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Chapter Text

SIRIUS BLACK EXONERATED

 

The wizarding world was shocked last summer when Sirius Black, convicted of the murder of thirteen with a single curse, became the first to escape from Azkaban. It received a second shock this afternoon when Black, finally accorded a trial, was exonerated by the Wizengamot in light of new evidence provided under Veritaserum by Peter Pettigrew, a supposed victim of Black's who was produced, alive and well, in June. Pettigrew confessed to the murders of which Black was accused. (For more information about Pettigrew's framing of Black and trial, turn to page six.)

Black expressed his relief that justice had been done, but didn't wish to dwell. Instead, he stated his plans to enjoy his newfound freedom, perhaps try out the latest racing broom, and spend time with his godson, Harry Potter, whose custody he recently was awarded and who he never before had a chance to know.

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, has been resident for the past thirteen years with muggle relatives of his mother Lily Potter, nee Evans. Black did not comment on the suitability of this choice, saying only that he regretted that he wasn't able to take care of Potter himself as directed in the Potters' will. "But Harry's generously given me a second chance," he said, "And I intend to make it up to him as best I can."

Is a quiet life really all that's on Black's agenda? Ever since his grandfather's death in 1992, Black has been the heir to a substantial fortune and a hereditary seat on the Wizengamot - though unable to make use of them in Azkaban. Now freed and exonerated, Black has become the heir to no small amount of speculation as well...

Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived and godson of Sirius Black, frowned at the article he had already read some fifteen times in the past three days. Sirius had said to him, too, that he intended to make up for the absence which had been in no way his fault; but knowing he had said it to a reporter for the Daily Prophet made a difference somehow. He also hadn't said the part about the second chance to Harry.

His chest felt tight. Did Sirius really think Harry would blame him for being wrongfully imprisoned for twelve years?

He would get a chance to ask him later today, for Sirius would soon be arriving in Privet Drive to pick him up. Harry would leave the Dursleys for the final time that morning, a fact he could scarcely believe. It seemed flatly impossible; he felt certain that any minute now he would receive a letter with some new disaster, or Aurors would swoop in and take Sirius back to prison, or Dumbledore would inform him it was not allowed.

He had packed his things reluctantly, feeling as though he was bringing down bad luck, last night. It was amazing to him that he had been able to keep his belongings with him in his room for the last month: but the Dursleys were in a good mood, a very good one indeed, at the prospect of seeing the last of Harry forever.

Uncle Vernon in particular had immensely enjoyed sneering at Harry, for he had rapidly recognized Sirius as the subject of Muggle alerts about a dangerous criminal the previous summer. "Suppose you're sure he won't murder you in your bed, boy?" he chuckled. "Well, it's no skin off our backs!"

Only Aunt Petunia did not seem entirely thrilled. Harry supposed she was thinking that without him around, she would have to do the gardening, cleaning and cooking herself. He suspected the quality of the housework at number 4, Privet Drive was about to suffer.

Harry looked at his watch. It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning now; Sirius was due any minute. He wanted to rush down the stairs to the front hall to wait - but he found himself curiously unable to move, picturing the look on Uncle Vernon's face if Sirius did not arrive at all. Harry was only too able to imagine what he would say about how unwanted Harry must be, by even his godfather.

A very load roar came from the street, so loud that the windows shook. Hedwig hooted unhappily. Harry leapt to his feet and went to the window.

A motorbike had come to a halt, just in front of the house at the edge of the drive. As Harry watched, breathless, a figure in jeans and a black leather jacket swung off the bike, tucked his helmet under his arm, and began the walk up the drive past Aunt Petunia's begonias.

It was Sirius. Harry leapt to his feet at last and pelted down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and flung the door open just as Sirius reached it. He beamed at him.

Sirius beamed back for a moment. "Harry!" he said, and rather to his astonishment, Sirius swept him into a tight hug.

Then he said, "What happened to your clothes?" looking somewhat taken back.

Harry was staring himself. It was hard to believe it had only been a few weeks from the change in Sirius. He was still thin, and his cheeks were gaunt; but he was now handsomely thin instead of skeletal. His skin was a more usual color for skin to be, and his hair was tied back and appeared well-groomed, if windswept.

Harry tore his eyes from Sirius' face, remembering as he did that Sirius had asked a question. "Dudley happened to them," he said. He was dressed, as usual in the muggle world, in his cousin's cast offs. As Dudley was a great number of sizes larger than Harry and not particularly gentle with his belongings, this gave the impression that Harry was dressed in a secondhand, well-used circus tent.

Of course, Sirius had only seen Harry in Hogwarts robes before.

"Dudley," Sirius repeated, eyebrows raised. "Your cousin?"

At that moment, Dudley himself emerged from the living room and stopped, clearly torn by the appearance of Harry's godfather.

On the one hand, Sirius was a wizard, and Dudley knew his parents despised magic; his own previous encounter with it had resulted in a pig's tail which had to be surgically removed. On the other hand, Sirius had arrived on the back of a very loud motorbike, and proved to be dressed not in wizarding robes or something like Hagrid's great overcoat, but in denims and black leather, with a long black ponytail. In short, Harry knew Dudley would be thinking, he appeared to be cool. Harry had never before been associated with anyone cool.

Harry's aunt and uncle, following Dudley into the front hallway, were nowhere near as interested. "You'll be Black?" Uncle Vernon said, dubiously.

Harry was briefly concerned. It had occurred to him before that when he and Sirius had last met, Sirius had been in the process of attempting to murder the man who had betrayed Harry and his parents to Lord Voldemort when Harry was a baby, and while Harry had been able to persuade Sirius to turn Peter Pettigrew in instead, he had shown definite signs of being infuriated by, say, Professor Snape's attitude towards Harry. Would there be a fight? Exonerated or not, Harry felt the last thing Sirius needed was to be promptly taken in again for cursing a muggle.

He apparently did not need to worry, at least not yet. "Yes," Sirius said, and gave an astonishingly polite smile to Uncle Vernon, extending his hand. "Sirius Black, Harry's godfather. It's a pleasure to meet you, ah..."

"Vernon Dursley," Uncle Vernon said, visibly distressed that he had been put in a position to have to touch Sirius' hand. He did this as quickly as possible. He made no move to introduce Aunt Petunia.

"And Petunia," Sirius said, and here Harry could see that his smile was somewhat strained. "We've met."

"I recall," Aunt Petunia snapped, crossing her arms in an attempt to be entirely clear she would not be shaking Sirius' hand herself.

"Well," Sirius said, when neither of them made any move to speak. "I'll soon be off with Harry. Shall I get your trunk while you say goodbye?"

Sirius knew that Harry had leapt at the chance to live with his godfather, a wizard he had never before met, who had at the time been in the course of attempting to commit the murder he'd been incarcerated for more than a decade previously. He had glimpsed Harry last summer in the process of running away from Privet Drive in the aftermath of some rather alarming accidental magic during a family argument.

However, Harry had not chosen to mention any other details about his life at Privet Drive as of yet. It seemed rather pointless, for one, when he was about to be leaving forever; and he did not wish Sirius to believe he was whining.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Thanks, Sirius. It's the bedroom on the left."

Sirius clumped up the stairs. Harry, unfortunately, was left to make eye contact with his relations.

"He's definitely taking you for good," Uncle Vernon said, for approximately the twentieth time. "Not a visit, not a trial run."

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry said, imagining what it would be like to shut the door for the very last time, and know he never had to come back inside.

"Because if he decides he's had it with you, you're not coming back. I won't have it. You'll have to stay at that school of yours. You've sponged off us for thirteen years, and been nothing but trouble the entire time--"

There was a thunk from the stairs, and Harry realized, to his horror, that Sirius had been coming back down them with his trunk, and must have heard at least the last sentence or two of this.

Uncle Vernon rapidly stopped talking.

"Ah, Harry," Sirius said, voice still remarkably calm. "Why don't you take Hedwig out and let her know where we're going? She can get a chance to stretch her wings. You have the address from my last letter."

Harry looked warily between Sirius and his aunt and uncle, but decided that Sirius was unlikely to jeopardize his freedom at this moment while not in a rage. He went up to get Hedwig, tarrying some on the landing to eavesdrop; but Sirius must have put up a silencing charm, because he didn't hear a word from downstairs.

It was evident that there had been shouting when he came back down. Sirius was slightly out of breath, and Uncle Vernon had gone purple. Aunt Petunia's lips were pressed very thin, and her face was white.

"Good, you've got everything?" Sirius said, and when Harry nodded. "Excellent. It's a long drive, so we'd better get going. Let me just shrink your trunk."

There was no further mention of Harry saying goodbye; and taking his last walk down the drive to the motorbike felt exactly as good as he had imagined.

It wasn't too far a drive, in fact; they were going to London, and relatively directly at that. They were in the city, idling at a stoplight, when Sirius turned his head and called, "What do you think about stopping for some lunch, Harry?"

"Sounds good," Harry managed to get out, before the light turned and they roared off again.

Riding as a passenger on a motorbike was an interesting experience. Harry suspected he might have liked it rather a lot if he was driving and in control of it.

Sirius shouted several queries about what kind of food he'd like on the bike, but Harry only buried his face in Sirius' shoulder and pretended he couldn't hear. A problem had just occurred to him: he had bought muggle food only once, on the disastrous zoo trip in which he'd vanished the glass on a boa constrictor's enclosure, and even then the Dursleys had only conceded to get him anything because it would have looked very funny not to once the woman in the van had asked. They had chosen for him.

He had also been in the Three Broomsticks, but students always ordered the same thing there; and he paid for himself. How exactly were you supposed to choose when an adult was paying for you, but one who was in charge of you and actually liked you? What kind of restaurant would Sirius bring them to? He supposed it at least couldn't be anywhere too posh, not with Sirius' clothing.

"Into the alley, quick," Sirius said when the bike was parked. Puzzled, Harry complied; he pulled his wand and gently tapped Harry's shoulder. Dudley's immense shirt and trousers shrank to a more reasonable size immediately.

"I'd have done it sooner but I thought it was best to get out of there before Lily's sister started screaming," Sirius said. "We'll get you some that aren't castoffs soon, but that should be good enough for lunch. Still no opinion about the food?"

"No," Harry said. "When did you meet Aunt Petunia?"

"At your parents' wedding, although James had seen her a few times and given us all some warning," Sirius said, leading him back onto the sidewalk. "Time hasn't improved her. I wouldn't have said it was possible but if anything she's gotten worse..."

They were in a cluttered, crowded street with numerous restaurants and small shops and a great many people. Harry had to focus on keeping up with Sirius. Still, this could hardly avoid grabbing his attention. "She went to their wedding?"

"She'd never have missed the chance to make snide comments," Sirius said dryly. "If she hadn't gone she wouldn't be able to complain. Curry?"

"Sounds great," said Harry gamely. He had never had curry; the Dursleys did not approve of foreign food. He thought he did rather well, watching Sirius surreptitiously as he perused the menu and ordering something that cost a little less than Sirius's choice. Surely chicken couldn't be too bad.

But when the waitress was gone, Sirius smiled a strange, knowing and sad smile at him. "You've never been in a muggle restaurant before, have you?"

Harry's face felt hot. "How'd you know?"

"James and I watched Remus about that hard the first time he took us to one - he's a halfblood, but he grew up mostly in the muggle world when he wasn't at Hogwarts, of course they aren't prejudiced against werewolves the same way. The Dursleys never bothered to take you out?"

Harry looked down at the tablecloth. It seemed that he was going to be hard put not to risk whining. "They mostly paid attention to Dudley," he said.

"I saw the cat flap in the door," Sirius said. "And all of the locks on the outside."

Harry wasn't certain what to say to this.

"Listen," Sirius said after a moment. "I'm not saying this to embarrass you. If anything, they remind me a lot of my parents."

Harry looked up, startled. "Your parents?"

Sirius smiled thinly. "They used to punish us by stripping all of the belongings out of our rooms - including clothing - and leaving us locked in for weeks. Sometimes they wouldn't let our house elf feed us, either... Anyway, when I was around sixteen I had enough, I ran away and James's parents took me in. They treated me like a son." Sirius's eyes were distant. "I'd never experienced anything like it before. I won't judge you for it, Harry. It's okay to ask questions if we're doing something new."

This was not anything Harry had expected to hear from his godfather, and it took a moment to work out how to answer. "They took your clothes?" he said, softly because a large family was filing into the next booth, but furiously.

"They're all dead now," Sirius said, simply. "Mostly nastily. My family were very Dark wizards, about as Dark as a family can go, and that doesn't tend to lead to good ends. Well, I suppose my cousins are still alive. At least Andromeda got out. I should look her up sometime soon."

Harry imagined for a moment the far future, perhaps twenty or thirty years from now, saying to someone without any particular feeling that the Dursleys were all dead now. It was hard, harder to imagine even than walking away from Privet Drive forever had been.

He realized he had not had any real idea there were other children like him. He had always supposed that the Dursleys, or at least his situation, were unique. That seemed strange now. The world was full of people like the Dursleys, people who were mean and bullying, and many of them had children.

"You have cousins?" he said. "What are they like, what are they doing now?"

"Well, Andromeda's daughter had her last year at Hogwarts in your first - I hear she's in Auror training now. You'll have heard at least one of the others. I understand Narcissa Malfoy has a boy in your year--"

Harry choked on his drink. "You're cousins with Malfoy's mother?"

"I told you my family was very Dark," Sirius said, voice amused.

This was bizarre. "But the first sister, Andromeda, she's not a supporter of Voldemort?"

"No, it's one of the few things I know about her life now. She was disowned when I was eight."

"Well, I'd like to meet her, when you get back in touch," Harry said, hoping this was the right thing to say. It seemed to be; Sirius smiled at him, and then the food arrived and he wanted Harry to try everything on the table to see what he liked.

"So where are we staying?" Harry asked, some time later. "Do you have a house?" It was one of the things he remembered asking Sirius, incoherent with joy, before they had gotten up to the castle with Pettigrew and everything had happened very, very fast.

"I do - two actually, now, but Grimmauld Place isn't fit for habitation. The stuff my family left in it..." Sirius laughed darkly. "But I bought one when I inherited some gold from my uncle, sixth year, and it needs some fixing up but it's livable. Dumbledore thinks - well, a lot of things, but one of the few helpful things he said was that he thought we should stay in the muggle world for now. I agree, I know who's going to want to come calling on me now that I'm out of prison and I'd rather they not try to curse my godson if he answers the door."

"You just - bought a new one when you were still in school?" Harry remembered the Prophet article. "You're rich, aren't you?"

"Rather, I suppose. My grandfathers died while I was in Azkaban, so I'm not used to it anymore - my uncle left me some gold, but nothing like what the rest of the family had. I thought about waiting and getting the place fixed up first, but you were very clear about wanting to come as soon as possible." Sirius looked at Harry intently. "I'm glad I listened."

Harry felt a different sort of heat in his chest, something warmer and softer than his earlier embarrassment. Uncle Vernon's speculation aside, Sirius did want him.

"Thanks," he said, awkwardly. "Wait, what did Dumbledore say that wasn't helpful?" Sirius seemed to mean he was angry.

A shadow came into Sirius's face again, and he looked much older, although not so bad as before, when he had been on the run for a year. "A lot of things. What it came down to is that he wanted you to stay with the Dursleys."

"He - what?"

"He had some reasons, but they're nothing we should talk about here - I'll tell you at the house. Don't worry, I won't listen to him, and he can't get your custody from me. My family is doing more for me dead than they ever did alive, even before I ran away.

"Fudge desperately wants to make amends for throwing a Black in Azkaban without a trial for more than a decade. If it ever looks close, I'll pay for a new wing in St. Mungo's or the Ministry building and it will go away." Sirius rubbed his temples. "I've wished the Ministry had a few principles more than once in the past. But this one time, that will be helpful."

For the first time, it seemed plausible that Sirius was closely related to Draco Malfoy.

Chapter Text

Sirius's house was made of somewhat crumbling brick, the third in a line of terraced housing that went down a somewhat derelict street. Harry felt almost relieved, picking around the broken glass on the sidewalk; for a moment he had had a terrified picture of living somewhere very like Privet Drive, trying to explain Sirius's wizarding behavior to a lot of neighbors much like the Dursleys.

"Well, here we are," Sirius was saying, unlocking the door. "Just a second, I need to make the wards recognize you. Don't come through yet."

"What do I do?" Harry asked, standing outside the threshold as Sirius crossed it and turned to face Harry in the doorway.

"I need your hand, and some blood, if that's alright."

Harry extended his hand. He had plenty of experience with pain, between Quidditch and twice confronting Voldemort.

Sirius pulled a pocket knife out, glanced around to make sure none of the neighbors were watching - Harry suspected this was the kind of place where they would not want to be seen staring anyway - and gently pricked the pad of Harry's right thumb with the knife. He smeared it onto a swatch of white silk Harry hadn't seen come out, and then reached up to the door frame. Harry watched his wrist move, and supposed he was writing something, but couldn't see what it was yet.

Sirius put the cloth in his pocket and said something softly under his breath. There was a brief flash of blue light in Harry's eyes, like a camera going off in his face; then it faded.

Harry realized he had not been able to see past Sirius into the house before now, although it had somehow not struck him as worth paying attention to. Now, he could see wooden floorboards and blue walls in a hall leading straight back, and doorways to the left and right.

"Alright," Sirius said, and the look in his eyes was triumphant. "You can come in now, Harry. Welcome home."

He unshrunk Harry's trunk and floated it up the stairs for him, telling him to pick either of the bedrooms upstairs - "There's a partitioned attic with two bedrooms, but I'm not done cleaning it yet; if you fancy either of those we can move your things later. I'm in the basement, don't want to wake you at night." Harry, clutching his Firebolt and Hedwig's empty cage, could not imagine that it would matter - he had never been allowed to choose a room before at all.

The house was somewhat narrow, but went a long way back. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom on the upper floor. Harry chose the one at the back with a view of the small, shabby garden - more of a muddy lot than anything else after so many years of abandonment - and the back of the houses on the next street, some of which had real gardens, or washing hanging out. It had cream-colored walls, and bright red curtains, and a wooden bed frame with a carved headboard. He dragged his trunk in and put it at the foot of the bed - he would unpack more later - and put his Firebolt on top of it. Hedwig's empty cage, he left open on the wide, empty desk. He opened the window so that she could come in when she made it, and then went back downstairs.

It occurred to him to check the inside of the door frame now; but to his disappointment he saw there was nothing there. "What happened to my blood on the door?" he asked, finding Sirius in the kitchen, moving a stack of newspapers off the table.

"The house absorbed it," Sirius said. "It knows you're one of the household now - that's done at the threshold ideally, for the most strength, and we may need that. Ah, Harry, maybe don't mention that to your friends at school. The spells aren't illegal to have up, but the Ministry frowns on going and casting them yourself. You're not supposed to create a new family manor, just inherit one from your ancestors from the depths of time..."

"It's not Dark, is it?"

"Not in the sense of malicious magic. But a lot of people think anything that uses human blood must be as good as, and there were some laws passed at the end of the last war accordingly. You can tell Ron and Hermione, just make sure they know to be careful with it, too." The last newspaper was relegated to a pile under the cupboard. "There we go, room for two now." Sirius glanced at Harry nervously. "I'll make tea, shall I? --Unless you don't want any, we just ate - it's fine if you want to go see your room, or look around..."

"Tea sounds great," Harry said, and then realized he had no idea what else to say now that Sirius was not carrying the conversation. He watched Sirius get the kettle out, trying to memorize where the kitchen things were kept so he didn't have to ask. He had started helping Aunt Petunia in the kitchen when he was four, so he had no memory of having to learn.

A few minutes later Harry remembered to ask, "You said you'd explain about Dumbledore when we were in private."

"Yes, I did," Sirius said. "Let me think where to start. You know that you were left with your aunt and uncle after - after James and Lily were killed. I don't know if you know that was at Dumbledore's word. Apparently there's a spell, or rather a ward, he constructed based on your mother - has anyone discussed with you the - events that night?"

Harry thought he might know what Sirius meant. "I heard them, when the dementors came near," he said. "Last year... My father said he would hold Voldemort off, that my mother should take me and run." He took a deep breath. "Voldemort told her to - to stand aside, and she'd be spared. She told him to take her instead, and he - he killed her. And then, well. It happened."

"Yes." Sirius's voice came out strangled. "Yes," he said again, clearer. "Your mother died to save you. Dumbledore was able to use that to make a - very strong ward against Voldemort, one that would only work as long as you lived with her blood relatives as a minor. So I have to apologize, Harry - I don't know if that's more important to you than getting away from the Dursleys, but I didn't ask."

It was quite clear that Sirius did not think Harry would be angry; and indeed, Harry felt only a deep relief that Sirius had understood him that well.

Unlike, apparently, Dumbledore. Harry swallowed down a lump in his throat. This was why Dumbledore had left him with the Dursleys? A bit of magical protection that, as far as he knew, had never been needed yet? Yes, Voldemort would return, but who knew if that would be while Harry was still underage?

Though Harry had to admit here that he had never discussed the Dursleys with Dumbledore. It had been difficult enough to know Sirius had overheard, that morning, when he was leaving them forever. Perhaps Dumbledore hadn't even known.

"I'm not mad," Harry said belatedly. "I, uh." His throat was tight. "Thank you for not listening to Dumbledore. I'm glad you came to get me anyway."

"Good. So am I," Sirius said fiercely, and "The tea's ready, Harry, if you want to come sit."'

The last week of July and the beginning of August passed strangely. Harry settled into the new bedroom, unpacking his things and gradually acquiring a few more. He also explored the streets around their house, and once Sirius found out he had never been on the Tube alone and showed him how it worked, went further afield in London.

Sirius, too, settled into the house. He spent a lot of time transforming the muddy lot out back into a real garden and bringing home strange furniture and knickknacks for the house, to replace what the Aurors had broken when they ransacked it after he was arrested. The rooms filled gradually with end tables and bookshelves, interesting dishes and strange objects, some of which were magical and some merely odd.

Harry had never had so much free time in his life; even when he had stayed at Diagon Alley last summer, he had had a smaller area to roam, all of his summer homework to finish at once and a shorter length of time. He finished his homework much faster than he had imagined he might for something to do with his time, and found himself offering to help Sirius with all manner of chores, although Sirius had a tendency to chase him off after a half hour or so to go "do something fun," often while stuffing pocket money into his hand.

Sirius did not seem quite sure how to share a house with him, although not in a way that made Harry feel he was unwelcome. It was only that he often seemed surprised when Harry came into the room, and a little awkward when they had to have the sort of conversations people had with parents: asking after Harry's summer homework or announcing dinner times. He did not speak directly about his family, but Harry got the impression in fits and starts that Sirius, like him, only knew about parents from books and other people's stories and at best time staying with friends; they were both making it up as they went along.

Harry exchanged several letters with Ron and Hermione, relieved to have unrestricted access to Hedwig. It was perhaps a mark of the previous summers that it didn't occur to Harry to suggest meeting with them until the first week of August, when Sirius wandered down to the kitchen around ten o'clock in the morning, spotted the letter Harry was writing, and said, "How are Ron and Hermione, then? We should have them over or something - pay the Weasleys back for hosting you."

It had not previously occurred to Harry that he could do that. "You don't mind?" he said to Sirius.

"No, it's a small house, isn't it? Nice to have some company around here," Sirius said, wandering back out with a piece of fruit.

"Huh," Harry said, staring at the letter, and started to write again.

Ron wrote back saying he could come some time soon, just let him know when, and inviting Harry and Sirius to come to the World Cup with the Weasleys; he added that Harry could come stay at the Burrow for the end of the summer with him and Hermione after.

("I suppose Arthur's still friends with Ludo Bagman, those are excellent tickets," Sirius remarked. "Tell him we'll definitely come.")

Hermione replied back a few days later with what Harry couldn't help but feel was somewhat alarming news: her parents were willing to let her stay with Harry, but they had seen the announcements on muggle television about Sirius Black last summer, and were not entirely convinced that he was an appropriate adult to take charge of their daughter, innocent or not. They wanted to meet him first, and did Harry think Sirius was able to act muggle? Her parents had liked the Weasleys when they met, but it had been away from the Burrow. (She underlined those last four words.)

"Lovely people," Sirius said. "I suppose I looked like a raving lunatic in the pictures they had up in the wizarding world. I was a raving lunatic at the time. Write back and tell her we'll have her parents over for supper, ask about what food they like, will you?"

"They're dentists," Harry said, feeling that Sirius should understand what this meant, being as familiar with the muggle world as he had shown himself so far. "I've never really met them, only seen them in Diagon Alley."

Therefore, following Hermione's nervous instructions, they had the Grangers over for supper the following Sunday. Hermione had provided a fairly long list of things not to serve, some of which were clearly related to her parents' profession (for example, fizzy drinks or sugar-rich desserts) and some of which were less so (she was emphatic about not serving any pork). Sirius looked it over and elected spaghetti bolognese (chicken based). He and Harry spent the afternoon putting it together, along with salad, toasted garlic bread, and a dark chocolate tart (according to Hermione, dark chocolate had less sugar and was therefore approved).

A half hour before the Grangers were due to arrive, Sirius told Harry to make sure nothing caught fire and slipped downstairs. He reappeared shortly in impressively respectable muggle attire: subtly pin striped gray trousers and a crisp white button down shirt. Harry thought that if it weren't for his hair, which he had tied up discreetly at the back of his head, Aunt Petunia would have been polite to him passing on the street.

"You'd better change too, there's tomato sauce down your shirt," Sirius said. "--Don't look so panic-stricken, kids can always get away with more casual dress, just put on clean clothing."

Harry went quickly. When he came back, Sirius was directing a group of sparkling drinking glasses to arrange themselves on the large dining room table, which the two of them had never actually used before. Harry went to get the plates so that Sirius could use magic to transfer the food, safe from further sauce splatters.

The Grangers arrived precisely on time. Sirius went to get the door before Harry could reach it. He heard a polite, "How do you do, Dr. Granger, Dr. Granger - it's nice to see you again, Hermione, Harry's just finishing up with the table." Sirius's accent seemed to have jumped three tax brackets.

Harry rapidly fixed the last napkin and put it down next to the place at the head of the table, then rushed into the hall.

"Harry!" Hermione said, sounding delighted, and rushed him before he could get a good look at her parents. Her grip was crushing.

"Let him breathe, Hermione," her mother said, coming in after them. Harry hugged Hermione back before letting go to look at her. It had only been a few weeks, but Hermione was tanned and looked, he thought, a little less like she was about to fall asleep on her feet than she had for most of last term. She was wearing her hair in two tight and rather childish braids thrown down her back, and her shirt was a shade of pink he had never seen Hermione in before. There were ruffles. Harry reminded himself very firmly that Hermione was his friend and tried not to look at them in case he laughed.

"How's your summer been?" he said. "You're going to the World Cup with us and the Weasleys, right?"

"Yeah, I will be," Hermione said breathlessly. "My summer's been - fine," she said, casting an anxious look back at her parents talking to Sirius.

Her mother was very pretty in a Hermione-ish sort of way, with bushy hair contained in a bob and matching olive skin. Her father was tall and reedy, and it was immediately apparent where Hermione had gotten her teeth. They were talking to Sirius about, it looked like, antique stores in London. Sirius was pointing at the furniture and explaining something.

"Come on, let's go into the dining room," Harry said, seeing the adults were occupied.

"Yes, of course," Hermione said, looking relieved. Once they were in the next room she said, "Harry - I tell my parents things they understand about school, you know, being top of the year and exams and fighting with Lavender and Parvati about who's in the shower, not--"

"Not fighting Dark Lords or basilisks?" Harry muttered in an undertone. Hermione nodded, looking relieved. "Don't worry, I'll just tell them about you drawing up exam schedules for Ron and me--"

"Well, if you'd just do your work," Hermione said, louder and exasperated, as her parents came into the dining room with Sirius.

"We do," Harry said laughing, and, "Hey, you'll be happy, I'm finished with my summer work already - nice to be able to do it at a desk instead of hiding under the blankets--"

"Under the blankets?" Hermione's father said, blinking.

"I told you Harry just came to live with his godfather," Hermione said anxiously.

"Yeah, my aunt and uncle don't like magic much, they didn't want to let me go to Hogwarts," Harry said, getting up to get Hermione's mother's chair for her out of reflexes born of serving dinner at the Dursleys. "It's nice to meet you both, Dr. Granger and Dr. Granger, I'm Harry Potter."

"It's so nice to meet you, Harry," Hermione's mother said, shaking his hand firmly. "We were always so worried about whether Hermione would ever have friends at school--"

"I have a friend who taught at Hogwarts last year, he was telling me about how you could absolutely never find the three of them apart," Sirius said, and, "Let me just get the plates--"

It was a relief to have food to focus on. Harry did not have much experience talking to adults who were neither teachers, nor under the impression from the Dursleys that he was criminally insane. He tried to keep up with the conversation, mostly about Hogwarts, but he had the disconcerting sense that he was being cross-examined by the Grangers in comparison to what Hermione had told them, and he did not want to make it obvious that he was looking at Hermione for signs before answering questions.

Still, he didn't seem to do too badly. Sirius periodically took over the conversation to remark on some aspect of adult life in the magical or muggle worlds, explaining the rules of Quidditch or commenting on the struggle to get his house back into livable condition after being, as he put it, away for so long.

This last pointed seemed delicate, as it brought up Sirius's term in prison, and Harry felt Hermione tense. Her father remarked, "About that - Hermione said you were cleared after the bloke who framed you ended up caught, but she wasn't too specific about how you were convicted...?"

Sirius hesitated, then said, "Well, I imagine you've taken a look through some of her textbooks, so you'd know about the war."

"Of course," Hermione's mother said. "Really terrifying stuff - we weren't too keen to let her go off, but that Professor McGonagall did say things had calmed down a lot."

"Yes, well, I'm sure you're familiar with the tendency of people to give emergency powers to authorities in crisis," Sirius said tightly. "As it happens, I have the misfortune of being the first cousin of someone very high up in Voldemort's leadership, and the government felt that I was guilty by virtue of my name. Some really horrible stuff happened back then, I'm just - grateful to be out now," he said, and leaned over to squeeze Harry's shoulder.

Harry's face felt hot. He said quietly, "I'm glad you're free, too."

He was worried about how the Grangers would take this information but as it turned out it took them down a road to common ground at last: complaining about Margaret Thatcher.

Finally, over rapidly clearing plates of tart, the Grangers agreed that it would be very nice for Hermione to visit both of her friends this summer, and they could see Sirius' home would be an excellent place to stay.

"How soon can she come?" Harry asked.

"Well, we understand your guardian might need a few days to prepare..." Hermione's mother said affably.

"As soon as you'll have me," Hermione said, and quieter, "I brought my bag with me in the car."

"Don't be rude, Hermione," her mother said. "You can't just spring this on them."

"If she'd like to stay tonight, we certainly have the space," Sirius said. "Not much longer until the World Cup, anyway, and I understand both of them will be visiting the Weasleys' then. You ought to try Molly Weasleys' cooking, hers is loads better than mine... Tell me again about what schooling is like for muggle dentists?"

The Grangers were gently shooed back over the threshold after around three hours, leaving an openly relieved Hermione behind. She began tearing her plaits out the second the door closed, using more nail than finger.

"You'll rip your hair out, slow down a bit," Sirius said, locking the door. "I promise if they come back tomorrow to say they've changed their minds I'll pretend we're not home."

"I'm sorry," Hermione said, "I really do love them - most of them - it's just that at anything formal - thank you for cooking, Mr. Black, and for having us for dinner, the food was lovely."

"Please, call me Sirius," Sirius said. "I'm glad to have you. I'm in the basement, Harry's the room in the back upstairs; you can take the other upstairs room or either one in the attic if you'd like to put your things down."

"Thank you," Hermione said fervently, picked up her bag, and disappeared up the steps, hair released from roughly one and a half plaits.

When she came back down, they grinned at each other awkwardly. Harry thought that it was odd to have just Hermione around, particularly without Ron being angry with her; but Ron was coming in a couple of days for the remainder of the time before they all went to the Burrow.

"So what's it like, apart from better than the Dursleys?" Hermione asked. "He looks so much better than he did when he escaped - I was worried, you know, that he'd answer the door looking like a skeleton and my parents would want to turn around and leave."

"He said he spent some time in St. Mungo's, after he was cleared, that's why I had to go back to the Dursleys for a few weeks," Harry said, leading her out to the garden. There were now flower beds around the lot in the back, and Sirius had paved the portion closer to the house. Harry dropped into one of the lawn chairs. "I think they were worried about the effects of the malnutrition, along with - the Dementors, on his mind - but he seems mostly okay now."

"I'm glad - I wasn't sure anyone could be worse than your relatives, really, but he seemed really sort of out of it at the end of last term - I'm sorry, that was rude." Hermione joined him in the other chair. "What have you been doing? Aside from what you said in the letters?"

"Well, that's most of it, really," Harry said. "We've been cleaning up the house - it's been empty since he was arrested, he just barely got it into good enough shape for us to live here first - and I've been exploring London, I've never - gone a lot of places by myself," he finished awkwardly. "The Dursleys live in a suburb with no bus service, you know. What've you been doing?"

They were able to move on, less awkwardly as time passed, to who the new Defensive Against the Dark Arts professor might be this year; what it was like to have an adult wizard for a guardian; and the World Cup. Ireland was playing Bulgaria, and their respective governments would send officials; Hermione had been reading about them and had quite a lot to say about the tradition of magical government in foreign countries. Some of it was even fairly interesting when it came to how Quidditch was important to international relations.

Naturally Hermione was horrified to learn he hadn't spent much time in Sirius' library, which consisted of books he had bought recently and quite a few he had inherited. He had been gradually moving these into the other upstairs bedroom, one by one as he verified they were not dangerous.

"You mean, cursed?" Hermione said.

"Yeah - oh, I nearly forgot to tell you!" Harry said up. "He's related to Malfoy--"

"No kidding?"

"No, his cousin's Malfoy's Mum! His family were really Dark, about as bad as the Malfoys, or worse. We're not living in their house because he said it would take a team of Aurors a month to make it safe to walk in the front door, although I think he might have been joking."

Sirius came back in, and they rapidly changed the subject. He asked amiably about how they had become friends, and they told him the story of the troll. He laughed very hard at Harry's description of Harry sticking his wand up a its nose. "It must have loved that," he said, gasping.

"Luckily Ron dropped the pipe on its head after that," Hermione said, laughing herself. "We'd just been studying hovering charms with Flitwick."

Chapter Text

Having Hermione around without Ron was a little strange, but it turned out that she was a very different person away from school. While she still spent most of her time reading, she was generally happy to settle on the couch or outside on the patio and read interesting bits out loud to Sirius and Harry. She also knew her way around muggle London much better than him and had a more thorough idea of what to do there, although Harry had the impression she was no more used to being allowed to roam around unattended than he was.

The days passed quickly. On the morning Ron was due to arrive, a knock came on the door hours before his expected arrival.

"That can't be them," Hermione said, looking towards the front door. "Ron's never been this early to anything in his life."

"I'll check," Sirius said, rising. "You two go ahead and stay here."

Harry didn't miss that he checked his wand before going. He and Hermione exchanged glances. They got up as soon as Sirius left the room, heading through the side door into the living room instead of following Sirius into the hall.

The door from the living room into the hall by the door was open a crack. Harry and Hermione arranged themselves so that they could see the doorway without being easily visible. Harry wished his invisibility cloak was with him, instead of upstairs; Sirius was standing between them and the steps.

Sirius glanced out through the spyhole, cursed, and put his wand in his sleeve before opening the door, to reveal--

A woman Harry had never seen before. She was tall and pale, with nearly white blond hair and icy blue eyes; but something in her face reminded him of Sirius. This must be Sirius' cousin, Draco Malfoy's mother.

"Sirius," she said at once. "I'm so glad to see you."

"Narcissa?" Sirius said, and stared for a moment. Harry wondered if Sirius would tell her to leave; but instead he was holding out his arms. Narcissa stepped through the doorway unhesitatingly to throw herself into them.

"You look so well," Narcissa said, kissing his cheeks. "I thought after Azkaban - well, no matter now. Very impressive wards you have up here. Dumbledore allows you to cast that sort of thing around Harry Potter?"

Harry felt Hermione vibrate with curiosity next to him.

"I'm not in the habit of asking Dumbledore for permission to cast magic in my own home," Sirius said dryly, kissing her cheeks in return. Narcissa did not let go of him but wound her arm around his waist instead, retreating perhaps half a step. Close together, the familial resemblance was obvious. If Harry squinted and looked past their hair, they had the same lines in their jaws and cheeks, and they were both tall, although Narcissa was built a little more delicately than Sirius.

"Oh, good, I'd wondered," Narcissa said, tone implying dire things about Albus Dumbledore "Really, Sirius - barely a month cleared and you already have custody of Harry Potter!"

"Well, I am named as guardian in his parents' wills," Sirius said, and then, "Narcissa. Does Lucius know you're here?"

Narcissa stiffened like an angry cat. "Does it matter?" she said.

Sirius sighed and stroked a hand down her cheek. It was an oddly intimate gesture from a cousin, and Harry felt as though they were watching something much more private than a greeting in an open doorway. He tucked her hair behind her ear, and said gently, "Cissy, it matters a great deal to me whether Lucius knows you're trying to get access to a home where my godson lives."

Narcissa's teeth clicked together angrily, but she didn't pull away from Sirius. "Are you accusing me of something?"

"Of course not. You were cleared of all charges, weren't you? Both of you. I suppose you didn't notice anything when he was," He paused pointedly, "Enchanted."

Narcissa was silent for a time. Then she said, "I will speak frankly. My husband made a serious miscalculation on the subject, and Bellatrix... You know how badly her judgment was compromised - how badly he damaged her - as well as I do. And if the Dark Lord should return, they will want Draco. If I was angry with the Dark Lord for taking my sister, it is nothing to how unwilling I am to give my son to him. I believe, for now, we are safe. But should he return..."

Harry could not believe that Sirius would take this declaration at face value. Sirius, fortunately, appeared skeptical. "We have a guest in the house," he said, after a moment.

Hermione twitched.

"I would be happy to meet any friends of your family of course," Narcissa said, poised.

Hermione choked and made a noise like an angry cat, muffling her mouth into Harry's shoulder. Narcissa glanced in the direction of the living room, but didn't seem to notice anything seriously amiss.

"I'm sure," Sirius said. "You may have heard of her from your son, as she's been top of every class in their year. Hermione Granger?"

Narcissa's face contorted as though she smelled something bad. "I see you really haven't forgotten your ideals, Sirius. Really, it's not enough to be polite to that sort of thing in public, you have to invite it into your house as well?"

Sirius smiled grimly. "Get out of my house, Cissy," he said.

"Sirius!" Narcissa finally jerked out of his arms and stared at him, then laughed, as though he had made a not particularly funny joke. "Oh, very well, I've been rude--"

"Narcissa," Sirius said flatly. "You've insulted a guest in my house, and you've done it on the grounds of your objection to my politics as head. If you want to ask me for favors, you'd better do it another day. Get out."

Narcissa stared wildly, and Harry thought for a moment she might cry, or slap Sirius. Then she said, "And you have turned away your kinswoman for a stranger. I see you are not recovered from Azkaban yet. I will call on you when you are well." Then she turned on her heel and stalked out.

Sirius watched the door shut, and raised his wand almost lazily to lock it behind her. Then he turned to the living room door. "You can come out now," he said.

Sheepishly, Harry and Hermione straightened, unpiled themselves and opened the door.

"I'm sorry you had to listen to her speak about you that way," Sirius said to Hermione. "I perhaps shouldn't have used you as a test..."

"No, you shouldn't have," Hermione said unhappily, "But I see why you did. Did she - do you think she meant what she said about You-Know-Who?"

Sirius shook his head slowly. "I don't know, and short of asking her to Vow or submit to Veritaserum, which she would be unlikely to agree to in any case, I don't see any way of finding out. Narcissa is...

"Well, children of the great Houses tend to be close, growing up, they're generally raised communally, and parents of that class are neglectful at best and violent at worst. I didn't have any allies as a child except my cousins and my little brother. I'm not surprised she'd come here, given that - her marriage was known to be unhappy in the seventies, and that was before her husband came down on the losing side of a war. But when we grow up and take our own sides..." He shook his head.

"Enough. She is what she is, now." Sirius smiled sadly at Hermione.

"So that was Malfoy's mum?" Harry said awkwardly, when Sirius did not seem likely to continue.

"Yes." Sirius started back towards the kitchen. "Narcissa Malfoy, nee Black. Well, if there's one good thing, I've been meaning to write her sister Andromeda - she's the other runaway Black in my generation. Narcissa coming reminded me. Shall I make some tea for us all, and then I'll start?"

"What did Andromeda do?" Hermione asked as they followed Sirius back to the kitchen. "I mean, when she ran away?"

"Andromeda eloped," Sirius said. "And broke a betrothal to Walden Macnair that her parents had made when she was fourteen. She told them she was staying at school and married Ted Tonks over Easter break, seventh year, to avoid it. It was the scandal of a generation, she outshone me running away to the Potters seven years later by half again. I think I'll ask them around for tea next weekend, it'll be good to have some company with you lot gone. I've been wanting to meet her daughter, she's a few years older than you lot."

Hermione was still rather subdued a few hours later when Ron was due to arrive. Harry eventually resorted to getting out the summer homework he had completed at the Dursleys and asking her about some of the trickier questions to cheer her up. Explaining things to him was a favorite occupation of hers when he had actually done the work ahead of time, and she looked a little happier by the time the next knock at the door came.

"Let me get it, just in case Narcissa's back," Sirius said, rising. "I don't seriously expect she'd send any of Lucius's associates around but there's always an outside chance..." They heard the door open, and he said, "Ah, it's good to see you! Harry and Hermione are in the kitchen...."

Ron came pounding up the hall, trailed by Sirius and Mrs. Weasley. He stopped short seeing Hermione's face. "What happened?" he said. "What'd you do to her, mate?" Then, seeing the textbooks out, "You can't have done that badly on McGonagall's essay?"

"Not me," Harry muttered.

"Sirius's cousin came to call," Hermione said, lips taut. "He threw her out after she questioned why he let 'that,'" her voice thickened with disgust as she gestured to herself, "Into the house."

"Sirius is cousins with Malfoy's mum," Harry said, to the gaping Ron. "She just showed up..."

"The Malfoys have a habit of doing that," Sirius said, pulling out a chair for Mrs. Weasley and going to pour them all drinks. "Normally their galleons smooth it all over. She won't be back again," he said, casting a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Weasley.

From what Harry understood, the Weasleys were mortified that Peter Pettigrew, the real murderer of the Potters, had been hiding as their household pet for years. Consequently Ron had reported absolutely no reluctance about allowing him to visit.

"I'm sure she won't be if you threw her out," Mrs. Weasley said. "Oh, I'd have liked to see that - Lucius is always trying to make trouble for Arthur at work, he's thick with Fudge. And Fudge thinks Arthur's too fond of muggles."

"Cornelius Fudge would accuse the paving in front of his house of being overly fond of muggles for letting them walk on it," Sirius said. "Will you stay for some tea, Mrs. Weasley? I picked up some buns at the muggle bakery down the street this morning, they're very good. You might take one home for Arthur, I'm sure he'll get a kick out of it."

"Oh, if I'm really not imposing - please, call me Molly, Mr. Black."

"Then you'll have to call me Sirius," Sirius said, taking out the bakery bag. "You too, Ron. Don't feel you have to sit here and entertain us if you'd rather go catch up--"

"Let me show you the house," Harry said, getting up on cue and hurriedly gathering his school books.

He did actually show Ron the living room and dining room quickly before taking them upstairs and pointing out the empty guest rooms in the attic. Ron dumped his bags on the bed, then trailed them into the guest room Hermione had taken over, where she was curling up in the window seat, still looking miserable.

"I'm sorry, it's been hours," she said, "I just keep thinking about it--"

"It's okay, Hermione, we understand," Harry said, sitting next to her as Ron took her other side.

"We can punch Malfoy in the nose for it when we're back in school," Ron said.

"Don't, you'll get into trouble!" Hermione said. "And anyway it was his mother who said it, not him."

"He obviously got it from her," Harry said. "What'd you think of the rest of the conversation?" Sirius had been hovering for much of the afternoon, impeding their ability to discuss it.

As he had expected, Hermione went from upset to thoughtful. "Well, I'm looking forward to meeting Andromeda, of course," she said. "It's interesting what she said about - Bellatrix and You-Know-Who, isn't it? And about the children in their family?"

"How's it interesting that the Blacks were horrible?" Harry asked.

"Well, culturally speaking--"

"Sorry," Ron said, "But could I get some background here?"

They rapidly filled Ron in on the conversation they had overheard earlier, and on what they had learned about Sirius' family.

"His cousin was fourteen?" Ron said. "Seriously? That's sick, that's only a year older than Ginny is."

"Her age is the only part of that that sticks out to you?" Hermione asked incredulously.

"Well," Ron said, looking uncomfortable, "I mean, it's something families like that do, isn't it? Not us," he said hastily, seeing the looks on both of their faces, "You've heard how they talk about us, Weasleys are all blood traitors, right? And Dad hasn't - hasn't got any money, he's the younger son of a younger son, so it's not like they can afford to pay for all of us to marry.

"Anyway it's a lot less common now because half of the old families are dead on our side, and in Azkaban now on theirs, or they couldn't find matches because everyone knew they were Death Eaters. I've heard my parents talking about it, Dad's really angry every time it comes up because everyone in Britain can know so-and-so's a Death Eater to the point where his kids can't get married but nobody can get a warrant for his arrest."

They had only a few days at Sirius' house before the World Cup, after which Sirius would go home and Harry, Ron and Hermione would stay with the Weasleys until term began.

Harry found that, as much as he looked forward to the Burrow and the World Cup, he wished the summer would pass more slowly for the first time. He had spent only a few brief, wonderful weeks with Sirius.

He knew he would be going home again for Christmas, but it was difficult to really count on anything so distant. Knowing Dumbledore was opposed to him living with Sirius only made the feeling that this could not be real and certainly would not last more solid. Perhaps something would happen to Sirius during the first term, or Dumbledore would announce that it was all for Harry's own good and pack him back off to the Dursleys... For whatever Sirius said, Harry found it hard to believe he could really oppose Dumbledore for long and get his way with the Ministry.

The Cup would occur that Thursday. They were due to take a portkey very early in the morning from the Burrow, and for this reason they would all spend Wednesday night with the Weasleys. That morning, as Hermione and Ron got into their second brutal argument about how much of Ron's summer homework wasn't done at the breakfast table, Sirius said, "Can I have a word with you, Harry?" quietly.

A little relieved to be excused from the fight, as Hermione kept pointing out that Harry had finished all of his already, just like her, Harry got up and followed Sirius outside. They sat down at the small table in the garden.

"What is it?" Harry said, glancing back at the house and wincing as a particularly high pitched shriek of Hermione's came through the wall.

Sirius laughed softly. "Quite some lungs she has," he said. "There are a couple of things I wanted to tell you in private, Harry, before you leave for the Burrow. Feeling up to a serious conversation this early?"

Harry had never before been able to wake up late so many days in a row, and he was still half-used to the Dursleys' mandatory early morning chores. "This is fine," he said, quietly. "What is it?"

"Well, Harry..." Sirius hesitated. "It's been strongly suggested to me that I shouldn't discuss this with you, and I admit I wasn't entirely sure, when you came to stay with me. I'd already sprung so many changes on you at once."

"Suggested by who?" Harry said, bolting upright. "Dumbledore?"

"Among others," Sirius said. He would not meet Harry's eye, instead looking out over the flowers in their next door neighbor's garden. "I do want to give you a choice about hearing it, Harry. Sometimes, it can be... isolating to know certain things, that have to be kept secret. It can make it hard to interact with other people your age, or connect to them, and...

"I don't want you to have to take on the war at this age. Fate has - thrust adulthood on you young, between what happened to your parents and your aunt's behavior. I was similar, and - enough, I'm meandering. Do you want to hear the rest of the story?"

"It's about the war," Harry said, carefully, "And - is it about my parents? Why he came after them?"

"It is," Sirius said.

"And I'd have to keep it a secret. Can I tell Ron and Hermione?"

Sirius hesitated for a moment, then said, "They've kept so many other secrets I can't imagine this one would be worse. Yes, you can, but be careful where you discuss it amongst yourselves, make sure no one overhears."

"Alright," Harry said. "Then I want to hear it."

"Alright," Sirius said, and straightening, "I'm proud of you, Harry, alright? For this, and for - everything you've done." His voice cracked. "Everything you've already had to do at your age."

Harry looked down, feeling an odd stinging in his eyes and throat. He swallowed hard. "Thanks, Sirius," he whispered.

"I'll start, then." Sirius cleared his throat. "Voldemort came looking for James and Lily - and you - for a reason, Harry, and it wasn't just that they were his enemies. Although that would've been enough."

"And this is why?" Harry said, feeling at once like he might be ill and grimly excited. This, then, was the answer to a question he hadn't even realized he had: why he was an orphan, why his parents had died, why Voldemort had been so interested in him. Sirius, it seemed, was prepared to offer him answers.

"Yes," Sirius said. "There was a prophecy before your birth, Harry, one about Voldemort and the one who would defeat him. I don't know the whole thing. I believe Lily and James did, but they only told us a few of the details. This is what I know: the prophecy said that a boy would be born in July, to parents who had defied Voldemort three times and survived; and he would have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord."

"And - and that meant me," Harry said, slowly, fighting to keep himself calm. He had not expected anything like this. If he had thought of it, he had thought of some grudge, some work his parents might have been involved in. He had never expected that his parents had been killed because of him, simply because they had been between him and Voldemort...

Though it should have. He had heard their last words, particularly his mother's, near the Dementors.

Sirius's hand came down on Harry's shoulder. Harry flinched before he realized Sirius was only squeezing it. Sadness flashed across Sirius' face, and then he suppressed it. "Voldemort believed so," he said. "And if my understanding of prophecy is correct - and I admit it's a complicated subject which few people understand well - by acting as though it must be you, he guaranteed it. Much of the power of prophecy comes from the courses of action people take in the wake of the actual prediction."

"But there were other candidates?" Harry said, uncertain whether it was hope he felt or not. He certainly wasn't particularly talented, though perhaps at Defense...

"One," Sirius said. "He's in your year at Hogwarts, of course, so you'll have met him. Neville Longbottom was also born in July, and his parents fit the criteria."

Chapter Text

Sirius was right that this new knowledge made Harry feel separated from Ron and Hermione. People had always talked about Harry as though he was somehow special and powerful, but he had assumed it wasn't true. True, he had faced Voldemort twice at Hogwarts, but both times he had escaped by sheer luck; and the very first time, of course, he had been only a baby...

But he had the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. If the prophecy was correct.

Later that morning he hesitantly said to Hermione, "So I know Trelawney's a fraud--"

"I can't understand why you're still taking Divination," Hermione said, snorting. Privately, Harry agreed with her.

"But do you know anything else about prophecy? Real prophecies, I mean?" he asked.

As he had hoped, Hermione turned from scornful to thoughtful. "Well, there's been a lot written, but nobody understands them very well, do they?" she said. "They aren't very reliable even when they're made by very well known Seers. But they are supposed to exist, there are whole books written about them, I bet Sirius has a few--" She made to get up and go upstairs, then paused. "What's this for, Harry?"

"Yeah," Ron said, looking him over curiously. "I thought we said Divination was a load of bollocks?"

Harry briefly considered keeping the truth a secret, just until he understood it himself, but the thought was unbearable. "Sirius told me this morning about why Voldemort came after my parents," he said, and told him quickly about the prophecy.

"Oh, Harry!" Hermione gasped, hands flying up and hovering, as though she wanted to hug him but wasn't sure if it would be welcome.

"Blimey," Ron said, shaking his head. "That's - that's crazy, Harry. You-Know-Who wasn't after your parents, just after you?"

"I knew it had to be me," Harry said, putting what he had realized earlier into words as he spoke. "I didn't - didn't think about it. But last year, when I was near the Dementors and I heard my parents dying... Voldemort told my mother he would spare her if she stepped aside, he only wanted me. She refused." Harry swallowed. "She died to save me, that's - that's how I got away from Quirrell and Voldemort first year, the sacrifice protected me and he couldn't touch me..."

Abruptly he thought he might cry. He got up and went to the back door to stare sightlessly out the window, fighting down tears, forcing down the memories: Voldemort trying to touch him and burning them both, screaming in pain; his mother's voice in the grip of the Dementors...

When Harry turned back to the living room, he found Ron and Hermione engrossed in a stiltedly enthusiastic conversation about the Cannons, avoiding his eye. Hermione cast him a distraught look as he sat back down.

Harry was afraid that this would be too much for Ron and Hermione at last, the knowledge that he had been prophesied to defeat Voldemort; but in fact things returned to normal quickly. Hermione ran up to the library and came back down with several tomes on divination. Meanwhile, Ron and Harry played several games of Exploding Snap, listening when she came up with potentially helpful or only interesting pieces of information.

A while later Sirius came in and offered Ron a chess game, saying that Harry had told him Ron was very good. Ron proceeded to slowly and methodically trounce him, although it took much longer than when he played Harry. As this proceeded, Harry managed to lure Hermione into taking a break to play cards with him, hair carefully pulled back and away from any explosions.

That evening, when they were all darting around making sure they were packed for the Burrow, Harry remembered something and drew Sirius off in the kitchen again under the pretense of looking for a quill.

"You said you had a couple of things to tell me," Harry said. "What was the other one?" He asked with no small amount of dread, considering the last piece of information Sirius had given him; but he was too curious not to ask.

Sirius, to his surprise, smiled at him. "This one's good news, Harry - at least, I hope so. Thanks for reminding me, I wanted to make sure you knew and had a chance to approve before I accepted..."

"Accepted what?" Harry said eagerly.

"My new job," Sirius said with evident delight. "I went in for the interview last week while you took Hermione to the park. I got the owl yesterday, Dumbledore's offered me the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. What do you think, Harry? Would you mind having a godfather for a teacher this year?"

Harry gaped. For a moment all he could think was that they would not have to be separated so quickly after all. He could have Sirius with him all year at Hogwarts, could see him every day in the Great Hall, go to his office after lessons the way he had once visited Lupin...

Sirius was still grinning, but Harry saw an anxious look under it.

"That's brilliant!" he said, and unhesitatingly this time - he was getting a lot of practice - he flung his arms around Sirius. "I bet you're amazing. Can I tell Ron and Hermione, or do you want it to be a surprise?"

"Go ahead, Harry," Sirius said, laughing with pleasure. "I thought you might not want me around at school, and I wanted to give you a chance to say so in private. I'd love to tell them, too."

"Oh, that's wonderful, Sirius!" Mrs. Weasley said, and raised her glass. "A toast, everyone - to Sirius, the newest Hogwarts professor!"

Harry gleefully echoed "To Sirius!" and knocked his own glass against Mr. Weasley's, across the table from him.

They were sitting around two tables in the Weasleys' garden. Harry felt that the introduction of Sirius to the Weasleys had gone rather well: no one had brought up Ron's leg, for one, or Scabbers. Instead the conversation had been confined to Quidditch, Sirius's new house, the upcoming year at Hogwarts, and Weasley family matters. These included the top-secret Ministry event Percy was clearly longing for the younger Weasleys to interrogate him about, and recent personal developments to do with the two Weasley brothers Harry had met for the first time that night, Charlie and Bill.

He had been nearly certain he would like Charlie on the basis of the occasion on which Charlie's friends had helped the tree of them smuggle an illegal dragon out of Hogwarts when they were eleven years old; and Charlie, stocky and with a quick smile and a noticeable burn on his arm, was exactly what Harry had pictured.

Bill, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise: Harry knew he worked for the wizarding bank Gringotts, and, on the basis of acquaintance with muggle bankers (of whom the Dursleys approved), had pictured him as a sort of older Percy. Gringotts must not be as strict with dress as muggle institutions: he arrived with long hair, an earring Mrs. Weasley soundly objected to, and dress much like Sirius' preferred muggle clothing, except that his boots were made of dragon hide. He and Sirius had earlier been swept into a side conversation about muggle rock concerts.

Just now, Sirius beamed at them all. "Thank you so much, Molly," he said, drinking from his own glass. "I'm really looking forward to it. Hogwarts was the first place I felt really welcomed, so going back as a professor will be excellent. Did I tell you your cooking is wonderful?"

Mrs. Weasley blushed and laughed him off, but Harry was no longer quite paying attention. Sirius' words echoed in his mind: Hogwarts, the first place his godfather, too, had felt truly welcome.

He had been compared to his father by a great many people, and it had always been his father Harry had measured himself against; but it seemed to him now that Sirius had a great deal in common with him, much of which he had never thought to consider over the summer. Like him, Sirius had had a difficult relationship with his family, but also like him, Sirius had felt at home for the first time at Hogwarts. Sirius must also have a special talent for Defense, as Harry was beginning to realize he might after Lupin's class; after all he had been hired to teach it.

And like him, Sirius had nightmares.

Harry pushed this thought back and focused with effort on dinner. Sirius was a quite decent cook, and Harry could also make do, but Mrs. Weasley's cooking was truly amazing. Harry felt a lump in his throat remembering how he had felt tasting it the first time before his second year at Hogwarts, welcomed to the Burrow very early in the morning.

He was glad he had been able to invite Ron over, and resolved to get Sirius to ask the rest of the Weasleys over some time, perhaps for Christmas dinner; he would like to be able to repay Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and there was plenty of space in their house.

Their house. Harry had a house, now, not just an unwillingly-granted space in the Dursleys'.

"May I ask what you're planning to teach, Mr. Black?" Percy was saying, moderately pompously. "I dare say I'll regret missing it - so many of our Defense teachers haven't been quite, ah, up to snuff..."

"I heard as much from Remus," Sirius said, managing not to laugh at Percy. "When I was talking about interviewing for the job I asked him about the curriculum, and Dumbledore mentioned it seemed quite, ah, irregular."

"It really has been very inconsistent," Hermione said, spearing a potato and gesturing with it. "Our first year we had a lot of lessons from the book, mostly on theory, then, ah, Professor Lockhart--" she went somewhat pink, "Mostly talked about his own books. And Professor Lupin taught our year a lot about magical creatures, but I think he had other lessons for the other years. How is he, Sirius? You've heard from him?"

"Yes." Sirius sighed. "After Snape, ah, let his condition slip in his - frustration - he's had a difficult time of it. Not just because people know about him now, either. There's a woman called Umbridge in the Ministry who got a bit of legislation through that makes it effectively illegal to employ werewolves in most positions - got a lot of mileage out of a werewolf supposedly sneaking into a professorship at Hogwarts. Lot of codswallop."

"Well," Percy said, "You have to admit that parents will be nervous."

"We had absolutely no doubts, Percy," Mr. Weasley said firmly. "Dumbledore's judgment of people is very good, and I understand Professor Lupin was one of the best Defense teachers there's been in ages."

"So what's Professor Lupin doing now?" Harry asked, worrying now. Professor Lupin had already had quite shabby possessions, and if it was now even more difficult for him to find employment, things must be difficult.

"Well, he's gone overseas for the time being," Sirius said. "He's always gotten the odd research article in on contract - nobody can tell whether a freelance researcher or writer is taking full moons off - and the new legislation only affects Britain. He wrote a couple of weeks ago and said he was in Sri Lanka at the moment, I'll let him know you asked after him."

They went to bed with extremely full stomachs, knowing they would have to rise very soon for the Portkey to the stadium. Harry was sharing with Ron as usual. He saw the familiar, garish Chudley Cannons posters overhead before they turned the lights out and grinned, thinking that Sirius would be with them at the game tomorrow - and then it would be only a few weeks until Harry saw him again at Hogwarts.

The sun was not yet up when they woke. They were supposed to dress muggle for the match, and Harry put on his new jeans and a green T shirt, knowing that they would be supporting Ireland against Bulgaria during the Cup. Beside him Ron groaned as he stumbled into similar clothes.

They came downstairs and found about half of the Weasleys awake. Mrs. Weasley was ushering Sirius out of the kitchen, telling him to sit down and thanking him for the help, as Harry arrived downstairs.

"Morning, Harry," Sirius said. "Excited?"

"I can't wait," Harry said, stifling a yawn. "Breakfast, then?"

"Muggle clothing on, everyone?" Mr. Weasley said, looking over them all when the last stragglers had appeared downstairs. "How am I doing, Harry, Hermione?"

He was dressed quite well in jeans and a sweater. "Great," Harry said, while Hermione nodded sleepily beside him.

They stumbled together through toast and eggs and then began the walk to the portkey. "Do you have any idea where it's being held?" Harry asked Sirius quietly.

"Well, it has to be somewhere isolated," Sirius said. "Somewhere there aren't a load of muggles around to notice a hundred thousand of us pouring in, and where the Quidditch players can fly without being obvious."

"Oh, the travel's always a huge problem," Mr. Weasley said, overhearing. "They have to stagger it, so there's room for all of the portkeys coming in. Some will use muggle transportation but we can't have too much of a rush there either. People with cheaper tickets will have arrived weeks ago."

"Thank you again for sharing these with us, Arthur," Sirius said. "I was - a bit disoriented - and I hadn't quite realized the Cup was being held in Britain this year. I never would have gotten such good ones in time if you hadn't invited us."

"My pleasure, Sirius," Arthur said, beaming.

"So where will the match be, Mr. Weasley?" Hermione said.

"Oh, I believe they've found a nice bit of isolated moor - muggle camping ground, actually, which is why we need the clothing. Here we are, the next hill!"

At the portkey, they met Cedric Diggory, a Hufflepuff boy two years ahead of them who captained his House Quidditch team, and his father, Amos Diggory. Harry felt Amos' scrutiny and wished he could duck behind Sirius or Ron and Hermione. Mr. Diggory's glee at his son beating Harry Potter in Quidditch was nearly as uncomfortable as Cedric's clear belief it had been unfair, as Harry had been incapacitated by Dementors and fallen from his broomstick at the time.

All in all, Harry was deeply relieved to take up the portkey - apparently an old boot - and wait to see what would happen.

As it turned out, there was a sudden lurch, and a feeling like being hooked and jerked into the boot, and then into space. They landed abruptly, and Harry nearly fell over. Sirius caught his elbow, steadying him; nearby, he saw Hermione picking herself up from the grass.

"Here we are!" Mr. Weasley said, beaming.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: The World Cup

The camp site was noisy, chaotic, and filled with things Harry had never seen or imagined. There were wizards and witches from all over the world, salesmen with loads of fascinating magical goods, and all kinds of showing off, from turreted tents and tethered peacocks to displays of team pride for Bulgaria and Ireland. Harry, Ron and Hermione rapidly left in the midst of Mr. Weasley's earnest attempts to light a campfire without magic, citing the need to get water, and stifling their laughter until they were out of earshot.

"You don't suppose he'll burn the tents down, do you?" Hermione said anxiously, one hand pressed to her mouth.

"Sirius won't let him, he knows muggle stuff, remember?" Harry said. "Which way was the pump, do you remember?"

"Well, you can't blame him, can you?" Ron said. "Matches, I ask you... Hermione, you've got the map."

"Oh, I think we're going the right direction but we can look around a bit first, surely," Hermione said. "Look, there's the Irish tents--"

They said hello to several classmates among the winding tent rows, as many other British wizards and witches had taken the chance to attend a World Cup. Ron was briefly furiously indignant with Hermione's skepticism at the fame of the Bulgarian seeker, Krum; the Bulgarian tents were hung with his face, which Hermione said looked "grumpy."

Once they had walked for some time, and this argument had tapered off, Harry said to Hermione, "Did you find anything much, in the books about prophecies?" He knew Hermione had taken at least one book to the Burrow, and had continued to read in every spare moment.

"Oh, well, it really is very confusing," Hermione said softly as they passed the Salem Witches' Institute. "No one seems to know much, it's all very vague and contradictory..." She sighed. "But I did find some things. Prophecies aren't binding and guaranteed, that's the one thing everyone agrees about - the fact that the prophecy was made means it could happen, but it doesn't have to happen."

"Alright," Harry said, and found he was feeling quite a bit better. "So I don't have to be the one to kill Voldemort? Someone else could do it, if - if something happened to me, or if he came back when I wasn't ready?"

It wasn't that he was reluctant, exactly. But Harry was only entering his fourth year, and was under no illusion about his ability to face one of the most powerful wizards of history, a wizard who had feared only Albus Dumbledore. And he did not like to think he was marked as a murderer.

Perhaps he would only defeat Voldemort and imprison him; he thought he had heard somewhere that Grindelwald, the last Dark Lord, had been captured alive.

"No, you don't have to," Hermione agreed quickly. "I think - there are two things that the prophecy tells us that are really useful, Harry."

"Yeah?" he said. "What two things, then?"

"Well, the first one is - why you matter to him, Harry." Hermione turned her head as though very interested in a tent with a large outdoor sauna attached, complete with small fountain. "He thinks you're the one who will defeat him, or at least that you could, so of course he's obsessed. He'll never believe that you defeated him as a baby because of - of your mother, or something he did. He sees you as a weakness."

"So you're saying, the prophecy means he'll keep coming after me personally until he's defeated," Harry said, quietly. Having Hermione state it for him made his stomach lurch painfully, even though he had guessed as much long before.

"Yes," Hermione said, softly, arms crossed over her stomach. "You won't be the only thing - I imagine he'll be very concerned about Dumbledore, and the Ministry - but you will be one."

"Course, he'll have loads of other things to worry about," Ron said quickly. "Like the Aurors, and immortality - he didn't come after you first year, did he? You just - got in the way," he said, throwing Harry an anxious look as though re-evaluating how likely Harry was to continue being in the way.

"And the other thing?" Harry said very quickly. They were rapidly approaching the pump, where a Ministry official was attempting rigorously to persuade an elderly man out of a flowery night gown and into some pin striped trousers.

Hermione turned back towards him and smiled somewhat grimly. "You can defeat him, Harry. Prophecies are always possible when they're made, so you must have - the potential to become as powerful as Voldemort, Harry."

Harry did not know quite what to say to this.

"Let's hope it means he's not going to be back for ages," Ron said. "I mean, if Harry's going to defeat him that'll be years from now, right? When we're out of school and all?"

"I hope so," Harry said, looking at Hermione. Three more years at Hogwarts did not seem at all the eternity it once had, trapped with the Dursleys, when the possibility of a duel to the death with Voldemort lay at the end of it.

From the look on Hermione's face, she agreed.

`
Back at the tent, Ron quickly joined Sirius and the others in speculating about the match, just as Bill, Charlie and Percy arrived, having Apparated. But Harry detected a somewhat fixed quality to Ron's grin. Harry himself, for the first time, found he would rather hang back a bit from the Quidditch talk with Hermione.

"You don't regret Sirius telling you, do you?" Hermione asked, piling the fire-cooked eggs and sausages onto her plate.

"No," Harry said, finding it was true. "I mean - it's true either way, isn't it? And this way I know, I can - can try to prepare..."

"You'd better pay a lot more attention in class," said Hermione, and at Harry's look, "Think about it! Duelists use all kinds of skills, it's supposed to be really important to combine magic in ways your opponent can't counter quickly - and you never know when you'll need a potion or something--"

"Alright, I'll try, but no power on earth's going to make it possible to learn anything from Snape," Harry muttered.

Their conversation was interrupted here by the arrival of Mr. Weasley, lunch in hand; he sat down and began a running monologue on passers-by from the Ministry for their benefit, as his own children were too familiar to be interested. Hermione was quickly absorbed, and Harry admitted it was interesting to see the Committee on Experimental Charms employee who had grown horns, or hear about the Department of Mysteries, or see the gawky Bertha Jorkins, part of the Department responsible for organizing the Cup...

"Ah, there he is!" Mr. Weasley called. "The man we've been waiting for, Ludo! Come sit down, have a bite--"

Ludo Bagman was extremely conspicuous, even compared the people Harry had already seen. At least many of them appeared to be foreign or counter-cultural, or merely very strange. Ludo Bagman wore striped Quidditch robes that made him rather resemble a bumblebee, with a picture of a wasp across the chest that really hovered with vibrating wings. Harry recalled someone had said he had once played Quidditch for England with the Wimbourne Wasps.

"Arthur!" Ludo cried gratefully, coming over. "Isn't the weather perfect, not a cloud coming in - and the arrangements are all playing out smoothly, not too much left for me to do!"

Behind him, several Ministry wizards rushed towards another disturbance.

Percy, who had been unendingly going on about both his new position at the Ministry and how irresponsible his boss thought Ludo Bagman was, rushed forward with his hand out regardless.

"Ah," Mr. Weasley said, grinning. "This is my son, Percy--" He continued on with the remaining children, ending with, "--And Ron's friends, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Harry's guardian, of course, Sirius Black..."

Ludo Bagman did the smallest double take at Harry's name, eyes flickering to his forehead; he appeared even more astonished by Sirius, saying, "--Ah, it's good to meet you! Suppose you're glad to be able to watch the Cup after all these years..."

Harry had previously been ready to like Ludo for his Quidditch robes and his subtle reaction to Harry; now he felt he could have throttled him. Sirius did not like being reminded of Azkaban. He had never been upset with Harry, but would sometimes become quiet and moody for hours, or retreat to the basement to pace endlessly.

But Sirius, though his eyes grew hollow for a moment, only smiled thinly. "Extremely glad," he said.

"Well!" Arthur said after an awkward pause. "It's thanks to Ludo here we got such good tickets--"

Seeming back in his element, Ludo Bagman beamed and waved his hand dismissively, and changed the topic rapidly to betting on the match.

Mr. Weasley seemed willing to bet a small amount. Fred and George, however, rapidly emptied their pockets of Galleons, Sickles and Knuts, and one fake wand which turned into a rubber chicken when waved.

Ludo laughed delightedly at this.

Hermione looked intrigued. "Those are very convincing," she said, though Percy disapproved. "Though I can't believe they're betting on something so unlikely, they'll lose all their savings..."

"Well, Krum's really good, isn't he?" said Ron, who had returned to their side. "And the Ireland Chasers are supposed to be really strong. Anyway," he lowered his voice, "The twins have been obsessed with making money lately, it's really weird. Almost as bad as Percy..."

"Mr. Crouch?" Percy said loudly, to some comment which Harry had missed. "He speaks at least two hundred languages!" and went on to list some of those languages.

"Never mind," Ron muttered. "Percy's definitely worse. He's been going on about some report he's working on all summer, cauldron bottom thickness regulations on foreign imports, as though anyone cares--"

"Well, it's important, isn't it?" Hermione muttered. "How would you like it if those things you call potions melted onto your shoes in class - but I suppose it's not really dinner conversation, is it," she added, grinning slightly.

"Oh, speak of the devil, Barty!" Ludo said, just as an elderly wizard Apparated onto their campsite. Dressed in a crisp suit and tie, polished shoes, and a terrifyingly straight mustache, Harry thought that this was what he had been picturing of Bill - or perhaps Bill's manager at the bank. Uncle Vernon would have approved. Naturally Percy, a great rule-follower, must as well.

"Sit down, Barty!" Ludo said.

"I've been looking for you," Crouch said peevishly. "The Bulgarians want to add twelve seats to the top box."

"Oh, that's what they want?" said Ludo. "Bit of a strong accent--"

"Mr. Crouch!" Percy said with great excitement, bowing so low he nearly fell over. "Can I get you a cup of tea?"

"Oh - thank you, Weatherby," Crouch said, looking at him with an air of mild surprise.

Hermione choked next to Harry, and Ron smothered a grin in his hands. Fred and George spluttered. Percy went very pink and became extremely fascinated by the business of heating up water with a muggle kettle.

"Oh, Arthur," Crouch said, noticing him apparently for the first time. "I've been meaning to speak to you. Ali Bashir is extremely upset about your embargo on flying carpets."

Mr. Weasley sighed. "I wrote to him about it last week. I've told him at least a hundred times that carpets are defined as a muggle item by the Registry. I have no control over it. Will he listen?"

"I doubt it," Crouch said. "He's desperate to export here - you know how important textiles are economically in that part of the world."

"I doubt they would replace brooms even if they were legal," Mr. Weasley said. "I understand they fill a similar niche in Turkish territories, but of course they don't use brooms at all."

"Ali Bashir and his associates believe the market could use a family vehicle," Crouch said. "I recall my grandfather had a twelve-seater carpet himself - before they were banned," he added rapidly, as though wanting to leave no doubt that every person associated with him would follow the law in all circumstances.

Looking around, Harry realized that Sirius had vanished entirely from the campsite. "Did you see where Sirius got to?" he muttered.

"Said something about getting more water," Ron said, pointing to the missing jug, "Just when Crouch showed up."

"--Well, no need to be disappointed it's nearly over!" Ludo was saying loudly, as though Crouch or Mr. Weasley seemed at all disappointed. "Plenty left to organize, eh?"

"We agreed not to make any public statements," Mr Crouch said stiffly, "Until the last details--"

"They've signed!" Ludo said, gesturing widely. "What do the details matter? They'll know soon enough," and to Harry's surprise he realized Ludo was indicating them. "It's happening at Hogwarts, isn't it?"

"The Bulgarians are waiting," Mr. Crouch said curtly. "Thank you for the tea, Weatherby." He handed his untouched cup back to Percy and waited, pointedly, for Ludo; and then they were off.

The Ministry put less and less effort - or perhaps only lost more and more ground - at hiding obvious magic as the afternoon wore on; and after dark they seemed to have given up completely. Harry, Ron and Hermione watched explosions, astonishing clothing, fireworks and other displays; salesmen Apparated every few feet; and in general the darkness was illuminated and filled with utter chaos. All of them bought shamrocks; but Ron supplemented this purchase with a small, moving figure of Victor Krum.

Sirius insisted on buying Omnioculars and programs for the entire Weasley family as well as Hermione. He pointed out that he was only repaying the Weasleys for his and Harry's tickets, and Harry felt an odd surge of warmth at being included as Sirius' responsibility. It was not long after then that they were off to the stands; the game would soon begin.

The box was nearly empty when they arrived, filing into their seats; but Harry spotted a small, bat-eared figure that he momentarily thought he recognized. Astonished, he said, "Dobby?"

Sirius' head jerked up as the creature whipped around; and Harry saw it was not Dobby at all.

"Sir called me Dobby?" it queried. Harry was not certain, but he thought its voice might be female. Ron and Hermione spun to look. They had not had a chance to meet Dobby, only heard about him from Harry. Even Mr. Weasley looked up.

"Uh, sorry," Harry said, smiling apologetically. He was aware that Sirius was scrutinizing him slightly. "I thought you were - ah, someone I knew."

"But I know Dobby too, sir!" the elf said, covering her face with her hands as though warding off too-bright light. "My name is Winky, sir, and you - you must be Harry Potter?"

"Yeah, I am," Harry said, surprised.

"But Dobby talks of you all the time, sir!" the elf said. She took her hands from her face, and Harry saw that she appeared awestruck.

"How is he?" Harry said, eagerly. "How's freedom suiting him?"

"The Malfoys freed their house elf?" Sirius said, astonished.

"No," Harry said quietly. "It was - I told you about the Chamber of Secrets, second year? Dobby tried to stop me from going back to Hogwarts, he thought the basilisk would kill me. He knew Lucius Malfoy had sent the diary. Dobby really hated them, he disobeyed orders and he was always punishing himself and saying his masters were Dark wizards - anyway, Lucius stormed in with Dobby. I, uh, returned the diary to him in my sock, and he took it off and threw it, and Dobby caught it..."

Sirius was grinning. "Oh, I bet my dear cousin-in-law loved that," he said. "Dobby was happy?"

"Ecstatic," Harry said.

"Ah, sirs," Winky said, looking petrified to have interrupted him "Forgive me, but I am not sure you did Dobby a favor, sir, when you had him set free."

"Why not?" Harry said, astonished.

"Freedom is going to Dobby's head," said Winky. "Ideas about his station. He wants," she lowered her voice, "Paying for his work."

"Paying?" Harry said blankly. "Why shouldn't he be paid?"

Winky looked appalled, and quickly hid her face. "House elves are not paid, sir!" she said. "I told Dobby, settle yourself down and find a nice family, but he is going around getting into all sorts of hijinks - I said to him, keep on like this and you find yourself in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures like a common goblin."

"Like a goblin?" Hermione hissed under her breath next to Harry.

"Winky," Sirius said, speaking for the first time. "Dobby was - ah - employed by the family of my cousin's husband. I would be happy to pay him for his work. If he does want a job and is having trouble finding one, please let him know he can apply to me at any time - Sirius Black," he said, and gave Winky the address of the new house.

Winky appeared quite horrified by this, but did not seem to know what to say to argue. "I will tell him, sirs," she said pointedly. "House elves do what they are told. I do not like heights at all, Harry Potter," she glanced at the edge of the box worriedly, "But my master sent me to the Top Box and I come. Sir."

"Why did he send you here if he knows you don't like heights?" Harry said.

"Master - master wants me to save him a seat, Harry Potter," Winky said. "He is very busy." She tilted her head to the empty place beside her. "I am wishing I am back in master's tent, but I do what I am told. I am a good house elf."

With that she buried her face completely in her hands and shut her mouth firmly as though to indicate the conversation was over. This was not a terribly servile gesture in Harry's opinion.

"That's a house elf?" Ron muttered. "Bizarre."

"Dobby was weirder," Harry said fervently.

Hermione was frowning. "What will you do with a servant?" she said to Sirius, sounding not at all happy, as they went to take their seats. The Weasleys took up most of the front row; Sirius, Harry and Hermione ended up behind Mr. Weasley, leaving a few empty seats next to Winky at the other end of the second row.

Sirius sighed, and glanced at Winky, lowering his voice. "House elves are - primarily attached to old families, Hermione, especially Dark ones. They're magically enslaved to descendants of the family line, they're passed down with the estate in families. Freeing them is like a punishment most of the time, because they don't have any society to go back to.

"Normally one that's freed will find a new wizard family to bond with instead, it's not too hard because they're a status symbol. But very few families would be willing to keep an elf who wants to keep their freedom, or pay them. I imagine I'll find something for him to do, especially if he doesn't want to spend all his time working - but he might not find anywhere else to stay."

Hermione looked completely horrified.

"Thanks, Sirius," Harry said quietly, swallowing a lump in his throat. "I had no idea - Dobby might be a nutcase but he tried to help me, he just didn't have much of a chance to do it..."

Gradually the box filled around them, although the seats next to Winky remained empty. Fudge arrived, flustering Percy to no end by greeting Harry like an old friend, and then made awkwardly flattering small talk with Sirius, who raised his eyebrows as though skeptical of what he was hearing but was not openly rude.

There was another awkward moment later when three familiar faces filed in, late, to yet unfilled seats: Draco Malfoy, his father, and Narcissa Malfoy, who Harry and Hermione had seen earlier at Sirius's house. They approached to speak to Fudge, and Harry saw Narcissa look at them, flick her eyes over Sirius, and pause; for a moment it seemed that she would approach him.

"Narcissa?" Lucius Malfoy said.

What she said to this, Harry couldn't hear; but she did not speak to Sirius, and when the conversation with Fudge was over, turned and followed her husband to the other end of the row.

But Harry couldn't dwell on the Malfoys: there was too much going on in the stands, the crowd, the giant hand writing out advertisements on the scoreboards. At last, Ludo Bagman rose to announce the mascots, and Harry settled into his seat to watch the best game of Quidditch he had ever seen.

Chapter Text

He was woken after what couldn't have been more than a few hours of sleep in the Weasleys' borrowed tent by Sirius' hand on his shoulder.

"Get up," Sirius said quietly. Harry bolted out of bed, fishing for his clothing. "Just put a jacket on, there's no time," Sirius said, going to wake Ron next to him.

Most of the fires had gone out, Harry saw, emerging from the tent, and the campground seemed empty of people, except for a few stragglers rushing over upset tents and limp, stake-less ropes. Squinting, he realized that what he had taken for the last campfires were burning tent and bushes. Screams echoed in the distance. Harry looked in that direction, not understanding, but seeing faint flashes of spell light. A mass seemed to be moving over the ground, towards them, but still distant.

A flash of green light came, much brighter, and he could see.

A mass of robed, masked wizards stood, wands elevated and pointing into dim shapes in the air. Squinting, Harry suddenly understood: they were people, twisted, hovering in the air. People, being elevated by the crowd.

Sirius had his wand out, and was being quickly joined by the others. "Come on, get to the forest," Mr. Weasley said. "Out of the way."

"We're going to help the Ministry," Charlie added, rolling his sleeves up.

The crowd passed over a burning tent, and suddenly Harry could see the figures in the air. One was Mr. Roberts, the campground manager they had met earlier; the others seemed like they might be his family, a woman of the same age and two young children. As he watched, Mrs. Roberts was spun in the air, her nightdress falling down and dangling off her shoulders.

"That's sick," Ron hissed. The smallest child began to spin, faster and faster, head and limps flopping vacantly.

Hermione made a soft, distressed sound in Harry's ear.

"All of you, I want you out of the way," Mr. Weasley said. "Sirius, are you coming--?"

Sirius looked at the crowd, then back at Harry.

"We'll be okay," Harry said, trying to smile.

"There might be more trouble in the woods, if any of them get ideas about the people trying to hide," Sirius said, and before Harry could argue, he transformed suddenly into a large, black dog.

Harry thought Mr. Weasley looked relieved. "We'll meet you when it's under control," he said, rushing off.

The three of them hurried, following Fred and George and Ginny. There was a nightmarish quality to the journey, stumbling over broken ground and discarded remnants of victory parties, illuminated by flashes of spell light. Turning repeatedly, Harry saw Ministry wizards rushing to the crowd, wands up, but they didn't seem to be making a lot of progress; he thought they might be afraid of causing the Robertses to fall. Sirius ran at their heels, now and then brushing against Harry's hand with his back; without this contact Harry might have lost track of him completely in the dark.

Just as they reached the cover of the woods, Harry heard a yell of pain.

"Ron!" Hermione said, turning. "Where are you? Sirius, is he okay? This is stupid--" She lit her wand with hissed "Lumos."

"Fine," Ron muttered, rising on his hands and knees. "Tripped over a tree root."

"Feet that size, hard not to," a drawling voice said.

Harry, turning, spotted the person he would have liked least to see under these circumstances: Draco Malfoy.

Sirius picked his head up and eyed Malfoy.

"I suppose your father's out there trying to help the Ministry idiots?" Malfoy said.

"I suppose your parents are out there wearing masks," Harry snapped.

Sirius barked, twice, very loudly. Harry jumped; he saw Draco whip around. "Is this your dog, Potter?" he said contemptuously.

Sirius barked again, leapt to his feet, and took off down the trail. Cursing, Harry followed him, glancing to the side to make sure Ron and Hermione were with him. He caught a brief glimpse of Malfoy's taken aback face before they rounded a bend and he was out of sight.

They heard distant crashes in the bushes, and Harry, turning his head to the side, spotted Winky struggling along; but he had no time to stop, he had to catch up with Sirius. He slowed, sniffing the ground, and turned decisively; Harry wondered where he was going when they caught up, suddenly, with Fred, George and Ginny.

"There you are!" Fred said, looking relieved. "Where'd you get off to?"

"I tripped," Ron said, rubbing his knee defensively. "Did you have to sprint off like that?" he demanded.

Sirius turned back abruptly. "This is no time to stand around baiting Draco Malfoy," he said to the three of them. "--And I realize he started it. Take it up with him when you're at school again, or at least not on the outskirts of a riot."

"What did Malfoy say?" Ginny said hotly.

"Nothing, really, he was just going on about Dad helping the Ministry," Ron said, glancing around. "Think we can just wait here? We'll probably hear anyone coming a mile off..."

The woods had gone very quiet; they must be far in, far enough away that the riot's noise was muffled. Occasionally there would be muffled crashing sounds, or footsteps, that must come from other game attendees seeking shelter; but none sounded very close.

All of a sudden there was a muffled shout, too far away for Harry to make out. Then an immense green skull erupted into the air, high above and a little way off in the wood. Squinting at it, he saw that it seemed to be composed of emerald stars. Something was moving, emerging from its mouth. For a wild moment Harry thought it was sticking out its tongue; then the mass emerged into a serpent, slithering slowly forward as the skull rose higher in the air.

There was a paralyzed moment of silence.

"Draw your wands," Sirius said, his own flung out, turning to face the direction of the clearing. "All of you - backs to the center, keep your eyes out. Light them, we've got to be able to see anyone coming..."

"What is it?" Harry hissed, pulling his wand rapidly from his pocket and obeying.

"It's You-Know-Who's mark," Hermione said shrilly. "Oh, he can't be here, he's supposed to be in hiding, but one of his followers--"

"The Death Eaters knew how to summon it," Sirius said flatly, scanning the forest. "But only them, and plenty of them were extremely dangerous in their own right."

Ginny gave a muffled sob; Fred and George seemed unusually serious, looking into the woods like Sirius. Harry put his eyes ahead himself, squinting into the darkness for any sign of movement, straining to see.

As a result he nearly cursed Draco Malfoy.

"You idiot," Malfoy hissed, hands rapidly rising, "I'm not doing anything-" He looked wildly around the clearing, spotted Harry and the Weasleys and tightened his lips. Then his gaze fell on Sirius. "You're Sirius Black, aren't you?" he said. "You're my mother's cousin--"

"Yes," Sirius said. "Come on, this is no time to be alone as an underage wizard--" He cast a quelling glance at them as though to prevent argument; and Harry couldn't say he was very pleased, but at the thought that one of Voldemort's followers might be very nearby, and perhaps drunk after the match, he supposed he didn't mind.

"Say," Malfoy said, unsteadily joining the circle and attempting furiously to maintain a casual voice, "Have any of you see my wand?"

There was an appalled silence.

"Could it be back in your tent?" Sirius asked, not moving an inch from his position at the forest. Harry wrenched his eyes forward, no matter how little he liked having Malfoy at his back.

"I had it," Malfoy said desperately, "At the game, but I put it in my pocket and I didn't think to check while I got dressed until I was out of the tent - then it was gone, it must have fallen out..."

"You can search later," Sirius said, "It may well be found by the Ministry. This isn't a good time to go looking."

"I don't understand," Ron said suddenly. "What's the big deal about the Mark? I mean, it's just a - just a sign..."

Malfoy scoffed behind Harry.

"You wouldn't understand, you're too young," Sirius said. "Let me try to explain it. The Death Eaters conjured the Mark as a statement to others, to intimidate and to announce their victories. They would leave it above houses when they killed. Imagine coming home from work, or from school for the holidays, and seeing the Mark above your house, and struggling to go inside, knowing what you'd find... Or passing by it on the street, not knowing who had been killed, who lived there, but being reminded of Voldemort's power..."

"Don't say the name!" a voice snapped behind Harry; and to his surprise, it was Malfoy.

"The pseudonym he chose is bad enough," Sirius said very calmly. "I won't do him the dignity of dancing around it as though I'm petrified of a word. You know, your mother used to say - when she was younger - that he couldn't possibly be pureblood, or he would have flaunted his family name instead of hiding it."

Malfoy made a strangled, insulted sound.

"Don't be absurd," Sirius said coldly. Harry longed to turn and see what Malfoy was doing, but didn't dare. He trusted Sirius to protect his back. "I won't stop you from leaving, but there will be Ministry wizards, possibly the Aurors, looking for whoever conjured the Mark by now, even if you're very confident your father's friends will recognize you while drunk in the dark. Stay with us."

"Fine," Malfoy snapped with ill grace.

A moment later there was a burst of red light in the woods, in the same direction as the place immediately below the Mark. Harry whirled towards it, and saw the others turning, too.

"Stunners," Sirius said. "I'll bet the Ministry's found the area..."

"We should go find out," Harry said quietly, longing to know what was going on. "They'll know, won't they? What's going on?"

"Potter, are you out of your mind?" Malfoy hissed.

Sirius laughed softly. "You're very like your father, Harry," he said. "I admit I'd like to know, too..." He glanced in the direction where the light had been. "But I told Arthur I'd watch all of you while he went to help the Ministry."

"Right, then," Harry said decisively, glancing around. He told himself that Fred and George could watch Ginny perfectly adequately, and Mr. Weasley had been ready to take Sirius with them anyway to fight the Death Eaters; gripping his wand, he said "I'm going to go find out. Ron, Hermione?"

"Harry," Hermione hissed, but she was already following him into the woods. Ron looked apprehensively behind himself, but followed as well. Sirius sighed and told Fred and George to stay where they were with Ginny; and astonishingly, the party was trailed by an enraged Draco Malfoy.

It took them perhaps fifteen minutes to get to the spot directly below the mark, wands out. Harry's palm hurt from gripping his wand; he squinted through the eerie green light on the clearing below it, and saw--

Winky, huddled in a ball and sobbing, surrounded by a number of wizards Harry didn't know and three he did: Mr. Weasley, Crouch, and Cedric Diggory's father.

"Excuse me," Sirius said crisply. Harry watched half the Aurors start to turn their wands on him by sheer reflex and falter. "What's going on here?"

For a moment, Harry thought Mr. Crouch would explode. He turned furiously red, and then faintly purple, in a way faintly reminiscent of Uncle Vernon. (He would never see Uncle Vernon again! Even standing in the woods under a Dark Mark with Draco Malfoy at his back, his heart leapt.)

"Ministry business," Crouch said coldly.

"You're alright," Mr. Weasley said, straightening with sheer relief; then, "The twins and Ginny--"

"Back about fifteen minutes," Sirius said. "This lot went rocketing off after the stunners and I told them to stay with her." He gestured towards Harry as though disapprovingly, but Harry thought, after some weeks of acquaintance, he could see a pleased glimmer in his eye. If Harry had not led them here, he would not be on hand.

"You can't," Hermione said, startling them all. She seemed rather unnerved when everyone in the clearing turned to look at her; she swallowed visibly and said, "What are you doing to Winky?"

"She has disgraced herself," Crouch said coldly, looking if anything colder.

"I didn't do it!" Winky squeaked, rocking again, as she had when they had first entered the clearing. "I don't know how!"

"You don't seriously think a house elf conjured the Dark Mark?" Sirius asked, voice cold and almost mocking. Hermione whipped around, opening her mouth, then closed it again.

"She had a wand," Mr. Diggory said, holding it up. "Stolen, most likely. And it's the one that conjured the Mark."

It seemed familiar. Harry frowned.

"Then look to the owner," Sirius said dismissively. "House elves have powerful magic, but that doesn't include the knowledge of specific incantations known only to a select few... Or perhaps her owner taught her?" Sirius' eyebrows lifted as though he was not quite aware that Winky's owner was in the clearing, standing quite near him in a dead rage.

"Have a care what you suggest," Crouch said.

"House elves cannot leave their homes without their masters' permission," Sirius said. Harry was distantly aware of Hermione twitching beside him. "If she conjured the mark, she must have learned it there... Perhaps from a friend of the master, then..."

Crouch raised his hand, and for a moment Harry thought he would curse Sirius; he tensed, clenching his own wand for a moment. But Sirius did not draw his; he stared Crouch down, unmoving as a statue, eyes gone cold and hard as they had been when Harry first saw him.

"That--" Draco Malfoy interrupted, stammeringly. "That's my wand, sir--"

"What?" Sirius said.

"Is that a confession?" Mr. Diggory said in disbelief, turning suddenly. "And who would you be--?"

"Draco Malfoy, I believe," said Crouch, eyes glittering and face gone slack in disbelief; and Harry saw the expression forming of a man who had received the best news in his life; a man who could not believe his luck.

Malfoy's parents, of course, had escaped Azkaban narrowly by claiming to have been cursed. But they were widely known to have been Death Eaters. Surely anyone would be delighted to find evidence that might send them to prison now, after all of these years.

But this evidence was against Malfoy, not his parents.

Harry looked at Malfoy. He seemed positively green with horror, hands clenched tightly on his arms, sallow face it up by the Mark and the wand light around him. He wondered for a moment if Draco had conjured the Mark, if that was why he had appeared so quickly after it was summoned--

But it had taken fifteen minutes to get here in the Dark, and Draco had been next to them perhaps two after it was summoned.

"It wasn't him," he said, loudly, breaking the taut silence.

"What?" Crouch said.

"And you are--" Mr. Diggory said.

"Please," Sirius interjected, tone light again, as casual as though they were in his sitting room. "I believe both of you met my godson earlier today, Harry Potter?"

The euphoria on Crouch's face vanished. "And you know this how, exactly?"

"He was missing his wand," Harry said, trying to explain. "We ran into him in the woods earlier and he told us it was gone--"

"A likely story," Crouch said sarcastically.

"We all know," Sirius said quietly, "How thorough and just the Ministry's investigations are. I'm sure you're about to demonstrate that again, Crouch, we'd love to see..."

"And was this before the Mark appeared or after?" Mr. Diggory said, hastily interrupting.

"Just after," Hermione said, voice strong, to Harry's relief. "But it was about two minutes - I looked at my watch at twelve-oh-three just after he arrived; and we were a fifteen minute walk away. He's - he's in fourth year with us at Hogwarts. He can't know how to Apparate yet."

"It's very unlikely that a fourth year could have cast that spell," Mr. Weasley said, and from his voice Harry knew that he was relieved by their defense. Relief swept through Harry as well. Mr. Weasley thought that defending Malfoy was the right thing to do, no matter what his parents were known to have done. "When did you first miss your wand, Draco?"

Harry remembered Hagrid after returning from Azkaban. He couldn't seriously wish that on Malfoy, who was a bullying git, but not, unlike his parents, a murderer.

Malfoy didn't look happy to be addressed by his given name, but he didn't object. "As I reached the woods, sir," he said smoothly, "It must have been around eleven-forty, because I looked at the clock when I woke up and it was eleven-thirty, and next time was just after I missed my wand, at eleven-forty-five. I looked through my pockets and at - at the ground, but I thought I must have left it in the tent after that, and I didn't want to - to risk going back out there, sir..."

"And a good thing, too, a riot is no place for children," Mr. Weasley said, stressing the word children pointedly. "When did you last have your wand?"

"Uh--" Malfoy looked briefly flummoxed. "In the Top Box, sir, I think. My mother asked me if I was certain I had it with me, and I checked then. I know that's a long time, sir, but I can't do magic outside of school yet."

Crouch was looking steadily angrier as time went on. He snapped his teeth together. "Very well," he said coldly. "We will return your wand to you when it has been examined, thoroughly, for any trace of the culprit. I recommend you not leave the country until that time, as a witness in a criminal investigation." He turned to Winky, then, and as though seeking someone who he could punish, said, "You have failed me utterly, Winky, and embarrassed me in front of the Ministry. This means clothes."

"No!" Winky shrieked, throwing herself at his feet and howling. "No, master! Not clothes, not clothes!"

For a moment Harry thought Sirius would speak; then he seemed to think better of it. "Well," he said, "I think this lot should get home." His gesture encompassed Malfoy. "Arthur, I understand if you need to stay here, I'll go collect the other three and get them back to the Burrow."

Hermione briefly resisted leaving, but Sirius murmured something to her that Harry didn't catch. She turned furiously and stormed off with the rest of them towards the rest of the Weasleys.

"I can't believe that man," Malfoy said after a moment, surprising Harry. "Accusing everyone in the clearing, as though he could throw anyone he pleased into Azkaban..."

"Oh, there was a time when he could," Sirius said grimly. "Crouch was the one who had me sent to Azkaban - without a trial."

"What?" Harry said.

"He had a lot of authority at the time," Mr. Weasley said, rejoining them. "Come on, I want to get out of here, your mother is worried sick. Which way did you say the others are?"

"How does that even work?" Hermione said furiously. "Isn't there any kind of - of due process?"

"My father says it's outrageous--" Malfoy started in nearly identical tones. This was as far as Harry knew the first time the two of them had ever agreed about anything. Beside him, he heard Ron fail to suppress a loud snort.

"You're both right," Sirius said calmly as Malfoy and Hermione shot each other glares. "Draco, is your mother here to stay with you tonight? I understand people can get... separated... in chaotic scenes like this."

"Of course she is," Malfoy snapped defensively. He stayed dead silent as they found the others, and broke from them the moment they reached the edge of the trees.

To Harry's astonishment, they went back to the tent after that; but of course it wasn't so simple as to have everyone go home at once when getting them here had been such a complicated and drawn out affair.

"The muggles are alright, aren't they?" Hermione asked anxiously, when she saw the remainder of those who had gone to help the Ministry.

"Yeah, we got them down in the end," Bill said. He was holding a torn bed sheet to his arm, which was bleeding heavily. "They got them Obliviated... Did you catch who did it, Dad?"

"We caught Mr. Crouch's house elf holding Draco Malfoy's wand," Mr. Weasley said tiredly, "But no closer to the actual culprit."

"I bet Malfoy would do it, they're huge supporters of You-Know-Who," said Fred.

Hermione was shaking her head. "We ran into him in the woods just after, too far away," she said. "He was searching for his wand. The Ministry thinks someone must have stolen it from him."

"They took it away though," Ron said. "Said he won't get it back until they're done with tests. Imagine if he doesn't get it back before term starts. 'Mr. Malfoy, twenty points from Slytherin, and please begin immediately at transfiguring your kitten--'"

There was laughter from those who were still students.

"I don't understand what the point was," Harry said, quietly to Sirius. "I mean - levitating those muggles..."

"The point?" Mr. Weasley, overhearing, laughed hollowly. "Harry, half the muggle killings in the last war were done for fun, that's all. They were celebrating, had a few drinks and thought they'd remind us all that most of them are still at large. A nice reunion party for them."

"So why summon the Mark in the woods?" Ron said suddenly. "You said they ran after it was summoned. Does that mean it was - the ending finale?"

"Well, think about it," Bill said. "The Death Eaters here tonight are the ones who abandoned him, aren't they? Went back to their lives, lied and said he'd forced them or cursed them. They're petrified he'll come back. He won't be very happy with them, if he does."

"So whoever summoned the Mark might have been trying to make them leave?" Hermione said, a speculative look on her face. "But Sirius said that only Death Eaters knew how to summon it... Were they a traitor?"

"We'll have to see if the Ministry finds out, Hermione," Mr. Weasley said, not sounding very optimistic. "Come on, everyone, we need to get to bed so we can get out of here in the morning. Your mother will be worried sick."

Chapter Text

Harry had looked forward to the Burrow, and it was still nice to see the Weasleys, but a cloud hung over the remainder of the holiday: Mr. Weasley and Percy were constantly at work, even on the weekends, as a result of a scandal over security at the Cup fanned by the Daily Prophet; and Mrs. Weasley was constantly fighting with the twins over an attempt they had apparently made earlier that summer to start a mail-order joke business. Mrs. Weasley had confiscated their stock and order forms, and they were furious with her. Meanwhile, she constantly suspected them of developing replacements.

Nevertheless, it was nice to play Quidditch with Ron and his brothers - there was nowhere to fly at Sirius's house - and to eat Mrs. Weasley's cooking. With so many people around, it was difficult to dwell on what Sirius had told him before the Cup about the prophecy. Harry might be a marked man, but, he told himself, there might be years before Voldemort returned; and it was hard to feel too doomed when he was stuffing himself on Mrs. Weasley's pie in the evenings, watching Ginny ply Crookshanks with bottle caps.

Mrs. Weasley had gone shopping in Diagon Alley for the entire family, including Harry and Hermione, in case the Cup ran on for weeks. Consequently the last unpleasant discovery of the holidays was made when Ron unwrapped a paper package to find something that looked remarkably like one of Aunt Petunia's more hideous house dresses.

"Mum, you've made a mistake!" he hollered. "This is Ginny's dress!"

"Those are your dress robes," she said briskly. "They're on your list for this year - robes for formal occasions. Harry, dear, here are yours--"

With dread, Harry unwrapped them to find a quite ordinary looking pair of robes, similar to his school ones, but a bottle green color.

"Those are fine!" Ron said. "Why couldn't I have some like that?"

"Well, I had to get yours second hand," Mrs. Weasley said, cheeks pinking, "And there wasn't a lot of choice!"

She busied off.

Harry, looking at Ron's face, thought of Sirius telling him about his family over the summer, about how Sirius had casually offered to hire a house elf simply to give him something to do, and wished not for the first time that the Weasleys would take gold from him. It seemed all the worse now, when he was not only the heir to a small fortune but the ward of a man with quite a large one.

Apart from this, packing proceeded rather as usual, with a storm of minor disasters, forgotten objects and arguments. Mrs. Weasley caught Fred and George attempting to smuggle out a number of evidently contraband objects and summoned them furiously from the hems of their jeans, their jacket linings, and other similar places; Crookshanks had to be hunted down from the attic, where he had been batting at the ghoul's toes; and Hermione stacked a small wall of books around her trunk in Ginny's room to begin furiously attempting to fit them all in along with less important objects like her her toiletries and clothing.

"Really, Hermione," said Mrs. Weasley, "Do you need quite all of these?" She picked up The Clouded Chamber: Prophecy, Record-keeping and the Modern Ministry. "I thought Ron said you'd dropped Divination."

"It's important," Hermione snapped, taking the book back and piling several into her cauldron. "I'm thinking of asking McGonagall if I can do an independent research project in the subject."

Tempers were running high by the time they got to the platform. Harry felt less bereft than usual, watching students saying goodbye to their families. Sirius had gone on to Hogwarts already - with Harry's permission - and he would be seeing his godfather very soon, at the Feast. Perhaps next year Sirius would come with him, when he wasn't moving into his quarters at Hogwarts, and he could see Harry off at the train.

Or would Harry remain with Sirius at the school itself over the summer, now? What did teachers normally do when they had families? Harry found he had no idea; he had never heard of any students who were related to the current staff.

The three of them found an empty compartment and settled in to wait. Over the morning, various friends looked in on them to discuss the Cup and what the Dark Mark might mean. Seamus and Dean had both gone to the Cup, but Neville Longbottom listened wistfully to their discussion of the match. Hermione, losing patience, unearthed another weighty tome from her bag and lost herself in Chosen One, Chosen for What? A History of Heroic Prophecies.

"Taking this seriously, aren't you?" Harry muttered, when the others had gone.

Hermione gave him an exasperated look. "If you don't appreciate it--" She softened, seeing he was smiling. "Well, I think it's important we find out all we can."

"Thanks, Hermione," he said.

"Are you really thinking about doing an independent project, or did you just say that to Mum to shut her up?" Ron asked. "Mind, I won't blame you if you did, once she starts she never stops."

"Well, I intend to do the research, and if I can get school credit for it it's just as well," Hermione said. "Divination might have a very dubious reputation but obviously it has been known to have some uses, and if--" she lowered her voice, "Harry's caught up in it I feel we should find out as much as possible.

"Everyone knows I dropped Divination in the middle of an argument, so I don't think it will be suspicious. I looked it up and it's allowed; you have to have the authorization of your head of House and they determine the requirements. I wrote to Professor McGonagall yesterday, I said I found a reference to prophecy when I was rereading The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and thought there might be more to the subject that I couldn't learn with Trelawney," she finished, and buried herself back in her book.

The weather turned dark and stormy as they drew further north, and by the time they disembarked it was storming furiously. Hagrid had to howl to the first years to be heard over the storm/

"Wouldn't want to be crossing the lake in that," Ron muttered. "C'mon, let's get to a carriage..."

Professor McGonagall arrived in the middle of a campaign by Peeves to ensure that no scrap of fabric or skin arrived to the Feast dry, sent him off, and sure enough, called Hermione to her office. Ron and Harry exchanged a glance; then they followed the rest of the students into the entrance hall at last.

Harry, looking around, thought how wonderful it was to be back at school. He hadn't been sure if he would feel like this when his summer had been the best he had ever had, and he had Sirius's home to look forward to. But Hogwarts was still the first place he had been welcomed, his real home; the London house had only a few weeks behind it. Looking at the lightning flickering across the charmed ceiling and the House banners, he felt an immense pleasure, like seeing an old friend.

Then he looked up at the table, and was distracted from what Colin Creevey was saying about his brother, because at the high table in between Professor McGonagall and Hagrid was Sirius.

Just at the moment he was talking to Hagrid energetically about something, but he seemed to feel Harry's eye on him and turned, beaming at him from across the hall. Harry grinned back and without thinking twice raised his hand to wave.

"Is that our new Defense teacher?" Neville asked. "Do you know him, Harry?"

"That's Sirius Black!" Seamus said, gaping. "I knew he was cleared, but blimey, hiring him this quick..."

"How do you know him, Harry?" Colin asked.

"He's my godfather," Harry said, grinning at Sirius, who was waving back. "Now he's been cleared I'm living with him when I'm not at school, I spent the summer with him. He's teaching Defense, he just accepted the position right after the World Cup."

His gaze drifted across the high table, and he blanched. He had just met Professor Snape's eye, and the man looked more furious than Harry had ever seen him; he seemed to be hoping that by glaring at Sirius, he could cause his robes to burst into flame.

"Really? What was it like?" Dean asked.

"Is he really as powerful as they say in the newspaper?" Colin Creevey asked. "I saw the photographs from before, he looked really scary - but much nicer now," he said quickly. "Do you think he'd let me take his picture?"

"Didn't he burst in on your bed with a knife?" Alicia asked Ron. "Aren't you upset about it?"

"Nah, what with - Scabbers and all," Ron said gamely - the affair had been covered thoroughly in the newspaper- "I figured I couldn't blame him. He's really nice, now he's not starving and living as dog all the time, Hermione and I went to stay with them over the summer."

Harry found that answering questions about Sirius was in some ways less embarrassing and awkward than the times when he had been the center of attention about himself. People usually wanted to know about things he had had no part in, things he would rather not be reminded of like his parents' deaths; but he could say quite honestly that Sirius was really cool, that he had a flying motorbike he had charmed himself and lived in a house in London.

He was in the midst of a description of Sirius's trip to pick him up to Dean Thomas, who had never known his father and was looking wistfully up at the table, when the door opened and Professor McGonagall led a long line of first years inside. Among them was a very small boy with a distinct resemblance to Colin, wrapped in Hagrid's immense overcoat and wearing it like a blanket. "I fell in the lake!" he mouthed at Colin, beaming as though this was a delight.

Harry watched the sorting with interest; he had not been present at one since his own due to various mishaps. "Different song, isn't it?" he muttered to Ron.

"Every year," said Ron, who had been present last year. "Can't think it has much else to do the rest of the time..."

Hermione came into the entrance hall just as Dumbledore opened the Feast itself, and the plates and goblets filled themselves. Harry waved at her, mouth full of his first bite of chicken. Ron, swallowing slightly faster, said "Well? Did she go for it?"

"She did," Hermione said, grinning at them. "And she said if you wanted, you two could too as long as--"

"She what?" said Ron.

"You didn't say you were going to ask her that!" Harry said, clearing his mouth.

"Well, it's not as if you're actually learning anything from Trelawney!" Hermione said. "This way we could get some real information without pretending we're seeing anything in crystal balls." Lavender Brown, several seats down, glared at her for this. "--Besides, you'd get out of her classes," she pointed out.

Ron looked cheerier at this. "Did she say when we need to tell her by?"

"Tonight, I think, after the feast," Hermione said. "So they can do the schedules."

"How much work did she say she wanted?" Harry asked. He would not at all mind never attending a Divination class again, and therefore never sitting through another round of Trelawney dramatically predicting his gruesome demise. And it was true that prophecy research might be interesting. On the other hand he knew how much work Hermione did, and while it was not surprising Professor McGonagall would feel her adequate for the task of an independent course, he was wary of his own abilities.

"You'll have to discuss it in detail with her," Hermione said. "But it's not supposed to take any more time than lessons and homework for a full class would. She suggested she might want a research paper every month, at least a few feet."

"That doesn't seem bad at all," Harry said, thinking of the lengthy dream diaries he had had to make up for Trelawney.

"--More problems every year," Sir Nick, the Gryffindor House ghost, was saying to another student. "Amazing Peeves hasn't been expelled by now. He's been causing trouble all evening, hurling water everywhere, breaking things, terrorizing the house elves..."

There was a mighty crash. Harry whirled and saw that Hermione had just dropped her glass of pumpkin juice onto her plate; it slopped over the sides and drowned her roll, but she did not seem to notice.

"House elves?" Hermione snapped. "Here?"

"Certainly," Sir Nick said. "You didn't think the food cooked itself, did you?"

"But they get paid," Hermione said. "They get - sick leave, and - and pensions when they're old..."

"House elves don't want sick leaves and pensions," Nick said, laughing.

Hermione's eyes narrowed dangerously. "One of Sirius's books said--" She broke off. "What does happen then? When they get sick? I assume they get sick. Or when they're old and can't work?"

There was an awful silence at the table. Nick looked back and forth, across the table; he did not seem to want to answer this question. Harry, feeling rather sick himself, hoped he only did not know.

"Slave labor," Hermione snapped, setting her fork down. "That's what made this dinner - slaves." And that was the last time she touched anything on the table that night.

When the last of their puddings were complete, Dumbledore rose to begin his start of term speech. Harry listened with an unfamiliar resentful feeling as Dumbledore reviewed the list of forbidden objects and locations. He remembered again that Dumbledore had wanted to return to the Dursleys. Yet now he had hired Sirius. Perhaps he was hoping to use the position against him? Were teachers required to reside at the school over the summer?

But Harry could not imagine Dumbledore would think Sirius would put a job above Harry.

He was distracted from this line of thought when Dumbledore announced that the Quidditch tournament would not take place.

"What?" he hissed, exchanging horrified glances with his team mates.

But Dumbledore was moving on, telling the school of his pleasure that this year, at Hogwarts, the Triwizard Tournament would occur.

Outbursts of disbelief filled the hall. Harry twisted, looking at Ron, who seemed to know what was going on and was gazing eagerly at Dumbledore. Hermione for once seemed quite as baffled as Harry.

Dumbledore continued to explain when the students quieted. "The Triwizard Tournament occurred for the first time seven hundred years ago, and proceeded for several hundred more. It was an arrangement between the three largest schools of magic in Europe; Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. A champion was selected from among each school's students, and they competed in three magical tasks for the glory of their schools - staying with their fellows at the host school and thereby establishing ties between international students. It was looked upon as a wonderful way of creating relations until the death toll rose too high--"

"The what," Hermione hissed.

"--And it was halted. Various attempts have been made to revive it over the centuries, and this year, our Ministry feels the time is on us once again. We have been working over the summer to ensure that there will be no mortal danger to champions."

Harry listened as Dumbledore expounded upon the timing of events, the prize money, and the introduction of an age requirement for entrance - this last one greeted with quite a bit of resentment, particularly from Fred and George Weasley.

"And last - but by no means least--" Dumbledore continued. "I would like to introduce you to a new addition to our staff." He extended an arm, and Sirius rose, smiling down at them all. "May I present Professor Sirius Black--" Muttering rose in the hall-- "Our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

"Owing to the events of last year, I feel obliged to remind you all that Professor Black has been cleared of all charges related to the unfortunate events that occurred thirteen years ago. I bid you to welcome him." And with that, Dumbledore concluded his speech.

Harry wasn't sure how easy it would be to locate Professor McGonagall before bed, but as it turned out she came to find him and Ron in the common room herself. "Well," she said, when Harry led the way up to her, "And I expected to find Miss Granger dragging you here by your ears."

"She's - upset about something someone said at the feast," Harry said, feeling that explaining to Professor McGonagall that Hermione was furious about the castle's use of house elf labor would be unwise. "She said you'd talked to her about an independent research course in Divination, for the three of us..."

"So I did," Professor McGonagall said. "And I admit that I would be delighted to see - something more - useful made of the subject by my students this year. However, I must make it plain to you that I expect the three of you to research different subjects, and in particular to hand in your own work."

Harry glanced at Ron, who looked somewhat ill at ease. It was true that Hermione had heavily edited many essays for the two of them over the years, particularly Ron.

"Well, that's good to know, Professor," he said. "Do you want to know our subjects now? Er, Hermione said you'd told her a research essay a month?"

"Yes, with one term-length larger project," she said. "I would expect two to three feet of parchment per month, well researched, not merely summarized from a textbook; and shall we say six feet for a major project each term, or an equivalent in another medium. I shall not expect you to demonstrate use of the Sight, as it is notoriously - ah - choosey. Please give me the subjects for your first essays by the end of the week. You shall have to sit OWLS with the remainder of the class, and I'm afraid if you change your minds Professor Trelawney shall have the final say on whether you may rejoin."

"Yes, Professor," Harry said; Ron muttered agreement beside him, ears still burning, and the two of them went up to bed at last.

The week progressed almost as normal. Hermione, fortunately, gave up on her hunger strike at breakfast the next day in favor of spending every waking moment in the library; when Harry asked, she muttered something vaguely about legislation on Beings before rushing off. Shortly after she departed, Harry received an owl with Sirius' familiar handwriting on it, inviting him and his friends to tea in his quarters that Friday when the week was over; he added that they were welcome any time they wanted to stop by on the weekend or after classes in the future.

He held it up and waved at Sirius, who grinned back, then scribbled down his and Ron's acceptance, adding that Hermione would probably come once she could be asked.

They were very soon buried in the routine of schoolwork. Hagrid had acquired a number of alarming creatures he referred to as "Blast-Ended Skrewts," which did not have discernible mouths and yet showed a remarkably propensity to bite, sting and burn at once. The class was expected to attempt to discern the Skrewts' preferred food.

They spent the first Divination class period in their year with Hermione in the library, looking through the Divination section and discussing what they would write their essays on and, very quietly, how to pick subjects that would be of particular use to Harry's situation.

"Well, if we want to sit the O.W.L.s we've got to cover the basics," Hermione said softly. "But most of it's basic methods and no one does very well at results, so one of us should be able to cover each section in an essay and then the others can read their notes. I thought I'd do my first one on prophesied heroes in British history, some of the books Sirius lent me should do for sources. Do either of you have any ideas?"

Harry and Ron looked at each other.

"I'm not sure I have any ideas yet," Harry said, feeling a creeping dread at what he was in for, and, "Honestly, Hermione, how do you pick them? I haven't got the faintest idea, usually it's just, 'Write twelve inches on the preparation of a Shrinking Solution,' or 'summarize the textbook chapter you read this week.'"

To his surprise, Hermione's face had softened immediately at this request, in direct opposition to her usual opinion of being asked to do homework for other people. "I mean, how would you know when they never teach basic composition?" she said, quietly. "Look, you remember when we were doing the research for - for Buckbeak--"

Her voice shook slightly. They had not been able to get Buckbeak off; he had been executed for an absurdly minor injury inflicted on Draco Malfoy last year.

"Or when we were looking for Flamel," Hermione said, strengthening. "Or - I guess you weren't with me when I went looking for creatures Slytherin's monster could be."

"Yeah, but those were all stuff we had to know about," Ron said. "And honestly you did a ton of the work, Hermione, you told us what to look for and we just had to do the reading..."

"So the first thing," Hermione said, cheeks pink, "Is to think of a question. Get a piece of parchment out, both of you, I'll help. Just think - what do we know right now about Divination? What do you want to know? Put down anything, even if it's stupid, you can pick later."

Harry looked at his parchment and frowned. Carefully, he wrote down, 'Prophecies about military victories,' as he supposed it would be unfortunate if someone were to find a paper declaiming the secret Sirius had told him left behind in a library book or under a sofa in the Gryffindor common room.

Then he frowned, because a question had occurred to him looking at that sentence. "Hermione," he said quietly, "You've been talking about prophesied heroes. Were there any others much like - the one we're researching?"

"That's a good question," Hermione said, beaming at him. "I've found a few references but the wording varies a lot - it's what I'm writing my essay on, you can read my notes later! Write down the question - carefully, I mean."

Harry obediently wrote down, 'Similar prophecies?' and wondered how this was going to help.

Hermione spent the rest of the period talking him and Ron through writing down every stray thought and question, even some Harry had to admit were extremely stupid, about Divination. In the end it did not feel much like they'd done any work - neither of them had so much as opened a book - but Hermione seemed extremely cheerful. "That's a great place to start," she said, "If you could narrow it down to say, five or six things you think might make a good paper, we can see what's available in the library about them next class period - just keep looking over your lists. I've got to get to Arithmancy now!"

Ron and Harry exchanged glances.

"Hermione," Harry said, "It's last period, there aren't any more classes;" but as they were in the library, he had to whisper, and Hermione had already gone.

"All that reading about house elves is making her barmy," Ron said, shaking his head.

When the Divination class in their year returned to the common room with agonizingly long star charts to do, Harry and Ron were cheered by their own choice. "Can't be that bad, writing a bunch of essays," Ron muttered to him.

Chapter Text

They had their first class with Sirius Thursday afternoon, which gave them plenty of time to listen to the opinions of other students and wonder what was in store. Sirius had not told Harry anything about his lesson plans before they returned to school, and while Harry had managed to find a few times to say hello, there had been little time for a real conversation in the chaos of the first week.

Harry was not the only one looking forward eagerly to Thursday afternoon. While they had received few details, students who had had his godfather earlier in the week had returned buzzing with whispered conversation about it, but refused to share any information. The Gryffindor fourth years, who were almost last to have Sirius, arrived early, and Harry followed Hermione up to sit near the front.

Often, Professor Lupin had brought in creatures in tanks or cages. His predecessor Lockhart had only used his books, apart from the memorably disastrous first lesson involving a cage of pixies. Their first year teacher's lessons had been remarkable primarily for the intense smell of garlic, before Harry had discovered he was possessed by Voldemort at the end of the year.

Sirius was not yet present, and Harry saw no odd containers or rattling cabinets. Instead, the blackboard at the front of the room had been freshly scrubbed, and there was what looked like a bulging folder of newspaper clippings on a table at the front of the room.

He checked his watch. Ten minutes to class, then five... The whispering around him picked up. Hermione had pulled out The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and was reading it absently, far too quickly for Harry to believe she had any idea what was in front of her. Ron was fiddling with his parchment.

At three minutes to class time, the door flung open behind them.

"Good," Sirius said behind them, in the clipped, upper class speech Harry had come to realize he used when he was nervous. "I see you're all here already. We can begin." He walked up between the rows of desks, letting them all get a good look at him, for the other students were staring.

Harry had a hard time not doing so himself. He had become accustomed to seeing Sirius in muggle clothing over the summer. Now he was dressed in seamlessly dark robes, so black they appeared to swallow light. He was wearing the motorcycle boots under them again, and his hair had been pulled back in a style Harry had most recently seen on Lucius Malfoy. While the muggle shirts and jeans had softened his gaunt look, this clothing intensified it. With the cold, distant look on his face, he seemed every inch a Dark wizard, the Sirius Black Harry's classmates had grown up warned about.

Harry smiled at him tentatively as he passed the front row; Sirius met his eyes and, to Harry's relief, grinned back. The class murmured around them as Sirius pivoted sharply to face them at the front of the room.

"Welcome to Defense Against the Dark Arts," he said. "I am, as you heard on the first day of term, Sirius Black. My office hours are seven to eight after dinner every week night. I ask that you save your questions about Azkaban and the events of last summer for that time, so that we can discuss our classwork instead for now. I also would like to ask that you not spoil the materials for your friends from other years and other houses. As this is my last class today and a double period, you have only one day left. Can everyone manage that?"

The class mumbled and nodded agreement, and Sirius nodded crisply once. "Good. Now. Traditionally, a Hogwarts class is structured with the expectation that you will cover everything important in a subject over seven years' time, with each year covering age-appropriate material that fits into a progression with the years before and ahead. Unfortunately, that has not been possible in Defense for many years now, as the last professor to have served in this position more than one year in a row was Professor Merrythought, who retired in the fifties."

The whispering picked up. Harry glanced to the side at Hermione, thinking she should surely be aware of this if it was true; she was watching Sirius with her lips pursed, a deeply thoughtful expression on her face.

"I would certainly like to be the exception, but I am not - despite what some have said about me - so arrogant as to proclaim I can manage it. Therefore, I have planned my lessons this year with the assumption that I will have one year with you all; that another professor will pick up with you as you progress; and that I have absolutely no control or way of predicting what that professor will cover. This requires," and Sirius finally smiled at the class here, "A nontraditional approach.

"I've heard some things about my predecessors for this year, but let me make sure it's accurate. Last year, you were taught by Professor Lupin, who grounded you thoroughly in magical creatures and methods of avoiding, escaping or controlling them." He paused, and then no objection was forthcoming went on, "The year before that, you had Professor Lockhart, who was..."

"Useless," Seamus called from the back, to general laughter.

"Hear, hear," Ron muttered, next to Harry. Sirius' eyes flicked to him, and his lips quirked.

"Indeed," Sirius said. "And before that, you had Professor Quirrell, possessed at the time by Lord Voldemort--"

Gasps swept the classroom, but Sirius pushed on through them.

"--Who proved a remarkably incompetent Defense teacher considering his undeniable expertise in the subject." Nervous laughter here. "I understand you went through The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection fairly thoroughly and received at least a theoretical grounding in defense, and considering that you were first years at the time, the opportunities missed were likely fairly limited. Would anyone like to interject with something I've missed in your educational background?"

Sirius paused for a longer period, but no hands were raised, and eventually he went on, "Good. Now, given that I don't know what you'll cover in the future and you haven't had much coverage in the past apart from with Lupin, I will try to treat the subject holistically - that is, instead of giving you an in depth grounding on jinxes, for example, or curses, I'm going to have to go at a very broad range of subject manner fairly shallowly.

"In order to do that," Sirius said, "I will take one event - one very recent, still relevant one - and cover it in very great detail, addressing every aspect of defensive magic and the Dark Arts it is designed to counter in the process. This event has shaped every aspect of the political situation in modern Britain, the social situation around you, and the legal status of the Dark Arts, as well as which of them are in common use and likely to be encountered. It has been formative in the lives of every adult you encounter, here at Hogwarts and at home.

"Can anyone tell me what this event is?" Sirius asked, and paused.

Hermione's hand shot up, not at all to anyone's surprise. Sirius did not immediately call on her, but stood back and waited. Slowly, hands rose around them, until Sirius called on, to Harry's surprise, Neville.

"The - the war against You-Know-Who," Neville said, in what was nearly a whisper.

"Very good - Mr. Longbottom, is it?" Sirius said, and Neville nodded, looking astonished. "Five points to Gryffindor." Sirius walked to the blackboard, then turned again to face the class.

"Some of you believe that Voldemort will return. Some of you do not. Some of your parents fought him; some, I imagine, supported him." He said this all very evenly, his eyes not moving among them. "I don't care about any of that; it isn't my job to persuade you of political positions in this class.

"It is my job to prepare you - whether that's for the return of Voldemort or for the next Dark Lord; or only for petty crimes and every day violence. I believe that studying the war with Voldemort can do that, because he is the most recent Dark Lord to rise in Britain and the most effective in many years. His tactics are the most advanced, the most effective, and the most frequently used now, because they were popularized during the war. We will study them; we will study fighting them; and to the extent possible, we will practice resisting them."

The class no longer whispered, but stared, attention rapt. Sirius glanced over them. "Any questions?" he said; and when none were forthcoming he waved his wand at the board.

An image sprung up immediately, as though from a muggle projector. It was a newspaper clipping from the Daily Prophet, dated from the seventies. It proclaimed the murder of journalist Robert Ackerley and his wife and children. The image was of a muggle row house, the Dark Mark floating above it like an ominous cloud.

Squinting, Harry read the opening lines of the article and frowned. Whoever had written this article did not seem very concerned or horrified by the murder; rather, the first lines pointed out that Ackerley had written a controversial editorial on opening certain Ministry positions to - Harry startled to actually see the word in print - mudbloods, and noted that his wife Pamela Ackerley nee Green had attracted social attention for her maintenance of a bank account in the muggle world...

"Your previous classes on this subject have emphasized magic almost exclusively," Sirius said. Harry, who had nearly forgotten about him, jumped. "Of course, magic is an extremely important aspect of defense - but it is not the only aspect. A war begins not when the first curse is thrown, but when the situation progresses to the point where violence is both inevitable and possible.

"This article appeared on July first, 1974, four years into the war against Voldemort. It followed the murder of a well-known political writer and speaker who had opposed his supporters' positions. I'd like you to read the first page, what I have up on the board, and tell me any thoughts you have about it. Anything that seems important, or strange, or interesting, it doesn't matter what. Anyone willing to begin?" Sirius asks.

There were no hands at first: even Hermione seemed intent on reading the article several times before raising her hand, although hers was the first in the air. Harry glanced around and then remembered that he should be reading the article himself.

After several minutes, Sirius said, "In the back - Mr. Thomas?"

"Yeah, that's me," Dean said. "And - the article's trying to make the victims look bad, isn't it? Like they deserved to be killed."

"Indeed. And what makes you say that? Can you give me an example?" Sirius said.

"Well - the first sentence tells you that the man, Robert Ackerley, wrote an editorial about - muggleborn rights, sir, and the writer didn't like it very much."

"No," Sirius said dryly, "She did not. What makes you say so?"

"Well - the word... I don't want to say it..."

"You don't have to," Sirius said quickly. "The writer chose an offensive word for muggleborns when summarizing the editorial, one the Ackerleys hardly would have used themselves. Very good. Anyone else? Miss Granger?" Sirius managed to make it sound as though Hermione had not spent some time over the summer hanging around in his living room in her pajamas.

"In the photograph of the house," Hermione said very quickly like she was afraid she would be stopped, "They've changed the lighting around so it looks dark and grimy, and I think the contrast has been changed - you can't see the flowers very well or the painted trim."

"Very good," Sirius said. "And why might they do that?"

"Well - to make the house look dirty, sir, or unappealing. Was Ms. Ackerley muggleborn, sir?"

"It's a good question," Sirius said. "And one I unfortunately don't know the answer to. In the seventies, people didn't usually publicize it if they were, with very few exceptions."

"Well, the muggle bank account would suggest it, wouldn't it?" Hermione said.

"...Not necessarily," Sirius said. "Ah, I suppose that's also potentially important for the article..." He glanced around slowly. "I don't necessarily expect it, but can anyone tell me how?" Hands dropped. "This isn't usually discussed in books published in Britain because the Ministry finds it embarrassing... Ah, good, Miss Patil?"

"Ms. Ackerley might not have been muggleborn because Gringotts doesn't maintain separate vaults for married women," Parvati said, eyes straight ahead. "If you want your own vault once you get married you have to go to a muggle bank or overseas. And that's why the reporter pointed it out - conservative elements in British society think that kind of thing is morally suspect behavior, so it's a smear on her that she had her own bank account, like her husband writing an editorial with controversial opinions in it."

Harry turned his head, sure that Hermione would have an opinion of this; but for once her hand had not shot back up. She was gaping at Sirius like a fish. After a moment she closed her mouth deliberately, picked up a quill, flipped her notes over, and began to scribble furiously.

"Yes - there are certain marriage contract provisions used to get around that, but it's dependent on family permission and conservatives tend to feel only their own daughters are trustworthy with them," Sirius said, "Five points to Gryffindor - for Miss Granger and Mr. Thomas as well. So, we have a few examples of how the article made an effort to portray the victims of this account as unsympathetic: their house looks dirty, Mr. Ackerley wrote newspaper editorials with controversial, unpopular opinions, Ms. Ackerley kept a separate banking account at a muggle institution as a married woman. Why? Does anyone have an explanation?"

Harry raised his hand tentatively for the first time, and when Sirius indicated him, said, "The reporter must have supported Voldemort, didn't they? But - how would they be that obvious about it and keep their job?"

He felt slightly stupid saying so - as though anyone did not know Lucius Malfoy, for example, was a supporter of Voldemort - but it seemed to be the question Sirius had been waiting for, because he smiled, nodding.

"Exactly," Sirius said. "You have all been done a grave disservice, I'm afraid, mostly committed by my generation. People talking about the war now will generally portray two sides: Voldemort's Death Eaters, and everyone else.

"The truth is that Voldemort was an immensely popular political speaker with a lot of support in the Wizengamot at the beginning of the war - but not quite enough support to get his positions enacted as legislation. That was when he began his campaign of murders, kidnappings and disappearance... You have a question, Mr. Finnegan?"

"Yes, sir - if he was really popular before the war, why would he start killing people instead of just trying to talk more of them around? Wouldn't that make people less likely to support him?"

"You might think so." Sirius smiled thinly. "I have a question for you about that - it's not homework because I'm not sure you'll be able to find the answer in the library here. But I'd like you to try; write to your parents if you have wizarding parents, go through the newspaper archives in the library, ask your other teachers if you're comfortable approaching them.

"The war with Voldemort is generally considered to have begun on January 18th, 1970, when the Dark Mark was first summoned during a riot following a Wizengamot vote. The issue the Wizengamot voted on came up again in 1974. If anyone can tell me next class what they voted on and what the vote counts were, both times, let's make it twenty points to Gryffindor, shall we? Each person with the right answer, hand it in on a sheet of parchment at the beginning of class.

"Now, Mr. Potter, would you like to try to answer your own question?"

"You mean," Harry said, feeling caught off guard, "How could the reporter have been so obvious about supporting Voldemort and kept her job?" Sirius nodded. "Well - her editor, or her boss at the Ministry, must have agreed with her, right?" Harry reread the first few lines of the article. "Not - necessarily that the murder was good, but that they were - asking for it."

"Yes," Sirius said. "Take five points as well. This article is an announcement to the public of a murder and an obituary. It also is an excellent example of propaganda. Right now, I'm just going to define that as a published piece of information with a political agenda. We'll talk more about it next class." As he spoke, he was opening the bulging binder.

"This is your homework. What I have in front of me is a collection of propaganda - newspaper, pamphlets, a variety of subjects - from countries all over the world, wizard and muggle, past and present. I'd like you all to come up and pick one, and write me six inches for next class about what the piece is advocating and how, whether it's an open argument or something more subtle, like the examples we discussed today.

"Now. This class is not history of magic," Sirius smiled, "And that's not all we're going to do today. Come up, pick out a clipping, look through them a bit - I'm afraid many of these will be upsetting, feel free to pick one that you think you can stand carrying around for a week. I'll give you ten minutes. Then put your quills and notes away, and get out your wands."

Harry got up immediately, wondering what Hermione would make of this assignment. It was very unusual, but it seemed to bear a resemblance to what she had been trying to get him and Ron to do during Divination study. He looked over her, and found that she was sitting rigidly, staring at the top of the desk.

Sirius was already walking over. "Go on, Harry," he said quietly, and sat down in the empty desk next to Hermione. Harry heard him say, "Miss Granger. If you'd like to talk about it..."

He would talk to Hermione later, he resolved, and went to the front of the room.

Ron and Seamus were already there, leafing through a number of pamphlets spread out on the table. Harry saw that some of them weren't in English; these had pieces of paper clipped to them that seemed to be translations. Ron was gazing dubiously at an ancient looking, worn piece of paper with an alphabet Harry thought might be Russian on it, portraying what seemed to be people drinking blood out of glasses.

"That's mad," he was saying to Neville. "People believe this?"

Harry looked down at the papers himself. There didn't seem to be anything from wizarding Britain. Perhaps Sirius had been concerned that the Slytherins would not do the assignment properly if they were asked to analyze articles in favor of Voldemort. It was the strangest Defense assignment he could remember being assigned - unless you considered some of Lockhart's - but he thought Sirius had a point, and not just because he was Harry's godfather. How had Voldemort gotten all of those supporters?

Aware that they were running out of time, he picked out an article for himself about the IRA, and - glancing back and seeing that she was still talking to Sirius - grabbed a pamphlet for Hermione that had something to do with vaccination for smallpox, then hurried back to his seat.

Sirius was just going back to the front of the classroom. Hermione was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her robes, but she looked less rigidly pale. Harry gave her the pamphlet and she tucked it into her bag quickly, saying "Thank you, Harry."

"Alright, everyone," Sirius said, when everyone had filtered away from the table. He waved his wand, and the remaining papers flipped back into the binder, which closed itself neatly. "Come up to the front and I'll get the desks out of the way..."

Another wave of his wand took care of that; the desks jumped to the edge of the room, leaving a large, clear space.

"So," Sirius said. "Part of resisting the Dark Arts is resisting their users' agendas - and all of the compelling reasons people will offer you as to why you should become one of them. But part of it is physically resisting the Dark Arts when they are used on you. And that's what we'll be dealing with for our second period today.

"Last year you learned about a variety of potentially dangerous magical creatures - kelpies, boggarts and the like. But the third year curriculum did not include the most dangerous creature of all - and there are nine of them standing in this room right now."

"Sir," Seamus said eagerly, "You mean other wizards, right?"

"Wizards and witches," Sirius confirmed, bowing his head. "I can't teach you everything about dueling in a day. Even if I could, it wouldn't make you invincible. I'm actually talking to the Headmaster right now about an opportunity to give everyone some more practice, but we'll start with the basics. How many people in this room have successfully performed a disarming spell?" Sirius tallied the hands, then said, "And a shield charm?"

Harry's hand went down, as did most of his classmates'. He was unsurprised that Hermione's stayed up.

What followed made Harry think of a rather more successful version of the disastrous dueling club Lockhart had started his second year. He and Ron disarmed each other several times for the first ten minutes; then Sirius went around, had everyone who could manage it successfully switch to the new shield charms, and went over the disarming spell more slowly with the remainder of the class, correcting their pronunciation and movements. Hermione, who had mastered both spells, came back to practice with Harry and Ron while Sirius assisted Neville.

Rather to Harry's surprise, he was the second one after Hermione to produce a completely successful shield charm, deflecting Ron's Expelliarmus so forcefully that his wand flew up and hit the ceiling.

"Well done, Harry!" Sirius called from across the room. "Take another five points!"

Their earlier discussion of the newspaper article had taken up a good half of the double class. When the dinner bell rang, Sirius put the desks back lazily and reminded them of the homework. "We'll work more on the spellwork next time too, so get some practice in if you feel you aren't doing well. Six inches explaining the argument in your propaganda - and everyone, remember this information is not factual! Please don't leave it lying around the common room either. I'll see you next week."

Chapter Text

Hermione again bolted down her dinner and departed for the library immediately. Harry had been trying to figure out what, if anything, he should say about Defense class, and was uncertain whether he was disappointed or relieved.

He and Ron went up to the common room, found chairs near the fire, and opened their bags. They already had small mountains of homework: all of their teachers seemed to feel that two years in advance was not too far ahead to begin preparing for OWLS, and perhaps even too late.

"What do you think?" Ron said. "Binns's goblin rebellion essay, antidote research for Snape, or Sirius?"

"I was thinking of looking over my divination notes - McGonagall wants our essay subjects by tomorrow," Harry said, digging the parchment out of bag.

Ron moaned. "I forgot. Where's Hermione?"

"Library again," Harry said. "We could go find her..."

"She'll just want to talk about house elves," Ron said. "So, I was thinking of what Hermione was saying about methods, and I figured I might talk about that - she found me a history of divination that looked okay."

"Yeah," Harry said, remembering their conversation about prophecies, "I'm trying to come up with something else about prophecies - you know," he lowered his voice, "Something useful."

"Well," Ron said, flipping through the table of contents of a book halfheartedly, "There are a lot of wizarding stories about prophecies - you know, nursery tales and stuff - and they always make a big deal out of the words. I dunno if that's a real thing or not, but maybe you could do that. I mean, if the prophecy said you had the power to defeat the Dark Lord, what does it mean by power?"

"Good point," Harry said, scribbling a few words down. "I'll probably have to go to the library to do more." He took out the essay for Binns and his History of Magic textbook.

Hermione failed to appear, but Crookshanks arrived in the common room, circled around them, and took up a position in her usual chair, eyeing the two of them. The common room grew crowded, then slowly began filtering out as people went to bed.

Trying to remember whether the rebellion of 1638 had been sparked by the lynching of Odric the Ostentatious's wife, daughter or aunt, Harry paused, quill to his lips. Fred and George were sitting in a corner across the room, whispering together over a piece of parchment. He remembered seeing them like this at the Burrow over the summer. He had assumed they were working on a new order form, but it seemed rather odd that Lee Jordan would not be involved.

By now the common room was nearly empty. Hermione finally arrived, dropping into the seat on the other side of Harry. Crookshanks leapt across Harry and Ron, knocking several quills to the floor, and settled into her lap, purring.

"How is it going?" Hermione asked, looking over them and beaming, apparently delighted to find them occupied by homework without her supervision.

"Horrible," Harry said, groaning. "Do you remember whether Albert the Absentminded the third's nephew was called Jost or Jupp...."

"Joerg, but you want his grandson Gert the Greasy, he was the one who stormed the Wizengamot with the twelve demands," Hermione said. "Can I borrow Hedwig, Harry?"

"Sure," Harry said, "I'll go up to the Owlery tomorrow, it's almost curfew now. Who are you writing?"

"Well, actually - if you think he wouldn't mind, Ron - I thought I'd write Percy." She said this very quickly as though afraid of their reactions.

"Percy?" Ron said, baffled. "I mean, he'll be thrilled. Why? Can you look at my essay proposal, we need to give them to McGonagall tomorrow."

"I'm not editing it for you!" Hermione said, but took it anyway. "--This looks fine, Ron," she said, then coughed as though embarrassed by how surprised she sounded. "And I thought it might be useful to ask him a few questions about the Ministry - I mean, he must see a lot as Mr. Crouch's assistant, right?"

Harry and Ron exchanged glances. "You hate Crouch, remember?" Harry said in an undertone. "With how he treated Winky..."

"All the better to know more about him, then," Hermione said, briskly but soft, fishing out parchment. "Is he still seeing Penelope Clearwater, Ron?"

"No, they broke up last year, Aunt Muriel gloated for weeks in the post," Ron said absently, then went scarlet. "Not that I care what she thinks," he said hastily.

"Why was she gloating?" Harry asked, finishing up his essay and blowing to dry the ink.

"Well, because Penelope Clearwater's muggleborn," Ron said, staring hard into his lap. "But she's horrible to everyone, we don't even see her at holidays - not since Fred and George set off a bunch of dungbombs under her chair one year. Nobody listens to her," he said quickly.

Harry looked at Hermione, who had paused in her writing and was biting her lip fiercely. "So, uh," he said, "Did you figure anything out about the house elves?"

"Yes and no," Hermione said evasively, but she began to write again. "Actually I went to see Sirius, because I couldn't find any reference to what he mentioned in the library - you know, about them having no choice but to bond with humans now. It's funny how incomplete certain reference tools are, isn't it?"

"You saw Sirius?" Harry said, startled.

"Yes, he did say we could all come by any time. Anyway, he could tell me some about it. There are mentions in his family's library of the subjugation of the house elves - gloating, you know." She made a disgusted noise. "Don't you think it's appalling that wizarding law bans everyone but wizards and witches from carrying wands? You know, there have been times when women were banned from them, too, or muggleborns, or commoners..."

"I think Dad mentioned something about that one time," Ron said, "Something to do with work. I don't remember." He seemed surprised by his own comment.

"I'm not surprised," Hermione said darkly, and didn't elaborate. She gave the letter a twitch and rolled it up. "What about you, Harry, did you decide what you're going to do for the first Divination essay?"

The best that could be said about Friday was that it was the end of the week. Charms wasn't bad, but Flitwick assigned them a mountain of theory reading in preparation for beginning Summoning charms; and after lunch they had double Potions with the Slytherins.

Draco Malfoy was surprisingly quiet, though he was replaced by Theodore Nott and Crabbe in snickering, getting in the way of the Gryffindor students, and generally being obnoxious. Harry caught Malfoy sending speculative looks in the direction of their table several times, but, out of character, he kept his mouth entirely shut.

"Wish he'd be that quiet for Hagrid," Harry muttered.

"Well, can you really blame him for complaining about the Skrewts?" Ron said.

"Something to share, Potter, Weasley?" Snape inquired nastily. Harry rapidly bent over his ingredients.

Sirius had given Harry directions to his quarters in his letter Monday. Immediately after dinner, they climbed several flights of steps, went through a corridor Harry had only passed by before, and stopped at a painting of a wolf curled up at the base of a column and tolerantly watching two human toddlers rolling a ball back and forth.

"Password?" the wolf asked, raising her head.

"Er, Black Sabbath," Harry said, and the door swung open.

They came into a rather cluttered sitting room, full of golden wood like their house and with white walls. Some of the furniture from the house was here - Harry recognized the claw footed side table - and some was new.

A number of bookcases lined the room, filled with a battered assortment of books, and to Harry's surprise stacks of board games on some of the lower shelves. Photographs beamed out from the walls, showing faces familiar and not: Harry's parents and Remus Lupin with a younger Sirius; a witch who looked rather like a female Sirius with lighter brown hair, a man who must be her husband, and a toothily grinning teenager with purple hair; and to Harry's surprise, a photograph taken that summer of Sirius with the three of them in the back garden with ice cream.

"Harry, Ron, Hermione!" Sirius called from the next room. "Sit down, I'll be right there."

Harry plopped in the middle of the sofa - new to him, with Gryffindor red cushions. Ron and Hermione sat next to him on either side.

Sirius arrived shortly with a tray of tea things and sat across from them in a stuffed armchair with moving dragons embroidered on it. "So how was your first week?" he asked.

"Well, Snape's implying he's planning to poison us, but he hasn't done it yet, so it could be worse," Ron said, reaching for a biscuit.

"He wants us to research antidotes," Hermione said, "Honestly, Ron."

"You know, I have no idea what Dumbledore was thinking, hiring him to teach," Sirius said, pouring tea for them all. "As far as I know he was never actually accused of being a Death Eater, but there have been rumors for years, and he certainly ran around with enough kids who definitely were later--"

"Seriously?" Harry said. He had always suspected something like this about Snape, but having it put so openly was something else.

"Yeah, but Dumbledore says he trusts him." Sirius shrugged. "I can't believe Dumbledore would hire him if he'd ever really worked for Voldemort, but the way he was in school it wouldn't be hard to believe. He's always been very into Dark Arts - used to invent curses as a teenager... What's wrong, Ron?"

"Do you have to keep saying the name?" Ron said plaintively.

Sirius smiled apologetically. "Yes, I'm afraid," he said. "But have another biscuit. What did you think of my class, you three?"

"It was brilliant," Hermione said before Harry or Ron could get a word in. "I've always thought wizards don't put nearly enough emphasis on - on logic, and analysis, and thinking about things instead of just doing."

"You know," Sirius said, "I certainly don't agree with every aspect of Muggle education reform, but you likely have a point there."

"I thought you were upset," Ron ventured, tentatively. "About uh..."

"I talked to Sirius about it during class," Hermione said. "And I'm not very happy about it, but it isn't his fault." She paused, and eyeing Ron out of the corner of her eye said quite emphatically, "Of course, when I get married - if I get married - I'll be keeping an account in a muggle bank, too."

"Of course!" Ron said very quickly, ears turning very red.

"So what did you mean about getting us all some more practice?" Harry said loudly.

Sirius grinned. "Let me finish talking to Dumbledore about it. I want to make sure I'm allowed before I make the announcement, not get anyone's hopes up. Speaking of that, Harry - I wanted to ask you something."

"Yeah?" Harry said, curious, taking a drink of his tea.

"Well, about the prophecy," Sirius said. "Hermione tells me you've all been doing some reading about the subject. I think that's a very good idea. I also think that - while you may well have plenty of time - we should get started preparing, if you're willing, Harry."

"What do you have in mind?" Harry asked eagerly.

"I'd like to give you - and Ron and Hermione if they're interested - some private lessons in magic, when you have time. You're still young, and we should have years to work on it, but I get the feeling it's something you're all interested in--"

"Definitely," Ron said.

"Yeah, absolutely," Harry said, conscious of Hermione nodding quickly beside him.

"Good," Sirius said. "Like I said, I need to make some arrangements with Dumbledore for everyone; I'll talk to you three more about it once I have his answer for sure, that'll influence a few things. For now, tell me about your other classes."

They did not have long to wait to find out about Sirius' arrangements, for that very Monday after classes, a note appeared in the common room announcing that a dueling club was beginning, run by Professors Black and Flitwick. That the first meeting was to be Wednesday at eight o'clock after dinner.

This immediately created quite a stir. "It shouldn't be like Lockhart," Harry heard one seventh year girl say to another, "Professor Black knows what he's doing."

"Oh, doesn't he," said her friend, slightly dreamy-voiced.

"Honestly," Hermione sighed, but then she looked speculatively at the paper. "Well, we know what Sirius meant about arrangements, don't we?"

"I wonder if it'll be more like last class, or something new?" Ron said. The three of them put their names down and went off to work on their Transfiguration homework.

Harry received another addition to his schedule not much time later, when Katie Bell came in through the portrait. "Hey, Harry," she said, passing him a parchment scroll. "For you. Shame about Quidditch, isn't it?"

"It really is," Harry said. "Thanks, who--" But Katie was already hurrying off, bag bulging with books. He recalled that Katie, one year ahead of them, was coping with OWLS this year.

He looked down at the note. The slanting handwriting seemed vaguely familiar, he thought, opening it - and then he spotted the signature.

"Dumbledore!" Hermione said softly.

"He wants me to come see him tomorrow, last period," Harry said, frowning; they had a free period after Potions Tuesdays, possibly meant as preparation to stay up at night for Astronomy class. "It doesn't say why..."

He could not think of anything he had done to be in trouble so quickly in the term, but he would not mind having a chance to talk to Dumbledore himself. Questions that had been pushed off by the beginning of classes rose in his mind again, about the Dursleys and the prophecies and all of the information which he had not received, and the decisions Dumbledore had made about him.

"Bet it's about the prophecy," Ron said in an undertone. "Should be interesting."

Harry had not told them what Sirius had said about Dumbledore over the summer. He had not wanted to discuss the Dursleys in general, but particularly now that he was gone from them forever.

"Yeah," he muttered, unable to keep the sullenness entirely out of his tone. Hermione gave him a sharp look. "Should be."

But in fact, the thought of a private meeting with Dumbledore seemed very desirable indeed when he was in Potions after lunch Tuesday. This was the third Potions lesson of the term, and Harry had noticed something: Snape no longer snarled at Harry directly or insulted him, took points off of him, or interfered with his work. Instead, he ignored him fixedly.

This might have been an improvement, except that Snape seemed to feel that while Harry was off limits, he would make up for it with those around him. He was vicious to every other Gryffindor, and most particularly to Ron and Hermione.

By the end of the lesson Hermione was practically in tears. Snape had spent the last ten minutes standing directly in front of her, glowering at her and making snide comments about everything she did. The fact that her work was textbook perfect, exhibiting exactly the sapphire blue the textbook described while the second closest in the class was Malfoy's dark teal and Harry and Ron's appeared an odd shade of green, made this seem particularly unjust.

"I cannot believe him," Hermione snapped when they left the class, stalking angrily. Harry and Ron exchanged a surprised glance; normally Hermione would defend Snape at least in his capacity as a teacher. "Why on earth is he allowed to teach? Why is he allowed to teach eleven-year-olds? Even if he wasn't a sympathizer with a fascist hate group, his behavior on the job alone--"

"Dumbledore wants to have something on him, I bet," Ron said. "What's fascist mean?"

Hermione turned and delivered Ron a ten minute rant about the total ignorance and political backwardness of the wizarding world which Harry felt was somewhat undeserved, at least as directed towards Ron, who was hardly any worse than most of their classmates. By the end of it Ron was snarling back, Hermione looked ready to storm off crying, and Harry was wondering if they would both be alive and speaking by the time he came back from Dumbledore's office.

However, he had little choice but to go, accompanied on either side by his fuming best friends..

"Sugar Quill," he said to the gargoyle statue outside the Headmaster's office, and ascended the spiral staircase with one last view of Hermione furiously getting a book from her bag, sticking her face in it, and nearly walking into a wall in the process of leaving.

Chapter Text

Harry looked around the headmaster's office curiously when he reached the top of the stairs. It seemed to be the same as always, crowded with silver instruments and odd objects. Fawkes shifted on his perch, watching Harry, who smiled involuntarily. However upset he might be with the headmaster, it was difficult to feel that way about his phoenix.

"Good evening, Harry," Dumbledore said, from behind his desk.

Harry looked at him. "Hello, Professor," he said, uncertainly, and proceeded to the chair set in front of it.

"I imagine you are wondering why I've asked you here," Dumbledore said. "Lemon drop?"

Harry glanced down at the candy. "Er, no thank you, sir," he said, uncertain if he was doing something wrong.

"Ah, well," Dumbledore said, sighing. "So we shall proceed. There are several matters I wish t discuss with you. And first, I believe you may have some questions for me as well."

Harry looked up, surprised. "Questions?" he said, and then, deciding that there was no use in playing dumb, "You mean about what you said to Sirius this summer, sir?"

"Indeed," Dumbledore said solemnly. "I imagine you may not have heard, but after our initial disagreement - and after he had retrieved you from your aunt and uncle - he made a second visit to my office and communicated some rather dire accusations. If even a third of what he said is true, then I appear to have wronged you greatly, Harry. I asked you here, foremost, to apologize."

Harry blinked.

This was not at all what he had pictured when he had imagined what he would like to say to Dumbledore, and he was momentarily shaken. He had expected Dumbledore to want to return him to Privet Drive. "Sir?" he said, and then, realizing this was not quite adequate, "You mean, for - leaving me with the Dursleys."

"And for failing to check on you adequately," Dumbledore said. "I admit that I knew you were unhappy - you have been straightforward about that much - but it is often the case that some... friction... is caused when muggleborn students discover their powers. As they spend much of their time here, a policy of noninterference is followed in most cases. I assumed that there were only the usual troubles - I did not check - and for this I must apologize most deeply."

Harry was torn between two equally passionate urges: the urge to accept what Dumbledore had said with relief, that the breach could be mended; and the competing desire to stand up and begin screaming and throwing things.

"You could have asked," he said when he found he could speak coherently. "You could have sent someone around - you could have asked my aunt and uncle, they'd have been happy to tell you what they think of me." He swallowed, realizing he was coming dangerously close to shouting.

"Ah, if I may correct one small misapprehension--" Dumbledore paused; Harry realized belatedly he was waiting for permission and nodded. "Mrs. Figg, who I believe minded you when the Dursleys were unable to, is an - acquaintance of mine. She did mention that there were some difficulties. I am afraid she did not have quite the... access... that Sirius apparently did..."

"They'd never have let her in the house," Harry said, before astonishment set in. "Mrs. Figg is a witch?"

"Ah, a squib, in fact," Dumbledore said, inclining his head. "I had believed that her position in caring for you overnight would allow her to determine if intervention was necessary, and she was concerned, but what she described seemed, again, not overly out of the norm."

"Yeah," Harry said savagely, before he could think better of it. "Uncle Vernon made it pretty clear what would happen if I let it slip to my primary teachers that they kept me locked in a cupboard at home."

He realized what he had said at once and felt his ears growing hot; but he did not drop his eyes.

Dumbledore's hands went still on the desk. He closed his eyes, then, and suddenly his face grew weary. A shadow passed over his face, or only an expression; he looked very, very old, in a way he usually did not, despite his long, white hair and beard.

"Truly," Dumbledore said softly, as though to himself, "The old are responsible when we forget what it is to be young... Believe me when I say that I understand why you did not tell me - better than you know - but it was unforgivable that I did not ask. I am sorry, Harry."

Harry narrowed his eyes. This seemed much more honest than the apology before, but merely the fact that two had occurred made him doubt. Would there be a third, yet more sincere apology later?

For a moment he wanted to see - to spit all of the details he could think of in Dumbledore's face and see if he could get a reaction. He could tell him about the spiders in the cupboard and the way there had not been a light; about Dudley stealing his breakfast, breakfast he had gotten up at dawn to cook; about Aunt Petunia swinging a frying pan at his head and how exactly and at what age he had learned to duck effectively, about why he always stayed at arm's length from Uncle Vernon; about the Harry hunting game Dudley played with his friends and Aunt Marge's dogs and the way Aunt Petunia had made sure to pull every teacher aside and warn them about how he was a liar and a cheat...

He thought about it, pictured how it would feel; and he realized that it would feel only embarrassing. He truly had not wanted to talk about it. Perhaps - if anyone had even believed him - he might have been taken from the Dursleys if he had told, earlier; but now he was living with Sirius, who believed him and had wanted him even before he knew there was anything to believe, and he would never have to go back.

"Yeah, well," Harry said quietly, "You didn't, and nothing can change that. Sir. But I don't think there's anything else you can do but apologize... And not send me back there."

Dumbledore opened his eyes slowly, and smiled at Harry. The age did not lift from his face, but perhaps some of the weariness did. "You are more gracious than many men twice your age, Harry. I believe I can at least promise you that."

"If something happens to Sirius," Harry said, an ache in his chest at the thought - but he had to be sure.

"In that case, I will seek permission from the governors and the Ministry for you to remain at the school over the summer holidays," Dumbledore said. "I believe they will grant it; but if they should not it may be possible to suggest to the Ministry that you remain with your mother's family as before while you go to stay with another household, the Weasleys, perhaps... Or I believe Sirius has contacted his cousin Andromeda. She would be capable as well if you should like her, in my judgment."

Harry almost made a nasty comment about Dumbledore's judgment but stopped himself.

"So," he said after a moment. "Uh, sir. You said you had other things to discuss with me?"

"So I did, Harry, so I did," Dumbledore said. His face gradually regained its life. "Before we begin, allow me to ascertain where we already stand. Sirius indicated to me that he intended to tell you some things during the summer. Did he?"

"He told me about the prophecy, if that's what you mean," Harry said. "That I'm - that it was why Voldemort went after my parents, and that I'm supposed to have the power to defeat him... And that it could have been Neville."

"Ah, I see," Dumbledore said. "So you have had some time to absorb that part. I am afraid that Sirius was not aware of the complete prophecy; Lily and James told their friends only what was necessary to understand their actions. Shall I tell you the remainder?"

"Yes, sir," Harry said, sitting up straighter.

"The prophecy in its total is as follows: 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives."

Dumbledore went silent after he finished.

Harry swallowed, not wanting to speak, but he made himself think, running over it in his head once, twice. "Sir," he said. "I - may I ask a question?"

"Certainly, Harry. You already have."

"When it says - the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal - does that mean, him killing my parents?" Harry asked. He wanted to ask the easier question first.

"I believe that it does," Dumbledore says.

"In that case - Sirius said that it wouldn't be Neville now most likely anyway, because Voldemort had - had focused on me. But if it says that Voldemort has to mark him, then it definitely can't be him? Can it?"

Dumbledore looked, again, exhausted. "I believe so."

"Alright." Harry swallowed. "And - 'either must die at the hands of the other' - so I can't imprison him, sir, like you did Grindelwald. I've got to kill him."

Dumbledore paused. "I remind you, Harry, that in many ways prophecy has as much control over us as we allow it to. I would not suggest that you dismiss the possibility of not killing Voldemort, should an opportunity arise. But the prophecy as it stands suggests that no such opportunity will occur. Certainly I would say that imprisoning Voldemort would be very difficult, perhaps more so than Grindelwald."

"Voldemort's not - more powerful than Grindelwald, is he?" Harry asked, alarmed.

"Power is a relative thing, and there are many kinds of use for it in many situations. What I mean here is that Voldemort is less human than Grindelwald is, or was at the time of his defeat. Grindelwald was very evil, Harry, but he did his evil and fought his battles as a man, and it was possible to imprison him as a man. Voldemort has used the Darkest of magics to go beyond and outside of humanity, and he will not be held by such things as bars and locks - not in his present state."

"Oh," Harry said. "Not human - how? Why?"

"A good question, and if you will allow me to appear to digress, it relates to the reason I have brought you here," Dumbledore said. "I am sure you are wondering. One of the things I wished to ask of you - and I do ask, I do not require you to agree - is that you embark on a course of what we might call private lessons, this year."

Harry considered that his schedule was going to be as bad as Hermione's, between Dumbledore, Sirius and dueling club.

"Yes, sir," he said. "What would I be learning?"

"As it happens, we will approach just those questions you have asked - what is Voldemort, and why?" Dumbledore smiled. "I don't ask you to convey this to him - indeed, I doubt he would appreciate it at the moment - but I understand Sirius has undertaken teaching you combat magic, and I feel he is quite adequate to the task. The Blacks produced quite frightening duelists via their, ah, uniquely alarming methods. What I will do is show you where to use that facility."

They sat for a moment in silence. Harry had a million burning questions, but no idea where to begin, and he was beginning to feel exhausted.

"Ah, but look at the time," Dumbledore said. "I have a few preparations to make before we can begin, and in any case I believe you are already extremely busy. I will contact you when your first lesson is prepared. Good night, Harry."

Ron and Hermione were speaking again by breakfast the next day. The three of them had a free period first thing Wednesday, and Hermione badgered them into coming to the library to work on their Divination essays. In lieu of starting, Harry told them in whispers about he had learned about the prophecy.

"Blimey, Harry," Ron said, looking pale. "Dumbledore said that?"

"I wonder what he meant by saying Voldemort wasn't human enough to be imprisoned?" Hermione whispered. "Everything I've ever read about him has been very politically focused, of course he used Inferi and a lot of spells that controlled people but loads of Dark Wizards do that..."

"Apart from him being on the back of Quirrell's head, you mean?" Harry muttered, grinning.

"Besides that," she said, swatting his arm. "It should be fascinating. I wonder what preparations he has to make."

Harry glanced between them, and felt a rush of affection for his friends. If he had been worried they would turn from him over the summer, his thoughts last night had been even worse; it was not only that he had the power to defeat Voldemort, but he had to kill him or be killed. But here they were, sitting with him, talking as though it was just another problem to solve...

"You aren't bothered?" he said, softly. "That I have to kill him?"

"Well, it's not your fault, is it, Harry?" Hermione said at once. "He's going to try to kill you until he's gone, and Dumbledore says he can't be imprisoned."

"We'll be there, mate," Ron said quietly.

Harry smiled into his parchment.

"So, what else did you talk about?" Hermione asked briskly. She was flipping through the library card catalog on Divination, finding books that might be relevant to their essay subjects. Ron was making notes based off an introductory Divination textbook to decide which methods to cover, and Harry had a book on prophecy wording out but was not reading.

"Dumbledore? Well, like I said, he said he wants to do private lessons for me - he said Sirius was the best person to teach me about combat magic, but he wanted to teach me what the best way to use it was. Other than that..." Harry hesitated, but he supposed they would want to know all of it, and he had been with Dumbledore too long for the prophecy to be the only thing. "We talked about the Dursleys," he muttered. "I didn't tell you two, but - over the summer Sirius said Dumbledore tried to stop him from getting custody."

"What? Why?" Ron said, baffled. "I mean, you hated them, I remember when we went to get you before second year..."

"Yeah." Harry glanced to either side. "He told him that there were special wards on the Dursleys that would only work as long as I lived with a relative of my mother's. But Sirius reckons that's not worth me staying with them, and," Harry swallowed, "So do I."

He looked down at the book and absorbed for the first time the table of contents in the silence that followed.

"Harry," Hermione said, slowly. He tensed, waiting for her to argue with him. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it - I know I probably wouldn't - but what exactly did the Dursleys..."

"Do?" Harry said, when she trailed off.

A million possible answers rose in his throat, including I don't want to talk about it. The only time he had talked about it without feeling horrible had been with Sirius, that summer. Sirius made it seem almost normal; he had a story that matched every one of Harry's own, and could see what was funny in Uncle Vernon lunging for him in the cupboard and smacking his head into the low ceiling.

"I don't know if I can tell you all of it," he said quietly. "It was - years, and I don't know how you'd understand everything, but..." He turned a page without seeing what was on it. "They kept me in a cupboard," he said. "Under the stairs. Until I turned eleven - my Hogwarts letter was addressed to it, 'Harry Potter, the Cupboard Under the Stairs,' and that scared them. They thought the house was being watched. So they moved me into Dudley's second bedroom..."

"Second bedroom?" Ron hissed, indignant. "And they didn't let you have one?"

"It's a four bedroom house, they have a guest room for Aunt Marge, too," Harry said. This was easier because it did not directly have to do with him. He tried to think what else to say. "They used to punish me in school if I got better grades than Dudley and made him look bad." Hermione made a distressed noise next to him and he grinned involuntarily. Of course Hermione would consider that one of the worst possible offenses.

"They used to let Dudley steal my meals. Any time they were mad they'd lock me in the cupboard, or in my room later, and not feed me for a day or so. Ron, you remember when you came with Fred and George and pulled the bars off my window? They were feeding me through a cat flap then, only twice a day..."

"I'm really sorry, Harry," Hermione said quietly; glancing at her; Harry saw she was trying not to cry. "I should have - we should have asked, before."

"Dumbledore left you there?" Ron said, outraged and a bit too loudly. Madam Pince glared at them.

"Like I said, that was what we were talking about," Harry said, feeling he had said enough for today about the Dursleys, perhaps a bit too much. "He apologized to me for not having watched close enough, and for not asking me why I hated them. He said, um," Harry carefully did not look at Hermione, "That there's often friction when muggle-raised students find out about magic, and since they spend most of their time at Hogwarts they usually don't interfere, and he assumed it was only the usual problems. And I, er, shouted at him a bit."

"Good," Hermione said fervently and softly, receiving surprised looks from them both.

Chapter Text

At dinner that evening, speculation about dueling club was high. Hedwig returned halfway through an argument between Ron and Seamus about what spells Sirius was likely to teach. She nibbled Harry's ear a bit harder than usual before extending a leg to Hermione. Percy had written back a large sheaf of papers in tiny, cramped handwriting, which Hermione promptly disappeared behind

Harry was soon after occupied by Dean attempting to explain muggle wrestling to Seamus, but he noticed that Hermione was less pleased than usual when supplied with new reading material. She kept laughing sarcastically or snorting and shaking her head as she paged through the letter.

After the meal, they made their way to the first club meeting. Sirius had found a large classroom to use on the first floor. When Harry, Ron and Hermione arrived, they saw that it had been completely cleared of desks. Sirius stood at the front of the room, next to a set of gym mats and a table with pitchers of what looked like water. Professor Flitwick came into the room a few minutes after them and joined Sirius; they were chatting about something, but Harry couldn't make out what.

They waved to Sirius, but couldn't get close to him in the crowd of students. It appeared that dueling club was immediately popular. Harry looked around to see who else had come. Everyone in their year from Gryffindor was there. He also spotted Fred and George paying far more attention than they normally gave teachers, as well as an extremely pretty Ravenclaw who played Seeker, Cho Chang, and - to Harry's surprise - a small knot of Slytherins which included Draco Malfoy.

A few minutes after eight, Sirius cast a charm on his throat and then cleared his throat. The sound echoed throughout the room, and the crowd quieted.

"Okay, everyone!" he called. "Welcome to the first meeting of our dueling club. I see we've got a lot of students here from a variety of years and houses here, that's good to see. Our first few meetings are going to be formatted like lessons, so you all get some basics down first; then we'll spend a lot more time on practice in the future."

He nodded to Flitwick, who repeated the same charm. His magically magnified voice echoed piercingly. "Let us first establish some basic rules! We understand that students will be familiar with a wide variety of spellwork coming into the club. When we allow free duels, you may use any magic with which you are familiar which is both legal and can reasonably be considered not permanently damaging. If you need clarification on this point, please ask Professor Black or myself before you use the spell. Repeat offenders or severe ones may be asked to leave the club, as well as receiving other discipline as appropriate.

"For our first lessons and occasionally in the future, we may have restricted duels in which you may use only a few spells. This is to make sure everyone is learning new magic, not only relying on spells they're familiar with. Let me assure you I have seen many duels lost by those who knew only one or two combat spells! Does everyone understand?"

Agreement was called from around the room.

"Wonderful!" Flitwick said.

Sirius grinned. "Alright," he said. "Before we get started today, Professor Flitwick and I are going to give you a brief demonstration of what a friendly wizard duel can look like. If everyone could form a circle around the very edge of the room..."

The three of them quickly found a spot against the wall and watched.

Sirius and Flitwick came to the center of the room, about ten steps apart. Both held their wands out. They both glanced around, checking that the students were out of the way, Harry supposed. Then they bowed, Sirius deeply, and Flitwick rather shallowly, as he was already quite close to the ground.

They straightened. Sirius held his wand loosely to one side. Flitwick had his raised, pointed towards Sirius, but had not yet cast. Harry watched them eye each other.

The first spells were cast so quickly Harry almost missed it. A ribbon of fire shot out of Sirius' wand and surrounded Flitwick, who dispersed it with a motion that turned into a circle over his head, drawing up a cloud of birds. They dove after Sirius, who dove to the ground and brought his wand up, rolling under the next spell Flitwick fired. The birds shattered into sparks that fell harmlessly to the ground, while Sirius conjured vines that grew from it and twined around Flitwick.

Flitwick conjured a shield that hovered in midair, deflecting the next burst of red light that shot towards him so that it fired into the ceiling; meanwhile he studied the vines and laughed softly, shaking his head: "Excellent work, Professor Black!" he cried; then waved his wand, and the vines withered and died like real plants.

The duel went on. Beams of different colored light shot between the professors, and then reflected off shields or scattered or were bent around the recipient or were simply dodged. Sirius called up a wave of iridescent, sinister water, which Flitwick shrank into a puddle. Flitwick conjured a swarm of dragonflies which mobbed Sirius and were turned into butterflies that flew away. They circled each other, or dispersed spells which held them in place, or dodged from side to side. Harry watched, mouth dry. Ron gasped and muttered. He felt, rather then heard, Hermione straining on her toes to see every detail on his other side.

At last, when both duelists were breathing hard and Harry could see that Sirius's robes were sticking to his back with sweat, Sirius glanced off to the side. "Ah, Professor Flitwick," he said, conjuring a sort of funnel-shaped black void that sucked the ray of orange light streaking towards him, "I believe the time we set aside for the demonstration is nearly up."

"Ah, you're correct!" Flitwick cried, with apparent dismay. "A draw then, Professor Black?"

"So it is, Professor Flitwick," Sirius said, lowering his wand, and they bowed.

Thunderous applause rocked the room around them. Harry saw that even Draco Malfoy was clapping, mouth agape.

"Oh, that was brilliant magic," Hermione said softly at Harry's side. "That vacuum shield, I wonder how Sirius did it, I'll have to ask later..."

"Now," Sirius was saying, strolling to the table at the front of the room, "Don't expect to do that just yet. Both of us have been dueling for years - and I understand Professor Flitwick was the regional champion of the British Isles three years in a row a few decades back."

"But with steady work and dedication, those of you who are truly invested can get there!" Flitwick said. "And with any luck we can teach you all at least something."

Sirius waved his wand and conjured a row of cups on the table with the pitchers. Harry watched him pour water into two cups, offering the first to Flitwick and taking a long draught for himself.

After the excitement of watching the duel, the rest of the meeting was almost a let down. Sirius and Flitwick showed the club several basic spells at different levels of skill, including Expelliarmus, Protego, and Stupefy, which stunned opponents. Then they had everyone divide up into pairs or small groups and work on the most basic spell they hadn't yet mastered.

Harry and Ron worked on the Shield Charm together; meanwhile Hermione paired up with, to Harry's surprise, Lee Jordan, and worked with him on Stunning. By the end of the lesson, Harry felt he had nearly mastered Protego, casting it successfully nearly every time for a half hour. Ron successfully deflected his disarming spell for the first time just before Sirius dismissed them, and was considerably cheered up by his success on the way back to the common room.

"So what did you think, Hermione?" Harry asked her, grinning, when Ron had finished celebrating.

"It was really interesting," Hermione said, "I'm going to have to take notes on what I remember about the duel, I want to ask Sirius to explain what he did - and I suppose Professor Flitwick won't mind if I ask him either, if I stay after Charms Friday."

"So, that's what Sirius is going to be teaching you, right?" Ron asked, quietly.

"I guess," Harry said, and grinned. "We've got more dueling practice in class tomorrow, maybe he'll teach the people who were at the club something new."

As they found a table, Harry mused on how close they had been standing to Cho Chang. He wondered if he could persuade Ron and Hermione to work together one club meeting and ask Cho to work with him instead.

The next afternoon was their second Defense class with Sirius. Harry knew that Hermione had done the extra assignment at some point, as she had stormily taken parchment out of her bag and stalked up to hand it in, though he had absolutely no idea when she had found the time. He felt a prickle of embarrassment that he hadn't - he had meant to, for Sirius, but he wasn't in the habit of doing extra assignments and had forgotten.

Sirius arrived thirty seconds after the bell and glanced over the handful of scrolls on the desk. "Three answers, I see," he said, unrolling one absently with his thumb. "Twenty points to Mr. Longbottom - you asked Augusta, I suppose...?"

Neville looked slightly thunderstruck to have earned so many points at once, but nodded.

"Good, she would know. Miss Patil, twenty points, and ah - of course, Miss Granger, twenty points. Where did you two find your answers?"

"My father," Parvati said. "Although I looked through the books on the Wizengamot in the library, they didn't seem to say much about legislation during the seventies..."

"A lot of that information is now considered embarrassing, and the Ministry discourages printing it," Sirius said. "Miss Granger?"

"I went through the Daily Prophet issues in the library," she said, teeth clenched. "For both years, one at a time."

"Which is sometimes what you have to do when you don't know someone," Sirius said. "I imagine Miss Patil's father read it in the news at the time and remembered--"

Parvati nodded. "My mother's a muggle, Professor, and in 1974 they had just gotten married, so it was important."

"Yes. And Augusta Longbottom was present for the repeal," Sirius said. "--Now I imagine the rest of you are wondering what we're talking about. Would any of you like to explain?"

Hermione's hand shot up; she only waited for the barest nod from Sirius before she said, "The 1974 legislation was split into two bills, the Regulation Establishment for Proof of Blood Status Act, passed two days before the Preferential Employment Act, in full the Preferentially Employing Individuals with Magical Inheritance for Cultural and Essential Positions Act. The first act legally defined 'pureblood,' 'magical heritage' and 'direct muggle heritage;' the second act made it illegal to employee anyone with 'direct muggle heritage' in certain positions, including any Ministry position, any position in Hogwarts, any position working in journalism and a number of other industries," she said very quickly, but clearly.

"The latter bill was never fully enforced anywhere but the Ministry, and Dumbledore drew political attacks and was nearly removed as headmaster for ignoring it, but it resulted in a number of muggleborns and halfbloods with muggle parents losing their jobs or having to be employed under the table, or being unable to find work on graduation. The former bill was the basis for a number of other discriminatory bills passed over the course of the war. The Preferential-Employment act was repealed in 1982, but REPBSA is still the law of the land as of 1991, which is when the only book I could find that mentioned it was published.

"Formerly in 1970, the contents of both bills went up to vote under a joint bill, the Magical Inheritance Assured act, MIA. That bill was not passed, and the worst riot of the Wizengamot since 1945 occurred directly after it was defeated."

Hermione hunched her head and hugged herself immediately after she was finished speaking. Harry tried to put together what she had said; he saw a number of his classmates looking like their heads were spinning. Dean was staring, wide eyed, at Hermione.

"Very good," Sirius said after a moment, swallowing. "Take another ten points. REPBSA is still in legal force, and that's not a good thing. I do want to emphasize that it legally defines the terms, but its only other provision is to make fraudulently claiming pureblood status illegal and require the Ministry to record other information about citizens. These are both obviously very important. Most of the discriminatory legislation built upon REPBSA was repealed in the eighties, however. Now, before we get started on dueling practice, I'd like to briefly discuss how this legislation was passed again..."

Notices appeared in early October that the representatives of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons would be arriving on October 30th, and classes would be dismissed a half hour early that day. However, apart from relief that Potions would be cut short, Harry, Ron and Hermione were almost too busy to notice. Those teachers who had not immediately ambushed them with piles of work in preparation for O.W.L.s two years away had only been waiting until the first week of class was over. The three of them spent nearly every waking moment writing essays, practicing spellwork or studying.

Harry found that Sirius' presence made a much stranger difference: for the first time, there was an adult around who cared about Harry besides Hagrid. In addition to class, dueling club and their weekly visits on Fridays for tea, Harry got into the habit of writing short notes to Sirius at breakfast or dinner, or dodging into his quarters after class if he wanted to talk. Occasionally they would all bring their homework to Sirius's sitting room and work while he graded essays.

Sirius had a number of small pieces of advice that Harry realized might have made life much easier for him and Hermione if either of them had had a wizarding parent: he corrected Harry's quill grip, answered their questions about O.W.L.s, and was able to keep up with Hermione's increasingly complicated and baffling political arguments. He also proved helpful in an entirely unexpected way one afternoon when Hermione had been driven to tears by Snape, and was still sniffling and wiping her eyes when they got to Sirius's quarters.

Ron went to bring dinner for all three of them up from the Great Hall, and Harry took Hermione directly to the private sitting room. Sirius, of course, was at dinner too, but he came in with Ron, to Harry's surprise.

"Here you go," Sirius said, taking down a hand towel from a closet and tapping his wand to it. Steam rose from it. Hermione took the towel and pressed it to her face, then sighed, shoulders relaxing.

"Ron says Snape's been giving you trouble, Hermione?" Sirius said, sitting down.

"N-not just me," Hermione said, face muffled in the towel.

"He goes after you worse than anything!" Ron said indignantly. "He takes points from all of us but he can't give you a break this term."

"He just ignores me these days, really," Harry said.

"I told Snape when I started teaching here that if I heard a word about him giving you trouble I'd give him trouble with the Board of Governors," Sirius said. "I have a few - er - acquaintances on it. I think I might need to go to them after all, I didn't realize he was harassing students."

"Wasn't Lucius Malfoy on the Board?" Harry asked, thinking of his second year, when it had removed Dumbledore ostensibly because he had not been able to prevent the basilisk attacks Lucius Malfoy had incurred. Lucius Malfoy had been sacked at the end of the year, fortunately.

"Yes, it's dominated by old Pureblood families," Sirius said. "But not all of them are Death Eater supporters. Some are merely conservative, and the Bones are downright liberal - the head's nephew replaced Malfoy, and he married a muggleborn woman. I can at least get some questions asked."

"Isn't Susan Bones in our year?" Harry said.

"In Hufflepuff," Hermione said, voice still muffled. "I - thank you Sirius. I'll be alright, it's just..."

"You should be able to focus on your classwork without teachers bullying you for your blood status or friends," Sirius said. "I'll write to Jake Bones. It might take a few weeks, but hang in there. I'll talk to McGonagall about it if you feel you need to skip."

"Skip classes?" Hermione said, scandalized. "But the material we're learning is so important!" Harry and Ron grinned at each other.

Indeed, a change in Snape was evident only in the Potions class on the appointed day of arrival for the other schools. He swept into the classroom several minutes late, turned on his heel at the front of the room, and stared at them in silence.

Harry stared down into his cauldron, wondering why he had thought Sirius would be able to interfere successfully with Snape, who clearly hated him. He hoped that Snape would not be so much worse to the other students... That he would at least go back to bothering Harry...

"It seems," Snape said, breathing heavily. "There have been some - objections - to the way this class is taught."

"Who could object to you, sir?" Draco Malfoy said from the front row.

"Silence," Snape snapped. Harry saw Malfoy startle back. "This is not a debate, nor am I asking for your input." He waved his hand, instructions appearing on the board. "You will finish in one hour. I will grade harshly based on your success. Anyone who does not complete their work adequately will write me twelve inches on their errors in preparation or incur a failing grade."

This did not seem so different than usual, Harry thought.

"Begin," Snape snapped, and sat at his desk - where he remained for the entire period, to Harry's astonishment, though he periodically looked up and scanned the room, probably for trouble. Other than that he bend over a stack over what Harry supposed were essays to grade. At one point he saw Harry watching him and opened his mouth, glowering - then suddenly snapped it shut again.

Grinning involuntarily, Harry bent over his cauldron again.

"Can you believe it?" Ron said, leaving the classroom. "An entire double period with Snape, and no points lost? Harry, do you think we could get Sirius a cake, or something?"

"If you bake it yourself," Hermione snapped, "Instead of relying on slave labor--"

"Let's get him something next Hogsmeade visit," Harry said quickly. "We can ask the others if they want to chip in - find out if Snape's behaving for the other classes..."

They had no time to pursue this idea immediately, as they were directed to return their bags to their dorms and come down, dressed neatly, to await the other schools' arrival. Harry supposed the teachers were anxious about making a good impression. Arthur Weasley's words about showing off when wizards got together came to mind. The castle had been scrubbed violently over the past several weeks, Peeves contained, and now it was the students' turn.

They were lined up by year and marched out to wait on the front lawns. A variety of speculation about the methods of arrival was cut short by the appearance of an enormous flying carriage from Beauxbatons, pulled by a dozen immense golden winged horses. Beauxbatons's headmistress, it transpired, was a woman with heavy black hair and sparkling opal jewelry who was almost precisely of a height with Hagrid.

Durmstrang's arrival was equally dramatic and, Harry felt, almost stranger: they arrived via an ancient looking, sail-less ship which rose from the lake in a whirlpool of its own making. Its headmaster was an old man, white-haired and bearded like Dumbledore, but with both cut relatively short.

The biggest surprise, however, was among the Durmstrang student body.

"Is that Viktor Krum?" Ron said, dancing on his toes to get a better look. Whispering and gasps were spreading around the lines of Hogwarts students. "I had no idea he was still in school--"

"He's just a Quidditch player," Hermione said, rolling her eyes.

"Just a Quidditch player? --I don't even have parchment," Ron said, moaning. "Harry, have you got a quill?"

"Sorry, they're in my bag," Harry said, just as he overheard a girl from another year asking if her companion thought Krum would sign her bag in lipstick. He saw Hermione glance their way, then at Ron, and grin, head down.

The feast that night was excellent, and contained a number of unusual and foreign dishes. The heads of the other two schools were joined by two other judges, Ludo Bagman and Barty Crouch; and, to their surprise, Percy Weasley, who had been brought along with Crouch.

At the end of the meal, Dumbledore rose and announced the procedure for champion selection: a rough hewn wooden cup filled with dancing blue flames would select a champion from each school from among slips of paper entered over the next twenty-four hours; and there would be an Age Line preventing underage students from entering. Fred and George were already plotting how to subvert this measure when they left the hall after the feast.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were at the door when the Durmstrang students were led by Karkaroff to leave; they stepped aside to let them pass.

"Thank you," Karkaroff said carelessly, glancing at them: then he froze, staring at Harry's forehead.

Several students looked to see what their headmaster was staring at. One boy nudged another and whispered. Harry waited for Karkaroff to say something to him, but Karkaroff remained silent, face draining as though in horror; then he abruptly turned on his heel and stormed off.

"Weird," Ron muttered, leading the way out of the hall.

The next day was filled with speculation about who would enter, and ultimately who would be chosen. The Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students entered all at once, but Hogwarts students, of course, had not been pre-selected. Angelina Johnson entered, receiving the hopes of most of the Gryffindors Harry knew. There were also several mishaps throughout the day involving underage students attempting to cross the Age Line, including - to the horror of Percy, who happened to be coming through the doorway at the time - Fred and George Weasley.

"Let's go say hello to your brother, Ron," Hermione said quickly, dragging them after her.

"Uh, okay," Ron said, looking faintly alarmed. "--Hey, Percy!"

Percy turned, looking annoyed. When he spotted them his face cleared rapidly, though Harry noted this seemed to be primarily for Hermione. "Hello, Ron, Hermione, Harry," he said. "Did you find my letter useful?"

"Oh, immensely!" Hermione said, to Harry's astonishment. This seemed a bit dodgy to him, when she had spent several evenings muttering darkly over the parchment pages and scribbling on them in red ink. "Would you mind answering a few questions for me about it? We were just about to go for a walk on the grounds - if you're not busy with Mr. Crouch, of course..."

Percy looked immensely flattered. "I'm sure I can spare a few minutes for one of Hogwarts's most promising students," he said pompously. Harry and Ron rolled their eyes at each other.

"Uh - Hermione," Harry said, "We'll just go down to Hagrid's - do you want to come when you're done?"

"Yes, of course Harry," Hermione said absently, digging in her bag. "I just had a few questions I wanted to ask--"

"What's gotten into her?" Ron asked, several minutes later, sounding disgruntled. "She was furious with Percy last time they talked, remember - him defending Crouch--"

"Well, she's been talking to Sirius about politics, hasn't she?" Harry said quietly, thinking about it. "She wants information from someone, and Percy's happy to give it... won't shut up about it, really."

Hagrid was delighted to see them, and Ron and Harry tried very hard not to smirk at the horrible, hairy suit he was wearing. They spent a pleasant time arguing about who the Hogwarts champion would be and pretending to eat their rock cakes for an hour or so, which was when Hermione showed up.

"I cannot believe you survived a summer with him," she said, collapsing into a chair. "--Thank you, Hagrid." She took a rock cake and a mug of tea. "He never stops talking about Crouch, it's infuriating..."

Harry and Ron grinned at each other.

"Who's this, now, Hermione?" Hagrid said.

"My brother Percy," Ron said. "She's been asking him questions about the Ministry."

"Well, it's an important subject, isn't it?" Hermione said, absently pulling out parchment and scribbling something down as she spoke. "We should all understand the government we live under. You know, in the muggle world they have books, and documentaries, and journalist access to the government... I had the worst time looking up the answer to the question Sirius asked, first class."

"What, for the public?" Ron said, bemused by this concept. "So everyone can watch?"

"That's the idea, Ron," Hermione snapped. "On the television, I mean, usually not in person, but--"

"So, Harry," Hagrid said loudly. "How's livin' with Sirius treatin' yeh?"

"Great," Harry said enthusiastically. "He came to pick me up on his motorbike--"

"Tha's the one I came ter get you in."

"I know," Harry said, grinning. "He's got a house in London now, I had Ron and Hermione over to stay over the summer." He told Hagrid about his new room, and the muggle neighborhood, and after Hagrid expressed curiosity the cinema, while Hermione fumed and Ron sent her irritated looks.

"Oh, by the way, Harry," Hermione said on their walk up to the castle. "Percy had some -- questions, for you. Or about you, rather."

"Like what?" Harry said. "We can go talk to him now if he's not busy with Crouch..." He didn't much fancy the idea of spending a Saturday afternoon with Percy, but they didn't have anything else pressing.

"Oh, I don't think we had better," Hermione said. "They weren't very nice questions, I was going to ask you what I should write. Mostly it's about Sirius."

"Sirius?" Harry said blankly. Then he remembered the way Sirius and Crouch had stared each other down in the clearing at the World Cup, looking as though they might draw their wands and curse each other... Sirius's cold voice speaking to Crouch about the source of the Dark Mark, and how he had later told them that Crouch had had him thrown in Azkaban without a trial...

"Yes," Hermione said. "You know, what sort of guardian he is, if you're happy, if you're - er - scared of him, or feel unsafe living with him... I know you do!" she said quickly as Harry came to a halt and swung around. "I like Sirius! I just want to know what you think I should say to him..."

"Tell him what I told Hagrid," Harry said. "Sirius is great, he's the best parent I've ever had." The only parent Harry had ever had. "And tell him I think his boss should keep his mouth shut about people he's had thrown into prison for life without a trial."

Chapter Text

Harry was impatient with the feast that night. The food was as excellent as always, but it was the second feast in two days, and everyone was eagerly awaiting the results after. He was relieved when the plates were cleared. Soon, Dumbledore rose and announced the cup was nearly ready, and asked the Champions, when selected, to proceed along the head table through the door to the next chamber at the front of the hall.

Harry leaned forward. Hermione held her breath beside him while Ron muttered "C'mon... c'mon..." The goblet flames turned bright red, and sparks began to fly.

A tongue of flame leapt forth from the goblet, a charred piece of parchment on it. Dumbledore caught it as it fluttered away, and read: "The Champion for the school of Durmstrang will be Viktor Krum."

The hall burst into applause. "Big surprise!" Ron roared in Harry's ears. They saw Karkaroff congratulating his champion avidly as Viktor Krum rose from his seat at the Slytherin table. The other Durmstrang students roared and clapped.

They had only another minute or so to wait before the next piece of parchment was emitted from the goblet. "The champion for Beauxbatons will be Fleur Delacour!" Dumbledore called out.

"Look," Harry hissed, "It's your friend--"

The veela-like girl was rising and walking from the Ravenclaws towards the head table. The hall again burst into applause, but her classmates did not seem so pleased for her as the Durmstrang students had been; in fact, Harry spotted two weeping in disappointment, faces in their hands.

"Us next," Harry muttered, leaning forward, waiting...

Dumbledore pulled the third parchment from the goblet and read, "The champion for Hogwarts will be Cedric Diggory!"

Harry applauded wildly, even while he heard Ron groaning in his ears.

"At least it's not Warrington," he muttered, clapping. "C'mon, Cedric's decent..."

After that, the Goblet of Fire was extinguished. Harry watched it returned to the casket, and wondered, as Filch carried it off, where it spent the rest of its time when the Triwizard Tournament was not held. Or was this a standard method of magical selection? Was it used for other events?

Hufflepuff, unused to being the center of attention, was carrying on wildly at their table. Meanwhile other students were getting up to go to bed, the feast over and the food gone. Harry went with the others to make their way out, only to be intercepted by Sirius near the entrance of the hall.

"C'mon, you lot," Sirius said softly, "I looked for you yesterday, I want to talk to you about something, my quarters."

"We'll be late for curfew," Hermione said rapidly.

"No, you won't, I'll take you up to the common room when we're done. McGonagall okayed it, anyway," Sirius said, leading them up the stairs to the portrait of the wolf mother.

"What's wrong?" Harry said, when Sirius had turned the lights on and retrieved mugs of hot cocoa rather than tea. He had a small container of marshmallows that floated and flashed colors when they became wet; Harry dropped several in and watched them light up blue and gold.

"It's Karkaroff," Sirius said. "I saw him stare at you last night at the feast - did he say anything?"

"No, just gawked at my scar, then ran off like he'd seen his own ghost," Harry said. "Why?" It was not like Sirius to make a production of a few odd looks.

"He's a Death Eater, is what," Sirius said grimly. Harry choked. "He made a deal with Crouch to get out of prison in exchange for names of other Death Eaters, and he was released. Not very popular in there, though, let me tell you. He put a lot of people in prison."

"And Durmstrang hired him as a teacher?" Hermione asked, appalled. "As their headmaster?"

"Voldemort doesn't have the same kind of meaning on the continent," Sirius said. "Grindelwald is the name everyone fears there. And Durmstrang's always had a reputation for the Dark Arts. I hadn't realized he had made headmaster and would be coming with his students, but I looked him up and it sounds like he's been teaching them to every student who passes through that school, so watch out for them.

"I'm not telling you they're evil," he said quickly, seeing Ron open his mouth. "The way my family is, I'd be a filthy hypocrite. Being taught the Dark Arts doesn't mean you want to use them, and there are a lot of things folded under that category. But be careful, don't go starting fights with them. They may not be used to the limits that are usual in Britain. And Harry, if Karkaroff tries to get you alone, don't go with him and tell me - or another teacher if they're closer - immediately. I don't think he's the type to go looking for revenge, he was certainly willing to sell out his former comrades fast enough, but I could be wrong."

"I promise," Harry said quickly, but he was thinking of something he hadn't had a chance to ask yesterday after hearing about Percy's questions. "Sirius - at the World Cup, you said Crouch had you thrown into prison without a trial. How? Is that-" He swallowed. "Legal, here?"

Sirius smiled grimly.

"Let me tell you about Barty Crouch," he said, cupping his own mug without drinking. "He used to be the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Well, I told you a little bit about it at the Cup, what it was like when Voldemort was powerful. Everyone was terrified all of the time - they knew he had powerful supporters but not who they were - they knew people were disappearing every day, that Voldemort could make people do terrible things without being able to stop themselves. The Ministry was a wreck, trying to cover it all up from the Muggles, who were dying too; trying to get Voldemort's followers under control and never quite making much difference...

"Different people react differently to crisis. Barty Crouch became ruthless, arranged all kinds of special powers for Aurors, powers to kill instead of capture, powerful to use Unforgivable curses - those normally earn you a lifetime in Azkaban, I'm talking about them in class next month. There were Aurors who didn't use them much, people like Alastor Moody or the Longbottoms who tried not to kill if they could help it, but they were rare.

"Crouch was power-hungry, and he became in many ways as ruthless as a Dark wizard himself. And he was popular; lots of people thought he had the right idea. He was down to become Minister of Magic at one point, especially once Voldemort disappeared. Then it all went wrong." Sirius smiled nastily. "His son got caught with a group of Death Eaters who'd gone out looking for Voldemort."

"His son was a Death Eater?" Harry said.

"I don't know for sure," Sirius said. "This was all after I was in Azkaban, it's mostly things I've found out since. He was certainly with a group I'd bet my life were Death Eaters - including my cousin Bellatrix - but it could have been a case of the wrong place at the wrong time, like the house elf."

"Did Crouch try to get his son off?" Hermione asked, wide eyed.

Sirius laughed. "I thought you had some idea what Crouch was like, Hermione. They had a trial that was more of an excuse for Crouch to show how much he hated the boy; then they were thrown in Azkaban for life... I saw him being brought in, he can't have been much over nineteen. And he was dead soon enough."

"Dead?" Hermione squeaked.

"Yes. Most of the prisoners go mad in the end, and plenty stop eating. They lose the desire to live. It's easier, so I gather, for those who have shorter sentences - something to hold out for... But if you're going to spend the rest of your life there, why bother?" Sirius seemed to remember his cup then, and drank from it for the first time. "They were allowed a death bed visit, Crouch and his wife, because of Crouch's position; he half carried her in and out. The dementors buried his son. He never came back for the body. And his wife died soon after, grief, I suppose...

"Anyway, Crouch had had it all, and then he lost it just as quickly: wife and son gone, reputation in tatters. All that time in the office took him away from his family... He should have left early once in a while, gotten to know his son..."

There was a long, unpleasant silence. Harry stared down into his cup, no longer amused by the flashing marshmallows, and tried to absorb this story.

"I can't believe Percy's working for him," Ron muttered. "He loves him. Hermione, what did you even get out of him today?"

"Oh, just - things about the Ministry," Hermione said. "More of what I asked him before, really..."

"What's this?" Sirius asked. Life came back into his face. His eyes had gone shuttered and distant, the way they had been when Harry first met him; now warmth slowly returned. "Ron, your brother's working for Crouch?"

"As his personal assistant," Ron said, rolling his eyes.

"And Hermione's been asking questions? What kind of questions?"

"Oh just - well, you remember what I was talking to you about," Hermione said. "How Wizengamot seats are chosen and how legislation gets passed and the Minister of Magic." Turning to Ron and Harry, she said, "Sirius knows a lot about the basics but because of the first war with You-Know-Who, a lot of the hereditary seats are absent - he killed the families who opposed him - and they haven't all been filled. So there are more appointed seats by the current government instead, and Sirius didn't know how people were nominated for them these days or who was influential. So I asked Percy some questions about it..."

"You've got to be careful messing around with Crouch, Hermione," Sirius said, although he did not look seriously worried. "If he gets the idea you're asking funny questions he could make your life difficult, and he'll want to if he knows you're associated with me. He's already not too happy because I hired his house elf--"

"Winky?" Hermione asked, looking startled.

"Yeah, she and Dobby came to ask about what I'd said to her at the Cup a few weeks ago. I don't really need the help, particularly living at the school, but they need the work, so I've set them to trying to make my parents' house habitable again. That should give them something to do for the next, oh, five years or so." He shook his head. "Be careful with Percy, if he's working for Crouch. I know you think he's a bit ridiculous, but if he's making those connections he has potential to give you real trouble."

"Hermione said Percy asked about me," Harry said.

"Did he?" Sirius asked.

"Yes," Hermione said, straightening. "And I wanted to ask you how I should answer him, Sirius - he wanted me to tell him that you were abusing Harry - oh, shut up, Ron. He asked if Harry was happy with you, if he felt safe living with you, if I'd ever seen you lose your temper or anything when I stayed with you, if I thought I would recognize Dark Magic in the house."

Sirius frowned. "What did you tell him already? You didn't answer him in person?"

"No - I mean, I sort of put him off, I said I hadn't noticed anything alarming but I'd ask Harry, and he asked me to think about it and I said I would. I said I'd write him when I got a chance and talked about O.W.L.s for ages - I asked him what he thought the best study schedule for a student at my point in Hogwarts was and he loved that--"

Ron and Harry sniggered.

"So I don't think he'll be suspicious if I take some time answering," Hermione finished, ignoring them pointedly.

Sirius nodded. "Wait a few days and try to give him a noncommittal answer, give him the feeling you're listening without encouraging him any." Then he grinned at Harry. "Assuming you don't want Crouch to rescue you from me, Harry."

"No," Harry said hotly. "I love living with you. Percy is an idiot."

"Glad to hear it," Sirius said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Finished your cocoa, everyone? I'd better take you up to bed."

"Sirius," Hermione said, hesitantly, when they were heading through the corridors towards Gryffindor Tower. "Can I ask something?" When he nodded, she went on hurriedly, "The things you're teaching in Defense - I mean, the political stuff, not the defense theory and spellwork--"

Sirius had gone from discussing propaganda to blackmail and suppression of the press; their last assignment, a rather nasty one, had involved choosing a murdered journalist from the first war and determining which articles in a collection of old Daily Prophet editions had caused Voldemort's followers to kill them.

"Could those get you in trouble with the Ministry?" Hermione said. "I mean, how big of a risk are you taking?"

"Oh, Dumbledore's already had letters from parents about it, but they're too desperate for a Defense professor to fire anyone mid-year, and most of the Board is concerned about whether they'll need favors from me in the future even if they do think I'm a lunatic for taking the position," Sirius said. "I wouldn't recommend someone like Remus try it, they'd be going over his history with a comb to find a werewolf law to enforce against him, and if the curse gets me it'll undoubtedly be related. But the number of problems they can cause me is fairly small. When Crouch threw me in Azkaban I was a disowned bachelor and my only patron thought I was guilty. Now I've inherited the House of Black."

This was largely what Sirius had said about Dumbledore over the summer, but Harry noticed one large detail: "What curse?" he said.

"On the Defense position," Sirius said. "I thought it was a rumor at school, but I looked back through the archives and realized no one's held it for more than a year since the fifties, like I said in class. I asked Dumbledore before I applied, and he told me Tom Riddle asked for the job that year and Dumbledore turned him down. He thinks Voldemort cursed it. I'm going to try to break it, I'm already working on it."

Sirius might have tossed this off casually, but Harry, who had been worried about losing Sirius ever since he first got him, was alarmed; and Hermione for once seemed to agree. The next day was Sunday, but rather than enjoying the last of the fall weather and going out to wander around the lake, Hermione dragged the three of them to the library, where instead of working on homework they got out a number of books on curse-breaking.

"Oh, I don't know what Sirius is thinking," Hermione hissed, flipping through pages angrily. "If Dumbledore hasn't been able to break the curse in nearly decades - I just don't know how we're going to be able to help, we're still in school..."

"Reckon I should write Bill?" Ron said. "He's a curse breaker for Gringotts, they do all kinds of stuff, he might have an idea."

"Oh, at least that's a start. We should ask him what he's doing but I want to have some idea what I'm even talking about first." Hermione moaned through her hands.

Ron got out parchment and began his letter; Harry went through indexes for Hermione and told her when something looked worth investigating, and Hermione took frantic, copious notes.

Around lunchtime Ron insisted they give it a rest. "We're not going to fix it today, Hermione, and I need to send the letter. Let's get some food. Harry, mind if I borrow Hedwig?"

This new addition to their schedule was no joke. Harry wondered how he would have time for private lessons with either Sirius, who had been giving him time to settle into his classes, or Dumbledore, from whom he still had not heard.

Their troubles were added to again that week: Hagrid announced in Care of Magical Creatures that the reason for the Skrewts' misbehavior was too much energy, and the solution for this was that each student would take a leash, fasten it around the middle, and take a Skrewt for a walk.

More mundanely, Viktor Krum had taken to sitting in the library at a table quite near their usual spot. This would not have been offensive in and of itself - all he seemed to do was read, presumably in preparation for the First Task - but he inevitably attracted a large group of giggling hangers on, who would chatter, peer at him through the shelves, and dare each other to go up and ask for his autograph. Hermione grew snappish and irritable with the interruptions, and Harry and Ron had to admit it made it harder to concentrate on either curse breaking or the principles involved in Switching Spells.

On the bright side, Karkaroff made no move to get Harry alone or indeed to speak with him at all, and the Triwizard Tournament seemed to be diverting attention nicely from Harry. Cedric Diggory, whose picture had appeared in the Daily Prophet as the Hogwarts' champion and therefore British favorite, was being mobbed nearly as badly as Viktor Krum, and Fleur Delacour had been asked out so many times that the rumor was she was threatening to transfigure the next boy who asked into a parakeet.

Bill's answer arrived after a week: he said that an unknown curse with a wide variety of effects was likely to be a tricky prospect, but had some suggestions for determining what kind of curse it might be. He also offered to arrange a visit to Hogwarts with Dumbledore if Sirius was interested in their help, which was a good excuse as any to go to see Sirius and tell him they had been researching the subject.

Sirius, to Harry's relief, was not offended or angry about it. "Well, if you want to help out I'm happy for it," he said, reading through Hermione's notes. "Of course I'd prefer you stick to the less dangerous parts, but there's a lot of grunt work in curse breaking... You said your brother works for Gringotts, Ron? Write back and say I'm talking to Dumbledore and want to know when he can get some time off, I'm sure Dumbledore will allow it."

Dueling club was going, Harry felt, really well - for the first time he was succeeding at an academic activity without a lot of extra effort. He and Hermione took it in turns to help Ron, who was not so quick to grasp spells; then they found themselves helping others who practiced near them during many of the group meetings. This eventually provided an unexpected opportunity to Harry, when Cho Chang asked him to help troubleshoot her Impediment Jinx.

"No, it's sort of a jab," Harry said, frowning and watching her try to curse her practice partner, a girl named Marietta Edgecombe. "Here, shall I show you?"

He was rather nervous that the way his hands were sweating would interfere, but he successfully froze Marietta in motion for a good ten seconds. Cho's next attempt merely made her step falter.

"Uh - let me show you," Harry said, tentatively putting a hand over her wand hand. Cho blushed and stepped closer, pressing the line of her arm against his. "Uh, Marietta, if you could raise your wand so we can see it working - Cho, you say the incantation while I move us..."

"Impedimenta!" Cho shouted, rather louder than necessary, as Harry pushed their hands forward together. Marietta froze, wand halfway up, and Cho cheered exuberantly, turning around to hug Harry.

Harry went scarlet, but Cho fortunately did not comment on this, only thanking him and turning back to her friend.

The reprieve in Potions class, however, had turned out to be only temporary.

Snape himself was still restrained by the governors. He sat at his desk and watched them work, scowling furiously, regardless of what they did. Unfortunately, either the Slytherins had worked out on their own that this meant he would not interfere with their activities at all, or he had given them a few hints in private. They shouted insults, muttered, and tossed things at cauldrons; they tripped people, elbowed them and stole ingredients or mutilated them; they stole homework and erased portions of the directions on the blackboard.

Before, Snape had at least seemed concerned that class be able to proceed with minimal disruption, even if he did not wish the Gryffindors to succeed. Now, this care seemed to have entirely escaped him. They discussed going to Sirius again, but were alarmed by what Snape might come up with next. At any rate, since they had learned Protego in Defense, Hermione had gotten everyone in the class to make a habit of casting Shield Charms around their working areas before they began, which mitigated the damage somewhat.

A week before the First Task, things got out of control. A pitched root had deflected off the Shield Charm in front of Neville Longbottom's cauldron and fallen directly into Draco Malfoy's. Unfortunately, Malfoy had been further along than Neville in brewing, and with a mistimed and inappropriate ingredient, the cauldron promptly exploded.

Malfoy, who was also in dueling club, got up a shield before it hit him, but the splatter destroyed his workplace thoroughly, as well as the next two students'. Unluckily, the closest Gryffindor who had already had Shields in place was Hermione, who was fair minded enough to turn to him and offer to let him borrow her ingredients for the class.

"I don't need your help, mudblood," he said, looking at her as though she were a bit of dung on his shoe.

Harry already had his wand out in order to deflect explosions; he raised it immediately. "Apologize, Malfoy!"

"Bugger off, Potter!"

Their curses deflected off each other at angles; Harry's hit Goyle, who promptly grew miniature boils all over his face. Malfoy's hit Hermione.

She clapped her hands over her mouth immediately. When Snape at last rose, lazily, she only reluctantly had them pried away to show her front teeth growing to resemble a beaver's.

"Hospital wing, Goyle," Snape said, lazily. "Malfoy, full marks for the day, I saw your cauldron before it hit."

"What about Hermione?" Ron said, furiously.

Snape looked her over coolly. "I see no difference."

Hermione gave a whimper and bolted from the room.

Harry grabbed Ron before he could shout; he was remembering the last weeks of class, remembering how Snape had ignored him completely even before this, while taking his frustration at Harry's inaccessibility out on everyone around him. He looked Snape in the eye, and tried to think of something bad enough, something that would hurt him a tenth of the amount Harry wanted, and the only thing he could think of was Sirius saying, you deserve to be able to learn without Snape harassing you about your blood status...

"We all know you agree with Malfoy," he said coldly. "So why do you have to teach here? Why not go off to Durmstrang, where the headmaster agrees with you?"

Snape's teeth ground furiously, and his fingers twitched on his wand. "Potter--"

"Old friend of yours, isn't he, Karkaroff?" Harry said, and dragged Ron off back towards their cauldrons before he could curse Snape.

Snape took a deep breath, and for a moment Harry thought he was done for; but he turned to the classroom at large and roared, "SILENCE! There will be no more unnecessary spellwork, throwing of ingredients, or shouting! Complete the potion without further childish trouble or I shall see you all expelled!"

Chapter Text

At last, Harry received the date of his first lesson with Dumbledore, delivered by a Colin Creevey elated to do him a favor. It was to take place the Thursday evening after the First Task, rapidly galloping upon them.

"What do you suppose it'll be, then?" Ron asked, sprawled in the common room.

"Unknown," Hermione said, exasperated, "That's the entire idea. It should be very interesting to see, I bet we'll learn loads from watching older students coping with unexpected danger..."

Harry grinned. Hermione had somehow found the time in between all of their other work to go over her notes from Flitwick and Sirius's demonstration line by line, researching every bit of magic they had used and cornering both of them to confirm and expand her findings. Flitwick, who had taught Hermione for more than three years now, had been amused. Sirius looked both impressed and slightly alarmed.

"She's starting to remind me of my cousin," he said in an undertone to Harry as Hermione rifled through the book on the use of transfiguration in combat he had loaned her, then frowned severely.

"What cousin?" Harry asked curiously, but Sirius was leaning forward, asking Ron about how the Cannons were doing in the League this year, and in the ensuing debate about which Quidditch teams were worth hoping for and which ought to have their names banned in fear of transferring their bad luck he forgot all about it.

The Saturday before the Task was a Hogsmeade visit. As Snape had apparently been reduced to actually controlling the class without resuming his harassment of Gryffindor, their year decided to go ahead with the plan to buy Sirius something as a thank you present. Harry, as Sirius's godson, had been deputized to choose what to do with the funds, and was rather enjoying having a connection to an adult his classmates liked. He sorted through the larger gift assortments with Hermione and Dean, saying "He likes sugar quills, and chocolate, and hazelnuts, I think..."

They had talked about who would deliver it, but since it had been the Gryffindor fourth year class's idea and there weren't terribly many of them, in the end they all trooped to the portrait, and Harry gave the password in a whisper.

"Hello, Harry - what's this?" Sirius said merrily, coming to the door.

"Uh, hi," Harry said awkwardly, and swallowed. Parvati proffered the gift basket, and Lavender behind her said, "We wanted to thank you, Professor Black, because we heard you talked to the Board about Professor Snape, and he's left us alone since then. Um, mostly, but he is now."

"So we put in a collection for the next Hogsmeade visit," Dean said.

Sirius looked around, slightly wide eyed, and slowly beamed at them. There was a shadowed cast to his face that rarely left him, Harry had noticed. Now it was forced back, and Sirius swallowed, like he did not know what to say. "Thank you," he said eventually. "All of you - very much." He took the basket from Parvati. "And I'm sorry that that's - such a big deal to you, having a teacher try to stick up for you..."

"We also think you're really cool in general. Sir," Dean said, hurriedly.

Sirius laughed. "Thank you for that, too. Would you like to come in?" He stepped back, holding the portrait hole open with one arm.

"What's this?" said an unfamiliar witch's voice.

Harry startled, and was briefly terrified they had interrupted something private; he saw Neville leap back as though frightened. But after a moment he recognized the lines of Sirius' face in the witch rising from the armchair in the sitting room. She had lighter curly brown hair, and her face had softer lines, but other than that they looked very alike.

"This is my cousin, all of you, Andromeda Tonks," Sirius said, carrying the basket to the table and sitting it down. "Andy, this is the Gryffindor fourth year class. There's - let me see, I should have you all by now - Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, Neville Longbottom, and this is my godson Harry and his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.'

"We wanted to thank Professor Black for making Snape stop harassing people in class," Ron said. "And - everything else," he said awkwardly.

"Here I was failing to picture you as a teacher, Sirius," Andromeda said, laughing. She had the same upper class accent that Sirius used when he was nervous, but the deep green robes she was dressed in were not particularly rich to Harry's eye. "I'm glad to meet all of you. Shall I go off and see if I can remember my way around the grounds while you deal with your students?"

Sirius insisted on sharing at least a smaller piece of the huge assortment with everyone before sending them off; he quietly asked Harry, Ron and Hermione to stay for a moment. "I was going to ask you," he said. "It's fine if you have other plans, but if not, would you be interested in eating dinner here tonight? Andromeda's come up to Hogsmeade for a few days for the First Task - and to visit with me - and I asked her."

They returned, therefore, around six in the evening. Harry gave the password and opened the door, only to freeze: Andromeda was saying softly, "--how the Longbottom boy jumped... I suppose his grandmother has raised him on pictures..."

"It isn't your fault, Andy," Sirius said, soft and tired. "You hadn't seen her in even longer than me..."

Hermione cleared her throat wildly and Harry heard them both jump.

"Hello!" Harry called, awkwardly coming through the door. "Uh, it's nice to meet you again, Andromeda..."

"A pleasure," Andromeda said, standing and coming over. She offered her hand to him as though he were an adult and said, "Andromeda Tonks. Sirius has told me an amazing amount about you in the past three months, he rarely speaks about anything else for long."

"Harry Potter," Harry said. "He's mentioned you - you're the one from the photo!"

"Yes," Andromeda said, smiling then, "And my husband, Ted and our daughter, Nymphadora." She moved on to shake hands with Hermione and Ron; meanwhile, Harry put his bag down and settled on the couch with Sirius.

They spent a pleasant couple of hours eating the dinner Sirius had made, listening to Andromeda tease him about when he'd learned to cook and talking. It turned out that Andromeda's daughter had just qualified as an Auror, one of an elite group of wizards and witches who caught Dark wizards, and Andromeda had a number of stories to tell Sirius about her training. She also asked after their schoolwork and what they thought of the Triwizard Champions, and - smiling wickedly - what they thought of Sirius as a teacher.

Harry couldn't help remembering that Dumbledore had suggested Andromeda as a suitable guardian if something should happen to Sirius. It seemed a terrible thought to consider while Sirius tried to convince them all to have third helpings, but he could not help it. It was only the first meeting, but Harry liked Andromeda so far, and her daughter sounded quite interesting. He tried not to feel disloyal at this, but he did mention, hoping it sounded casual, that he would like to meet the rest of her family.

"I thought I would invite you and Sirius for Christmas, as it happens," Andromeda said immediately. "I know teachers have to remain at school over the break, and I assume Harry will too - although if you'd like a break from Hogwarts you're welcome to visit us for longer - but surely you can be excused for Christmas Eve and morning. Ted and I would love to have you."

Harry thought there was a subtle challenge in her voice, and he wondered what it was about.

"Well, I don't know about Harry, but I'd love to come," Sirius said.

"So would I," Harry said rapidly.

Andromeda glanced at the other two, then. "I suppose you'll be with your families," she said wryly. "But if either of you don't have somewhere to go..."

"I'll be at home, yeah, but thank you," Ron said.

"My family doesn't celebrate Christmas," Hermione said, making Ron choke and Harry look up in surprise, "But I appreciate the invitation very much." She hesitated. "I'll probably stay at school for the holiday anyway, actually, and it's miserable to be alone while everyone else does, so if you don't mind a stranger there... But, um, the food...'"

"Let me know what you can't eat, we can handle it," Andromeda said immediately. "I hadn't heard the Grangers had married into a non-Christian family recently?"

"If you mean the Dagworth-Grangers, I have no idea, but I'm not related," Hermione said, chin going up. "My parents are dentists."

To Harry's surprise, Andromeda looked relieved. "You might have mentioned, Sirius - my husband is muggleborn," she said to Hermione. "I was disowned for marrying him. Sirius has been offering to reinstate me." She looked amused by this.

"Well, I don't get the feeling you want the name back," Sirius said, also amused, "But I can give you what they would have paid as a dowry if you went along with the betrothal."

"I appreciate that. It isn't so much the money," she said, speaking as though to herself, "As what it means."

Classes were dismissed at midday for the First Task Tuesday. There was a tremendous clamor in the Great Hall at lunch. Harry saw Cedric Diggory surrounded by admirers and looking faintly ill. Viktor Krum was eating quickly with his head down - Harry supposed he was used to nerves on game day - and Fleur Delacour was picking at her food, appearing even more irritated by it than usual and going on at great length to her seatmate in French.

"Wouldn't fancy being one of them today, would you?" Ron muttered.

"Definitely not," said Harry. He had learned to work past the nerves for Quidditch, but then, Quidditch did not have a notable death toll even in the professional leagues...

Hermione dragged them off to the stands quickly after lunch, saying that they should get good seats; as a result they ended up quite near the judges. Harry saw that Percy was with Crouch again, and Karkaroff looked profoundly uncomfortable to be in their vicinity, but just as he was leaning over to tell Ron, he was distracted.

The first task had arrived: dragons.

"Bugger," Ron said, staring into the stands. Harry had to agree.

"Oh my god," Hermione said softly, hands pressing into her face. Looking down, they could see a team of dragon handlers in hide clothing, wrestling an immense creature with a spiked head and tall, into an enclosure in the center of the stadium. Harry saw what looked like a nest below, near the dragon, full of football-sized eggs. One egg in the nest was a glittering gold.

Harry thought of the Snitch and realized at once what the Champions' task was.

"Hey, Ron," Hermione said suddenly. "Look at the handlers - is that your brother?"

Harry craned his neck. Sure enough, he could faintly glimpse among the team of dragon handlers one with bright red hair.

"Must be," Ron said, gaping. "I had no idea..."

"The task was supposed to be a secret," Hermione pointed out.

"I hope he's staying longer than the task, I'll go see him - way rather talk to Charlie than Percy," Ron said.

There were three dragons. Harry thought the first one they'd moved was both the largest and most frightening. But this was a relative point: all of them were dragons, immense, with sharp teeth and claws, and they all breathed fire.

Ludo Bagman left the stands as the task grew closer; they heard him tell the other judges he would prepare the Champions. Harry, looking at the dragons, wondered why exactly they were there. He had thought of the Task with the same vague anticipation that he felt about Quidditch matches in which he would not play, but this was not Quidditch. This was not a game; and yet it was, the Champions were all participating voluntarily...

Bagman returned to the judges' box and announced the scoring method, and the task Harry had deduced: the Champions would have to get past the dragons and retrieve the golden egg from each nest, fiercely protected by what were apparently three nesting mothers.

"I can't believe them," Hermione muttered in his ear.

Then the task was starting, the first Champion was making their way out of the tent, through the gap in the enclosure, and Ludo Bagman was announcing Cedric Diggory.

"Wouldn't fancy going first," Ron muttered. He sounded casual, but when Harry glanced at him, he saw that his grip on the bench was white knuckled.

For a moment, Harry thought Cedric was paralyzed with fear. Then he saw that his wand was out. He was pacing into the enclosure, watching the dragon; Harry thought he was gauging how close he could come to the nest without alarming her. About ten strides in, she swung her head around to face him, and Cedric jumped back quickly.

Laughter, scattered and nervous, rose in the stadium.

"Steady now," Bagman called, voice magically amplified. "Got to get to her somehow..."

Cedric was pointing his wand, not at the dragon or the nest, but - oddly - on a largish rock at the edge of the enclosure. Harry thought he saw Cedric's lips move, a long way away. Then the rock warped, swelling in size. It grew five protrubances which stretched, four into long legs and one into a head; then a sixth became a tail.

The rock had become a dog which leapt up into the enclosure. Cedric directed his wand at it; Harry didn't know what he did, but the dog shot off at a run towards the nest at the end far from the golden egg.

The crowd gasped and cheered. Cedric was crouching like a sprinter waiting for a race to begin. Harry thought, move - the dragon could not possibly take long to deal with the dog once she began to move-

Then her head came down again, winging towards the dog; she was not yet striking but seemed to eye it, curiously.

Cedric began to run. The dog began to bark - Harry wondered if Cedric was still controlling it somehow - and growl. The dragon roared back, a sound that seemed to shake the earth. Cedric was nearly at the egg--

Then the dragon was twisting, changing her mind, and fire leapt along the ground--

"Oh no!" Hermione moaned next to Harry. Harry felt frozen, unable to look away.

Then the fire flickered out, Cedric was crying out in pain, but he was moving, he was alive; the egg was under his arm, and he was out of the enclosure. The first Champion had succeeded!

The stands seemed to take a moment to absorb it. Then they were rocked with screams and cheers - Harry was on his feet applauding, no matter that Cedric gotten hurt. He would have applauded even if Cedric had turned around and walked back out without the egg, just to see that he was still alright--

Cedric was being ushered off to the medical tent; Bagman was announcing that the judges would score him as soon as he was released.

"And this is less dangerous than before?" Hermione said. Very soon, Cedric emerged and was receiving points out of ten from each judge; they all seemed to have taken points off for the injury, although Ludo Bagman still gave him an eight. The lowest score was Karkaroff's, who awarded him a four.

Fleur Delacour was up next. She seemed slightly calmer coming from the tent. Harry supposed she had had more time to think, if nothing else. She did not approach the nest once in the enclosure but stood, raising her wand from the far end. Harry saw her swaying, full body, back and forth, turning slightly then and again. He had never seen a spell cast this way before, but it seemed to be having an effect: the dragon sank lower and lower on its feet, until it was curled in a ball next to the nest, seeming barely aware of its eggs.

Its eyes began to droop, and it lay its head down on one forepaw, then closed them entirely with a sigh. It was asleep.

Fleur began to proceed to the eggs, skirt held slightly up as she crossed the rough ground of the enclosure, apparently unconcerned.

The dragon let out a great snore. Laughter came again, but Harry was tense; he had seen a faint flicker of fire coming from the dragon's nostrils when it breathed out...

The dragon snored again, louder still. This time a jet of flame came with the breath, too close; Fleur's skirt caught fire.

She froze for a moment, no longer poised; then her wand came up, and water emerged from it, dousing the fire. The dragon was stirring, and she had to turn and restart the charm; wait precious moments until she slept again, this time watching the head warily. When she proceeded to the egg her skirts were sodden and burnt, but Harry could not see that this mattered much; unlike Cedric, she did not seem to have been hurt. She was not limping.

Fleur was not taken off for treatment, and her points were slightly higher. Madam Maxime offered her a ten, and Ron snorted contemptuously in Harry's ear, but he could not feel it mattered very much.

Krum would be next, and Harry felt interest stir beside the fear for the champions; he had enjoyed watching Krum once before. But just as he was emerging from the tent, a cry came from the judges box.

Harry whirled, leaping to his feet; he saw others startling around him, turning in a ripple to the judges, and Bagman's commentary had ceased; but most people were not watching the judges, but the enclosure. The dragon gave a great bellow of pain, but Harry hardly had any attention to spare for the task...

"He's dead!" someone shrieked from the box, just as Harry saw someone toppling.

He strained, wanting to go to the box, to see what was happening, hand on his wand; but the crowds were packed too tight. He would never reach them. He could only wait, staring hard at the figures, until they parted and he could see who had fallen.

It was Karkaroff.

Chapter Text

Karkaroff was not dead. This was announced rapidly enough to forestall total panic. He was carried down the medical tent, where Madam Pomfrey had a great number of remedies available in case of mishap with the task. In a small corner of his mind, Harry felt rather bad for Krum, whose headmaster had not been able to see him perform. Though of course that headmaster was a Death Eater.

People milled about in the stands uncertainly. Krum's scoring was supposed to happen, but Harry doubted the judges would have been watching closely. Barty Crouch stalked out of the judge's booth in a vile temper, students jumping out of his way. Professor Dumbledore spoke, with a grave face, to Madam Maxime and Professor McGonagall. Ludo Bagman sat back in his chair, face gone slack and disbelieving. Finally the students were told to begin leaving the stands.

Charlie Weasley caught up to them as they passed the enclosures. "Ron," he said, looking relieved and nodding to Harry and Hermione as well. "Hang on a minute, I'd better be able to owl Mum and say you're all alright or you know how she'll go on... Have you seen Percy?"

"He was still in the box, I think," Ron said. "Looked alright, just a bit scared..."

"I'm here, Ron," Percy said behind them, making them all jump. "Can you believe - right during the tournament - not that I was worried, you know..." He gave a hearty laugh which fooled no one.

"You were right there," Harry said. "Did you - did you see anything?" He was not sure what he hoped to accomplish - Professor Dumbledore had also been there, and a number of other fully qualified wizards besides - but perhaps they had not been watching the box. Percy was not actually a judge.

"Nothing," Percy said heavily. "Came straight out of the air - attacker must have been invisible. Well, they'll be tightening security now, I imagine, not that it will help the scandal... I'd better go, Mr. Crouch must need me."

As he hurried off, Hermione gave a soft gasp. "Come on," she hissed as Charlie bid them goodbye; then she grabbed Harry and Ron's arms and pulled them just far enough ahead to be clear of the enclosures, then off the path into the forest.

"'Mione, there are things in here!" Ron protested, no doubt thinking of his and Harry's encounter with Aragog and his offspring second year.

"We're not going far." Hermione looked around, apparently searching for something, then pulled them both into a thicket of brambles nearly as long as Hagrid was tall. "Harry, do you have the Map?"

"Uh, yeah." Harry pulled it from his bag, muttered, "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," and unfolded it. "You don't think they're still there?" He found what must be the judge's box by locating Albus Dumbledore's dot, still hovering with Madam Maxime and Ludo Bagman.

"Not now," Hermione said, just as Harry concluded there was no one unexpected in the vicinity. "You can't tell anyone about this," she went on anxiously. "I'll get in so much trouble if anyone finds out I told you - not just at school, with the Ministry, too--" She was digging in the front of her robes. As Harry and Ron watched, she pulled up a thin gold chain, and there, dangling on it, what seemed to be a tiny golden hourglass.

"Hermione," Ron said, gaping. "Is that a Time-Turner?"

"I'll explain later, I promise - we shouldn't wait any longer - Let me think. I checked my watch between champions and it was three-twenty, and Krum had just gone up so it wasn't long after... We came off the path at ten to four... It's really dangerous to travel through time," she said, and Harry gaped, finally understanding. "We have to make sure we don't see ourselves, understand?"

"Wish I'd brought the cloak," Harry said. Hermione was beckoning them closer; he and Ron pressed in, and she flung the chain over their necks. "I'm watching the Map - when are we going back to?"

"One turn, I think - it should get us there a few minutes before it happened," Hermione said. "Ready?"

She spun the hourglass.

They were still under the thicket; Harry still held the Map. Rapidly he searched for Dumbledore, and felt a bizarre sensation seeing the three of them a few rows away on the Map. Then he began to look through the area around the judges - what if Percy was wrong, and it had been someone in the box legitimately? Or a student sitting a way away...

"Hang on, are there two Crouches?" Ron said, and Harry saw it too.

"No," Hermione breathed. "Not two... Harry, Ron, remember what Sirius told us? Oh, no, it's..."

"His son," Harry breathed. "His Death Eater son cursed Karkaroff. He's alive."

There were still a good fifteen minutes before their past selves would disappear from the path and the three of them could reappear. They spent the time arguing about what it meant.

"You don't suppose he was framed?" Ron said. "Like Sirius? And now he's gone after Karkaroff for really being a Death Eater?"

"But why would his father keep him hidden?" Hermione whispered. "Why was he here at all? Oh, it doesn't make any sense..."

"Maybe he's angry Karkaroff got off and he was sent to prison," Harry said quietly. "Whether he's guilty or not, Karkaroff definitely was... And Karkaroff made the deal with Crouch's father, didn't he? Sirius said loads of people hated him in Azkaban."

"Not in Azkaban now, is he?" Ron muttered darkly.

"We'll tell Sirius," Hermione said firmly. "He'll have an idea what to do - we need to go now!" She grabbed them again, and hauled them through a circuitous route back onto the path fifty feet ahead of where they'd left it.

Sirius wasn't in his quarters when they arrived. Harry went to get tea in his kitchen while Hermione paced and muttered to herself and Ron tried to get her to sit down.

Harry heard the door open a few minutes later. Sirius stuck his head in the kitchen, looking very relieved. "Good, you're all safe," he said. "Word is no one was hurt but Karkaroff, but..."

"Sirius, we know who it was," Hermione said. She stopped her agitated pacing and threw herself into one of the armchairs.

"What?" Sirius said.

"We saw on the Map," Harry said. "There were two Crouches in the judges' booth."

"The Map?" Sirius said. "--Yes, the Map. You had it out in the stands?"

"No," Hermione said. "We--" She hesitated, as if hanging on a precipice. Then she extended the hour glass again.

"I see," Sirius said, staring at her. "McGonagall mentioned you had one at the staff meeting start of term." Then he collapsed into the second chair and began to laugh wildly. "Two Crouches..." he gasped. "Barty Crouch, hater of all things Dark indeed."

Harry sat, uncertain how to respond. Sirius' laughter sounded quite mad, but the next moment he pulled himself together. "We'd better tell Dumbledore this," he said, going to the fireplace. Harry thought he saw Hermione sigh in relief.

Then Sirius was tossing Floo powder from a bowl on the mantle into the flames and calling, "Headmaster's office." Harry watched, intrigued, as Sirius knelt and put his head through, wondering what it was like to have half your body in a different room.

A very short time later, Sirius removed his head from the fire, straightening, and Professor Dumbledore came through the fireplace. With his tall, thin and brightly dressed frame unfolding from within the hearth, he rather resembled an immense jack-in-the-box toy.

"Thank you, Sirius," he said, taking a seat in the armchair Sirius had just vacated and turning to Hermione. "I am told, Miss Granger, that you used your Time-Turner and a certain map to identify Professor Karkaroff's attacker, breaking several dozen laws and school rules in the process."

Harry glanced at Hermione to see how she would take this accusation, but far from apologetic she had set her jaw stubbornly.

"And thereby providing us with extremely vital information on the actions of Bartemius Crouch," Dumbledore finished calmly.

"Well, yes, sir," Hermione said, deflating slightly from her indignation. "That is - I took us back an hour so we could watch the judges' booth on the map, and we saw two Bartemius Crouches there at once. So, unless Crouch also has a Time-Turner, sir, and an invisibility cloak..."

"A possibility, but not, in my opinion, a very likely one," said Dumbledore.

"If Crouch was going to go around killing Death Eaters who'd got off he'd have started years ago," Sirius said, bringing in another tea cup for Dumbledore and more hot water. "Not to mention coming up with a better time to attack."

"Could he have wanted an alibi?" Harry asked, distracted by this possibility. "I mean, everyone could see him in the judges' box."

"While it is not impossible," Dumbledore said, "Crouch has many other pressing duties that keep him in the more or less public eye, and would not place him so close to his victim... No. I believe your first thought was correct. The second Crouch is likely Crouch's son, the Death Eater, supposed to have died in Azkaban years ago..."

He looked at Sirius, who was frowning. "I saw the dementors bury Crouch," he said. "He was definitely dead at the time, and Crouch never came for the body..." Then he frowned harder. "It wasn't too long after Crouch visited with his wife... She was very ill at the time, he half-carried her out..."

"You think it might have been Crouch's wife who died in Azkaban?" Ron asked. They all knew very well that there were ways to disguise oneself as another person with magic, such as the Polyjuice potion Harry, Ron and Hermione had brewed in a toilet second year. "He left her there... That's sick."

"For her son," Harry said quietly. "You said Crouch hated him, didn't you, Sirius? I bet it was her idea. But I don't understand why he was at the Task."

"Don't you, Harry?" Hermione asked furiously. He jumped at her tone. "He fired Winky, didn't he? Now he has no one to watch Crouch at home! I wonder what he does for work!"

Sirius and Dumbledore exchanged glances. "If Crouch is sneaking his son into the Department of International Cooperation..." Sirius said.

"Most likely he has other arrangements in place for his daily routine," Dumbledore said. "Perhaps a habit of Apparating home briefly every hour or two, which would be impossible at Hogwarts. But I imagine Crouch Jr. was with his father at the World Cup, as well."

"And the house elf's real offense was losing control of him," Sirius said, sighing. "As though she'd any chance against a wizard of her own family once he broke whatever enchantments Crouch has on him."

"So is Crouch's home going to be searched?" Harry said roughly. "I mean, his son's a Death Eater, right? Just because he's supposed to be dead..."

"Alas, Harry," Dumbledore sighed, "It may not be so simple in this case. Cornelius Fudge has become rather fond of power lately, and correspondingly less fond of my advice; and I am not sure he will accede to such a request from me against a powerful Department."

"And if it was anyone else, I'd ask," Sirius said with a crooked smile. "But all the world knows I hate Crouch, especially after our little spat in August."

"Isn't there - someone else we could ask?" said Hermione. "Amelia Bones is head of the MLE, isn't she? And she's supposed to be fair."

"And if we had evidence that wouldn't incriminate you, I'd suggest it, but given the circumstances..." Sirius said, squeezing Hermione's shoulder.

"Hang on, couldn't we leave that part out?" Ron said. "Just show them the map, say we saw two Crouches leaving... He's a Death Eater, we don't need proof he cursed Karkaroff."

"Ah, but the map itself is a very unusual artifact, and, I'm afraid, one signed with nicknames Sirius and his friends are now known to have used." Dumbledore smiled.

"So it all leads back to Sirius," Harry said, throwing himself down in his chair. "Did we get Hermione in trouble for nothing?"

"On the contrary, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said. "We have gained a great deal: we now know what we must find evidence of. And I should be able to tighten security so that the younger Mr. Crouch cannot access the grounds... Indeed, we might apprehend him at the gates and spare ourselves further trouble entirely. And Miss Granger is not in trouble, although perhaps in the future she might notify me of any such plans first. Now. Sirius, I believe you are now employing Mr. Crouch's former house elf."

"Yeah, but she's not likely to tell us anything, she doesn't like me much - you know the type. Raised among humans, no life but service, think of themselves as part of the family... If I lived like a Black she'd get over being displaced and start thinking of it as an honor, but she suspects me of pity as it is." Sirius' smile grew more crooked yet.

"Still," Dumbledore said mildly. "We might try."

"As you wish," Sirius said indifferently. "Winky!"

Harry glanced at Hermione to see how she was taking this, and found her sitting rigidly, with a deep frown.

There was a loud pop, and Winky the house elf arrived. She was dressed now in what looked like miniature human clothing, a blouse and a skirt, but in contrast to her former garments, the clothing was not being taken care of. It was covered in small stains and burns. She fixed Sirius with a look of profound irritation and said, "Sir calls?"

"Thank you for coming, Winky," Sirius said. Harry thought she looked somewhat gratified by this. "Professor Dumbledore had some questions he thought you might be able to help with."

Winky looked astonished. She swung around, spotted Dumbledore, and sank into a deep bow. "Sir has need of a house elf?" she asked.

"I wondered, Winky, if you might answer a few questions about your former master, Bartemius Crouch," Dumbledore said.

A suspicious frown appeared on Winky's face. "I keep my secrets for my old master, sirs," she said. "I do not have to, but I am a good house elf. I do not need wards to make me behave."

"Certainly, we would not ask you to work against your master's interest," Dumbledore said gravely. Harry thought this was a bit rich: he did not know what the punishment for breaking someone out of Azkaban and harboring them for more than a decade was, but he doubted it could be pleasant. "Mr. Crouch has been ill, and he has had to rely more and more on his young assistant, Percy Weasley, of late..."

Winky looked as though she might cry. "My poor master!" she said. "He cannot manage without his Winky..."

"Indeed, he has been very stressed in recent days," Dumbledore agreed, smiling gently. "If we were certain of what was going on, perhaps we could offer some assistance..."

Winky straightened abruptly and shot a ferocious scowl at Dumbledore. "I know what you are doing, sir," she said. "I am not a spy. I am a good elf. And I am a free elf and cannot be made to tell my master's secrets."

With that, she turned to Sirius, gave a quite sarcastic bow, and announced, "I must continue with the kitchen, sir - Kreacher has not touched the dishes in years. They are growing mold, and soon they will grow legs." And she promptly Disapparated without waiting for a dismissal.

"I did warn you," Sirius said.

Dumbledore regarded the place Winky had disappeared from with a deep frown. "So you did," he said. "Whose choice was it for her to remain free? Yours, or hers?"

"Oh, Dobby was the one who requested it, but she was happy enough to let him," Sirius said. "Kicked up a fuss when he tried to ask for payment for her too, but not a word of argument about the clothes... They know it's an insult to be dismissed, but they aren't nearly as happy to be slaves as they like us to think." He glanced up. "Any further brilliant ideas, Headmaster?"

Dumbledore looked merely amused by this, not insulted. "I am open to suggestions, Sirius - Mr. Potter, Weasley, Miss Granger."

"Is there anyone else who might have seen inside Crouch's house?" Harry asked. "Percy Weasley - but he'd never say anything against Crouch any more than Winky, he adores him..."

Sirius looked thoughtful. "An assistant from before he was transferred, maybe? Without any need to please him now..."

"Aha, I believe I have it," Dumbledore said. "Bertha Jorkins at one time worked quite closely with Crouch in his present office, but she has been transferred a number of times and now works with Ludo Bagman."

Sirius was nodding. "I remember her from school - nosy beyond belief. If anyone would have seen something it's her... I'll ask her to have a cup of tea and catch up, she won't be able to resist asking me about the last year."

"And I should attend to the school security," Dumbledore said, rising. "Goodnight, and good work, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger. I shall see you Thursday, Mr. Potter."

Harry chanced a glance at Hermione after Dumbledore had left. He was unsurprised to find her scowling furiously after the headmaster, arms crossed.

Chapter Text

On Thursday evening, Harry proceeded to the stone gargoyle guarding Professor Dumbledore's office, gave the password and began up the spiral stairs. His mind was boiling with questions. He had nearly forgotten to wonder about the actual lesson Dumbledore had planned in the wake of what had happened after the First Task.

Karkaroff had apparently made a full recovery, the curse dispelled almost immediately by Professor Dumbledore. But he had not been seen since collapsing in the judges' box. The Durmstrang students huddled together in the Great Hall and in corridors, muttering and casting suspicious looks at outsiders.

Harry rather wished he had had time to ask Sirius about any further developments, but they had all been extremely busy Wednesday evening with the fourth years' course load, forgotten in the lead up to the Task. They might have approached him in or after class except that there had been an accident with the spell they were practicing. Sirius had been occupied putting Lavender Brown back to rights while Parvati apologized frantically at the end of the lesson. Sirius had still been calming her down when the bell rang.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said when he opened the door. "Please sit down."

Professor Dumbledore's office looked quite as it usually did, with one exception which distracted Harry from his thoughts: a shallow stone basin sat on the desk, with runes carved around the rim. As Harry drew nearer to sit, he saw the contents were a strange, silvery substance which was neither liquid nor gas, or perhaps both at once. One moment it roiled like liquid; the next it broke apart into separate clouds.

"This, Harry, is a Pensieve," Dumbledore said, following his gaze. "In general they are personal artifacts, but this one belongs to the school. They allow the viewing, organizing, and searching of thoughts and memories, when one finds they are rather overwhelmed by those in one's head... Or wishes to view someone else's directly, of course."

"Sir," Harry said in amazement, "Those are your thoughts?"

Dumbledore smiled. "At the moment, in fact these particular thoughts belong to another. But yes, you are looking at the substance of memory. Two, in fact."

"So you want to show me..." Harry hesitated. He recalled Dumbledore telling him that he would teach him how to direct the skills Sirius would give him. Sirius still had not begun their private lessons. On the other hand, he might want Harry to master the basics of dueling with the other students first. "Experience?"

"It is my belief," Dumbledore said slowly, steepling his fingers, "That in order to defeat a man, or overcome one, you must understand his methods... I believe I have a quite good understanding of Lord Voldemort, Harry, perhaps better than anyone else, and I could tell you what I think I know directly. But I admit that many of my conclusions are based in speculation, and inferences, and what if I were to be wrong? No, I think it best to give you, as much as possible, the information I have received - so that when I tell you what I believe I know, you will have a chance to judge for yourself my conclusions..."

Harry sat, feeling somewhat embarrassed and pleased to know Dumbledore valued his opinions so highly. His resentment over the summer felt very far away at the moment. "So, you think that knowing this - about Voldemort - will help me figure out what he's planning? And - stay alive?"

"I very much hope so," Dumbledore said solemnly. They sat for a moment in the aftermath of that question.

Then Dumbledore said, "Now - the memories I will show you tonight are relatively short, so I will provide you with a bit of context first. Professor Slughorn, whose memory we will enter, taught at Hogwarts for a great many years, from the twenties through the seventies. He was Head of Slytherin House, and as such responsible for discussing career options with a number of students who went on to distinguish themselves in Lord Voldemort's service, in ways we would perhaps find less than admirable. You have not yet had this meeting; it occurs in your O.W.L. year." He paused.

"So you're going to show me him talking to a Death Eater about their job prospects?" Harry said. "Two Death Eaters?"

"Indeed, though I believe neither student had taken their vows at the time of the memories; and one had not yet met him. Can you deduce what information we might gain despite this?"

"It shows us - the kind of followers he picks?" Harry said. "But why career meetings - the reasons they chose him?"

"Indeed," Dumbledore said. "Lord Voldemort has an extremely extensive knowledge of magic, but there is always a limit to what one individual can do. Much of his power has always laid in his capacity for inspiring - controlling - others." Here Dumbledore paused, studying Harry. "Indeed, one might call it something the two of you have in common."

"Me?" Harry said, startled. "I don't have followers, sir."

"No, of course. You would refer to them as friends. Your methods are quite different from Lord Voldemort in this respect. But we are wasting time, Harry, into the Pensieve - just lean over it and touch the thoughts--"

Harry obeyed. As his face touched the substance he felt a lurch not unlike a portkey, and then he was falling through blackness--

He landed in an office somewhat larger than most teachers' studies and filled with an array of objects that made Harry think of a rich, fussy old woman: boxes of candy, many heavily gilded picture frames and frilly little knickknacks. The man behind the desk had an immense girth and an extremely impressive silver mustache. He took no notice of Harry, but continued to write with a luxurious gold and tawny brown patterned quill. Many of the photographs were arrayed on the desk, so that there was hardly room for him to work.

"Ah, Professor Slughorn," Dumbledore said behind Harry, making him jump. "Here, Harry, where we can watch."

Harry joined Dumbledore by a round table away from the desk. Not much time later, a knock came at the door. Slughorn flicked the letter away and called, "Come in."

Harry watched the door open with a sense of sick anticipation, wondering who he was about to see - one of his classmates' fathers, perhaps--

A girl a year or two older than Harry came into the room. She had thick, shining black hair, and elaborate earrings that jingled faintly as she walked. Bracelets, too, clinked as she drew up the chair in front of Slughorn's desk. Her face was down, shielded by her hair.

Then she looked up, and Harry's breath caught. She was the precise mirror of Sirius's cousin Andromeda, except that her hair was black, and her face a little more starkly pale, beauty more striking - in fact--

In fact, she was very much like a young, female Sirius might have been before Azkaban; as Sirius was starting to look as he recovered further. He remembered, then, that Andromeda had commented on how Neville jumped as he saw her for the first time - had said that he had been raised on pictures, in fact

Harry opened his mouth to ask Dumbledore - just to be sure - but in the next moment Slughorn said, "Ah, Miss Black!"

"Sir," the girl said sullenly, throwing herself into the chair and sprawling in it. Harry remembered distantly Narcissa mentioning her sister and Voldemort to Sirius. This, then, must be the third sister: Bellatrix Black.

"Now, now," Slughorn said, chuckling. "I suppose you do feel this is a bit of a waste of time, but we must observe the rules - may I offer you something to drink--"

"A waste of time?" Harry asked incredulously, wondering if Slughorn knew about and endorsed her plans to join Voldemort already, but Dumbledore said quickly, "Listen first--"

And Bellatrix did not seem to feel as though Slughorn was referring to some mutual plan. She straightened, scowling at him furiously. "I can go if you don't feel I'm worth talking to, sir," she said.

"Miss Black," Slughorn said jovially, but Harry could see he was rattled. "I mean no offense - just that I'm aware of your plans already, of course--"

"My plans, sir," Bellatrix said coolly. "You mean, graduate, wait for my cousin to grow up, marry him as soon as he's legal, and embrace my subsequent life as his broodmare and hostess."

"I'm sure your cousin isn't as bad as that!" Slughorn said, now looking faintly alarmed. He summoned a tea tray and poured for her; but Bellatrix did not touch her cup.

"It isn't about my cousin," she said. "Sirius is three."

Harry choked, glancing furiously at Dumbledore, but Bellatrix was already talking again and he had to turn back to her to keep up.

"They aren't my plans at all, and they certainly aren't Sirius's. They're my uncle's plans."

Slughorn opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was now staring at Bellatrix as though he had never seen her before; he did not seem able to come up with anything to say.

Bellatrix snorted contemptuously after a sufficiently long time had passed. "I know this is a waste of time, sir," she said. "May I go?"

Slughorn hesitated. "If there's anything you wish to discuss, Miss Black - any alternative plans - I am afraid your grades are not quite, well, there's still time before your O.W.L.s to improve them."

Bellatrix shrugged. "It hardly matters, sir. As you said, my family has plans."

"I'm sure they have your best interests at heart," Slughorn said.

Bellatrix tossed her hair over her shoulder, frowned at him calculatingly. Harry had a sense she was teetering on the edge of something, debating whether to speak. He knew how it had ended - Dumbledore had told him she was a Death Eater - and nevertheless he found himself urging her, go on, say it... It's not too late...

"You're right about my grades, sir," Bellatrix said. She raised her chin. "But... What if I told you they were planning to force me to marry him?"

Relief hit Harry without the input of his brain; he thought, come on, help her, even knowing that whatever Slughorn might have done, it hadn't worked in the end.

Slughorn flinched; the tea tray rattled. "Miss Black," he said. "I'm sure it's not - not so bad as... Your family is quite influential, and..."

Bellatrix got up with a violent clatter of jewelry and took up her bag without being dismissed. "Excuse me, sir," she said. "I see that you already know my plans." Her face was blank, but on the way out she slammed the door so hard it bounced.

Harry turned to stare at Slughorn, but the office was going black around him - he could see nothing but his own body--

Then it reformed, the same room with the same furnishings. This time Slughorn's waistcoat had green embroidery instead of silver. There was a box of crystal pineapple on the desk instead of the letter, and a quite different tea set. Harry understood this was the second memory, taking place on another day. Slughorn himself was not writing, distracted, but sitting up and watching the door quite avidly. Harry saw notes on his desk, what looked like a student file.

He took this in, but it was not his primary concern. "He just - told her to give in?" he whispered urgently to Dumbledore. "She told him her parents were going to make her - and he just--"

"I do not excuse it," Dumbledore said quietly, eyes upon the door. "I would only note that Horace Slughorn was somewhat understating the matter by calling the Blacks influential. It is quite reasonable to think that if he attempted to help their eldest daughter and the fiancee of their heir run away, he would be killed quickly and brutally. Orion Black's policy of neutrality on the subject of Lord Voldemort cost them dearly during the war, and Andromeda may well owe her survival to their collective distraction."

"But he didn't even try," Harry said.

"Indeed." Dumbledore sighed. "Horace was very reluctant to give me this memory, Harry, and when I saw it I knew why at once. Had I known that Bellatrix Black had told her Head of House she was being forced into an engagement she wanted to flee in 1963, I might have done something, and thereby deprived Lord Voldemort of his foremost lieutenant years later, to say nothing of what became of Bellatrix herself.

"But watch, Harry, we are about to meet another Death Eater, Bellatrix's eventual husband, in fact..."

Harry turned to the door just as another knock sounded.

Slughorn got up to open it himself this time. "Mr. Lestrange," he said eagerly, almost possessively, holding it back. "Please, come in, come in, sit down..."

The boy who entered was solidly built, with straight black hair in a loose ponytail and a slight frown. He paused to thank Professor Slughorn for holding the door, then sat, as poised at fifteen or sixteen as Bellatrix had been sullen.

"Well," Slughorn said, crossing around to sit behind his desk again. "Mr. Lestrange. I suppose this meeting may seem to be a bit of a formality to you." He smiled. There was something almost predatory in his jovial smile, Harry thought, a little sickened.

"Indeed, sir," Lestrange said. "I would be pleased to hear any thoughts you have, regardless." The words were delivered smoothly, but his voice was a hair too empty, apathetic instead of polite.

"Well, you might never have to work, it's true," Slughorn said cheerfully. "At least, not for a wage - but of course, a man in your position has a different sort of career planning to do. Given any thought to what you mean to do with the family name when it's yours?"

"My father is still young, sir," Lestrange said quietly. "It may be many years before that's under my control." He said the words, but he plainly did not believe them. It was as though he was playing a part, Harry thought finally, and one he was not much invested in.

"Nevertheless!" Slughorn laughed. "I understand the family is quite involved with a certain new political movement - might almost call them a bit radical..."

"Yes, sir, my uncle has long been a confidant of Voldemort," Lestrange said, and Harry startled again, staring.

"And do you plan to consider the association?" Slughorn asked. Harry could not tell whether he thought that this would be a good plan or not.

Something changed in Lestrange's face, like shutters behind his eyes had closed. Harry thought of Sirius when he was reminded of Azkaban. He said, "I will carry on my family's legacy, sir," and the words were almost wooden.

"Never doubted it," Slughorn said cheerfully; but his face was shrewd, and Harry saw him decide not to pursue this line of questioning. "Now, you may not need the formal qualifications, but I'm sure you have thoughts on which classes you'd like to continue on at N.E.W.T. level - if there's anything you'd like to discuss..."

"I believe that's enough, Harry," Dumbledore said, and took his elbow gently. He felt himself lifted up; and the next moment they were back in the Headmaster's office.

Harry sank back in his chair. He felt dazed, as though he had just been knocked from his broom. He realized he was trembling faintly.

Dumbledore sat down himself, and replaced the memories into two small glass vials, using his wand to draw them up from the Pensieve in strings. "I believe I had at least your initial perceptions of Bellatrix Black," he said after a moment. "May I ask your thoughts on Rodolphus Lestrange?"

"He seemed so... hopeless," Harry said, thinking over the meeting. "Even more than Bellatrix - she was still hoping Slughorn would get her out of it, wasn't she? And she was angry about being pushed into it. He'd just given up."

"Years before, I believe," Dumbledore said. "His father was not at school with Tom Riddle himself, that was his father's younger brother, but somehow the elder Lestrange had been drawn into the network of Death Eaters by the time Rodolphus was old enough to understand and anticipate the future. He is one of a number of Death Eaters I have reason to believe made their vows to Lord Voldemort - and received his mark - before they had attained legal majority or left school."

"Then before that meeting--" Harry said, then, "But you said he hadn't yet."

"Indeed. My sources suggest that those who are asked as minors typically take the mark at sixteen, on the first school holiday after their birthdays. Rodolphus likely was initiated into Lord Voldemort's inner circle only a month or two after the meeting we just witnessed. He already knew, I think you will agree." Dumbledore paused, then, studying Harry. "Now, do you know what this tells us about Lord Voldemort, and his followers?"

"Desperation," Harry said. Details from the meetings flashed in his mind: Bellatrix's challenging stare when she suggested her parents planned to force her to marry her cousin; Lestrange's quiet acquiescence. "They didn't - neither of them thought they had any choice, did they? Lestrange was raised for it, and Bellatrix - Bellatrix picked him so she wouldn't have to listen to her parents, didn't she? Sirius didn't run away until after the war started, he told me..."

"Indeed, Sirius would begin attending Hogwarts the same year that the first war began," Dumbledore said. "His eldest cousin had been associating with Voldemort publicly for two or three years at that time. It was rumored that she was his mistress, in fact, if you will excuse me for mentioning it."

"His--" Harry thought of Voldemort's snake like face and blanched, revolted.

"Indeed, and I would suggest that revulsion at that thought is more appropriately caused by his behavior than his appearance," Dumbledore said, smiling as Harry flushed. "Though in this case they are related, as Lord Voldemort's - somewhat reptilian look, you might say - is related to his practice of Dark Arts.

"Now, Harry, I have one more memory to show you tonight, concerning the fate of the Lestranges. This one is mine." And with that, Dumbledore took a third vial from the desk top and emptied it into the Pensieve.

They arrived in a vast stone room, with tiers of benches like a stadium. In the center were four empty chairs with chains dangling on them. There was a total absence of decoration in the room, and it contained no windows Harry could see.

This fit the mood. People filled the benches, staring down into the room or whispering. Close by, a wispy, frail witch wept continuously; next to her - Harry startled - was Bartemius Crouch, younger but gaunter, looking exhausted.

And next to them was a second Dumbledore, sitting on the bench and frowning down at the room.

"Sir?" he said. "Where are we?"

"A court room in the Ministry of Magic," the Dumbledore by Harry's side replied, quietly. "We are about to witness a trial in front of the full Wizengamot. As a sitting Lord, Rodolphus Lestrange possessed rather more legal rights than many of the accused, and Bartemius Crouch was required to accord him and his family at least the appearance of a trial with a jury from the aristocracy."

"Bring them in," Crouch said, voice echoing.

A door opened, and six dementors entered, escorting a group of four. Harry flinched in anticipation, but in the memory the dementors could not touch them. He saw the effects plainly nevertheless in three of the four people - prisoners - being escorted into the room.

The fourth was Bellatrix Black - no, she must be a Lestrange by now. She strode, head up, as though she owned the court. Her hair still hung, thick and shining, but she was no longer a beautiful and sullen teenager but an adult witch. When she sat, it was as though in a throne, even as the chains crept around her, fastening her to the chair.

Harry recognized Rodolphus Lestrange as well. He did not have his wife's confidence; he gave a fixed, blank stare, which Harry thought was a sort of intensified version of the hopeless look he had worn as a teenager in Slughorn's office. Harry did not think he was surprised to have ended up in a court room.

The other two he didn't recognize. There was a thin man whose eyes darted rapidly, and a boy who could not be much older than his teens, with a chalky complexion and straw-colored hair.

Crouch stood up; Harry saw hatred in his face as he gazed down at the prisoners. "You have been brought here before the Council of Magical Law so that we may pass judgment on you, for a crime so heinous--"

"Father," said the light-haired boy, and Harry flinched in comprehension of who this must be - the very man who had cursed Karkaroff a few days before, who even now they suspected was being kept captive in Crouch's home. "Father, please..."

"--that we have rarely heard the like of it within this court," Crouch said over his son. "We have heard the evidence against you. The four of you stand accused of capturing an Auror - Frank Longbottom - and subjecting him to the Cruciatus Curse, believing him to have knowledge of the present whereabouts of your exiled master, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named--"

"Father, I didn't! I didn't, I swear it, Father, don't send me back to the dementors--"

"You are further accused of using the Cruciatus Curse on Frank Longbottom's wife, when he would not give you information." Crouch was shouting now to be heard over his son's pleas. "You planned to restore He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to power, and to resume the lives of violence you presumably led while he was strong. I now ask the jury--"

The boy screamed for his mother this time; Harry watched the witch next to Crouch begin to sob, rocking.

"I now ask the jury," Crouch repeated at the top of his lungs, "To raise their hands if they believe, as I do, that these crimes deserve a life sentence in Azkaban!"

Crouch's son screamed as the jury universally endorsed this verdict. The crowd began to clap in triumph at the sentence, and the dementors were coming back into the room. Harry's eye was drawn to the movement of the other prisoners: Bellatrix, Lestrange and the third man rose quietly, unprotesting.

Bellatrix turned to Crouch and called "The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch! Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!"

Only the boy fought the dementors, and Harry could see that he was tiring fast. The crowd jeered as he struggled, and the woman swept out as though the dementors were an honor guard and not her captors.

"I'm your son!" the boy screamed. "I'm your son!"

"You are no son of mine! I have no son!" Crouch shouted, and his wife fainted. Crouch did not seem to notice.

"I think this is enough," Dumbledore said quietly, and put his hand under Harry's elbow again.

If Harry had been shaken by the first two memories it was nothing to how he felt now. He collapsed into his chair and bent, arms around himself, staring into the desk top. Crouch's screams echoed in his ears. At the same time he saw Bellatrix's face, displaying no fear, almost triumphant, as she declared that Voldemort would return and reward her...

"Why did Lestrange help her look?" he asked at last. "If he didn't want to join, shouldn't he have been pleased that Voldemort was gone?"

"An excellent question, Harry," Dumbledore said quietly. "The memory you saw of Lestrange as a student was from the spring of 1958; the trial was in late winter, 1982. In that time, Lestrange had taken Lord Voldemort's mark and fought at his side in a war that lasted for slightly more than a decade. He had done unspeakable things - the last of which you saw him sentenced to life in prison for - and found a way, nevertheless, to live with himself. He may have come to believe in Lord Voldemort's ideology, or feel some personal attachment to him; he may have only cared for his fellow Death Eaters, perhaps foremost his brother Rabastan Lestrange, who was the fourth tried that day, and his wife.

"It is a powerful incentive to believe, Harry, if you have already done terrible things in support of a cause. If you should doubt it, you are doubting your own virtue, your capacity for moral decision making. I believe it is for this reason that Lord Voldemort inducted some of his followers so young."

"So that he can control them better, you mean," Harry said. "So they don't have a chance to fight him, until they've already done so much they don't think they can turn back."

"Yes," Dumbledore said heavily. "So I believe."

Harry swallowed. "That's - what you wanted me to see, isn't it? That this is how he recruits people, how he treats his followers... He picks people who think they're trapped and twists them around so they can't imagine anything else..."

It was not Lestrange who his thoughts came back to but Bellatrix: her sullen disbelief that Slughorn would offer her any help, and the faith that shone in her eyes at her trial when she declared that Voldemort would come for her. He thought involuntarily of himself. He remembered the wonder he had felt at age eleven, when Hagrid had come to rescue him from the Dursleys - and also how he had felt when Dumbledore told him he could not stay for the summer holidays second year. If it hadn't been Hagrid who had brought him to Hogwarts, if it had been some Dark wizard...

But he had also been a child then, he had always known he would not have to live with the Dursleys his whole life. Bellatrix had expected to have to marry her cousin.

There was a pause, then Dumbledore said, "You are perceptive beyond your years, Harry. However, I regret that it is now nearly curfew..."

"Of course, sir," Harry mumbled, getting up and taking his bag. Then, "Wait. The Longbottoms - did they kill Neville's parents?"

Dumbledore frowned. "He has not told you, in three years, how he came to be raised by his grandmother? --No matter, Harry. We will discuss it next time. I ask you not to mention it; give him his own time to face it."

"Yes, sir," Harry said, and fled the office.

Chapter Text

There were now only five minutes to curfew, and Harry knew Ron and Hermione were waiting for him to come and tell them about his first lesson. But despite Harry's intentions, his feet took him straight to the painting of Romulus and Remus suckled by the wolf outside Sirius's quarters.

"Alright, Harry?" Sirius asked at once, leading him inside. There was a stack of essays on the table in the sitting room, and a mug next to it. "You look upset."

"I just had my first lesson with Dumbledore," Harry said, allowing Sirius to bundle him into an armchair and get him a second mug. "He wanted to show me memories to do with Voldemort..."

Now that he was sitting with Sirius he felt quite calm: Sirius would be able to explain it. Staring into his mug, he told Sirius all about his conversation with Dumbledore and the three memories, leaving only Neville's parents out. He supposed Sirius might know about them, but he couldn't be sure.

Sirius twitched when Harry brought up his cousin for the first time, but apart from that he was a very good listener. He asked questions when Harry stopped, unable to think of how to go on, and made the right noises and faces otherwise.

"My god," he said at the end, sinking back in his chair. "Dumbledore showed you this to explain Voldemort, he said?"

"Yeah," Harry said, and watched as Sirius got down a bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky and poured a carefully measured shot into his own mug. "I - I'm sorry if it upset you."

"No, no, Harry, I'm glad you told me." Sirius squeezed his arm. "I just didn't know that Bella..." He took a deep breath.

"Were you really engaged?" Harry said, derailed suddenly by the nickname. His mind had been whirling with half-formed questions since the first memory. Now, having recounted it once, he felt more able to articulate them.

To his surprise, Sirius nodded. "About since I turned out to be a boy, I think. My parents were cousins too, it's how the Blacks dealt with eldest daughters who might be able to make inheritance claims. Later, of course all of that became a moot point."

Harry realized Sirius's hands were shaking. He saw Harry looking, took a long gulp of firewhisky-spiked tea and said, "Sorry, it's just that I haven't talked about her since - not long after we left school."

"It's fine," Harry said quietly. Tentatively he moved from the armchair to the couch next to Sirius, thinking that Sirius seemed very alone, huddled there. Sirius immediately wrapped an arm across Harry's shoulders, and to his surprise, Harry felt better at once.

"So - what else did you want to talk about, then?" Sirius said.

"Would your parents really have killed her for not marrying you?"

"I don't know, exactly," Sirius said. "But it's possible. Andy disappeared for a while after marrying Ted. In a way the war helped them, because everyone was so distracted, and there was no hurry getting to them in particular. Loads of mixed couples died whose families wouldn't have cared, but Andromeda Tonks nee Black would have been a target anyway..." He sighed, and put his face in Harry's hair.

Harry froze, uncertain what he was supposed to do about this, but Sirius only went on, "They looked for her. They thought Bella knew where she was, and when she didn't tell them they nearly killed her for it. Changed their minds at the last minute. So I don't know what they'd have done if Bella refused a marriage directly."

"That's horrible," Harry said.

"It really is." Sirius hugged Harry's shoulders, and sat up to take another drink of tea. Then he settled his arm around Harry again. "It's less common now. Well, there already weren't many purebloods left, and the war finished their society off. All of those high society organizations tainted by association with Voldemort, all of those houses destroyed with property intestate... And too many people killed, whether by Aurors or for refusing to support Voldemort, or in prison, or just having left the country. It makes it pointless to kill your children to salvage the others' prospects. I'm not exactly sorry to see the way of life go," he said bitterly.

"What do you mean, to salvage the others?" Harry asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Marriage, mostly. Part of why Narcissa married Malfoy was that. One sister ran away and one was openly carrying on with - well, you heard Dumbledore, with Voldemort. No one believed Narcissa would be faithful, so the best they could do for her was a wealthy lord of the village manor with pretensions and well known perversions. And I'd say Lucius is still insecure by the way his son carries on in school. If we weren't the Blacks she'd never have married at all. But if they'd killed Andromeda or Bellatrix over it everyone would think they still had control of Narcissa... Sick, isn't it?"

"I see why you ran away." Harry pictured the fifteen year old Bellatrix Black from the memory again. "So Voldemort said he would - bring back their power, and instead..."

"He more or less destroyed them. I wouldn't be surprised if he got a lot of Death Eaters that way - gave them someone to fight for besides their parents, an acceptable cause..." Sirius shook his head. "Did you have other questions, Harry?"

"No," he said, then thought about it. "Were you and Bellatrix," he started uncertainly, "Close?"

Sirius laughed hollowly. "Very," he said. "Or at least I thought so. It's hard to explain. I don't know if you've thought about growing up and getting married at all--" Harry shook his head-- "Well, you more or less expect to marry for love, or at least your own reasons, when you choose it. I didn't, I always knew it was up to my parents.

"A lot of us go to total strangers. If you can try to imagine it - she might hate you; might be terrified or unwilling; might be unpleasant or bad-tempered or not like men; and you don't really get a say. The Ministry and the Church both require consent, but it's a formality. You know your parents can get around it.

"So, I grew up knowing my other cousins would leave, and I might never see them again if there was another political split with their husbands or they went too far away, but Bella would always be there. She was twelve years older and we grew up in the same house, of course I didn't have any interest in her, she was like my sister. But no one I knew had any real interest in their spouse. Most pureblood men have mistresses for that. I loved Bella, and I trusted her; that was more than most people ever got..."

"And then she joined Voldemort," Harry said when Sirius trailed off.

"Yes." Sirius stared into his mug. "I'd have said she was relieved too about the engagement until... I never had any idea she wanted to run away," he said quietly. "I suppose that was what made her so loyal to him. I left before the marriage was supposed to happen, but if she was the one who said no, he wouldn't have let them kill her. I always wondered."

After that Harry felt the subject was dead. He finished his tea, and Sirius asked him about his classes, and told him he had sent an owl to Bertha Jorkins, asking if she wanted to get together some time during or after the holidays to catch up. The owl had not yet had time to return.

Harry knew Sirius was feeling better when he said, "So, I hear McGonagall made an announcement to the Gryffindor fourth years today about the Yule Ball."

"Yes," he mumbled, hiding his face in his tea. His ears felt hot.

"Anyone in mind?" Sirius asked.

Immediately Harry thought of Cho, and the way her normally sleek hair had looked after the last dueling club meeting, swept into a ruffled mess like she'd just landed her broom. "I might just go alone," he muttered. Cho was quite popular and a year above him.

"Mhmm," Sirius said. "Want me to partner you with Cho at club this week? I can find a reason."

"No! She'll know you did it. And what if she says no and I have to keep working with her the whole time?"

"Then you say, 'Oh well, have fun,' and try to mean it," Sirius said. "And don't go chasing her to change her mind. But I've definitely seen her watching you too, you keep missing each other. Ready to go up to bed?"

Sirius walked him to the portrait hole to avoid getting him into trouble. By now it was past midnight, and Harry was starting to be concerned about getting up for class. Then again, he supposed he could always sleep in History first period.

Ron and Hermione were still awake in the common room. A purring Crookshanks was draped over Hermione's lap, and she had awkwardly balanced a book on top of him. Ron was halfheartedly working on what looked like homework.

"Harry!" Hermione said, looking like she wanted to rocket up and hug him but for her cat. "Dumbledore kept you really late, we were starting to worry--"

"It wasn't just Dumbledore," Harry said, dropping into a chair next to her. "I went to talk to Sirius after - about what he showed me--"

"What was it?" Ron asked eagerly. "Magic?"

"No, not really, it's - have either of you heard of a Pensieve?"

"I've read about them," Hermione said eagerly. "They're supposed to be really rare artifacts - they're devices for viewing memories-"

"So that's what Dumbledore showed you?" Ron asked. "Memories?"

"Yeah, he said it was so I would understand Voldemort better--" Ron flinched, "And that way I'd be able to - to figure out what to do," he said, and then he told them everything about the memories he had seen, finishing up by telling them somewhat guiltily about his conversation with Sirius. He could not see how he could avoid explaining when the first memory had so heavily revolved around him.

There was a pause.

"That's - that's really sick," Ron said quietly. "She was twelve?"

"And Sirius was a baby, yeah," Harry said quietly.

"I've heard about this kind of thing but the books always made it seem historical," Hermione said. "Muggles used to, too, in about the fifteenth century-- I need to go to the library--" She cast a furious look at the portrait hole, presumably recalling that it was several hours past curfew.

"Tomorrow," Harry said hastily. "Anyway, that's not the worst part," he said, and explained what Sirius had said about murder.

"...It makes a horrid kind of sense," Hermione said, eyes wide, arms tight around Crookshanks. "If she thought they'd kill her - and she needed someone more powerful to protect her, more than her family--"

"I guess," Ron muttered, shaking his head. "Wonder what Dumbledore'll show you next?"

Hogwarts erupted with the news of the Yule Ball; it was all anyone would talk about. Rumors flew wildly, egged on by the very lengths the teachers had gone to decorate the school for Christmas in the spirit of competitiveness. Many seemed very unlikely, although it did seem to be true that the Weird Sisters, an evidently quite popular band, had been booked to perform.

To Harry's surprise, he was asked out almost immediately by a third year Hufflepuff he did not know who seemed extremely insulted when he refused immediately. This was followed by an invitation from an alarming Gryffindor fifth year.

"Well, they're only asking because you're famous, and of course your godfather is rich," Hermione said quite calmly. "If you want them to stop, ask someone yourself and then they'll know they don't have a chance."

"They don't have a chance now," Harry muttered, eyes studiously avoiding the Ravenclaw table. The thought of having to spend an entire evening trying to talk to and dance with a complete stranger, making a fool of himself, was terrible.

"They don't know that," Hermione said simply.

Still, it was not necessarily bad advice, so spurred on as much by fear that she or Sirius would try to help as by their actual encouragement, Harry steeled up his courage Wednesday night as they hurried off to dueling club.

"Hey - Cho," he said, just after the demonstration had finished. She was standing near him again; hopefully this was a good sign. "Would you - work with me tonight?"

Was it just his imagination or did she looked slightly disappointed at the end of this sentence?

"Sure, Harry," she said, and went from her several friends to him as Ron and Hermione partnered up next to him.

His palms were sweating. He fumbled the incantation and accidentally summoned several flamingos instead of the shield he was aiming for when Cho's friends let out a particularly loud eruption of giggling. "Sorry--!"

"It's okay," Cho said, vanishing them again for him. "I know you can do it, I saw last week - come on, it's too loud to think over here--"

And glaring over her shoulder, she seized his wrist and pulled him through several other practicing couples near the wall.

This was as good a time as any. Cho was virtually never alone. Harry swallowed, tried to smile and hoped he did not look as sick as he felt, and said, "Cho, would you go to the ball with me?"

To his delighted relief, Cho smiled. "I'd love to, Harry," she said. "-Want to try the shield again?"

"Great, I mean, yeah, sure--"

This time it came out perfectly, which meant that he deflected Cho's hex and promptly had to unspell her from the forced jig she was dancing in a circle on the floor. At least, he thought, face burning, they had both managed to make equal idiots of themselves today.

When he rejoined Ron and Hermione walking back to the tower, Ron was slightly scorched around the ears and Hermione apologizing repeatedly.

"--Come off it, I should learn to duck," Ron said resignedly. He brightened at Harry's approach. "Nice flamingos!"

"Shut up," Harry muttered, falling into line with them. "--So I asked Cho to the ball, and she said yes."

"Really?" Hermione beamed, extremely pleased either that he had gotten around to it or that there was a distraction from whatever she had done to Ron practicing. "I mean, I knew she would."

"Thanks, Hermione."

"I'd better get a move on," Ron said, sighing. "Otherwise I'll wind up with a complete troll--"

"A troll?" Hermione asked, brows arching. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, I'd rather go alone than with say, Eloise Midgen--"

"She's really nice," Hermione said. "And her acne's gotten loads better."

"Her nose is off center," Ron said, and sighing despondently while Hermione spluttered in anger, "At least you got a good looking one, Harry--"

Harry was trying to figure out what to say to this that would not result in either Ron or Hermione never speaking to him again when Sirius said behind them, "Hey, you three, it's nearly curfew. Ron, want me to put your robes right for you before you go back up?"

"Meet you back at the tower?" Ron said, relieved, and Harry nodded in equal relief.

"I cannot believe him," Hermione said huffily several corridors later. "As though he's some great prize - her nose is off center, honestly--"

"Sirius is probably going to tell him off for it," Harry said, hoping that this was the case and he wouldn't have to decide whether to say something. "D'you know who you're going with, then?" he asked, hoping to distract her.

Hermione brightened. "Yes, I do, it's--" Then she stopped, and blushed. "Well, you'll see. I don't want to say anything now, you'll make fun of me."

"Okay," Harry said, mystified. "Can you give me some advice, though? It's practically a month to the Ball, what am I supposed to do around Cho now?"

Ron came back to the common room fifteen minutes after curfew, face a shade of scarlet that clashed terribly with his hair and muttering vaguely about drowning himself in the lake. Hermione refused to speak to him for the rest of the night, anyway.

They were reconciled by breakfast the next morning, though, when Ron received a letter and turned to them, beaming. "Bill's coming first week after break!" he said, shoving the letter over to let them have a look. "He says his manager was happy to give him the time off once he found out what was going on. Gringotts' reputation is based off of their consulting jobs, you know, so if he can figure out a curse for Hogwarts that Dumbledore hasn't broken it'll make them look really good. Think Sirius knows?"

"He must," Hermione said, still slightly frosty. "I imagine he had to work out the timing with him and Dumbledore. It'll be nice to see him, won't it?"

"Yeah, I haven't talked to him much for ages, he was hired by the Egyptian branch right away after school," Ron said.

"What does he actually do for Gringotts?" Harry asked, spearing a bit of egg with his fork. "He's a Curse-Breaker, right?"

"Yeah, he tests their security," Ron said. "You know Gringotts is supposed to be about the safest place in the world to keep your stuff? Well, people are always trying to come up with new methods of trying to break through wards, so Gringotts has to keep developing new security measures, and they have a ton of people on staff to try to figure out their weaknesses. Sometimes they get loaned out, since everyone knows goblins don't really care about wizard politics and will do security for anyone without putting in back doors. He did a contract for the Turkish government once and he couldn't talk about basically anything."

Hermione promptly began pestering Ron for further information about this, which meant Harry had a chance to finish his breakfast.

On the way out of the Hall, he spotted Cho lingering at the Ravenclaw table and seized his chance. "Hey, Cho," he said, coming over quickly to sit down. Her friends shrieked and giggled. Harry tried very hard to pretend that they were merely particularly noisy spectators at a Quidditch match. "I was wondering. It's okay if you don't want to do anything before the Ball, but uh, are you free next weekend for the Hogsmeade visit...?"

Cho blushed, but she raised her eyes to his and managed to say without a trace of a giggle, "That would be great, Harry. I'm going to - do some stuff in the morning, but do you want to meet for lunch?"

"Sure. Is noon okay? Three Broomsticks?" This seemed to be going well so far, Harry thought nervously.

"Yeah, okay. Uh, do you have your dress robes for the ball?"

"Yes." Harry blinked at her, wondering if she thought he'd expected to show up in uniform.

"Just - I was wondering what they looked like? What color?"

"Oh! Um, they're green - like, bottle green, I guess? And they're mostly like normal robes, just, um, the fabric's different." Cho's friends seemed to find this very amusing. Harry's face burned.

"Okay, thanks!" Cho waved, and helpfully also rolled her eyes and mouthed 'sorry;' as her back was to her friends they didn't see.

Feeling uncertain how that had turned out but overall hopeful, Harry collected his bag and left the Hall to catch up with his friends. He spotted Cedric Diggory looking between him and Cho rather jealously and felt a sudden lurch of cheer, then worry. What if Cho wished Cedric had asked her out first? He was a school champion, after all, and a year older than Cho instead of younger.

"She didn't have to say yes to you asking her to Hogsmeade," Hermione said when he expressed this worry during their free period. "She knows it'll make everyone think you're really dating, not just going to the ball together, so if she wanted to see Cedric Diggory instead she could've just said she had plans the whole day."

"You think so?" Harry had been trying not to think of concepts like 'dating,' which gave him a rather confused collage of images of Aunt Petunia simpering over Dudley using rude words for girls at school, and talking about going for walks with Uncle Vernon. But he supposed if he had asked Cho out twice and she had said yes both times they probably were. "What if Hogsmeade's awful?" It would be terrible if he broke up with Cho a week and a half before the ball and had to find a new date. But it might be worse if they decided to go together after all and fumed the whole time.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Just talk to her about Quidditch," she said. "The other Ravenclaw fifth years never shut up about makeup and who's engaged to who, she doesn't have any friends to go on about Wonky Faints with--"

"Wronski Feints," Ron said, speaking for the first time.

"--So I imagine if you go on about Quidditch the whole time she'll be really happy. All her friends are like Marietta Edgecombe and spend two hours curling their eyelashes before class," Hermione said with a sniff. "Do you two know what you're doing for your divination essays this month yet?"

Chapter Text

Harry met Cho in the Three Broomsticks that Saturday and was greatly relieved to find her alone. Her only company was a pile of several shopping backs she was trying to hide behind her chair, with her cloak thrown over them. "Hey, Harry!" she said, waving, with a smile that aimed for friendly and instead made her look rather sick.

"Hi, Cho," Harry said, grinning back just as nauseously. He sat down, carrying his Butterbeer and food. "Uh, how are your classes?"

"Okay," Cho said, looking relieved that he had provided a subject of conversation. "Kind of terrifying because of O.W.L.s, but most of the teachers are giving up on getting us to work too much with the ball coming. Except Snape, of course he's scheduling a test last week."

"You, too?" Harry said. "He's been hinting that he's planning to poison us as a test on antidotes, and we've got him last thing Friday."

"Oh, no! You can't look forward to break at all," Cho said, laughing, which made Harry feel good, unusually, about Snape.

However, he was unable to come up with a good follow up remark, and they lapsed into awkward silence for several moments. Harry sipped at his Butterbeer awkwardly.

Quidditch, Hermione had said. Talk to her about Quidditch, and things you have in common. But Harry did not know much about Cho, except that she was a Seeker like him, and extremely pretty, and she must be better at talking to people normally because of all of the girls who followed her around normally...

Pretend it's Ron, he thought fiercely, pretend you've just met Ron for the first time, and said, "D'you have a Quidditch team, then?"

"Oh!" Cho looked very relieved. "Yes, the Tutshill Tornadoes."

Harry tried to call up his reading about Quidditch, but he had always spent much more time playing, having no opportunities to go to games outside of school. "Did they - set a record a while ago?"

"In the first half of the century," Cho said, laughing. "They won the league five times in a row - and none since, but it's the local team to where I grew up. And their listing's a lot better this year, I've got hopes once the new Keeper is trained--"

Talking about Quidditch got Harry through most of his sandwich. While initially he was worried about what he was doing with his hands and whether he should wipe them on his robes as he normally would, Cho quickly reassured him by using her chips to construct a diagram useful for explaining a maneuver the Tutshill Tornadoes Seeker had made in a game she watched over the summer. She was much more relaxed than before, or indeed than she usually seemed in school. Harry thought she was much prettier with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and a bit of sauce on her nose.

Unfortunately she then asked, "--What about you, Harry? What's your team?"

"Well, uh, I grew up with muggles until last summer," he said awkwardly. "So I didn't really get to watch games outside school. My godfather took me to the World Cup last summer, though."

"Oh, that must have been a great match to start with," Cho said, sighing. "I wanted to go so much, but Mum and her parents and I always visit their family in China in August and she wouldn't hear of moving it - she's great but she doesn't really get it about Quidditch. Says football's loads better because the rules make more sense, which is insane, but what can you do about parents?"

Harry tried to look as though this complaint had any relationship whatsoever to his life. "So uh, is your Mum a muggle, then?"

Cho looked surprised, then laughed and shook her head. "Nah, halfblood - her mother is, though, and Mum grew up in a muggle neighborhood. That's what makes it so crazy, she's seen Quidditch and she still thinks football's better! But what did you think of the match? I listened on the wireless of course but it's not the same as seeing it - you've seen Krum play--"

Harry spent much of the rest of lunch narrating the Quidditch World Cup to Cho in as much detail as he could remember, which turned out to be quite a lot. They eventually finished eating, and Cho said, "So, do you want to go for a walk, then?"

"Sure," Harry said eagerly, pulling his bag back on. Then he had to wait for several minutes while Cho collected her shopping bags.

"Sorry," Cho said, sighing, "It's just, last minute stuff for the ball - not all of it's mine, I mean, Marietta and Carya knew I was going to sit and wait for you for lunch so they dumped all their stuff on me, and now I'd have to spend all afternoon chasing them down to give it back."

"It's okay," Harry said, "Do you want me to carry something?"

Slightly more encumbered, therefore, they went out and wandered down High Street.

"So," Cho said, "If you were at the Cup - did you see after, the stuff that they reported..." She trailed off nervously, glancing around.

"You mean, the Mark?" Harry's voice had dropped unintentionally. Cho nodded, drawing closer. "Yeah," he said, softly. "I was in the woods. They sent us off, because of the riot, I mean, my godfather and Ron's parents. We were there together with his family and Hermione Granger. And then the Mark was cast nearby..." He thought about telling Cho that he had raced after it, but decided that that might sound merely very dumb.

"My mum said Draco Malfoy's wand was used to cast it?" Cho said.

Harry gave her a startled look. "How'd your Mum know that?"

"Well, she works in MLE - Magical Law Enforcement, you know," she said. "She's not really supposed to talk about it but she wanted me to know, because he's at school with us. She said to stay away from the Malfoys just in case. She didn't think Draco Malfoy had cast the Dark Mark at fourteen but she thought one of his parents might have used his wand so they wouldn't get caught doing it themselves."

"They weren't anywhere near as far as I saw," Harry said quietly. "They caught a house elf holding the wand, actually." He wished he could tell her about their suspicious about Barty Crouch, but he did not have to ask Sirius or Dumbledore to know what they would say: it was not a good idea to go spreading that kind of thing around where it might get back to Crouch and warn him.

"A house elf?" Cho said. "But one couldn't have possibly--"

"No," Harry muttered, shaking his head. "They said they thought she picked it up after the culprit dropped it. Crouch fired her anyway, though."

"Crouch's elf?" Cho asked, eyebrows raising speculatively. "Wow. That must be why Mum's been so mad, if they found it and couldn't actually pin anything back to him--"

"Your mum, er, doesn't like Crouch?" Harry asked.

Cho shook her head, shiny hair rippling around her face. "So - I guess you wouldn't have heard, people don't talk about the war much except with family, and you - er, wouldn't have the chance," she said, looking slightly apologetic. "Mum has a desk job now, but she used to be an Auror - Dark wizard catcher - back during the war. She had to retire from combat because Rodolphus Lestrange cursed both of her legs off, and you can go into the field with one fake leg but not usually two."

"Oh," Harry said, wide eyed, and tried to think what to say. Wow did not seem quite appropriate. "That's - really impressive of her. Is she alright now?"

"Yeah, she has prosthetics, but she usually uses a wheelchair outside the house," Cho said. "It's charmed to hover when we're in magical areas. Honestly, Dad says--" Her voice dropped, "That in a way it's lucky, because most of the Aurors from then are dead now, or in way worse shape. But she got disqualified from combat before she was killed, and Lestrange wasn't arrested on her testimony. Then she got married, and since she was pregnant with me and then taking care of me the last couple years of the war, no one--" She swallowed. "Retaliated against her, when You-Know-Who was gone."

"Oh," Harry said again, and "I'm glad. That she's okay, I mean. She doesn't like Crouch - is it because of his, um, policies?"

"Yeah," Cho said. "She didn't like that he used to encourage Aurors to kill instead of capture because suspects might get off on trial and go back into the field, and she was really mad at him for how he handled interrogations. She said you could never figure out if anyone was guilty or not, after Crouch was at them, because they'd tell you anything you told them to just to get out of interrogation.

"She said it wasn't at all surprising when Sirius Black turned out to be innocent and she bet loads of other people Crouch put away were, too... She mostly doesn't talk about it, though." Cho glanced at him nervously, "I mean, please don't - it's okay if you tell your godfather, I guess, but if it got around that she'd said this stuff she might lose her job, or worse, so..."

"I won't tell anyone else," Harry said quickly. "Don't worry."

"Thanks." Cho swallowed, then gave a rather forced smile. "It's loads better now that Amelia Bones is head of MLE - you know her niece Susan Bones, she's in your year, right? She's my cousin by marriage, so I know Amelia, and she's kind of scary sometimes, but she's really fair. So you just moved in with your godfather this summer? Is it weird, d'you miss your other guardians?"

Harry decided not to say much about the Dursleys, as it was so clear Cho had meant this to be a cheerful change of subject. "Nah, we didn't get on really well," he said, and, "But Sirius is great - he has this motorbike, he enchanted it to fly--"

"Really?" Cho said, looking delighted. "I really want to learn to drive one but my parents are horrified by the idea. My muggle cousin has one already though so I'm going to make him teach me whether they like it or not--"

The subject of motorbikes and how they compared to brooms brought them all the way back up to the school, with no further discussion of the war.

"How'd it go?" Ron demanded when Harry arrived back at the common room, before even Hermione could get a word in.

"Good," Harry said, and felt his ears burning. "Really good - we mostly talked about Quidditch, Hermione, like you said I should..." This seemed rather shallow as a summary of the afternoon, but the rest of it had been very personal. Fishing for something that was not a secret, he said, "And her mum used to be an Auror, during the last war, did you know--?"

"Really?" Ron looked startled. "She's still, uh, okay and everything, right?"

"Cho said she lost both of her legs to, uh, Rodolphus Lestrange but other than that she's fine," Harry said. "Uh, it wasn't just depressing stuff - I told her about Sirius's motorbike, too--"

Hermione and Harry wiled away some time after that trying to explain the concept of motorbikes to Ron. Eventually Dean Thomas overheard enough that he came over to join them, laughing, and tried to draw a picture for Ron and an equally bemused looking Seamus. The picture, Harry thought, didn't really do much - motorbikes were more about the idea than the looks - but Hermione enchanted the picture so it would zoom around, and the stormy look on Ron's face when Harry came in had faded quite a bit by the time the others got bored and wandered off.

"Right," Ron said, sighing, "Well, you've definitely got a date then, I'd better figure out who to ask..." He looked over the common room as though it were a moat full of poisonous snakes.

Then his gaze slid to Hermione and unaccountably brightened.

Oh, no, Harry thought, remembering what Hermione had said about her mysterious date.

"Hermione!" Ron said. "You're a girl!"

"Oh, am I?" Hermione said caustically. "Well spotted."

"Well - you could come with me!"

"No, I can't."

"C'mon, I'm sorry I said that about your Charms essay earlier--"

Harry supposed that argument had occurred while he was on his date with Cho.

"No, I mean," Hermione snapped, "I can't because I'm going with someone else."

"Come on," Ron said, "You don't have to lie - look, I won't ask to copy off you again until February, okay?"

Hermione sprang up, indignant. Ron watched her with a rather puzzled look.

"Just because you haven't spotted I'm a girl in four years doesn't mean no one else has," she snarled. "Harry, I'm glad you had a good time with Cho. Keep an eye on Ron if you want to spot what not to do. I'll see you at breakfast." And she picked up her bag, was somewhat delayed by the task of shoveling about six textbooks into it, and stormed up the stairs.

"Oh, come on," Ron muttered, watching her go once she was safely out of earshot. "What d'you think I should do to apologize? Ask her again at breakfast?"

"I don't think you should," Harry muttered. "She's telling the truth."

"You know who it is?" Ron looked startled.

He shook his head. "She told me she had a date, though, a while back," he muttered. "She wouldn't tell me who, said I'd make fun of her. I'd leave her alone now."

Ron glared moodily at the door to the girls' dorms. "Fine," he muttered, folding his arms. "Can't be anyone decent or she wouldn't be so embarrassed... Think she took pity on Neville, maybe?"

"Exploding Snap?" Harry said, feeling that this line of conversation would do them no good.

"Fine," Ron said; but a very short time later he put down a card too hard and set his eyebrows on fire. No sooner did he extinguish them than he, too, stormed up to bed.

Harry glumly pulled out his Potions notes.

Hermione seemed to get over this argument, which was fortunate, because Harry would have otherwise been concerned she might strangle Ron. He kept ambushing her at odd moments to ask who she was going to the Ball with, as if hoping she'd be so surprised she'd let the answer slip out. She insistently refused.

Unfortunately, Ron had a lot of opportunities to ask, because the teachers had mostly surrendered to the general atmosphere and allowed them to talk or play games in class. In Charms Wednesday, Ron alarmed Hermione saying, "Oh, I wanted to ask--"

"Not again," she muttered.

"Not you," Ron said, flushing slightly. "Harry, I know I've left it a bit late, but do you think Sirius's cousin would let me come for Christmas, too? I know I said I was going home, but since I'm staying it'll be depressing to be here without you two."

"I bet it'll be fine," Harry said. "We can go down after Herbology and ask him later, during our free period." This reminded him of something. Quietly, he said, "'Mione, can I ask you something? You said to Andromeda that your family didn't celebrate Christmas, but you always get us stuff."

Hermione glanced at them and said lowly, under the cover of a loud boom from the Exploding Snap game Dean and Seamus were playing at the next table, "I wondered if either of you would ask about that."

"I thought it might be a muggle thing," Ron muttered.

Harry shrugged. "You never talk about your family," he said. He had to admit that all of his Christmases before Hogwarts had been extremely unexciting, and had not wished to rub in anything similar that Hermione might have experienced.

Come to think of it, he always knew exactly what Mrs. Weasley sent Ron, but he could not recall Hermione producing any Christmas presents except those Harry and Ron gave her.

"Oh, it's nothing like that," she said softly. "I mean, I don't really - get along with them too well, it's true--" Her cheeks were pink. "But it's nothing to do with that. I just wasn't sure..." She trailed off.

"Speak English, would you?" Ron said.

"Oh, shut up, Ron." Hermione bit her lip and said very fast and quietly, "We don't celebrate Christmas at home because we're not Christian, but I've never been sure how safe it is to admit that at Hogwarts and honestly it's not like I mind giving you two Christmas presents or getting them."

"What do you mean, safe?" Harry muttered.

"The Patils aren't, and Parvati's in your dorm," Ron said, sounding slightly baffled. "I mean, people don't talk about religion much, yeah, it's rude, but come on, you let us think you celebrated Christmas for four years?"

"Well, it's different when your family is from a different country," Hermione snapped softly. "I found out this year that you don't let women have their own bank accounts-"

"The Patil family's been in Britain about a hundred years, my dad's friends with theirs, and that's not a law," Ron said, "It's just that the goblins don't like rearranging the vaults when people get married--"

Harry had a feeling they were going to go on like this all period if he didn't say anything. He cut them off quietly saying, "Hermione, do you want to go talk to Sirius about it with us?"

"I'm not sure," Hermione said, twisting her sleeve anxiously. "I mean, I think Sirius would be okay, but--" She bit her lip. "I'm Jewish, see, and you know, there was a Edict of Expulsion in 1290 throwing us out of England, and we weren't allowed back in at all until just before the Statute of Secrecy separated magical politics out. We weren't considered equal citizens until the 1800s and by then magical Britain had almost nothing to do with Parliament. I was afraid I'd be expelled if anyone found out, or - or worse."

"What, from the whole country?" Ron said. "Muggles are nuts."

"It's not a muggle thing, Ron," Hermione said. "Look, I helped you with that homework assignment for Sirius--"

"Oh, I remember," Ron said. "--You told me they were lies, you didn't tell me people went around saying that about you--"

"Well, not for ages, at least not in England, or not anyone who's... respectable," Hermione said.

Ron suddenly seemed to remember something. "When you told me all that stuff about the Nazis--"

"Yes, well, I've already covered why I didn't tell you he was talking about people like me," Hermione snapped. "I'd think that would make it all the more obvious, really--"

"Well, I've never heard of anything like that," Ron said. "Hang on, I think Aunt Muriel said something about a Jewish family who were purebloods ages back when she was arguing with Mum about when Ginny gets married."

"So we'll talk to Sirius?" Harry said. "--Thanks for telling us, Hermione."

"You're welcome." Hermione's smile looked rather watery. "Uh, fancy a game of chess?"

Hermione and Harry took it in turns for the rest of the period to allow Ron to beat them ferociously at chess, until the opposing side of Ron's chess board was ready to mutiny.

Sirius was teaching during their free period after Herbology, but they went up to the castle to his quarters to wait. Harry dug around to find the hot cocoa in his kitchen cupboards and they passed the hour discussing what Bill would do to break the curse on the DADA position and what the next Triwizard tasks were likely to be.

Chapter Text

"--Hello, you lot," Sirius said, coming in and dropping a stack of essays on his desk. "What do I owe the pleasure to?"

"Hermione wanted to ask you something she's been worrying about," Harry said.

"Go ahead." Sirius came over to sit down, pouring himself a mug of chocolate from the pitcher.

"I," Hermione started hesitantly. "So it's hard to find out a lot about - laws, and cultural norms and everything, when you're muggleborn and only see people at school here, you know that's why I came to ask you about house elves earlier this year. I did try to look up religion in the wizarding world but the library is so unhelpful, and Professor McGonagall just told me I needn't worry about other people's opinions when I tried." Sirius looked politely curious. "I - I wanted to know if there were... Well, my family's Jewish and I never knew whether it was safe to admit to it here, honestly."

"Oh, Hermione." Sirius rubbed his face. "No, I see why you wanted someone closer than a teacher to tell why you were asking. Yes, it's legal. The Goldsteins are Jewish, and so are the Sinistras and the Princes - I don't think you know any of them, but Anthony Goldstein's in your year, and you know Professor Sinistra."

Hermione nodded rapidly several times and said indistinctly, "I've been an idiot, haven't I?"

"No, no, it makes sense." He reached over the table to squeeze her shoulder. "I can see why - you hadn't had any idea about the laws about women until I talked to you."

"It's such a medieval culture," Hermione said. "And I - you know, we weren't legally equal until the 1800s and I know a lot of wizarding law hasn't changed since long before then, and we were only allowed back in the country in 1655. I mean there was the abolition of feudal service in 1660, that was right before the Statute too and it was ignored..."

"And you already know people go around murdering muggleborns," Sirius said quietly. "Honestly, most people don't broadcast it. Everyone knows about the pureblood families and they have their political reputation, but people don't really talk about religion here with strangers."

"Why is that?" Harry asked awkwardly, feeling like he was interrupting.

Sirius glanced up and smiled thinly. "Mostly because it's been a rather nastily divisive subject for most of European history and a lot of people have died fighting over it. I've seen that bizarre piece of revisionism about witch burnings in your History of Magic textbook. The truth is that fundamentalism in England during the Civil War and the Protestant Revolution was a major force in getting the Statute passed after a lot of us died. Magical churches have their own traditions, and of course a lot of our customs looked garishly papist or blasphemous. And in Catholic countries there was the Inquisition, of course."

"That didn't persecute for witchcraft," Hermione said indistinctly through the handkerchief she'd pulled out.

"In a few places it did, but on the whole it was heresy we were arrested for, not witchcraft," Sirius agreed. "And sometimes treason. Muggles don't care about it too much now, not here, but you've seen how little contact most of our world has with them, no one really believes it's over." He refilled Hermione's cocoa. "Anyway, you're fine in England. I wouldn't necessarily suggest you visit Spain or Russia, though."

Hermione smiled weakly. "Muggle Russia isn't safe for Jews, either. Thanks for telling me."

There was an awkward pause. Ron at last filled it by remembering he was going to ask Sirius about coming to Christmas. Sirius got up and said he would Floo call Andromeda, but he imagined she'd be fine with it.

It was just after Sirius was straightening from the fireplace, nodding at Ron, that someone knocked loudly on the portrait door.

"Funny," Sirius muttered, checking his clock. "I'm not expecting anyone--"

The knock came again. It was rather more of a pounding this time.

"Right - you lot mind waiting?" Sirius asked, gesturing to the kitchen. Harry, Ron and Hermione trooped in, shutting the door after them. They heard Sirius cross the room, and muffled voices in conversation, but the door seemed to be unusually insulating against sound, so they could not identify the other speaker.

"Wonder who it is?" Ron asked, leaning against the counter and examining a jar of biscuits with interest. "Harry, do you reckon Sirius would mind?"

"He said I could help myself to anything here," Harry said, "I doubt he'll care."

"Oh, it's probably just a student wanting to know about their grades or something," Hermione said, but the next moment they heard a familiar voice shout, at a volume louder than the door had been charmed to muffle, "And just WHO WAS IT that put them up to complaining in the FIRST place, BLACK?"

"Snape?" Ron mouthed.

"Oh no," Hermione muttered.

Harry went over and quietly, cautiously cracked the door open. Peering out showed this care had been unnecessary, as Snape and Sirius were paying no attention to the kitchen door whatsoever. The argument was now fully audible:

"Snape, if you haven't learned to teach in fifteen years, you can't blame me for it," Sirius was saying. He sprawled on the couch, arms and legs wide, not quite looking at Snape, as though he felt the other professor below his attention.

Snape was on his feet, bellowing. His face had gone pale with rage, and his hands were balled into fists inside his robe pockets. "You're just the same as your father and the rest of them," he snarled furiously. "Throwing your money and your name around - taking whatever you want and discarding it - I suppose you think it makes you better than everyone--"

"As another professor, not to mention the guardian of one of your students, I'd every right to complain," Sirius said flatly. "The governors looked into the situation and took the action they felt was appropriate, all I did was ask them to look--"

"A likely story," Snape snarled. "I notice that the only teacher you felt the need to ask them to look into happened to be the one you spent most of your school years hexing in the hallways--"

Sirius's head snapped up. "Far worse than you and your friends cursing anyone who couldn't fight back, I remember what you did to Mary Macdonald - course, it wasn't enough for you, was it? After she graduated you lot murdered her, too--"

"The courts may have declared you innocent of killing the Potters," Snape said coldly, voice dropping. He was the angriest Harry had ever seen him; angrier by far than last year when he had caught them coming into the castle with Sirius and Pettigrew. "But we both know that you proved yourself capable of murder at the age of fifteen--"

"As opposed to you, committing an actual murder at sixteen?" Sirius said. "I had a few words with some old friends recently, Snape, I know what you are. And I know what you have to do to be taken on as a Death Eater. Dumbledore might think you're too useful to consign to Azkaban, but we both know what you really deserve--"

"Oh, do you know?" Snape spat. "So was it your brother who told you, or your fiancee?"

Sirius closed his mouth with a snap and stood. "Get out of my quarters," he said.

Snape crossed his arms. "Regulus, then, I suppose? Trying to entice you, was he? Did he think it would appeal to you?"

"Bella told me, in fact," Sirius snarled furiously. "So you did take it before you left school? That would have been, what, Christmas fifth year, you turned sixteen? You were still friends with Lily then, so what did you tell her about why you wouldn't roll up your sleeves after break? Come to think of it, weren't you dating her over that Christmas?"

"Lily?" Hermione breathed behind Harry in horror. "Harry, isn't that--"

She stopped talking before they heard her, fortunately. Harry's head pounded. His mum - Snape had been friends with his mum at school - had been friends with her and nevertheless became a Death Eater--

"Don't you dare speak her name to me," Snape said coldly.

"Don't you like remembering that time you fooled around with a muggleborn?" Sirius sneered. "Don't you think she was good enough for you, you little ball of slime? Lily was worth twelve of you--"

"I seem to remember you discarding her yourself," Snape said coldly. "I suppose you were too much of a coward to marry a muggleborn in the end - had to get Potter to do it for you--"

"James loved Lily!" Sirius snarled.

"He certainly loved fighting with her," Snape said. "A rather sudden turn around on her part, wasn't it, seventh year? Tell me, did you teach him whatever he used to achieve it? A love potion, perhaps, or one of those charming curses your family used on their wives?"

Sirius's face was as white as paper. He reached out a hand to Snape. Harry could see it trembling. "How. Dare. You--"

"Dare I what?" Snape's whisper was a thousand times more dangerous than his shouting. "Tell the truth? I was Lily's friend, Black, I heard her plans. She wanted to get her Potions mastery, travel Europe after the war. She was very specific on the subject of getting married before twenty and having children right away - but I imagine when Potter was paying all her bills and had her alone in the house, he found a way to change her mind. Tell me, did you help? Did you enjoy it? You shared everything at school, so I suppose Potter didn't mind sharing his wife as well--"

Sirius went for his wand. Harry froze, wondering if they were about to kill each other and unable to quite think. Snape's words seemed to echo in his head, repeating on themselves - she was very specific on the subject of getting married before twenty... I imagine Potter found a way to change her mind...

Hermione behind him banged the door open suddenly, loudly. Sirius faltered in his draw; both men whipped around to face the kitchen.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Hermione squeaked, looking convincingly terrified. "I thought he'd gone, the door must have muffled you--"

"I see you have company already," Snape said coldly, looking them up and down furiously, and swept out.

Sirius sank into the couch, shaking hard now. "So," he said wearily, rubbing his hands over his face, "How much of that did you lot hear?"

The conversation that followed was distinctly unsatisfying, though the part of Harry that was rational pointed out that perhaps Sirius would give better answers when he was not so upset. He explained to Harry that yes, he and Lily had dated sixth year; yes, she and James had fought rather a lot in public before they started dating seventh year, after James had deflated his head a bit; yes, she and Snape had been friends as students and dated briefly fifth year, although Sirius didn't know very much about it.

Yes, he and James and Remus and - he reluctantly added - Peter had not infrequently gotten into fights with Snape and Snape's friends, not to mention the rest of the wannabe Death Eaters, as they had gone around ambushing random students and in particular muggleborns. Mary Macdonald had been another muggleborn Gryffindor, in fact Lily's best friend, who had been ambushed by Mulciber and Avery, two friends of Snape's; and she had later been killed by Death Eaters. As far as Sirius knew, James and Lily had begun dating after they partnered together in Transfiguration because Mary was sick for a few weeks at the start of term, and they figured out that they worked well together and did a rather spectacular N.E.W.T. level project.

Yes, it was true Harry had been an accident - they had been fighting a war, after all - but his parents had both wanted him and loved him very much, Lily had said as much to Sirius. He didn't know what Lily had said to Snape about her plans, but they hadn't been speaking since they were sixteen, so probably Snape didn't have the most up to date idea of what she had wanted later. There had been the Potter property and seat to think about and the necessity of a legitimate heir, something Sirius promised he would explain to Harry in detail later--

At this point Hermione announced that she was going to make tea, would Harry please show her where the things were in the kitchen and dragged him off.

"Look," she said hastily and quietly, "I understand why you're upset, those things Snape said are horrible, but I think we should let Sirius calm down and ask him about it later, okay? And think, Harry, Snape hates Sirius, he came in angry because of Sirius helping us complain about his teaching. He probably just said what he thought would upset him the most."

"If Sirius thought it was all nonsense he wouldn't have cared so much Snape said it," Harry muttered shakily, finding the tea leaves.

"Mate, listen to Hermione," Ron said behind him. "Snape's always saying horrible stuff, think about what he calls you and Neville in class. Everyone says your parents were great - look at what Hagrid says--"

It was true that people often told Harry that his parents were wonderful. But thinking back, Harry realized that they had been rather nonspecific about it. They said that his parents had been wonderful and heroic and good, that they had been excellent students, but he had had only scraps from Lupin and Sirius. He had always assumed this was because it was too painful for them to speak about their friends, who had died so horribly.

What if it wasn't that? What if they were reluctant to talk about his father because his father had in fact been a bad person, the kind of person who would bully a woman who hated him into marrying him? What if Snape was telling the truth? What if they had only thought the whole thing was over with, now that his parents were dead, and best forgotten so that their heroic sacrifice could be remembered instead?

He couldn't quite voice these thoughts, it was too painful. Instead he helped Hermione bring tea to Sirius and talked to him about his date with Cho and what the Second Task would be until he seemed calmer, and then he let his friends lead him off to the Gryffindor common room.

Unfortunately with classes nearly over for the term, he had few distractions except for Snape's own test on antidotes, during which he stormed around, silently glaring at everyone except Harry, who he treated as invisible once more. After this, the holidays began in earnest. Harry, who was having trouble getting into the spirit of things even with his godfather available for the very first time, found it difficult not to brood.

"Maybe you should talk to Sirius now?" Hermione said tentatively after another day of him staring moodily into the fire, ignoring Ron's attempts to draw him into a chess game. "He's had time to calm down, and Harry, I'm sure he's noticed you avoiding him--"

Harry felt a twinge of guilt, recalling that Sirius had not had a decent Christmas for at least thirteen years. "He's just going to tell me what he did before, that Snape was making it all up."

"Well, he probably was," Ron said. "Come off it, Harry, when do we take Snape's word for anything?"

"But he did know my Mum," Harry said. "Sirius said so. And - why would he make that stuff up, about her plans, if some of it wasn't true? He's said loads of awful things about my Dad before, he didn't have to bring her into it..."

"Well, they said that she was involved with Sirius as well, didn't they?" Hermione said. "Perhaps he thought that it would upset Sirius more."

Harry stared into the fire and said, knowing perfectly well they were about to argue, "I want to ask Snape about it."

After five or ten minutes of argument failed to persuade him otherwise, Hermione said finally. "Then we'll go ask Snape."

"We will?" Ron said.

"Wait, what?" Harry said.

"If you don't want to we don't have to, and frankly I'd rather we didn't," Hermione said. "But if you're going to spend weeks wondering what he meant I don't see any way of finding out but asking him - unless we can think of any of your mother's other friends to ask, and no one's ever mentioned them to you, have they?"

Harry had to think about that. "We could ask McGonagall if there was anyone else," he said. "Both my parents were in her house, she might know."

"Let's do that first," Ron said.

They were hindered briefly when McGonagall proved not to be in her office, it being the holidays, but they soon tracked her down discussing O.W.L. students with Professor Vector in the entry way, overlooking the Christmas trees.

"Uh, Professor?" Harry said, mouth feeling dry. He suddenly was not so sure this was a good idea; if asking Professor McGonagall about his mother was intimidating, how much worse would it be to approach Snape?

"Ah, Miss Granger, Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley," Professor McGonagall said. "--If this is about your grades, Miss Granger--"

"Harry had a question, actually, Professor," Hermione said.

"Indeed?" She seemed rather surprised to turn her attention to him instead.

"It's - about my mother, Professor," Harry said. "I know she was in Gryffindor, and you were Head then, too. Did she have any - friends? People I might write to ask about her? It's just - I know a few of my father's friends, Sirius and Professor - I mean, Remus Lupin, but no one else."

Professor McGonagall's eyes softened at this. "I'm afraid your mother's closest friend, Mary Macdonald, died before her," she said, gently. "She was also close to Marlene McKinnon, who unfortunately was killed the previous July as well... Of those who are still alive, well - your godfather was also friends with her for a time in school, starting the year before your father, actually. And..." She hesitated.

"I'd like to know about anyone, Professor," Harry said slightly desperately.

"Well," Professor McGonagall said reluctantly. "Professor Snape was a close friend of your mother for their first four and a half years of school or so. They knew each other before school, I understand, and they used to go about everywhere together when not in separate classes. I do not know whether he will be willing to discuss her with you, but you might ask."

Harry heard Hermione inhale sharply. He felt a sort of dull horror returning, the same sense that came whenever he thought of the argument. Here, now, was corroboration of at least one part of Snape's story.

"There's no one else, Professor?" Hermione said. "We'd always - er- had the impression that she was well liked."

"I'm afraid that Lily Evans had many admirers and fewer close friends," Professor McGonagall said. "She was - very brilliant, very talented, and that can.. intimidate as well as drawing people in. She was also - outspoken about being of muggle background, and unfortunately that could be... risky in those days." She did not look at Hermione as she said this. "I believe some were reluctant to spend time with her in case they were suspected of sharing her heritage. However, she was a particular favorite of Professor Flitwick's, and he may have more personal memories of her to share, if you should ask."

"I - I'll do that, then," Harry said, relieved to have at least one person to ask besides Snape. "Thank you very much, Professor."

"So," Ron said reluctantly when they had extricated themselves from the professors. "Snape, then?"

"Snape," Harry said, steeled himself, and turned towards the dungeons.

Chapter Text

They made their way down to Snape's office. There was a light under the door. Harry glanced at his friends and said, "I think it had better just be me."

Ron and Hermione cast looks at each other but did not argue.

Trying not to think about the conversation ahead, Harry knocked on Snape's office door. There was a moment of silence before Snape called, "Enter."

Harry pushed open the door and left Ron and Hermione behind.

Snape had evidently not expected him. His eyes went wide, showing a rim of white all around, then narrowed. They looked at each other.

Harry thought how strange it was to be in Snape's office voluntarily. While he had been here before, it had generally been for detention. Certainly he would never have approached Snape with a homework question.

"Potter," Snape said, evidently coming to the same conclusion. "Can we assume this is not about your holiday work?"

"No, sir," Harry said, feeling it was best to get to the point. "I wanted to ask you about something you said to Si- to Professor Black the other day."

Snape's lip curled. "Offended by the insult to your sainted father?"

"No, sir. I wanted to ask if you thought he had really abused my mother." Harry locked his gaze on Snape's desk and concentrated hard on staying calm. He did not want to shout at Snape. He wanted answers. If Snape had been making it up, the only thing he should feel was relief.

"What, and your godfather was not ready and willing to spring to your father's defense?" Snape said. "Or perhaps you didn't believe him, Potter? Did you think he lied?"

Harry took a deep breath. He would not shout at Snape. "Sir, I don't think Sirius would lie to me on purpose. But he - everyone, really - talks about my parents like they were--" He hesitated. "Well, er, sainted. Like they didn't have personalities. And I didn't think about it very much with Hagrid, because I was eleven, and I don't know how well he knew them. But Sirius was my dad's best friend - he should know what he was like. It makes me think there's something he's - that he doesn't want to think about."

The office was very quiet in the wake of this speech. Harry shifted his weight. He was already beginning to regret coming. What did he really think Snape was going to do in response to this declaration? Laugh at him and inform the Great Hall about it at breakfast?

"And you think I will give you answers?" Snape said icily.

"I think if you were friends with my mum, you might be able to. And you did sort of shout it at Sirius, sir. Unless you were making all that up." He hoped it was not obvious how much he hoped that was true.

Another long silence. Harry wondered when he would next have a Saturday free of detention when Snape exploded. Eventually Harry looked up. To his surprise, Snape almost flinched.

Then he said, "Sit down, Potter. I suppose this will take some time." His voice was still cool, but Harry thought there was less of a bite to it than usual.

He sat. Snape folded his hands and stared into them.

At length, he said, "Your mother and I had been friends for some years. However, we had a falling out at the time of our O.W.L.s and were not speaking thereafter, and Lily began seeing Potter seventh year. I do not know her side of events. That, I fear, is likely lost entirely, as her closest friend was killed in 1979.

"What I can tell you is this. Potter had made advances to her and been rejected repeatedly for several years. At one time or another he had attempted what I would call - rudimentary coercion--"

"Meaning what?" Harry interrupted without meaning to. He hastily tacked on, "Sir."

Snape glared, but said in a high voice evidently meant to represent James Potter, "'Evans, I'll stop hexing him if you go out with me - Evans, I'd be better motivated to help after a snog--' Childish, but perhaps indicative. Lily was known to say she would rather go out with the giant squid."

"Oh." Harry felt sick. "So - what happened?"

"I have just told you I do not know, Potter. What I know is that they worked together in Transfiguration on a project seventh year. One week Lily put him in the hospital wing after an argument in class and the next they were kissing in the halls. It is not hard to come up with four or five magical means Potter might have utilized to engineer such a change of mind. Or perhaps she had only started to receive rejections to her job applications for the end of school."

"Rejections?" Harry said, startled by a piece of information he had not been specifically dreading. "What do you mean? I thought - people say she was brilliant."

"And she was," Snape said unhesitatingly. "Muggleborn students always have a disadvantage in career seeking. In 1978 when we graduated, it was widely believed the Dark Lord would soon rule Britain openly. There were laws against hiring those with too much muggle heritage in many positions. Lily was... outspoken, too, and refused to hide her blood status. She should have been able to do anything. Instead, no employer would touch her. It is possible all Potter had over her was a roof over her head and regular meals, I suppose. She didn't get on with her family." He sneered at Harry.

"No kidding," Harry said involuntarily, thinking of Aunt Petunia. For the first time he wondered what sort of parents had managed to raise both his aunt and his mother. Then he snapped his mouth shut and looked at Snape, horrified he had said it out loud.

To his surprise, Snape snorted as though Harry had told a joke. "I am acquainted with your aunt, yes," he said. "I suppose she has told you all about Lily's selfishness and laziness."

Harry stared at Snape. He could not have been more surprised if Snape had sprung over the desk, hugged him and declared his intention to adopt Harry and open a charity for werewolves with Sirius. "You've met Aunt Petunia?" he said. He tried to imagine what his aunt would say to Snape and could only come up with an angry 'Wash your hair!'

"I grew up in the same town as your mother," Snape said reluctantly.

Harry seized on this. He knew where Snape's drawl came from. "In the Midlands?" he said eagerly. He had heard only a few words of his mother's voice. His mind called them up at once, searching for any hint of Snape's dialect in them. "Where?" Aunt Petunia had an extremely studied voice that matched Uncle Vernon exactly. Harry had long ago found a stack of elocution books in the attic to explain it.

Snape stared at him, seeming for the first time shocked. "It's a town called Cokeworth," he said after a long time. "The mill closed entirely years ago, and jobs had been dwindling for years. Lily's parents had modern plumbing put in the house after they got married, it was a wedding gift. You haven't heard this before?"

"Aunt Petunia never talks about her family," Harry said. "She said my parents died in a car crash." Aunt Marge's declaration that they had probably been drunk intruded painfully in his mind. "What were my grandparents' names?"

"Thomas and June Evans," Snape said, and got up. Harry jumped, prepared to be thrown out, but Snape went instead to a locked door in the back of his office. "Come," he said impatiently, "Don't dawdle."

Harry got up and followed Snape into what he realized with amazement were his living quarters.

The room they emerged in was a small, crowded sitting room with a hallway going off the opposite end. Bookshelves crowded around the walls, shortening the room at least a foot in every dimension. As Snape lit the chandelier and the hallway's wall sconces, Harry's first thought looking around was that this was what a grown up Hermione's flat might look like.

On the other hand, the trunk serving as a table had a rather disturbing pattern of agonized faces molded into the lid's rim, and animal skulls sat on top of the bookshelves in a circle around the room, grinning down at the squashy arm chairs and sofa.

"Sit," Snape said, not looking at him. Harry sat awkwardly while Snape went down the hall to another door. He looked at the shelves rather than the trunk and read a title at random: Of the Covenant: Theory and History of Blood Magic in Vows and Contracts.

So Snape's quarters were pretty much what Harry would have imagined if he'd ever tried.

Snape came back with a small chest. "Here," he said, sounding reluctant. There was a strange gentleness in his hands as he put the chest down on the trunk. "I will - make tea, and return to my grading in the kitchen. You may take your time." Then he straightened and went back down the hall.

Slowly, not knowing what to expect, Harry opened the chest to find on top - papers, mostly, stacks and stacks; a few books; a pile of muggle notebooks; a few smaller boxes and pouches; and a photo album. Coming to the last, Harry lifted it out at once and opened it.

His mother, a year or two younger than him, sprawled out by the lake. She had a quill in one hand and was gesturing irately at the photographer with it. She lifted her eyebrows the way he did when angry, he saw. Her hair fell in a smooth ripple to the ground under her, and she wore a beaten up muggle watch on one wrist.

Harry turned the page slowly, and again, and again. These were the pictures that he hadn't realized were missing from Hagrid's album: his mother alone, or with Snape, or as a child and teenager on holidays. There was a picture of her at King's Cross in bell bottoms and a T shirt, swatting a spotty, young Snape with her book and laughing that Harry stared at for a very long time. He wondered about the name on the shirt - was it a band? What music did they play? - and the book, which had a title he couldn't quite see, and more.

Snape came back into the living room and Harry jerked up wildly, afraid he had somehow misstepped, but Snape said only, "I brought you some tea."

"Professor--" Harry swallowed, looking down at Lily elbowing teenage Snape, "Is there any way to copy photographs?"

Snape hesitated, then said, "Take it. The chest."

"Really?" Harry wanted to clutch the photos to himself, but stopped, afraid that Snape would recant if he saw how much Harry wanted it.

"Yes. Do not keep it in the dorms or discuss who gave it to you." Looking as though he smelled something bad, Snape said, "Your godfather's quarters should be - safe enough."

"Safe?" Harry asked, then recalled something Sirius had told him. "You mean - because when Voldemort comes back--"

"Don't say the name--"

"Dumbledore says I should," Harry said, and went on hurriedly, "You'll have to go back to spying, and if anyone knew you were being - decent to me--"

"You are far too interested in things that are not your affair, Potter."

"I think Voldemort really sort of is, sir," Harry said. "What with him trying to kill me." Then, because Snape looked truly murderous now, "I heard what Sirius said about Dumbledore getting you cleared during - the other day, that's all. I guessed. I don't know anything about it I couldn't have heard from reading the news. Thank you for my mother's things, sir."

Appearing almost physically pained, Snape said, "You are welcome, Potter. Now go before your friends conclude I dissected you for potions ingredients."

Harry put the photo albums back into the chest rapidly, shut the lid and went.

Ron and Hermione were still outside the door. Harry saw that they had sat on the ground across the hallway waiting. Hermione had pulled out her holiday Charms essay and was editing it with great gusto, while Ron appeared to looking over chess problems. "How did it go?" Ron asked at once; Hermione dragged her attention up from her essay reluctantly.

"What's that you're carrying, Harry?" Hermione said.

"Not here - Sirius's quarters," Harry said. "It went - okay, I think." Dazedly he tried to put together everything he had learned about his mother in the past hour. She had been so outspoken about politics she hadn't been able to find a job, she had grown up in a mill town in the Midlands, she had taken loads of pictures with Snape...

They made it halfway across the castle in record time. Feeling somewhat guilty that he hadn't been here in nearly a week, despite being of class, Harry gave the password to the wolf nursing Romulus and Remus and went in through the door.

"Who - Harry!" Sirius said, looking up at once from a stack of papers with immense relief. Guilt twinged again as Sirius rushed over to hug him. "What's this?"

"It's - Snape gave it to me, it's mostly things of my mother's," Harry said awkwardly.

"He did?" Sirius said.

"He what?" Ron said.

"Yes, and perhaps Sirius had better check it for curses," Hermione said.

Harry stared at her. "I've already been in it," he said. "And normally you think we're stupid suspecting Snape."

"Yes, well. Just in case," Hermione said primly. "And I think if you've already been in it that makes it more important!"

"Well, yes," Sirius said. "It's up to you, if he gave it to you, though."

"Go ahead," Harry said after a mental war and put the chest down on the coffee table.

Sirius examined the chest from the outside, muttering and looking at it, then waved his wand over it and tapped it in several places. Finally, he opened it briefly and did the same over the contents. "--I think it's clear," he said at last. "If it's not he's outdone me, anyway, so unless you want to bring it to Dumbledore..."

"That's okay," Harry said hastily, and took out the photo album. "Do you want to look at it?" he said uncertainly to Sirius. "It's - pretty much all my mother..."

"Very much, Harry," Sirius said quietly. "Sit with me?"

Sirius paged through the album with Harry next to him and Ron and Hermione looking over their shoulders. Every so often he would pause and laugh softly, or make some comment: "I forgot she used to squint like that when she was furious," or, "She wore that shirt around the house until there was a gaping hole in the armpit when she was pregnant."

"So she really must have been friends with Snape," Hermione said perhaps halfway through the album. They were looking at one of the holiday photos, this one of a dilapidated set of chipped concrete stairs going up from a river bank. In this one Snape was sitting with a book open in his lap and Lily was sitting a few steps below him, leaning her head on his knee and laughing. Harry thought they were perhaps fourteen or fifteen - close to the age Snape had said they had their falling out at.

Both of them had on faded and battered muggle clothing, but something was indefinably more put together about Lily: her torn jeans and thin T shirt hung off her artistically, almost as though they were a fashion choice, while Snape's clothing merely seemed worn and mismatched. Perhaps it was just that even as a teenager with acne Lily was beautiful, while Snape was greasy and even more strangely proportioned than as an adult.

"Yeah, I remember that," Sirius said, turning the page to show Lily alone with a cat in her lap at Hogwarts. "Nobody understood why she talked to him, especially when we got older and his friends started joining the Death Eaters."

"Was that her cat?" Hermione asked.

"Didn't you say my parents had one?" Harry asked.

"Yes, but this wasn't the one you nearly killed with your toy broom. I can't remember this one's name, there was - I'm sorry, this is a horrible story, but somebody hung her our seventh year and wrote a message about - muggleborns, not using that word, getting what they asked for, on the wall next to it. They never got proof, but Avery went around with scratches all over his hands for the next week."

Hermione made a soft horrified gasp, and Harry flinched. He looked at the cat, rubbing her striped head into Lily's elbow and wrapping her tail around her wrist, and had the horrible thought that both subjects of the photograph had been murdered by Voldemort's forces.

Then he thought about what Sirius had said just a moment before. "Was Avery a friend of Snape's in school?"

"Yeah." Sirius smiled sadly. "He was."

Harry stared down into the chest, unable to think what to say.

"Did that kind of thing happen a lot in Hogwarts?" Hermione asked, tone oddly flat. "In the seventies?"

"Yes," Sirius said after a long moment. "It did. There were times when it was pretty much open warfare in the halls and on the grounds, between the students everyone knew were on Voldemort's side and the ones who opposed him, or whose families did... I was talking to Pomfrey about it the other day, she says you lot get yourself hexed as often in a few months as our generation used to in a week. And people attacked pets or destroyed belongings all the time. It was one reason a lot of students hid being muggleborn."

"But not my mum," Harry said, watching the cat turn her head to the viewer and blink steadily.

"No, not Lily," Sirius said. "Harry... What did Snape say about your father and Lily?"

Harry hesitated. He could feel Ron and Hermione's interest perking at this question, and he swallowed before he said, "He said he didn't know for sure, because he and my mother weren't speaking after fifth year and she didn't start dating my dad until seventh. But - he said that James had asked her out repeatedly and she kept turning him down for years, and they had a fight that put him in the hospital wing the week before they were dating all of a sudden.

"And that - he could think of how James could have used magic to do it, but it might have just been money, because my mum had a hard time getting a job - muggleborns in general did then - and didn't get on with her family very well, and James could pay her bills."

"That doesn't sound like a very good reason to claim he forced her into it to me," Hermione said.

Harry swallowed again and said, "He told me that James used to try to - bribe or or threaten her, I guess, stuff like saying he'd stop hexing people if she'd go out with him." He glanced at Sirius from the side as he said this.

"Well." Sirius sighed. "The main person I remember James saying that about was Snape, in fact. And it was only once. But yes, it happened."

"Oh," Harry said. He did not know how to ask the question he wanted to; he looked at Ron, who was also staring, pale-faced, and then at Hermione.

Hermione swallowed and said it for him: "Sirius, do you think Snape was right?"

Sirius looked down at the photo again, and he said, "I don't know."

An awful silence reigned.

"I never saw him mistreat Lily," Sirius said at last. "I would have said something - done something - if I had. It's true that they fought, maybe a lot, but we all did... We were teenagers trying to fight a war, I mean. That was how - how Peter got away with getting us to think Remus was the spy, getting Remus to think I was. And I don't know if Lily would have agreed to get married so soon, so young, if she hadn't gotten pregnant.

"But - that very fact, I think, would suggest James didn't use a love potion on her or anything. I know she thought about breaking up with him more than once, and nearly said no when he proposed, and people who are enchanted don't normally do those things. I believe Snape is being paranoid about that. But as for what the relationship was like, or what would have happened if they lived..." Sirius tried to smile at Harry, a terrible look in his eyes. "I don't know. We can't know what they would have done, would have decided, if they lived, or what Lily would have thought about it years later. She never got a chance to look back on it.

"And they were the only ones in the house most of the time under the Fidelius. Lily wrote to me fairly often, James once or twice. But... Everyone who knows what happened then is dead," Sirius finished tiredly. "Can you forgive me, Harry, for trying to gloss over that earlier? For wanting to remember my best friend, and another close friend of mine, well?"

"I think so," Harry said after a moment, and hugged Sirius, trying not to feel embarrassed about Ron and Hermione's presence.

He thought he knew what Sirius meant. The life Snape had painted as Lily's desire, the life she might have had, was not real any more than the life Harry might have had if he was raised by his parents. Voldemort had denied her any chance at it, the same way he had taken Harry's chance at a happy childhood.

Chapter Text

The days until Christmas itself were subdued, but Harry felt better now that he was speaking to Sirius again. He had not realized until now how much more he had always idolized James Potter, thought about him, missed him in comparison to his mother; but, he supposed, it was James Potter who people compared him to most often, and Lily Evans whose family he had unhappily lived with.

He got a start on his holiday homework, to Hermione's pleasure, and spent time in Sirius's quarters sorting through the chest Snape had given him. The vast majority of the contents were papers, so it would take a long time to go through them all. It was very strange, pouring over decades-old Charms notes on which his mother had scribbled things like 'Tell Sev - n.v. modify gesture?' and had conversations in text with Mary Macdonald about how fit various boys were.

The composition books and notebooks seemed to be journals. mostly taken during school holidays, and many contained notes on experiments with spellwork conducted with Snape, who apparently had had a witch for a mother and could do magic at home. Harry also found a meticulous tracking of earnings from a summer job in 1975 in relation to various desired purchases (he wondered whether she had bought a bike, or converted the money into galleons to buy her school robes new that year, in the end) and a furious diatribe about how Tuney kept sneaking into her room and going through her things - which perhaps explained the dire warning in the notebook in question that anyone who opened it without permission would be hexed into a frog.

Ron seemed to have given up on acquiring a date to the ball. He eventually said to Harry with forced cheer that it wasn't as though he could dance anyway, so it was probably just as well. Hermione meanwhile was vanishing for several hour stretches into the girls' dorm and had been seen talking to Lavender and Parvati, a state of affairs Ron and Harry were mutually baffled by. Normally Hermione only returned to the girls' dorm to sleep, precisely because of her roommates.

As Sirius had told them Andromeda and Ted were happy to have another guest, the three of them went to Sirius's quarters around two in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and stepped into the Floo with him. They found themselves in a neat sitting room, with a bright red rug, a large tree spangled in ornaments and tinsel, and numerous photographs of a child with alternately pink and purple hair, going from infancy to Hogwarts age to graduation.

"Hello, the house guests," a man called. He stood in the doorway to the kitchen, nearly filling it. "I'm Ted Tonks, Dromeda's husband." Ted came over to shake Sirius' hand. "She's gone to meet Dora at the office, she had some kind of work injury and she's not allowed to Apparate."

"I hope she's alright," Sirius said, looking slightly nervous. "I'm Sirius Black. This is my godson, Harry Potter, and his friends, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley."

"Otherwise fine, she said they were just worried about side effects. Nice to meet all of you," Ted Tonks said, beaming at them. "Nice to have a full house for Christmas for once." He was a fair haired, friendly looking man. "Let's get all of you settled - eggnog or just tea?"

They had just settled themselves into the living room when Andromeda arrived home with the girl in the photographs, now a young woman with short, vibrantly pink hair.

"Wotcher," she said, beaming at them and waving. "These are the kids?"

"Hi, Tonks," Sirius said, standing and setting aside his eggnog. Andromeda rolled her eyes. Harry tried to work out if this was meant to be some sort of insult before remembering it was their last name. "This is my godson, Harry, and these are his friends Ron and Hermione. You three, this is Nymphadora Tonks--"

The woman coughed.

"Who prefers to be known by her surname."

"Mum was high on the muggle painkillers when she named me and Dad was in too much shock over my hair to argue," Tonks said, coming over to shake Harry's hand and then Hermione and Ron's. To Harry's relief, her eyes did not flicker over his scar at all.

"Nymphadora is a perfectly good name," Andromeda said.

"It is not," Tonks said. "Sirius says so, and he was raised by the same nutters as you, so--"

"Oh, did Sirius say so," Andromeda said, eyes flashing as she rounded on her cousin.

Sirius leapt to his feet. "I'll just see if Ted and his mother need help in the kitchen," he said.

"Coward!" Andromeda said, laughing.

"Yeah, stay and defend me," Tonks said, sniggering.

"You're an Auror, and you were trained by Moody, you can defend yourself perfectly fine," Sirius said, and exited.

Tonks promptly stole both his chair and his barely-touched eggnog. "So how is it watching the Triwizard Tournament?" she said. "Almost enough to make me wish I was back in school - not that I'd have wanted to enter, I had enough trouble, honestly--"

"Yeah?" said Harry, who felt he generally had enough trouble for five people at once.

"Well, everyone knows about Mum," Tonks said, shrugging. "Being the runaway Black and all, and when I started in 85 pretty much half the student body were Death Eaters' kids - the ones who lived through the war to go to school. So what did you think of the Champions at the First Task?"

Talking about the dragons got them through the next bit of the evening comfortably, and very shortly Ted, Sirius and Ted's mother were calling them into the dining room for Christmas dinner. Ted's mother was a muggle woman in her early seventies with short, graying hair and a ready smile, who told them that Mrs. Tonks would be hopelessly confusing with Andromeda around and they should call her Kathy instead.

After dinner they all went into the living room, where Ted and Tonks dragged out board games. There was a mix of muggle board games Harry and Hermione had heard of and magical ones, with figurines that moved and offered advice and boards that twisted around or rose up to make three dimensional landscapes. Monopoly was thoroughly shouted down by Tonks, Kathy and Hermione, to Andromeda's evident disappointment and Ron's curiosity, but Scrabble proved to be a favorite of several people, particularly Hermione and Sirius.

Harry went up to bed at nearly midnight, leaving Hermione, Kathy and Andromeda in the middle of a game of Risk that Andromeda commented might still be going next week. Hermione had conquered most of Asia, but Andromeda was holding decidedly steady with Europe and the Middle East.

Harry and Ron had the official guest room, while Hermione was sharing Tonks' childhood bedroom once she went to sleep. Sirius was supposed to sleep on the couch - always supposing, he remarked, that the others could take their minds off world domination long enough to let him.

Around two in the morning, Harry woke with a start and his hand on his wand, and tried to work out what was wrong. He heard Ron snoring softly on the camp bed. It sounded as though the Risk players had at last gone to sleep themselves, with no voices downstairs and the hallway dark. He didn't hear footsteps...

Someone hammered on the door downstairs and Harry nearly jumped out of his skin.

He heard Sirius swear and lurched up. Without thinking Harry was on his feet, wand in hand. No lights were on, but he heard soft footsteps in the upstairs hall. When he opened his door silently he saw Andromeda in a house coat, wand also out, watching down the stairs. She turned her head to him and put a finger to her lips. Her gray eyes glimmered, catching light from outside.

The third bedroom door opened and Tonks came out, equally quiet until she knocked her elbow into the railing and swore loudly, then apologized.

"Well, that's the hostiles warned," Andromeda said dryly, head not turning from the stairs. "How on earth did you pass training, dear?"

"You don't have to get good marks in every subject," Tonks muttered dismally. "We're not under attack yet or you wouldn't just be standing here..."

The knock came again, furiously.

"We really should go check, someone might be hurt," Tonks said.

"Or it might be an Inferius," Andromeda said calmly. "Or just a person trying to lure us into opening the door."

"Sirius is down there, he's going to check if we don't go down," Harry said for the first time.

Andromeda looked at him and sighed. "You're likely right," she said. "Dora, Harry, stay upstairs until you know it's safe. Don't assume it's over just because you hear my voice calling all clear."

"I'm an Auror, Mum, I know," Tonks said. Harry thought she would argue staying upstairs, but she turned her head to look at him, then glanced at the half open door to the room where Hermione still slept, and stayed quietly between him and the stairs.

Andromeda went down almost silently, wand raised. They saw her round the bend in the stairs, and listened in silence. Harry heard inaudible whispers - her and Sirius - and then the sound of two sets of footsteps walking to the front door...

And halting, and flinging it open, and Andromeda's astonished voice calling, "Cissy?"

Harry tried to remember when he had heard that nickname before. But the next moment it was unnecessary. Narcissa Malfoy's voice carried clearly up the stairs: "I'm so sorry to just show up like this, Andy, but I wasn't sure where to go...." She sounded, Harry thought, like she had been crying.

"Bollocks," Andromeda said after a split second pause. "--Oh, I don't doubt that was - Lucius, was it?" A pause, then "But he didn't do that the one day Sirius is away from Hogwarts by coincidence. Who told you he would be here? Severus Snape?"

"Andromeda," Sirius said, speaking for the first time. He sounded somewhat appalled.

"You're not my head yet, I'm still disowned," Andromeda said, "And this is my house, paid for with my jewelry even if you were the one who sent it to me."

"Not going to let me in, then?" Narcissa didn't sound as angry as Harry might have expected, but exhausted.

"Don't be ridiculous," Andromeda said briskly. "But I'd like to be sure we understand each other first."

"It's snowing and she's wearing a nightdress," Sirius protested.

"So she can cast a warming charm. Well, Cissy? Going to explain your timing?"

"I suppose it is true that I said what I did with some thought to the date," Narcissa said venomously, anger entering further into her voice with every word, "But I'd think the fact that he'd do this alone--"

"Obviously I'll kill him in the morning," Andromeda said with what appeared to be exasperation. Harry choked; he saw Tonks clap a hand over her mouth in front of him. "But what did you say, exactly?"

"That won't be necessary," Narcissa. "Please, I just want my head to negotiate the divorce--"

"Of course I--"

"Quiet, Sirius. What was the argument about that you don't want him dead? Or are you just afraid of what your lord will say about you arranging him to be killed?"

This was said so naturally that it took Harry a horrified moment to realize that Andromeda was discussing Voldemort.

"He must be high ranked if Bella didn't kill him the second he put a hand on you," Andromeda went on, "So I can see why you would be a bit recalcitrant."

"He's not my lord--"

This protestation seemed a little late to Harry.

"Then why do you want Lucius alive?"

"Perhaps I merely don't want the rest of my family consigned to Azkaban as well--"

"Touching, but it would be more convincing if I didn't know for a fact that you suggested someone hurry up and have me killed before I gave birth and there was a child running around with a muddy father in the Black line."

Tonks made a low, sick sound at this. Hermione, who had joined them in the hall at some point while Harry was riveted on the conversation below, gasped softly.

Downstairs, someone else also gasped. To Harry's surprise it was Narcissa who said, "Bella spoke to you?"

"As a matter of fact she was a little concerned you might kill me without permission in 1973," Andromeda said dryly. "No - get up, Cissy. I don't want you to beg. I want to know what you and Lucius fought about."

"Very well," Narcissa snarled. "If you must know it was Rodolphus Lestrange--"

"Lestrange?" Sirius said.

Andromeda hooted. "Oh, you did, didn't you! I suppose the three of us always did share everything, and it's not as if Bella was using him--!"

"And how did that come up now with Malfoy?" Sirius said, cutting Andromeda off. His voice was very tired, with none of Andromeda's maliciousness or - Harry realized - hysteria.

"Lucius caught me writing a letter to him in prison," Narcissa said.

"Engineered that very nicely, didn't you? I'm surprised he believed it after all this time," Andromeda said.

"He thinks it would cause - suspicion - to contact Bella or the others in Azkaban, when we..."

"So conveniently fell cursed to do precisely as your own beliefs said you should," Andromeda said. "So he caught you writing to your lover, which he had expressly forbidden you to do, and he knocked you about and you want a divorce. Why now? Why the head with the furthest opinions from your own, Cissy? You could have asked Grandfather to let you move home any time before he died, he loved us. Or do you just want a crack at Harry Potter now?"

Harry's breath caught. He had been feeling indignant at Andromeda's reaction, but now he wondered if it was true - if he'd endangered them all by coming--

"They turned me down," Narcissa muttered after a long silence from downstairs.

"Did they know what he does to you?" Andromeda was shocked for the first time.

"It was Sirius and Reggie," Narcissa said tiredly. "They - fine, do you want me to say it? I will. I'd rather be in prison. I was a Death Eater like Bella and they thought it was our fault the family lost both male heirs, so Uncle Arcturus turned me out and said he'd kill me if I asked again."

There was a long silence then.

"Come inside," Andromeda said, finally. They heard the door shut, then she called, "And everyone eavesdropping on the stairs, get down here!"

At some point everyone had woken up, so Ted and Ron also joined them. They found Narcissa on the couch with Andromeda calmly casting healing spells on a horrible mass of cuts and bruising down the side of her face. Blood had washed down into her silvery blond hair, dying half of it a rusty brown as it dried.

"Honestly, did you leave this untreated just for the picture you made?" Andromeda said.

"Well. Perhaps I could have washed the blood out," Narcissa said. "But Lucius took my wand."

"He what?" Sirius spun towards them. Andromeda froze, off hand balling into a fist.

"I got it out of his dresser before I came," Narcissa said. "The idiot doesn't realize I found his hiding place years ago. But obviously I had to wait until he went to sleep and at that point I preferred to leave immediately." Then she spotted them and stopped.

For a moment Harry thought she would shout, or object. Instead she said, "You would be Nymphadora?"

"Tonks," Tonks said, chin jutting out. "Did you really try to have my mother killed so I wouldn't be born?"

"Don't, darling," Andromeda said with a sigh, to Harry's surprise. She had sounded livid earlier. Now she seemed perfectly serene, siphoning dried blood off her sister's face with her wand. "It's how we were brought up, there's little point - and I imagine she was rather angry I got her betrothed to Lucius Malfoy, she married him the year you were born. What did he hit you with, Cissy? This is cursed."

"That stupid cane," Narcissa said, and to Tonks, "Useless as it is, I am sorry. We were - were raised to solve our problems that way."

"How'd Mum get you engaged to him?" Tonks said, warily. "Was she supposed to marry him before she ran off?"

Rather awkwardly, Harry went to the kitchen where Ted was getting tea. Ron and Hermione trailed him. They could still hear every word in the living room.

"No, darling, I imagine no one else would have her after I left," Andromeda was saying.

Harry, taking instructions from Ted, began putting biscuits from several half-empty tins and bags on a tray while Ron started the kettle and Hermione hung awkwardly between them, opening bags for Harry with great gusto. The noise they were making would probably wake up the neighbors and did absolutely nothing to block out the conversation going on in the next room.

"Yes, more or less," Narcissa said. "And Bellatrix carrying on with the Dark Lord like that didn't exactly help. But Abraxas - you remember what a mercenary he was - he said, in twenty years everyone will forget all that and my grandchildren's mother will still be a Black. I almost wish he'd married me himself, thirty years older or not, at least he was sane."

"Is Lucius crazy, then?" Andromeda said lightly.

"Not exactly," Narcissa said, tone evasive.

"Cissy," Sirius said, breaking in. "I'm happy to help, don't get me wrong, but could you tell me exactly what you want me to do? Just demand Malfoy sign the divorce papers, or...?"

"Well, it's not just the legal marriage," Narcissa said. "You recall that nasty traditional marriage spellwork? I have to live under the paterfamilias's wards for six months and that will nullify it. I know Grimmauld Place is still closed up, but that place you bought will do it, if you'll allow me there."

"So that's what you came to check?" Sirius said. "The elves have been cleaning up Grimmauld Place, it should be livable by now."

"I was just going to ask then, but you threw me out."

"You called my guest less than human," Sirius said flatly. Turning his head slightly, Harry saw that Hermione had gone flushed. "I'm taking you back because I care about doing the right thing," Sirius went on. "So I think you should appreciate that, really."

"Not because I'm family?"

"Only caring about family is how the Blacks ended up here in the first place."

"Caring about family is really putting our parents' attitude a bit strongly," Andromeda said. "So we agree that Narcissa will stay at one of your houses until the six months are up, during which you will be teaching anyway. And you will - well, I will write the usual letter to Lucius Malfoy over abuse of your house's daughter and you'll sign it."

"I suppose," Sirius said.

Harry had no further biscuits to arrange and it sounded as though they were winding down, so he cautiously went to take them out into the living room.

"You'd better reinstate her, then," Andromeda was saying. "--There we are." She pulled the end of what looked like a tangled black thread off the wound into a sinister, faintly oozing ball in the air, then vanished it. "Curse is off, Cissy."

"Thank you," Narcissa said, and just as Harry set the tray on the low bookshelf in back of the sofa she got off it, quite composed, took two steps to Sirius and fell gracefully to her knees.

Sirius did not seem surprised. He only offered his right hand to her, palm down. Harry, frozen, watched her take it.

"I plead to return home," Narcissa said in a low, clear voice. "My husband has misused me."

Next to Harry at the couch's arm, Andromeda rolled her eyes. Tonks, sitting on the end of the steps, looked as startled as Harry felt.

"A daughter of the house is always a Black," Sirius said, and Narcissa lowered her head to kiss his hand.

Then she got to her feet entirely casually as though none of this was more interesting than picking up a house key might have been. "Did it work without the ring, you think?" she asked.

"It should," Andromeda said. "The ring is only jewelry, it's the house charter and the family magic he's using."

"It did," Sirius said, eyes slightly unfocused. "I can feel you in it... Merlin, that's bizarre." Then he looked up. "Sorry about the scene, Harry."

"Er, sorry to interrupt," Harry said. "Ted said that since everyone's awake we might as well get breakfast started now."

"We'll help," Sirius said, looking relieved for an excuse to escape. Tonks sprang off the steps and followed him into the kitchen with only a minor upset when she banged her hip off the door frame.

This left Harry alone with Andromeda and Narcissa.

"He cooks?" Narcissa said. She directed the words somewhere halfway between Harry and her sister, as though she wasn't sure who to ask.

"He cooks," Andromeda said, and shrugged. "He told me Lily Evans and Remus Lupin took it on themselves to make him learn when he left school."

"Did Sirius really mail you your jewelry?" Narcissa asked. "When?"

"1974, a few months before Dora was born," Andy said.

"What?" Sirius asked, sticking his head back through the kitchen door. "I mean, I would have if I knew where you kept it, but I didn't have a clue. Your room was stripped years before then anyway."

Andromeda and Narcissa's eyes met.

"Bella," Andromeda said, grimly.

"She's been able to forge his signature since he learned to write," Narcissa said, and put a hand to her face.

"I suppose if she signed it with her own I'd never have opened the package," Andromeda said.

By the time breakfast was made for the nine people now in the house it was closer to morning than midnight, although only slightly. Narcissa, now healed, proved willing to get up and help rearrange the furniture to make it possible for them to all eat at the same table, though there was an awkward moment when Andromeda pointedly stopped the proceedings to introduce Narcissa to her husband.

"I remember," Ted said, and smiled willingly.

Narcissa's face was cool for a moment. Then slowly, like she was forcing herself, she put out a hand. "Narcissa Mal-Black," she corrected herself, and shook his hand. She had rallied by now and went on, "I'm so sorry for the trouble, and for waking the house."

"Well, Dora used to wake us up about this early on Christmas, no harm done," Ted said.

"Call-me-Tonks," Tonks said, groaning, to general laughter.

At the end of breakfast they were all reasonably awake, and presents were distributed quickly from under the tree, their holiday post having been sent on from Hogwarts. Harry received a book called Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland from Hermione and a bag of Dungbombs from Ron, as well as a bag of candy from Hagrid, the usual Weasley Christmas jumper in green, and several mince pies from Mrs. Weasley.

These were all the people he was used to receiving gifts from. In addition to them, he received a penknife with attachments to open any lock from Sirius and a set of Quidditch gloves from Andromeda. This last one made him very grateful that Hermione had shepherded him and Ron into ordering a box of imported chocolates together for the Tonkses as a present. She had said that she wasn't entirely sure about Christmas etiquette as a guest but when near-strangers allowed you to stay in their house you usually brought them something.

He realized that he had never seen Hermione opening Christmas presents before, though she usually came down and thanked him and Ron for what they had given her. She very neatly slit open the wrapping paper on the book he had given her - A History of Domesticated Magical Species in Europe, which she had bemoaned the Hogwarts library lacking a month ago when he ordered gifts - and a box of chocolate frogs from Ron and sat with them in her lap, looking down at them every few minutes.

He glanced around to where Tonks was enthusiastically arguing with Ron about the Cannons - triggered by the hat Harry had bought him - and muttered to Hermione, "You okay?" Narcissa, of course, had nothing since no one else had expected her to be here at all, but Hermione had the fewest gifts to open of anyone else. He supposed it would not feel quite the same to be shorted on Christmas when you didn't celebrate it at all - the Dursleys had always made an elaborate point of giving Dudley things in front of Harry - but still, it had to be lonely to be surrounded by people who did.

"Yes," Hermione said quietly. "It's just always strange because I never had friends who got me things before Hogwarts. I knew I should send you something first year, because you said you weren't expecting anything from the Dursleys and it was so obvious that it upset you, but I didn't think either of you would send anything back."

"Honestly, Mione, we'd have failed all our classes without you," Harry said, and hugged her quickly, one armed. "You two were my first friends too, you know."

Hermione's smile was rather watery.

Chapter Text

Around noon, those who were returning to Hogwarts prepared to Floo back, and Andromeda volunteered to get Narcissa settled in at Grimmauld Place. (Harry overheard Sirius ask her to warn Dobby and find something for him to do away from Narcissa).

Harry, Ron and Hermione found a large and enthusiastic snowball fight going on outside, which they promptly joined. Harry was feeling rather tired by an hour in, having been awake since two in the morning. He excused himself to go back to the castle after the conclusion of a particularly spectacular ambush by Fred and George on Ginny and Ron. Hermione and Ron seemed to agree, and followed him up to the tower.

Once dried off, Harry didn't want to go back to bed. He wished he had the box of his mother's things, but it was safely in Sirius's quarters, which were a long walk away. He settled into a chair by the fire and flipped through Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland, watching the players in various colors zooming around or waving at the camera. After talking to Cho it seemed like an oversight that he had never paid much attention to Quidditch outside Hogwarts, and Ron's absent commentary over his shoulder only contributed to this impression: "There's Selene Carmichael, she got her start as Gryffindor's Seeker, too," and "Mortlake was kicked out of the league after he ran his broom into the referee's wife in the stands--"

Hermione, too, had a book, but for once she wasn't paying much attention to it. She kept looking nervously across the common room or fidgeting with her hair, and at three o'clock she stood up. "I'd better get ready for the ball, then," she said.

"What, you need five hours?" Ron said to her retreating back. "Who are you--"

Harry dug an elbow into his side, making him wince. "Leave it," he muttered, and when Ron opened his mouth mutinously, "Tell me about this one," he said, jabbing randomly at the page.

"What? Oh, that's Rue Pritchard," Ron said distractedly. "She started out playing for France, but her family had left Britain during, you know, the war, and they came back in '87. She's got the record for finishing a game with the most broken bones."

They saw no sign of Hermione that afternoon, although other students - and Harry particularly noticed the girls - trooped up and down the stairs, giggling, talking, and sometimes, alarmingly, crying. At seven, Harry got up, feeling he had better go get dressed in case something somehow went horribly wrong.

Seamus, Dean, and Neville joined him and Ron soon. They all pulled on their dress robes, and Harry nervously tried to flatten his hair, while Ron desperately resorted to using a Severing Charm on the lace on his robes.

"Guess there's one bright side to not having a date," he said, studying his reflection. The robes did look better, but the edges were rather frayed. "No need to worry she'd see me and head the other way."

Seamus and Harry laughed.

They made it down into the entry hall with no sign of Hermione, people collecting dates as they went. Seamus and Dean weren't expecting anyone either, which brightened Ron slightly. Neville and Ginny met in the common room. Her pale purple dress robes seemed much better than Ron's, although it was possible to see a place where the side of her skirt had been fixed.

Harry found Cho near the still-closed doors to the Great Hall. She was wearing a deep blue, shimmering gown, with silver combs in her hair and silver bracelets. He realized, having come to a halt, that he was staring, and almost wrenched his eyes away - but, he thought wildly, they were on a date, weren't they? He was allowed. Cho had been much less intimidating in school robes with a bit of sauce on her nose.

With determination he closed his mouth and stepped forward. "You look, er, great," he said.

"Thanks!" She blushed. "So do you."

Harry thought this was unlikely, but arguing seemed like a bad plan.

"Do you see the champions anywhere?" Cho said.

"I don't see anyone from Durmstrang," Harry said, scanning the hall. "Parvati's date's from Beauxbatons, though, they're here. There's their champion by the stairs."

Fleur Delacour was standing with the Ravenclaw Quidditch captain, Roger Davies. He looked like he was caught in a dream he was afraid to wake up from.

"Oh, no." Cho giggled. "He's been like that ever since she asked him. It's a good thing we're not playing this year, if they didn't break up over Christmas we'd get flattened."

Harry laughed, hoping he hadn't looked as stupid staring at Cho. "I'm just glad Oliver's not here to see Quidditch canceled. He might have drowned himself in the lake."

"Or tried to duel Bagman and Crouch - look, Durmstrang's coming in!"

The front doors opened to admit the Durmstrang students. Krum was at the front of the procession, with a pretty girl in lighter blue than Cho who Harry didn't recognize.

The Great Hall was opened then, and Harry saw that the usual house tables had vanished. There were instead a hundred small, round tables with seats for a dozen, lit up with flickering lanterns. Garlands crossed the starry ceiling, and the walls had gone white with enchanted frost.

"Where do you want to sit?" Cho asked, starting into the hall. She grabbed his hand as she went, and Harry suddenly found the question of what to do with it very difficult.

"I don't mind--" He still didn't see Hermione anywhere, but Ron was lurking miserably a few paces off. "Er, do you mind if Ron comes? He didn't get a date," he added, lowering his voice and hoping very much that Cho would not laugh.

"No, that's fine, then I can ask Carya, she's alone too," she said, twisting and waving through the crowd with her free hand. Her shoulder bumped against Harry's chest, and he felt his ears grow hot. She added slightly defensively, "I know about her father but she can't help it, and she's really nice, she helped me practice so I could get on the team my second year--"

Harry did not get a chance to ask what Cho knew about Carya's father before he, Cho and Ron were joined by a girl with curly black hair who had, conspicuously, what Harry thought was a wedding ring. Harry groped for something to say to this and was fortunately preempted.

"Carya Greengrass - I mean Carrow," she said, offering a hand. "I think my little sister is in your year in Slytherin."

"You mean Daphne?" he said, suddenly very glad that Daphne Greengrass had never been personally horrible to them or Hermione. "Yeah, she is. I mean, I'm Harry Potter."

"Yes, I know," Carya said, and mercifully went to offer a hand to Ron.

"Ron Weasley," Ron said. "Nice to meet you." He seemed visibly cheered that he was not the only one without a date at their table; in fact a significant portion of the student body seemed to have come alone.

They were joined by a friend of Cho's named Marietta Edgecombe and her date, a tall boy in Hufflepuff; Parvati and her Beauxbatons date, plus her sister Padma with Justin Finch-Fletchley; and Neville and Ginny, who slid quickly into the last two seats with an air of relief.

Then the Champions were processing through the doors, so dinner must be nearly there. Krum was surprisingly awkward looking in front of the watching student body, Harry thought. His date turned her head to say something to him and--

It was Hermione.

Harry gaped. "Look," he muttered, nudging Ron on his other side from Cho. Hermione was wearing light, periwinkle robes, and she had tamed her bushy hair into an elegant knot at the back of her head. She was also carrying herself upright for once, instead of throwing her body around stiffly as ballast against a few dozen books in her bag.

Krum looked totally immersed in her, but many other students were glaring, or gaping insultingly. Harry hastily closed his mouth, realized that she probably didn't enjoy the staring any more than he did, and turned back to Cho.

Cho was watching him; when he turned to her she grinned, lantern light sparkling off her hair. "She's really pretty when she tries, isn't she? I had no idea."

"I guess, yeah," Harry said, and Cho grinned wider. He saw the Champions filing to a round table at the head of the hall alongside the judges - Dumbledore, Madam Maxime, the apparently recovered Karkaroff, Bagman, and again accompanied by Percy a livid looking Crouch who would not look in Karkaroff's direction. Percy immediately accosted Hermione with an expression that Harry suspected, though he could not clearly see from across the hall, was extremely smug.

Dumbledore demonstrated the correct method of ordering food from the kitchens, and Harry scanned the menu quickly, trying to come up with a conversation topic. Talking to Cho had seemed very natural in Hogsmeade compared to this, but he had felt just as nervous at first. On the other hand, was it a bit obvious to start every conversation with Quidditch? He couldn't talk to her about the war, not with so many other people there, and Sirius' motorbike had been exhausted last conversation. He wondered what it was that Cho knew about Carya's father again...

"You're a fantastic flier, you know," Carya said, before he could fumble his thoughts into an attempt at conversation; he remembered distantly that she had been Ravenclaw Seeker before Cho. "I always wanted to know, did someone teach you?"

"Oliver, I guess," Harry said. "But I didn't fly growing up--"

"Oh, you're joking," Cho said, sighing wistfully.

"He's not," Ron said, "Unfair, isn't it?"

"Did your parents mind you playing?" Ginny asked, looking between Cho and Carya, who both shook their heads.

"My mum played, too, she was the highest scoring Chaser in a century in her house until Angelina Johnson broke her record a few years ago," Carya said. "She was really happy when I got on the team, she sent me her old gloves - no house colors."

"Mine says at least it's safer than her job," Cho said, shrugging.

"I didn't know you wanted to play, Ginny." Ron looked mildly guilty.

"It's okay, you haven't stopped me. I've been breaking into the broom shed and taking your brooms out in turns since I was six." Ginny smiled beatifically.

The table howled.

"I didn't know your mother was in Gryffindor?" Cho said to Carya when the laughter died.

"Yeah, the Selwyns sort of go every which way," Carya said. "Most Greengrasses are Slytherin, of course, like my little sisters, but I wasn't too much of a surprise. And Myrina was in Gryffindor like Mum."

Ron opened his mouth and closed it.

"And my dad?" Carya asked, interpreting his glance and raising her eyebrows. "Slytherin, yeah. But he was arrested with Hyperion Mulciber, and he was in Gryffindor. So it really doesn't guarantee politics, does it?"

"So was your mum?" Ron asked.

"Was my mum what? A Death Eater?" Carya scoffed.

"Well, if she married a supporter of--"

"Oh look," Parvati said loudly, cutting across the conversation; she and her sister hadn't been paying attention to the Quidditch talk earlier. "Crouch doesn't look happy with Dumbledore, does he?"

The argument cut off as they all craned to look around at the high table, where Crouch was glaring angrily down at his plate, stabbing at his dinner like he wanted to kill it. Dumbledore was smiling benignly at him. Harry could picture his eyes twinkling from far away.

"Look," Carya said to Ron, although Harry thought she glanced at both him and Neville first. "I'm not my mother or my father, whatever they believed, or did. I don't even remember my father, I was four when he was sent to Azkaban."

"Of course you're not," Neville said quietly, staring at the table. Harry could not help but wonder whether Carya's father had known the Death Eaters who tortured his parents.

There was an awkward silence. Harry looked back up at the head table, and frowned. "Is Crouch's arm hurt?"

Heads swiveled again. "It looks like it," Carya said. "But why he wouldn't just heal it - it has to be cursed--"

"Or he got bit by a thestral or something at the entry way," Ginny said, looking cheerful at this prospect.

"Nah, not Crouch," Cho said. "I bet he's been dueling. Mum says he's never one to turn down a challenge even if it is illegal."

"I wonder if it was with Karkaroff?" Neville said, looking around, which set off another flurry of whispers. Harry had a feeling he had another explanation, but all he could do was exchange significant glances with Ron.

The conversation settled more amicably on classes, Quidditch and the Tournament for the rest of dinner, until Dumbledore was gesturing for everyone to stand up and banishing the tables to the walls. Harry watched the Champions and their dates filing out onto the floor and was profoundly grateful not to be the center of attention for once. It had not escaped his notice that Cho would expect him to dance, but hopefully he would have a chance to muddle through without the entire school staring at him...

Hermione did not appear to share his reservations; she was taking Krum's hands quite readily. Harry suspected that she had practiced this the same way she practiced everything else from the smooth way they rotated on the floor. In fact they looked a good deal more graceful than the other couples; Roger Davies still seemed dazed - "How does he ever catch the Quaffle," Carya muttered, apparently eyeing the same thing - and Cedric and Katie Bell were swaying slightly, barely moving from their spot.

"They really should have made the Champions take dancing lessons if they were going to make them demonstrate," Padma remarked from across the table, which set the table off laughing again.

Soon other students were joining the champions. Harry glanced at Cho nervously, and saw her grinning equally anxiously back.

"I don't know how to dance," he said. "But--"

"I suppose we'll figure it out," Cho said, laughing - he was starting to realize that she giggled when she was nervous, not only when she thought something was funny - and got up.

Dancing was certainly not Harry's favorite activity, but it wasn't so bad to grip Cho's hands and attempt to move vaguely in time. He concentrated very hard on not stepping on her feet. He could see that nearby, Neville was not nearly so successful with Ginny, who kept flinching.

Cho seemed to gain confidence after about half a song. She took a step closer and wrapped an arm around him, which allowed her to steer them more easily, although it also forestalled any attempt Harry might have made at conversation. It was very hard to think with Cho pressed into him.

They made it through several songs together this way before Cho went to sit back down again. "Er, I'll just get us more drinks, shall I," Harry said awkwardly; but as he was just about to go Hermione intercepted him.

"Harry, Cho - you don't mind if we sit with you, do you? I'm sorry, you don't see Percy anywhere, do you--" She looked over her shoulder rapidly.

Cho rapidly stepped to stand between Hermione and the dance floor, dragging Harry over; as Cho was rather taller than Hermione, this screened her very well. "That's Mr. Crouch's assistant, right? He's talking to Madam Maxime over by the stage," she said after a moment, scanning the crowd. "What did he do?"

"Do? Oh, nothing - just wouldn't stop talking, he thinks I'm interested in what he has to say..." Hermione glanced around Cho's shoulder to verify Percy's location, then took a chair out and collapsed at the table. "Thank you."

"Having a good time at the head table, Hermione?" Harry said.

"With Viktor, yes." Hermione made a face at Harry. "He's just gone to get us some more drinks, I said I was going to find you and get away from Percy and Karkaroff--"

"Krum's headmaster?" Cho said, surprised.

"Yes, Viktor's really nice, he says he likes it much better here - and I don't think Karkaroff is happy he asked me." Hermione made a face. "Since I'm muggleborn, I mean."

"You are?" Cho asked, sounding surprised, then rapidly added, "Not that it matters - I mean, my grandmother's a muggle, I don't mind."

"Of course you don't," Hermione said, in a tone more like an order. "Anyway, I'm just glad we don't have to sit in the same arrangement all night. Harry, did you see Crouch is--"

"Favoring his arm?" Harry said eagerly.

"Did he duel Karkaroff?" Cho asked.

Hermione blinked twice. "Not that I know of - I tried to ask, made it sound like I was worried, and he said some nonsense about a biting cabinet in the department."

"I'll see if I can get it out of him," Cho announced, grinning wickedly. "There he is - you'll be okay?" When Hermione nodded, to Harry's astonishment she whirled off and was very shortly dancing with Crouch.

"Did she really just ask him?" Hermione said.

"She said her mum knows him from work," Harry said, sitting down at last and eyeing Percy for any risk of approach. "I guess he doesn't know she doesn't like him much. Hermione, did you know Daphne Greengrass's father was arrested for being a Death Eater?"

Hermione blinked a few times. "Greengrass - you mean Pandion Greengrass? I think I read about it at some point, he died of pneumonia in Azkaban... Why?"

"Cho asked Carya - her older sister - to sit with us," Harry said. Now that he had asked, he felt rather stupid; he knew that Lucius Malfoy couldn't be the only Death Eater with a child at Hogwarts, and that a lot of people had been arrested at the end of the last war.

"You don't think Cho--" Hermione looked troubled.

"No, I think she meant it - Carya said she wasn't her parents, when Ron brought up her father. And Cho said she wanted to ask her because she was alone at the Ball. She helped her practice to get on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team." He hesitated. "Hermione - Carya had a wedding ring..."

"Oh. Yes." Hermione made a face. "I've been paying more attention since arranged marriages came up over the summer, and a few of the older girls have them, so I asked Professor McGonagall. She said that it's more common since the war, especially in pureblood families, because a lot of people died, especially men. So there are a lot of teenagers who don't have parents getting married hastily and a lot of adults whose spouses are dead, and families with girls feel more like they have to accept the first offer they get. Sometimes they're pulled from school when they get married, too, if Carya's married she's probably lucky her husband's family let her finish."

"That's horrible," Harry said.

"It really is, isn't it?" Hermione shook her head. "Honestly, Harry, sometimes I feel like we're surrounded by - by aliens, or people from a time portal or something. I'm really glad we're friends or I'd go mad. I said something about it to Ron, and he just said, 'Well, I wouldn't mind not having to take N.E.W.T.s if it were me'!"

"Well," Harry said awkwardly, "It's Ron." And, because it was true, "He means well, he just..."

"Doesn't think about what he says, I know." Hermione grimaced. "It just makes me so angry--" She looked up. "Viktor!"

"Hello, Hermione," Krum said, sitting down. "And you are Harry Potter."

"Nice to meet you," Harry said, offering a hand, which seemed the thing to do because Krum grinned cheerfully at him and set down the drinks to shake it. "I saw you in the World Cup last summer, it was amazing to watch."

"Yes, thank you. I only wish we had won. But if I did not catch snitch then, we would lose by more." Krum sighed, then smiled at Hermione. "But there is no need to talk of losing now! Hermione tells me you are very good friend of hers."

"Since we were in first year, yeah," Harry said. "She says you like it at Hogwarts?"

Krum was telling them both about an incident in which a Durmstrang fireplace, lit for magical purposes, had turned out to contain a ghoul. He was telling them about how it erupted into the classroom covered in flames and furious to be disturbed, when Ron arrived.

He had a face like a thundercloud, but he threw himself into a chair and said, "Hullo, Hermione, Harry," and nodded jerkily in the direction of Krum.

Krum looked rather nonplussed, but went on, "So Professor Lebedeva - she is teaching ritual magic - took up her wand and said--"

"Harry," Ron said, rudely interrupting and ignoring Hermione, "Do you want to go for a walk? Percy keeps bothering me--"

"Uh, I think I'd better wait here," Harry said, "Cho's going to come back--"

"Fine," Ron snapped, and stormed off again.

Harry and Hermione exchanged alarmed looks.

Krum had just about finished the story when Cho dropped into a chair, took the full cup Harry had been saving for her, and beamed at them. She was very pretty with the light glinting off her hair and smile; it reminded him of how she looked when she blocked him in the middle of a Quidditch game.

"What did he say?" Harry said eagerly.

"Oh, he said he got into a duel at Lionel Shacklebolt's wedding last week and thanked me for asking," she said. "It could be true, and it might even explain him lying about the biting cabinet. Hilde Shacklebolt will duel everyone. But the bride, Matilda Weasley, is my second cousin by marriage, and she said she wasn't going to invite Crouch last summer. I'm going to write my parents and find out."

"Oh, that's really interesting," Hermione breathed.

"Who is this?" Krum asked, looking between them in confusion.

"Oh, Crouch!" Hermione said quickly. "You saw he was hurt at dinner--"

"You think he is hiding something?" Krum asked.

"He might not be," Cho said, then seemed to realize who she was talking to and blushed furiously. "Oh, um--"

"This is Cho Chang, my, um, girlfriend?" Harry said, looking at Cho, who nodded and grinned.

"Pleasure." Krum shook her hand. "What would Mr. Crouch be hiding?"

"My godfather says he had a reputation for - bending the rules, in Magical Law Enforcement, during the war," Harry said, remembering that Cho was afraid her mother's career might be damaged if it got around that she did not like Crouch.

"And he was horrible to his house elf after the cup," Hermione said, and rapidly distracted both Krum and Cho, along with the other remaining table members, with an account of Winky's sacking. Harry felt somewhat nervous over this, but Cho seemed happy to hear anything bad about Crouch, and so did Carya, for reasons he tried not to think about. Krum was apparently unfamiliar with attitudes towards house elves in Britain.

"There are a few in Germany, I think, and some of my classmates have them," he said. "But in Eastern Europe, house spirits are called domovoi, or sometimes other things in different languages. They are more human looking, yes? And humans do not give them orders, it is the other way, I think. My great aunt has a house with one and she says it is always very clean as long as she makes sure there is rakija - it is a kind of fruit brandy - and if there is not he destroys the house."

The table laughed very hard. Harry, wiping his eyes, saw Hermione looking thoughtful with narrowed eyes.

Chapter Text

Harry got up to get the next round of drinks, feeling grateful for a chance for a break. While the night had not been anything as bad as he had feared, he still felt as though he was about to say something stupid and make Cho storm out at any given moment.

There was a long table of endlessly refilling drinks: a steaming pitcher of hot chocolate, an elaborate samovar for tea with a line of Durmstrang students before it, and endless crystal bowls of punch and other brightly colored liquids. There were trays for the numerous students who had been sent to get drinks for larger parties. Harry took one and flicked a beetle off it, hoping it would not find its way into the punch.

He took his time filling enough cups for everyone at the table, trying to remember what the others had been drinking. He was just getting a cup of an amber liquid with apple slices floating in it for Hermione when he heard a shriek nearby and nearly dropped the tray.

"Is it true?" Pansy Parkinson cried. Her frilly pink robes clashed badly with the angry flush in her cheeks. "Oh, Draco, it can't be!"

Malfoy was pale and furious in high-collared black velvet. He seemed too frozen to speak for a moment. Harry had a nasty feeling he knew what this was about. Did he know that his mother had left their house on Christmas Day? Thinking of how he had always talked about his father, Harry felt that if he did know, it must have been unwelcome news...

"It's true," Malfoy said softly. Harry could hear clearly in the hush that had fallen around them.

"You'll stay with your father, of course?" said Theodore Nott. He had a pretty, blond girl from one of the other schools with him. She was wearing red, and with Nott's dark green they looked like a pair of smirking Christmas ornaments. "Pity about your mother - but with one sister running away and the other quite mad, I suppose it's no real surprise to anyone."

"I don't know," Malfoy said, and Harry, who had been edging towards them, stopped dead in surprise.

"What?" Parkinson said.

"I said I don't know what I'm going to do. It's all just happened," Malfoy said. An angry flush was rising in his cheeks.

Nott gaped like a fish. "But - your mother's sister's a blood traitor! And her cousin is just as bad, he's--"

"Head of the House of Black? The Baron Pen?" Malfoy snapped.

Harry took a moment to realize Malfoy was talking about Sirius.

"Excuse me," Malfoy said coldly when Nott found no reply. "I'm going back to the dorms. Pansy--"

"No," she said.

This brought Malfoy, who had begun to turn, to a halt. "What?"

"I said no!" Pansy Parkinson said. "If you're going to go off and get yourself killed or worse - with blood traitors and mu-"

"Pansy, I just--"

"We're through!" she screamed and slapped him. "I wish I'd never been friends with you at all!"

The blood drained from Malfoy's face. He went from flushed to deathly pale. He swept the crowd with an icy glare, snarled something Harry could not make out in the sudden clamor, and departed from the hall at something close to a run.

Harry slipped back to the table quietly in the aftermath, while Parkinson began to sob loudly into Nott's shoulder. Everywhere he saw people turning to each other and whispering.

"We heard shouting, what happened?" Hermione asked anxiously when he returned to the table.

"It was Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson," Harry said, wishing he could talk to Hermione and Ron - and maybe Sirius - in private. Surely Sirius, as a professor, had attended and seen what had happened, anyway. "I think she's dumped him."

Carya whistled. "Here I thought she would drag him to the altar if she had to chain them together... It's her parents pushing for it, really, not her," she said in response to Hermione and Cho's looks. "What did he do?"

"It was about his mother," Harry said, and then, figuring there was no way it would remain a secret at this point, "She's left his father. We knew about it, actually, Sirius took us to his cousin Andromeda's house for Christmas and she showed up. She said her husband beat her, and it looked pretty bad," he said heavily.

"When we left, Andromeda and Tonks were trying to convince her to go to St. Mungo's," Hermione said after a moment, which Harry hadn't known.

"Tonks - you mean her husband?" Carya asked. Harry tried to decide if her lip was curling or if she was only worried.

"No, her daughter, she won't go by her given name because it's, er..." Harry glanced at Hermione.

"Nymphadora," she said, rolling her eyes. "Why did that make Pansy Parkinson dump him, though?"

Harry hesitated again, but the argument had been in front of the entire Great Hall and could not possibly remain private, so he said, "Nott came up and started giving him a hard time, saying it wasn't a surprise his mother turned out to be - er - to do that after her sisters, and of course he'd stay with his father. Malfoy said he didn't know, he hadn't had time to think. Then he tried to leave with Parkinson and she said--"

"She dumped him?" Carya asked, intrigued.

"She said 'If you're going to go off and get yourself killed with blood traitors, we're through,' started crying and slapped him," Harry said heavily. "Then he stormed off. So, if you call that being chucked, yeah."

There was a rather stunned silence at the table.

"I am sorry," Krum said, "But who are these people?"

Explaining the context of the argument to Krum took nearly twenty minutes and consisted mostly of Hermione and Carya giving competing explanations while Cho and Harry contributed occasionally. By then it was closing in on eleven-thirty. As the ball was drawing to a close, Cho asked Harry to dance again while they still could.

He made a good try, but when the second dance was slower he couldn't conceal a yawn. "Sorry," he said. "I said Malfoy's mum showed up at the house? It was at two in the morning, I've been awake since then."

"I thought you seemed a little distracted!" Cho said, giggling nervously. "That's really horrible, though. She did say Lucius Malfoy did it?"

"Yeah, she did," Harry said.

"I was wondering if that was why you were so interested in Crouch," Cho said, steering them deftly away from Fred and Angelina, who were dancing so enthusiastically as to risk injury to passers by.

"Oh, er," Harry said awkwardly. "Was it that obvious?"

"I mean, I was curious about it too, but I wondered," Cho said. "Are you going to tell me?"

"I'm not sure I can," Harry said, fumbling.

He had always told Hermione and Ron everything. Cho had gone to talk to Crouch to find out just like one of them might have, and he felt he might offend her by not telling her why; she was pursing her lips unhappily now. He had never had any close friends besides Ron and Hermione, and it somehow had not occurred to him that if he and Cho dated seriously, she would expect to be there and to be told things about what he was doing.

"Look," he said, "It's just, there's someone else who could get in really serious trouble. I'll ask them first, and then I'll tell you if I can, okay?"

Cho scrutinized him and said, "It's a deal. But only if you dance with me until the ball ends."

Because of this ultimatum, Harry arrived back at the common room a while after Ron and Hermione. When he came through the portrait hole, he discovered them screaming at each other, ten paces apart, surrounded by appalled and delighted onlookers.

"You know what the solution is?" Hermione screamed. All of her hair had come undone from its sleek knot, and it bushed angrily around her face; she had gone flushed.

"What?" Ron spat.

"Next time there's a ball, ask me before someone else does instead of as a last resort!" Hermione snarled, turned, and stalked up the stair case.

"That's not," Ron spluttered. "Totally missed the point--"

Harry, wondering how the argument had started, hoped that they would be speaking by breakfast tomorrow. He still had to ask Hermione if they could explain things to Cho.

Things were not as bad as he might have feared the next day. Hermione and Ron were speaking again, but extremely polite and strangely stiff.

"Er, can we have a word before breakfast?" Harry said. It occurred to him that Cho might want an answer when he next saw her, and it would be very awkward if she cornered him at the Gryffindor table. "All three of us," he said.

"Let's go to Sirius's quarters if it's private," Hermione said, stifling a yawn. "We can have breakfast there."

They made their way quickly to the portrait of Remus and Romulus and found Sirius looking as though he had slept only a few hours and hurriedly writing a series of letters at the desk at which he normally did his marking.

"Morning," he said, rubbing his face. "I wondered if I'd be seeing you after that."

"Harry said he wanted a private word," Ron said. "Is there food?"

"There can be," Sirius said distractedly. "Kitchens, breakfast!"

Perhaps forty-five seconds later an astonishing assortment of food appeared, covering every inch of the coffee table. Sirius looked up, put a hand to his face and groaned.

"That will teach me to make requests while I'm distracted," he said. He seemed to be in good humor, at least, so Harry didn't think anything had gone horribly wrong with Narcissa. "You'd better get started eating, it hurts their feelings when it goes to waste. Have any friends you'd like to invite over to share?"

"We'll think about it," Harry said, sitting down and forking eggs and kippers onto a plate. "Um, how is... Narcissa... then?"

"My cousin? Andromeda thinks she'll be alright, although I'd feel better if she'd let us take her to a Healer. I'm glad I set the elves to cleaning up Grimmauld Place so they didn't feel useless, otherwise I'd have nowhere to send her." Sirius set his letter aside and joined them at the coffee table.

"What is Grimmauld Place?" Hermione asked, settling on one side of Harry and shuffling several plates around.

"It's the house I grew up in. Narcissa and her sisters too, actually," Sirius said. "No one's lived there since my mother died in '85, and a lot of the family furnishings have a life of their own when they're left unsupervised. And Kreacher's still there, he's the last family house elf left, so I thought it might, er, give them some company... Although that's backfired a bit, now Winky keeps trying to persuade me that if he thinks it's such an honor to be decapitated and have his head stuck up on the wall I ought to hurry up and do it now."

"Decapitated?" Hermione shrieked.

Sirius winced. "I told you my family... Well, you've met Narcissa now, you saw how casually she and Andy talk about murder. My cousins - and I include Bellatrix Lestrange in this - are probably the sanest witches in the family in generations. Great Aunt Elladora started the tradition of decapitating house elves when they got too old to carry tea trays and sticking their heads on the wall up the stair."

Harry, Ron and Hermione stared in Sirius in mutual horror. Sirius, who had just been pouring himself tea, took a drink and wiped his mouth before adding, "The thing is, I'm sure she thought she was being kind. The family still killed them before that, but they used to throw the bodies out like trash. The Black ancestors' bones are all kept in the house, too."

"Uh," Harry said weakly, deciding that perhaps he didn't wish to ask any more about that. "So Winky and Kreacher don't get along, then?" He thought he remembered some snide remark Winky had made about this ages ago before dismissing herself from Dumbledore's office.

"I don't think there's a being alive who gets along with Kreacher," Sirius said. "He adored my mother, and you can't imagine worse taste. She was in school with Voldemort and even he couldn't stand her, apparently--"

Ron choked on his toast. "Your mum went to school with You-Know-Who?"

"Well, somebody had to!" Hermione said, apparently forgetting to be stilted with Ron in shock. "Think about it, we knew he was a Prefect here when he opened the Chamber of Secrets! But your mother knew him?"

"Yeah, he was Slytherin Prefect, so both my parents did," Sirius said carelessly. "I suppose it's why Father never joined; it was exactly the kind of thing he was all for, cleansing the Wizarding world and having purebloods in charge... But to him Tom Riddle was always the halfblood Prefect who spent a lot of wasted hours trying to get him to pass Transfiguration. They used to laugh behind their hands and call him a mudblood. To a certain kind of pureblood, being halfblood's no different from being muggleborn, especially first generation halfblood - and I don't mean because none of it matters."

Sirius looked up then and seemed to notice their shocked faces. "Sorry. I learned not to talk about this in school, but being around Cissy brings a lot of it back. Even if it's just because I want to throttle her about every third sentence that comes out of her mouth. She's set up in her old room in Grimmauld Place with two bored house elves waiting on her, she'll be fine. I'm just getting the divorce in motion now."

"No, it's alright, it could be useful to know," Hermione said. "Like what Dumbledore says about understanding him... But if people knew he was halfblood and cared, how did he..."

"Well, some people made a connection between Tom Riddle and Voldemort eventually if they had known him, but you have to understand, it wasn't exactly spoken about," Sirius said. "Tom Riddle was known fairly well to his teachers and a few years of students, especially Slytherins, because he was a Prefect. Then he left school and vanished off the face of the earth. He'd never been in the papers, never worked for the Ministry or anywhere he would have made connections as Tom Riddle, and he didn't have a family in the wizarding world to identify him. To most of the world, Voldemort appeared out of thin air. People speculated he was from the continent, or one of various scholars who had gone missing. Powerful magic can stop a person from aging much, so they had a pretty long time window..."

"But if they'd known the truth, and it would have upset his supporters to hear it--"

"Then his supporters would have told themselves it was baseless slander." Sirius smiled sardonically. "Especially the ones who'd sunken years of work and their personal reputations and money into him.

"And people were scared to criticize him in public, Hermione. I already talked about murders of individual journalists but we'll get to more of that soon in class. A lot of opposition papers aren't around anymore because their offices were burnt and their editors and owners were killed. People died for saying much less offensive things than accusing him of being the son of a muggle. It's perfectly safe to whisper behind your hand to your wife who's also your second cousin and would be lost without you, that's different from taking a stance in public - something my father avoided whenever possible."

Harry had been thinking something else. "Sirius?" he said. "Sorry if this is - sensitive-"

"Go ahead and ask, Harry. If anyone has a right to know whatever I can tell you about that time you do."

Harry hesitated. He had mentioned what Dumbledore had told him about Bellatrix and Voldemort before, but only in passing; they hadn't really discussed this part. "Dumbledore told me your cousin Bellatrix was... his mistress," he said carefully. "Was it true?"

Sirius took a deep breath and stared down into his tea cup. "Yeah," he said, eventually. "Yeah, Bella was sleeping with him. I never understood that one."

"Did he force her to?" Ron asked.

Sirius shrugged. "I don't imagine any Death Eater would have been in a good position to refuse if he asked," he said, which gave Harry a number of unpleasant mental images. "But she didn't act like she was unwilling. He used to go into public, we talked about that in class, if you remember. I saw them together a few times as a kid, at weddings and after political speeches. Either she was an incredible actor - which I don't think she was, Harry, you saw how well she did innocent at her own trial - or she was being dosed with Amortentia, or she was in love." He paused. "Was that what you wanted to ask?"

"Not quite," Harry said. "If your parents thought he was - not pureblood enough," he said awkwardly, very aware of Hermione next to him, "They can't have been very happy that she was sleeping with him, were they? Especially when she was engaged to you. Unless her parents didn't know?"

Sirius snorted. "Oh, they were furious, all of them - well, maybe not Aunt Dru. I'm not sure my cousins' mother noticed much at all, she was blackout drunk three days out of four. I hear she moved home after her father-in-law died and cleaned herself up while I was in prison. But they couldn't really stop her for the same reason she went to him at all, it would have made the Blacks targets. It's possible that she married Lestrange because it came to a head finally after I left, though, I wasn't exactly up on the family gossip at that point."

"Do you think Narcissa's - safe?" Hermione asked. "To be around?"

Sirius frowned. "I don't really know, and I certainly am not going to let her live in the house with Harry - no offense to you," he added, "I know you can defend yourself, but many powerful adult wizards have been killed in their sleep by guests who were allowed past the protections on their homes. She might be ready to change her mind; she's always cared more about her sisters than anything else, and with Bellatrix in prison for life Andromeda is all she can have. But if she's really a Death Eater, not just in service to Voldemort - and I think Andromeda would know better than me - she's certainly killed for him before. You heard Snape and I. You have to kill to join."

"So, was this what you wanted to talk about, Harry?" Ron asked. "Not that I'm complaining - Seamus always steals the best bits of bacon at breakfast--"

"If you got up earlier," Hermione started.

"No, it's something else," Harry said. "Ron, you weren't around, but Hermione was. Cho heard us talking about why Crouch was injured and went to dance with him so she could ask him questions. He told her something totally different from the biting cabinet story Hermione got at the head table, he said he got into a duel at her cousin's wedding, and Cho's writing to her to check. But she also asked me why we're suspicious of Crouch, and I think we need to tell her something if she's going to volunteer to ask questions for us," he finished in a rush, his face feeling rather hot. He hoped Sirius didn't think he was asking just because Cho was his girlfriend.

"Well, we'd better tell her something if she's already curious," Sirius said. "Cho's Auror Fang Lin's daughter, right?"

"She said her mother was an Auror and she lost her legs in a fight with Rodolphus Lestrange," Harry said. "She works in MLE now, I think."

Sirius nodded. "Yeah, that would be her. She wasn't involved with the Order herself but a few of her friends were. If her daughter's anything like her she's a good person to have on your side. But it's a little early to tell her anything incriminating."

"Let's show her the map," Hermione said. "Tell her we saw two Crouches on it at the First Task, and not about the Time-Turner. The map's really kind of sketchy by itself, so it would make sense we wouldn't go to the Aurors, but she doesn't have to know Sirius helped make it if we just show it to her. That's different from turning it over to the Aurors to be investigated."

Harry looked at Sirius and Ron for approval of this plans.

"I dunno, Harry," Ron said. "D'you think we should trust her this fast?"

"It's not a bad story," Sirius said thoughtfully. "But where will you say you got it?"

"Fred and George," Harry said. "That's true."

"It might get them in real legal trouble though, if her mother gets involved," Hermione said, frowning.

Hashing out the details of what to tell Cho took most of the morning. They had a leisurely and huge breakfast over the course of it before the house elves vanished the leftovers. By the time Harry went down to try to find Cho, he was at least confident that Ron and Hermione were friends again.

As it turned out Harry didn't have to find Cho. Just as he was trying to decide whether it was worth approaching a Ravenclaw Prefect to ask if she was in the common room, she found him.

"Harry!" she said quickly from behind. "Er, could we talk--"

Marietta giggled at her elbow. Cho shot her a furious glare, and when Harry nodded, grabbed his arm and pulled him off.

"--Sorry," she said, three hallways away. "I love Marietta, she's the best when you've been dumped or told off by Snape, but she's always looking for drama when other people are happy. Here," she added, pulling aside a heavy green tapestry, "This is private."

Harry followed her into a hidden window nook with cushions and had to wonder if she had previously used it for snogging.

"Uh, thanks," he said, looking around in mild alarm.

"So, can you tell me?" Cho said immediately.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Not everything, but most of it," he added, compelled by honesty. "I need to show you something first, hang on..."

Cho's eyebrows arched when he dig out the map and tapped it, muttering "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good." Then she gaped, peering over his shoulder and nearly knocking heads with him as ink spread over it.

"Oh, that's amazing," she said quietly. "My mother would kill for something like this... Where did you get it?"

"From an older student who had nicked it from Filch's office," Harry said quietly. "The creators only put their nicknames on it, and it's pretty old, a few of the secret passages on it have been caved in for years."

"It was probably illegal," Cho said glumly, coming to the same conclusions they had. "I'd still love to know how they did it... So did you see Crouch somewhere he shouldn't be?"

"Kind of," Harry said. "During the First Task, when Karkaroff was attacked, one of my friends had it out, and they saw two Bartemius Crouches in the box."

There was a long silence. Cho touched the map, tracing the small alcove their dots stood in, practically on top of each other. Then she said, thoughtfully, "You think Crouch used illegal time travel to try to murder Karkaroff?"

In the end Cho agreed there was no use turning the map over when it would probably be confiscated and ruled illegal evidence, and that it was unlikely her mother could get a warrant without it. She told Harry to watch it carefully and try to arrange witnesses if they ever saw two Crouches on it at once again and rushed off to write to her mother, grimly saying, "She can at least keep an eye on him."

Harry hoped the conclusions she had come to weren't going to cause too much trouble.

Chapter Text

After the Yule Ball, break was much quieter, with time to relax, get into snowball fights and play long games of chess and Exploding Snap, and begin to think about the homework that had felt so distant before Christmas. Harry was sitting in Sirius's quarters with hot cocoa, leafing through pages of his mother's old Charms textbook, when the fireplace lit up green. A strange, flat object came through the flames, slowly resolving into the side of a large portrait. It was followed by Sirius himself.

"Hi, Harry," Sirius said, panting slightly. "Help me hang her up - Aunt Cassie, where do you want to be?"

The portrait's subject was a middle aged woman with a round, pretty face and black braids wrapped around her head. She had been painted sitting at a broad desk. On one side was a stack of books; on the other, a human skull sat by her hand, gazing into a mirror. More books filled the background.

"The kitchen, if you would," the woman said, squinting out of her portrait. "I've no desire to reduce any of your colleagues to hysterics if they come to discuss the students in your sitting room, nor to watch you sleep, Sirius."

"Sure," Sirius said, turning the portrait.

They shortly had it hung up over the small table in the kitchen, where the subject could see through the door into the sitting room but would not be obvious. "So, Harry," Sirius said, straightening. "This is my Great Aunt Cassiopeia. She died in 1960 when I was a baby."

"My idiot brother murdered me, you mean," Cassiopeia said, leaning over to examine Harry.

"Your brother?" Sirius looked slightly floored by this. "You mean Grandfather Pollux?"

"Pollux always did have more high mettle than sense. That's what happens when you breed people like prize livestock. You produce men with the intelligence of race horses."

"Thanks," Sirius said dryly.

"You seem to be one of the exceptions so far. I regret that I didn't live to meet you in person. This is your ward, then?"

"Yeah, Aunt Cassie. This is Harry Potter."

"Er," Harry said. "It's nice to meet you. I'm sorry to hear about you being, um. Murdered."

"Thank you, I appreciate hearing it," Cassiopeia said calmly. "And that would be the curse scar Sirius mentioned? Would you mind lifting your hair very much?"

Harry did mind, but she didn't seem to be asking out of curiosity about who he was, so reluctantly he did.

"I asked Aunt Cassie to help with your lessons," Sirius said as he did it. "She was a bit of an expert in the Dark Arts herself."

Harry opened his mouth to ask if Sirius meant Defense, looked at the human skull in the portrait, and closed his mouth again.

"Interesting," Cassiopeia was muttering, craning her neck. "Very interesting... My understanding is that the survival was probably affected by his mother's sacrifice?"

Harry felt the urge to squirm under her gaze. There was something disturbing about her distracted, clinical tones. He felt a bit like the Grindylow in the tank from their lessons last year.

"Yes," Sirius said. "Does it matter?"

"Very much so... I need to consult a few books. I had my portrait done with my library the background for that purpose," she added. Then her eyes seemed to focus on Harry. "I'm sorry, I'm being quite rude, aren't I? I've only had the other Grimmauld Place portraits to talk to in some time, and regrettably most of the family is either deranged or unpleasant."

"It's alright," Harry said, although he wasn't sure it was. "What is it that's interesting about my scar?"

She frowned. "Don't read too much into it until I've had a chance to check, but I don't believe that scar could have been created by the curse that was deflected from you. A sacrificial protective spell strong enough to stop the Killing Curse should have totally prevented all damage, and in any case the physical affects when it doesn't connect with a soul and complete consist of explosive damage, not a few cuts. That was either done before your mother's death by a different spell, or after by one that the protections did not consider damaging."

Harry nodded, although he wasn't sure he had understood more than a quarter of that.

Cassiopeia smiled. "Don't worry too much, you'll understand later when you have more of the background. Sirius, will you tell me more of what you were thinking now that we haven't got my darling niece shrieking in the background?"

Sirius winced. "Think I should relocate any of the other portraits away from her?"

"Cissy can deal with that."

"Right." Sirius pulled one of the chairs at the table out and sat, gesturing for Harry to take the other. "Well, I told you what I knew about the prophecy before. I've been working on his dueling - he's got very good reflexes, but I don't know how much good I can do there besides making sure he practices a range of spells."

"Against Riddle?" Cassiopeia drummed her fingers on the desk in her portrait."It's an open question, and quite possibly the answer is no good at all, given I think he's only ever lost a duel to Albus Dumbledore. But it's still worth trying. If nothing else, Harry will probably need to fight his followers when he returns.

"But I was never a duelist myself - you know how pureblood girls are raised, Sirius, few of us develop much physical athleticism, and our parents were more conservative than your father. If you want a duelist other than Dumbledore himself to assist you... If you trust her, ask Cissy. If not, I would suggest Amelia Bones if you can persuade her, I know she took out Bella and several others sent to kill her once, and Bella is supposed to have been the best Riddle had."

"Right. So what do you think will be good against Riddle? You met him a few times, didn't you?"

"In the fifties and sixties, yes, he was involved in the academic community for a few years, although he never did work very well with others." Cassiopeia smiled crookedly at the two of them, and Harry wondered whether there was a community for Dark Arts. He supposed there had to be someone buying the goods in Knockturn Alley. He wondered why Sirius had asked this aunt's portrait - although he supposed she would probably know more about Voldemort's magic than Sirius or Dumbledore if she had met him when he was learning it.

"What I can tell you is that he was very interested in immortality," Cassiopeia went on thoughtfully. "That pseudonym he chose isn't just a name. He is terrified of death and regards this as so universal a human characteristic that he doesn't hide it - well, he didn't at that time. Your father believed he'd made a Horcrux--"

Sirius coughed and choked. "A Horcrux?"

"What's a Horcrux?" Harry asked quickly.

"It's one of the simpler methods of pursuing quasi immortality that actually works," Cassiopeia said and shrugged. "You - hypothetical you, I don't recommend anyone go out and try this - kill someone and enact a brief ritual which will take advantage of the altered mental and metaphysical state to encase a part of your essence - your soul, colloquially - in an object. This will prevent the main part of your essence from departing if your body is fatally injured or destroyed. In the former case it gives you time to fix the damage, in the latter it will keep you around in wraith form until you can enact further rituals to make one.

"It's not very favored, in part because dividing up your essence between yourself and an inanimate object will tend to be detrimental to the stability of both pieces, and in part because most people would regard being trapped as a voiceless, helpless wraith unless you can persuade a living person to enact a serious sacrifice to embody you as worse than death, not better." Her voice had gone dry on the latter part.

Harry swallowed. "Right. So you think he's - that's what he is now, this wraith form? A wraith could possess Quirrell?"

"In theory, and possession is certainly an art Riddle was skilled at when I knew him. We co-authored a paper on it, once."

"Can you tell us more about what he could do to get a body back?" Sirius asked, appearing somewhat shaken by his aunt's latest revelation.

"There are a few options, I think... This isn't something I've spent a lot of time on, you understand, I'm a Black at heart and the pursuit of immortality has always been rather antithetical to our family's values. I think anything would require the participation of at least one living follower, and not a trivial level of participation. I'll see if I have any further information in these books later. I believe there is also a painting of the library here enchanted to update with new purchases for the use of the portraits.

"As I was saying, Sirius's father believed Riddle had made a Horcrux in school at the age of sixteen. If so that would be a remarkable achievement in its way. I can't tell you for sure because it's difficult to tell one kind of old damage from another, and I didn't meet him until years later. I don't believe your father had seen someone who had freshly made a Horcrux before to compare. But it would be consistent with what you've told me about his doings after his defeat."

"So if he has made a Horcrux, what do we do?" Harry said. "Is there other - stuff, he might have done to try to live forever?"

"Destroy the Horcrux, but it has to be located first, unfortunately, and I can't say I knew him well enough to speculate. This is where Bella would really be useful if she wasn't madly in love with him," Cassie said, gray eyes coolly amused. "Sirius, I would see if you can persuade Horace Slughorn into lunch--"

Sirius made a reluctant noise.

"Oh, I know, probably better than you do, but he's the only person I can think of who's both safe to approach and likely to know, and he's not exactly difficult to manipulate. Your father's sister Lucretia was in school with him as well, but I can't say whether she would be approachable. My brother mentioned to my portrait that the Lestranges paid her expenses after she was widowed, and it's quite possible she became a follower of Riddle."

"Lucretia." Sirius frowned. "Who did she marry again?"

Cassiopeia rolled her eyes. "Ignatius Prewett."

Sirius straightened. "Ignatius - isn't that--"

"Mmm."

"She became a Death Eater?"

"Not all marriages are happy, nor made between those with like minds. And as I said she was part of Riddle's crowd in school, although indirectly. She didn't associate with him for his own sake, but she was friends with Reinhard Lestrange. I think she'd hoped he would ask to marry her for a while. His other friends are mostly dead now - Reinhard himself in 1969, Abraxas Malfoy in 1992... The ones who aren't are also Death Eaters and never were as close, and Lucretia at least has something to want from you to persuade her to cooperate."

"What would she want?" Harry asked.

Cassiopeia's eyes flicked back to him. "Sirius is her family's head. I don't know where she's living now with the Lestranges in prison, but it's on charity at best, and she would have deeply alienated her marital family going to the Lestranges, as her husband was murdered by Death Eaters. Sirius could give her security and some measure of status back." She shook her head. "Honestly, Sirius, I know this sort of thing but politics aren't my forte, I never cared enough when I was alive. You need to teach him about them, but I can't help you much there."

"So find out where he would have kept his Horcrux," Harry said. "And - if he's a wraith and it's gone, what will happen to him?"

"He will no longer be tied to his earth, at least if that's his only protection. I find that somewhat unlikely, given the depth of his obsession, but we know he doesn't have access to the Elixir of Life, and without it a possessed body will degrade over time. Even unicorn blood can only forestall death for a short period. Of the other reliable methods, one is permanently inaccessible and two so inconvenient I cannot believe he's making use of either. Past that we go into the experimental, likely methods of his own devising."

"And what do we do about that?" Sirius asked.

"Look into his research interests and conduct experimental tests." Cassiopeia looked at Harry. "As I said, immortality isn't a specialty of mine but I can teach you enough to enable you to study it yourself to understand what he's done, assuming you have the basic aptitude for the Arts. The Blacks turn them out consistently but the Blacks also begin teaching at five. It's harder to say with teenagers, let alone adults, and if you hate the thought it would be stupid and dangerous to continue."

"You mean the Dark Arts by the Arts," Harry said. It wasn't exactly a question, but he couldn't help himself glancing at Sirius questioningly. He remembered Sirius talking about Durmstrang, and before that the wards on his house over the summer. Was it only in retrospect that some of Sirius's comments seemed startlingly evasive?

"Yes, but it's not so useful a term as you might think. That mostly means magic the Ministry has banned." Cassiopeia shrugged. "Mastery of the Arts - or study - is at its heart only study of the art of magic. It is illegal, except for certain limited exceptions and employees of the Department of Mysteries, but learning about how, say, blood magic works is necessary to understand the basis of several major fields of magic and it hardly compels you to run out and start conducting rites with the stuff."

Harry frowned. "Can I think about it?" He wanted quite badly to talk to Sirius about this, and possibly Hermione as well, although he could guess what she would probably say.

"Please do. I can still tell you what I recall Riddle saying about his plans if you don't want to, and I can advise, but my ability to conduct tests myself is obviously limited by my situation."

Harry hesitated. What he wanted to ask now was definitely a bit rude.

"Ask," Cassiopeia said.

"Why did your brother kill you?" Harry said, and swallowed.

Cassiopeia hesitated. There were three rings on her left hand: one was a signet with a crest, and one was a black stone engraved with a skull in relief, but the third was set with a simple diamond, something a muggle might wear as an engagement ring. She took this one off and rubbed it thoughtfully.

"Pollux killed me because I asked him to," she said, and Sirius made a startled noise beside Harry. "Though in retrospect it's really the sort of request you should question before carrying out... Sirius's father, and his father's father Arcturus Black, had found out about a lover of mine they objected to and they killed her. I knew they were probably going to kill me, likely unpleasantly, and in the aftermath I found I rather wanted to die rather than live on alone. I tried to get Pollux to let me out of my confinement so that I could take revenge, and when he refused I told him to end my suffering."

Her? Harry thought, startled. Of course he knew that - that existed, and he had known not to take Uncle Vernon's opinion of homosexuality seriously any more than what he said about immigrants or Harry himself, but it somehow hadn't occurred to him that he'd meet anyone who was gay.

Well, he sort of hadn't. Cassiopeia was dead, wasn't she?

"I'm sorry," he said, belatedly. "For you and your..." He felt too embarrassed to repeat lover. "That you both died."

"I appreciate it," Cassiopeia said quietly.

"My father..." Sirius sounded faintly nauseated.

"I'm sorry to tell you, Sirius," Cassiopeia said calmly.

Sirius shook his head. "I knew - it's not news to me what he was like, I just didn't know he'd ever gone through with it."

Harry found Hermione without Ron in the library, studying with several other students from her Arithmancy class. She went with him willingly into an empty courtyard where they huddled around a jar of her bluebell flames, and Harry told her about the conversation.

"Oh," she said at last. "Oh, that's horrible, they murdered her lover and then she asked her brother to kill her just so they wouldn't torture her first..."

"I know," Harry said quietly. He was a little relieved Hermione hadn't blanched at him mentioning Cassiopeia's lover had been a woman. He hadn't been at all confident about bringing it up. "She said it was when Sirius was just a year old."

"He must be feeling horrible finding that out about his father, too," Hermione said. "We should go back to his quarters for dinner. What do you think about the rest of it?" She watched him cautiously.

"Well," Harry said, feeling off balance, "It sounds like Voldemort probably did make a Horcrux. I don't know how we'd start finding it."

"Harry," Hermione said at once. "What did Cassiopeia say a Horcrux is like?"

"Well, she didn't."

"She did. She said it was an object with a piece of someone's essence encased in it." Hermione looked at him pointedly. "For instance, their memories."

"Oh!" Harry said, and gaped at her. "You think - the diary--"

"You might have already destroyed it!" Hermione said, and hugged him.

"Oh." Harry said and laughed, startled. "You think - the prophecy--"

"We should tell Sirius and Cassiopeia about it and see what they think. But I would assume she's right and he had other contingencies. Harry, what did you think about her saying she would teach you Dark Arts?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "It seems rather - dodgy, to say I wouldn't have to do them to learn them. But Sirius..."

"I know, that's what I don't understand. We'll have to ask him." Hermione frowned. "And I need to go back to the library. I can check what she said about blood magic and it being important to understand other branches of magic, I just need a pass to the Restricted section. Let's go ask Professor McGonagall, she'll be pleased if I say I'm looking into the depths of Transfiguration theory."

When they went down to the Great Hall for lunch, Hermione lugging several large, alarming looking books in her bag, they found the Slytherins in a knot hunched over something.

"Oh, no," Hermione muttered. "What is it this time..."

"Look at Malfoy," Ron said, pointing with his roll. "He's not having it."

Harry had a sudden, horrid suspicion just as Pansy Parkinson straightened and began to read aloud:

"'A shocking scandal in the House of Malfoy,'" she called out shrilly, her voice carrying clear across the hall. "'Narcissa Malfoy nee Black is the picture of a perfect pureblood wife--' Do you think Skeeter's forgotten about her sisters? 'But things are not as they seem in Lucius Malfoy's Wiltshire mansion.'"

"Oh, no," Hermione muttered. "They would..."

"Malfoy deserves it," Ron said frankly, tucking into his potatoes with great gusto.

"Don't be a prat, Ron," Hermione snapped softly. "Her husband was beating her. And it's going to cause trouble for Sirius if the papers go after her, isn't it?"

Sure enough, Pansy was reading, "'...Sought refuge with her cousin, Sirius Black, recently exonerated after thirteen years in Azkaban, despite their political differences...' That's one way of putting it, isn't it, Draco?"

"I suppose Narcissa's decided she'd rather be beaten for her political opinions than for being a whore," said an upper year Slytherin whose name Harry didn't know in a clear, low voice that carried.

Draco jerked up. "You watch your mouth about my mother, Crabbe," he snapped at the boy.

"Or what?" the boy said. Harry could see a faint resemblance between him and their classmate Crabbe, now that it had been pointed out. That Crabbe was huddled at the end of the table, ignoring everyone furiously. "You going to tell Cousin Sirius on me, Malfoy?"

"I think you'll find that's unnecessary when you carry on like this in the Great Hall," Sirius said dryly from the entrance. Half of the Slytherins jumped.

"Going to put me in detention, Professor?" the elder Crabbe said, raising his head defiantly.

"If you're so eager for it, by all means," Sirius said. "My office, first day of term, eight o'clock. Miss Parkinson, this is a dining hall, not a news station, sit down and keep your voice at normal levels. Ten points from Slytherin for both of you - yes, from your house, Mr. Malfoy, will you please come with me?"

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged looks as Malfoy sullenly trailed Sirius from the hall.

"That's not going to end well for him," Hermione said quietly.

"Well, it's not like Sirius could just ignore it, either," Ron said, shrugging. "Not with them mouthing off about his cousin in public. If it gets Malfoy punched out for being a tattler, who cares? He is."

As term would be starting that Monday and he wouldn't have as much free time to spend with Sirius, Harry decided to go back up to his quarters that evening. If nothing else he could spend more time going through the box of his mother's things. Hermione and Ron said they would come with him; Hermione had been leafing through the books with an increasingly frustrated expression while Ron trounced Harry soundly at chess several times, to the immense frustration of the chess set Harry had gotten off of a wizarding cracker first year.

To Harry's surprise, they reached Sirius's quarters just as Malfoy was leaving, apparently having spent several hours there. He looked frustrated but less miserable than earlier, and even muttered an almost civil sounding "Potter," as he passed them, though he completely ignored Ron and Hermione.

Once inside, Harry went to get the box from the top of a bookshelf, while Hermione settled in an armchair with her books and Ron talked to Sirius about what it was like to be a dog. Harry had a feeling of contentment it took him a moment to recognize.

The small, firelit sitting room had begun to mean home to him, in a way he had never experienced before. Here was Sirius, his godfather, here were his friends, here was his box of his mother's things and the table they had scorched with an Exploding Snap game back in November and the mug he always had tea out of. He wondered if this was how most people felt about their houses. It would be strange when Sirius stopped teaching at Hogwarts, as he had admitted he planned to do after the year whether or not he broke the curse. Harry hadn't been nearly so used to the house when term started.

He had been excavating a few inches at a time from the box, trying to save them, aware that this might be all he ever had of his mother. Most of the contents were books and notes. He had also found a handful of small belongings: flowers pressed in between the pages of a second year Defense textbook, a few pieces of cheap jewelry, an empty ink pot shaped like a cat.

There was a T shirt spread out over the bottom layer a few inches from the bottom. Harry recognized it as a band T shirt and made a mental note to look them up when he was next in muggle London, and possibly ask Dean and Hermione if they had ever heard of their music. He pulled the T shirt to his face, inhaling and coughing; most of what he smelled was dust, but there was also a faint, floral scent.

"Sirius," he called, watching him and Ron look over. "Did my mother wear perfume?"

"Orange blossom, yeah," Sirius said. "After - well, I actually gave her the first bottle for Christmas sixth year, that was when I dated her. She liked it enough to keep buying it, though."

"Wasn't that after she stopped speaking to Snape?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, and I recognize that shirt, too. I wonder... Your aunt might have sent him her things, if they knew each other as children. She probably didn't know about what Snape did in the war, and if he asked..."

"That might make sense," Harry said, although it was difficult to imagine Aunt Petunia doing anything involving contacting Snape voluntarily. On the other hand she might have been happy to get rid of Lily's things without having to do anything as openly abnormal as throwing them away.

He tucked the shirt in a pile of things he had decided he could safely take up to the dorm and say had come from his aunt and looked at what had been under it.

Most of it was more of the same, parchment and paper mixed together with school supplies. But there was a small box Harry thought was meant for jewelry in a corner with a velvety finish. He picked it up warily and opened it.

Inside was a gold ring set with an emerald that even Harry could tell was worth quite a lot of money.

Hermione gasped softly beside him. "Is that--"

"I don't know." Harry took it out and looked at it. Something scraped in the box; he moved the padding aside and saw a folded up letter in it.

Carefully he took it out and read the faded ink, not in the handwriting he now knew was his mother's, but rather Snape's.

It appeared to be a draft.

My beloved Lily--

I am so sorry was written and crossed out, then rewritten. I have made the worst mistake of my life-- crossed out again. I wish I had never become a Death Eater was the version that Snape had settled on.

Harry took a deep breath and went on.

I know I said this to you before, and you may not want to hear it now, but I must try again. I have done terrible things and you might never forgive me. You might be right not to. But I need help, Lily, I can't leave without somewhere to go now, and you know all of my friends are also followers of the Dark Lord.

I know the rest of this might be unwelcome. I hear you're living with Potter now. But I have resolved to say it anyway if nothing else as proof of my sincerity, because we both know what would happen if any of my friends read this.

Lily, you are my best friend and the love of my life. I have never had feelings for anyone like I do for you. I should never have treated you the way I did. I swear, if you'll give me another chance I will never say another cruel word to you. You are more than worthy of me.

If you will marry me now...

The letter stopped there. It was very obvious that Snape had never sent it.

"What's it say?" Ron asked.

Harry swallowed. "Here, you read it," he said quietly, and passed the letter around. He felt a bit uneasy about this, as Snape would be furious, especially that Sirius had seen it. But after all Snape had told Harry to keep the chest in Sirius's quarters, and he couldn't imagine hiding this.

"Is there a date?" Hermione asked, head close to Ron's. "I don't see one..."

"If he wrote it when Lily was living with James and hadn't married him yet, it would have to have been written between about May 1979 and that Christmas," Sirius said. "They got married a few weeks after Lily found out she was pregnant, the wedding was New Year's Eve." He hesitated. "Only about a year after we graduated."

"He wanted to leave," Hermione said, softly. "He wanted to leave that fast..."

"He didn't, though," Harry said. A kind of fury was burning in his stomach. "He kept killing people for ages after this - he couldn't work up the nerve--"

"He bought her a ring, though," Ron said, sounding dazed. "Sirius - this is expensive, isn't it?"

There was a pause, then Sirius said, "I wouldn't have thought Snape could afford this, even after he started working for Voldemort. He couldn't exactly have told Lucius Malfoy he wanted to buy Lily Evans an engagement ring, so he had to have taken it out of his own money... It would've been a decent chunk of what Voldemort paid him as a research specialist, if I remember what the Order found out about his financials right."

"What does it mean, then?" Ron asked.

"I don't know," Harry said, and sat back heavily, the ring box in his hands. Firelight flashed off the emerald.

Chapter Text

Term began with a miserable truck out to the greenhouses in the snow. They spent the hour adjusting the greenhouse mirrors and discussing which plants required more light and heat, and dreading the next hour they would spend outside even that protection in Care of Magical Creatures even more. The use of adjusting the mirrors was dubious, pointed out Ron, when the snow was so thick almost no light filtered in to reflect off of them in the first place.

After lunch Hermione had Arithmancy, while Harry and Ron were meant to be working on their Divination self study. Hermione reappeared a few minutes after leaving, quietly saying class had been excellent and it was really good to be back; Harry spotted the gold time turner's chain around her neck and tried not to smirk.

"--And I wondered if you wanted to talk about what Cassiopeia told us, Harry?" she said after reviewing his and Ron's next essay ideas and declaring them quite good.

Ron, who Harry had filled in earlier, went from trying to stifle his shock to skeptical. "Listen," he said. "I'm not sure if listening to some portrait about Dark magic is a good idea... You know what Dad says..."

"If Sirius thinks it's a good idea I'm going to at least consider it," Harry said. "Hermione, you were going to look up what Cassiopeia said, weren't you? What did you find?"

"Well." Hermione dived slightly breathlessly into her bag and dug out one of the ancient looking tomes. "At first I wasn't having much luck, trying to look up the history of blood magic, before it finally occurred to me to look for changes in legislation about Dark Arts. Did you know, a lot of what's banned now has only been illegal for about fifteen years? New legislation was passed--"

"To make it easier to arrest Death Eater, yeah," Ron said. "Dad was involved in some of it. Listen, though, just because blood vows or whatever were legal before the seventies doesn't mean they weren't seriously bad news, the whole reason that stuff was made illegal was because it was mostly Death Eaters and their crowd who used them."

"Would you let me finish, Ron?" Hermione said slightly snappishly.

Krum had asked her to go with him for the next Hogsmeade visit, halfway through January, and ever since she and Ron had been on decidedly stiff terms. Harry was starting to wonder whether to wish Hermione and Krum would break up, or for Ron to find another girlfriend. Maybe Cho would have a friend willing to go out with him...

"Fine," Ron snapped back. "What did you find?"

"Well, as I was saying, that got me on the right track and I found a few books about older law changes. And historically speaking the current status quo is really strange - you know, all this emphasis on wand magic and legislation on who can carry a wand, and making it illegal for minors to practice outside of school. If you ask me, it's a sort of status symbol, and a means of making it easier to regulate magic. Only humans can carry wands, it's actually illegal for anyone else to carry one or for a wandmaker to sell one to a goblin or a banshee or a Veela or whatever..."

"What about Fleur Delacour?" Harry asked.

"She counts as human because her Veela ancestry's more than one generation back, but there were very recent times when she wouldn't have been allowed, and whichever of her parents is half Veela wouldn't be allowed a wand in Britain," Hermione said. "It's horrible. And of course, it's a lot easier to confiscate someone's wand than wipe the knowledge of how to cast a ritual from their mind, and ritual magic uses all kinds of ingredients, it's impossible to keep them all restricted. But anyway, what I was getting at is that five hundred years ago there was a lot more emphasis on other forms of magic. Several of the most powerful branches of wandless magic were outlawed or severely restricted at the same time the first laws on who could carry wands were passed, and that formed the basis for Dark Arts as a concept."

"Some of those branches were seriously nasty, though," Ron objected. "I've heard the kind of stuff Dad and his coworkers confiscate - potions made out of baby bones and ritual human sacrifice--"

"Yes, of course, I'm not saying that that's everything," Hermione said quickly. "But I'd say it's sort of a tautology, isn't it? If any potion using human blood or bone is illegal, the only people who use it will be criminals, and of course they're more likely to hurt people to get the ingredients." She paused. "Did you know, Hogwarts taught blood magic as a course until the seventeenth century? But Hogwarts, A History doesn't even mention it in its chapter about curriculum changes - it's really a very redacted book." Hermione was disgusted by this; Harry had the impression she felt that the book had personally insulted her.

"So you think I should say yes to Sirius and Cassiopeia, then?" Harry asked.

Hermione frowned. Harry could see how torn she was on recommending that Harry agree to break the law. "I think you should use your own judgment and not the Ministry's about what's right," she said. "--It's not like we haven't seen the horrible stuff the Ministry decides. But, Harry, what Cassiopeia suggested you studying probably is going to be... I mean, she's talking about teaching you to follow You-Know-Who's research, so it's probably not going to be the nicer stuff."

"No kidding," Ron said fervently.

"I was thinking I would go ask Sirius what he thinks," Harry interjected. "And maybe why he got Cassiopeia involved at all. I don't think he knew she was going to suggest that, but I haven't gotten round to asking." The discovery of Snape's letter had completely distracted him during their last visit.

"I'll go with you if you want," Hermione said. "I'd like to meet her. Oh, and that reminds me - Harry, you said there was a skull in the painting, right? What else?"

"Uh, there were loads of books, she said she had the painter do her with her library so she'd have them," Harry said. "There were more on the desk, and stuff for writing... She had her hair done in braids, and she was wearing these rings, I think one was a signet, one had a skull on it, and then there was a diamond ring. The skull was looking into a mirror..."

"That was what I was wondering about. It was facing the mirror?" Hermione said. "Not on top of it, or with the mirror in its teeth, or anything?"

"Facing, yeah," Harry said. "The mirror is propped up and then the skull is looking into it."

"Alright, thanks..." Hermione dove back into the stack of books, extracted a much thinner volume, and began to flip through it rapidly.

Harry and Ron exchanged bemused glances.

"I was thinking that it sounded like some kind of symbolic message," Hermione said, muffled. "Which is really pretty typical in medieval portraits... So I thought I would look up magical portrait iconography. I know I've heard something about mirrors and skulls somewhere before...

"Here!" she said with excitement. "Hear this - 'The mirror is a traditional symbol of magical study, and many great scholars are painted with one. Both the location in the portrait and the surrounding objects may assign a more specific meaning' - for example, it says a mirror with a flame symbolizes study of charms and enchantments further down..."

"Is a skull Dark Arts, then?" Harry asked.

"Let me find it - yes, here, it says so." Hermione frowned and read aloud, "'While in older and classical portraiture a skull would traditionally symbolize study of necromancy and other magical arts concerned with the dead, in latter times it came to indicate a dedication to the whole of the Dark Arts, now including specialties in blood magic, sacrificial rites and the magic of the human body... The specific placement of the mirror in relation to the skull as well as their other attributes may indicate further information about the portrait's subject. A mirror placed between the teeth of the skull indicates a study of combat magic, while a child's skull suggests a specialty in sacrificial rites--'"

"That's sick," Ron muttered.

"No kidding," Hermione said, sounding slightly shaky. "It goes on, 'A skull along with another human bone, most typically a long bone such as a femur, indicates specialization in the magical properties of the human body. The placement and characteristics of the mirror may suggest information about the career of the scholar at the time the portrait was made. A skull placed on top of a mirror so that the reflection is largely concealed suggests a new endeavor or that the subject remains an apprentice, while a mirror placed across the portrait from the skull suggests a pursuit now abandoned or complete; this latter example occurs in the portraits of several clerical officials and nuns who were known to have studied Dark Arts prior to their dedication to religious life.'

"And here - 'A mirror placed so that it directly reflects the skull in the painting, propped up, indicates an ongoing scholarship and competence in the Dark Arts, and most particularly a skull placed facing into a mirror is the symbol of a master, that is to say someone styled a 'Dark Lord' in the parlance of practitioners of the Dark Arts--'"

Hermione stopped.

"So that'd be Cassiopeia, then," Harry said heavily after a minute.

"Do you think Sirius knows?" Ron muttered.

"We'd better ask. Hermione, can you bring the books?" Harry asked and got up.

Sirius was still teaching, but his last class would end in fifteen minutes or so. After a few minutes of awkward silence in the sitting room, Hermione said, "This is stupid. The portrait's in the kitchen, right?" and marched off to investigate herself.

Harry and Ron followed her hurriedly. Cassiopeia was reclining in her desk chair, a book open on the desk in front of her. She absently toyed with her rings as she said, apparently oblivious to him. It must, Harry thought for the first time, be very boring to be a portrait.

"Hello," Hermione said shakily, stopping in front of the table. "Er, Cassiopeia Black?"

Cassiopeia looked up and closed the book. "Indeed, or at least what's left of me," she said dryly. "Harry, will you introduce me?"

"This is Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley," he said awkwardly, nodding to them.

"I'm Septimus's grandson," Ron volunteered, looking slightly surprised by himself.

Cassiopeia was nodding. "And Cedrella's too, then?" she said. "You would be my first cousin twice removed, then... And Hermione - would you be a relative of Hector Dagworth-Granger?"

"Most likely not," Hermione said, raising her chin. "Both my parents are dentists." Her eyes darted to the stack of books.

Cassiopeia only nodded absently. "I apologize for the assumption. A pleasure to meet you both. May I assume there was something in particular you wanted to ask?"

"Yes," Hermione said, sounding distracted. "That's The Well of Loneliness."

"So it is," Cassiopeia said.

"That's a muggle book," Hermione said accusatively.

"I was fairly certain neither the painter nor my family would recognize it," Cassiopeia said. "To be honest there isn't a lot of lesbian fiction published in the magical world - some pornography, mostly French and written to appeal to men."

"Is it just that, then?" Hermione asked.

Cassiopeia smiled thinly. "No, I see you've guessed. Harry told you what I said before about my lover? Yes, she was a muggle. Her name was Margaret Wright. We had two daughters - hers - Clio and Daphne. They both died as well; after they ambushed me, Sirius's grandfather set the house on fire and locked the doors."

Hermione went silent in horror. Ron looked nauseated.

Harry, trying hard not to think about that, said, "I'm sorry about your family, Cassiopeia. I want to ask something."

"By all means. I have little else to attend to."

"How," Harry said, eyes flicking to the skull, "Does a Dark Lord become - involved - with a muggle woman and her children?"

Cassiopeia smiled tiredly at that and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Sit down, all three of you. This is a long story. It's fair enough for you to ask, I realize you're wondering whether to trust me."

Exchanging glances, the three of them sat down. Harry got up after a moment to make tea, something he was very used to doing in Sirius's quarters by now.

"I was born in 1910," Cassiopeia said. "My father, Cygnus Black, was the third son, and he and his brothers and their wives lived in the same household, in Grimmauld Place, where Narcissa has gone and where she and her sisters and Sirius grew up. I had two elder cousins, Arcturus Black, who inherited, and his sister Lycoris Black; three younger cousins who were also sisters, Callidora and the twins Charis and Cedrella, who married Septimus Weasley, Ron; twin elder brothers, Pollux and Castor, and two younger siblings, Marius and Dorea - Harry, Dorea married your father's second cousin, Charlus Potter.

"My uncle, Sirius Black the second, was Arcturus and Lycoris's father and the head of the family at the time. He and I... did not get along, and he regarded me as ungovernable and potentially dangerous following a fight when I was twelve that ended in me cursing him. When I was seventeen he resolved--"

"Hang on," Ron said. "You cursed your uncle at twelve?"

"It wasn't unusual for fights in the Black household to become violent," Cassiopeia said, and shrugged. "Not in my generation, anyway. The Black adults have never exactly taken the restriction on underage wizardly seriously."

Harry could picture cursing Uncle Vernon quite easily if he had been able to use magic undetected, and opened his mouth to say so when Hermione said, "But what did he do?"

Cassiopeia studied her for a moment, then said, "To be more precise, I cursed my uncle because biting and screaming at him hadn't stopped him from touching me." Hermione made a sick noise, but Cassiopeia carried on calmly over it, "At any rate he wanted me out of the house as soon as possible and I rather suspect he wanted me married to someone who would stop me from visiting home. I was married to Edwin Nott two weeks after I graduated Hogwarts.

"My uncle's plan backfired. Nott was not only controlling but unstable and violent. After four years I was hospitalized with severe injuries; I got a sympathetic healer to contact my older brother Pollux and he insisted that I be allowed to return home and divorce.

"So I divorced Edwin, but in the meantime I had had two daughters--" Cassiopeia's breath caught and she paused, here for a moment before going on. "I had a right to leave because of my husband's violence but this was before the bill that allowed women to receive physical custody of their children in the case of divorce for battery. I left Antandre and Thalia behind, and I never saw either of them again.

"I was... extremely grieved by the loss of my daughters, and I had no clear idea where I would go. It's difficult for pureblood women to remarry in general, and if they initiate the divorce themselves..." Cassiopeia shrugged. "I was twenty-two, divorced once and with no hope of marrying again. At that time I couldn't be accepted into training for most prestigious careers because I had been married, and my family wouldn't allow me to occupy myself with anything supposedly beneath our status. I sank into a depressed stupor, I stayed in bed for days at a time, I spent almost all of my time crying - which I don't recommend, eventually it becomes literally painful, but you can't help continuing anyway - and I took to going out into London and wandering around for hours at a time because I didn't want to deal with my family in the house.

"Which is how I met Margaret. She sat down next to me on a park bench and asked why I was crying." Cassiopeia smiled sardonically. "I admit at first I thought of it as something like talking to a friendly dog or a pigeon to distract oneself, but she disabused me of that notion fairly quickly. She was also coping with recent grief; her husband and her infant son had been carried off together by illness. We both were at a loss with our marriages ended in our early twenties, both grieving infant children, both estranged from our families but dependent on them... It was easy, in short, to see myself in her.

"After that things developed... as they do. When you are in the middle of it it makes perfect sense to risk your life, your security, and everything you have on love. I recovered enough to think, and began to study seriously what I had dabbled in before; I used the dowry I had in my own name to buy a house and support Margaret and I spent as much time as I could with her. Eventually we decided we wanted our own children..." Cassiopeia sighed. "And eventually we got caught, and died. Does that answer your question?"

There was an awful silence. Listening to Cassiopeia Harry had forgotten for a moment that she and her lover were dead, that everyone in the story was.

"I think so," Harry said shakily. "I'm sorry to pry."

Cassiopeia shook her head. "Someone should know," she said quietly. "No one else does. Someone should remember us."

"Excuse me," Hermione said carefully. "I'm not sure I understand why exactly you studied the Dark Arts?"

Cassiopeia shrugged. "If you're looking for a compelling reason, I can't give you one. They are a specialty of my family, I had been taught from childhood, and when I needed something to do with my time and my temperament inclined me to study in general, they were an obvious avenue.

"I suppose I did hope they would protect me from family retaliation. You see how well that worked. If there's one lesson from my life that may apply to Tom Riddle, it's that there's no amount of personal power that can stop someone from overpowering you in your sleep - that's how they got me.

"Now, Sirius came back some time ago, and I believe you may have wanted to speak to him?"

Harry jumped and turned to see Sirius standing, somewhat shakily, in the doorway to the kitchen.

"Hello, Aunt Cassie, you three," he said.

The four of them settled in the sitting room again with the door to the kitchen shut.

"So," Sirius said. "Did you have questions for me?" He was unpacking papers from his bag, assembling newspaper clippings into a folder and sorting what looked like student assignments.

"Er, yeah," Harry said. "I wanted to ask, did you know Cassiopeia was going to suggest teaching me Dark Arts? Why did you ask her?"

Sirius frowned thoughtfully and continued sorting papers. After four or five rolls of parchment, he said, "I didn't know exactly, but I had an idea she might. And truthfully, Harry, this is not going to be very comforting, but I wasn't sure where to start. I can teach you to defend yourself as best I can, but if anyone had a clear idea of what would be needed to defeat Voldemort, well--"

"There wouldn't need to be a prophecy?" Harry said.

"More or less," Sirius agreed.

"So you asked her because you thought she would have a better idea of how to defeat another Dark Lord?" Hermione asked, then frowned, biting her lip. "What does that mean, anyway? I always just assumed people meant what You-Know-Who did politically, but your aunt said she didn't care about politics at all when she was alive."

"You'd probably be better off asking her for a full definition," Sirius said wryly, "But my understanding is that it's not that different from being awarded the title of Potions Master or Seer, it's just that the Dark Arts are illegal and more extensive. I didn't actually know Cassie had that title before, for the record," he went on, pausing to neaten the pile of scrolls. "But it doesn't surprise me much. My family never was very impressed by Voldemort."

"So you think I should accept?" Harry asked.

Sirius frowned. "Dark Arts mean a lot of things," he said. "You understand - I was taught Dark Arts by my family, and there are things I have nightmares about and things I still use. I don't recommend that you take everything she says as the truth, but if I didn't think she would be helpful I wouldn't have asked her. And the muggle books in the stack on her desk suggest that her political opinions aren't the rest of the family's. That was why I talked to her portrait in the first place."

"You use Dark Arts?" Ron said, voice slightly high pitched. "What?"

"Well." Sirius smiled thinly. "For example, there's a certain method that allows you to perceive magic directly with sight. It's extremely useful, but it usually can't be taught to adults and a certain percentage of children who are taught lose themselves in it and become incapable of controlling their magic or returning to reality. I was taught at five, which is extreme, even for Dark families - the younger the child, the better the results if successful, and the more likely they are to have an accident. From what my aunt said, the Rosiers teach it around twelve, I don't know about any other family. It's classified as Dark because of the high fatality rate among learners, but once you've acquired it it's not particularly destructive."

"Oh," Ron said, gawking.

Harry swallowed. "So," he said. "If you think it's a good idea - then I'll try."

"There's - one more thing we should tell you and Cassiopeia," Hermione said tentatively, looking at Harry. She seemed to want his permission so he nodded, and then they all had to troop back into the kitchen.

"Have you reached a conclusion?" she asked. She had her book open again, but rather than reading she had taken down her hair and was in the midst of re-braiding it.

"I'll try it and see whether I think you're teaching me things I shouldn't do," Harry said, and to his relief Cassiopeia laughed. "But Hermione had a guess about the Horcrux."

"Do you get - a lot of news?" Hermione said tentatively. "You did say some things about the war before…"

"My brother Pollux has a portrait in the Ministry - he was head of Magical Law Enforcement in the fifties - and Phineas Nigellus, Sirius's great-great grandfather, was the least popular headmaster Hogwarts ever had." Cassiopeia smiled blandly. "So he has a portrait in the headmaster's office. Other than what they overhear and choose to share, I've heard nothing since Arcturus died a few years ago, and he rarely spoke to the portraits in his residence or had visitors."

"But if you hear news from Hogwarts, you know the Chamber of Secrets was opened two years ago?"

Cassiopeia seemed to have followed Hermione's thoughts immediately. She raised her eyebrows and said softly, "A memory... Yes, Phineas Nigellus mentioned a book was responsible. I thought it strange at the time, I wondered if he'd misunderstood..." She lapsed into silence then muttered, "But that doesn't make any sense."

"What doesn't?" Harry said.

"Sorry, I mean the way he treated the Horcrux. Do you know how it came to be at Hogwarts? Phineas didn't explain."

"Lucius Malfoy slipped it into my sister's school things," Ron said, furious all over again at the reminder. "Dad was working on a muggle protection bill he was mad about, so he thought he'd discredit him with his daughter attacking muggleborns--"

"I'm sorry," Cassiopeia said, "Lucius Malfoy tried to frame a Weasley as the Heir of Slytherin?"

"He might have been thinking of us," Sirius said. "I mean, Ginny and Ron have us on both sides."

"Please," Cassiopeia said tartly, "If there had been a single Parselmouth in the family in the last three hundred years everyone in Europe would know. Your mother would have taken out ads in the newspaper reminding the country on a weekly basis." She rubbed her temples with both hands. "I realize it doesn't have to make sense, political gossip is like this, I just - this is why I despise politics...

"So we can presume Lucius Malfoy didn't know what it was, or perhaps wanted his master definitively dead and unable to come interfere with his political position. Did any of you interact with the Horcrux closely enough to say whether it was actually meant to open the Chamber, or merely capable of it once it possessed someone? Ron, would your sister know?"

"I came across it," Harry said, "And I talked to it. I don't know exactly what it was meant for, but it had been made when he was sixteen, it showed me a memory of him framing someone for opening the Chamber. It was a blank diary, and if you wrote in it, it absorbed the ink and then used it to write messages back."

"Which really does sound like a deliberate weapon." Cassiopeia frowned. "Do you surmise why I say this doesn't make sense?"

"Because if he cut off his soul so he could - protect it separately from his body, why throw it into danger to attack people?" Harry said.

"Yes. He must have had other methods of protecting himself later, but if he designed it as a weapon at sixteen then his original plan must have been..." Cassiopeia looked suddenly blank, then appalled.

"What is it?" Sirius said, leaning forward.

"It occurs to me that, supposing you are not attached to having a functional soul or any humanity whatsoever, there is no technical reason to limit yourself to only one Horcrux," Cassiopeia said. "--I need to think about this. Sirius, if you're able to contact Slughorn or Lucretia to find out about Riddle's plans as a teenager, please proceed."

Chapter Text

It turned out that in the short term, agreeing to study the Dark Arts meant more homework.

Only a few days into term, Harry already felt that his situation was dire in this area. The fourth years who'd had Charms already had been assigned mountains of reading prior to beginning Banishing spells, and as Harry had only sort of mastered the Summoning Charm, he reluctantly agreed with Hermione that he should do the supplementary readings as well. Furthermore, Professor McGonagall was now grading essays on an O.W.L. standard and had written a request that Harry turn in an edited version of his last homework assignment before the holidays in exchange for a higher grade on top of their new assignment.

Snape, furthermore, had begun the term with a rant about how half of them had failed his test on antidotes, suggested that certain students would be fortunate to pass the end of the year, and begun the next unit on potions affected by lighting by assigning them a hundred pages of reading for the practical Friday. He appeared to be attempting to make up for their reduced misery in his class.

On the bright side, Hagrid had announced that as they were down to two Skrewts, they could no longer continue studying them. Harry felt a certain amount of trepidation as to what he would bring in next.

"It would be easier to feel sorry for Snape if he acted like less of a git," Harry said in Sirius's quarters that evening. They were all trying to get some work done between dinner and Astronomy class.

"Well, at least he's not going after you and Neville anymore," Ron said. "Not that that makes him less of a - hi, Sirius."

"Hello, all," Sirius said, dropping a bag of parchment on the couch and digging in his teaching satchel. "Harry, I was talking to Aunt Cassie last night and she asked me to get a couple of books from Grimmauld Place for you. Neither of these should leave my quarters. Am I right in guessing you two will want to work on it with him?"

"Yes, of course!" Hermione said.

Harry could not help sending her a slightly dubious look. She had been more lively during the holidays, and it had not been so obvious what was wrong when she and Ron were fighting before the ball, but only a couple of days into term the dark circles were starting to appear under her eyes again. He wondered if she was remembering to use her Time Turner to sleep as well as attend class.

Ron hesitated, but said, "Well, if Harry is."

Sirius nodded. "I can't copy the text easily - they're charmed against it - and single copies of these books are hard enough to get, but you can trade them off. I've marked the pages in these two. Don't go out of the parts I've sectioned - Hermione, I know this is asking a lot of you, especially, but some of these books are enchanted to be dangerous to people who aren't prepared."

"What will we be reading about?" Hermione asked eagerly.

"Here." Sirius took out two books. One was thin and bound in black leather; the other was quite thick and had a cover of peeling red clapboard. "The introduction and first three chapters of this one - A More Complete Theory of Magic - and chapters two through four in this, Sacrificial Rites and the History of Magic in the British Isles. Aunt Cassie said to let her know when you're done with those, but she understands if you need to focus on other work to avoid scrutiny. They're both primarily theory, but I am also supposed to tell you that under no circumstances are you to run off and try anything without discussing it with me, as none of you have the preparation you would at your ages if you'd been raised by traditional families." Sirius rolled his eyes on the last phrase.

Hermione at once put down the essay assigned in History of Magic that morning to take up the red clapboard book.

Harry sighed. "I'd better finish editing this essay for McGonagall first," he said. "I can't figure out what she wants." Having extra homework the second day of term seemed distinctly unfair.

"Want me to have a look?" Sirius asked, yawning. "It's less depressing than deciding whether I'm really going to have to fail one of the firsties..."

Harry passed the essay to Sirius with relief and thought about starting Snape's reading, but the power of curiosity was too great. He picked up the black leather volume - Sacrificial Rites - and turned to the bookmark at the beginning of chapter two.

Right away there was an obvious difference. Most books he had encountered in the magical world were in something like typeface - he thought there had been a mention in a History of Magic reading at some point of the printing press's adoption by the magical world - but this book had been copied by someone with a neat, dense hand. Harry brought the book closer to his face and squinted, trying to decipher it.

The modern conception of magic as conjured, so to speak, from thin air and intent, is in the end baseless and quite ahistorical. All magic is in a technical sense sacrificial, in that it requires payment. The current fashion is for spellwork paid for with only the energy of the caster and in rare cases emotions, which necessarily means the power of a given spell will be capped by the magical capacity of its caster.

As a result an inherently inequal playing field is created: wizards and witches with more power will have more effective spellwork, regardless of the quality of their intellectual understanding, intent, or focus; and spellwork which cannot be powered by the common individual will tend to die out entirely.

If we turn to the British Isles some two thousand years ago at the twilight of indigenous civilization before the Roman Empire, the situation is reversed almost entirely. At this time most magic is sacrificial and practiced by the community rather than the individual. Individual use of magic is almost unknown, and many of the most common spells today might be considered borderline blasphemous for their casual tampering with natural forces. As a result of this communal focus, individual power capacity is almost meaningless, and in fact at this time the communities of Britain draw no distinction at all between what we would term 'muggle' and 'magical' - a distinction that seems quite obvious and essential to us today.

This latter understanding would be deemed perverse by many - but it is the ancient affair in almost every country and remains so in most civilizations worldwide. A full discussion of the implications of the Statute of Secrecy on these societies is outside the focus of this work, but the point bears acknowledgment before we move on to the specific how and why.

The branch of magic which is practiced by these communities - which enables this lack of individual focus - is sacrificial magic, outlawed in Britain and by every ICW member today. This branch is the most primitive and primary type of magic. It is practiced widely in indigenous societies and is determinative in the mentality described above, because it actually allows muggles to participate in magical rites.

Harry tried to sort through the implications of the dense text, then looked at Sirius. "Have you read this? Your family owned it?"

"Last night, yeah." Sirius yawned. "That one's from Aunt Cassie's personal library. It looks like someone boxed it up and put it in storage without going through the books. I'm pretty sure if anyone else had opened that one it would have been burnt."

At dinner Wednesday they had a surprise: Bill Weasley was sitting at the Gryffindor table when they arrived in the Great Hall, surrounded by chattering students.

"Hey, Ron!" he called, waving to them. "Harry, Hermione - clear up some space, would you?" he said.

"We forgot you were coming!" Ron said, dropping next to Bill.

"Nice to see you again," Harry said, grinning and sitting down. "Are you going to stop by dueling club tonight?"

"I might as well see how you're doing, since Professor Black won't be available to talk about the curse with until after," Bill said. "I hear you're going to help with the grunt work?"

"Yes, whatever we can," Hermione said breathlessly. "I've been doing some reading and I was wondering what approach you'll be using - I read that the Cauldwell method is usually taught to Gringotts curse breakers--"

The ensuing conversation rapidly went over Harry's head. He tucked into his roast chicken, half-listening and worried.

Things had been going so normally at school that he had nearly forgotten about the curse on the Defense position. True, Barty Crouch might be hiding his Death Eater son, but he was far away from school most of the time and nothing strange had happened since the attack on Karkaroff in November. Now Harry wondered whether he was endangering Sirius by agreeing to study illegal magic with him, quite apart from whether it was a good idea on its own. After all, might it be playing into the curse's hands to get involved in something so dangerous?

He was not able to discuss this with Ron and Hermione at dinner, however. Afterward they trooped up to the common room to drop off their bags and were followed by Bill, so he didn't have a chance to get anyone in private that evening.

At dueling club itself Cho promptly found him and asked to partner with him. He tried to be happy about this; it was true that he felt a certain satisfaction when she hugged him in celebration of a successful jinx, particularly when he saw Cedric Diggory shoot a wistful glance at her from across the room. But he knew he was distracted, and Cho knew it, too; he could see that she looked hurt.

"Sorry," he muttered a few minutes later, helping her up. Sirius and Flitwick had just called a time out, and were traveling through the room countering spells that the students hadn't been able to reverse. "It's just - you know Bill Weasley got here tonight? Dumbledore asked him to the school to see if he can identify the curse on the Defense job. I'd forgotten about it and now I'm worrying about Sirius again."

It seemed strange to just say this to someone other than Ron and Hermione. Harry was accustomed to his problems being unusual and inexplicable to others. But he knew he had to tell Cho something.

Her face cleared almost at once. "Of course - there really is a curse, then? I thought it was just a rumor."

"Sirius and Dumbledore seem to think so," Harry said. "I had no idea until he'd already accepted the job." Cho seemed happier, but it occurred to him that she would probably get tired of it if every time they saw each other he had to apologize for being distracted by his problems. "So, uh - do you have plans for next Hogsmeade weekend?"

Cho lit up quite visibly. "Not yet!" she said.

"Er, is there anything you'd like to do? With me, I mean."

"Maybe we could have tea at Madam Puddifoot's?" she said.

Hermione had drifted over. "Oh," she said eagerly, "Are you going to Hogsmeade together next visit?" When Harry nodded, she said, "Cho, do you think you might be interested in a double date? I'm going with Viktor, and we were talking about it."

"Oh - if Harry's alright with it," she said, glancing at Harry.

Harry tried to work out whether he was meant to say yes or no to this. "Uh, it's fine with me," he said. "If you're doing something else already, maybe we could meet up after tea?"

"We were going to go for a walk on High Street and see," Hermione said. "Would three work for you?"

This was quickly arranged, and Harry thought Cho looked a lot happier when he left the club with Ron and Hermione.

"Thanks for that," he said.

"You'll want company after Madam Puddifoot's," Hermione said. "Just try not to laugh when you go in, Cho's the type to get offended."

Harry was still trying to determine what that meant when they arrived at the portrait of Remus and Romulus to wait for Bill and Sirius.

"Well, it's nice to see someone so interested," Bill said a few minutes later, spreading out diagrams over the coffee table. "Any chance you're thinking of going into the field yourself, Hermione?"

"I don't much fancy banking," Hermione said. "The spellwork is interesting, though."

"Gringotts hires the most of us, but there are other businesses that do, too, Bill said. "So, situation like this, the first thing we want to figure out is what we're actually looking for. I got a list from Dumbledore of what happened to every defense teacher in the last forty-odd years since the curse is supposed to have been set, and the notes from the two previous Curse-Breaker teams that have looked at it." He took out a roll of parchment and began weighing it open. "And to be honest, I'm not much wiser than when I started except that I can tell you a bunch of things it's not."

"That's what's always struck me as strange about it," Sirius said, setting a tea tray to hover next to the table so they would have more room. "Most of the time a curse would kill people in the same way. This..."

"Looks completely unrelated, assuming you accept twenty-seven resignations, accidents and deaths in a row," Bill said, cheerfully. "Which is ridiculous. But I think I found a pattern after squinting at it for long enough. Any of you have a guess?"

Harry began to read the scroll from the top. Several items down he cast a glance at Hermione, feeling the inkling of an idea. To his surprise, Hermione was still reading intently, looking frustrated.

"Er," Harry said, feeling like he could not possibly be right. "All of these were the result of someone else's actions, weren't they? I mean, it doesn't look like anyone just - fell off a broom or had a heart attack, or..."

Bill was nodding. "Malicious intent. I think the curse is zeroing in on the Defense teacher and affecting the minds of the people around them."

After that they discussed how a curse could identify a particular professor and then target people who interacted with them for an hour or more, coming up with increasingly far-fetched ideas of what the specific affects might be. Bill seemed to enjoy the lecture, although slightly overwhelmed by Hermione's word-perfect recitation of extracts from several curse breaking textbooks. They ended the night with Bill and Sirius planning tests for Bill to get started on the next day and determined when Sirius and the three of them would be able to assist him, although unfortunately Thursday was one of their fuller days and they wouldn't have much time.

"Don't worry about that," Bill said. "You three have class to deal with. If we can't wrap it up while I'm here I can always come back, or Dumbledore can follow up on what we find. And I'm here for a whole week, anyway."

Hermione almost vibrated with disappointment at this pronouncement, and Harry half-expected her to volunteer that she could be there with her Time-Turner, but in the end she accepted it.

The next day, however, they were distracted at breakfast by the news.

"'Attack on Malfoy,'" Hermione read in a whisper, having borrowed a paper from an older Gryffindor. "'An unknown perpetrator cursed Lucius Malfoy, head of his family, during a visit to the Ministry Wednesday morning...'"

"Good," Ron said, mouth full. "Hope it was painful, what did they get him with?"

"It doesn't say," Hermione said. "But look, he's in St. Mungo's!"

"Wonderful," Harry said. "I hope it takes him ages to heal."

"Oh, no!" Hermione's hand flew up to her mouth. "They're suggesting that Sirius might have arranged it--"

"Not directly, that's the kind of libel that would actually get them in trouble, saying that about the Black head," Ron said, startled.

"No, no, it's just saying that his wife recently filed for divorce on grounds of battery and it seems like a funny coincidence, but that's what everyone will think, isn't it?" Hermione glanced anxiously up at the head table, where Sirius was conspicuously absent.

"Well, he's at Hogwarts, isn't it? So if they do ask it'll be fine," Ron said, but he gave the high table a worried look, too.

Harry glanced over the Slytherin table. Draco Malfoy's presence on the end by himself was now a familiar sight. The other Slytherins in their year were huddled in a knot around a newspaper.

Harry swallowed. He wasn't sure he liked the idea, but...

"Would you mind if I went and asked him to sit with us?" he said in an undertone. Students were allowed to move between house tables; Cho had come to sit with them occasionally, and Harry had gone to sit with her and at the Ravenclaw table once or twice. He had never been close friends with anyone else from another house, though.

"Harry," Ron groaned.

Hermione looked anxiously over her shoulder and swallowed. "It's a good idea," she said quietly, but she didn't look pleased.

"If he says anything awful to you I'll tell him to shove off," Harry said, and got up.

He was sure his face was burning by the time he got past the Ravenclaw table. People were starting to look up now that it was obvious he wasn't going to sit with Cho again. He told himself he had gone too far to turn back without looking stupid and went to sit down across from Malfoy.

"Er," he said, because Malfoy hadn't looked at him, but his ears were also going pink. "Malfoy."

"What, Potter?" Malfoy snapped.

This had seemed like a much better idea from the other side of the Great Hall. "Do you want to eat with us today?" he asked, carefully.

"I don't need your pity," Malfoy snapped, face jerking up.

"So, no, then?" Harry said.

There was a conspicuous silence lasting several moments.

"Fine," Malfoy muttered, gathering his breakfast things jerkily and getting up. Harry followed awkwardly, very aware of the stares from the knot of fourth year Slytherins.

What followed was an awkward, mostly silent meal. Hermione made several persistent attempts to talk to Malfoy, who - possibly fearing retaliation by the Gryffindors around him - was not openly rude, but muttered unintelligible responses and kept his head down. Ron rolled his eyes and cast Harry disbelieving looks several times, and Harry himself could think of nothing whatsoever to say. Even talking to Ron and Hermione seemed absolutely impossible with Malfoy right there.

However, by the end of the meal Malfoy had uncurled slightly and his flush had gone down, and if Harry wasn't sure he was glad he'd done it, he didn't exactly regret it, either.

During break, while the other Gryffindors were wringing out their clothes after Care of Magical Creatures, Harry ran up to check on Sirius in his quarters, hoping he would be there. He found him sitting at his desk, speaking into a mirror propped up against the wall. The mirror showed not Sirius's face, but Narcissa's.

"--Honestly, I can think of any number of men," she was saying and sighing."Yaxley, for example, I was sleeping with him for a while, or Amycus Carrow... It could even be one of Bella's--"

"Bella's?" Sirius' eyebrows crept up.

"Alecto, for example," Narcissa said.

Sirius choked, then swung around. "Harry!"

"You weren't at breakfast, I wanted to check," Harry said awkwardly, looking over Sirius's shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

"The person who attacked my ex-husband, of course," Narcissa said calmly. "It's so unnerving not to know." She didn't sound upset. In fact, she sounded pleased, and perhaps excited.

"You think it was probably a Death Eater, though?" Sirius said.

Narcissa shrugged. "Unless the timing was a coincidence, anyway. It's true that any number of Ministry employees might have wanted to, but it doesn't seem likely they'd pick now... Unless they were hoping to pin it on you, I suppose."

A twinge of worry went through Harry at that thought, but he was distracted by another thought almost immediately: had it been the younger Crouch?

"I suppose," Sirius said heavily, "But you'd think they'd come up with a better target - Merlin, Harry, you'd better get to Transfiguration or McGonagall will have my head. Go on, I'll be fine," he said.

As Harry left, he heard Narcissa say, "A lot like you at that age, isn't he?"

Chapter Text

After dinner the three of them met Bill and Sirius in the empty Defense classroom. Bill had a strange looking handheld mirror with runes engraved into the rim, and was examining Sirius in it, moving around him, while Sirius leafed through a heavy book.

"Hey," Bill called when they opened the door. "Come on in."

Harry filed in after Hermione and Ron, feeling rather like he was at a lesson he hadn't done the homework for. A large number of strange objects were assembled on the table at the front of the room, including odd metal instruments, several more mirrors, a large bundle of what looked like string, and a cage containing a live chicken.

"So, what are we going to do, then?" Ron asked, examining the table with interest.

"If you remember from yesterday," Bill said, "Two Curse-Breaker teams have been invited to the castle before, in addition to Professor Dumbledore's personal efforts to break the curse. I have a list of the stuff they've tried and their test results. Most of the standard scrying, identifying spells - and a lot of nonstandard ones - have been attempted, and found nothing at all, or incoherent results. That's part of why a lot of people will tell you the curse is just a rumor. There's no proof of a curse at all. A couple of general purifying and protection spells have also been cast in an attempt to neutralize a hypothetical curse, which is better than nothing when you don't know what to counter, but generally pretty ineffective. As you can tell, they don't seem to have helped.

"I've spent the day recasting some of the testing spells to verify those results, and unfortunately I still haven't found anything. So, we're going to move from trying to detect the curse itself to examining the normal enchantments and looking for anything out of place. That's what Professor Dumbledore has been attempting on and off on holidays, but he hasn't had the time to really pursue it thoroughly.

"I took a look at the Defense classroom earlier today while Sirius was between classes, and I didn't find anything on the room itself," Bill said. "Not a shock - it's changed several times since the curse was set, and we all assume You-Know-Who's smarter than that. The next thing I'm doing is looking for anything obvious hooked to Sirius himself, and I'm not seeing much..."

"Nor me," Sirius said, winking at Harry; Harry recalled that Sirius had been taught some unusual methods of observing magic by his family.

"But of course, if it was easily visible the curse would have been broken years ago." Bill grinned. "This just makes it fun. So, to review, last time we talked, we figured out that all of the Defense teachers have been attacked by other people - not always physically. So what does that imply?"

"It implies we should look for the curse operating on people around the Defense professor," Hermione said at once. "Are you going to examine us next?"

"That's the idea," Bill said. "Who wants to go first?"

Hermione climbed readily onto the desk in front of Bill and sat down, allowing him to walk around her in a circle with the mirror and then set it up to examine more closely her head, her wand hand, and her back over her heart. Harry and Ron were standing close enough that Harry glimpsed the mirror when Bill brought it back up to examine the back of Hermione's head, and Harry gasped: around Hermione's hair swirled glowing lines in incomprehensible tangles and spirals, with gossamer threads drifting out from them, and a haze of color overlaying it all. It looked something like a kaleidoscope.

"That's not the curse, is it?" Ron asked.

"Not as far as I can see," Bill said, frowning.

"Life almost always looks like that once you make the magic visible," Sirius said, leaning on another desk next to them. "So do magical objects - wands, for instance, or even an enchanted sock... Part of the complicated part of learning to modify enchantments - or break curses - is learning how to interpret it."

"You mean, wizards and magical creatures?" Ron asked.

Sirius shook his head. "Muggles, too, or even an ordinary dog." He grinned at them at this, and Harry muffled a laugh. "We - wizards and witches, and other magical beings - can manipulate magic, and we can see it, but it doesn't make us special any more than... I don't know, than bats have a special existence in sound because they echolocate--"

"They what now?" Bill asked, frowning into Hermione's hair. Harry was glad that he had asked; Ron looked confused, and while he had a vague idea about bats making noises and listening to how they bounced, he wasn't sure of it, either.

"They navigate with sonar - sound waves - by making very high pitched noises and listening to the way that they echo back to interpret the space around them," Hermione said. "So what Sirius is saying is that you or I couldn't perceive sound like that, or hear the noises bats make at all, but we still make noise. Right?"

"Yes, exactly," Sirius said. "All life has magic - all material things, really, but if you take something like a plastic chair or a glass bowl it's going to be very hard to detect."

"So part of how curses hide," Bill said, picking up, "Is by weaving themselves in with the magic that makes up a witch or a wizard and disguising themselves as something ordinary... Or even something important, one of my teachers saw a nasty one that made itself look like a part of the cardiac system so everyone was afraid to pull it... If you're enchanted I'm not seeing it, Hermione. Ron or Harry next?"

Harry sat down on the desk. Something was bothering him about the idea. He couldn't quite think what...

Bill raised the mirror and exhaled sharply.

"What?" Harry stiffened.

"What's wrong?" Sirius had gotten to his feet.

"Nothing," Bill said shakily. "I just - I guess that's the curse You-Know-Who used on you..."

Sirius got up and went over to look; Harry could see Hermione craning over his shoulder and felt uncomfortable. They were all staring, not at his scar, but at its reflection in Bill's mirror.

"What is it?" he said at last, annoyed.

"I think it's your scar," Sirius said. His hand stretched in the air over Harry's face. Harry resisted the urge to duck.

"It's - there are all of these swirls and colors around you," Hermione said, sounding dazed. "And most of them look - normal, alive, but then there's this gaping... gash... over your forehead. It looks like a necrotic - like a wound gone rotten," she said. "Like there's a hole in your magic, in you. And..." She tilted her head slowly, like she was following something Harry couldn't see, "There are these... lines, like smoke trails, leading off of it into the distance..." Her hand sketched a shape in the air, trailing entirely out of the mirror's field. "Like ash and bone..."

"Hermione," Sirius said sharply, settling a hand on her shoulder, and she jumped.

Her eyes blinked rapidly. "What just happened?"

"You went into a trance," Bill said, slightly stunned. "That's supposed to take a ton of training..."

"Not quite a trance, more a heightened awareness," Sirius said. "Come on, sit down, I think you've seen enough of the mirror today."

"But I wasn't finished looking," Hermione said, disgruntled, but allowed Sirius to lead her off.

"You remember what I told you about my family's magic?" Sirius said. "That's the first lesson. It's not supposed to be doable like that by a witch your age. I don't want you to have any accidents."

Hermione looked rather shaken by this news, and Ron rapidly went over to her himself, forgetting about the mirror. "Is she alright?" he said to Sirius, looking pale.

"She should be," Sirius said. "Hermione, if you're seeing or hearing anything - having strange thoughts - I want you to tell me right away. If I'm not available, go to Dumbledore."

Hermione nodded reluctantly.

Harry tried to recapture the thought he'd had just before they had distracted him with his scar. "Sirius?" he said.

"Yes?" Sirius looked over.

"All of the people who were attacked - it wasn't just random, was it? I mean, I attacked Quirrell in the middle of a fight, and Lockhart's wand backfired after he and Ron and I got into a - a fight, and Snape told everyone about Lupin. Were the others all like that, too? I remember on the list we were looking at, that first teacher got into a duel with another professor, and there was one two after that who was cursed by a parent whose daughter he'd, um..."

"Not all of them had much information, but basically, yeah," Bill said.

"So - the curse probably doesn't just work on everyone, does it?" Harry said. "It activates - during fights, or when there's an opening, or on - on people who don't like the professor..."

"It's a thought," Bill said slowly. "Merlin's tits, that would be complicated to set up, but considering the caster..."

"Then you know who we should use?" Hermione said at once.

"Who?" Harry said, surprised.

"Professor Snape, of course," Hermione said. "He loathes Sirius. If it's just someone who doesn't like the Defense professor - or we could make sure they were having a fight, so that we could test if that's what causes it..." She looked at Sirius apologetically.

"If you want me to have a go at Snape in the name of research, I'm delighted," he said dryly.

Bill was shaking his head. "Too risky when we think his mind might be meddled with to make him attack you. But if we can convince him to sit down and let us take a look at him in the room with you as a preliminary thing... And if you do get into any ongoing arguments..."

"They're having one now, Sirius got the board of governors to look into his teaching," Ron said.

"They've sort of made up, though, haven't they, over Harry?" Hermione said.

"I'll ask him before I go," Bill said. "He doesn't exactly like me, but he doesn't particularly dislike me either. I was in his N.E.W.T. Potions class and he was less of a git to me then.

"So," Bill said. "Back to my plans. As you can see, I have several blank mirrors on the table. You lot, assuming you don't object, are going to help me enchant them to match this one, so that we can search more efficiently. It's an interesting method I learned from a Syrian Curse-Breaker who works at the Egyptian Gringotts branch with me.

"Now. I want you all to remember that this stuff is proscribed. I'm allowed to practice ritual magic for the purpose of Curse-Breaking on a legitimate job according to my professional license, and I can draft assistants as I deem it necessary - that's you lot - but don't recreate any of this or talk about the details, because I'd get into serious trouble."

With that warning given, Bill went over to the table to collect a packet of chalk. Sirius waved his wand and cleared a large space in the center of the Defense classroom floor, then took one of the pieces of chalk and began walking a loose circle around it, marking spots on the floor.

Bill had been sorting through a collection of papers on the table; he located a diagram in the pile and came over to begin writing in chalk on one of the points Sirius had marked. "You three, go set candles on these spots and light them, will you? Incendio will be fine," he said, holding the diagram out.

What followed seemed in some ways more like a play or an odd children's game than magic, which Harry associated mostly with grinding, endless attempts to copy the correct movements, words and focus. They lit the candles and set up the remaining mirrors so that each reflected flame from one of them. Then Bill conjured water into a small bowl and mixed salt into it, before releasing the chicken from its cage.

Ron and Hermione were both shooting anxious looks at the chicken. Harry, too, felt a certain amount of trepidation about its fate. It turned out that this was unnecessary. Bill only sat on the floor in the middle of the candles and chalk and coaxed it over to him, then delicately plucked a feather.

"It has to give this up willingly," he said to the four of them, eyes on the chicken. "So I have to have a chicken that's friendly enough to come to me, and stupid enough to keep doing it even after I've yanked its feathers out a dozen times. Hagrid loaned this one to me, I'll be bringing it back when we're done. Now, one at a time, I go to each of the mirrors..."

He dipped the feather into the bowl of salt water and took the first mirror, painting on the rim where the finished mirror had carved writing; then he said evenly in English, "Lend me clarity of vision." The candle reflected in the mirror blazed blindingly bright for a moment; when it faded, the mirror reflected magic, not just the room itself.

"Oh, wow, that's amazing," Hermione said, straining on her toes to see.

Bill half-smiled. "Watch me do the next one from up close, then you can do the next, alright? I've got the inscription written on the bottom of the diagram, you can copy it."

Hermione's performance was successful. Harry and Ron both declined to attempt the last, not knowing runes, but Sirius volunteered, saying he'd like to remember how it worked. Seeing him and Bill exchange looks, Harry suspected that Bill had drafted Sirius to assist him with the intention of sharing the technique without giving up plausible deniability later.

When they were finished, they had four new enchanted mirrors, and a certain amount of chicken-related damage to the room to clean up.

"You said you learned this from a Syrian wizard?" Hermione asked, wiping chalk from the floor. "Those runes were Futhark, though, weren't they?"

"Yeah," Bill said. "That's the runic alphabet I know best, I adapted the inscription. Middle Easterners mostly just use Arabic for magical writing. I had to learn it to practice Curse-Breaking in Egypt but I'm better with the stuff I've been using longer."

"I was surprised you didn't use an invocation," Sirius added, sounding distracted; he was chasing down the chicken to return it to the cage.

Bill shrugged. "Well, I learned Curse-Breaking here, in professional training, and the goblin-run courses don't teach it; I've always had perfectly good results without calling on any power. You three, he's talking about when I asked for clarity of vision. Most of my local colleagues in Egypt call on God when they do rituals like that, and you can find Brits who do it, too; and then a lot of people will call on specific saints for the task at hand, or local spirits or gods... You'd have grown up doing that?"

"Yeah, saints, ancestors and gods," Sirius said, shutting the cage. "I don't know that I've ever seen much of a difference either, but it does feel strange not to. You three had better go up to bed, it's almost curfew."

Harry was grateful to have Snape's likely cooperation to argue about on the way back to the tower; the ritual had been an excellent distraction, but if he didn't have something to think about, his mind kept slipping back to Hermione's blank face and straining eyes as she'd said, "Like a wound gone rotten..."

Just in front of the Tower, they were intercepted by Marietta. "Hey, Harry," she said, grinning at him rather suggestively. "Professor Dumbledore said to give this to you... Have fun in Hogsmeade with Cho!"

Blushing furiously, Harry took the scroll and examined it on the way in.

"It's my next lesson," he whispered to Ron and Hermione once they were inside. "He's set it for two weeks, Monday after Hogsmeade."

In Potions Friday, Harry tried to watch Snape to decide whether Bill had asked him and if so, whether he'd agreed. He received no clear hints from Snape's manner: he put up the instructions, gave the now usual warning about expelling anyone who fooled around, and sat down at his desk, glowering furiously at his parchment.

On the bright side, Harry mused, now that he was more or less free to think about his results and ask Hermione questions he was doing a lot better in Potions. So was Neville.

When he brought up his vial of Heartening Draught, however, Snape raised his head. "Potter," he said.

"Sir?" Harry said awkwardly, handing over the vial. Snape's lip curled, looking at it, but then he nearly always looked like that examining student potions.

"Stay behind," he said only, lazily. "Tell Miss Granger, too."

Alarmed, Harry conveyed this news to Hermione, and the two of them watched the remaining students hand in their work before filing awkwardly back to Snape's desk. Ron hovered in the doorway until Snape unceremoniously stalked over, told him to leave, and slammed it behind him before returning quite calmly to Harry and Hermione.

"So," he said, voice cool but not icy. "I am informed by Mr. Weasley's elder brother that the three of you are assisting him and - Professor - Black in examining the Defense curse, and that Mr. Potter had an idea which inspired him to ask me for assistance."

"Uh, didn't Bill tell you, Sir?" Harry said.

"He did. I wish to hear it from you."

"Right." Harry swallowed. "Well, Bill got a list of what happened to all of the Defense professors since the position was cursed from Professor Dumbledore, and all of them were attacked or injured in fights caused by other people--"

"Not all," Snape said. "Lupin, for example."

"Uh, not all physically, sir, but they were all caused to leave by other people. So we thought that the curse might act on bystanders, not the professor themselves. And I was thinking about it, and all of them were during - fights over something else, or disagreements, or between people who disliked each other, it wasn't like people have just been attacking the Defense professors out of the blue for no reason, sir. So I thought instead of examining just anyone in the room with Sirius, it might work better to use someone who..." Harry was quite unsure how to finish this sentence, and trailed off awkwardly.

"Who detests him as he richly deserves?" Snape arched one eyebrow. "Tell me what Mr. Weasley has done to examine you so far."

"He was using a mirror enchanted to view magic," Hermione said. "That was all with us, so far - he looked over Sirius, and me, and then Harry and we got... distracted."

"Yes. Mr. Weasley also informed me that you demonstrated an alarming ability to slip into trance." Snape studied Hermione, frowning, in a way that made Harry want to shove himself in between them to stop him. "Did Professor Black inform you what he thought you had done?"

"He said that it was related to a method of magic sight his family taught young children," Hermione said. "And that, er, the process of learning killed some of them."

"Indeed. The process itself is not Dark, but teaching it is illegal because of the low survival rate, coupled with the age at which it traditionally must be taught in order for the lessons to be effective. You are at the upper range of the age at which it can be taught at all." Snape frowned. "Has Black offered to teach you?"

"No, sir. He told me to go to him or to Professor Dumbledore if it happened again."

"Well. I suppose it would be quite impossible to teach during the term, at least if you are to attend to your other classes. Where is it that you are supposed to meet?"

"In the Defense classroom after dinner," Harry said.

"You may inform Black and Mr. Weasley I will see you there. You are both dismissed," Snape said, lazily. "Miss Granger, I would like to see you in private in my office at some time this week. I understand your schedule is incoherent. What day?"

Hermione practically vibrated in shock. "Er - I have Ancient Runes Tuesday night, and dueling club Wednesday, Professor. Any other night I'm free after dinner."

Snape nodded once, sharply. "Next Thursday, then. Both of you, go."

Chapter Text

Ron felt very strongly that Hermione should not go to the appointment with Snape.

"He probably wants to teach you his own Dark magic," he said in an undertone at dinner. "Listen to Sirius, he said you should talk to him or Dumbledore if it happens again, not Snape, and he hates you, see how he behaved before--"

"He's a teacher, Ron, I can't just not go," Hermione said through gritted teeth. "He would just give me detention and say whatever he was going to say anyway, and anyway, he's been okay ever since Harry asked him about his mother, hasn't he?"

"If by okay you mean slightly less of a total--"

"Talking about a professor, ickle Ronniekins?" Fred asked, dropping onto the table.

"Wouldn't want to get in trouble, would we?"

"Might get a howler from Mum--"

"Or a detention--"

"Oh, shut up," Ron groaned.

"Don't mind us. We just stopped in to talk to Harry here--"

"Give him a little friendly advice--"

"Man to man, right?" Fred said.

"Your girlfriend's eyeing you--"

"Looks a little lonely--"

Harry looked up, startled, and saw Cho, indeed eyeing him from across the hall.

"Er - I'll see you two after dinner, alright?" he said, collecting his bag. "Thanks, Fred, George--"

"No trouble, Harry--"

"Just looking out for our Seeker."

"Hi, Cho," Harry said a few minutes later. "Er, is it alright if I sit down..."

"Sure, Harry!" she said brightly, reaching for a platter of bacon and nearly knocking a jug of pumpkin juice over.

"So," Harry said, sitting down and cycling through several ideas for starting a conversation that did not involve apologizing for how distracted he had been lately, "What do you think the Second Task will be?"

"Well," Cho said thoughtfully, "The first one is usually creatures, so they were traditional so far, but it probably won't be a variation on the same thing."

"Is there any pattern to the second task?" Harry asked curiously.

"Just the hint, according to my cousin Leilei, she was reading about it," Cho said. "It's meant to be a puzzle, but that means they vary a lot. She said one year the Tournament took place in Durmstrang and the students had to make it across a three day obstacle course in the winter without freezing to death."

Harry mused how strange it was to have dangerous and bizarre things happening to other people for a change. Speculating about the Tournament was easy, and allowed Cho's friends to join in between giggling at the two of them. Harry was starting to get used to the giggling; at least, he thought, it was all over something he actually wanted to be doing, dating Cho, instead of because someone was trying to kill him or because they thought he was the Heir of Slytherin. He went off to meet Sirius and Ron and Hermione after dinner with a distinctly lighter heart.

He found Snape examining one of the mirrors Bill had used last time with a thoughtful expression, Sirius and Hermione talking, and Ron absent.

"Where's Ron, do you know?" he asked, coming inside and trying not to look at Snape.

"He was arguing with Fred and George, then he said he had something to do and rushed off in a hurry after dinner," Hermione said, looking up and frowning. "I hope he doesn't miss it completely, you know he'll regret it later..."

"I see no reason to be upset if he does," Snape said flatly. "His incompetence can only cause trouble in any situation requiring delicacy or tact." He set the mirror down and flatly pronounced, "Adequate."

"Okay," Bill said, taking it, "Sirius, you stay over there for now while I have a look."

At first it was very similar to the previous day: Snape was surrounded by swirling colors and tangled lines with no obvious connection to the curse.

The colors on Snape were different, bloody and faintly nauseating, and the tangles sometimes formed jagged thickets that made Harry think of thorns. Harry hadn't really noticed emotions being drawn up by magic they viewed the previous day, but this was darker stuff, and examining a tangle for too long would sometimes lead to sudden feelings of hatred or fear, and sometimes more graphic mental images.

"That would be his previous work," Bill said when Harry expressed this, and Snape's lip curled. But nothing was identified as related to the curse, even when Sirius came closer and - both of them looking as though they wanted to bolt - touched Snape's hand.

They were about to give up when Sirius remarked, "Interesting little loop here..." and traced a line near Snape's left ear. "Used the Imperius curse often, have you?"

"It was required of many of us," Snape said flatly. "I notice you recognized it. Enjoying your examination? Nearly as good as casting the curse, is it?"

"Yeah, from watching my family. Oh, is that why you suggested I taught James to curse Lily? Done it yourself a few times?" Sirius's voice had grown sardonically amused, his accent more pronounced, so that he sounded almost like a grown up Draco Malfoy.

"Black!" Snape snarled, half rising and reaching for his wand. Harry threw himself forward and in between them before Sirius could draw, and both men froze for an instant.

"There!" Bill said.

"Oh, look!" Hermione said, pointing into the mirror. "Look, that line's moving!"

Snape and Sirius slowly relaxed, glaring daggers at each other.

"It had to sound good, or it wouldn't have worked," Sirius said, which Harry felt was probably as close as he could possibly come to apologizing to Snape.

"So it did," Snape said coldly. "Well? Do you see anything worth the risk Black just engaged?"

"Oh, don't worry, I can handle you, Snape."

"I think that's enough for us to find the curse, you don't need to keep going," Bill said mildly, reaching for a pad of parchment. "Let me see, it's splitting, black in color, the line looks plied to me... Try not to focus on it too closely, that's a nasty one."

Once he was absolutely certain that Snape and Sirius were not about to curse each other, Harry moved from between them to look in the mirror himself. He could identify the curse easily without needing it pointed out; now that the magic had activated it seemed to exude malevolence. Always before, Dark, hostile magic had been cold to Harry: the numbing ice of the dementors, or Voldemort's high pitched, eerie laugh from Quirrell's head. But this was hot, burning like fury; Harry felt rage rise in him, so intense he shook with it. He felt he could have torn the target of that anger apart with his hands and teeth, if he had any idea who it actually was...

Shaking, he stepped back from the mirror and averted his eyes.

"Now what?" Harry asked, once they had each had a chance to look.

"Now we see if we can follow it and map it," Bill said. "Everyone take a mirror. Now that you know which one it is," his tone turned faintly apologetic, "Try not to stare at it straight on, look from the corner of your vision, like you do in Astronomy with faint objects."

This turned out to be a complicated task, not because it was hard to find the line and not just because they had to be careful how closely they looked at it, but because it was too easy to locate. It was tangled about the Defense classroom so many times it was hard to tell whether you were following the same bit you'd started with; and when Hermione went out and down the hall and came back, she reported it was still easy to find down at the other end of the wing.

"If I didn't know better..." Bill said, frowning. "It looks like it's woven into the wards."

"Wouldn't it have to be?" Hermione asked. "In order to bypass the ones protecting teachers, I mean--"

"They're strongest at the borders of school property, and we know this was cast inside," Bill said. "Still, for it to have rooted itself so thoroughly in the school's magic..."

Harry was only half listening; he was squinting sideways at a portion of line that seemed to follow Sirius as he paced with the mirror, swaying slightly. The long body of line slithered as it moved, rather, Harry thought, like a snake...

Some impulse prompted him to open his mouth and say, "Hello?"

The line turned, doubling back towards him, but all of the other magic it was woven into was turning too, blurring and brightening. This felt nothing like the hot, angry curse. Harry had a sudden feeling that he was expanding outside his body, traveling rapidly over and throughout the school. He could see the Astronomy Tower, the lake, feel the castle's revolving floor plan from the highest tower to the deepest dungeon, and in his office, Professor Dumbledore looked up, saying, "Harry?" worriedly.

Then he was opening his eyes, flat on his back in the Defense classroom. Sirius was leaning over him, hands tight on his shoulders, "--With me, Harry!" He sounded frantic, Harry thought.

"I'm alright," he said, and Sirius sat back hard in relief. "I'm fine - what happened?"

"Idiot child," Snape said, further away. "You spoke to it in Parseltongue. What did it say?"

"It didn't say anything." Harry sat up slowly. "I just said hello, and then it moved - and so did the magic around it. I saw the castle, and the grounds, and Dumbledore. He said my name, then I woke up."

There was a silence.

"Harry," Hermione said, sounding stunned. "I think I know what happened?"

"Do you?" Snape said sarcastically. "Enlighten us."

"He spoke to the wards," Hermione said. "And they responded to him, they let him see them. I was reading about pseudo-sentience in location-based ward craft and - Professors, we know Salazar Slytherin hid the Chamber of Secrets in the school. What if he constructed the wards, or worked on them, and he made Parseltongue the key that would let you alter them?"

"Hermione," Sirius said, slowly. "That's..."

"Ridiculous," Snape said. "Slytherin was hardly the only Parselmouth in the world."

"He might have been the only Parselmouth in tenth or eleventh century Scotland," Bill said slowly. "The only known one, anyway. The Founders didn't know the school would stand for a thousand years and become famous. He might have only been thinking of a few generations, or until the next ward keeper took over..."

"You know what that would explain?" Ron said, startling Harry. Looking over, he saw that Ron was standing near the door, obviously having come in recently and listened. "If Slytherin made it so a Parselmouth could alter the wards, that would explain how You-Know-Who did it, wouldn't it?"

Harry could see the moment when Snape began to believe it. His eyebrows furrowed and raised, and he said, "The security concern is difficult to overstate. We will need to speak with the headmaster."

"How fortunate that I am already here," Dumbledore said from the doorway behind Ron, apparently having followed him. "Mr. Weasley here was kind enough to inform me of the experiment Professor Black and Snape were undergoing earlier, and so I knew where to find you when I heard Harry a moment ago. Now, what exactly is it that we have discovered? Harry, are you quite alright, or is there some reason for you to be on the floor?"

A few minutes later, they had gathered around the large table at the front of the classroom where Bill's supplies were piled. Dumbledore was examining the mirrors Bill used thoughtfully, listening to the explanation of what had happened.

"Yes," he said, "I saw Harry as well as hearing him speak. It certainly sounds as though he felt, at least briefly, the wards, although - do you retain any sense of the castle, Harry?"

Harry thought about it. "I... don't think so, sir," he said. "I could try to speak to them again, but I would need a mirror to see them, I think."

Dumbledore nodded. "Parseltongue alone is not enough. I know that Tom Riddle made some attempts to contact the castle and its enchantments as a student and was rebuffed. Whatever else Salazar Slytherin was - and time has lost most of the details of his life and convictions - he cared deeply about the school, and about at least those of its students he felt belonged there. The wards did not judge Tom Riddle to be otherwise worthy. I do not think he ever saw as much as Harry did just now." He frowned. "Yet it seems difficult to escape the conclusion that that same.. pass phrase, as it were.. allowed him to entangle the Defense curse in the castle - something which should be impossible - and perhaps to otherwise commit damage..."

"I will have to investigate the matter, perhaps with Harry's assistance once I determine how to best use it. I do not think there is any great cause for immediate alarm." He raised a hand at the protests that met this statement. "We now know about the situation, but it has not changed, and Voldemort must have been aware of it by the time the curse was cast decades ago. Whatever enchantments he may have enacted have been in effect all of that time. And Sirius, Severus, you will recall that when his forces attacked Hogwarts most directly, they attacked in Hogsmeade. Whatever access he may have is not enough to bring the wards totally down or enable a full scale assault on the school. Furthermore, he is as weak as he has ever been in that time, bodiless and most likely far from Britain. We must investigate slowly, carefully.

"And you must continue with that curse. I am afraid that the never ending staff search has become extremely tiresome, and I will be delighted if the curse can be removed before I have to seek another Defense professor."

After that there didn't seem to be much to do but put away the supplies and make further plans. Bill and Sirius agreed that the curse's physical form suggested a physical anchor somewhere in the castle that the line attached to, and that there wasn't much they could do unless they found it, since the magic of the curse was too entangled with the castle to root out.

"That will be what you can help with," Bill said. "If we're lucky we might find it before I go, but it's possible that the search will take months. I'll leave the mirrors with you."

The next day was Saturday, so they got up and went to collect mirrors directly after breakfast. Harry, receiving permission from both Bill and Sirius and thinking it was the sort of thing that was at least easy to explain, found Cho in the library and asked if she wanted to help; she came along curiously and paired up with him.

Trying to follow the black threads could have been fun if it was less important, but Harry could not quite forget that Sirius might be seriously injured or killed if they couldn't find the source first, and that lent frustration to jogging up and down the corridors, doubling back when the thread doubled back. Periodically someone would focus too hard on the curse and briefly fall into its emotional effects, and while it did not seem able or interested in making them attack anyone besides the Defense professor, they would have to sit down to recover from the flashes of emotion.

They were trying to draw a map to determine whether the curse moved around any specific area and so that they didn't redo the tracing work. Cho proved to be better at this part than Harry, so she drew while Harry held the mirror and they both pointed and squinted.

They received a number of funny looks, but word had spread that there was some sort of project Bill was working on with them, so most students left them alone. By lunch, they had mapped about a hallway per pair, with Ron and Hermione and Bill and Sirius each working together as well as Harry and Cho.

"Which is quite a lot of space, really," Bill said encouragingly when they met back at the Defense classroom. "When I was learning this sort of curse, a lot of the time we'd only get through one room in a day."

"How many rooms are there in this castle, again?" Ron said.

"That's why I need you lot to keep working when I go back to Egypt," Bill said.

Reluctantly Harry conceded to put the mirrors down and call it a day for ward searching; he was starting to develop a headache and felt much more tired than he should. They headed down to dinner in a group, as they were all starving.

"Bye, Harry," Cho said at the entrance to the Great Hall, slightly reluctant, but Marietta was waving at her pointedly from the Ravenclaw table.

"Bye, Cho," he said, and started to turn, but Cho was standing very close, almost in the way; and as he started to try to work out how to ask her to move, she leaned in and down and kissed him.

It was wet. The angle was odd and he nearly clipped his teeth into hers, but then she turned her head a little and it seemed to be working better - her lips were very soft, he thought, feeling slightly disoriented, and he could feel her breast and hip pressed up against him in a line--

Then she was pulling back, giggling a little nervously. "See you later!" she said, and went back to the Ravenclaw table.

Ron had to jab Harry twice in the side to get him to walk forward to the Gryffindor table.

"Shut it," Harry said, feeling himself flush, when Dean smirked at him. "Oh, don't laugh," he had to add to Hermione, who rapidly stuffed a bread roll in her mouth.

"Didn't you like it, Harry?" Ron said, sniggering.

"No. I mean, it was fine. Why did it have to be in front of everyone the first time?" he said, slightly plaintively, and felt himself flush harder at having admitted that it had been the first time.

"I expect because she wants everyone to know you have," Hermione said, after swallowing several times rapidly. "Look, she's being mobbed at the Ravenclaw table--"

Looking over Harry saw this was true, and felt slightly vindicated by the tinge of pink in Cho's face.

"Anyway, working on the curse has been really interesting but I can't believe how behind on homework I am," Hermione was saying. "We have all of that reading for Transfiguration, I'm only halfway done, and I haven't even started my equations for Arithmancy Monday afternoon. I'd better go to the library after dinner - what about you, Harry, Ron?"

Most of the time in years past, Harry would have been at Quidditch practice at some point on Saturdays, but the Triwizard Tournament had taken it away, and consumed only three days in the entire year in exchange. "Might as well," Harry said, forking chicken onto his plate. "Only let's go to Sirius's quarters, I want to look something up in his library." He hoped this was an appropriately subtle way of referring to Cassiopeia's assigned reading.

Hermione's eyes widened fractionally. "Good idea," she said, and took another bread roll. "I can't believe how hungry I am, I didn't feel like we were using magic at all..."

"That's because you've spent all morning passively opening up your core and straining to catch all of the magic around you and you're not used to it," Malfoy said condescendingly from a few feet away, and every Gryffindor at that section of the table jumped. Harry hadn't even seen him come over, although he hadn't been paying much attention in his exhaustion.

"Do you have experience with it?" Hermione asked, immediately curious. "I couldn't find much on the subject, it's all really esoteric stuff on enchantment modification and curses and very specific..."

"Most people think of it as Dark Arts even though it's not," Malfoy said. "Unless you've got a very specific professional reason, anyway. Er. I thought. Is it alright if I sit here again." The last part was said very quickly while he ducked his head, as though he was afraid to hear the answer.

"Sure," Harry said after a long silence. He and Hermione edged apart to make room, while Ron and Dean exchange dubious glances.

"That said," Hermione said quite calmly, "If you call me - or anyone else - a mudblood again we're kicking you out forever."

"I, er, thought as much," Malfoy said, and paused for much too long, taking a bread roll and buttering it, before he said, "Sorry. About what I said before to you, I mean."

Harry choked on his pumpkin juice.

"I accept your apology contingent on your future behavior," Hermione said primly. "Did you start the Arithmancy assignment yet? What did you think of section four of the reading?"

With that she and Malfoy were promptly off on a conversation that Harry barely understood, just as though they were longtime friends and did not hate each other violently. Harry looked at Ron and gaped. Ron shrugged back and shook his head.

Across the hall, Harry saw Pansy Parkinson cut into her food so violently she elbowed her glass off the Slytherin table.

Chapter Text

That evening, Sirius announced that he had finally settled on a time with Bertha Jorkins, his old school mate who had worked with Crouch. She had been replying enthusiastically but extremely late for months. Bertha Jorkins would be coming to tea Sunday afternoon, so they could come to check in with Sirius around three, but he would need his quarters to himself until then.

On Sunday, Hermione went off to the library, muttering vaguely about her loads of homework. Ron went with her once she mentioned that Viktor would be there. This announcement made Harry, on the other hand, feel rather strongly that he did not want to come and witness Ron's reaction.

It was surprising how lost Harry felt without the option of going to Sirius's quarters, when he had never had it in earlier years. After sitting around feeling lost for a while, he remembered he had meant to ask Dean or Hermione about the band T shirt of his mother's and dug it out of his trunk.

"Oh, Pink Floyd!" Dean said and laughed. "Yeah, my Mum likes them too, their stuff's all over the place. I wish we could play cassettes in Hogwarts. Don't your aunt and uncle have any music?"

"They don't like..." Harry paused, trying to come up with a way to end that sentence that wasn't 'me.' "Anything their neighbors don't do," was his awkward substitution. "Or anything they think might be weird or strange. Aunt Petunia listens to the radio sometimes, but I don't know who the artists are because she doesn't like it when I ask questions." He didn't catch that one in time; his face flushed.

Dean studied him curiously. "Well, I bet Professor Black does," he said. "But I can send you some cassettes over the holidays if not, if you like."

"I'd love that," Harry said honestly. "I don't really... I was raised by muggles and all, but I don't really know the muggle world much, to be honest. They aren't expensive, are they?"

Dean laughingly explained the cost of a cassette to Harry and made a list of bands he should look up; then when Harry said he was going to see Hagrid for tea, he asked if he could come along.

It was a little strange, Harry thought, to be hanging out with Dean on his own. He spent a lot of time with his dorm mates in class, but he rarely talked to any of them, except occasionally Neville, who needed encouragement. Hagrid was happy to have visitors, and announced morosely that there were only two Skrewts left, something which Harry and Dean frantically pretended to be sad about.

"So what will we be doing next, then?" Harry asked, demonstrating for Dean how to soften up a rock cake in tea so that it was possible to convincingly pretend he was eating it.

"Oh, got a few ideas," Hagrid said, cheering up. "Not sure yet... Have t'look into what's available... How are yer classes going? Hear you're seein' the Chang girl, Harry?"

Harry blushed and became very interested in his rock cake until Dean changed the subject.

Back at the castle, he was debating whether to go to the library and join Hermione and Ron working on homework or head up and see if Sirius was free yet when Professor McGonagall came through a doorway and said, "There you are, Mr. Potter. Please come with me."

"What's going on, Professor?" Harry asked, following her worriedly.

"Nothing significant," McGonagall said. "Your godfather has a visitor and I thought you might take her to his quarters--"

Harry started to say that Sirius had been expecting Bertha Jorkins when they came through to the entrance hall, and he stopped short.

The witch waiting by the entrance was not Bertha Jorkins, who Harry had seen a picture of earlier and who had, in any case, been in school with Sirius. She had close-cropped gray hair and a monocle, and was peering around the entrance hall with an expression of mild interest. With no small amount of dread, Harry recognized her as the witch who had been called in last summer when Peter Pettigrew was arrested: Madam Amelia Bones, head of Magical Law Enforcement. He had only glimpsed her briefly then.

"Mr. Potter," Amelia Bones said amiably enough. "Nice to see you again. You're looking much better today."

This was true: when they had last met, Harry had spent most of the night chasing after what he believed to be the Grim, then been involved in several fights prior to warding off a large number of dementors. He had been in less than ideal condition.

"Uh, nice to see you, too," Harry said. "What are you here to talk to Sirius about?"

"Mr. Potter," McGonagall said. "That is between Madam Bones and your godfather."

"I don't mind it, Professor," Amelia said. "I imagine Mr. Potter's worried about losing his godfather all over again. It's about the attack on his cousin, just a formality, really, if you could lead the way? Professor, I'm sure you're very busy, there's no need to follow," she said, tipping her head and starting up the stairs.

Professor McGonagall's eyes flashed, but interestingly, she obeyed.

"Uh, thank you for explaining," Harry said awkwardly, starting after Amelia. "It's this way--" He started off leading, but couldn't help anxiously saying, "He's really not in trouble?"

"Lucius Malfoy was attacked in clear daylight in the middle of the Ministry," Amelia Bones said. "Prophet got that right for once. Now, the attacker seems to have been under an invisibility cloak, so it could have been just about anyone. Naturally I've got to have a word with his ex-wife's head of family. But seeing as he's been at Hogwarts for months I think it's pretty open and shut that he wasn't involved..."

"Would you normally come, er, yourself?" Harry asked.

Amelia smiled thinly. "No, usually I'd send a couple of Aurors or a summons, but I think your godfather's seen enough of MLE's cells and uniformed Aurors. No need to make it a bigger deal than it needs to be... Ah, is this the place? Nice painting."

"Yeah, it is," Harry said, and leaned in to whisper the password into the wolf's ear. It twitched, and the door swung open.

Sirius was sitting in one of the arm chairs in the sitting room. A gleaming silver tea service sat on the table between him and Bertha Jorkins, recognizable from the photograph. She was a plump, dark-haired woman with bright and curious eyes.

Just now she was saying, "Sorry it took so long, Sirius! Of course I've been dying to see you, but you know me, can't keep a thing in my head for more than a few minutes. I kept meaning to write back to you..."

Sirius was frowning, and at Harry's side he heard Amelia make a soft hmm noise. Hearing them come in, Sirius turned, mouth opening. Then he froze.

"Lord Black, Madam Jorkins," Amelia said, half bowing. "Hope I'm not intruding, your godson was kind enough to show me up. I just need a few words."

"Ah - Madam Bones," Sirius said, fumbling and rising. His pale complexion had gone chalky. "Please come in, let me get you some tea - Bertha, if it's alright--"

"Not at all!" Bertha said, sitting up eagerly and looking between them. "This is Harry Potter? And Madam Bones!" The way her head tilted in pursuit of gossip put Harry in mind of Crookshanks listening for a mouse.

"Uh, nice to meet you," Harry said, smiling awkwardly as Sirius went to the kitchen to get another set of cups. He came back and nearly upset the tea pot pouring, hissing as hot liquid slopped over his shaking hands.

"Let me get that," Harry said quickly, jumping to help. He tried to casually stay between Sirius and Amelia as he filled the cups, as though it were an accident, but at last he had no choice but to sit down in the empty chair, on Sirius's other side.

Sirius had vanished the spilled liquid. He took a deep breath and smiled at Harry; Harry had a feeling he knew what Harry had been about. "Do you need privacy, Madam Bones?"

"I don't think so," Amelia said, rounding the table to sit down next to Bertha. "It's all fairly straightforward. You'd be in class on Wednesday evening?"

"Yes, from just after lunch at one until dinner at five o'clock, which I attended, and after that I was leading dueling club from eight until nine," Sirius said. "Afterwards, I was discussing the curse on the Defense position with Bill Weasley, my godson, and two of his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger until - fairly late, they left close to curfew." His voice was steady, but Harry saw his hands pressed to his thighs to steady them, and his face was still white.

"Alright. Which class would that be?"

"Harry's, actually." Sirius's smile looked distinctly forced. "The Gryffindor fourth years. I'm sure Professor McGonagall can provide you with full class lists, or I can if you would prefer that. Of course the entire school goes to dinner, and I can get you the dueling club registry if you'd like, I'd just have to find it - I co-teach it with Professor Flitwick, who was there as well."

Amelia nodded amiably. "If you could, in a minute," she said. "And do you testify that you have no access to Time-Turners or other time travel devices?"

Sirius hesitated. Harry, who had been beginning to feel better - Lucius Malfoy could not have picked a busier day of Sirius's to be attacked - felt faintly nauseous.

"I have no personal access," he said. "However, my godson's friend, Hermione Granger, has access to one... Applied to the Ministry for the sake of her education, all of the teachers were notified. She's known to be very responsible, I doubt it's been taken off the grounds."

"I'll check, but I imagine you'll be right," Amelia said. "As you probably know, Time-Turners provided by the Ministry record all persons who use them automatically, so an examination of the device itself should clear any doubt. Black." Her voice, generally loud and brisk, softened. "You're not under arrest."

"Of course not." Sirius smiled tightly and rose, turning to rummage in the desk. "I'm innocent, after all. Here's the club membership list, and here would be my class schedule." He tapped both pages with his wand, and copies sprang off them. "Was there anything else, Madam Bones?"

"I don't think so. Ta," she said, draining the tea cup; and set it down. "Mr. Potter, could you show me to Professor McGonagall's office? Been a while for me, and I wasn't one of hers myself."

"Uh, yeah," Harry said, getting up and wishing badly that he could have stayed with Sirius, who he could see was fighting to keep his breathing calm. "Sirius, I'll see you..."

"I'm perfectly fine, Harry," Sirius said. "Don't worry. Bertha, what were you saying about Albania just now? Excellent liquor, was it?"

Down the hall, Amelia said, "So, Mr. Potter, what can you tell me about your godfather's location on Wednesday?"

Harry felt an urge to shout, but he bottled it up very harshly and reminded himself that Amelia was only doing her job. She had been perfectly decent to Sirius, and he had overheard Professor McGonagall saying last summer that she had stopped Fudge from sweeping the whole thing under the rug.

"Well, it was like he said," Harry said. "He was at lunch; then my friends and I went to Defense class, he left a few minutes before us and was there in the Great Hall when we got there for dinner. We had a double period, and I spent break in the room talking to him about Bill Weasley coming, so I was with him. Then we went down to dinner with him, he was at the head table, and after that we were at dueling club."

Amelia nodded. "How often did you look at him at dinner?"

"Uh, a few times," Harry said, disarmed by this question. "I'm not sure what time - he was sitting next to Hagrid, though, and they were talking, so Hagrid will be able to tell you if he stepped out or anything. And in dueling club he was helping Neville Longbottom next to me at first, and around forty minutes in he came over to show me how to heal a broken nose. Then he was there the whole time when we were talking about the curse."

"Alright. And this is the door?" she said, Harry having brought them to a halt at the end of this sentence."

"Yes," Harry said, and then had no choice but to go off again.

He would have liked to go back to Sirius, but Bertha Jorkins was still there, so instead he went unhappily to the library and told Hermione, Ron and - because there was no good way to get rid of him - Viktor Krum all about the interview.

"Do you think she believed you?" Hermione asked anxiously, gnawing on one fingernail.

"Has to, doesn't she?" Ron said reasonably. "There were loads of witnesses everywhere Sirius was Wednesday."

"But the Time-Turner - oh, I wish I'd never asked for it." Hermione wrung her hands.

"Madam Bones said she could tell who'd used it if she had a look," Harry said. "So it should still be fine..." Belatedly he remembered that, while Sirius was clearly innocent, Hermione had shared it with both him and Ron illicitly. Hermione's hands flew to her cheeks and they exchanged horrified looks.

Krum studied them. Then he said, "So what have you been doing with this Time-Turner? No - that is not the question. The question is, what will happen when they find out?"

"I don't know." Hermione was wringing her hands frantically. "I don't know... No, I do, they warned me about it when I got it. For minor abuses it's just that they take it and you have to withdraw from the extra classes and sometimes there's a fine. For worse ones you can be - be expelled, or sentenced to time in Azkaban - not usually more than six months for one offense..."

"What is the difference?" Krum asked. "Or is it a matter of the official's discretion?"

"I don't know," Hermione moaned. "--Well, cheating on an exam proctored by the Ministry, so an O.W.L. or a N.E.W.T., or using a Time-Turner for - to commit a crime. Risking a paradox - but that's just if you're trying to change the past, usually, or risking it, and we - we weren't. Allowing anyone without official permission to use one - or go off with it, or - or leaving it unattended..."

"Well, we were with you," Harry said in an undertone. "Can they tell?"

"I - I think so. They should be able to. I don't remember how long the record of use lasts, either, it might be okay. It'll be mostly me in trouble, I'm the - the one who signed the agreements…" Hermione was rocking in her chair, and looked close to tears. Krum put his arm around her worriedly; Harry wished they had been somewhere more private.

They tried to work on homework, if only to stop thinking about it, but with the threat of Azkaban looming for Hermione this proved very difficult. Only fifteen minutes later, a student was sent to tell her she was wanted in the Headmaster's office. With a face like she was going to the gallows, Hermione got up.

"She'll be alright," Ron said in an undertone. He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself. "Dumbledore knows about it and he approves, he'll make sure they don't do anything terrible to her."

"I hope so," Harry said. With Sirius's imprisonment looming over him, he did not feel so certain. He was trying not to think, too, of when Hagrid had been taken to prison without any conviction Harry's second year, all because he had once been framed for opening the Chamber of Secrets, and how ill he had looked when he returned. The thought of Hermione expelled from Hogwarts was terrible, and the thought of her in prison, surrounded by Death Eaters...

They gave up on the library not long later. Followed by a rather lost looking Krum, they went to find an empty classroom where at least Madam Pince wasn't looming over them. There they lingered, unable to focus on anything, wondering periodically whether it was late enough they could go see Sirius or Professor Dumbledore about Hermione. Harry got up after an hour had passed, deciding that if Bertha Jorkins was still there he would simply tell Sirius it was an emergency, and Ron and Krum followed him.

They were intercepted halfway there by Hermione.

Harry was in front, and she tackled first him, then Ron; then she threw her arms around Krum too and kissed him for good measure. "I'm okay!" she whispered. "They didn't even find out. Madam Bones saw I looked like I was terrified and I thought for sure she'd be suspicious but she just said that she was there about an attempted murder, not student misbehavior, and two weeks' records were plenty to determine whether anyone had gone back to Thursday."

She smiled, elated. Then she burst into tears.

Harry and Ron led Hermione to Sirius's quarters, Krum trailing them. Harry gave the password quickly and they bundled her inside and to the couch, still sobbing.

"Who - Hermione?" Sirius called from the kitchen, worried. He glanced at Krum, looking mildly surprised, but didn't comment. "One of you put the kettle on - what's wrong--"

"N-nothing," Hermione said, sniffling. "They wanted to see - to see my Time-Turner to check who'd used it and back in November Harry and Ron--" Sirius bolted upright, looking alarmed, "But she only - only checked two weeks back, she didn't find out. I was just so scared - I don't want to be - to be expelled or go to - to Azkaban..."

Sirius leaned over and put his arms around Hermione, who curled up on the couch and blew her nose loudly into the handkerchief he handed her. Ron got up and muttered something vaguely about the kettle.

"Ah, excuse me," Krum said. "Professor Black? I do not know how the Ministry in this country works, but in mine - is it likely that this Amelia Bones will ask to look at the evidence again?"

"Well, in general they could, and I don't like to say what MLE will or won't do, but I doubt Madam Bones will," Sirius said, stroking Hermione's hair. "She made sure they looked at the evidence saying I was innocent last summer. She wasn't in charge of MLE when I was arrested, and everyone I've spoken to says arrests without evidence are way rarer since she's been in charge. It's why they had to send Fudge to arrest Hagrid a few years back, to go over her head..."

"But if she thinks Hermione was afraid..." Ron said from the kitchen.

"I'll speak to Dumbledore about it, we'll come up with a story that will keep her in school if she does," Sirius said, firmly. "You'll be alright, Hermione, I'm so sorry I didn't think of it earlier, I shouldn't have told her you had it..."

"That would just have made you look more suspicious," Hermione said blurrily but distinctly into the handkerchief.

"Well, it's over now," Sirius said, sighing. "Narcissa said they called on her earlier today, and she cried very prettily into Auror Dawlish's arms for an hour and got him complimenting her on the elves' biscuits by the end of it...

"That's Cissy for you," he said in response to Harry and Krum's looks. "When she was eleven years old, she tried to fly her broom inside and destroyed the drawing room, and she convinced my father it was my mother and our grandfather dueling. She's never taken the blame for anything in her life. Thanks," he added to Ron, who had just come back with the tea and a large package of chocolate biscuits. "Come on, Hermione, your throat has to hurt, have a cup."

It took a while and several reassurances from Hermione, but Krum finally left about twenty minutes later. Only after Sirius had called for dinner in his quarters did Harry get around to asking him how tea with Bertha Jorkins had gone.

"Weird," Sirius said, frowning. "Oh, not bad, Bertha's pretty much herself. She wants to know everything about everyone, but she's not malicious, it just makes her feel better to know. But Merlin, her memory is going, she used to be able to regurgitate every rumor in Hogwarts from the past year..."

"Well, it's been a while since you've seen her, hasn't it?" Ron said, mouth half full of biscuit. Hermione gave him a disgusted look.

"Did you find out anything about Crouch?" Harry asked.

Sirius grimaced. "Not much. She didn't want to talk about him, which is strange, because the Bertha I remember would have gone on for hours about a scandal like what happened with his son, and she was happy to talk about everyone and everything else she's done in the past fifteen years. Apparently Ludo Bagman is in some impressive debt, and Coeus Mulciber - he's head of the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures - has a mistress younger than his youngest niece... But nothing about Crouch, she just kept changing the subject."

"So she must be hiding something, right?" Harry said.

"Or he was unpleasant to work for and she doesn't want to talk about it, or she's afraid I'm looking for vengeance for him locking me up." Sirius half-smiled. "She might not want to get involved in that. I'll see if I can make any headway, I'm not giving up yet. If nothing else, she has friends in almost every department in the Ministry, so I might find someone else willing to talk through her."

Nobody felt much like working, but they had no choice, as it was Sunday night and none of them had completed their homework. They had botanical sketches for Herbology, and Hermione had another half page of equations for Arithmancy that she finished with uncharacteristic listlessness. Finally, they were done and could head back to Gryffindor Tower and go to bed early.

Chapter Text

Monday morning, Harry checked on Hermione, who insisted she was now fine and should never have been worried, and went to sit with Cho at breakfast. It had occurred to him - without anyone's help, for once - that after kissing him in public, Cho had not seen him for all of Sunday, and she would probably be nervous.

"Hi," he said awkwardly. Marietta tittered, and he felt like he was approaching Cho to ask her to the Ball all over again.

"Hi, Harry." Cho smiled anxiously back. "Want to sit with us today?"

"If it's alright," he said with relief and sat down.

"I heard Amelia came to question your godfather about the attack on Lucius Malfoy yesterday," Cho said. "But he was in class all day, wasn't he? She didn't give him any trouble, right?"

"No, she was okay," Harry said. "He was really upset, though, not by anything she did, just..."

"Being reminded?" Cho said. "Yeah, I can see why. Pass the eggs?"

It was strange, Harry reflected as the week went on, to be so totally absorbed by schoolwork. In addition to his usual classes, he had the Divination independent study, theory reading for Cassiopeia, and this week, Curse-Breaking work for Sirius and Bill, which took up almost every moment of spare time. He was only able to see his friends because most of this work was shared with them.

Cho and Viktor were both recruited to help with the curse mapping, and all of them occasionally brought along other people who were curious; they were slowly proceeding through the wing the Defense classroom was in, and should be finished with it some time after Hogsmeade, although every session left emotionally as well as physically drained. ("Only about fifty more hallways to go," Ron muttered.)

In all the excitement over Amelia Bones's visit, they had been distracted from Bill, but they were able to work with him Monday evening and Tuesday before he left late Tuesday night. Worryingly, Hermione left early from their Tuesday session, but they found out why during their night time Astronomy class. She arrived just before the bell, panting, and announced, "I've turned in my Time Turner."

"You what?" Harry whispered.

"But you're top of all of your classes!" Ron whispered.

"I don't care, it was making me crazy. Anyway they'll wipe the records now once it's been processed, so it can't hurt me now," Hermione said. "If I drop Muggle Studies I can have a normal schedule again. I told Professor McGonagall I'd drop something else if I was having trouble fitting the independent study in, but they aren't making me do it now."

Ron and Harry gaped at each other, then rapidly moved to adjust the telescope when Professor Sinistra eyed them.

On Wednesday night after dueling club, Harry went up to talk to Cassiopeia, as he had finally finished the reading she had assigned. Her portrait was empty when he came in, so he found Sirius's marshmallows and hot cocoa, then sat at the kitchen table finishing his Transfiguration reading for class tomorrow. Sirius had left the school to go talk to Narcissa about something at Grimmauld Place, so Harry was alone in Sirius's quarters at the moment.

Cassiopeia wandered back in at length. Her robes were open at the collar, but otherwise she looked the same as always - hair wrapped around her head in braids, austere expression.

"Good evening, Harry," she said, sitting at her desk. "How are you, tonight? I believe you just came from my nephew's dueling club?"

"Hi," Harry said. "Yeah, I did. I'm fine. How are you?"

"Very well, thank you. I will miss the expanded social opportunities when Sirius returns me to Grimmauld Place. There are a great deal many more portraits in Hogwarts than just about any other building."

"What's it like, being a portrait?" Harry asked, curiosity piqued. "You can use the stuff in the other portraits, too, right? I know the Fat Lady has portrait friends…"

"I might as well ask you what it's like being a person," Cassiopeia said. "I have the real Cassiopeia's memories from the time I was painted, but I'm not exactly her. I know what her memories of the so called real world are like, but who knows how well they translate?"

"But you do - eat, and drink, and everything," Harry said. "Do you need to?"

"Not as such, but the sensations are pleasant, and it begins to feel strange to go entirely without them. I may not be human, but I was constructed upon the framework of a human mind, and much of the complexities of human life are meant to support acquisition of necessities... That is, you become disoriented if you don't eat, and sleep, and drink, so doing so is helpful even without the physical need." Cassiopeia raised an eyebrow. "Did you come to discuss this? I don't mind, but you don't seem the type."

"Uh, no," Harry said awkwardly. "I finished the reading you asked us to do, I thought I'd come ask you about what you wanted me to do next."

"Ah." Cassiopeia nodded slightly, thoughtfully. "And what did you think of the reading?"

"I don't know." Harry felt that she was disappointed by this answer, and scrambled to come up with a better one. "I thought - the sacrificial one, that talked about how there didn't used to be a difference between muggles and wizards, it was interesting. And - ever since the Statute, wizards don't do magic to help muggles at all, do we? It's illegal. So it seems like - we developed magic together, for humans in general, and then we said fewer and fewer people could use it, and it gets used for pettier and pettier things, it's just a convenience to most people now, isn't it? Learning to summon objects or turn a hedgehog into a pincushion..." He trailed off awkwardly, feeling that he had sounded very stupid.

Cassiopeia, however, was nodding thoughtfully. "It's something to consider," she said. "One of the projects I was devoted to was extending the lifespan of a muggle to that of a witch without any harmful actions to others - that is, without, say, stealing the life force from someone else. I wanted it for selfish reasons, I wanted to keep my lover with me as I aged, but as I became closer to achieving it, I thought - why not offer it to everyone? Why restrict magical healing? Why should some people die and others live, all because we've declared that magic is only our own?"

"I was also wondering," Harry said, swallowing, "This is to do with what my mother did, isn't it?"

Cassiopeia frowned. "I believe so, but keep in mind I don't know, and as a portrait I can't directly examine you or the magic clinging to you. But most likely, she provided herself as substitute, giving her life to absorb all harm Tom Riddle would attempt to do you. It's a more complicated method than those discussed in that book, we'll get to it eventually... I don't think we're quite at the point of trying anything, but if you could get the book we can review it and I'll tell you what to go over next."

So his reward for finishing was more homework; but Harry did feel that Cassiopeia cared that what she taught would be useful eventually. And if nothing else, she was interesting to talk to.

The next evening after dinner, the three of them made their way down to the dungeons. Ron and Harry exchanged glances as Hermione knocked on Snape's office, wondering whether to wait or not. But as it happened, Snape swept his eyes over all three of them when Hermione opened the door and said, "Potter, Weasley, you might as well come in as well, lest you discover a Minotaur lurking in the deepest dungeons while unsupervised for fifteen minutes."

Ron was obviously relieved, but Harry was not sure what to make of this. The three of them trailed into Snape's office and took seats in front of his desk, Hermione in the center.

Snape frowned at them. Harry tried to decide if he was scowling more or less than usual, or if that expression was only the way his face looked by habit.

"Miss Granger," Snape said. "Please describe the experience Mr. Weasley's brother informed me you had while using a magically activated mirror the other day.

"Er," Hermione said squeakily; Snape raised his eyebrows at her, and she took a deep breath and seemed to suddenly come into focus. "Bill wanted to examine us for magic while we were in the same room as Sirius so that we could test the theory that the Defense curse acts on people around the professor. They looked at me first, and I was normal.

"Then he called Harry over. We didn't find the Defense curse on him, but we were examining his scar and it was - obviously cursed; the emotional resonance and mental images were also significantly stronger than the Defense curse. I was disoriented by viewing it and lost focus on the mirror itself and the room, and tried to trace the edge of the curse scar. I succeeded in tracing it off of the surface of the mirror, and then Bill and Sirius got my attention again and I couldn't see the magic anymore. Is that what you wanted to know, sir?"

"In part," Snape said. "Clarify what you mean by 'obviously cursed.'"

"The resonance was clearly and overwhelmingly malicious, and it dominated the surrounding magic per the description of Tiberius Pucey in his book--"

Snape raised his hand to halt her. "Describe the resonance."

Hermione hesitated there, glancing over her shoulder towards Harry, but Snape opened his mouth and she hurriedly said, "Malevolence, infection and decomposition of living flesh; and there was something under it but I didn't have time to really see before they got my attention."

"Which detection spells did you perform?"

"None, sir." Hermione said this anxiously, as though she expected Snape to accuse her of lying. Harry was trying not to think of Hermione describing a curse attached to his forehead as 'decomposition of living flesh.'

"I believe The Anatomy of Curses is in the Restricted section," Snape said dryly. "In fact, it is one of the works grandfathered in with the Hogwarts collection, as it happens to be banned in Britain. Which teacher signed it out to you?"

Hermione blushed. "Er, McGonagall gave me a general pass for a project I did last year..."

"So Black has not been instructing you in Black family secrets," Snape said.

"No!" Hermione said anxiously. "I just - I was returning the books I'd used and I still had a few days on the pass, so I thought I'd see what else looked... interesting..." Her voice faded out.

"You are aware that the ability you demonstrated is dangerous to the user?"

"He told me so after I'd done it, sir."

Snape settled back in his chair; to Harry's surprise he appeared satisfied, for once, not angry. "Miss Granger," he said, steepling his fingers together, "I believe I have an apology to make."

Harry choked, and Ron made an odd sort of strangled noise. Snape glanced at them but ignored them, continuing, "You follow recipes precisely in my class and consequently receive consistently adequate results and nothing more. I had assumed that your vaunted reputation was merely a matter of memorizing the supplemental readings, but perhaps you only have limited ability to experiment with Potions at home, with your... background."

And perhaps, Harry thought angrily, you're an arsehole who insulted her for being too smart and trying too hard in her first class with you.

"As you have obviously researched many subjects not normally considered appropriate for students, please describe to me the arguments put forth by Tiberius's nephew Sergius Pucey, at the Wizengamot in 1948, regarding instruction in the Dark Arts. I believe the school library's copy of Art and Artifice includes a reprint of his speech."

"He said--" Hermione turned her head to the side and Harry could see her frown, thinking. "That banning information about the Dark Arts and theoretical instruction in illegal magic was no guarantee that it wouldn't be reinvented, but it was a guarantee that methods of countering them would be lost and a lot of damage would be done while they were recreated each time it was necessary.

"And he also said that forms of magic that had turned out to be unusually destructive to, er, he said something like "collateral in the form of people, buildings and the fabric of reality," which the Wizengamot wanted to censure the mention of entirely, had to be public knowledge so that people would know what not to do."

Snape nodded sharply. "When children enter our world, either through growing up in it or through their school letters, they learn about the boundaries of magic, what is impossible and unlikely. However, in truth many of those limits are a matter of convention, or personal power, or only imagination. A sufficiently powerful wizard can create food out of nothing or fly unsupported, and a sufficiently creative witch," he inclined his head towards Harry, who started, having felt as though he was invisible, "Can conquer death.

"Obviously, the Ministry does not want to find itself governing a population aware that the only real limit on their powers is their minds. For this reason the majority of deeper magical theory is either proscribed or censured. As most people will never try anything they aren't given instructions for," Snape's lip curled, "In most cases this is enough. But everyone on both sides of the debate knows that there are exceptions.

"The Ministry snatches up a great deal of those exceptions for the Department of Mysteries, and sets them to problems of its own devising, closely supervised, unable to quit without permission and always a step away from arrest - but given unlimited budget and materials, few Unspeakables care to think about the consequences of rebellion. Certain of the great houses have their own resources and family knowledge. They train family members and snatch up other exceptional students as vassals or adopted children, and contain their share of the problem. Independent teachers identify others. A few always go uncaught, particularly in times of crisis or stress, and while some stabilize in time, others do a great deal of damage.

"Miss Granger, I trust you can ascertain where I am headed. Lest it go to your head, let me emphasize that I am speaking not of unusual gifts of power or magic, but personality traits, and the particularly dangerous combination of curiosity, creativity, and a tendency to ignore the instructions of authority figures. Intelligence and power are often beside the point." He glanced away from Hermione then, pointedly making eye contact with Harry, who glared back.

"I - yes, I do understand," Hermione said, sounding rather flustered. "What are you suggesting?"

Snape hesitated.

"I cannot demand you accept instruction from me," he said. "I could not acknowledge you as my student even among the Dark Arts community for political reasons, and even if I undertook it in secret it might be found out. If you can contain yourself until graduation, and find no other teacher, perhaps then.

"The Blacks may be able to assist you, although I doubt Professor Black's capacity or interest in doing so, and even if he had it he has demonstrated his utter lack of judgment before. Ask Andromeda Tonks or Narcissa. Failing that, I suggest you emulate Lily Evans and endeavor to discover which Arts were banned because they risked destroying the fabric of reality or their users' minds, and keep away from them. If I find out you have been meddling with time, or the human soul, or anything similar, I shall have to interfere. Don't."

Hermione was reeling back, looking uncertain as to whether she had just been insulted, but Harry had had a different thought. "Professor?" he said, warily, and met Snape's eyes. "Can I ask something?"

"I cannot prevent you." Snape sneered, although really the fact that he hadn't thrown Harry out of his office was very friendly.

"Do you know anything about a scholar named Cassiopeia Black? She would have been Sirius's great aunt..."

Harry trailed off. Snape had sat bolt upright, eyes widening.

"I know the name," he said curtly. "She was the foremost scholar of Dark Arts in Britain before the Dark Lord's rise. They apparently worked together for a time - they have one or two joint publications, and there was an occasion when they spoke at the same gathering - before parting over irreconcilable ideological differences.

"The politics of the Dark Arts community have unavoidable repercussions in the rest of our society, and she had a certain ability to restrain the Dark Lord's followers from their worst excesses when she lived. Unfortunately, her family murdered her in her sleep over some issue of family shame in 1960, leaving the Dark Lord to replace her. Where did you hear that name, Potter? Don't tell me Sirius Black repeated it."

Harry exchanged glances with Hermione and Ron. "She has a portrait, it was in the family house Sirius inherited. I talked to it a few times," he said, which was true and did not imply Cassiopeia was currently in the castle. "She said she was ambushed in her sleep and killed later, though."

Snape shrugged. "I wouldn't know. She vanished overnight, and it is the traditional means of killing Dark Lords. Go, and consider what I've said."

They left hurriedly, exchanging significant glances but unable to talk in the hall.

"Hey, Potter!" someone called outside Snape's office. Harry looked up and saw Malfoy emerging from near the Slytherin common room. He tensed. But then, Malfoy had been acting friendly lately, weird as it had been.

"What are you doing down here?" Malfoy asked, coming closer. Then he seemed to realize that he sounded rather angry and forced a queasy looking smile.

"Hermione had an appointment with Snape, we came with her," Harry said.

"Well, you're not going to hang around now, are you? Not much to see down here," Malfoy said, and starting walking, apparently just assuming they would follow. Ron rolled his eyes at Harry; Harry shrugged back, but started after him, and Ron and Hermione followed.

"Pity they had to cancel Quidditch for the Tournament, isn't it?" Malfoy said conversationally as they climbed the last steps out of the dungeons, as though there had not been a gap of several minutes before he came up with something to say. "It's only a few days in the whole year."

"Yeah, I miss flying," Harry said honestly. His Firebolt had been his first gift from Sirius and was one of the major pleasures of his life, and he had only had a brief chance to fly it at the Burrow over the summer.

"We should go out some time," Malfoy said abruptly. "I mean, we don't have practice, but it's not against the rules to fly, is it? All of you," he added, his eyes sliding to Ron belatedly, "We can, er, take turns on the brooms..."

"Sirius might have one Ron can borrow," Harry said. "It sounds good to me."

Ron gave Harry a plaintive look, but said gamely, "Yeah, sure. When?"

"I'm not much for flying, but I'd be happy to come and watch once the weather is better," Hermione said.

Malfoy had nearly as much homework as Hermione, thanks to, apparently, several extra credit projects he was working on, but they came up with a time they were all free after a few minutes of conversation.

"So," Malfoy said finally. "Potter. Er - is it alright if I call you Harry?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry said. "Er, should we call you Draco, then?" Hermione and Malfoy had been using first names for each other already. Harry had the impression they had been sitting together in their other two electives since Malfoy came over to eat with them the second time.

Malfoy looked like he wasn't sure he had meant to include Ron in this invitation, but he said, "Yeah, that's fine. So - you're Sirius's ward, right? Is he likely to adopt you?"

"We haven't talked about it," Harry said, honestly. "I don't think I'd like to stop being my father's son, though, legally."

Malfoy - Draco, Harry thought, trying to get used to it - nodded. "Still, you're living with him, and so is my Mum. That makes us - something like cousins, right?"

"If you like," Harry said, thinking that Draco might actually look like a reasonable person in comparison to Dudley. (He would never have to see or speak to Dudley again!) Then it occurred to him that this might have something to do with Draco's suddenly friendly behavior.

"Do you know - er, your godfather isn't planning to teach more than one year, is he?"

"Well, he might not be able to if we don't break the curse," Harry said. "But - I don't think so, he said something about wanting a year to get used to being in - society again, after Azkaban."

Draco nodded a few times, looking ill again. "So - do you know where he'll be living again after? I know my mother's moved into his family home."

"Probably not there, he has his own house," Harry said. "It's where I stayed over the summer."

Draco actually looked faintly disappointed, but he said, "Alright, then, just wondering. See you!" and departed quickly across the Great Hall as they reached it.

"Weird," Ron muttered.

"Yeah." Harry shrugged.

"He's trying, anyway," Hermione said. Her voice was torn between skepticism and approval.

Chapter Text

On Saturday, Harry got up and dressed for Hogsmeade, feeling almost as nervous as if it was a Quidditch game instead.

This was his first actual date since the Yule Ball, and he had agreed to go to Madam Puddifoot's with Cho. Hermione had refused to tell him any more about her reaction to the shop name, so Harry had only a vague notion that she thought he would want to laugh and shouldn't. He made a useless effort to comb his hair and put on his school robes, then gave up and went off to breakfast.

At one o'clock he met Cho in the entrance hall to walk down to the village. The wind had let up, at least; the snow was piled high, but it was pretty instead of grueling, unusual for January.

"How are you doing, Harry?" Cho asked breathlessly.

"Um, good," Harry said. He would have liked to discuss Quidditch, but he was afraid they had run low on new conversation to make about it: they hadn't been playing or practicing, and Harry still didn't have a team or confident knowledge of game schedules outside Hogwarts. It had always mostly been playing he was interested in.

Although that reminded him of Draco's invitation. "Hey," he said, "We have plans for today, but do you want to go flying some time another weekend? Maybe we can play one on one with a Quaffle or something, or just fly."

"Sure," Cho said, looking relieved. "You don't - er - mind that I play, then, not just watching?"

"Why would I mind?" Harry said, baffled. "It's half of what we talk about."

Cho picked at the fringe on her edge of the scarf and was quiet for ten or twenty feet. Then she said, "Some men don't like women who play Quidditch, it's supposed to be unladylike. My family doesn't mind that I play, but a lot of other Wizengamot family girls aren't allowed to do it. That's what Ginny was talking about at the ball."

"Oh." Harry tried, and failed, to absorb this knowledge into his firsthand experience of the Weasleys. Mr. Weasley was mostly interested in taking apart muggle artifacts, not, as far as he knew, Ginny's behavior. Then he thought of Mrs. Weasley, who often went and called Ginny to help her just when they were getting started with a game or when she was getting too involved with her brothers' friends, and frowned.

"No, I don't mind, I like that you play. It gives us something to do together, plus I'd never have noticed you otherwise - it was when you kept blocking me in that game my third year, when I first did--"

Cho laughed. "I was so frustrated, trying to play you on a Firebolt. Say - could I give it a go when we go flying?"

"Yeah, sure," Harry said. "--Why ask if I mind?"

"It's just..." Cho hesitated and spend another few moments silently playing with the end of the scarf. "I know you asked me to go to Hogsmeade before so we could try out - being together before the ball, everyone wanted a date for it. I wasn't sure whether we were really together until you asked me to Hogsmeade again, and introduced me as your girlfriend, to Viktor Krum."

"I mean, you want to be, right?" Harry said. "You'd have said something if not, I thought--"

"Yeah, of course!" Cho said quickly. "I'm glad you asked me. But there are - if we're dating, that's different from going to the ball together, so I wasn't sure..."

"If I'd care more about my girlfriend playing Quidditch than my date to the Yule Ball, you mean?" Harry said.

"Yeah."

"Well, I don't mind," Harry said truthfully. "That, or anything else - I mean, I'd mind if you went around picking on people, I guess, or whatever, but not stuff like that."

"Good," Cho said, and reached to take his hand. Harry squeezed hers back, mouth very dry.

"So," he said, trying to come up with another conversation topic. "--You're taking your O.W.L.s this year, right? Do you know what you want to do after school, yet?" He remembered that career counseling occurred fifth year, and was important to which classes students continued on in.

"Oh, I don't know," Cho said, sending him a sidelong glance. "I used to want to be a professional Quidditch player as a kid but I really don't think I'm good enough." She sighed. "It's easier to get a start in another position - you know, a Chaser or a Keeper has an individual record even if the rest of their team isn't great, but a Seeker has to win, or at least catch the Snitch... I might want to follow my Mum's footsteps - you know, be an Auror - but she might not be very happy with me even if it's less dangerous now than it was during the war. And of course you can't be an Auror and be married."

"You can't?" Harry said, startled.

Cho looked surprised. "Not women," she said. "Men can. Women either retire, they move to training positions, or they end up with desk jobs if they get married, it depends how long they spent on the force. Mum has a desk job, now. And the other thing is, during the war it was different because the casualty rates were so high, but it's hard to get in if they think you're just going to leave again and get married. So a lot of the time women have to make a big show of not being interested..."

"Sirius's cousin Tonks is an Auror," Harry said, remembering. "I met her over Christmas. If you want to do it, you should, it's not fair that they keep women out for marrying."

"I don't know," Cho said again, looking down the path to Hogsmeade, then back at Harry anxiously. "It's just that it's a lot to give up, you know? It would have to be my whole life, and I might want to, but not necessarily want to that much, if that makes sense. But then I think, am I giving in if I say that?"

"I guess," Harry said. "I don't have any idea what I'm going to do. Try not to die, I guess."

Cho glanced at him again, this time through her heavy lashes. "Do you think You-Know-Who will be back, then?"

"Dumbledore does, and I reckon he'd know best, wouldn't he?" Harry said. "I just hope it's a long time from now." It seemed strange to him that people did not know about the prophecy; that Cho would think he was only as afraid of Voldemort as everyone else.

"So do I," Cho said fervently.

They reached Madam Puddifoot's before much longer, to Harry's relief. There did not seem to be any easy way to resume that conversation.

Harry got to the door first and held it open. Looking in, for a moment he felt as though he had been hit in the face with a bludger and was seeing stars. Every inch of the room inside was packed with pink. Bows and other frilly decorations covered the walls, counter and chairs, and lace doilies were draped over the tables and served as napkins.

Don't laugh, Harry thought frantically, hiding his initial choking sound with a cough. His glasses were fogging up from coming inside so suddenly. Gratefully he took them off to wipe them clean on his scarf. Don't even think of laughing, he told himself.

"Oh, it's so crowded," Cho said, sounding a little dismayed, but she looked around the room with every sign of pleasure. Harry was aghast, and reminded himself very firmly that this was the same girl who had nearly knocked him off his broom last year and just asked wistfully to try his Firebolt. It was no worse than listening to Ron go on about the Canons. Actually, the painfully bright color scheme reminded him a bit of Ron's room at the Burrow.

That comparison helped. "D'you see a free table anywhere?" Harry asked, craning his head and hoping fervently that the answer would be no.

Unfortunately, Cho pointed one out near the wall and led Harry over. They had to strain awkwardly to get around the cramped tables without knocking anyone over, but at last they were safely ensconced in chairs, well away from the draft that came in every time someone opened the door.

"So, er, do you come here often?" Harry said. He tried very hard to keep his eyes on Cho, and not on the sixth years one table over who were kissing ferociously over the table. The girl was making a little mm-mm noise that was audible, unfortunately, from where Harry was sitting.

"Only once before, last year with - er, it doesn't matter, he turned out to be a jerk anyway," Cho said slightly breathlessly. "It's your first time?"

"Yeah," Harry said, slightly panicked; the proprietor, a very large woman with very shiny black hair, was edging around tables trying to get to them. "D'you have any idea what's good here?"

"Oh, everything's supposed to be pretty good, last time I had chamomile - sort of a little kids' drink, though, isn't it?" Cho said, and rapidly ordered coffee.

It occurred to Harry that she was just as nervous as he was about being here, which helped slightly. "Uh, same as her," he said, and realizing he had no idea whether he liked coffee or not, cast around rapidly for something else in case the answer was no. "And a couple of those chocolate pastries, for both of us?" he said swiftly, seeing a couple sharing them at another table; chocolate, he figured, was a safe bet for nearly everyone.

Cho looked pleased, so apparently he had done something right.

Harry cast his mind around for something to talk about. He hoped talking to Cho would eventually get easier, or he had no idea how he was going to keep dating her. He supposed it must, or nobody would ever get married. "Did you grow up with any brothers or sisters, then?" he said at last. "You mentioned a cousin, right?

"Yeah, I've got two little sisters, and then my cousin Lei's two and a half years older and my parents raised her because all of her family died in the war," Cho said calmly. "She graduated last year, she was in Hufflepuff. My sisters are Xiulan and Jun."

"Xiulan's a year down from you in Ravenclaw, Jun's only seven. Then I've got two other cousins on my father's side, Zheng's the oldest and the Chang heir, he's married and they have a son who's a year old, and Wen's got a muggle girlfriend and his parents are mad because he says he won't marry anyone else and she doesn't want to marry until she finishes school and finds a decent job."

"Oh," Harry said, trying to absorb this flood of information. "What's Wen's girlfriend studying?" He had a sort of general knowledge about muggle university, but no real details.

"Engineering," Cho said. "She says she's going to design bridges and what's the use of being able to fly if we can't do maths, but in general she's pretty nice. She's only in the beginning of her Masters course now, so it'll be years before she's done. That's really what annoys my uncle, not that she's a muggle. Then on my Mom's side I have a bunch more cousins..." Cho paused. "What about you?" she said. "I mean, you went to live with your mother's muggle family, right, until Sirius?"

Harry was struck by the realization that Cho had been very restrained in refraining from asking about this until now, considering how curious everyone always was about him. This did not help much.

"Yeah, I did, her sister and her sister's husband and son," Harry said. "Dudley's the same age as me. I don't... Honestly," he said, "I was thrilled to move in with Sirius, we don't get on very well."

"Does she blame you for - you know, her sister dying?" Cho asked, then flushed, seeming to realize how rude this was.

"I don't think so," Harry said, although it occurred to him that this was entirely possible as an explanation for Aunt Petunia's general hatred. "I think she just doesn't like magic, or... Honestly, I can't think of anything she does enjoy, she spends all her time cleaning and eavesdropping on the neighbors and trying to be normal..."

"She sounds horrible," Cho said.

"Yeah. They always made a big fuss of how much better my cousin was because he was normal - not magic, I mean." Harry's ears felt hot. He saw someone at another table glance at them and realized how hard it would be to have a really private conversation in Madam Puddifoot's. "Anyway, Sirius is loads better, like I said last time." He swallowed. "So do you just want to be an Auror to be like your Mum, or is it anything else? You like dueling, right?"

"Yeah." Cho bounced slightly in her chair, making the china bowl clatter alarmingly. "I was so glad Professor Black started a club - you must be too, you learn really fast."

"I should have known," Harry said, laughing suddenly, "Because you play Quidditch like you duel - all that blocking--"

"Well, it's useful playing against someone as fast as you," Cho said, laughing, too, and the conversation once against returned to Quidditch moves.

They managed to keep talking for an hour or so, but Harry was relieved when Cho said they might want to get a little more to eat before meeting Hermione and Viktor a little after two, and got up to leave. He was having a hard time not staring at all of the people kissing; it made him feel as though he should be doing it, too. While kissing Cho before hadn't really been bad, the thought of doing it for an extended period of time in the small, stage-like interior of Madam Puddifoot's where half of the patrons had been eavesdropping on their conversation made him want to sink through the floorboards.

Cho kept glancing at him on the way out, so Harry waited until they had paused to decide which way to go, nervously took her hand, and kissed her.

It still wasn't bad, although he was struggling a bit to work out where his lips should go. Cho tasted like coffee and chocolate, which made sense, and her lips were chapped. She was taller than him and it made it a slightly awkward, he had to sort of crane upwards..

They broke apart soon, Cho giggling her nervous giggle, but looking pleased. "So, where do you want to go for lunch?" Harry said, relieved that he seemed to be filling out his job as her boyfriend well enough. He wondered if there was any way of asking Sirius for advice that would not be just as embarrassing as floundering.

Cho went down a side street to a sandwich shop, and once they had food they wandered down High Street companionably. Harry thought that this was much nicer than Madam Puddifoot's. He resolved to find out somewhere specific to ask Cho to go next time, maybe from Hermione, which made him think of the question, "How do you know about all these places?"

"Well, it helps that all of my cousins have been going to Hogsmeade for ages, I asked Lei and Zheng and Wen when I started last year," Cho said. "Plus my parents. I guess you and Hermione wouldn't have anyone to ask last year, though, and the Weasleys probably don't want to, well..."

"Spend a lot of money, yeah," Harry said awkwardly.

Cho nodded.

"You said you had two little sisters?" Harry said, trying to pick up the conversation again. "Do you like kids, then?"

"Yeah, I think so," Cho said. "I mean, Xiulan can be a real brat sometimes but it's mostly funny, and Jun's the good one, so she's easy... And obviously I want my own some day," she said, shooting a nervous glance at Harry.

Unlike her earlier remarks about being an Auror, Harry got the gist of this one immediately. "I have no idea," he said. "My cousin's the same age as me," and had been just as horrible when he was younger, "So I've never been around them much - I'm friends with Ron, but Ginny's the youngest and she's only a year younger."

He remembered that Sirius had commented on when you get married, when they had discussed Sirius's engagement to Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry had been too distracted at the time to think much of it, though. He supposed that when he had been able to think of the future beyond the question of whether he would escape the Dursleys or whether Voldemort would kill him, he had had a sort of vague vision of a household like the Burrow - messy, chaotic and full of people. "I think I'd like kids," he said. "I mean, I haven't got any other family, so... What if I'm awful with them, though - it's not like you can just take them back--"

Cho giggled. "You'd need to marry someone who can teach you, obviously."

Harry was grateful that they were meeting Hermione and Viktor too soon to get much further into that.

It was strange, he mused, watching Hermione introduce Cho to Viktor, that they were talking about it - strange that Cho was thinking about it, although if she had to decide whether to get married at all before she could pick a career it sort of made sense. After all, she was in her O.W.L. year, and would be selecting which N.E.W.T. classes to take this summer. But still - she was fifteen or sixteen, he wasn't sure when her birthday was, and he was only fourteen...

Sirius had apparently been engaged when he was only a baby, and while Ron last summer had dismissed the idea that he would try to set anything up for Harry, he had not seemed to consider it an unrealistic possibility in general. Harry definitely had the idea Cho was thinking about it. He resolved that he had better talk to Sirius about it soon, in case he gave Cho the wrong idea.

When he tuned back into the conversation, Cho was asking questions about what it had been like to fly in the World Cup. Viktor seemed rather flustered, but after talking to him a few times around Hermione, Harry suspected that was because he was - like Harry - nervous about the attention and whether Cho was about to pounce on him for an autograph or something.

"I was thinking I'd love to try the Wronski Feint, I never understood what it was supposed to look like until I saw you," he said. "I bet Cho would, too - she plays Seeker for Ravenclaw--"

"Oh, if my broom was better I would," Cho said, sighing wistfully. "But I've got a Comet 260, I'd just crash into the ground."

Viktor's expression cleared at once. "Perhaps you could try my broom or Harry's," he said. "Harry also has Firebolt, I believe--"

"Yeah, we were talking about going flying," Harry said. "I'd love to fly with you, too, some time--" He glanced at Cho, nervous she would be angry he had effectively invited someone else along on their date. But Cho looked delighted, so apparently Quidditch stars were acceptable as company.

Harry glanced at Hermione a few shops down and saw that she was looking very bored. "Sorry," he said to her. "But you probably should have guessed the three of us would end up talking Quidditch when you invited us--"

"Oh, I really should have," Hermione said dryly, but she seemed less angry now that Harry had noticed. "How was Madam Puddifoot's, then?"

"Pink," Harry said, after glancing over to be sure Cho was absorbed in a move Viktor was trying to illustrate with his hands. "Thanks for the warning, I had to take my glasses off when we came in until I got my face under control. At least the pastries were good."

"They are," Hermione said, lips twitching. "Madam Puddifoot's an amazing cook, I suppose it's why she gets away with that decor."

"Who did you go with, anyway? Viktor?" Harry asked.

Hermione grinned. "What," she said airily, "Did you think I was sulking about being abandoned the whole time last year you and Ron wouldn't talk to me over the Firebolt?"

"Why would a Firebolt stop you from speaking to Hermione?" Viktor asked, attention drawn back by mention of the broomstick.

"Oh, er, she thought it was cursed and talked to McGonagall, so she took it off to examine it and Ron and I were afraid it would be damaged for weeks, it was - kind of stupid, looking back," Harry said.

"Why would it have been cursed?"

"Because it was sent to me anonymously as a gift. Sirius sent it," Harry said. "But this was back before everyone knew he was innocent, they thought he was trying to kill me after he broke out of Azkaban..."

It took several minutes to explain this to Viktor, with occasional interjections from Cho and Hermione.

"He must be very wealthy to buy a Firebolt as a Christmas present like that," Viktor said, shaking his head.

"Oh, the Blacks are probably the richest family in Britain," Cho said casually.

"I reckon he thought it was his fault my old broomstick was smashed, since he showed up at the match before that as a dog and the Dementors came to the pitch," Harry said, which required another explanation.

Cho was the one shaking her head at the end of it. "Harry, is your life always like this?"

"Er," Harry said. "Pretty much. This year is the most peaceful it's been in years."

"The first half of first year was fairly peaceful," Hermione said thoughtfully. "Of course, that was because we didn't know Quirrell had been possessed by Voldemort--"

"Quirrell was what?" Cho practically shrieked.

"I thought everyone knew that after he died," Harry said.

"We knew he was working for him, not - we had You-Know-Who as a Defense teacher?"

"Well," Harry said awkwardly, "It wasn't him teaching, he was stuck on the back of Quirrell's head..."

It took a while for them to get back to Quidditch, but Harry reflected that it was probably just as well. At least Hermione could join the conversation about events at Hogwarts.

They came back around five o'clock, drenched from snow melt and tired. Harry thought, as he kissed Cho goodbye in the entrance hall, that things had gone fairly well. For one thing, that time he didn't have to think so hard about not knocking noses or teeth with her. The chocolate had been good, and everyone had gotten along.

"Do you think Ron is going to be upset we left him alone?" Hermione asked in a small voice as the two of them climbed to Gryffindor Tower.

"Well, he'd have been just as upset if he was hanging around by himself with us," Harry said, although his feeling of satisfaction was starting to turn to guilt. "We'll just have to spend tomorrow with him."

"I guess if we both offer to play chess - he can never get anyone to go against him anymore," Hermione said, looking guilty herself.

Climbing through the portrait hole, however, they realized that Ron had found a way to occupy himself in their absence. Quite a few people were casting looks toward the place he was sitting by the fire, enthusiastically kissing Lavender Brown.

Chapter Text

It was with a small amount of relief that Harry collected his bag on Monday evening and left for Dumbledore's office.

On the bright side, Ron had stopped sulking since asking Lavender out. On the other hand, they proved to be attached at the hip in a way that neither he and Cho, nor Hermione and Viktor, were, and they were also rather noisy while kissing. The three of them - plus Lavender - had been trying to work on their Divination essays in the common room while waiting for Harry's appointment, but in between difficult-to-decline offers of help with her favorite subject, Lavender kept cornering Ron and making sloppy, wet noises into his mouth.

Harry found himself exchanging involuntarily appalled glances with Hermione over their heads repeatedly. Finally, he gave up and moved to Hermione's other side, away from Ron. They spent the next hour talking about the assignment and trying to ignore Ron and Lavender. Ron didn't notice.

Still, after the last time, it was with some trepidation that Harry climbed the spiral staircase and entered Dumbledore's office.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, behind his desk. There was another small bottle of wispy memory on the desk, and the Pensieve itself was out on its table. "Lemon drop?"

"No, thank you," Harry said, but sat. "Er, how are you, Professor?"

"Very well, Harry, thank you. And you? I hear that you have become rather better acquainted with Miss Chang."

"Er." Harry flushed.

"It's a pleasure to see inter-house cooperation going so well," Dumbledore said blandly. "Particularly on the matter of that curse. It had not previously occurred to me to set students to following it around, but I hear you have mapped a quite sizable portion of the castle in just two weeks."

"Right, sir," Harry said. "So, tonight--"

"I have another memory for you, as you might have guessed." Dumbledore indicated the bottle. "However, first, while it has been some time since our last meeting, I believe I may have left you with questions...?"

"I asked Sirius about most of it," Harry said, trying to think back to November. "Er, Neville's parents..."

Dumbledore paused, looking at Harry gravely. "They were tortured to incapacity by the Lestranges. They reside in St. Mungo's, where I believe Neville and his grandmother pay them regular visits during school holidays. However, his parents no longer recognize him."

Harry swallowed. "That's horrible." He tried to think whether it was worse to have his parents entirely gone, or to have them there, but unknowing; but could not. Both were as bad as could be.

Dumbledore inclined his head. "I tell you because it has come up, and because we will find ourselves discussing the Lestranges and their actions again; but I ask that you not spread word around. If Neville has not found himself ready to discuss it…"

"Of course, sir," Harry said immediately.

"Then..." Dumbledore stood and emptied the bottle into the Pensieve. Harry, once more, leaned over it first. He could see inside a crowded antechamber, almost like a stadium. Then his face touched the surface, and he was falling--

He landed in the stands of a large, stone chamber. Wizards and witches, mostly of advanced ages, were crowded throughout the room, which was at least the size of the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Many of them, he saw, had a silver W embroidered on the breasts of their robes, though those robes were otherwise of a great variety of styles. There seemed to be one for every party, although some of the W-bearers were alone and some accompanied by a great many people.

"Ah, here," Dumbledore said behind him, and nodded affably to--

A second Dumbledore, this one facing ahead and quite oblivious to them. So this was another memory of Dumbledore's.

"A session of the Wizengamot from 1969," Dumbledore said softly beside him. "We may as well sit, Harry, this may be a while."

Dumbledore from the past sat quite alone, staring thoughtfully down to the empty stage, so this was easily accomplished. Harry and the current Dumbledore simply took two vacant seats beside him.

"The Minister of Magic at the time, Maximilian Viridian, chaired this particular session," Dumbledore said. "I had opposed the testimony that you will see today, and it was deemed more appropriate... There he is."

A small, black-haired man with a large mustache and a brilliantly dyed indigo coat was taking the floor. He tapped his wand to his throat - Harry saw his lips move from a distance - and then said, voice magnified to every corner of the large chamber, "This session of the Wizengamot is now in progress."

The audience took no notice of him, but continued to talk amongst themselves, laugh, and move about. Harry thought they were being quite rude, but the Minister of Magic looked unsurprised. He shouted again two more times; the crowd gradually quieted so that it was easier to pay attention, although the whispers did not quite stop.

"Do they not like the speaker, either, sir?" Harry asked. He kept his voice down, even knowing that this was only a memory and he could not possibly interrupt.

Dumbledore looked surprised, then smiled wanly. "While some of the families in attendance undoubtedly considered themselves above the proceedings, the Wizengamot is rarely more orderly than this, Harry. Quite a few of the members consider it more of a social club than a political body, particularly when testimony is being heard and not, say, important votes on business matters... But here, it begins."

"We are honored to introduce a scholar who is an expert in matters of great concern to this body, and us all," the Minister said. Harry craned his neck, and saw a tall man rising from a seat near the bottom and striding out to join him on the stage. "I am very pleased to turn this platform over to Voldemort."

Harry choked and twisted, staring at the Dumbledores. The present Dumbledore looked up at him and gave a sardonic little smile; the past Dumbledore only sighed, very softly, and folded his hands in his lap.

Harry would not have known for sure it was Voldemort, not without the introduction. He remembered the tall, handsome Tom Riddle from the diary his second year, and the pale, nose-less face on the back of Quirrell's head. But this figure was neither. He was recognizably handsome, still pale and dark haired; but something about his features had distorted slightly, so that his adult face was blurred.

"I thank you humbly for this opportunity," he said - he had not needed to tap his wand to his throat to magnify his voice - and bowed to the Wizengamot. His voice was not oily, but smooth and ringing. "I bow to you, as I am bowed before the weight of this institution's age and prestige..."

The crowd liked that, Harry thought, annoyed by the way Voldemort was bringing them to focus much more easily than the actual Minister.

"I was asked to come to you and speak of the times we live in, that is, of modernity; of the inherent risks and special necessities of our era. I expect some of you - our oldest families and our purest - may be confused by this statement; for some of you have had the wisdom to insulate yourselves so deeply in our world that you are protected from all crisis outside it...

"But just as a man in his house must listen closely for the cry of alarm at the walls, we are wise not to sit too insulated, too safe inside our world's fortifications, without attention to the outside world. For recent developments have put us all in danger..."

Harry frowned. "He's not saying much, is he?" he muttered to Dumbledore. Voldemort had begun to speak of the degeneration of muggle society and social institutions; there were notably few examples. If anything, it sounded to Harry like a more polished version of Uncle Vernon going on about foreigners and youth.

"No." Dumbledore smiled. "It would not do to appear too knowledgeable of muggles among the Wizengamot families, most of whom claim the purest of descent."

Voldemort had gone on to describe, as Harry listened with increasing rage, the risks supposedly posed by muggleborns, and even those of what he called good families worthy of respect, who trafficked with muggles, outside their world, and brought in developments from outside, and who in venturing outside made themselves vulnerable to widespread detection, a greater risk every year with muggles' increasing abilities to communicate en masse and radiate their information...

"Is he talking about television?" Harry hissed after a few minutes of this. "He's saying we need to kill all the muggleborns because of TV?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "I believe radio and the telephone were also considered to be grave security risks by this particular segment of society, Harry. Never underestimate the broad scope of the unknown that people are willing to fear, if a handsome man tells them they should."

"They're going for it, though," Harry said, twisting to look at the crowd. "They're hanging on his speech..."

"Not quite everyone," Dumbledore said. "Many of those who are quiet are, like me, alarmed; he had his detractors and his violent opposition in the Wizengamot alongside his support. But he had enough support - enough fans - to get here, Harry, and to be invited back."

The speech was not long. As Voldemort began his concluding remarks, Dumbledore rose. "This way, Harry," he said. "Let us get a closer look of those who come up to congratulate him when he is finished." They began to descend, carefully climbing around people standing on the stairs between levels, until they could perch again in the bottom row, directly across from Voldemort.

The first man who came up was instantly recognizable to Harry as a Malfoy. He had the same long, shining blond hair as Draco's father, and a familiar arrogant expression, though his features were subtly different. His face changed as he approached Voldemort, though most of the hall wouldn't have been able to see it. For a moment it softened, then hardened again with a sort of vicious excitement. He said something Harry didn't catch to Voldemort, raising a hand to put it on his shoulder.

"Abraxas Malfoy," Dumbledore said beside Harry. "Lucius's father and Draco's grandfather. He died two years ago of dragon pox."

To Harry's astonishment, Voldemort did not curse him or even shrug his hand off, but turned into him, smiling with the same cold fervor. They spoke quietly, clasped hands, and the blond man moved off. In the upper levels, people were talking again, loudly enough that it was impossible to eavesdrop. Glancing up, Harry saw that some of the people standing in the stairwells were leaving, apparently here only for the speech.

The next man who approached Voldemort was entirely unfamiliar to Harry. He had heavy, straight black hair and broad shoulders, and a more thoughtful expression. Like Abraxas, he did not bear the W that Harry supposed might stand for Wizengamot.

"Reinhard Lestrange," Dumbledore said. "Rodolphus Lestrange's uncle, and a schoolmate of Tom Riddle's. I recall that he and Abraxas Malfoy were Tom Riddle's closest confidantes at school, the ringleaders of a group that could never be firmly connected to the nasty incidents that occurred repeatedly during their time. That group eventually became the Death Eaters."

Abraxas had returned to his seat in the stands, but Reinhard lingered, speaking softly to Voldemort as others approached. Dumbledore gave no comment to several, or only a name, so Harry judged them as unimportant.

The Minister of Magic seemed to decide that he had given Voldemort command of the Wizengamot for long enough. Harry watched him jump up and stride over. As he came, Voldemort's gaze lifted into the stands, somewhere about a quarter of the circle away from them.

Following it, Harry saw a woman wearing a veil made of scarlet lace. The layers of gauzy fabric hid her identity until she lifted her head, and the light in the chamber shone through to her face. In age, she was between the two memories he had seen before: Bellatrix Lestrange as a young woman, a few years out of school.

Voldemort looked at her across his admirers and smiled, very faintly. As Harry watched, Bellatrix flipped her veil up, showing her face clearly, and smirked back. It was an expression distinctively reminiscent to Harry of Marietta Edgecombe, full of insinuations he wasn't sure he could explain but which always made him turn bright red.

Bellatrix pressed two fingers to her lips, then dropped her hand and the veil back down. Someone on her other side was waving frantically, someone with a very small hand. Harry leaned forward, trying to see around her, and stopped short.

It was plainly Sirius, perhaps a year or two too young for Hogwarts, black hair escaping a ponytail as he waved madly for Voldemort's attention, holding his older cousin's hand.

Harry dropped back into his seat, feeling nauseous.

He told himself it wasn't really anything new. He knew what Sirius's family was like, knew that he hadn't minded the thought of marrying his cousin as a child. Of course Sirius hadn't known about the world when he was too young for school, any more than Harry had known anything but the Dursleys. It made sense.

He tore his eyes back to the floor to watch Voldemort speak to the Minister quietly. Voldemort's face was intent, a painfully false sincerity on his lips that made Harry want to tear out of his seat and punch him, all thought of wands forgotten.

"This is what I want you to watch, Harry," Dumbledore said, apparently oblivious to where Harry's attention had wandered. "His face, his body language. Look how close the Minister stands. He hates it - his fingers twitch towards his wand every minute or so - but he endures, he chooses to appear humble. When Abraxas puts a hand on his shoulder, or Reinhard speaks to him, they are friends, he must be Tom Riddle.

"You and I know, Harry, that Voldemort does not take confidantes or feel friendship, that he does not tolerate the slightest hint of disrespect in those he can control. See how he treated the basilisk, proof of his heritage and a living creature with memories of the ancestor he claims to hold so sacred; see how he treated Professor Quirrell, who sought him out and helped him when he was desperate, when no other being had for ten long years. But he pretends, he manipulates, he gains trust and relies on it.

"His enemies in the Wizengamot acquiesced to him speaking here because we felt bound by those very social conventions he disregards, and he took advantage of that to establish a foothold. He is charismatic and charming until the very moment someone has no power to defy him; then he becomes the monster he truly is..."

Harry swallowed. "So you want me to see how he persuades people, you mean? And - politics?"

"Indeed." Dumbledore sank back in his chair, looking very old. "I do not know whether his old tactics will work when he returns. He has shown himself too well for many to follow him the same way. But I do not think he will need them, Harry. Too many are in his power, whether by enchantments meant to ensure their loyalty or only because he has knowledge and proof of what they have already done for him. And there are always those who want to be persuaded, to find a reason to overlook past misdeeds... But come, this is enough," he said, rising; and soon they were back in Dumbledore's office.

Harry was distracted through the conversation after, and Dumbledore let him go fairly quickly. His mind was whirling, trying to put together a plan out of the information Dumbledore had given him this time and last.

He still wasn't sure how he could use it. He had seen where Voldemort got his followers and how he treated them, how loyal they were; and he had seen how Voldemort manipulated the Wizengamot and the public. But Harry had no idea what to do with this.

He had been terrified of the idea of having to face down Voldemort wand to wand ever since hearing the prophecy, but now he found there was something that might be worse: having to face down Voldemort politically. Voldemort, Harry thought dully, might be a liar, but he was charismatic and brilliant - and Harry was always surprised when Ron and Hermione listened to him, let alone all of magical Britain...

And then there was the image of Sirius as a child, twisting on Bellatrix's arm, waving at Voldemort, rising whenever he could take his mind off the idea of Voldemort's political influence.

He didn't get a chance to talk to Sirius for the next two days. Ron and Lavender continued to be as ostentatiously together as possible, which frequently reduced Hermione to a huff and occasionally to tears. Viktor went from baffled to a mix of nerves and jealousy as this continued, so Harry had to assure him that Ron and Hermione hadn't been dating and Hermione was only upset that her friend was ignoring her. Meanwhile, Hermione was spending even more time than usual at the library and once was brought up by a Prefect long after hours, apparently having fallen asleep there and somehow been missed by Madam Pince.

Unfortunately, at dinner Tuesday night she expressed her anger with Ron by turning away and having a long, involved conversation about Arithmancy with Draco Malfoy, who evidently shared all of Hermione's electives. This made Ron furious whenever he came up for air from Lavender. Hermione, Harry thought, had to have noticed; she giggled much too often for it to be anything but deliberate.

On top of it all, Harry was struggling through the extra homework Cassiopeia had given him, dashing up to Sirius's quarters when he had free moments, though Sirius was either in class or his office. Cassiopeia had hinted that she wanted to try a small sacrificial ritual that weekend if he finished the next chapter, and Harry's very feeling of powerlessness against Voldemort's political influence made him doubly determined to try to improve magically.

On Wednesday evening, seeing Hermione open her Ancient Runes textbook eagerly at dinner, Harry became so annoyed that he got up. "Have fun, you lot," he said, and walked over to the Ravenclaw table to sit with Cho.

"Hi, Harry," Cho said, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. Harry felt her shoulder press into his chest and tried not to blush. "Wow, Ron and Lavender are really very...."

"Embarrassing?" Harry said.

"I was going to say enthusiastic," Cho said, but giggled. "But that's probably true, too. Do you know what we're doing in dueling club tonight?"

"I don't know for sure, but Sirius said something about an obstacle course he was working on with Flitwick earlier this week, it might be for tonight."

"Oh, really? Thanks, I'll look forward to that!" Cho said, and snuggled against his side before she went back to buttering her bread roll. Harry felt a sort of glow in his chest for the rest of dinner that completely distracted him from Ron and Hermione's behavior.

Dueling club was really enjoyable, enough to get Ron and Hermione's attention back. Sirius and Flitwick had charmed the classroom to temporarily expand it, and fitted it out with trees, broken ground that sloped upward to one boulder higher than head height, and a stream. They explained that they would be fighting over rough ground today, and that as they all grew more comfortable, the environment might also be trapped to create more complicated obstacles. Then they pulled up a pair of seventh years as examples to practice dueling over the stream.

Harry, Ron and Hermione went up to Sirius's quarters - together, for once - soaking wet, covered in dirt and bruised, but happy. Hermione flopped into a chair once she had dried herself off and began picking leaves out of her hair, while Ron went to scrub mud off his arms and face and Harry, who had done the best, healed his skinned palms and knees; he had at one point forgotten what was behind him dodging and tripped over a tree root.

"Hello, everyone," Sirius said a few minutes later, coming in. "What do you think, do I have your approval?"

"Oh, I loved tripping Pansy Parkinson into the water," Hermione said, "All her makeup came off, she was crying when I left..."

Sirius looked like he was trying not to laugh. "Well, her fault for not using waterproofing charms."

They settled in to do homework together. Harry had a Transfiguration essay to edit. Sirius had given him a list of things to check before turning in essays after helping Harry revise his assignment a few weeks earlier, and Harry had found that, embarrassing as it was to actually go over the list every time, it did help his grades.

He found himself lingering over it as it got later, hoping Ron and Hermione would go up to bed first. When he could find nothing else to fix on his essay, he got out his Potions textbook and began a supplementary reading for Friday's practical that he normally would not have bothered with.

"Alright, Harry?" Sirius asked, fifteen minutes or so after Hermione and Ron had left.

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, but he closed his book. "I..."

"Wanted to talk to me about something?" Sirius asked, putting down the last of his marking. Harry saw a red P scrawled on it and winced for the student.

He thought of the memory, of child Sirius in the Wizengamot, but it was curiously difficult to form words; and he found himself saying instead quite by accident, "Yeah, it's about Cho."

"Cho?" Sirius asked, raising his eyebrows. "Not going quite how you hoped?"

"Uh, not exactly," Harry said. "Look, I think I might have messed up somehow, but I just don't really know what she... expects."

"Tell me about it and I'll try to help," Sirius said, coming over from his desk to sit across from Harry's armchair on the couch.

Harry bit his lip, then told Sirius about the conversation he'd had with Cho on Saturday before meeting Hermione and Viktor.

"--And it's not like she came out and said she wanted to marry me or anything really weird, but I could tell she was shooting me looks when we talked about children, and I just don't understand how we got on the subject," Harry finished, frustrated. "I like her, but we've only been dating a few weeks, and I didn't think - she doesn't usually act like - like that."

Sirius frowned, thoughtfully. "You said she asked you if it bothered you that she played Quidditch, and then you got on the subject of her wanting to be an Auror. How did careers come up?"

"Well, I was trying to change the subject, you know," Harry said, thinking back, "So I asked if she knew what she wanted to do after school... what?"

Sirius was nodding and trying not to smile. "That would be it. Harry, she probably thought you were scouting her out."

"I'm fourteen," said Harry, who usually didn't feel much like a child and certainly wasn't used to being looked after, but did have some sense. "She's fifteen - or sixteen, I guess, I haven't asked when her birthday is."

"Yes, and for most families that would be too young - it is too young - but Cho's from a Wizengamot family the same as both of us," Sirius said. "I don't think the Changs normally marry that young, but she'll know people, cousins and children of her parents' business associates, who do, and she won't know exactly what you expect. And a lot of that social class doesn't expect women to work, unless they're extremely dedicated to the idea, or expects them to have their children first; so she would wonder when you asked."

"So you think I shouldn't have asked what she wanted to do after school, and it gave her the wrong idea?"

"I think she was testing for it by saying she was thinking of becoming an Auror," Sirius said dryly. "She didn't seem disappointed when you weren't upset, did she?"

"No." Harry said, and ventured tentatively, "Relieved, maybe?"

"But she didn't double down and say she really wanted it, either," Sirius said. "So - and this is just a guess - I'd say she's relieved you're not set on her but she's still thinking about you seriously, or wants to think about you seriously in the future if it lasts."

"So... what do I do?" Harry asked.

Sirius shrugged. "Keep on as you have been," he said. "Cho knows you're not a polished society member - which is a point in your favor - and she likes you that way. I don't think she expects it. And go ahead and keeping asking me if you need to figure something out... And I'd try being honest with her if she really confuses me. You don't need to worry about marriage at this age, Harry."

"Thanks," Harry said, although really he felt this advice was not very helpful. "What else?"

Sirius looked like he was considering adding more. He nodded, sure enough, and said, "The one thing is, Harry, it's possible that her family is going to take it seriously, or will when they find out, so you might want to ask her about what they think."

"What, you mean they might..." Harry trailed off, uncertain.

"They would be writing to me to ask about engagement at this age, since you're a minor," Sirius said. "And I certainly wouldn't agree to anything at your age, even if you wanted me to. But I think you should be aware of that, with Cho and... any others."

"Why?" Harry said.

Sirius smiled. "You're young, you're going to be head of your family immediately when you come of age, you've a Wizengamot seat, and you're reasonably well off in addition to being my ward; and you're not engaged already. That makes you attractive to anyone who agrees with your politics, especially since whoever you marry - assuming you do, and you don't have to - won't have a living mother-in-law to boss her around. Sorry to bring you bad news, Harry, but yes, you're a very attractive match for the sort of family that cares about that."

"What, I'm attractive because Mum's dead?"

Sirius winced. "Lily wouldn't have been a bad mother-in-law anyway, but in traditional families, a lot of the time it's expected that women obey their husbands' mothers, so it can...cause trouble, and not having it to worry about is often a relief."

Harry didn't want to think about that, and cast his mind around. "Cho's halfblood, though," he said. "Her mum's mother is a muggle, she said, it doesn't sound like her mother's family is important."

Sirius shook his head. "The Changs don't arrange everything, not anymore - that's part of why Cho's willing to date openly, I'd say. And her father was a third son when he became involved with Auror Fang Lin, so the family wasn't that invested in his marriage. That doesn't necessarily stop them from having feelings about who Cho dates in school...

"Don't worry too much about it, Harry, she'll have to tell you if she wants something. And anyway, my perspective here isn't necessarily - my family was, obviously, as conservative as they come. I'm not as used to people in between."

With this unsatisfying answer, Harry gave up and bid Sirius goodnight.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, Cho had other things to discuss Thursday morning at breakfast.

"Hey, Harry," she said, coming over. She sat on the end of the table across from Draco, who was finishing Ancient Runes homework with an occasional consultation with Hermione or his textbook. "Matilda finally answered me - she takes ages to write, sorry, I know it's been a month since I asked--"

"Matilda?" Harry asked blankly before he remembered. "You mean about--" Draco did not seem to be listening, "Crouch?" he said softly, leaning closer. Draco did glance up, but only smirked at them, so he probably thought they were kissing.

"Yeah," Cho breathed back. "And not only did he lie about the duel, she said that Crouch wasn't there at all. He was invited, but apparently he's been skipping loads of social engagements..."

Yes, Harry thought, now that he no longer had Winky to watch his son.

"Which I thought was interesting at first, because if he's misusing a Time Turning he should have all the time he wants, right?" Cho whispered. "But I was looking it up and apparently a lot of people forgot to sleep enough using them, or to eat at the right times, so they end up exhausted and make themselves sick..."

Harry carefully did not look at Hermione.

"So I thought that might be why. Doesn't Ron's brother work with him? I know he's bringing him to tasks."

"Yeah," Harry said distractedly, "Percy. Hermione was writing to him - hey, Hermione," he said louder, then said it again; she finally looked up. "Did Percy say Crouch has been ill?"

"I don't know about ill, but he's been injured a lot," Hermione said, frowning. "And he's apparently giving Percy all kinds of duties he's not qualified for, saying he's acting on his behalf. Percy loves it, of course."

"Are you talking about Bartemius Crouch?" Draco Malfoy asked, unfortunately choosing this time to emerge from his homework.

"Yeah," Cho said smoothly, looking at him. "Did you see he was hurt at the Yule Ball? We were wondering what happened."

"Mother said he ran afoul of a biting cabinet at work," Draco said scornfully. "You would think he would be capable of handling a cabinet, but I suppose he's rather lost his touch... Can't take care of himself without his elf."

"Harry mentioned he'd sacked her," Cho said thoughtfully. "I suppose your mother told you that, too?"

"No," Draco said shortly, looking down again. "I was there." His tone did not invite comment, but his ears burned.

"It was after the World Cup, she picked up a wand from the ground during the riot and got caught with it and he was furious," Harry said, eliding the fact that the wand was Draco's and had been used to summon the Dark Mark. "Cho, thanks for asking your cousin about it, she's not going to think it's a weird question, is she?"

"Please," Draco said before Cho could answer. "Everyone loves gossiping about Crouch, especially if he might be doing something wrong. You'd know that if you--" He glanced at Ron and stopped talking abruptly, as though cutting off an insult mid-sentence. Then again, Harry thought, he might just have been put off by the sight of Lavender lolling back in Ron's lap, wearing an expression like someone entranced by a Veela.

Then they all had to hurry off to first period, the fourth years going together to Care of Magical Creatures. Harry resolved to tell Sirius about Cho's information later.

Thankfully, Hagrid had given up on the Skrewts. He had told an increasingly nervous Harry, Ron and Hermione about his difficulties finding anything really interesting to follow up, before beginning lessons on the - thankfully domesticated - invisible Hogwarts thestral herd.

Thestrals were apparently winged, carnivorous horses who pulled the Hogwarts carriages. They became visible only to those who had witnessed death. In Harry's class, this was limited to Theodore Nott, who sneeringly condescended to describe thestrals when asked, and Neville Longbottom.

"They're kind of scary looking," Neville said quietly to Harry, "But not as bad as I thought they were the first lesson. They're just... stringy, not really skeletal, and they're nice enough--" He paused and laughingly shoved away an invisible head. "It was trying to lick the blood off my cheek," he explained to Harry.

There was blood on Neville's cheek because, as part of their lessons, Hagrid had invited them to help feed the thestrals their diet of meat. "Keeps 'em from going after t' owls," he explained cheerfully. "They won' attack a person, it's no worse than wha' you eat fer breakfast..."

The students were divided in their opinions of this statement, but at least, Harry thought, nobody was getting burnt, bit or stung chasing and being chased by the Skrewts.

If normal classes were not distracting enough from issues like Crouch, Draco Malfoy and other complications, Thursday afternoon Sirius delivered news that would have wiped everything from Harry's mind on its own.

"Everyone come up, I want to talk to you and be able to hear you - leave your bags," Sirius said, leaning against the front table. When the small Gryffindor fourth year class had gathered in the front row, Sirius sat back on the table and said, "So. We've had a pretty good year so far, I think.

"Every one of you has successfully managed a Shield Charm and the Disarming Charm, identified the three Unforgivables and a range of other illegal spells that were in common use during the war, explained satisfactorily some of the methods Voldemort and the Death Eaters used to gain power, and successfully used the Levitation Charm to make an impromptu shield in a mock duel. That's really good, a lot of this is stuff many adult wizards are not capable of, and I'm proud of you all.

"Unfortunately, it isn't enough." Sirius paused, and smiled at the alarmed looks on their faces, especially Neville. "In a very real sense, no amount of preparation is enough - but I'm not Alastor Moody and my job isn't to turn you all into soldiers. But there is one spell that was in extremely wide use during the war against people in a variety of positions, which can't be directly countered or protected against except by willpower, and which can be resisted through practice. Anyone have a guess?"

Harry knew where this was probably going, and Hermione's hand went up first, but Sirius skimmed the class and said, "Mr. Thomas?"

"The Imperius Curse, sir?"

"Ten points to Gryffindor," Sirius said. "Now, the Imperius Curse is illegal to cast on a human for any reason - unless you're an Auror, we talked about that last month - and therefore what I'm proposing is illegal, though it would be me in trouble, not you. I've spoken to both Dumbledore and Amelia Bones and received their permission to go ahead anyway. That said, I'm not going to require anyone to participate; anyone can sit out this lesson and write me an essay on the effects of the Imperius Curse and I won't ask why.

"But for those of you who do want to - and I want to emphasize that it is much better to experience this in a controlled environment for the first time, with someone who doesn't intend harm - what I'm proposing is to put you under the Imperius Curse. The first time the goal will just be to experience it, see what it feels like so you can identify it - that makes it much harder to keep you under control with it for long periods of time, by the way - and give you some idea what you're fighting against. Then we're going to talk about resistance, and then we'll go again and everyone will try to fight it. I don't necessarily expect all of you - or any of you - to succeed, but it is much more likely you'll manage it in the future if you've had one chance to try before."

Sirius paused for a moment before continuing. "If anyone wants to sit out the lesson, you can tell me now, or write me a note, or come to office hours. We'll be doing the first lesson next Thursday. I want anyone who sits out to observe, then turn in the essay week after next. Any questions?"

Hermione put her hand back up immediately and said as soon as Sirius nodded, "Professor, if we probably won't resist it now, how will we be able to in the future?"

"Well, you might manage to resist it now," Sirius said. "But in general, how effective Imperius is depends on a few factors. Some aren't under our control - like the power and experience of the caster - but it's also generally easier to resist the Imperius Curse if you're told to do something you have a very strong negative reaction to, and it's harder to resist someone you trust.

"Because of that, this lesson will in some ways be more difficult than a real situation. I don't have the same amount of experience as Voldemort's followers casting it, but most of you are unlikely to truly panic or hate being asked to do jumping jacks by your Defense teacher in a classroom, for example."

Thinking about politics, Harry raised his hand, only half realizing he was doing it.

"Harry?" Sirius said, and he nearly jumped.

"Er," he said. "Is this just the fourth years, or...?" He was thinking about just how many people had claimed to be under the Imperius Curse before.

"Good question. No, I'll be doing this with everyone in fourth year and up, so the fifth, sixth and seventh years are all either going to have this lesson or already have. Anyone else? No? Alright, your essays on other magical methods of mind control are due Thursday, one foot, please, everyone. Now go on to dinner."

This announcement was all any of them could talk about at dinner, of course. Draco proved to have already heard in his class that morning, and laughed when Hermione speculated on where Sirius had learned to cast the Imperius Curse.

"From his family, obviously," he said, sotto voice. "My mother learned all kinds of things growing up, too. She said she didn't think it helped much in the end - I didn't get the sort of lessons Black children do because of it. That, and she thought the fatality rate was too high to risk. No, what I want to know is how he talked Amelia Bones into going along with this."

"I doubt it was that hard," Harry said. "She probably felt bad for upsetting him--"

This meant he had to tell Draco at least that Amelia Bones had questioned Sirius over his father being attacked. Fortunately Draco didn't seem surprised, only astonished that Sirius had allowed himself to show panic to her.

"I suppose it's all for the best if he got a favor like this out of it," he said, but sat back quietly after that, looking troubled.

Harry had been debating whether he wanted to put off a conversation he'd meant to have with Flitwick for a while, but he decided that he had already been stalling since before Christmas and if he kept putting it off he might never manage. So Friday, he told Hermione and Ron - and, unfortunately, Lavender - to go ahead to lunch without him, and hung back.

"Professor Flitwick?" he said uncertainly, wondering if he should have tried to catch him in his office. "Er, do you have a minute to talk?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter!" Professor Flitwick flicked his wand, and the cushions they had been unsuccessfully - apart from Hermione - banishing gathered into several neat stacks immediately. Further wand movements sorted out the desks, chairs and assorted classroom furnishings that had been flying through the air instead (along with, several times, Professor Flitwick). "What's this about? Having some trouble with the charm?"

"Well, yes," Harry said honestly, "But it's really about - er - I asked Professor McGonagall during holidays, and she said you were... that you knew my mother fairly well, sir."

"Ah." Professor Flitwick paused in his cleanup efforts and turned to look up at Harry. "I see. Perhaps you would like to take lunch in my office with me? Sometimes I find it easier to get marking done with a good helping of tart to go with it."

Harry followed Professor Flitwick back to his office and looked around curiously once inside; he had been in Professor McGonagall and Snape's offices before, and the Defense office under Professors Lockhart, Lupin and Sirius, but no one else's.

Professor Flitwick had a small, round room in one of the shorter towers, with large windows lined with fluttering, sheer curtains. His desk was a normal height, probably so that he could meet students there, but he had a very high chair that brought him up to height with it. There were short bookcases on either side of the desk, and on top of them a number of charmed objects, including a slowly revolving ball of light inside a glass sphere and a chess set in the middle of playing itself.

"Sit down, sit down, Mr. Potter," Professor Flitwick said. "Kitchens, lunch for two, please! So. Lily Evans... Well, Lily Potter, I suppose, but of course I knew her best at school. Yes, she was a brilliant student, especially excellent at Charms - and Potions, I hear, but of course I didn't see that as often. What would you like to know?"

A tray had appeared on the desk between them as he spoke. Professor Flitwick absently opened a wicker steam basket and forked out a piece of salmon, offering the basket to Harry next.

"Just, anything," Harry said. His mouth felt dry. "About when she was at school, or her friends - my aunt, er, didn't get on with her, she doesn't like talking about her..."

"Hard to imagine!" Professor Flitwick said. "Everyone liked Lily. Let me see, her best friend was Mary Macdonald - terrible, what happened to her... But when they were in second year they had the worst time trying to retrieve Lily's cat from the music room, it had crawled inside the piano..."

Harry spent most of lunch picking at the dish of tarts that had come with lunch and listening to stories about his mother from her school days. It seemed that in addition to being clever and excellent at classwork, his mother and Mary Macdonald had had a knack for getting into absurd trouble much like Harry's own, if often less dangerous, and Professor Flitwick could recount many such incidents.

It was near the end of the period when he got up the nerve to say, "Professor, may I ask something? I mean, something else?"

"Of course, Mr. Potter." Professor Flitwick looked at him inquiringly.

Harry had never known his Charms professor very well, but Professor Flitwick had always treated him exactly like everyone else after his initial reaction to Harry's name first year. It was this very lack of expectation that made Harry feel it was possible to bring up his next question, something he could not bear to ask Sirius

"My parents - both of them, I mean," Harry started, and stopped. His mouth felt dry. He took a sip of his pumpkin juice. "Everyone talks about how brilliant they were, how my mum was great at Charms and Potions and my dad was really good at Transfiguration, and they invented - new spells, and complicated projects, at school," Harry said, barely averting a dangerous mention of the Map, or worse, his father and his father's friends illegally becoming Animagi. "And I thought - when I was eleven I didn't really think about it, and later on I wondered if it might just be people... remembering them kindly." He swallowed again.

"But I've heard from you, and some other people, that they really were exceptional -I guess I should have realized before. But I'm..." Harry's face felt hot. "Really nothing special. I mean, I barely managed to learn the Summoning Charm last term, I feel like a lot of the time I'm one of the worst in the class. I'm no better in Transfiguration, or Potions."

Although he was doing better in Potions lately. It was a lot like cooking when Snape wasn't doing his best to be an even worse supervisor than Aunt Petunia. Snape himself was was scrutinizing Hermione in particular with great focus, but had as a result had even less attention to spare for everyone else.

"And I guess... It's not like people are always just like their parents, I know that. But I feel like I'm not... Living up to them, I guess," he said, and then stopped. He couldn't come up with a way to ask his real questions: Aren't people supposed to inherent talent and power? How am I supposed to stop Voldemort when I can't send a cushion across a room to the right place? Why am I so bad at magic?

Professor Flitwick paused, looking at him for what felt like a long time. "Mr. Potter," he said, and took another bite of tart, like he, too, had to think of what to say.

"There are a few elements that make up successful casting," he said finally. "I know you've heard this before in class, but I find it is easy to get bogged down in the little details of a particular spell, and not think through how they apply all the time... Power is one aspect of it, and power is often - if not always - inherited. I would say that you do have your parents' power, Mr. Potter, even the way you make mistakes shows that. You do not generally wave your wand and find nothing happens, not since you learned to focus your magic into it at all.

"However, power is not all of the making of a spell... Don't look so glum, Mr. Potter, power is in many ways the hardest problem to fix. Focus can cause problems, and I do think that your distraction with matters of life and death has often caused difficulties for you..." Professor Flitwick frowned thoughtfully.

"But I rather think you have a different problem. The most difficult to grasp aspect of magic, often, is will. It is the belief that what you are doing will work and the concentrated desire for it to actually happen, and it is very difficult to muster for some students--"

"I want my spells to work!" Harry protested indignantly, before realizing he had rudely interrupted.

Professor Flitwick smiled at that. "But do you believe they will? I do not have the ability to perceive magic that Professor Dumbledore has, or that I imagine your godfather can command, but most masters of their subjects acquire a sense of how work should feel over time. Miss Granger has a rare combination of quite impressive natural power with focus, and every success builds her will. She expects a new spell to work the same way the last fifty did, for her. Mr. Weasley has a quite reasonable amount of power, but often has difficulty believing in his own ability - like you - and his focus is erratic - it's not unusual in children your age, Mr. Potter, I mean no insult to him. But often he gathers his magic for the wrong spell, or the wrong effect.

"You, Mr. Potter, tend to prepare correctly - you feel like Miss Granger in the beginning of a spell - but often cut out at the last minute, or suddenly lose focus; that is why you will make an object explode when you mean it to change colors, or flop feebly over instead of being banished, while Mr. Weasley will make it zoom about in circles or suddenly grow legs." He paused. "Did you have difficulty in school before Hogwarts?"

Harry flushed, thinking of Dudley stealing his homework and ripping it up, and all of the teachers who had assumed it was proof of his aunt's comments about him when he could not turn it in after. "Sometimes," he muttered. "My cousin was in classes with me, and we - didn't get along."

Professor Flitwick nodded. "I find often," he said, "That students who expect to fail, or who expect to be punished for trying, do poorly at Charms and Transfiguration, subjects that are so deeply tied to will. I can make some suggestions for exercises to help, or you might speak to your godfather - oh, but lunch is nearly over, Mr. Potter. I suggest you get to Potions, or Severus will be extremely fraught to deal with in the staffroom."

Chapter Text

Harry was distracted thinking about what Professor Flitwick had told him all throughout Potions. It was a good thing that Professor Snape was his improved, less bullying self, because Hermione had to whisper sharp rejoinders to Harry several times, and once grab his hand before he put in an incorrect and potentially explosive ingredient.

"What happened during lunch?" Hermione finally hissed.

"Nothing," Harry said automatically. Neither she nor Ron seemed to find this convincing. He hastily added, "I went to talk to Professor Flitwick about - about my mother."

This meant that Hermione shot him sympathetic looks for the rest of the afternoon when she thought he wasn't looking, but at least they stopped bothering him about it. Truthfully, Harry was at least as occupied by what Professor Flitwick had told him about magic. What did it mean, that he didn't expect his spellwork to succeed? How could he go about fixing that?

He was still wondering about this when the three of them went to meet Sirius and Cassiopeia's portrait Saturday afternoon for their first practical lesson. They had spent the morning mapping the corridor outside the Divination classroom with Cho and Viktor, harassed by Sir Cadogan. The knight's portrait had eventually stopped shouting at them once he was persuaded they were on a noble quest to rescue Harry's godfather from a curse, but he had followed up by trying to comment on everything they did and offer his assistance.

"Glad to get a break from him," said Ron, who had been pried away from Lavender with difficulty to help, but now seemed mercifully normal. "Crikey, you'd think they'd shut him somewhere out of the way where he can't bother students..."

"They tried that when I was in school," Sirius said, filing away the new map section. "He just drove the other portraits mad camping out in their frames... So, everyone ready for an illegal magic lesson?"

"I think so," Harry said. Hermione nodded eagerly. Her nerves had apparently been pushed away by the simple method of giving her a number of new books to read on an entirely new subject.

Ron frowned. "What are we doing, exactly? Because if it's - butchering an animal, or something--" He looked slightly green, which did not surprise Harry, as Ron didn't even like watching Crookshanks hunt.

"No, no, the only thing we're sacrificing today is wine and bread," Sirius said. "Sacrifice has gotten a bad reputation in the last few centuries because of the association with animal and human sacrifice, but inanimate objects are honestly more common. It was all proscribed along with ritual because the authorities thought it looked too much like devil worship. Supposedly it was meant to prevent muggles catching glimpses of us and misunderstanding. I'll let Cassiopeia explain the magic theory to you, but she won't be able to come, since we've got to be outdoors and it's going to be a bit wet. C'mon."

"Hello," Cassiopeia said, leaning forward in her portrait. Harry felt she was a lot more cheerful than she used to be; he supposed she had missed having people to talk to. "We're - or rather, you're - going to be attempting some weather magic today."

"But that's really difficult stuff!" Hermione said. "I read about it second year - only really powerful witches and wizards can change the weather, trying it can drain you and make you pass out--"

"If you're using your personal magic," Cassiopeia said, smiling mischievously. "But you won't be. Alright, I know you did some ritual magic with Bill Weasley a while ago, so you've assist in something a little like this, but I imagine he explained little of the theory to you - he would risk losing his license if he did. The vast majority of sacrificial magic is harnessed through ritual in order to direct the energies involved - do any of you remember why?"

They recited back bits of the information Cassiopeia had told them before until she released them, telling them to go with Sirius. Harry thought she looked a little bit wistful; he was sure she would much rather have supervised them herself.

"Alright, everyone," said Sirius, who had lit a fire in the grate. "We're going to the Cliff House, everyone got it? After you, then," he said, indicating a box of Floo powder.

Hermione unhesitatingly scooped up a handful and shortly disappeared into the flame, and Ron followed her. Harry, who had had less than optimal experiences with Floo travel in the past, took a deep and somewhat nervous breath. He was very careful to pronounce the name correctly this time.

He emerged in what was not so much a house as a falling down foundation with a few roof beams left and a large, crumbling stone hearth. The house was built into the top of a rocky sea cliff, and a few dozen meters away on one side the ground dropped away to the ocean. On the other the weeds gradually thickened into a sort of scrabbly meadow.

"Come on, this way," Sirius said behind Harry. "Careful you don't fall through the floor, and let's walk away from the ocean, I don't want anyone going off the cliff."

"This place is still connected to the Floo?" Ron said, picking his way carefully over the knee-high stones left of the wall on that side.

"The Black family properties all are," Sirius said. "My great-grandfather paid the Ministry about a thousand galleons to never have to renew. Mind, the house had fallen down long before then, but I think he figured it was useful as an emergency escape route... It's still warded and everything, even if it hasn't got more than one wall. We've got to build a fire," he said, putting down his bag and kneeling to draw out a number of flat hearth stones. "Someone go look for dry wood, there should be enough here."

Shortly they had a campfire built and lit in the middle of the meadow. Sirius smiled a little crookedly, looking at it, then said, "Okay, here's the wine, everyone take a bottle. I'll get the bread. This isn't quite like the magic you're used to, there isn't a set incantation. We each pour into the fire - or toss in my case - and ask aloud for rain. Focus on your desire for it, picture it, but don't touch your wand or gather power for a spell, because weather magic will drain you if you do it wrong. Hermione, go first?"

Hermione looked a little rattled to be chosen, but she gamely pulled the cork from her wine bottle and said aloud, "We ask for rain," pouring a small stream of wine into the fire. She jerked her bottle upright when Sirius nodded. "--Just that?"

"We'll keep going around until it starts," Sirius said. "Ron, your turn?"

Ron looked steadier than he had earlier, as though actually seeing the ritual had made it less frightening. He said, "We need it to rain," and poured wine over the fire, which sputtered but seemed to grow brighter.

Harry looked up at the sky and tried to imagine the clouds gathering and darkening, rain drops starting to fall. "We ask you for rain," he said, addressing it without thinking to the sky, and poured into the fire. He tried not to feel a bit stupid. Professor Flitwick's comment about him not believing his magic would work came to mind, and he concentrated very hard on believing it was about to rain. The clouds, he thought, did seem a bit darker...

"We beseech you for rain," Sirius called, voice firmer and louder than the rest, and tossed one of several round, flat loaves of bread into the fire, which consumed it to ashes almost immediately.

He nodded to Hermione, who seemed more ready this time. "We ask you, please make the rain fall," she said, voice louder, copying Sirius. They went around again, and this time, as Sirius tossed the second cake of bread into the flames, Harry felt a droplet of water hit his cheek. Sirius gestured to keep going, and the rain picked up through Hermione pouring the last of her bottle of wine into the flames. By the time they reached Sirius and he tossed his third and final piece of bread, the rain had thickened to a steady downpour, and the fire was starting to die.

Sirius laughed, most of the sound torn away by the wind. "Well, we did it!" he called. Harry grinned back, something bright and happy in his chest: this was the first time he could remember doing magic that had worked perfectly on his first try. Hermione was staring around in wide eyed fascination. Harry imagined he could see her fingers twitching to take notes, although it would have been useless in the pouring rain.

He glanced back at Ron, worried, but Ron, too, was staring around in wonder. Just then he saw Harry looking and turned to him.

"Mad, isn't it?" he said, grinning back. "I just hope Sirius can get the hearth lit again for the Floo."

When they got back to the fallen in house, thoroughly drenched, Sirius created an invisible shield above the hearth to make the rain bounce off and used a drying charm on the hearth. They were back inside his quarters in Hogwarts in, as it turned out, a little more than an hour after they left.

"I see you succeeded," Cassiopeia remarked from her portrait. "That, or all of you happened to fall off the sea cliff."

"Worked like a charm," Sirius said, and laughed loudly. "I'm not even tired - what about you three? Anyone falling over?"

"No, just cold and wet," Ron said through clenched teeth.

Sirius looked apologetic and waved his wand. Warmth seemed to spread outward from Harry's skin, and then he was standing in quite dry clothing, with crackling dry hair. "Sorry, forgot," he said. "It worked exactly as you said it would."

"So I see," Cassiopeia said, looking amused. "So, now that you've seen it for yourself, do any of you have comments about the application of the theory? Hermione?"

After Cassiopeia was done, Ron left, muttering vaguely about meeting Lavender, while Hermione suddenly remembered plans to study with several Ancient Runes classmates fifteen minutes later, leaving Harry alone in Sirius's quarters.

He should have been relieved. Often, he had badly wanted time alone with Sirius, and his friends, he thought, were arranging to give it to him. But the memory Dumbledore had shown him was bothering him again.

Ask Sirius, he thought, he'll explain it to you... But he did not know how to bring it up, and the thought of confronting Sirius with something he had done so long ago, as a child, was nerve wracking.

In the end Harry settled on the sofa to work on the finishing touches of his January Divination essay - this one on possible paradoxes in historical prophecies - while Sirius worked on marking and lecture notes. It should have been companionable - it usually was - but this time Harry's stomach churned with anxiety.

So ask him, he thought again, as he finished his clean copy of the essay and rolled it up. Just ask him. He fished through his bag and debated whether he should work on his History of Magic essay or look over his notes on thestrals for Hagrid again.

"Harry," Sirius said, glancing up from the desk. "Is everything alright? You seem upset."

"Uh," Harry said, mouth dry. He should definitely ask Sirius now. "I was talking to Professor Flitwick Friday..." he said.

"Hermione mentioned that," Sirius said, frowning. "About Lily? I can't imagine he said anything bad..."

"No, it was... We talked about Mum, but I also asked him about why I..." Harry swallowed; this was exactly what he hadn't wanted to ask Sirius, even if it was better than talking about the memory. "Why I have trouble with magic when my parents were so good at it."

"Harry," Sirius said, starting up as though to protest.

"And he said," Harry said quickly, "That he thought I had trouble with will - well, he said he had a sense for how students felt doing charms work after this long, and that I usually prepared right and lost focus at the last minute, and he thought it was - that he saw it a lot in students who didn't expect to - to succeed. And I was trying to figure out what to do about that - we'd sort of ran out of time, and he said I could ask him for exercises for it later, but..."

"Hmm." Sirius sat down on the couch then, frowning at Harry. "Well, it's a problem I know of, but I admit I don't have much experience with it. One of the advantages of the way my family teaches magic, and there aren't all that many, is that we were all used to the focus and will components by the time we started school. We knew our magic would work. I know muggleborns sometimes have trouble with it in particular, and students whose parents enforce the Decree on Underage Wizardry, problems with will actually come up every so often when the Wizengamot discusses changing it."

"Yeah?" Harry said, surprised. "Why did it pass, then?"

"Well, that's a complicated question and I don't fully understand the answer myself, but among other things it was felt that some problems with succeeding in doing anything were better than a lot of children losing control of their powers and hurting people and exposing magic," Sirius said. "I admit my family never enforced it at home, and I don't see any point doing it myself.

"But anyway - your best subject is Defense, I've noticed that, and Remus mentioned it to me over the summer. I haven't noticed any problems of the kind in your practical work, but I believe Professor Flitwick, and I've noticed that what I see doesn't seem to match what he and Professor McGonagall say about you. Would you say you think differently about Defense?"

Harry frowned. "I guess. I was never very good first or second year, but our teachers were..."

"Not Remus," Sirius said, half-smiling. "Did you do a lot of magic in those classes? I've seen the notes."

"No," Harry said honestly. "Almost none, actually."

"So the first Defense practical work you did with Remus, and you did pretty well. Do you think you might expect your Defense spellwork to succeed because of that?"

"Maybe," Harry said. "--I mean, Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick are good teachers, though, it's not like Professor Lupin was loads better than them. If I was comparing him to Snape..."

"No, but they didn't treat you differently from other students or try to get you to volunteer in class, did they?" Sirius said. "And I understand you had a lot of trouble with handwriting, that sort of thing, and confidence - I know this is embarrassing, Professor McGonagall spoke to me about you when I took your guardianship over, since I didn't have a chance to find out much from the Dursleys. You were more confident as a third year, weren't you? And Remus mentioned he asked you to answer a question first class even though you hadn't volunteered..." He smiled at Harry.

"Oh, I forgot about that," Harry said, laughing. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And after I learned the Patronus I knew I could do anything else in class, since Professor Lupin said that a lot of adult wizards couldn't--"

"Oh, yes, he bragged about that," Sirius said, smiling nostalgically. "You're a triumph for him, you know, teaching a thirteen year old to produce a corporeal Patronus."

"I didn't know that," Harry said. "Have you heard from him lately? You said he was in Sri Lanka over the summer?"

"Yeah, we've been writing," Sirius said. "He left South Asia a while ago, he's writing a paper on magical creatures in Mongolia at the moment."

"Tell him I said hello, would you? And asked how Mongolia is?"

"I will," Sirius said, squeezing Harry's shoulder. "I'm sure he'll be happy to hear from you. Does that help, a little? It's not that you're only good for Defense, it's just that you had a better start."

"Yeah, it should," Harry said, and tried to look as though that was all that had been bothering him and he was reassured. He went down to dinner after not too much longer, feeling exhausted by the conversation and by pretending nothing was bothering him.

He really needed to talk to Sirius, or at least Ron and Hermione, but that knowledge did not seem to stop him putting it off.

He was nearly to the Great Hall when he met Viktor coming in through the front door. "Ah, Harry," he said. "May I have a word?"

"Uh, sure," Harry said, and followed Viktor through a different exit of the entrance hall into a narrow side hall that lead to a back stair and was currently deserted. "What is it?"

"About Hermione," Viktor said, and paused. "I am not angry about anyone," he said. "But, few people come up to tell me she fights with Ron Weasley and flirts with Draco Malfoy. I do not want to upset her mentioning. Do you know what goes on?"

"Oh," Harry said, trying not to sound or look as horrified as he felt. He had hoped this issue was resolved. "Er, well--" He tried to think what to say that would not raise further questions. "You heard about her and Ron having a row after the Ball?"

"Yes. I did not think much at the time. He is very - he is angry with people very often, yes? I know he is your friend."

"Yeah, Ron's like that," Harry said heavily. "He left it to the last minute to ask someone to the Ball, and then he, er, didn't believe Hermione really had a date when she said no, and he kept bothering her about it. She wouldn't tell him - I think she thought we wouldn't believe her. So then he spent the whole ball sulking and they got into a fight after."

"They are not dating?"

"No, they've never dated," Harry said, just like he had told Viktor before, and suppressed the urge to say that he thought Ron had always expected to date Hermione because he did not think she had other options. "But she's mad at him for acting like he is with Lavender because he got mad at her for seeing someone else. She's not really flirting with Draco," he added quickly, "All she's doing is laughing when he talks, and they mostly talk about class. They're in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes together and Ron and I don't take either class."

"I see," Viktor said, frowning slightly. "Well, thank you, Harry," he said, and wandered off.

Harry went in to dinner, hoping fervently that this would never come up again.

Hermione was alone at the end of the table, buried in her Charms essay. Harry saw Ron sitting several seats down, feeding Lavender bits of chicken.

"Hey," he said quietly to Hermione, sitting down. "Listen, don't be too upset, but Viktor just asked to talk to me--"

He outlined the conversation quickly, trying to stress that Viktor had not seemed at all angry, only confused.

Hermione looked first surprised, then hurt, then furious. "Thank you for telling me, Harry," she said, and although she had a full three quarters of her plate left to eat, she slammed her book back into her bag and got up at once.

Ron had evidently been paying more attention than it seemed, because on the way out of the hall he said, "Hermione was really upset about that, wasn't she? Think they'll break up over it?"

Harry muttered something noncommittal, thinking that Ron sounded far too happy about this for an uninvolved party. Harry had a feeling that this was going to end terribly.

Chapter Text

Harry didn't get another chance to talk to Professor Flitwick until after Charms Wednesday. Hermione had been oddly touchy for the last several days. She frequently snapped at not only Ron, but Harry and Draco as well, and vanished for long periods of time with limited explanations after. Harry wondered if she and Viktor had rowed, but she refused to answer questions about it. He rather hoped that Viktor had not said anything horrible to her, as Harry had liked him, and did not want to stop.

Ron was making things worse by being insufferably cheerful. Unfortunately, Lavender had noticed, and had not had any problems connecting Ron's good mood to Hermione's difficulties with Viktor. She had taken to dogging at Ron's heels like a very determined collie, sniping any time he mentioned Hermione. Harry was driven to consider hexing Ron, Lavender or both several times; while he did not appreciate anyone's behavior right now, he felt most sympathetic to Hermione.

"Are your friends always like this?" Draco muttered to him once. Ron and Hermione had just stormed off in separate directions after an incomprehensible screaming match about Ron smiling too much while passing her the butter.

"Yeah, pretty much," Harry had to admit, thinking of the debacle over Scabbers the previous year. "This is worse than usual, though. They'll be talking again eventually, it's just going to be mad until they do. Don't your friends ever fight?" he asked, then felt rather tactless, remembering that none of Draco's previous friends were speaking to him.

Draco went pink, but seemed to consider the question seriously. "I mean, Vincent and Greg get along alright, but I wouldn't know if they didn't, neither of them really talk about anything around me. So it's really just Pansy. She's horrible to fight with. One time she was mad at me for saying something mean about her dress robes, and she knows I sleep with the window open, so she climbed into my room at night and used a shredding charm on all my formal robes right before a Ministry dinner. My parents were furious.

"But if she fights with anyone else in Slytherin, it's usually funny. She's almost always fighting with Daphne Greengrass or Blaise Zabini, and neither of them are exactly my friends, there's none of this sitting in between people who want to curse each other."

Harry considered this tale and decided it was not worth commenting on. "I just wish they'd go out with each other and get it over with," he said, spooning potatoes onto his plate. "Mind, I don't know if they'll be brilliant or a disaster but at least this will be finished."

"That, or they'll wind up hating each other and they'll be like this the rest of your life," Draco pointed out. "--Though I hope they don't marry. She would be wasted on Weasley, she's doing her Arithmancy term project on the Seville Problem and I think by the end of term she'll actually have solved it. You know he's just going to want a wife to give him five or ten more ginger sons and wash his socks."

Harry winced and ventured no opinion on this.

"Say," Draco said, a few minutes later, "--What's going on with you and Chang, anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, disconcerted. "We're going out, aren't we?"

"Yes, but is it serious?" Draco asked. Harry was suddenly, uncomfortably reminded of his conversation with Sirius. "I mean, has your godfather talked to her parents yet?"

"I don't know," Harry said, alarmed. "I mean, no, he hasn't, he told me I was too young to worry about it."

"He's a Black, though! And we're already fourteen, we're not that young. If he's waiting for Chang's O.W.L. scores she'll have them this summer anyway."

"He says he thinks being engaged to Bellatrix as a baby messed him up," Harry said, thinking that Sirius would probably not mind this opinion being spread about. "He doesn't want to do it to me. Don't tell me you're..."

"I'm going to marry Pansy, I know she's not that pretty but she's hilarious and I know I can live with her without wanting to kill her," Draco said automatically, then appeared to recall what had happened at Christmas and went a deep, vibrant red.

It was with some relief that Harry told Ron and Hermione to go on without him after Charms and spared himself from listening to them on the way to lunch.

"Mr. Potter!" Professor Flitwick said, stuffing their homework essays into a bag. "I wondered if I would be seeing you. Here we are, here we are," he said, taking out a slim blue book. "I think this might be helpful to you, especially chapters one through three. Let me know if you have any questions," he said.

Going down to lunch, Harry wondered if there was a charm to increase your reading speed, and when exactly he was going to sleep. He stayed up late that night reading the book anyway. Some of it was the sort of dense theory he had always needed Hermione to help with - he put in several scraps of parchment to mark pages he wanted to ask her about - but there were also a number of practical exercises that he thought he could manage alone, or with anyone's help.

For example, the book explained that while normally careful, slow practice was necessary for new spells, for wizards who tended to second guess their abilities the opposite was true. Therefore it suggested playing music and making attempts in time with it, or having someone call out spells randomly. It was too late at night to test this out immediately, but he made a note to attempt it over the weekend.

Very soon, it was Thursday afternoon, and the Gryffindor fourth years were going to double Defense, where Sirius would use the Imperius Curse on them. Harry still had not asked Sirius about the memory Dumbledore had last shown him. He told himself guiltily that he had not had time, particularly with Hermione so upset. In truth he had been deliberately going to do Cassiopeia's reading or look through Lily's things when he knew Sirius would be occupied elsewhere.

It was therefore somewhat nervously that he sat down in the front row in Defense. Ron sat beside him, but Hermione had gotten lost somehow in the shuffle of students on the way up from lunch. She arrived just before the bell, a few seconds before Sirius.

"Alright, everyone," Sirius said as he came in, sitting down on the front table. "In case you've forgotten, today we're working on the Imperius Curse. I received two notes from students who wanted to opt out. That's fine; you can change your mind at any time and volunteer, or come to see me in private or with a friend if you'd rather do that. I meant what I said about not making anyone participate.

"Now. Any volunteers to be first?" he asked.

For once, Hermione's hand did not shoot into the air instantly. Harry thought about volunteering - he trusted Sirius, didn't he? - but something squirmed in his stomach, and he did not feel quite up to it. After a long silence, Ron nervously raised his hand.

"Alright," Sirius said, calmly raising his wand. "Ten points to Gryffindor for courage, Mr. Weasley - Imperio--"

Sirius did not give his next command out loud, but he did not have to. Ron rose from his desk, face ecstatically blank, and did a quite competent handspring over it. He landed neatly in the aisle and performed a series of cartwheels he would not have been up to under any remotely normal circumstances. Then he recited several verses of what sounded like a poem about a quest to defeat a dragon before Sirius lifted the curse, and he bent over, breathing hard.

"Well, then," Sirius said, unsmiling. "How do you feel, Mr. Weasley?"

"Bizarre," Ron said fervently, shuddering. "--Uh, sorry, Professor…"

"No, no, I wanted the truth. Can you describe the feeling for your classmates?"

"It feels good," Ron said after a moment. "Like - like there's nothing to worry about, like you can do anything…"

Sirius was nodding. "The Imperius Curse is rarely discussed in terms of the emotional effects it has on victim and caster. It works not by controlling the body like a puppet, physically, but by allowing the caster to insert thoughts and emotions into the victim's head. The easiest way of doing it is by flooding the victim with euphoria to drown out coherent thought along with the instructions. You may want to copy that down for your essay," he added, and there was a sudden scramble for quills. "Sit down, Mr. Weasley. Who's next?"

Lavender raised her hand next, evidently unwilling to be outshone by her boyfriend. Under the Imperius Curse she got up and sang several songs in French in a high, sweet voice, and flushed brilliantly when released before sitting down.

One by one his classmates followed: Hermione declaimed dramatically in Latin; Dean went to the board and wrote out several N.E.W.T. level Arithmancy problems; and Neville, who had whispered to Harry that he was going to write to Sirius opting out, evidently changed his mind and asked a giggling Parvati to dance, then waltzed elegantly around the desks without knocking anything over.

Finally, Harry decided that he would not want to go last and later explain why to Sirius, so he raised his hand.

"Harry," Sirius said, nodding, and Harry braced himself and stood.

The next moment, all thoughts were gone from his head, all of the worry with them. He was floating above the classroom, or perhaps in a warm bath. He felt a curious sense of relief in the knowledge that he trusted Sirius, that he would never doubt him again... He had gone to the chalkboard without thinking about it...

Pick up the chalk, a voice said in the back of his head. He reached for it obediently. He could see the picture he was going to draw on the board...

Why? a second voice said in the back of his head.

Draw a snake, the first voice said.

I'm not much for art, Harry thought, this time recognizing it at his own thought, and the second voice as sounding rather like Sirius. Of course, he thought, he was being cursed, he was meant to see what the Imperius Curse was like...

Next, Harry felt quite a bit of pain in his hand, and suddenly the euphoria dropped.

"Merlin," Sirius was muttering, going to him quickly. "Give me your hand, Harry--"

Harry extended his hand obediently and hissed in agony. He realized that he had simultaneously tried to draw on the board and fling the chalk away, with the result that he had smashed his hand very hard into the blackboard and was now bleeding, his little finger sticking out at an awkward angle.

Sirius waved his wand and his hand straightened and healed; the blood vanished with the next flick. "Good job," he said, then, and for the first time in front of his classmates hugged Harry.

Harry could feel him shaking.

"Alright," Sirius said, louder and clearly addressing the class; he seemed to have to force himself to step back. "What happened there was, Harry resisted the curse instinctively. That's very rare and very impressive. He wasn't able to throw it off completely, but he tried to stop himself as he obeyed.

"Harry, you can sit down - it's alright if you want a minute to recover, but when you're able could you describe what that was like for you?"

"Er, let me think," Harry said, making his way slowly back to his desk. "So - I felt the, the happiness Ron described, and then there was a voice saying I should draw on the board. But then I thought, why? And when the voice repeated I thought it sounded like Sirius, and I thought - I'm not much for art, and recognized it as me thinking, and that that meant that the first voice was someone else, and... I'm really not sure what happened after that," he said apologetically, looking up at Sirius.

Sirius was nodding, though. "A very good practical description," he said. "The Imperius Curse inserts thoughts, and those thoughts are artificially compelling - but no one acts out everything they think, no one follows every impulse. Alright, who's next?"

Parvati was the only remaining student who did not go at least once. When Seamus sat down from singing several muggle rock songs, Hermione put her hand up and asked if she could go again; Sirius, smiling wryly, allowed it.

This time Hermione seemed slower, almost faltering in her recitation of several stanzas of poetry in a language Harry did not recognize, and she abruptly cut off, clenching her jaw together, in what was quite obviously not the end of a line. She did not seem able to relax or throw off the curse, but stood there, taut and as still as a statue, until Sirius released her.

"Very good," he said. "I almost forgot - twenty-five points to Gryffindor, to you and to Harry. Does anyone else want to go again?"

Several others volunteered to go again, and after the third repeat, Parvati raised her hand and said she had changed her mind as well. No one else was able to make any progress in resisting the Imperius Curse, but Sirius did not seem disturbed, saying that two in one lesson was astounding and that he had expected most of the class wouldn't make any obvious progress by the next lesson, either. He let them take a break early to calm down and came back to the front to begin the actual lecture, then.

"Now," he said wryly, having mended the board where Harry had punched it earlier. "I told you that I had special Ministry permission to cast the Imperius curse on you. I don't have permission to lecture you about how to cast it, but unfortunately there's no other way to teach you how to resist it except hoping you figure it out on your own. Therefore I am trusting you all not to turn me in or abuse this knowledge. I assure you the Death Eaters already have it, so there's not much use in keeping it from everyone else.

"Please put your books away and take these packets," he said, waving his wand and causing rolls of parchment to fly out of a bag and onto each of their desks. "There are three major methods of resistance generally used, and a number of strategies meant to overcome these methods..."

The Gryffindor class was both exhausted and subdued by the time they went down to dinner. Any triumph over Harry and Hermione's performance had worn off over the hour they spent discussing how victims were subdued and how they could hypothetically avoid it, and the essay Sirius had set them was complicated, long, and, he had emphasized repeatedly, probably their most important assignment for the year.

For once, Hermione and Ron were not bickering at dinner, nor were Ron and Lavender snogging. After several attempts to get a reaction out of them failed, Draco gave up and said, "What's the matter with you lot? What do you have Thursday afternoon?"

"We just finished the Imperius practical," Harry said, stifling a yawn.

"Oh. Nobody ever resists it the first time, you know, don't feel like it makes you useless."

"Harry did," Hermione said. "He nearly threw it off."

"So did you, second time," Ron said. "Wish I'd managed it, ugh."

"Really?" Draco looked astounded. "You haven't - had it happen before, have you?" he said, more quietly. "I don't know what happened first year, but I heard Quirrell was some kind of follower of the - of You-Know-Who."

Harry shook his head. "That was the first time," he said. "But it wasn't really the practical, it was the lecture."

"Oh." Draco blinked. "Well, yes, I suppose I can see how that would be upsetting. I already knew most of it but I think Professor Black did a much more organized job of covering it, I took months to learn all of that..." He seemed to realize what he was admitting to and quickly said, "All from a theoretical perspective, of course."

"Of course," Hermione said. "And I suppose you studied it on your own, too."

"Naturally," Draco said brightly.

Harry had resolved to just go talk to Sirius about the memory by the time dinner was over. He was sure Sirius knew he had been avoiding him, and the thought of how Sirius had shook as he hugged Harry kept creeping into his mind. Worry for Sirius overcame any sense of embarrassment; so Harry bid goodnight to Ron and Hermione along with Draco and went alone to the portrait of Remus, Romulus and the wolf.

At first he thought Sirius's quarters were empty. Then, as he spread out his books on the sofa, he spotted a fluffy black tail trailing out from the side.

"Hi, Padfoot," he said, getting out his Potions homework to check.

The tail thumped. A minute or two later, the immense black dog he had once mistaken for the Grim crept backwards out from behind the couch and came around to put his head on Harry's leg.

Harry grinned, scratching his ears. "You know, it's Hermione who said she always wanted a dog growing up, not me," he said. Sirius whined and rubbed his head into Harry's hands.

"Are you alright?" Harry asked. "The class isn't upset or anything, you know. Hermione said she was going to find out where you learned Latin, I think she's mad she couldn't do that by herself more than anything else." Sirius's tail thwacked against the coffee table loudly. "Draco said he was impressed when he had it, too."

Harry hesitated, then. He had imagined having this conversation with a human Sirius, but in some ways it was easy - or at least easier - to talk to Padfoot, who was not as a general rule prone to guilt or judgment, or to Sirius's occasional poorly hidden fits of despair and self-loathing. Harry knew Sirius would remember whatever happened when he was a dog - at least, if Padfoot had managed to pay attention to it - but he had admitted his emotional responses were guided by the simplicity of a dog's mind. He wouldn't be as upset by the same things.

"Can I tell you something?" Harry said slowly. "You don't have to turn back."

Sirius whined inquiringly. He picked up his head and went around the coffee table, then heaved himself up onto the couch. It groaned alarmingly as a dog who weighed more than Harry settled on it. Harry, laughing, rescued his textbooks and then pet Sirius's head as he settled it on Harry's leg.

"It's about my last lesson with Dumbledore," he said. "I haven't - talked to anyone yet. It wasn't as bad as last time, but..."

Sirius growled softly, menacingly. Harry jumped, reminded uncomfortably of Ripper, but Sirius immediately softened and whined, and Harry relaxed. "It's alright," he said. "I'm fine, Sirius. Just let me tell you about it, okay?"

Sirius settled - the couch creaking again as his weight shifted - and let out a long, heavy sigh.

"Alright, er, let me think." Harry swallowed. "So it was another memory. Dumbledore wanted to show me a Wizengamot speech made by - by Voldemort in 1969," he said, and told Sirius quite accurately about how disturbed he had felt by watching the Minister of Magic cater to Voldemort, and Voldemort take control of the audience's attention effortlessly.

"--And it was so stupid, I mean, they really believed muggles were a threat because of television?" Harry said. He had meant this part only as an introduction, but it really had bothered him, and now he found himself getting wound up all over again, imagining Voldemort's ringing voice in the Wizengamot chamber.

Sirius cocked his head to the side and barked, once. Harry blinked, and paused, but Sirius shook his head irritably, so he went on awkwardly, "And after the speech..." He paused. Sirius's ears were perked, and he was staring attentively. Harry's face felt hot.

After a moment Sirius seemed to realize Harry was uncomfortable; he put his head down again and closed his eyes. Harry went on, "Dumbledore was - telling me about the people who went up to talk to Voldemort - Abraxas Malfoy and Reinhard Lestrange, and..."

He swallowed. "Your cousin was in the audience. Bellatrix, I mean. And... So were you. I saw him - Voldemort - look up, and your cousin, uh, lifted her veil and kind of.. put her fingers to her mouth, and then dropped the veil again. And I saw you waving," he finished lamely. "You were nine, I mean, kids are... Anyway, then Dumbledore brought me back once people were done going up to Voldemort. I don't think he noticed me staring."

Harry trailed off there. He wasn't sure how to phrase his question, or indeed what his question actually was. He only knew that the memory had bothered him at strange moments for weeks now, making him uncomfortable with Sirius. Now, with Sirius's doggy head in his lap, sitting in his quarters, it seemed almost silly - Sirius had been a child, and Harry could not even think of a question to ask that made sense - but that did not stop Harry's stomach from roiling as he pictured it.

Sirius whined. He sat up on the couch, an elaborate, nerve wracking affair at his size, shoved his nose in Harry's face, and enthusiastically began to lick it.

"No!" Harry laughed, shoving at it. "Sirius, stop it!"

Sirius withdrew obediently, but stared at him morosely, ears dropping. His tail gave a very small wag.

Laughing, Harry leaned over to hug him. "It's okay, I still love you," he said. As ridiculous as a pronouncement it was, he knew at once it was true, and felt obscurely better.

Sirius turned back a few minutes later and went off, he said, to make tea and remind himself he had hands and not paws.

"So," he said, coming back and sitting down across from Harry this time. "Sorry about licking your face, Harry, Padfoot doesn't have the best grasp of what humans think is appropriate behavior. The memory's been bothering you?"

Harry mumbled something, but fortunately Sirius didn't seem to require an answer. "I'm guessing you want to know why I wanted Voldemort's attention when I was nine," he said, pouring tea. "And I'm also guessing that you've been telling yourself I was a child--"

Harry nodded, staring at his hands.

"--And that you haven't been able to stop yourself thinking, well, I was a child and I knew better than whatever the Dursleys told me, and my cousin was a child too when he laughed at my aunt locking me in a cupboard and punched me in the nose over the two bites of of cake my aunt let me have."

"Well," Harry said. "Sometimes, yeah."

"It's alright, Harry," Sirius said, slowly. "You're allowed to think I was a horrible child - I was - and you're allowed to judge me for it. And we don't have to talk about it, but I have a feeling you're here because you want me to have a good explanation."

"Maybe," Harry agreed slowly. "I just - you're right, that's what I was thinking, about me and Dudley. I know you didn't know anything about muggles growing up, it's not like you could have known..."

"Not a damn thing until I was old enough to sneak into muggle London myself," Sirius agreed cheerfully. "But that's not exactly why." Harry glanced up and saw that Sirius was staring into his tea, not looking at Harry either. "I... Maybe I should have told you this before, but it didn't seem..." Sirius sighed. "Well, you don't like talking about the Dursleys either, I'm sure you understand how it is."

"You don't have to tell me," Harry said. "I'm not mad or anything, it was just a shock to see it, instead of just hearing about it, what you were raised with…"

"You should know," Sirius said, shaking his head. "If nothing else because I doubt Bellatrix will stay in Azkaban when Voldemort comes back, and you should know why she... is what she is. I just don't know where to start."

Harry waited, unsure what to say.

"Alright, so." Sirius sighed. "I told you about the engagement before. What I didn't tell you was... Imagine that you weren't alone with the Dursleys, I suppose, that you had an older sister, or maybe just an older cousin who was decent..." He shook his head. "I don't know, that may not be the best approach. I'll just tell you - Bellatrix was more...

"When I started talking I tried to call her and Andromeda both Mother, I didn't know who mine was because I never saw her. Andy was the one who hadn't started school yet, so she took care of me most of the time for the first couple of years of my life. But Bella enchanted these mirrors, I still have mine, that let us talk to each other. They were a little like muggle telephones, but you could carry them around and see the other person's face. Andy was a little girl, she would have been just barely ten when I was born, not that Bellatrix was that much older. So she had Bella on the mirror all of the time, telling her what to do, or talking to me from school so Andy could get some sleep. Once or twice Bella actually snuck home through the common room fire in emergencies. And then she graduated when I was five, and she was there all the time.

"I don't know how much of this matters, what I should tell you, how to make you understand. Bella was - when we were children she was everything to us. She and Andy took turns to lie and take blame for anything we did, Reggie and Cissy and I, so they'd get punished instead of us. I think that's what she really was furious with Andromeda for, for leaving her to cope with the family alone, I mean. If I had nightmares, or tripped on the stairs and hurt myself, or was having trouble in school, it was always Bella I went to, not our parents. And when she became a Death Eater..."

"She stopped caring?" Harry asked.

Sirius shook his head. "That's the problem," he said tiredly. "She loved us just as much, and she was harder to ignore, harder to go around for the adults. Before, if I snuck out of the house and someone missed me, and Bella said, "Oh, I didn't realize you had plans, I took him out and I didn't want to bother you for permission," it meant she was getting beaten instead of me. After, they had to defer to her, and no one was beaten over it. And..." He swallowed. "I suppose I'd better tell you, it's just difficult to--"

"You don't have to tell me," Harry said, reaching for Sirius's hand over the coffee table uncertainly.

Sirius took his hand in both of his and squeezed it. He was silent for a moment, but he seemed steadier for the contact. He took a deep breath and began, "My grandfather, Arcturus Black, didn't care much for his duties. My father took over at some point as a teenager because his father didn't want to bother with the work. Arcturus cared only for his hobbies, and they were opium, Dark Arts and sex." There was a long pause before he continued, "Preferably sex with boys. Children."

"Oh," Harry said, horrified.

"I see you have the shape of it." Sirius smiled crookedly. "Anyway, after - when Andromeda ran away, our parents thought that Bellatrix had helped her, and there were a few weeks where it looked like they might execute Bellatrix for collaborating--"

"What?" Harry said.

"I told you before that they nearly killed her for it." Sirius squeezed Harry's hand again. "I think she joined Voldemort in part to - to clear her name, so to speak, to make it clear that she didn't approve of what Andromeda had done. And because Voldemort cared more that she was alive to do his bidding than about our family's individual reputation, he would have retaliated if they killed her once she was his. So after that there was a rift in the family. My father was furious with Bellatrix for it, and me because...

"Well, I might as well tell you this before you hear some other way," Sirius said. "I was eight years old, and I knew that they were going to kill Bella, so I bragged about her dueling at a party. That was what drew Voldemort's interest to her. I thought it might save her. Which it did," he said, dragging his fingers unhappily over his hair to pull it out of his face. "It did, in the end."

Harry, considering this, could not find it in himself to judge an eight year old Sirius harshly for it. "So that's why you liked him, when you were a kid. He saved your cousin's life."

"Yes," Sirius said. "And - I was telling you about Arcturus," he said heavily. "So, after that, Father ignored me and Bella, he was furious with us both, and Arcturus... saw it as an opportunity, I suppose. I told Bella eventually, and she - she never told me exactly what she threatened him with, or did to him. I suppose it was something Voldemort taught her. But it worked. Arcturus completely ignored me and Reggie after that." He stared into his tea.

And Reggie, Harry thought. He knew he had heard that name before, during Sirius's argument with Snape. "Reggie - Regulus?" he asked, tentatively. "He was your brother, wasn't he?"

"My little brother, yeah," Sirius said heavily, face still down. "He joined the Death Eaters and he got killed when he changed his mind."

"They killed him?" Harry asked, shocked. "Even - what you were saying about Bellatrix..." He realized then that between what Dumbledore had shown him and what Sirius had said, he had begun to think of Bellatrix as someone backed backed into a corner, someone who had taken what seemed to be the least terrible of a list of bad options. He reminded himself harshly of the speech Bellatrix had given the Wizengamot; if Sirius as a child had wanted Voldemort's approval, Bellatrix had loved him well into adulthood.

"Oh, Bella wasn't involved in that." Sirius laughed harshly. "Or if she was, she was ashamed enough to lie to me about it, and she rarely was that. She found out after the fact, apparently, that he'd committed treason and been executed, and she was upset. Showed up at my place to tell me, must have been the first real tears she'd cried in years...

"But she wasn't upset enough to leave the Dark Lord, or even say that killing Reggie had been wrong. That was the last time I saw her before Azkaban."

They sat in silence for a while. Harry eventually moved around the table to beside Sirius, remembering how much Sirius had been comforted by hugging him before, and Sirius pulled him into his arms tightly. Harry's mind was whirling, picturing horrible things - watching your grandfather hurt your little brother and having nowhere to turn but a Death Eater, waiting to find out if your parents would murder your favorite cousin... Harry had never had family that he liked exactly, but it was not at all difficult to imagine Aunt Petunia in a position to murder Hermione, or a little brother as a sort of mix of Colin and Ginny.

"Thank you for telling me, Sirius," he said eventually. "And I'm sorry to remind you of it."

Sirius shook his head. "I want you to ask me, Harry, or talk to me, if you're upset," he said. "You don't have to, I mean, everyone sorts out problems their own way, but if there's something you want to know about me..."

"Yeah, alright," Harry said, uncertain but feeling he should be willing to trust Sirius that much after everything Sirius had told him. "Is it alright if I spend the night in your quarters? Instead of going back to the dorm?"

"Yeah, of course," Sirius said. "I can sleep on the couch. Or you can share the bed with Padfoot if you don't want to be alone."

"That - might be nice," Harry said, and soon went to bed with a very large black dog snuggled beside him.

Chapter Text

February arrived, bringing a continuation of January's thick snow and more of the same impressively grueling work schedule for Harry, Ron and Hermione. ("Forget handing it in," Ron moaned at one point when he and Hermione forgot they were fighting; "I wish you'd asked them to give Harry and me Time-Turners, too.")

Harry felt better after talking to Sirius, even given how horrible what Sirius had said was. He had not realized how much he had begun to rely on Sirius's help, and the simple feeling that he was safe in Sirius's quarters, until he had tried to avoid them both for weeks.

Harry, Ron and Hermione along with Sirius and their occasional helpers had finally settled into a rhythm mapping the Defense curse during free periods and Saturday and Sunday mornings. They might not finish the entire castle in time, but Sirius said that they were going at a good enough rate to take a guess where to search more intensively after Easter. In dueling club they continued to work on footwork and obstacles, which meant that the rate of new spells had slowed down. This was helpful for both actual homework, and Cassiopeia's lessons.

Having succeeded in teaching them the basic execution of sacrificial magic, Cassiopeia was now working on how to construct sacrificial rites themselves. For Hermione, this was no trouble at all; she remarked once that the biggest problem she was having was remembering not to use examples in her school essays involving magic which was illegal. However, Harry and Ron had run into a new problem. Arithmancy was involved heavily in the logic of what sacrifices could be used for which purposes and the quantities required.

Cassiopeia had told Sirius irritably to walk them through the basic concepts when she discovered they had no experience. On the bright side, Arithmancy was perfectly legal, and they could work on it in the Gryffindor common room and get books out of the library themselves. On a less positive note, it was fiendishly difficult, and they kept having to explain why they were studying a subject they weren't taking.

"Maybe we should just sign up for it next year," Ron said, groaning. "It's obviously more helpful than the Divination essays, and we're doing the classwork anyway. It'd make Mum happy, I guess." He made a face. "Though I don't know if I want her bothering me about whether I'm going to do as well as Bill for a job."

"We probably should," Harry said, "If only so that we can ask for help from someone less annoyed with us for not already knowing."

"You'd think taking Divination and Care of Magical Creatures was some kind of crime, the way she looked at us," Ron said.

A few days into February, Viktor, who had been absent for a week or so, caught up with them mapping the curse in the Great Hall and offered to partner with Hermione again.

Ron sulked and paid no attention to his drawings for the rest of the period, so that Harry had to correct him several times. On the other hand, Hermione and Viktor appeared no different from usual throughout the session.

"What happened with him, anyway?" Harry asked her on their way up to Gryffindor.

"Oh, he really wasn't mad, but I thought since we had managed to confuse each other so much we should discuss what we actually wanted from the relationship," Hermione said briskly, furiously ignoring Ron, who had been pulled aside by Lavender. (They were staring into each other's eyes instead of walking, with the result that they had just walked into several third years.) "So we took some time to think..."

"Yeah? And what did you decide?" Harry asked, trying not to laugh. Hermione was usually good at figuring out other people's feelings, but sometimes she seemed to conduct her own life as though it were an Arithmancy equation.

"Well, he's going back to Bulgaria at the end of the year, and obviously I'll still be in Britain," Hermione said. "And frankly from what he's said I don't want to move there, and he doesn't want to leave either. So it's all going to be rather-short lived but we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can this year, and we said we would try to write later."

Ron made a strangled, appalled noise from two feet to the left, as though Hermione had said something very shocking. Lavender looked furious.

"Sounds reasonable," Harry said, thinking sounds Hermione-ish, and dragged Hermione off before Ron could start another row.

It was a good thing that Harry had finally gotten on top of his current schedule, as it turned out. Soon, working together for approximately the first time, Snape and Sirius conspired to give him a new task.

When Harry arrived in Sirius's quarters after lunch the first Saturday in February, he discovered with no small amount of alarm that Snape was there.

While he and Sirius were glaring at each other, they appeared to be conversing surprisingly civilly. When Harry walked into the sitting room, Snape turned to face him and said, "I understand that you have been conducting private lessons with Professor Dumbledore this year, Mr. Potter."

"Er, there have only been two of them, but yes. Sir," he added hastily, before Snape could become really angry, and went to file away the section of curse map finished that morning.

"So your godfather has been telling me," Snape said, sneering audibly on 'godfather' as though it was only a substitute for what he really wanted to say. "I was about to recommend that if you are going to spend extended time in the company of the headmaster, you should be instructed in Occlumency."

"Er, what?" Harry said, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Quite apart from whether anything Snape wanted to teach would be pleasant, he had only just stopped feeling that he had to choose between completing his work, eating and sleeping on a given day.

"Occlumency, Mr. Potter. It is a form of mind magic designed to protect one from intrusions in the form of Legilimancy--"

Harry put this together and, coming up with a very unpleasant idea, interrupted. "Professor Dumbledore can read minds?"

"The mind is not a book, Potter. It cannot be opened and skimmed at leisure. But the discipline of Legilimancy may allow a practitioner to view memories and perceive thoughts and emotions--"

If this was not mind reading, Harry was not quite sure what the difference was.

"And Occlumency may allow you to prevent it." Snape scowled. "Therefore I believe you should be tutored in it, and reluctantly allow that I am the only option at the school."

"And I think he's probably right," Sirius said, though he didn't look happy. "I can help you practice, I'm an Occlumens as well, but in order to test someone you need to be a Legilimens and I'm not. How do you feel about it?"

"Uh, if you think it's important," Harry said. "Just me this time?"

"As you are the only one who is conducting private lessons with the headmaster, at this time it is most vital that you achieve some degree of competency," Snape said.

"So you're saying the headmaster reads student minds? I mean, uses this Legilimancy thing on them," Harry amended hastily, when Snape seemed about to launch into another lecture.

"Accusations of that sort," Snape said furiously, "Would be politically incendiary, as Legilimancy happens to be illegal. However, there is some circumstantial evidence that Professor Dumbledore is capable of the art, and I certainly believe that should he be capable of it you would be an extremely tempting subject."

Harry sorted through this, taking a seat in the empty armchair. "So you think Professor Dumbledore is using Legilimancy on me during private lessons and you think I should stop him?"

"Regardless of whether you are currently being subject to Legilimancy attacks," Snape said, "It is a skill which will be useful to you, should you be capable of attaining it. The Dark Lord is a Legilimens," he said, just as Harry was about to demand why.

"So, we're agreed?" Sirius hastily interjected, and when Harry nodded, he said, "I told Snape I thought you were free Monday and Thursday nights, is that right?"

Harry thought longingly of being able to finish his homework after dinner in a reasonable amount of time, and said, "Yeah, that's right."

"Then I will see you Monday night at eight o'clock in my office, Potter," Snape said, and swept abruptly from Sirius's quarters.

"Snape is trying to protect you from Dumbledore?" Ron said later that afternoon.

Harry had rounded up Ron and Hermione and taken them to his and Ron's dorm, deciding this conversation would be best had away from Sirius and that the weather was too horrible to go outside. Neville, Dean and Seamus were all off with better things to do on a Saturday afternoon, and while Ron and Harry were not allowed in the girls' dorm, Hermione spent plenty of time in theirs. So they were sitting on Harry's bed with the curtains up and silencing charms on them.

"So he says," Harry said.

"I bet it's a trick," Ron said immediately. "He said he'd have to use Legilimancy on you to test you, didn't he? So he's looking for a way into your mind, he wants to have an excuse."

"I don't know," Hermione said slowly. "I mean, I read a little bit about Legilimancy when I was looking into the history of the Dark Arts, and it's supposed to be impossible to detect without training. If Snape wanted to use Legilimancy on Harry, he could have been doing it for years without Harry noticing. Teaching him Occlumency and making sure Sirius knows about it would make it harder for him, not easier."

"I bet he has," Ron said. "I bet that's why he always suspects us of stuff--"

"Usually of things we've actually done," Hermione said, looking surprised at herself.

"I think he might be right about Dumbledore," Harry said, only half listening.

"What?" Hermione said.

"What?" Ron said. "Harry, you must be joking--"

"No, listen," Harry said, looking up from the quill he had been fidgeting with. "I've been thinking about the memories Dumbledore showed me, and I think he was really interested in my reactions to them, especially the first one, almost more than he was in telling me anything. And I think--" He swallowed. "I think it's a funny coincidence that right after Sirius shows up he starts showing me stuff that make him and his family look really bad - Bellatrix Lestrange telling Slughorn she was scared of being forced to marry her cousin, and-"

Harry stopped. He still hadn't told his friends anything about the second memory.

"And what?" Hermione asked. "What was the second lesson?"

"It was a Wizengamot session from 1969," Harry said. "The Wizengamot had Voldemort as a speaker--"

"You're joking," Ron said.

"--And he had me watch the speech and how everyone listened to him, and the people who came up to talk to him after," Harry said. "And it just happened that Bellatrix Black was sitting in the front row with Sirius - who was nine years old, I mean, he was just a kid - and Sirius was... Obviously really excited to be there," he finished lamely.

"He was a kid," he repeated, "And I talked to him about how it was because of stuff in his family, it's private, but basically Bellatrix used being a Death Eater to stop their parents from hurting the younger kids, and that's why Sirius didn't realize Voldemort was evil until he grew up a little bit more."

Hermione was watching Harry with a knowing look. Ron still appeared poleaxed by the idea of Voldemort talking to the Wizengamot.

"Anyway," Harry said, "I just think it's strange, that he's shown me this stuff both times. Maybe it's nothing, I'll see what he uses next time. But he hired Sirius for the Defense job knowing it was cursed, too. And Lupin just got sacked, but Lockhart had his memories erased, and Quirrell actually died... And you know Dumbledore didn't want me to leave the Dursleys last summer. He apologized, he said he hadn't known. But what if he was hoping Sirius wouldn't be able to take care of me, or I'd have a row with him?

"I know this sounds paranoid," he finished awkwardly, feeling his friends' stares, "But... If Snape and Sirius both think Dumbledore might be using magic to read my mind, I don't mind learning how to stop it. And anyway, Snape said Voldemort's a Legilimens too, so it makes sense to teach me either way."

"Well, if that's how you feel, Harry," Ron said. "Just let us know, or Sirius, if Snape's being awful?"

"Promise," Harry said, looking at Hermione. She hadn't spoken, but there was a distant look in her eyes, one that he knew meant she was thinking very hard.

Despite what Harry had said, the thought of extra lessons with Snape - private lessons in which he was the only target for Snape to be angry with - was not appealing. He tried to throw himself into homework and mapping with great enthusiasm as a distraction Sunday, but it was difficult to draw his mind off things.

"Alright, Harry?" Dean asked after lunch. Hermione was off working on an Ancient Runes project with a classmate, and Ron and Lavender were snogging again, leaving Harry to struggle through checking his answers on one of the basic Arithmancy lessons Sirius had set him for Cassie. "You seem kind of worried."

"Maybe," Harry said, and thinking about what he could say, added, "Sirius asked Snape to give me extra lessons in something and I'm worried about it, the first one's tomorrow."

"Extra lessons with Snape?" Dean said, making a horrible face in sympathy. "I thought he and Sirius hated each other since Sirius went to the Board of Governors?"

"I think Snape's getting over it, but yeah, they don't like each other much." Harry sighed. "So if they agreed it's important..."

"So you feel like you can't screw it up," Dean said, and Harry nodded. "Anything I can do?"

"Distract me?" Harry said, dropping the Arithmancy work as hopeless for now. "Actually, there's something Flitwick suggested I do to help work on my Charms issues, if you want to help--"

So he spent a pleasant twenty minutes having Dean call out spells from their Charms textbook so Harry could try to cast them immediately without time to second guess himself. Dean made it more interesting for himself by coming up with bizarre effects when spells were combined, or particularly funny uses of the spells they had already learned.

Hermione was very interested in what they were doing when she came back up to the common room, and asked at once for an explanation of what Flitwick had suggested Harry do. Harry felt rather embarrassed by explaining what Flitwick had told him his problems were, especially since he had hid it earlier, but Hermione only nodded thoughtfully and said, "That does make sense. Do you know if anyone in your dorm has a radio, if he suggested music?"

"I think Neville does, but he never gets it out," Dean said. "Wish we could bring our own stuff more easily, I miss music when I'm at school."

Hermione sighed sympathetically. "You'd think someone would come up with a magical tape player or something..."

Harry left Hermione and Dean commiserating about the lack of culture in the magical world and went to give Sirius his Arithmancy work, still trying not to think about Occlumency lessons with Snape.

On Monday night after dinner, he had no choice but to bid goodbye to Ron and Hermione, shoulder his bag and head down to the dungeons. It was unfortunate, he thought, that Snape had chosen the day on which the other Gryffindor fourth years had double divination. He had had nothing to do but work himself up anticipating lessons with Snape all afternoon while trying to concentrate on homework.

He made his way to Snape's office and paused, thinking how odd it was that he had developed a sort of habit of coming here voluntarily. Reluctantly, he knocked.

"Enter," Snape called within, and Harry went inside and sat down in front of Snape's desk.

Snape was evidently marking a stack of homework; Harry saw 'appalling excuse for an essay-' scrawled on the top one before they were swept aside into a desk drawer. "Mr. Potter," Snape said, regarding him and steepling his fingers together on the desk.

"Professor," Harry said uncertainly.

"I imagine you have little experience with mind magic," Snape said after a moment. "It is not a subject often discussed. As Legilimancy is illegal, few are willing to admit to knowing it in order to teach Occlumency to defend against it, even if it is permissible under certain circumstances with the correct licensing. This oversight is... unfortunate, and you may consider it an indication of the problems with the classification of Dark Arts."

He seemed to expect Harry to argue with this, his lips curling. Harry tried not to think about Sirius and Cassiopeia teaching them illegal magic - was Snape reading his mind now? - and said, "Yes, sir."

"Occlumency is the art of concealing one's thoughts or repelling attacks on them," Snape continued. "The most basic approach is to develop a shield of blankness - lack of thought - so that any attacks simply... bounce off. Alternatively, if you are attempting to hide specific information - particularly from someone who does not know you are capable of Occlumency - you may organize your thoughts into a sort of maze or trap, so that I may see your appalling study habits in your memories of writing the tripe you refer to as essays and not your illicit forays into my private storage cabinets, Potter."

Harry, who had been lulled into a state of false security by the preceding explanation, jumped.

"Knowing that these approaches exist," Snape said, "Can you ascertain which would be most useful to you?"

"Well, er," Harry said, trying to gather his thoughts. Snape sneered. "If you're worried about Dumbledore - you don't want him to know you're teaching me, do you?" Snape made no reply, so Harry went on, "So the second approach - except I don't know if there's anything specific I'm hiding from him..." Immediately half a dozen counter examples came to mind. Harry tried very hard to dismiss them. "And - you said Voldemort--"

"Do not say the name," Snape snapped furiously.

"Is a Legilimens," Harry finished. "So, hang on," he said. "You said you could access someone's mind with Legilimancy. Can you... change it?" he asked.

"It is no more possible to control someone's mind like a puppet with Legilimancy than to read it like a book. The Imperius Curse is as close as we can come, and I am told you have shown potential in resisting that," Snape said. "However, thoughts may be implanted, or visions inserted, with Legilimancy, and with more subtlety than the Imperius Curse." He seemed slightly less contemptuous now, which Harry supposed meant he was doing quite well with Snape.

"So, I'd need to learn the uh, first version too, then?" Harry said.

Snape snorted. "Both are necessary for a true defense," he said. "In general students of Occlumency will be better at one than the other, and as we are most concerned that you acquire some defense, I wish to ascertain which you are more capable of before deciding which course to pursue."

"Right," Harry said. "So. How do we start, then?"

Snape raised his eyebrows and looked down his nose dubiously at Harry, then said, "We begin by testing your untrained capacity for resistance. Rise," he said, standing himself and drawing his wand.

Nervously, Harry drew his wand as well as he stood. Snape nodded, once, and said "I am going to attempt to enter your mind. You may resist by any means that occurs to you, magical or emotional, with or without your wand. I doubt you have the capacity to do any real damage," he added with a sneer, and raised his wand immediately.

Harry wasn't ready, he hadn't had any time to begin to resist - he raised his wand by sheer reflex but before he could think of a spell, the office was swimming. A tide of mental images washed over him, more and more vivid until they seemed to totally erase the office from view--

Aunt Petunia swung a frying pan at him, hot oil flying out of it into his face, and Harry raised an arm to try to shield his eyes - Sirius's motorbike roared up Privet Drive - Hermione punched Draco in the face - Ron lay still and silent on the giant chess board after being captured by the opposite side - Sirius sat shakily in his quarters and said, "Arcturus cared only for his hobbies, and they were opium, Dark magic and sex... Preferably sex with boys."

No, Harry thought, that's private, that's Sirius's, it's not even mine--

Then there was a great deal of pain in his knees. The office swam into focus. Harry had crashed to the ground; Snape was rubbing at a bright red weal on his cheek.

"Did you mean to produce a Stinging Hex?" Snape asked.

"No," Harry said shakily, trying to gather himself. "How much of that did you see?"

"Flashes," Snape said coolly. Harry wondered if he had seen what Sirius had told him and felt terrible. But then, that was why he was doing this, so that other people's secrets could not be casually pulled out of his head. "You let me in too far and you lost control."

"How am I supposed to stop you if I don't know how?" Harry said angrily. "You didn't tell me what to do!"

Snape regarded him disdainfully, then said, "I suppose it was too much to suppose you might extrapolate. You must clear your mind of emotions, Potter, blank your thoughts, if you are to resist directly."

Harry should have been able to do this; how many years had he spent swallowing his rage at the Dursleys? But never before had he had somebody else to be angry on behalf of. He knew Snape had casually punished Lupin by letting slip about him being a werewolf, and he had absolutely no expectation that Snape would remain closed mouthed on anything else he stumbled across--

Snape was raising his wand, saying, "Again!"

Frantically Harry tried to clamp down on his emotions, but panic was not exactly a good way of achieving calm--

Ripper was chasing him up a tree while the Dursleys laughed - sixteen year old Tom Riddle stood in the Chamber of Secrets, coolly watching Harry trying to wake up Ginny -

Remembering Riddle's cool indifference, Harry seized upon it, trying to imitate it himself - he thought of his cupboard door closing on him, and feeling only relief to be away from the Dursleys - the comfort of being alone in the dark with his spiders-

The office swam back into view for a moment; he saw that Snape was frowning intently at him, wrist cocked with wand pointed; then Dudley was ripping up his primary homework and laughing about how the teacher would say Harry was a liar - Padfoot was dragging Ron across the grounds to the Whomping Willow, half-mad in his desperation-

When Harry came to his throat was hoarse, as though he had been shouting, and his face was buried in his hands.

"Get up," Snape said, sounding furious. "You are making no effort—"

"I'm trying," Harry snarled, "But I don't know how, and you keep pulling up the worst memories--"

"If you cannot withstand your own memories, what hope do you have of ever achieving anything?" Snape snarled.

Harry swallowed, trying to fight back the urge to shout back, and finally was clear headed enough to say, "What about the second method?" and, when Snape's head snapped up dangerously, "Sir."

"What?" Snape said, and then, seeming to reorient himself, "Yes. The other one - may be a more advisable starting place. I had thought... Sit down, Potter."

Harry sat. He was trembling slightly, whether with fear or rage, he did not know.

"There are disadvantages to creating a false trail, and it does not serve adequately as a sole defense," Snape began after a moment. His own breathing was ragged, but his voice smoothed out, so that by the end of the sentence he might have been lecturing in Potions. "In particular, false memories cannot protect against the insertion of emotion, thoughts or false visions. However, as we do not presently suspect anyone is attempting to attack you in such a way, it may do to start. And I suppose it may be natural to such a frequent liar as yourself," he added nastily.

"Right. Sir," Harry said shortly. "How does it work?"

"We will need to begin with a thought you will protect from me," Snape said. "I think perhaps - you are seeing Cho Chang?"

"I don't really want to share that either, sir," Harry said.

"Then you will have incentive, won't you?" Snape said. "You will think of other memories - other visits to Hogsmeade, perhaps - and attempt to drag your mind back onto them. I will attempt to make you recall your... excursions... with Cho Chang. We will begin," he said, and once more raised his wand before Harry had the slightest chance to gather his concentration.

He was stopping dead in the doorway of Madam Puddifoot's, frantically cleaning his glasses to give himself time, and thinking of Ron's bedroom--

Ron, he thought, and forced up the mental image, trying to block out Madam Puddifoot's, without a thought to how thrilled Snape would be to mock Ron's ridiculous taste. He drew up the violently orange room in the Burrow, full of faces of the Chudley Cannons--

"Oh!" Cho said, looking relieved, the sunlight from the window flashing off her hair, "Yes, the Tutshill Tornadoes."

No, Harry thought, wrenching his mind away to other memories of the Three Broomsticks - he was crouching under a table in his Invisibility Cloak and Fudge was saying, "Sirius Black--"

No, I don't want you seeing that either, Harry thought and with immense effort focused his mind on only the path between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, and the ordinary walk that he, Ron and Hermione had taken the first visit this year, before everything had gotten complicated with Viktor and Lavender and Cho. The thought flashed by him of coming this way with Cho talking about Sirius's motorbike, but he pushed it back. With the same concentration he focused on the Snitch during games in thunderstorms, he focused on the path to Hogwarts, the sound of Ron and Hermione bickering on either side of him, the bite of the November air without any snow, yet...

No, he wasn't thinking of kissing Cho in the dining hall, he was thinking of - of the Great Hall during the end of the year feast, then of ordinary mealtimes: Hermione reading her Ancient Runes textbook at the table while Draco hung off her shoulder, pointing at bits and ducking when she swatted him; Fred and George messing with Percy last year; little Colin Creevey waving his camera--

His emotions were draining, flattening out; he knew Snape was trying to bring up Cho sitting next to him but the thought had no pull. Calm, he thought, clear your mind, and the classroom blinked back into focus.

"Well," Snape said, collapsing into his own chair and frowning across the desk at Harry. "Well, Mr. Potter."

Harry's temples were pounding, and there was a stabbing pain behind his left eye. He felt as though he had been through six Quidditch practices in a row. "Well, sir?" he said

"Tone, Mr. Potter," Snape snapped. "It appears you may have some potential skill in misdirection, clumsy as it may be - and in the future you may wish to avoid displaying your illegal activities as a distraction. I seem to recall an insistence that you had not left the castle last year, Mr. Potter? That Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger had bought you those appalling trinkets, and you had carried them around for weeks out of your gratitude..."

"Sir, if you're going to go around mind reading me I don't know what you expect to find," Harry said, feeling rather like he would like to punch Snape. All happiness at his success was gone. He was in agony, he wanted to go to bed for the next week, and he was very aware that he had not entirely finished his Transfiguration homework for tomorrow.

"Detention, Potter," Snape snapped. "For being out of bounds. Eight o'clock Saturday - we will practice again then," he said.

"If you're going to dig up my thoughts and punish me for what you find, maybe not," Harry said furiously. "If Sirius--"

"Oh, Sirius," Snape sneered. "Run to Black, as though he didn't ask me to do this - as though you didn't show me the memory of him breaking Mr. Weasley's leg in some mad rush a mere half hour ago--"

"Sirius couldn't help it, he was out of his mind!" Harry snarled, and realized with a start that he was standing and shouting at the top of his lungs. He had never put his wand away, and he saw it now, pointed at Snape, as though his hand belonged to someone else entirely.

"Dismissed, Potter," Snape said, sneering at his hand. "Until Saturday."

Harry barely remembered to pick up his bag before storming out of the classroom.

Chapter Text

Ron and Hermione were waiting, bursting with curiosity, when he came in. Their faces dropped when they saw Harry's expression, but they willingly followed him to Sirius's quarters.

"Hi, you lot," Sirius said, then looked at Harry. "--Didn't go well?"

"Snape is a complete bastard," Harry snapped, threw himself down on the couch, and began to angrily tell the three of them about the lesson.

"--I don't know how he expects me to learn anything if he's going to punish me for what he finds," he finished furiously. "And what he saw was private - not the Hogsmeade visit, the other stuff." He had not mentioned that Snape had seen Sirius telling him about Arcturus in his memories, as Ron and Hermione didn't know about it; but it hung on him like a weight. All of his previous willingness to make up with Snape over his mother's things had vanished. He felt certain Snape was only waiting for the best time to release this information, too, when it would hurt Sirius the most.

"Maybe he was trying to give you - incentive, you know," Hermione said tentatively. "So you would keep him out of your memories."

"I was supposed to be practicing redirecting him," Harry said furiously. "And I was, he told me to pull up other Hogsmeade visits when he tried to make me remember Cho. I bet he was hoping he'd catch a memory of me sneaking out--"

"He might have been hoping you'd show him how we did it in school," Sirius said tiredly, rubbing his face. "Look, Harry, I'll talk to Snape, you don't have to do the detention. Trying to make you serve punishments for rule breaking he finds in your memories is ridiculous." He hesitated. "If you feel you can't continue..."

"I know it's important," Harry said. "Isn't there anyone else..."

Sirius hesitated. "I might be able to drill you on practice and have him test you less often," he said slowly. "Or..."

"You don't know any other Legilimens?" Ron asked Sirius. "Or - is Snape really worse than Dumbledore?"

"Well, I know one," Sirius said, sounding resigned. "Two, technically, but one is in Azkaban and the other's not trustworthy. Look, Harry, I'll ask around, see what I can do. Remus knows some people interested in this sort of study, and he might have a suggestion. You can quit any time you like, nobody's going to make you continue."

"I'll keep trying," Harry said, motivated mostly by the drained look on Sirius's face, as though he was very much afraid Harry would give up. He stared into his hands, feeling exhausted.

"Well," Hermione said, forcibly bright, "How are our other, er, plans, going, Sirius? Have you gotten anything out of Bertha Jorkins?"

"Well, I got her version of why she left International Cooperation," Sirius said. "She says she had a mental breakdown--"

"What? No way!" Harry said, loudly.

"About what I thought," Sirius said ruefully. "But it fits with what I'd begun to suspect. Her memory's like a sieve these days, and that definitely wasn't the case in school. I think someone Obliviated her, or used another memory charm, and it went wrong."

"Can that happen?" Ron asked nervously. "I mean, without taking - everything?" Undoubtedly he was also thinking of Gilderoy Lockhart. "And it lasts forever?"

"They can be countered under some circumstances, but of course in order to begin that kind of restorative work Bertha would have to know what was wrong and seek treatment," Sirius said. "And I don't think just coming out and accusing her old boss of tampering with her mind is a good idea. I'm not saying we're going to leave her like that," he said hastily to Hermione, who was opening her mouth, looking appalled. "Just that we need to think carefully of how to broach the subject so she listens to us, and we don't terrorize her. Especially since everyone knows I've got good reason to hate Crouch," he said moodily. "Not that half of Britain doesn't..."

"But - in a way it's a good sign, right?" Harry said tentatively. "I mean, if she's been memory charmed that means she saw something, right?"

"Something," Sirius said. "It might or might not be something related. Of course, it doesn't really matter what we get Crouch on as long as someone searches his house. Merlin, the man's committed plenty of crimes over the years. The problem is he had emergency powers for most of them, so even if they're public record..." Sirius shook his head. "What else haven't I had a chance to tell you lot about - oh, I've been writing to Lucretia--"

"Your aunt, the Death Eater who was at school with Tom Riddle?" Harry said, startled; he had nearly forgotten about that revelation of Cassiopeia's portrait.

"Yeah," Sirius said. "Trouble is, my letters haven't been getting to her."

"How do you know?" Ron asked. "Couldn't she just have been sending them back herself?"

"Her late husband's aunt returned a few of the letters with nasty notes telling me to piss off," Sirius said. "Accused me of wanting to marry my own aunt once--"

"What," said Harry, Ron and Hermione together.

"The Blacks are a bit infamous for forcing female relatives to come home to marry the head when it's politically difficult to arrange a marriage and there's no heir," Sirius said, grimacing. "Nasty people, my ancestors. The head's right to force a divorce at any time is legally written into most of the marriage contracts. Anyway, I told her the House of Black could go rot as far as I was concerned and I had Harry anyway if I was desperate, and she told me she wouldn't let me 'bother' Lucretia with my harassment, so I think it's safe to say they aren't getting through.

"On the bright side, if I can get through to Lucretia she'll almost certainly be willing to help me if the woman paying her expenses is confiscating her mail, but I need to work out how." Sirius shook his head. "I have a couple of other angles to try before I give up or do something drastic like showing up on their doorstep and breaking down the door. Harry, you're still rubbing your head, do you want me to get you a pain potion?"

"Oh, that reminds me," Hermione said, while Sirius got up to rummage through a kitchen cabinet. "I've been writing to Percy and asking him questions about Crouch being injured - carefully," she added quickly, when they all sent her alarmed looks. "I just ask him about how he handles all these responsibilities and sound admiring and he doesn't suspect a thing, honestly. He says that Crouch has been out of the office a lot, or showing up hurt - not all together, but he's always telling me that he substituted for Crouch at this conference because he had a cursed hand, or he filled in taking notes at the department head meeting because Crouch was sick..."

"Sounds like he's having some real troubles controlling his son," Harry said, scowling into the fireplace. "Winky still won't say anything either?"

"Not a word," Sirius said. "Not that I really expected it."

At lunch Tuesday, Harry relayed a carefully edited version of the news about Crouch to Cho, including that Percy had told Hermione that Crouch had often been injured and allowing Percy to fill in for him; and that Sirius had been talking to Bertha Jorkins and was suspicious that her memory had been tampered with after her story of having a breakdown and odd difficulties remembering appointments.

"Yeah, that sounds really fishy to me," Cho said at once, frowning at her soup. "Of course it would be really obvious to Sirius seeing her for the first time after fifteen years. It's the kind of thing Mum talks about looking for, people close to the victim who suddenly have a load of memory problems or mysterious breakdowns..."

"Does that happen a lot, people Obliviating witnesses?" Harry asked.

Cho made a sort of indeterminate gesture. "Mum says it's not as common as it could be, because you usually have to be stronger magically than the person you're casting a memory charm on for it to work very well, so it's loads more reliable with muggles. But it definitely happens."

"Do you think you could write to her about Bertha Jorkins?" Harry said. "It's real evidence, not just a suspicion," he said, knowing Cho would understand he was talking about the Map. For a moment he had a little thrill that he was sharing secrets with someone new besides Ron and Hermione, and that it was his girlfriend; then he pushed it aside, feeling a little embarrassed by it.

"Yeah, I will," Cho said. "I might talk to Susan Bones too, I told you before we're cousins by marriage, right? If she writes to Amelia Bones about it that'll help, I think - they're really close, Susan grew up with her and she's her heir."

"Thanks, Cho," Harry said, feeling tentatively hopeful, and leaned over, still not entirely sure what he was doing, to kiss her at the table.

On Thursday afternoon, the Gryffindor fourth years nervously filed into the Defense classroom. Sirius was nowhere to be seen. Harry looked down at his essay again, skimming it nervously to remind himself of the reading. The other students were whispering nervously around him. Concentration and focusing on your goals, he read, trying to hold the important parts in his mind. Identifying unusual or dangerous thoughts...

At two minutes past the bell, Sirius opened the door to the classroom. "Alright, everyone," he said, coming in. "Essays, please--" He waved a wand and summoned them to him before continuing, "In case any of you haven't been fretting over it all day, today we're working on the Imperius Curse again. We discussed this last class, but as a refresher, who can tell me the first step in throwing it off? Mr. Longbottom?"

"Identifying that you're under the curse," Neville said quietly.

"Ten points," Sirius said. "Once you've identified that you're cursed, what do you do next? Miss Granger?"

"Focus on your normal thoughts and behavior, and on getting help," Hermione said.

"Another ten. Who can identify a major weakness when resisting the curse? Harry," Sirius said.

"It's harder to resist if the caster wants you to go about your business like usual," Harry said.

Sirius grinned at him. "Ten more points. Besides focus, name another strategy... Mr. Thomas?"

Ten or fifteen minutes later, the review was over, and they were once again putting their books away to actually have the curse cast on them.

Sirius had asked Harry if he would mind volunteering to go first in the hopes he would succeed and encourage his classmates, so Harry nervously raised his hand. He tried to push back anxiety that he was about to let Sirius down, reminding himself of what Flitwick had told him about believing his magic would work. He was not entirely sure it applied to this kind of magic, but it was, at least, unlikely to hurt.

Sirius flicked his wand, saying "Imperio," and Harry's mind lightened, floating above his body... He had no need to worry about anything, could not quite focus on what he had been thinking before...

Do a handstand, Sirius's voice said, and Harry started to bend obediently. As he went, he caught the title of the book on his desk and thought, no, wait, this is Defense class... We're resisting the Imperius Curse...

Lean forward, Sirius's voice said in his head. Sirius's voice, not his own - Sirius wasn't supposed to be in his head...

I'm not much for gymnastics, Harry thought, and with a heroic effort he lunged upward and shouted, "No!"

They went through everyone in the class three times. Harry was able to throw the Curse off entirely the second round; on the third, Hermione and Parvati managed to free themselves, and about half of the others could hesitate, shout in protest, or visibly struggle.

"As long as you're around people who understand what's going on and are on the lookout, that's often enough," Sirius said when they were all seated again. "There were a number of Ministry employees who were uncursed during the war because they resisted enough their coworkers reported them as possibly cursed. That saved their lives, it saved them from going under criminal trial after the war and possibly being convicted, and we can never know how many bystanders they might have been forced to attack or inform on who were saved."

On that disquieting note, Sirius dismissed them to go to dinner.

Harry would really have liked to bolt his food and go back to his dorm to lie down; resisting the Imperius Curse repeatedly had given him a headache of the kind that Occlumency had left him with, although nowhere near as severe, and he felt exhausted. But only a few minutes after they sat down, Cho came over, accompanied by a blond Hufflepuff who Harry recognized belatedly as Susan Bones.

"Hey, Harry," Cho said, dropping into her now-usual seat across from him. "This is Susan Bones, in your year, my cousin. Susan, Harry Potter."

"We've met," Susan said cheerfully, sticking her hand out to shake anyway. Harry, feeling a little baffled, returned it, and Hermione shifted over so that Susan could sit with them. "I was wondering if you'd mind taking me up to your godfather's quarters after dinner? Cho says he had some suspicions he wanted to pass on to my aunt, and I thought I'd be able to explain better if I heard it from him."

"Yeah, sure," Harry said, a little surprised things had moved so quickly, and passed Susan the beef when requested. They had an amiable conversation about the Defense lessons on the Imperius Curse, which Susan's class had had earlier that week, and when they were finished, she followed Harry, Ron and Hermione up to the portrait of Remus and Romulus.

"Hello, all - and Miss Bones," Sirius said, looking a little surprised and bowing to Susan, who laughed.

"Hi, Professor Black," she said. "I heard there was something about Bertha Jorkins that should get passed on to my aunt, do you mind telling me the details?"

Looking very thoughtful, Sirius ushered Susan in and bid the others goodnight.

Harry had been told several times that he didn't have to serve the Saturday detention with Snape; but if he was going to make an effort with Occlumency, he felt it was a bad idea to start out by antagonizing him. Therefore at eight on Saturday, he pushed open the door to Snape's office unhappily.

There he fell back with a start. Snape was sitting at his desk, scowling at the door like he had Monday evening, but there was also a second chair drawn up next to it, and seated there was Narcissa Malfoy.

"Mr. Potter," Snape said. "Have a seat."

Feeling rather like he was being eyed by a large, man-eating beast, Harry obeyed. The scrape of the chair on the dungeon floor was very loud.

The last time he had seen Narcissa, she had been covered in blood and bruises and wearing a nightgown. Now, her white blond hair tumbled back over her shoulders and her delicate face was unmarred. She was wearing pale green robes that Harry thought were silk, and seemed entirely out of place in Snape's office, surrounded by jars of murky liquid with unsettling shapes suspended in them.

"I have discussed matters with your godfather," Snape said, lip curling, "And we have come to an agreement. While Narcissa cannot currently be considered trustworthy, she is able to examine what I see of your shields in my mind without any risk to the information in yours, and therefore to assist with instruction. Is this arrangement amenable to you?"

Harry wasn't sure that having lessons from Narcissa Malfoy and Snape was any better than just Snape. On the other hand, it could hardly be worse than just Snape, either. "Alright," he said nervously, glancing at Narcissa. "Er, how are we starting, then?"

"Hello, Harry," Narcissa said. When she was not in the midst of a screaming fight, her voice was soft and girlish and entirely unlike both of her sisters. "I understand last week didn't go very well. I'm going to take you through an exercise or two first, then I'll have Severus look at your shields and look through his mind to see what you need to work on. Is that alright?"

It was somewhat startling to be asked his opinion. "Yeah, sure," Harry said, setting his bag down. "What do I do?"

The worst thing Narcissa initially told him to do was close his eyes while sitting in a room with her and Snape. Harry reminded himself that Sirius had approved this - or had he? - and forced himself to shut one eye and then the other, and to try to relax when Narcissa told him to.

After that she had him focus, not on clearing his mind entirely, but on the image of a Snitch, imagining that he was flying after it in a steady dive, and keeping his mind entirely free of distraction or emotion the way he would in a game.

He was not quite sure what to think of the lesson after that. She made a point of telling him to focus on sitting and concentrating while she tried to distract him, so it was clear that she was being intentionally provocative for the sake of the lesson, unlike Snape. But while Snape had shouted at him and insulted his competency, Narcissa's snide comments were subtly worse. She began civilly, trying to make conversation with Snape and then him and praising him when he failed to respond, but escalated into sudden jabs at him and his friends; when she idly called Hermione a buck-toothed mudblood Harry nearly swung around and hit her.

"Ah, I got you there," she said as though she had done nothing wrong. "Close your eyes again, see the Snitch - yes, I know you're quite angry with me, but you realize if your Occlumency shields fall over a word anyone will be able to pull them down. We begin again now - Severus, I wanted to ask you what on earth you saw in the boy's mother..."

At the end of all of this, she fell silent and had Snape attempt to read his mind again.

Again flashes of memory drowned out the imaginary Quidditch pitch: he was staring at letters painted in fresh blood on a wall - he was running from Dudley's gang behind his muggle primary school - but it was easier to pull up the image of the Snitch than the classroom he knew he was sitting in. He thought, think of flying, think of flying, and it was not too different from trying not to rise to Dudley or Draco's taunts, so he felt that he had at least some practice...

He was lying in the infirmary with a limp and flopping hand - no, he was diving, diving after a Snitch that hovered just out of reach - Hermione was lying in the hospital wing herself, covered in black fur - no, think of the Snitch, think of the Snitch...

He was still exhausted and aching when Narcissa called a halt.

"Let me see, Severus," she said calmly, and Snape turned his head. Harry watched rather uncomfortably as they stared into each other's eyes for what felt like a very long time.

Then Narcissa turned to him and said, "There we are. You're really doing quite well for a beginner, Harry- it's similar to resisting the Imperius Curse, and Sirius said you were very good at that when I came to the castle today. Of course, I thought he might have just been warning me off," she added, eyes glinting with an amusement that was more disturbing to Harry than the worst of her insults.

"Er, thanks," he muttered when he realized that she was waiting for him to say something. "What do I do to practice...?"

"I'd like you to practice that image, the Snitch, every night for perhaps fifteen minutes, a half hour if you can bear it," she said. "Eventually you'll need to maintain the emotional state without the mental images, so that you can keep it going at will while doing other things, but it's generally easier to start with a construct. I don't think there's much use in working together again in two days, so we'll see you Monday after next."

Judging by the look on Snape's face, Narcissa had not cleared this with him in advance. Harry wondered if Sirius had put her up to it, or she only didn't want to bother coming back to the castle so often.

"Right," he said. "So is that all...?"

"You may go, Mr. Potter," Snape said flatly.

"And try not to be discouraged by last time," Narcissa said, eyes dancing. "Severus is brilliant, but he's a terrible teacher. Bella actually banned him from helping with the new recruits. But don't hold it against him, dove. He hasn't got any patience to use on you, that's all."

On that alarming note, Harry left the room before Narcissa said something else.

Chapter Text

Harry was startled to find the Second Task was galloping upon them. On the one hand, he supposed it would be a nice distraction to watch somebody else doing stupid and dangerous things for a change. On the other hand, this meant that Crouch would once more be at the school. While there had been no incidents at the Yule Ball, and presumably Crouch was not bringing his son anymore, Harry could not help but wonder if there would be some new crisis to match the First Task.

On February the twenty-fourth, they were excused from classes. They lingered over breakfast and then went up to Gryffindor Tower to get their cloaks before proceeding to the lake. Hermione had been absent from breakfast, and Harry could not help worrying. He felt that she would not have missed seeing Viktor perform for anything short of a catastrophe, though McGonagall had assured him and Ron that Hermione was fine.

Temporary stands had been erected around the lake. Harry and Ron sat with Cho, accompanied by Marietta, Carya and Susan Bones, although Harry found himself distracted, scanning the crowds for Hermione. If she had arrived late she might have forced to sit elsewhere, he thought...

He spotted Crouch ascending to the judge's box and was distracted. Percy Weasley's red hair bobbed next to him, clearly identifiable even across the stands. From a distance it was difficult to tell whether Crouch was injured at all. Harry had his Omnioculars from the World Cup with him, having missed them during the First Task. He hurriedly pulled them out and focused them on Crouch. He was limping, Harry thought, his left leg was hurt, but he couldn't see any more--

"Oh, are those Omnioculars?" Carya asked beside him. "Will you share?"

Harry wanted to keep watching Crouch, but he had to admit he couldn't see how it would help. "Yeah, sure," he said, passing them down. "Ron, you got yours, too, right?"

"You were right, this was the place to sit," Marietta said to Cho teasingly. Cho blushed scarlet and leaned in against Harry, a line of warmth up his side. It was - nice, Harry thought, feeling his ears heat. It was very cold in the stands and February, and warming charms were not a specialty of his. If Hermione was there, she undoubtedly could have handled it, but he didn't want to ask Cho or Carya and admit he didn't know how.

The Champions were assembled in a little knot in front of the lake. Harry took the Omnioculars back from Susan and focused on them. Cedric looked mildly ill, Fleur jittery, and Viktor coolly determined. Dumbledore was rising then, magnifying his voice with magic to announce...

"Hostages?" Ron murmured behind him, and then Dumbledore waved his wand, lighting up giant screens set up around the stadium, and Harry stopped breathing. He registered vaguely in flashes the views of screens showing Grindylow fields, open water, the giant squid's luminous eye, because at the center--

Hermione.

There were three hostages, but Harry had eyes only for Hermione, bobbing gently in the current underwater, and limp as though asleep.

"She's okay," Ron said; Harry only belatedly realized he had leapt to his feet. "Mate, she's okay, it's just a task."

"The dragons, though, someone could have died," Harry hissed.

"The Champions volunteered and they're of age," Ron said. "C'mon, it looks like Fleur's sister and she can't be more than about eight years old, they're not going to let her die for a championship, sit down."

With great effort, heart pounding, Harry wrenched himself back into his seat, ears burning again. But he couldn't think about his embarrassment or what Cho must think, not with Hermione there, tied deep underwater in the lake, and Harry could only let Viktor try to rescue her, not help...

He forced himself to look at the other hostages. As Ron had said, there was a little blond girl who had to be Fleur's sister, too young for Hogwarts by at least a few years; and on her other side was Katie Bell, who had gone to the Yule Ball with Cedric.

Only then did Harry realize the Champions were already gone - into the water, he assumed. He glanced at the other screens reluctantly but saw only Cedric wrenching apart the fingers of a Grindylow. His head was surrounded by a sort of bubble. "What'd the other two do?" he said, finally looking to his other side. Cho was looking a little embarrassed, Marietta sardonic, but Carya and Susan both seemed unsurprised.

"Fleur used the Bubblehead Charm too," Carya said. "Krum did a sort of half human transfiguration -- turned his head into a shark's. Come off it, Cho, didn't your boyfriend rescue Ginny Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets two years ago? Who'd trust the teachers after that?"

Harry did not particularly wish to contemplate the reason why Carya Greengrass would distrust Hogwarts teachers, but it was better than thinking about that. "Well, er," he muttered. "Ron was there, too."

"Yeah, he did," Ron said beside him firmly.

"Funny two of them used the same thing," Susan said after a moment of awkward silence.

"I know Flitwick teaches the Bubblehead Charm in class sixth year, so Cedric must have learned it there," Carya said. "I imagine it's part of Beauxbatons' curriculum, too, but Mum says it's a bad choice if you might be in combat because physical force can puncture it and you can't recast underwater, so if someone gets you with the wrong spell you just drown..." She paused, glanced at Harry and Susan and said, "Er, sorry."

"I suppose you were discussing dueling," Susan said, a hint of sarcasm under her affable nature.

"Yeah, dueling," Carya said with relief. "Mum hasn't formally competed since it's undignified for women," she rolled her eyes here, "But it doesn't stop her from getting into honor duels. One time she creamed Lucius Malfoy at a Rosier wedding, it was hilarious."

"What did Malfoy do?" Ron said, cheering up at this prospect.

"He brought another teenage boy in drag and Mum took offense to him insulting Narcissa Black like that," Carya said.

"He what?" Susan yelped.

"Why?" said Ron.

"What?" said Harry.

Marietta elbowed Cho and giggled into her hand.

"Well, most gay men are more subtle in our class," Carya said, "And what with everything he's done for his reputation I'd think he'd be more careful, but he must feel very secure now, dining with the Minister. And Fudge doesn't give two Hippogriff shits about family honor, just look what else he ignores in his associates."

"He's done this before?" Susan asked.

"I'd have thought your aunt would know?" Carya said.

Susan shook her head. "I mean, she probably does, but Aunt Amelia doesn't like gossip, she says it's petty trouble making. I thought she'd told me about everyone else in society who was gay, though."

"It's not really something he does often, but every few years, yes. Apparently the first time was his first year out of Hogwarts, just before he married Narcissa Black, and he did it at the Wizengamot Yule Ball, so as publicly as possible. Mum says he was probably hoping Orion Black would take offense and break the engagement so Abraxas Malfoy wouldn't make him marry her. Bringing boys in drag to parties is the closest he ever comes to demonstrating interest in women, and he never brings anyone actually galli, either." Carya shrugged. "--Look, Fleur's having trouble with the Grindylows!"

Harry leaned in, feeling a little ill watching Fleur struggle. His heart pounded wildly, and he could not help but wish he was in the lake himself, available to help her; Lupin had covered exactly this sort of scenario last year. Watching Fleur send up sparks to be rescued, he thought frantically, They won't let them drown, she'll be okay and so will her sister, they won't let them drown... It's just a game...

Fleur was rescued very shortly, but her sister still bobbed among the silent hostages, hair floating in a cloud that mingled strangely with Hermione's.

"They'll get them when the task is finished, mate," Ron said, reading his mind. "It'll be fine."

Ten minutes later, the time limit was nearly up, and while Viktor was nearing the hostages, Cedric was running into a different problem.

"Oh, no," Cho said, chewing her lip worriedly.

Carya beside her was moaning into her hands as the bubble around Cedric's head distorted and flickered. "Idiot... That's why you don't use Bubblehead Charms under stress. He didn't practice maintaining it enough, look, he can't hold it this long."

"He probably didn't figure out what the Task was soon enough to start practicing," Susan whispered.

Professor McGonagall had rescued Fleur only when she sent up red sparks, but the teachers were moving long before Cedric gave up. Harry gasped in relief when Professor Flitwick, who had dove into the lake after quickly conjuring muggle-style flippers for himself and casting something over his mouth, reached Cedric only a few seconds after the bubble began pouring in water.

This left Viktor alone proceeding to the hostages. Harry watched, biting his nails, as Krum selected a sharp rock and began to unbind Hermione's wrists. He settled her over his shoulder, then turned back, looking uncomfortably at the two remaining hostages. Harry guessed that he was wondering where exactly Fleur and Cedric were, not knowing that neither of them would be able to proceed to the bottom of the lake. He could wait as long as he liked, Harry thought, the time limit wouldn't matter with him the only one to finish...

"Come on, idiot, go," Carya muttered. Harry swallowed. Cho's fingers found his and she squeezed down hard. Harry wondered why on earth he had been looking forward to this; he felt like he was going to be sick.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Viktor left the other two hostages behind and began to swim upwards. He towed Hermione with him, her face obscured by her billowing cloud of hair.

Viktor broke the surface of the water not long later; they all saw Hermione start upright and gasp, jerking out of Viktor's grip and treading water. Harry heard Cho laughing beside him and thought that it must be very surprising to wake up in the arms of a human with a shark for a head. She seemed to reorient herself quickly - it was very strange to see her face blown up on screen - and began to swim for the shoreline, Viktor beside her.

The teachers were not entering the lake to retrieve the remaining hostages. Harry tensed, seeing movement on the screens. A strangely shaped person approached the hostages, and Harry realized with a start that he was looking at a mermaid. A merperson? She had a long tail where her legs should have been, and her skin was green, her features eerily distorted. Harry watched her take a knife from a belt-like garment and begin swiftly cutting Fleur's little sister free. A second merperson freed Katie, and the two of them began to swim upwards.

"See?" Ron said, laughing weakly. "They're fine." His voice was too shaky for Harry to believe he had not been worried. "They must have made an arrangement with the merpeople in the lake, to set up the hostages..."

Harry heard Susan sigh in relief beside him and knew that he had not been the only one truly frightened.

The judges were conferring in a huddle. Viktor had untransfigured his head, and he and Hermione were talking, Hermione laughing and brushing wet hair back from her face. Harry saw Fleur's sister break the surface of the water first; she looked around in bafflement and began to cry, and Fleur splashed rapidly out to the water to meet her, sweeping her into a hug. Harry thought that it was the most normally he had ever seen her act.

Katie woke, too, startled to see the merperson holding her, then seemed to recover. Harry watched her offer a hand and shake his while treading water, then turn to swim to the shoreline. Cedric went out to meet her and help her up, laughing ruefully; he seemed to be apologizing.

Harry had a difficult time paying attention through the scoring, although he registered that Cedric had come last for a catastrophic failure, Fleur second because she had been able to keep enough control of the situation to ask for help and keep herself safe until she was rescued, and Viktor, as the only one to return with his hostage, first. Then they were dismissed and he was getting up, elbowing his way through the crowd with Ron tightly behind him, and finally tearing his way across the shore of the lake to Hermione.

"Hi!" Hermione said breathlessly, turning away from Viktor immediately to hug him. Ron thumped into her a second later, so she was squished between them briefly, laughing. "I'm fine, honestly, you two--"

Harry was not able to speak; he had just realized what he had been reminded of. While she had been limp instead of stiff, her blank, unconscious face had inescapably brought up his memories of Hermione lying petrified in the hospital wing their second year.

"Harry was worried they'd let you drown," Ron was saying breathlessly, as though he did not also sound as though he had been terrified. Viktor looked a little annoyed, but Harry found that he didn't much care.

Finally they had to release Hermione. People were milling down from the stands around them and the crowd had been very thick, so at least they probably hadn't drawn too much attention. Harry supposed Cho might not be happy - he wasn't totally oblivious to how she felt about his close friendship with Hermione - but he didn't much care.

"As I was saying," Viktor said, insinuating himself into their knot again and picking a beetle off of Hermione's hair. "I was hoping you might visit me over the summer, even if you do not wish to move?"

"C'mon," Harry said, grabbing Ron's arm before he said anything stupid. "Watch out, I think I see Percy."

Horrified, Ron rapidly ducked away into the crowd, trying to cover his hair with his hands as though it would be less visible.

He had only said it to distract Ron, but as it turned out Harry was right. Percy was bearing down on Hermione with an inescapably determined air. Unfortunately, Harry was unable to escape into the crowd.

"Hello, Krum, Hermione, always good to see you, Harry," Percy said and stuck out his hand to him with an unbelievably pompous air. Harry tried to keep a straight face shaking it.

"Always good to see international relations being furthered," he added to Viktor and Hermione in apparent seriousness. Harry smirked at Hermione over Percy's shoulder and she had to rapidly smother a laugh into a cough. "--Alright there, Hermione? Swallow any lake water?"

"Maybe a bit," Hermione coughed. "--The enchanted sleep was really very comfortable, though. You're here with Mr. Crouch again, Percy?"

"Yes. I was telling Hermione at the Yule Ball," Percy added to Harry, with an expression so smug Harry felt it deserved a fine, "I've been promoted to Crouch's personal assistant!"

He paused as though for applause,

"Congratulations - that's really great, Percy!" Harry said, trying to look as though he meant it. This time it was Hermione's turn to catch Harry's eye with a smothered giggle; Harry rapidly looked away, lacking the excuse of having been unconscious in the lake for an hour or so. "I bet it's really difficult," he added, feeling he was laying it on a bit thick; but Percy only preened. "What does he have you doing?"

"Oh, all sorts of things!" Percy said. "Taking notes in meetings, handling his schedule - Mr. Crouch works with some very important wizards and witches, the Duchess of Brittany was just meeting with him the other day, for example - sometimes I've even filled in for him, you know, when he's been a bit under the weather…"

"That's so impressive," Hermione said, muffling a smirk into Viktor's shoulder when Percy turned towards her again. "Do you find it very difficult?"

"Oh, it's all pretty routine most of the time," Percy said with what he must have thought was modesty. Viktor, looking resignedly amused, gently turned Hermione towards the castle and began to walk, so that Percy and Harry had to follow them to continue the conversation. "Mr. Crouch has just been having some health problems - you know, stress, not surprising for a man his age with so many responsibilities! He just doesn't have enough time for everything in his schedule, especially with Madam Bones--" Percy stopped short as though realizing he had said something he shouldn't have.

Breathing carefully, Harry said, "Oh, you mean Amelia Bones?" as though he did not realize the significance of her name. "Her niece is in Herbology with us, we were sitting with her watching the task, Hermione. You know, Susan?" he said to Percy. "In Hufflepuff?"

"Of course. Very good student, Susan Bones," Percy said, frowning as though he would have liked to have something to complain about. "But her aunt - well, just between us," he said conspiratorally, "I think Madam Bones is also - er - feeling the strain of her position, Harry, Hermione... You know she lost almost her entire family in the war, and some people are saying she's getting as paranoid as Mad-Eye Moody..."

"Paranoid?" Harry asked, making sure he sounded very surprised. "You don't mean she's making accusations of Mr. Crouch?"

For a second he thought Percy had cottoned on, but the frown passed, and he said, "Oh, nothing serious, but a few things said - undoubtedly just office gossip blown out of proportion. She's been asking around about Mr. Crouch's former employees, people who've worked with him personally like me. Of course, I told her it was all nonsense, he's been nothing but an absolute model employer, wonderful to work with. Like I said, she's losing it a bit - but you didn't hear it from me! Excuse me, I think I see Mr. Crouch waving to me--"

And with that he was off.

"Nice guy, isn't he?" Harry muttered to Viktor and Hermione.

Viktor snorted. Hermione only hummed and frowned, thoughtfully, into the distance.

Chapter Text

"But why his personal employees?" Ron said.

It was about the fourth time he had asked. They were sitting in Sirius's quarters the evening after the Second Task, having just finished another portion of the map of the Defense curse.

Cassiopeia's portrait had started them on the theory of mind and soul magic - two complicated fields that were intertwined in unpredictable ways - and they were supposed to be working on the readings out of the shared materials. But the conversation had quickly moved from Harry trying to answer Ron and Hermione's questions about his experiences with Occlumency back to speculating about Amelia Bones's investigation of Crouch.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione said, yawning and rubbing her face. She had been trying to ignore them, squinting and skimming the fragment of parchment on the nature of the human soul that she was trying to read. "Isn't it obvious?"

"Obvious?" Harry asked, surprised.

Hermione looked at him and frowned, then said, "Sirius told Susan Bones, and you told Cho, that Bertha Jorkins is acting like she's been Obliviated and she left Crouch's employment after a breakdown. We know she would have seen something after a visit to Crouch's house. One was recorded in the department's archives, and it was pretty close to when her breakdown happened."

"Okay, so?" Ron said. "Look, don't sigh like that, you obviously know and we don't. Explain it already."

"How do you know it was recorded?" Harry asked.

"Madam Bones probably thinks Crouch is sexually abusing his employees," Hermione said calmly. She carefully rolled her scroll open a few more inches before replacing the weight on the right side. "Rita Skeeter put out an article alleging he was under investigation for 'matters of a sensitive and personal nature,' it was a few inches in the morning Prophet on page eleven. She didn't really have enough material for a headline, I suppose. I imagine Percy's been gossiping to people besides us."

"What?" said Ron.

"Probably," Sirius said, sighing himself. "Which may be for the best, since Amelia Bones won't take his assurances seriously, and she might sign a warrant to search Crouch's house or check his wand for the Imperius Curse if she can get away with it..."

"You don't look happy," Harry said.

Sirius shrugged. "If she's opening an actual investigation and Skeeter's jumped on it, it's going to get around, and people will eventually figure out who the suspected victim is. Bertha Jorkins could run into some trouble if people start saying she's been raped. Especially since from what I hear, she's been kept around as a sort of obligation, shuffled between departments a lot - nobody actually gets fired from the Ministry without a massive scandal motivating it."

"But this could do it?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, unfortunately. I feel bad for causing her trouble when it's not even true." Sirius shook his head. "Not that it would be better if it was. And it's important to contain Crouch Jr," he continued, sounding unconvinced himself.

Harry looked back at the crudely rebound papyrus text he was trying to read.

...while magics which devise to alter, bind or preserve the human soul are some of the eldest of our craft, they must also be numbered among the most dangerous; for to change the soul is to change the essence of self and the mind at once, so that neither can act as an anchor nor stand in for the recreation or restoration of the other...

Harry yawned. He hadn't slept well last night; he had woken throughout the night, with dreams of green, watery light and floating, lifeless fingers running through his head.

"Look, you two can read this first, it's not making any sense to me," he said, putting it down on the table. "I think I'm going to head up to bed."

A few hallways away, he changed his mind again. It was still mid evening, with hours until curfew, and Harry didn't want to return to his dormitory and lie in the dark, picturing his friends and Sirius drowning in the lake. He turned again, thinking he might see if Cho was in the library or something. He had begun to make his way back downstairs when he heard someone crying from behind a tapestry of a unicorn being captured.

Harry hesitated. If he had been crying alone, he might have appreciated his privacy... But it was possible that someone was hurt, or cornered, and might need help...

He knocked cautiously on the wall at the edge and said, "Are you alright?"

There was a pause, then Draco said thickly, "Oh, it's you," and pulled the tapestry aside.

It was obvious at once that he had been the one crying. They paused for a moment, looking at each other in mutual embarrassment; then Draco said indifferently, "Come in, then, if you want."

Harry followed him behind the tapestry. It was hiding a small alcove with cushions; Harry saw that there were several bottles of Butterbeer and crumbs strewn around two places, as though someone else had just left.

"It's Pansy," Draco said dully, gesturing for Harry to sit down.

"Pansy?" Harry said, surprised. "You're, er, speaking again?"

"Yes. Just in private, her parents would be furious." Draco stared at his hands. "But that's all I wanted, really, I understand how it is."

"So what went wrong?" Harry asked, when it became apparent that Draco wasn't going to explain.

For all Draco had been an utter prick for the last several years, and thoroughly deserved both previous jinxes and the time Hermione had punched him, he had been decent the last couple of months. He also gave Hermione someone to talk to about classwork who was interested when she rambled on about magical theories. This made Hermione happy, so Harry was beginning to feel Draco was, if still rather on trial as a friend, at least alright as a person. Certainly he was worried about whatever was making Draco skulk around crying in secret alcoves.

Although if this turned into another instance of Ron and Hermione-esque dating drama Harry was going to turn around and immediately go up to bed.

"I told you before, I was going to marry Pansy? Before all this happened, I mean," Draco said. "Well, we weren't formally engaged, the Parkinsons are, well, sort of recent as a family, my mother thinks of them as upstarts. Family tree only goes back to the eighteenth century and all. But Pansy and I like each other, and there just aren't enough purebloods anymore for anyone to be as picky as they were in my mother's generation anyway, not after the war.

"So we figured they'd let us, and her parents wouldn't push her at every adult man in Britain if she was attached to me, and mine wouldn't bother me about not wanting - well, anyone," Draco said quickly. "And we get on alright, so it... made sense."

Dating drama it was. Harry tried to work out how to tactfully exit.

"But that's all gone out the window, obviously," Draco said. "I mean, if I was staying with my father, maybe not, it wouldn't matter what my mother did, but I - I can't. I just can't. My mother's had Sirius sue for custody, and since she divorced - divorced my father for battering her, and she has a family head to take her case in court and everything again, they've agreed, she's got my custody, so I can't - but Sirius hasn't been really acting the part in society and it was the Malfoys her father had an understanding with and they're - they're politically more like.. So Pansy's parents started looking again, for her, and..."

"Did they pick, then?" Harry asked, trying to sound sympathetic and not as though Ron was going on about Lavender's dubious taste in Valentine's gifts. "Who?"

"My father," Draco said, and stopped.

"Your father what," Harry started to say, and then he looked at Draco and actually thought about a few of the things he had just said about Pansy's parents. "You mean she's engaged to..."

"Obviously he can't marry her until he finishes divorcing Mother," Draco said, and laughed unsteadily. "And her parents will probably make him wait until she finishes O.W.L.s, so she's got until, oh, summer after next. But yes. They wrote to her they'd reached an agreement last week - didn't even ask what she thought. It isn't as if they care. She'll be married and pulled out of school after fifth year." He laughed mirthlessly. "It's kind of funny in a way, isn't it, Harry? She's always made such a big deal of being older - her birthday's November and I'm May, so it's six months - and now she's going to be my stepmother. Father doesn't even like women, he just needs a new heir, and knows this will hurt me the most."

Harry didn't have the slightest idea of what to say. Perhaps fortunately, Draco did not seem to expect much contribution; he only slumped into a ball and went back to crying.

Harry awkwardly crouched next to him and patted his shoulder until he was done. At that point he muttered, "Better get back to Slytherin," used some charm Harry would have liked to know which immediately cleared his face as though he had never cried at all, and slipped off, leaving Harry to clean up the mess.

Uncomfortable though he was about it, Harry said nothing about this to Ron, Hermione or Sirius. He had never particularly liked Pansy Parkinson, but if her parents were making her marry Lucius Malfoy, a man who had tortured his last, adult wife, Harry didn't think she wanted it going around the whole school.

However, his mind was no longer the safe and secure place he was accustomed to, and he spent Monday both dreading Snape digging out the encounter and hoping that perhaps Narcissa might be able to do something about the situation if he did.

In Care of Magical Creatures, Hagrid had moved on reluctantly from their study of thestrals to the also-equine unicorns resident in the Forbidden Forest, but he had announced they were finished with the unicorns last class. The other students were murmuring nervously about the wooden crates surrounding his hut as they went down, but Harry could not drum up too much apprehension; nor was he as delighted as his classmates by the fluffy, long-snouted black creatures Hagrid introduced as Nifflers. It was just as well that they had only independent study work in the afternoon. After an hour of failing to focus on his essay, Harry got up and went to Sirius's quarters, thinking that if he happened to be there he might ask Sirius to have a word with Draco and feel less guilty about ignoring the whole thing.

He opened the door to Sirius's quarters and was surprised to hear angry voices in the kitchen.

"--Cannot believe you didn't tell me," Narcissa was saying passionately; as Harry approached the cracked doorway, he saw her on her feet, gesturing with a tea cup. Liquid sloshed over her hands, soaking into her bell-like silk sleeves, but she was oblivious. "If you--"

"Narcissa, you know why," Sirius said wearily. He was sprawled in his chair, wearing his robes open over jeans; he had been increasingly informal in classes as the year went on. He scrubbed one hand over his hair as he spoke. "You haven't been offended that we doubt your loyalty before, because you know that we have to. And it isn't as if it actually affects you--"

"If you're getting into a feud with Bartemius Crouch it affects this whole house," Narcissa said, "And that's beyond the fact that his son is involved--"

"Who on earth is Barty Crouch Jr. to you?" Sirius asked.

"Bella's student," Narcissa said, furiously, "And my--" She cut herself off and shook herself irritably. "If he's been at the mercy of his father all these years - he'd have been better off dead, Sirius!"

"You realize that if we find him he's going to be sent back to prison, Cissy," Sirius said wearily. "No, we both know what Crouch did to Bella and I, I know you're right, but there's only so much I can do. Particularly when every indication is that he's a loyal Death Eater."

"Let me talk to him, then," Narcissa said, "He can stay dead officially, I can get him to turn, I swear, he'll listen to me--"

"Dumbledore is involved," Sirius said tiredly. "And we just covered the fact that I don't trust you, Cissy. How did you find out?"

"The house elf," Narcissa said, shrugging.

"She wouldn't tell us a thing."

"You've always been terrible with them, Sirius," Narcissa said. She set down her tea with a clatter and threw herself back back into her chair. "She's lonely, she misses her old family and desperately wants someone - something - familiar, she feels terrible for leaving Barty to his father, it wasn't hard."

"The house elf thinks Crouch is a monster?" Sirius said.

"A man's servants often know him best," Narcissa said dispassionately. "And she practically raised Crouch's children, Charis was often ill without her twin--"

"Charis?" Sirius sat up straight, horrified. "Crouch's wife was Charis?"

"Yes," Narcissa said, disgusted. "Now you see--"

"Is that why Bella--"

"Among other things. He desperately wanted family who cared about him and Bella indulged that. Sirius, we cannot leave him there--" She leaned forward, and when Sirius snorted, flung herself forward onto her knees on the floor, catching his hands. "Sirius--"

"Cissy," Sirius said. His eyes were wide. "Cissy, I'm not saying--" He closed his eyes and swallowed, hard. "We can't just storm Crouch's house, especially not me. Not you, either, you know why. I've been talking to Amelia Bones about some of his more suspicious behavior, she's investigating him, Dumbledore is trying to lean on Fudge a bit, we're working on it."

"To send Barty back to Azkaban."

"We don't have an alternative," Sirius said. "No, I don't like it either, he's even younger than me, but..."

Narcissa swallowed, then said "I do not - like the way that Dumbledore has treated Severus, but in comparison - if he could be persuaded to - to spy, when the Dark Lord should return…"

"If we can get to him you can put the idea to him, but I don't know what Dumbledore will say," Sirius said, sounding irritated. "He hardly listens to me, he's already trying to turn my godson against our family--"

Harry drifted carefully further back from the open crack in the door, but could not resist continuing to listen.

"You hardly appreciate the family."

"He's deliberately showing Harry memories that associate me and Bella," Sirius said tiredly. "He must want to separate us, I just can't think why, damn it, Cissy. I mean, what does he think I'm going to do? He has a damn prophesied hero--" There was the sound of a bottle being uncapped and liquid poured; Harry imagined Sirius spiking his tea with Firewhisky-- "Lily died to give him that, and he just... Sends him to school? Keeps him boxed away from the magical world during break, doesn't try to teach him to fight..."

"He's probably afraid you'll teach him Dark magic," Narcissa said, snorting. "And corrupt his soul. Dumbledore's never liked what he can't control, Sirius, you know that. Hello, Aunt Cassie, do you want something?"

"Nothing urgent," Cassiopeia's portrait said. "It's just that Harry's been waiting to speak to you for a few minutes, and I thought if you were going to discuss him you might invite him to comment."

There was an awkward pause, then Sirius called, "Harry? Come in?"

Blushing furiously, Harry opened the door to the kitchen and went inside. Narcissa had risen to the sink and was washing tears off her face; she used a charm to finish it off, and immediately looked as perfect as Draco had after crying.

Sirius was smiling wryly at Harry from the table, fiddling with the Firewhisky bottle. "Hello, Harry," he said. "Sorry you heard that."

"I'm sorry, I didn't want to interrupt, and then it just got more awkward," Harry said. "Er, hello, Narcissa." She had insisted on being called by her first name in lessons, as they were family. Harry had the impression that she was not quite sure whether she should be Malfoy or Black and didn't like being reminded.

"Hello, Harry," Narcissa said, voice again serene, as though she had not been passionately declaiming to Sirius two minutes ago. "Shouldn't you be in class?"

"It's our independent study period, but I couldn't focus," Harry said. "Er, there's something your son might need your advice about, I think," he said. That was obscure enough Draco could readily come up with a different story if he didn't want to ask his mother. "I can go."

"It's fine, I think we were done there," Sirius said dryly, raising an eyebrow at Narcissa. She snorted but did not argue.

"Who's Charis?" Harry asked, figuring that there was no point in pretending he had not overheard.

"Charis Black," Narcissa said, "Our grandfathers' first cousin, and Bartemius Crouch Sr.'s late wife. His son, the Death Eater, is my father and Sirius's parents' second cousin." She glanced at Sirius. "Keeping track of the family tree's details is generally a women's job, and Sirius has paid little attention to society for some time," she said dryly.

"I didn't realize they were family, but most purebloods are," Sirius said. "Look, Cissy, if you have any ideas for getting him out of there..."

"I'll talk to Fudge," Narcissa said, frowning. "Or his wife, anyway, she's been willing to return my letters since leaving Lucius. Fudge is wavering on whose side to take--"

"Your husband nearly killed you," Harry said, horrified.

Narcissa gave him a small, sardonic smile. "Fudge has been listening to rumors about my behavior before," she said. "He wants very badly to forgive his friend - otherwise, he'd have all of those years of mistaken judgment to face up to. I'll try, though. If not Fudge, perhaps - I have other allies, still," she said.

"Any Death Eater with the power to go after Crouch would have years ago," Sirius said broodily, staring into the bottle of Firewhisky.

"You mentioned Draco?" Narcissa said then, to Harry.

"He's probably still in class now, he has Arithmancy with Hermione," Harry said.

"He won't appreciate his mother coming up to him in school anyway," Narcissa said, "But Sirius, if you could send him to - your office, perhaps--"

"It's not," Harry started, fumbling, "I'm not sure he'd want--"

"Perhaps your quarters, then, as a happy accident," Narcissa said. "He knows I've come to see Sirius at the school before, that's plausible enough."

"I'll just - be going, then," Harry said, and awkwardly fled, feeling if anything more baffled and upset than before.

Chapter Text

"I understand that Harry has already mastered the Patronus Charm," Cassiopeia said. She had rearranged the contents of her desk, moving the skull aside and several books from the shelves behind her into its place.

It was Thursday night after dinner. Sirius had had their class working on deflection of jinxes and hexes in the afternoon. While their class had in general performed well, he had stepped up the intensity as they demonstrated competence so that all three of them were nursing minor injuries. Harry had a bandaged cut on his cheek, Ron's ears were still twitching lightly, and Hermione's hair was somewhat singed at the ends. (Sirius had given them the homework assignment of looking up how to counter or heal every minor piece of damage the class as a whole had sustained, and told them to come see him during his office hours Friday if they hadn't countered the damage to themselves by then.)

"Uh, yeah," Harry said, blushing slightly. "In third year, Professor Lupin taught me because I was having problems with the dementors."

"So Sirius mentioned. The Patronus Charm is a good example of the class of spells we're about to discuss, albeit a legal one. As for spells Ron and Hermione will be familiar with... My understanding is that Cheering Charms are currently third year work?"

"Yes, they were on our Charms exam last year," Hermione said.

"Then you and Ron should be familiar with at least one example as well. Can any of you tell me what I'm talking about?" When none of them immediately leapt in with an explanation, Cassiopeia said, "Harry, how is the Patronus charm cast?"

"Er, with emotion - you have to concentrate on a happy memory," Harry said, "And say the incantation and point your wand, I mean."

"Exactly. And what is the effect of the charm, apart from the obvious? On you," she added, when Harry didn't immediately understand.

"Oh - it makes you..." He frowned. "Not happy, exactly - elated? Secure?"

Cassiopeia was nodding. "The Patronus charm is a good example of a spell which both requires emotional control to cast and fuels that emotion. As happiness is deemed nondestructive by the idiots on the Ministry censorship board, and more pertinently the changes to mood are temporary in duration, don't tend to produce personality alterations and aren't addictive - no one gets into a habit of casting the Patronus charm constantly - and as there are no other good means of protection against dementors, it remains legal, unlike the majority of spells in this class. Can you explain the relevance of the Cheering charm, now?"

"I think so," Hermione said. "The Cheering Charm requires you to focus on the mood you want to produce - cheerfulness - and it produces a reciprocal effect in the caster as well as the subject of the spell. So it would be another example, wouldn't it?"

They were sitting at Sirius's kitchen table under the portrait, floating marshmallows in hot cocoa and talking to Cassiopeia about Dark Arts. Harry thought that if all of his lectures had been conducted like this, he might have an easier time understanding his theory classes.

"Uh, can I ask something?" Ron said. "You called the censorship board idiots for saying happiness isn't dangerous...?"

"Well, emotions aren't dangerous in and of themselves," Cassiopeia said, face going thoughtful. "In general there's a limited number of emotional states and they more or less all occur in everyone. Emotions become a problem when their response to stimuli or their pattern is altered...

"Which is to say, it's not a problem if you get angry sometimes, but it is a problem if you become so angry you become violent whenever someone laughs in your vicinity. Happiness is not obviously a problem, but happiness artificially created, which persists even through things that ought to shake it, can be - imagine if you were unable to feel upset by the pain of a broken leg and so didn't bother to seek medical attention, for example."

"So is the Patronus Charm dangerous?" Harry asked, frowning.

"I would say Cheering Charms are more so, frankly. They can become addictive, and using them on other people without consent can easily become a tool of abuse - imagine if you cast one on your spouse every time she got angry with you for refusing to watch the children. The Patronus Charm tends to create a feeling of contentment and stability rather than euphoria, which are more stable emotions, and the caster is more likely to hold the Patronus in place than recast it repeatedly, which creates a fainter effect."

"But they teach us those in class!" Hermione said, scandalized. "They're part of the O.W.L. curriculum!"

"Life is dangerous, Hermione." Cassiopeia smiled wanly. "You can kill with a hovering charm, or with a mundane knife. You prevent a child from killing by teaching them it's wrong, not by chopping off their hands in case they misuse them. Which is why I oppose the proscription of specific spells in general.

"But we were discussing spells that feed off of the emotions of the caster and alter the caster's mind in general. You should always know what a spell will do to you and what risks it carries before using it. Unfortunately this information isn't always recorded along with the effects, but I aim to eventually teach you how to analyze it with unfamiliar spells. I will explain the risks before I teach you anything. If you need to use a spell which carries a risk of permanent and undesirable alteration, there are precautions that can be taken; among other things, often removing certain key memories and replacing them after the spell is used can return your emotional reaction to baseline."

"Can you give us an example of that?" Harry asked, struggling to put the abstract words together.

"Certainly. For one that is likely to remain hypothetical," Cassiopeia smiled sardonically, "The Cruciatus Curse requires the caster to enjoy inflicting pain. Achieving the emotional state once and recalling it is generally sufficient to cast it again, and those who want to learn it and aren't natural sadists will often use artificial means to meet that goal.

"The reason it is invariably possible to recast is that Cruciatus fuels pleasure in pain in the caster, creating sadistic tendencies where there were none. The more often the spell is used the more pronounced the effects are, and it is known to be addictive.

"If you had an important reason to use Cruciatus - which is extremely unlikely - you could take a memory of being upset by someone else's pain, or preferably four or five memories, extract them and store them. Then you would learn the curse and use it for whatever your purpose was, then - ideally, view the memories before returning them to your head, but if you were in a rush you could simply return the memories immediately. They would remind you of your previous reaction to pain, and while you would be influenced by the memory of enjoying it as well, they would reduce the changes to you caused by using the Cruciatus Curse."

Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged glances.

"Right," Harry said, almost regretting having asked for an example. "So - you can preserve whatever reaction you had before you started using a spell like that. What if it's not a one time thing, like - there are combat spells that change your emotions like that too, right? So if I was in a war, and expected to use them a lot..."

Cassiopeia nodded. "The Killing Curse requires hate to cast and encourages dehumanization of the enemy and detachment from human connection when used often. Many people are never capable of casting it indiscriminately, but it can create problems similar to the Cruciatus if used frequently. I suspect this is related to the problems in the Auror Department late and post war, to speak honestly. If you expected to use it frequently in battle, you might try something similar and view the memories regularly, but it might not be sufficient.

"You would have to take more elaborate precautions in that case. There are some ritual spells meant to preserve a copy of your soul for restoration, although that also mitigates any other experience gained in the meantime. Another precaution often taken by soldiers is using a potion or spell that numbs emotional response entirely; that can reduce the effects of battle curses that change the personality by altering emotional responses, since no new emotional associations are created.

"We aren't going to work on any spells that should require precautions right now, but I prefer to discuss this before teaching casting, in case my students look for new spells themselves. Now - Harry, could you explain what Severus and Narcissa have been teaching you to do in your Occlumency lessons, just in general?"

What followed was a somewhat grueling session working on emotional control. Cassiopeia did not want them to block out all emotion like Snape and Narcissa; instead she had them raise emotions and then try to suppress them again, or switch rapidly between anger and happiness. Harry had the feeling that she was having trouble being patient with them. She admitted at the end of the lesson that Blacks started learning this skill around five years old, and nearly all of them were extremely good at it by the time they started school.

"Which is almost certainly responsible for a lot of our destructive behavior, so I wouldn't necessarily count that as a positive," she said dryly.

"Isn't being able to calm yourself down a good thing?" Hermione asked, saving Harry from needing to.

"It depends. Emotions are a warning sign, you know, they tell you when you're in pain and need treatment, or when you're hurting someone else and need to stop and take care of them. Being able to look at a crying child - or a corpse on the floor - and feel nothing, or suppress your reaction until you do, is not necessarily a universal positive."

Hermione hesitated, "Two of the examples you used earlier..."

"Yes?" Cassiopeia arched an eyebrow.

"You listed two of the three Unforgivables," Hermione said. "Is Imperius..."

"Also of this class?" Cassiopeia smiled wryly. "I knew you were familiar with them from Sirius's class, so I thought it would be a good place to start. Yes, Imperius also works based off of an emotional state - the belief that someone should obey you, essentially, it's a more complex one - and fuels a desire for social dominance in the caster. It also is directly pleasurable to the caster, like Cruciatus.

"To anticipate your next question, the Unforgivables are not Unforgivable because of their effects. There are a great number of charms that kill, cause pain, and subdue. But all three of them both require and fuel the desire for those effects, and while they require power, they're easy enough technically to cast that you don't have to study the Dark Arts at great length first if you can meet the emotional requirements. The argument - not necessarily accurate - is that no one who is able to cast them will be capable of stopping, and making them Unforgivable discourages neophyte Dark Arts users. I do not think either is true, at least not as an unqualified statement, but I would also not recommend anyone without precautions and good reason attempt any of the three."

"You said you don't believe in banning specific spells," Ron said, frowning. Harry knew that he was the most uncomfortable with the three of them with learning Dark Arts, as his father and brother worked for the Ministry. "Does that include..."

"The three Unforgivables? Yes, although I'm not necessarily saying they should be legal, either--"

"That's a contradiction," Hermione said.

Cassiopeia shook her head. "Let me finish. The Ministry in general prefers prohibiting spellwork to actions. Murder is illegal, of course, but there's no law against torture or compulsion with magic in general. Cruciatus carries a life sentence because it appears to represent torture out of control, for pleasure, but it's perfectly legal to use a flogging spell on your wife. That's by design. Likewise, love potions and many other tools which subvert the mind of the target are only banned under very specific circumstances.

"The banning of the Cruciatus Curse allows the Ministry to prosecute torture by war criminals without making things awkward for many of the ruling social class who prefer to be able to use torture as a disciplinary tool in the domestic household and within their Houses. This is true in two ways: the first is that many more mundane torture spells are legal, or at least are not specifically banned, so that they have to be prosecuted as assault or similar crimes that apply mainly to non-kin. You won't get very far prosecuting a man for assaulting his child with a flogging spell, no matter how many scars the child has.

"The second is that Cruciatus leaves little or no lasting evidence. It can cause nerve damage if overused immensely, and there are magical traces for about twelve to twenty-four hours after it's cast, but in general you can't find Cruciatus damage months in the future. It has to be testified to by the victim. An Auror telling a court that a Dark wizard or witch used Cruciatus on them in a fight is credible; a battered wife or child often is not treated that way."

On that unsettling note, Cassie dismissed them to practice the mind exercises for the next week. Hermione and Ron went up to bed, but Harry still had a couple of references to check on his history homework, and resigned himself to going down to the library to work until it closed.

Fifteen minutes into the pile of tomes on goblin rebellions Harry had assembled, Draco pulled out the chair across from him, and sat down when Harry nodded.

"Professor Black asked me to see him Monday evening, and my mother just happened to be in his quarters at the time," he said, taking out his Transfiguration textbook. "She was a good thought, you know, she's very good at social politics."

Harry looked at Draco. He was smirking, hand laid casually along the table, in a position Harry was beginning to identify as an illusion of confidence.

"Look," he said quietly, quickly casting Sirius's charm against eavesdropping, "I'm sorry I brought her into it without warning you, but I had to tell her something--"

"Did the muggles fail to teach you how to lie, alongside how to dress yourself and brush your hair?" Draco drawled.

Harry gritted his teeth and said softly, "No. But Sirius asked your mother to help teach me Occlumency--"

Draco sat bolt upright.

"--So I knew she was going to get it out of my head one way or another, and I thought if she went to you knowing you wanted help with something you could control telling her. I should've gone to find you after we were done," Harry improvised, knowing Snape's assistance should be kept quiet, "And I meant to, but the lesson pretty much knocked it out of my head. I don't know if you've had Occlumency lessons--"

Draco shook his head warily.

"--But I had a blinding migraine after and I didn't get anything else done that night, either."

"Fine," Draco said after a long moment. "I understand you could not turn down your guardian's instructions on the lessons themselves. I accept your apology for failing to warn me, and I appreciate that you tried to mitigate the damage."

"So is she going to help - your friend?" Harry asked, deciding that this was Draco's bizarre way of saying everything was fine.

Draco grimaced. "She'll try. But she's out of contact with most people right now - it would help, you know, if Black actually acted his rank, but I suppose some eccentricities can be forgiven in a man just out of Azkaban after twelve years - and Pansy's refusing. Says Father will guess I spoke to Mum if she asks around, and if Mother can't get her out of it he'll treat her worse. Which," Draco said unhappily, "Is probably true, so I can't blame her."

"So she's just - giving up?" Harry said, jerking his head up to stare.

"Shh," Draco muttered, but went on, "I don't know, from what she tells me, yes, but she may have a few ideas up her sleeve she doesn't want me to know about. What she's saying is that she can't enjoy her last year of freedom if she's spending it scrambling to escape, and anyway Father's got enough enemies that if she's lucky one will bump him off and leave her an extremely wealthy widow by the age of twenty-five or so--"

Harry choked.

"I know," Draco said, "She didn't say that part to me, obviously, she said it to Daphne Greengrass, but Daphne mentioned it to her mother and apparently Ulrike Selwyn's an old friend of my mother. She's actually still speaking to Mother, anyway, so I heard it that way around." He shrugged. "I hope she's not going to just lie down and take it, but... She doesn't have a lot of choices, here."

"Don't you have to agree to get married in the wizarding world?" Harry muttered. Draco shot him a short, incredulous look. "Look, you know I was raised by muggles, you made fun of me enough for it, I have no idea how any of this works. So explain it to me."

"You didn't like it the first time I offered to," Draco said, laughter in his tone, but he went on, "Look. Yes, they generally do require cooperation in the church service, but let's imagine it, alright? Her parents get the wedding planned and the paperwork done and the priest, over her screaming protests if necessary, and drag her to the altar and they get to the 'I do' portion and she screams that she'd rather die than marry Father for all the world to hear... What then?"

"Well, she wouldn't be married, would she?" Harry said, although he could already see where Draco was going with this.

"No, but she'd still be sixteen years old, and her parents and her head of family would be humiliated, they'd be on the verge of a feud with Father for failing to control their daughter, they'd be out a lot of money, and they'd still be her guardians," Draco said. "So they'd drag her back home and at best lock her in a room and beat her until she changed her mind. Or they'd send her to Father anyway without the benefit of a legal marriage to be his concubine instead, to try to make up for the scene. At worst, they'd just kill her and figure they'd set an example for the rest of the Parkinson girls, although that hasn't happened much since the war, not so publicly."

"Wouldn't someone call MLE?" Harry said. "Or she could, couldn't she?"

"Yes, and if it was bad enough they might intervene, but they also might not - it's not really illegal to beat your daughter or your wife, so it would depend on what exactly they did and how much proof she had - and even if they do, what then?" Draco said. "Pansy can't just stay in protective custody forever. She's certainly disowned and penniless, no one would dream of marrying a woman who acted like that, anyone who wants to speak to Father wouldn't remotely consider hiring her or recommending her to anyone else, and Father has enough friends that people won't want to make his friends angry doing it, either, even if they're totally uninvolved.

"So her life would still be destroyed, and she would also be starving and homeless. As opposed to her life being destroyed by means that leave her the use of my father's extensive Gringotts vault, ample petty luxuries, and the fawning attention of all the people who want political favors from her husband."

"So you're saying there's no use in fighting?"

"I'm saying that if she wants to fight, she needs to do it by a route that makes her come off as the righteous party, or at least get her parents and head of family to call the wedding off themselves," Draco said. "Which my mother is excellent at, incidentally, so I'm hoping Pansy will at least agree to take her advice if I wear her down enough."

"Fine," Harry said, and gave up on the subject. "Did you do the essay for Binns, yet? I can't find the speech I want to quote, it's the one where the leader talked about the plague..." One benefit of Draco spending so much time with them was that Harry had discovered he had nearly as good a memory as Hermione, and nowhere near as many scruples about how other people should do work for themselves; although he was much more willing to help Harry than Ron.

"Yeah, you want chapter thirteen for that one," Draco said. "I didn't use it, though, I did mine on the one who talked about his family dying in that riot."

They passed a few more minutes working on their respective homework before Draco asked, "Had any other lessons from the Blacks?"

Something about his tone was too casual. Harry frowned, and decided he'd better find out why Draco cared, rather than simply denying it. "Why do you want to know?"

Draco looked up then and frowned, hard. "You are, aren't you. What exactly is Black teaching you?"

"I wouldn't think you'd object," Harry said. "I mean, you said you'd--"

"By my father," Draco said, face gone pale. "Look, this isn't the place to talk about this, are you done--"

"Give me ten minutes, the library's about to close anyway," Harry said.

They spent ten minutes working in tense silence before they rose and by mutual, silent accord filed out of the library. Harry led Draco to an empty classroom nearby and locked the door behind them, then sat on a desk. "Well?" he said.

Draco bit his lip. "What, exactly, is Black teaching you?"

Harry hesitated. Bringing up Cassiopeia did not seem a good idea; Sirius would be fired at worst, but a portrait could easily be confiscated or destroyed. "Mostly theory," he said. "Look, you know - Voldemort--"

"I hate when you say the name like that," Draco muttered.

"I know. You know he's protected himself against death. They reckon--" he hesitated, but he supposed that Voldemort already knew about the prophecy, and there was no way to explain this without it, "I'm supposed to kill him, there was a prophecy before I was born. That's why he went after my family." Draco looked up, lips parted in horrified exclamation, but Harry pushed on.

"So I have to be able to figure out what he did to protect himself from death and unravel it. That's why. So it's mostly just the stuff I need to do that - how ritual and sacrifice work, what we know about the human soul. We're not actually going out and trying that kind of seriously Dark stuff. The only ritual we did was weather magic, we went out to an old Black property that's in ruins and called a rainstorm so we could see how it was easier to use massive amounts of power that way."

"We is your godfather and Hermione, I assume?" Draco said.

"And Ron, yeah," Harry said.

Draco's eyebrows raised, and he snorted. "Oh, Symon Weasley would love that if he heard... Alright, that makes sense, I suppose," he said. "If you're not going around studying stuff that wreaks havoc on your emotions--"

He must have seen Harry tense because he broke off. "You are," he said flatly. "That's not - Harry, you don't need that to kill the Dark Lord, there are plenty of combat spells--"

"It's not like he's teaching us Unforgivables," Harry hissed. "We just talked about how the whole class works, how to protect yourself against being permanently damaged--"

"That's not the only danger of that kind of spell," Draco said, laughing mirthlessly. "I as good as told you my father taught me the Unforgivables. He didn't do it so I could use them, although that was part of it, or even so that I'd be more ruthless, although he hoped I would. He wanted me off my head in the short term so I'd agree to--" He broke off and said sharply, "That doesn't matter. I can see you won't listen if I tell you to stop, so I want in on these lessons."

"Draco," Harry said.

"I could blackmail you but I know it won't work, you're such a Gryffindor, you'll just tell me to be damned and do it," Draco said. He seemed to be talking to himself. "And anyway my mother still needs Black - look." He looked up, focusing on Harry again. "Please, Harry, I'm worried about you - you can see that, right? I've already done worse than anything Black has any reason to teach you, you know I won't run off and tell tales for no reason. And I've been studying the Dark Arts for longer, I know better than you or Granger what you're getting into. Do I need to keep begging? I will, I can go down on my knees--"

His words were far less persuasive than the desperate light in his eyes, the way his hands twisted in his robes.

Harry took a deep breath. "I'll talk to Sirius," he said, cutting Draco off. "I don't object to it, but it's not just me on the line. I'll ask."

"Alright," Draco said after a moment. "But if he says no I will find something to do about it."

"Fine," Harry said, unlocked the door with barely a twitch of his wand, and stalked out of the classroom. It took him three staircases to realize he'd cast Alohamora non-verbally in his frustration.

So apparently Professor Flitwick was right about the cure for self-doubt, then.

Chapter Text

There weren't many opportunities for Harry to talk to Sirius on Fridays. Draco gave him pointed looks all through breakfast, until Ron and Cho, who had come to sit with them, were both shooting their own curious looks between the two of them. Even Hermione, who was frantically skimming through her Ancient Runes textbook and muttering about assigned pages, looked up and frowned. But Sirius was at the high table, deep in conversation with Professor McGonagall, and frustratingly unreachable. Harry might have skived off History just to deal with it, but he knew Sirius would be teaching, so there was little point; and break wasn't a good time to try to have an involved conversation.

He was unsurprised when Draco authoritatively dumped his books next to Harry's seat in Potions, leaving Hermione to partner with Ron and ignore Lavender's furious, jealous glares. "I haven't had a chance to talk to him," Harry muttered, going over the list of instructions to try to think what they would need from the storage cabinets. "We finished talking right before curfew and he's been in class all day."

"You'd better talk to him by Sunday," Draco muttered back, glancing up towards Snape, where he stood by Hermione and Ron's desk. "Alright, did you actually do the readings for this one?"

Potions was a much easier class since Snape had ceased bullying students. Furthermore, when Draco was sitting with people who did not encourage him to torment others, he was actually a very valuable resource; he knew all sorts of things about why Potions had to be stirred a certain direction or what effect the ingredients and their preparation had. If it were not for Draco's periodic suspicious looks, Harry might have enjoyed the double period for once - although watching Lavender hiss insults and a reddening Hermione berate Ron for every small mistake did take some of the fun out of it.

Draco and Harry finished ten minutes before the lesson was over with a Potion that actually fit the description in the textbook. Deprived of the ability to insult them, Snape did not seem to particularly care whether his students were present or not. So after turning in the potion, Harry excused himself from his friends and hurried over to the Defense classroom.

He reached it just as Sirius dismissed a class of giggling first years and stood to the side until the rush had more or less cleared. Coming in, he saw a room scattered with cushions, and Sirius answering the question of a small girl with pigtails as she pointed to a page in the textbook. He caught Sirius's eye easily, and Sirius waved her off soon.

"Harry," he said, cheerfully enough. "What's going on?"

"Would you mind if," Harry stammered, hoping he was not being rude, "Could we eat dinner in your quarters? Just us," he added, when Sirius looked over his head, evidently for Ron and Hermione.

"Fine with me," Sirius said, looking so genuinely pleased that Harry felt a bit guilty for the conversation they were about to have. "Let me just get this cleaned up--"

"I can help," Harry said quickly. He drew his wand and concentrated, murmuring the incantation for the Banishing Charm they had been learning with Flitwick a month or two ago. A little to his surprise - but less surprise than in the past - the cushions he was aiming at rose together and flew into the box on the table. "What were you doing with these, anyway?"

"Hovering Charms," Sirius said. "More specifically, they're way too young to get up a good Shield Charm, but they learned this spell months ago and most of them are fairly good at it. So they may not be powerful enough to block jinxes, but if their reflexes are good and they practice they can shield themselves with their surroundings. Often that's a better strategy against a superior opponent or one using lethal force anyway, we talked about it in your class..."

"Against spells like the Killing Curse, yeah, I remember," Harry said, mouth dry.

They finished clearing the classroom and started up to Sirius's quarters. Sirius spent the walk telling Harry about the younger years' classes. He could not help wishing that they had had teachers like Sirius his first and second years, although Lupin had been just as good.

"How's Lupin doing, anyway?" he asked. "--Sorry, you reminded me talking about the third years."

"No trouble," Sirius said, cheerfully, although it sounded a bit forced to Harry. "He's doing well, he wrote me a couple of weeks ago. He thinks the standard classification of wyvern species might be wrong, he's writing up notes for a paper about it."

"And he's - doing okay?" Harry said. Sirius gave the password without breaking stride, and they entered his quarters. "I mean, he's got enough money and everything?"

"You don't need much in Mongolia, but I understand he's happy enough," Sirius said. "Living in a tent and healing yaks for the local muggles in exchange for supplies when he needs them - would drive me mad, but Remus, he's happy like that. I think he might just decide to stay there."

Sirius called to the kitchens for dinner for two and began sorting out his papers from class. As the steaming platters appeared on the coffee table, he said, "So what's wrong, Harry?"

"Sorry, is it that obvious?" Harry asked, sitting down awkwardly.

"A bit, yeah, but I'm getting to know you, too," Sirius said. "Plus you've never gone to catch me right after class like that before. Take your time getting it out if you need to."

"You won't be angry?" Harry found himself saying and stopped short, feeling humiliated at having let it slip out his mouth.

"I'll never be angry for you for bringing a problem to me for help," Sirius said sincerely. "We can handle it, whatever it is... Cho's not pregnant, is she?"

"WHAT?" Harry said. "No!"

"Alright, alright," Sirius said, laughing.

"We haven't even - I'm fourteen!" Harry protested.

"Remind me to get you a book on contraception charms now, then," Sirius said. "Your father needed them at this age, it was a fair worry."

"My dad," Harry said, then stopped, deciding he never wanted to know. "Did you?" Then he stopped again, horrified, and hoping he hadn't just reminded Sirius of his grandfather.

"Not for another year," Sirius said, apparently taking the question the way Harry had meant it, "And Remus was seventeen. There's no need to rush it if you're not ready, it's better to wait until you want it. Your father and I were both ridiculously young compared to our peers. So what is the problem?"

"I," Harry said, trying to figure out how to explain that Draco Malfoy had demanded to supervise his Dark Arts lessons, which he thought were with Sirius. "I wanted to ask you something," he said, and found himself saying instead, "What Cassiopeia told us about the Unforgivables - she said they're part of a class that affects your mind, right? And you cast the Imperius on every student over fourth year, or as good as, so, did you use your memories to stop it affecting you? Or something else?"

"Oh," Sirius said, looking surprised. "I--" He dragged a hand over his hair, pulling it back from his face, then dropped onto the sofa across from Harry and frowned down at the food. "Cassiopeia was right, I want to be clear. You should absolutely - well, I don't want you using any of those spells anyway, but if you have to, you need to take preparations to stop them from changing you. But..."

"But?" Harry asked.

"I grew up using those spells," Sirius said, and laughed harshly. "Not the Unforgivables themselves, I was taught those at fifteen, but they're not so unusual in their affects. A lot of Dark Arts spells encourage sadistic tendencies, or detachment from human life, and as for Imperius... My father wanted me to believe I had a right to total obedience, at least once I inherited. He certainly thought that way. Whatever I am - and I am not necessarily a good person, and certainly not by nature alone - it's under the influence of magic like that. Whatever my personality is, it's already been affected by it... And when I made my choices - to reject my family, to refuse to become a Death Eater - it was under their influence, as well."

"So you didn't - do anything?" Harry said.

"No, I didn't." Sirius smiled crookedly. "Well, unless you count turning into Padfoot in the evenings and hiding under the couch. The effects of Imperius are - well, depending on the context they can be very disturbing for the caster, as well. But don't you dare run off and try this, Harry, you're not - I don't really think that learning to enjoy other people's pain would make you go around cursing them in the halls, you're not like that, but let's not find out."

"I don't think I want to find out, either," Harry muttered.

They ate in silence for a few moments, the tension slowly fading. Sirius eventually said, "Was that all you wanted to ask me?"

"Uh, no, actually," Harry said. "Draco kind of ambushed me--" He explained his conversation with Draco quickly.

Sirius was amused at first, but quickly grew concerned. "I hope I haven't guessed what Lucius Malfoy wanted out of him from that," he muttered. "No, it's fine with me, it won't remotely surprise him, and I suspect he'll feel better seeing what you're really doing. We'll have to ask Cassiopeia obviously, and Ron and Hermione, and I should probably check with Cissy for that matter. But frankly, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make sure Draco actually knows how to control whatever his father taught him to use."

Sirius said he would handle talking to Cassiopeia, so Harry had nothing to do but wait. He returned to the Gryffindor common room after dinner to find a tearfully triumphant Hermione watching Lavender and Ron shout at each other; when no coherent explanation was forthcoming from any of them, Harry turned to Colin Creevey and found out that Lavender had had a go at Ron for spending so much time with Hermione in private, and evidently she did not believe that Harry was usually there.

Harry was of two minds: on the one hand life would be a lot simpler if Lavender and Ron broke up, but on the other then Ron would be upset for weeks, and he would probably go back to actively trying to interfere with Viktor and Hermione. When Lavender had burst into tears for the third time in an hour, this time to Hermione laughing loudly as though at something in her textbook, Harry gave up on the evening and went up to bed.

Saturday it seemed that the worst of both predictions were true: Ron and Lavender were alternating saccharine affection with sniping to combine into something worse than the worst of Ron and Hermione bickering. Furthermore, Draco was aggressively tailing Harry; it seemed that he was not prepared to wait to see if Harry would follow through on his promise. After fifteen minutes or so of all of it, Harry got up to join Cho at the Ravenclaw table; she and her friends were in the midst of an argument about the role of focus in casting Charms, and Harry found that to his surprise he was entirely able to participate after the extra reading Flitwick had given him.

Cho and Harry went to continue the map of the Defense curse after they ate. Harry was grateful that Cho was interested in helping with this, as otherwise he might not be able to pay her any attention the way his schedule had been going lately. But after they had enough practice not looking directly at the curse, strolling through more or less deserted corridors of the castle could be a fairly romantic activity even when interrupted frequently to stop and diagram. And as much as Harry was worried about Hermione's absence, it probably did make Cho happier.

He went down to the library to do homework after lunch and was promptly cornered by Draco, who announced that Sirius had asked him to come up to his quarters. Draco seemed to expect Harry to come with him, and Harry supposed that he could write up his report on the Niffler lesson in Care of Magical Creatures just as well in Sirius's quarters, so he got up to follow Draco.

Sirius was waiting for them, buried deep in a pile of N.E.W.T. student essays. "Go ahead into the kitchen," he said, seeing who it was, "She wants to meet Draco herself."

"She?" Draco said nervously.

"C'mon," Harry said, "She's just a portrait," and pushed open the kitchen door. Draco, close behind on his heels, stopped short.

Cassiopeia had moved the skull and mirror in her painting back to their original position and was reading a book propped up on the skull; she raised her head when they came in. "Hello, Harry," she said. "And you would be Cissy's son?"

"Draco Malfoy, my - er - lady," Draco said, shooting a terrified look at the portrait, and bowed.

Cassiopeia smiled thinly. "Cassiopeia Black. The courtesy title is typically gender neutral, for future reference, but you may address me as Cassiopeia or Aunt Cassie--"

"Aunt Cassie?" Draco said.

"You would be my brother's great-grandson, so, yes," Cassiopeia said calmly. "Even when I was alive I didn't stand on formality, but I am, after all, only a portrait."

Harry hoped rather futilely that she hadn't heard him say so a minute ago.

"So it's you who's been teaching them Dark Arts?" Draco asked after a moment.

"Yes. Sit down?" she asked, gesturing to the kitchen table under her portrait. Draco didn't move until Harry went to pull out a chair himself. "I understand from Sirius you're concerned about the lessons. I gather your mother didn't teach you the family magic."

"No, she said it was - er, that she didn't think it had actually helped her and her sisters any, and she didn't want to lose me," Draco said. "I've had some lessons from my father..."

"Lucius Malfoy," Cassiopeia said calmly, "Is a pea-brained idiot who would fall in love with his own reflection if he'd the attention span to fall in love at all. And he has all of the artistry and skill of an apprentice run wild with a bucket full of black powder."

Draco spluttered. Harry, hoping to forestall a fit on his part, thought of something else: "Wasn't he a child when you died?" He doubted that this sort of thing had been relayed through portraits in the Ministry and Hogwarts.

"Yes, but I hung in Grimmauld Place for the entire war and I heard all of my brother's complaints about Narcissa's marriage, and the other portraits relayed Bella's complaints about his performance," Cassiopeia said dryly. Harry watched Draco double take at the name Bella. "I can't blame you for fearing the Art with that teacher, and I'm happy to remedy that, provided you will promise to listen to me about precautions."

"I'm not going to promise to try anything," Draco said, "But I can swear I'll be at least as careful as you want me to be."

"Good," Cassiopeia said. "Never try anything you're not comfortable with, no matter who tells you to do it."

Draco rocked back, looking surprised.

"Now," Cassiopeia said, "I imagine you'll want some idea of what we've been doing. Hermione's notes will be the most thorough, if you could get hers out, Harry, I doubt she'll mind. Draco, I request you refrain from trying any of this without discussing it with me, the notes won't give you the full context..."

Draco excused himself and hauled Harry back into the sitting room unhesitatingly. Sirius, still reading through the same N.E.W.T. essay scroll, mumbled a hello, but most of his attention was clearly elsewhere. Meanwhile, Draco opened Hermione's notes and began to skim them.

Harry watched him warily, but as he read he seemed to relax; his jaw unclenched, and his face appeared a less chalky white. "I really need to convince her to let me borrow her History notes," he remarked. "What do you bribe her with? Money? Chocolates?"

Sirius made a smothered noise of amusement in the corner.

"Er, Ron usually just reminds her we might fail if she doesn't share History notes," Harry said. "I suppose you've passed the last three years, though. Her parents give her pocket money, I usually just buy her books for holidays..."

"I suppose books might work," Draco said thoughtfully. "Pity I don't have access to Father's library anymore, though, she can just ask Sirius to borrow Black books."

Sirius broke out into a coughing fit; when Harry looked up, he saw he was smirking into his hands.

Draco was frowning at the next page of notes, though. "You haven't gone over magic detection, have you?" he asked, appearing to direct the question to both of them. "I mean, that's not something you could do in school."

"No, it would be a terrible idea somewhere like Hogwarts," Sirius said. "She had an accidental glimpse of it assisting Bill Weasley a while back, and I think she put some of her reading notes in that packet. It may be something she looked up on her own."

"I think some of this is describing actually doing it, though, and the date's recent" Draco said, now appearing worried. "Come look--"

Sirius put aside his marking and came over, brow furrowing. "I'll have a word with her later," he said, looking over Draco's shoulder. "--Try not to worry for now, both of you."

When Harry went down to dinner, he was a little disappointed to find that Lavender and Ron had evidently made up. They were both speaking to Hermione, albeit stiffly and awkwardly. Hermione ate very quickly, then went off to sit with Viktor and Draco at the very end of the Slytherin table. She and Viktor were usually fairly discreet, and Harry had never actually seen them kissing, but Hermione spent the meal leaning into his side with his arm around her.

It was just as well that everyone had calmed down, because as the weeks leading up to Easter went by their teachers stacked on more and more work; they seemed to have suddenly realized they only had a single term left before O.W.L. year began. Draco was either reassured by his participation in their lessons with Cassiopeia or too busy with homework to follow Harry around, though he was notably less friendly to Sirius in Defense. As for Cho, she had little time for Harry at all, as she would take her O.W.L.s that June; what time they spent together, they usually spent doing homework.

The weather remained bleak and cold, if drier, but that seemed just as well with all of the work they had to do. Sirius suggested that Harry take a look through Lily's notes at the very least for help with Charms. In fact, Harry found that it actually helped with nearly every subject. His mother had heavily annotated her textbooks and added commentary in her lecture notes that bridged a number of gaps for him; it seemed that she thought similarly enough to him that he did not have to bash his head against a text for hours to get the point if she explained it.

Percy wrote Hermione another letter containing copious complaints about Amelia Bones, and Bertha Jorkins invited Sirius to tea in London one weekend, from which Sirius returned looking very thoughtful; but he passed on no immediate developments. Harry hung back to ask Narcissa about how her attempts to speak to Fudge had gone after Occlumency one night, and she told him with evident irritation that his wife had been reluctant to actually meet her in public and evasive in her letters. His main comfort was that there had been no incident at the Second Task, and Sirius and Dumbledore were very certain that Barty Crouch Jr. had not accompanied him when he crossed Hogwarts' wards.

In the first week of April, Harry received a somewhat nasty surprise that shouldn't really have been one at all: Colin Creevey hurried to intercept him during break Monday and passed off an invitation to another lesson with Dumbledore. Harry sent Hermione and Ron anxious looks as he showed them the date, Thursday evening.

But before Harry found out what Dumbledore had in store this time, a more pleasant development occurred that Wednesday in dueling club: a familiar, short-haired witch stood at the teachers' podium with Flitwick and Sirius. Susan was also there, chattering happily with her aunt. Feeling much happier about Amelia Bones's presence this time, Harry exchanged grins with Cho and found a place near the front of the room.

"Hello, everyone!" Sirius called a few minutes later. "We have a guest today - I know some of you are already familiar with her, but just in case anyone isn't, this is Amelia Bones of Magical Law Enforcement--"

There was scattered applause from those members of dueling club whose families knew the Boneses.

"Hello, everyone," Amelia called brusquely.

"She's going to be helping us out with a demonstration, and then with instruction," Sirius said. "If everyone could clear the center of the floor, Professor Flitwick and I will be going two on one with Madam Bones..."

"Oh, this is going to be good," Cho breathed in Harry's ear. "She's one of the best duelists in Britain."

Sirius, Flitwick and Amelia Bones formed a sort of triangle on the floor, with Amelia forming the top point and Sirius and Flitwick the base. They bowed together, Sirius and Amelia deeply, Flitwick shallow and jaunty.

Then they all drew their wands.

What followed was one of the strangest duels Harry had ever seen. At times they barely seemed to be fighting at all, only effortlessly passing spells back and forth: the desks became a galloping herd of horses, which Flitwick split in two parts that flowed around him and Sirius, while Sirius transfigured them into a harmless wind; Flitwick conjured shrieking, carnivorous eagles that dove at Amelia while Sirius unleashed a barrage of transfigurations at the ground under her feet, Amelia alternating canceling them with dispelling the eagles with tiny, efficient twitches of her wand.

At other times the duel was furious: waves of flame crashed across the room, dissipating on the invisible barriers they had set up in front of the students, and cutting curses drew blood that splattered on the classroom floor. Amelia and Sirius in particular were willing to throw elbows and kicks into the fight when they closed, and often crashed to the ground to roll rather than taking a curse; Flitwick usually remained standing, stepping calmly aside to dodge.

Harry had expected that Flitwick and Sirius were good enough to win against nearly any opponent together. In fact, after what seemed like an eternity, but according to his watch had only been ten minutes, Amelia swept the floor into ice with a wave of her wand, then as Sirius and Flitwick both scrambled to keep their footing and shield, melted and refroze it with a turn of her wrist. Sirius and Flitwick's feet were trapped in the ice, so that neither was able to dodge, and Amelia very shortly dispatched their shield and flicked a jinx conjuring red paint at both of them.

"Dead," she said, calmly, lips twitching in a little half smile.

"We yield," Sirius said, sighing. "Now let us out of this ice, will you?"

"Gladly," Amelia said, and bowed as she did it.

In the suddenly quiet room, Hannah Abbott's whisper was very loud: "Susan, your aunt is really cool."

Chapter Text

On Thursday, Harry proceeded after dinner to Dumbledore's office, feeling decidedly nervous. On the bright side, he thought, after tomorrow they would be on Easter break, so he would have plenty of time to talk to Sirius; and there was enough holiday homework assigned that he would have plenty to distract him, too. This was probably the first time he had been grateful for holiday assignments.

"Professor," Harry said, reaching the top of the spiral staircase. He could not help a certain suspicion, and he concentrated very hard on maintaining the meditative state Narcissa had drilled him on. He only briefly had to visualize the snitch now.

"Ah, good evening, Harry," Dumbledore said. "And how has your spring gone?"

Very light, like a moth's wings fluttering against skin, Harry felt a Legilimens touch his mind.

Empty, he thought, be empty... The dive for the snitch, unaffected by spectators' roars and boos, with no room for outside thought...

"Busy, sir," Harry said. "Did you hear about Amelia Bones dueling Sirius and Professor Flitwick?"

"I was delighted to hear she had accepted Sirius's invitation," Dumbledore said. Harry felt the Legilimancy attack withdraw. Surely Dumbledore must have noticed the change - Harry had had no training in Occlumency before - but he did not comment or change expression. "And very disappointed I could not witness it. Professor Flitwick told me about the trick with the horses, delightful on both ends. Lemon drop?"

"No thank you, sir," Harry said. "Whose memory will we be viewing tonight?" The Pensieve was already out.

It was a struggle to keep his face blank. He had, he realized, not taken seriously Sirius and Snape's suggestion that Dumbledore might use Legilimancy on him. But now he had proof, and he could not think how to react; except that he should think about it later when his face would not give anything away.

"A man by the name of Bob Ogden, Harry," Dumbledore said. "He was employed by the Ministry some time ago, in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Shall we go?"

They emerged in the countryside under a brilliant blue sky, on a lane with high, tangled hedgerows. Bob Ogden transpired to be a short, fat man with heavy spectacles and the bizarre assortment of clothing many wizards and witches used around muggles. As they appeared, he was reading a wooden sign directing travelers to Great Hangleton, 5 miles away in one direction; or Little Hangleton, 1 mile away in the other.

They set down the path towards Little Hangleton. Harry was just beginning to wonder at how early this memory began compared to the others, assuming they were going to the village visible in the valley below, when they turned through a gap in the hedge.

The path through this gap was narrower, bordered by wilder hedgerows, and shortly let out at an abandoned cottage in a tangle of trees. Harry squinted through the nettles obscuring the grimy windows, wondering what could be inside to bring them there, when a window was thrown open and smoke emerged: evidently the cottage was inhabited after all, despite the mossy walls and missing roof tiles.

Ogden was approaching the door, but he stopped abruptly, staring at it. Harry, looking at it, realized with no small amount of disgust that someone had nailed a dead snake to it.

Then a man in rags dropped from a tree. Harry had drawn his wand instinctively without thinking. He flushed, recalling that this was only a memory and looking at Dumbledore, who was studiously watching the scene in front of him. Harry put his wand away again.

The man hissed at Ogden, "You're not welcome." He was matted with dirt, equally filthy as the house and equally neglected, missing teeth instead of roof tiles. Harry could not blame Ogden for backing away rapidly, particularly as he was brandishing a wand in one hand and a rather bloody knife in the other.

"Er - good morning. I'm from the Ministry of Magic--"

"You're not welcome."

"Er - I'm sorry - I don't understand you," said Ogden nervously.

Harry stared.

"You understand him, I'm sure, Harry?" Dumbledore said quietly.

"Yes, of course. Why can't Ogden--" Harry started to ask before his eyes slid to the snake on the door. "He's speaking Parseltongue?"

"Very good," Dumbledore said.

The man in rags was advancing; "Now, look," Ogden said, but a bang issued from his wand, and Ogden was on the ground, clutching his nose, from which yellowish goo spurted.

"Morfin!" someone called furiously. An elderly man was exiting the cottage, banging the door. He was shorter than the first - Morfin? - with very long arms and broad shoulders. He halted beside the first man, who was now laughing madly.

"Ministry, is it?" the elderly man said, looking down disdainfully.

"Correct!" Ogden said, angrily dabbing his face. "And you, I take it, are Mr. Gaunt?"

"S'right," said Gaunt. "Got you in the face, did he?"

"Yes, he did!"

Gaunt did not make any apology for this. "Should've made your presence known, shouldn't you?" said Gaunt. "This is private property. Can't just walk in here and not expect my son to defend himself?"

"Defend himself against what, man?" said Ogden, getting to his feet again

"Busybodies. Intruders. Muggles and filth."

Ogden used his wand to take the jinx off his nose, and Mr. Gaunt said out of the corner of his mouth in Parseltongue, "Get in the house. Don't argue." Now that he was looking for it, Harry could distinguish the hissing.

Morfin nearly argued, but when his father glared, he went back into the cottage and slammed the door. The snake swung sadly against it.

"It's your son I'm here to see, Mr. Gaunt," said Ogden. "That was Morfin, wasn't it?"

"Ar, that was Morfin," Gaunt said, and evidently wishing to distract, added, "Are you pureblood?"

"That's neither here nor there," said Ogden, coldly. For the first time Harry looked at him with respect.

Gaunt squinted in and said, clearly trying to insult him, "Now I come to think about it, I've seen noses like yours down in the village."

"I don't doubt it, if your son's been let loose on them. Perhaps we could continue this discussion inside?"

"Inside?"

"Yes, Mr. Gaunt. I've already told you. I'm here about Morfin. We sent an owl--"

"I've no use for owls, said Gaunt. "I don't open letters."

"Then you can hardly complain that you get no warning of visitors. I am here following a serious breach of Wizarding law, which occurred here in the early hours of the morning--"

"All right, all right, all right!" Gaunt was now shouting. "Come in the bleeding house, then, and much good it'll do you?"

The house was as tiny as it had seemed, and even filthier on the inside. The main room seemed to be both kitchen and living room, with two doors leading off it. Morfin was sitting in a dirt-encrusted armchair; Harry paid him no mind until he heard the Parseltongue he was crooning to a live adder in his hands:

"Hissy, hissy, little snakey,
Slither on the floor,
You be good to Morfin
Or he'll nail you to the door."

He stopped and looked at Dumbledore, appalled; but before Dumbledore had a chance to answer his look, he heard a scuffling noise in the corner by the open window.

Turning to it, he saw a girl dressed in ragged gray, attempting to cook on a grimy black stove and sorting through pots on a shelf above it. She was no prettier than her brother, but had made a little effort to keep herself cleaner. Harry thought he had never seen a more defeated looking person, watching her face and her apathetic movements.

"M'daughter, Merope," said Gaunt grudgingly.

Harry frowned, thinking of some of the people Cassiopeia had mentioned. "Like the star?" he said to Dumbledore.

"A common naming schema among certain families," Dumbledore said.

"Good morning," Ogden said to Merope; but she gave him a frightened look and turned her back to the room. Harry, remembering how alarmed the Dursleys had been any time company spotted him, wondered if she was not allowed to speak to strangers.

"Well, Mr. Gaunt," said Ogden, "To get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son, Morfin, performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night."

Merope dropped a pot with a clang.

"Pick it up," Gaunt snarled at her, evidently savagely grateful for someone to abuse freely. "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle--" Harry felt that Gaunt calling anyone else filthy had to be regarded as ironic at best-- "What's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?"

"Mr. Gaunt, please!" Ogden said, as Merope flushed scarlet, dropped the pot a second time, drew a wand and muttered something. The pot did not rise but shot across the floor away from her, cracking in two on impact with the opposite wall.

Morfin laughed again. Gaunt shouted, "Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!"

Harry's nails dug into his palms and he found his heart was pounding.

Before Merope could get her wand out, Ogden had lifted his own and repaired it instantly. Gaunt stiffened as though to shout at him, but got himself under control and said to Merope, instead, "Lucky the nice man from the Ministry's here, isn't it? Perhaps he'll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn't mind dirty Squibs..."

Merope put the pot back on the shelf and stood very still, back to the wall, as though hoping everybody would forget she was there.

"Mr. Gaunt," Ogden said, "As I've said: the reason for my visit--"

"I heard you the first time! And so what? Morfin gave a Muggle a bit of what was coming to him - what about it, then?"

"Morfin has broken Wizarding law."

"Morfin has broken Wizarding law," Gaunt said, singsong and mocking. "He taught a filthy Muggle a lesson, that's illegal now, is it?"

"Yes," said Ogden. "I"m afraid it is." He took a small scroll of parchment from his pocket and unrolled it. Harry, looking up towards Merope, thought he saw something like triumph flash in her eyes; but she was so quickly subsumed in defeat again that he thought he might have imagined it.

"What's that, then, his sentence?" said Gaunt angrily.

"It is a summons to the Ministry for a hearing--"

"Summons! Summons? Who do you think you are, summoning my son anymore?"

"I'm Head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad," said Ogden.

"And you think we're scum, do you?" screamed Gaunt, now advancing on Ogden, though he pointed only a dirty fingernail and not his wand. "Scum who'll come running when the Ministry tells 'em to? Do you know who you're talking to, you filthy little mudblood, do you?"

"I was under the impression that I was speaking to Mr. Gaunt," said Ogden. He did not retreat in the face of Gaunt's advance.

"That's right!" Gaunt snarled, shoving his middle finger in Ogden's face; Harry took a minute to spot the ugly, black-stoned ring. "See this? See this? Know what it is? Know where it came from? Centuries it's been in our family, that's how far back we go, and pureblood all the way! Know how much I've been offered for this, with the Peverell coat of arms engraved on the stone?"

"I've really no idea," Ogden said, blinking, "And it's quite beside the point, Mr. Gaunt. Your son has committed--"

Howling with rage, Gaunt ran towards his daughter. Harry tensed, even knowing there was virtually nothing he could do, that this had all happened years in the past. He thought Gaunt was throttling her at first; then he was dragging Merope to Ogden by a gold chain around her neck. "See this?" he bellowed, shaking a heavy gold locket while Merope gasped for breath.

"I see it, I see it!" Ogden said quickly, looking with concern at Merope.

"Slytherin's! Salazar Slytherin's! We're his last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?"

"Mr. Gaunt, your daughter!" said Ogden in alarm. Merope, released, was staggering back to her corner, rubbing her neck.

"So!" Gaunt said triumphantly. "Don't you go talking to us as if we're dirt on your shoes! Generations of purebloods, wizards all - more than you can say, I don't doubt!" He spat.

Morfin cackled; Merope, head bowed, said nothing, and hid behind her lank hair.

"Mr. Gaunt," Ogden said, "I am afraid that neither your ancestors nor mine have anything to do with the matter in hand. I am here because of Morfin, Morfin and the Muggle he accosted last night. Our information--" he glanced down at his scroll of parchment-- "Is that Morfin performed a jinx or hex on the said Muggle, causing him to erupt in highly painful hives."

Morfin giggled.

"Be quiet, boy," Gaunt snarled in Parseltongue.

"And so what if he did, then?" he continued to Ogden. "I expect you've wiped the Muggle's filthy face clean for him, and his memory to boot--"

"That's hardly the point, is it, Mr. Gaunt?" said Ogden. "This was an unprovoked attack on a defenseless--"

"Ah, I had you marked out as a Muggle-lover the moment I saw you," sneered Gaunt, spitting again.

"This discussion is getting us nowhere," said Ogden. "It is clear from your son's attitude that he feels no remorse for his actions. Morfin will attend a hearing on the fourteenth of September to answer the charges of using magic in front of a Muggle and causing harm and distress to that same Mugg--" He paused.

There was a jingling sound outside the window, and horses' hooves, and laughing voices. The winding lane to the village must come very close to the house. Gaunt froze, listening, and Morfin hissed; Merope raised her head, face gone even paler.

"My God, what an eyesore!" called a girl. "Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared away, Tom?"

"It's not ours," said a young man. "Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt, and his children. The son's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village--"

The girl laughed. Morfin furiously made to rise.

"Keep your seat," said his father in Parseltongue.

"Tom," said the girl, "I might be wrong - but has somebody nailed a snake to that door?"

"Good lord, you're right! That'll be the son, I told you he's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecelia, darling."

"Darling," whispered Morfin in Parseltongue to his sister. "Darling, he called her. So he wouldn't have you anyway."

Merope went even whiter and swayed, so that Harry wondered if she would faint.

"What's that?" said Gaunt sharply in Parseltongue, looking between them. "What did you say, Morfin?"

Harry remembered Cassiopeia telling them that her brother had killed her, her first references to an inappropriate lover and the later, horrible story of what had happened to her and Margaret; the way Draco and Sirius had both discussed fearing for female relatives and friends...

"She likes looking at that Muggle," said Morfin, a vicious expression on his face; he had found something Merope had done that was worse than bringing the Ministry down on him, something with which to redirect Gaunt's likely rage. "Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn't she? And last night--"

Merope shook her head, begging with her eyes, but it did not prevent Morfin from continuing, "Hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn't she?"

"Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle?" said Gaunt quietly.

Merope shook her head in frantic denial but did not seem able to form words to explain herself, pressing into the wall.

"But I got him, Father!" said Morfin. "I got him as he went by and he didn't look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?"

"You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!" roared Gaunt, and as Harry had feared his hand closed around his daughter's throat.

Ogden shouted "No!" and raised his wand, crying "Relashio!" Gaunt was thrown back away from his daughter; he tripped over a chair and fell. Morfin roared in rage, leaping for Ogden and brandishing knife and wand, firing hexes indiscriminately.

Ogden ran for his life; Dumbledore indicated they should follow and Harry went, feeling sick for the probably long-dead Merope. Ogden ran up the path and collided with a glossy chestnut horse ridden by a handsome, dark-haired young man, but Harry was hardly paying attention until Dumbledore was taking his elbow and tugging him up to his office.

"What happened to the girl - to Merope?" said Harry at once.

"Oh, she survived," said Dumbledore, to Harry's relief. "Ogden Apparated back to the Ministry and returned with reinforcements within fifteen minutes. Morfin and his father attempted to fight, but both were overpowered, removed from the cottage, and subsequently convicted by the Wizengamot. Morfin, who already had a record of Muggle attacks, was sentenced to three years in Azkaban. Marvolo, who had injured several Ministry employees in addition to Ogden, received six months."

"Marvolo?" said Harry, who had been about to demand what exactly incarcerating Marvolo for six months was supposed to do to protect his daughter from murder. "You mean that was--"

"Voldemort's grandfather," Dumbledore said.

"So Merope," Harry said, "She was his mother? Or Morfin--"

"Merope," Dumbledore said, with a slight nod. "As it happens we caught a glimpse of Voldemort's father, as well. The handsome muggle who used to ride past the Gaunt cottage was Tom Riddle Senior."

"And they ended up married?" Harry asked in utter disbelief.

Dumbledore smiled wryly. "I do not believe it was a lasting relationship, even before her death about a year and a half later."

"How did she die?" Harry said, even more startled by the news that Voldemort's birth was so close. "He was brought up in an orphanage, wasn't he?"

"Yes. She died in that same orphanage, in fact, in labor; she never had a chance to meet her son. Tom Riddle left her while she was pregnant, I know that much; he reappeared in Little Hangleton, saying that he had been hoodwinked. I suppose he was bewitched by Merope, although the townspeople reached the conclusion that she had lied and said that she was going to have his baby and that was why he had married her."

"But she did," Harry said. "--Hang on. If Tom Riddle was still alive, why was Voldemort..."

"He never troubled to find out what became of his son," Dumbledore said, quietly. "Harry, can you see why I've shown you this? What insight we can gain into his mind?"

"Well--" Harry said, mind going off in several different unrelated directions, "His mother's family was obsessed with ancestry, too - the heirs of Slytherin - wait," he said. "Tom Riddle - the diary, I mean - said he thought we were the first two Parselmouths to pass through Hogwarts since Slytherin..."

"An exaggeration, but not too large of one," Dumbledore said calmly. "The Gaunts - like several other isolated families - did not send their children to Hogwarts, preferring to teach them at home. You saw how well that approach worked with Merope; depression and hopelessness often sap one's powers. It is one of the reasons the Dementors guard Azkaban."

Harry looked up, startled. "You mean - they want the prisoners to be miserable?"

Dumbledore smiled sadly. "It is a very difficult thing to imprison a wizard or witch, Harry. Desperation tends to lend power and abilities that one does not display under normal circumstances, like wandless magic. It was deemed necessary by the Ministry of the time to find some method of suppressing magic even for the very powerful, and the Dementors, it must be admitted, are effective. The fact that they also kill many of their charges over time has been deemed... necessary collateral, I am afraid."

"That's sick," Harry said.

Dumbledore inclined his head; then said after a moment, "But we were discussing Voldemort."

"Right," Harry said, trying to focus. "So - it wasn't like he got that from Merope, sir, but - he was raised without knowing his parents, but he must have found out he was related to the Gaunts with his middle name. And once he knew that he could've found his father, too, couldn't he? So he must have found out his father left his mother - and about the Gaunts being obsessed with Slytherin..."

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, "I am fairly certain that both of his overriding obsessions - his interest in his ancestry and his hatred of muggles - were born before him, with the circumstances of his parents' meeting and his own birth. He would not have liked what he found, when and if he discovered the Gaunt hovel - he would have envisioned a glorious past if he could only find his magical family - and when he did, his interests turned to anger and resentment."

Harry went down from the office only a few minutes later. This time he went to find Ron and Hermione at once to recount the meeting, knowing he should tell Cassiopeia and Sirius too: this was a suggestion as to what Voldemort might have studied and sought out, and if Cassiopeia was correct about his use of multiple Horcruxes, what other objects he might have been interested in... Heirlooms of Slytherin, or of the Gaunts, he supposed...

Harry was so occupied with the story of Merope Gaunt and Tom Riddle that it was not until he was in bed in his dormitory that it occurred to him that he had not told Sirius that Dumbledore had used Legilimancy on him.

"Well," Cassiopeia's portrait remarked a few days later, "I always said the pureblood aristocracy would eventually pay for how they treat their women... Although I admit I didn't think Tom Riddle was the particular form."

"What do you mean?" Ron asked, stuffing half of an eclair from the kitchen in his mouth and swallowing rapidly. "He was all in favor of pureblood toffs being in charge, wasn't he?"

"Oh, in theory, but you notice how many old families have gone extinct in the last couple of decades - though I suppose you don't remember what it was like before." Cassiopeia shook her head. "A rather horrible story, Harry. You convey it well."

"Thanks," Harry said uncertainly.

It was the second day of Easter holidays, and the three of them had gathered in Sirius's quarters while he finished up his marking on homework assigned before the holiday. None of them had gone home, although Sirius was planning to host Easter dinner at their actual house next weekend and had arranged permission to take Ron and Hermione off school grounds for the day. The Weasleys were also invited, although Hermione's parents hadn't been able to come.

Harry's mind leapt to the other thing that he had found out for sure during his meeting with Dumbledore. He hesitated. Ron and Hermione both knew it had been a possibility anyway, but somehow he couldn't stand saying it in front of him. He could picture their reactions too well: Hermione's fluttering horror, her desire to make excuses for teachers warring with her righteous anger; Ron wanting to believe in Dumbledore and being crushed...

"Sirius?" Harry said, "Can I talk to you in private a minute?"

Sirius raised his eyebrows but stood. "Certainly," he said, and gestured Harry after him into his bedroom.

Harry had been in here a handful of times, but not often and never for very long. He had noticed the muggle rock posters on the walls and a small photograph of Sirius with a group of people in muggle clothing who were absolutely covered in rainbows, as well as the fact that Sirius seemed to have nearly as many bottles of hair product as Lavender.

Now, standing near the dresser, he spotted another photograph on the other side from the rainbow-covered group. In it a Sirius a few years older than he had been in the Wizengamot memory stood between two witches, clearly recognizable as younger versions of Narcissa and Bellatrix. It was snowing heavily in the picture, and all three wore cloaks and scarves. Harry identified the street behind them after a moment as Diagon Alley, but not the Diagon Alley he knew; windows in this one were boarded up or covered by posters with large, official looking notices on them, and the few people in the background huddled together in tight groups.

"So, what was it, Harry?" Sirius asked, and Harry jumped guiltily.

"About my meeting with Dumbledore," Harry said, and hesitated a moment. There was no real way to soften this. "He tried to use Legilimancy on me," he said. "When I came in. I tried to deflect it, and it felt like I stopped him, but I don't know, he's good enough I might not have noticed. Probably I wouldn't have if he was really trying."

Sirius stared at him a moment and swallowed hard. "I - I see," he said shakily, and sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

"Sirius?" Harry said, worried and rushing forward.

"I'm fine, Harry, I'm fine. I should have expected--" Sirius shook his head. "Thank you for telling me," he said seriously, and got up to hug him. Harry felt oddly reassured by Sirius's arms around him, and the now-familiar smell of dog and leather and pomade that clung to him. "I'm glad you trusted me with it. I'd hoped that we were just being paranoid, but since we aren't, it's better that we know and are prepared."

"Are we going to - do anything?" Harry asked.

"Anything else, you mean?" Sirius said. "If you aren't comfortable I can insist as your guardian that the private lessons stop. Hells, if you want I can pull you, teach you myself or send you to Beauxbatons and resign--"

"No!" Harry said rapidly.

"But I didn't think so. Just keep in mind it is an option," Sirius said.

"I don't think it's a good idea to stop the private lessons," Harry said after a moment of thought. "He has plenty of chances to see me, and this at least gives us an idea of what he's trying to do. And I know that he's - that he's manipulating me, now, so I'll know to ask you about anything like those memories..."

His voice trailed off. It was quite obvious that this was the next step, and that was why he had said it; but once he did he realized that he was treating Dumbledore as though he was an enemy. His eyes stung and he blinked furiously until he was sure he would not cry.

"Alright," Sirius said. "Just let me know if you change your mind, alright?"

"I will," Harry said. "So, apart from that…"

"I'm going to have to tell Snape," Sirius said unhappily. "We'll want him to take a look at you and see if there's anything implanted, any compulsions or anything--"

"You can do that?" Harry said, alarmed.

"I don't think it's likely," Sirius said quickly. "It's not really Dumbledore's style, even with real enemies like Death Eaters. If he was willing to do that why bother trying to drive you away from me with information? But we'd be stupid not to look at this point, better safe than sorry."

"Alright," Harry said and swallowed.

Chapter Text

Sirius went with Harry to Snape's office to tell him about the Legilimancy attack that very evening. Upon hearing he went very still and cold. For a moment Harry felt something that was not his usual dread of an unpleasant and cruel man, but more like terror: Snape seemed to be something truly monstrous, a Dark wizard of awesome and terrifying power.

Then he breathed out and he was only Snape, the Potions Master once more. "Well, then," he said. "Potter, come sit down. I'd as soon get this over with as soon as possible."

Then Harry had to sit, relax all of the protections he had been building up with Narcissa and Snape's guidance, and let Snape rifle through his head.

It was not pleasant, and at many times it was only Sirius, standing behind him with a hand on his shoulder, that kept him from losing either his temper or his composure. Snape was going through his memories, and while he flicked through them with a clinical disinterest, the contents did not become any less embarrassing for it: he was speaking to a boa constrictor at the zoo - kissing Cho in Hogsmeade - speaking to Dumbledore about Quirrell in his office first year--

At least Snape was not so brutal as during his lessons, when he was mimicking a violent assault; the memories whipped by quickly and did not eclipse Harry's view of the office.

Finally, Snape sat back. Sirius's hands were tight on Harry's shoulders, and Harry knew without looking that he was glaring at Snape. He suspected there would be red marks on his shoulders later, but he didn't mind.

"Well?" Sirius said flatly.

"If there is any trap or compulsion left in him, I am not skilled enough to discern it," Snape said. "His mind is, as far as I can say, his own."

Harry went almost limp with relief. Even the slimy, disturbing contents of the Potions office could not bother him.

Sirius hesitated, then said, an odd note in his tone, "About Dumbledore..."

"Save it, Black," Snape said flatly. "I am - familiar with how he handles subordinates. I had hoped that I, as one of his most questionable associates, was an exception, but evidently not." He looked down his nose at Harry and added snidely, "Not that any great subtlety or trickery is necessary to handle your godson, but I suppose he has reasons for being paranoid."

Harry tensed, anticipating an argument, but Sirius made a sort of irritated huffing noise and said only, "I mean, I know you're indebted to him, but if you need help--"

"I will obtain it without your assistance. Now get out of my office, I have grading," Snape said curtly.

Harry went up to Sirius's quarters, where Sirius made him hot cocoa, and he sat on the couch, feeling drained. His head ached from the intrusion of Legilimancy, even well-intentioned, and there was a curious distance between him and his thoughts, as though he was watching them from the outside.

"Well, it isn't as bad as it could have been," Sirius said, as though to himself, then looked up and seemed to remember Harry. "--Not that you can't be angry about it, Harry, what he did is bad enough."

"I know," Harry said. "I mean - thanks, Sirius. For..." His throat seemed to close. He had no idea how to articulate his thoughts at that moment - that he would never have known if not for Sirius's intervention to get him taught Occlumency, or had any idea what to do if he had. (Which, Harry supposed, meant he also ought to be grateful to Snape. Fortunately, he doubted Snape would appreciate any display of the sentiment, so he didn't have to worry about how to express this.)

"Harry," Sirius said seriously, "You don't need to thank me. You should have had someone looking out for you all along."

"I know," Harry said, and swallowed to clear his throat. "But thank you, anyway."

They sat in companionable silence for a while, and Harry sipped his cocoa, gradually feeling more like himself. Sirius eventually went to get his own grading to work on.

Harry was just wondering if he should go up to Gryffindor Tower for the evening to see Ron and Hermione, or at least to get some of his homework for the holiday, when the portrait hole outside banged open and Hermione darted inside in a great hurry.

She stopped short as it closed, seeing them there, and looked appalled. Harry could see why: her cloak was on around her shoulders as though she had been outside, but it was wet at the edges and smelled strongly of the lake, and she was wearing very little under it: she had on the jeans she and Harry usually wore under their robes, but in addition to lacking them she seemed to be missing her shirt, and was trying to hold her cloak shut under the fastener to hide it.

"Hermione," Sirius said, already on his feet. "Are you alright? Is someone chasing you?"

She shook her head rapidly, her hair bouncing. Portions of it were also wet, and Harry thought he saw a piece of lake grass dangling from a strand by her ear. For a moment Harry was reminded strongly of her floating unconscious underwater during the Second Task. "No, I only thought this would be closer than the Tower, you're not so many flights up, and -- can I use your shower? Please?" she said plaintively.

"Go ahead," said Sirius, although he obviously wanted to know what was going on. "I'll get you one of my spare shirts, hang on."

Hermione came out of the shower not much time later in her jeans and a faded band shirt of Sirius's, with her hair wrapped up in a towel. "Thank you," she said gratefully, and took the mug of cocoa Harry poured her. "I--" She blushed. "Karkaroff caught me in Viktor's room on the ship and he was - really mad. I sort of lost track of time, usually I leave before he gets back. Anyway, you know he's not happy about Viktor seeing me - because of my parents - he glared the whole time at the Yule Ball."

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, alarmed and remembering that Karkaroff had been a Death Eater.

"He couldn't curse me or anything, it was public." Hermione made a face into her drink. "But he could call McGonagall and go on at her about me invading Durmstrang property and - you know. I've got detention for the first week after Easter holiday. And he wouldn't let me go back to the ship for my clothes or ask Viktor to bring them. McGonagall offered to go up to Gryffindor, but I didn't want to wait on the grounds - er, topless - for that long, so I just said I'd make it up with my cloak and took off as soon as they let me."

"Did you fall in the lake?" Sirius asked, now looking like he was trying very hard to stay sympathetic and not laugh.

"I tried to make it over the side of the ship before he saw who it was," Hermione mumbled, blush darkening, "And I can't do a drying charm properly nonverbal, it only sort of half works. I'm just glad I didn't have my bag and lose it, or get the books wet."

"All's well that ends well," Sirius said reassuringly. "Trust me, everyone has a few moments like that - one time McGonagall caught me having a snog in the Astronomy Tower and I wasn't thinking and tried to escape onto the roof--"

Harry choked, nearly spraying cocoa across the couch.

"I know," Sirius said. "I did get out the window but there's no way off without a brooms, so I just had to sit there - less than clothed - and wait for her to come rescue me. Made it about a thousand times worse."

Hermione giggled. "That might be worse," she said, sounding happier. "Did you--"

A chiming noise came from the desk. "Just a second, sorry," Sirius said, and went to pick up the hand mirror Harry had seen him talking to Narcissa with months ago. "--Hello, Cissy, Harry and Hermione are with me," he said into it, and turned the mirror so that they could see Narcissa's face. Hermione, who Harry remembered hadn't seen the mirror, looked fascinated.

"Hello," Narcissa said to them. "Good, Harry's who I wanted to talk about - Sirius, did you ask him?"

"I forgot," Sirius said, rolling his eyes now that the mirror was angled away from his face. "There was a minor crisis I was occupied with today, I was just about to get to it."

"Well, do it now, then," Narcissa said.

"Narcissa is going to afternoon tea with the Boneses and a few other people this week," Sirius said, keeping an even tone but with an expression just short of rolling his eyes again. "She'd like to know if you would like to come along, as it should be a fairly small and quiet party and you've no experience with formal society at all. Draco and Susan Bones should both be there, so you won't be the only teenager in the room."

"Er," Harry said, thinking that he would like nothing less.

"I realize it sounds singularly unexciting," Narcissa interjected from the mirror. "But you realize you'll have to eventually, and people will be more forgiving now, while you've only recently acquired a Wizarding guardian. And I thought you might like a chance to talk to Amelia Bones, since I understand you saw her duel recently."

For the first time Harry felt a spark of interest. "Er," he said again and looked at Sirius. "Do you think I should?"

Sirius shrugged, and looked as though he wanted to say no. "Narcissa is correct that you'll have to eventually as an adult, and it is true that the Bones family tends to be less formal about things. And tea should be fairly short."

Harry glanced at Hermione then, feeling rather awkward about being invited to something without her, but she smiled ruefully and shook her head, so he said, "Alright, I guess."

"Wonderful," Narcissa said. "Sirius, I'll be around to take him dress robe shopping tomorrow."

"I have them," he protested, "For the Yule Ball--"

"Darling, robes for a formal ball are completely different from afternoon dress at a semi-formal tea, even aside from the fact that Sirius purchased them off the rack," Narcissa said, and Harry knew she was the one deliberately refraining from rolling her eyes this time.

"Alright," Harry said, although he was already regretting accepting.

"Wonderful," Narcissa said. "Incidentally, Sirius, why is Hermione Granger hanging around in your quarters in her underwear?"

"This isn't underwear!" Hermione protested.

"Fine, I'm sure it's perfectly respectable muggle clothing but you're still at school."

"She fell in the lake and this was closer than Gryffindor Tower," Sirius said. "She stopped by to use the shower."

"I see," Narcissa said, quirking her eyebrow. "Fell in the lake, was it? Off a certain ship?"

Hermione was scarlet again.

Narcissa went on thoughtfully, "I know Severus gives his students something you might sort of call an educational talk - you know, 'don't get pregnant in the dorms or I will make your life hell before your parents get a start, this is the appropriate book to consult' - but I'm not sure McGonagall does anything of the kind, does she? No? I'll have to discuss getting you a reference with Andromeda," she said, smirked at them, and ended the call. The mirror's surface rippled; then Narcissa's face vanished, and it reflected only the room.

"Sirius," Hermione said, sounding rather flustered, "Your cousin is--"

"Yeah, I know," Sirius said, and dragged a hand over his face. "Sorry. If it's any consolation, living with her as a teenager was much worse."

Robe shopping with Narcissa was not much like doing it on his own. They went to a tailor Harry didn't know, a young, red haired woman who Narcissa introduced as Madam Boot. She measured Harry and began talking to Narcissa over his head rapidly, using many terms he did not know and only occasionally consulting him for his opinion; "Green or red?" and "This length or this one?" were occasionally directed to him.

"What did you think of her?" Narcissa asked as they left an hour or two later, Madam Boot having promised to deliver the robes by the next day.

"...I'm still not sure what we bought," Harry said, and Narcissa laughed, bell-like.

"Don't worry about it, you'll be appropriately dressed," she said. "Madam Boot can't quite believe her luck, my old tailor is not politically appropriate anymore. Mind you, showing up and demanding a full custom outfit by the next day is not something you do to tradeswomen on a regular basis, she's doing it because she had some space in her schedule and she wants very badly to be taken on by an actual patron."

"I'll keep that in mind," Harry said, not adding that he would never have dreamed of doing it now, either.

Narcissa laughed again. "While we're out, and since you endured that nicely, let's get something to eat, shall we?" she said. "And we can practice table manners at the cafe."

Harry expected that part to be horrible, but Narcissa was more tactful than he might have expected from the way she teased Sirius and Snape. She bought a bag of chocolate buttons that multiplied when split in half along with their coffee and tarts, then taught him a game where they divided up the buttons between them and stole them from each other when they caught a mistake.

This might have been very unfair, except that Narcissa made a number of deliberate, comedic errors, exaggeratedly pulling faces, sticking her elbows in her dishes and making absurd comments, so that Harry had trouble getting out his points through laughter. She became subtler as the meal went on and Harry started to get a grip on what she wanted.

It was still exhausting, and Harry was extremely grateful to go back to Hogwarts in the evening and be able to eat in the Great Hall, where he could blow bubbles in his pumpkin juice or reach over Ron to grab the last roll before anyone else took it, and no one would comment.

He still had a third of his chocolate buttons left, and some of them had not yet been snapped to multiply them; so after dinner he went and found Cho studying frenetically in a window nook and coaxed her into looking up enough to share them while he quizzed her on Transfiguration terminology.

Cho was starting to get a distinctly frazzled look as her O.W.L.s approached; she often appeared in the Great Hall at breakfast with yesterday's makeup smeared across her eyes and only remembered to fix it at lunch, and her hair was more often held up with a spare quill or her wand than brushed or put up properly. But she was doing better than many of her friends; according to her, Marietta had burst into tears loudly in Charms the week before break, declared she was a failure as a witch and a human being, and had had to be taken to the infirmary to be given a Calming Draught.

"I'm sure you'll do fine," Harry said, "You've been working for ages, and you're really smart."

"I hope so," Cho said miserably; Harry wasn't sure she had heard him at first, but she definitely seemed more confident when they went back to the Transfiguration.

The next day, he and Draco met in Sirius's quarters to greet Narcissa. She passed off a bundle of clothing to him and told him to go get dressed, "And let Sirius do something about that awful hair, dove," then began to critique Draco's wardrobe choices.

Harry went into Sirius's bedroom to dress in what turned out to be light gray silk robes with burgundy lining that showed when he turned back the cuffs and collar. Fifteen minutes later, he was feeling very ridiculous putting on several heavy, flat silver rings and a cuff bracelet, while Sirius assured him that wizards invariably wore at least some jewelry and tried to tame his hair.

"It's probably no use," Harry said, staring dubiously into the mirror. "It's always been like this, even when Aunt Petunia cut it short it just grew back."

"That's normal," Narcissa said from the doorway, "Our hair corrects itself to our mental images if we've any decent amount of power. Still, you might try growing it out if you can get yourself to imagine it, it might be neater..."

"James and Montgomery had hair about this length, and about this tamable too," Sirius said, smearing hair gel into his brush and running it over Harry's head again. "There, I think this is as neat as it's going to get, Cissy, is he presentable?"

Narcissa stood back to study him and nodded in apparent satisfaction. "You'd never know how he goes about normally. Come on, Draco's good enough. Have a good time grading twelve year olds' essays, Sirius," she added, standing on tiptoe to kiss her cousin's cheek.

"Where are we actually going?" Harry asked, glancing over Draco and Narcissa. Draco was wearing soft green robes and - making Harry feel marginally less stupid - had in addition to rings, a gold chain showing at the edge of his collar. Narcissa was wearing crinkly navy robes, and Harry spotted what looked like a signet ring on her left pinky as she pulled Floo powder from the mantle.

"The Bones property on the upper estate, it's the one they usually use for entertaining," she was saying. "Particularly now with the family so small... Beechcroft House," she called clearly, and stepped through.

Chapter Text

Harry emerged from the Floo upright and only somewhat disarrayed. He felt this was a serious accomplishment given his previous experience. Draco, however, rolled his eyes and reached over to straighten his collar. "What are you, five?" he muttered.

"I've only used a Floo a few times before," Harry hissed back, trying to flatten his hair again.

"Come on, boys," Narcissa called ahead, laughter in her voice. Harry turned to inspect the space they had emerged in. It was an entrance hall, with two fireplaces lit across from each other; as he watched, the other one flashed green and more guests arrived through They were trailed up the wood-lined hallway by a very dark-skinned woman in pale lilac robes, about Narcissa's age, and a girl who looked a few years out of Hogwarts and was obviously a relative of hers.

"Hello, Madam Black, Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Potter," said a woman also around Narcissa's age, rising to meet them at the doorway to the next room. She had curly, dirty blond hair that trailed over her shoulders and down her back, and was wearing a soft purple robe open over a lilac shirt and loose black trousers. She wore a wedding ring and another signet, this one notable for the grinning skull emblem. "I'm so glad to have you," she said. Harry thought she looked nervous under her smile.

"Mistress Bones?" Narcissa said, and leaned in to kiss her cheeks. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Please, you must call me Narcissa."

Harry saw Draco look up, a little surprised at this, but the woman, looking less nervous, and said "Then I will be Maggie to you."

"This is my son, Draco Malfoy," Narcissa said, then indicating Draco, "And my cousin's ward, Harry Potter."

Harry watched Draco closely to copy him. Draco smiled at Maggie and said, "Charmed;" when she offered a hand and only then he extended his to shake. When she turned to Harry, he said "It's a pleasure," as though he was another adult and shook her hand after, feeling he had managed reasonably well.

They were led to a large, octagonal parlor while Maggie greeted the guests who had arrived just after them; they proved to be Hilde Shacklebolt ("Madam," Narcissa murmured to both of them, "She's not married. Her twin brother is the Shacklebolt heir and the girl's father; Madam Hilde helped raise her after her mother died in the war.") and her niece Evelyn Shacklebolt.

Harry looked around the room while Narcissa quietly told him who of the people there was who. He had expected it to be stuffy and overly-clean, like a wealthier version of Privet Drive, but rather to his surprise it was pleasant looking and somewhat disorganized. The floor and furniture were made of dark, gleaming woods, and there was a large window in each wall, emitting gleaming sunlight and showing a view of fields stretching out around the house, as well as a lane leading away from it and lined by beeches. There were many bookshelves in the room, with interesting objects scattered among the books, and squashy armchairs in a variety of mismatched prints alongside the wooden tables and cabinets.

Harry had never actually been to a meal described as afternoon tea before; the Dursleys certainly would not have served him cake - or any optional food - at home. While Aunt Petunia occasionally had those house wives of Privet Drive who met her standards of normalcy over in the afternoon, he had always been firmly banished after the cleaning was finished.

He had had a vague mental image of something like the time she had been invited to an expensive restaurant when he was eight, an occasion she had described over and over to friends, when he was invited. This vision was supplemented by glimpses he had gotten of the television when she had been allowed to control the remote, generally because Dudley and Uncle Vernon were both otherwise occupied. Narcissa fussing over manners and clothing had only reinforced this idea. But in fact the guests seemed to be seated rather casually in armchairs scattered around tables, with no formal place settings at all.

There were two or three of the tiered stands he had expected, floating in the air and slowly circumnavigating the room so that the guests could serve themselves from them; likewise platters with tea pots and cups, as well as what seemed to be alternative drink options, circulated. Coming near one as they went to sit, Harry saw a mix of foods he had expected and foods he had not. There were the expected cakes, and iced buns alongside an array of what looked like tiny tarts and pies, and glass dishes he thought contained puddings or custards. But in lieu of sandwiches was a top row also of pies, perhaps with savory fillings, on two of the three stands.

Harry snapped back to paying attention to the people as Narcissa went on. There was Amelia Bones, who he had expected: she was sitting near the fireplace in the parlor, sprawled backing her chair, in black robes that ended just below the knee and showed her gleaming leather boots. She was talking to Marjanah Rowle, a woman wearing a brilliant turquoise robe that reached the floor, with curly, reddish brown hair held up in a bun. Next to her--

"Is that really," Draco breathed.

"Be polite, dear," Narcissa said softly. "I think she must be - Jessica Shepherd," she said to Harry, sotto voice. "Marjanah's muggle... companion."

Harry blinked and looked at her. If someone had told him there was a muggle in the room, it was true he likely would have guessed Jessica, who was wearing soft black trousers and a long sleeved green shirt with flowers embroidered around the collar and cuffs, and had her black hair cut in a bob. He would not have expected it. Harry realized with a start that while the Weasleys generally claimed to be alright with - even interested in - muggles, and lived in a muggle village, never once had they had one around their home. He was not closely acquainted with any halfblood children with mixed families.

Then he thought through the second half of the statement. "So wait," he muttered, "Are Jessica and Marjanah--"

"Don't be obscene, you don't point it out," Draco muttered, as though he had not made the same mistake thirty seconds earlier.

Harry thought of Cassiopeia, who also had had a muggle woman for a partner; he wondered if, had Cassiopeia been born later, or to a different family, she too might have taken Margaret to parties at which she was the only muggle and been whispered about instead of being horribly murdered. Then the trays were circulating near them.

Harry watched Narcissa and Draco to be sure he didn't do something horribly rude, but the procedure seemed fairly self-explanatory. Any self-consciousness he might have felt over the amount of milk and sugar he still felt tea needed to be drinkable - the Dursleys hadn't exactly given him unnecessary beverages either, and it wasn't normally served at Hogwarts - was stifled by watching the amount of clotted cream Narcissa put in, along with a pinch of something that smelled like cinnamon rather than sugar. There were dishes on the side tables, although a few pieces were missing compared to Harry's expectations. He poured his own tea out of the magically heated pot, and took what turned out to be a pie filled with apple and cheese from the top tier, then tried to catch the trick of eating mostly out of his lap without making a mess.

Someone else was coming into the room, and Maggie Bones rose again to greet a woman with long hair in a very large bun on the back of her head, wearing robes in a soft blue and gray print. "Mistress Chang," Narcissa said, and added "Cho's aunt," with a small smile at Harry, who knew he was blushing. "She's married to the Chang House heir. I imagine she'll want to talk to you to get a sense of what you're like for herself at some point.

"And there are the last few guests, it looks like Susan's showing them in. That's Madam Angharad Abbott - her daughter is in your year at school. She's the Abbott Head, her husband and parents died in the war. Over there, Isabel Macmillan - nee Abbott - is her first cousin, her husband is Emil Macmillan, they're nowhere near the line of succession. Mistress or Mrs. Macmillan," she added to Harry.

With everyone present people began to circulate, and Harry found himself forced to talk to people other than Narcissa.

Fortunately Susan came over to them first, gesturing Evelyn Shacklebolt to join her. They both carried their plates casually with them. "I'm so glad you both came," she said, speaking mostly to Harry, "Everyone here is going to be talking about the greatest hits of the eighties political scene all night. Harry, Malfoy, this is Evelyn Shacklebolt."

"Pleasure to meet you," Harry said, remembering at the last minute to only shake her hand after she extended it. Narcissa had told him several times that women offered - or didn't offer - first.

"Likewise," Evelyn said, settling on the edge of a bookcase and balancing her plate on her knee, which made Harry feel better about his manners. She was wearing short robes, a little below the knee like Amelia's, and eye-catching boots with silver bits worked into the gleaming metal. Her hair was in very long dreadlocks gathered into a tail at the back of her head. "Please call me Evelyn, I've got too many cousins to be just Shacklebolt."

"Harry's fine," Harry said, relieved, and Draco concurred, probably just because he was uncomfortable being the only one on formal terms in the room. Harry suspected Susan might not take up that invitation from him; she didn't reciprocate it.

"So what are you lot doing on break?" Evelyn asked, casting a wry look over them. Harry guessed she might not appreciate being herded together with the three teenagers; but everyone else in the room was at least a decade older than her.

"Harry and I are staying at school, but my mother had permission to take us out - since our guardian is a professor, it works differently, apparently," Draco said.

"I've mostly been here or at the townhouse," Susan said, dropping into the arm chair next to Harry's, which Narcissa had vacated. "Getting dragged around by my mother party planning and clothes shopping because she's afraid I'm going to grow up like Aunt Amelia and hate women's social duties--"

"You can manage it, don't give in," Evelyn said, laughing.

"Does your mother really," Draco started, and stopped at the glare Susan was sending him. "I'm sorry," he said, correcting quickly, "I don't mean to give offense. You all know what my father was like; he would have been very angry if I talked to anyone with muggle heritage much, so I've no practice avoiding making a fool of myself."

Susan's glare did lessen in intensity slightly. "If anything I think that makes it worse," she said, sighing after a moment, and cast it over her shoulder at her mother instead. "She chose this, see, she sees it as interesting and worthwhile and can't get why I hate it." Looking at Harry she added, "Mum's muggleborn, I'm the first halfblood Bones heir in something like five centuries. Malfoy over there is probably thinking 'ah, that's why the exotic meal,'" she added with more humor, "Although wizards imported tea as an occasion about ten years after it became popular in the first place, giving my mother an excuse to lecture me about a second, completely different set of manners."

"Is it that bad?" Harry asked, carefully.

Susan glanced at him, seemed to study him for any hint he was mocking her and then laughed, shaking her head. "I suppose not," she said. "I mean, I'm loads better off than lots of girls, it's not like they're trying to marry me off next year." Harry saw Draco wince slightly out of the corner of his eye. "It's just that I'd rather be practicing dueling with Aunt Amelia or reading or going about on the estate on horseback or something else. Even accounting would be better. I can stand about an hour of which-neckline and which-fabric and which-guests before I want to scream and tear my hair out," she finished, twisting her yellow braid over her shoulder.

"You're both your families' heirs, right?" Draco asked.

"Susan is, they're still deciding about me, and since we're not noble it's not really urgent," Evelyn said. "I think they really would rather my father remarry and have some boys, but Dad doesn't want another wife. I see your mother's doing better, Draco, I was so sorry to hear what happened in the papers."

"Yes," Draco said, glancing at Narcissa automatically; she was talking to Mrs. Chang now, smiling at something. "Yes, we've been - much better. I'm glad to see she's happier," he finished softly, swallowed, and said, "So, Quidditch teams, anyone?"

Susan's favorite team proved to be bitter rivals of Draco's, so that provoked an argument that left them all on much friendlier terms; Evelyn professed not to follow Quidditch closely but said she usually cheered for the London local team when she went, and Harry again admitted to not having a personal team. This admission was followed by horror by all three of them - even Evelyn who supposedly didn't much like Quidditch - and a rousing argument between Susan and Draco about which of their teams was obviously the best choice for him, which Evelyn laughingly refereed.

If Harry had been able to sit and talk to the other younger guests for the rest of the afternoon things might not have been difficult; but eventually Evelyn's aunt Hilde called her over to talk to Isabel Macmillan--

"I bet they're going to try to foist her son on me," Evelyn said resignedly, "It's why they keep bringing me places, but I don't particularly want to marry Andhun Macmillan."

"Just wave at Aunt Amelia or Marjanah Rowle if they go after you too hard," Susan said, grimacing sympathetically--

And Susan was summoned by her aunt, leaving Draco and Harry sitting together for an instant of peace before Mrs. Chang bore down on them.

Draco leapt to his feet immediately and Harry stood, quickly, though he wasn't sure why.

"Masters Malfoy and Potter," she said, bowing slightly; Harry bowed back after Draco's lead. "A pleasure to meet you both."

"A pleasure to meet you," Draco said, and Harry followed it.

"Master Malfoy, I believe your mother wanted you," she followed; Draco mouthed 'sorry' when she wasn't looking, but went.

Harry began to regret agreeing to come.

"Master Potter," she went on, "I'm so glad to have a chance to meet you. I understand you and my niece Cho have been seeing a lot of each other at school?"

"Er, yes," Harry said, trying to remember if he was sure Cho had told her family they were dating. "A little less lately, though, she's been, er, very busy studying for O.W.L.s..."

"As she should be," Mrs. Chang said. "How is she doing at her studies, then?"

"Er, good, I think," Harry said. "I was helping quiz her on Transfiguration the other day. I'm sure she'll do fine," he said, hoping this was the sort of thing people liked to hear about their nieces from their nieces' boyfriends, "She's really smart."

"How did you meet again? I believe you're a year younger?"

"In dueling club, my godfather started it this year, plus we both play Quidditch as Seekers," Harry said. "I, er, noticed her because she almost knocked me off my broom last year--" He crashed to halt, appalled.

Cho's aunt was laughing silently, shoulders shaking. "I should wish all teenage boys valued their girlfriends for that," she said after a moment. "Brooms and dueling - well, she's certainly her mother's daughter, but everyone in the family knew that."

Harry made it through ten or fifteen minutes of questioning about how he liked his classes and how he was doing, and what he thought of his godfather and coming to live with him after so long, before Mrs. Chang's attention slipped to Maggie briefly and Harry saw an opportunity for escape. Muttering about being right back, he edged over to the hallway he had seen several people duck in and out of, and then out a cracked door that proved to lead into a small walled garden, in which early flowers were blooming.

It wasn't a terrible party, he decided, leaning against the stone wall. Evelyn and Susan were nice enough, and Mrs. Chang didn't seem to dislike him. And the food was good, even if some of the desserts had odd flavorings like quince, which he had never had before. But watching everything he said and did was exhausting, and he didn't much like being interrogated by Cho's family without having Cho there to give him hints about what he should say. He'd better tell her about this as soon as he got back, and apologize he hadn't known to ask her...

"Harry?" Narcissa called from the doorway. "I wondered where you'd got to..."

Harry turned, dreading being scolded, but Narcissa was smiling wryly. "I just needed some air," he muttered.

She laughed. "Mistress Chang says you held up very well under pressure, and she approves of Cho dating her dueling partner, I think," she said. "I thought you might need a break at some point. It's alright, we can stay out a few minutes. I just wanted to check on you."

"Thanks," Harry said with deep relief. "Er, how is it going for you?"

Narcissa's smile grew rather predatory. "Oh, very well so far, I think," she said, seating herself and her yards of navy skirts on a bench a few feet from Harry's spot at the wall. "Really I ought to send Rita Skeeter flowers, she was just so explicit about how badly I'd been mistreated. Otherwise these women wouldn't give me the time of day - I believe every one of them lost immediate family in the war, you know, some their entire families."

Harry could not think of anything tactful to say to this and kept his mouth shut.

"But it's certainly a start," Narcissa went on. "Of course it helps immensely that Sirius trusts me to handle his interests - not that he knows he shouldn't," she said, rolling her eyes. "But my uncle--"

What Sirius's father had done in particular Harry didn't get to find out. Someone cleared her throat from the doorway. Turning, Harry saw Amelia Bones, stooping slightly to get through the door out.

"Nice to see you again, Mr. Potter. Madam Black," she said, inclining her head to Narcissa. "Mind if I join you?"

This obviously was not a real question; she was already coming over.

Narcissa rose fluidly from the bench. "Madam Bones," she said, and offered her hand, not upright but with the palm down.

Amelia Bones's eyebrows raised hard, but she took the hand and brought it not quite to her lips to kiss, but near her mouth, like a mimed version, before dropping it. "You won't mind if I have a seat near you, then," she said dryly.

"Please, if Sirius said anything I'd eat my broomstick," Narcissa said, sitting again. "He's still trying to convince Remus Lupin to come back from his torrid love affair with the magical fauna of Mongolia and give him a second chance, you know--"

Amelia Bones coughed. Harry muffled spluttering in his sleeve. Sirius - and Professor Lupin--?

It did, he thought, make a sort of sense. He remembered the desperate way Lupin had embraced Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, how they'd each blamed themselves for not trusting the other. He could not begin to form an opinion of this.

A thought slipped through: if Lupin did come back from Mongolia, would he be Harry's step-godfather? Would he come to live with Sirius and Harry (and perhaps Narcissa and Draco as well)? Harry supposed they could put Lupin's tanks and cages in the guest room along with the library, or perhaps in the sitting room...

"And I imagine you're utterly unoffended by the prospect of sharing a House with a werewolf," Amelia Bones said dryly.

"It wouldn't be the first time I'd broken bread with one in my own dining room," Narcissa said calmly, to Harry's astonishment. "And in any case, Remus Lupin is not Fenrir Greyback."

"Ah. I suppose it was while you were under the Imperius Curse," Amelia Bones said sarcastically. Harry began to wonder if they had forgotten he was there.

"When I was under the threat of my husband beating me to death if I objected to his political choices," Narcissa said tartly.

Harry nearly spluttered again, this time in disbelief. But it didn't seem that Amelia had fallen for it. She raised her eyebrows skeptically. "Would you testify to that?"

"If you think it would do any good, which at the moment it won't, so I'll deny every word of this if you call me up," Narcissa said. "Dislodge Fudge from the Minister's seat and I'll happily tell the Wizengamot enough to get my husband more life sentences than my sister."

"I believe the Lestranges technically only received two each," Amelia said. "In any case, Madam Black, there aren't any serious contenders for Minister right now, not to mention the difficulty of unseating Fudge. He's very popular among the Ministry appointees, and they've still got a controlling interest in the Wizengamot."

"You might have a go at it yourself. I understand you're more popular than you know."

"I hate politics."

"Then you can't blame anyone but yourself for what those who play the game anyway do," Narcissa said. "But I understand you have been playing recently - investigating Crouch?"

"Yes, I suppose your cousin would be interested in that," Amelia said. "But it's strictly a matter of ethics. If he's abusing his position--"

"As though he's ever done anything else!"

"If your cousin has anything to say about his conduct during his interrogation I'll be glad to hear it, Madam Black, but in any case--"

Amelia was starting to rise, but to Harry's surprise, Narcissa shot to her feet first and laid a hand open on her arm. Amelia nearly drew her wand, but stopped herself and only stood, silent and baleful, until Narcissa said, "Only my cousin?"

"Of course any information would be useful. I'm afraid it's unlikely the Wizengamot would convict anyone of doing anything to Bellatrix Lestrange."

"Then for investigative purposes, you might as well hear it. I'm sure you're aware I've been writing to her recently."

"MLE monitors all Azkaban post," Amelia said tonelessly.

"But the contents don't get passed up to you unless there's a security threat, and certainly not if they might incriminate the employees doing the monitoring," Narcissa said with a small, mirthless laugh. "Crouch had my sister raped in custody, Madam Bones, more than once, and I'm given to understand he watched. I can't make you extend the protection of law to her, but I'd consider it suggestive of what else he'll do with others under his authority. Good day, Madam Bones," she said, retreating half a step to bow, and then stalking towards Harry.

"Please come, we should check on Draco," she said, extending an arm to him. Harry scrambled to take it, fighting to recall how he'd seen Sirius take Narcissa's arm once or twice; she didn't say anything so it must have been passable.

"I'm sorry you had to witness that," she said, low voiced, as she dropped his arm and they re-entered the sitting room. "It was too good an opportunity to speak to her privately. I suppose she was a little on edge leaving me alone with you in her house."

"Wasn't - wasn't that true, then?" Harry said, aware his voice was shaking slightly. He knew that Crouch had tortured Sirius, that he had had people arrested without trial, but this seemed somehow worse. He saw in his mind's eye Bellatrix Lestrange declaiming her loyalty to Voldemort, and heard Dumbledore tell him that she was the reason Neville had grown up without parents. At the same time he saw Sirius's hands shaking when Amelia came to call on him, heard Cho telling him that you never knew whether a prisoner was guilty or not after Crouch had a chance to interrogate them; and, feeling sick, remembered Percy's adulation of Crouch...

"Oh, it is, but I doubt Bella would want Amelia to hear it," Narcissa said dispassionately. "She has her pride, even now; she told me because she wants me and Andy to get Andy's daughter out of the Aurors--"

"What?" Harry said. "Does she think Crouch still runs them? Why does she care, when Andromeda married Ted Tonks?"

"She seems mostly aware of what year it is, and she knows Amelia's head of MLE, but most of the men who did it are still on the Auror force, so I have to say I consider it a valid objection," Narcissa said. "As for the latter, I have absolutely no idea, but I'm hardly going to complain that she's not telling me both of us are blood traitors who deserve death. But Nymphadora has so far been reluctant to actually hear either of us out on the subject. I may try to get her pinned down again at Easter..."

It was very strange to hear Narcissa discuss writing to Bellatrix. Harry realized he had been thinking of the woman he saw in the memories as a sort of ghost, a long-dead follower of Voldemort like the rest of Sirius's family, or a tragic figure akin to Merope Gaunt. He had not pictured a real, living and breathing Dark witch, albeit one still in Azkaban; someone who might have opinions of what was going on in her family, and someone who might one day attack him, if Voldemort returned and freed her.

"So why did you tell Madam Bones if she won't like it?" Harry asked, shaken and trying to get a grip on the conversation.

"Because no one else has made an actual allegation against Crouch, just smiled tightly and changed the subject - I have a few friends to ask - so Amelia hasn't written up a warrant to search his house. Now that she has something, she'll look. She won't try to arrest Crouch over Bellatrix of all people, but that's because of the Wizengamot, not her personal inclinations. Amelia Bones believes in the rule of law." Narcissa smiled sarcastically.

Chapter Text

Harry had trouble focusing on the party after Narcissa's revelations, although in some ways it made it easier to be too distracted to be nervous. He finally sat down and managed about fifteen minutes of conversation with Jessica Shepherd about what it was like to find out about the magical world when she greeted him, looking sympathetic for his obvious discomfort. Then Narcissa collected him and Draco and excused them all with a light comment about not overwhelming the children that would have embarrassed Harry thoroughly if he had been paying much attention.

To his surprise, they didn't go back to school immediately. Narcissa Apparated them both to a small coffee house off Diagon Alley. Harry watched with trepidation to see what she was going to do to her coffee, but it was handed over to her with a lot of whipped cream on top and she seemed to feel that was adequate. Harry tentatively asked for the same thing as her, thinking it might improve on the plain coffee he had drank at Madam Puddifoot's with Cho.

Once they had finished ordering, Narcissa sat them down and said to Draco, "Well, doves, I think we made a good start. Report?"

"Susan Bones says she's declared heir and Evelyn Shacklebolt isn't yet, but believes her father won't remarry," Draco began. "Neither of them are engaged. Evelyn said that she didn't want to marry Andhun Macmillan when they called her over, and that they've been trying to secure her agreement to a match for a while. Susan was very rude up until she believed I wasn't here so that someone could shove the two of us together--"

Narcissa laughed.

"--And then they were both willing to hear me out as genuinely changed. Angharad Abbott's daughter Hannah isn't engaged yet, and she seems to think I would make a reasonably acceptable son-in-law once my father inevitably disowns me--"

Draco's breath hitched slightly on this but Narcissa didn't acknowledge it and he moved on, "But I don't know how Hannah would feel about that. I was fairly awful to her in second year. Marjanah Rowle is sympathetic to us for leaving a Dark family--"

"She would be, the Rowles completely changed position when her brother inherited, before that she and Jessica were on a dozen hit lists," Narcissa commented.

"--And came over to tell me so, yes. Isabel Macmillan and her cousin Angharad Abbott are close enough to consult each other on most decisions..."

They went on like that for five more minutes. Then Narcissa turned to Harry, and he braced himself to decide what he was even comfortable telling her, but it turned out she was more interested in telling him things than listening. She went over each family's business interests, political influence and rank, and current notable members one by one. Harry's head was swimming by the end; he felt like he had been expecting to go to lunch after an exhausting practical lesson and been tricked into a lecture period instead.

"--But don't worry if you can't keep track of all that just yet, you're just getting started," Narcissa finished.

"Mother," Draco said, almost whining but laughing, too, "You'd flay me if I didn't know all of that this year!"

"You've been having political lessons for years, dove," Narcissa said. "It takes time to absorb it all. But you will need to know it, Harry, you'll be head of the Potter family as soon as you're of age and if you don't at least appoint someone to sit and show up personally once a year you'll lose the seat, so you need to be prepared in three years, at latest; and you'll also be responsible for the House court at that point, although I do believe the Potters have few enough dependents there's only the one."

"Wait," Harry said, having at last heard something he sort of recognized, "What exactly do I do with the seat?" He vaguely remembered Sirius mentioning the Potter seat a few times, but this had somehow not translated into the realization that Harry would have to make decisions about it.

Narcissa and Draco exchanged glances.

"Raised by muggles, I ask you," Narcissa said, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Yes, darling. The Potters aren't traditionally one of the wealthier Wizengamot Houses, the estates don't take in cash rents the way the Black lands do, so most of the family's assets are in kind or favors and influence. Your grandfather was a potions inventor who made up a large portion of the family fortune with trade - don't make that face, Draco, some of the most powerful families on the Wizengamot are in trade instead of land management these days - but your father promptly spent it all on the war. But you do have the political position and you can make up the money quite readily as a patron through that if nothing else, if you know what you're doing."

Harry debated saying that he had absolutely no desire to become a wealthy brat like Draco, but considering Narcissa's response to Amelia's I hate politics, he doubted she'd like that even put politely. He could talk to Sirius about it later. "Okay," he said hesitantly instead. "Hang on, do I have - property? Aside from land somebody else lives on, I mean."

"I imagine you've still got the current Potter family home in Exeter, it's a town house but reasonably sized," Narcissa said. "Your grandparents lived there until they were murdered. I'm afraid I don't know too much other than that, the Potters were always rather diametrically opposed to the Blacks politically, but Sirius should know since he lived with your father and his parents for a while."

While Harry was absorbing this, Narcissa turned back to Draco. "I'm afraid it is very likely your father will disown you, dear," she said apologetically. "Once he has more children if not before. But honestly it may be a blessing in a sense, there are quite a few female sole heirs in your generation. If you don't like the Bones or Abbott girls, what do you think of Evelyn Shacklebolt? If she's got a heart after Amelia Bones and Marjanah Rowle it may be just the thing, really."

"Mother!" Draco said protestingly again, but this time he was only laughing.

The rest of Easter break promised to be more relaxing. They had mounds of homework, but this could be completed after sleeping late, while sitting around the fire in the common room or in Sirius's quarters. Harry managed to extract Cho from her O.W.L. review briefly on Thursday and convince her, Draco and Ron to come out and take advantage of the longer days to fly over the lake and forest, something they had done in smaller groups a few times before. First, he recounted meeting her aunt without any warning from Narcissa. Cho listened to his account and sighed and said "That sounds like Eldest Aunt to me," so it did not seem he had ruined anything.

Hermione came out with Viktor to join them after an hour, and while Hermione only watched, Viktor took place in their impromptu Seeker competition, taking it with good grace when Cho knocked Harry into the frigid lake in pursuit of the snitch, spraying all four of them with icy water.

That evening, Hermione, who had seemed much less stressed out for the rest of break, was obviously preoccupied. Harry supposed it was her usual anxiety over exams beginning, or perhaps she was only thinking that Viktor would soon be leaving when the year was up.

But after a while, she said in a strange tone, "Harry, Ron?"

"Yeah?" Harry said, putting his quill down. He was trying to explain the process of transfiguring one species of animal into another for Professor McGonagall, and kept having to backtrack because he absentmindedly put in examples from Cassiopeia's illegal reading.

"What's up, Mione?" Ron asked, dropping his History textbook in disgust.

"I was just thinking - only it's okay if you don't want to, but - well, we're not doing anything and--"

"Mione, breathe," Ron said. "You have to actually ask us, you know, before we can say yes or no. It's not this year's new and improved exam study schedule, is it?"

"No!" Hermione said indignantly, and took a breath. "I just wanted to know if you two wanted to come to Professor Sinistra's Seder with me tomorrow night, for Passover. I haven't really done anything for the holidays since I started Hogwarts, and when I asked her she told me she usually celebrates them with the Jewish students in her quarters, but I haven't - really - I haven't gone to anything, I've been too nervous," she confessed in a rush.

"Sure," Harry said, figuring that if it was a holiday it had to beat doing homework. "What's Passover?"

"Will there be food?" Ron asked.

Hermione sighed gustily in disgust, but she was trying to stifle a grin through it.

The next day, Hermione collected Harry and Ron and took them up to Professor Sinistra's quarters. Harry had never spent much time interacting in private with their Astronomy professor, and was surprised to follow Hermione up the bottom flight of the Astronomy Tower to a doorway he had never taken much notice of. Entering, he saw what looked like most of this level of the tower was taken up by a large, circular room filled with squashy arm chairs and couches, and star charts on the walls. Windows stretched around one half of the room.

"Hello, Miss Granger," Professor Sinistra said, appearing from their left. "I'm glad to see you here at last--" Hermione went scarlet. "And I see you brought guests, lovely. Come take a seat, sunset's in just a few minutes."

There were four other students clustering on two couches by the wide windows, watching the sun set over the grounds. A Ravenclaw boy Harry recognized as a classmate of Cho's turned to them and, grinning cheerfully said, "Hi, I'm Daniel Blake. Who's whose guest? We'd know about your branch of the Weasleys, but I have no clue about you two."

"I asked Harry and Ron to come with me," Hermione said, a bit shyly, taking a seat. "Hermione Granger," she said to the crowd in general. "You all know who Harry is--"

"Thanks," Harry said.

"--And this is Ron Weasley."

"I'm Odaya Sinistra, I'm Professor Sinistra's niece," said a very young girl Harry guessed was a first or second year. "This is Melinda Bobbin, she's here with me--"

"I thought it seemed more interesting than revising for exams," said the girl next to her.

"Ismene Parkinson," said the oldest girl. Harry nearly did a double take; she bore only a very faint resemblance to Pansy, if that, with her long black hair and heart shaped face. "If you second years think you have it bad, I'm going to be sitting N.E.W.T.s in a few months--"

Everyone winced sympathetically.

"So my dorm mates have been telling me about how I'm sure to fail everything if I take a night off."

"Surely one night can't make that much difference," said Hermione, to Harry's surprise.

"Mine are all panicking about O.W.L.s," Daniel said, and offering Ismene a hand over their heads, said, "That's the great thing about being Jewish, right? Religious obligation to get drunk instead of studying!"

Ismene stared at it, bemused, until Odaya helpfully said "You're supposed to slap his hand to congratulate yourselves, it's a muggle thing."

"...Right," Ismene said, and participated in what was probably the most awkward high five in history. Harry and Hermione snorted at each other.

The conversation was derailed when Professor Sinistra arrived with Professor Snape. Hermione and Ron traded aghast looks; Melinda squeaked in surprise, and Snape cast a suspicious glare over the entire group before settling in a high-backed wooden chair and drawling, "Well, Aurora, do we have the wine? If I'm obligated to subject myself to the company of students in my off hours, I wish to be drunk as soon as possible."

Harry choked.

"Everything's set up at the table if you want to move," Professor Sinistra said, apparently unperturbed. "Now, is anyone going to be having grape juice? I never know what muggle raised students are going to expect from this," she said, shooing them over to the table halfway down the room.

Hermione looked rather surprised, but said "I suppose I might as well try it with wine;" no one else volunteered, including, Harry was a little surprised to see, either twelve year old.

"It's not as strong as what you'd be used to, dear," Professor Sinistra said, "I understand muggles don't use wine as an - mm, every day sort of drink, so they make all of it quite strong these days. We're more medieval about things in the Wizarding world. Sit down, everyone, and don't you dare leave while you think I'm not looking, Severus!"

"She makes him come," Ismene said confidentially to the younger students when the professors were distracted by bickering. "To the holidays at least, every year they have at least one big argument about it."

"Fancy being able to make Professor Snape do anything," Odaya said, looking extremely impressed by this new information about her aunt.

What followed was definitely one of the strangest meals Harry had ever experienced.

Before they could eat the actual food, Professor Sinistra passed out books to the table and led them through a weird sort of call and response story, where they periodically had to take tiny bites of symbolic foods or make gestures that she explained to them. Professor Snape maintained a constant sarcastic commentary under his breath, and several other times various students interjected with indignant or exuberant commentary. Hermione was briefly entangled herself in a potentially vicious-sounding argument with Ismene Parkinson and Professor Snape about whether Ancient Egyptians had actually kept slaves.

They were getting towards what sounded like the end of the story, and Harry was wondering when exactly they would get to eat normal amounts of food, when Odaya came back to the table with an arm full of green leek stalks and began passing them around.

Professor Snape sighed heavily and somehow contrived with his eyebrows to look even more long suffering. Odaya was grinning, and Ismene smirking slightly.

Daniel leaned over to address Hermione: "You're Ashkenazi, right?"

"Yes," Hermione said warily. "Is that..."

"Yeah, so'm I, I had such a start first year, my jerk cousins didn't warn me. The Sinistras are Sephardic and they do the leek battle thing during Dayenu, get ready."

"Leek battle?" Harry said over Hermione.

"Yeah, and the professors can do wandless magic with them, so watch out," Daniel said.

"It's to symbolize the Egyptians whipping their slaves," Ismene said, breaking into a giggle at the end of the sentence and preparing herself to, in the next moment, launch herself at Professor Snape and attempt furiously to hit him in the face with her vegetable sword as the rest of the table started to sing.

There were several minutes of violent confusion. Harry found himself trying to ward off two twelve year olds pummeling him in the back as Professor Snape cast a wandless Protego, completing the wand movement with his leek.

"No fair!" Professor Sinistra said gleefully and promptly cast a shield busting charm back with her own, "Everyone after Snape!"

"This is my favorite part of Passover now," Daniel said happily and chucked a collection of loose, broken off pieces at the battling professors.

Soon after, as they were serving the actual food at last, Harry looked up at Professor Snape and had to bite back a giggle: there were little shreds of leek stuck in his hair. Snape, who appeared to know what Harry was thinking, glowered back furiously.

"No putting people in detention at my seder, Severus," Professor Sinistra said, and very firmly poured him another glass of wine.

The students fell on the food enthusiastically; everyone was somewhat giggly from the wine, and the tension Harry had felt in the room earlier had disappated.

"So you're Reform?" Daniel was saying to Hermione.

"Yes, I suppose, but my parents aren't very observant - High Holy Days Jews, you know," Hermione said, forking salad into her mouth. "What about you?"

"Well, my family are halfbloods but they've been magical forever, so we don't really fit into the recent muggle history," Daniel said. "There's a wizarding synagogue in London if you don't know about it - loads of muggleborns don't, you sort of end up straggling in…"

"Yes, I had no idea who the other Jews would be until this year," Hermione said. "Are all of your families Jewish?" she asked the table.

"The Sinistras are," Professor Sinistra said. "Severus's mother was a Prince, and they're another Sephardic-British family."

"I was not raised practicing," Snape said, rolling his eyes. "My father was Church of England, although he was hardly a churchgoer, either."

"The Goldsteins are the other well known pureblood family - they go home if Passover's during Easter break," Professor Sinistra said.

"And the Parkinsons at large aren't," Ismene said, "But my great-great-grandfather converted to marry a Prince, and since then my branch has been kind of a mess, and not on great terms with the main line. And my mother's a Crouch, so if anyone brings up my halakhic status I'll hex you."

The table laughed, including Hermione, although she still looked a bit confused. Harry muttered, "Halakhic status?" to her under the cover of the conversation Odaya had started about the food people ate at home.

"Halakha is religious law," Hermione said distractedly. "And - so technically you're Jewish if your mother is, right? But sometimes people are raised by a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother who teach them to practice Judaism, or their parents aren't observant at all for a few generations, or someone converts to Judaism, but in a way that... other people say doesn't count, so the denominations that care about this kind of thing say they aren't really Jewish. It's silly."

"And the Crouches are Karaites," Ismene said, apparently having overheard. "So I'm in kind of a weird situation; my mother's from a patrilineal sect and my father's from a matrilineal sect, assuming you count him, because his mother was a Weasley and never converted to Judaism, but his father had him converted as a minor because of it - but I think some of the stricter groups wouldn't count how our synagogue does conversions."

"Really, the Karaites are patrilineal?" Hermione asked. "I had no idea. That's - you only believe in the Torah, not the Talmud, right?"

"Surprised you've heard of us," Ismene said. "But yeah, plus a couple thousand years of further developments, that's basically it."

"I had no idea the Crouches were Jewish, the person who told me about the Sinistras and Princes and Goldsteins didn't mention it," Hermione said.

"Not everyone thinks the Crouches count," Ismene said. "And not everyone actually knows, since the Crouches don't care that much about their wives' religion, they're a lot less observant than the big three pureblood families anyway. If you're wondering how I'm related to the infamous Bartemius Crouch, he's my grandfather," she added with resignation.

"No, really?" Ron said. "My brother's his personal assistant - he can't shut up about it."

"Tell your brother I pity him," Ismene said flatly. "He's always harassing my mother about something or other. He's been out of his mind the last few weeks," she added, rolling her eyes, "And now Amelia Bones is calling on him wanting him to produce interrogation records from the seventies, as though--" She looked up at Professor Snape, who was expounding angrily on something involving Potions to Professor Sinistra, and said very abruptly, "So are we going to be seeing you at Shabbat dinner this week, Granger?"

Harry tried to keep himself from visibly brooding over this knowledge for the rest of dinner, but it was probably just as well that the three of them soon finished eating and got up to go back to Gryffindor before curfew. He stopped by Sirius's quarters first, letting Ron and Hermione go on without him, to mention that Ismene Parkinson had said Crouch was complaining to her mother that Amelia Bones wanted him to produce seventies' interrogations records; Sirius paled, but thanked Harry for the warning.

Chapter Text

Sirius intended to have the Weasleys and the Tonkses over for Easter on Sunday, so on Saturday he and Harry went home through the Floo and cleaned the house that had been sitting empty since September. Cleaning was much more pleasant with magic, not to mention with someone who did not loathe him. Sirius did most of the work with long sweeps of his wand that banished dust and shined wood. It felt very strange to Harry to be back in his bedroom that night; it was his room, not a shared dormitory, but he had only lived in it for about a month last summer.

On Easter, Sirius and Andromeda got up to go church at dawn before they started cooking; Harry got up late and came down to meet Ron and Hermione, who had received permission to leave school with Sirius again, at the fireplace in the sitting room before they all went to the kitchen. There, they found total chaos. Sirius and Andromeda were in the middle of a vicious argument about how a sauce was supposed to be made, while Narcissa fumed on the other side of the room.

Harry and Hermione quailed slightly at the doorway, but Ron looked them over sweepingly and said, "Any of you eaten since you got home from church?"

There was a pause, then Sirius started laughing just as Narcissa looked like she would round on Ron furiously. "Right you are," he said, getting up and going to the cupboard to get out biscuits. "None of us have eaten since midnight last night," he said over his shoulder, and, "Here, you can bite my head off after you take one, Cissy, Andy. Take it in turns."

After that the chaos settled gradually into a sort of companionable state of urgent disaster, with six dishes in progress in Sirius's not particularly large kitchen. Cissy made what seemed to be her tenth or so suggestion that they just get the elves at Grimmauld Place to take care of something and was roundly shot down by Sirius and Andromeda.

"Why?" Hermione asked, looking rather surprised. She was stirring a bowl of batter and had flour on her nose and dusting her hair. "Not that I object--" she added rapidly.

"Servants are supposed to get the day off for Easter," Andromeda said. "One of the few religious traditions our family actually followed--"

"I always thought Father was hoping someone would take the chance to poison my mother," Sirius said.

"But Cissy's not the religious type," Andromeda finished with a teasing look at Narcissa.

Narcissa said primly, "I simply don't see the point in forcing down barely edible food in service of an ideal meant for human beings who actually enjoy time off."

"Well, some of the steward families had human servants," Sirius said. "And be charitable, some of our parents could cook--"

"Bella could cook," Andromeda corrected. "Mostly out of self defense, mind--"

"My mother used to take out grudges on people by ordering Kreacher to ruin their food," Sirius explained to the rest of them. "He adored her, listened to her before anyone else, and since Mother hated Bella--"

"Aunt Cassie could also cook before they murdered her," Narcissa said crossly, a statement which immediately put an end to all conversation for a solid ten minutes.

Draco arrived an hour or so later, just in time to be unceremoniously ordered to set the table by his mother and give her a look as though he had been unexpectedly dumped in a lake. Harry, aware that Draco was now something like a friend, muffled the urge to snicker with difficulty and pointed out where the good silverware was kept.

"When's everyone else coming?" Harry asked, carefully pouring a ginger sauce for the lamb into a crystal dish and trying to avoid splashing or smearing the sides. He found that, while it had been several years since the Dursleys trusted him enough to force him to assist Aunt Petunia prepare important meals, the knack of it was still ingrained; and his stiff hold on the saucepan brought him back for a moment to Privet Drive. He felt uneasy at that; his heart was beating faster, his hand trembled--

Damn it, he'd splashed the crystal, Aunt Petunia would--

"Here," Sirius said, and Harry jumped and nearly dropped the dish. Sirius flicked his wand, and the splotches of sauce on the sides vanished. Harry's cheeks flushed, but Sirius was only saying, "Sorry, I scared you and made it worse - no harm done, though. Magic's great for that kind of thing."

Harry looked him in the face reluctantly, embarrassed to have made a big deal of something so stupid. Sirius was only smiling gently; he squeezed Harry's shoulder and turned away. Around them the chaos of meal preparation continued; no one else had even noticed.

Harry took several deep breaths and carried the sauce out to the table extremely carefully.

There was an astonishing amount of food when they were finished; it was obvious that Sirius and his cousins had been cooking for hours before they had shown up. ("And Ted and Dora," Andy added, "Neither of them wants to get up at dawn to go to church but they got started before we were home.")

The center piece was a spectacular roast lamb which took up much of the center of the enlarged table in the dining room, which Narcissa told them had been prepared in Grimmauld Place's kitchen with its roasting spit. It was surrounded by many other dishes, including chicken and beef as well as loaves of bread, stuffed sweet rolls, salads and vegetables, and many elaborately decorated eggs, with patterns that moved and changed colors.

"No pork on the table," Sirius said to Hermione, rubbing his face, "But don't mention it to Cissy or she'll throw another fit about me changing the family recipes."

"She's not--" Hermione cast a nervous glance to Narcissa, who was on the other end of the table moving Easter eggs.

"She won't care that you're Jewish, but if she hears I messed with the traditions she'll go off at me for doing it instead of just warning you off things," Sirius said, rolling his eyes. Then, pitched louder, "Okay, the Weasleys and the rest of the Tonkses will be here in ten minutes, everyone! If you're changing clothes, change clothes, if you're washing hands, wash your hands, otherwise sit down!"

There was promptly a minor stampede to the two bathrooms in the house and the kitchen sink. Harry found himself craning around Draco in the downstairs bathroom, trying to see all of the places he needed to wash flour off himself. It hadn't occurred to him to bring a change of clothing from school, but fortunately he had a bedroom here. When he came back downstairs, Sirius was spelling sauce stains off of Ron's jumper while Hermione - identifiable by the tips of her bushy hair - changed behind a spare table cloth Andromeda was levitating.

Everyone was actually more or less seated around the stretched table by the time the doorbell rang. Sirius sprang up and told everyone else to wait; Ron got up anyway, and was shortly trailed by Narcissa.

Andromeda made no move to get up, and remarked dryly, "It's nice not to be responsible for everything for a change."

Harry could hear Mrs. Weasley greeting Sirius cheerfully in the front hall. A few minutes later, she trooped in with Mr. Weasley, the twins, and Ginny, followed of course by Ron with Sirius and Narcissa.

"Oh, and thank you, too, for having us," Mrs. Weasley was saying to Andromeda, coming over so that she could greet her, "Sirius says you and Narcissa handled the cooking--"

"We helped," Ron said indignantly, indicating Harry, Hermione and - reluctantly but definitively - Draco.

"So did Sirius, and for that matter Ted and Dora earlier, they got started while we were at church and the children were having a lie in," Andromeda said, kissing Mrs. Weasley's cheek and somewhat perturbing her with the gesture. "I was so happy to hear Sirius invited you, you must need a break on holidays - Christ, I thought one was bad enough--"

"Oh, but we all know I'm more like about twelve," Tonks said, arriving in the dining room and promptly knocking over a lamp to demonstrate. "Oh no!"

"Got it," said a second voice; to Harry's surprise, Evelyn Shacklebolt, who he had met last week at the Boneses', had darted in and grabbed the lamp before it fell. Today she was not wearing robes, but matched Tonks's muggle clothing in a pale lilac dress that didn't quite reach her knees and high heeled shoes; her dreadlocks had been wound in a bun. Harry wondered what she was doing here, although she had been friendly enough and he was happy to see her again.

"No harm," Sirius said. "Hello, dear cousin," he said, kissing Tonks's cheek and catching her arm so that he could deposit her rapidly in the chair next to Harry. Evelyn took the next chair herself. "Everyone, this is Evelyn Shacklebolt - do you know the Weasleys? Ted, Tonks, thanks for helping get the food started, we never would have finished everything in a reasonable amount of time after we got home."

"No problem," Tonks said, and glanced up towards where her mother was still distracted talking to Mrs. Weasley about her recipe for apricot sweet rolls. She said in an undertone, "Thanks for asking us to help, especially Mum. It eats her way more than she admits, not being a Black, she was really pleased you asked her to help host along with her sister."

"Well, I couldn't do it by myself," Sirius muttered. "You know after my time at Hogwarts ends I'm going to have to start being an acting Head, I can only play the recovering-from-Azkaban card for so long. She's welcome to House duties. Any she wants."

"Tell her that," Tonks said, grinning faintly. "Tell her loud and clear, maybe tell her how much help you need too..."

"Lay it on thick?" Sirius asked, grinning back. "Well, Andy'll catch me at it if I go overboard, but I'll try. Speaking of, have you two considered my offer?"

Tonks was suddenly serious. "I'm thinking, yeah."

"We're discussing it," Evelyn said, placing her hand over Tonks's on the table. "But of course as long as she's an Auror and can't marry you would only be putting the issue off by a generation."

Harry had a sudden intuition of why Evelyn had come with Tonks, and wondered if Evelyn's parents knew if they were trying to get her to marry Andhun Macmillan.

"I told you before I understand if you turn it down," Sirius muttered. "There's no need to feel pressured--"

"Aside from the chance Mum'll do me in if she hears I passed it up," Tonks said, but she was laughing again. "I'm probably the worst suited person in Britain, even if Evie's better at that stuff than me. Just tell me you can find somebody else--"

"I'm not going to let the lands get split up and sold when I die just because I don't have a blood heir, don't worry," Sirius said. "I'll find someone to adopt..."

"Not Harry?" Evelyn asked. They seemed to have forgotten they were sitting so close to him; or perhaps they only thought the loud sounds of Fred demonstrating the effects of a Canary Cream by eating one at the table, and his mother's reactions, were sufficient cover. Harry quickly looked down and busied himself with his napkin.

"I wish I could," Sirius said very softly, and sighed. "He's like a son to me, you know that - but he has to be Potter heir for the same reason I need one, and anyway I'd be stealing him from James and Lily."

Whatever Tonks or Evelyn said to that was too soft for Harry to hear. Or perhaps it was only the roaring in his ears that covered it up; Sirius so casually, he's like a son to me--

Harry had once fantasized in his cupboard that his family - his real family - would arrive and rescue him. Sometimes he had even imagined them arriving on a flying motorbike, one he saw in his dreams and which must, he supposed, be based in some subconscious way on Sirius's. He had grown up and grown out of it, he had thought, in primary school; he had understood that fantasies were not real...

And here Sirius was. Harry swallowed hard. He rapidly took a slice of bread and began buttering it with enthusiasm, before he could get swallowed up in that thought.

He looked around the table, trying to decide how everyone was getting on, instead. Hermione and Draco were talking, a little to Harry's surprise, to Ted Tonks; a few words of Arithmancy jargon drifted over the table from their direction and Harry grinned, knowing that Hermione would be happy for the next several hours.

Mrs. Weasley had either given up on lecturing the twins or been diverted from it by Andromeda, who was telling some kind of evidently hilarious story about housewarming gift mishaps and her and Ted's muggle next door neighbors, while Mr. Weasley leaned over in fascination. Fred, George, Ron and Ginny seemed to be immersed in a conversation about the twins' joke shop plans, now that their parents had been diverted. Harry shifted his chair over to join that conversation, cheerfully inquiring as to how the twins' mail-order business plans were going and whether they had managed to replenish their stock of order forms.

"--Oh, I wanted to tell you," Tonks said, even more softly, glancing across the table. "Madam Bones can't court martial anyone without putting the specifics into official record, and she'd need the transcripts Crouch "lost" to get it to stick, but she's fired everyone on the list you gave her." She hesitated. "And thanks for admitting it, from me."

"They weren't giving you too much trouble, were they?" Sirius asked seriously.

Tonks gave an awful little grimace, hair wavering white as though parodying shock before it returned to its usual pink. "Nothing like you," she said. "Just, you know, rude comments. I feel way worse knowing what they were joking about. But," she said, with forced cheer, "They're gone now, aren't they?"

A moment or two later, Sirius got up to carve the lamb. Tonks leaned in and asked with interest about the charms on the Canary Creams, while Evelyn joined the elder Weasleys' conversation with Andromeda; listening, Harry thought it had moved on to a discussion of muggle wedding gifts and what Ted's parents had thought of Andromeda.

Some time later an awkward quiet fell to Harry's left, and he turned automatically in time to hear Andromeda say, "Yes, we lost Ted's father to the war," tiredly. "But his mother is still alive. They were a bit older when they had Ted, she's in her eighties now. Of course muggles don't live as long as us, that's quite old by their standards, we've been discussing her coming to live with us." With forced cheer, she added, "I'm looking forward to it in a way, I never got used to living with just Ted and me and Dora, and Dora's been discussing moving out since she finished Auror training--"

"Thank Merlin," Tonks muttered in Harry's ear, making him stifle a laugh hurriedly.

"It's so strange to just have one little branch of a family in a house," she added. "--Though I can see why you would, you've quite a full enough house already."

"Yes, well," Mrs. Weasley said, "Of course we - we lost Arthur's parents and my father in the war as well, and my brothers, and his - surviving brother has his own household..."

"I'm so sorry to bring up the memories, dear," Andromeda said, patting Mrs. Weasley's hand; but Harry could swear she shot a pointed look over her shoulder at Sirius.

"And your mother lives with the infamous Old Auntie, doesn't she?" Sirius asked, rising to pour Mrs. Weasley more wine, which Harry supposed was what Andromeda had been cuing him to do.

"With Aunt Muriel, yes." Mrs. Weasley pursed her lips disapprovingly.

"Really?" George asked, suddenly diverted from his quiet recitation of the finances of joke shops to Tonks. "I didn't know we had a grandmother alive, how come she doesn't come around at holidays?"

"Yeah, what'd she do to deserve living with Aunt Muriel?" Ginny asked. Ron snickered.

Mrs. Weasley had gone quite pale. "I'm afraid we haven't been on speaking terms in some time," she said, clipped.

"Hang on," Sirius said, frowning as though in recollection, "She was a Black, wasn't she?"

"Is, I suppose. She's certainly made it plain who she prefers," Mrs. Weasley snapped, then recoiling from this, added, "I mean no insult to you, Sirius, you're turning the family around quite well."

All other conversations had died out; while it was obvious Mrs. Weasley did not wish to say more, it was just as obvious that the specter of a previously unknown close relative had captured all of her children. Mr. Weasley was frowning at his wife as though he had never seen her before. Harry had the sudden suspicion that he had no idea what the cause of his wife refusing to speak to her mother was, if he had even heard of the conflict before - and that Sirius and Andromeda already knew.

In fact, Narcissa, too, was sitting with her lips pursed together and her face gone white. Harry wondered what in the world would upset both her and Mrs. Weasley at the same time.

"Can we meet her?" Fred asked. "I mean, how come you're still not talking to her, when you talk to Aunt Muriel?"

"No thanks to you and your brother!" Mrs. Weasley snapped.

"The twins set off a load of dungbombs under her chair one Christmas," Ron muttered in an undertone to Harry, Hermione and Draco. "She hasn't been around at holidays since. Mum says she'll have written them out of her will, but they say it's worth not having to deal with her."

"Boys," Mr. Weasley said, uncertainly, "Don't bother your mother about it. I'm sure she has a good reason--"

"You mean you don't even know?" Ginny said.

Narcissa cleared her throat. "Perhaps," she said evenly, eyes on the table, "Some subjects are easier to leave buried for a family."

"Oh," Mrs. Weasley snapped, appearing to lose her temper, "And you would know, I imagine you've seen a lot more of her than I have--"

"Not since 1982," Narcissa said.

There was a horrified silence.

"No, you wouldn't have," Mrs. Weasley snarled, appearing unable to take her wish with good grace and change the subject, now that she had been roused. "Because she was a Death Eater, the same as you, wasn't she. Should I ask, or do I not want to know, whether she was the one who had Father killed--"

"If she had, he'd have deserved it," Narcissa said coldly. "Do you want to know how Bella recruited her?"

Narcissa had not defended her actions as a Death Eater once in Harry's presence since her arrival, but now she was as coldly enraged as Mrs. Weasley was furious. She gathered herself up and stared at Mrs. Weasley icily.

"I doubt it, but I shall tell you anyway. We had informants in St. Mungo's - everywhere in those days, really - and one of them told Bellatrix that her aunt, Uncle Orion's older sister, had been hospitalized by her husband. They tried to intercept her, but the Prewetts got her home before it was possible, so Bellatrix went through her medical records and found out that it had happened every two or three years like clockwork since they were married in 1944--"

"And compared to the people you had murdered with her--" Mrs. Weasley began hotly, but Narcissa cut her off.

"Do you know what she said to us, once we managed to reach her? It took almost ten years. They'd taken her clothing - everything but her shift unless she had to go out in public for something - they'd taken her books, they'd taken her wand. They snapped it when the war started, but they'd confiscated it decades before that. But of course, none of this is news to you," Narcissa said. "You knew, because you grew up with it, watching them treat her like that.

"What might be news," and now there were tears of fury in Narcissa's eyes, "Is that Bellatrix showed up in her hospital room in 1978, when we finally caught her there. We had to get the Healers to tell your father that there was a complication with the head injury - as a result of him breaking her skull, which he absolutely did do - to get them to leave her alone long enough to talk to her.

"And yes, she said she wanted to come home, and they took her away to the Lestranges' family residence and replaced all her personal belongings - including her wand - and paid her expenses for the next four years until they all fucking well went to prison. And yes, Bellatrix ordered Ignatius killed after that, and Lucretia knew about it and said nothing. What else should she have done? Should she have loved him? They forced her to marry your father; they starved her for two weeks before the wedding. Do you know you should have had two older siblings, and she miscarried because she was being mistreated so violently? Ignatius hated her because of the blood feud - that started after the wedding - but even while he accused her of spying for her family, he knew she'd never risk trying to go back."

Narcissa rose with a sudden, violent movement. Mrs. Weasley had her wand in hand, but Narcissa only bowed. "I apologize," she said, curt. "Sirius, I am unable to treat our guests respectfully as is their privilege. Excuse me," she said, and walked out.

There was a sudden clamor of voices - Mr. Weasley asking Mrs. Weasley what had just happened, Fred and George demanding answers, Ginny's plaintive voice. Ron alone was quiet, sunk into his chair, looking sick. Harry looked at Hermione and Draco, saw them both staring away from the table too, and got up, appetite suddenly gone; he rather felt the Weasleys should have privacy. The other two followed him out into the garden, and very shortly were joined by the Tonkses and Evelyn.

"Well," Andromeda said calmly, shutting the door behind them all. "That answers one question. We certainly can't get to Lucretia Black through her daughter."

"Why were you trying to get to Lucretia Black?" Draco asked. At the same time, Hermione said, "Mrs. Weasley's mother went to school with Voldemort?" and Tonks said, "Er, what the hell's going on?"

"We have reason to believe she has important information if she can be persuaded to share it and it can be verified," Andromeda said. "Sirius thinks his letters weren't reaching her, and we suspected Muriel Prewett was confiscating her mail. We might have to go to Slughorn after all - or, well, Sirius will when term's over."

"That's what Sirius and Cassiopeia weren't saying about her, when she came up," Harry said, thinking back. "Sirius asked who she'd married, and Cassiopeia said something about not all marriages being happy..."

"Probably," Andromeda said.

"I just don't understand," Hermione said suddenly. "The Prewetts opposed Voldemort, didn't they? Weren't Mrs. Weasley's brothers war heroes?"

"That doesn't always mean too much, unfortunately," Ted said, raking a hand over his hair and taking off his glasses to clean them. "The thing is, Hermione, a lot of pureblood families opposed Voldemort because they didn't like the idea of one man in charge of Britain, or they didn't like him using Dark magic or killing off other purebloods who opposed him. Plenty of people who fought Voldemort thought he was perfectly right about us - muggleborns - or about social liberties like individual human rights..."

Andromeda put a hand on Ted's arm, light. Harry couldn't tell whether she was trying to comfort him or steady herself, or both. "I apologize for that scene, we didn't expect - well, I thought it might be awkward."

"But you didn't expect a row?" Narcissa said from the door, making them all jump. "It wouldn't be a Black holiday without at least one. I apologize, but it's polite to warn your family members about schemes before you involve them, you know. What were you trying to do?"

"Find out how to reach Lucretia," Andromeda said, shrugging. "We'd thought she might be speaking to her daughter, but I suppose not. It's probably going to have to wait until Sirius can force his way through in person. Would you say she's dangerous herself?"

"Bellatrix had her on accounting, so not particularly," Narcissa said. "She adored Bella, don't misunderstand me, but she was fairly indifferent to all concerns outside the family. I understand she does go with Muriel to certain events, it may be possible to corner her at a wedding or something. But that will also require us to be in attendance. Is it urgent?"

"Not more so than anything else that must be done and preferably soon," Andromeda said. "Although if she's still being violently mistreated--"

"Her husband's dead," Narcissa pointed out. "Muriel's controlling but she hasn't been in hospital since the war ended so she's probably not in immediate danger of being murdered."

"I can't help noticing," Hermione said somewhat testily, "How much less upset you are than you were ten minutes ago."

"You were trying to draw her out, don't complain," Narcissa said. "And I will happily stifle any amount of emotion over the past if we're going to do something about Lucretia's situation now. Or this summer, as it is. Excuse me, the second to last Weasley son is at the door and I suspect he will not be best pleased to consult with you around me. Tell Sirius I returned to Grimmauld Place," she said, kissed her sister's cheek, hugged Draco, and Disapparated.

It was a somewhat dispirited group that returned to Hogwarts. Ron and his brothers and sister were distracted and brooding, and Harry, Hermione and Draco varying amounts of uncomfortable. They bid goodbye to Draco and went up to Gryffindor, where Hermione buried herself in a book and Harry felt bad enough for Ron to ask him to play chess.

Trouncing Harry three times in a row did seem to lighten Ron's mood some. "Wish they'd told us the truth before, but Mum and Narcissa were the ones who made it a row," Ron said eventually. "And I guess I'm glad we did find out eventually..." He shook his head. "I can't believe our grandmother was a Death Eater."

"I sort of can," Hermione said testily from behind her book. Harry gave her an incredulous look, but she went on, "What was it? All your family are wizards, except you have a second cousin who's an "accountant or something?" And you don't talk about him? I don't think most families stay pureblood by accident, blood traitors, or not."

And to Harry and Ron's surprise, she slammed her book shut and stalked up to her dormitory.

Chapter Text

Hermione had forgiven Ron by the next day, and while Fred and George were stilted and Ginny was quiet, Ron quietly assured Harry they weren't mad at Sirius, or him. This was a good thing, because Sirius had announced that they had enough data to begin trying to locate the nexus, or key, to the Defense curse; while they hadn't mapped every inch of the castle, they had a reasonable idea of the concentration and age of the curse traces throughout it.

"And we know what year the curse was cast," Sirius said, cheerfully, "Which is harder to come by than you'd think. So our first step is to go through all of the maps and eliminate any corridor or room with no strands of the curse that old."

This involved a lot of sitting and going over maps piece by piece, and was easier to do with many people, so it was fortunate that they could still enlist Ron's siblings as well as their friends. Cho had very little free time and no patience for sitting still and concentrating when she could drag herself out of her O.W.L. revisions, so she was not terribly helpful. Lavender was equally unwilling, and she didn't take Ron's preoccupation with it - or his renewed friendship with Harry and Hermione - well.

After the second argument Harry witnessed, he had to ask, "Why don't you just dump her?"

"I don't want to be the one to do the chucking," Ron said, then brightened. "Maybe I should get something for Hermione at Hogsmeade this weekend, that could get Lavender to end it--"

"Honestly, Ron," Hermione said.

On the Wednesday of the second week of Easter break, the three of them and Draco gathered around Cassiopeia's portrait in the kitchen for the beginning of a subject Hermione was really looking forward to: ritual magic.

"Hello, everyone," Cassiopeia said, settling in her chair. "How has break gone? --Aside from the family melodrama, I mean." She listened calmly to their replies, then said, "To start, I have a question for you. Why do we use incantations?"

There was a pause. Normally Hermione and Draco would compete in the theory lessons, but to Harry's surprise neither of them seemed to have an immediate answer; Draco was frowning slightly while Hermione bit her lip.

Cassiopeia smiled. "I don't expect a specific answer. Please do speculate; you won't have read about this."

Harry frowned, trying to come up with enough of an answer to take a stab at it.

Hermione said, "Well, the words are arbitrary, aren't they? They'd have to be - we use so many different languages, and a lot of the Latin is, well..."

"Wrong?" Cassiopeia said, smiling. "Yes, it is. Keep going. Harry, you look like you're thinking something."

Startled, he said "Well - a spell is named by the person who makes it up, right?" Cassiopeia nodded encouragingly. "So - when we learn a spell, we're just - copying someone else's magic, and the incantation..." He trailed off, losing his train of thought.

"It's a - a chess gambit," Ron said, and stopped short, looking somewhat shocked.

"Yes?" Cassie said.

"Like in chess," he stumbled, looking uncomfortable to have Hermione and Draco's focused attention at once. "Someone comes up with a strategy, or a solution to a problem, and then other people memorize it..."

"A spell is an arbitrary association of magic with words and a wand movement which call to mind the specific effects," Draco summarized, speaking at last, with what Harry felt was a somewhat resentful glance in Ron's direction for speaking first.

"Very good," Cassiopeia said. "What is the difference between spell casting and ritual magic, then?"

"The rituals are more involved," Draco said, before anyone else could get a word in. "And they're an older form of magic, they were invented before wand casting... Is it just that? That wand casting is simpler, and not every ritual has been abbreviated into a spell?"

"Yes and no," Cassiopeia said.

"Ritual involves more components, doesn't it?" Hermione said. "I mean, you can analyze a spell with Arithmancy but you don't usually make up a new one using it... Though there are exceptions, aren't there?" she said quickly, with an air of getting this qualification in before anyone could correct her.

"There are, but we can get into that another time," Cassiopeia said. "You're both on the right track. All magic originated in ritual, but ancient ritual split into two lines. One is the ancestor of modern spell casting and most legal magic forms in Britain - it was abbreviated until it was nearly instantaneous. One took advantage of components of ancient ritual other than will and intention, of the ability of ritual to combine them with additional sources of power and direction.

"Modern ritual, then, is complex magic; the integration of multiple disciplines in one. It allows many things which are commonly supposed to be impossible, but is rarely practiced in Britain. Master of the Dark Arts, unlike all other specific magical disciplines, requires mastery of ritual and therefore mastery of history and practice of all magical disciplines. It is for this reason," Cassiopeia half-smiled as she spoke, "That the Dark Arts are inextricably bound up with true mastery of magic, and an independent master is attributed honorary lordship."

After an emphatic pause, she went on, "Of course none of you are at that point yet, and I don't want you doing anything that you haven't gone over with me or someone else qualified first. We're going to begin with an analysis of a very well known ritual, one that's still practiced legally today: the most common variations of marital spellwork in Britain."

After the lecture, Cassiopeia gave them a thick stack of books to read on ritual magic, which seemed to be a favorite topic of the Black library. Unfortunately they didn't have time to do much reading, because the term resumed that Monday with a vengeance, and they had to scramble to finish their homework in time.

Cho hadn't had time to go to Hogsmeade with them during break, but Harry tracked her down before Astronomy Tuesday night with the bottle of butterbeer and Honeydukes chocolate he had bought there. She was sitting in a back stairway landing with six books spread around her on different subjects, staring into a blank roll of parchment and looking like she might burst into tears at any minute.

"Hey, Cho," he said carefully, sitting down next to her.

"I'm sorry Harry," she said very quickly, not looking up. "I just don't really have time - I'm trying to review for Charms--"

"It's fine, I just wanted to give you these," Harry said, setting down the bottle and chocolate next to her. "...That's your Potions textbook?"

"I know," Cho hissed nonsensically, then predictably started to cry.

Harry gathered her into his arms awkwardly and stroked her hair, trying to hide how baffled he felt. "Hey, Cho, it's okay," he said, and "You skipped dinner, didn't you?"

"I did?" Cho bolted upright awkwardly, knocking her forehead into his chin."Ouch! --What time is it?"

"Nearly nine," Harry said, and firmly pressing the chocolate into her hands, "Eat this. You'll feel better. And I think Fred and George know how to get into the kitchens, I'll see if I can find them to ask. You can't just go around skipping meals."

"Harry," Cho said in apparent despair in between bites of chocolate. "Why are you so, so--"

"So what?" Harry asked, baffled.

"Nice," Cho said, sobbing again into the chocolate. Harry patted her back. Cho hiccoughed, and finished the chocolate, tears tapering off slowly.

"Cho," Harry said, slowly, offering her the butterbeer. "Is something wrong? Besides exams, I mean."

"No! Sort of," Cho said, took a swig of the butterbeer, and made a face at the combined taste it must have made with the chocolate. "Ugh, where's my water bottle..."

"Here," Harry said, fishing it off a step two below them and handing it over. "Um, which?"

"Sort of," Cho said, sighing and taking a longer drink of water. "It's - look, it's not your fault my aunt cornered you, but I was sort of... Implying to them that it wasn't very serious in my letters home, and now they're all excited that I might marry you."

"Er," Harry said. "Sorry?" He tried to recall the details of the conversation he had had with Sirius about this and came up blank.

Cho shook her head. "It's not like I told you," she said heavily. "And you're - you're sweet, I don't mind the idea, really, I've got to marry someone, it's just..."

"That you don't want to have to pick now?" Harry said, and Cho nodded. He swallowed heavily and said, "So, are you chucking me, then?"

Mostly he felt vaguely nauseous at the prospect, but there was a stab of something that might be relief underneath it. Harry frowned.

"No!" Cho said rapidly. "No no, that's not what I mean - I like you, Harry, I just want my family to back off..."

"Is that part of why you've been so, um..."

"Nonexistent?" Cho smiled sheepishly and pushed her long hair behind her ears. "Most of it's O.W.L.s, but some, yeah. And it's not just you, Marietta can't imagine why I wouldn't be so happy to be engaged, she's ready to kill me I keep dithering. I was thinking about breaking up with you, I just decided I didn't want to. I mean, it's not like it would be better if I dated someone else, unless it was someone I couldn't marry, and then I'd have a different thing to be upset about."

"Er, good to know." Harry examined his emotions for disappointment, if he had been relieved earlier, but did not find it, exactly. It was just, he decided, that he had had some idea something was wrong and was glad to actually know what.

"What do you think?" Cho said slightly desperately. "I don't actually have any idea what you think, I know how I feel--"

"Could you maybe summarize it again for me?" Harry said.

Cho blinked, then to Harry's relief laughed. "Sorry, that was sort of a mess, wasn't it? I like you and I want to keep dating you. I don't know if I want to marry you, I haven't had time to decide yet, and I'm worried my family will say yes if your godfather offers for me before I have a chance to think it through. If they do talk about it, I've got to dig my heels in right now and say no or I won't have any choice later."

"So you want to keep dating and not be engaged," Harry said. "Er, okay. Just so you know, Sirius says he doesn't believe in people being engaged as minors, and I'm only fourteen so you've got at least two and a half more years before they could anyway." Cho looked tentatively relieved. "And I..."

He trailed off, feeling frustrated; he hadn't had a lot of conversations like this and he wasn't sure where to start. "I think - it's a lot like what you said," he said slowly. "I like you, I think we're - friends, as well as dating," Cho nodded rapidly.

"And that's. Nice. But I didn't... you know I was raised by muggles, I didn't grow up expecting to get married right away after school like you, I'm still - getting used to the idea, I guess? And I can't quite picture what it means, or what life will be like as an adult, especially since, you know, I'm tied up with Voldemort." He swallowed hard, but Cho didn't look surprised by this. "So I think I feel the same, I want to keep trying and see where we end up but I don't know what I want forever and always, yet."

"So basically we agree," Cho said, wiping a hand across her eyes.

"Yeah, I think so."

"...You don't have a spare handkerchief or a tissue or anything, do you? Mine are all in the wash," Cho said, and gratefully accepted when he produced one.

After that Cho was around a lot more, and she even joined them with her O.W.L. notes while they worked on homework or the map in Sirius's quarters a few times.

Harry found that while her presence might have been awkward before he was only happy for it now. Kissing Cho was no longer a somewhat awkward chore, but something he genuinely enjoyed. He realized he was noticing how pretty she was again. He was relieved that something in his life was going well; it was a distraction from the fact that Mrs. Weasley had been refusing to answer Sirius's letters, and Ron, ears burning, admitted she was now sending him questions about Sirius as a guardian that were reminiscent of Percy's.

Furthermore, while Harry and Cho were doing better, and Hermione and Viktor seemed to be coasting along as always, Ron and Lavender had taken a turn for the disastrous. The fact that Ron was not particularly bothered by this only seemed to aggravate the situation.

There was nearly a fight one night in the common room when Harry and Ron realized that Hermione had not appeared at ten minutes to curfew. Lavender overheard them discussing going to check if Hermione had fallen asleep in the library, as she had seemed rather stressed and inclined to lose track of time lately, and tried to insist on coming along; but Harry brushed her off and dragged Ron off before they could get started shouting.

Once they were outside the portrait hole, he got out the Map. Hermione's dot was not in the library; nor was it in the Owlery, or near the kitchens. Finally Ron spotted the dot labeled Hermione Granger in one of the study nooks one floor up, and they went for the stairs.

They found her sitting cross legged with a book in her lap, with some of the bluebell flames she had learned to conjure their first year cupped in her hand, staring into them as though mesmerized. Harry halted at the door, feeling something was wrong; Ron said, "Hermione?"

She didn't answer, or look up, or apparently blink. Harry swallowed and said, "Hermione?" going into the room. "Are you alright?"

She still didn't answer. Harry approached cautiously. She still hadn't turned her head, or blinked. "Hermione," he said again, now frightened, and put a hand on her shoulder.

She startled hard as though caught by surprised, and gasped. The fire in her hand sputtered and died, and she brought her fingers up to rub her eyes. "Harry?" she said. "It hurts--"

Ron said an incantation Harry didn't recognize; Hermione gasped again, in relief this time. "Oh. Thank you, what was that?"

"It's a first aid spell, it's not really hard," Ron muttered, sounding embarrassed. "Mum taught me... Are you okay? What happened?"

"I was just - looking at the fire," Hermione said, sounding guilty. "And the magic was so pretty... I don't know how long I was like that."

The curfew bell for older students rang, making them jump.

"Come on, we'd better get back to the common room," Harry said. "--Is this happening a lot?"

"You should talk to Sirius," Ron said. "Or Madam Pomfrey."

"I can't right now," Hermione said, collecting her bag. Seeing their anxious expressions she said, "Tomorrow, alright?"

Lavender glared when the three of them came back together, but fortunately said nothing before they all went up to bed.

Things came to a head the second dueling club meeting after term resumed. Lavender had been fuming over Ron working with Hermione in Potions the previous week, and Ron was not nearly apologetic enough for her tastes. She had angrily challenged Hermione to partner her during the practice duel, with predictable results: Hermione was not caught by a single one of Lavender's jinxes, but Lavender was left tap dancing furiously and covered in little red boils. Both were rapidly dispelled by Hermione herself, but Ron made the mistake of snickering at the side.

"RONALD WEASLEY," Lavender bellowed. "How DARE you!"

"Well, you have to admit," Ron said, still sniggering, but what it was Lavender should admit, they never found out; Lavender had already stalked over and slapped him.

A hush fell among the nearby dueling partners.

"I can't believe you, you total arse!" Lavender shrieked. "You carry on with her - in the tower, in class - and now she jinxes me and you stand there and laugh--"

"We're at dueling club, it was a duel," Hermione said, exasperated, but if Lavender heard this only egged her on.

"We're finished, Ronald!" she screamed. "I can't believe you!" And she turned on her heel and stormed out of the club.

"Well, it was doomed anyway," Ron said philosophically, to muffled laughter and a furious glare from Parvati; and he turned back to Dean and loudly complimented him on his Jelly Legs Jinx.

"Well, thank God that's over," Hermione said under her breath. Harry snorted.

Chapter Text

That weekend, Harry ran across Sirius leaving Gryffindor in the morning. He intercepted Harry and asked if he'd mind eating in his quarters; Harry could see Sirius was waiting to tell him something and went eagerly.

"So what happened?" he asked, wondering if Crouch had at last been arrested.

"You remember the demonstration with Amelia Bones?" he asked. "And Cassiopeia saying she might be able to fight Voldemort? Well, I talked to her and asked if she'd be amenable to helping teach you dueling, and she found some free time this weekend unexpectedly - some meeting or other canceled. I just got the owl, are you game?"

Harry grinned back. Sirius's anticipation was contagious, and Harry was really beginning to like dueling. "Yes, definitely," he said. "When can she come?"

"After lunch," Sirius said, "Just let me write her back. I need to talk to her about the situation with Crouch, too, I talked to Hermione about it last night and we have a story that won't incriminate her."

By the time that afternoon came, Harry was beginning to have second thoughts. Amelia Bones was supposed to be very powerful and an incredible duelist, and Harry was at best rather fast for fourteen. He was learning, faster than he had anything else with the future prospect of fighting Voldemort hanging over him, but perhaps it would have been better to put off being seriously tested for another year or two...

"Don't worry," Hermione said, looking at his face. "Sirius said Amelia was going to help him decide what to teach you, right? I'm sure they don't expect you to be perfect."

"Come on, Harry, you got a hit on Flitwick during a demonstration last month," Ron said through a mouthful of sandwich.

"Only because he was distracted by that third year accidentally levitating her partner into the ceiling," Harry said, but he got up and picked up his bag. He had actually felt rather awful after the incident in question, since it was apparent that Flitwick had considered the duel interrupted. Harry hadn't stopped to think when he saw Flitwick turn aside, and had only realized why after the fact. Flitwick and Sirius had both assured Harry that taking advantage of an opponent's distraction was an important skill and not cheating, but he was not sure that helped much.

"Hey, Harry," Sirius said cheerfully when Harry got to his quarters. He and Amelia were sitting in the living room, and a tea tray with three mugs was on the coffee table. "Come sit with us. We're going down to the Defense classroom in a bit, but not just yet.

"Alright," Harry said, coming over to sit down. "Um, it's nice to see you again, Madam Bones."

"Amelia's fine when I'm not working," she said, smiling at him. She was wearing the same sort of shorter robes she had at the party, and this time they were open over trousers and shirt. She looked, Harry thought, a lot more comfortable here. "Sirius tells me you've been doing well with dueling."

"I guess," Harry said. "I'm still learning, though." He glanced at Sirius uncertainly.

"Do you have any idea what you want to work on improving?" Amelia asked, gently.

"Uh..." Questions like this were nerve wracking; Harry was never quite sure what he was supposed to say. "My Transfiguration could use some work, especially doing it quickly," he said eventually. "And countering spells... And of course I just don't know that many different..."

"Things to do in a duel? That's normal at your age. Pretty much lines up with what Sirius has been telling me," Amelia said, taking a sip of her tea and wiping her mouth absently. "You need to be able to fight in general - probably your whole generation will, sorry to say it - but let's be honest here, we're preparing you to fight Voldemort. We know he's going to keep coming after you."

"Yeah," Harry said, hoping he did not sound as miserable as he felt. "And he's won against everyone he's ever fought but Dumbledore, hasn't he?"

"More or less." Amelia snorted. "I did manage to delay him for a few minutes once to cover a retreat. Look." She set her cup down and leaned forward. "Harry, I can see that you think it's hopeless. I can understand why, but the thing about magic is that what you expect to happen matters. If you give up, your powers won't work correctly. And you won't fight as hard, either. So I want you to believe that you have a chance."

"I'm not giving up," Harry said indignantly, jerking his head up.

"Good." Amelia smiled thinly. "So, about fighting Voldemort, a few things. It's not just that he's massively overpowered and magic comes to him like breathing to the rest of us, although both are true. He uses mind magic in combat, he often invents his own spells, and he can manipulate magic directly without using a wand. All of those things create advantages for him, but weaknesses, too. I hear you're already studying Occlumency?"

They spent a few more minutes talking about general strategies for combating Voldemort's tactics: there were ways of sucking in a person who tried to touch your mind or personal magic in a fight or turning their attack against them, and draining their magic or similar. While Amelia commented drily that many of them were illegal or extremely dangerous to learn, just knowing this gave Harry more hope: there was something he could work on, something specifically meant to attack Voldemort, instead of only hoping he would be able to become, somehow, the best duelist of the century.

"Wait," Harry said, frowning. Amelia raised her eyebrows. "In my first year - does MLE... know about... Quirrell?"

"About Voldemort possessing him?" Amelia said, nodding.

"Right. He tried to touch me, and he couldn't, it burned him. Dumbledore said it was because of my mother's blood - and this year, he said that there were... protections set up on my house when I lived with her family based on her dying for me. Would that make it harder for him to attack me this way? If they're based on - touching someone's mind with yours, or magic with yours..."

"Could be the case," Amelia said, slowly, thoughtful. "Could be. Sirius, you were friends with Lily Evans. I can think of a few things a powerful witch could do with her own murder, but most of them aren't in the books in the library here, let alone talked about. Was it the kind of thing Lily Evans was interested in?"

Sirius was already nodding. "She worked on curse analysis for Dumbledore," he said. Harry jerked his head up, fascinated; but Sirius was smiling tightly, and his voice was strange and hoarse. Harry remembered how hard it had been for Sirius to talk about Lily and James before... "She worked on Voldemort's spellwork, actually, she was the one who came up with the counter when Frank Longbottom survived being cursed by him personally..." He swallowed. "She would have known."

"Alright. I'll look into it, my family were specialists in wards," she said, frowning then. "Might have something relevant, especially as to whether it'll hold up with you moved away from your mother's family... Anyway." She stood abruptly. "Ready to get some practice in?"

Harry did not do quite as badly as he had feared. In particular he seemed to be able to dodge at least as fast as Amelia could cast, when she stuck to throwing spells at him directly; only when she transfigured the floor to ice and tripped him was she able to hit him with one of the color changing charms she had been using to test his reflexes.

After that she let him up and they began working on spells he had to counter or shield. She also encouraged him to try different methods of offense, sometimes slowing down enough to give him a chance to think between spells. Perhaps fueled by his feeling of desperate enthusiasm to learn how to counter Voldemort, Harry was able for the first time to pull off a Transfiguration mid-duel, changing a chair into a dog which occupied Amelia's attention for just long enough for him to attempt to cast a Stunner and promptly have to dodge its reflection.

"Good, good," Amelia said, finally dispelling the last spell effects. Harry was panting, but Amelia seemed unmoved. "No, really, you're doing good. I know it doesn't feel like it, my teachers wiped the floor with me every day for months when I started really studying combat magic. You'll get better. Sirius, I'll owl you a summary of my thoughts."

"Do you have just a few more minutes?" Sirius said, looking anxious. "There was something else I wanted to discuss with you."

"Sure, sure, it's not that late. Go back up to your quarters for it?"

"Should I come?" Harry asked uncertainly. A little to his surprise, Sirius nodded, and gestured for him to come up with them.

"Perhaps I'm being a fool," Sirius said calmly, "But if you'll take a tip in confidence..."

"There are things I couldn't keep secret," Amelia said. "I suppose you're smart enough to know what they are, though."

"I certainly hope so. Harry," Sirius said, "Could you give me the map?"

Harry tried not to look as shocked as he felt, and bent to find it in his bag. Had Sirius decided to tell Amelia directly?

Amelia raised her eyebrows as the parchment was spread on the coffee table, and laughed when Sirius activated it, saying "I solemnly swear I'm up to no good."

"The work of teenagers, I suppose," she said, leaning over, and then gasped sharply as it filled. "This has to be the only workable map of Hogwarts in existence."

"I'm sure if we managed it, others have, too," Sirius said. "As you've probably guessed, I created it with James, Remus and - Pettigrew in the seventies... Through somewhat dubious methodology, although I will say nothing we did was specifically banned."

"Because nobody at the Ministry had thought to ban it?" Amelia said, but she was tracing the hallways of the second floor with an enraptured look. "Gorgeous, that's really gorgeous magic... Incredible for teenagers. These show everyone in the castle? Well. You saw someone who shouldn't have been there? I'd think you'd tell Dumbledore."

Sirius hesitated. "Dumbledore is aware," he said. "He was... reluctant to involve the Ministry without proof, particularly as the... methodology of detection was dubious, as you say."

"Very well. Surprised you'd trust me but I'm flattered. No, I'm not about to go arresting you or Remus Lupin for some eerily proficient tracking charms installed when you were seventeen--"

"Sixteen," Sirius said, and Amelia nodded, looking impressed. "Well. During the First Task, you will recall the attack on Igor Karkaroff--"

Amelia inhaled sharply. "You saw the culprit? And haven't mentioned this up until now."

"I did," Sirius said smoothly, as though it had been in fact him looking at the map. "Or I believe so. There was no... strange name sitting in the judges' box. What there was was a second Bartemius Crouch."

There was a pause. Amelia said, "I see why you wanted more proof," dryly.

"I know how it sounds," Sirius said, rubbing his hand over his hair. "That said, I don't think Crouch - at least, Crouch himself - attacked Karkaroff. The thing about the Map is, it doesn't append titles, and it doesn't know to distinguish between people with the same name."

There was a rather stunned silence, then Amelia said, "You think his son is alive. You were in Azkaban when he died?"

"Crouch and his wife visited his son very soon before his death," Sirius said. "I know that her information is dubious, but I wrote to my cousin to ask if she remembered much about his death under the pretense of being upset having to interact with his father at the Tournament, obviously I didn't tell her we suspected he was alive. Bellatrix told me that he wasn't coherent after his father's visit, he didn't seem to recognize people. I think it's entirely possible that the guards buried an effigy, and that may well be why Crouch never claimed his son's body."

Sirius hesitated, then continued, "Crouch has been injured repeatedly over the past few months, he's been missing work frequently, and he dismissed his house elf after she was found carrying the wand that cast the Dark Mark after the World Cup. His house elf was in the top box saving him a seat for the game, and he never arrived to use it. His behavior over the last year has been undeniably strange. It's possible that he has his son prisoner, and Crouch Jr. has begun to fight whatever measures Crouch used to control him; it's also possible that he himself may be under the Imperius Curse, or that he did use a Time-Turner to attack Karkaroff, but I think it's undeniable he's involved.

Amelia pulled her lips to the side wryly. "The Imperius Curse? Not acting of his own volition?"

"I'd believe he'd attack Karkaroff, but not that he would deliberately summon the Dark Mark," Sirius said. "And... You saw Bertha Jorkins when you came to talk to me about Lucius Malfoy's attack, I know you suspected her memory had been modified. Well, I brought up the subject of Crouch to her and she couldn't remember much about working for him or why her work started going downhill, and she eventually made the same guess you did. She wrote to me, recently, asking for help. I couldn't leave her wondering what he did to her if I could help."

"It seems that everyone in your family wants me to have his house searched lately," Amelia said, then asked, "Your cousin - Narcissa, I mean - knows about this?"

"We didn't tell her deliberately, but a house elf did," Sirius confirmed. "She's always been good with them, and it hadn't occurred to me to order Winky not to discuss anything sensitive with Narcissa."

"That does explain it, then. I remember Crouch Jr. was close to your cousins during the war." Amelia hesitated. "Tell you the truth, Sirius, I was about to write a warrant to have his house searched anyway. Like I told you before, I went looking for his interrogation records and found out a number of them had gone missing - not just yours." Her voice was flat. "If he destroyed them entirely it won't do any good, but I'd hoped he might have saved them."

"Which other records?" Sirius asked, slow.

"Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband and brother-in-law, Antiope Greengrass, you, and a couple of others," Amelia said. "I'm considering reopening the investigation into Antiope Greengrass's death; if we can pin him down as having been in her cell that night it might be possible to convict him of murder. The problem is that given the other missing records..."

"If you convict him of murdering Antiope Greengrass and confirm he tortured me, you're left with the Lestranges' remaining allies pushing for them to be freed," Sirius said.

"I would be lying if I said I wasn't concerned. Supposedly Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange both confessed and confirmed Bellatrix's involvement; she waited to give a statement until that little scene in the actual Wizengamot after they were all convicted. Given the missing records, and some of what Narcissa told me when I owled her later, I can't imagine the Wizengamot upholding the convictions again if how exactly Crouch got those confessions comes to light. It's a very different time now."

"But all three of them are undeniably guilty, and the moment Bellatrix in particular is free, it will be a matter of months until Voldemort is risen," Sirius said.

"You see my problem. But I can't just ignore this. Frankly, it may be a blessing if he is holding his son in his house; it would be enough to convict him for life without having to bring anything else into question."

"You realize," Sirius said slowly, pained, "I'm not saying the Lestranges are innocent. But some of the other people Crouch had locked up may be. Almost certainly are."

"I realize it," Amelia said, rubbing her temples with one hand. "I'm going to open an inquiry into war era convictions as soon as I can get Fudge in line. But I'd like to have the question of what will be done with Bartemius Crouch concluded first."

They sat in silence for a moment, then Amelia said, "What do you think of all this, Harry?"

Harry jumped, surprised to be addressed. "I mean," he said fumblingly, "If Crouch had people handed to Azkaban without trials - or real trials - then yeah, some of the people there must be innocent, like Sirius." That was a horrible thought, and one he tried not to dwell on. "But it makes sense about the Lestranges - I mean, Sirius, if you know they're guilty, couldn't you testify if they were put on trial again?"

Amelia frowned. "Maybe. There are rules about introduction of new evidence, but depending on the mood of the Wizengamot... Would you, Sirius? It would be rather awkward for your reputation as Head."

"No, the proper thing for the Black Head to do would be to execute Bellatrix myself, I know." Sirius laughed bitterly. "If it comes to that, I'll testify, Amelia, but I hope before Christ and all of Merlin's gods that it does not. Are we finished?"

"One more thing," Amelia said after a moment of thought. "I imagine it's going to be rather difficult to get Crouch Jr. to cooperate if he's alive and being held by his father, and we'll really need his word on what happened. The only person I can think of who he might trust is Narcissa. Would you agree to me bringing her? And if you will, do you think she's trustworthy, or will she curse me in the back and make off with him the second she can?"

"Oh, bring me an easy question to finish with don't you," Sirius said, snorting; then seriously, "I don't think Cissy would abandon her son like that, knowing he would go to her husband without her. And she's missed Andromeda, and me, too. If Bellatrix was free and had told her to, or Narcissa anticipated joining her, then yes, I think she would do anything to free Crouch Jr. But absent that factor, I do think she's trustworthy... Of course, it depends on what will happen to Crouch Jr."

Amelia nodded, thoughtfully. "Given his age at the time of his arrest," she said slowly, "And the obvious moral corruption of his father, I think a case could be made for time served, and some sort of probation or monitoring, or possibly house arrest. It depends on the Wizengamot's feelings and what we conclude when we have him in custody. Do you think that would satisfy her?"

"I think house arrest is a world away from Azkaban, and she knows she can't get to him without MLE, so yes, it likely will," Sirius said, rising. "I'll Floo her - Harry, do you want to stay for this? You don't have to."

Harry swallowed. "I want to know what's going on," he said.

"Alright," Sirius said, and went to the fireplace.

Narcissa came through very quickly, and for once not perfectly put together; she was wearing plain dark green robes and had ink smudged across her knuckles and her forehead, as though she had been writing and absently brushed her hair out of her eyes. "You're here?" she said to Amelia, sounding at once horrified and exulted. "You're going to do it?"

"I am," Amelia said. "Given that we will need Crouch Jr's cooperation if he is indeed present, I wondered if you might willingly accompany me. Once you've changed clothing," she added.

"Of course," Narcissa said at once. "I can be back in ten minutes--"

"I do need to write the warrant," Amelia said. "A half hour, perhaps. I thought, given his age at the time of his arrest," she added, raising her hand, "And the circumstances, it might be possible to commute Crouch Jr's sentence to house arrest, if the Wizengamot is willing."

Narcissa rocked back on her heels, then glanced at Sirius. "Indeed," she said, looking back at Amelia. "And I shall be quite furious if you are lying, you know. A half hour, Madam Bones, and I shall meet you at the office of MLE?"

"I believe you are familiar with the location of the Director's Office," Amelia said, and bowed.

After that Harry had little to do but go and find Ron and Hermione and catch them up in quick whispers. Sirius had promised to call him as soon as he knew what happened in Crouch's house, but it might take hours to get the legal formalities accomplished and to get through any protections Crouch had, so there was no point in waiting by the fireplace with bated breath - at least according to Sirius. He had added that if anyone besides Amelia from MLE came through to talk to him, it might be better to have the three of them out of sight and out of mind, which Harry felt was perhaps a little paranoid, but did not argue.

It was true that as the afternoon wore on, it became harder to maintain the same sense of anticipation. The three of them went to Gryffindor and tried to focus on homework and Exploding Snap, but it was difficult. At one point Ron's sleeve caught fire because of their inattention, and they abandoned that game.

At last Professor McGonagall came to find them in Gryffindor a little before dinner. "Professor Black would like the three of you in his quarters," she said. Harry leapt up and searched her face for a hint. She was not happy or furious, as she imagined he might be if they had arrested Crouch for the attack at the school; there was not much emotion at all in her face. Perhaps she did not know why?

The three of them hurried along the corridors, fighting against the early dinner crowd, almost running when they found a clear corridor, until Harry called out the password and they surged through the portrait hole together.

Amelia was standing in front of the fireplace, lips pressed together. Sirius had sagged, defeated, in a chair, looking twenty years older. Narcissa was nowhere to be found.

Chapter Text

"Damn Crouch," Amelia hissed, angrily stalking to a chair herself as though she had just come through the Floo. "Sirius, I--"

"She chose to go," Sirius said, a total lack of emotion in his voice as though he had no energy left for feeling. "Furthermore she deliberately ignored your instructions to wait. I can't hold you responsible, Amelia."

"What happened?" Harry said. "Where's Narcissa?"

They both looked up. Sirius smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. "Sit down, you three," he said. "Amelia got the warrant signed, but it looks like someone in the department tipped Crouch off to the request. It's not a surprise, he was a very popular head, he still has his contacts. It's probably how he got the records to disappear, too."

"I got an emergency call, a confiscated Dark object had gotten out of containment and been set off," Amelia said tiredly. "No one else who can personally handle that level is in on weekends regularly, and he would know that, of course. I told Narcissa to wait while I handled it, but she must have guessed it was a diversion."

"She went by herself?" Hermione said. " And - and tried to break into Crouch's house?"

"Knowing Cissy, she probably knocked on the door planning to keep him talking for an hour or so," Sirius said with a bitter laugh. "She's too used to no one ever blaming her for anything, and she never had to face Crouch when he was angry."

"We found the house cleaned up, no sign of anything illegal, and Crouch indignant at suspicion," Amelia said, running a hand over her bristly hair. "--No, I know, it was obvious that several rooms had recently been wiped of all magical traces, and he also had a very bad slice to his chest recently patched up, nasty cutting curse. There was no sign of Narcissa or where he might have taken her, and she's not with her sister, or at Grimmauld Place, or St. Mungo's."

"And I can't feel her in the family magic, even though she's been reinstated for months," Sirius said.

"She's not dead?" Ron said, horrified.

"We don't know," Amelia said, tired.

Sirius was shaking his head. "I know what that's supposed to feel like. If she's dead, he blocked her magical connections before killing her, and I would say that's more likely if he's holding her alive."

"We'll go on that theory for now," Amelia said. "Crouch acted suspicious enough that I could easily excuse searching the other properties, everywhere we know of that he has access to and might stash captives. That's in progress now; he's being forcibly served tea in my assistant director's office since I can't easily arrest another Department Head."

"We'll let you get back to searching," Sirius said. "And I really don't blame you for it."

"I appreciate that," Amelia said, rising with visible effort.

"When you find anything--"

"We'll let you know immediately," Amelia said, bowed, and left.

The wait was horrible.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were all tense and worried. Draco was pale and withdrawn, and snapped at people at the slightest excuse. He seemed to go back and forth between blaming Sirius and by extension the three of them, blaming Crouch, and blaming the whole world.

Harry in particular had spent a lot of time with Narcissa that spring in the course of Occlumency lessons and had begun to get used to the idea of her as part of his extended family. It was terrible to think she might be dead, and he might never hear her bicker with Snape or ask her for help with an Occlumency problem again. He realized that although his entire life had been marked by loss, his parents' deaths were a fact of life, an absence he had grown up with and could not remember the beginning of. He had never personally known someone who died before.

The fact that Narcissa might not be dead, might only be out of reach and being hurt, only made things worse.

Harry regularly stopped by Sirius's office and quarters in spare moments to ask if he had heard anything, but he didn't get any results until lunch that Wednesday.

"Two things," Sirius said in response to his query. "Amelia Bones found this and sent me a copy, Draco's already seen it. Apparently Narcissa mailed it on Sunday just before she left, so the Auror office read the sensitive information and held it. It was probably a better strategy than sending a message to Amelia for Crouch's informants to destroy."

Harry took the letter and skimmed it quickly. It written in a hasty, messy hand and was not long.

Dearest Sister,

I love you & hope you are as well as can be anyway, give my kisses to R. and everyone. Am about to do something v. stupid and want you to know why if I stop writing & also someone to know where I am if everything goes wrong which it v. probably will.

Barty jr is probably still alive & being held captive by his father, feel so terrible for him if so. Sirius has brain after all & has persuaded Amelia Bones to search his house, they asked me to come so that Barty jr will not curse Bones in the back promptly (which is fair either way!) but of course Crouch's messengers heard as soon as the warrant was signed. Someone has set off a v. dangerous something in confiscated artifacts and Bones has rushed off.

Suspect if I wait as instructed Barty jr will be dead or at very least moved by the time we get there so I am going now. I only plan to delay Crouch but he probably will know why. Am writing this in Bones's office, leaving when done.

Love you v. much, please take care of Draco if V. breaks you out and takes over Britain.

Yr sister,
Narcissa Black

"Well," Harry said, and took a deep breath. "It's proof of where she went, at least, isn't it?" He didn't feel very encouraged, since it was nothing they hadn't already guessed.

"It is," Sirius said. "Amelia's got a warrant to keep Crouch under house arrest while they search now, at least." He hesitated. "Andromeda also is writing to their mother, Druella Rosier, to ask if she has any ideas that might help search. The Rosiers are experts in blood magic, they apparently have some spell that can track down blood relatives almost anywhere, and she thinks Druella might willingly speak to her if it's to help Narcissa. I'll let you know if anything comes of it."

"Alright, thanks," Harry said, and then they both had to scramble to get to Sirius's Defense class.

Harry was almost relieved to receive another invitation to Dumbledore's office from Colin Creevey that evening. After all, worrying about Dumbledore was a distraction from worrying about Narcissa. He proceeded as directed that Saturday up the spiral staircase and into Dumbledore's office.

"Good evening, Harry," Dumbledore said, affable enough.

Was there something a little guarded in his eyes, something unhappy in his expression, or was Harry only imagining it? The last time they had spoken, Dumbledore had tried to use Legilimancy on him and Harry had at least tried to deflect it; and too, Sirius had obviously spoken to Amelia Bones against Dumbledore's advice, and without warning him.

"Good evening," Harry muttered, taking a seat across the desk.

"My condolences for your guardian's cousin's disappearance," Dumbledore said. "There can be unfortunate repercussions, unfortunately, for hasty action. But the Black family has rarely considered waiting worthwhile."

Harry was overcome with the desire to launch himself over the desk and punch the headmaster. He strangled it, appalled, and mumbled, "No, sir."

"But I do not wish to imply insult," Dumbledore said hastily. "Narcissa's actions were by all counts extremely brave."

No, Harry thought, but you were talking about Sirius, weren't you? Sirius talking to Amelia without your permission.

He did not say this, and after a moment Dumbledore went on, "So, the Pensieve. I apologize that this may be the final memory I have to show you this year. I need to make some investigations into the matter of Tom Riddle's family background over the summer, and too, I shall be extremely occupied by the final task of the Triwizard Tournament next month."

"Of course, sir," Harry mumbled, keeping his eyes on the desk. Dumbledore seemed, he thought, a little taken aback by Harry's apathy, and he shoved down triumph at even that pale victory and asked, "Whose memory is this, sir?"

"Mine, or rather, a series of mine," Dumbledore said. "Tom Riddle attended Hogwarts between autumn 1938 and the spring of 1946. His years here, particularly the latter half, were marked by a series of unpleasant incidents to which he and his friends were never successfully linked. The worst, of course, was Myrtle Warren's death, but as the murder weapon was a basilisk, Riddle came under relatively little suspicion for it.

"I was Deputy Headmaster at the time, and under Headmaster Armando Dippet handled many of the school's disciplinary problems when they became too severe or complex for ordinary professors. What follows is a series of unsatisfactory meetings I held with students after an altercation with a second year Slytherin girl named Marina Bobbin in Tom Riddle's sixth year."

"Is she related to Melinda Bobbin?" Harry asked, startled.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows slightly. "Yes, I believe Marina was the younger sister of Melinda's grandfather. You are acquainted with the current Miss Bobbin?"

"Oh, uh, kind of," Harry said. "Hermione asked Ron and me to come to Professor Sinistra's Seder and Melinda was there with Odaya Sinistra."

He had the feeling he had said something he shouldn't have, but Dumbledore said only, "It is good to see you broadening your social horizons, as it were. Very well. As I was saying, there was a nasty incident with Miss Marina Bobbin in which her hands were cursed off - you will be glad to hear they were reattached," he added at Harry's horrified gasp, then continued, "An incident which took place in the middle of the Slytherin common room and yet was apparently witnessed by no one whatsoever.

"Subsequent investigation turned up no proof - even testing the upper years' wands gave no evidence - but did reveal that Marina Bobbin was regarded as somewhat of an enemy of Tom Riddle's, having complained about his favoritism as a Prefect to Professor Slughorn. Her complaints were unsuccessful. Prefect Tom Riddle was popular with both teachers and students, good looking and intelligent, and a particular favorite of Professor Slughorn's."

"The Slughorn from the earlier memories?" Harry asked, and when Dumbledore nodded, said, "I knew I didn't like him."

"I thought as much," Dumbledore said with a slight smile. "Now, into the Pensieve?"

Harry proceeded, perhaps for the last time, to bow into the surface of the shimmering memories. He had a terrible jolt upon landing. At first he thought he was looking at Draco facing a much younger Professor Dumbledore, whose hair and beard were auburn instead of silver.

Then Harry blinked, taking in more detail. He realized that this boy's face was a subtly different shape, square instead of pointy, that his silvery blond hair curled slightly at the ends and was cut longer, and his clothing was different. He was sprawled back in his chair in a way that reminded Harry very much of the Draco of previous years, although it seemed a touch even more arrogant; he could not quite picture Draco behaving this way called into McGonagall's office.

"Abraxas Malfoy," said the Dumbledore behind Harry. "We saw him as an adult two memories ago, at the Wizengamot."

"Mr. Malfoy," said the Dumbledore behind the desk. "I believe you know why you have been called in today."

"No, sir," Abraxas Malfoy said, straightening slightly, but still appearing very relaxed. "Unless - is it about that poor girl? Bobbin? They got her hands reattached, didn't they?"

The words were concerned but his face was not; he was very nearly smiling.

"The professors believe she will make a full recovery," Dumbledore said heavily. "You are quite sure you saw nothing?"

"Completely, Professor," Abraxas said. "I'm glad she'll be alright." The words were so clearly insincere that Harry stared.

"You were in the common room at the time, were you not?"

"Yes, sir, but I wasn't paying any attention to the younger students. They can get a bit rowdy, you know, and we had noise canceling charms up at our table so we would be able to study. Sorry I can't be more help," Abraxas said.

"You will not mind if I investigate your wand?" Dumbledore said.

Abraxas hesitated. At last, some discomfort crossed his face, but he handed it over.

Dumbledore murmured "Priori Incantato," and Harry watched as a smoky toad emerged, transfiguring into a small box and back; several chess pieces formed, levitated, and chased each other; and a textbook bit a smokey hand.

"--Just teasing Plutus, sir," Abraxas said to Dumbledore's raised eyebrows at this. "See, he wasn't hurt--"

The book opened again and the hand retreated, clearly unmarked.

Dumbledore, clearly unhappy, dismissed him from the office.

"But he was obviously guilty!" Harry hissed at the older Dumbledore.

He merely sighed. "He was obviously not remotely sorry for Marina Bobbin, no. But that did not prove guilt. I might have put the entire house in detention, but in all likelihood that would only have made Miss Bobbin's predicament worse, positioning her even more as the enemy of her classmates."

Harry had to see the logic of this, comparing it to his time bullied by Dudley in muggle primary, but nevertheless he fumed.

The memory flickered; the same office formed, Dumbledore in the same clothing, even, and a knock came on the door.

"Enter," Dumbledore said, and a girl came in who made Harry's breath catch: she was smaller and slighter built, her hair was a few shades lighter and her curls a little looser, but otherwise she was the spitting female image of Sirius.

"Miss Black," Dumbledore said, and behind him, the older Dumbledore said, "Lucretia Black."

"Professor," Lucretia Black, Mrs. Weasley's mother, said, and seated herself neatly in the chair, hands folded in her lap. Her face was a passable imitation of attentiveness. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, Miss Black," Dumbledore said. "I'm sure you can guess what this is about."

"Yes, sir, the Bobbin girl? I went by the infirmary with her school books and Madam Croaker said she'd be alright. She was glad to hear that she's got an extension on her homework."

"How responsible of you to arrange it," Dumbledore said, a current of irony in his voice. Harry stared between them, looking at Lucretia Black's much more practiced yet still somehow apparently fake innocence. Or was it only that he knew she had been involved, as a friend of Tom Riddle's?

"You did not see the culprit, Miss Black? I had hoped that one of the Prefects...No?"

Lucretia was already shaking her head. "I'm sorry, sir, I wish I had," which she made sound very nearly plausible, "But just before it there was a bit of an altercation between Ino Greengrass and Honoria Malfoy. Someone stole someone else's hairbrush and ran out of their room with it, you know the sort of thing. So I got up and rushed into the dorms just before it happened to stop Ino pulling Honoria's hair out, and that was when..."

"I see," Professor Dumbledore said. "You did not hear any word from Miss Bobbin as to the identity of her attacker when you brought her books?"

"No, sir," Lucretia said, wide eyed. "I'll ask her again, though."

"Please let her know that should she suddenly remember something, or anyone else should, they may come to me."

"Yes, sir," Lucretia said, and began to rise, when Dumbledore said, "One more thing. Your wand, Miss Black?"

Lucretia hesitated, then handed it over. Hers revealed several more suggestive charms, including a Total Petrification Hex, but the body of the victim was hazy and unclear, and Lucretia said at once, "On Ino, Professor - sorry, I know it's not really an ideal way of maintaining student discipline, but Ino's cursed other students very badly before, you remember the incident with Miss Rookwood last year, and Honoria isn't the best at shielding. I was concerned."

"Of course, Miss Black," Dumbledore said drily. "You may go."

"He had the rest of the Prefects on his side?" Harry said indignantly.

His Dumbledore sighed. "What we are seeing today, Harry, is the extent to which a conspiracy of silence can cow all bystanders, when backed up by violence especially; and how young Tom Riddle managed to assemble such a gang of hangers on that he could command this silence. Lucretia was a seventh year, as are several other of the students we will see interviewed, a Prefect who had in general performed her duties admirably, and yet... I have no doubt that she impressed upon Miss Bobbin that if she spoke she would regret it, when she retrieved her books for her in the infirmary."

They watched several other students interviewed; some genuinely seemed to have been only bystanders, while others were as openly defiant as Abraxas Malfoy.

"No Reinhard Lestrange?" Harry asked, finally, recalling Voldemort's other friend from the Wizengamot memory.

"He had graduated the previous year," his Dumbledore said, and then the door opened again.

The student who entered was familiar at once. Harry would recognize the young Tom Riddle anywhere. He was nearly the same age as the diary Horcrux had been, sixteen instead of fifteen, immaculate in Slytherin robes with his Prefect badge shiny on his chest.

"Mr. Riddle," Dumbledore said, eyebrows furrowed unhappily. "Please, have a seat."

"Sir," Tom Riddle said, and went to sit down. "Please, is this about Marina Bobbin? Is she alright?"

"Your concern does you credit," Dumbledore said, his voice very nearly sarcastic. "She will be fine; she is in the infirmary now."

"You're sure? It's only--" Tom Riddle looked up, hesitant and faltering, "I feel so terrible, Professor; I should have been in control of that room, and I didn't even see--"

It was a masterful performance, Harry thought; if he did not know that it had certainly been Tom Riddle's order to terrorize a second year girl, he might have believed it.

"Enough, Mr. Riddle," Dumbledore said sharply, and he fell silent. "Your wand, please."

There Riddle's facade broke; hatred shone through his face for just a moment before he blanked it, and handed his wand over.

Dumbledore went rather further back with the Reverse Spell on this wand than he had with the others, apparently determined to find evidence; but none was forthcoming. The wand had been used to practice nearly every Charms spell in the sixth year book, for a Transfiguration class, for, apparently, a dueling session that Riddle explained had been with Abraxas and which failed to include any spell that might have severed someone's hands; but nothing incriminating.

Finally, Dumbledore had to hand the wand back. "You may go, Mr. Riddle."

"Thank you, Professor," he said, rising.

"One thing," Dumbledore said, and Tom Riddle turned.

"You have become quite accomplished at concealing evidence," Dumbledore said conversationally. "Much better than you were last year; I suppose your successful framing of Mr. Hagrid has left you very confident. But make no mistake, Mr. Riddle. If you continue to victimize your fellow students, I will see you expelled."

Tom Riddle stared blankly at him for a moment, then said, "I understand, Professor. Did someone bring Miss Bobbin's books to her?"

"Lucretia Black. Go," Dumbledore said, and he went.

Harry was staring at the closed door, startled, and barely heard Dumbledore telling him they were finished; for what he had thought of at that moment was not the Horcrux or the adult Voldemort, though undeniably they were on his mind. What he dwelt on as they retreated from the Pensieve was how, as he accused Riddle and promised to see him expelled, for a brief moment Dumbledore had sounded extraordinarily like Snape.

Harry made it through Dumbledore's discussion of Tom Riddle's gang with difficulty. He rushed off immediately to tell Sirius, Ron and Hermione about it, in particular the limited information he had obtained about Lucretia Black. However, Hermione was distracted; she muttered something about Divination essays, to Ron and Harry's bafflement, and dove promptly back into her book, making only occasional comments on the memory.

Chapter Text

It was now the last week of May. Everyone was consumed by exams, which at least meant that people stopped asking why the three of them and Sirius were solemn and subdued; and it was hard to be totally consumed with worry about Narcissa and Crouch while trying to memorize the theoretical definition of a Switching Spell for Transfiguration.

Therefore, when Hermione dragged Harry and Ron off to an empty classroom on a Saturday, he assumed it was only in the name of a fit of studying; Hermione always lost her mind during exams for a while. However, what came out of her mouth was, "I worked out prophecies."

"What?" Harry said.

"What?" Ron said. "--I mean, Hermione, loads of people have said that, but--"

"Shut up, Ron," Hermione said tartly. She had been a bit short with him ever since Lavender, even after he had apparently apologized to her for his behavior earlier in the year. "If you just think about it from a distance - I went back through every verified prophecy in record for the last two hundred years and everything we knew about the circumstances of how they were filled--"

She pulled out a long, somewhat tatty scroll that Harry had thought was her exam notes and began to unroll it. The top rapidly spilled over the edge of the desk she was using and rolled away across the floor. Hermione did not seem to notice.

"--So at first I thought they had to be simulations along the lines of a computer program, describing the most likely outcome of the current circumstances, because of course if you examine all parallel possibilities they aren't always actualized," Hermione said, "Which wasn't quite right, I mean, look at this one saying 'it will happen in the morning,' they do actually predict the future, although they often start from a description of circumstances and sometimes that's all they are.

"For example, if you think about the prophecy about Harry, it predicted his birth month, but any doctor can do that for a baby roughly; and it described the conditions of his power, and of his and Voldemort's relationship; but it doesn't exactly give a future sequence, does it? So at first I was thinking of true prophecy as like that, a description of present events, and that led me off track. But I was on to something, I just had to start looking up prophecies that weren't filled but were made by reputable Seers, ones with a higher than chance success rate, and verifying across multiple dimensions."

"So what did you find?" Ron said, finally cutting her off. Harry only sort of heard; his heart was pounding madly at the reminder, at the words of the prophecy he had nearly forgotten: And neither can live while the other survives...

"It's an illustration of a possible future as it opens!" Hermione said madly. "Look, look at this - this one about a prison escape in France, for example. It foretold the escape of the notorious Dark Lord Ursula the Blackheart in the thirteenth century, and she did escape, but the way she escaped was by taking advantage of the hiring of a distant cousin of hers as the warden of the prison, and the prophecy was given on the same night that the warden was hired! They're all like that if you dig deep enough, all the ones I could confirm. The prophecy spills out at exactly the time when the circumstances come into play that will make the events possible."

"Hermione," Ron said, "When did you last sleep?"

"Yesterday," Hermione said distractedly, "And it doesn't matter, it's a Saturday, I can go off and sleep until noon tomorrow and it'll be fine."

"Hermione," Ron said seriously, "I think having that Time-Turner for a year and a half has messed you up."

"Don't be ridiculous, Ronald--"

"I mean it, I want you to come to the infirmary with me--"

"Don't you see--"

"What if you finished explaining and then we walked you to the infirmary?" Harry interjected.

Hermione looked put out that they didn't appreciate her discovery, but said, "Fine. Look, Harry, do you understand?"

"I - I think I do," Harry said slowly. "The prophecy was caused by - circumstances that were already true, right? So something happened that made me the one who would - be able to defeat him - happened then."

"Yes," Hermione said. "And we know it was given before your birth - can you find out the exact date from Dumbledore? -- So whatever the power you have that You-Know-Who doesn't know about is, it has to be something you inherited, or something you were sure to acquire based on the circumstances."

"But what would that be?" Harry asked, dubiously. "It's not as if I'm great at magic. I mean, sure, my parents were brilliant, but..."

"We'd better ask Sirius," Ron said. "--But first we'd better go to the Hospital Wing, Hermione, come on."

"Where's Viktor, anyway?" Harry asked before Hermione could begin to argue, as they started their walk. "I thought you were with him when you were disappearing."

"Oh, sometimes I have been, but he's distracted now," Hermione said dispassionately. "They told him what the Third Task was last Thursday--"

"Yeah? What is it?" Ron said eagerly.

"They're going to make a maze for the champions and they have to navigate it, they're putting all kinds of magical barriers and creatures in the way," Hermione said. "A bit like the Stone first year, I suppose, except going on for ages longer - they've started growing the hedges in the Quidditch Pitch--"

"They're doing what to the pitch!" Ron shouted, appalled.

Harry walked faster, just as Ron began to roundly abuse the Triwizard Tournament judges, the Ministry, and in fact everyone who might have been involved in the decision.

"Hello, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger," Madam Pomfrey said when they arrived, currently in the middle of sorting potions vials. "What have you done to yourself now, Mr. Potter"

"Not me, it's Hermione," Harry said rapidly as Madam Pomfrey turned to glare.

"I'm fine, really," Hermione said.

"You're not fine," Ron said, and to Madam Pomfrey, "She says she hasn't slept since she got up Friday morning, only she won't admit that's not normal--"

"I just had a lot to do last night!"

"You know about the Time-Turner, right?" Harry said quickly as Ron and Hermione began to bicker.

"Ah," Madam Pomfrey said. "Yes, I do, and there can be... side effects, certainly. Miss Granger, I appreciate that you have a lot of exams to study for, but neglecting your sleep will not help you do so. Please come sit down on a bed. Mr. Weasley, Mr. Potter, thank you very much for bringing this to my attention, and you may go."

They rapidly exited the infirmary under Hermione's furious glare.

"We'd better get her something good to make up for that," Ron said, wiping his forehead. "Maybe Fred and George will tell us how to get into the kitchens..."

They returned to Gryffindor, where Ron began to wheedle Fred and George into telling them about the kitchens, but Harry was distracted. All week he had been buried alternately in worrying about Narcissa and in preparation for exams, as the teachers seemed to look at their fourth year exams as a sort of practice O.W.L., but now he had time to dwell on Dumbledore's final lesson for the year.

It wasn't, Harry thought, staring into his knees, that he thought Dumbledore was wrong. It was quite obvious that Abraxas Malfoy, for example, had been guilty. And if a twelve year old girl had been horribly injured in the middle of the common room by an unknown attacker and everyone claimed they hadn't seen what happened, it seemed natural to blame a charismatic student who could command most of the house anyway.

It was just that the way Dumbledore had responded had seemed so useless. He had delivered his words calmly, a little sadly, totally unlike Snape; but both of them were railing uselessly at wrongdoing they had no proof of and couldn't stop. Dumbledore had made it into a contest of power with Tom Riddle and then he'd lost it.

That, Harry decided, was what bothered him: Dumbledore hadn't, as far as he could see, gone to Marina Bobbin to coax her into believing it was safe to speak out, or tried to change the enchantments on the Slytherin common room so it couldn't happen again, or had more Prefects added, or any number of measures. He'd tried to terrorize Tom Riddle into compliance, and Tom Riddle had not been cowed. He had only seen how ineffective Dumbledore was.

"Harry?" Ron said.

"Sorry, what?"

"I said, they told us how to get in," Ron said. "Assuming they weren't having me on - tickle the pear, honestly - but let's go."

"Oh, yeah, sure," Harry said, getting up and trying to dismiss his thoughts.

They made their way down to a corridor near where Harry thought the Hufflepuff common room was, in the basement, to a large portrait of fruit. Ron, bearing an expression suggesting he was waiting for Fred and George to leap out, laughing maniacally, reached out and tentatively tickled the bear.

The portrait swung open onto a scene full of house elves.

Harry and Ron blinked at each other for several heartbeats before one of the elves noticed them. "Students!" it said, ears flaring in what might be either happiness or anxiety. "What would you be wanting today?"

"Er," Harry said, "Our friend Hermione's ill, we wanted to bring her something in the hospital wing--"

In a matter of minutes, a basket of sweets and several bottles of butterbeer was zooming towards them, borne by several elves, and very rapidly they were packed back out of the portrait hole.

"All this time I was so impressed by Fred and George nicking things from the kitchens," Ron said. "Not exactly hard, isn't it?"

"No," Harry said absently, "Not at all."

They returned to the infirmary and found that Madam Pomfrey had been joined by Professor Snape and Sirius, who looked like they wanted to strangle each other but were consulting with a number of books. Hermione was sitting on the end of a bed, looking mutinous, but listening; she raised her head with relief when they came in.

Madam Pomfrey approached with the clear intention of throwing them out, but Snape raised his hand. "A moment, Poppy," he said. "You two should hear this as well. I believe," he said, eyes traveling from Ron, to Harry, to Hermione on the bed, "That I expressly forbade you all - but in particular Miss Granger - from tampering with the fabric of reality?"

"What?" Harry and Ron said together.

"I didn't do anything to reality!" Hermione protested not at all convincingly. "And anyway it wasn't on purpose but the only thing it would have damaged would have been--"

"You," Sirius finished, for a moment rather frighteningly angry himself. "And that wouldn't matter at all, would it?"

Hermione shrank back.

"She'll be alright," Madam Pomfrey said comfortingly to Harry and Ron. "You were right to bring her in right away, a little longer and things could have been much worse."

"Your friend," Professor Snape said, "Had been researching Divination and the theory of multiple universes for those idiotic assignments Minerva gave you. I assume Minerva thought that there was little trouble you could get into with a 'useless' Art like Divination and failed to keep an adequate eye on experimental procedure.

"From there, it appears that Miss Granger's experimentation with augmented vision resulted in her failing rather spectacularly at safety procedures when she was mesmerized by the magic, and she slipped partially through a door instead of looking into it. She has been half soul-lost for some weeks now."

"What does that mean?" Harry said hastily as Ron began to splutter.

"It means that her soul was divided between timelines," Sirius interjected. "It's a rare problem - well, it hasn't actually been proven possible before this, but when you combine obscure Arts with each other, with a practitioner who's - er - inexperienced, sometimes impossible things happen.

"Given the novelty of the problem we cannot be absolutely certain, but we believe the situation is resolved," Snape interjected, sneering at them all. "At least until the next time Miss Granger augments her vision at the wrong moment. Had you considered doing anything whatsoever to contain that little issue, Black?"

"If she was my child, I'd have pulled her out for health reasons for a couple of weeks months ago," Sirius said tiredly. "But I can't do that with someone else's daughter, let alone a muggleborn who's legally required to be at Hogwarts until she comes of age. It isn't as if the process of teaching is hard to notice, Snape."

"Then you will allow me to provide the excuse," Madam Pomfrey snapped; both men jumped as though they had forgotten she was there. "I originally believed the problem might be related to Time-Turner withdrawal. Some of the symptoms appear to be similar, particularly the disorientation in time and fatigue. I will tell the Headmaster that that was the case and that she requires a few weeks of supervision in the infirmary owing to a rare complication.

"You two will ensure that she is able to control this ability by the end of that point, and stop using up beds in my infirmary because of your collective idiocy. I am tired of seeing students unnecessarily hospitalized by experimentation in the Dark Arts that I cannot actually see them assisted with with lest the Ministry haul them off to Azkaban - and do not give me those looks! Professor Snape, I remember your final years of school! Professor Black, in addition to your personal activities I have ample records of your family from previous Hogwarts Healers! And your mother," she said, rounding on Harry, "Was the worst of you all! Now all of you get out, take your illegal activities with you, and allow Miss Granger time to rest before her lessons begin."

Harry's Occlumency lessons had taken place with Snape alone for the last few weeks. They were awkward but not as painful now that Harry had obtained what Snape referred to as "some marginal degree of competency," though they made Narcissa's absence even more obvious.

This time, however, Sirius met him on the stairs and said, "Harry, you're coming with me today, I excused it to Dumbledore and Snape. Druella Rosier wrote back to Andromeda, and we're going to try to locate Narcissa today. I thought you should see it even if I can't get Ron out of school as easily and Hermione's still in the Hospital Wing. That is - if you want to come?"

"Yeah, sure!" Harry said eagerly. "Er - is your aunt going to be..."

"Horrible?" Sirius asked, lips twitching. "I don't know, to tell you the truth." He started back up to his quarters, Harry trailing him. "Aunt Dru was a pretty bad alcoholic most of my childhood - drunk by two or three in the afternoon every day - so I didn't get to know her very well, although she was nicer than most of the others when she was sober. Andy said she was willing to help when she wrote. We're meeting them at Grimmauld Place, my parents' house. Ready?"

Harry emerged through the Floo after Sirius to a large stone kitchen with an immense fireplace. There was a long, scarred wooden table, and a number of dusty cupboards.

"Andy and her mother'll be upstairs," Sirius said. "--Don't mind the decor once we get out of the servants' work rooms, my family's taste has always been terrifying."

Harry opened his mouth to ask, but then they emerged onto the ground floor and he saw at once what Sirius meant: flickering gas lights illuminated many dark, muttering portraits full of suspicious looking background objects, which overlooked such furnishings as an umbrella stand made of a troll's leg and decapitated house elf heads in a row up the stairs. He stared.

"I know," Sirius said, sighing, "But what can we do, throw them out? That would be worse... C'mon, they're in the drawing room upstairs," he said, looking antsy, and began to climb the next flight of stairs.

The drawing room was a long and exceedingly green room lined with tapestries. Most of them depicted gruesome scenes Harry tried not to examine too closely. One shorter end contained a writing desk and the other a number of glass cases displaying alarming objects, while the wall opposite the door was hung with a single immense tapestry the full length of the room which seemed to consist entirely of a family tree dating far back into the middle ages

Harry's eyes rested on the writing desk. There was a cloak still lying there as if carelessly discarded and forgotten, made of what looked like peacock feathers but which he knew was heavily embroidered fabric. It was Narcissa's.

He swallowed and raised his eyes to the two people waiting on the sofa.

Andromeda sat next to a woman who must have been her mother, but who hardly looked older than her. They were both rigid, staring away into opposite ends of the rooms. Druella Rosier had heavy, trailing ringlets the color of beaten gold and a narrow, aristocratic face. Were she standing, she would be tall. When she turned to face him, sprawling her arm along the back of the couch, he saw that her eyes were a deep, dark blue, and that she was obviously the source of Narcissa's more distinctive mannerisms.

"Ah, Mr. Potter," she said, rising. Her voice was low and a little sardonic, and seemed not to match her face and dress. "A pleasure to meet you at last."

"My aunt, Druella Rosier," Sirius said. "Aunt Druella, my ward, Harry Potter."

Harry belatedly remembered not to offer his hand. Druella did not offer hers, but only bowed, and he copied her somewhat awkwardly. "Charmed," she said softly.

"Don't take offense, my mother has never shaken a man's hand in her life," Andromeda said, and fidgeted with her sleeves. She was dressed in formal robes for the first time Harry remembered, dark purple silk with flowers embroidered around the hems, and kept looking uncertainly towards her mother. Her face was even paler than usual and worn with worry and sleeplessness. "Well. We're here."

"We are," Druella said, and took from her sash a small glass bottle of blood. "I drew this earlier. Are you all prepared?"

"We are," Sirius said cautiously.

"Very well." Druella rose and went to the writing desk, placing the bottle on it, and the rest of them followed her. "The spell creates a sort of compass," she said. Her voice was brisk and her movements assured and calm. "You spill the blood on parchment and recite the words, and it forms into an arrow and a distance measure; the arrow will spin to indicate the direction. The location charm is stronger and more accurate the closer the relation. Only the blood must belong to a relative but if the caster is as well, results are more consistent. You understand?"

"You'll perform the spell, and we'll have a compass and distance measure to Narcissa," Sirius repeated. "--Isn't this usually more potent with fresh blood?"

"It depends on the spell. The difference should be inconsequential here," Druella said, unstopped the jar, and poured it calmly onto the parchment sitting on the desk.

"Blood of the mother, find your daughter," Druella said, voice almost toneless, eyes distant. "Find Narcissa."

The blood began to move. Aside from the use of fresh blood, something felt different to Harry in comparison to the ritual magic he had seen before. There was an uneasy, oily depth to the pool the blood formed on the parchment, and the air felt hot and staticky around them. The color of the blood was so intense it made Harry look away for a moment, head aching. He looked back quickly to find the blood had formed a series of circles inside one another on the parchment, which rippled and spun, until the outer circle grew thick and the smallest condensed into a dot, and an arrow was spinning between them, spinning so fast it blurred.

The arrow slowed gradually, second by second. Harry's breath was ragged in his chest. He saw Sirius biting his lip and Andromeda staring intently at her mother. Druella seemed oblivious to them all, looking out the window, face still very blank; but her hand was white knuckled on the empty vial.

At last, the arrow stopped, and below it shimmering numbers formed: 123 miles.

"What direction is that?" Andromeda said.

"North northeast," Druella said. "You will tell me when you find her, won't you?"

"Of course we will," Andromeda said. "Mother?" She took a step hesitantly forward; and suddenly her mother was turning and almost falling into her arms, clutching at her with a face screwed up against tears.

Harry thought that that would be very close to the end of it, that Narcissa would soon be back with them, but it turned out not to be.

Tonks came to update them on the search Tuesday evening, joining Sirius, Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco and a reluctant Snape in Sirius's quarters for dinner. One look at her face dashed Harry's hopes. Draco groaned softly. She looked exhausted, and she couldn't quite smile at them.

"Well," she said when they'd sat down, "We plotted out the direction and the number every step we took, and it was a good thing, too, because it looks like someone had a ward up to detect tracing. The thing bleeding well vanished after about three hours. First the writing got hard to read, then the - what I am going to pretend I think was red ink started shimmering and blurring on the page. Then it burst into flames and couldn't be put out with magic until it had burnt to ashes, which is a sure sign of a defensive ward.

"But you have the place, right?" Draco said, strained. "So you can find her anyway?"

"Well, we're a lot closer than we were before," Tonks said encouragingly. "That is, assuming they didn't move her when they noticed the ward going off--"

Draco moaned in distress, hands clenched on his thighs.

"--But probably there's no way Crouch could manage it, he's still under guard," Tonks said quickly, trying to sound cheerful. "We've got about a mile square to search now instead of all of Britain, and that's a big improvement. I imagine she'll be back with you in a week or so."

"Where did the spell send you?" Sirius said.

"Middle of the country side," Tonks said, sighing. "Not a damn building in sight, and no records of the Crouches owning land - 'course, that probably just means it's Unplottable and invisible. We'll find it, don't worry. The Aurors have plenty of practice breaking into charmed buildings. And we know Narcissa was alive as of yesterday afternoon, too, or that spell would have failed."

"It wouldn't burn like that? If she'd died?" Draco asked anxiously.

Tonks shook her head. "I wrote to Mistress Black - Druella Rosier, I mean, my grandmother - and she told me the "ink" would turn black if the subject died during the search, and the compass and distance would stop moving. That's not what happened. She's alright, Draco, just bored. And we know she's got water and probably food, too, since it's been way more than three days--"

Draco made a soft, nauseated sound; it was clear this had not occurred to him.

Tonks looked stricken and hurried on, "So she'll be alright, that's the point. Don't worry." Standing, she said, "I've got to get back to the office now, Sirius, sorry - thanks for the steak, I never get a chance to eat hot when we're on a case like this."

Chapter Text

Once more, Harry found himself in the position of having to carry on as normal while others continued the search for Narcissa. He described the blood tracing spell several times to Draco, who was profoundly frustrated that he had been left out, and unsatisfied by Sirius reminding him that it was not safe for him to leave school grounds with only his father in a known location. But at least Draco's desire to hear about it meant that he was speaking to them civilly again.

Some of those ordinary concerns were nearly as worrisome as Narcissa's kidnapping. In particular, Sirius's search for the focus of the Defense curse was becoming urgent. It was now June, and whatever final incident would spark his dismissal or severe injury must be creeping up. There were arguments nearly every time they gathered to work on the curse, but it was impossible to tell whether that was the curse itself acting or only the fact that they were all so wound up.

They had traced the oldest signs of the curse to the seventh floor after great effort, and were slowly narrowing it down to the patch of corridor surrounding a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy attempting to teach trolls ballet. Unfortunately, this patch of corridor included no doorways, no rooms, and precious few objects, although they scoured that tapestry and two others, the carpets, and several wall sconces for any sign of hidden enchantments, and the walls, floor and ceiling for doors - all unsuccessfully.

"I'm beginning to think Voldemort somehow got the thing inside the walls," Sirius said wearily, crouching on his heels.

"Is that possible?" Hermione asked, wiping her forehead with a sleeve. She was in the middle of recounting the tassels on the Barnabas tapestry for numerical significance, although they had done this and concluded there was none already yesterday.

"Undoubtedly, but it's not as if we can demolish the hallway stone by stone," Sirius said.

"Why not?" said Harry.

"Well, for a start the castle tends to resist that sort of activity." Sirius grimaced. "No doubt he used the castle's enchantments--" Then he looked at Harry.

"D'you want me to try talking to it again?" Harry asked.

"If you don't mind," Sirius said eagerly. "--No, not just yet, you should get something to eat and rest a bit first. It's always wiser to be focused before you make a serious attempt at interacting with ancient magic. And we should talk about what you're going to say to it. Back to my quarters for lunch, everyone?"

Thinking about Parseltongue reminded Harry of a question that Hermione had brought up just before she went to the hospital wing. He hesitated, but it was only Ron and Hermione with them today, and somewhat unusually, Ginny; all of them were trustworthy.

"Sirius," he said slowly. "Hermione was doing some research on prophecies..."

Hermione's head snapped up. "Oh, I can't believe I forgot!" she said, and quickly outlined her idea to Sirius herself - which was a good thing, because Harry still wasn't sure he understood it.

Sirius looked very curious about Hermione's research. "You wouldn't mind copying those notes for me, would you - once your exams are over, I mean?" he said. "--It sounds plausible enough, I think I remember some theory along those lines being talked about by a few people in the seventies but I don't know that they had the data behind it... Honestly, you ought to think about publishing it, Hermione."

Hermione blushed. "I'm only fifteen," she said.

"Well, you could ask - perhaps not Professor Trelawney," Sirius said, "But someone to help you get it cleaned up. I'm afraid it's not really my area... But I suppose this has to do with Harry, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Harry said, swallowing. "Hermione thinks that the circumstances that would let me defeat Voldemort had to be in place when the prophecy was given, maybe from exactly when. Do you have any idea...? I mean I wasn't born yet, was I?"

Sirius smiled thinly. "Unfortunately, just how much of a man's personality is determined before birth is something I understand neither magical nor muggle science has ever discovered - but no, I can think of a few possibilities..." He frowned. "There are genetic abilities, and of course there was Lily's development of the ritual - or maybe only the expertise - that allowed her to save you from Voldemort. I believe she was studying blood magic and sacrifice that year, so it would make some amount of sense."

"Oh," Harry said, swallowing. "So, part of it probably is the protection she gave me, that Dumbledore used..."

"The enchantments on the Dursleys' house were tied into that protection, but they weren't the entirety of it," Sirius said firmly, understanding his concern. "It isn't gone, if that's it."

"What did you mean about genetic abilities?" Hermione said. "I mean, you wouldn't have - an aptitude for Charms, or whatever, in utero, would you?"

"Not likely." Sirius smiled wanly. "But there is one inherited ability Harry has that's extremely unusual, one he shares with Voldemort."

"I got Parseltongue from him, though," Harry said, startled. "Dumbledore says it's from our connection?"

Sirius stared at him for a moment, and began to laugh. Baffled, Harry stared at him for several long moments until he recovered himself to say, "Harry - well, Dumbledore might think so. He wouldn't have known, I think," Sirius shook his head as he spoke, laughing again, "That Lily was a Parselmouth."

Harry wasn't calm, exactly, when they returned to the seventh floor, but the fluttering in his chest was for once an almost pleasant excitement. He hadn't realized until now how it affected him to think he was so influenced by Voldemort as to share his unnatural abilities - but if Parselmouth was something of his mother's, it was different. It seemed special, desirable, to share a rare ability with his mother, and he found himself wondering why he had never used Parseltongue, why he had never sought out snakes to talk to.

Sirius for once readily answered questions about Lily on the walk, perhaps because he could sense something of Harry's relief. She had not kept pet snakes herself but had been acquainted with the ones who lived in her garden and by the river near her house at home; she had known several who nested in locations around the lake and Ha grid's hut, and used to go down to catch up with them in the warmer months. She had once kept a Runespoor for several months in a tank--

"Reconstructing what the Death Eaters were doing with one," he said hastily to Ron, by which Harry guessed that Runespoors were associated with Dark magic.

Finally, she had laughingly told them that the hat had tried to put her into Slytherin for it once.

"I thought all Parselmouths were heirs of Slytherin?" Ron said eventually. He had been very quiet.

Sirius shook his head. "It's pretty rare in Britain, which is undoubtedly why that legend sprung up around him, but it's more common in certain other areas, India and North Africa especially, and I think some regions in the Americas and Eastern Europe. That may be how Slytherin got it. It's hard to say anything really definitive about his history but Salazar is definitely a Spanish name, and there's always been a lot of immigration between Spain and North Africa. If Lily inherited it from a distant squib ancestor there's no telling who it was; and all magic talents like that start with wild magic somewhere, so she may well have been the first in her line anyway. Here we are, good old Barnabas."

Harry settled more eagerly to begin his discussion with the castle in Parseltongue; but unfortunately the help he got was distinctly mixed.

"There's definitely a room," he said, lying on his back and squinting at the wall, trying to resolve the wavering, dancing threads of the enchantments of the castle and its ward magic with the corridor around him. "It's there, but it doesn't have a size or a shape, or an entrance? That doesn't make any sense."

"It might be Unplottable," Hermione said eagerly.

"The wards should be able to see around that, though," Sirius said, and Harry could hear the frown in his voice. "Harry, ask it about the protections on the room?"

But Harry could not get any sense out of the wards, although they showed him images and feelings in response to all of his questions.

"The only thing I can think is that Voldemort somehow closed the backdoor he used to get in, and made it impenetrable," Sirius said finally. "--Oh, well, it's progress of a sort, we know which hallway we're trying to break into an inaccessible room in. We'll continue another day. It's nearly dinner."

Harry, exhausted and with a migraine to rival his first Occlumency lesson, was reluctantly inclined to agree.

But they were not able to relax over a leisurely dinner as intended. No more than five or ten minutes into the meal, dozens of owls swooped into the room, all bearing identical copies of the Daily Prophet printed with "EMERGENCY EVENING EDITION."

Hermione had subscribed earlier in the year. Harry and Ron were joined by half the Gryffindor table in crowding around her as she shakily took her paper from the post owl. The headline was in letters so large they could be read several seats away: "BELLATRIX LESTRANGE ESCAPES AZKABAN."

"You don't think this has something to do with Narcissa's letter?" Ron breathed in Harry's ear.

Hermione looked up, apparently having heard, eyes bleak. "Almost certainly," she said softly. "I just hope they don't blame Sirius."

If they had thought security after Sirius's break out last year was tight, it was nothing compared to the response to Bellatrix Lestrange's escape.

No students were allowed out of the castle without being escorted by at least two teachers. They attended Herbology lessons in tightly knotted groups, and Care of Magical Creatures, which did not have the closed structure of the greenhouses for protection during lessons, was moved into one of the larger dungeons. (Hagrid, apparently unbothered, began teaching them about nocturnal creatures.) All mail was searched on its way in and out of the castle, and all Floo connections had been cut off except for brief, pre-authorized trips; Sirius apologetically said that they wouldn't be able to have any more practical lessons on special magic until the summer because of it.

No one was messing around with Dementors now after two escapes from Azkaban. Instead, Aurors were stationed at the entrance to the school and the perimeter, and there were news articles about regular sweeps through Diagon Alley. Amelia Bones had had several rows with Fudge on the subject of security and Dementors, which unusually, she had won; it seemed that the public was blaming Cornelius Fudge, rather than Amelia Bones, for the rash of escapes.

("Not that Sirius was really dangerous," Harry said, exasperated. "So really it's only one important one--"

"They probably think the other prisoners saw what he did," Hermione said, rolling her eyes.)

Beyond the intrusive security and the worry about what Bellatrix Lestrange was going to do now that she was out of prison, Harry had two major concerns about the situation. The first was that Crouch had been released from house arrest. MLE, it seemed, had other things on its mind and other uses for its manpower, and Amelia had been unable to press keeping a Department Head in custody without proof of a crime in the wake of avoiding blame for Bellatrix Lestrange escaping. Druella was apparently checking Narcissa's location in the wake of Crouch's release and said that she at least had not been moved, and was still alive.

The other concern was Neville.

Many students were upset by the breakout. Bellatrix Lestrange had been rumored to be involved in just about every major attack in the war with Voldemort's forces as far as Harry could tell, and the halls were mixed between students crying over long-lost family and students getting into fights with others who taunted them that Bellatrix was going to come finish them off. But the one crime the Lestranges had actually been convicted of was depriving Neville of his parents through torture.

Harry frequently wondered how he could ever have felt sympathy for the woman in the memories. Half the time Neville walked the halls like a ghost, not seeing or hearing what was happening in front of them; the other half it was all Harry and Ron could do to hold him back from picking fights with Crabbe, who had fallen in with a few of his older cousins, or other Slytherins who too obviously considered Bellatrix's escape a license to display their family's sympathies.

Neville did not blame Sirius for his cousin's actions; on the contrary, he had taken to reviewing Defense with an almost frightening intensity. His hand was up first at nearly every question, and Sirius's office hours, which he normally used to grade, were consumed by repeatedly demonstrating every dueling spell that was within the grasp of a pre-O.W.L. student.

Harry, of course, knew what had brought about this change in Neville, but most of their year mates were baffled. Draco had been enduring many taunts from his former faction of pro-Death Eater students that his aunt had heard he was now a blood traitor and was coming to kill him; and he seemed to know about Neville as well, but Ron and Hermione were as confused as the rest, and Harry did not feel it was his place to explain what Dumbledore had told him.

Things came to a head one night in the Gryffindor common room when Dean asked what the bleeding hell had gotten into Neville, though he said it somewhat admiringly. Neville had nearly hexed Seamus for grabbing his shoulder from behind.

"What's gotten into me?" Neville shouted. "What's--"

"Neville," Harry said quietly. "Dean doesn't know."

Neville looked up, white faced, and nodded once curtly; then he picked up his bag and stalked upstairs without another word.

Harry hesitated. He wasn't sure if Neville would want to be left alone. But he supposed if Neville shouted at him, he could go back downstairs, so he climbed the stairs to their dorm cautiously.

"Neville?" he called from the doorway. A muffled sob greeted him. Harry dug in his bag. "I brought you a chocolate frog," he said tentatively, circling to Neville's closed curtains.

"Thanks," Neville said, muffled and opened one. He took the candy but stared at it without unwrapping it. "...I suppose you know, Professor Black would have..."

"Yeah," Harry said heavily, feeling a full explanation of how he had found out would not help. He sat down on the opposite bed.

"I hate her," Neville said, looking into the chocolate packaging as though it contained answers. "I hate her more than anyone else in the world. And Gran - she wanted me to avenge my parents, it's why she's so mad that I'm... I was supposed to - to replace my father," and suddenly the normally affable Neville had turned from sad to furious. "She gave me his wand, and all she talks about is how I'm too much of a - a disaster to be an Auror..."

"You're not a disaster!" Harry said, startled. "And you've improved loads in Defense--"

"But it's not just Defense you need to be good at, and I don't want to be an Auror anyway," Neville said, swinging back into morose. "All I really want to do is something with magical plants - you need Herbology, and - and Potions, but I've been doing better at that lately too, and some Charms.... But," and he looked up, "It's not just what she did - I mean, it's all Bellatrix Lestrange's fault. I guess her husband and the other men with her, too, but everyone knows she was in charge of the Death Eaters, so it was her decision. And none of it would have happened if not for her."

"But?" Harry said, carefully.

"But it's my gran and Uncle Algie who put my parents there," Neville said, furious again. "They're in - they're in St. Mungo's in the long term curse damage ward - they don't even recognize me, not really, except - except Mum gives me these, these candy wrappers--" His hands throttled the frog and Harry regretted his choice of peace offering, "And Gran won't let me sit and wait to see what she wants with them and she tells me to throw them away. I have to - to hide them."

Harry swallowed hard. "I - I'm so sorry, Neville--"

"You of all people know what it's like to have no parents," Neville whispered. They sat quietly until he went on, "I can't kill - kill Bellatrix Lestrange like Gran wants me to, or replace my father. But I can - I can take them home, when I'm seventeen and I count as a guardian. And maybe they won't ever get better, but at least they won't be locked up. And - and I know they spoke at the Lestranges' trial, they said who had attacked them, so they weren't always - this bad, so maybe they will."

"I hope they do," Harry said, and tentatively leaned across the space between the beds to squeeze Neville's shoulder.

Sirius called them up into his quarters Friday evening after Potions to tell them that they had made some progress on Bellatrix, though it was hard to say what it meant.

"Druella wrote her right before she escaped," Sirius said tiredly. "She admitted it, she went straight to Amelia apparently, but I only just heard about it now. Aunt Dru asked her about the blood trace, if she knew what would have had the effect we saw and how to circumvent it - apparently Bellatrix was working on modifying it for Voldemort during the last war, so she would know."

"So she broke out because she was worried about Narcissa?" Hermione said, frowning.

"Does that mean she's not trying to resurrect Voldemort?" Harry said. "Or, er, at least not until she gets Narcissa back?"

"It might mean that's her priority," Sirius said. "I'll tell you one thing, Crouch must be wishing he was still under house arrest with her loose. But unfortunately Bellatrix is - manifestly - capable of working on more than one problem at a time."

"But wait," Ron said, looking pale and horrified, "If she broke out when she heard Narcissa was missing, does that mean she could have - just - at any time?"

"We don't know," Sirius said, taking a swallow of the coffee on his desk and choking. "--Ugh, this has been cold for hours. But they still have no idea how she actually did it, and apparently the Dementors haven't been helpful. I know she's not an Animagus - if she was, there's no chance she'd have held out against changing forms in front of me when she could have avoided the Dementors that way, not for years. That said, I would guess--" He stopped, staring into the cold coffee.

"Look. The Dementors aren't just cruelty, although they are. Despair, depression, they can stop someone from using magic, or at least sap their powers so they're less capable. Holding any adult witch or wizard for long is difficult and risky, but holding many, and people of Bellatrix's power..." Sirius shrugged. "The Wizengamot says there's no other way.

"But aside from the effect on magic, after a while it's hard to do much of anything, it's why a lot of prisoners starve, or die from diseases they can't fight off because of starvation, and because their immune systems don't work properly without magic. External motivation, any sort of change, especially one that's not happy, can - affect that, mitigate the Dementors, some. That's why I broke out when I did, and how I mustered the will."

"So she probably couldn't have mustered the nerve to break out until Narcissa was kidnapped?" Harry said.

"Probably," Sirius said, tiredly, and again, "We just don't know. There's something else, too," he said. "Aunt Dru didn't specify which family member, obviously," and he rolled his eyes, "But she passed the location we got around her family, and apparently there was a Death Eater safe house there during the war. She gave the Aurors the location, but it's got the sort of protections on it that make that less than helpful for really getting into it. So it's possible that Narcissa is actually being held by Crouch Jr., not his father."

"You don't think she might have known about the safe house herself?" Harry said tentatively.

"Of course, we can't rule that out," Sirius said. "But it's hard to explain why she wouldn't have contacted me, or someone, if she was. She may be under the Imperius Curse--"

The door flew open.

"Black," Snape screamed at the top of his lungs, "Get over here!"

Harry had a sudden horrible feeling that they were back in December; once more Snape was advancing furiously into the room, glaring at Sirius, but this time they were there to see the whole thing from the beginning.

"What in the name of Merlin do you think I've done now, Snape?" Sirius said tiredly.

"I received an interesting letter from an acquaintance serving time for illegal Potions trading,' Snape snapped. "He said that Lestrange received a letter just before breaking out - a letter which, according to her husband and gossip, carried the Black seal. What did you tell her? What help did you give?"

"Snape, if you think I want my cousin to break out and murder my godson--"

"That hardly stopped you from contacting her before, did it?" Snape said, sneering.

Sirius went pale, and his eyebrows snapped together furiously. "The letter had nothing to do with me," he said. "Druella Rosier wrote to her about a method we were trying to use to trace Narcissa's location. She's a Black widow, she has the right to the seal, and I suppose she still has her signet. She went to MLE immediately; they concluded it inspired the breakout but didn't constitute outside help - something you'd be more likely to give a Death Eater than me, Snape."

"I will be checking this story with Dumbledore," Snape said coldly.

"Dumbledore didn't know about it," Sirius said. Snape twitched and advanced a step towards him. "By all means, write to Amelia Bones, if she'll answer someone with your history--"

"Sirius, the curse!" Hermione shrieked at an earsplitting volume that at last attracted both men's attention.

"This is the curse," she said, wringing her hands, "It's trying to make you fight - oh, you'd better leave, Professor Snape, don't you see? You can argue about this some other time, out of the castle--"

Harry wasn't sure it would work, but Snape's eyes were clearing, slowly, inch by inch. He turned on his heel to the door and said furiously, "We will discuss this in Hogsmeade, Black!"

"I look forward to it," Sirius said coldly back, and the door slammed shut; and Sirius slumped back on the couch.

"We'd better make another try at the door, Harry," he said, rubbing his face.

Chapter Text

Numerous attempts to find the unknown room on the seventh floor were unsuccessful. Harry asked the castle's enchantments every question he could think of, and they combed the hallway looking for hidden doors, but nothing helped. The Third Task drew nearer and nearer, and soon after it the end of the school year.

Harry felt no comfort at the thought that the danger would be over after Sirius's year teaching, for always before, fatal and near-fatal incidents had struck at the end of the year as the curse's intensity increased. On the other hand for once he almost looked forward to exams beginning; at least they prevented him from spending all his time worrying alternatively about Narcissa, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Sirius. And he did not feel he was doing too badly after all of his extra studying this year.

The morning of the Third Task itself was notable only because the Champions vanished from the breakfast table to the side chamber at the teachers' end of the Great Hall. Harry, Ron and Hermione had a History of Magic final after breakfast; they spent the walk to lunch after bickering amicably about Ron's confession that he had made up several goblin rebel leaders, unable to remember their real names.

They left a little early for the Task itself, wanting to get good seats to watch Viktor, and were among the first students who filed into the stadium. Ron and Harry gasped in outrage as they entered: the Quidditch pitch was unrecognizable, filled with a twenty foot high hedge maze. While some areas were shadowed or obscured, others allowed a clear view from the stands of shimmering enchantments, strange obstacles, and dangerous creatures, including - Ron moaned - an Acromantula at least eight feet tall.

It seemed to be a long wait while the other students entered the stadium. Harry got out the map, feeling somewhat anxious about Crouch Sr. in the same place as Sirius, even if there were hundreds of students in the stands and it was unlikely they would come face to face. He amused himself looking for people he knew: Cho Cho was sitting with Marietta again; Ginny with several third year girls in other Houses who he did not know; Neville with Dean and Seamus six rows up.

Finally, Ludo Bagman was announcing the Champions' scores: Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum would be entering together, tied in first, and then Cedric, who Ron cheered for with a pointed cry of "HOGWARTS!" (Hermione, clapping politely, rolled her eyes.)

And then, in no time at all, the Champions were entering the maze.

While some of the monsters in the maze were unnerving, Harry found he was much less disturbed by this Task. He had confronted similar obstacles in his very first year, after all; and with no hostages or dragons, he was able to anticipate the thought of watching advanced, difficult magic.

Harry, Ron and Hermione had again brought their Omnioculars from the World Cup. They passed them between the students sitting near them; Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott were in the row front of them, and Odaya Sinistra with two other second years Harry didn't know behind, among others.

Meanwhile, the Champions moved warily around the maze, sometimes disappearing from sight for long minutes to pop up somewhere unexpected. Being able to see what the Champions were about to encounter around a turn better than the contestants themselves made an odd, exciting game of it: they often found themselves shouting useless warnings or directions, especially at Viktor and Cedric.

"Is that one of Hagrid's Skrewts?" Ron asked with a gasp, pointing.

"Oh my god," Hermione moaned, clutching her seat, as Harry focused his Omnioculars.

A ten foot long monstrosity was advancing on Fleur Delacour. Harry could clearly see her swallow through the lenses and brandish her wand. She shot several different colored streams of light at it, which seemed to do nothing but bounce off its armored shell, leaving smoking holes in the hedge. The Skrewt reared up as it reached her, legs twitching--

And the next stream of purple sparks cut into its softer underbelly, gutting it. Fleur dodged backwards just in time before it crashed on top of her.

"Oh, wow," Hermione said softly. "I wonder what spell that is?"

"I wonder how they got Hagrid to let them use the Skrewts for this?" Harry muttered."Bet he's upset it's dead..."

Hermione turned her Omnioculars into the crowd. "He's crying," she said with a sigh, "He's got his handkerchief out--"

Harry was skimming the maze again. "Look at Viktor!" he said. "What's that stuff?"

Viktor had stepped into a haze of golden mist hovering in a cloud that blocked the passageway, and while he had not moved, gravity seemed to have reversed on him: his hair and clothing were streaming upwards, and he was standing in frozen fear, apparently, of flying off the ground.

"Oh!" Hermione said, focusing her Omnioculars rapidly. "I don't know what it is! It must be a localized effect though, it's probably an illusion…"

Even as she said this, Viktor screwed up his face and took a step, and another; and as he reached the edge of the mist, his shoulders eased, and his clothing fell normally towards the ground.

The Champions advanced slowly, often taking wrong turns or doubling back. The crowd's roar often alerted Harry to something interesting happening with another contestant he wasn't watching. In a way he felt it was more interesting than the other tasks as well as less horrifying. He found himself noting spells to look up, or memorizing how the more experienced Champions moved when battling creatures or testing unknown enchantments. He would enjoy discussing this with Sirius later, he thought.

He was watching Cedric pace in front of a sphinx, and the ripple of muscles as the sphinx sat, prepared to pounce if Cedric gave the wrong answer to its riddle, when he smelled smoke.

"Oh my god," Hermione gasped again, this time struggling to her feet. "The hedge is on fire--"

Harry jerked his eyes away from the Omnioculars and saw, mouth going dry, flames leaping twenty feet high in front of the judges' booth.

"There's a shield around the inside of the stands, I asked Professor McGonagall," Hermione said, leaning towards it, wide eyed. "But if the flames spread in the maze, the Champions--"

However, even as she said it, sparks leapt from the hedge towards the crowd, and the next moment the stands were ablaze.

"I don't think there's a shield anymore," Harry said, and stood.

The professors were on their feet already, battling the flames. Dumbledore shot an immense jet of water from his wand towards the hedge while leaning towards Ludo Bagman, who began to issue instructions for evacuation. But Harry was leaning towards the hedge: it was clear that none of the Champions were listening to Bagman if they could even hear him, for they were still battling into the hedge even as the flames spread towards its center...

"Harry," Hermione said, clutching his arm frantically. "We have to get to them - the professors can't rescue them, not while they're fighting the flames--"

"I know," Harry said - unquestionably the professors had to deal with the hundreds of students in the stands first. "How--"

"Fly," Ron said, rapidly. "There's no other way through the maze, not fast-- but we need our brooms--"

Harry had been practicing Charms all year, and he had become much better with Summoning. He closed his eyes and raised his wand and said, trying to believe it would work instead of only hoping, "Accio Firebolt!"

For a long moment, he didn't know whether anything had happened. He thought he could feel the thin thread of a spell connecting the way Flitwick's exercises had taught him, but it might have been imagination, or hope--

Then his Firebolt came soaring out of the distance - at first a speck, then a miniature broom rushing from the horizon and expanding until it smacked, solid, into his hand.

"Well, then," Harry said, mounting it. "Hermione, Ron, I can only carry about one more person at a time, so I'd better--"

Hermione was shaking her head. "You'll need me, since I got control over - I can see the scraps of the shields still up around the hedge. Ron can fly me, if you summon another broom. But hurry," she said, chin up.

Harry swallowed and raised his wand. He wondered if he could summon a school broom from the closed shed, but Gryffindor Tower, too, was closed, so he had to try--

"You take the Firebolt," he said to Ron, mounting the Comet 260 that had come soaring over in a much smaller amount of time. "You're flying with two," he added, tactfully avoiding the fact that he was a much better flier than Ron and could better compensate. Then before Ron could argue Harry was shoving his Firebolt into his hands and pushing off--

The flames had spread a very long way even as they were talking. Cedric and Viktor were still oblivious, but Fleur was surrounded and battling them to escape, a Bubble-Head Charm preserving her air supply. Harry watched Hermione's shakily pointing hand for a gap in the tattered shields around the hedges, soared through it, then dove frantically. The flames were like an oven, the heat was already suffocating and he was still twenty feet above Fleur, fifteen, ten--

"Fleur!" he shouted and she turned, wide eyed; then she grabbed his arm at once, agile, and he was pulling her up over the broom, soaring high over the flames, safe and able to breathe.

"Harry Potter?" she said his ear. The bubble pressed into his shoulder and the side of his face, tingling softly against his skin. He could feel Fleur shaking. "This was not part of the task?"

"Someone took down the shields around the maze and set the hedge on fire, they're evacuating the stands," he said, hoarse. "I've got to get Cedric and Viktor too, but you were the closest to the fire..." He skimmed the hedge, trying to find them and decide if he had time to set Fleur down. The school broom was vibrating under the weight of two, and he was losing height any time his attention strayed from it.

"Put me by the entrance," Fleur said, pointing, "We are nearly there, and then I will call my own broom and get Cedric if you will get Viktor now. Viktor is closer to the fire."

"Thanks," Harry said in relief, and spiraled into a landing.

When he rose again he saw that Hermione and Ron were between Viktor and an advancing wall of flame. Hermione was sending great gusts of water at it but it was hardly slowing the wall at all. The Firebolt probably could have held three, but Ron was white faced, dodging gusts of flames, and Harry doubted he would be sure of it.

Cursing, he shot forward, urging the school broom faster. Viktor was fighting the fire from the ground, but soon it would surround him - Harry had to get there first--

Viktor saw him coming, unlike Fleur, and he was as comfortable on a broom as Harry if not more: he crouched, ready to jump, and Harry only slowed, skimming the ground as Viktor leapt for the broom and hung on. Harry rose rapidly, offering a hand to Viktor at the same time to help him scramble into a proper seat.

"I thought you would have a better broom!" Viktor shouted in his ear. The fire roared so loudly Harry could barely hear him; when he understood, he laughed breathlessly.

"Ron has my Firebolt!" Harry shouted back and turned. He spotted Fleur and Cedric across the maze, and Ron was taking Hermione to the exit of the stands, the champions rescued...

As Harry reached the edge of the maze he heard a human-sounding scream, and twisted instinctively.

The sphinx who had riddled Cedric was still in the maze, cornered by flames, her tail ablaze. Harry bit his lip. The Acromantula he had spotted he felt no particular grief for, having once nearly been eaten by a colony himself, but the sphinx had spoken to Cedric, and he remembered that they were considered Beings. She would probably have been hired as a guard for the Tournament, expecting to at worst give and receive treatable injuries...

"Can you jump down?" he shouted to Viktor, who nodded. Harry barely slowed to let him dismount before he was off again. He did not know if the school broom could carry the weight of a sphinx, let alone how she would mount it, but he knew that he could not watch her burn to death.

She had jumped or run through the fire in front of her and was racing away, her tail extinguished, but the flames were gaining on her. Harry swung down into the maze after her, flying faster than she could run but barely matching the pace of the flames. He shouted, "HERE!"

She looked up; he saw relief in her eyes along with wild terror, and she leapt, claws extended, as he swung past her. He braced for impact, and the broom sagged as she landed, clinging to his back with her front paws; there was a searing pain in his sides as her claws scraped through his robes. For a wild moment, Harry thought they were both going to fall and be swallowed by the rapidly gaining wall of flame, but he thought, UP with all of his mental might and they were rising, rising...

Then they were hovering safely fifty feet above the maze. Harry skimmed it, trying to identify anyone else who needed rescue, trying to close out the pain from the sphinx's grip on his sides. He decided that the only living creatures left were Skrewts, who if nothing else would probably take his head off if he tried to pick them up.

"Tell me your name," the sphinx said.

"Er, Harry Potter," Harry said. "I'll just take you to the exit, then?"

"Please," she said through gritted teeth. A few minutes later when she had caught her breath, she said, "Humans will negotiate with us for a price, but very few of them would so much as put one of us out if we were ablaze in front of them, let alone dive into an inferno on a rickety broomstick to rescue us. I thought I was going to die. I will not forget your favor."

"Er, you're welcome," Harry panted. As they spiraled in towards the ground, students peeling away from them in alarm, he said, "How do you want to get back off?"

"Hover and I will jump. I am called Elpis from Alexandria," she said, and leapt from the broom with a great force that made it sputter and veer before she bounded off through the crowd. She had been hanging onto the tail of the broom with her hind claws, and her dismount took a fair chunk of them out. Harry sank slowly to the ground with the dying broomstick, glad he was out of the stands and the fire.

"Well, Mr. Potter, I think that school broom has had it," Madam Hooch said from his side, making him jump. She waved her wand, and the searing claw marks in his sides suddenly numbed; looking down, he saw that there were now long, pale scars visible through his torn robes, but he was no longer bleeding.

"Sorry about the broom, Professor--"

"On the contrary, thank you, and let's call it fifty points to Gryffindor for incredible flying in service of others' lives," she said, and squeezed his shoulder before continuing to herd a group of exciting, babbling first years.

The evacuation seemed to be proceeding well enough; looking through the crowd, Harry saw that several professors were battling a Skrewt who had escaped through the burnt out hedge, while others contained the fire and led students out. Panting as he walked from the entrance, he fished in his slightly singed bag for the map and scanned it rapidly. He needed to see that Ron and Hermione - and for that matter Sirius and Cho and everyone else he knew - were alright and had made it out of the stands... Then he could begin to think about what had happened...

Ron and Cho were in the crowd streaming out of the stands, and he found Hermione and Viktor moving rapidly, close together, presumably aboard a broomstick above the students. Trust Hermione not to be able to leave things to the professors, he thought wryly, and looked up just in time to see her, laughing giddily in a most un-Hermione like fashion, shoot a bolt of red light at the underbelly of an Acromantula pinned down by Flitwick while Viktor pulled them out of a dive.

It took a longer time for him to find Sirius, and his heart was in his throat, thinking of the Defense curse. He located him at last inside the castle, and relief flashed through him for an instant--

Then he looked closer. Sirius was in the side chamber off the Great Hall, alone but for one person: Crouch. They circled each other as though dueling.

Harry stared at the map for a moment, heart racing, unable to think. He spotted a second Crouch in the judges' booth and was hopelessly confused before he remembered: Narcissa might have been kidnapped by Crouch's son rather than Crouch Sr., and there was no reason at all why Crouch Jr. could not have come to Hogwarts of his own will. Perhaps the fire had been a distraction. Already a convicted Death Eater, he could kill Sirius openly if he wanted to keep Narcissa captive.

Sirius was alone with a Death Eater, and the Defense curse was making its final move.

Chapter Text

There was no time to wade into the crowd of hundreds of panicked students and find a teacher, let alone to persuade them to come. Harry stuffed the map back into his bag and set off at a run. He wished violently that he had his Firebolt, or that the school broom had not been so damaged. He would have reached the castle ten times faster aboard a broom.

He raced up the steps, nearly knocking over a third year Hufflepuff with only a shouted "Sorry!" and swung into the empty Great Hall. He sprinted alongside Gryffindor's empty table, up to the high table and past it, reaching the door.

He knew they were dueling before he entered the side chamber. He heard a curse shatter stone, Sirius calling an insult. A body hit the ground and rolled, and Harry wrenched the door open.

It was fortunate that the room was dark, lit only briefly by flashes of spell light, for Crouch did not see him. Sirius was rising, wand raised. Red light flared and ricocheted against Crouch's shield. Harry ducked behind a table in the side chamber, eyeing the participants. His own wand was in his hand, but he had no recollection of drawing it. He tried to get an angle on Crouch, but they were both moving rapidly, and he couldn't be sure of hitting him and not Sirius.

Sirius used a curse that flashed white like lightning and shook the floor of the chamber. For an instant the room was as bright as day, and Harry saw Crouch's face clearly.

It was not Crouch Jr., the Death Eater, but his father, whose face Harry knew all too well from the previous tasks.

It was Crouch Sr. dueling Sirius, who was clearly trying to kill Sirius; and furthermore Harry now knew that unless Crouch had been abusing a Time-Turner after all and his son was truly dead, Crouch Jr. the Death Eater was among the professors fighting the fire in the judges' booth and the students fleeing the burning stands.

Harry didn't have time to think about that now, not if he wanted to help Sirius. He inched out from behind the table, wand raised. Sirius and Crouch were well matched, but Harry knew Sirius still tired fast, and rarely performed more than one show duel in a lesson - he had been locked up for twelve years, after all - and Harry could see his energy flagging, his steps slowing.

Crouch raised his wand and Sirius was shielding too slow. Harry rocketed up and shouted, "STUPEFY!"

It deflected Crouch from Sirius for long enough to give him recovery time, but Crouch was turning, flicking his wand. Harry dodged the first stream of blue light, then jumped the table leg that reached out to trip him, but there were ropes flying towards him that he wouldn't be able to dodge. Surely, Harry thought, Crouch wasn't so far gone as to murder him, even if he would attack Sirius - the Defense curse must be influencing him, for even if he was convinced Sirius was somehow guilty this would be nearly public murder--

"Harry, no!" Sirius shouted, and a jab from his wand sliced open Crouch's arm. The ropes dissolved into light, but Crouch's rebound was too fast for him; purple flames hit Sirius's chest and he crumpled, lying still against the wall.

For a moment Harry was too horrified to move. Crouch advanced on Sirius's body, wand still raised; then Harry threw himself forward, slashing his wand up by pure instinct, and brought three heavy iron wall sconces out of the stone, shooting towards Crouch.

Crouch whirled, deflecting them at once, but he had at least been diverted from Sirius. Now Harry had no time to think, had to focus on shielding against the jet of red light that came towards him. They fought furiously, Harry trying not to stop and consider what he was doing long enough to feel panic, focusing on taking one spell at a time, because if he had to think he would falter.

Three exchanges of spells, four, and he was somehow still standing, still fighting. Harry lit Crouch's robes on fire and distracted him for a moment, but when he went to press the advantage his mind went horrifically blank, and then Crouch was straightening, and with a flick of his wand whipping Harry's out of his hand--

And the opposite door of the chamber crashed open.

A woman flew inside, interspersing herself between Crouch and Harry and raising her wand; he could see only her long hair in the shadowy chamber. Crouch flew backwards and hit the wall with a bang. Crouch was not finished; he rolled and rose, lips forming a snarl. The next flash hit and Harry recognized Andromeda, face haggard with fear. Harry had not realized Sirius had invited her to come to this task, too, but of course she had come to at least the First Task. Perhaps she had noticed Crouch separating Sirius from the crowds.

Harry rushed to Sirius's side, as Andromeda seemed to be containing Crouch at least for the moment. To his immense relief, Harry found a pulse quickly, and it seemed strong; but Sirius was limp and could not be roused, and Harry certainly could not carry him. He gripped his wand, trying to remember the spell for levitating an injured person without jarring their injuries. But his mind was not working properly and he had only seen it used once or twice, most recently a year ago in the Shrieking Shack.

"Vulnera Sanentur, three times, stabilize him," Andromeda shouted over her shoulder, blasting to pieces the table Crouch had sent flying at her. Her voice was twisted and hoarse from the smoke in the stands, much like Harry's own. Harry repeated the incantation quickly, three times, not daring to waste time wondering if he had heard it correctly or could even perform an unknown spell, and pointed his wand at Sirius's chest. He felt a warm glow spread through his wand arm, and Sirius's color looked a little better in the next flash of light.

Andromeda screamed behind him and he turned and saw her fall and struggle to rise, off arm clutched to her chest. But Crouch, too, was injured, bleeding heavily from the face; he was spending his seconds of leeway casting Impervius on his own eyes--

Without further thought Harry's arm slashed up, months of dueling practice behind him: he cast Incarcerus, tangling Crouch's legs together with rope, and as Crouch raised his wand arm, attention drawn once more to the duel, Protego followed by another shouted Stunner, and Crouch crumpled, unconscious.

The room was finally quiet.

Andromeda was panting, breaths echoingly loudly in the suddenly quiet stone chamber. She was bent double with exhaustion, her hair dark with blood from an open head wound, and when she lit her wand, Harry could see her face was still twisted, now in pain as well as fatigue. Her stride was heavy and halting when she approached.

"Is he--"

"He's alive," Harry said, kneeling at Sirius's side. "That spell, I think it helped, only I can't - can't remember how to move someone who's hurt..."

"Mobilicorpus," Andromeda said, twitching her wand, and Sirius rose, flat and rigid as though on a stretcher. "Dumbledore will have called for healers, there will be other injuries from the fire. We should take him outside."

"Alright," Harry said, climbing to his feet with effort. The last hour was sinking in. He was exhausted, so exhausted he could barely walk, but his heart still raced with panic over Sirius. "Are you hurt?"

She started at the question, hand rising to the cut on her face like she had only just noticed. "Not badly," she said, but twitched her wand, and the blood vanished. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine," Harry said distractedly. "Crouch didn't actually hit me with anything."

Andromeda nodded and, directing Sirius with her wand, began the trip back out of the castle. Sunlight streaming from the Great Hall's ceiling lit up the navy dress robes she had worn to the Task, now partially burnt and sliced open in several places by curses.

There were still students straggling into from the crowd outside the stands. It looked to Harry like the fire was mostly extinguished. He could see the Healers' tents Andromeda had predicted, set up at a safe distance from the once-burning stands. There was a cluster of students there, presumably the injured, and as they drew closer he identified Professor McGonagall sitting on a rock, a healer bent over her leg.

"Looks like a Skrewt got Professor McGonagall," Harry said inanely, looking at Sirius again and checking nervously that he was still breathing.

"Is that what those infernal creatures were?"

"Yeah, didn't Sirius tell you?" Harry said. "Hagrid bred them, no idea what they really are... I'm just glad he stopped trying to get us to take care of them in class a few months ago..."

"That does sound like him," Andromeda remarked, trailing behind him. They were nearly at the Healers' tent, and Harry waved frantically to the closest unoccupied one, a woman with a dark brown braid. "Hey, we need help!"

"--Doesn't look like fire damage," the woman said, redirecting quickly, wand out.

"He was hit with some kind of curse - there were purple flames--"

"The Curse of Alfric's Flames," Andromeda said. "It liquefies organs, but an Uncursing was cast thrice in succession within two minutes."

"Liquefies?" Harry said, horrified.

The Healer was casting several spells in a quick stream; she looked up at the third and said, "You caught it in time, he'll be alright, just out of commission a while. Your favorite professor?"

"He's my godfather," Harry said, sinking to the ground to watch him work, biting his lip. "How did you know-" he said, turning to ask Andromeda, and stopped short: she was gone. She must have gone to find someone else to tell, he thought distantly, or to check the professors had the fire and Skrewts in hand...

Harry remembered the two Crouches on the Map and thought of finding Dumbledore to tell him about Crouch Jr.'s presence, but he was so tired. He got up and staggered; the Healer working on Sirius's head was bent, and she didn't notice, but a voice behind him said, "Hey, kid, careful--"

And suddenly he was on the ground.

"Don't try to move," a dark-skinned man in Healer's robes said, crouching over him. "You'll be alright, just exhaustion," he went on. "How many fingers?"

"Er, four," Harry said, "My name is Harry Potter and Cornelius Fudge is Minister of Magic."

"Good, there you go, and a good job I've already seen the scar and know you really are. Drink this," he said, handing it over.

"Harry - SIRIUS!" Andromeda shouted. Harry looked up, wanting to tell her that nothing had changed since she left, and blinked: he was quite sure she had been wearing navy, hair loose and wild, but now she was striding towards them in clean robes of pale green, her hair braided and coiled on top of her head. "I came as soon as Dumbledore called me--"

"You were already here," Harry said, staring. "You just left--"

A hoarse laugh came from the right; Harry turned and saw Sirius's eyes slitting open.

"He's waking up," the Healer with the braid said.

"I'm awake, I'm awake," Sirius said, and broke into a cough. When he could speak he went on, "Harry, that wasn't Andromeda."

Harry stared at him, confused for a moment, but understanding was dawning; there was a buzzing in his ears--

"Oh, Morgana," Andromeda said, face gone pale. "What did Bella do?"

They called over the Aurors, who were already on scene investigating the sabotage of the Task's shields, and Professor Dumbledore; but when Harry offered the map and Dumbledore engaged the Headmaster's view of the castle's monitoring spells, the only thing they established was that both Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jr. were long gone.

"Bleeding disaster it is," Amelia said, wiping her face when she came to update Dumbledore and Sirius at the Healers' tent. "I don't actually think she was trying to massacre the students so much as distract everyone from her entering Hogwarts, nobody even died, but the papers are going to write it up as Britain's brand new terror wave anyway."

"You know, the person you should throw into prison without a trial is Rita Skeeter," Andromeda remarked.

"Don't tempt me," Amelia said darkly. "The other person who's missing now is Crouch Sr."

"You don't think he was working with--" a male Auror said.

"Bellatrix Lestrange?" Amelia said, eyebrows flying up. "You must be joking, Dawlish. Frankly, I suspect the whole thing was about getting access to him and her saving her cousin entirely coincidental," she said, giving Harry and Sirius a pointed look that Dawlish could not see from behind her. "You did say that she jumped into the duel with Crouch as soon as she got through the door?"

"Yeah, she pretty much flew at him," Harry said, understanding immediately. "Didn't seem to see Sirius on the ground at all."

"Hang on," Dawlish said, eyeing him. "You were there--"

"Dawlish, this is Harry Potter," Amelia said scathingly. "If you could stop throwing accusations at witnesses for five minutes--"

"Sorry, ma'am," Dawlish said, going scarlet.

All Harry wanted at this point was to go up to his dormitory and collapse, but unfortunately he had to be taken to St. Mungo's to be tested for the Imperius Curse, having been alone with Bellatrix Lestrange. His protests that he could throw it off and had in class were firmly overruled. He had written a paper about this process for Sirius's class and knew that it took a minimum of six hours of careful ritual to verify without the use of Legilimancy, which was, unfortunately, both legally restricted and not considered adequate proof since a sufficiently talented caster could fool many Legilimens.

"Well, if nothing else you'll have great first hand experience of the process," said Hermione, who had arrived at the tent while this was being argued to have a burn on her shoulder treated. She made up for this comment by hugging him tightly.

"And you'll be able to go with Sirius when they transfer him," Ron said, which was a much better point.

"Yeah, I will," Harry said, and hugged Ron, too. "Make sure you tell Cho what happened, will you?" He supposed that he was going to have a lot to explain to her when the truth about Crouch came out.

"We will," Hermione said. "Are you coming back to school after this?"

Harry shook his head. "Dumbledore said I'm excused from the last exams tomorrow," he said, yawning, "So we're going straight home, but listen, I'll see you both over the summer this year, alright? This isn't going to be like the last few years, I'm not going to vanish until August."

"We'll see you soon, Harry," Hermione said.

"Promise," Ron said, and Harry went, at last, to the Portkey.

Chapter Text

Bartemius Crouch Sr., or more precisely the pieces that were left of him, was found a few days later on the morning after the Hogwarts Express returned the rest of the students home.

"Ugh," Sirius said, skimming the paper. "Well. Served him right." He dropped the paper on the table, reached for his cane with a shaking hand and levered himself up to stalk, slow and clunking, out of the kitchen.

He had been sent home the same day as Harry after a blazing row with the Healers, who wanted to keep him for observation. As all Sirius actually had to do was take a large number of different potions on a schedule, he had insisted furiously that he would recover better in his own bed, and he had a godson to take care of, to Harry's embarrassment and - though he did not admit it - pleasure.

Sirius was nevertheless under strict instructions to rest, and could not generally leave bed for more than an hour at a time. On the previous day he had eaten in bed, insisting on ordering food instead of letting Harry cook, but today he had limped up to join him for breakfast. The Healers said he should be alright eventually but it might well take months.

"But at least I've narrowed down the curse's source for the next poor bastard," Sirius had said tiredly when he and Dumbledore discussed it.

Harry looked at the paper, hearing Sirius settle himself in the sitting room while muttering angrily, and swallowed.

He did not particularly want to speculate on which pieces of Crouch had been found, or what the article was implying with its references to obscure Dark Arts. Harry, after all, had Stunned Crouch for Bellatrix. Yes, Crouch had been trying to kill Sirius, and likely Harry as well, at the time. Yes, Harry had thought it was Andromeda. Yet he still felt in a way responsible: Bellatrix's first thought had so clearly been to get Sirius to safety. Hadn't Incarcerous been enough? If Crouch had been conscious, he might have gotten away alive while Bellatrix was diverted...

He had not expressed these thoughts to Sirius. he knew that Sirius would assure him it wasn't his fault, and anyway, he did not wish to tell Sirius he felt guilty for causing his torturer to be horribly killed. Perhaps Sirius was right, and Crouch had deserved what he had gotten - but wasn't that the same mentality that had seen Sirius himself thrown to the Dementors for twelve long years without a trial?

A knock came at the door. Harry got up to answer it, letting the paper slide closed again so that it showed only the top headline, Harry Potter: the Fourth Triwizard Champion?

Ron and Hermione had each suggested they would visit soon after the Express returned, so Harry was expecting one of them when he reached the door. Only the belated memory that everyone was still on high security over Bellatrix's escape prompted him to peer through the peephole first.

He went still. Then he carefully withdrew from the door and called, softly, "Sirius!"

"Yeah?" Harry heard the cane clicking on the floor from the sitting room.

"It's your cousins," Harry said, and ducked to hide in the sitting room himself. It was the same place that he and Hermione had eavesdropped on Sirius and Narcissa last summer. He carefully closed the door and dropped to peer through the keyhole, in time to watch Sirius stand in the entryway for a long, silent moment.

Finally, when Harry could not bear any more suspense, Sirius opened the door, wand in hand.

"Sirius," Bellatrix said, quietly.

Now that he knew it was her, Harry wondered that he could have mistaken her voice for Andromeda's even in the middle of a duel. Her voice was lower and rasping, probably the result of years of screaming in Azkaban, and her accent was different. Andromeda had years and years of Ted Tonks's accent seeping over her and Sirius's native upper class voices, while Bellatrix was icily aristocratic, even after years in prison.

"Bella," Sirius said, equally softly. "I see you've brought your sister home."

"She needs you more than me right now," Bellatrix said. Her tread was heavy as she came into the house, and without a pause passed through the enchantments that detected ill intent. She carried her sister in her arms. "The sitting room...?"

"You'd better take her upstairs, I won't be able to," Sirius said shortly; but they did not leave immediately and Harry was able to keep listening. "Bella..."

"She's been unconscious the whole time she was gone," Bellatrix said, "So you should be able to keep her out of prison. She dueled Crouch Sr. - I imagine you can guess that - and apparently when she fell the panic let Barty snap out of the Imperius Curse."

"Did you work out what he used on her?"

"I think he invented it, but we got his Occlumency shields down and the counter out of him yesterday," Bellatrix said dispassionately. "She'll be up in a few hours."

"I'll call St. Mungo's when you're gone, then," Sirius said. "Bella..."

"Don't, Sirius," Bellatrix said. "Your godson is a good duelist for his age. When we next see each other..."

"We'll be at war again," Sirius said. "Bella. This can't be like before. I have a son, now, and your lord wants him dead."

"I know," Bellatrix said, and she shifted Narcissa in her arms; and Sirius moved closer to kiss her.

The kiss was chaste; then Bellatrix stepped back. "You remain a member of the House," Sirius said, and his voice was very tired. "God go with you."

"I'll get Cissy settled, then," Bellatrix replied. "And Sirius... Good luck."

Sirius bowed his head. He was silent until Bellatrix came back down the stairs and out the door.