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Chapter Text

PART ONE

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- 1 -

"The boy, Harry, he's gone."

For a moment Albus Dumbledore felt unable to do anything but stare at the head of his old acquaintance that had only moments ago appeared in his fireplace.

"What exactly happened?" He asked when he found his voice.

"I don't know, I don't know. The week before last I saw him go to school like any other day, but that's the last I saw of him. He wasn't at school for the last two weeks. Nobody saw him. Not in the garden, not anywhere. Tried to talk to his aunt, she didn't say much just that he was sick but-" Old Mrs. Figg wiped her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief, then blew her nose loudly.

"But?" Albus prodded softly, careful not to upset the old woman even more.

"But then today the police showed up. Law enforcement. Asked questions about Harry. Their son, the Dursley boy, said something at school about Harry being gone for a while now. Don't know much else, they went inside then. But, but I just felt you needed to know." She hiccupped.

"Thank you, dear. That was indeed the right call. I'll see what I can do."

"You have to find him, Albus. He's so small. Tiny. Such a nice boy. And the cats like him. Even Mr. Tumbles. Even he."

Albus left for Privet Drive immediately. This didn't sound good, not at all. He had given Harry into the care of his relatives because it was the safest place for him to be, the only place for him to be, and if he'd run away… Albus didn't want to contemplate the consequences.

He disillusioned himself and apparated straight to the doorstep of Number Four Privet Drive. When he was sure that nobody was watching him, he lifted the charm and knocked on the door.

Nobody opened it.

Albus knocked again. Louder this time.

Still, nothing but he could hear faint noises coming from inside. Hastened steps that quickly became louder, then the voice of a woman. "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

The door opened a crack and Petunia Dursley peered out. She looked rather poor. Her face was even gaunter than he remembered and there were dark circles under her eyes.

"Yes?" She snapped.

"I'm here about Harry," Albus said.

"Who are you?" She squinted at him mistrustfully.

"Albus Dumbledore. I brought Harry here and left you the letter."

"You!" she hissed, her eyes sparkling with anger. "You brought this down on us. What do you want?"

"I simply wish to talk to Harry, he will receive his Hogwarts letter soon."

"Harry isn't here."

"And where is he?"

Petunia looked him up and down, her mouth twitched marginally when her eyes reached his purple striped pants. She opened the door wider.

"Come in. Quick, before the neighbours see."

The house looked just as pristine as Albus had imagined it, there were no dusty surfaces, the floor was squeaky clean and pictures of a happy family – of three, he noticed with a sinking feeling – smiled from the walls.

There were clinking sounds coming from the kitchen. Petunia twitched nervously. "The living room is this way."

A big red stain, probably red wine, marred a light-coloured carpet in the living room. A half-full bottle of brandy was sitting on the table. It was the first sign that there might be something out of the ordinary going on in this house.

Petunia switched on the light and only two of three light bulbs shone.

Another sign. He couldn't for the life of him imagine that Petunia Dursley would allow her house to be anything but perfect, not under normal circumstances at least.

Albus took a seat in the only armchair and looked at Petunia grimly. "Where is Harry, Petunia?"

She started kneading her hands nervously. Her fingernails were too short and uneven. It seemed she was biting her nails.

Albus still didn't know what to expect, but his hope that all of this might turn out to be a big misunderstanding shrank substantially.

"He's gone," she said.

"What do you mean gone?"

"Means just wha' she said, don' she?" A slurred voice remarked from the hallway, soon followed by the massive frame of Vernon Dursley. He stumbled into the living room, bringing with him a stinging smell of strong alcohol and tobacco.

Vernon slumped onto the couch next to Petunia, who flinched and glanced at her husband nervously.

Since when was Vernon Dursley a drunk? What had happened to this family? Should he have known? Should he have taken Harry away?

A heavy feeling settled into Albus' stomach. Guilt.

"Are you sure you don't want to, um, go upstairs, darling? Take a nap?" Petunia tried.

Vernon ignored her, or simply didn't hear her, and looked at Albus with unfocused eyes. "Freak's gone, 'n good riddance."

Then, as if he had only just realized that there was a stranger sitting in his living room, Vernon added. "'n who are you anyway?"

Albus let Petunia explain the situation. Vernon's face turned redder with each word.

"What happened?" Albus repeated when Petunia was finished.

"What happened? What happened?" Vernon hollered. "You hear that, Pet? He wants to know what 'appened!"

He stopped his rant to take a large gulp of brandy from the bottle on the living room table. "That freak happened, nothing else. Came here, destroyed our lives. That's what happened. Destroyed my fucking life."

"And how did he do so?" Albus asked patiently, not sure what to make of Vernon's accusations. He had no idea what kind of child Harry had grown up to be, but he couldn't imagine him turning out as bad as Vernon said he was.

"Made me lose my job! Made me the laughing stock across the neighbourhood. Lost my car because of him!"

"But how?"

"HOW? HOW?" Vernon shouted again, spit flying from his lips. Albus vanished it with a discreet twitch of his wand before it reached his face.

"How should I know? He's the freak. He's the one with those thrice-damned powers. I know he did something, I know it!"

"So Harry didn't really do anything?" Albus was perplexed. Petunia had grown up with a witch as a sister, she should very well know that it was not in the capabilities of an untrained, young child, wizard or not, to magically make Vernon lose his job.

"Didn' you listen to me old man? I los' my biggest client and then my job. I know he did something. Gave me bad luck or somethin'. I just know!"

He sat back exhausted from shouting and drank some more.

This was deeply unsettling. As far as Albus could tell Vernon had lost his job and blamed Harry for it, had started drinking, and probably blamed Harry for that too.

"Why did Harry run away?" He finally asked.

"I'm not sure," Petunia said.

"Yeah, how should we know," Vernon agreed.

"Did you maybe do something to him, in your anger?"

Petunia bristled. "He didn't-"

"Pet. Lemme. I jus' knocked him about a bit. Not too hard. Least not harder than he deserved," Vernon said.

Albus closed his eyes and tried very hard to suppress his rising fury. "What did he do to deserve such punishment?"

"Turned his teacher's hair blue, the little freak!" Vernon said triumphantly, drunkenly thinking Albus would understand this reason.

"So he did some accidental magic and you punished him for it?"

"Gotta beat that freakishness out of him. Nothing else works."

Petunia covered her face with her hands. "I tried to stop him," she mumbled. "Tried to tell him that it was too much. He never hit Harry before. Not really. Harry ran out of the door the first chance he got and we haven't seen him since."

Half an hour later Albus left Number Four and apparated straight to his office. The news left him exhausted, but he had no time to rest. He had people to inform, a search to organise, had to somehow keep the news from getting out to Voldemort's remaining followers…

He was confident that they would find Harry. They simply had to.

.

Something was pressing into his back uncomfortably. He moved around a bit, trying to find a more comfortable position. It didn't help much, but he was so tired, he didn't want to wake up yet. His head was pounding. Maybe sleep would help. With a sigh, he sank back into the darkness of his dreamless sleep.

A few hours later he woke up once more, something was still pressing into his back. And now that he thought of it, into his cheeks too. He opened his eyes and was greeted by trees.

He gasped. Where the hell was he? Why wasn't he in his cupboard? What had-

Suddenly memories of the previous night – or had more than one night passed? – came back to him.

His horrible teacher. His anger. Blue hair. Vernon's anger. And then pain. He remembered tearing his arm out of Vernon's grasp, remembered running out of the front door, wishing to be anywhere, just anywhere else. He remembered feeling squeezed like there was no room for him to move. Then his memory stopped.

Harry got to his feet. His arm hurt like hell. He rolled up his sleeves and took a look at it. There were black and blue markings where Vernon had grabbed him, scratches of too long fingernails. He hurriedly pulled his sleeve down again. He didn't want to see this.

He was surrounded by trees. No matter in which direction he looked, only deep, dark green awaited him. Should he go left or right? Or maybe straight ahead?

He felt like crying. He had no idea where he was.

Either straight ahead or left, he decided, then raised his uninjured hand and started to count:

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…"

His own voice sounded odd to him, scratchy, probably from screaming at Vernon.

He finished the rhyme. "Left side it is," he murmured and started to walk.

He felt like a stupid little child for using that rhyme, but he didn't know what else to do. Maybe he got lucky with it. Maybe he'd reach a street soon and could ask someone to take him-

His train of thought stopped abruptly. Take him where? Where could a stranger take him? He didn't want to go back to the Dursleys, who made him sleep in a dark cupboard. He didn't want to go back to Uncle Vernon, who had hurt him. To Petunia who hated him. He couldn't go back there.

After a few hours of walking his arm and head throbbed painfully and he decided to take a rest. He lay down on his belly and rested his head on his good arm.

Just as he was about to close his eyes he saw it. Right in front of him, only a few yards away, was a wall of dark wooden boards. It was hidden between trees and bushes, but it was definitely a wooden wall. Maybe a small hunter's hut!

He scrambled to his feet and started running.

Maybe he was lucky and the hunter was there!

It turned out he was right, there was indeed a hut and its small windows were illuminated. He ran up to the door and stopped in front of it.

Suddenly doubts began to gnaw at him. What if this wasn't a nice hunter? What if this was some kind of evil person, a criminal, a murderer even, hiding out in the woods?

For lack of other options, he decided to knock anyway.

It took an eternity before someone opened the door. It was an old man. His sparse hair was as grey as his eyes, his face sunburned, his hands rough. He wore weird clothes, not a trouser, and a shirt, but something that looked like a robe.

The man looked down at him, and the boy shrunk back when he saw the annoyed, nearly angry expression, that marred the man's features.

"What's a wispy wizard like you doing in my woods?"

Wizard? What? Maybe this was neither a hunter nor a criminal but simply a nutcase?

"Um, hi, I'm Harry," he simply said in the end.

Chapter Text

"Harry, ey? Just Harry?"

"Potter, I'm Harry Potter."

"Potter. Harry Potter," the old man repeated his name slowly as if tasting it on his tongue. Suddenly he started to laugh loudly, his belly quivering. It was a rough sound, not really friendly.

His laughter stopped as abruptly as it had started and grey eyes narrowed in on Harry. "What's your middle name boy?"

"J-James," Harry said perplexed, wishing he hadn't knocked, wishing he had just kept walking. The man clearly wasn't all there.

"Harry James? Yes, yes… James… I think I remember. It's been a long time, a long, long time." He reached out a hand, quick as a snake, to touch Harry's head.

Harry was too scared to object and too tired to move and simply allowed the old man to pat his head, or feel his hair or whatever it was the old man was up to.

"Yes," he'd said and laughed roughly. "Real Potter hair, and in my woods. Say, what is a little Potter wizard like you doing in my woods?"

"I'm sorry sir," Harry said, as this was what his aunt and uncle always wanted to hear when they were angry with him. "I'm sorry. I didn't know this was your wood, I didn't know it belonged to anybody. I was just running down a street and then I was here and-"

"Running away, were you?" The man interrupted. "Ooh, what are your parents going to say? What will they say? A little wizard running away to my woods…"

"Um, my parents are dead," Harry said quietly.

"Interesting... And you didn't like where they put you, so you ran away?"

Harry nodded.

"Well come in then, boy. It's getting dark already. You can stay for the night. I'm Al."

One night became two, then three, then a whole week and soon they had an unspoken agreement that Harry was allowed to stay as long as he helped Al around the house and garden. Oh, and Harry promised to buy the old man an elf when he was too old to care for himself. Harry agreed to that too, even though he knew that elves didn't exist. But he liked living with Al better than living with the Dursleys and he wasn't going to ruin his new life over something like that, so he kept his mouth shut.

There were quite a lot of things Harry remained silent about. It seemed the old man was as obsessed with magic as the Dursleys were with normality. He often talked about a magical world, about potions, wands, witches, wizards, and muggles. The latter were what he called normal, non-magical people. Al didn't like them at all.

On his third day, when Harry was tending to the vegetable patch, Harry had asked him why he didn't simply buy his food in a store. There had to be a town or at least a small village somewhere nearby. This simple question led to a 20-minute rant from the old man.

"I might have a condition, but I'm not lowering myself to that," he spat, his grey eyes narrowed angrily at the startled child. "I got my standards. Of course, a wizard like you won't understand, think I'm just the same. Think I'm no good. Oh, but I got my standards, my pride. I'm no muggle."

Harry never raised the issue again. If there was one thing he had learned while living with his aunt and uncle, it was that it wasn't advisable to argue with the people that had power over him.

At the Dursleys, this meant never questioning their irrational hatred of all things abnormal, at Al's it meant accepting that he believed magic was real.

Al's hut wasn't big. It had a small kitchen with a wood-burning stove, a table with two chairs and a shelf for the dishes, a bedroom for the Al that Harry wasn't allowed to enter, a bathroom, and a small but cozy living room where Harry slept on the couch. It still wasn't his own room, but it was better than the cupboard under the stairs.

All in all, Harry thought his living situation had really improved since coming here. Yes, the old man had some very weird quirks, but he didn't get drunk every day like Vernon, didn't make Harry go to school with a bunch of stupid, bullying children and all things considered was also better company than the Dursleys had ever been.

They didn't talk much about their respective pasts. Al seemed to think Harry's parents were a witch and a wizard too, and by the way, he always condemned the 'muggle world', Harry felt it, saver, no to mention that he'd been living with these so called muggles all his life. If Al liked to believe that Harry was a wizard with magical parents, then it was better not to disagree if Harry wanted to stay. He also never mentioned the Dursleys by name, out of fear Al might one day change his mind and call them to get him.

The one thing that disturbed Harry a bit was the hunting. Al liked to eat meat, and as he was unwilling to buy it in a store, he went out to hunt for it himself. With a wooden bow and arrows.

Sometimes Harry felt like he was sent back centuries, like this little part of the woods Al occupied had been left untouched by the course of time. Al had no phone, no telly, no microwave, and as it turned out not even a shotgun to go hunting.

It was an amazing adventure, like living in a book.

For countless times, Harry had watched Al disappear into the woods with his bow and arrows, only to return a few hours later with a deer, rabbits, or pheasants.

Sometimes they prepared the meat over an open fire and sat outside till late in the night. Harry liked those times. In the glow of the campfire, Al opened up. He told Harry amazing stories about speaking rabbits, hopping pots, goblin rebellions, about a magical castle called Hogwarts where ghosts roamed the halls and suits of armor came to life.

After evenings like that, Harry often had to remind himself forcibly that none of it was real. It was all too easy to lose sight of reality when living in the woods with a man like Al, far away from civilisation. Harry would like nothing more than to believe in Al's stories about dragons and wizards, but he had learned early on, lying in his dark cupboard, wishing for a knight in shining armor to save him, that life just didn't work like that.

"So Harry," Al said one evening in mid-August, when Harry had been living with him for about two months, "tell me about your accidental magic."

"About my what?" Harry asked perplexed. Accidental magic? Did Al want to have proof that Harry was a real wizard? What should he say? That he had fought a dragon? Made a cauldron dance?

"Your accidental magic. The things you made happen, the things muggles," he spat the name, "couldn't wish to understand. Bit slow on the uptake, aren't you?"

"Am not!" Harry said indignantly. He wasn't slow, just not as crazy as Al. Harry thought about what he should say. Maybe fighting a dragon was laying it on a bit thick. Suddenly he remembered the incident when aunt Petunia had cut his hair really short, and the one where the mean teacher's hair had suddenly turned blue… But that wasn't really caused by him, was it? That was just a coincidence.

"Um, well, on time, somebody cut my hair too short, it looked really ugly and I didn't want to go out like that, the next morning, it was back to its normal length," Harry said.

Al laughed heartily. "Vain little thing, you are. What else?" Al's eyes had an eager gleam in them as if he was starved for these stories about magic and mystery.

"Another time I was running away from a bully, and suddenly I was up on a roof. But I never climbed up there, and there was no ladder."

Al whistled in approval. "Accidental apparation. Now that's not something you see every day."

Harry told two more stories, about the teacher with the blue hair and about the pullover that shrunk when Petunia wanted to force it on him, and the longer he talked, the more he realized that there really had been some weird things happening in his life.

Could it be that he was the reason for them? That he was a – he hardly dared to think it, much less say it out loud – a wizard?

No. Definitely no. Wizards did not exist. The solitude didn't become him, it seemed. He was definitely going crazy. Magic wasn't real, the Dursleys had told him so numerable times. Or was it?

.

A loud noise startled Albus awake. He'd fallen asleep while reading, again. He stood up and went to the window. An owl was waiting outside. He opened the window to let it in, and with a sigh, took the letter from its outstretched leg.

'Harry James Potter' the envelope read, nothing more. No location. Albus had made the magical quill, that addressed the letters, write Harry's letter multiple times over different days, but the outcome was always the same. No address, just a name.

Without an address, the owls weren't successful either and always returned with the letter after one or two days.

This led Albus to consider three options: One, Harry had been taken in by a wizard and was somehow kept out of their reach. Two, he was living on the streets and didn't stay in the same place long enough for the letter to find him. Three, – an option Albus refused to believe – Harry was dead.

They had searched London and its suburbs for weeks, and even notified the muggle authorities when their efforts had remained fruitless for too long.

By now, the whole wizarding world knew that Harry had gone missing. Fudge was in a right state, telling everyone who would give him the time of the day, that this incident had nothing to do with his government, that it under no circumstances should be blamed on him. The remaining Death Eaters now also knew of Harry's disappearance, and Albus couldn't help but doubt the motives behind Lucius Malfoy's offer to help sponsor the search. At least this offer reassured him somewhat, that Malfoy also didn't know of Harry's whereabouts.

The prophet was running stories about Harry almost daily, and every day new people came forward who claimed to have seen Harry in one place or another.

One witch, a young, round-faced woman, even swore on her mother's grave that she'd seen Harry in the magical district of Paris, playing cards in a pub with two young veela.

Unable to stop himself, Albus had even investigated that claim. Of course, it hadn't led anywhere, but at least he'd been able to stock up on his favourite French candies, which was made this trip more successful than any of his other expeditions.

Harry's disappearance troubled Albus immensely. Not only because he suspected that Harry still had a destiny to fulfill, but also because Harry was just a young innocent child, that right now should be excited about the joining wizarding world and not living in mortal danger.

He heaved a deep sigh. Harry was his responsibility. He owed it to Lily and James to ensure that their son didn't die a senseless death.

Chapter Text

"I heard he went to live with the giants. They allowed him to stay after he helped them battle a huge dragon!"

"You're completely bonkers. Everybody knows he's fighting vampires in Transylvania, the Aurors there are useless."

"Vampires? Are you sure?"

"Course! My aunt said so, and she works for the Prophet."

"The Prophet? They write rubbish."

"Take that back!"

"It's the truth. My dad says so."

"Well, then your dad is stupid."

"Excuse me," Hermione interrupted the two students sitting next to her at the Gryffindor table. "Who are you talking about?"

She had heard stories like that and even more absurd earlier that day on the train ride to Hogwarts too, but couldn't make head nor tail of it.

Some stories sounded like they were about a young boy who ran away from home, others like they were about a dragon-riding, vampire-staking hero who had to be at least a hundred years old, taking into account all his supposed achievements.

The two older boys, probably second or third years, Hermione thought, looked startled.

"Who are we talking about?" One repeated slowly as if he couldn't believe she'd even asked that question.

Hermione hid a wince and nodded. She hated not knowing something, especially if everybody else seemed to possess said knowledge already.

"Why, Harry Potter, of course."

"Harry Potter?"

Her brain flittered through everything she connected with that name at the speed of light.

There was Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived, defeater of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, wizard, and hero.

Then there was Harry Potter from Surrey. A boy about her age who'd disappeared a few weeks ago. He was a muggle, a normal boy; or so the papers had said.

Muggle papers, stupid. She scolded herself. Of course, they wouldn't say he's a wizard.

"Don't tell me you haven't heard of him," the second boy said. "Muggleborn, right? Well no matter, we'll get you up to speed. He's the Boy-Who-Lived, he-"

"I know who he is," Hermione said. "I read all about him. I just didn't know he went missing."

"Oi! He's not missing. That's just the cover story. In reality, he's fighting vampires, my aunt-"

"Oh shut up. Nobody is interested in-"

Hermione left the two upper years to their squabbles and took a big gulp from her goblet. She grimaced. Pumpkin juice really needed some getting used to. She returned her concentration to her fellow first years. They too were talking about him and his adventures now, and hardly ever mentioned his name, probably assuming that everybody knew whom they were talking about anyway. Well, now she knew too.

.

Oh, there! A rustling noise! Harry froze, even held his breath, and pricked his ears. Yes, there it was again. Now he was sure. Something was moving over there, right behind a withered bush of dog roses.

Harry turned towards the bush, moving in slow motion, careful to avoid making any noise that could startle the animal. He closed his left eye and focussed his right one on his target – a few, still rustling branches. Then he slowly pulled the bowstring back with the arrow he was holding in the sweaty fingers of his right hand and simultaneously raised the bow. Al had made him practice this move at least a hundred, if not a thousand times until he was somewhat satisfied with the result.

The arrow, or more accurately Harry's hand, was shaking slightly, even though there was no wind blowing. Harry started breathing deeply to relax his body. He was going to do this. He could do this. He wasn't a small child anymore, he was eleven already!

Another deep breath.

He had to do this today. This was his third time alone in the woods, and the last two times he had had to return unsuccessfully. Not this time. Not only because it would disappoint Al, but also because Harry really wanted to eat meat again. Al hadn't given him any for the last two weeks because he said that Harry was old enough to contribute to their meat stock too. As long as Harry didn't go hunting, he didn't get any meat, and only eating the vegetables Al grew in the garden became boring fast. They didn't even have noodles or rice, only the bread Al baked, which didn't taste too great, in Harry's opinion.

The breathing exercises were helping. Harry's heartbeat calmed down and his hand stopped shaking. He pulled the arrow back further and was about to let it fly when he remembered that he'd completely forgotten to check his stance.

Keeping his left eye shut, Harry squinted down to his feet with his right eye as inconspicuously as possible. Al would scold him for only thinking of checking his shooting stance so late. He shifted his left leg a bit, until his feet were shoulder-width apart, his weight evenly distributed on both of them. Perfect.

The twigs rustled once more, and this time, Harry was ready. He let his arrow fly and watched with big eyes as it whistled through the air and disappeared in the dog roses. Suddenly Harry heard a soft squeak and immediately dropped his bow in surprise. He hadn't expected to hit something for real this time. Not after all those futile attempts, where he'd even had a better view of his target most of the time.

Slowly Harry walked towards the bushes. His knees were trembling; from excitement or shock, he didn't know.

Oh god. He'd really hit something. On the small patch of grass behind the bush was a rabbit. It wasn't dead yet but seriously injured. Harry's arrow had hit it at the side of its belly. Blood was flowing out of the wound and colouring the green grass red.

Harry wanted to close his eyes, turn around and run away. He couldn't believe that he was the cause of this. He was to blame for this rabbit's death.

"Get a grip," Harry said. His voice sounded too loud to his ears as if it was disturbing the silence of the woods. Disturbing it like his actions were disturbing the life in the woods.

"Get a grip," he said again, quieter this time.

It shouldn't matter if he was shooting the animal himself or if Al was doing it for him. The result was the same.

While he kept staring at the rabbit – he just couldn't look away, no matter how much he wanted – Harry fumbled for the piece of wood Al had given him for situations like this. It was as thick as a broomstick and as long as Harry's forearm.

His hands were too warm and a bit slippery, which made it difficult to get a good grip. Harry wiped his sweaty hand on his pants and tried again.

With his left hand, he reached for the rabbit.

Hold it by its hind legs.

"You can do this. You can do this. You can do this," Harry muttered again and again. Yes, he could, but he didn't want to, damn it!

Harry cursed Al and his stupid aversion to supermarkets. Things would be so much easier if they could just go to the next village and buy packaged, maybe even spiced meat…

Harry grabbed the rabbit by its hind legs and lifted it up. It struggled a bit, but not much. It had already lost a lot of blood.

Harry stared at the rabbit in his hand. The arrow was hanging out of the wound in its belly, swaying back and forth. Maybe he should have gotten rid of it before picking the animal up?

He gripped the wooden stick tightly and felt for the right place to hit the rabbit.

Right behind the ears.

Al had even shown this part to Harry, but he'd only watched half-heartedly. He hadn't wanted to see an animal die then, and he didn't want to now.

When he found the right place, Harry held his breath, raised the wooden stick, and hit the spot right behind the ears with as much force as he could muster.

The rabbit twitched in his hand for one last time. Then blood started trickling out of its mouth and ears.

Harry gazed at the gruesome picture. The eyes of the rabbit were bulging out; its fur was sticky with blood. An intense smell of copper was in the air and Harry tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. He felt sick to the stomach and couldn't imagine eating this rabbit for anything in the world.

He picked up his bow and walked home slowly. Al would be proud, he knew, but at the moment Harry just couldn't bring up any joy for finally receiving the much longed-for recognition. Not when he was carrying a rabbit, whose blood-smeared head was swinging against his trousers every few steps, staining them red.

Al was working in the garden and he laughed out loud when he saw Harry approaching.

"Finally! I knew you had it in you."

Harry didn't say anything. He wordlessly held out the rabbit to Al.

"Oh no. You're not done yet. It needs skinning and cleaning. We can't just eat it like that."

"I don't want to," Harry said and lowered his head. He didn't want to disappoint Al, but he liked the idea of drawing off that bloody rabbit's fur even less.

Al took the rabbit and put it on a table. Then he knelt down and put one hand on Harry's shoulder. With his other hand, he reached for Harry's chin and lifted it up until Harry looked right into his eyes.

"You were great today, Harry. You don't have to feel bad or ashamed for anything. This is nature. The stronger ones inevitably triumph over the weaker ones. If you hadn't shot the rabbit, then maybe a fox or another animal would have caught it. Rabbits are prey, that's their natural place in the food chain. You're a wizard, and today you saw that you're on top of the food chain, as you should be. Millions of muggles, wizards, and witches eat meat daily. They buy it ready for usage and think nothing of it because somebody else does the killing for them. Killing that rabbit yourself doesn't make you a worse person."

Harry looked at Al in wonder. This was probably the nicest and most sensitive thing Al had ever said to him. It seemed Al realized that too. The next second he cleared his throat somewhat embarrassed and stood.

"Come on, boy. Now you get a chance to show me how much attention you paid when I showed you how to skin a rabbit."

Harry looked down at his hands, then at Al. Could he do this? Could he skin a rabbit?

"Come on, Harry. A man only shoots his first animal once. Are you really going to chicken out now, when you've already come this far?"

Harry tried not to smile. He knew that Al only said all of this stuff to convince him, but in a way, Al was right too. This was the first time he'd returned from hunting successfully and it had been hard work to get here.

He had trained with his bow and arrow for weeks and had wandered through the woods for endless hours. He should be allowed to feel proud. He remembered feeling like an Indian in an old western the first time he tried out his bow and arrow, and suddenly that feeling returned. He was a stealthy Indian hunting for buffaloes. Or Robin Hood! Hunting for whatever Robin Hood liked to eat. They probably skinned the animals they hunted themselves too.

Finally, Harry looked up and nodded. He could do this. He was already eleven, after all.

.

The search was coming to an end. A few volunteers as well as Albus himself still investigated all alleged sightings of Harry Potter, but those claims became fewer every week.

Some of his old friends and acquaintances had lost hope already. If even Albus Dumbledore’s magic couldn't find the boy, then he had to be dead, right?

Chapter Text

"I never went this far before," Harry said, looking around the unfamiliar path they were walking uneasily. It was getting dark earlier these days, and colder too. Harry wrapped the robe Al had given to him tightly around his body, to shield it from the biting wind that grew harsher the closer they got to the clearing that was their destination.

"We need to get past the protection, and fast," Al said frowning down at his pocket watch. "The owls always arrive at 6 pm sharp."

The owls. For as long as Harry had been here, Al had given him the impression that he lived completely isolated from the outside world, but this morning he'd suddenly started talking about owls that apparently delivered letters and goods from acquaintances four times a year on a clearing about one and a half hours away from Al's hut.

Al had actually wanted Harry to stay behind, but Harry would have none of it. Owls delivering letters and packages? Harry doubted Al was telling the truth but wanted to come along just in case anyway.

After living with Al for about three months, Harry couldn't dismiss the existence of magic as completely as he once had. Maybe, just maybe, he really was a wizard. Harry shook his head. He had to stop daydreaming all the time. Yes, his life with Al was unreal – he went hunting for his own food with a bow and arrow, for god's sake – but he shouldn't lose sight of the reality of his situation.

"Here we are," Al said as they stepped out of the woods and into the clearing.

Harry looked around with big eyes. It was beautiful. The sky was of a dark blue, tinted with orange and pink, and the sinking sun was bathing the meadow and surrounding trees in a warm glow.

Hoo, hoo.

Harry craned his neck to search the sky. That really sounded just like he imagined owls to sound.

Hoo, hoo.

A dark shadow, no, two dark shadows descended from a treetop nearby. Fascinated Harry watched as they approached Al, who held out his left arm for one of the owls to land.

The other circled around Al until the old man gestured at Harry. Immediately the owl turned to Harry, as if it understood Al, and landed on the arm Harry reluctantly held out for it.

Its talons were sharp and digging into Harry's skin painfully, yet not quite cutting it. Cautiously Harry raised his free hand and touched its dark brown feathers. They were just as soft as they looked.

Real post owls. Harry could hardly believe it.

"You're beautiful," Harry murmured. When the owl reacted to his words by fluffing up its feathers proudly, he added: "And intelligent too."

Frighteningly intelligent, even. Harry had never heard of owls that reacted to humans like this. Were they simply well trained or was it magic?

When Harry tried to reach for the package the owl carried, it turned around sharply and bit him.

"Ouch! Al, it bit me!"

Al didn't pay him any mind. He was reading the letters the first owl had carried, his wild grey eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

Harry eyed his owl distrustfully. It was sitting on his arm dead still now, but following every movement of his hand with its wide, yellow eyes, undoubtedly readying itself for another attack.

It seemed to take ages until Al had finished reading all three letters he'd received, penned a reply, and sent the first owl off with it. By the time Al turned towards them, the muscles in Harry's arm burned like fire.

"Now we come to the pleasant part," the old man said and freed the second owl of its burden. As soon as the package was in Al's hands, the bird took off into the night sky.

"Come Harry. We'll open it back home."

After living with the Dursleys for nearly his whole life, watching Dudley unwrap dozens of presents at every opportunity while he was left empty-handed, hearing that word uttered so casually meant more to Harry than he had known. Definitely also more than Al could know.

"What's inside?" Harry asked, jumping up and down excitedly as they made their way back.

"You'll see." Al smiled mysteriously.

Back at home, Al put the package onto the table and handed Harry one of the sharper kitchen knives to cut the package open.

Harry goggled. From the outside, the cardboard box was no bigger than a very thick book and not particularly heavy, but from the inside, it was big enough for aunt Petunia's microwave and then some. It was filled to the brim with different candies, books, bottles of drinks Harry had never heard before, pasties, sausages, and stuff he couldn't even identify.

"Catch," Al said and threw Harry a small package.

Chocolate Frog was written on it in big, loopy letters, and Harry's mouth filled with water - finally, something that wasn't a vegetable, meat, or Al's bread.

He ripped the box open and let out a cry of surprise when his treat jumped out of his hand and onto the floor.

Al laughed. "Haven't had them in a while, I take it?"

"Never," Harry breathed as he watched the frog crawl over the wooden floor.

1.  There was no other explanation for this anymore. Magic was real.

Harry's head spun, he felt dizzy.

"Never?"

Only when he heard Al repeat his answer incredulously did Harry realize that he was behaving all wrong. He'd been pretending to know about magic, reacting like this must be looking very suspicious.

"Yeah," Harry said. "The people I lived with, they didn't allow me to eat any sweets."

That much was true, at least.

Al hummed and gave another chocolate frog to Harry. He never commented on the things Harry told him about his past, but his expressions often suggested that he didn't think much of the Dursleys.

This time, Harry was more careful. He cupped his hand over the box and caught the frog when it jumped. Its tiny legs wriggled as he put them into his mouth and tickled his palate in a funny way. The chocolate tasted delicious, far better than anything he'd ever managed to steal from his cousin.

"Take a look at the card inside the box," Al said. "Chocolate frogs always come with the card of a famous witch or wizard. I had an almost complete set when I was a child, there were only two or three cards missing when…" Al stopped abruptly. "Well, not matter."

Harry was about to ask Al to elaborate - the old man didn't often talk about his past - when he caught a glimpse of the card inside the chocolate frog box and completely forgot his previous train of thought.

The picture was moving.

It showed a woman with fiery red hair. She wore night blue robes and was scowling fiercely at him.

"I got Morgan le Fay," Harry read from the card.

"Ah yes, she's quite common. But a good start for your collections nevertheless. She was a very talented witch."

"The card says she was an Animagus," Harry continued.

"Yes, yes. Could turn into a bird. My grandfather used to tell me stories about her and Merlin every time he came to visit."

By now, Harry thought, he really shouldn't be surprised anymore. If magic was real then why not Merlin and Morgan le Fay too?

"I think I'll go to sleep," Harry said. He had so much to think about, he didn't even know where to start.

"Already? Well, g'night. We have to talk tomorrow, by the way. I'll have to leave for two or three days and I can't take you with me. Business."

Harry was too overwhelmed by events of the day to feel much of anything when Al dropped this last bomb on him. Going by the way Al talked about the outside world – or the muggle world, more specifically – Harry had always thought that Al didn't leave the woods at all.

In the end it was just another thing he'd been wrong about. Interesting but hardly comparable to the discovery that magic was real. He'd like to see the look on Aunt Petunia's face now.

Harry fell asleep with a soft, contented smile on his lips.

.

Rain was pouring down the windowpane, dancing on the glass ceiling of the living room in a maddening whirlwind of uneven steps. A violin, floating two meters above ground, its strings played by invisible hands, was fighting for dominance over the endless beat of raindrops.

Gentle notes complementing the wild rhythm of nature gave way to sounds so raucous, so loud, the bow threatened to splinter in its effort to reach a new crescendo - would have splintered if not for the magic dwelling within.

Pipe smoke mingled with the music, took on new forms with each change of rhythm telling stories of beauty and transience. Its outer tendrils formed nimble-fingered claws that grabbed for the velvet red curtains framing the high windows, as if in an attempt to prolong its existence, anchor itself in reality, not knowing that all it would leave behind was a lingering smell, slowly fading away in the light of the day.

A clock somewhere nearby struck ten, and when the sound of the last stroke died, a man, who had up until now been lying on a heavy leather sofa situated in the middle of the room, sat up and put his naked feet on the warm wooden floor.

His muscles were tense, every motion controlled as he put on his socks and heavy boots, this behavior very at odds with his usual bearing. But then again, this was no usual night, not by a long shot. This was one of eight nights a year that stood out, where he was a different kind of person leading a different kind of life.

On a table nearby lay two knives, one long and thin, one short and double-edged. He reached for the long knife first and scoffed as his fingers brushed against the polished tabletop made of mahogany wood.

Pretentious - but not uncommon, not in this life he led eight nights a year.

He cut through the empty space in front of him with a flowing movement and watched the light dance on the edges of the sharp blade. Next, he threw it up into the air. He stood uncaringly as it sped back to the ground, knifepoint at the front. Then, just before it could touch the ground and damage the undoubtedly expensive wooden floor, he stretched out his hand.

"Back."

And the charmed knife followed his command without hesitation.

When the last syllable left his mouth, the knife stopped, hovered mid-air for a split second, and then rushed back into his hand. The handle fit perfectly into his palm, as if it belonged there, and maybe it did.

He repeated the procedure with the second knife, then, finally satisfied, both disappeared in between the layers of his clothing.

He left his abode, crossed the busy street right in front of the house, and disappeared into a narrow alley. Soon he was nothing but a shadow, his black clothes melting into the darkness of the night, his heavy boots charmed to be as quiet as a cat on the hunt.

.

Harry opened the kitchen window to let in the fresh air and felt his mood sink even further. It was only early in the afternoon, but the sky was dark with rainclouds, the sun nowhere to be seen. It had been raining non-stop for the last two days, and without Al to keep him company Harry was terribly, unbelievably bored. He could hardly wait for Al to return. Thankfully he'd be back in the evening.

Al had allowed him to read one of the new books from the package they'd received a few days ago. It was called Wandering with Werewolves and told the story of how the author, a wizard called Gilderoy Lockhart, had saved a village from werewolves. Real, shape-shifting werewolves that howled to the moon once a month and ate other wizards and muggles.

Harry loved the book, he soaked up all the information it provided eagerly, enjoyed how the author described other wizards' and witches' clothing style – even though he belittled it most of the time – and their daily life and leisure activities.

Lockhart mentioned Ministry officials and a Ministry of Magic, a sport called Quidditch played on flying brooms, he talked about Galleons – a special currency wizards used –, greedy goblins, centaurs, and unicorns.

With every page Harry turned, his longing to see this world with his own eyes grew stronger. He wanted to have a wand, to learn the locking spell Lockhart used to get into the house of the werewolf and tripping jinx that allowed him to slow the monster down.

"Cold, so cold…"

A quiet voice startled Harry out of his musing. He looked around in confusion.

"Cold and wet, so cold…"

There it was again! It was definitely coming from outside. Harry leaned out of the window as far as he could without losing his balance but didn't see anybody. Weird.

He looked out of all the windows in the small hut – minus the one in Al's bedroom, which was locked – but still didn't see anyone.

"Heat, need heat…"

The voice sounded weaker this time. Harry pushed down the uneasy feeling that spread in his belly, opened the front door, and stepped out into the rain.

"Blood so cold, so cold…"

Harry followed the sound of the voice; it was coming from somewhere close by, somewhere beneath him. Harry crouched down on the rain-soaked ground and looked around.

"Where are you?" Harry asked because even though he would swear that he was right next to the voice, he still couldn't see anybody.

"Cold…"

"Yes, I know," Harry said, "but I can't help you if you don't tell me where you are!"

"Cold... heat…"

The voice seemed to be coming from under a pile of wood that was situated next to the door. Cursing loudly, Harry lay down on the floor and crawled closer to get a better view.

"Hello?" He said as he peeked under the pile of wood feeling more than a little silly.

"Cold!" The voice answered and moments later a small snake appeared. "You help?"

It took Harry a moment to realize that it was indeed the snake that was talking, and another few seconds to get over the shock.

Well… jumping chocolate frogs, moving pictures and now speaking snakes. No need to freak out, just another day in this new crazy life of his.

"You won't bite me, will you?" Harry asked just to make sure.

"You bring heat. I won't bite."

Hesitantly – he hadn't forgotten the biting owl yet – Harry offered his arm to the snake. "Crawl on my arm, I'll take you inside. It's warm there."

With the snake wrapped around his forearm, Harry went back inside. He put it on the floor near the stove where it was the warmest, and then immediately took off his wet and muddy clothes. He took a seat next to the snake, after this little adventure he too craved the warmth of the fire.

The snake didn't look magical at all. No special colouring, no wings, just a plain, boring snake. Apart from the whole speaking thing, of course.

"Where are you from?" Harry said.

The snake flickered its tail in the direction of the door. Right.

"Do you know Al?" Harry asked next. When the snake didn't answer Harry elaborated. "The old man who lives here, I mean?" The snake shook its head.

After they sat in silence for a while – and wasn't it weird that you could sit in anything but silence with a snake? – Harry asked his next question: "What do you eat?"

The snake opened its eyes again and blinked at Harry. "Mice are lovely. And chicks, fluffy chicks, they are more lovely. They are very good." Apparently, food was a good topic.

"Oh. I eat rabbits," Harry said, trying to keep the conversation going.

"Rabbits are a heavy meal," the snake said, and Harry thought it sounded a tiny bit impressed.

When Al came home in the evening, Harry was still sitting by the oven, still only clothed in shorts. Al looked tired. His robes were wet from the rain and his boots were too dirty to make out their original colour.

"Al! You're back. Look what I found!" Harry scrambled to his feet, grabbed Al's arm, and tugged him towards the oven.

"A snake? Why did you bring it inside?" Al asked and looked at Harry in confusion.

"Not just any snake, Al," Harry said, "a speaking snake! We've been talking all afternoon. He told me he likes to eat baby birds; can you believe it? So gross. "

"He told you?" Al repeated and looked down at Harry questioningly. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." Why was Al acting so weird? A person who knew of the existence of hopping cauldrons and singing quills should be used to talking snakes, shouldn't they?

"Can you show me?" There was a soft tremor in Al's voice, confusing Harry further.

"Sure," he said nevertheless and turned back to the snake.

"Hey, wake up." Harry nudged the snake carefully. "I want to introduce you to Al."

A loud gasp made Harry turn around. Al was staring at him. Staring as though he'd never seen Harry before.

"Everything alright?" Harry hated how timid his voice sounded, but he couldn't hide how much Al's reaction was freaking him out. It was just a talking snake, for god's sake!

"Harry Potter," Al said his name slowly and stared at Harry's face with an unnatural concentration. He looked as if he was trying to solve a complicated puzzle.

"What's your mother's maiden name?" Al said out of the blue.

His mother's maiden name? Maybe he should be worrying about Al's mental health… Maybe something happened to him while he was away…

"Your mother's maiden name, do you know it?" Al asked insistently and grabbed Harry's shoulder.

"N-no," Harry said. Aunt Petunia had never mentioned either the name of his grandparents or her own maiden name. "I don't. My parents have been dead for a long time. I don't know much about them."

Al was pacing through the kitchen in agitation. "And her first name?"

"Lily."

"Lily. Lily. Nickname or given name?"

"Her real name, I think."

Al continued walking up and down the room murmuring his mother's name, and Harry started to feel a bit scared.

"You smell salty," a voice commented from the ground, and Harry saw that the snake had raised his head and was watching him.

"What?"

At the sound of Harry's voice, Al stopped pacing.

"You're parselmouth, Harry."

"I'm what?"

"A parselmouth! Didn't those people you lived with teach you anything? You're snake speaker!"

Harry looked down at the snake, then back at Al. "A snake speaker? But he's speaking English!"

"No, no, it's not! You're speaking parseltongue, the tongue of snakes." Al's cheeks were flushed; he was talking so fast he was nearly stumbling over the words. "I have no clue what it's saying, and don't understand you when you're talking to it either! A real parselmouth, I can't believe it. I thought they died out."

"Died out?"

"Yes, it's hereditary. Only one family was known for this talent."

"That's why you wanted to know my mother's maiden name?"

"Of course. She must have been a descendant of Slytherin."

Al went to the shelf and poured himself a generous glass of Firewhisky. The first time Harry had seen Al drink whisky – right after they'd finished unpacking the package – he'd been afraid that Al might turn into another Vernon Dursley when he was drunk. Thankfully Al said he only drank the whisky because he liked the taste, and hardly ever enough to get drunk.

He sat down and stared at Harry some more.

"How old are you?"

"Eleven."

"Eleven?" Al sounded disbelieving.

"What?" Harry snapped. He knew he was small for his age, no need to rub it in.

"I thought you were nine, ten at most. Eleven is the age wizards usually start their magical education."

"You mean I'm old enough for a wand? A real wand?"

Al laughed. "Yes, I think you are."

Harry felt so excited it was hard for him to stand still. He wanted to go and buy a wand right now, and then he wanted to learn how to fly and fight werewolves and pet unicorns and…

"Where do I get a wand? Can we go tomorrow?"

Al seemed to hesitate for a moment; his smile disappeared. "Usually young wizards buy them at Ollivanders in wizarding London, but… I don't go there. Ever."

Ever? Then how was he supposed to get his wand? Harry's heart sank to his stomach. He had no idea where exactly he was or how to get to London, let alone the wizarding part of London.

"So, no wand?" Harry tried to sound less heartbroken than he felt, but he was not sure he succeeded. He didn't want to make Al feel bad about this, the old man had done so much for him already.

Al looked at him and the snake to his feet for what seemed like an eternity; then he stood and left the room.

Harry stared after him. Tears were welling up in his eyes but he rubbed them away angrily. He refused to cry like a baby. He would simply get a wand later when he was old enough to go to London by himself. Yes, he'd just wait a bit.

The kitchen door opened and Al stepped back into the room, carrying a narrow box. When Al sat it on the table in front of them, Harry saw that it was covered with a thick coat of dust.

"That," Al said, looking at Harry solemnly, "was my grandfather’s wand. He entrusted it to me, and now I'm entrusting it to you. It might not be an ideal fit, but I'm sure you'll do this wand proud for as long as you'll use it."

"Your grandfather's wand?" Harry wasn't sure he should accept this. If he had something that belonged to his parents, he didn't know if he could give it away like this.

"It would've made my grandfather proud to know that a parselmouth, a descendent of Salazar himself, was using his wand," Al said with finality.

Harry held his breath as Al opened the box, barely daring to believe that this was really happening. The wand inside was beautiful, made of dark wood, lying on a velvet cushion.

Harry reached his hand out slowly. His fingers tingled where they touched the wood and the wand trembled before it calmed down and allowed Harry to pick it up. Sparks of gold and blue were flying from its tip and for a moment Harry thought he could feel a soft breeze.

Al smiled. "Yes, we can definitely work with this."

Chapter Text

1992

Albus appeared in one of Hogwarts' dungeons in a bright flame of phoenix fire. He wasn't the least bit surprised to find his Defence teacher already there, kneeling in front of the Mirror of Erised, the stone thankfully still safe inside. The school year was almost over and he had suspected that Quirrel would make a move for the stone soon.

What did catch him by surprise though, was the blood-curdling scream that resounded in the chamber and the spirit that seemed to be in the process of removing itself from the back of the teacher's head. The turban Quirrel usually wore was lying on the floor discarded, the smell of garlic heavy in the air.

Blood red eyes, so full of hatred, for him, for the world, for the creature itself – to call the being human would be blasphemy –, stared back at him.

"Albus," the spirit all but hissed, "so we meet again."

'Tom',   Albus wanted to say but couldn't.

Tom was a lonely boy in an orphanage.

A brilliant student.

A murderer at the age of sixteen.

A charismatic but cruel young man.

A middle-aged man marked by life, scarred by dark magic.

A megalomaniac, sadist, dark wizard.

Above all Tom was a man.

Albus couldn't bring himself to call this sad, distorted shade of a man by that name.

"What have you done to yourself?" He asked instead, eyes fixed on the malevolent spirit, while he started waving his wand discreetly.

Its high-pitched laughter reminded Albus of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard.

"What have I done? You dare?" It screeched. "This… this is what your precious saviour reduced me to. A bodiless wraith, just strong enough to talk, to possess…"

Albus twirled his wand hurriedly in small circles, and razor-thin threads of pure light fled from its tip and sank into the ground.

"But now… what will you do now Albus? Without the child of the prophecy to hide behind, what will you do?"

The tendrils of light had nearly reached the ground right below the spirit when it suddenly shuddered as if it had felt their approach.

"Trying to cage me, Albus? Me? You fool."

With one last pull, followed by an inhuman shriek of Quirrel's, Voldemort left his servant and fled through the wall on the opposite side of the chamber. At the same time, Albus gave up all pretenses of inaction and moved his wand to the front, spinning it between his fingers rapidly, urging the light threads to travel faster, to touch, to cage – but he was too late.

Voldemort was gone, Quirrel's lifeless body the only reminder of his presence.

.

"Diffindo," Harry said and a few steps from where he was lying in the grass, soaking up the summer sun, several flower heads fell to the ground.

"Wingardium Leviosa."

They rose high up into the air and Harry directed their flight like a conductor guiding his orchestra.

In the beginning, he'd only been able to levitate single, very light objects over a short period of time, but it seemed the old muggle saying "practice makes perfect" was also true for magic, and by now Harry could use the charm on several objects simultaneously. The heavier ones were still a bit tricky, but he was getting there.

For Harry, the knowledge that magic was real, that he could use it, was still wondrous and he practiced it every day; sometimes so much that it annoyed even Al, who, at least in the beginning, had been obsessed with watching Harry perform magic.

Harry often wondered why Al didn't perform magic himself. Once, a few days after receiving his wand, Harry had asked Al outright if he even was a wizard because he had never seen him perform any magic. The atmosphere in the cosy kitchen had grown tense in the blink of an eye.

"My blood is pure enough," was all Al had said, and that had been the end of the matter - at least for the old man. To this day Harry had no idea what Al had been talking about.

"Sweet mouse, stay still, sweet, sweet mouse…"

Harry stood, looking for the source of the voice. Soon he found the snake in question. It was an adder, like all the other snakes Harry had encountered in these woods so far.

It was slithering through the grass, completely focused on the hunt. Harry didn't see the mouse the reptile was speaking of, but he was sure it was there. He'd watched snakes hunt often enough.

They were deadly predators, superior to their prey in every way. They moved so quietly that not even the sensitive ears of rodents could pick up any noise, they moved so fast that even the quickest mouse had no chance of escaping.

That was what had captured Harry's attention, his fascination in the first place: As soon as a snake set eyes on its prey, it had no chance.

And that was even without taking their poison into account.

The adder was moving more slowly now. It was a beautiful specimen, with scales of a light brown that glistened in the morning sun as it moved, and a dorsal zigzag pattern of such a dark shade of brown that it swallowed any light it was touched by.

Harry didn't dare move, afraid he would scare away the mouse or distract the snake in a crucial moment.

"I smell blood… warm blood."

The snake was completely still now and Harry held his breath. Then, so fast that Harry didn't even really see it, it stroke. The next moment Harry heard the desperate squeaking of a mouse in mortal agony. He could see it now, squirming in pain while the adder's venom worked through its body.

He didn't feel sorry for the mouse. It was just like Al had said: The stronger ones triumph over the weaker ones. Such was life. Such was the natural order of things.

.

1993

"Are you finished?" Al asked somewhat impatiently and Harry, who had just swallowed the last bite of his breakfast, looked up in surprise.

"Yes," he said and scrutinized the old man carefully. Al was never impatient; there was just no need to be when one lived in the woods, far away from civilisation.

"Great," said Al and reached for the kitchen shelf. He took a small parcel from the upmost board and handed it to Harry.

"Happy Birthday."

Harry stared at the parcel in his hands in wonder. The wrapping was a yellowed piece of parchment decorated with inky fingerprints and wax stains. Harry knew it was probably just a discarded page, but to him, it looked like a treasure map.

"Well, open it," Al grumbled.

Carefully, Harry pulled on the string that held the package together and the wrapping fell open. Inside was a knife.

Its handle was made of soft, dark leather, the colour not unlike the one of Harry's wand, and ended in a pommel of steel decorated with small symbols.

A barrier between handle and blade made sure that the hand couldn't accidentally slip onto the blade, and given how sharp the two-edged blade looked, Harry thought it was a necessary precaution.

"A knife?" He asked as he picked it up to try out how it felt in his hand. The leather was warm as if another person had been holding it for quite some time before him. The blade, only slightly longer than his hand, had wave-like patterns, reminding Harry of oil on a water surface but lacking the typical rainbow colours.

"A dagger," Al corrected him. "Every man should know how to wield one. At thirteen you're old enough to learn. Take it and follow me."

"Thanks, Al." Harry grinned and scrambled to his feet to follow the old man outside.

Three hours later Harry returned to the kitchen bemoaning his fate. Of course, the old man he lived with had to be the fastest, trickiest bastard in Britain. People Al's age were supposed to sit around carving wood and complaining about their eyesight, they were not supposed to be able to beat the shit out of teenagers!

Harry was only glad Al had had the decency to use a wooden stick instead of a real dagger, or he would be a few body parts short.

In the privacy of his mind, Harry added yet another mystery to Al's persona. Where had he learned to fight like that? And why?

Over the next couple of weeks, Harry spent a few hours each day training with his dagger. Sometimes Al would join him and show him new stuff, other times Harry practiced alone.

Al taught Harry several arm and leg movements to avoid attacks; they changed depending on the body part the opponent went for.

If Al for instance tried to hit the right side of his upper body, Harry now knew he had to move towards the right side with his right leg and then use his right arm to displace Al's attack.

It was complicated and after a few hours of this Harry's brain felt worse than it had after a full day of school back when he'd still been living with the Dursleys.

By September they were using real daggers in their mock fights and Harry thought his progress was quite acceptable, even impressive. Many of the movements Al had taught him had become so familiar to him over the daily repetitions that he didn't even have to think about them anymore but reacted instinctively with the right maneuver.

Al did not agree.

"You hesitate too much! Use your full strength this time."

Harry nodded and concentrated on Al's movement, trying to predict where the next attack would strike. Al went for Harry's left ribcage and Harry instinctively moved forward intercepting Al's arm with his left hand. Now he had an opportunity to strike, he should strike… but he didn't want to hurt Al. What if…

"No, no, no!" Al shouted. "You can't hesitate like that. Attack, god damn it!"

"I was about to-"

"Too slow. Too much thinking."

Al took a few steps back and scrutinized Harry carefully.

"Have you actually used your knife for real yet?" He asked after some time spent in silence.

Harry looked at Al incredulously. "Um, every day for the past two months?"

Al shook his head in exasperation. "No, I mean have you ever seen what that knife can do? On a living, breathing, body?"

"What? No. You're the only person I fight with, you know that."

Al rolled his eyes. "Not on a human, stupid." He looked at his watch, then back at Harry. "Well, maybe that's the problem. We still have three hours until the sun goes down. Come along."

Al limped into the woods, Harry at his heels.

"Bloody knee," he cursed. "Don't ever grow old. Not worth the hassle," he said through clenched teeth while he picked up a long branch from the ground. With his new walking aid, they moved much faster.

Now watching Al, Harry could hardly believe that Al had managed to hide his obvious pain during their fight – but then again, today was not the first time this had happened.

Harry had once asked Al how he could just ignore an injury when they were fighting, it didn't make sense to Harry. When you were in pain, you were in pain. There was no way around it.

'Determination. Prioritization. You'll learn in time,' was all his teacher had said.

Soon Harry realised where Al was leading them. This was the path they took when Al was hunting for game.

Not much later they reached a small clearing, and indeed, a few deer were grazing on the meadow, enjoying the mild evening sun.

They were still far enough away not to scare the deer off, though the silencing charm Harry had to put on their boots regularly probably also helped.

"Summon one," Al said pointing in the direction of the animals.

"Summon?" Harry watched the deer closely. All of the animals for fully grown, he'd never summoned anything this heavy before. He was about to protest, but the irritated expression on Al's face stopped him in his tracks. Determined he pulled out his wand. He could do this. It was no different than summoning firewood. Only about a hundred times heavier and alive. He gulped.

"Careful," said Al, apparently noticing his distress. "Don't knock yourself out. I won't carry you back."

How comforting. Harry briefly glared at Al and went back to his task.

"Accio," he uttered reluctantly, wand pointed at one of the smaller specimens. It didn't even so much as flinch.

Al sat down on a moss-covered tree stump to rest his leg and watched Harry with eagle eyes.

Bloody great.

"Accio," he said again, more forcefully this time. The doe in question was yanked in his direction for a few meters but got away in the end. It took off in the opposite direction at high speed.

The rest of the deer was nervous now, many moving to leave.

"Hurry," Al grumbled.

"Accio!" Harry tried for a third time. By now he was in a bad mood. Al was expecting too much. The summoning charm was one of the hardest he'd learned so far, especially when it involved great distances or heavy targets. He was tempted to tell Al to shove it and try himself if he thought it that easy, when suddenly the animal he had focused on, a young stag with hardly visible antlers, zoomed at him.

With a cry that had the rest of the deer running in fright, Harry jumped out of the way and the stag crashed into the tree behind where Harry had been standing only seconds before.

The stag dropped to the ground, animalistic screams of pain echoing through the woods like slowly building thunder.

Harry had never heard anything like it. The panicked squeaks of a mouse or rabbit right before their death didn't bother him anymore, but they were nothing compared to this.

He had the sudden urge to block his ears with both hands and close his eyes, or better yet, run away, but he knew Al would never accept him showing weakness like that.

"What now?" He asked, forcing his voice to remain steady.

"Now," said Al, who seemed to remain completely unaffected by the suffering animal on the ground, "you'll get to see what that dagger can do. Kill it."

"Kill it?"

"Yes. You'll be putting it out of its misery if that makes you feel any better."

Harry ignored the mocking undertone in Al's voice and grabbed his dagger. "How?"

"Slit its throat. Makes them bleed out pretty fast."

Harry clutched the dagger in his hands so hard that his fingers became numb. He walked towards the stag slowly. He had never killed a stag, or any deer for that matter, before. They were too strong, too heavy, too grand for him. Only Al ever hunted them.

The animal was trying to get to its feet, but apparently, its wounds were too severe.

With its cries still ringing in his ears he bent down, and with a quick move – the image of a striking snake flittered through his mind unbitten – he slit the stag's throat. The blade cut through the fur, skin, and muscle tissue like butter.

Bloodshot out of the wound like water out of the garden hose in aunt Petunia's garden, when Dudley had been standing on it while the water was turned on. It covered his hand and drenched his undersleeve, even splashed on his face, but Harry took no notice of it.

He was watching the stag's eyes. They were of a deep brown, shining with desperation and fear, moving around erratically until suddenly they remained fixed on a point behind Harry. It was like he could see the intelligence, the life, leaving them, but Harry wasn't disgusted or even scared by this as he had expected to be, no he was fascinated.

He was the reason these bright eyes dulled. He was the reason they would never see him again. He was the last thing they'd seen.

He, Harry, the too-small boy from Number 4, was superior to this strong, fast, majestic animal. He, his magic, his determination had triumphed over the King of the Woods.

Chapter Text

- 6 -

.

1996

Silence. Peaceful silence. Harry floated in nothingness, darkness, light. The pain from earlier was gone. Or maybe there had been no pain to begin with.

Was he flying? Yes. Flying. Finally. He should open his eyes, look around, watch the sky, the clouds, the woods from above.

He turned around, flying upside down. Flying, soaring through the air. Harry laughed in exhilaration but couldn't hear his own voice. Maybe the wind took it away, snatched the sound as soon as it left his mouth, and made it echo behind him like the white trail lingering in the wake of a plain?

A sudden pain, flaring in his chest, jolted Harry out of his musing. Something was missing, wrong, very wrong, he just didn't know what yet.

He moved his arms, trying to find balance, but they moved sluggishly, slowly, as if something was holding them, him down.

Air. That was what he was missing. That was why his lungs were on fire. He opened his mouth to take in a deep, relieving breath of fresh air, only to find water pouring in. He choked, coughed, tried to get rid of the liquid that seemed to be filling his lungs with ice, fuelling the fire. But only more came in.

And with the water, the memories came back. A blow to the head. Darkness. Voices. Darkness.

He became aware of the coldness of the water surrounding him, needling his skin, freezing his muscles.

Somewhere deep inside he knew that he had to fight, to swim, to get to the surface, to the life-saving air.

He opened his eyes but only more darkness welcomed him. Where was up and where down? Left and right?

Moving his arms became harder by the second. He felt his energy leaving him, felt his limbs cease to fight – and maybe he should stop fighting, the water didn't feel so cold anymore, the darkness less frightening.

Maybe this was, where it was supposed to end, his wonderful dream of magic and a Dursley-free life.

If he closed his eyes and ignored the fire in his chest, then he could still believe he was flying. It wasn't so bad to die while flying, high up in the air, in freedom.

Al. The old man's face appeared before his eyes, clear as if he was standing right in front of Harry. 'I should have listened to you. I'm sorry.'

.

About three years earlier

1993

Sirius stretched his claws, sank them deep into the muddy sand of the coast. Just a little bit farther, just a bit more strength, and with one last, strong forward jerk he was out of the water, out of the cold.

He made it. He made it. He felt light-headed, light-hearted. For the first time in years, there was hope, a silver lining on the horizon, a light at the end of the tunnel that was his life.

He wanted nothing more than to lay down and rest, sleep free of the oppressing presence of his guards, but he knew that he couldn't rest yet, that he had to run and get away from here as fast as possible. Soon they would discover his disappearance, soon they would send Aurors and Dementors to come after him, to catch him and cage him once again.

His legs trembled as he pulled himself up once again. By all rights, he shouldn't have the strength to continue, starved and weak as he was, but then again, he shouldn't have managed to escape in the first place. His hope gave him strength, for the first time in years he was filled with a purpose. He had to save Harry. Peter – a shudder of anger and disgust, of deep, boiling hate ran through his body at the mere thought of the traitor – was at Hogwarts, Harry wasn't safe.

.

Knockturn Alley was as dirty as he remembered. He was hiding in a corner opposite a dingy pub. The nearest streetlight was broken. Still, he thought, and suddenly old memories of better times overcame him.

Memories of the summer after his sixth year, when James and he had still been carefree, filled with dreams, hopes, and no small amount of recklessness.

They'd come here, to this pub, to drink firewhisky, to sit at a bar and feel grown-up and rebellious. They'd stumbled out of the pub sometime in the wee hours of the morning, when it had still been late enough to leave undetected but early enough that they could feel the rising sun, the nearing daylight in the air.

They'd been sloshed beyond comprehension, had been laughing and singing stupid rhymes… Then one of them, probably James, had remarked that the streetlight was broken, that nobody could see them here. And as one – so in tune as he had only ever been with James – they had turned to this corner, this corner right here, where he was sitting now, where the darkness was even deeper and had transformed into their animagus forms and then raced each other down the street. Stag and dog, bumping into each other from time to time because they had been too drunk to run straight, accompanied by animalistic cries of freedom and laughter.

When the pub's door opened with a slight cringing of the hinges and stopped his painful trip down memory lane, Sirius was so thankful for the interruption that he nearly felt bad for what he was about to do.

But it wasn't as if he had many options left.

A drunken wizard stumbled out of the pub, wand in hand, slurring something that could have meant Lumos or something else completely.

Too tense to wait any longer, Sirius crouched down and pushed himself off the ground with all the might his emaciated legs would allow, his eyes were fixed on the stumbling wizard's wand hand and one moment later his mouth closed around the thin wooden stick.

He dashed away, fled down the same street he and James had run down years ago, but instead of laughter, this time his run was followed by the furious swearing of a wandless wizard.

.

Harry was gone.

At first, he hadn't wanted to believe it. But with every old Daily Prophet he found, with every article he read, the truth became more inevitable.

Harry was gone and nobody knew where he was.

With a furious swish of his wand, Sirius sat the whole pile of painstakingly collected newspapers on fire. That little act of destruction didn't help release his anger in the least.

"Bombarda," he said and watched with a smile of grim satisfaction as a few stones broke out of a nearby wall.

"Bombarda," he said again and again. The cave he was hiding in crumbled around him, dust was heavy in the air and sank down on his sweaty skin and unwashed hair.

"Bombarda! Bombarda! Bombarda!"

The rocks above the entrance began to tremble, but Sirius didn't stop.

Harry was gone.

What was he supposed to do now?

Find Harry? He was a fugitive. He didn't have any connections, any friends left.

"Bombarda!" A huge rock fell down, right in front of the entrance, blocking out most of the sunlight.

All he had wanted to do was find Peter, kill Peter, tear Peter limb from limb, watch him suffer, writhe in agony…

"Bombarda!"

Then Harry would have been safe again. Then he could have left with the knowledge that he had done at least something to redeem himself – even if he could never fully repay his debt. Even if his mistakes were too grave to ever be forgiven.

James and Lily were dead because of him. And now Harry was gone.

He had to change his plans. He couldn't simply kill Peter and disappear. He had to find a way to look for Harry, had to find a way to get in touch with his old friends again... He was Harry's godfather; he was the person James had trusted with the wellbeing of his only son. He had to do something.

.

1994

"Wingardium Leviosa," said Harry, his wand pointed at the broom Al used to sweep the hut.

It was an old thing, with dirty fingerprints on the stick and bristles protruding in every which way.

Al had forbidden him to enchant this broom to fly and didn't budge even after Harry had nagged him every evening about it for two weeks in a row. Apparently racing brooms that were made specifically for flying differed a lot from normal brooms. But Harry didn't care, he wanted to try flying, and Al, who was away for a few days like every spring, couldn't stop him this time.

The broom hovered mid-air and Harry looked at it questioningly. The slender broomstick didn't look too inviting, more like it would hurt to sit on it, really.

Harry harrumphed, resolutely swung his legs over the broom, and bent his knees to lift his feet from the ground.

This position was supremely uncomfortable, but Harry gritted his teeth, he was determined to fly. He gripped the broom handle tightly with his left hand; the other one was still holding the wand. It might not be ideal – or all that safe – but that wouldn't stop him. Not now that he was about to fly for the first time.

He directed the broom with his wand, made it fly higher until he was on eye level with the chimney on their hut.

It was… okay. The high trees surrounding their clearing blocked his view, sitting hurt even more now that he moved around and directing his flight with his wand just wasn't the same as he had imagined.

His wand arm hurt a bit from holding it up all the time, but he couldn't put it down or the broom would follow.

When he'd read about flying in Al's books it sounded magnificent – souring through the air at high speed, the broom following the body's movement so quickly it felt like an extension of it.

This… no, this was nothing like he had imagined. Disappointed Harry directed the broom to sink down to the ground.

He winced in pain as he got off the broom, left it lying in the grass, and went inside to get himself a glass of water.

The Levitation Charm obviously wasn't the right method to make a broom fly. There had to be different charms to accomplish that, ones that he hadn't yet learned. Charms that weren't in any of the books Al had given to him so far – Harry had perused them repeatedly – but maybe in other books…

Harry put his drinking glass down, left the kitchen, and went to Al's bedroom. Like always the door was locked, but Harry knew a charm that could help with that.

He hesitated for a moment – this was Al's room, and Al never allowed Harry to go in there… but he wanted to fly, and he was only looking for books. Books Al would give to him sooner or later anyway.

Harry looked over his shoulder - Al had only just left this morning, he shouldn't be back until the day after tomorrow at least, but better save than sorry – then lifted his wand.

"Alohomora."

The door clicked open so easily that Harry wanted to laugh out loud. Magic was incredible.

He opened it only slightly, slipped through the gap, and closed it softly behind himself.

The room was bigger than Harry had thought. The ceiling and floor were clad in a dark wood, but the walls, in all the other rooms made of wood too, were different.

They were of a dark green, reminding Harry of the forest, and above Al's double bed was an emblem depicting a silver snake. Beneath the snake was a banner embroidered with words Harry couldn't read. The letters looked odd and the words seemed to be written in a foreign language too.

Harry walked in further, there was a desk opposite the bed, and above it wizarding photos on the walls.

One seemed to be a family portrait, showing a few old people, probably parents, even older ones (the grandparents?) and quite a lot of children.

All of them, even the youngest children, bore a haughty expression, nobody smiled.

The next photo was of a young boy with a pageboy haircut who was sitting on a white-haired man's lap, ripping the wrapping paper off a parcel. The parcel nearly dropped to the ground and the old man had to intervene. Both man and boy were laughing. Then the scene started anew.

Suddenly Harry realized that the boy on in the picture was probably Al, and he looked down uncomfortably. He felt like he had intruded on a private part of Al's life that he had had no right to see. Not without Al's permission.

The next second though, all thoughts of respecting Al's privacy were forgotten. There, in the center of the table was one of the mysterious letters Al always got by owl, the letters he never allowed Harry to read, never even told Harry what they were about. The letters that were the reason, Al, from time to time disappeared for a few days.

Harry's stomach fluttered, he was nervous and pretty sure that he shouldn't read this letter, but his curiosity was overwhelming.

He wanted to know why Al disappeared, where he disappeared to, what he did there… and the answers to all these questions were right in front of him.

He bent over the table and started to read.

London.

Mary Marshall.

05.10.1960

5'6''

XX

London.

Thomas Reid.

23.04.1953

6'3''

XXX

Bristol.

Michael Jenkins.

27.09.1957

5'8''

XX

Next to every name was a muggle photograph of the person. Harry stared at the letter some more, as if trying to get it to tell him its hidden meaning, then turned away.

He wasn't any wiser than before. The names and pictures made no sense to him. Who were these people? Did Al have to meet them? Give them something to? Take something from them? Maybe even do something to them?

Frustrated he went to the bookshelves that dominated the wall opposite the door. There had to be a few hundred books on these shelves, too many, Harry soon realized, for him to find the one he was looking for among them without help.

He left the room more frustrated than ever before.

.

The last class of the day was over, and Remus Lupin was looking forward to a nice, quiet evening.

After dealing with overexcited first and second years for the better part of his day – 'But Professor, my mother said the wand movement is-' 'Professor, can you show me again?' 'Professor, Anne is cheating, I know it!' 'Professor, look, look, I did it!' 'Can you give us a hint for the test? Just one hint, please!' – he really needed some peace.

His old leather armchair, a cup of tea, and a good book (preferably something that had nothing to do with his lesson plan, for once). Maybe he'd finally get around finishing the muggle detective story Albus had given to him for Christmas…

So when he opened his door, his thoughts circling around the mystery in his book, and saw a person he'd hoped to never see again standing behind his desk, his first, irrational thought was, that he had to delay his reading once again.

Then reality caught up with him. He pulled out his wand and pointed it at his old friend, his traitor turned friend.

"You," he hissed, his voice carrying all of the anger, the pain, the disappointment he felt whenever he thought of the man now standing opposite him.

Sirius was holding a wand too, his hand was shaking.

"Moony."

Remus flinched. "Don't, don't call me that. You have no right."

Sirius looked down. "Remus then. Please, just listen, I have to-"

"Listen? To you?" He took in a deep breath. "You dare come here? After what you have done?"

"I understand that you're angry-"

Remus severely doubted this. A man capable of what Sirius had done could never understand the depth of his feelings.

"-but please. Just take a look at it."

"You have no right to ask anything of me. I'm going to call Dumbledore. You won't get away this time." His voice was shaking.

Sirius looked bad; his face gaunt, his once-proud stance ducked under an invisible burden.

"Remus, please. Just take a look. It- it wasn't me." It seemed to take great effort for Sirius to speak these words. "I didn't betray them. Peter did."

"Peter?" Remus said. "You killed Peter. You killed him after you betrayed Lily and James."

"No. I didn't, I swear. Just take a look. Please."

His voice was so insistent, so desperate, that Remus couldn't help but glance down on the desk.

His breath hitched. There was a parchment lying on his desk, a parchment he knew all too well and had thought lost long ago. The Marauder's Map.

"Why?"

"Just do it. Please. The Gryffindor Common Room. Please."

With a swish of his wand, eyes still trained on the traitor, the parchment flew in his outstretched hands. He looked down at it, his eyes searching for the all too familiar Common Room, and what he saw nearly made him lower his wand unconsciously.

"Peter Pettigrew," he breathed, not understanding what he was seeing. "But how?"

"I never was the Secret Keeper, Peter was. We have to catch him. Please, Remus."

Remus didn't know what to say. This was a trick, the map had to be wrong.

"The map never lies," Sirius said as if anticipating his thoughts.

"No, it doesn't," Remus had to agree.

He lowered his wand and Sirius did the same.

"You really didn't betray them?"

"Never."

Sirius sounded so sincere that Remus wanted nothing more than to believe him. But he couldn't decide this alone, maybe it was just a trick, an elaborate plan.

"I'll call for Dumbledore," he said in the end and conjured his Patronus.

After his wolf Patronus had left to find the headmaster, he leaned back against the wall behind him, fixing Sirius with his eyes. His former friend did the same.

Chapter Text

- 7 -

.

Summer 1994

"This is outrageous Dumbledore! You can't be serious."

"I'm afraid I am, Cornelius. I brought Peter Pettigrew to the Ministry myself. Aurors are questioning him as we speak."

The Minister took off his bowler hat and slumped back into the heavy leather chair behind his desk, which looked much too comfortable for an office.

"You talked to them? Black and Pettigrew? Are you sure Black is innocent?"

At Albus nod, he groaned and buried his face in his hands. Moments later he seemed to realize the vulnerability of this action, and slowly folded his hands in his lap.

"This is a disaster. He can't be innocent. He was locked up for years! This going to be a PR nightmare, and not only in Britain! With the Quidditch Worldcup taking place here this year, international journalists will be crawling all over the place."

Albus remained silent, allowing the Minister to gather his thoughts.

"Maybe Pettigrew just hid because he was afraid of- of Black? Black could still be the real killer."

Albus suppressed the exasperated sigh that wanted to escape him. Trust Cornelius to look for ways to avoid the truth as long as possible.

"From what I've learned so far, it's more likely that Sirius Black was innocent from the beginning and Pettigrew the real culprit."

Fudge shoulders slumped.

"Do you know what this means Albus? What this will look like? They'll descend on me like vultures! And I don't even want to think about the troubles certain families are going to make when word gets out that Black was sent to Azkaban without trial. This is going to be a nightmare."

Albus' eyes wandered to the big window on the right side of Cornelius' desk, watching the busy comings and goings down in the Atrium, witches, and wizards stepping in and out of fireplaces, colleagues chatting on their way out, delivery owls crossing paths… It was only an illusion – in reality, the Minster's office was deep inside the bowls of the Ministry – but an accurate one, that allowed the Minister to oversee the happenings in the entrance hall.

Yes, he had come to the same conclusion as Cornelius, and it was indeed worrisome. He didn't think that any of the other Death Eaters incarcerated in Azkaban were innocent, and if any of Tom's faithful followers now managed to get released on the grounds of a procedural defect…

He had no doubt that Tom would return one day, and the idea of giving him an advantage like this irked Albus to no end, but with Peter Pettigrew's quite public reappearance – shocked and desperate for proof as he was, Remus had forced Peter into his human form in the midst of the Gryffindor common room, just as the rat was about to disappear through a crack in the wall – his hands were bound. They couldn't make this any less public if they tried; he only hoped that Sirius' case remained an exception.

"The Triwizard Tournament," Fudge suddenly blurted. "We'll have to postpone it until the worst is behind us. We don't need foreign Ministry Officials watching our every move." He shook his head vehemently. "This will tarnish our reputation enough as it is."

Albus silently agreed, though not for the same reason. He knew Cornelius craved prestige. He feared the Minister might rush through the rulings, not giving them the proper attention they needed, afraid of digging up old dirt under the watchful gaze of foreign Ministries.

"Madame Maxime expressed concern due to the situation with Black already, and I think Headmaster Karkaroff will quite readily agree to stay out of Britain in a time where old Death Eater trials are brought back to the public's attention. It shouldn't be hard to convince them that postponing is in their best interest."

For a moment Cornelius stared at him open-mouthed, apparently not expecting Albus support.

"You think? Won't it cast a bad light on us if we postpone? I don't want anybody to think we're hiding something. Maybe-"

Albus felt the first signs of a weak headache above his eyes. It was tiresome dealing with a Minister as insecure as Cornelius. On some days Albus' support reassured him in his decisions, on other days, like today it seemed, he allowed his delusions that Albus was after his position to cloud his judgment.

If only he showed the same level of wariness when it came to Lucius Malfoy.

"I think your idea was excellent, Cornelius. Peter Pettigrew's and Sirius Black's trial will demand the Ministry's full attention, as will any trials that might follow in their wake."

For a moment Cornelius seemed to hesitate, but then nodded and smiled thinly. "Of course, Albus. I just wish we didn't have to postpone it. Barty will be on my case for weeks! Has put a lot of effort into organizing the whole thing. But then again, with his personal history, his son being a Death Eater and all, he might understand."

Fudge was at his feet by now and moving towards the door. "I'm a bit in a hurry now, Albus, you understand. I have to talk to Barty and should probably go down to the Auror Department too, with a case as important as this."

Albus smiled merrily. "After you, Cornelius. Sirius is in one of your holding cells at the moment, I can trust you will see to it that he is treated decently until his innocence is proven?"

"Sure, sure. Of course, wouldn't want to give him a reason to sue us." Cornelius' lips twisted sourly.

"Excellent," Albus said, answering Cornelius' less than happy expression with a beaming smile of his own, before he strode down the hall towards the elevator, purple robes flowing in his wake.

.

Spring 1995

"The letters, again?" Harry asked as Al got up from the breakfast table and immediately put on his shoes and got ready to leave.

It was that time of the year again. Al got letters four times a year, once every season. Not always at the same date though, and Harry had no idea how Al knew when they arrived.

"Yes," grumbled Al, his voice still rough and unused from the night. They never talked much during breakfast, neither of them was a morning person; they preferred to drink their tea in silence while they got ready for the day ahead.

Once the novelty of post owls had worn off, Harry had stopped accompanying Al to retrieve the letters. The march to the clearing took almost three hours and Harry had grown bored of the trip long ago.

"I'll go out hunting then. I think I'm in the mood for deer."

Al looked at him oddly but grunted his consent.

Harry knew why Al looked at him that way. Ever since he'd first killed that stag with his knife, Harry's fascination with hunting had only grown. He couldn't really explain why, but the hunt thrilled him.

He didn't much care for shooting rabbits and pheasants with his bow and arrow, but hunting bigger animals, ones that were of superior strength and speed, ones that by all rights he shouldn't be able to kill with his bare hands and his small knife, hunting those was a thrill. Only he, his magic, and his knife.

Maybe it was because of all the books about fighting dangerous magical creatures he read, maybe it was because he had nothing else to do and hunting was the only diversion he had…

In the end, Harry didn't care. There was nothing wrong in enjoying a good hunt – lots of people did so, even the Queen, from what he had heard when he'd still been living with the Dursleys.

Shortly after Al had left, Harry grabbed his knife and went to the back of the house. There, in a cage Harry had built himself, sat a big brown rabbit, chewing on the bread crust Harry had given to it the day before.

"Petrificus Totalus."

The rabbit fell to the side.

"Come on, big boy, time to go," said Harry, and with a murmured incantation and a swish of his wand, the rabbit rose up into the air and followed Harry into the woods.

The leaves on the deciduous trees were still young and light green, Harry's steps nearly soundless on the soft forest floor. Above him birds were chirping and, he noticed a little jealously, flying from one tree to another, and somewhere nearby he could make out the sound of a woodpecker busy at work.

Next to summer, spring was his favourite season. There was just so much life in the woods at this time of the year, the snakes woke up from hibernation and Harry could hear them hissing excitedly as they slithered through the undergrowth, baby animals were born, birds returned from their winter journey, and the evenings were growing longer and warmer again.

After half an hour's foot march, his path ascended slowly and the moss-covered forest floor gave way to a rockier underground. Soon he reached his favourite place in the woods, his cave. He'd found it the summer after he had turned twelve. Its entrance was broad enough for two people to go side-by-side, but not very high – Al had had to bow his head when Harry had shown it to him.

The cave was only a little bigger than the cupboard under the stairs at Privet Drive, but a narrow path at its right end led deeper into the rocks.

Harry had of course followed it soon after discovering the cave. Sadly it didn't really lead anywhere, just to a dank, moldy place, even smaller than the first cave and bereft of any sunlight.

Jumping from stone to stone he crossed the small river that flowed right past his cave and through the woods below. At last, he stepped onto a narrow strip of pebble beach and climbed up to the cave – though to call what he was doing climbing was probably stretching it a bit. Al had been able to lift him up and sit him onto to edge of the stone without trouble.

Once inside he immediately went to the back of the cave to retrieve two pieces of wood, three short wooden sticks, and a rather poor-looking book.

He sat down on the ground near the entrance of the cave where the light shone brightest and opened the book. Next to him laid the petrified rabbit and two square plate-sized pieces of wood with identical inscriptions. The words were written at regular intervals, one on each side of the square.

All's Well - Sick - Danger - Dead

One piece was roughly hewn, the letters uneven, while the other was made with great care, and, as Harry could attest to, lots of time and effort.

"…the day of the new moon, coat the watch hand with the enchanted blood. Let it rest for seven days, then repeat the process once for each lunar phase. On the 29th day, before the new moon rises once again, fix the hand to the clock."

Harry picked up one of the sticks and put it in the middle of the roughly hewn version of the clock. He raised his wand and moved it in well-practiced motions while he chanted the long string of words written down in his book.

The dark red wood gleamed ominously in the sunlight, and to Harry, it seemed as if it were getting hotter inside the cave as if the stick were attracting and absorbing the light.

Well, he was doing magic. It probably was.

Once the spell was done, Harry lowered his wand and picked up the clock. The watch hand was attached to the center of the square and pointing to 'Danger'.

Harry looked down at the rabbit. Yes, being petrified and in the presence of a person that intended to kill you in the near future probably justified the watch hand's position.

He floated the rabbit down to the pebble beach and lifted the petrification. At first, it hopped around nervously, confused by the change of location, but soon it calmed down and started sniffing at various stones and the weeds growing in-between.

The watch hand didn't move.

Harry lowered his wand and banned all thoughts of killing the rabbit, trying to make his presence as unthreatening as possible.

It still didn't move.

"I won't kill it, I won't. Okay?"

Great. Now he was talking to inanimate objects.

It worked though. The magic seemed to pick up on his sincere intention to leave the rabbit alive, and the watch hand slowly moved to 'All's Well'.

Harry petrified the rabbit again – the watch hand switched to 'Danger' immediately – and climbed out of the cave, the two clocks as well as the rest of his stuff floating behind him.

Now that he was sure that his clock worked, he wasn't in the mood to go hunting any longer.

He had things to do, preparations to make!

He would have to find and enchant a container for their blood, he wanted to engrave Al's and his name into their respective watch hands, and maybe continue working on the watch itself for a while longer. Right now all it was decorated with were a few small wooden stars he had carved into its surface.

All of a sudden the hours until Al's return didn't feel so long anymore.

.

Al came home in the late afternoon, once again carrying a small package.

"Thought you went hunting?" He said and looked around frowning.

"Had something better to do." Harry grinned and jumped to his feet. "So what's in there? Chocolate frogs? I haven't had any chocolate for ages."

"Yes, because you're a greedy little thing and ate all of it within two days," said Al and ruffled Harry's hair affectionately.

"Oi!" Harry cried out. "I used a flattening charm on it this morning!"

"Flattening charm? Are you sure about that? Could've fooled me."

Harry huffed indignantly and stomped inside.

"Why're you using a flattening charm anyway? It's not like anyone but I sees you."

"The snakes see me," Harry said. "They always remind me to style my hair and take good care of it, you know, because they have none."

"What?"

At the flabbergasted look on Al's face, Harry couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"Just kidding," he sniggered. "I had no idea you were so gullible."

"Well, how should I know what matters to snakes. I can't talk to them."

He put the package onto the table and started cutting it open.

"Then you're just vain? When did that happen?"

"I'm not vain," Harry groused. "I just found the spell and wanted to try it out. No harm done."

"No harm done? Don't you know that beauty charms shrink the brain over time?"

Harry looked at Al horrified.

"A widely known fact. But I heard the effects aren't as bad when there isn't much to be harmed in the first place. Guess you're lucky."

"Not much to be…" Harry repeated slowly, then narrowed his eyes angrily. "You're lying, aren't you? There are no side effects!"

Al's eyes sparkled with laughter. "I had no idea you were so gullible, Harry."

Harry folded his arms, deciding to ignore Al for the time being. It was annoying. One time he managed to get one over the old man, and Al had to get back at him immediately. Now he couldn't even remind Al of the incident without being mocked in return.

"Will you stop sulking if I tell you that there's a whole package of frogs in here, just for you?"

Harry graciously let the comment about sulking slide and took the proffered box of chocolates from Al's hand.

"I've got something else for you too."

Al handed Harry a leather-bound book. It wasn't hard to guess its content. The title, "Salazar Slytherin", didn't leave much to the imagination.

"It's a book about Slytherin, his life, his philosophy, thought it would be nice for you to have it. It's important to learn about family history, especially if one is as famous as yours."

Family. For the last few years, Al had been all the family he needed, but maybe sometime in the future, it would be nice to find out if he had other, blood-related relatives too.

"Thanks, Al, it's great." He rounded the table to give Al a rare hug. "Oh, by the way, I've got something for you too!"

Even before he'd finished speaking, Harry was running outside to get his present.

It wasn't wrapped, but he didn't think Al cared much about that.

He hid it behind his back to keep it out of Al's view until he was standing right before him.

"Here you are." Harry gave his gift to Al and held his breath.

"Is that…" Al looked at the clock, then back at Harry. "Is that what I think it is? A family clock?"

Harry nodded.

"And you made it, all by yourself?"

"Yeah, took me a while, but…"

"Of course it took you some time, it's incredible that you managed it at all, this is really advanced magic, Harry. I'm very impressed."

Harry felt his face heat up. Al didn't dish out praise easily.

"I only ever saw a clock like this once before, it was slightly different though. It could tell what a person did, like working, traveling or sleeping."

"My book had instructions for that too, but it's harder to make and I thought it wouldn't be of much use. We don't do a lot of different things here."

The last sentence left a bitter taste in his mouth. While Harry enjoyed his life with Al a lot, and couldn't be more thankful that Al had taken him in instead of sending him back to the Dursleys, it was frustrating to never meet new people or go to different places.

Al nodded thoughtfully. "Quite right. So, I see the watch hands are not yet attached to it. What do we need to do?"

Pushing all negatives thoughts away, Harry hurriedly started explaining.

.

Summer 1995

Harry was sitting at the breakfast table, his book about Salazar Slytherin leaning against a jar of strawberry jam.

Salazar had been born to a family of wizards and grew up in the north of England, but left his birthplace sometime in his teenage years, presumably to take up an apprenticeship.

Not much was known about his life during the following years, he only resurfaced when he and three friends decided to found a School for Magic – Hogwarts.

From what Harry had read so far, Slytherin seemed to have been an impressive wizard. The book said he was skilled in the Mind Arts and had a special talent for something called Legilimency, which allowed a wizard or witch take a glimpse into another person's thoughts.

He was also famous for his ambition and cunning, traits the Slytherin house at Hogwarts still prized in its members.

His attitude towards muggles reminded Harry of Al. Salazar Slytherin thought of muggles as an inferior race and was against allowing muggle-born students into his school.

Another type of magic linked to Slytherin was the Dark Arts. Harry had never heard of them before.

He'd studied books on Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, and Potions, and sometimes the authors warned of the dangers of carelessly using certain spells, but he had never come across the term Dark Magic before.

From what he could tell, it was some sort of battle magic, used predominantly in duels, but he hadn't been able to find anything more. No incantations, not even detailed descriptions of its effects.

He'd asked Al about it immediately after discovering the term, but Al hadn't been helpful at all. Only said that Harry was still too young to study it.

Which was rubbish, in Harry's humble opinion. He was 15, hardly a child anymore. His ancestor had ventured out into the world on his own while still in his teenage years, so he should at least be able to read books on whatever subject he wanted!

With that thought in mind, Harry once again unlocked Al's bedroom door to look for a book. Harry immediately discarded the books without titles; he didn't have the time to go through them page by page.

After about an hour in Al's room, Harry finally found a book that looked promising. The title read 'Dark Secrets' and Harry hesitated for a moment before pulling it out.

"Don't be stupid. It's just a book," he murmured to himself before grabbing it.

With the book, a picture fell out of the shelf. It showed a group of young men, all wearing similar black robes, standing in front of an impressive castle. Harry was about to put the picture back when he recognised Al in one of the boys. He looked no older than 16 and was twirling a wand in his right hand.

A wand.

Harry stared at the picture open-mouthed. He had never seen Al do any magic, and as Al stubbornly avoided talking about the topic, Harry had, shortly after discovering the existence of squibs in one of his books, come to the conclusion that Al must be unable to do any magic. But then why was he holding a wand? And the castle in the background, could this be Hogwarts? It certainly fitted the descriptions Harry had read.

This photo strongly suggested that Al had been a student at Hogwarts. A student with a wand. A wizard.

Carefully Harry put the photo back. He didn't know what to make of this and was more confused and curious than ever before, but he could hardly ask Al about a photo he shouldn't even know of in the first place.

Looking down at the book in his hand, Harry decided to postpone trying to solve the mystery that was Al's life. He wanted to get through as many chapters of the book as possible before Al returned.

He left the room as quietly as he had come and ventured out into the garden to read while lying in the sun.

The book was fascinating. There was a chapter on poisonous potions and one of the poisons described was a potion that remained dormant in a person's body until he or she spoke certain words that would trigger its effect. The brewer could choose the words the potions would react to and it used to be a popular way to assure somebody's silence.

The book also mentioned curses that could make blood boil, entrails disintegrate or explode, curses that could suggest certain ideas to a person and make it seem like these thoughts were their own, even spells to curse someone with bad luck or never-ending nightmares.

Harry had never thought these things possible, which in retrospect, made him feel kind of stupid. He could transfigure a cup into a mouse, an inanimate object into a living being, it really shouldn't have come as a surprise to him that magic could also be used for more malicious purposes.

The last chapter was devoted to a trio of curses. The Killing Curse, the Imperius Curse, and the Cruciatus Curse.

Invented during the Middle Ages, the Imperius Curse is also known as the Curse of Enslavement, as its victim is forced to submit to the caster's control. Only a person of superior strength of will can hope of resisting it.

Should he, shouldn't he… Harry had never felt more nervous. But he wanted to prove to himself (and Al) that he wasn't too young to study Dark Magic, that he was skilled enough to cast these curses.

"Accio," said Harry, and a moment later the big brown rabbit, that was still living in the cage behind the hut, flew towards him. As he hadn't petrified it this time, the rabbit was flailing around wildly.

The rabbit still suspended in the air, Harry quickly browsed through the book's content once again. He wanted a curse that would show an immediate reaction, but nothing too bloody, he had grown used to the rabbit during the last month, what with feeding it and keeping an eye on its clock. It didn't deserve a cruel death.

Well, maybe he should go with the last curse he read about.

"Imperio," Harry said and pointed the wand at the animal.

Nothing happened.

"Imperio," Harry said again, but the rabbit didn't relinquish control.

"Imperio," Harry snapped annoyed, he wanted the stupid rabbit to stop moving!

Suddenly the rabbit held its body completely still, not even its ears were twitching. At the same time, Harry felt, well, he didn't know what exactly, but something. Maybe the rabbits will or presence or fight for control… it was some sort of connection.

Slowly he lowered the rabbit to the ground.

"Jump," Harry said and the rabbit jumped.

"Jump backwards."

"Wiggle your ears."

"Do a somersault."

Amazingly enough, it did everything it was told, though its somersault ended in a rather poor attempt.

"Behave normally, but don't leave the clearing."

The rabbit hopped away as if nothing had happened.

.

Not expecting Al to return before the evening, Harry once again spent his next morning outside, soaking up the warm summer sun and reading the Dark Arts book. He wanted to cover as many chapters as possible before the old man returned.

He was so engrossed in his reading, that he didn't notice someone approach until the man's figure cast a dark shadow over him.

Harry looked up in surprise. "Al! What, why-"

A deep cut on Al's cheek made him lose his stray of thought momentarily.

"What happened?"

"Just as small mishap," Al said dismissively. "What are you reading?"

Harry looked down at the book to his feet guiltily. "Um, I just-"

Al, who had followed his line of sight, suddenly looked very angry. "Where did you get that book, Harry?"

"I-"

"Did you enter my room?"

Harry didn't know what to say, Al looked so angry… It was unfair; all he had wanted was to read up on an interesting subject.

"Did you enter my room, Harry?"

"I'm sorry," Harry stuttered. "I just, you said it was too difficult for me, and I just wanted to prove to myself that it wasn't."

"And you thought just because you wanted to, it was okay to break into my room?"

"I don't know why you're keeping it locked anyway," Harry replied stubbornly. "It's not like there's some big secret hidden inside."

"It doesn't matter why!" Al had raised his voice. "I told you not to go into my room, I expressively forbid you from practicing any Dark Magic, and as soon as I turn my back you betray my trust!"

"Well what was I supposed to do? I read all the books you gave me and studying how to transfigure a cup into a bird or something gets boring. I don't have any friends my age here. I don't have anything to do but study and wander through the woods. I was bored. And this sounded like it was fun."

"Fun," Al thundered. "You invaded my privacy because it was fun."

"That's not what I said!" Harry shouted. "You're twisting my words."

"I don't care. Give me that book. You won't be getting any new ones, that's for sure."

Harry picked the book up and threw it at Al. It fell back to the ground with a loud thud.

"Pick it up and give it to me like a civilized wizard," Al said, eyes narrowed angrily.

"Pick it up yourself if all you care about is that stupid book."

Harry turned around and ran into the woods, tears streaming down his face.

It wasn't fair. Day in day out it was the same, he didn't have a single friend, didn't know a single person besides Al because the stubborn old man forbids him from association with the people living in the muggle village nearby.

He brushed his tears away angrily. If Al didn't want him to find something to do inside the house, well, then he'd just have to make some new experience out here.

"Point me," said Harry, balancing his wand on his flat hand, thinking as hard as he could about a village or town, just some kind of civilisation.

The wand spun twice before it rested, pointing north, and Harry determinately followed its lead.

He must have been walking for hours before he encountered the first house; it was getting dark already. Not willing to give up so close to his goal, Harry continued.

Soon the trees became sparser and more and more houses appeared in the distance. Once Harry had reached a paved road he encountered the first muggles. It was weird. He hadn't seen anybody but Al for years; all of these people just seemed so… normal.

There was a middle-aged woman pushing a buggy down the street, and two young boys racing each other on inline skates. When one of them caught sight of him, he grinned broadly and nudged the other boy. Now both were staring at him, as if he were some weird curiosity.

Could they see he was different?

Harry continued down the road and soon reached what he thought was supposed to be the village center.

There was a post office, a restaurant, and even a dingy-looking pub. A car sped past him, and Harry took in a deep breath, enjoying the slight smell of exhaust fumes in the air.

He should have come here earlier, he hadn't realised before now how much he had missed civilisation.

He wandered through the village a little longer, from time to time people were shooting him curious glances, but Harry couldn't be bothered. This was his first time back in a village for who knows how many years; nothing could spoil that.

The village wasn't exactly big, and two hours later Harry had seen everything and was back where he had started. It was really dark by now, and the street lights – glorious street lights – were his only source of light.

"Hey stranger."

The sound of a feminine voice made Harry turn around. A petite girl, probably around his age, was sitting on a little bench, a beer can in hand.

"You're not from around here." It wasn't a question.

"No," Harry said stupidly. He hadn't talked to someone his age, let alone a girl, in ages.

"Thought so. I know everybody here." She took a sip of her beer and simultaneously brushed a few strands of blonde hair out of her face.

"So… Are you a goth?"

"What?" Harry asked flabbergasted. He'd heard that expression somewhere before, but its meaning wouldn't come to him.

She waved her hand in his direction. "Just asking, 'cause of the clothes, you know."

Surprised Harry looked down at himself. He had completely forgotten that he was wearing robes! No wonder all those people had been staring at him.

"Oh, um, no, not really."

She only shrugged and held out a can of beer to him. "You want one? Nobody else will be coming tonight. You could keep me company."

Harry stared at the beer. He had never drunk alcohol before. Al would definitely disapprove.

"Sure," he said, took the can, and sat down next to her.

.

Barty hated muggle transportation. It was so… undignified. Herded like cattle. He could smell his neighbour, a fat man who was sweating as if he'd just won a Quidditch match.

The woman opposite him was once again blowing her nose.

Merlin.

He just wanted to grab his wand and hex the stupid thing off.

But he couldn't. No, no, no. He had to behave unassumingly. Couldn't have anyone becoming suspicious.

The fat man took a bite of some sort of sandwich (muggle sandwich, surely disgusting) and chewed open-mouthed, behaving like the animal he was.

If his Lord could see him now, see what his most devoted, most faithful follower was enduring for him… oooh… he would shower him in praise, reward him for his endurance.

Muggles. Simply disgusting. He would love to blow up the train, a little brain matter here, a few intestines there… that was art, that was all muggles were good for.

He sniggered, and the disgusting, coughing, wheezing woman shot him a disturbed glance.

Oh if she knew, if only she knew…

There was a voice coming from those machines muggles used to make sound travel distances. It was probably the conductor announcing their next stop.

The background noise made the voice hard to understand, but it didn't really matter, the language was foreign to him anyway.

Once again, he looked down at the old newspaper in his hands. An old Daily Prophet.

His eyes flew over the article about Sirius Black…

...

Sirius Black free!

False information led to unjust imprisonment.

Minister graciously offers Black One Thousand Galleons as compensation.

Mr. Black's rash decision to break out of Azkaban was costly:

"All the added security, the wanted posters… He should have approached a patrolling Auror about the misunderstanding before taking matters into his own hands. The Ministry would have been more than happy to compensate him richly then," says a spokesperson for the Ministry. (More on page 8)

...

…and further down, until he reached the lines he was looking for. The lines he could read again and again. It never got boring.

...

Bartemius Crouch Sr. found dead!

Crazy House Elf suspected of murder.

"I had to walk outside immediately. The stench was unbearable. One of the trainees couldn't help but empty his stomach. It was- I have never- The poor man."

(More on page 12)

...

He sniggered again. Yes… it had been unbearable… unbearably beautiful… a cathartic experience.

He leaned back into his seat, and with a content smile on his face, Barty Crouch Jr. watched the countryside of Albania fly past.

Chapter Text

Autumn 1995

Harry opened the front door as quietly as possible. He had no idea what time it was - the sun had already risen, but maybe he could still sneak inside without Al noticing him…

"You were with that girl again, weren't you?"

Harry nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise. Al was sitting at the breakfast table and watched Harry stumble through the kitchen with narrowed eyes.

"Yeah," was all he said as he quickly made his way past Al towards the living room.

"You smell of alcohol."

"I'm tired. Let's talk later, okay?" Harry concentrated on speaking clearly, but he knew his voice slurred a bit nevertheless.

"You're tired all the time. Tired and wasted. I didn't raise you like this, to go out and associate with muggles, drinking with them. I'd have thought you had a little more self-respect."

Harry ignored Al and proceeded to the living room, which, over the course of the years, had unofficially become his room. He had permanently transfigured the sofa into a bed and slumped down onto the soft mattress exhaustedly. As soon as his head touched the soft cushion, Harry fell asleep.

.

When he woke, the sun was already sinking again. A quick glance at the old grandfather clock in the living room told him that it was 5 pm already. After a quick stop in the bathroom, Harry cast a cleaning charm onto his black trousers and sweat-shirt – muggle clothes he had stolen from a shop in town to blend in with the muggle crowd a bit more.

Courtney had had a fit of laughter the first time she saw that he didn't wear any trousers underneath his robes, and still teased him about it from time to time.

From the kitchen window, he could see Al working outside in the garden. Like every autumn Al was making a select few plants ready for winter.

For a moment Harry thought about climbing out of the living room window. He wasn't in the mood to get into yet another unfriendly word exchange with Al. He straightened his back. This was ridiculous.

As he walked out the front door, Al looked up.

"Going there again?" Al spat.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Because he didn't see why he should allow Al to govern his life when Al didn't even share a minimum of his own life with Harry.

Because the secrets he had discovered in Al's room – the family photos, the picture of Al with a wand – made him feel bitter and resentful whenever he looked at the old man.

Because Courtney was his age. She was nice. Fun. An amazing kisser. Generally very talented with her mouth.

"Just because."

.

Like every evening Harry walked the narrow pebble stone path up to Courtney's house, stepping over an old, broken bicycle, empty beer cans, discarded plastic bags, and other garbage, and finally knocked on the old door, whose peeling paint was yet another reminder of the general state the house was in.

Courtney's father was gone, her mother a drunk who was either sleeping off her last drinking spree or with one of her numerous lovers.

With that in mind, Harry was very surprised when instead of Courtney, a young man, a few years older than Harry, with a shaven head and an unfriendly expression opened the door.

"Yes?"

Who was that bloke?

"Is Courtney here?"

The man looked him up and down with narrowed eyes, and Harry became uncomfortably aware that he wore his black winter robes over his muggle clothes. Courtney didn't really have a problem with them – yes, sometimes she said they made him look like a weirdo, but always with a smile on her lips – but the young man scrunched his face up in disgust and looked even more hostile.

"Freak," he muttered under his breath and turned around to call for Courtney. Harry took a step back in surprise.

At the back of the man's head was a tattoo of two eyes, very real-looking eyes, and beneath them, flames that seemed to lick at the base of his head. Now that Harry was paying attention, he realised that the man's arms, and even hands, were covered in tattoos too.

Aunt Petunia would have had a fit.

He shrugged the unbidden thought off and tried not to squirm under the intense stare of the man's real eyes. Finally, Courtney appeared.

"Who's that Court?"

She flinched at his sharp tone.

"A- a friend…"

"So that's the little shite Jake told me about? The one you spend all your time with? Never knew you had a thing for freaks."

Little shite? Harry was about to tell the man what exactly he thought of him but closed his mouth when he caught Courtney shaking her head slightly.

The man grabbed her arm and shoved her outside. Her jacket came flying a moment later.

"If you let something like that screw you-", he waved his hand in Harry's direction, "—you better stay away from the house."

Harry's blood boiled, his fingers itched to grab his wand and teach that idiot some manners, but Courtney took his hand and dragged him away.

"And don't get knocked up! I want no fucking freak for a nephew!"

Courtney walked faster, only stopped once the house was out of sight.

"Who the hell was that?"

"My- my brother, Rob…" A single tear ran down her cheek, and Harry felt even angrier than before. What right did he have to treat his sister like this?

"I'm sorry," Harry said and pulled her into an embrace. She was crying for real now. He kissed her cheeks and rubbed her back soothingly, hoping he was doing the right thing. In all honesty, he had no idea how to calm a crying girl.

"He's a moron," he whispered, trying to make her feel better, and immediately Courtney pushed him away.

She looked angry, furious really. "He's no moron. Don't you dare say something like that again. He's my brother and just looking out for me."

"What?" Harry said dumbfounded. Was she really defending the guy who had just thrown her out of her own home?

"He's-", she continued hesitantly, "-he's just been released from prison, you know? I think he just needs some time to… well, realise that he's back home again."

"He threw you out of the house and insulted me without reason. He doesn't even know me."

She looked at his robes. "Not without reason. You do look like you escaped a circus with these ridiculous robes you always wear. Just buy something normal."

"I like my robes. And this still doesn't give him the right to treat you like he did."

"Just drop it, okay?" she said and came closer again, "He'll be gone in a few minutes anyway, visiting friends, then we can go back home and-", she kissed him, "-forget about all of this. Yes?"

Harry didn't like it, he wanted to talk about this some more, make her see that her brother had no right to treat her that way, but in the end, he just kissed her back.

"I know you only meant well, and I love you for it," she whispered into his ear.

Harry froze for a moment. Nobody, nobody, had ever said this to him before. She took a step back and looked into his eyes, blue meeting green. She looked so vulnerable and so kind, and somehow lost too…

"I love you too," he whispered back, and when he saw her smile, he knew that it was true.

.

Over the next few months, Harry would come to look back at the day they declared their love for each other as the beginning of the end.

He didn't realise it immediately, caught up in the giddy state of loving and feeling loved for the first time in his life as he was, but the signs were there.

Courtney started complaining about things that had never bothered her before, like his ignorance concerning films, computer games, or music. She wanted him to dress differently, more like a "normal person", cut his wild her, like a "normal person", and generally be more normal.

They couldn't meet as often as they used to, because her brother had practically forbidden Courtney to see him, and she didn't or couldn't stand up to him. Instead, she claimed that he had a point and that everything would get better if Harry only tried to look, to be more normal.

Harry refused out of sheer principle. He wouldn't change who he was for an idiot like Rob.

When Courtney said she wanted Harry to change for her, he reminded her that before Rob reappeared in her life, she had had no problem with any of the things she was complaining about now.

She had joked good-naturedly about his clothes, had introduced him to the music she liked to listen to, had accompanied him on long walks through the woods, and nearly squealed in delight when he'd shown her one of the clearings where the deer liked to graze.

So when Harry visited her on a late evening in February he wore his robes, just like he always did. He waited in the woods nearby, freezing his butt off until it was finally 11 pm - the time Rob usually left to go out with his friends.

He stepped over the garbage in the front garden with practiced ease and knocked at the door.

Rob opened.

"You." His breath stank of whiskey. "I told you to leave my sister alone."

Harry shrugged. "She invited me here," he said.

"Court!" He called. "The freak seems to think you still want to see him."

Courtney appeared behind him, she didn't meet his eyes. "I told you to leave me alone Harry."

He gaped at her. He knew she didn't want to parade their relationship around in front of her brother, but the outright rejection hurt him in ways he hadn't thought possible.

"Courtney," he said, "this is getting ridiculous. Just tell him the truth."

"Court? Anything you want to tell me?" Her brother towered over her, and she shrunk back. She caught Harry's gaze, and with a sinking feeling, Harry realised that she wouldn't admit to their relationship.

"Just go," she said.

Harry stared at her. "Can we talk alone for a minute?"

"Didn't you hear her? She said she doesn't wanna see you anymore. Get lost."

Harry stayed. He couldn't- didn't want to move. The Dursleys hadn't wanted to acknowledge his existence all his life. He had had to hide certain aspects of his life - his muggle upbringing - from Al. For once in his life he wanted someone to just stand by him. They were in love. Surely she wouldn't just ignore him? Bow to her brother's irrational wishes?

Suddenly he was grabbed by his collar and dragged inside. Rob pushed him roughly against the wall. His face was inches away from Harry's.

"Maybe I need to be a bit more specific," he growled. "We. Don't. Want. You. Here. Freak."

He grabbed Harry again and threw him through the room. Harry tried to regain his balance, but it was too late. He fell backward, his head hitting something hard and edgy.

He sank to the floor, his vision blurring. His head stung, something wet and warm drenched his hair.

Someone was bending down to him, touching his head.

"Fuck Rob! Shit, shit, shit."

Courtney.

"I didn't mean to-"

"He's bleeding!" Her voice was shaking. "Harry? Harry, can you hear me? Please, say something!" She sounded desperate as if she was crying.

Harry wanted to say something, but his mouth didn't work. His brain felt fuzzy, everything was dark.

"Get away from him!" Rob roared and Harry felt the soft touch of her hand retreat.

"We have to call an ambulance. He could be dying. What did you do?"

He heard someone approach. Rough hands picked up his head and let it dangle in the air. Harry didn't have the strength to keep it upright himself.

"Shit."

He was dropped to the ground again, a wave of pain rolled through his body.

"Damn it," a voice - Rob? - cursed. "We- we can't call an ambulance. If- if anybody finds out about this I'll be back in prison."

"We have to," a soft voice pleaded. "Rob, he could die."

Silence. Someone paced up and down the room.

"I'll take care of it, Court. Just, if anybody asks, I've been here the whole night. Do you understand?"

What were they talking about? They had to call an ambulance. Harry tried to sit up, but his body didn't follow his command.

He was picked up and slung over somebody's shoulder.

"You can't… please Rob… He didn't do anything…"

Can't what? Harry wanted to shout. He wanted to know what they were going to do to him, where they were taking him.

"Courtney I can't go back to prison. That place is… it's horrible. I can't go back there."

Loud sobbing. Somebody, Courtney, was crying.

"Please Rob, don't…"

"It's me or him Courtney. Your brother or some freak."

Silence hung heavy in the air, only disturbed by loud sobs.

"I ca- can't…"

"Me or him, your brother or…"

"You…" Courtney breathed, and suddenly the body carrying him was moving again.

The door clicked open.

"I've been here the whole night Court. If anybody asks, I've been here the whole night."

Courtney was crying hysterically.

The cold air hit Harry like a shockwave. A shudder went through his body. Another door opened. He was dropped onto something soft, warm.

Maybe they were taking him to the hospital.

An engine started. A car. That was it. He had to be inside a car. Rob was taking him to the hospital. He had to be. Courtney wouldn't allow anything else. Courtney loved him.

The car drove down a street, the occasional bump intensified his pain. Then it turned on an even more uneven road.

This didn't feel right. Harry wanted to open his eyes, but it felt impossible, harder than anything he had ever tried before. Why wouldn't his body respond?

All of a sudden, they snapped open. His surroundings were blurry. He could make out the back of Rob's shaven head on the front seat. They were driving through the wood, moving past trees at a break-neck speed.

Another bump. Another hit to the head. Pain followed by darkness. Harry tried to stay awake, tried to keep his eyes open, but unconsciousness claimed him.

The next time Harry became aware of his surrounding, he was picked up again. He could hear water nearby. Oh god.

"No…" He whimpered, but his protest was either ignored or went unnoticed.

"It's not my fault," someone murmured. "It's not my fault. I told you to stay away. My sister told you. It's not my fault. I'm not going to prison for a freak like you. I'm not. It's your fault, you hear me. Not mine."

The noise the water made became louder. They were approaching it. Harry tried to squirm away, but once again, his body refused to obey.

No. No, no, no.

A second noise mingled with the sound of water splashing against stone. Someone was crying.

Rob, Harry's sluggish brain provided.

"It's not my fault," the man repeated again and again. "Should've stayed away. Should've listened."

And then… from one second to the next, unable to even cry out in shock, Harry was sailing through the air.

Flying.

It felt like an entirety. He hit something hard and cold. Then his world went dark.

When he came to, he was surrounded by silence. Peaceful silence. Harry floated in nothingness, darkness, light. The pain from earlier was gone. Or maybe there had been no pain to begin with.

Was he flying? Yes. Flying. Finally. He should open his eyes, look around, watch the sky, the clouds, the woods from above.

He turned around, flying upside down. Flying, soaring through the air. Harry laughed in exhilaration but couldn't hear his own voice. Maybe the wind took it away, snatched the sound as soon as it left his mouth, and made it echo behind him like the white trail lingering in the wake of a plain?

A sudden pain, flaring in his chest, jolted Harry out of his musing. Something was missing, wrong, very wrong, he just didn't know what yet.

He moved his arms, trying to find balance, but they moved sluggishly, slowly, as if something was holding them, him down.

Air. That was what he was missing. That was why his lungs were on fire. He opened his mouth to take in a deep, relieving breath of fresh air, only to find water pouring in. He choked, coughed, tried to get rid of the liquid that seemed filling his lungs with ice, fuelling the fire. But only more came in.

And with the water, the memory came back. A blow to the head. Darkness. Voices. Darkness.

He became aware of the coldness of the water surrounding him, needling his skin, freezing his muscles.

Somewhere deep inside he knew that he had to fight, to swim, to get to the surface, to the live-saving air.

He opened his eyes but only more darkness welcomed him. Where was up and where down? Left and right?

Moving his arms became harder by the second. He felt his energy leaving him, felt his limbs cease to fight – and maybe he should stop fighting, the water didn't feel so cold anymore, the darkness less frightening.

Maybe this was, where it was supposed to end, his wonderful dream of magic and a Dursley-free life.

If he closed his eyes and ignored the fire in his chest, then he could still believe he was flying. It wasn't so bad to die while flying, high up in the air, in freedom.

Al. The old man's face appeared before his eyes, clear as if he was standing right in front of Harry. 'I should have listened to you. I'm sorry.'

.

Al tossed and turned in his bed.

Harry wasn't home, which was nothing unusual, but… he couldn't shake the feeling that something was different tonight. Wrong.

With a sigh, Al threw his blanket aside and brazed the cold of his room. Well, cold in comparison to the warmth of his bed.

He'd just check the watch. Then he'd see that he was getting worried over nothing. Harry was surely having a good time at the moment, getting drunk and doing who knows what with that muggle girl he seemed to have fallen for so hard.

The last time he had tried to talk with Harry about it, the boy had even claimed to be in love.

In a way, Al couldn't even find it himself to be overly angry with Harry. He was a young man - it was practically expected of him to sow his wild oats.

But that it had to be with a muggle…

He reached the kitchen, glanced at the clock, and was about to return to his bed when the reality of what he had just seen caught up with him. He looked back again.

The watch hand was pointing to Danger, to the 'r' to be more specific, leaning dangerously towards the word Dead.

Al's heart jumped painfully. He quickly slipped into his shoes, grabbed his winter robes, and stepped out into the dark.

He had no idea where to start looking. If only he had his magic. Familiar hatred, for the world, but mostly himself, welled up in him. He couldn't lose Harry. The boy was the only good thing that had happened to him since that night so long ago, the night he had lost his magic. He couldn't lose him too.

Back inside the kitchen, the watch hand slowly moved away from the 'r', past the 'e', 'g', 'n', 'a' and slowly stopped waveringly at the 'D'.

.

With a gasp, Harry came to. His face was resting against something cold and hard. He sat up with effort and felt for his wand. It was still where he remembered, strapped to his lower leg with two cords.

His fingers were numb, stiff with cold, and it took him an eternity to untie the knots.

"Lumos," he whispered. The tip of his wand glowed, illuminating his surrounding. He was sitting on a rocky shore next to a rapid river.

He stared at the water. How the hell had he ended up here? He should be with Courtney-

Her name triggered his memory, and abruptly one painful scene after the other flooded his brain.

"It's me or him Courtney. Your brother or some freak."

"You…" Courtney breathed.

A cry of denial, of gut-wrenching pain, tore from his lips.

She had- she had simply allowed Rob to take him away, to discard him like garbage.

And Rob… Rob had had simply done so. Thrown him into the river. Left him for dead.

Harry's hand was shaking, the light wavered.

Rob had thrown him away like Harry was garbage, and he had let him. He, a wizard, had allowed a muggle to gain the upper hand. Had allowed a muggle to incapacitate him.

He felt for the wound on his head. It wasn't bleeding any more. In fact, it seemed to have healed remarkably well, too well.

"Magic," Harry said reverently.

Magic had saved him.

Harry staggered to his feet. He swayed a little, but determinately put one foot in front of the other. He would find Rob, and then he would show the stupid muggle exactly what he had gone up against.

He laughed in exhilaration. Magic had saved his life. Magic had allowed him to survive where a simple muggle would have died. For the first time in his life, Harry understood why Al looked down on muggles, even though they were so similar to them in appearance and intelligence.

Muggles were weak. They were an inferior race; where they died, wizards prevailed.

"Point me Rob." His wand spun in his hand.

.

Al could already see the lights of the muggle village in the distance. His knee hurt, but he ignored the pain with practiced ease. If Harry would only start learning healing spells, then maybe…

Well, Harry could hardly start learning healing spells as long as Al barred his access to the library.

He cursed his own stubbornness. Maybe if he had allowed Harry to continue his studies, he wouldn't have gone to meet that muggle so often, maybe then Harry wouldn't be in mortal danger right now.

A car sped past him, and Al shielded his eyes from the light. He caught a glimpse of its passengers and his breath stopped.

One of them was Harry - deathly pale and with blue lips, but alive. He spun around and followed the fast-disappearing car.

.

Abducting the muggle had been easy. Almost too easy.

He had slipped into the house silent like a shadow.

Courtney was nowhere to be seen, and Rob was sitting in front of the TV, holding onto a bottle of cheap vodka like a lifeline.

The Imperius was harder to perform on a muggle than on an animal, but it worked nevertheless, and Rob followed him out of the house, got into his car, and drove them back to the place where he had thrown Harry into the river without protest.

Now he was sitting on the ground in front of Harry, looking into the distance with unfocused eyes.

It would be easy to just kill him now and be done with it, throw him into the river, just like Rob had done to him, and command him not to struggle… but Harry wanted Rob to see him before he died, to see what he had brought on himself.

Courtney's face appeared before his eyes… she wouldn't want her brother to die… she would plead with him to let Rob live…

Harry pushed the thought away. He didn't want to deal with all of that now. Didn't want to face the reality, the true horror of his night. Right now, he wanted to concentrate on nothing but his revenge.

"Serpensortia."

A thick, black snake appeared on the ground before him. He repeated the spell.

"Coil around his arms," Harry hissed and the snakes followed his command without hesitation. He grinned. Being a wizard was amazing.

He canceled the Imperius and with a start, Rob became aware of his surroundings.

"What the fuck?" He spat, then he caught sight of Harry and shrunk back with a - in Harry's opinion embarrassingly high-pitched - shriek.

"You- you're dead."

"Obviously not."

"H- how did I get here?"

"I told you to come here."

Rob looked at him disbelievingly. "I don't remember…"

His face changed from confusion to rage, and he took a step forward, probably to attack Harry, but the snakes wrapped tightly around his arms hissed dangerously.

"I wouldn't do that," Harry grinned. He knew he was probably looking like a maniac, but it just felt so good to get back at the man who had tried to kill him, the man who had destroyed his relationship with Courtney, who had cost him his first love.

Rob froze, his eyes widened in horror. "How…"

"Oh, I can talk to them, you know. It's a freakish talent of mine. Look," Harry focused on the snakes. "Tighten your grip."

"St-stop this- stop this damn it."

"Not so tough anymore, are we?"

"What do you want?" Rob's voice shook.

"Just to make us even. You tried to kill me, so now it's my turn."

"Is this about Courtney? Do you want to date her? I can-" it seemed to physically pain him to finish his sentence. "-I can back off."

Harry laughed, the sound hollow to his own ears. "It's a little too late for that, don't you think? Cou-," his voice broke, he couldn't say her name, "-your sister didn't help me. She doesn't care."

"She cares," Rob pleaded, "I know she does. She- she hates me for what I did for you if you just-"

Harry's hand shook. He knew if he didn't hurry up, he wouldn't be able to go through with this. He couldn't allow Rob to waste time talking, to make him think about all of this.

"Enough," Harry hissed. "You tried to kill me. You failed. And now you're going to bear the consequences."

"I was drunk and angry, I didn't mean-"

The snakes reared up and Rob fell silent. Tears were running down his cheeks, his eyes following Harry's every movement, widening in horror as he caught sight of the sharp dagger in his hand.

'It's not much different from killing a deer. It's not. He deserves it. He tried to kill me. He deserves it. He's just flesh, and blood, and bones, not so different from a deer…'

Harry approached, knife gripped tightly in his hand.

"Please, no…"

Rob tried to step back, but one of the snakes was crawling down his body, winding around his legs, making him trip.

He fell down.

'Not so different from killing a deer. Just flesh, and blood, and bones.'

Harry crouched down next to him, focusing solely on his eyes. They were different from a deer's, weren't they? More aware somehow, more afraid of death. Different, but not in a bad way.

Rob's breathing sped up, but he didn't try to get away again.

"Please…" he whispered, but Harry didn't listen.

He brought his knife down, and with one smooth motion, honed to perfection from the hunt, he cut through Rob's throat, severing the carotid artery.

Rob's eyes rolled back, he lost consciousness immediately. His brain was shutting down as the blood pressure dropped. It was a quick death but Harry didn't think he had the stomach for torture.

He doubted he could have gone through with the kill if Rob had had more time to plead with him.

Rob's arms twitched, his mouth opened and closed a few times, a wet stain appeared in his groin area.

Harry staggered back. He looked at the bloody knife in his hand to the dead man on the ground.

His fury, his anger was receding, leaving horror and doubt to cloud his mind.

Had he gone too far, had he… god. He had just killed somebody. He'd really done it.

Leaves rustled behind him and Harry turned around faster than he thought possible, wand raised, a stunning spell already on his lips.

"Harry?" A familiar voice asked.

"Al? What? How?"

The old man stepped out of the woods, stared at Harry, then at the corpse behind him.

"What happened here?" His voice was flat, neither judging nor horrified, simply there.

Harry broke down. The horror of his night, the feeling of drowning, the certainty that he would die, the cold of the water, the feeling of fresh air in his lungs, his fury, his desire for revenge, the disappointment, the look in Rob's eyes… it all came crashing down on him, and his knees simply gave out.

Al enveloped him in an embrace, holding Harry's shaking body, talking to him soothingly. "Why don't you just tell me what happened?"

"I- He-," Harry hiccupped, "-he tried to kill me. Would've killed me if my magic hadn't saved me. I- so angry and I just-"

It seemed to take him an eternity to tell the whole story. His voice broke more than once when he came to the part about Courtney's betrayal. He still loved her. Or the person she had been at the beginning of their relationship - the girl who accepted his strangeness, even seemed to like him for it. The unafraid girl, who explored the woods with him at the dead of the night, the girl he could stay up whole nights with, just making love and talking.

When the story was told, the last word spoken, Al just sat with him in silence.

"You did the right thing, Harry."

"I killed another human being…"

"A muggle. A muggle who tried to kill you first."

He got up and pulled Harry with him. "Can you transfigure him into something? A piece of wood maybe?"

"I don't think so. It's too complex." Harry felt stupid. He could kill somebody but not even clean the mess up afterward.

"Then just make him float along. We'll think of something."

Harry did as he was told, and the two men, with a corpse in their wake, started their way back.

"Al?" Harry asked timidly.

"Yes?"

"I- I want to say I'm sorry. I was stupid and, I was so angry with you… not because of the book, but-," he hesitated.

"Then why?"

"Because I don't know a damn thing about you. I don't even know your name. And I thought you were a squib, but when I- I broke into your room and took the book, a found a picture of you, holding a wand, so clearly you had magic at some point and I just don't understand. I- I don't even know your whole name, and you know everything about me, know even more about my family's history than I do…"

Harry hadn't wanted to say this much, be this direct, but once he had started talking, he just couldn't stop. His mouth simply continued on and on, sharing all the thoughts that had occupied his mind for the last few months.

He didn't dare look at Al. He knew Al would just put the topic off like he always did. And he also knew that he had no right to demand anything from Al.

"My past is very painful for me to remember," Al said. "But I realise that by taking you in, by raising you like my own, I made the decision to let you into my life long ago. I should have told you more about myself, but it- it seemed so unimportant to me. My past is gone. It's nothing I can go back to."

He paused and they walked along in silence.

"The picture you mentioned? That's indeed me with a wand. I started Hogwarts in September of 1936, following in the footsteps of my ancestors. I had magic then, my- I- I don't anymore."

Harry stared at Al open-mouthed. "Thank you," he said, though those simple words were not enough to express the gratitude and relief he felt. After all these years, Al was finally starting to let him in.

Al grinned. "Aye. My name's Alphard, by the way. Alphard Black. Are you sure I didn't mention that? Thought I had introduced myself to you with my full name that first day when you appeared on my doorstep."

Chapter Text

-9- 

April 1996

Sirius eyed his surroundings mistrustfully, glanced down at the piece of parchment in his hand, and wrinkled his brows. The address was correct, but the grey multi-story building in front of him couldn't be the right place, could it?

"Number 18," he murmured, as he inspected the board of buttons, names, and numbers that was right next to the entrance door.

Finally, he found the right number. Shrugging, Sirius pressed the button next to it. The expected ringing of a bell never came, instead, a female voice with a strong German accent answered:

"Hallo?"

Bewildered, Sirius bent down to the small board, near to the area where the voice came from.

"Hello? Um, Sirius Black here. I have an appointment with Miss Steinmann."

"Right. Come up. Top floor."

The door buzzed loudly and clicked open. Hesitantly Sirius entered the building. This was definitely not what he had expected. He followed the stairs, walking past various apartment doors, some decorated for Easter with small bunnies, flowers, and twigs until he reached the topmost floor.

A young woman with long, brown hair and friendly blue eyes, she could be no older than twenty-five, held one of the doors open. "You're Mr. Black?"

"Yes, and you're Miss Steinmann, I presume?"

"Yes, that's me. Come in."

Sirius followed the woman into her apartment. She wore muggle clothes, jeans, and a dark green sweater, and her apartment was very modern – light floors, white walls, and new – albeit cheap-looking – furniture. She led him through a truly tiny kitchen into her living room.

"So… You're a seer?" Sirius tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice, as he looked around the cozy living room – comfortable red sofa, plants, a few wizarding photos on the walls – but she seemed to have picked up on it anyway.

"Yes, I guess you expected something different?" She smiled at him and took a seat on the floor on one end of a round table, tying her long hair back into a ponytail as she did so. "Most people do. But to be honest, being a seer doesn't pay very well these days, and Munich is an expensive place to live, especially the wizarding district. This muggle flat was just more affordable."

Well… maybe if she had a workplace that instilled more confidence in her skills, her business would pick up too. Sirius didn't voice his thoughts. She was probably just a fraud anyway.

"Please take a seat opposite me. Did you bring something belonging to the person you want me to scry for?"

"Yes, one moment." Sirius pulled Harry's old favourite stuffed toy out of his coat pocket and reluctantly handed it to the woman, who promptly dropped it into the big bowl of water situated on the table between them.

"Wha-"

"Shh… I need to concentrate. You can ask questions later."

The woman closed her eyes and started to hum while the stuffed rabbit saturated with water and slowly sunk the bottom of the bowl.

Definitely a waste of his money. Sirius sighed. His search for Harry had led nowhere so far. It was as if the boy had simply dropped off the face of the earth, and Sirius felt forced to resort to desperate measures.

Still humming, the woman slowly raised her hands to touch the water surface. Her eyes had a strange far-away look when she opened them, and she started to mutter quietly.

It took so long that Sirius was surprised when she finally addressed him again.

"Ich kann Ihnen ni- Sorry. I can't tell you where he is now. I only saw lots and lots of different shades of green, but I'm not sure what this means. The obvious thing would be to assume that he is somewhere where it's very green, but then again, divination is rarely so straightforward."

She looked apologetic, but Sirius didn't buy her act for one second. She was a fraud, of course, she couldn't tell him any details.

"I think I caught a glimpse of his future. Please, don't take this information at face value, the future is never sure, it's subject to constant change. We make hundreds of decisions each day, and each decision can change the course of our future. I can only tell you what I see for him now."

Sirius made an impatient noise, urging her to get to it. He really didn't want to spend more time than he already had to watch this disgusting display. She – like so many other 'seers' – was just a fraud taking advantage of desperate witches and wizards.

"There… there is blood and death in his future. Betrayal. But also a reunion. With whom I can't say, but I know that he will reunite with someone thought lost."

"Thank you." Sirius stood briskly, summoning the soaking wet rabbit in his outstretched hand. He cast a drying charm on it, put it back into this pocket, and dropped the agreed sum on the table.

Blood and death. For a prediction like that he wouldn't have needed to travel all the way to Germany. Trelawney would have done the job just fine.

And 'reunite with someone thought lost'? Merlin. Everybody was thought lost to the boy, wherever he was.

He apparated straight out of her living room. It was considered impolite, but then so was deceiving paying customers. He could hardly believe this woman had been so highly recommended. She was a fraud. Obviously.

.

July 1996

The sun was burning down mercilessly; Harry felt sweat trickling down his brow and blinked to keep it from dropping into his eyes.

He bent down to avoid Al's next attack, and that's when he saw it: Al's knee wobbled, and for a split second, he shifted his weight to the other leg. If Harry hadn't been looking for it, he wouldn't have noticed the brief show of weakness. Now, if he would only manage to…

Quick as a snake, Harry darted out, feigning an attack to the right. He could hardly believe it when Al fell for it, it seemed the old man was getting tired too. At the last moment, Harry twisted around to attack Al's unprotected side. Al jerked around in surprise; his knee made a cracking sound and Al went down with a pained cry. Harry went after him, bent over Al, and pressed his knife against the man's throat.

"Got you," he breathed. Finally. He felt his body relax.

"You got me good," Al said through clenched teeth. "Won't deny that. But-"

And suddenly Harry could feel a sharp blade digging into his rips.

"If I push, it goes straight into your heart," Al smiled, and it wasn't nice.

"Damn," Harry cursed and fell back onto the grass next to Al. "Impasse?"

Al nodded.

They remained on the ground next to each other for the next few minutes, trying to calm their beating hearts, then Harry got up. Al tried to follow, but his knee gave out and he sank back to the ground.

"Damn it," he cursed. "Help me up, will you?"

Harry pulled Al to his feet and supported him on the way back inside.

"I think I might have just ruined my knee further."

"Sorry…" Harry looked down guiltily. He shouldn't have…

"Nonsense," Al said. "You saw my weakness and you took advantage of it. Finally. I've been waiting for you to lose your stupid sense of nobility for ages. A fight isn't supposed to be fair. And it's not only a measure of strength. It's about ruthlessness, cunningness, and you finally showed me that you have both."

"Well… if you put it that way," Harry grinned. "So you're saying that if I had only taken advantage of your injury sooner, I would have won long ago?"

"Don't twist my words around," Al grumbled. "And you didn't win. Impasse, remember?"

Harry chuckled, left Al sitting at the table, and went to prepare dinner.

.

However much Al's knee had hurt him before, it must have been nothing compared to the pain he was in after their fight. Over the next few days, Al was practically bedridden, unable to walk on his own, even with the aid of a stick.

A week had passed since their fight, and like every day Harry was sitting at the table next to Al – the old man refused to lie in bed all day long and made Harry help him hobble around the house – surrounded by books on Healing magic.

"How come you have so many books about healing?" Harry asked as he put aside yet another useless book on the topic.

"I told you I lost my magic after a traumatic experience in my past?"

Harry nodded. Al had told him as much, but nothing more.

"Well, my family… In the beginning, they tried to help me find a cure, but after a few years went by without any sign of betterment… they, well, no not they, my sister Walburga," he spat her name with disgust, "…felt I was too big an embarrassment to stay with the family any longer."

Al's face was twisted in anger, but Harry could see the underlying pain, the vulnerability, and he regretted raising the issue immediately. Whatever had happened between him and his sister, Al was not over it.

"There was a self-styled Dark Lord gaining power at the time. Squibs have always been a blemish, a spot on any family's name, and the rise of this Dark Lord gave her an excuse to get rid of me. She said she feared our family would be targeted if the Dark Lord got wind that there was a Squib in the family – not that I really am one anyway –, and so she cast me out. Burned me off the family tree. What she didn't know though-,"

and now Al grinned,

"-was that my grandfather had made preparations for this eventuality. Before his death, he made sure that I was entitled to a small part of the family library and a hefty sum of money. You should have seen her face when she found out. Brilliant."

Al chuckled.

"I even left half of my money to one of her sons, just to spite her - and of course to remunerate him for his troubles. I don't think anybody else ever managed to make her as livid as that boy. Not even me, but not for lack of trying." Al wallowed in his memories for a few minutes, before he continued:

"But anyway. I got part of the library and took most of the books on Healing magic. At the time I still hoped to find a cure for my… affliction."

"You don't anymore?"

"I'm seventy-one years old, Harry," Al sighed. "I've been looking for a cure for the better part of my life. If I haven't found it until now…"

Harry returned to his research, not saying anything. He knew Al was probably right. But… the old man was like a father to him. It hurt to know he had given up.

Two hours later Harry's efforts finally paid off.

"Found something," Harry said and handed the thick book to Al. "It's a potion. I'd need to vanish your knee and regrow it."

Al studied the page. "Skele-Gro." He nodded. "I was hoping we'd find something else. We don't have the ingredients for this potion. Damn it. I'll have to write to my associates. The next letter will arrive in a few days, if I write them back immediately it will still take a few months for the package to arrive."

.

Over the next few days, Al's mood grew increasingly worse. He hated being confined in his movements.

The day the new letters were scheduled to arrive, his knee was still so bad that he couldn't even make it to the clearing on his own, and Harry had to accompany him, alternately serving as Al's walking aid and simply levitating the man.

On the way back from the clearing, a pensive expression marred Al's features.

"Can we talk for a moment?" he asked once they were back in the hut.

"Sure." Harry took a seat opposite Al at the kitchen table.

Harry had never seen Al look so uncomfortable. He avoided Harry's eyes and looked constantly down on his hands or out of the window. Finally, he seemed to have gathered his bearings.

"Do you- do you regret killing that boy, your girlfriend's brother?"

Harry was surprised by the question, and not in a good way. He didn't often think of this night, because these thoughts would lead him to think about Courtney… the girl he hadn't seen in months now, and who probably either thought he was dead or had killed her brother or both.

"No," he said after a while. "It's like you said, isn't it? The stronger triumph over the weaker, and I was stronger."

Al hummed. "Yes. Do you," and now Al looked straight at him, "do you think you could kill another person again? Or watch someone be killed?"

Harry held his breath. He had an inkling where this conversation was going…

He thought back, remembering Rob's eyes, the fear in them, the satisfaction he felt when he got his revenge when he saw the life leaving them… the barely-there feeling of triumph because this was the confirmation that he truly was better, stronger, more capable than the muggle.

Could he do something like this again?

To his surprise, the answer was yes. Yes. Death was just part of life, wasn't it? The strongest survived; such was the law of nature, and he saw it applied every day. A snake hunted a mouse, a fox a rabbit, a human a deer. A wizard a muggle?

"I think so," he answered carefully.

"Are you sure?" Al pressed.

"Yes. If the circumstances demanded it, I could kill someone."

Al sighed. "This is not something I ever wanted to ask of you, at least not so soon, but with my knee… the situation is complicated. You know that I leave here a few times a year. I do some… jobs, for wizards."

"What kind of jobs?" Harry asked though he thought he already knew the answer.

"I deal with people… muggles for them. Sometimes they just want me to intimidate the muggles, deliver a warning shot, other times it's… an assassination."

"Why do they involve you? If they're wizards, wouldn't it be easier for them to just, you know, do the job themselves?"

Al shook his head. "No. Magic… it leaves traces. More often than not the Ministry knows of or at least suspects the association of certain wizards with muggles, and if they think that a wizard might be involved in a crime they send Aurors to investigate. So these wizards contact me when they want their involvement to stay secret. I can't use magic, so it automatically looks like a muggle job."

Harry nodded. It did make sense. In a weird way.

"Wouldn't it be easier for them to just hire a muggle though?"

Al laughed. "Most of my clients hate dealing with muggles. They are involved with muggle businesses to further their winnings, but they avoid them where they can. Also, they know that I'm up for the job, and as thanks to my dear sister the Ministry thinks I'm dead, the Aurors don't come looking for me. With muggles there always the risk that the Ministry would find them, and get them to give up the person who hired them."

"Okay…" Harry hesitated for a moment, unsure what to do with Al's unusual forthcomingness. "So, um the letter, that's your next job?"

"Yes. It's an assassination. I'll do the actual job. But I'd like you to come along to cover my back. I don't feel like dying just yet," Al grimaced, looking down on his knee.

Harry didn't feel as shocked as he should – maybe because he had suspected something like this for a long time now.

This was, after all, the most obvious explanation for Al being as skilled a fighter as he was, for his disappearances, for the time he had returned wounded after one of his jobs, for the letter with the names on it he had found in Al's room a few years ago…

It was due to his actions that Al's knee was so useless at the moment. If Al died because of an injury Harry had caused, he would never be able to forgive himself. Of course, he'd help him, it was the least he could do. Harry held Al's eyes and nodded.

.

They left for London the next morning. As it turned out, the letter was a Portkey that would take them to an apartment where they could prepare for the mission.

Once again standing on the clearing where they usually received the letters, Harry grabbed hold of the parchment.

"Ready?"

Harry nodded, and a moment later felt like he was jerked forward by his navel. The ground disappeared beneath his feet and he was pulled through a swirl of colours. The wind rushed in his ears, and Harry was thankful that his hand seemed to be glued to the letter; otherwise, he would have let go of it in shock.

When his feet hit something hard, he buckled over and found himself lying on a dark wooden floor. He looked around hesitantly. Al was next to him, standing even though his knee must be giving him hell.

"You could have warned me," Harry murmured as he got to his feet.

"Wanted to see your face," Al chuckled. "And a warning wouldn't have changed a thing," he said when he saw Harry's indignant expression. "Can't really explain that sensation, can you?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Harry looked around. They were standing in a rather big room. A comfortable-looking sofa stood in its center, a few meters away from a big fireplace; the ceiling was made of glass and a floating violin was playing a soft tune.

"Nice," he said appreciatively.

"Mhm." Al hobbled to the sofa, sat down, and picked up a thin folder waiting there for him. "Usually I read through the details-" He held the folder up high. "and afterward lie down and listen to the music until it's time to leave. It's just something I do to get into the right frame of mind for the job."

"Just pretend I'm not here then," Harry said. "I'll just look around a bit, enjoy the view." He walked towards one of the big windows to his left. It should be dark outside by now, but the city lights kept the true darkness of the night away.

"We'll make it look like a mugging," Al said.

"What?" Harry turned around just as Al was putting down the folder.

"The job. The target is out tonight, and I'm supposed to make it look like a mugging that ended in its death."

"Right," Harry murmured and turned back to the window.

Beneath him, the busy streets of London unfurled. There were dozens of cars, hundreds of people… The city crawled with muggles like the forest with ants.

It all seemed so surreal.

If he hadn't found Al, would he too be one of those people down there? Narrow-minded? Ignorant of the wonders of magic? Caught in a boringly ordinary life? Satisfied with normality?

No. Magic was in his blood. It was in his nature, his heritage. Even if he hadn't run into Al, he would have found his way to magic, he was sure of it.

The minutes trickled by at snails-pace. Al slept or meditated or something, and Harry got increasingly bored. There were no books, no paintings or photos… as interesting as the room had seemed at first glance, as boring turned its bare walls out to be at the second.

Finally – Harry was convinced he would die of boredom if something didn't happen soon – a clock nearby struck ten, and Al opened his eyes and sat up.

"Time to go. Are you ready?"

"More than ready," Harry murmured and followed behind Al. The old man picked up two knives from a table next to the door, took a step back, turned around, and threw them at Harry.

"What the fuck?" Harry jumped out of the way.

"Back," Al said, and the knife flew back into Al's hand before it even reached Harry's previous position.

"Just checking if you're alert and ready."

If Al hadn't been hurt already, Harry might have hit him.

"The knives are charmed to always come back to me." Al grinned. "Wouldn't have let it hit you."

"How nice of you," Harry muttered, following Al out of the door. The older man was already at the stairs, descending slowly.

Grinning, Harry swished his wand and levitated Al without warning. Al yelped and shot the loudly laughing Harry a furious glare.

Revenge was sweet.

Al relaxed and allowed Harry to float him downstairs. "Once we leave the building you have to be more careful. Can't let muggles see you use magic."

They took a cab to drive through the city. Harry's eyes were glued to the window, taking in the streetlights, cars, and huge billboards; the people huddled together in groups, faces hidden behind umbrellas…

The cab stopped near a big park. High trees overshadowed the pavement, and a shiver went down Harry's spine as he stepped out of the car and followed Al down the rain-wet street.

They were about to kill a guy. Kill. Anticipation mixed with fear and no small dose of trepidation spread through him.

What if something went wrong? What if Al's knee gave out and…

Harry shook his head. He couldn't allow his thoughts to go there, not if he wanted to keep his wits about him.

They stopped in front of a brick-built townhouse with stucco-framed windows and a small front yard.

Al led Harry into the shadows of a nearby tree.

"What now?" Harry's voice rose barely above a whisper, but in the complete and utter silence of the night, he felt like he might as well have shouted

"Now we wait."

For about half an hour nothing happened. Harry was about to ask what they were going to do if the man never showed when he heard a car approach.

For a short moment, its light illuminated their hiding place, and Harry thought his heart would jump out of his chest any minute.

A bald man, probably in his late forties, stumbled out of the car.

"Thanks for the ride. I'll see you on Monday!"

"No problem. See you."

The car sped away with screeching tires. Finally, they were alone.

Al pulled a small rubber ball out of his pocket and let it bounce down the street. The noise immediately drew the target's attention and the moment he turned away from their hideout, Al stepped out of the shadows, knife in hand.

The blade reflected the light of the streetlamp, which made it easy to follow Al's movement.

With bated breath, Harry watched as Al raised the knife. Somewhere in the back of his head, a small voice urged him to look away, to turn around… but he couldn't – he didn't even want to.

The man stumbled but caught hold of himself at the last minute. He must have seen Al out of the corner of his eyes, because he turned around sharply, and his wide, horrified eyes zoomed in on the knife in Al's hand.

Al reared back to avoid the man's swinging fists, but his knee didn't support his weight and when he saw Al fall down, Harry knew he had to intervene. The old man could hardly walk these days; he wasn't fit to fight.

He stepped – no he ran out of the hideout, his own knife already clasped tightly in his hand. He knew they didn't have long. The man would overcome his shock any minute, and then he would remember to scream and draw the attention of the whole neighborhood.

"You don't have to-" Al started, but Harry was already past him. Without giving it another thought, Harry ducked under the man's arms, dodging his punches. It was just like yet another training session with Al, only his current opponent was much slower and this time, Harry didn't take the pressure off his knife when it touched the ribcage, but drove it directly into the man's heart, twisting it there.

The man's mouth dropped open, and for a moment he stared at Harry with nothing but surprise. Then surprise gave wake to understanding, pain, and at long last complete and utter freedom. To watch someone breathe, feel, live one moment and perish the next… it was fascinating, a phenomenon to behold. The man was unconscious before his body hit the ground.

"Take his wallet and watch, if he wears one."

Harry did as he was told and followed behind Al, who was walking down the street slowly.

They walked for about half an hour before Al called a cab to take them back to the apartment.

To Harry's confusion, during the whole time, Al neither spoke to nor looked at him once. He didn't think he had done anything wrong. It was Al's job to kill the guy, and he had asked Harry to help him if needed…

Al ushered Harry through the door and immediately sat down on the sofa.

"Come here."

Harry sat down next to Al, not sure what to make of the situation.

"What are you thinking about?" Al asked.

"I'm wondering… are you angry with me?"

"Damn it," Al cursed. He tried to stand up, but his knee gave out and he sank back down. "Why aren't you thinking about the man?"

"What?"

"You just killed someone, Harry! Someone you had no personal grudge against! Someone who didn't try to kill you first! And you… you just seem to be perfectly fine with it!"

Harry was not sure what to make of Al's reaction. "Yeah… but like you said. The stronger one survives. Law of nature and all that. And anyway, he was just a muggle, wasn't he?"

Al took a few deep breaths, obviously trying to calm himself, when he finally spoke he sounded more composed than before. "Yes, you're right, it was only a muggle. But… It's just, seeing you today, you reminded me so much of myself.

One of the first men I killed was a muggle too, and I just remembered how much I struggled with causing his death. Even though I technically knew that he was a muggle, the way he looked at me… his eyes haunted me for a long time."

Harry didn't know what to say. He didn't feel guilty, or desperate, or like a bad person. And he didn't want to feel like that either. He had felt all of this and more after Rob's death, and he had only managed to overcome these feelings because he knew deep down that Al had been right back then. The weak die, and the strong survive. A muggle was weaker by nature.

If he allowed doubts to cloud his mind if he allowed thoughts of guilt back into his life… then how should he survive what he had already done? What he had done to Rob, and by extension to Courtney?

"You raised me this way, Al. You raised me to accept death as a natural part of life. You told me time after time that we are on top of the food chain. I don't know what you want me to say."

"I was just surprised, is all. I don't want you to feel guilty. You probably saved my job, if not my life today. With my knee, I couldn't have dodged his punches."

To Harry's surprise, Al took his hand into his own and squeezed it tightly. "Thank you, Harry. I'm glad you were with me today."

.

"Who are you?" A loud, unfamiliar voice woke Harry from his dreamless sleep. When he opened his eyes and saw a wand pointed in his face threateningly, he deeply regretted insisting on making do with the sofa in the main room, while Al slept in the adjacent bedroom.

Great. Now he would die, just because he'd wanted to be selfless for once in his life.

"I'll go get Al," Harry said in his calmest, most non-threatening voice. "He'll explain everything, alright?"

The blond man nodded, and Harry didn't know how, but on this man, this usually innocent gesture seemed full of scorn.

"AL!" Harry knocked continuously and shouted at the same time. "There's someone here."

"I'm coming, I'm coming."

Al limped into the main room but hid his injury as soon as he was in view of the other man.

"Mr. Malfoy," Al stated.

"Mr. Black. I assume you fulfilled the assignment to my satisfaction?"

"Of course. And I assume my payment will be delivered to my Gringotts account within the next few days?"

"Of course. Who is the boy, if you don't mind me asking?"

Al turned to Harry, gesturing him to come closer. "That's Harry," he said. "My son."

Not even the shocked expression on Malfoy's face could wipe away the broad smile that threatened to split Harry's face at that moment. Al had just called him his son. In front of another wizard, no less!

"I didn't know you had a son," Malfoy said. "Who is his mother?"

"Dead," Al said tonelessly.

"A witch?"

"Are you trying to insult me?" Al still sounded perfectly calm, but there was an underlying hardness to his voice that hadn't been there before.

"Forgive me. Insulting you was not my intention." In Harry's opinion, Malfoy didn't sound sorry at all. "There's just something about him that reminds me of someone I once knew. But I just can't put my finger on it. I thought maybe his mother…"

"Maybe," Al conceded but didn't offer any more information. "Do you have the Portkey?" He changed the subject.

"Here you are," Malfoy handed yet another piece of parchment to Al. "It will activate tonight, at seven pm sharp."

Harry didn't pay attention to the two men anymore. If the Portkey activated in the evening, then he still had a few hours to spare. Maybe he could take a look around London, possibly even visit the magical part of the town…

"Al?" Harry asked once they were alone again. "Would you mind if I went into the city today? Visit Diagon Alley?"

Al looked troubled for a moment and sighed deeply before he forced a smile on his face. "No, of course not." He threw the dead man's wallet, which was lying on a table nearby, at Harry. "Take the money, have the goblins change into our currency, and buy yourself something nice."

Goblins. Gringotts. Wizarding bank.

Right.

Harry left the house and, following Al's directions, took a cab to Charing Cross Road. The Leaky Cauldron was a grubby-looking pub, which seemed to go unnoticed by the muggles hurrying by.

Harry's heart beat a mile a minute, and as he stepped through the wooden door, automatically holding his breath. The pub was just as shabby on the inside as it appeared to be on the outside, but Harry paid the dark and dusty surroundings no mind.

For the first time in his life, he was among other witches and wizards, among his own kind. A pair of old wizards were sitting at a table nearby playing a game of chess – nothing unusual, if it were not for the talking and wildly gesticulating chess pieces. The bartender, a bald man with friendly eyes, was smoking something that looked like a pipe but was giving off colourful soap bubbles instead of smoke.

"Excuse me," Harry addressed the bartender. "Could you open the path to Diagon Alley for me?"

The man looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Sure. Are you a muggle?"

"No. I'm a wizard."

The bartender harrumphed. "Sorry. Usually, it's only the Hogwarts first years who need me to help 'em."

Harry followed the man outside into a small courtyard.

"I'm Tom, by the way. How come you don't know how to access the Alley? You sound like you're from around here."

"I am, originally. I just lived abroad for the last few years," Harry said, inventing his story as he went. "So it's my first time visiting London."

Tom tapped the wall with his wand. "Three up, two across," Tom explained. "Make sure to have some ice cream at Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. It's famous all over Britain. And if you need lunch, you best come back to my pub, I serve the best sandwiches 'round here."

The brick Tom had touched with his wand started vibrating and a small hole appeared in the middle, which grew wider and wider until they were facing a small archway.

The sight of Diagon Alley was overwhelming. Wizards and witches, clad in colourful robes, some even wearing ridiculously large hats were rushing up and down the streets, owls carrying letters as well as packages flew in and out of open windows of a building with the sign "post office"…

A young boy on a broom nearly made Harry trip as he sped past him. "Look where you're going!" A round-faced woman shouted, running after him.

"…if you brew pepper up in a brass cauldron…"

"…dragged me to a Celestina Warbeck concert, can you believe it?"

Harry soaked in his surroundings, listening to conversations of various witches and wizards on his way to Gringotts – which was just as imposing and blinding white as described in his books. Even though the goblins weren't the friendliest creatures, exchanging the money was no problem and Harry left the wizarding bank 40 golden Galleons heavier.

His first destination was Ollivanders, the famous wand shop. The wand Al had given to him was fine most of the time, but Harry knew – from Al's tales and his books – that a wand that chose him would work even better.

Golden letters above the door of a narrow, shabby building spelled the name "Ollivanders", and when Harry stepped inside the shop, a tinkling bell announced his entrance.

"Good afternoon."

Harry nearly jumped out of his skin. To his right stood an old, white-haired man, with eyes as pale as the moon.

"H-hello," Harry answered.

"How may I help you, young man?"

"Um, I want to buy a wand," Harry said, wishing the old man would turn his scrutinizing gaze somewhere else.

"Yes, yes, right-handed, correct?"

Harry only nodded and watched with growing trepidation as a tape measure started measuring him on its own.

"You are Mr. Potter, correct? Harry Potter?" There was a creepy glint in the old man's eyes now, and Harry really wished he would blink once in a while.

"Um, yes?" His answer sounded more like a question. How did this guy know his name?

The man handed him a wand – birch and dragon-heart string – but ripped it out of Harry's hand when a stack of paper on his desk caught fire. Harry tried wand after wand, without much success, and was tempted to just leave and continue using Al's grandfather's wand, when Ollivander suddenly started muttering under his breath.

"Yes, yes. We'll try it. Why not?"

Harry longed to leave this shop and the crazy old man behind, but he would give this last wand a try.

"Here you are. Holly and phoenix-feather."

When Harry took this one, a sudden warmth spread through his fingers and up to his arm, and gold and red sparks burst from the tip of the wand.

Without realising it, Harry smiled. Yes. This was his wand. He felt connected to it in a way he never had with his former wand.

Harry paid the man and left the shop as fast as he could, paying no mind to the thoughtful look on the shop owner's face. He'd never met a creepier person.

He didn't have much time left, and so his next and final stop was the Broom Shop he'd passed by on his way to Gringotts.

He entered the shop and was met with a wall of hot air, which curiously enough didn't seem to bother the young man behind the counter.

"Can I help you?"

"Just looking around," Harry said, taking in the numerous broom models displayed in the shop. The names – Nimbus 2001, Comet 290 – didn't tell Harry anything, but even he could see that the Firebolt was something special.

He wiped his sweaty hair out of his face, before softly touching the expensive-looking broomstick.

"Hey, no touching!" The clerk said, and Harry swiveled around, an apology already on the tip of his tongue, but the shocked expression on the man's face stopped him in his tracks.

The man looked like he'd seen a ghost, but it couldn't be that unusual that a customer touched one of the brooms, could it?

"N-never mind, no problem." The man said. "You can keep looking."

"Okay…"

Harry wasn't in the mood to stay much longer. The guy was behaving increasingly weirdly and he didn't have much time left anyway. Just as he was about to leave the shop, a flashlight blinded him.

"What was that?" Harry asked.

"Nothing. Um, just security measure." The young man's head was beet red. "Have a nice day."

"You didn't take a picture of me, did you?" The flash had reminded him of Petunia's old camera.

"No, no, of course not," the young man stuttered. "I would never- I mean… Just a security measure."

He knew too little about wizarding customs to argue with the man. Maybe it really was just a security measure? Harry shrugged the weird encounter off and left the shop.

He made it back to Al just in time for the Portkey to take them home.

Chapter Text

- 10 -

July 1996

...

HARRY POTTER ALIVE

Spotted shopping in Diagon Alley

Whether young or old, witch or wizard, there isn't a soul in Wizarding Britain that hasn't followed the story of Harry Potter's tragic life.

After his mysterious defeat of the Darkest Wizard in recent history left him an orphan, Harry Potter was given into the care of his mother's muggle relatives.

Nine quiet years went by, but on May 2nd, 1991 the child became a talking point once more, when the news of young Harry's disappearance hit the headlines, resulting in a search of unequaled proportions.

Countless wizards and witches, among them notable personalities like our esteemed Minister Cornelius Fudge, Albus Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, Amelia Bones, and Gilderoy Lockhart, took part in the quest, but to no end. Neither hide nor hair of young Harry was to be seen, until yesterday that is.

Jeffrey Jones, 23, a shop assistant at Quality Quidditch Supplies on Diagon Alley, couldn't believe his eyes when he saw just who had walked into his shop:

"I knew that there was something different about him the moment he walked through the door. He just draws attention, you know? Of course, I would never have guessed... I mean Harry Potter?! But when I saw his scar, there was no doubt about it."

As luck would have it Mr. Potter's visit was caught on camera, and the photographic evidence supports Mr. Jones's statement. The tall, dark-haired youth, whose uncanny resemblance to the late James Potter is hard to overlook, can only be his son Harry James.

While Mr. Potter's unexpected reappearance fills us with relief, new questions concerning his disappearance arise:

Who is he living with? Why did he or his caretaker never contact the relevant authorities? And where is he now?

...

"Lucius? Are you alright?"

Lucius heard his wife's voice in the background, but he couldn't look away from the young man frowning at him from the newspaper. Even though the picture was a bit blurry, there was no doubt about it: This was the same boy he had seen yesterday morning. The boy who had been with Alphard Black.

He couldn't believe he had been in the same room with Harry Potter and failed to recognise him. It was all there, the messy black hair, the narrow lips, the straight nose – apart from his eyes he was a spitting image of his father.

"Lucius! I'm talking to you!"

"What?" he snapped, more harshly than was appropriate, and Narcissa narrowed her eyes at him.

"We're having breakfast together, Lucius. Either you put down the paper and talk to me, or you can eat by yourself."

"Harry Potter was spotted in Diagon Alley," he said tonelessly and pushed the Daily Prophet to her side of the table.

Narcissa wrinkled her nose and chewed her last bite carefully before she deigned to answer him. "Please Lucius, don't tell me you fell for this." She pushed the paper back towards him without so much as a glance. "Isn't there someone claiming to have run into Potter at least twice a year?"

"This time it's different," Lucius said. "They have pictures," he elaborated when she raised her eyebrows at him.

"What?" Narcissa reached for the newspaper faster than Lucius could blink.

"By Merlin, he looks just like James Potter. But I thought- I thought he had died?"

"That was the general assumption, yes."

With a loud popping sound, their house-elf appeared next to Narcissa. "There is a fire-call for Mistress in the family room. Mrs. Zabini-"

"Sweet Lord, she must have seen the news already." Narcissa stood, smoothed down her morning robe, and looked at her husband apologetically. "You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not, darling." In fact, he was more than just a little relieved that she would be otherwise occupied. There was so much to think about. Right now, he probably was the only wizard in Britain who knew where to find Harry Potter.

Or at least he knew where to start looking. Alphard Black, as paranoid as Bellatrix was mad, had always insisted on keeping his whereabouts a secret.

He was only reachable by owl, and only at certain times of the year. Maybe he could contact him again, pretend to have another job for him? Convince him to bring the boy along?

But then what?

His Lord was gone. The only ones benefitting from Potter's reappearance would be Dumbledore and his ilk…

Should he even bother?

.

Thump. Thump.

A loud pounding noise woke Remus from his slumber. He groaned and rolled flat onto his stomach. What had he been dreaming about?

Thump. Thump.

There had been lots of greenery… woods maybe. Yes, he'd been in the woods. And noises. The scream of deer in distress…

He'd been running, no hunting, and was about to sink his teeth through soft fur into deliciously lean flesh, was about to taste the unique flavour of warm blood on his tongue…

Remus grimaced in disgust. As much as his subconscious seemed to enjoy these dreams in his sleep, as much he hated them when he was awake. They reminded him that the beast was inside him at all times, not only that one night of each month it took control.

Thump-Thump. Thump-Thump.

"For Merlin's sake," he muttered under his breath as he put on some pants and hurried for the door. "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

As soon as he'd turned the knob, the door was pushed open with enough force to make him stumble back.

"Bloody hell, Sirius! What are you doing here, it's-" Remus glanced at his watch, fully expecting the time to vindicate his indignation. Alas, it seemed the early morning hours had long passed. "-it's eleven a.m.," he finished weakly.

"You really do need to find a new job," Sirius said as he pushed past him into the kitchen. "Coffee?" he asked, already making himself at home.

"Please." Remus sat down at the kitchen table. "You know it's not easy for me to find a job, what with-"

"Harry is alive," Sirius interrupted him, swiftly directing a cup of hot coffee to settle in front of Remus. "Drink up, we have no time to waste."

"Sirius," Remus started carefully. "We've talked about this. Nobody has seen Harry in-"

"And that's where you're wrong!" Sirius said, pulling a crumpled newspaper out of his coat pocket. He straightened it out on the table and turned it so that Remus could read the article in question.

"Look!" Sirius insisted, stabbing his finger against a picture in the center of the page.

"James," breathed Remus, not fully understanding why Sirius was so excited about the photo, or why the Prophet would print it, for that matter.

"Look at his eyes."

"Oh my… That can't be, he's- I thought he was-" Remus felt like he couldn't breathe.

Staring back at him from the paper was a pair of eyes that didn't belong in James' face. They were bigger, and almond-shaped whereas James' had been more downturned.

Remus felt like time had come to a standstill as he watched over and over how the eyes in the picture widened in surprise before they narrowed in what looked like suspicion. He recognised them now, knew where he had seen that exact look more times than he could count.

Those were Lily's eyes, Lily's eyes in James' face.

His friend's voice snapped him out of his stupor:

"Harry is alive. This-" Sirius held onto the worn-out paper like it was a lifeline "-is exactly what we needed. Every wizard and witch will be on the lookout, the Ministry will reopen the case. We're so close to finding him Remus, I can feel it!"

.

Barty slowly approached the child-like figure resting in a cushioned armchair. He made sure that his footsteps could be heard loud and clear - while his Master's outer appearance had suffered, his reflexes could still put a snake to shame, and trying to sneak up on the Dark Lord was a quick way to get oneself killed.

"My Lord," he spoke reverently, even more so than usual as he was not sure how the news he brought would be taken, and a Cruciatus before breakfast was really not what he aimed for.

He normally trusted that his Lord acted just and merciful towards his servants, but his current condition grated on the Dark Lord's nerves, rubbed them raw, and made him more volatile – not that Barty faulted him for this.

If he were to be in his Lord's position… If he had existed only as a specter for years on end…

Barty knew he wouldn't have been as strong as his Lord, wouldn't have been able to cling to life by sheer force of will, to find a way to possess animals, to contact his servants, to devise a plan to regain a body…

But this was the Greatness, the Power that distinguished his Lord from the common man.

Lord Voldemort would find straight lines where there was only chaos, wander paths untraveled, unravel secrets even the myths had ceased telling about.

Lord Voldemort was extraordinary in mind and magic, and Barty was proud to be back at his side, to have the honour to help his Master regain a body, and further down help him cleanse their world of all those unworthy and bring it back to its long lost greatness.

"Barty," Lord Voldemort spoke slowly, stretching each vowel. "Why do I detect nervousness in your voice, my faithful?"

Barty respectfully averted his eyes. "My Lord, Harry Potter has been sighted."

He held out the newspaper, and with a swish of his wand – oddly long in Lord Voldemort's child-like fingers – it flew towards the Dark Lord.

With bated breath, Barty watched as his Lord's eyes took in the front page. He tried to gauge his reaction, but the Dark Lord gave nothing away.

The silence stretched, only interrupted by the rhythmic dripping of the leaking tap in the bathroom next door.

"I think it is time we return to England, my friend," his Lord finally said. "I discovered a ritual that will help me regain my body, and coincidentally I need the blood of an enemy to complete it. It is only appropriate that I invite Mr. Potter to join us on this occasion. A man only gets so many fated enemies, after all."

The newspaper burst into flames.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11

October 1996

It was nearing midnight, when, with a soft plop, a lonely figure appeared in a deserted Alley. The man, clad in robes as black as they were expensive, pulled his hood over his silvery-blond hair and so deep into his face that only a dark shadow remained.

Lucius purposefully strode down Knockturn Alley, deeper into the blackened heart of the most infamous part of Wizarding London. A howling wind accompanied his every step, and he couldn't quite suppress the shudder that went through his body. There was something peculiar about the wind in Knockturn Alley, an otherworldly, ominous note. Ever since he was a child, this was the sound he imagined the souls of those condemned to the Dementor's kiss would make, could their last begging for mercy be heard by human ears.

Hidden safely in the depths of his robes was the reason for his nightly excursion. Two days ago, just as he had been about to leave his office and join his wife for tea, Lucius had received a note.

The Grey Crow. Day after tomorrow. Midnight. Come alone.

It wasn't the content of this note that had turned his world upside down in a matter of seconds, but the elegant script. After several years in Lord Voldemort's service, he was more than familiar with his Master's handwriting.

The precise penmanship, the elegant bow that marked the end of each word - for Lucius, there was no doubt about it: This letter could only come directly from the hand of his Lord.

The Grey Crow was a narrow, brick-built house. The curtains were drawn - probably to shield the patrons and whatever shady business they were up to from nosy onlookers. When Lucius pushed against the old door, it only opened slowly, as if it was offering him an opportunity to rethink his decision, a last chance to turn around and leave.

Drawing himself up to his full height, Lucius stepped through the door, and was promptly welcomed by a surge of hot, stale air. At the bar to his right sat a lonely figure, talking quietly to an old bartender with a pockmarked face. Nobody looked up when he entered, but Lucius wasn't naïve enough to think that he wasn't being watched.

To his left were several tables. A few of them were vacant, while others were occupied by small groups of witches and wizards. Only at one table, the rearmost one, half-hidden in the shadows, sat a single man. He wore wide robes and his hood was drawn as deep into his face as Lucius'.

Suddenly, as if he could feel Lucius questioning eyes on him, the man lifted one hand and gestured him to come closer. Lucius slowly crossed the room and slid into the empty chair opposite the man.

The man's face was still hidden in the shadows, and when he spoke his voice was raw, as if he didn't often get an opportunity to use it. "Lucius."

Finally, he looked up. Lucius recoiled instinctively and grabbed his wand tightly in his right hand, pointing it at the impostor under the table.

"Who are you?" There was a tremor in his voice; even though he tried, he couldn't completely hide his shock.

"You hurt me, old friend." The man smirked, revealing crooked teeth. "After everything, we went through together, after fighting a war side by side, you don't recognise me?"

"The man whose face you are wearing is dead."

With an expression of child-like wonder, which looked grotesquely misplaced on the man's emaciated face, the Barty-impostor slowly started moving his hands over his body. His fingers followed the slight curve of his nose, stroked his eyebrows lovingly, and rested on his cheekbones for a moment, before slowly moving down his throat to his arms. His touch was soft, like a lover's caress.

"I'm afraid I have to disagree," he said in the end. "I feel very much alive."

"You're insane."

"Maybe it's your version of reality that needs to be questioned," the man answered and, without warning, burst into low, crazy laughter.

Whatever- whoever this was, it was obviously a waste of his time, maybe even a trap. He should never have come here in the first place – but the handwriting… And his Mark had gotten darker too, over the last few months…

Lucius stood, and the laughter stopped abruptly.

"Lucius."

He ignored the man and prepared to leave.

"Lucius."

Furious, Lucius turned back. "Listen to me, whatever-"

The rest of his sentence got stuck in his throat. The man had exposed his left forearm and presented his Dark Mark for the world to see.

"Pull your sleeve down," Lucius said, so angry he could barely restrain himself from cursing the man. But it wouldn't do to draw even more attention to them, least of all now, while this moron was waving his arm around like he was showing off a fancy piece of jewelry, and not his Dark Mark.

He sat back down.

"Let's say I believe you," Lucius said. He wasn't sure yet what to believe exactly, but the Dark Mark couldn't be faked and the man certainly looked (and behaved) like he had spent a few years with only Dementors for company. "How come you're alive?"

"A loving mother and Polyjuice Potion." The man – Barty – stretched his arms above his head. His sleeve slid down, nearly exposing his mark once again and Lucius' heart skipped a beat. "But let's not bore ourselves with the details," Barty continued. "We have more important things to discuss, things pertaining to our Lord."

Barty had lowered his voice, but Lucius discretely cast the Muffliato Charm to keep their conversation private anyway.

"Our Lord?" Lucius barely dared to breathe. Moments he hadn't thought of in ages, scenes he had banned to the rearmost corner of his mind flashed before his eyes.

Lord Voldemort, glorious and tall, his wand held high, leading an army of white-masked, black-robed wizards into battle. He could almost feel the air vibrating with magic, could almost taste his Lord's seductive power.

But there were other memories too; memories of the heavy cloud of fear following the Dark Lord like a shadow, of the promise of pain lingering around him like a bad smell, of humiliation and ridicule...

"Has he truly returned?" Joy and fear warred within him. Their old goals were suddenly within reach once more, but he had denied his Lord in front of the whole Wizarding World. Could he still spin this to his advantage? Right now he was one of the richest wizards in Britain. He had influence and respect-

"I knew it!" Barty crowed, interrupting his thoughts. "I told him," he continued in an urgent whisper, eyes gleaming feverishly, "that you weren't to be trusted! That you didn't believe in him, had abandoned him in favour of crawling in the dust at Dumbledore's feet. But-" Barty grimaced as if speaking the next part caused him physical pain, "-our Lord is merciful. He is willing to offer you a second chance, an opportunity to redeem yourself."

Lucius waited for Barty to continue, but the younger man only returned his stare, a mocking smile gracing his lips.

Obviously, Barty was savoring this moment - it didn't happen every day, after all, that a Malfoy had to take orders from a younger, lower-ranked Death Eater like him.

Lucius swallowed around the bitter taste of humiliation that clung to his tongue. "What am I to do?" He was sure that neither his voice nor expression had betrayed how much the situation bothered him, but suspected by Barty's look of satisfaction that he knew anyway.

"Our Lord has a very special task for you, one that will allow you to put all those contacts you cultivated so carefully to good use."

"And what is my task?"

"You are to find Harry Potter and deliver him to our Lord."

Lucius smiled thinly. He had spent the last few months trying to find out where Alphard Black lived, so far without results. A letter it would be; a letter in which he had to somehow convince Alphard to bring the boy along on the next job. Hopefully, he'd get a hold of Black soon enough to satisfy his Lord.

.

November 1996

Slytherin's line is considered extinct. There are rumours though, according to which one of his female descendants married into the Gaunt family, where Salazar's talent to understand and speak to snakes lived on through the ages.

Harry sighed deeply, closed the tome, and slammed it onto the growing pile of useless books he had already perused. He wanted to find out more about his family, his roots, but the Potters hadn't been important enough to be mentioned in any history books, and the story of the Slytherins seemed to start and end with Salazar – who, having died about a thousand years ago and all, couldn't really be considered a close relative.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?" Harry jumped to his feet and hurried to open the door for Al. The old man had been at the clearing today to pick up a package, and the long walk had clearly worn him out. He limped severely as he made his way through the door and towards his bedroom.

"Come along. I don't want to wait any longer. That bloody knee's been bothering me long enough."

"Um, what? You want to do it now?" Harry asked, overcome with panic. "I really think I should practice some more, what if I-"

"You've been practicing vanishing bones on animals for two weeks straight now. I'm sure you'll do fine. Otherwise, I'd never let you near my knee."

Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and followed Al to his room. He hesitated at the threshold.

"Come on in," said Al. "It's not like you're in here for the first time."

Slowly Harry walked inside. The room hadn't changed at all since he'd last been here. The walls were still as richly green as the woods, and there were still the same people smiling – or in most cases frowning – at him from the picture frames.

The odd, old-looking letters on the banner hanging above the bed and beneath the silver snake – Slytherin House's emblem he knew by now – caught his eye. He still didn't understand a word.

"What's written on there?" he asked, gesturing towards the banner.

For a moment, Al looked surprised. "Sometimes I forget how young you are, how much times have changed. In my day, everybody recognised this."

"Well… it's not my fault you're as old as dirt, Al." Harry grinned.

"Watch your tongue, young man," Al grumbled good-naturedly.

"So… what does it say?" Harry asked again.

Al looked at the banner silently – there was something longing, mournful in his gaze. When almost a minute had gone by, Harry was starting to feel uncomfortable, wondering how he'd managed to ask just the wrong question once again. It seemed he really had a talent for that.

"I walk past this every day," Al said, speaking slowly as if still lost in thoughts, "but I never really see it anymore." He jerked his eyes away from the banner and cleared his throat loudly. "In any case, the sentence is written in old German letters. It says 'Für das Größere Wohl'."

Harry raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.

"It means 'For the Greater Good', and this line marks an important time in our history," Al explained, "but my old books are too outdated to cover it. I never thought I'd return to the Wizarding World, and didn't really want to keep up with what's happening there, but you… Maybe it's time we order some new history books for you. Who knows what happened since then. For all I know, there isn't even a Wizarding Britain anymore," Al joked, but Harry didn't laugh.

His thoughts still circled around the words on the banner. What did they refer to? What was the Greater Good? Whose Greater Good? And why did Al put them up above his bed?

"Soo… For the Greater Good… I guess there's a story behind this?" Harry asked.

"Yes." Al sat down slowly, obviously trying to avoid putting too much weight on his injured knee. "But one for another day," he said through clenched teeth, his face distorted in pain. "Right now I want to concentrate on fixing my bloody knee."

Al pushed his robes aside, so that Harry had a good view of his knee, and fixed Harry with impatient eyes.

"Don't stare at me," said Harry. "It makes me nervous when you stare, and when I'm nervous I can't concentrate, and then I make mistakes and-"

"Harry?" Al interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up and get to it."

Harry narrowed his eyes at Al for a split second but didn't say anything. Al was right. He was in pain and Harry had a job to do. Talking wouldn't calm him down or help otherwise. He concentrated on the knee, imagined the bones he wanted to make disappear, conjured their image before his mind's eye; then finally he lifted his wand and uttered the spell.

Al cried out in surprise and immediately started feeling his knees. Where the kneecap should be, his fingers sank into the soft flesh as if it were jelly. Harry's stomach turned at the sight.

"Oh fuck… I vanished too much, didn't I? Shit! I'm so sorry Al!"

"Calm down. There's a reason Mediwizards have to go through special training before they start practicing. Given the circumstances, you did rather well. I have enough Skele-Gro to regrow the kneecap too."

"But it will hurt even more…"

"Like a bitch," Al agreed. "But I've gone through worse. Now hand me the package and then out with you. You don't need to see me like this."

.

Al had locked the door to his room, but Harry could still hear the old man groaning in pain. He'd paced up and down the floor before Al's bedroom door for several minutes, asking repeatedly if there was anything he could do, but Al didn't want any more help.

So after spending a tedious half-hour listening to Al in pain, Harry had decided it was best if he just left the house for a while.

He didn't watch where he was going, and in the end found himself at the edge of the forest, overlooking the smoking chimneys of the houses in the village below. His eyes automatically sought out the part of the village most familiar to him, the part where Courtney lived. He hadn't seen her in months, almost a year.

If he could only turn back time, stop himself from going to her house that night, and undo the whole incident.

But maybe it was better this way. If he hadn't gone there that night, then he would still believe that she loved him.

He slowly walked down the dirt road that led into the village but stopped before he was too close and sat down on the damp ground.

Cold crept up his body, but he wasn't in the mood for a warming charm. He wasn't in the mood for anything, to be honest. Al, the only person he knew and trusted, maybe even loved, was back home enduring a painful healing process he only had to go through because Harry had injured him during one of their mock fights.

The second person he had once trusted and loved was—

"Harry?"

-talking to him in his mind. Great. It seemed his secluded lifestyle was finally catching up with him. He was going crazy.

"Harry?" A hand touched his shoulder softly. Quick as a snake, his reflexes honed by hunting and his fights with Al, Harry grabbed it and stood.

Even though he had recognised her voice the moment he heard it, he was still surprised to find himself face to face with his old love. The touch of her hand, warm and familiar, convinced him that she was real, not a figment of his imagination.

It seemed his sanity hadn't taken a leave of absence just yet.

"Courtney," he said her name hoarsely. He tried to fight against the onslaught of emotions, tried to remind himself of what she had done – or not done, as was the case – but his efforts were futile. Unbidden images of their time together, of running through the woods during the summer, of the delight in her eyes when he had shown her the deer, of her soft laugh when he tickled her, invaded his mind.

"I- I thought you had… um, you know…" she said in a small voice. She looked thinner than he remembered. Her face was gaunt, and her skin too pale, nearly translucent.

"You thought I was dead?" Harry said, the words coming out softer than he intended. Damn it. He was angry with her. Furious! He'd never wanted to see her again.

But the way she looked standing there, so vulnerable and innocent…

Tears filled her eyes. "Yeah, I mean Rob… he… I mean, how?"

"Got lucky, I guess."

"I'm sorry," she said.

For some reason, these words were the first thing that irritated Harry about their encounter. She was sorry? Sorry? Well too bad. He wouldn't give her absolution.

"Rob is gone," she continued when the silence became too heavy in the air.

Harry nodded.

His lack of reaction seemed to trigger something in her. She narrowed her eyes at him. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

For the tiniest moment, Harry hesitated. Courtney immediately took a step back, her mouth wide open, her eyes horrified. "Oh my god. You did something to him, didn't you?"

"Of course not." Harry tried to sound convincing. He needed to steer this conservation away from Rob. Talk about something else… Anything. Sadly, his mind came up blank. "So, um, how have you been?" Harry asked, internally cringing at his weak attempt.

It seemed Courtney didn't even register that he had asked a question.

"Oh my god, oh my god…" She was breathing faster, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

"You are lying, I can tell. You always look down when you're lying. Oh my freaking god." Her tears started flowing faster, leaving mascara-streaked tracks running down her cheeks.

"Oh my god."

Suddenly Courtney took a step closer and started pounding his chest with small fists.

"You-" she breathed between sobs,

"want to know-"

Thump. Her fist collided against his chest once more.

"How I've been?"

Thump.

"Miserable. Fucking miserable, Harry!"

Thump, thump.

"My life is a nightmare!"

Thump.

"My mother lost the house."

Thump.

"My brother is gone."

Thump.

"You're gone."

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Courtney broke down like a marionette whose strings were cut. It was as if all her power had gone into her blows, and now she was left with nothing, not even enough strength to keep her body upright. Harry had never felt so out of his debt. With Al, with hunting, with fighting, things were simple, but here, now? What the hell was he supposed to do?

"I wish I'd never met you," Courtney sobbed.

Harry didn't say anything. Sometimes he wished the same, it would probably have been for the better. He wouldn't have become a murderer and she would still have a family.

They sat in silence for an eternity. By the time Courtney's tears had dried up and she slowly began to pick herself up, the sun had almost disappeared behind the horizon.

She walked away without another word, only turned around when there was quite a big distance between them.

"You better run, Harry," she said, her voice eerily flat, emotionless. "Because you won't get away with it. The police will be looking for you."

As soon as the last word had left her lips, she turned around and ran into the darkness.

For a moment Harry was frozen in shock. Then he stood and followed her as fast as he could. His wand had slipped into his hand without him noticing.

"Lumos," Harry said.

The warm light of his wand illuminated the night. He could see her again. She was running towards the village, getting closer to it by the second, but he could still catch up with her. Hopefully.

"Stupefy." A red beam of light left Harry's wand, but missed its target, hitting a nearby tree instead. Fuck. It was hard to run and take aim simultaneously. Especially as Courtney seemed to have realized that he was shooting something at her and started swaying from side to side, while still keeping up her impressive speed.

"Stupefy." Harry tried again and again, and finally, on the sixth try, when he'd almost abandoned all hope, the spell hit her in the back.

Harry flinched when she fell down flat on the ground. Hopefully, she hadn't broken any bones.

He immediately realised how ridiculous that very thought was. She was threatening to expose him. Whatever he was about to do to her, it would probably be more harmful than a broken bone.

He sat down next to her and stroked her soft hair. It felt just like he remembered.

"Fuck."

He couldn't take her to Al. Al would insist on killing her. The old man would never allow someone who could and wanted to bring attention to Harry, and by extension, him, to live.

Harry looked down at her familiar face. The skin around her eyes was reddened from crying, and even in her stupefied state, there was hopelessness edged into her features.

It really would have been better for her had they never met.

At this thought, an idea came to Harry. It was so simple, so obvious… How come he hadn't thought of it sooner?

He would perform a memory charm on her.

He would make her forget all about him. About the good and the bad times, and then it would be as if she had never met him. Sure, Rob would still be gone, but the guy had been a useless scumbag anyway. Courtney was better off without him, even if she didn't realise that yet.

He'd tried the memory charm only a few times so far, and only on animals. But it couldn't be that hard to perform on a human, could it?

He pointed his wand at her. "Obliviate."

Her memories lay before him like an open book. At first, Harry wanted to erase all memories of his existence, but he soon realised that they were too numerous and too defining. If he took all her memories of their time together away, he would erase part of her personality too, and maybe damage her mind irreparably.

In the end, he settled for simply erasing any memory she had of his face and appearance. He put another face in the place of his, one belonging to some guy he remembered from his trip to London.

He altered her memory of the night Rob tried to kill him as much as possible. Now she'd simply think her boyfriend hadn't shown up and her brother had disappeared. Still depressing, still a lot to deal with, but better than the guilt of standing aside and letting her brother kill her boyfriend.

The moon shone brightly by the time Harry reached the last memory and erased every last detail of their meeting this night.

"Imperio." For the second time in his life, Harry felt a human mind submit to his will. It still took more effort and control, but it was doable.

"Ennervate."

Courtney opened her eyes, looking ahead unfocused.

"Stand up," Harry said, and Courtney did as she was told without hesitation.

Harry leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on her cheek.

"Go straight home," he said and she turned around and started walking away. "And be happy," he added in a whisper. She was still his first girlfriend, still the first person he'd known he loved.

Only one of them would get to remember their good-bye, and as Harry watched her disappear into the darkness, he desperately wished it weren't him.

Chapter Text

December 1996

"Sure you haven't heard anything?" Sirius pressed his wand against the old man's throat. He looked just like any other beggar on the streets of Knockturn Alley, dressed in thin rags that offered no protection against the biting cold wind.

"No, no, nothing," the wizard repeated, holding up both hands. His thin hair, damp with sleet, stuck to his skull, making his ears seem abnormally large and his head too small; his muddy green eyes were wide and pleading. He made for a truly miserable picture, but Sirius wasn't misled by his appearance. This man was one of the best-connected to roam the streets of Wizarding London. He was a well of knowledge; every secret made its way to his ears, every rumour, even when whispered behind closed doors, eventually found him.

"Think again," Sirius said. "I'll make it worth your while." With his free hand – the one that wasn't holding the man at wand point – Sirius reached into his coat pocket and took out a bag full of coins.

The man followed the bag with greedy eyes and licked his lips nervously.

Bingo.

"Let me feel it," he demanded.

Sirius gripped the bag securely, lowered it into the man's hand, and allowed him to feel its weight and the shape of the coins.

"Twenty Galleons. Quite a lot for what I'm asking."

"Not enough, if you-" the man started to say, but Sirius cut him off by digging his wand deeper into the soft spot between his collarbones. The man started coughing, but only when his face was turning red did Sirius release the pressure.

"Want to start over?"

The old man glared at him. "As I was about to say-" he cleared his throat, probably to get rid of the scratchiness lingering in his voice "-the information you seek is connected to certain individuals, which makes it worth a lot more than twenty Galleons… But," he continued at Sirius thunderous expression, "I'll make an exception for you, Mister Black. Twenty Galleons will do."

He paused for dramatic effect. Sirius rolled his eyes. "Get on with it."

"Alright, alright. Patience is a virtue, you know?"

"Start talking," Sirius said through gritted teeth.

"Um, well, a few months ago, shortly after Mr. Potter's little trip to Diagon, a man came down here. Started asking all sorts of questions. If anybody had seen the boy before, if anybody knew where to find him, and-"

the man paused again, then smirked

"-if anybody knew where to find another, certain individual. It seems he believes this individual to be connected to the boy and the key to finding Mr. Potter. He never mentioned Mr. Potter by name, but it was obvious who he was talking about."

"So, who was asking the questions? And whom was he asking about?" Sirius pressed on. He could barely believe it. After all this time looking, after searching for Harry high and low, after questioning every street rat he came across, he was finally getting closer.

"No, no." Snow crunched under his heavy boots, as the man quickly took a step to the side. All of a sudden the wand Sirius had taken off him at the start of their encounter was back in his hand, pointed at Sirius.

When Sirius stared at him in shock, the man started laughing. "I might be old, but I'm more than fit. How do you reckon I protect this pretty little head of mine, full of secrets as it is?" he said, tapping a crooked finger against his temple. "It's been fun so far, Mr. Black, but let's get to business."

Sirius knew when to admit defeat and grudgingly lowered his wand; the old man did the same.

"Twenty Galleons will only buy you one name. Either that of the man who asked the questions or that of the individual he was asking about."

"And what will the second name cost me?"

"Another twenty, I'm afraid. That's some rather sensitive information you're after."

"Ten."

"Twenty. Take it or leave it."

"Fine," Sirius ground out and retrieved the second bag of money from his coat pocket. Money wasn't really a problem anyway, but he detested being outmaneuvered.

"You came prepared, I see." The satisfied smile plastered across the other man's face made Sirius wonder if he had somehow known that forty Galleons was the exact amount Sirius carried with him today.

"Of course. I suspected you might need some convincing."

"Then let's not dally any longer. Mr. Malfoy was the one asking the questions-"

"Malfoy?" Sirius' blood ran cold. That bastard was never up to anything good. If he was looking for Harry…

"-and Mr. Black was the person he was looking for."

"What? He was looking for me?" Sirius asked surprised. Why would Malfoy be looking for him? He knew where to find him. And why would he think that Sirius had anything to do with Harry's disappearance?

"Oh no, not you-" the old beggar was grinning from ear to ear, his deeply wrinkled face unpleasantly reminding Sirius of his family's old house-elf Kreacher "-he was asking about your Uncle, Alphard Black."

"Alphard Black has been dead for years."

"Be that as it may-" The old man waved his wand and the two bags of coins wiggled out of Sirius' grasp, landed on the snowy street with a dumb thump, and jumped right into the pockets of his tattered cloak "-but that's who he was looking for. I'm never mistaken. It was a pleasure doing business with you."

He turned, took a step into an adjourning alley, and Disapparated with a loud crack, leaving Sirius standing in the last light of dawn, his head brimming with even more unanswered questions than before.

.

February 1997

Harry was sitting high above the ground on a gnarled branch of an old tree. His breath came out in white puffy clouds, and his fingers were stiff from the cold, even though he applied warming charms every so often. He was on high alert, keeping a close eye on the wintery landscape unfolding beneath him.

Flap-flap… Flap-flap…

The sound of bird wings in motion had him turning around just in time. A black crow was flying at him at high speed; its talons poised threateningly, its beak white open in a battle cry.

Caw-caw…

His wand already in hand, Harry pointed it at the bird as fast as he could, a curse leaving his lips just in time. He hit the bird right in the chest. It squeaked as if surprised, fluttered its wings one last time, and then finally gave up, allowing gravity to take over. It made hardly a sound when it hit the ground, the thick snow mantle swallowing most of the noise.

"Number nine," Harry murmured and returned to his previous position. Now there was only one animal left – a squirrel if his memory served right.

He waited and waited, but the animal didn't show. When the sun started to descend, bathing the snow-covered treetops in a soft orange glow, Harry resigned and climbed back down.

Maybe something had gone wrong? Maybe he hadn't cast the curse well enough or--

Without warning, something small and furry jumped at him. Its sharp claws dug through his clothes, scratching his chest raw. Harry instinctively took a step back, but of course, that didn't help, not when that thing was attached to him so firmly. He grabbed it by its neck, trying to rip it off him, but the little bugger twisted its head and bit his finger.

Harry quickly removed his hand and reached for his wand.

In the meanwhile, the animal climbed up further. Harry could feel its tiny claws digging into the sensitive skin of his neck. If he didn't hurry he was sure he'd get to feel its sharp teeth a second time too.

He pointed the wand at the animal and consequently himself, and hoped the little bastard would hold still long enough to aim at it. If he hit himself instead… well, he'd probably end up as squirrel dinner.

"Petrificus Totalus."

The animal froze. Harry breathed a sigh of relief, plugged the animal off his neck, and dropped it into the snow. It looked funny, frozen in its position as it was - its tiny muzzle wide open, teeth bared, its legs pointing towards the sky.

He shook his head and aimed a severing charm at its neck. On his way home, he started healing the scratches the squirrel had left behind on his neck and hands. He was almost done when he reached the hut.

Al was sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book.

"Make sure you don't drag any snow inside," he said without looking up.

Harry rolled his eyes – secure in the knowledge that Al wasn't looking – and started applying drying charms to his clothes.

"You don't always have to tell me that, you know. I don't think I ever-"

"Remember that day you dragged in so much snow it nearly flooded the kitchen when it melted?" Al said, finally looking up with raised eyebrows.

Harry grinned. "Yeah, but that wasn't an accident, was it? I wanted to build an igloo."

"Inside the house, next to the fireplace."

"Well, it was rather cold outside that day," Harry said, "and that was years ago Al. I was, what? Twelve? And I thought I'd found a spell to stop snow from melting. Of course, I wanted to try it out."

"Of course," Al said. He tried to sound annoyed, but Harry saw the humour and warmth in his eyes.

"So what did you get up to tod-" Al stopped when Harry pulled his shirt over his head to heal the scratches on his upper body

The lines around Al's eyes crinkled, and Harry knew the old man was moments away from bursting into laughter.

"So… um, what got you this time? A sparrow? Or maybe a rabbit?"

"Squiwwl", Harry muttered under his breath, his face turning red.

"What?" Al said, enjoying the situation way too much. "I didn't quite get that."

"A squirrel."

For a moment Al stared at him disbelievingly, but then he started to laugh. "If I," he said between bouts of laughter, "only had a Pensive… Oh Merlin, what wouldn't I give to see that. Harry Potter and the Big Bad Squirrel."

"It was an especially tricky one," Harry defended himself. "When I Imperiused the animals to attack me, I tried to make them be more careful, stay hidden until I turn my back to them, stuff like that. It seems to have worked well. Which is a success too, I think."

"Yes, yes," Al agreed. "You're really getting a handle on the Imperius Curse. It's not like I don't approve of this hobby of yours. Sharpens your reflexes, teaches you to stay alert… but to imagine-" Al laughed again "-too funny."

"And you'll never get to see it." Harry stuck his tongue out at Al and took a seat opposite him. "You got a letter?" He nodded towards the envelope on the table.

"Yeah. Another job," Al said. "Lucius Malfoy again, the wizard you met last time."

"Condescending twat."

"Old purebloods, the Malfoys. Thinking too much of oneself is like a birth defect in that family. They can't help it."

"Yeah well… He sure didn't try. So, what's the job?"

"Not sure yet. But apparently, it's a bigger one, and Malfoy suggested that I bring you along to help me. What do you think?"

There was no question about it for Harry, if Al needed his help, then he would of course accompany him. But well… that didn't mean he couldn't get something else out of this.

"Well," he said, pretending to think about it, "can I visit Diagon Alley afterward?"

"Don't see why not."

"Then I'm in." Harry grinned. Since it was him who had ultimately finished the job last time, Al had insisted on Harry keeping the payment. Apparently, contract killings paid quite well. If he remembered the prices correctly, then he should have enough money to buy one of the brooms at the Quidditch Shop. He could hardly wait for the day to arrive. He would finally get to fly.

.

March 13th, 1997

"Harry!" Al bellowed. "Hurry up, the Portkey activates in two hours, and the clearing hasn't moved any closer since last time."

"I'm coming, I'm coming." Harry ran towards Al, tying his shoes with a flick of his wand as he went.

As always, the woods were a peaceful place. The snow had started melting long ago, but the undergrowth was still sprinkled with small flecks of white here and there. They reached the clearing just in time for the Portkey to take them away.

"The job today starts earlier than last time," Al said, stepping through the door of the London apartment. "Don't get too comfortable, we're just here to retrieve the target's address."

In contrast to last time, Al had no problem descending the stairs. Harry knew he was still in pain – Al believed there was something wrong with the tendons that the scele-gro potion had not been able to heal – but it didn't seem to be unbearable anymore. They once again hailed a taxi to take them to their destination. Al took out the letter from the apartment, his worry lines deepening as he read on. "Can you cast a privacy charm?"

Harry nodded, flicking his wand.

"HELLO!" Al shouted.

Harry nearly jumped out of his seat. "What the--"

"Just checking," Al said, nodding towards the driver. "Your silent casting has improved impressively. Now, about today. We're only supposed to intimidate the target. According to Malfoy, the guy is highly trained in some muggle martial arts, loves those muggle bullet weapons, and has no qualms using them. He's so dangerous that Malfoy thought it better if I didn't go alone, and that never happened before. If we lose control of the situation and this man in any way tries to harm you, don't try to be smart about it, just use your magic, understand?"

"But if I use magic and the Ministry or Malfoy gets wind of it, won't that damage your business?"

"I have been working this job for a long time, I won't mind retiring a bit early."

Harry knew that was a lie. The packages they received from someone in the Wizarding World, the money Al saved for when he was too old to work - it was all tied to this job. Without it, Al would be stuck in the woods with no contact with the outside world.

"You sure? I'm quite good at fistfights too, if you remember." Harry tried for a cheeky grin, but it fell flat.

"If that guy is as dangerous as Malfoy says, you won't stand a chance. Just keep your wand at the ready."

The taxi stopped in a quaint-looking neighbourhood. Middle-class homes stood in a row on each side of the street, their front gardens showing off neatly trimmed bushes and identical flowerbeds.

A shudder went through Harry. This reminded him way too much of the Dursleys' home.

"Everything alright?" Al asked.

"Yeah, just… a bad memory."

Al laid an arm around Harry's shoulder. He didn't press Harry for more information – he never did – but the gesture of support was all Harry needed to shake the bad feeling.

"So, don't tell me our exceptionally dangerous mystery man lives here," Harry said, trying to encompass the whole ordinariness spread out before them with a sweeping motion of his arm.

"Nah," Al said. "We'll walk there. Didn't want the taxi to drop us off right in front of the house, if something goes wrong it wouldn't do to make us prime suspects. Having wanted posters with your face on it plastered all over town isn't as glamorous as it sounds."

They stopped at a crossroad. Al turned left, then right, but both streets looked exactly the same, just like the one they'd just walked through. He grumbled something under his breath and retrieved Malfoy's letter from his coat pocket.

He glanced at the street names to both sides, back at the letter, and then led Harry straight ahead.

"That's the problem with muggles, you know," he said. "They lack fantasy, any spark of individualism. A wizard would shrivel and die in an environment like this, but they feel right at home, perched together like the sheep they are." At the next intersection, they turned left. The distance between the streetlamps grew bigger, and the terraced houses made way for larger mansions.

Al stopped in front of an imposing three-story building surrounded by an iron-wrought fence with pointy finials. The gate was locked but swung open without a sound once Al was done with it.

"From now on, no magic until strictly necessary," Al whispered and signaled Harry to follow him down the pebble-stone path. Every step they took made a squelching noise that seemed obnoxiously loud in the silence of the evening, and Harry wished he could cast a silencing charm. Alas, it was not to be.

No light shone from behind any of the high arched windows, there was no car in the parking spot, and the garden was wild and overgrown, though it looked like it had once been well cared for. If Al didn't insist that their information was reliable, Harry would have thought the house abandoned.

The lock on the front door was easily dealt with, too easily, a tiny voice at the back of his head whispered, but Harry didn't have time to ponder that thought. Al was holding the door open, urging Harry to come inside.

They stepped onto a dark red carpet and followed it down a long hallway. The walls were decorated with rather eerie-looking oil paintings of richly dressed men and women. Bathed in the silvery glow of the moonlight falling in through the windows, the paintings' inhabitants looked almost alive.

Harry could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on end; there was something off about this place.

"Al," he said softly, almost inaudibly, tugging the man's sleeve.  Al turned slightly and made a shushing motion with one hand while pointing at the closed door at the end of the hallway with the other.

Dull light was filtering under the door, beckoning them to come closer. They moved forward, the thick carpet muffling the sound of their footsteps and as one held their breath when, for a short moment, a shadow broke the light.

There was definitely someone on the other side of that door, moving around, maybe pacing up and down the room.

When they reached the door Al turned back, resting a comforting hand on Harry's shoulder, looking at him questioningly. He knew Al was giving him a last chance to back out, to turn around and wait outside, and even though he would have loved to do just that, Harry nodded reassuringly. This house was giving him the creeps; he sure as hell wouldn't leave Al all alone.

Al pressed the door handle down, pushed the door open, and stepped into the room, closely followed by Harry. Both of them had their knives in hand, prepared to deal with any threat they might encounter - only there wasn't anybody.

The room was large and airy, and obviously used as an office, but apart from a large desk, an office chair, a fully stacked bookshelf, and an impressive layer of dust, it was empty.

But they had seen the shadow of someone walking, hadn't they?

His instincts were screaming at Harry that something was completely, utterly wrong.

Then he heard a noise.

Only the rigorous training Harry had subjected himself to over the last few months allowed him to turn around in time to dodge a beam of light aimed at his back.

"Al!" Harry shouted, grabbing him by his arm and dragging the older wizard down with him.

The man standing in the doorway cut an imposing figure. His black cloak did nothing to hide his broad frame, and he had a crazy glint in his eyes that made a shudder run down Harry's spine.

This man was dangerous, no doubt about it.

The man stepped fully into the room, shooting a curse at Harry as he went. Harry summoned the office chair in its path, and at the same time followed after Al to take shelter behind the desk.

The man grinned at them, slowly licking his yellowed teeth. "And here I was afraid this would be boring."

Another curse shot at them but was deflected by Harry's hastily raised shield. The next one was directed at Al. Without waiting for the result Harry returned fire.

"Bombarda."

With a lazy flick of the other wizard's wand, the spell was batted aside.

"Stupefy! Bombarda!"

"Malfoy!" Al shouted beside him, and Harry's attention snapped to the man who had just entered the room. For a moment Harry hoped that the wizard had arrived to help them, but when he came to a stop next to the other man, Harry realised with growing horror that they had to fight their way past not only one, but two wizards.

"Good evening Alphard, Harry," he said pleasantly as if they were meeting for tea - as if he hadn't lured them into a trap.

"I'm afraid we're on a tight schedule," he said without averting his eyes from Harry. "Let me worry about the boy, you take care of Mr. Black."

Harry had heard enough.

"Avis," Harry cast, hoping the flock of birds would distract the two wizards. "Redactum Skullus." He was done kidding around. "Reducto."

"Try to get out of here," Al said.

"Not without y-"

"If you get the chance, you run!" A curse aimed at Al's head cut their conversation short. His face distorted by rage, Al hurled both his charmed knives at the wizard.

The birds Harry had conjured burst into flames.

Besides him, Al jumped to the right, and the bookshelf behind him was hit with a curse and went up in flames.

Harry wanted to help Al, but he had hardly time to breathe. Now that the birds were out of the way, Malfoy was making ground fast – curses left his wand faster than Harry could blink.

"Secate!" Harry cried, dearly hoping the dark cutting curse would meet its target. Malfoy avoided the curse by a hair's breadth, and Harry angrily banished the heavy desk against the other wizard.

Midway through the room, the desk started to crumble, and by the time it reached Malfoy, it was nothing more than wood flour.

A volley of spells forced Harry to defend, rather than attack.

"Protego," he shouted; out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Al go down.

Blood, so much blood. It was pouring out of multiple wounds on Al's neck, arms, and upper body, drenching his clothes and the carpet beneath him.

"Al," Harry shouted. He wanted to rush over and heal him before it was too late, but first, he had to deal with the wizards-- He turned to them, a curse on his lips-- He was hit. The grip on his wand slipped… he heard it clatter to the floor… then everything went dark.

Chapter Text

The first thing he noticed upon waking was the smell of burnt wood. He tried to raise his hand to cover his mouth and nose only to find that he couldn’t move.  He was bound. Tight ropes were digging into his flesh.

Careful not to attract any attention, Harry slowly opened his eyes. He was surrounded by tombstones, rows upon rows of tombstones darkly silhouetted against the setting sun. A shiver went through him. If all the books he’d devoured in quiet moments had taught him anything, then that nothing good ever happened in graveyards - especially after sunset.

Far more alarming than the general scenery, however, was the oversized cauldron atop a crackling fire, and the plush armchair next to it, where an ugly toddler with an oversized head was sitting wrapped in blankets.

Was this some kind of joke? No… Al would never…

Al.

The blood… Al falling... No…

“Our guest is awake,” a too-high, too-thin voice said coldly.

Harry’s eyes snapped to the- the thing, that didn’t seem to be a toddler after all, but something else entirely. When their eyes met, Harry’s scar, the one he hadn’t paid a second thought to in years, exploded with pain. It was agony, worse than splitting his head open, worse than drowning-- worse than anything he had ever experienced. The pain reached a crescendo, bile clawed up his throat and he threw up, soiling his robes. 

“Hurry!”

Out of the corner of his eyes – he didn’t dare look at the creature again, even as the pain was ebbing away – Harry saw a tall man bustling about the cauldron. The liquid inside was simmering, emitting thick steam and fiery sparks.

“It is ready for you, Master,” the man said reverently. As he picked it up, the blankets fell away, revealing a truly hideous body. It had black, scaly skin, bony arms and legs, and every rib visible on its emaciated body.

Horror struck, Harry watched as the man carefully almost lovingly lowered the thing into the cauldron, where it vanished beneath the surface.

“Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!” the man cried, and the stone to Harry’s feet cracked with a thundering noise. From the gap, a swirl of grey dust rose and floated towards the cauldron. When it touched the surface, sparks flew into the air, and the Potion turned a luminous blue.

Next, the man pushed back the sleeve of his left arm, and with a smile on his lips, held it over the cauldron.

“Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your Master,” he said reverentially, and then – Harry didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t look away either – he raised a long, silver dagger and cut off his own fucking hand. His scream of anguish pierced the air, but the expression on his face-- it was pure bliss.

This was some next-level crazy.

Harry pulled against his restraints as hard as he could, and when they didn’t budge harder still. He had to get away from here right now.

But it was too late. The man, his bleeding stump now wrapped in the abandoned blanket, walked towards Harry.

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead. First bones, then flesh, what was next? What did they need him for? His heart maybe… a healthy, young heart…

He didn’t want to die. He really, really didn’t want to die. He struggled, tried once more to free himself, but in vain.

“I will kill you,” Harry whispered, trying to put every detail of the other’s face, every single freckle, to memory.

He didn’t get an answer, but curiously enough the other wizard returned the inspection, even raised his remaining hand and let it hover above Harry’s cheek, almost but not quite touching him.

Then he pulled out the dagger, and a manic grin split his face.

He dragged the pointed tip of the dagger from the crook of Harry’s arm halfway down to his hand. The pain felt like a dull echo, compared to what he had experienced earlier, but Harry had to grit his teeth to stop himself from crying out nevertheless.

The dagger hit the ground with a dull thud, and Harry watched as the wizard retrieved a small glass vial, held it next to Harry’s arm, and filled it to the brim with his blood.

The vial in hand, the wizard walked back to the cauldron, his steps slow and deliberate, yet his body shaking with excitement.

“Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe!” he cried, before emptying the vial into the cauldron.

The liquid within started to shine in a brilliant white. The cauldron began to vibrate, and sparks of light flew in every direction.

Then, as if someone had turned a switch, all light was gone, and a tall and naked creature stood where before had only been the simmering potion.

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see this. This was not happening. It wasn’t real. It was--

“Robe me.”

Harry recognised the voice from before. It had belonged to the toddler-thing. His eyes opened of their own accord, just in time to see the servant pick up black robes from the ground, mumbling reverentially while he clothed the creature.

Its long, spindly fingers smoothed down the robes, then slowly moved up its arms to its face, as if it was getting to know its body, examining if everything was in order. Finally, it reached into the pockets of its robes and drew out a wand.

“Barty,” it said quietly, and the wizard, who had been following the procedure, eyes alight with joy, fell to his knees in front of it.

“My most faithful,” the creature said. “Hold out your arm.”

“My Lord,” Barty breathed, and held out his good arm, and the creature – the Lord - pulled back his sleeve, exposing the vivid red tattoo of a skull.

*“It is back,” the Lord said softly, “they will all have noticed it… and now, we shall see… now we shall know …”

He pressed his long white forefinger to the brand on Barty’s arm. A sharp pain seared through Harry’s scar. When the Lord lifted his finger, Harry saw the tattoo turn pitch black.

“How many will be brave enough to return when they feel it?” it – he – whispered. “And how many will be foolish enough to stay away?”

In Harry’s mind, staying away from all this was the only sane thing anyone could do.

The Lord turned back to the wizard, still kneeling in the dirt to his feet.

“Now your other arm, Barty.”

“Oh, thank you, my Lord. You are too good, too grand,” the wizard whimpered, and with his good hand pulled the blanket off his wounded arm, exposing the bleeding stump.

Harry’s stomach revolted.

The Lord raised his wand, drawing small circles in the air until what looked like a small, silvery marble fell from its tip. It hovered above Barty’s head, vibrating and expanding, writhing and stretching, taking on the form of a silvery, human hand, that soared downward and fixed itself upon Barty’s bleeding wrist.

“My Lord, thank you. It is magnificent.”

The creature nodded benevolently. “May you always remain my most faithful, my most devoted.”

“Always,” Barty breathed, and Harry thought for a moment he saw tears of gratitude shimmering in the corners of Barty’s eyes - which would be all kinds of fucked up. Then again, what about this scene wasn’t?

They had ignored him for so long, that Harry had dared to hope – albeit feebly – that his part in today’s events was done, that maybe they would just let him go.

(Thanks for your blood, you seem to be a little weak on your feet, should we perhaps call you a taxi?)

Harry chased away the ludicrous thought. Sweet Merlin. The madness was contagious.

As if aware of Harry’s wandering mind, the Lord for the first time turned towards him. “Harry Potter,” he said, savoring every syllable. “So we meet again. You are quite the elusive young man, almost impossible to track down, or so my servants would have me believe. But of course, I would not have done this without you. One only gets so many fated enemies, after all.”

Harry, who could neither remember meeting the Lord before nor recall being anybody’s fated enemy, did not get a chance to ask the creature to elaborate, because right then the silence in the graveyard was disturbed by a string of loud cracks as wizard after wizard, a good two dozen at least, appeared between the gravestones.

They wore white masks and had the hoods of their robes drawn up over their heads.

“Master, master,” they murmured, shuffling closer until they were standing in a semicircle in front of Harry and their Lord.  

The Lord remained silent, his vivid red eyes moving over them, and a shudder of unease went through the crowd, until one of the wizards – Malfoy, Harry thought, recognising his long blond hair – fell to his knees, crawled towards the Lord and kissed the hem of his black robes. Soon, the others followed his example, and only when the last wizard had returned to his place in the circle, did the Lord deign to speak again, of his disappointment in his followers, who had not come looking for him, his half-life as a specter, possessing animals and humans alike…

As he listened, a bone-deep horror took hold of Harry, because everything he had learned over the last couple of years, from Al and his books, told him that nothing about this was normal or natural, even by magical standards.

“I had almost given up hope,” the Lord said, his words dripping with accusation, “when at last a faithful servant returned to me.” He turned towards Barty, gesturing with one long, pale finger for the wizard to step forth. “Guided only by rumours, he succeeded where none of you even tried: He found me, in the woods of Albania, and took upon himself the task to see me return to a body.

His loyalty shall not be forgotten.”

“It was my honour, Master, my duty.”

“Your duty, indeed.”

Another shudder went through the crowd, and Harry had the feeling he wasn’t alone in his wish to be anywhere but here.

“Of course, there is one more person, that we have to thank for making Lord Voldemort’s return a reality: Our guest of honour, Harry Potter.”

Guest of honour, was he?

“The mere rumours of my continued existence chased him from the Wizarding World, drove him to spend his life secluded, hidden away… Not that it did him much good. Let his example be a reminder to you all: You cannot run and you cannot hide. Lord Voldemort will find you, wherever you are.”

This still left the, in Harry’s opinion rather pertinent question, why Lord Voldemort had even wanted to find him in the first place.

“Now, after all these years,” Lord Voldemort continued, “the day has finally come to show the world that nothing and nobody can stand against Lord Voldemort. That Harry Potter is not a saviour, but simply a lucky child.”

Saviour?

Harry didn’t have time to ponder the choice of words, for when Lord Voldemort continued to speak the blood froze in his veins:

“And to prove this to you, I will kill him, here and now, in front of you all, where there is no mother to die for him, nowhere for him to hide. He will be allowed to fight, and you will be left in no doubt which of us is the stronger.”

The ropes restraining Harry loosened and rolled up at his feet. Surprised by the sudden freedom, Harry staggered away from the gravestone, almost fell, but caught himself at the last moment. His legs felt numb and tingly, but he wouldn’t crawl in the dirt to the monster’s feet, not if he could help it.

“Lucius,” Lord Voldemort called softly. “I believe you still have Harry’s wand? Give it to him.”

Malfoy walked towards Harry, his head held high, his grey eyes surveying Harry as emotionlessly as ever. There was no sadness, no mercy, nothing – and Harry was glad for it. Finally, his fear and confusion gave way to an emotion he could work with: hatred.

He snatched his wand from Malfoy’s hand, then whispered, because he couldn’t stomach the idea of dying without knowing, “Where’s Al?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Malfoy said, and Harry was sure there was a mocking smile lurking behind that awful mask. “You’ll be reunited soon enough.”

It was as if someone had dropped a bucket of ice water on him. Harry had expected it, of course, but to hear it uttered so casually--

Malfoy had already turned away and was walking back to his place in the circle, and suddenly Harry knew with clarity, that if he ever wanted to avenge Al, he had to act now because all things considered, he probably wouldn’t live to see another day.

“Secate,” Harry cried, his wand pointed straight at Malfoy. The masked wizards shouted Malfoy whirled around, eyes wide. Someone tried to cancel the curse, but only managed to deflect it… A piercing cry echoed through the graveyard.

One of the masked wizards behind Malfoy sank to his knees in pain. “No,” he cried. “No, no, no.” He was holding on to something small, pale, and very bloody. “My hand! My hand…”

“Calm down, Aldrich,” the wizard next to him said, bending down to him. “We’ll reattach it. Or grow it back.”

“Always the moron, Goyle,” the wounded wizard spat. “Didn’t you hear the incantation? It's gone. For good.”

“Indeed it is,” Voldemort said. “But don’t blame Goyle for his lack of expertise. This is, after all, neither simple nor well-known magic. Which makes it all the more curious that it was the first curse our little saviour here thought to use.”

Voldemort seemed to be almost… delighted?

“I know of course who raised you,” Voldemort continued. “But it has to be said that you exceed expectations. Had nobody intervened… Had the curse met its target as you intended, I dare say Lucius would be half the wizard he used to be.”

And pretty dead, too.

Malfoy gave a strangled cry, but Voldemort ignored him. “Now, we’ve dallied long enough,” the Lord said. “Let us duel before you get the idea to cripple another one of my servants.

And just like that, his short reprieve was over.

Harry gripped his wand tightly. He wasn’t ready to die, he really, really wasn’t, but he had no illusions that he could win a duel against a wizard of Voldemort’s caliber.

“We bow, before we duel, Harry,” Voldemort said, bowing a little, keeping his eyes fixed on Harry, who remained standing upright.

He would not bow to his murderer.

“That won’t do,” Voldemort admonished. He raised his wand, and there was pressure at Harry’s back as if the very air behind him was conspiring against him. Slowly, painfully, his upper body moved downwards. The masked wizards cheered.

“Excellent manners,” the Lord said. “It’s almost a pity you have to die.”

“Then why? Why are you doing this?” Harry shouted, desperate. “You have my blood, why not let me go?”

Voldemort laughed, a cold, high sound. “It’s nothing personal, Harry,” he said. “I am the Dark Lord, and you are their precious saviour. It’s… fate.”

Fate? More like madness.

“I’m nobody’s saviour,” Harry said. “I don’t have anything to do with this.”

A handful of wizards laughed again, but Lord Voldemort shushed them with a sweeping motion of his arm.

He regarded Harry curiously. “You seem to really believe that,” Voldemort said slowly. “Could it be that you truly don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” Harry said, resenting the desperation that was creeping into his voice.

“Some fifteen years ago, give or take a few months, I killed your parents,” Voldemort said. “And then I decided to kill you too. Only, I had not considered that your mother’s sacrifice could provide you with a protection… foolish of me, I admit… so when I turned my wand against you, my own curse backfired… robbing me of a body, and leaving nothing but the scar on your forehead behind on you.”

What?

“But, my parents died in a car accident,” Harry blurted. That was what Petunia and Vernon had told him, about his drunk, good-for-nothing parents, who had wrecked their car and died in the process.

“A car accident? A… muggle death?” The Dark Lord sounded almost insulted. “They died at the hand of the most powerful wizard to ever walk this earth, the hand of Lord Voldemort!”

But why would the Dursleys… Had they known that Harry was a wizard?

He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because all of this was ridiculous and terrifying and unfair and confusing, and--

And he would die today because Lord Voldemort was pissed he hadn’t been able to kill him as a baby.

Apparently, nothing cleared his mind like the threat of impending death. Harry stood a little taller, gripped his wand a little tighter…

“Yes, I agree,” Voldemort said. “The time for words has passed.”

A pale red beam of light sped towards Harry, who promptly flung himself to the left, seeking shelter behind a large stone. A gravestone. How fitting.

“I have no interest in childish games, Harry. Face me, face me and die like a man, like your father. I promise to make it quick.”

Harry’s heartbeat in his ears. He wiped his sweaty palms on his robes and tried to calm his breathing. He could hear the other wizards, their robes rustling in the wind, their whispers…

Hunched over, he snuck to the edge of the gravestone. He aimed his wand at Voldemort, tried to recall everything about the Curse he was going to cast, the intonation, and the pale green light--

“Avada Kedavra.”

Cries of outrage ripped through the crowd of wizards, and hope flared in Harry’s chest, but--

“I see you are done playing too.”

The voice came from behind him. Harry spun around as fast as he could. Voldemort had already raised his wand, his red eyes were narrowed to slits, his lipless mouth opened--

“Avada Kedavra,” they cried in unison. Their spells met mid-air, but instead of canceling each other out, or steering each other off path, instead of whatever else normally happened when two Killing Curses collided, a connection formed between Harry’s and Voldemort’s wands.

Harry’s wand started vibrating, and before he knew what was happening, they were lifted off the ground. Harry saw his own shock reflected in the vivid red eyes of his opponent. It comforted him that Voldemort too had no idea what the hell was going on.

Large beads of light grew out of the thread linking their wands and started sliding up and down the connection, like pearls on a string.

All Harry knew was that he didn’t want to die today, that he wanted to break the connection and run, while Voldemort was still preoccupied. He tried to whip his wand to the right, but it wouldn’t let him. The golden thread remained unbroken, and the glowing beads began to slide in his direction.

His wand quivered angrily, and once more Harry tried to break free, and once more he was denied. His wand grew increasingly hot in his hands, and a bead of light was almost at the tip of his wand, and with sudden clarity, Harry knew that he shouldn’t, that he couldn’t allow it to touch, but the understanding had come too late.

The glowing bead enveloped the tip of his wand, and Harry had the feeling it might burst in his hand any minute, it grew so hot, so angry--

And then it screamed.

Harry had never heard a more heart-wrenching sound.

A smoky replica of a hand – Aldrich’s hand - grew out of the tip of his wand and vanished… A flock of ghostly birds followed, dissolving as soon as the last had broken free from his wand.

It was as if the connection forced his wand to relive its past.

Then something of a darker grey colour, of a more solid, albeit still smoky, appearance was born from the tip of his wand, and with a jolt, Harry recognised it as the squirrel he had killed not too long ago in the woods. More animals followed. A bird, a rabbit, another squirrel, a stag with large antlers…

And none of them showed any inclination of dissolving into thin smoke. Instead, what had legs ran upon the air towards Voldemort taking position behind him, flanking him, and the birds circled above them, from time to time emitting an otherworldly battle cry.

Voldemort surveyed the ever-growing number of animals, a disturbed look crossing his snake-like visage before he turned his attention to Harry.

“This has gone on long enough,” he whispered, and with one strong pull on his wand, the golden thread splintered.

The ghostly animals ran towards Harry, circling him, obscuring his view. The birds shot down on him too, screeching, claws extended…

Harry tried to get away, stumbling backward, but he couldn’t see. He turned around, and an oversized rabbit – no, the ghost of one – jumped at him, its claws sharper, its teeth pointier--

With a swerve to the right, he avoided the animal’s attack-- only to be confronted by the ghostly form of a stag, which was stood next to a gravestone, as if waiting for him. Harry was moving too fast to stop, but tried anyway-- he fell, hitting the ground so hard all air was forced from his lungs.

As he was lying there, a sharp pain shooting through his head, colourful lights dancing before his eyes, the ghosts finally vanished.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Lord Voldemort draw closer, but he saw something else too… something was moving through the grass, gently, smoothly…

Maybe he could use this. He could distract the Lord for a moment and --

And what? Get thirty more seconds to live?

Well, it wasn’t like he had any other options left.

Harry concentrated on the wriggling movements in the grass, imagined the snake he knew to be there, and said, “Attack the man. Bite him. Wrap around him. Squeeze. Bite. Attack. Now.”

Man and snake stilled abruptly. 

“Attack, he says,” the snake repeated. “Attack now.” Regrettably, it didn’t do as it was told.

Lord Voldemort, apparently haven gotten over the shock of hearing Harry make nonsensical hissing noises, walked up the Harry, and knelt down on the ground next to him. Harry’s heart was beating against his ribcage as if it were trying to break free, unwilling to accept that its time had run out. The Lord reached out, and with one of his unnaturally long, pale fingers pushed Harry’s hair away from his forehead. For a long, quiet moment, he stared at Harry’s scar, then moved on to Harry’s eyes.

Harry refused to avoid his gaze; he would not cower before his murderer.

And he would die, here, now. That he was sure of.  There was no way out.

Voldemort lifted his hand from Harry’s forehead, and raised his wand…

At the moment before his death, Harry's life flashed before his eyes.

He was at the Dursleys’. Petunia had sent him to his cupboard earlier than usual. He was leaning against the thin door, listening to his aunt and uncle ask Dudley about his first day of school… Telling him how proud they were…

He was sitting on the sofa in the living room, staring at his big toe poking out of his holey sock. At school, a teacher’s hair had turned blue, and Vernon was shouting at him like it was his fault. A hard blow whipped his head upwards. Vernon had struck him. Harry jumped from the sofa, tried to run past Vernon, but his uncle grabbed him…

He was fighting with Al about seeing Courtney…

Al… Al who was dead, who he would never see again… Harry gasped. The memory was too painful…

Suddenly the memory of Al’s face was replaced by Voldemort’s very real one.

Why wasn’t Harry dead yet?

Voldemort was twirling his wand through his fingers, regarding Harry thoughtfully.

“You are not what I expected,” he said. “Not what I expected at all. A wizard with your talents, your interest in experimenting with the more… rewarding branches of magic, your ruthlessness… Such a wizard could have a place within my ranks. If he were so inclined.”

“You want me to become one of your servants?”

“I am offering you a chance to become one of my trusted companions, a chance to live. Think before you speak, for your decision will be final.”

Harry stared up into the face of his parent's murderer, Al’s murderer (at least by proxy)…

At the thought of Al, an image of Lucius Malfoy’s smug visage danced before his eyes.

Malfoy was still alive, still breathing, still going home to his family - his loved ones. If Harry died today, Lucius Malfoy would get away. Nobody would be left to care about the old man’s fate. His death would never be avenged.

But if he got to live another day, if he bid his time…

Voldemort’s red eyes bore into his. “Have you made a decision?”

Harry nodded. “I want to live.”

Lord Voldemort smiled. ”Then bow to me.”

Still lying on the ground, murder on his mind, Harry awkwardly lowered his chin to his chest.

- End of Part I -

Chapter Text

Part II

- Chapter Fourteen -

Only a small number of people could make Severus Snape lose his composure. In fact, he could count them on one hand: Albus Dumbledore, the Dark Lord and Sirius Black (the latter regrettably in prison no more).

Given that he had just come from seeing one of the three, and was on his way to meet another, Severus felt that it was perfectly acceptable to walk the sloped pathway from Hogwarts’ gates up to the castle at a more leisurely pace. He needed time to sort his thoughts. Alas, as was often the case in situations like this, time was a fickle bitch and didn’t hesitate to betray him. It was like he blinked and he was up at the castle, striding through the oaken entrance door, up the stairs and down the torch-lit corridor until he reached the ugly stone gargoyle guarding the Headmaster’s office.

“Liquorice wand”, Severus said. The gargoyle leapt aside, and Severus marched up the moving staircase. The door to Albus’ office was ajar. The thin beam of light that flickered across Severus’ face was all the invitation he needed.

Albus stood with his back to Severus, giving instructions to the portrait of an old headmistress. The conversation took no more than two minutes, but Severus’ felt himself grow restless. Finally, the witch in the portrait murmured, “As you wish, Headmaster,” and disappeared from her frame.

Albus turned, and it took only a moment for him to interpret Severus’ expression.

His face darkened. “Voldemort regained a body, then.”

Severus flinched at the name.

It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway. “He has.”

The room fell silent but for the whirring and spinning of the instruments scattered around the vast office. Even the portraits had ceased their fake snoring and were now openly paying attention.

“What happened?”

Severus closed his eyes briefly. “I followed his call and arrived at a graveyard. I did not recognise the place, but I can find it again.”

Albus nodded.

“I was late, as you know, and the Dark Lord was none too pleased.” Severus could still feel the uneven ground beneath his knees, the Dark Lord’s wand digging into his cheek. “He had already dismissed most of the others, I could only see one Death Eater. Barty Crouch Junior.”

Albus’ reaction did not disappoint. He stood a little straighter, his eyes narrowed.

“His death in Azkaban…“

“…a ruse, it seems. Though I don’t know how he did it. Not yet.”

“Why would he remain behind?” Albus wondered aloud. “Was he significant to Tom in any way that you could discern?”

“No. They hardly interacted while I was there,” said Severus, replaying the scene in his mind. Although… They didn’t interact, but-- “He had a silver hand,” Severus blurted, in a manner he usually found repulsive in his students. “He certainly did not have it before Azkaban. And his robes were bloodied at the sleeve, as if…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence.

Albus was pacing his office, and Severus could almost see the cogs turning in the headmaster’s impressive mind. “A missing hand, cut off that evening” Albus repeated under his breath. “Barty Crouch Junior, Death Eater, follower, servant. Missing a hand, missing bones… missing flesh.”

He stopped so abruptly, Severus almost started. “Was there anybody else ?” he said, an urgency in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Dead or alive.”

“Not that I could see,” said Severus. “But there was one time when I thought I heard someone whisper, and Crouch started coughing at the same time - as if to cover it up.”

Relief flashed across Albus’ face; it was gone as quickly as it had come.

“He doesn’t trust you yet,” Albus said. “If he hid his guest from you.”

“No, he doesn’t. But he didn’t kill me either.”

They stood in silence. “I am asking a lot of you, I know.”

That he did.

When Severus didn't answer, Albus continued. “I’m afraid our night has not yet come to an end. The news you brought… They are troubling. Even more so than you understand.”

Then explain it to me - the words were already at the tip of Severus' tongue but he swallowed them down. It would be no use.

“Take a seat, Severus,” Albus continued, as he walked over to his desk, where he scribbled a few short words on a piece of parchment. He rolled it up tightly and held it out to the phoenix perched on the back of his chair. “Fawkes, if you would?” The bird trilled shortly took the letter in his beak and disappeared in a ball of flame.

Irritated that he was being kept out of the loop - after everything he had endured tonight -, Severus watched as Albus then turned towards the portrait of an old Headmaster. “Go to your portrait at the Ministry, keep your eye out for Voldemort’s known associates, especially Lucius Malfoy, and any mention of Harry Potter.”

Harry Potter?

“What-?” he began, but Albus interrupted him - “One moment.” – and strode across the office to a large cabinet, touched his wand against the bottom drawer and moved it over the smoothly polished surface in no discernible pattern. A lock clicked open, and Albus pulled out some kind of large, silvery fabric. He held it in his hands, eyes closed but a concentrated expression on his face, then nodded as if this act had just confirmed something, before putting it back.

“Harry Potter, Albus?” Severus said, unable to hold his tongue any longer. “You think the Dark Lord will search for him right away?”

“No. I think he already has Harry.”

Severus felt cold. “You mean the invisible person--?”

“Yes, I strongly suspect that it was Harry.”

“Harry Potter? But why would he go-- how-- The Dark Lord wants to kill him, for Merlin’s sake!”

“I did not say he was there by choice.”

“You think the Dark Lord, not even possessing a body, succeeded where the Ministry, where we – you yourself – could not?”

“Not Voldemort, no, but Lucius Malfoy.”

"Lucius." It all made sense now. How Albus had asked him to reacquaint himself with his old friend, to keep an eye out for unusual behaviour on the other wizard's part…

“Yes. Sirius approached me only a week ago with news about Harry, or rather the person he is with. In trying to verify the information, I stumbled upon quite the convoluted tale… Nevertheless, I think it more and more likely that Sirius’ information is accurate,” he said, putting on his travelling cloak. “There are only a few pieces still missing from the puzzle. Pieces we are going to collect tonight.”

Albus stood by the door, holding it open. “Are you coming, Severus?”

Of course, he was coming. Severus wordlessly swept past the Headmaster.

“What exactly did Black discover?” Severus asked, turning up his collar against the brisk wind as they walked towards Hogwarts’ gates. He had a hard time believing Sirius Black of all people could ever discover any lead worth their while.

Albus moved his wand in a small circle, before letting it disappear up his wide sleeve. “Some conversations better remain private,” he said by way of explanation. “You’ve heard of Mr Prye, I assume?”

“Prye? The newsmonger?”

“Precisely.” Albus nodded satisfied. “Several days ago, Sirius had a conversation with him about Harry.”

Severus was tempted to ask how the hell Black had managed to pull that off – that wizard’s existence was more rumour than fact – but that would mean giving Black credit, out loud. He’d sooner chew off his tongue. Black had probably blackmailed someone else into doing the hard work for him anyway.

“And?” Severus said, ignoring Albus’s knowing smile.

“And he discovered that Harry is connected to someone named Alphard Black.”

“I thought Sirius Black was the last of that name.” And good riddance too.

“Officially, that is the case, yes.”

Dear Lord. Severus could feel a massive headache coming on. “Officially,” he repeated. “So another dead man alive. What happened to the common decency of the dead staying dead?”

Albus hummed in agreement, his hands clasped behind his back. In the distance, they could see clouds of smoke wafting out of an open window of the Groundkeeper’s Hut; the wind carried with it the smell of burnt sugar.

The silence lasted too long for Severus’ liking. “Alphard Black,” he prodded.

“Ah, yes. He is the brother of one Walburga Black. Sirius’ mother,” Albus said. “Alphard attended Hogwarts, back in the 1940s, as a member of your own house.”

“The 1940s…” Severus repeated.

“Yes. About the same time as Tom Riddle.”

“If he was a Death Eater, then how the hell does Potter fit into this?”

“I did not say that he was.”

“What?”

“A Death Eater.”

Albus was giving him a headache – on purpose, Severus suspected. He wanted to demand an explanation, but as they were nearing the gates he realised that he still did not know where they were headed.

“Where are we going?” he asked, as the heavy iron-wrought gate fell shut behind them.

Albus offered Severus his arm for Side-Along-Apparition. “Why, naturally to talk to the last officially remaining Black.”

As he was whisked away in a whirlwind of colours, Severus regretted having accepted the proffered arm so readily. Three out of three did not a good night make.

. 

Sirius Black was asleep at his kitchen table, his head resting on the page of an open book. Numerous sheets of parchment surrounded him; some were yellowed and old with frayed edges, on others the ink still glistened wetly in the light of the ceiling lamp.

Not a sound could be heard from outside; only the steady ticking of a cuckoo clock and Sirius’ occasional snoring disturbed the silence.

It was quiet, until, just before the clock stroke midnight, a bird appeared in a ball of fire, trilling loudly. 

Sirius woke with a start, knocking over an inkwell in his haste to spot the intruder. When his eyes fell on the fiery bird, he relaxed. He stood, cracking his neck.

“Hey Fawkes,” he said. “That for me?”

The phoenix looked at him sideways, but let go of the scroll of parchment clasped in his talons when Sirius reached for it.

“Thank's,” Sirius said. He’d never before seen Fawkes deliver a letter.

A queasy feeling in his stomach, Sirius unrolled the parchment. It was a short, rather uninformative note, written in apparent haste.

Dear Sirius,

I’m afraid recent events leave me in urgent need of your assistance.

I shall call upon you at your home in a quarter of an hour.

Please forgive the lack of timely notice. 

Yours sincerely, Albus Dumbledore

He sank back into his chair, absentmindedly vanishing the ink that had spread across the parchment and book.

There was only one reason he could think of that would have Albus rush to him in such a hurry.

Harry.

He’d told Albus about his meeting with old man Prye, half expecting the Headmaster to dismiss the information out of hand. It was crazy, after all. His dead uncle Alphard, not only

alive and in hiding for over two decades, but also connected to Harry Potter, another missing person. Ridiculous. Where could they have possibly run into each other? At a meeting of

Missing Persons Anonymous?

Only, Albus had not dismissed Prye’s claims. He’d looked thoughtful for a moment, nodded his head in that maddening way of his, as if he understood something the rest of them couldn’t even begin to see (which wasn’t unlikely) and then encouraged, almost instructed Sirius to further look into the matter.

Could it be that Albus had found him?

More to keep busy than out of any desire to be a good host, Sirius wandered over to the kitchen and put the water boiler on the stove. With a flick of his wand, he ignited the flame.

The water boiler sighed lewdly.

Only a couple more minutes until Albus’ arrival. Maybe he should make room at the kitchen table. Wouldn’t hurt to have a place to sit down, after all.

Scowling, he turned to the messy assortment of books, documents and handwritten notes. Of the latter, there were scarcely few, even though he’d spent every day since his talk with Prye digging up old documents, pouring over books and hunting down people who might have once known his uncle.

He’d only taken one significant step forward, but at the same time about a dozen steps back. It was jinxed, literally.

The tiny door of the cuckoo’s clock opened. The cuckoo peeked out tiredly, as it was wont to do when visitors came by this late. It trilled once.

He shouldn’t have got up his ho--

A second trill sounded through the room.

Two visitors. Not one, two.

Sirius told himself to think rationally. Who could accompany Albus on a late-night visit? (Harry, a treacherous voice whispered.)

He was at the front door in a flash, pulled it open and--

There really was no god.

Striding up the path next to Albus, his black robes billowing about him, was Severus Snape.

“Come on in,” Sirius said, opening the door fully. Light from the hallway fell on their faces, revealing Albus’ unusually severe expression and Snape’s customary scowl.

“Thank you,” Albus said, stepping into the house. Snape, on his heels, only nodded in acknowledgement.

"Good evening, Sirius. Please forgive our untimely intrusion,” Albus said, as they followed Sirius into the kitchen. “Alas, the latest developments do call for swift action.”

“The latest developments?” Sirius asked.

“Will you not invite us to take a seat, Black?” Snape interrupted, from where he hovered by the door like a dark, especially ugly thundercloud. “Or do your manners not even extend that far?”

“Your manners as a guest aren’t up to par either, Snape,” Sirius retorted. “But then again, not many people invite you around their house, do they?”

“Gentlemen.” Albus' voice sounded strained. “Not tonight. Please."

Sirius desire to find out what was going on trumped his urge to argue with Snape. He gestured towards the table. “Have a seat.”

“Why, thank you,” Snape said, his tone grating on Sirius’ nerves. “Now if--”

He was interrupted by a shrill, slightly breathy voice:

“Look here, my love, I’m boiling,” it sang,

“I have the hots for you!

Take me, baby, add your spice,

I know you want it too!"

“What. Is. That?” Snape said in disgust, looking for the source of the voice.

“A housewarming gift,” Sirius answered, rushing over to the stove before the water boiler could break into the second verse of its song. “Anybody want some tea?”

“Yes, please,” said Albus, smiling slightly for the first time. Snape nodded sharply.

Sirius floated three cups of tea to the table and took a seat. Albus’ cup landed gently before him; Snape’s – accidentally – came to a skidding halt at the edge of the table, hot liquid spilling over its rim. Snape vanished it instantly, glowering at Sirius.

Albus took a sip of his tea, put the cup down, and sighed deeply. When he looked at Sirius all humour had vanished from his face. “Tonight, only a few hours ago, Lord Voldemort succeeded in his quest to regain a body.”

It felt like a wave of ice-cold water was crashing down on him. He wasn’t sure if Albus continued to talk, all he could hear were voices screaming, all he could see were images of the Dark Mark hovering in the night sky, of dead bodies and broken eyes. Memories he had been forced to relive again and again during his time in Azkaban were dredged to the front of his mind.

“How?” he asked hoarsely. “How can--?”

“I have my suspicions,” Albus said. “But the details of his resurrection remain unclear. Severus was only called to his side after the fact.”

“You saw him?” Sirius asked.

“I felt the tip of his wand against my throat.”

Sirius’ leg jerked. He wanted to get up, go out, and find Harry, now. If Voldemort was back, he’d be looking for Harry soon. No… He was already looking for Harry. That’s why Malfoy--

“We have to find Harry.”

Albus sighed wearily. "It is likely that Voldemort has Harry already."

"No…" Sirius said hoarsely. "No, that can't be. If Voldemort's got him, then he's dead. Harry is not dead," he said with conviction.

"I do not believe that he is," Albus agreed. "It seems Voldemort, for reasons unknown, has allowed him to live, for the time being."

The feeling of relief was crushing. "Why, though?" Sirius asked. "Why do you think he's not dead? And why wouldn't Voldemort kill him when he got the chance?"

"It could be that Potter is helping him willingly," Severus said, eyes glittering malevolently.

"No child of James would ever… could ever…! Voldemort murdered his parents!"

"Maybe he doesn't care--"

"At the moment, we can but guess for Voldemort's reasons to spare Harry's live," Albus said quietly. "We will discover more in due time, I assure you. Severus' will integrate himself into Voldemort's inner circle once again, and I too will explore every avenue available to me. Tonight, I called upon you to share with us your insights on Alphard Black."

"What use is it to try and find my uncle, if Harry is in Voldemort's hands!" Sirius stood. How could Albus be so calm? He itched to fly his motorcycle to Malfoy Manor and curse Lucius within an inch of his life.

"Because," Albus said calmly, "for now all we have are assumptions. We assume that Harry is already in Voldemort's grasp. We assume that he is still alive. We assume that Alphard Black is also alive, and we assume that Harry stayed with him. We are wading through quicksand, and we need to explore every direction until we find solid ground."

Sirius slumped back down into his seat.

Albus cleared his throat. “While I have never personally made use of Mr Prye’s services, I have heard of him as a reliable source for this sort of information. After Sirius came to me, I investigated the matter myself.”

Snape perked up; apparently, this caught his interest also.

“Did you find anything?” Sirius asked.

“Nothing I suspect you don’t already know, “ Albus said. “Alphard was in Slytherin, back in the 1940s, not much of a troublemaker, from what I remember. He graduated in 1944.”

“One year before the Dark Lord,” Snape added.

“Yes," Albus said. "But I kept an eye on Tom Riddle and his circle of… friends. Alphard was not among them. Tom was already besotted with the idea of blood purity, while Alphard seems to have followed a different school of thought popular at the time.”

The early 1940s… “Grindelwald,” Sirius said.

“Quite right,” Albus said. “Alphard’s grandfather, your great-grandfather, publicly supported Grindelwald; he was rumoured even to be a close acquaintance of the man himself.”

Ah yes. His dear old mother had been quite proud of that. 

“Information on Alphard’s time after Hogwarts is hard to come by, but everything I did find suggests that he followed in his grandfather’s footsteps.”

“Grindelwald was defeated only a year later,” Snape said. “Did Black fake his death to avoid prosecution?”

“He didn’t die, or fake his death or whatever, for another thirty years,” said Sirius. “And he was never charged with any crime, I don't think.”

“No, but he was questioned once about the whereabouts of his grandfather. According to Ministry records, he did not know anything,” Albus said. “This record is also the last official record of his existence.”

“He must have fallen ill around that time,” Sirius said. “I remember my dear mother going on and on about her good-for-nothing brother and all the money they wasted trying to find a cure for him. I don’t think anything ever came of it. The way she talked, he didn’t leave Grimmauld Place for years.”

After a moment, Sirius added, "I never met him though, so he must have moved out at some point.”

“An impressive deduction”, Snape said mockingly. “Is that the extent of your findings?”

“If it were, it would still be more than you contributed,” Sirius said and continued before Snape could get a word in, “But no. I also found something very interesting while going through old account information.” Sirius waved a hand towards the stacks of parchment and books. “For all we know, he was still ill when he moved out, so I figured my grandparents must have bought a place for him.”

Sirius stood, his chair scraping against the floor, and rounded the table.

“I didn’t find anything useful except for this.” He picked up a dog-eared piece of parchment and laid it on the table in front of Albus.

Snape bent over the table to get a closer look, his greasy black hair falling into this face. “A land register entry,” he said.

“Yep. There’s only one problem: Whoever hid this property did a brilliant job of it,” Sirius said darkly.

Snape looked up from the document to give him a condescending look. “What are you talking about, Black. It’s all right--” he broke off in mid-sentence and looked back down, his eyes narrowed.

“It can be read, but not remembered,” Sirius said, massaging his temple. The damn thing was giving him a headache.

“Interesting,” Albus murmured. His eyes still on the document, Albus opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. “Interesting,” he repeated. “I tried reading it aloud,” he said. “Sometimes the most obvious solutions are also the right ones, though not in this case, it would seem.

“We cannot see it, not in a sense that would mean something, cannot speak it, and just a guess but-“ Albus touched his wand against the parchment “-yes, we cannot spell it to be read aloud.”

Sirius knew of only one spell that could hide a secret so completely. “Is it the Fidelius Charm?” he asked.

“No,” said Albus, apparently deep in thought. “No, it isn’t. If it were, we would either not be able to see this information at all, or, had it been written by the Secret Keeper, we would be able to see and retain the words. No, this is something else.”

“I need a quill and parchment,” Snape said.

“Help yourself.” Sirius pointed to the other half of the table. 

Visibly displeased, Snape summoned what he needed. The quill whizzed out from under a stack of scrolls, sending them in disarray. The empty sheet landed softly on the table next to the document, and, with his eyes firmly on the document, Snape started to write.

Or tried to. His hand never moved.

It didn’t surprise Sirius. He had tried all of this and more. Nothing worked.

“It was worth a try,” Albus said.

“Do you have any idea what kind of magic this is?” Sirius asked.

Albus nodded thoughtfully. “I think I do. I’ve come across something like this almost two decades ago while researching ways to hide high profile targets in the last war. In its effect, it is not unlike the Fidelius, but in its nature… The Fidelius Charm hides a secret in a foreign soul, but the Secret-Keeper can always choose to divulge the secret. It requires trust. For this spell, you not so much hide the secret in a soul, but you lock it into a person.”

Snape’s face went even paler than before. “Lock it into…?”

"The Secret Keeper gives his eyes so that the secret can no longer be shown, his tongue so that the secret can no longer be spoken, his hands so that the secret can no longer be written down and his legs, so that nobody might lead an unknowing person to the secret."

Sirius felt sick to his stomach. "My great-grandfather…" He had heard the stories, growing up. Kreature, their house-elf, had often bemoaned the fate that had befallen his Master, the injuries, that had ultimately led him to an early grave. "I knew he'd supported Grindelwald in the war-- I thought it had happened then. Some kind of curse--"

  Even Snape looked horrified. “Black did that to his own grandfather?”

"It is possible," said Albus.

Sirius could sit no longer. He got up and started pacing the room. "That doesn't make any sense… I mean, they could have just used the Fidelius Charm and avoided all… that." He shuddered.

“Ah, but you see, even though both spells hide a secret, the protections they offer are not the same," Albus said. "With this spell, the person the secret is kept for, not the Secret Keeper, can only ever share the secret, and the Secret Keeper’s death doesn’t change that. It doesn’t hide the secret from view. If the location of a property is hidden by this spell, the people who knew of it before can still find it, though they are no longer able to share what they know. It has never been a particularly popular spell, as it can only be cast between two people with a close familial and emotional bond."

"How wonderful," Severus said. "The Boy-Who-Lived has been raised by a psychopath."

Sirius bristled, but there was nothing he could say. What a fucking mess. He really did not want to think about his favourite Uncle (he had left Sirius a sizeable sum of money, after all) hacking off his great-grandfather's limbs.

“So…” Sirius said slowly, determined to get the conversation back on track, "if the secret is not hidden from view, and someone looking to discover it knows roughly where to look, in which village, for example, they’d just have to knock on all the doors until they stumble upon it by accident?”

“That is, I believe, how it works.” Albus nodded.

“A pity you don’t know the neighbourhood it’s in,” said Snape.

“I doubt they told anybody before hiding it.” Sirius slumped into his seat. “We have no way of finding it, unless we, I don’t know, knock on every door in Britain.”

"And even if we find it, given tonight's events… It is unlikely that Potter is still there…"

Without another word, Sirius summoned a bottle of Firewhisky and topped up their cups. It was going to be a long night.