Reading Time: 129 Minutes

Title: Eyes in the Darkness
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Drama, Family, Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery, Paranormal/Supernatural, Suspense
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , child abuse (canon), illegal imprisonment (canon), Dumbledore bashing, mental health issues (multiple), memory modification (involuntary and voluntary), ritual magic, PTSD, C-PTSD, Harry is so very tired, Sirius is so messed up, dark curses
Beta: Batspit
Word Count: 94,810
Summary: As Aunt Marge floated off into the night, Harry ran out of Privet drive with everything he owned. Heart pounding, he hid in the shrubs next to the old retaining wall that was his closest hiding place. When the starving dog across the way darted into his arms as aurors arrived, what else could Harry do but wrap them both up in his invisibility cloak?
Artist: Izzy Hound

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11. Vassal’s Vow

Every time I see a Potter, the stump of that damnable vassal bond aches inside me. And then the curse Grandfather laid on the Potters stabs at me to make me move away. Drawn towards them and away at the same time; it’s intolerable.

#

Harry ran like Dudley and his gang were on his heels. The pure panic in Sirius’ voice was more than enough to get his feet to fly up the floating stones in the second chamber of records. He didn’t know why they had to run, not yet, but given the howl of fury that came from the egg-chamber where all the Potter records were kept, Harry sure as heck wasn’t going to stick around and ask.

Thankfully, the floating stones didn’t shift a lot as Harry jumped from one to the next. He, somehow, managed to remember which of the arching stone slabs was the one that led back to the main Department of Records Lovecraftian room of doom. Not that the whole darn place didn’t smack of something right out of Lovecraft, especially that clerk with the claws and the glittery eyes whose nametag had been Engel or Umat, not Adam.

Harry stumbled as he came out of the first gate, then squawked as Amal smacked into him and drove him straight into another man’s arms. That man shouted something about vigilance and then whirled to point his wand at Sirius as he came barreling out of the bookcase with his fake blond hair flying and his grey eyes wide.

“Don’t stop!” Sirius gasped. “He’s right on our—Oh shit! Moody!”

“Wait, Mad-Eye Moody?” Harry asked as he grabbed Moody’s arm so that he wouldn’t curse Sirius.

“Who’s chasing you?” Moody demanded as his mechanical eye locked onto Sirius. He snarled. “Black. You…”

Harry’s heart pounded so hard in his throat that he nearly threw up over Moody’s shoulder. This. This was one of his vassals. Or he should be. That meant—

“You swore to the Potter line,” Harry said, clinging to Moody’s arm. “Do you keep to the oaths or are you foresworn from me?”

Moody’s head snapped around. He stared at Harry, both eyes wide. Then he gasped and swallowed so audibly that Amal and Sirius flinched back.

“I am for you, boy,” Moody said, “but I need answers and I need them quick.”

“Angry werewolf on our tail,” Sirius babbled. “Need answers from the records but he won’t listen, not yet. We’ve got to get out of here right now!”

Moody cast a spell at the bookshelf, silently. There was a weird moment where the bookshelf flexed like rubber and then someone, the werewolf with the shabby clothes and glowing gold eyes obviously, started clawing at the gate. It was so very much like something out of a horror movie that Harry flinched.

“We’ve got three minutes,” Moody announced.

“Do you swear to protect, defend, aid and help me in all that I must do?” Harry asked, condensing the vassal oath from the etiquette books he’d read yesterday.

Magic shimmered between them, fast and urgent and gold-edged burgundy that reminded him of the Gryffindor common room late at night when most everyone had gone to bed.

Moody blinked. “I do so swear to protect, defend, aid and help you, my Lord. Still need answers.”

The magic sparked between them, forming a cord that bound Harry to Moody and Moody to him. There was a moment where Harry could feel Moody’s desperate worry and fear both for Harry and of Harry, then it flipped into a sort of determined competence that Harry knew very well.

It was just like the mindset he got when there was something that had to be done and he had to do it, no matter how nasty the job might be.

“Right, well, get us to a place where we can apparate out of here and we’ll explain the whole mess,” Harry promised. “Preferably in about two minutes thirty seconds.”

Moody grinned. “Follow me!”

For a man with only one good eye and a peg leg, Moody could run. Really, really run. Harry barely managed to keep up with him despite all his Harry Hunting training with Dudley. Sirius wheezed as he struggled to keep up. Amal had a grip on his elbow and hauled him along.

They didn’t go back to the elevators. Instead they ran to a stairwell and then up the stairs which moved like an escalator under their feet. Moody didn’t bother waiting for the stairs to convey them upwards. He ran up them as if he was Harry’s age instead of really old. Once they were all on the stairs, Moody shot another silent spell at them, and they whizzed upwards so fast that Harry had to grab Moody’s elbow to keep from falling over.

It took something less than six seconds for them to hit the top of the stairwell. Moody flung Harry out of the stairwell, grabbed Amal and Sirius, and flung them out, too. Then he charged through the door, casually scooping all three of them up before they even hit the ground, setting them on their feet with a wave of his wand.

“Run!” Moody snapped.

They ran. Past a dozen or so identical doors, past a looming, creepy empty stone arch that Sirius pulled Harry well away from, and then upwards again until they were in the atrium where they’d arrived.

“Follow me!” Moody ordered, striding across the atrium with his wand in his hand.

Absolutely everyone got out of the way. Aurors dove for the walls, eyes wide. Several rich Purebloods in the kind of expensively understated robes that Draco always wore stiffened and then oh-so-casually made sure that their path didn’t intersect with Moody’s path. A literal pathway that Moody opened for them so that they could get out of the Ministry as quickly as possible.

“Where to?” Moody said once they strode out of the building on his heels.

“I’ve got Harry,” Amal said.

“I’ve got you, sir,” Sirius said though he looked anything but happy about it.

Harry felt the first pinch of apparition just as Sirius took Moody’s arm. At the same time, a howl echoed through the atrium doorway, followed by people’s screams.

Then they were gone, squeezed through a straw and spit out at Grimmauld Place. Three far too long seconds passed before Sirius and Moody arrived.

“Run!” Moody snapped. “Into the house now!”

Harry ran, dragging Amal with him because Amal hadn’t let go of his sleeve. Kreacher was at the door, ears back and face paler than normal. He didn’t so much run up the stairs as get flung up them as both Sirius and Moody shoved Harry in front of them.

He tumbled along the floor, shiny new glasses going flying, and came up just in time to see the werewolf arrive across the street.

Kreacher slammed the door and then Sirius slapped one hand against the door, muttering something that locked the wards on Grimmauld Place down so hard that Harry’s ears popped sharply.

“Bloody hell,” Moody complained companionably as he rolled back to his feet. “Been a long while since I had to outrun a werewolf. You get into even more trouble than your father and grandfather did, boy.”

“Harry, please,” Harry said, squinting up at Moody. “Do you see my glasses anywhere? They went flying.”

“Friend Harry is not taking care of his things well,” Dobby said. He offered Harry the new glasses and grinned when Harry just shrugged. “They is not suiting you, Friend Harry. Not at all.”

“No, but they let me see a whole heck of a lot better than my old ones did,” Harry said. He clambered back to his feet. “So he can’t get in, right?”

“Probably not, no,” Sirius said, still pressing against the door. “I think. Maybe. It’s Remus. He’s… If anyone could, he probably could do it. There’s a lot of the warding curses that wouldn’t do more than inconvenience him. We might have a couple of hours. Maybe less if he goes to get the Aurors.”

Moody grunted. “Good point.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask what they could do to keep the Aurors out if and when Remus remembered to call them, but Moody just waved one hand before muttering something under his breath. A silvery mist poured out of the tip of his wand, swirling into a series of shapes that almost looked like otters or a stag with a majestic rack of horns only to shift into a lion and a tabby before settling on a swirling vortex instead.

“On the trail of Black and Potter,” Moody said to the swirling silver mist. “I think Remus Lupin got the wrong idea about what I’m up to. Don’t go mucking up my op. I’ll report in again in an hour.”

The vortex whooshed off through the wall, leaving Moody to nod firmly.

“That takes care of that,” Moody said. He grinned at Harry’s curious look. “Patronus spell. Above you yet. Give it a few years and you’ll be up for doing it, for sure. They can carry messages, drive a way Dementors. Very useful spell. That should keep anyone from backing Lupin up, either way. Doesn’t solve the problem, though. We still have an angry werewolf trying to batter down the wards.”

Harry blew out a breath. Okay. Good. Fine. This was… good enough. For the moment.

“Right,” Harry said. “Okay, so, who’s the werewolf and why’s he so determined to get at us?”

“Old friend of your family and he probably believes all the shite published by that Skeeter woman,” Moody said.

Sirius flinched at the word “friend”, but he nodded for the rest of it.

“Friend-friend or lover-friend?” Harry asked Sirius completely seriously. “Because a lover-friend is going to be way more stubborn about the supposed betrayal than a friend-friend.”

“Ah,” Sirius said. His cheeks went so red that they colored his glamoured hair strawberry-blond. “Well.”

“Great,” Harry said with a tired sigh. “Why would things be easy? Okay, Amal, get away from the door. You’ve got all the stuff we managed to track down. Obviously, we don’t want to kill him, but we can’t trust him until we get him calmed down.”

Amal hurried back into the house, ducking into one of the perfectly gleaming parlors and then coming back out without the files he’d managed to copy before Sirius sent them running through the Department of Records.

“Moody,” Harry said, turning to him, “how do you stop a werewolf long enough to get him to listen?”

“No bloody clue, lad.” Moody laughed and shook his head. “We don’t talk to werewolves. We put them down. It’s a bloody tragedy, but that’s what it is.”

“Lovely,” Harry groaned. “Sirius, any ideas?”

“Silver burns,” Sirius said so sadly and reluctantly that Harry almost went over to comfort him. It was only Sirius’ hand pressed against the faintly quivering door that kept Harry where he was. “Wood through the heart will hurt like hell and slow him down until he pulls it out. Only decapitation will kill him. And, honestly, I doubt that Moony will listen to any of us.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Great. Kreacher, Dobby, any suggestions?”

“Kreacher could restrain,” Kreacher said slowly and hesitantly enough that Harry was pretty sure that it would only be for a little while.

“Dobby could restrain easily if he had a bond to Friend Harry,” Dobby said quite confidently, “but wouldn’t work well to restrain. Wolfy Man would just keep fighting and hurt himself to get to you. He sees Friend Harry as cub in danger.”

Harry blinked. Then grinned. “Does he now? All right then. That’s something we can work with.”

From the scowl on Moody’s face and the frown on Sirius’, they really were not going to like Harry’s thoroughly half-assed plan. Harry wasn’t sure he liked it but if Dobby was right, and he didn’t have any reason to think that Dobby was wrong, Remus wasn’t going to hurt Harry.

“What’s the strongest stunning spell you can think of?” Harry asked Moody. “Something fast and not likely to be blocked.”

“He’ll see me casting it, lad,” Moody said, shaking his head.

“Oh, no, I’ll cast it,” Harry said. He shrugged. “I reckon we let Remus in, let him grab me, slam the wards shut tight, and while he’s growling at everyone else, I spell him in the back. Or stab him if that’ll be faster and more effective. I’m assuming that basilisk venom will kill him just like it does most everything else?”

Sirius’ jaw dropped open. “Prongslet, we are having a long, long conversation on how you got this way after this is over.”

“What?” Harry protested with a frown that only made Moody stare at him and Sirius shake his head. “We can’t keep him out there for long. People will notice. Someone will call the police and they’ll call the Aurors. We’re on a short timeline, here. Basilisk venom, yes or no?”

“No,” Moody said. He gave himself a shake like a dog that had just crawled out of a lake. “Best thing for you to do is hit him with incarcerous. He should listen to me once he’s in here.”

“No, he won’t,” Sirius said, wincing as the door shook. “He’s going to batter his way through the wards soon. You’re not wrong Prongslet, but I officially hate this plan.”

“What plan?” Harry said, snorting a laugh at Sirius’ glare. “I’m punting. It works really well. Kreacher, be ready to help me hold him down. Dobby, get a bucket full of nice cold water to dump on his head. Amal, seriously, I want you out of the way. You’re the only one of us who can wander around freely right now.”

“Ah, right,” Amal said.

Not happily, but he looked resigned as he ducked back into the parlor, grabbed their copied files, and then scooted off towards the floo room. Once he was away and Dobby was back with a nice big bucket full of water, and a huge grin, Harry nodded to Sirius.

Sirius looked to Moody.

Moody nodded, fingers tightening around his wand.

Harry quickly drew his wand, tucking it behind his back where it wouldn’t be quite so obvious. Not that he expected that to be effective, long-term, but he wasn’t looking for long-term. He was just trying to get Remus down for a few seconds. That should be enough to get him to stop and think if he really was Sirius’ former lover.

“I hate this,” Sirius commented in a falsely cheerful tone. “On three. One, two… three!”

Harry didn’t have the chance to see Sirius open the door because the instant he dropped the wards, Remus apparated into the hallway. He spun, wand out, and apparated directly in front of Harry. His growl was a terrifying thing, what you’d expect to get from a huge monster, not from a relatively shabbily dressed man with wrists so thin that they looked like they were made of fine porcelain.

Still, right in front of Harry, one arm spread to keep Harry at his back and away from everyone else.

Well, that was nice of him.

“Easy, lad,” Moony said. “This isn’t what you think it is.”

Harry put the tip of his wand against Remus’ back and nodded when he froze for just a moment. “Incarcerous!”

The spell had virtually no wand movements, just the will and the word, so it worked perfectly. Thick ropes whipped around Remus, binding his legs together. He flailed, barking a wordless shout, and then toppled when Kreacher waved both hands and snapped Remus’ arms to his sides where the spelled ropes caught and held them. Harry grabbed Remus’ wand, dancing backwards just in time to escape Dobby’s bucket full of water.

Which had ice chunks in it. Big ones.

“Gah!” Remus spluttered, eyes wide and no longer glowing gold. Chunks of ice clung to his cheeks, forehead, and nose while water dripped off him and soaked into the hall area rug. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

Remus also stopped struggling, stopped growling, stopped looking like a terrifying monster just about to break through his human skin into something that would haunt your nightmares. Instead, he was just a wet, flustered, somewhat-shabby man staring up at Harry and Dobby in shock.

Harry grinned. “Huh, what do you know? It worked! Great job, Dobby!”

“Dobby added extra ice to be sure Wolfy Man listened,” Dobby said, grinning. He snapped his fingers and the bucket filled back up again. “Dobby will do it again if he has to.”

“…What?” Remus said, staring at Harry and then lifting his chin so that he could stare at Sirius who sort of shrugged helplessly and Moody who hand one hand over his face and his wand dangling from his fingertips.

Not that Harry thought Moody’s wand would be useless in that pose. Moody had a solid enough grip that he could probably precision-cast like Professor Flitwick or Professor McGonagall. Just, you know, not the firm battle grip that could have been used to stab someone that he’d had before.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Harry said. “You willing to listen? And maybe help? The Potter blood line’s apparently got some sort of curse on it and Sirius got caught up in it. He’s totally innocent, by the way. Oh, and Dobby is a Free Elf. Don’t ask him to do things for you since he’s conserving his magic. And Moody is my vassal. So don’t mess with him because I’m pretty sure he’ll curse you into little bloody bits if you threaten me.”

Remus stared even longer at Harry, mouth moving without anything coming out for the longest time. “…What?”

“Let’s get you dried off and then we’ll have tea,” Sirius said with a tired sigh. “Or something stronger.”

“Definitely stronger,” Moody said. “Give your oath, Lupin, or I really will curse you.”

“I… swear on my magic to listen to what you all have to say,” Remus said slowly, obviously thinking over each word before he said it, “and that I will not try to take Harry or turn… anyone in until you’ve had a chance to convince me.”

His magic, gold and wild, swept over him. Harry frowned, putting his wand back into his holster.

“One more thing,” Harry said. “Swear on your magic that you will never betray me to my enemies, to Molly Weasley, or to Dumbledore.”

Absolutely everyone stared at Harry for that one but really, how could he let Remus go without a proper oath that he wouldn’t betray Harry?

“Molly Weasley?” Sirius spluttered.

“No, no, the boy’s got a point there,” Moody said. “Molly’s an amazing dueler and that temper of hers is terrifying.”

“Exactly,” Harry drawled, waving both hands at Moody as if it was self-evident, which it was.

Remus shook his head and then sighed. “I don’t understand it, but all right. I swear on my magic that I will never betray you to your enemies, to Molly Weasley or to Albus Dumbledore.”

Only once the vow settled into Harry’s magic did he let Remus go. Harry turned to Kreacher who sighed and shook his head at the mess of water soaking into the carpet and floorboards.

“I think it’s time for tea, Kreacher,” Harry said. “Dobby, might as well keep the bucket around. Who knows? You might need to throw it at someone before the explanations are done.”

Dobby crowed. “Dobby will be ready!”

12. Warrior’s Soul

Something must be done. You agreed with me on that before you stormed off the other day. Gellert, please come back and listen to me. I swear that my plan isn’t half as mad as you think. Besides, you were the one to suggest modifying both the curse and the vassal bonds of the Potters. The curse should be easy enough to meddle with given that I’m heir to it.

#

Sirius breathed in the rich citrus of the Darjeeling tea that Kreacher had chosen for their impromptu tea party. As often as he’d shifted and stayed with Remus during the full moon, Sirius had never taken Remus’ lycanthropy for granted. Remus was dangerous.

He just was.

Remus was also kind, hesitant, and profoundly emotionally scarred by having been attacked as a child. He was brilliant in ways that compared to Lily, favorably. The man could teach a rock to do magic, witness his helping Wormtail, the traitor, through transfiguration. But he was still dangerous.

All the time. Not only at the full moon. He was so damned smart, so grimly determined to do whatever he put his mind to, that nothing and no one stopped him.

Until Harry bloody Potter decided he wanted a chat.

What the fuck? Seriously, what in the name of Merlin’s saggy balls had happened to Harry to make him this way?

“Okay,” Harry said once he’d added about a cup of milk to his half-cup of tea and then added six sugar cubes. “We have tea. Moody has firewiskey. Dobby has his bucket of ice water, with extra ice and a generous dollop of salt to make it even colder than normal.”

“Yes, Dobby does,” Dobby declared with a huge grin that Harry echoed.

“Why don’t we get started at this?” Harry suggested far too brightly. “I’ll start since everyone else, but Dobby, looks kind of like they’ve gotten hit up back the head with a cricket bat.”

Sirius started snickering. “You’re not wrong, Prongslet.”

Which made Harry grin like a normal thirteen-year-old before he launched into a marvelously detailed and Auror-level debrief that would’ve done Sirius proud back when he wasn’t hunted by the Ministry. A much too practiced debrief that touched every single thing that should be touched and left out all the unimportant stuff that only got put in reports no one read.

Suspicious as hell, that. Moody obviously thought so, too, as he narrowed his good eye and slouched down in his chair as Harry went over the whole blowing his aunt up, kidnapped and rescued by Sirius thing. Amal took notes, extensive ones that he didn’t let out from under his hands the whole time he wrote.

Remus leaned forward, gently twisting his teacup in his hands in precise quarter-circles, all the while keeping his eyes locked on Harry. Every few seconds, Remus’ nostrils flared as he breathed in Harry’s scent. All of their scents, actually.

Sirius hoped that he could get with Remus later and find out what Moody was feeling underneath that paranoid scowl.

“So, because we knew that the files on me were disappearing oddly, we decided that we had go to the Department of Records and see what they had there,” Harry said, adding a couple teaspoons more tea to his doctored sugar-milk. “Did any of the records make it back here, Amal?”

“No,” Amal huffed, glaring at the paperwork under his hands. “They were still there when I put them down to get my tea but now they’re gone again. That’s why I won’t let go of these. I think the curse, spell, whatever it is, steals them as soon as people stop touching them.”

“That’s… likely,” Remus agreed entirely too mildly. “James always complained that the instant he set anything down, like homework or thank you cards, they disappeared. We tested it once, late at night in the dorms. It did seem to happen quite reliably, but only to things related to the Potters.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, wagging a finger at Remus. “So, one of the things that Amal revealed was that the Potters had that curse-thingie. The other thing he revealed is that the Potters kept vassals. Moody is one. He swore himself to me and helped us get here. Amal’s another. Hey, do we need to do the oath all formal-like instead of casual the way we did?”

“Oh, eventually,” Amal said, still writing furiously. “There’s no rush on my part. I’ve been working for you all along. The Seneschal is somewhat different than a regular vassal. They all tend to have different duties and different oaths. As far as I’m concerned, I’m good.”

“Huh,” Harry grunted, nodding slowly as if that made sense.

Which maybe it did. Sirius didn’t know. He was going to have to take back the book on vassal bonds before he had a long, long chat with Remus. If, of course, Remus would consider being a Black vassal. He might not.

Remus’ eyes snapped from Harry to Sirius as his nostrils flared. One eyebrow went up in the familiar old “you’re an idiot and I don’t know why you are the way you are” expression he got when he was amused by Sirius’ oddities instead of annoyed. Sirius snorted into his tea and wagged his eyebrows while shrugging. Wasn’t like they hadn’t been through that conversation a million times before they finished fourth year.

“Wow,” Harry drawled. “You two really are lovers, aren’t you?”

“Obviously,” Moody drawled, smirking into his firewiskey. “Ought to just get married already. You’re most of the way there.”

Remus went as red as Sirius did. “That’s… not really possible.”

“Completely aside from the whole running from the Ministry thing I have going,” Sirius agreed, “Remus is, in fact, a werewolf. He’s not allowed to get married, legally.”

“Well, we’re gonna fix that,” Harry said with enough disgust that Remus smiled at him for the first time. “That’s ridiculous. Anyway, I assume that Dumbledore had you hunting for me and since no records of me stay where they’re supposed to, you went to the Department of Records to see what you could find out.”

Remus huffed, glanced at Sirius with a clear “what is up with James and Lily’s son?” expression before nodding to Harry.

“Exactly that, actually,” Remus said. “Dumbledore never has done a deep examination of the records. He did mention that Madame Pomphrey complains endlessly that she can’t keep records of you around because they seem to go missing as soon as she files them away. The same thing happened during school.”

“Professor McGonagall took to keeping her grade book in her pocket, shrunken down so that it never left her person,” Sirius agreed with a little laugh. “Did that first year, I think. I’m not sure she ever stopped.”

Harry blinked. “Wow, and no one ever went to try and track this thing down? It’s messing with everyone’s lives, destroying record trails, and getting my relatives killed, but it’s not worth investigating? That’s bizarre.”

“Oh, people checked, Potter,” Moody said with a long, tired sigh.

He shut his good eye. That side of his face looked exhausted and very sad. The magical eye roamed around the room, idly scanning everything around them. Sirius really wondered how Moody stayed sane with that thing in his head.

The next second he shook his head. Moody hadn’t been sane since he was younger than Sirius. The war, all of the wars Moody had fought in, had seen to that.

Harry frowned. “Hm. So, we need to get the Goblins involved. Do you think they have curse breakers who could help figure this out? I’d like to ask them about it. And, honestly, if I could talk to Theodore Nott, I’d like to.”

“His father is a Death Eater,” Remus protested immediately.

“His father was a Potter vassal who got tossed out for becoming a Death Eater,” Harry explained before Sirius could do more than open his mouth. “From what I’ve seen, the whole vassal thing is messing with Theo. I’d like to talk to him, maybe see if there’s anything I can do to, you know, give him a little more peace. He’s pretty clearly messed up by it all. And his dad is a Death Eater that Theo refuses to follow. He’s in a lot of danger.”

Sirius hid his grin, poorly, behind his tea as Remus spluttered and then subsided into flustered unhappiness that was a good match to what Lily used to do to him.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Remus said reluctantly. “But you should have people with you the whole time.”

“Oh, sure,” Harry said, waving the warning off. “I’m not going to risk my life stupidly. Or, you know, without a good reason for it. The point is, are you going to be reasonable or does Dobby need to go for the bucket?”

“No, that’s fine!” Remus squawked, jerking back in his chair as Dobby reached for his bucket of ice water with a huge, huge grin. “You’ve already convinced me that none of you are endangering Harry. Or each other. I just… don’t want you to be hurt.”

The way Harry’s face went blankly smiling set off so many alarm bells in Sirius’ head. He put his tea down and caught Remus’ wrist, startling Remus enough that he didn’t immediately ask what exactly about that had set Harry off.

Moody’s magic eye studied Harry closely before slowly sliding back to scanning the room. Sirius would bet anything that he was going to pin Harry down and have a very uncomfortable discussion with him later. Possibly one about stranger danger, bad touching and just exactly what the Dursleys had done to him. Potentially with detailed questioning about each one of them, Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley.

“He’s a lot more competent than any of us were at his age, Moony,” Sirius said. “Leave it be. He saved Kreacher and I a couple of times now. Unless you want him to get all James in a snit crossed with Lily narrowing her eyes and marshalling her arguments at you, I’d let that one go.”

Remus stared at Sirius with horror blooming on his face. “…At the same time?”

“Yup,” Sirius said, popping his “p” as obnoxiously as possible.

His bright smile, the one he deployed at Malfoy and his Mother, made Remus shudder.

“Well then,” Remus said. The words came out an octave higher than normal, dissolving Harry’s blank face into suppressed snickers. “I suppose that I could go do some research on the curse in the Department of Records. Perhaps I could send a message to Mr. Nott while I’m out?”

“Nah, I reckoned I’d have Kreacher take a letter to the Post,” Harry said, waving the offer off. “And there’s no point to do research until after we learn if the Goblins can fix it. You’d just waste your time. Maybe later, though.”

Moody straightened up and then downed his firewiskey in a single gulp. “Come on, Potter. Let’s go find the sparring room. I want to see what fighting skills you have so I know where I need to tutor you. Let’s let the lovebirds here have the private chat they’re trying to avoid so hard.”

That set both Harry and Dobby into snickers, especially as Sirius’ face went flamingly red and Remus started spluttering protests again. Either way, they all cleared off, leaving Sirius and Remus alone in the parlor with their tea.

“I don’t… know what to say,” Remus finally murmured.

“Was Moody angry or very, very sad about Harry’s, you know, responses to things?” Sirius asked.

Remus breathed a little ghost of a laugh. “Terribly frustrated, actually. A little sad but no surprise, no real anger. He knows something is very wrong with Harry. He just doesn’t know what it is or what to do about it.”

Sirius nodded. He downed his tea much like Moody had his firewiskey, though with several swallows instead of a huge gulp. Remus stared down into his teacup, still restlessly turning it in neat quarter circles with his fingertips.

“I don’t blame you, Remus,” Sirius murmured. He shook his head as Remus went stone-still. “I don’t. Everyone believed that I’d been given a trial. James and Lily were dead. Prongslet was off who knew where. Dumbledore never did know who our secret keeper actually was. He had every reason to believe it was me. Everything said I’d betrayed them. Harry. You.”

Remus’ shoulders slumped. “I still could have come to yell at you.”

“Moony,” Sirius said gently enough that Remus dared to look up at him through his blunt brown eyelashes. It was as devastating now as it had been back in school, though much more bittersweet. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you’re a werewolf. If you’d gone to Azkaban to yell at me, you’d’ve been dead instantly. They would’ve assumed you were on You-Know-Who’s side and executed you for attempting to help me to escape.”

“Ah,” Remus said, cheeks going red before he laughed and shook his head. “Berk. You know what I meant.”

“Uh-huh,” Sirius said with his biggest grin. “Don’t take the blame for things you couldn’t fix. There were people who could have tried. You’re not one of them. I’m likely to scream in Amelia Bones’ face the first time I see her. She, of everyone, should’ve checked for a trial.”

“True,” Remus allowed. He sighed and finally sipped his tea instead of just playing with it. “He’s… terribly emotionally damaged, Sirius.”

“I know,” Sirius agreed. “The real reason I want to go back to Gringotts is to get him, and me of course, a lot of healing. He’s. He’s such a mess, Moony. Outside of the curse, outside of all the chaos. Dumbledore gave him to Lily’s sister Petunia.”

Remus’ jaw dropped open as his fingernails transformed partway into claws. “What?”

“Yeah.” Sirius sighed. “Petunia married that racist ass, Vernon. You remember him from the wedding?”

“Built like a brick wall, going a bit soft in the middle, balding,” Remus agreed. “He didn’t get any better, did he?”

“No,” Sirius said, shaking his head. He tapped his teacup and it refilled with Kreacher’s best tea, the cinnamon-apple flavored one that was like drinking autumn in a cup. “If anything, he and Petunia got worse. She and Lily were always stiff with each other, but since Lils’ death, it’s like Petunia became someone else entirely. Just as racist and bigoted as Vernon, harsh, unforgiving; they abused Harry horribly. Raised their son Dudley to beat Harry up at every turn. They had Harry doing all the chores around the place, I think from the time he was three or four.”

Remus shut his eyes and breathed in the slow careful way that Lily’s friend Marlene had taught him to control his temper. They sat in silence, Remus breathing and perfectly still, Sirius drinking his tea slowly.

“Dumbledore put him there,” Remus said.

“He’s now and forever enemy of the House of Black,” Sirius confirmed. “Or will be once I can do the proper ceremony to make him one. We had some healing done with Healer Smethwyck. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot more healing that we need that the Goblins can provide. Not to mention the whole horcrux issue. I just… I don’t know why Dumbledore did it, Remus. I don’t understand. My memory’s still chuck full of holes from school and the time just before Prongs and Lils died. I need…”

“Oh, Padfoot, of course I’ll help,” Remus huffed. “I didn’t want to believe you were guilty, but Dumbledore said that it was done, that you’d been convicted. I had to believe him.”

It wasn’t what they’d once had together. Sirius wasn’t sure that they’d ever have that again. So much had happened. So much time had passed. Remus was almost a completely new person. Bloody hell, Sirius was a new person. Lord Black and all.

But that didn’t really matter. He was still Padfoot to Remus’ Moony. James and Lily were gone, yes, and Peter was still out there, the traitor. There was an ancient bloodline curse to deal with, Dumbledore’s plotting, and Harry’s everything.

Speaking of which.

“So, how do you think we should go about getting Theodore Nott away from his asshat of a father?” Sirius asked Remus with his brightest, most manic smile because plotting with Moony again after all these years was going to be a joy.

“I had an idea about that, actually,” Remus said with a sly smile that lit his warm brown eyes up with a hint of the gold of his magic. “We’ll have to ask Harry and Moody, of course, get Amal involved but I do think that a vassal should have wages, yes? Their lord supports them. Don’t you think that Mr. Nott would be interested in the possibility of being free from his father’s financial control.”

“You’re brilliant,” Sirius said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s go find Amal. Oh, and I need to introduce you to Anthony and his wife, Lacey. They’re amazing. Lacey is terrifying. It’s wonderful!”

Remus laughed and shook his head while smiling fondly at Sirius. “Never change, Padfoot. Never change.”

“Pfft, why would I?” Sirius replied just as he always had. “That would be boring!”

He bounced to his feet and headed off to the floo room to see if Anthony and Lacey were available. They needed to be brought up to speed, and Merlin knew that they needed all the help they could get dealing with Harry’s everything.

13. Ally’s Truth

The vassal bonds? I’m pondering several new ideas you might find useful for the future we want to build. Binding people with modified vassal bonds, tying them to the Greater Good and then using behavior modification to sculpt their memories and personality, may be our best way of ensuring true peace in Magical society.

#

Uncle Vernon always claimed that everyone had a price. According to him, if you knew what it was, you could control them forever and ever and ever. It was something that Harry had thought was ridiculous, but apparently Uncle Vernon wasn’t as wrong as Harry had thought.

When Remus and Sirius had suggested, with Amal and Lacey’s strong approval, that Harry set up vaults for Moody and Theo as his vassals, it’d seemed really odd. The bond that had bloomed between Harry and Moody was kind of like Moody was his pseudo-father combined with a drill sergeant. A really enthusiastic and sadistic drill sergeant, especially when they were sparring, but still a sorta fatherly drill sergeant who cared that Harry could defend himself against all the stupid stuff that kept happening to him.

But Moody had nodded and commented that providing a vault with a proper income for your vassal was commonly accepted. Apparently, Harry’s grandfather had paid Moody and his family a really good wage until everything fell apart during the war.

Silverclaw, once they got to the bank in their disguises, had agreed with them all. He’d already set one up for Moody, based on the previous rate. After a short discussion about inflation, Harry had raised the level of compensation dramatically. He had, actually, understood the whole inflation discussion due to Uncle Vernon’s rants about how small his raises were compared to the rate of inflation and what was the world coming to when a good, hard-working man wasn’t paid enough to support his family and one freeloading freak taking food from all their mouths?

Not that Harry said any of that. He was already tired of the concerned looks everyone gave him whenever he put on his “dealing with the Dursleys” face.

Either way, they’d sent Kreacher off with a message to Theo that there was an opportunity for him to achieve financial independence immediately and if he was interested, he should come to Gringotts right away.

Theo had, according to Kreacher, promptly closed the book he’d been reading in his room at Nott Manor, packed a few personal belongings that he didn’t want to give up into his trunk, and snuck out with his truck shrunk down in his pocket. And the book in his hand, too, because apparently books were important.

Now he was sitting opposite Harry, fingers tapping sharply against the black leather cover of his book while he glared at Harry like he wanted to cut Harry’s throat. Moody was slouched behind Harry on a chair. Sirius was off talking to Silverclaw about even more healing for Sirius and Harry, while Lacey was working, and Amal was at the Department of Records with Remus trying to track down the whole bloodline curse thing.

Not having a small army hovering while he explained to Theo was actually easier. If time-consuming enough that Harry had sent for tea so that he wouldn’t end up all hoarse and incoherent before he was done.

“All right,” Harry said, pouring tea for Theo and then giving himself half a cup of tea so that he could have the proper amount of milk and sugar in it. “Given everything at school, I don’t exactly know much about you. I presume the opposite isn’t true, since everyone in the world gets to hear what I have for breakfast and what pants I’m wearing daily.”

Theo made a kitten-sneeze of a laugh, turning his head away as if the sheer concept of smiling anywhere near Harry’s vicinity was unthinkable. “You’re… not entirely wrong. Especially with Malfoy about.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “That berk. All offended when he was the one who insulted me first. You know, I’ve been reading etiquette books and I had to make a special list just for Malfoy. He owes me apologies, has given blood feud level insults, has been insulted dreadfully and might be someone I could turn to for help. It’s ridiculous.”

“I’m surprised he’s not the one here, then,” Theo said, sipping his tea and watching with growing horror as Harry doctored his tea.

“Malfoy’s family aren’t traditionally Potter vassals,” Harry said once he’d gotten six lumps of sugar stirred into his tea to go with the half a cup of milk. He sipped it and nodded happily. Just right. “Your family is, other than your father who was a right berk and went and swore to You-Know-Who when he was already sworn to my family. Now, I know your father was thrown out, but it wasn’t a “no one in your bloodline shall ever darken our doorstep” sort of thing.”

Theo’s lips pursed as Harry sipped his tea. He didn’t quite grimace, not openly, but the delicate little shudder was clear enough that Harry had to grin at him over his teacup.

“No, it wasn’t,” Theo huffed. He leveled a dark glare at Harry’s tea. “But I’ve no interest in being bound to anyone. I’m no one’s slave.”

“Good,” Moody commented.

“You shush, you,” Harry said over his shoulder. “You’re happy to serve. Theo’s got every right to be nervous about this whole idea.”

“Wait,” Theo said, eyes going wide as he stared at Moody. “Mad-Eye Moody is your vassal? When did that happen?”

“Today when we were escaping out of the Department of Records pursued by an angry werewolf,” Harry said in his best bright and cheerful tone of voice with the sort of grin that would get Aunt Petunia swinging her best cast iron frying pan at him. “That was fun.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Theo snapped while leaning back in his chair, fingers locked on the edge of the table as if he wanted to run away screaming but didn’t quite dare go for it.

“Well, no, it wasn’t,” Harry agreed, letting the exaggerated smile go. He shrugged. “But it was fun dumping a bucket of ice water on his face once we got him trapped in an incarcerous spell. He’s okay. He’s an old friend and lover of my godfather.”

“…Is anything about your life normal?” Theo asked extremely slowly. He’d set his teacup down to stare at Harry with abject horror. “I’d suspected that you were a bloody mess from the last two years, but this is worse than I thought.”

Harry shrugged. “Not so much. Sirius thinks its Dumbledore’s fault.”

“He’s partly responsible,” Moody grumbled.

“I think it’s more the bloodline curse the Potters are under,” Harry continued as if Moody hadn’t piped up. “Either way, I was raised like a really poor, really abused Muggle. I’ve less than no idea of how to navigate all the… protocol stuff that goes along with being the last Potter and the heir to the Black family. I’ve got Amal as my Seneschal handling the money and paperwork. I’ve got Moody handling defense now. And I have my godfather doing the whole raising me thing, once he’s free to do so. But I still need help. I need a lot of help with all the etiquette and society and clothes and being properly social since I’m utter pants at it. I need smart help from someone who’ll be trustworthy, who’ll tell me straight-up when I’m wrong, and who can stand up to Ron in a snit and Hermione on a full-blown rant.”

Theo’s mouth dropped open only, only, when Harry got to Ron and Hermione. “…But let’s not expect miracles, of course.”

Harry snickered. “You’ve stood up to both Ron and Hermione already. At the same time. I know you can do that. I believe that you would be motivated to help me navigate all the social and noble protocol stuff, especially at school, if you could be safe as my vassal. Plus I’ll give you your own vault with your own income, which I’ll add to as necessary. Inflation is a thing. Rates have gone up.”

Sadly, neither Moody nor Theo snickered at the Young Frankenstein quote. That was a shame. Sometime soon, if at all possible, he was going to plunk both of them down and make them watch it. Everyone should be able to quote Mel Brooks movies.

“That they have,” Theo said, sipping his tea again.

He stared off into space, one fingertip tapping against the rim of his teacup. Eventually, after about forty or so taps, Theo nodded. A good firm nod that went along with him pursing his lips and snapping those intense dark eyes to Harry’s face. For a bloke with lush, full lips, Theo didn’t look at all hesitant despite the way he’d pouted out his lips. Probably the cheekbones that could cut glass and the carefully styled hair that swooped up off his forehead like a crow’s wing as it took flight.

“I’d require you to pay for my education and provide a home for me,” Theo said. “Also, I would expect raises depending on how useful I was to you.”

“Oh, sure,” Harry agreed with a casual wave of his hand. “I’m thinking that you could potentially be the person I have handle the lower-level political nonsense once we grow up. So, you know, a starting rate now, then more as you get masteries or muggle degrees. I would want you to be able to navigate in the Muggle world too.”

Theo sighed but nodded. “I can deal with that, if I must.”

“Good,” Harry said. “And once you decide on a spouse and when you have kids, of course the rate would go up again. I don’t want you or Amal or Moody to have to take other jobs unless you outright want to.”

“Logical,” Theo agreed as if that was a foregone conclusion. “Our attention should be on our lord.”

“True,” Harry said, wagging a finger at him. “But I don’t want or need you to be a House Elf for me. I’ve got Kreacher for that. So other interests, other friends, even hobbies that bloom into full jobs, eventually, I’m fine with that.”

Theo turned to Moody who started chuckling. “He’s not got the least bit of training on this, has he?”

“Not a bit,” Moody said. He grinned when Harry looked over his shoulder at him. “Sorry, lad, but you truly don’t know a bloody thing. It’s refreshing, honestly. Albus always made out like I was enslaved to your grandfather and his death had somehow miraculously freed me.”

“I really don’t like Dumbledore,” Harry complained.

“You certainly aren’t the only one,” Theo said. He snorted. “Let’s work out the wording of the oaths and get it all written down. I’ll want copies so that I can send one to Father to terminate his rights over me. It will be… well. I hope you have a secure location to go to. I’m not entirely certain that Gringotts is safe enough.”

Harry nodded as he passed over the version of the oaths he’d written up while waiting for Theo to appear. “First draft here. There are Goblin war ward bracelets that are being brought up. For me, you, Moody, Amal. Most everyone, actually. They’re Black family work so Sirius will need to give them to you, but they should keep you safe from everything short of You-Know-Who showing up and casting Adava at you.”

It took about an hour to get the oaths to the point that Theo was satisfied with them. Moody joined them at the table about fifteen minutes in, approval written all over his craggy face as Theo spilled so much red ink on the first draft that you’d have thought he’d killed a chicken on it.

Most of that hour was spent listening to Moody and Theo debating back and forth about the minute particulars of “all loyalty” versus “true loyalty” to the lord and “render all respect” to Theo versus “accord all respect”. The minor wordsmithing meant absolute worlds to Theo, clearly, but to Harry it was all the same thing.

Theo would swear to help, educate, support, and follow Harry with an unbreakable vow to never swear to anyone else. Harry would help, educate, support and lead Theo with an equally unbreakable vow to protect Theo from doing anything like getting close to swearing to someone else.

Wording was irrelevant. Sure, the magic of the vassal bond meant that the words mattered, but only in as far as it clarified everything for Theo.

Harry knew what Theo would be. He knew how he would treat Theo. The only time he entered the argument was when Moody or Theo lofted ideas that would mean that Harry had to be all cold and lordly towards Theo. That just wasn’t going to happen so putting it in the bond was a terrible, no-good, awful idea and Harry wouldn’t allow it.

“You should… require a certain mode of address, you know,” Theo said once they had a clean copy of the vow. “There are expectations.”

“Well, sure, in public,” Harry said. He shrugged away the sharp looks he got from both Moody and Theo. “But not in private. I mean, I started this whole discussion with the fact that I needed someone who could stand up to me and tell me outright that I’m wrong. You’ve got to have the freedom to yell at me, call me a prat and berk and whatever else it takes to get through my temper. So in public, sure, proper Lord This and Lord That, but in private, no. Absolutely not. Unless you think it’ll get through to me. Then go right ahead.”

“All right then,” Theo said with a wry smile and a little shake of his head. “I’m satisfied with this.”

“Should work,” Moody agreed.

“Let’s do it,” Harry said, studying the new oath.

He didn’t fidget as Theo cautiously came to kneel in front of Harry the way it was supposed to be done, unlike the abbreviated and ad hoc way he’d done it with Moody. When Theo put his hands between Harry’s, Harry didn’t let the nerves show.

This was important. Very important for Theo. It might, possibly, given the high spots of color on Theo’s cheeks and the way his pulse hammered at his temples, be more important than anything else Theo had ever done.

“I, Theodore Nott, swear all loyalty to Harrison James Potter, Lord Potter and Heir Black,” Theo intoned as the magic rose between them. “I shall help, educate, support and accord all respect to him for so long as we both shall live. This vow shall prevent any other vow from superseding it, and I shall never, under any circumstances, offer my magic or my loyalty to another, on basis of my magic, my life and my very soul.”

Green, gold, and teal magic throbbed between them, pulsing in time with Harry’s heartbeat which was way slower than he would’ve expected. Harry smiled, squeezed Theo’s hands, and took a deep breath as he completed the vow.

“I, Harrison James Potter, Lord Potter and Heir Black,” Harry said as the magic between them began to spin and whip down into something that looked like a loosely braided rope, “swear that I shall return and reward Theodore Nott’s oath as is right and proper. I shall help, educate, support and render all guidance to him for so long as we both shall live. Where others may threaten his loyalty and his oath, I shall protect him and defend him with all the power I have. So mote it be!”

The loosely braided rope of magic between them flashed into a tightly braided cord that flared neon-bright for a moment. Then it disappeared entirely, leaving Harry blinking away spots. He shook his head and then helped Theo shift from his knees into his chair where Theo slumped, blinking rapidly while rubbing his chest.

“That was… something,” Harry said. “Wow. You okay?”

“I… think so,” Theo said. A frown bloomed on his face. He turned to Moody who raised an eyebrow. “Do you feel it? The way your magic is shifting? There’s something… I think that bloodline curse is doing more than anyone realizes.”

Harry frowned and leaned forward. “Tell me. Tell me everything you feel so that we can break this thing before it destroys me and the Potter line entirely.”

14. Sworn Oaths

I must admit, your advice during your last visit on how to ratchet up the effects of the blood curse were quite thought-provoking. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in arithmetic calculation to see if we can make it happen efficiently.

#

Goblin healers were even more terrifying than Lacey in a snit or going up against Voldemort in a full rage. The team working on Harry under Moody and Theo’s supervision had gone past sneers into snarls and then into outright cursing in several languages instead of just Gobbledygook. Silverclaw’s claws tapped incessantly against each other, setting off sparks that attracted the attention of the guards protecting the healing team.

Only the healing team. Apparently, it was Moody and Theo’s jobs to protect Harry. In reality, it was probably Harry who’d protect everyone else. The kid was stupidly good at eliminating threats with that deadpan face.

“So, I’m getting that this is not going well,” Harry commented in that same deadpan face and voice.

He’d been unceremoniously plunked down on a crystal altar and subjected to dozens of scans that Sirius didn’t recognize at all. The healer team had gone from two to five and then to thirteen Goblin healers as the scan results flashed molten-lava-red and glimmering gold.

“Very not good,” Theo agreed. He hummed while studying the scans. “Your body is an absolutely mess, Potter. I’m stunned that you’re able to walk around when you’re this malnourished, abused and dehydrated.”

“It’s honestly better than it was,” Harry said. He sighed and rolled his eyes when he got a room full of pointed glares for saying it.

“It is,” Sirius agreed. “We’ve both had in-depth healing sessions with Healer Smethwyck. He did say that we need a lot more work, with years of potions, but we’re both better than we were.”

“That’s even more disturbing,” Theo complained.

The healing ritual room was deep within Gringotts. Sirius wasn’t sure just how deep. They’d taken a lift that went down, to the left, down some more and then on a long swooping spiral that felt like they’d gone in widening loops counter-clockwise. It was warm enough that Harry and Sirius had both stripped down to their pants and put on gauzy white robes with relief.

Despite being what felt like miles under the earth, the room was bright from light pouring down through crystal veins shot through the ceiling, walls and floor. The room was bright enough that Sirius had had to shield his eyes when he first entered the room. Harry had squinted, grunted and then let himself be shoved up on the altar ahead of Sirius who would get his turn shortly.

“What’s the biggest problem?” Harry asked entirely too calmly for Sirius’ nerves. “Is it something that’ll take time to fix, or can we do a ritual or something to fix it?”

“The biggest problem, as you put it,” said Bannet, the lead healer and apparently spouse of Ragnok, the Chieftain of the Goblins, “is that the curse is turning your magic against you and everyone around you. Large portions of your magic are being consumed by the curse. It leaves you at a huge disadvantage, Lord Potter.”

Sirius frowned. “Wait. All the weirdness that happens to Harry, all the stuff that happened to James and his family, they fueled it with their own magic? Someone turned the Potter magic against them?”

“Yes,” Bannet agreed so grimly that Sirius had to grit his teeth so that he wouldn’t snarl and offend the Goblin. “Exactly. Our scans are not showing a way to break it, either, short of shattering his core which would kill him.”

Bannet shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair which was short and curly enough to look almost as wild as Harry’s, just brown instead of black. Given that his claws were barely longer than his fingers, he didn’t abruptly scalp himself or give himself an unfortunate haircut.

“No, no, no,” Harry said, leaning up on his elbows to glare thunderously at Bannet. “That’s not the important part of what you just said. My magic is affecting everyone else? I’m hurting them by being here?”

“Don’t you dare, you idiot!” Theo promptly snarled at him. He shoved Harry back down sharply enough that Harry’s head knocked against the crystal altar. “You’re not getting rid of me or Moody, so don’t even think about running away to save us from your messed up magic and your stupid curse.”

“…But if I’m hurting you guys…” Harry said, pouting as he rubbed the back of his head.

“I’m with Nott,” Sirius said. “You’re staying put and that’s that, Harry. They swore oaths to you. You swore oaths to them. You don’t get to walk away now, not when you promised to protect, help and lead them.”

At this distance, Sirius couldn’t hear what, exactly, Harry muttered. Judging by his extremely grumpy pout it was something on the order of “not fair”. Whatever it was, Harry stayed still while Bannet continued working on his many and very serious issues that Healer Smethwyck hadn’t been able to address.

They couldn’t all be fixed.

Bannet had made it clear from the outset that fixing every single one of Harry’s issues would require more or less rebuilding him in ritual and all of them, Moody and Theo included, didn’t think they had enough time for that. Or money. The cost would’ve been horrendous.

Half an hour later, Sirius slid up onto the crystal altar for his turn at getting his shrunken stomach fixed, his nerve damage from the dementors repaired, and his very fragile sanity stabilized. Unlike Harry, who’d flatly insisted on being awake for the whole thing, Sirius gratefully allowed, encouraged even, Bannet to knock him out.

Why feel Bannet’s magic squirming through his innards and his mind if he didn’t need to? Sirius was crazy but he wasn’t nuts.

Waking up, Sirius shifted against the warm flannel sheets the Goblins favored for their recovery beds. The bed itself was a damn sight harder than Sirius was used to in a bed, but it was phenomenally softer than the stone floor he’d had in Azkaban. The image of his cell, dirty and dark, slime dripping down the far wall near the hole that had functioned as a privy, didn’t set Sirius to shuddering.

It was… distant. A thing which had happened, but which no longer controlled his life. The mess of tangled emotions that linked back into the memory spells that Dumbledore had done were less confusing. He was deeply furious at Dumbledore, but not to the degree that he wanted to go running off to curse the man in the back.

Peter was less of a flashpoint, too. Sirius would gladly kill the little rat, but only if there were no hope of capturing him and brining him to trial.

Progress. Nice.

“He’ll be okay?” Harry asked in a tired tone that sounded like the millionth time he’d asked the same question.

“Potter,” Theo drawled, “for the nineteenth time, he’s just sleeping. Healer Bannet said outright that he needed the sleep to sort out his memories. Between the memory spells Bannet removed and the effects of the dementors, I’m astonished that the man was as coherent as he seemed.”

“Well, he is a lot better than he was when I first met him,” Harry said with a sigh that sounded like it came right from his toes. “He was really unstable. Giggling and crying jags, flipping from horror to rage to laughter for no reason at all. Claiming the wards of the Black family home made a huge difference.”

Sirius let his eyes drift open. The Goblin’s recovery room was, of course, a cavern. Unlike the ritual room with its brilliant crystal veins providing light, this cavern was lit with torches that burned smokelessly around the room. It was dim enough that Sirius couldn’t quite see the ceiling. The torches bracketing his and Harry’s beds burned low and dim, giving them just enough light to see but not so much that it made it hard to sleep.

Harry sat on his bed, rubbing his hands over the thick blanket covering his legs. His fingers traced the marble-like patterns on the blanket. Moody stood at the end of Harry’s bed with his arms crossed over his chest, magical eye focused squarely on Harry instead of whirling and searching for threats. Not that Sirius could think of a single threat that could get them in the healing halls underneath Gringotts.

“Lad, you need to rest,” Moody said far more gently than Sirius had ever heard out of the old Auror. “Fretting isn’t going to wake Black up sooner and you’ll just be too tired to make effective decisions if you don’t lie down and shut your damned eyes.”

Harry grimaced. “I know. I know. I just… I’m not used to having anyone watch my back, Moody. Having both of you is really weird. I mean, that’s entirely aside from the whole godfather thing and his small hoard of people. And Amal. Can’t forget Amal. Do you think he and Remus will find anything?”

“That’s the twenty-ninth time you’ve asked that,” Theo said in such a snippily precise tone that Harry winced, and Sirius grinned. “The answer hasn’t changed. It’s not going to change. They may. They may not. There’s insufficient information to know for sure.”

“Prongslet, go to sleep,” Sirius said.

It came out husky and wrong but that didn’t seem to bother Harry who gasped and whirled to stare at Sirius with so much worry and fear that Sirius tried to lever himself up.

“Lie back down, Black,” Moody snapped. “There. He’s awake. Go to sleep, Lord Harrison James Potter-Black, or so help me, I will go find Lacey and let her bind your scrawny ass to that bed.”

Harry squeaked and scooted down under his covers. “Yessir! Wow, that full name thing is a lot more effective than I thought it was.”

To Sirius’ great amusement, Harry yawned as if trying to separate his jaw from his skull as soon as he lay down. A few fidgeting tugs at the covers and then he fell asleep. Moody snorted. Theo rolled his eyes and turned a gimlet glare on Sirius that had Sirius pulling his covers up, too.

“Bannet said to tell you that your memories of everything are highly unreliable,” Theo murmured. He rubbed his forehead and then shrugged. “He does feel that Dumbledore is a threat to you and Harry, however it may not be… as severe as you think.”

“Could be the curse on the Potter blood,” Moody agreed with a little nod. He hadn’t uncrossed his arms or moved at all. “Could be that Albus is up to shenanigans. Could be both. We don’t know yet and won’t know until Amal and Lupin get back.”

Sirius sighed. “Lovely. You do know that he’ll be massively pissed off if the two of you don’t sleep and eat, right? You can’t stand guard the whole time.”

Theo snickered and glanced at Moody who scowled. “Oh, we’re well aware of that. That was the third conversation we’ve rotated through with Harry since the healing. Eleven times, in fact. Moody is taking the first shift. I’m just waiting for Amal, Lacey or Anthony to take me back to Grimmauld Place. It’s the second safest place for me to be, right after here.”

“Your father will be upset, won’t he?” Sirius said, frowning.

“Of course,” Theo agreed readily. He didn’t seem upset at all about that. “Father expected that I would follow the Dark Lord as he did. I’ve made it clear since I was a small child that I would do no such thing. It’s been a bone of contention between us forever. I’ve already sent him a note explaining that I took the vassal’s oath to Harry. He’s already sent back a reply disowning me and telling me that I’m not free to ever return to his house. It’s expected. Father always knew this would happen if Harry offered.”

Sirius opened his mouth to… what? Comment? Protest? He wasn’t quite sure. For all that Sirius had run away from home and abandoned his family as a teenager, he’d never been fully and properly disowned. The family magic had welcomed him. Grandfather Arcturus had made it clear, through James’ parents, that Sirius could come to him at any time if he wanted to.

But that wasn’t a fair comparison, now was it?

Theo had been fighting his parents, his father, his entire life. Sirius had hated Mother, had feared Father, but he’d never been told outright that he had to serve that monster Voldemort or be thrown out until the very end. By that point, he’d known that he had safe places to run to.

Rather than ask Theo questions that his scowl clearly said he didn’t want to answer, Sirius turned to Moody who rolled his good eye.

“What about the Order?” Sirius asked Moody.

“…Good question, Black,” Moody replied after a moment of frozen silence. “Very good. My oath to Harry supersedes everything I swore to Albus and the Order. Told Albus decades ago that the Potters would always come first for me. He didn’t much like it, but he accepted that he wasn’t going to get more. Not sure what will happen now that he’s an enemy of my Lord’s adoptive family.”

“I don’t know either,” Sirius said with a sigh. “The enmity isn’t formal but…”

He’d sworn oaths to Dumbledore as a member of the Order of Phoenixes. There was no weight to them anymore. In fact, Sirius hadn’t felt a single thing from that oath of silence and loyalty since he took the wards back. Which was not how such oaths should work.

Sirius squirmed a little, exhaustion pulling at him again. “Well, see what you can find out, you two. Ask Lacey and Anthony about it when they come back. And Remus. He’ll probably have already thought about that. Dumbledore used to have him out trying to convince the werewolf packs to side with us. I don’t… know if that’s still going on or not.”

Moody exchanged a dark frown with Theo who looked more puzzled by the whole exchange than anything. They would have to tell the others about the Order later. After he woke up. And after they figured out just what was going on with Harry’s curse. Oh, and hopefully after his memory was less of a mess.

That would be lovely, thank you. Sirius snorted a little laugh and let himself drift off to sleep. If Merlin and Lady Magic could fix his memory while he slept, that would be perfect, not that he expected it to work.

Sirius’ luck just didn’t run that way, sadly.

15. Light Threats

If I can get access to the remaining Potters, and especially to their friends, I can sculpt the effects of the blood curse so that they die faster. You’ve always been brilliant on such things, Gellert. I would appreciate your help with my work on liberating my family more than I can say. Obviously, I’ll do most anything you want to get your assistance.

#

Every bone in Harry’s spine cracked as he stretched his arms up over his head and rocked side to side. The workroom that Silverclaw had arranged for them in Gringotts looked more like a fancy hotel suite. There were bedrooms for everyone with big, comfy four-poster beds with heavy curtains and too-soft mattresses. The outer room of the suite had not just big comfy couches but also a nice dining room table and chairs, and four big worktables that were now completely covered with carefully spelled and charmed and cursed notes.

The whole reason that it’d taken half of forever for Amal and Remus to come back from the Department of Records was that they’d tested what it took for them to be able to keep a record instead of it quietly disappearing the instant they took their hands off it.

The notes had to be written on specially spelled parchment that was protected from destruction, designed to be nearly impossible to copy with standard archivist duplication spells and the parchment had to be pale orange. No other color worked. How they’d figured that one out, Harry didn’t even want to know, but as it made a difference so be it.

Then the notes had to be charmed to stick together at the top edge. Only the top edge, nowhere else. Finally, they had to be strongly cursed so that only the person who wrote the notes could handle them or read them.

If all of that was done in exactly that order, and the notes were written with a special archivist’s quill using indelible blue archivist ink that couldn’t be erased by either magic or muggle means, then you could keep your notes.

You just couldn’t share them.

Which was fine. Just made for long, wordy explanations of what they’d found over the hearty breakfast that Silverclaw arranged for them to eat once he and Sirius had woken up.

“All right,” Sirius said while stretching his shoulders and grimacing at the loud cracks. “The final result is that we don’t know, yet, who put the curse on the Potter family. We do know what it does to him and to everyone around him.”

“Yes,” Amal said. He scowled at his notes as if he wanted to set them on fire. “It’s a variation of the Interesting Times curse, expanded out to cover the whole bloodline both born into the family and adopted. Married as well. Everyone who associates with, marries into or who’s born into the Potter family will have, well, a tendency to get sucked into dangerous situations. Potentially lethal situations.”

“On top of that,” Remus continued as Amal descended into angry grumbles that Harry kind of agreed with on sheer principle, “the curse amplifies certain aspects of each affected person’s personality. So James? James had joke thing. He loved his pranks to the point where he’d lose all common sense and take things too far. Lily, once she got involved with him, started having this…”

Remus paused, staring into space while windmilling his hands as if he was trying to work taffy between them. After a moment, he shrugged and focused on Harry again. His smile was rueful and a little amused.

“Lily was a very flexible thinker when she was young,” Remus explained. “She’d figure out the most amazing things by going in the oddest directions. Once she and James began dating instead of sniping each other all the time, she started… changing. She’d get stuck on an idea and then refuse to let it go no matter what evidence you showed to her.”

“Lily was Right and everyone else was Wrong,” Sirius agreed with a scowl directed into his teacup. “Dumbledore and Flitwick were among the few people who could get her to change her mind.”

“Huh,” Harry grunted. “Well, obviously, I’ve got a Saving Everyone thing. I mean, just so you guys know. It’s a thing already and has been pretty much my whole life despite the Dursleys and my old school and everything. I can’t seem to help myself when I see someone who needs help.”

Not a one of them, including Silverclaw, looked at all happy about that. There was a fair bit of grouchy cursing under his breath from Moody and Remus looked like he wanted to fling himself in front of anything that might ever threaten Harry. Oddly, Theo was the only one who appeared to take it in stride, but then he’d spent a couple of years at Hogwarts with Harry and must have had plenty of time to observe Harry and all the nonsense he got into.

Nonsense that was contagious. That bugged Harry. Badly. He hated the thought that just being around Harry, being friends with him, might be enough to get other people thinking and acting irrationally. Especially when there was the other half of the curse to deal with.

“So, we know about what the curse does,” Harry said. “Do we have any idea of who or why? I mean, people don’t curse for no reason at all, especially not something this big.”

“Not yet,” Remus said with an exhausted sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose and then rubbed his eyes as if they were burning. “I’ll have to go back and do more research. The best we can determine, the curse hit somewhere around 1937 or 1938. It had to have been directed at your grandfather Fleamont or great-grandfather Henry.”

“There is a chance it was directed at your great-uncle, Charlus Potter, or his wife Dorea,” Amal said, wagging a finger at Remus who nodded as if he could allow that but only barely. “The thing about the curse is that it affected everyone in the family, either by blood or adoption or even dating. It could have been any Potter alive at the time.”

“There were not many,” Silverclaw said. His voice was low and grave, with a hint of rumbling gravel like he wanted to curse some more. “Your great-grandfather Henry Potter was unfortunate enough to watch most of his relatives die before he reached adulthood.”

“Well…” Harry paused and turned to Theo who was frowning thunderously, “doesn’t that sort of imply that the curse happened in the generation before Henry? I mean, if they’re all dying off then it would make sense.”

“We just don’t know,” Remus complained.

He rubbed his forehead again, hard enough that the skin went white and the flushed angry red. Both he and Amal looked like they’d been beaten up. Remus looked worse. A lot worse. Amal looked tired, sounded tired. His shoulders slumped and his jaw kept tensing as he fought against yawns.

Remus looked like he’d been beaten up, thrown in front of a bus, trampled by Aunt Petunia and the other women on Privet Drive as they went to gossip about someone, and then expected to stand up and look like nothing had happened.

“Okay, Moody,” Harry said, smiling as Moody snapped to attention. “This curse. It’s affecting everyone. Is that why Remus is so darned exhausted?”

“I’m fine,” Remus protested only to wince when Sirius blew a scoffing raspberry at him. “I think I’m entitled to be a bit tired after all the excitement and the research we did.”

“No, he’s not “fine”,” Moody drawled. His human eye rolled while the magic eye spun and then focused square on Remus who cringed away from it. “The curse is definitely affecting him. Seems to be affecting his werewolf curse, too.”

“Right, that’s that, then,” Sirius huffed. “Moony, go back to Grimmauld Place. Get some food from Kreacher and eat all of it. Then get some sleep.”

Harry pointed a finger at Remus who froze. “I will absolutely pull out the tragic eyes at you.”

Remus huffed and stood, taking his bright orange stack of notes with him since no one else could look at them anyway. He muttered something like “cheating” under his breath as he left, but at least he did leave. Hopefully he would actually eat and sleep when he got back to Grimmauld Place.

“So why isn’t anyone else affected the same way?” Harry asked the table at general.

“He’s a werewolf,” Moody said with a not really casual shrug. He didn’t quite manage to look unbothered. His jaw jutted out too far for that.

“The werewolf curse unbalances your magic,” Lacey explained, scowling into her tea. “Few werewolves bitten as children live to adulthood, Harry. He’s in very bad shape generally, then you add your curse onto his own curse, and he’s going to be prone to bigger problems.”

Harry huffed as Sirius waved at him to stay in his seat. He didn’t want to stay put. Something needed to be done. For Merlin’s sake, he was hurting Remus!

“There’s the expression I expected,” Theo commented. He smirked when Harry glared at him. “That’s the Saving People expression right there.”

“…There was a surge in his core right then,” Moody said, magical eye locked onto Harry while Moody’s normal eye widened in surprise. “Damn me, I can see it affecting you.”

“Now, that’s useful,” Amal said. “Sirius, I’d strongly suggest that you go talk to Remus. He was blaming himself for everything that’s happened while we were at the bank. I don’t know if that’s normal behavior for him now, but it wasn’t healthy at all.”

Sirius nodded and stood. “I was planning on it. Prongslet, I expect you and the others to follow me back to Grimmauld Place within the next hour. I know you want to keep working here, but we need the Black family magic and our library to deal with this.”

“Agreed,” Silverclaw said. “There is little goblin magic can do for this issue. Bannet has made it clear that you will both need to heal naturally for at least a year before he can do the full ritual he wants. In light of that, there is little that we can do at the moment other than guard the Black and Potter investments while making ourselves available for any other needs you may have.”

“The big need I’ve got,” Harry said, pausing as Sirius ruffled his hair in passing. Sirius laughed as Harry tried to swat his hands away. “Is to know just how to break this curse. Or, I mean, if the curse can’t be broken, can we meet the requirements of it? Is that a thing? I mean, in fairy stories in the muggle world, you had to meet the clauses of a curse to break it. True Love’s Kiss and all that.”

Amal groaned, head dropping down to his orange sherbet-colored notes. “I am so done with the Department of Records.”

Lacey grinned at him, while Anthony patted his shoulder comfortingly. “I can understand that, but it’s a valid question. And yes, there’s two ways of dealing with a curse. You either break it, which is generally preferred because the clauses built into a curse are normally nearly impossible to meet, or you meet the clauses and hope that you did it exactly right.”

Harry looked at Silverclaw and Lacey hopefully. Lacey sighed and shook her head. Silverclaw did his best to keep a rock-still face but he somehow managed to look furious despite not moving a muscle.

Great.

“No way to break it that you can see?” Harry asked even though Bannet had already explained a couple of times after the healing that it was tied straight into Harry’s core.

“If we want to kill you, sure, we can break it,” Lacey said in a brittle, bright tone that was as bad as Aunt Petunia at her garden party snippiest when someone insulted her roses. “If you want to survive it with your magic intact, not so much.”

“Great,” Harry groaned. “And we don’t know when it was placed or by who or why so we can’t figure out what the requirements for it are, either. That’s just… peachy.”

Theo leaned forward, looking at Moody and then Amal. They both straightened. There was something in the bonds Harry had to the three of them, something determined and sharp as a scalpel.

He breathed through the weird feeling, trying to sort out just what it was that Theo felt. But that didn’t really matter, did it? What Theo felt was what Theo felt. His emotions were his emotions. Same for Moody who was hard and scarred and somehow joyful despite all the worry for Harry briming over into the bond. Amal? Amal was steady as a metronome set to a slow one-two beat, but the sound of that beat was all duty, duty, duty. Happy about it, yeah, but still duty.

Weirdly, Harry could shut his eyes and know exactly where each of them were. Moody was to his left, facing Harry with one leg thrust out so that he could leap away from the table at any moment, should they somehow be attacked. Theo sat close to Harry, at his right hand, close enough that if Harry pushed his knee out just an inch further, they would touch. And Amal sat directly opposite Harry so that he could give his reports properly to his lord.

It was all there in the bond. Where they were, where Harry was.

That there were other people there, too.

Silverclaw’s magic, so quicksilver despite being as close to polished granite as anything Harry had ever felt. Lacey and Anthony who gleamed like Sirius, all silver-bright and full of the whispering power that was the Black family magic.

Huh. He could feel the bond to Sirius, too, off back at Grimmauld Place.

No Remus, though.

“You… think you see something?” Harry asked, eyes still shut, and arms crossed over his chest as if he’d turned into a mini Moody.

“Moody can see the curse working,” Theo said readily enough that Harry almost opened his eyes. “We know that it was affecting you at that particular moment. We know that it was affecting Remus quite directly. I think that we can figure out what it wants, possibly, with some testing.”

“Oh, that might… work,” Amal breathed.

Harry did open his eyes at the sheer delight coming through the bond to Amal. “You think so?”

“Yes,” Amal said as he turned to Lacey and Silverclaw. “There are detection spells for motives of spells on artifacts. Could we adapt one so that we could use it to see how the curse is moving between us?”

“Well, maybe,” Lacey said so dubiously that Harry bit his lip. “There’s a certain level of power that has to be flowing for the spells to catch it. I’m not sure you’re at that all the time.”

“Something changed when I took my vows,” Theo said.

“It really did,” Harry agreed. He waved at Amal, then at Moody. “I mean, I didn’t feel a single thing from Amal. Not before he took his vow or after. It was just a little bit of ceremony that made Amal feel better about the whole thing. For Moody there was a sort of surge and then I trusted him to get us out of danger. But once Theo swore, wow, it was a huge difference. I can feel them. I can tell where they are, what they’re doing and what they’re feeling. It’s like a wall got broken down or something.”

Both Silverclaw and Lacey perked right up at that. Lacey’s grin went sharp enough that Silverclaw nodded approvingly while Anthony went all besotted adoration at her. Not that Lacey noticed as she pushed back from the table and stood.

“Then it probably will work,” Lacey said with her vicious grin.

“I can kind of feel all of you guys, too,” Harry said. “Silverclaw and you, Anthony, Sirius. Not Remus. Kreacher definitely. Not Dobby, of course. We don’t have a bond.”

“We can use that,” Lacey exclaimed. “I’ll be right back. We should be able to get some good data on this thing. It will at the very least give is a better idea what we’re dealing with.”

She hurried out of the suite. Harry leaned back in his chair and let the others talk over his head. Well, the adults anyway. Theo just leaned on the table and listened with a serious expression. His knee drifted closer, pressing against Harry’s.

Just a little touch, nothing to think about, if it weren’t for the calm determination and iron will that flowed through Harry’s bond from Theo. Harry might have a Saving People thing, but he thought that Theo had a Take Care of Harry thing, too.

Maybe.

Hopefully, all of this would let them figure out how to break the curse because Harry already had too much to worry about what with his relatives, Sirius’ lack of a trial, and Dumbledore’s getting all up in Harry’s business over everything without caring if he survived it.

16. Bright Blade

Though perhaps I can demonstrate my dedication to you and our cause when next you visit, always presuming Aberforth will care for Arianna long enough. She gets more and more unstable as she ages. The battle with Father that resulted in that Muggle trash dying destabilized her magic quite dramatically.

#

“Damn it, Moony!” Sirius shouted as he kicked the door to Remus’ borrowed bedroom. “Will you open the bloody door and let me in already?”

Not a peep from the other side of the door which meant that Moony was sulking and being ridiculous as if he was a threat to everyone when, clearly, Harry was the threat to everyone else. No, no, wait.

“If you’re in there blaming yourself for not knowing that Prongs had a bloodline curse on him, I’m going to blast this door open and bop you one!” Sirius shouted like they were eleven years old and arguing over who got to use the loo first at Hogwarts again.

“I am not “blaming” myself,” Remus huffed as he finally flung the door open to glare at Sirius. “I did miss it! And I should have seen it. With my senses it should have been obvious.”

“Oh, because you’re somehow infallible unlike every Potter in the last several generations, Dumbledore and oh, hey, McGonagall?” Sirius replied with as much sarcasm as he could pack into the words.

It must have been enough, especially on McGonagall’s name, because Remus winced and then deflated to look exhausted instead of furious. Sirius rolled his eyes and pushed Remus back into his suite. Kreacher had given Remus the Sunlight Suite, one of the smallest ones in Grimmauld Place, but the soft yellow walls, simple wood floors and pale cream fabric on the curtains and squat, squashy little slipper chairs were nice.

Soothing.

Good on Kreacher, really. Moony could always use soothing environments and this suite was small enough to keep him from feeling like he was somehow “wasting space” that should go to someone more deserving.

Damn Remus and his endless self-blame, anyway.

“I should have… known,” Remus muttered as he sat in one of the slipper chairs, hands hanging limp between his knees.

“Moony, none of us knew,” Sirius said, sitting in the other lovely squashy chair. “I don’t think James knew. How in Merlin’s name could you have known? And don’t tell me that you should have known because special magic werewolf senses. You spent most of our lives barely surviving month to month. You didn’t have the strength or energy to do much more than survive for a quarter of the month. The rest of the time you were too afraid to breathe lest someone discover your secret. I still remember your panic attack when we confronted you about your furry little problem.”

It had been a full-blown panic attack, not that Remus had ever admitted it while they were at Hogwarts. There had been panting, blown out pupils and Remus shaking so badly that his teeth chattered. He’d completely lost the thread and curled into a little ball on the floor of their dorm room, arms over his head.

They’d had to spend a good hour calming him down. Every time one of them tried to explain, even with Peter shifting to his form and wiggling his whiskers at Remus, it’d sent Remus off into another panic attack spiral.

At least he’d calmed down after the first full moon when they’d all survived and Remus himself hadn’t been as miserable, as exhausted, as torn to shreds as normal.

Remus sighed. “Still.”

“No still,” Sirius huffed at him, wagging a finger just like Lily used to when they were all young and idiots. “You get no stills in this conversation, Moony. I won’t have it.”

Either the finger or the nonsense got through to Remus finally. He breathed a ghost of a laugh, smiling so tenderly and so sadly at Sirius that it just about tore Sirius’ heart out. The worst part was that no matter how much Sirius wanted to take care of Remus, to stuff him full of food and Wolfsbane and dress him in good new clothes, Remus would never let him.

It wasn’t like Remus was Sirius’ vassal.

He was just Sirius’ best friend and the very heart of Sirius, not that Remus had ever seen it.

“Fine,” Remus said. “What are we going to do?”

“Well,” Sirius said while shaking his head and laughing through the horrified awareness that lurked in his heart after spending a few days around Harry, “Prongslet is going to do something absolutely insane that gives us an idea of how to handle all this. He’ll rope his vassals into it and probably drag Lacey, Anthony and even Silverclaw along with him. And he’ll put on this blank, emotionless expression while doing something that terrifies everyone so bad that they damn near piss themselves.”

“…That’s remarkably specific, Pads,” Remus said, blinking at him worriedly.

“Why do you think I’ve been roping people in to help?” Sirius groaned. He threw up his hands and slouched in the wonderful accommodating squashy chair. “Prongslet makes James look even-tempered on these things, Moony. He literally had a basilisk fang in his trunk that he used to kill a horcrux in the downstairs parlor, specifically because he was hungry and wanted to get Kreacher on his side by taking care of the task my idiot little brother gave him.”

If Remus had been Moony, his ears would have slid back and back until they were plastered against his skull. As it was, Remus stared at Sirius going slowly pale until he raised a shaking hand to rub it over his face, fingers catching on the scars.

“Ah, I had thought that was exaggeration,” Remus admitted.

“Not in the slightest,” Sirius said. “I don’t know what Harry’s been through, Moony, but it’s… he’s as bad as I am. Maybe worse. I mean, I know Azkaban punched gaping holes in my sanity and my memory. I’m not sure Harry realizes that he’s been traumatized. Add this curse on the top and, Merlin’s saggy bollocks, I’m stunned he’s not already dead.”

No surprise, that got Remus’ eyes to flash gold. It was old-hat to Sirius so he just nodded. Remus growled and stood to pace diagonally across the little sitting room since there wasn’t enough room to pace any other way. Too small.

“I don’t understand why Dumbledore placed him somewhere that he’d be unsafe,” Remus complained.

“I think,” Sirius said slowly and deliberately because Remus needed to hear that he was serious about this, “that he was placed with Lily’s sister deliberately. You remember what that ass Petunia married was like. He’s not gotten a bit better over the years. Still a blustering bully, still a bigot, still a racist monster. Dumbledore not just put Harry there originally. He made Harry go back three summers in a row despite everything. The only reason Harry’s here now is that he bolted, and I took a chance and brough him to Grimmauld.”

The gold flashed in Remus’ eyes much longer this time. There was a hint of fang about his teeth as he snarled and looked away. His nails seemed longer, sharper, too.

“Quit trying to destroy my temper,” Remus growled at him.

“Moony, I’m not,” Sirius said. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees to stare up at Remus. “I need help. I need your help, certainly. Merlin knows you’re the better of the two of us at all this nonsense. And the only one who can go walkabout at will. You honestly need to know this because I need your help with our Prongslet. He’s a right mess and I can’t do it by myself.”

Remus’ eyes went wide. He bit his lip, no fangs at all, and then came back to flop in the squashy chair. His hands were shaking again, which was odd.

Or, no, it wasn’t odd at all.

The curse was affecting Remus. They knew that. That was why Remus had come back here. But if it was affecting Harry and the people he was closest to, then that meant that Sirius was affected, too. So Sirius being here was passing the curse onto Remus, which he absolutely couldn’t allow.

“Kreacher!” Sirius called.

“Lord Black calls?” Kreacher asked. He’d popped in silently, his little butler’s uniform perfectly clean and so impeccable that it was an outright sneer against Sirius who’d gone all rumpled the moment he slouched down in the chair.

“What’s Harry found out about the curse?” Sirius asked. He flapped a hand at Remus when Remus rolled his eyes. “I know that boy’s already done something. I can feel his excitement.”

Kreacher shook his head, slow and amused. “Master Harry is testing the curse. His vassals is able to see and feel the curse now that Master Harry has enough of them. Mistress Lacey thinks that the minimum number in the bonds for the curse to be obvious is three. Elves is not counting. Our magic is not same, so does not show or feel the same.”

Sirius tilted his head to the side, staring at Kreacher. He’d spent his entire childhood hating the old elf. That Kreacher and this Kreacher seemed to be completely different people, though. Without his mother pouring her hatred and bigotry into Kreacher, he wasn’t as bad. Still snooty, still judgmental, but not so awful.

Add in Harry’s effect, and Kreacher was almost reasonable to be around.

Or maybe that was the bond to Kreacher.

“But there’s only one elf in the bond,” Sirius commented. He gasped. “Oh, and I only have Anthony and Lacey! I don’t have enough to be able to feel the curse working on my side either.”

Kreacher nodded. “Is true. Kreacher thinks that maybe adding Dobby would change how the curse behaves to Elves, but he is not sure, and Master Harry is not willing to force Dobby. Besides, Dobby is stubborn and very powerful and very old. He could not be forced now that he is free.”

“I do need one more bond, don’t I?” Sirius said, pointing at Kreacher who stared back so flatly that Remus flinched.

Sirius didn’t. There was a thread of approval coming from Kreacher that Sirius had figured it out without excessive snark and poking like he usually needed to listen to Kreacher. Sirius rolled his eyes and waved a hand to dismiss Kreacher. Of course, Kreacher being Kreacher, he took a good six seconds before he popped away with a loud enough pop that both Sirius and Remus jumped. Clean and healthy or not, Kreacher was still a little troll. Very little, very much a troll with every bit of the bad temper a troll had.

Less stink, thankfully. He should thank Harry for that sometime. Later. When there weren’t more important things to do.

“I don’t see how that makes sense,” Remus said as soon as Sirius slumped back down in his squashy slipper chair.

“I’ve stopped questioning these things, Moony,” Sirius said. “It’s Harry. Harry’s got all of James’ mischief mixed up with all of Lily’s smarts, twisted around into this terrifying determination that would make even You-Know-Who pause. And, apparently, did. You know. Back then.”

Remus’ flat stare for the very weak joke was a good bit better than his automatic rejection. There was no way that the whole “doesn’t make sense” thing was anything other than a rejection. It was Remus, after all. He resisted anything that might whiff of charity.

“All right,” Sirius said, sitting up properly so that he could lean forward and stare menacingly into Remus’ eyes. “I’d let you beat around the bush and pretend that this is a debate, but we are dealing with a bloodline curse on Prongslet. It’s a threat to our boy, Moony. It’s going to kill him. The curse,” he paused long enough for Remus to go progressively more pale, “is going to kill Harry. Right now, you can do research, but you can’t help me see the curse. You can’t protect yourself against it. You can’t protect Harry.”

“I don’t…” Remus sighed as his shoulders slumped. “I don’t want to be a burden on you, Padfoot.”

“Remus, the only person you’ve ever been a burden to is yourself,” Sirius snapped. “You’re my best friend, my only friend now, but you’re a bloody idiot about this. James never saw you as a burden. I certainly didn’t, unless you fell asleep on top of me. I don’t know how someone who’s consistently skin and bones can weigh as much as you do.”

A startled laugh escaped Remus. He shook his head, eyes wide. Sirius didn’t even need to hear “Peter” to know what was coming.

“What the rat said is irrelevant, Moony,” Sirius said with a decisive wave of his hand. “Ignore him. Well, ignore him until we track him down and tear him apart for betraying James and Lily and Harry. He had to be a spy for ages, Moony. Don’t believe a damned thing he ever said.”

“Dumbledore, actually,” Remus murmured sadly even as he nodded his agreement on Peter.

Sirius glowered. “I am this close to declaring Dumbledore an enemy of the House of Black. If I knew better what memories were real and what weren’t, I’d already have done it.”

“I’ll… want to circle back to that,” Remus said, wagging a finger at Sirius as if he was telling Sirius to write it down so they could revise on the subject later. “You really believe Kreacher? And Harry?”

Sirius shrugged. “I have to. You had your own Harry Potter encounter, Moony. You saw what he can do. You saw how he goes sideways and up when everyone else is going straight forward. If he says that there’s a thing with three bonds and more, I believe it.”

“And Kreacher?” Remus asked with a slow nod that was as reluctant as any Sirius had seen from him.

“He can’t lie to me anymore,” Sirius said. “I’m Lord Black. He’s my bonded elf. I can feel when he’s telling the truth and when he’s being a little shit. Which, for the record, is all the time. Except to Harry, but then he’s still a little shit to Harry. It’s just cleaning everything before Harry can get to it.”

Remus swallowed a laugh.

Then sighed and curled inwards on himself just as he had when he finally gave in and let them all keep him company in the Shrieking Shack.

Sirius relaxed so much that it felt like his spine melted. He offered a hand to Remus, smiling as Remus took it hesitantly. The grip was anything but hesitant. Remus squeezed his hand so hard that Sirius’ bones creaked. He didn’t care.

“Vassal bond?” Remus suggested.

“I… you mean so much more to me than that, Moony,” Sirius admitted. His cheeks were as red as the first time he’d attempted to kiss Remus back when they were fourth years. “You always have. Would you take Lord Consort? The old blood oath bonding doubles as a marriage bond. It would protect you from Dumbledore and, hopefully, be a strong enough bond to help keep you safe, safer, from the curse.”

Remus’ jaw dropped open as his eyes went wide and shimmering gold. “…You want to marry me?”

“Moony, I proposed when we were twelve,” Sirius said, grinning and blushing as his heart pounded against his breastbone like a caged bludger. “I thought you knew that by now.”

The long few seconds before Remus nodded, shook his head no, and then nodded much more eagerly felt like they lasted at least a thousand years. Maybe ten thousand. But Remus did nod, and he did laugh and stare at Sirius as if Sirius was the most brilliant thing he’d ever seen.

“Shouldn’t we have the others here?” Remus asked. He jumped as Kreacher popped in with a shimmering silver blade.

“Grandfather’s athame,” Sirius whispered. He took it and licked his lips as how very easily it meshed with his magic. “No, I don’t. I don’t want to share this with anyone, Moony. I want something just for us. We’ll tell them, maybe do the old-fashioned presentation party thing if I ever get my trial. But this? I want it to be just for us.”

Remus licked his lips and nodded. “I’d prefer that, honestly. I… don’t know how Moony is going to respond.”

“He’ll be over the fucking moon, no joke,” Sirius said with a snort. “His pack back, his mate back, the potential for revenge, a good den to live in? Moony will love this.”

The old blood oath version of marriage was as simple as it could be. Kreacher popped away as Sirius cut his right palm. The athame kept it from hurting. Remus took the blood-slicked knife and cut his right palm, too. Thankfully, grandfather’s athame wasn’t silver. It was mithril which meant that it didn’t burn Remus to hold it or be cut by it. He passed it back and Sirius set it to the side, out of the way.

They grasped hands, pooling blood between them. Their magic already swirled between them, like the moon and the sun shattered into glimmering dust that orbited the two of them and their perfect squashy little chairs.

“I swear to have and hold you, Remus John Lupin, as my mate, my bonded husband and as Lord Consort of the House of Black,” Sirius intoned, putting every bit of his heart into the oath. “I will protect, defend, cherish and put you above all others for so long as we both shall live.”

Tears spilled over in Remus’ eyes as he took a shuddering breath. “I swear to have and hold you, Sirius Orion Black, as my mate, my bonded husband, and my Lord. I swear faith and fealty to the House of Black. I will protect, defend, cherish and put you above all others for so long as we both shall live.”

The swirling magic spun between the two of them, forming rope that bound the two of them together. It snapped into place and Sirius gasped at the same time that Remus did.

He could feel Remus. His fear, his joy, his bone-deep exhaustion and worry. Sirius pulled Remus out of his chair and into his arms, clinging to him as they both shook from the power of the bond they’d created.

There was so much. So much he needed to do for Remus, for Harry, for Anthony and Lacey, too. It didn’t matter. Right now all that mattered was that Remus was finally, truly, his.

“Mine,” Remus growled into Sirius’ ear.

“Yes,” Sirius replied. “Always!”

17. Friendly Foe

I’d thought that she might become an Obscural. That would at least make her useful some of the time. Think how much easier it would be to eliminate the Potters if we had an Obscural under our control!

#

As much as Harry wanted to solve… all the problems as quickly as possible, a day off was nice.

Calming. Not soothing, not with so many things to test and research, but at least he didn’t have to worry about someone seeing him on Diagon Alley and realizing who he was. The disguise was wonderful, but it wasn’t foolproof.

Staying in Grimmauld Place and helping Theo test the whole “Moody can see the curse” thing was interesting. Theo had a mind just like Hermione’s in that he was smarter than anyone else Harry had ever met, and he was just as determined to learn All The Things as she was. He had the advantage over Hermione in that Theo was much more flexible in his beliefs. And he didn’t worship authority the way Hermione so often did.

Which was how Harry ended up in the downstairs blue parlor, not the one with Sirius’ mum, sitting on a marvelously comfortable wingback chair upholstered in the most ridiculously gaudy royal blue, gold and lime green fabric he’d ever seen. Across the parlor, which was one of the smaller ones about the size of a Hogwarts broom closet, Moody stood glaring at Theo as Theo stood between the two of them.

“One more test,” Theo said for the twenty-ninth time.

“Lad, I’m about to lose my temper with all of this,” Moody replied with a not-quite convincing growl for the eighth time.

“Aren’t you the one who goes on about eternal vigilance?” Theo replied with a snide little lift to one eyebrow while tapping his clipboard authoritatively.

Harry kept his mouth shut. He’d figured out that getting between Theo and Moody when they were snarking at each other was a bad idea back at the bank yesterday. Amal had fled back to his office to do more work on getting Sirius a trial hours ago. Before dawn, actually. Harry would feel like Amal was abandoning him but getting Sirius a trial really was the most important thing for Amal to do right now.

Figuring out the curse was the most important thing for the three of them to do.

Sirius and Remus, according to Kreacher, might, might, be out of Sirius’ bedroom sometime around dinner.

There was no way that Harry was going to interrupt what was apparently a honeymoon. A really amorous honeymoon between people who’d loved each other since first year but who couldn’t admit it until yesterday afternoon. If he saw Sirius and Remus before tomorrow dinner, Harry would be surprised.

Moody’s glower intensified.

Before he could bark something fondly gruff and annoyed at Theo, an owl pecked at the single window. Harry turned and looked at the window which was all of six inches from the arm of his ridiculous wingback chair. It was one of the generic post owls that Hermione used to send mail.

“Huh, I wonder what Hermione has to say,” Harry said as he threw open the sash, took the letter which was hotter than he would have expected and then started as the owl flew away as quickly as it could. “Oh. Uh-oh.”

Howler. Harry hadn’t ever handled any of the howlers that Ron had gotten from his mum. They’d all blown up and bellowed at him before Harry could touch them. Now he knew why Ron always got that jittery, terrified expression before he opened them.

It felt like rage. Disappointment. Like that moment before Uncle Vernon started bellowing when his veins popped, and his face went red, and his lip curled up so sharply that his teeth showed through his walrus-mustache.

Like the moment just before Aunt Petunia swung a frying pan at Harry’s head.

“No,” Theo breathed.

He moved aside at the same moment that Moody drew his wand and lurched towards Harry, peg-leg sounding like a gunshot against the parquet floor.

Not that it did any good. Harry already knew that you didn’t get to escape a howler. He drew in a breath, braced himself and opened the flap. The howler tore itself up and out of Harry’s hands, unfolding into a pair of lips that pursed just like Hermione’s when she was about to rant about… well, about anything.

“Harry James Potter!” Hermione shouted through the howler which shook the room. Might have shook the entire house, actually. It was so loud that Harry flinched back into his chair.

“I can’t believe you!” Hermione continued. “What do you think you’re doing? You are in desperate danger and you’re treating it like a lark? You’re ever bit as irresponsible as Ron! I thought better of you, but I can see that you’re no different from him, lazy and completely uncaring about anyone else’s feelings. I better get an owl back from you right away or there’ll be hell to pay!”

Her words were a knife to the heart. They hurt worse than the basilisk bite had, worse than everyone at school turning against him, worse than all those years spent silently crying in his cupboard wondering why his family hated him so much.

“You—!”

Moody blasted the howler into a shower of ashes.

“I can’t believe she did that,” Theo whispered, eyes like saucers as he stared at the ashy confetti slowly falling to the floor. “She’s always a bossy witch, but this is ridiculous. How dare she? Who does she think she is, giving you orders and scolding you like a toddler?”

Theo started off startled, moved into amazed, then to so outraged that he vibrated in the middle of the little parlor. Moody, on the other hand, glared at the ashes on the floor like he wanted to keep blasting them until there was a hole right down to the bedrock. And then maybe go blast Hermione, too.

“She’s my second friend ever,” Harry told both of them. “You don’t get to kill her Moody. And Theo, you can absolutely yell at her, but um, I’m kind of curious what exactly she thinks I’m doing that’s a “lark”.”

They both paused. Given that Rita Skeeter was still spinning wild stories of how Harry had been raped, killed, raped again, eaten and then resurrected as some sort of golem in the Prophet, there was no knowing just what Hermione thought he’d done.

Granted, he’d know when he ran that Hermione would have a fit over him leaving Privet Drive. That he would dare to leave the so-called protection of his family and the maybe-there-maybe-not wards over Number 4 would drive her absolutely batty. It was Hermione. She was all about following the rules and respecting authority, especially Dumbledore’s authority.

This, though? This was ridiculously blown out of proportion from her normal way of handling things.

“You think she’s been affected,” Theo said so flatly that it might as well have been a shout. He didn’t move a muscle, but the vassal bond held the feeling of throwing your hands up in horrified disbelief.

“Seems likely,” Harry said with a little shrug. “Everyone has been. And Theo, remember, Hermione and Ron are my only friends. They’re the only ones who were close enough to me, you know other than Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and Dudley, who could have been affected by the curse. No one else was close enough to me. Our testing’s already shown that.”

“Damn it,” Moody growled.

He glowered at Harry with his normal eye while the magic one whizzed in his head as if he was trying to see in all directions at once.

“You don’t think that the curse affected your relatives,” Theo commented.

“Mmm, no, not really,” Harry said. He sighed. “From what Sirius and Remus have said, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have been like that since before my mum got together with my dad. They’re just horrible. They raised Dudley to be as horrible as they are. It’s what it is. Ron and Hermione, though, they might be… very different away from me than they are close to me.”

Their testing had shown quite a lot. Bonds made a huge difference in how quickly and directly the curse affected people. Dobby had helped them even though he was an elf and a free one at that. He’d been able to point out a few things that he noticed that none of them had, including the fact that none of them were seeing magic quite the way they should. Especially Harry. His innate gift for picking up spells with little to no study seemed to be a side-effect of the curse. It interacted with the magic and did… something.

Theo had a dictionary’s worth of descriptions of exactly what it was. He’d gotten half of a research paper written during the testing at the bank. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if he actually finished it and published it eventually, though if Harry had his way, it would be long after they broke the damned curse entirely.

“We can’t let that happen again,” Moody said, glaring at the window.

“What the bloody hell was that?” Sirius shouted as he flung open the door to the parlor.

He was wearing nothing but burgundy pajama pants with golden snitches flying around on them. Harry would’ve been seeing way too much of Sirius torso, except that his hair was loose, shrouding his chest nearly enough for Harry to not blush his face right off.

“Howler from Hermione,” Harry explained, pointedly not looking anywhere south of Sirius’ chin. “Moody and Theo are pissed.”

“Huh, I thought I’d set the wards to refuse all howlers,” Sirius said with a frown. “It should have self-destructed the instant it touched the wards.”

All three of them stared at Sirius. Then Moody and Theo shoved their way past Sirius who stumbled backwards into Remus’ thankfully robe-covered arms. Harry followed them, frowning when they went out in the back yard with its no longer massively overgrown mess of shrubbery, grass and scraggy trees.

The trees were still scraggy, of course, but the grass was neatly trimmed, and the shrubs had been clipped to the point that they were like sculptures instead of like living plants. Kreacher had gotten here before Harry yet again. He hadn’t even thought about going out in the yard and yet here it was, cleaned to within an inch of its life before Harry could think of doing some gardening.

He was going to have to talk to Kreacher about that. Gardening when he wasn’t forced to might be fun. Hard to know when there wasn’t a single weed to pull or plant to tend to.

“Are the wards wavering?” Theo asked Moody.

“Not that I can see.” Moody grumbled and then jerked his chin at Sirius who’d followed Harry. “Black. What do the wards tell you?”

Sirius sighed and shut his eyes. He didn’t do more than smile faintly as Remus wrapped a robe over his shoulders and then pulled Sirius’ hair out of the back of it so that he could braid it up for Sirius. Both of them looked… better? Better was a good way to put it. So was settled and content. Grounded, maybe.

Either way, their bond seemed to have done something good for the both of them.

“The wards are set exactly as they should be,” Sirius said. “Which means that the curse did something different.”

“Or Dumbledore did,” Harry suggested. He rolled his eyes as everyone frowned at him. “Come on. Dumbledore is the one who put me on Privet Drive. He’s the one I asked both years to keep me from going back. And, more importantly, he knows that Hermione and Ron are my only friends. He would’ve gone to them and asked them to send letters. You know him, Sirius. He’d be all “dear boy” this and “daring adventure” that at Hermione and her temper would’ve gone boom.”

Theo wagged a finger in Harry’s direction. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“If Albus gave her the howler paper and helped her spell it, it would go through pretty much any wards,” Moody agreed reluctantly, scowling up at the roof of Grimmauld Place. “Would explain why it rocked the foundation. He’d’ve overpowered it to make sure it got through.”

“The owl did fly off very quickly,” Theo said with a tired sigh. “Regardless, I do not like that she did that. It could point to our direction. It could bring Dumbledore or the DOM down on us and we can’t afford that.”

“So what do you suggest?” Harry said, waving for them to come back inside.

Knowing that there could be aurors or Dumbledore or who knew what tracking the howler made Harry far too nervous to be outside. He’d talk to Kreacher about the garden another time. After this was all over. For now, he wanted walls around him and his vassals.

Right now.

Moody shooed Theo inside, taking the rear with his magic eye focused behind them and his normal eye scanning ahead. Creepy, still, but that was Moody. Harry was almost getting used to his eternal vigilance thing, though as far as Harry was concerned Moody’s jumpiness and aggression wasn’t all that different from Harry’s wariness and suspicion of anyone and everyone he didn’t know.

Maybe Bannet could recommend a healer that could help Moody. Something to remember for another time, maybe.

“Can’t leave her wandering around causing trouble and drawing attention our way,” Moody said with a stern glare that Harry automatically bristled at.

“Stop that,” Theo snapped. He swatted Harry’s shoulder, fingers just brushing Harry but the sheer fact that he’d swatted at Harry at all startled Harry so badly that he stared at Theo with his mouth open.

“You hit me.”

“If I’d meant to hit you,” Theo said, that eyebrow going up, “you’d be rubbing the spot I struck. I’ve had lessons on proper combat techniques that go beyond hexes and jinxes. No, it’s my duty to tell you when you’re being an idiot. We literally cannot allow Hermione to do that again. We, Moody, Amal and I, cannot let it happen. Bringing her here isn’t ideal, but we could bring her to Amal’s office. That might work.”

“Or the bank,” Moody agreed. “We have to deal with this, lad. It’s a threat to you and we can’t have that.”

Harry sighed. “Great. Okay, well, obviously, I need to stay away from them so that you guys can assess how they’re affected. Let’s… make a plan and then go intercept them. If we’re lucky, we might get both Hermione and Ron at the same time.”

He wasn’t sure that it would happen that way. Hermione put up with Ron because of Harry and vice versa. There was no guarantee that they would be together or that they would show up together if Harry sent them a message. But he had to try.

If he, his curse, was affecting them, then something needed to be done. Immediately. Harry wasn’t going to let them be hurt by this thing, no matter what it took to break it.

18. Bound Souls

Sadly, that is not to be. Aberforth cares for Arianna too tenderly, as did Mother before her demise. None of my comments nor the isolation I’ve imposed upon her since Mother died has worked. Sad. I truly thought between the isolation and Mother’s death, she would become an Obscural.

#

“Well, isn’t that interesting?” Theo murmured as he distinctly did not stare at Hermione Granger.

Sirius didn’t bother with being discrete. He stared right at her, even though Theo glowered at him. The kid was dead-serious about his job as Harry’s vassal. So were Moody, who was in Flourish and Blott’s somewhere, disillusioned, and Remus, who was waiting with Harry at Fortesque’s with Anthony.

They’d made a right proper parade going up Diagon Alley, much to Sirius’ amusement. He’d put on his best pretending-to-be-Malfoy swagger to go with the blond disguise that he was coming to love. It was so bloody nice to have people just glance at him, visibly peg him as someone rich and pureblood and thus unimportant to their day, and then walk on. If anyone, even James and Lily, had told him that the best disguise money could buy would be a rich ponce like Malfoy, he’d have laughed in their faces.

And he would’ve been utterly wrong.

Which he was never, ever going to admit to anyone.

Either way, Remus and Anthony had agreed to guard Harry while Moody and Theo insisted on guarding Sirius as he checked out Hermione Granger, sender of building-shaking Howlers of enough power to make Molly Weasley take a step back in shock.

She didn’t notice him staring. Hermione was far too focused on poring over a Witch’s Weekly, biting her lip and twirling one wiry curl around her finger as she read. If anything, she looked like a perfectly normal young witch. A bit girly, given that she’d studied every article about cosmetic glamours and tailoring charms for shoes and dresses, but normal.

“What’s interesting?” Sirius asked finally because he really couldn’t see what the issue was.

“She’s reading Witch Weekly,” Theo said as if Sirius was mentally damaged, stare of disbelief and all. “That girl refuses to read it at Hogwarts. She turns her nose up and insults anyone who does. I’ve never seen her without a stack of books half as high as she is. Now she’s got a stack of magazines and she’s… consulting a cosmetic charm book. Bloody Hell, now I’ve seen everything.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Right. Very different behavior, then?”

“Diametrically opposite her norm,” Theo confirmed quietly. “Go on. I’ve got your back.”

He stayed in place by the history books, nose apparently buried in one of the thicker books on the history of magical creatures in Britain that Remus swore by. Sirius tapped his cane against the book, making Theo start and stare at him.

“Get that for your Lord,” Sirius suggested. “I doubt he’s read anything of that quality at Hogwarts.”

Theo blinked, frowned, and then looked at the book he’d been hiding behind. He snorted and nodded, tucking the book into the basket he’d grabbed as soon as they walked into Flourish and Blott’s. Then he grabbed another massively thick and detailed history, this one on the centaurs, which Sirius grinned at.

“Go talk to her, damn your eyes,” Theo snarled at him.

“Oh, I will,” Sirius said, still grinning. “As soon as you go and tell Mr. Flourish that your Lord, or me of you prefer, wants a copy of the catalog. I really do need to update the library and I know Harry will want to browse it.”

Theo rolled his eyes and strode off to do that, leaving Sirius to saunter over to Hermione. He wasn’t worried about approaching her alone, not with Moody lurking about to keep him safe. What he was worried about was the curse working through Theo to attack Hermione and change her behavior before Sirius could chat with her.

All of Harry, Moody and Theo’s testing had said that it worked much more directly through Harry, himself, than it did through second parties protected by a bond. Sirius was the least likely to carry the curse onwards to someone else.

In all honestly, he should have brought Anthony and Remus with him and left Theo and Moody to protect Harry at the ice cream shop, but Harry desperately needed to know if Hermione was okay. Sirius desperately needed to know that Harry was okay.

So they’d switched.

It should work, just as long as Theo and Moody kept their distance.

“Pardon me,” Sirius said in his poshest tones, the ones that would make his mother nod grudgingly approvingly at him. “I noticed that you’ve got a good stack of the ah, girly books. I need to find a good book on cosmetic charms for my cousin’s wife. Do you have any you’d suggest?”

Hermione started and stared up at Sirius with wide brown eyes that blinked blankly at him for several seconds. Then her brown cheeks went brick red as she blushed and clutched the cosmetic charms book to her chest.

“I um, well, I’m not very good at them,” Hermione said in a softer, gentler tone than Sirius had expected from Theo and Harry’s descriptions.

“All the more reason to ask you,” Sirius said with a low-key nod and a slight smile that hopefully wasn’t too haughty. “She’s never bothered with such things and needs books with good instructions in them.”

Hermione bit her lip as she sorted through her stacks of magazines and then turned to the bookshelves. “Well, for someone my age I’d say Witch Weekly, but you said she was married. Maybe this one? It’s all about professional styles.”

“Oh, that’s quite nice,” Sirius said. He flipped through the book and nodded. “Huh. Good choice. Nice clear instructions, good variations of each style, hmm. Oh, look. They let you vary things according to your face shape and coloration. Thank you. This is perfect.”

It was perfect for the mythical gift. If Sirius actually gave Lacey the book, he’d be minus his bollocks instantly. Didn’t mean he couldn’t set it aside and put it in the library though. Hopefully someday Harry would find a nice young witch or have daughters who would like it.

Hermione blushed and beamed at him for the praise. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you approve of it.”

“No, truly, it’s very good,” Sirius said. He looked over and noted that Theo was on his way back over.

Next to him, Hermione frowned and then slowly stiffened. The closer Theo got, the harsher her expression became. By the time Theo sauntered over to raise an eyebrow at the book in Sirius’ hand, Hermione stood so straight that she looked like she had a poker through her spine. The gentle, sweet smile and soft expression was completely gone, replaced by the sort of expression Lily used to get after she and James got together. A chill went up Sirius’ spine because that was Lily’s “I see you misbehaving and I don’t approve” expression, transplanted onto a completely different witch’s face.

“What are you doing here?” Hermione snapped at Theo.

“I’m shopping for books for my Lord’s library,” Theo said, eyeing the cosmetic charms book. He passed the catalog to Sirius who took it with an approving nod. “Good choice on that one. Daphne says that it’s the very best on the market.”

Hermione huffed and muttered as she shoved all the magazines back into their places and carefully reshelved every single book she’d been poring over. “Ridiculous waste of time.”

Theo glanced to the side, just a flicker of his eyes. A moment later, Sirius felt Moody’s hand on his back, urging him to leave. Sirius shivered and stayed where he was for a moment longer. Every second that ticked by had Hermione’s muttered complaints growing sharper and her movements more impatient.

She was a completely different person under the influence of the curse.

“Ah, well, thank you for your assistance, miss,” Sirius said. “Good day to you.”

Hermione glowered at him. “Well, fine. Good day, I suppose.”

Sirius suppressed another shiver as he whispered under his breath. “Moody, monitor how long it takes for her to return to normal. Don’t get closer than fifteen feet if you can help it.”

“On it,” Moody muttered back. “Move your arse, Black. There are Malfoys out and about on the Alley.”

Oh, lovely.

While Sirius was absolutely capable of playing snooty Pureblood, he didn’t want to interact with the Malfoys given how much he looked like one right now. Blond hair and ice blue eyes were certainly not the sole jurisdiction of the Malfoy family blood, but everyone in Britain seemed to believe that it was.

Unfortunately for Sirius and Theo, who was pale and doing his best not to tremble next to Sirius as they left Flourish and Blott’s, Draco Malfoy was standing in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies. His father stood proudly next to him, hand resting lightly on the snake-head cane that was a mirror to Sirius’ lion-headed one. Narcissa, thankfully, wasn’t there.

Ron Weasley stood next to Draco, stars in his eyes as he stared at the latest broom displayed in the window.

“What the bloody buggering fuck?” Theo whispered to Sirius who cast a quick disillusionment over Theo.

“Shush and stay close to me,” Sirius said. “I want to test the effect again.”

“Right.”

Theo’s invisible hand rested between Sirius’ shoulder blades as he sauntered over, carefully watching both Ron and the two Malfoys. At twenty-five feet, there was no difference. Once Sirius hit twenty feet, Ron shifted and rubbed his hands over his thighs as if they’d suddenly gone sweaty. Draco’s lip curled up in a sneer that grew dramatically the closer Sirius got to the three of them.

By the time Sirius passed them, just two feet away from their backs, Draco and Ron looked as though they were on the verge of beating each other bloody for the sheer insult of standing at Quality Quidditch Supplies together.

Their fight didn’t fade away after Sirius went into Fortescue’s and settled at Harry’s table in the corner. Anthony stood to give Sirius his seat, letting Sirius settle at Harry’s side.

“Finite incantum,” Sirius murmured, revealing Theo who gratefully plopped down next to Harry. “That was… very not good, Moony. Very not good.”

“Are you two okay?” Harry asked at the same time that Remus did. Remus waved for Harry to go ahead though Remus did grab Sirius’ hand to squeeze and then hold on tightly.

“The curse is…” Sirius tried to think of a way to explain it and failed.

He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. Both Hermione and Ron had been completely different while under the influence of the curse than they were outside of it. The weirdest part wasn’t a Weasley willingly standing next to a Malfoy. That was quite reasonable considering that it was Quality Quidditch Supplies. Even bitter enemies would declare a truce for Quidditch.

No, the most horrible part had been watching Hermione’s sweet, gentle nature disappear into the curse-driven brittleness that had overtaken Lily so long ago.

“You don’t know Hermione or Ron,” Theo said far too baldly. “Their behavior away from you is completely different from how they are with you. It’s… scary. Very scary. Moody is watching to see how long it takes for Hermione to go back to normal. I don’t think it’ll be fast.”

Harry paled dramatically. “I’m… destroying them?”

“No,” Sirius snapped, wagging a finger at him. “You are doing nothing of the sort. This curse is and that is so very not your fault, young man. I’ll thank you to remember that it’s been in force for at least three generations now. Maybe four or five. You were born into it, and it is not your fault.”

“I don’t care about who’s to blame,” Harry huffed at Sirius with that too-blank expression that always made Sirius’ gut curdle. “I care about whether or not I’m destroying my best friends. And everyone else I interact with.”

Moody appeared next to Harry, startling Anthony, Remus and Sirius but not Theo and Harry. “Lad, it’s bad. She showed no signs of improving. I had to leave. I set a couple of spells that will monitor her to see if she changes again, but it looks like, once triggered, the effect lasts for quite a while.”

That wasn’t what Sirius wanted to hear. At all. He gripped Remus’ hand far too tightly, not that Remus even made a noise. As strong as Remus was, Sirius probably didn’t hurt him.

Anthony bit his lip, looking out towards the street and craning his neck as if he wanted to see through the walls between them and Hermione. Sirius kind of wanted to as well, impossible as that was. Which wasn’t as bad as Harry’s reaction.

Harry shuddered like he’d been struck. He stared into his empty ice cream bowl, scowling at it as if he wanted to fling it at the wall. Though Sirius had yet to see Harry strike out that way. Throwing things was more a Black response than a Potter one.

James, when he was that blackly furious, was more likely to put on a falsely-bright smile before going off and doing something blindly stupid.

“Prongslet, look at me,” Sirius stared at Harry until he lifted his face and met Sirius’ eyes. No fake smile but the mask of calmness Harry used was just as bad. Maybe worse because there was no real sign of what he felt other than the shimmer of magic in those green eyes.

“I’m fine,” Harry said.

“Oh, don’t try and lie to me, Prongslet,” Sirius said with a snort of broken-hearted laughter. “You’re so far from fine that it’s ridiculous. I need a promise from you. You are not to go haring off to save either Hermione or Ron.”

“But–!” Harry snapped his mouth shut so that he wouldn’t protest any more.

The glower Moody leveled at Sirius wasn’t half as bad as that blank face or Theo’s narrow-eyed stare of doom. Sirius ignored both of them in favor of offering his hand to Harry. It took a long, long moment before Harry carefully put his hand into Sirius’. Behind him, Anthony let out a long, slow breath as if he’d been just as worried about Harry going off half-cocked, too.

“We will save them,” Sirius promised. “I want the promise because if you get close to them, the curse will affect them more strongly. There’s still time before school starts, Prongslet. My trial can wait. We still need to get evidence. Give me your word that you won’t hare off after them and we’ll get this curse dealt with first thing.”

The blank mask shattered as Harry narrowed his eyes just like Theo. The two of them exchanged a long look while Moody shook his head and sighed as if Sirius was being an idiot. Remus, thankfully, just nodded that it was the best option for the moment, while Anthony put a gentle hand on Harry’s shoulder to reassure him.

“Fine,” Harry said, patting Anthony’s hand absently. “I promise I won’t try to save Hermione and Ron from the curse, or seek them out until we figure out how to deal with this thing.”

“Thank you,” Sirius said, relieved. “I know you hate it. I mean, honestly, both your parents would’ve been cursing me up one side and down the other for it.”

Harry snorted, lips curling up in a tiny smile. “Well, I suppose I feel better. You know, if it’s a normal thing.”

“Lily would have jinxed him so hard that he’d be begging forgiveness by now,” Remus said. He grinned suddenly. “Frankly, she would have been worse before the curse affected her than after. You come by it naturally, Harry. I understand the desire to go save them, but Sirius is right. They’ll be safest if you don’t reach out yet. Let us do our research and then we’ll break this thing.”

Harry sighed and nodded.

He didn’t look at all resigned to it, but he made no move to leap up and run off to find his friends. It was about all that Sirius could expect.

19. Warped Minds

Which, as an aside, your plan for Mother’s death was quite perfect. I executed it three days after you departed to visit those worthless relatives of yours. Mother died instantly. Both Aberforth and Arianna are convinced that Arianna killed Mother in a burst of wild magic.

#

Harry scrubbed his hands over his face. It felt so weird when he took off the glamour that Silverclaw had created for him.

While it was in place, it was fine. His face felt like his face, his hair like it was actually his hair.

The longer he wore the glamour, though, the more uncomfortable he got. By the time they’d gotten home after Fortescue’s, Harry had been twitching . When he took it off, his skin crawled like he had bugs all over it.

Though, honestly, he’d have been twitching even without the glamour. How could he not when there was so much going on and so much that needed to be done, and Harry couldn’t do a thing about any of it because of his stupid blood curse.

Which was destroying his best friends.

And everyone else.

His heart raced. Every fiber in his body screamed at him to turn and run, to hide away somewhere that no one could find him. If he wasn’t around, then they’d be safe, right? If they weren’t bonded to him, they’d be safe.

Except no, because Moody had made it really clear that once affected by the curse, it took hours, maybe days or even weeks for the effect to fade. Hermione was still being a horrible know-it-all according to Moody’s carefully distant watching spells. So was Ron.

And Ron affected his family when he interacted with them, so they were all acting weird, too. Kreacher had been able to report on that since Molly was a Black descendant. Every single person he knew was being tortured by this stupid curse and it was his fault because he hadn’t figured out how to free them yet.

“No,” Harry growled while staring at himself in the bathroom mirror. “This is not my fault, damn it.”

Every single thing they’d found, tested or researched so far had done absolutely nothing to his curse. It didn’t help at all. Some of it made things way worse. The sheer fact that he couldn’t do anything was driving him crazy.

Which, apparently, was part of the stupid curse in the first place.

Now that he knew about the way it affected people, he’d started paying close attention to his thoughts. When the little voice in his head sounded like Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon, it felt like pain and rage and suffering. It felt like the curse he’d seen reflected through the bond to Moody, Amal and Theo.

When the little voice was all snarky and sly and exasperated, that sounded more like Harry and less like someone else. It felt right, too.

So he wasn’t being warped all the time. Just when it was convenient and in ways that were really super-hard to track. Made him shudder just thinking about how little control he had over himself because of the thing.

Harry huffed and washed his face in the vain hope that it would make the crawling feeling go away. It didn’t. Of course. Why would anything work right for him? Nothing ever did.

He should go downstairs and get something to eat from Kreacher. Or, better by far, make himself something while Kreacher grumbled and banged pots and glowered at Harry for daring to be interested in cooking for himself.

Honestly, the ice cream had been lovely, but he wanted something more to fill his belly. A big serving that made him feel bloated, something heavy enough that it felt like carrying a weight in his tummy. That always worked well at Hogwarts when he wanted to distract himself from all the drama and stupidity going on.

Should work now.

To distract himself from the curse.

Which wasn’t going to go away, no matter what he did.

Harry went and flopped in one of the chairs in his stupidly huge sitting room.

“Dobby?” Harry called.

Dobby popped in, ears drooping. “Friend Harry Potter calls?”

Harry stared at Dobby. “You look about as bad as I feel. Withdrawals not going well, I take it?”

“No,” Dobby said with a bitter laugh as he wrapped his skinny arms around his chest. “Is not going well. Dobby knows it can be done but he cannot stand… Everything itches, Friend Harry.”

“I know how that… feels,” Harry breathed, staring at Dobby who frowned at him. “When did the itches start, Dobby? When exactly?”

His breath caught at the thought, the snarky thought with the sly tone that it would be just like the curse to bond Dobby all sneakily to Harry so that it had more people to affect and more torment to feed on.

That…

Dobby cocked his head to the side, staring curiously at Harry. “This is starting about an hour ago. Was just little itches, all over Dobby’s face, but they is growing until now Dobby’s whole body feels itchy. Why is Friend Harry asking?”

“Because I’m itching like crazy,” Harry said steadily even though his heart hammered against his ribcage. “It started about that time in just that way.”

Dobby’s ears smacked back tight against his head as he stared at Harry in horror. “Dobby does not have a bond with Friend Harry! He is not wanting one!”

“I know,” Harry said, sitting up and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees the same way that Sirius and Anthony both did when they wanted to make people pay attention and take them seriously. “I’m fine with that. But this curse of mine might, probably is, affecting both of us. Because it hits my friends first and worst, Dobby.”

There was a bird made of pure rage battering around inside Harry’s magic, trying to get past the iron control he’d taught himself at the Dursleys. The last two years had strengthened that control until Harry had been pretty sure he could handle most everything that life threw at him.

Sometimes it was really stunning just how often Harry could be wrong.

The rage battered him from the inside. This was his friend. His friend! He’d saved Dobby from Lucius, set him free, and now Dobby was going to die in misery because of Harry’s stupid curse. It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair!

Dobby’s eyebrows drew together as he started scowling as if he could feel Harry’s rage. He huffed and rubbed his upper arms for a moment before standing up as tall as he could to lift his chin and glare into Harry’s eyes.

“Dobby does not like that,” Dobby declared.

“Neither do I,” Harry said. “People that have bonds to me are less affected, but they’re still affected. Hermione and Ron are a mess because of this curse. And now you’re a mess, too.”

Dobby nodded slowly, eyes glowing and fingers sparking with electricity. “Dobby sees. Is very bad curse, Friend Harry. Dobby still does not want bond, but he does not want to be all itchy and miserable either.”

“Would swearing that you’ll never be my friend help?” Harry asked.

“No,” Dobby said with a little laugh and a wry grin. “Because Dobby would not mean it so it would not work. Friend Harry couldn’t swear it because he really, really, really wouldn’t mean it. No, that is not a good solution. Dobby wants Harry as a friend and maybe as a Master if he cannot survive without a bond. He does not want to be away from Harry at all, honestly. The curse makes Harry’s magic all prickly and mean, but it still feels good to be close to Harry. Soothes the magic inside of Dobby almost right, drains it away gently.”

Harry opened his mouth and then close it again.

Prickly and mean. The curse made Hermione go from a sweet girl into a rule-worshiping harridan. It made Ron go from cheerful and upbeat into a jealous, greedy jerk. Remus lost control of his intelligence and got all obsessive. Moody had been very clear that the curse was bringing out the worst in every single person that Harry interacted with.

He wasn’t sure what to make of the soothing thing but maybe the curse was feeding on everyone around Harry. Maybe on Harry, too? That would make sense of it.

Or it could be two separate things. They did really like each other, and Dobby did really want a bond with Harry, if only things were different.

“My magic is prickly,” Harry murmured as he pondered that part of things. “All right. Let me know if anything changes, good or bad.”

He’d taken a yoga class one summer before he went to Hogwarts. It had been free and there was no way that Dudley and his gang would follow Harry into yoga when everything was decorated in pastels and lotus flowers and stuff. The class had mostly been an excuse to get away from Dudley, but he’d learned stretching that he rarely used until after he’d escaped from a Harry Hunting.

And he’d learned meditation.

Harry focused on his magic the way Professor Flitwick always recommended, breathed the way Professor McGonagall always ordered them to before they worked on their transfigurations, and then tried to still his mind and his magic the way that long-ago yoga teacher had.

Dobby flinched. “Worse! Much worse. Friend Harry’s magic is spiking out. Trying to grab at Dobby.”

“Calm is worse?” Harry said, surprised. “What was it like just a minute ago when I was staring at you?”

“Magic felt very calm,” Dobby said with one of his firm, ear-swinging nods.

Harry groaned. “Okay, so it’s inverting the emotions I feel. If I’m calm, the magic starts attacking people and if I’m angry, furious, it pulls in and leaves them alone. Which means that my suffering is kind of a key to the thing. Right. Okay. Try number two. Tell me what happens.”

This time Harry focused as closely as he could on every bit of rage and misery he’d felt at how the Dursely’s treated him. He thought about Snape sneering at him, at the way Draco constantly insulted and taunted him. Most importantly, Harry let the black rage he felt about this stupid curse that had killed his whole family and which was trying to kill him flare inside his magic and his heart.

Dobby sucked in a breath and then relaxed utterly. “Ohhhh, that is being much better, Friend Harry. Dobby did not know that the curse was grabbing him so hard.”

“Okay, can you feel the tentacles it’s got on you?” Harry said, gritting his teeth and raging even harder. His fingernails cut into his palms and his shoulders ached from focusing so hard on all the awful crap that he’d been through.

“Dobby can,” Dobby said.

He blinked. Cocked his head to the side. Harry could see something around the edges of his vision, but he couldn’t make it out without losing his focus on the misery and pain. Whatever it was, Dobby seemed to see it too because he tilted his head left and right, squinting as he slowly raised his hands and caught… something… in them.

Then Dobby made a little gesture like he was pushing whatever it was away from him, soft and gentle and kind.

Magic whooshed around Harry so hard that the curtains billowed behind him, and the area rug curled up over his toes. The magic snapped away from Dobby in a hard wall that pounded into Harry, driving him backwards into his squashy chair so hard that he darn near toppled right out of it. Harry wheezed at the shock of that, then shouted and curled around his chest.

So much pain!

Stomped on, he’d been stomped on. A full leg kick straight to the ribs, to the gut, like Dudley punching him as hard as he could while Piers held his arms.

Or no, more like the time Dudley had knocked Harry down three summers ago and then Piers had kicked him in the chest so hard that Harry had expected his ribs to shatter into little bony shards inside his body.

Like he’d gotten bitten by the basilisk again, this time right to the heart.

Harry moaned and pulled that feeling, that pain, that misery, deeper inside of him, clutching it tight so that his magic wouldn’t grab Dobby again. That was the point. That was the whole point. He had to free Dobby, properly this time, if it was the last thing he ever did.

“Go,” Harry whispered to Dobby who was pale and staring at him while his knees and hands shook. “Dobby, go! Don’t let it grab you again. Run and don’t look back. I mean it. Check with Kreacher later but for now, run!”

“Friend Harry is… the best friend ever,” Dobby whispered, tears welling up in his eyes.

He popped away just as Sirius threw open the door and came in, eyes wide and face far too pale. With the whole hoard of vassals, family and Remus behind him. Sirius looked utterly terrified which, you know, justified.

But he’d figured the curse out. That was good. Harry laughed a little, trying to sit up.

He couldn’t.

The pain was just too bad. He’d had burns that hurt less, cuts that hurt less. The darn basilisk had hurt less than this.

“Prongslet, don’t move,” Sirius said as he caught Harry’s shoulders and supported him so that he didn’t topple right out of his chair. “Don’t move. Whatever this is, we can fix it.”

Harry laughed some more, breathless and sweaty and shaking. “I saved Dobby, Sirius. I saved him. Broke the curse’s hold over him. He’s truly free now. He just, just… just can’t be near me. But it’s okay. It’s okay. He’s free now. I just have to, to be furious, to feel all the bad emotions, and it calms my magic enough that people can be freed.”

Theo shoved Sirius out of the way, catching Harry’s shoulders as he knelt in front of Harry at just the right angle so that Harry had to stare into Theo’s eyes. Amal was behind him, and Moody had two wands out as he stared at Harry with his magic eye whirling to search for threats.

“Tell me exactly what you just did,” Theo demanded. “Every single thought, every detail. Because the curse feels different. You did something effective for the first time and we cannot let this go.”

Harry nodded through a shaky grin. “It wants me to suffer, Theo. That’s the point. I have to suffer. If I suffer, the curse pulls in to make me dwell on it. It lets people go. The more I suffer, the less I hurt other people. The less the curse hurts them.”

Theo nodded slowly, turning to look at Amal and Remus who both looked horrified. “Then we have a better idea of what to look for.”

“Let the pain go, lad,” Moody said so sternly that Harry pouted but did as he was told. “We need you able to think if we’re going to conquer this. Pain’s hell on thinking.”

Harry laughed at that. He’d never had an adult be that honest about it before. This whole vassal thing was wonderful. His body trembled as he let the emotional pain of his past go. The pain of the curse’s hold on Dobby breaking was bad enough. It should keep the curse from hurting anyone.

For now.

At least they had a lead now. That was the most important part of it all.

After Dobby being truly free at last.

20. Hero Thing

Better still, none of the aurors who came found a single sign of my magic. Oh, they found plenty of Arianna’s magic. Her core nearly fractured when my control over her activated, but she survived, and Mother died.

#

Sirius groaned as he dropped his face into his hands. The kitchen smelled of hot chocolate and chocolate cake. Kreacher had pulled out every single bit of chocolate he could fine, in every single form available. Milk chocolate coated Sirius’ tongue and his teeth were sticky with chocolate frosting.

It wasn’t helping.

How could it? Whatever Harry had done to free Dobby had been like a punch to the throat for everyone. Sirius had, on one very bad and forever memorable occasion, taken a solid kick to the family jewels. This… whatever Harry had done, had been worse than that.

“Cruciatus compares favorably,” Remus murmured from behind his mug of hot chocolate.

“Yes,” Amal said. His voice was thin and pained enough that Sirius dropped his hands. “Why would he just accept that? He tried to keep the pain, to increase it.”

“We’re more important than he is,” Sirius explained.

Everyone glared, even Remus who Sirius could feel through the bond understood exactly what Sirius meant. Sirius rolled his eyes at them and took another chocolate biscuit from the platter in the middle of the kitchen table. The biggest gold platter that Mother used to use when she wanted Kreacher to serve a whole roasted suckling pig; it held a lot of biscuits.

Half of them were already gone.

“Don’t glare at me like that,” Sirius said. He waved the biscuit at Moody and Theo who looked like they wanted to stab him. “That’s why he did it. Prongslet is convinced that everyone else is more important than he is. I don’t think it’s all the curse, either. He found a way to save Dobby and just leaped straight at it instead of thinking about it. Just like with those damned horcruxes.”

Theo sighed. “I need more detail on the horcruxes, actually. Because I think that they need to be destroyed. They, potentially, might be a key to this.”

What?

Sirius stared at him, biscuit halfway in his mouth. He took it out and set it down as Remus put down his hot chocolate while Amal turned in his chair to stare at Theo with a confused fluster of blinks. Even Moody frowned at him, which meant that it was a sudden leap of logic.

“Back up and show your work, kid,” Sirius said.

“What?” The single word came out so flatly that Sirius grinned despite the ache under his breastbone where the bond to Harry rested.

“You jumped from A to Z and none of us can follow your logic,” Sirius said. “Yes, what Harry did absolutely has to be followed up on. But I don’t see how you went from Harry being a suicidally self-sacrificing and horrifically honorable young man to the horcruxes, much less how they could be the key to this.”

Theo breathed a little laugh. He took one of the biscuit sandwiches with chocolate-raspberry ganache filling that had been dipped in white chocolate to wave in Sirius’ direction. Anthony grabbed one, too, passing it to Lacey who leaned back in her chair and sighed as she nibbled the white chocolate off hers while staring at Theo challengingly.

Not that Theo seemed to notice.

“My father is one of the ones that knew about the horcruxes,” Theo explained. “They’re a horrible sort of magic. His grandfather taught him about it before he went to Hogwarts. Great-Grandfather also taught father exactly how to tell when someone had created a horcrux or when they were under the influence of one. They’re quite powerful and the stronger a horcrux is, the stronger the magi who created it was.”

Theo paused to raise his eyebrow at the spluttering noises that Anthony made and the cursing that Lacey did under her breath as she pulled her biscuit sandwich apart to lick at the chocolate-raspberry ganache. He shook his head after a moment.

“I’ve long thought that Harry, Ron and Hermione showed signs of being under a horcrux’s influence,” Theo continued. “Their behavior was just slightly off, you see. Now I believe that it was the curse affecting them, but between what Harry did, the research we’ve done so far and my family’s unfortunate fascination with repulsive black magic, I think that destroying the last horcruxes should give us the key to how to break the curse.”

Remus nodded thoughtfully, turning his mug of hot chocolate in carefully perfect quarter-turns while staring at Theo. “Interesting. But you need to explain further. What do you hope to gain by destroying another? How do we know that there are more?”

“You sound entirely too much like Professor McGonagall,” Theo complained as he fidgeted in his chair and finally took a bite of his biscuit sandwich.

“Thank you,” Remus said. The smugness only came through their bond. What showed on his face was calm acceptance. “So?”

Theo huffed. “Father was told that the Dark Lord made five horcruxes. Bellatrix and her repulsive husbands were quite, quite drunk when they let that slip. Bellatrix had one, a cup. Apparently, she put it in her vault at Gringotts. There’s also a diary, a locket, a ring that was special to the Gaunt family, and a diadem. The diadem was hidden at Hogwarts somewhere that only a house elf could find. The ring is hidden where the Dark Lord grew up. I believe Malfoy had the diary, though given everything that happened last year, I think it must have been destroyed during the whole event at the end of the school year. And the locket, according to Lord Black here, has already been destroyed.”

Sirius’ jaw dropped open. That was…

“What the bloody hell sort of operational security is that?” Sirius demanded, sending Moody off into hoots of laughter. “People just know about them?”

“Well, some people do,” Theo said with a smug little grin. He took another bite of his biscuit sandwich, then polished it off in a final bite before dusting off his fingers. “Father’s terribly good at drawing people out and getting their secrets. It’s a familial gift. Either way, the curse is designed to hurt Harry. To hurt any Potters and anyone associated with them. At some point, we don’t know where or when, a Potter so deeply offended the person who laid the curse that they decided the whole family has to suffer.”

“To atone,” Amal breathed, sitting up so straight that it startled Sirius. “They have to atone for whatever it was.”

“Right,” Moody said with one firm nod. “You-Know-Who was born Tom Riddle. I’ll go check his old home and then check the Gaunt Mansion. That’s the most likely place for the ring.”

“Sirius and I can get into Bellatrix’s vault easily,” Lacey agreed, already standing to brush her simple black skirt free of chocolate biscuit crumbs.

“That leaves me and Remus to head to Hogwarts,” Anthony said.

Theo rolled his eyes. “Kreacher!”

“Kreacher has already asked the Hogwarts elves,” Kreacher said, putting a very lovely, very creepy feeling diadem on the table. It was wrapped in an old silk blouse with a huge brown stain on the sleeve. “Has been hidden in Come-and-Go room for a long, long time. It is just like Master Regulus’ locket, Lord Sirius. Lord Sirius is to go get Master Harry’s basilisk fang right away. Kreacher does not want this here any longer than it has to be. Is very, very hard to keep magics from affecting everyone else.”

“And that’s exactly what I need to test,” Theo said, wagging his finger at Kreacher. “Thank you, Kreacher. That was perfect. I’ll take this down to the practice room. You lot go get the other two. Remus, Amal, I’d like your help to set up my test ritual circles. We’ll destroy them one by one and see what we can learn.”

“Right,” Anthony said, pouting only a tiny little bit at having his adventure taken away. “I’ll go sit with Harry and make sure he doesn’t try and do anything while we get this all set up.”

Stunningly, it was as easy for Sirius and Lacey to get the cup from Bellatrix’s vault as it had been for Kreacher to get the diadem. They walked into Gringotts’s, were escorted to Silverclaw’s office, and told him what they needed. The instant that Silverclaw realized that there was a horcrux in the bank, the Goblins were ready to go to war against Bellatrix, her husbands and Voldemort.

All told, it took about fifteen minutes to get the cup.

Silverclaw did insist on coming back to Grimmauld place with them, but that was fine. No one better than the Goblins for sorting out this sort of thing, especially if Theo was right that destroying the horcruxes would give them some ideas of how to deal with the curse.

Moody arrived back with the ring, carefully wrapped in a moleskin pouch that barely kept the dangerously enticing aura of the ring under control, just after Theo, Remus and Amal finished their ritual circles.

“Some nasty spells over the thing,” Moody said as he passed it over to Silverclaw who cursed in Gobbledygook while setting it into is ritual circle. “Ah, good circle. That cut the aura right down.”

“Silverclaw gave us advice on how to make it work better,” Theo explained. “Good. Now we just need Harry.”

“Wait a minute!” Sirius shouted, blocking the door so that no one could go get Harry. “He’s already hurt, and you want him to destroy these? He can’t handle it!”

“I know,” Theo said far too bluntly, even for him. “That’s why we need him to do it. At least one of them, preferably two of them. If the curse is built around atonement, if the suffering of a Potter is key to the curse ending, then this is perfect. In one stroke, Harry will destroy an evil that threatens the entire Magical world and he’ll suffer while doing it. This is literally our best bet yet of breaking the curse.”

Silverclaw snarled something thoroughly obscene in Gobbledygook, but he nodded slowly and definitively as he did it. “The boy is right. Our research agrees with what Mr. Nott and Consort Black have explained.”

“He’ll be saved, Sirius,” Remus said far too gently. “This is what has to be done.”

Sirius’ breath caught. He shut his eyes, arms still blocking the door to the ritual room. Merlin’s saggy bollocks, what was it with Harry? Why did he always have to be the one to suffer?

Stupid question. Sirius already knew the answer to that. It was the curse and Dumbledore’s interference and Harry’s basic personality, all mixed together. He couldn’t change Harry, wouldn’t even want to. And he couldn’t stop Dumbledore, either.

Yet.

Hopefully soon, Dumbledore would be on the agenda.

For now, Sirius had to let Harry do this even though it made him want to scream like he used to at Mother and then curse everyone in the room until they agreed to wrap Harry up in blankets and keep him safe for the rest of his life.

“I hate this,” Sirius announced in a voice that came out remarkably cheerful for how blankly furious he was.

“We all do,” Amal said. “Trust me, Sirius. We hate it just as much as you do. We’ll be suffering along with Harry. It’ll be up to you, Remus, and Silverclaw to protect him.”

“Anthony and I will guard the room,” Lacey promised. “No one will get in, not past us and Kreacher.”

“We’ll support the lad as best we can,” Moody promised far too gently for the paranoid old man that he was. “Go get him. Best get this done so that we can move onto the next set of disasters.”

Sirius breathed a shaky laugh for that. “Bloody hell, I really wish things would calm down for him. Just… bloody hell.”

Moody nodded and waved Sirius to go.

Climbing the stairs with Remus at his side felt like going to his own execution. The closer he got to Harry’s suite, the worse he felt. Couldn’t they find some other way to deal with the horcruxes? Theo understood them. He could do it.

As Sirius stood, trembling hand on Harry’s doorknob, he realized that the desperate desire to have anyone else deal with the horcruxes was external.

“It’s affecting me,” Sirius murmured to Remus.

“I can feel it, too,” Remus said as he rubbed his chest. “This… might work. The curse is fighting back so powerfully now.”

Sirius blew out a breath and forced himself to open the door, to go into Harry’s bedroom where Anthony sat on the foot of Harry’s bed, watching Harry who was not sleeping at all. Harry’s eyebrows were drawn together, and he bit his lip while rubbing his chest much like Remus.

“Hey, Prongslet,” Sirius said in a too-bright, cheerful tone. His smile felt so wrong that it hurt his face. “Ready to do your hero thing again? We’ve got an idea that might just break the curse at last.”

“Really?” Harry asked, sitting up and groaning as he toppled forward into Anthony’s arms. “Ow. Okay, I’ll do it if I can. Whatever it is.”

Sirius smiled a little more genuinely. “It’s just stabbing three more horcruxes and then suffering through the wash of power as they die, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Harry said, sudden amusement making a grin flit across his face. “Well, if that’s all. Sounds good. Be down in a jiff. We’ll take care of it and have tea right after.”

“Good plan,” Sirius agreed.

Neither one of them acknowledged the tears hovering in Sirius’ eyes or the way Anthony shuddered. Remus’ keen of pain and worry went unremarked, too. Because there was no other way to handle it, not when the curse was clawing at all of them to stay alive until Harry, himself, died.

Sirius could only hope that this worked out so that Harry lived through it. Otherwise, Sirius would tear the entire bloody Magical world apart in vengeance.

21. Magical Atonement

One step closer to true freedom. One step closer to our perfect world, my Heart.

#

So, ritual rooms were a thing. Harry looked around the granite-lined room as curiously as he could when his whole body ached, and his heart kept giving weird little lurches as if it’d forgotten how to beat on a regular rhythm.

It was a stark room, really. Just granite floor, walls and ceiling, all smoothed but not polished. There were spots on the floor that looked like someone had thrown a grenade at them, pockmarks and dents as if something had blown up. A few places had melted bits that’d gone glassy and there was one place on the far side of the room that everyone avoided. That spot looked like a giant had gone at the stone with a sword, hacking through the granite like it was made of warm butter.

Chalk dust coated the floor. White and red and blue and green, the faint lines of long-ago ritual circles lay everywhere. Silverclaw and Theo had apparently scrubbed the middle of the room because that bit of floor had very little dust though Harry could see the faint echoes of old chalk lines slowly reappearing as the floor dried back out.

Theo’s ritual circles were done in blood.

Real blood, not blood-red chalk. Harry’d squawked as soon as he smelled it, seen it, only to wince when Theo raised an eyebrow and pointed to the little bowl that Remus explained held chicken blood from tonight’s roast chicken dinner.

Which… okay. Fine. That made sense. Of a sort. Still gross, though.

The three circles were small, barely a foot across each.

A golden cup sat in the middle of one. Looked kind of like one of those traditional steins Aunt Marge always liked during Octoberfest, just made of gold with two handles on either side. It gave the feeling of being a pineapple or maybe a thistle, all scales on the bulbus base and then a flaring top that formed the cup bit.

Drinking from that thing might just poison you. Harry was pretty sure it was tainted in more than one way, just looking at it.

A really gaudy crown-like thing shaped like a bird sat in the second one. It was oddly modern-feeling with a stylized bird, a raven presumably, formed from a whopping blue sapphire in the middle, diamond-studded wings forming the top of the crown and two dangly blue sapphires that made a tail. Ugly as far as Harry was concerned, but that might be the creepy feeling of it.

Worse than either of those was the ring. It looked like a simple enough ring, gold band, smokey quartz square stone set in it, but the ring… whispered to Harry.

“So, which should I start with?” Harry asked, glaring at the whispery little ring and its stupid offers of power and immortality and great adventures.

“Which ones feel most powerful?” Theo asked. His eyes were square on Harry’s face, but he kept rubbing his hands over his thighs as if they were sweating and he couldn’t get them to stop.

“Least to most,” Harry said as he forced himself into the Dealing with the Dursleys face that always got him through trouble, “that’d be cup, crown-thing and then creepy ring.”

“That’s the order we’ll follow then,” Theo said overtop of Remus murmuring “diadem”. “I rather thought that would be the order, but I wasn’t sure how they would affect you.”

“Affecting me is the point, isn’t it?” Harry asked. His chest twinged and Theo, Amal and Moody all rubbed their chests exactly where Harry’s had hurt.

Theo breathed a laugh that was anything but humor. “Yes. For the record, I loathe everything about this but it’s our best chance. I don’t know that destroying the horcruxes will break the curse. That’s why we’re starting with the weakest of the three. It does make sense that it would. We don’t have much time before you recover from freeing Dobby, though.”

“Hit while I’m hurting,” Harry said because of course.

Of course.

He would have to suffer.

He always did.

“Yes,” Theo agreed with a black glare at the horcruxes. “Suffering and atonement, that’s what the curse seems to require for fulfilment.”

“Best get on with it then,” Harry said brightly. “Certainly better than the alternative. Where’s my basilisk fang?”

Not a one of them responded well to Harry’s attempt to be cheerful about what was coming. Seriously, no one ever did, no matter how positive a spin he tried to put on things. Aunt Petunia always glowered at him as if he wasn’t allowed to live without being miserable. Uncle Vernon got all twitchy about plots and misbehaving behind his back, while Dudley started flinching as if he expected Harry to give him another pig’s tail.

Now, Moody glowered at him for the tone, Theo rolled his eyes and Amal rubbed his forehead as if he’d suddenly developed a headache. Sirius, of course, got that stricken look and started muttering “bloody hell” not quite under his breath while Remus looked deeply, deeply concerned. Anthony and Silverclaw exchanged worried looks.

“Gentlemen,” Lacey groaned, rolling her eyes. She shook her head and thrust the carefully wrapped in dragonhide basilisk fang to Harry. “Ignore them. I’m not pleased about the way you ignore your trauma, but we can deal with that after everything is done.”

“Thank you,” Harry replied with a roll of his own eyes. “Seriously, there’s time for that sort of nonsense later. Deal with problems first, talk about it later.”

Much later, preferably, but he doubted that he’d get to push it off too much. Not one of the adults around him looked willing to forget about this, more’s the pity. He almost, not quite, missed the Dursleys because they could be trusted to let Harry pretend that he was fine no matter how hurt he was.

Somehow, facing down the pain and fury and loss and loneliness were much worse than dealing with physical trauma, magical disasters, and epic levels of pain.

Hm.

Maybe they had a point.

Oh, well, didn’t matter right now. There was work to be done.

Harry nodded to the cup. “So I just stab the thing?”

“I made it as easy as possible,” Theo agreed, still scowling at Harry. “I’d recommend kneeling and not smudging any of the lines but other than that, you stab the horcrux with the basilisk fang while we observe and do our tests.”

Harry couldn’t see what those tests were going to be. He really didn’t care. If killing the horcruxes would help get rid of the curse, he’d gladly do it, no matter how much pain it left him in.

He was fairly sure that it was going to be much worse than getting rid of the one that had been in his scar. Anthony and Sirius wouldn’t be biting their nails if it weren’t a problem.

Either way, Silverclaw cast several circles around everyone else, leaving Moody free to move as he wished. Harry was the only other one with no circle, presumably so that he could attack the cup at will. He made sure everyone was secure, took a deep breath, and then stabbed straight down into the cup.

The scream rattled Harry’s teeth. He clamped his jaw shut, leaned harder on the basilisk fang, and fought not to stop breathing entirely. Not breathing meant passing out. Passing out meant letting up on the horcrux. Letting up was bad.

Breathing, good. Passing out, bad.

He panted as he leaned harder and harder. The scream rose and rose, cutting through his head until Harry’s eyes started watering and his nose began to run. Finally, when the pain his head reached the point where Harry screamed along with the stupid horcrux, something popped.

The gold of the cup abruptly melted underneath Harry’s basilisk fang like it’d been doused in hot acid. He jerked and nearly fell on top of the thing, barely keeping himself from toppling headfirst into the ritual circle.

“Okay, I hope you got some good information on that one,” Harry wheezed as he sat back and then groaned. “Wow, not fun.”

He swiped a hand across his face to get the tears and snot off, starting when his hand came away red. Oh. Blood, not tears or snot.

“That’s… not good,” Harry said, blinking several times.

“Don’t move,” Theo snapped at Harry. “That set off a huge wash of power. Is Grimmauld Place on a ley line?”

“No,” Sirius said in a rock-steady voice despite the way he stared at Harry. His hands shook violently enough to convey his worry. “Thankfully. Because that was worse than the ward room or the locket.”

“They do seem to be worse each time,” Harry agreed. “I mean, killing the diary, I wasn’t paying attention so much. Big basilisk, lots of water, pain from being bitten and all that. But it didn’t seem so… violent, I guess? And the locket was loud but not like this.”

He waved at his face. The blood seemed to have stopped, thank goodness. Lacey had on the scary “going to murder someone” face that Sirius and Anthony both seemed to like. Neither of them noticed it yet.

“And the one in your scar?” Lacey asked while Theo nodded and pointed firmly at her.

“Bloody, horribly painful, but I thought that was my scar splitting open,” Harry said. He sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “And, you know, the wards having a fit about the stupid thing, too. It just seemed logical that it would’ve been worse when it was part of me, you know?”

“Logical, yes, but not accurate,” Theo said as he studied glowing circles floating in the air around him. “If someone else killed one of them, then the strike-back at you would go back to the same level as the first one. Unfortunately, if we let someone else do it, the curse will not be broken, and you’ll die.”

Harry stared at him. “Okay, not the question I want to ask, but I think I need to. How likely is it that I’ll die from killing the horcruxes? I mean, I’ll still do it to save everyone and stop Voldie from coming back, but I’d much rather have a chance of surviving to adulthood, you know.”

Theo’s shoulders sagged as he sighed and looked at Harry as if he was the stupidest person alive. It wasn’t that far off of Hermione’s normal “I can’t believe you’re this dumb” stares when he and Ron did something stupid.

Lacey’s groan was about the same thing as was Silverclaw cursing in Gobbledygook, not that Harry really knew what he was saying.

“Lad, you’re very hard on the heart,” Moody complained.

Harry shrugged. “I know. But seriously, that’s the point here. If we break the curse, that’s perfect. If we can break the curse and permanently kill Voldie at the same time, that’s amazing. But if it’s necessary for me to die to break the curse and stop him, well, so be it. You know I’ve got a saving people thing, Moody. You were complaining about it earlier.”

Moody snorted a laugh and slanted a little nod in Harry’s direction like he was conceding the point.

Which was cool. Not cool was Theo cursing under his breath as he pointed Harry at the second circle with the diadem. Harry groaned and moved to sit next to it.

“This will be worse,” Theo said. “I’m sorry, but it will be. This should tell me how much of a backlash we’ll get from the ring and whether or not you’ll survive without assistance from all of us. If you won’t, well, there are things that we can do. Lacey and Silverclaw have… plans.”

“As if that’s not scary as hell,” Harry muttered and then grinned when Theo stabbed a finger at him and nodded that Harry was absolutely 100% right about that. “Okay, brace yourselves everyone. Round two is a go.”

Round two was hell.

The blood started flowing almost immediately. This time the pain was like being stabbed, like that time when he was really little, barely four, and Uncle Vernon beat him so badly that his ribs felt like they were moving independently, and his head felt like it’d cracked open and even Aunt Petunia had been afraid when she stared at him in his cupboard.

It was agony.

Harry’s vision went red as the blood covered his eyes. He screamed as he leaned on the basilisk fang, not caring if he landed on top of the stupid thing when the diadem died. The horcrux’s scream rattled his bones until Harry felt like his brain was shaking inside his skull.

It stopped.

Good enough.

Time for a break.

Harry groaned and collapsed, barely managing to push himself to the side so that he wouldn’t faceplant right onto the fang and get poisoned or burned or whatever again.

Please, let this work. He really couldn’t do this again if it wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t survive it.

22. Shattered Granite

Sadly, Arianna’s mind reasserted itself a bare half hour after the aurors left. I’ve enclosed some of my charms for you to check. I think if I make the changes indicated in purple, it will make them much more long-lasting.

#

The only reason Sirius didn’t dart across the ritual room to scoop Harry up was that Theo, Lacey and Silverclaw had set his ritual circle to keep him in. He slammed a fist against the ward holding him in.

“Don’t!” Theo snapped at him.

He was so pale that even across the room Sirius could see the pale blue tracery of Theo’s veins in his cheeks and at his temple. Moody was white about the lips, stock-still and so tense that Sirius was surprised he didn’t smash into a million pieces when Theo breathed a sigh of relief and sagged inside his circle.

“He’s alive,” Theo said.

“Resting,” Harry muttered. “That sucked.”

“That it did, Prongslet,” Sirius said. He laughed, more than a little bit crazily. “I think you rocked the entire house.”

“Block,” Lacey said, shaking her head as she reviewed the results of her spell. “We can’t do it here, Theo. Harry will take the house down and drop most of the buildings within a three-block range.”

“We have to do it here,” Theo snarled at her. “There’s no time to set up somewhere else! This needs to be done quickly.”

“Right,” Sirius said as he reached for the house’s wards.

Upstairs, Kreacher had stabilized pretty much everything. The shaking had knocked over one set of crystal goblets, but those things had been spelled to be unbreakable since before Grandfather Arcturus was Harry’s age due to the battles the family used to have whenever they got together.

The house itself was fine. Same for the wards, though they felt overpowered. Sirius frowned as he realized that they were overpowered. Dramatically.

“The wash of power went straight into the wards,” Sirius said, frowning at Lacey and then at Silverclaw whose eyebrows went up slowly in surprise. “Lacey might be right, Theo. I’m not sure that they can hold this much. If the next one is stronger, it might just cause them to implode. It wouldn’t be blocks. It would be square miles devastated.”

Theo stared at him aghast. “I’m dead serious when I say that we cannot wait. This has to be done today and it has to be done within the next oh, fifteen minutes.”

“Fuck my life,” Harry complained from the floor next to the blackened, dead diadem.

Sirius grinned in spite of himself. “You do have the worst luck, Prongslet. Right. Lacey, Silverclaw, would me linking to Harry as his magical guardian, adoptive father, and godfather help? I could channel the backwash into the wards properly instead of letting it just flood into them.”

“That would help,” Remus said, smiling when Sirius started. “It would, Padfoot. I was watching, my wolf was. The magic wants to be directed. It requires that it be used for something useful. I don’t think Harry can do it, but you could.”

“We could,” Sirius said with a slow nod, then a faster one. He grinned at Remus. “You’re my consort. I link to you, then to Harry, then to the wards. I channel the power and then you put it to use.”

“Me?” Remus squeaked, so alarmed that he backed off a step and ran into the wards around his circle that kept him from moving outside of it, too.

Ha! Wasn’t just Sirius that Theo didn’t trust not to be an idiot. Moony got it, too.

“You’re the one who studied ancient runes and magical theory,” Sirius said. “I stopped learning this stuff when I ran away. You could’ve gotten a mastery in it if you’d been able to keep studying after Hogwarts.”

“Gonna fix that,” Harry muttered from the floor.

One of his hands twitched, index finger flexing upwards for a moment like he wanted to point at Remus but just didn’t have the energy. His eyes stayed firmly shut and he didn’t so much as twitch other than that, but it was still reassuring to see Harry moving and reacting after… all of that.

“Thank you, Prongslet,” Sirius said while Remus flushed and rolled his eyes while rubbing the back of his neck. “So, yes, that’s your job. Anthony, Lacey, you’re going to link to me, too. You’re family so you’re going to help bleed it off. Silverclaw, if this is as big as everyone thinks, we probably need more wards in here to keep the house from coming down on our heads. How long will that take? And no, cost is no object here.”

Silverclaw smirked at the acknowledgement that payment would be rendered after all this was over.

“With your permission, I can do that now,” Silverclaw said. “While I am not the best for such things, as an account manager I have training on protecting my clients from… a great many things. This is one of them.”

Sirius reached into the wards and gave Silverclaw permission to cast wards in the ritual room, specifically limiting it to this time. Honestly, he probably could allow Silverclaw to do it pretty much anytime given that the Goblins didn’t extend themselves to help anyone without a clear profit, but he wasn’t going to take any risks right now.

As soon as Sirius opened his eyes and nodded to Silverclaw, Silverclaw nodded and bowed his head.

The magic that swept around the ritual room was profoundly different from anything that it had seen before. As Sirius watched, the granite smoothed out. All the cracks, divots and cuts inflicted over the years disappeared. Then the stone gleamed as the crystals in the granite shifted and moved.

Sirius’ jaw dropped open as the stone itself formed jagged squares, triangles and swooping lines of white quartz, black obsidian, and grey granite. Goblin runes manifested in and around them as power thrummed through the room, prompting Harry to open his eyes and then whistle in awe. He still didn’t move but he looked more alive than he had just a moment before.

“This will fade within the hour,” Silverclaw announced once he was done. Only Lacey looked unimpressed. Everyone else looked as stunned as Sirius felt, even Moody who huffed and rubbed the back of his hand over his lips before nodding gruffly at Sirius.

“Thank you,” Sirius said. “Let’s get this done so I can pamper my godson until he throws pillows and curses at me.

Harry snickered at that.

As Harry worked on slowly picking himself up off the floor and shuffling over to the darkly threatening ring that lurked in the final circle, Sirius reached into the wards as Lord of the Black family.

It felt so odd for the family magic to spring to attention at his call. Grandfather should lurk in the family magic. There was no trace of him left. Death had washed his personality away. Thankfully, death had cleansed the family magic of his mother and father. They’d both been stains on the magic. And, what with the spells on Azkaban, Bellatrix was the faintest hint of cackling laughter far, far away instead of something in Sirius’ face.

Eventually, when they got a chance to breathe, Sirius was going to expel her from the family magic along with Narcissa.

Now though, the family magic gleamed quicksilver with Sirius, Anthony, and Lacey. Remus was a bright full moon in the magic, fierce and supportive and so damned determined to make this work. Sirius could feel plans and ideas running through Remus’ head as he gripped the consort bond between them and felt Remus’ answering grip.

Anthony and Lacey reached their magic out at the same time, perfectly matched to each other. Dark and light, serious and laughing, they balanced each other, and they balanced Remus and Sirius, too.

Moody, Theo and Amal linked their magic together. They nodded to Sirius and then turned to Harry who made a face like someone had just handed him a plate of rotted cabbage for dinner instead of like he was about to risk his life.

“This is it,” Sirius murmured as he pulled gently on Harry’s magic. “We’re behind you, Prongslet. One more thing and then you’ll be done.”

Harry’s smile went lopsided, sardonic, but his magic quivered with gratitude that it was almost over. “Right then. Brace yourselves or whatever it is that you’re going to do.”

He passed Moody, Theo and Amal’s magic over to Sirius. They settled into Sirius’ magical grip with some tugging and rough edges but all three of them seemed to take a deep breath and then deliberately stop resisting as Harry turned to Silverclaw who nodded for Harry to begin.

It was worse.

So much worse.

Sirius shut his eyes and focused on letting the magic pouring off Harry flow through him. That was his job. That was his only job. Just as Harry only (only!) had to kill the horcrux, Sirius only had the channel the power to Remus and the others.

The magic tore at him. It was razor blades along his nerves, jackhammers to his skull and spine. The scream of the horcrux drove the breath from Sirius’ lungs. His knees gave way, cracking against the glowing granite floor.

Open, stay open, that’s all he had to do. Stay open and pull the wash of power away from Harry. He could do it. He would do it. No, no, no hesitation. No flinching. Just… hold… on.

He’d lost track of time the instant Harry’s basilisk fang touched the ring.

Sirius hauled his eyes open. When had he closed them? No, open eyes. Open eyes and look at Harry.

The fang stabbed at the stone. At the band. Oh, the band, that was, that was where the horcrux was. Not the stone?

No, not the stone which glowed and screamed defiance at the horcrux.

Harry’s hair stood on end like Medusa’s snakes.

Blood dripped down his face, pouring from his nose, his eyes, his ears, the bruised remnants of his scar. It stained his teeth, coated his lips as Harry snarled and leaned on the basilisk fang with his full weight.

The magic throbbed.

No.

The Black family magic throbbed. The stone in the ring snapped free of the band, toppling to the floor where it glowed like gravelights on the full moon at Halloween.

Death.

Sirius shuddered as his Grim howled for the stone. For the death. For Death.

For that bloody damned horcrux to die and move on to its damnation, along with bloody Voldemort himself.

The magic that blasted over Harry, that poured through Sirius, screamed of death. Death. The end of all and the certainty that immortality was impossible.

“Help him,” Sirius prayed to Death because he couldn’t imagine that Lady Magic, Lord Time or Fate herself would help Harry with anything. “Please help him. He’s my son. He’s your son. Help him, please!”

The band of the ring abruptly began to melt. Harry shouted as the basilisk fang cut through it like it was half melted and about to dissolve into a heap. The horcrux’s final scream echoed through the room.

And then it got worse.

Harry collapsed on top of the stone, the ring a melted puddle of slag around the tip of the basilisk fang.

Grimmauld Place shuddered.

A boiling cloud of rage-red magic roiled up off of Harry. There was a face in the middle of it, contorted in a scream that Sirius couldn’t hear.

He felt it.

Thwarted, denied, the curse screamed that it had been cheated.

“He died twice for the world, you bastard,” Sirius bellowed at the curse. “Let him go!”

The cloud of rage-magic whipped around and surged at Sirius.

It felt like watching his mother’s wand come to point at his face. It felt like battling Death Eaters alone and desperate, not knowing if there would be rescue in time.

It felt like doom.

The rage-magic of the curse slammed into Sirius and then wailed as Remus sucked it on through into the spell he’d been building with the magic Sirius had fed him.

Everything bleached into white-hot power and lightning cascading down Sirius’ arms to his fingertips and then across the floor of the ritual room.

“Now!” Remus shouted.

The Black family magic surged back through Sirius to Harry, pulling with it the Potter magic and Silverclaw’s and a cloud of magic that felt like redemption but smelled like death. Sirius sucked in a breath to scream but it overwhelmed him.

His eyes rolled back in his head as the magic surrounded Harry, setting him aglow along with the stone that had been in the ring.

“Yes,” Sirius prayed as he struggled to stay awake long enough for Remus’ spell to work. “Take care of our Harry. Yes.”

Then the floor came up and smacked Sirius in the face, sending darkness washing across him at last.

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