Reading Time: 117 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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23. Destiny’s Child

None of this will do any good if we can’t maintain the control, after all. People are so wild, so uncontrolled. Its aggravating.

#

An arm lay warm and heavy over Harry’s stomach.

He turned towards the body, moaning as every single inch of his body ached from the movement. The last time he’d hurt anywhere near this much had been right after the basilisk bit him. Before that? The final Harry Hunting before he got his Hogwarts letter.

His teeth hurt. His fingernails. Toes. Heck, even his hair hurt. Luna would’ve probably said that his aura was bruised right along with his poor body because Harry could swear that he could feel the tips of his hair aching along with the rest of him. Which made it hard to open his eyes.

Sirius lay next to Harry, face slack and mouth open. He drooled ever so slightly on the pillow squishing his face. The bags under Sirius’ eyes were back, purple-blue bruises that made Sirius look way older than he really was.

Harry sighed.

Then frowned.

How’d they get here? Wherever here was. Last thing he remembered was screaming in frustration as the stupid ring fought him, trying to preserve the life of the horcrux and the curse.

Oh. Oh yeah!

The curse should be gone.

Underneath the aches and pains, Harry didn’t feel much different. Maybe the curse was still there? If he’d failed to break it, that was it. He wasn’t going to try to break it again. No way. This hurt far too much to make another attempt.

But somehow he didn’t think they had failed…

“You’re thinking too hard,” Sirius complained, eyes still shut but eyebrows drawn together.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “Just worrying. I can go back to my room?”

Sirius snorted as he opened his eyes. “Prongslet, this is your room. Remus insisted on us sleeping together.”

“Oh,” Harry said, blinking at the drapes over the bed. “Huh. Hadn’t looked around yet.”

“It looks different anyway,” Sirius said. He yawned and pulled Harry even closer, burying his nose in Harry’s hair. “There was a good bit of damage. Kreacher fixed it but doesn’t look the same.”

“Oh.”

Harry had one wild moment of desperate need to pull away from Sirius so that he wouldn’t endanger Sirius.

Then he curled into Sirius’ arms for a hug that felt like coming home. He’d never had a home before. Grimmauld Place might be a home, but it didn’t feel like Harry’s home. Sirius’ arms did.

Thankfully, Sirius didn’t comment on the wet spot Harry cried into his shirt.

“Sorry,” Harry said, snuffling and wiping his eyes on his sleeve once Sirius let him pull back a bit. “Tired. And really, really sore.”

“Pfft, no problem, Prongslet,” Sirius said as he smiled and ruffled Harry’s hair. “Can’t tell you how many times I did the same for James, Remus or Wormtail. We all… went through things. It’s just part of being family.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry said. He snorted and then sighed, pulling the covers up a little only to realize that he was under the covers, but Sirius was over them.

Sirius grinned. “You’re a blanket hog, Prongslet. I got up in the night to use the toilet and came back to discover that there was no liberating even a corner of blanket from you.”

“No way.” Red-faced, Harry protested even though he knew it was true. Clinging to the blankets he had was the only way he got to keep them.

“Oh yes,” Sirius replied, his grin going wider. “Blanket hog.”

He laughed as Harry hid his blush under the covers. Harry didn’t stay under the covers for long. How could he when Sirius laughed so happily, if tiredly, while rubbing Harry’s back through the blankets. Harry sighed and frowned at Sirius.

“Did it work?”

“It did,” Sirius confirmed. His smile slid away into as serious an expression as Harry had ever seen on his face. “The curse is broken. All of Voldemort’s horcruxes are gone. Silverclaw is in the process of checking to see if that means that Voldemort is gone, too. He and Lacey think that it means that he is. Better still, Remus took the power we threw off between the two of us and wove a series of protective wards around the both of us. No one is going to curse you again, not that Theo, Amal or Moody would let that happen.”

Relief flooded Harry. He shut his eyes against the sudden prickle of tears, breathing slowly so that he wouldn’t show just how huge that was. It was…

…everything.

Everything. Even if he didn’t feel different, things would have to be different without his curse changing the people around him and forcing bad things to happen. Hermione would be better. Ron, too. Maybe Ron would lose his jealousy. Maybe Hermione wouldn’t be such a know-it-all, though it was hard to imagine her as anything else.

“Wait,” Harry said, opening his eyes to frown at Sirius who was smiling at Harry like he was the cutest thing that Sirius had ever seen. “We’re not sure Voldemort is gone, right?”

“Nope, not as of when I got dumped in bed,” Sirius said.

“If he is gone,” Harry said very, very slowly because his brain couldn’t quite wrap itself around the concept, “that means that there’s no threat to me, right? No one has a reason to make me go back to the Dursleys.”

Sirius snorted. “You’re not going back there one way or the other, but yes.”

“We gotta find out if Voldemort’s actually gone,” Harry huffed as he tried to sit up despite Sirius’ arm going firm and forbidding across his belly. “No, we do! Because if he’s gone, then the next most important thing is getting you your trial.”

“And figuring out if Dumbledore is actually your and my enemy,” Sirius agreed. “Which might actually be bigger.”

“Pfft, getting you a trial will show us his true intent,” Harry said. “Come on. If he fights it even though we have proof that Voldemort’s gone for good, then he’s an enemy. If he doesn’t, just goes all lukewarm, then he’s under suspicion. If he’s truly apologetic and helpful and pushes to get your vindicated, then he’s not an enemy.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Sirius agreed. “But you’re still not getting up.”

Harry huffed at him. All he got back was a solemn shake of Sirius’ head that smushed his face even worse against the pillow. Sirius snickered at Harry’s narrow-eyed pout. It worked really well when Aunt Petunia narrowed her eyes at people and pursed her lips, but it didn’t seem like it worked at all for Harry.

“I’ve still got a couple of things I need to emphasize to you,” Sirius said far too firmly even though his arm gentled across Harry’s belly.

“…What?” Harry eyed Sirius, expecting a grin.

He got a long, tired sigh instead.

“All right, this is a conversation that Remus and I had with James back in oh, I think it was fourth year,” Sirius said. “Fifth? No, fourth, right before we went home for Yule. Potters have a long and glorious history, Harry. Your family has done some incredible things over the centuries. You, personally, have a reputation that’s going to give you fits your entire life and there’s not much that can be done about that now.”

“I know,” Harry complained. He snapped his mouth shut when Sirius raised a stern eyebrow at him.

“James was convinced that the Potters have a destiny,” Sirius said. He grimaced. “He might have been talking about the curse, now that I think of it, but in your case, there was an actual prophecy about you. Anthony has gone to the Ministry to see if it’s gone dark. Dark or not, you’re a child of destiny. Lady Magic, Lord Time, Fate and the other Powers have plans for you.”

“Plans?” Harry asked. His stomach was churning so bad that he was a bit light-headed. This was not the direction that he expected this to go. “And what does “dark” mean?”

“Oh, right, you haven’t had Divination yet,” Sirius said with a roll of his eyes at himself. “Prophecies are captured in little crystal orbs by the Department of Mysteries. If they’re active, they glow with this soft yellow-white light. If they’re inactive, either broken or complete, they go dark and just look like a chunk of milky quartz.”

“Oh,” Harry said, blinking. “Huh, that’s cool. So Anthony’s going… to go check on the prophecy about me?”

“Yep,” Sirius agreed. “We’re expecting it to be dark. Killing the horcruxes should’ve fulfilled the prophecy, kicked Voldemort through to Death’s waiting hands, and set you free from that mess. Which doesn’t mean that Fate is done with you. Do you feel different?”

Harry bit his lip. “No. Not at all, really. Just sore. And hungry. That’s all.”

“Fate still has plans for you,” Sirius said with another long, slow, exhausted sigh. “We’ll have to figure out what it is eventually, but it’s never a good idea to mess with Fate’s plans. You dad called Fate a meddling bitch who doesn’t like to be thwarted. It’s better to just live your life and deal with problems as they come up than it is to try and fight Fate’s plans.”

Harry nodded. “Makes sense.”

“The important part,” Sirius continued with a little pat to Harry’s belly, “is that you get to choose your path through life, Prongslet. I think you’ll probably always have your saving people thing. I hope that you’ll take after Lils because she was brilliant and could think and talk her way out any problem she faced. Prongs was… not as good at that. He wasn’t dim-witted, not at all, but he was prone to assuming that his status as the Potter heir should get him off from pretty much everything.”

That was moderately horrifying. Especially given that Sirius didn’t seem to be all that upset by it. His dad was like Malfoy? Harry grimaced. Ugh.

That wasn’t going to be how Harry lived his life. Not a chance.

“Right, so, I might have more stuff Fate wants me to do,” Harry summarized in hopes that this talk was almost over, “but I should do my best and live my life and not be a prat like my dad.”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, grinning brightly. “Ask Remus about his and Lils’ pranks. They never got caught unlike me, James and Wormtail. It’ll be all right. I’ll be here. Remus, your vassals, Anthony. Lacey! She’ll make sure to keep us all in line for sure.”

Harry snickered over the stars in Sirius’ eyes. Black men sure seemed to have a type. Even though it hurt, Harry scooted a little closer to Sirius and then relaxed as Sirius took that as the invitation for a hug that it was. He’d never gotten so many hugs before in his life. Well, honestly, pretty much everything so far this summer was new and unprecedented. It was strange, and all because Sirius had found him outside of the Dursley’s place.

“Hey, wait,” Harry said. He pulled back just enough to be able to frown at Sirius. “I never asked what you were doing outside Privet Drive.”

“Oh,” Sirius said as his cheeks went red. “Well, I was getting a look at you before I went off to the Burrow to break in there.”

“…Why?” Harry asked after staring at him for a few seconds in confusion.

Sirius groaned. “Okay, so, one of the guards dropped a newspaper outside my cell in Azkaban. It had an article about the Weasley family winning a prize and going off to Egypt to visit their eldest son. I saw Wormtail in the picture. He’s hiding out in their house. I couldn’t let him get at you at Hogwarts, so I figured I’d make sure he wasn’t at Privet Drive, go to the Burrow and see if I could sneak through the wards. Didn’t honestly expect that I could but I had to try. And then I’d hunt Wormtail down at Hogwarts and make him pay for betraying you and your parents. Simple.”

Harry pushed Sirius’ arm off his belly so that he could sit up and stare at Sirius. He tried to ask more questions but all that came out was gibberish because what?

What?

“None of that makes sense,” Harry said finally once he got his words again. “I’ve been to their house. There’s no one there but the Weasleys.”

“Wormtail,” Sirius said, easing upright and then groaning as his spine popped audibly. “Peter Pettigrew was his proper name, but we called him Wormtail because he was an animagus like me and Prongs. James was a deer. I’m a dog. Peter was a rat.”

Harry grabbed Sirius’ shirt as his whole body went cold as ice. “Scabbers! Ron’s been sleeping with Peter Pettigrew for years now?”

“That’s… even more disturbing than it was before when you put it that way,” Sirius said a little breathlessly. He shuddered and patted Harry’s hands. “Come on. Let’s get up, get some food, and see what needs to be done next.”

Harry nodded. He already knew what needed to happen. Sirius’ trial was the next issue to address and the best way to make that happen was to capture Scabbers and force the Ministry to face the fact that they’d thrown the wrong man in Azkaban.

24. Reverse Course

Purebloods aren’t too bad. You’ve commented on it before. Pureblood parents go to great lengths to ensure that their children will do as they’re told, that they will fulfill their duty and uphold their family’s honor.

#

Sirius sucked in a breath to say… something… to Harry, only to have it gust right back out of his lungs when Harry turned the most dramatically effective disappointed puppy eyes on him. Not sad puppy. Not angry. Disappointed.

As in Lily’s “so disappointed in you, Sirius” frown with the eyebrows drawn together, the bottom lip just barely caught between the teeth and then the widening of the eyes coupled with that determined little chin-tilt upwards.

How the bloody hell was Lily’s “Disappointed in You” look genetic?

“Sirius, we have to do it this way,” Harry said for the third and most definitively final time because Sirius was not going to be able to battle those eyes. “If you’re not free, then I’m not free. Remus will be in danger. So will Lacey and Anthony. The Wizengamot will be acting on incorrect information. So will the Ministry and the Aurors. We have to get Scabbers and then get you a trial.”

The ballroom felt like a closet. Before they broke the curse, Harry was… intense. In a very worrying way. Now it as though he’d turned the dial up to a million and sucked all the air out of the room. Which he absolutely shouldn’t have been able to do when his face was still bruised, and Sirius knew for a fact that Harry’s whole body ached.

The wards told Sirius that much. Hell, Harry’d said it outright before he got going on the whole trial thing. Between him and Remus doing the quietly disapproving of all of Sirius’ life choices thing, Sirius was surprised there wasn’t a wall against his back.

It sure felt like there should be.

“I just…” Sirius said even though he knew it wasn’t going to work.

Logically, it made much more sense to pass the news that the horcruxes were destroyed onto Dumbledore to make sure that he would back them. Anthony had already confirmed that the prophecy orb was dark. Voldemort was completely dead this time, not sort-of dead, all the way dead. Which meant that Dumbledore needed to be given a chance to prove he was actually a good man.

Sirius frankly still wasn’t sure. His memories were too much of a hash for him to be certain. All Sirius knew was that Dumbledore had definitely meddled with all their memories for some mysterious reason. Why? He had no clue.

Maybe because of Peter? After all, Peter had definitely betrayed them all.

But no, that didn’t make sense. Peter being a craven idiot and an oath breaker had nothing to do with Dumbledore deciding to edit all their memories for reasons unknown. Sirius had tried to figure out the logic of it all and failed. He just didn’t know.

Either way, Harry was no longer cursed or subject to that prophecy so he wouldn’t be dragged back into all the same trouble as before. There was no reason whatsoever for him to set up this hugely complicated plan to get Wormtail and then get Sirius his trial far faster than anyone in their right mind should expect.

Sirius shook his head and opened his mouth to try one last time to get through to Harry that he didn’t need to focus on Sirius first. There were more important priorities.

“No,” Remus said, putting a hand on Sirius’ shoulder and squeezing gently while urging Sirius to stop fighting it through their bond. “Harry’s right. You’re the next key piece of the plan, Sirius. Listen to Harry. He’s come up with a really good way to handle this.”

“Fine,” Sirius groaned, throwing up his hands as he flopped down into the chair next to Harry’s.

He’d never won a fair fight with Remus before they did the consort bond. There was no way in hell he’d ever win one again. All Remus had to do was look at him and Sirius was going to give in.

How could he fight his own husband?

The kitchen table hadn’t been big enough for all the stuff Harry, Theo and Remus had gathered up for Harry’s plan. They’d dragged everyone, along with all the stuff, to the ballroom which had the long dining table in the middle of it. The one that Mother had used to give grand dinners back before everything went to hell with the war.

Barely an inch of that table’s elaborate inlaid woodwork was visible.

The orange notes were now readable by anyone. No notes or records disappeared into the Department of Records, much to Amal and Silverclaw’s relief. Remus’ knees had almost given out when he’d seen for himself that it was true this morning.

Books and scrolls bookended stacks of random parchments and receipts. There were maps and a stack of stone tablets that had to have come from Silverclaw. No one but the Goblins used stone tablets anymore. It looked like, while Harry and Sirius slept off the destruction of the horcruxes, Theo, Anthony and Remus had gathered a mountain of information that Amal had, somehow, sorted into a coherent sequence of events to explain what had happened, what was happening right now and what needed to happen to get Sirius his trial.

Probably.

It was a bit overwhelming so Sirius hadn’t exactly paid as much attention to the explanation of what everything was as he should have. Not even Remus’ side-eye had been enough to get him to focus properly on the stacks of parchments, books, and various persnickety little records.

He spent far more time eyeing the small devices of mysteriously threatening origin that were scattered across the table’s fifteen-foot length. All of them screamed that Moody had gotten paranoid and creative in terrifying ways while Harry and Sirius slept.

“Right,” Harry said enthusiastically now that Sirius had stopped fighting the inevitable. “The plan’s already in motion so I don’t know why you’re fighting it. Dobby came back when Kreacher called him. He’s doing way better now. Apparently, the curse was making him worse. Anyway, he’s found other free house elves in Europe and Egypt. They, once they realized what Dobby was trying, showed him how to regulate his magic properly without a bond. It’s not easy and he’s kind of struggling with it, but they wanted to help him out with his project for me, so they agreed to go and steal Scabbers from Ron.”

“Is already done,” Kreacher announced as he popped in with a bare whisper of noise. “Dobby is returning now with bad rat-man. Will go straight to Bank.”

“Perfect!” Harry said with his biggest grin. “Once Silverclaw has him, the Goblins extract a confession from him. Silverclaw is um, motivated to get that done.”

Amal grinned. “He really wants the Black vaults to get back in circulation properly. Ragnok is backing Silverclaw wholly. Apparently, his mate Bannet convinced Ragnok that this was vital to the survival of Gringotts.”

“That,” Harry agreed. “Now, Theo’s arranged with Moody to have a special session of the Wizengamot called. Moody got Amelia Bones on our side. He’s not saying how.”

Moody just looked smug which meant that he’d called in some favors and told Amelia that she might be able to get one-up over Dumbledore. There wasn’t much that Amelia wouldn’t do to achieve that. She hated Dumbledore with the heat of a thousand fiendfyres.

“And… you want me to march in there, submit myself to the Wizengamot in the expectation that they’ll be good and just and fair,” Sirius said with more sarcasm than he really should use towards Harry.

Harry rolled his eyes. “As if. They’d throw you straight back in Azkaban or through the Veil. Moody will present his thing, whatever that is, with Amelia Bones. Then Ragnok will barge in with Scabbers and demand that they listen to the testimony. Lacey is going to be in the audience, watching.”

“My job is to see how Dumbledore reacts,” Lacey said with a smirk that Sirius liked far too much for his own good. “None of you are particularly objective when it comes to him. I’ll be able to tell if he’s shocked or angry or whatever.”

“It’ll be chaos,” Harry continued, nodding his agreement with Lacey. “But useful chaos. We should be able to see who could be an ally or an enemy. Once the meeting breaks up, then we’ll reassess, see what we can throw at them next. Two or three rounds of it and they should bring you to trial whether you’re there or not. If not, well, we’ll go to the ICW and get them to land on Britain.”

“That’s… not a bad plan,” Sirius said reluctantly.

It wasn’t that bad.

Not perfect, of course, but there were far too many variables to control. Especially when the curse had been affecting people in predictable ways. Now they would react differently than before and there was no telling just how many people had been affected. Or how severely they’d been changed by it all.

“We might as well try it,” Sirius said. He laughed as Harry cheered and high-fived Amal. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up, Prongslet. There’s a good chance this won’t work.”

“I know,” Harry said even though he was grinning and all but vibrating with excitement. “If it doesn’t, well, we’ll just try something else.”

Sirius sat back and let Harry go at the problem. If he got in over his head, then Sirius would intervene. Harry needed the experience, and this was a relatively solid thing for him to decide to work on, even if it was probably going to fail once he went up against the Wizengamot and Dumbledore.

That plan lasted all of about two minutes.

Dobby popped in. He looked just about as excited as Harry did. He also looked a thousand times better than he had before. Sirius had never seen Dobby that energetic or that healthy-looking. There was a fuzz of hair growing behind his ears, which Sirius had never seen on a house elf before.

“Friend Harry, Silverclaw says that Wormtail is done,” Dobby announced. “They is having full confession from him. They has already posted it on front of Gringotts and they is sending it to ICW and Prophet and Quibbler and Ministry so no ones can deny truth of what they finds.”

“Did they link Pettigrew with Ron and the Weasleys?” Harry asked.

“No,” Dobby replied with a firm enough nod that Harry relaxed a bit and Sirius mentally kicked himself for not thinking of that ahead of time. “Pettigrew is not saying it in his confession and Silverclaw is not asking. Silverclaw says that Moody is to be going to the Ministry right away.”

“One angry tirade coming up,” Moody said with the sort of terrifying grin that had given Sirius nightmares as a trainee auror. “Amelia’s going to be chewing iron and spitting nails over this. Make sure you’re ready, lass. The Wizengamot will be called quick over something like this.”

“I’m already on my way,” Lacey drawled.

She kissed Anthony, patted Harry on the head and followed Moody to the floo. They went through separately so that no one would realize they were coming from the same place. Sirius had enough time to suggest a meal for everyone else to Kreacher who nodded that he’d get it done, before the wireless that Theo had brought in from his trunk started squawking about an emergency meeting of the Wizengamot and traitors and long-hidden lies.

“Food,” Kreacher announced.

He cleared a spot on the long dining table before snapping his fingers and putting down an array of trays with small sandwiches, most of which were not beef, bowls of soup and Kreacher’s special salads.

Sirius made a point of pushing a salad into both Theo and Harry’s hands. Theo frowned at it, but Harry was already eating his like it was the best thing he’d ever had. That encouraged Theo to try it. Both his eyebrows went up. He started eating just as eagerly as Harry.

The reporter at the Wizengamot went all breathless over Amelia’s calling an emergency meeting to address the lack of aurors when there were more important issues like the continuing mystery of where the Boy-Who-Lived had disappeared to. Before the reporter had the chance to do much besides imply that she was just trying to get more funding to funnel into her pockets, as if Amelia was no different than Fudge, the doors to the Wizengamot banged open so violently that it was like a gunshot over the wireless.

Harry grinned. “Here we go.”

“Listeners, this is unprecedented,” the announcer said in a breathless voice that wasn’t half as shocked as it should be. “Ragnok, Chieftain of the Goblins, has just forced his way into the Wizengamot.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow at Theo who smirked.

“Of course we warned the reporter ahead of time,” Theo replied so smugly that Sirius rolled his eyes and went back to picking at his food.

This was going to be very interesting. Pity he couldn’t be there and see what was happening personally. He’d give quite a lot to be a fly on the wall.

25. Wizengamot Outrage

Half-bloods don’t. Those vermin Muggleborns are a plague on our society. Always asking questions and changing things that don’t need to be changed. Why, just a few weeks ago, while you were at the market with your aunt, one of the Muggles in the neighborhood bragged about his new gun.

#

Harry grinned at Theo as Benjamin Thornapple, the reporter they’d chosen to cover the Wizengamot meeting, spluttered mostly convincingly about “outrage” this and “unprecedented” that, even though Amal had confirmed that Ragnok made a point of barging into any Wizengamot meeting he felt like. Since no one in the magical world would be polite to the Goblins, Ragnok apparently felt no need to be polite back.

Not that Harry could blame him, really, but it made for very good, very dramatic radio broadcasts.

The charm that Moody had given him activated, letting Harry see through Moody’s eyes. Not both, not the magical one because wow, that was way too disorienting for Harry to handle. He didn’t know how Moody handled it. Just the normal human eye.

Dumbledore frowned at Ragnok with real enough distaste that Harry bit his lip. “Chieftain, I wasn’t aware that you were interested in this issue.”

“I haven’t even introduced the issue yet,” Madame Amelia Bones snapped, glaring at Ragnok first and then at Dumbledore. “What is it?”

“Your issues will have to wait,” Ragnok replied with a little sniff and curl of his lip that exposed his knife-sharp teeth. “My people in Egypt discovered a problem that the Wizengamot must deal with immediately. There are vaults held in stasis because someone,” he glared at Fudge and Dumbledore so fiercely that Dumbledore’s chin went up and Fudge flinched, “couldn’t be bothered to do their job at the end of the war.”

“…What?” Dumbledore said with slowly dawning horror.

The horror grew as Ragnok pulled a shrunken cage from his waistcoat pocket, tossing it into the center of the Wizengamot floor. A muttered phrase in Gobbledygook and the cage swelled until it was big enough to hold a man.

It held a rat.

A small, trembling, rat that sat in the center of the cage instead of running out straight through the bars even though there was more than enough room for it to do so.

“If you will be so kind as to cast the animagus reversal spell on this… creature,” Ragnok said to Madame Bones.

Madame Bones raised one eyebrow and then shook her head as if she couldn’t see the point of this entire exercise. It was amazingly good acting. Anthony had promised that they’d fully briefed Madame Bones on what was going to happen. He couldn’t tell at all from the almost insultingly casual grip she had on her wand as she cast the spell at the rat.

Which shuddered and then rippled as it grew and grew and turned into a man with thinning brown hair, a pockmarked face, and buck teeth under beady, terrified eyes.

“Peter Pettigrew!” Benjamin Thornapple shouted over the wireless, nearly knocking Harry right out of the charm that let him see through Moody’s eyes. “Listeners, Chieftain Ragnok has just revealed Peter Pettigrew in the very living flesh! Oh, I can’t believe it. The entirety of the Wizarding world thought him murdered three days after our beloved Boy Who Lived defeated You-Know-Who. How can this be? Surely, we cannot have been so deceived. This must be a disguise, a trick of some kind!”

Madame Bones threw five fast spells at Pettigrew, which Thornapple reported as a finite incantum, a spell to reveal hidden charms, one to dispel an illusion, a second to dispel an illusion that was only used by aurors in extreme circumstances and then finally an incarcerous that wrapped Pettigrew up like a burrito in ropes even though he was still trapped inside of the cell.

“This… this can’t be,” Fudge spluttered. His face was the color of cold oatmeal, complete with the sweat dotting his face that showed up when you left oatmeal out to cool all day.

“Indeed,” Dumbledore agreed. “Perhaps we can have an explanation?”

“An employee of Gringotts received information that Pettigrew was hiding as a rat in Egypt,” Ragnok explained brusquely while glaring at Pettigrew who shivered in the middle of the cage. Even with all the ropes binding him, it was quite obvious that he shook like a leaf in a storm. “A team was sent, and we recovered the rat. Subsequent examination revealed that yes, the rat was an Animagus. Our forms of… revealing… Animagus are rather more strenuous than yours. He was returned to human form and questioned to determine exactly what he’d done.”

Harry’s eyes narrowed along with Moody’s as Dumbledore’s face switched from sternly frowning to distinctly disturbed. Not that Dumbledore got the chance to say anything because a roar of demands that Pettigrew be tried went up.

“Silence!” Madame Bones shouted. She obviously used a spell of some sort because it made Harry’s ears ring and the Wireless buzzed with feedback for a second. “Ragnok, will you share the testimony with us?”

“Absolutely,” Ragnok said. “I have it with me. The full transcript is even now being published by the Quibbler, the Prophet and in every newspaper in the ICW. A copy has already been posted on Gringotts’s doors.”

Dumbledore’s shoulders slumped ever so slightly.

Fudge made a gobbling noise as he went so green that Harry thought that he would pass out at any second.

The testimony was long, as boring as it was infuriating. Pettigrew’s voice in the recorded testimony, projected so that everyone could see and hear it in the Wizengamot, was monotone. Utterly flat even when he was reciting horrors like deliberately betraying Harry’s parents and Harry to death. Ragnok’s investigator, a Goblin by the name of Steeltooth, never once lost his temper or cursed or anything, so it was calm, dry voices meticulously examining every minute detail of how Pettigrew betrayed his closest friends, took the Dark Mark, and then turned Harry’s whole family over to Voldemort.

Even the people watching up in the visitor’s gallery of the Wizengamot settled down after a little while. Lacey, who Moody glanced at several times, never lost her laser-focus on Pettigrew’s face. She glared like she was pondering exactly how to carve him into little bitty pieces while keeping him alive.

Everyone else? Yeah, no, half an hour into it, most people were yawning. Not Lacey. Not Madame Bones and Moody. Certainly not Dumbledore whose lips got thinner and thinner as the testimony went on and on and on.

Fudge? He spluttered and fussed and fidgeted and trembled the whole time.

“That was… very thorough,” Madame Bones said after an hour and forty-seven minutes, thirty-two seconds, not that Theo had been counting and written it down on a slip of paper that he pushed over to Harry with a smug little smirk.

“Of course,” Ragnok said, staring straight at Dumbledore and Fudge who curled inwards under the weight of Ragnok’s glare. “After going to this much work, I wouldn’t want Pettigrew to escape due to lack of evidence.”

“Very commendable,” Dumbledore said in a tone that meant the exact opposite.

“We also have complete records on Pettigrew’s finances prior to the betrayal,” Ragnok said with a little lift to his chin that made Dumbledore’s nostrils flare. “There are several transfers into his vaults that are quite suggestive.”

“He betrayed the Potters for money?” Madame Bones asked.

She sounded like someone was half strangling her, but it was pretty clearly just outright fury cutting off her ability to speak without gritting her teeth and glaring hot death at Pettigrew. Ragnok nodded once. The entire Wizengamot went up in a roar of rage that made the Wireless fuzz out again.

“What’s Dumbledore doing?” Theo asked.

“Glaring at Ragnok,” Harry said. “He hasn’t even looked at Lacey or Moody once. Hasn’t seemed to notice that Madame Bones is in on it, either. She’s a super-good actor. I’ve only seen a couple little flickers of satisfaction so far.”

“She is good,” Anthony agreed while Sirius chuckled.

Restoring order took another fifteen minutes and several attempts from Madame Bones, a panicky Fudge and finally Dumbledore letting his aura flare out while he banged on the bench so hard that dust rained down from the rafters of the Wizengamot.

“I believe that a trial is in order,” Dumbledore said once the crowd had settled down into quietly rumbling discontent. “Shall we set the date for our next meeting in one month?”

“No,” Madame Bones snapped at him. “We’ve heard the evidence already. Ragnok was very thorough. Goblin testimony is unimpeachable. Pettigrew has admitted on record that he betrayed the Potters and then set Sirius Black up to take the blame for his crimes. We can vote on this now and be done with it.”

“But Sirius Black is a murderer!” Fudge protested.

“Pettigrew admitted eighteen times on record that he committed every crime that Black is accused of,” Ragnok shouted at Fudge. “You have the true murderer lying right there. Justice must be served!”

Dumbledore sighed and leaned back in his seat as the Wizengamot erupted yet again.

Moody started to look away from Dumbledore, to look up at Lacey and then scan the furious crowd of Wizengamot members and gallery guests. Harry mentally nudged him to keep his eyes on Dumbledore instead. There was something there. He just knew there was.

What it was, Harry didn’t know yet but there was definitely something more going on with Dumbledore.

As Moody returned his eyes to Dumbledore, Dumbledore did something very odd. He pulled out his wand and began playing with it. Not pointing it at anyone. There weren’t any spells at all.

But when Dumbledore’s wand shifted towards Fudge, he stopped quivering and started huffing and puffing like he was as outraged as everyone else. When he pointed at certain members of the Wizengamot, like Malfoy and Greenglass and Ogden, their attitudes changed.

Malfoy’s fury changed to a sneer. Greenglass went from a red-faced glare of death at Pettigrew into a narrow-eyed stare that seemed hesitant about condemning him. And Ogden had been biting his lip, waving his hands, and protesting as if he didn’t think that they should hurry to judgement until Dumbledore’s wand so casually and accidentally pointed at him.

After that, Ogden was on his feet and shouting louder than almost anyone that Pettigrew should be thrown through the Veil of Death immediately.

“Dumbledore is definitely up to something,” Harry reported. He frowned. “Don’t know what but he just changed at least a half a dozen people’s emotional responses to this whole thing.”

“…He memory charmed people in the middle of an open Wizengamot meeting?” Theo demanded, going as pale as Fudge had been before Dumbledore hit him with the whatever it was he did with his wand.

“Maybe,” Harry said. “Don’t know. It wasn’t a spell that I recognize but it definitely was something.”

The weird part was how people had reacted once Dumbledore did whatever it was he did to them. Their responses had changed. Dramatically changed. It was like Dumbledore had completely altered their memories and opinions and personality.

Which wasn’t all that far off of what the curse had been doing to everyone around Harry.

Harry frowned as he watched the debate through Moody’s eyes. Dumbledore didn’t seem to do anything other than occasionally scold people for being too loud or too profane as they cursed at Pettigrew, Fudge, and the other members of the Wizengamot. Yet every time his wand so casually, so accidentally pointed at someone, they changed.

What, as Sirius had the habit of saying, the bloody hell was going on with him? Too weird. And way too suspicious.

Not that it mattered. After half an hour of Dumbledore sculpting people’s responses and Thornapple breathlessly reporting every single word spoken as if it was the end of the world happening right there in front of them, Pettigrew was condemned to Azkaban.

Not the Veil.

More importantly, Madame Bones immediately pushed through a resolution that the Kiss on Sight order on Sirius be lifted and that he be given a trial as soon as he could be found. Harry smiled grimly at Theo and nodded.

Even though for one moment Dumbledore looked as though he was as dark and evil as Malfoy with his furious glare at Madame Bones’ back.

26. Black Trial

A gun! In our neighborhood. Those nasty things are far too uncontrollable. It was a rifle, you know? One that he claimed was used for sniper work. I charmed it so that it would blow up the next time he fired it. As if I’d allow something like that in our town.

#

Sirius settled into the witness chair, letting the honesty spells settle around him without a bit of struggle. All Aurors were trained in the little tricks that you could do to keep a secret, to redirect your answers so that you didn’t reveal too much. He had no intention of doing anything like that.

The Wizengamot was going to get the bald truth. Hopefully, they’d choke on it.

He flipped the hem of his robe so that it settled in graceful folds alongside his legs instead of in an ungainly and ugly lump under his rear end. Mother had always insisted that movement, etiquette, and fashion lessons would be vital for Sirius in the future.

He’d go to his grave without ever admitting that she’d been dead right.

His entire outfit was based on some of Mother’s earliest lessons, back before she decided that he was too rebellious and a failure. He’d chosen charcoal grey wool for the trousers and jacket, a dove grey shirt with a deep garnet waistcoat that closed with muted gold buttons.

His robe was deep black, with a faint reddish tone to it, embroidered with burgundy and deep forest green vines around the hems so that it lightened and softened the starkness of his traditional Black Family robe. Open front, with a simple silk cravat in claret, the one pop of bright color he’d allowed himself, the outfit screamed cultured Pureblood Lord.

If only he’d been able to get his hair cut. The braid hanging down his back was so very old-fashioned that he felt like a fossil, though most of the older Wizengamot members who wore long hair made a point of wearing it loose. Like Dumbledore who always made a point to have as long of hair and beard as possible.

Dumbledore hummed.

Sirius flatly refused to look at him, instead brushing his hands over his thighs to smooth his trousers even though the crease was perfectly aligned over his knees and the hem broke exactly correctly over the arch of his dragonhide boot.

“Madame Bones, if you will be so kind?” Dumbledore said as though this was something unimportant, something completely casual.

And wasn’t that just like the man? Sirius was on trial with the treat of being tossed back into Azkaban or through the Veil and Dumbledore acted like they were only going to have a polite little chat before tea. Amelia snorted, eyeing Dumbledore as if she agreed with Sirius.

“Thank you for your cooperation in this inquiry, Lord Black,” Amelia said while sorting through the very slim stack of paperwork in front of her. “This shouldn’t take very long.”

“However long it takes,” Sirius said with a genial smile for her and a little nod to the Wizengamot which sat staring at Sirius as if he was a circus bear about to do tricks for them. “I’d like to get this mess cleaned up. My healer strongly disapproves of my exerting myself until I’m restored to full health.”

Amelia took a sharp breath, glaring at Sirius as if he’d just made a problem for her. “That was one of the questions we wanted to address later, but perhaps we should get it out of the way. How exactly did you escape from Azkaban?”

“I’m an Animagus,” Sirius replied. “I’ve already paid the late registration fee, just in case someone wants to complain about that. Bit difficult to register when you’re in Azkaban, of course, but I’d not want to give anyone cause to throw me back in.”

“What type?” Amelia asked as she made a note.

“I’m a Grim,” Sirius said. He rolled his eyes when a roar of horrified whispers went up from the crowd. “All of us turned out to be rather unique when it came to our Animagus forms. James Potter was an Irish deer, the giant ones that are extinct in the muggle world. I was a Grim. Magical Animagus forms are quite common the Black family. And Peter, well, he was a rat, obviously. His… oddity… was that his pelt changed color depending on the season, if he let it. He found it rather too obvious, so he taught himself not to change colors while we were still in school.”

Amelia frowned at Sirius. “Quite unusual.”

“Very much so,” Sirius agreed.

“So you… slipped through the bars,” Amelia said and noted it down when Sirius nodded. “I’m quite stunned at how rational you are. The effect of Dementors on prisoners in Azkaban is well-documented.”

Sirius snorted. “The Dementors don’t feed on Grims, Madame Bones. A Grim is a similar species to an Dementor. I won’t deny that I had quite the psychotic break, but that happened before I was taken to Azkaban. I don’t honestly remember the first month or so. I’m told that I was laughing and blaming myself for everything when I was captured. I have to believe that losing everyone so abruptly and then discovering that Peter betrayed us all snapped my mind, especially once he escaped. My memories are still a bit of a hash. It’s part of why my healer doesn’t want me doing anything strenuous.”

The chamber hushed as he explained, then shifted nervously as Sirius admitted the blatant truth that he’d been quite unbalanced when he was thrown in Azkaban. By law, he should’ve gotten a proper medical exam and given several depositions under Veratiserum before he was given a trial. None of that had happened and everyone in Britain knew it.

“It was reported,” Amelia said, slanting a glare at Dumbledore who looked politely confused while fiddling with his wand, “that you were the secret keeper.”

“Oh, I was,” Sirius said. He rolled his eyes as people started shouting. It took a good three minutes before Dumbledore finally silenced everyone. Two of that went with Dumbledore just looking sternly at people.

“You were?” Amelia asked. Her cheeks were red with what had to be fury.

“Oh yes,” Sirius said completely calmly. “For all of about twenty minutes. James and Lily allowed Dumbledore to place the first Fidelus. James was… quite paranoid about the whole thing. We’d debated between the five of us for weeks, but it was decided that I would be decoy, Remus would be the guard for the true secret keeper and Peter would be the final secret keeper. We waited until Dumbledore left and I’d passed the secret on to him, Remus and Peter, then Lily recast the spell with Peter as the secret keeper.”

They’d decided during the wait that throwing Dumbledore under the Knight Bus wasn’t worth doing at this time. While what he’d said was absolute truth, what Sirius had left out was that he’d gone and told Dumbledore immediately that they’d switched the secret keeper, as planned.

Dumbledore had known all along.

Hopefully, admitting that his memory was a hash would keep Dumbledore from doing something stupid and dangerous before Sirius was free.

“Very clever,” Amelia said with an approving nod.

“Oh, so very clever,” Sirius drawled. “Give the secret to the traitor. We knew there was one, you know. We just hadn’t figured out who it was. Peter was better at secrets than we thought.”

Amelia winced. So did a good number of the people watching. Rather odd to sit here and recite what had happened. He and Remus had spent several hours going over what questions might be asked, what had to be covered, and in the end had decided that they had nothing whatsoever to hide.

“Right.” Amelia sighed. “Moving along, then. Why did you escape from Azkaban and go after Harry Potter?”

“I didn’t,” Sirius said.

This time he glowered at the shouts and complaints that he had somehow resisted the witness chair’s spells. Amelia silenced the room since Dumbledore didn’t look like he intended to do a thing to shut everyone up.

“As I was saying before everyone interrupted,” Sirius said with a stern glower at the reporters up in the visitor’s galley, “I didn’t escape to go after Harry. I went after Peter. He was living as a pet rat with a Light family. They were in the newspaper, picture right on the front page. I saw it, saw Peter, and realized that the children in the family were of the right age to be at Hogwarts with Harry. That couldn’t be allowed to fly, of course. I slipped out, swam to shore. Wasn’t even that hard, actually. You should probably do something about that.”

“We will,” Amelia promised in a grim enough tone that Sirius had to laugh quietly. That was going to get fixed right after this meeting if Amelia’s expression was anything to judge by. “Do you believe the family knew who they had?”

“Not at all,” Sirius said. “The Goblins obtained Peter and they already testified that the family didn’t how that their pet rat was an Animagus. I’d personally like to see them all be tested for memory charms, behavioral modifications, and whatnot. Goodness knows, Peter was always a dab hand at making his problems “go away”.”

He wiggled his fingers suggestively and nodded when Amelia’s face went pale. Interestingly, Dumbledore started as if he didn’t know that. Given that he’d been the one to teach all of them memory charms, Sirius was surprised by that. If anyone should know, Dumbledore should.

If, of course, Sirius’ memory of those lessons was accurate.

“That will be looked into,” Amelia said, noting it down, too.

She looked at her list and took a deep breath. Before she said anything, Amelia imposed the silencing protocols so that no one could interrupt this bit of questioning.

Which meant that she’d reached Harry’s portion of the questioning.

“When did you kidnap Harry Potter?” Amelia asked.

Sirius laughed, shaking his head. “Lovely phrasing, Madame Bones. I didn’t. What happened was that I gave into sentimentality and went to check on Harry before searching out Peter. I wanted to make sure that Harry was all right. He most emphatically was not all right. That was the night that he blew up his abusive aunt, Marge Dursley. I heard her going on and on about Harry’s parents. The point at which Harry’s rather stunning self-control broke was when Marge Dursley announced with absolute conviction that breeding will tell. A “bad bitch”, she’s a dog breeder you understand, will always throw weak and defective pups that should be put down immediately.”

Amelia rocked back in her chair. Behind the silencing protocols, the entirety of the Wizengamot lost their minds. Sirius shook his head as people shouted, silently, pointing furiously at Sirius, at Amelia, at Dumbledore and Fudge. It took a bit before Amelia got enough control over herself to continue with her questioning.

“So you took him before our people got there?” Amelia asked.

“No, not at all,” Sirius said, smiling wryly at her. “Harry ran out of the house with his trunk and his wand and stomped up the street to just across from the dark alley where I was hiding. He looked like he was about to summon the Knight Bus. Logical, of course. I found out later that Harry had no idea what the Knight Bus was. What happened was that he saw me across the street and was considering whether or not I was a threat.”

“Well, a Grim,” Amelia said, barking a little laugh that got nods from Dumbledore and Fudge.

“He had no clue,” Sirius said, shrugging. “At the time, I was filthy, far too thin and shaking. He saw a large black dog who looked abused, starved and perhaps beaten. Harry lowered his wand just as you and your team showed up. I expected that he would go to you all but Harry dove into his trunk and pulled out the invisibility cloak James used to have. Not sure how Harry got it. Last I heard, Dumbledore had it to study it. Either way, I darted over and hid under the cloak with him and Harry just…”

Sirius laughed a little, shaking his head in amazement that wasn’t at all manufactured. The Wizengamot stilled, quieted. Even Dumbledore leaned forward a little as Sirius continued. He made a point of just looking at Amelia, not at anyone else, as if this was purely a discussion between old coworkers and friends.

“He wrapped me up in his cloak and hugged me,” Sirius said, heart hurting. “He was almost as skinny as I was. That was the point at which I realized that it wasn’t just Marge Dursley hurting Harry. Petunia and Vernon had to be hurting him, too. No teenage boy should be that skinny. That wary. We stayed long enough to overhear a conversation about multiple incidents of people on Privet Drive being memory charmed to protect the Statute, and then I shifted. I told him to trust me and then side-alonged him to the Black family manor. He’s there now, perfectly safe.”

That.

That was the point where Dumbledore finally sat up, focused fully on Sirius, and pointed his wand not casually at all in Sirius’ direction.

His breath caught in Sirius’ chest as a thousand memories cascaded through his mind of all the times he remembered Dumbledore memory charming him.

None of them felt real.

All of them felt real.

And there was not one thing he could do in the middle of the Wizengamot to protect himself from Dumbledore if the man did it again.

27. Sacred Oath

If Lady Magic is with me, it will kill him. One less Muggle to breed and threaten us all. Father’s attack on those Muggles was wrong-headed, not in that he killed them but in that he did so publicly. I think Arianna’s magic, the weight of the vassal bond’s stump and the needling of the curse just pushed him over the edge.

#

“He’s terrified,” Remus said, hands pressing against the table in the pale blue parlor so hard that it creaked. “It came from nowhere.”

“Dumbledore pointed his wand at Sirius,” Harry reported. “It’s not from nowhere.”

Harry wished for one wild, terrifying moment, that he could change places with Moody. Not that he could anything to protect Sirius that would be half as good as what Moody could, but he desperately wanted to be there to protect his godfather. And not just because of the whole “never going back to the Dursleys” thing that Sirius had going.

No, Harry wanted to be there so that he could charge over and pop Dumbledore right in his big nose. How dare he go around memory charming and spelling people? What kind of Leader of the Light was that?

No kind, that’s what.

They’d broken into teams. Silverclaw was there with Moody and Lacey, ready to protect Sirius if they had to. It didn’t look especially likely given the way that Madame Bones had been questioning Sirius, but that could easily change if Dumbledore messed with her, too. Remus and Harry were sitting at the table, eyes shut so that they could focus on their links to Sirius and Moody, respectively.

Behind them, Anthony and Theo were busy coordinating with the Goblins through the Floo and a linked diary thing that Anthony and Lacey had.

Madame Bones hummed and noted down that Harry was safe. She looked at Sirius whose pulse pounded visibly at his temple but who otherwise looked completely calm, cultured and unruffled. That was a surprising skill that Harry really didn’t need to know about, mostly because Remus had reacted to seeing Sirius in his elegant clothes sauntering into the parlor by getting visibly red and then awkwardly covering his groin.

Gross.

“That’s good to know,” Madame Bones said wryly.

“Well, you know,” Sirius said with a grin that was just a hair wobbly, “what with the Prophet reporting his gruesome death in a dozen inventively new ways every day, I thought it was necessary to say so.”

He waved up at the watching gallery and at the members of the Wizengamot who glared at Sirius as if they didn’t believe a word of it.

“After all, people seem to not believe that I swore a blood oath to be Harry’s godfather,” Sirius said. His fingers shook slightly, and to Harry’s astonishment, Sirius smiled wryly at them. “It’s a bit stressful that people think I’m so wicked and powerful that I could break an oath, survive it and kill my own godson, much less my blood brother’s child. I mean, really, Blacks are powerful but we’re not that powerful.”

Dumbledore suddenly turned his wand away from Sirius.

The pulse at Sirius’ temple decreased.

“He’s calmer again,” Remus said, huffing. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

“Dumbledore turned his wand away,” Harry said, glancing at Anthony who frowned and Theo who stuck his head into the fireplace’s green flames to report back to Ragnok. “It’s pointed… nowhere now. Not any anyone.”

“We really need to get that wand away from him,” Anthony grumbled as he wrote to Lacey.

In the gallery, Lacey frowned at her journal and dashed a quick note back while Madame Bones nodded and took another note. Then a second that she tapped her quill over once she was done.

“Those oaths were witnessed?” Madame Bones asked.

“Oh, yes.” Sirius laughed. “Half of Gryffindor witnessed our blood brother oath. It was just James and me. Remus didn’t feel he could and Peter, well, he always said that he’d get around to it after we graduated. He claimed he didn’t want us to be distracted while our bond was so new.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. So did Madame Bones. Dumbledore did not. He frowned as if he disapproved of their derision for Pettigrew’s excuses.

“And the godfather oath?” Madame Bones asked.

“Unfortunately, that one I couldn’t call a witness to the stand for,” Sirius said with a sigh. “Remus was ill that day, right after the full moon you know. Peter was there. So were Frank and Alice Longbottom. That was it, other than James and Lily.”

“So one traitor, two lunatics and a werewolf,” Madame Bones said, shaking her head. “Well, I’d still like to ask Mr. Lupin.”

“Consort Lupin-Black,” Sirius corrected with a blazingly bright smile that radiated joy. “He finally accepted. I’ve been after his hand ever since fourth year, but I finally got him to be my consort.”

Pretty much the entire Wizengamot lost their ever-loving minds. Harry rocked back in his chair, peeking at Remus, and then grinning at him. Remus was so red that he looked like he’d been boiled like a lobster. He huffed and flipped his fingers at Harry when he saw Harry peeking.

“Awwww,” Theo drawled as Reporter Thornapple howled about a werewolf being the beloved and very powerful consort of Lord Black. “That was sweet.”

“And cute,” Harry agreed.

“Get your head back in the game, Potter,” Theo said, pointing at the Wireless. “They won’t be at that forever.”

“Says you,” Anthony said, snickering. “This’ll be in the news for months. Years! It’ll be the biggest gossip around.”

“Shut up and focus,” Remus groaned.

Harry did so after sharing a grin with Theo and Anthony. They’d had plenty of time for their bit of teasing. Dumbledore made no move to calm the Wizengamot even as Madame Bones glowered at him because people had taken to tossing balls of paper at the floor of the Wizengamot. A few more enterprising ones made paper cranes that swooped in at Sirius who just raised an eyebrow.

After the first one went up in flames as soon as it got within three feet of Sirius, Harry realized why. The witness chair was protected against such nonsense. Eventually, Madame Bones stabbed her wand at Fudge who glanced at Dumbledore and then pounded on his bench until the throwing things, silenced shouting and general carrying on stopped.

Through it all, Dumbledore stared at Sirius with tightly pursed lips and no sign of a twinkle in his eyes. If anything, he looked like he wanted to stab Sirius straight through the heart.

“Anthony,” Harry said, “tell Lacey that we’re going to need to research the whole godfather thing. I’m thinking that being my godparent might be a stronger claim for Sirius than Dumbledore likes.”

“It would be,” Remus agreed. “Sirius is creeped out by the staring but trying not to show it.”

Harry snorted. “He’s doing a very good job not showing anything but confidence. I can’t tell at all.”

They both shut up as Madame Bones finally shook her head and turned back to Sirius’ so-called trial. Given that he couldn’t be charged with killing anyone and he’d been illegally incarcerated, the trial wasn’t really a trial. It was just an “inquiry”, but more than a few people seemed to be upset that Sirius wasn’t guilty of something.

“Congratulations,” Madame Bones said dryly enough that Sirius’ lips twitched as he fought against a grin. “I trust you’ll flirt with my staff less now that you’re properly married.”

“But of course,” Sirius said in the most insincere tone of voice possible. He even batted his eyes at Madame Bones who shook her head and rolled her eyes right back at him.

“Have the Goblins confirmed the godparent oaths you took?” Madame Bones asked. She tapped her quill against her notes, eyes locked on Sirius as if she was looking for a lie.

“Yep,” Sirius confirmed cheerfully. “It was part of the healing they did for Harry and I.”

And there was the opening Harry had been waiting for. Moody tensed, going from his so bored he might as well have been dozing lounge to alert, focused and ready for anything in Harry’s mind. He couldn’t tell if Moody moved at all, but the difference in how he paid attention was dramatic.

“…I can understand you needing healing,” Madame Bones said very slowly and warily, “but why would Mr. Potter need it?”

“I’m sure we don’t need to know that, Amelia,” Dumbledore interrupted for the very first time in the whole process.

Didn’t that just figure? Couldn’t let his pawn get taken away or treated better, now could he?

“It most certainly does need to be explained,” Madame Bones snapped at Sirius. “Do you know how many times my people have been called out to his home?”

“How many times?” Sirius asked.

The lightly teasing, relaxed tone was gone. In place of the casual, cheerful Sirius was a stern Lord whose eyes cut right through Madame Bones like Sirius, Lord Black, wanted to flay her alive. Moody’s approval welled up and then subsided as he noted that most of the Light faction went very still while Malfoy frowned as if he was worried about the answer.

“Excuse me?” Madame Bones asked.

“How many times were aurors called out to obliviate the surrounding area?” Sirius asked with dreadfully grim expression transforming his face into the sort of stern taskmaster that would make anyone think twice before pulling a prank. “It’s relevant to my answer to your question.”

Madame Bones stared at Sirius, quill slowly dropping until her hand rested on the bench. After a moment, she sighed and shuffled through her paperwork to look up the answer. The entire Wizengamot waited breathlessly.

Other than Dumbledore who hummed and fidgeted as if he wanted to snatch the paperwork out of Madame Bones’ hands before she could find Sirius’ information.

Harry was rather curious himself. He had no idea. Given that his aunt and uncle had worked so hard to keep him from knowing about magic at all, all the weird little things that had happened when he was younger might have been acted on. Or not. It really depended on how many were reported.

“Ah, here we go,” Madame Bones finally said. She shut her eyes and sighed. “The total is near a hundred. Ninety-three separate incidents of Obliviators being sent out to deal with accidental magic by Mr. Potter.”

“What?” Fudge gasped. “That’s ridiculous! Most Muggleborns only have one or two unless they’ve been…”

“Abused,” Sirius finished as Fudge trailed off in the face of his realization and the glare from Dumbledore. “Exactly. When I saved Harry, he’d not eaten all day. What little food he’d gotten was during a dinner where he was verbally harassed and castigated. He was wearing clothes twice his size and he was dramatically underweight. When our Healer worked on him the next day, he found that Harry was covered in bruises, old scars and had serious malnutrition issues, not to mention many untreated broken bones left to heal naturally.”

Harry swallowed down the surge of loathing at the idea of anyone knowing what had happened to him. Bannet had been absolutely clear that it wasn’t Harry’s fault. So had Healer Smethwyck. It wasn’t that Harry really believed Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. They were such terrible people that Harry had stopped believing what they said years and years before his letter came.

That didn’t make it any easier for other people to know. The staring alone was going to be horrific, much less the inevitable whispers and pity he’d get when he went back to school. But it would help get Sirius free and it should keep Dumbledore’s hands off both of them so…

The Wizengamot was much less calm about the idea. Moody went darkly amused at how many of the Light faction glared outright at Dumbledore. The Dark faction, especially Malfoy and Greenglass, looked like they’d been gutted. Which was odd, now that Harry thought about it. What did they believe about his childhood that they’d react that way? He was going to have to find out later.

Once this was over.

“This after two years at Hogwarts,” Sirius continued, eyes glaring at Madame Bones and no one else. He didn’t even flick a glance towards Dumbledore. “Harry Potter was severely abused and neglected by his guardians. Both Harry and I will require ongoing potions and healing work for the next several months. Harry will be seeing a Healer four times a year for at least the next six years.”

Madame Bones set her quill down and leaned back in her chair to rub her face with both hands. The Wizengamot stilled. They couldn’t really go quiet since they’d already been silenced, but everyone there waited on bated breath to see what Madame Bones would say.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” Madame Bones replied finally. She turned and glared at Dumbledore who abruptly switched from glares of death at Sirius to twinkly grandfatherly looks at Madame Bones. “I told you there was a problem. You swore that you’d take care of it.”

“Don’t bother,” Sirius said when Dumbledore opened his mouth to say something pointless and probably annoyingly vague if his wide-eyed innocent look was anything to judge by. “I am Lord Sirius Orion Black of the House of Black. Harry James Potter is my godson by oath and by choice. He has sworn it, as have I. Here, before the entire Wizengamot, I swear that I will see dead anyone who tries to take Harry James Potter from my custody, with all the ancient skills and knowledge of the House of Black.”

He paused and pointed one elegant finger straight at Dumbledore and Fudge.

Magic glowed around him and then swept out to envelope Dumbledore in a blazing glow. Fudge lit up but it was weaker, flickering instead of a blazing sun. No one else lit up, just the two of them, even though Madame Bones scrambled to her feet and backed away from Dumbledore and Fudge as if afraid that the magic would sweep out and engulf her, too, if she was too close.

“So. Mote. It. Be!”

Sirius’ oath rang through the Wizengamot, cancelling the silence spells at the same time it knocked Dumbledore and Fudge out of their chairs and back into the stone wall behind them.

Silence reigned for a long couple seconds.

Then the Wizengamot audience roared.

28. Fallen Hero

Sometimes I think he went mad. The longer you’re gone, the more I think that I’ll go mad, too. You made it all bearable, Gellert. When you come back, I’m sure that the curse and the bond’s scrabbling at my mind will be soothed again.

#

It was a right pity that Dumbledore lay slumped unconscious against the wall for so long. Sirius would’ve really liked for him to be awake enough to silence the chamber again. His ears ached from the roar of screams, questions, and hysterical laughter. Fudge, of course, was utterly useless. He scrambled back into his seat, panting and pale faced with his green bowler hat tilted drunkenly on his head. It looked like he wasn’t aware enough to even realize that the Wizengamot was one step away from rioting.

Sirius shook his head and sighed.

He stood, flipping his robes away in a nicely dramatic little gesture that Snape always used when he wanted to be a drama ghoul back at school. His robes flared and settled, letting Sirius set his hands on his hips as he stared as sternly as possible up at the Wizengamot.

Lacey grinned at him.

“Nice move,” Lacey murmured into Sirius’ mind through their family bond. “Practice it in the mirror for long?”

“Hush, you,” Sirius replied while fighting against a sudden grin because of course he had.

They all had. Lily had laughed herself sick when the four of them did the move in perfect unison in seventh year just before the holidays. Which they had, logically, done just as Snape swooped in to be cutting and cruel with Malfoy at his back.

That had been one of the last good days before everything went to hell.

At least the memory helped keep Sirius’ face stern long enough for people to start to fidget as they calmed down. Sirius held up one hand, palm facing out. Most everyone other than Rita Skeeter and Madame Longbottom quieted down. It took a finger wagged at Skeeter and a single raised eyebrow at Madame Longbottom for them to shush.

“Thank you,” Sirius said as he sat back down with the proper little flip of his robe so that it would settle properly. “Amelia, you might want to see if we can get a healer in for the Chief Warlock. He shouldn’t have stayed down that long.”

“I’m… rather astonished that he was struck at all,” Amelia said without snapping at him to use her damned title.

Sirius shrugged. “He is the one who placed Harry with Lily’s sister. I’ve no idea why. Lily and James both had wills and they explicitly forbade that Harry go to her sister Petunia.”

“…Because she hates magic that much.” Amelia sighed while rubbing her forehead. “Damn it all, I knew I should’ve stuck him to a seat and made him explain why Potter was there.”

“It will be fine now,” Sirius said, rather grateful that the Wizengamot stayed so quiet that the majority of them might be holding their breath to make sure they didn’t miss a word of this “private” little conversation. “I was their first choice. Alice and Frank Longbottom were next. I’m surprised you weren’t contacted though. They put you third, then Professor McGonagall fourth.”

The glare that Amelia turned on Dumbledore was so viciously furious that Sirius was mildly surprised that Dumbledore’s sparkly robes didn’t catch fire.

“Let’s get this one,” Amelia snapped as she stomped back to her seat and slammed down in it so hard that the legs of her chair screeched against the floor. “I’ve only one more question for you.”

“Ask,” Sirius said.

“Who is the greatest threat to your godson, after You-Know-Who?” Amelia asked. She held up a hand when Sirius frowned. “I’m not going to let the boy go without protection from now on. It’s obvious that he needs it.”

“Well,” Sirius said, laughing a little because that was… lovely. She had to ask that while he was sitting on the witness chair. “Ah, I would have to say that Dumbledore is first, followed by any followers of You-Know-Who who haven’t realized that he’s truly dead now, and then move onto any rabid fans Harry has who don’t understand that he isn’t who or what his fame has made him out to be.”

Malfoy clapped a hand over his arm, going even paler than normal as he stared at Sirius as if he’d just said something that both terrified him and explained the greatest mystery of the universe. It probably had. The Dark Mark certainly must have changed since they killed what was left of Voldemort. It might even have dissipated entirely.

Amelia frowned. “What do you mean “truly dead now”? He’s been dead for years.”

“Only mostly dead,” Sirius said. He pointed a finger at Skeeter when she gasped. “You hush. Let me explain before you go spinning your wild nonsense-tales.”

Skeeter huffed and tossed her hair while glaring at Sirius with her arms crossed over her chest. Her pen kept on scrabbling quickly across her parchment, though, so the warning clearly did no good there. At least the Wireless was still recording. People would hear this straight from him.

“All right,” Sirius said, raising an eyebrow when Dumbledore groaned and mumbled something. “Finally. When I rescued Harry, I got us into the Black family mansion. Kreacher is the house elf there and he’s… always been quite horrid to me. My mother set him against me when I was very young because she disapproved of me. Everyone should know that by now. It was in all the gossip rags for ages.”

Amelia snorted. “It’s still in them.”

“Kreacher had a locket that he’d gotten from my little brother Regulus,” Sirius explained, inwardly cheering as Dumbledore jerked himself upright, scrambling back onto his chair to stare at Sirius with wide, horrified eyes. “Ah, I see you know about it, Chief Warlock. Well, I didn’t know what it was at first. Neither did Kreacher. He’d been trying to destroy it ever since Regulus disappeared. Harry, being the terrifyingly efficient human disaster that he is, took one look at it, pulled the basilisk fang he had in his trunk from killing a basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts just before the end of term, and stabbed the locket with the fang.”

Dumbledore silenced the Wizengamot before anyone could do more than open their mouths. “You should not speak openly of such things!”

Sirius rolled his eyes at Dumbledore. “It died.”

“What…?”

“The locket died, screaming,” Sirius said. “A black cloud welled up off it that shrieked and then imploded, leaving behind a scorched, melted locket, me and Kreacher knocked back on our bums, and Harry with a bloody nose that he ignored in favor of ordering all of us to go have well-needed baths.”

Amelia swallowed a startled laugh that was echoed by a good number of the people in the audience.

While Sirius nodded his agreement with her, Dumbledore’s mouth opened and shut like he couldn’t believe it. Fudge was all but having vapors next to him, clutching his chest, and mouthing terrified squeaks that, thankfully, Sirius didn’t have to listen to. Better still, Skeeter’s quill had finally gone still as she stared at him, mouth gaping open.

“I had to get him into the wards, of course,” Sirius continued, “so we went to the ward room and, given that Harry is a walking, talking human disaster area with the worst luck in all of Potter family history, he had another horcrux in his scar. Now, for those who don’t know what a horcrux is, it’s very black magic were a magi splits their soul in ritual and hides it in an object or creature. That was… concerning…” Amelia buried her face in her hands. “So, Harry and I managed with the help of house elves to get to the Goblins who realized exactly what we were dealing with. They and some allies Harry and I managed to gather, found Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, the Gaunt family ring, and Rowena Ravenclaw’s diadem.”

“They were…?” Dumbledore asked.

“Oh yes, all of them were horcruxes,” Sirius confirmed. “Now, there seems to be some sort of prophecy that tied Harry and You-Know-Who. It’s why Lily and James went into hiding, though I was never told the exact wording of it. We’re fairly certain that it said Harry was destined to destroy You-Know-Who, which obviously ties into the horcruxes we found.”

“They must be handled carefully!” Dumbledore gasped. “The damage–!”

He snapped his mouth shut when Sirius raised a hand at him again, using the same “please be quiet” gesture that he’d used with the Wizengamot. Stunningly, it actually worked. Sirius vowed to copy that memory so that he could come back to it again and again in the future because the look of shock and outrage on Dumbledore’s face as he snapped his mouth shut at Sirius’ command was priceless.

“They’re already destroyed, exactly as Harry destroyed the other ones,” Sirius said.

He raised an eyebrow as Malfoy, Goyle and Greenglass all sagged in their seats. Tears flowed down Goyle’s cheeks. A few other members of the Wizengamot and a good fifteen or so up in the audience looked so very relieved that Sirius knew they had to be former Death Eaters, Marked or not. That wasn’t good. But at least none of them looked like they wanted to fling themselves at Sirius to stab him through the heart for taking their Lord away.

“That’s…” Dumbledore whispered, voice shaking. His hands shook on his wand which couldn’t seem to point at anyone or anything.

“It’s Harry,” Sirius said with a shrug. “He just does these things and then I spend a little while cursing under my breath and asking what it is about the Potter family that makes them act this way. I’d swear that James wasn’t that bad, but I’d be lying and that’s not possible on this chair.”

Dumbledore started and stared at the chair, all the color draining out of his face. At the same time, Skeeter’s hands flew to her mouth as she realized, along with the entire Wizengamot that there was no way that this could be a lie. Sirius was literally incapable of lying right now so every single word he’d said had to be the absolute truth.

“You-Know-Who,” Amelia said because she was exactly the sort of bloody-minded witch who would nail that one to the wall and then blast it until it was vaporized, “Voldemort was not fully dead until… when?”

“The day before Peter was brought to the Wizengamot meeting,” Sirius said. “Just a few days. We’ve been recovering from it. Killing those horcruxes takes a lot out of you. Harry’s still a bit flattened by it.”

Amelia nodded, licking her lips as he picked up her quill and noted the date. “Voldemort is fully dead now.”

“I do believe so,” Sirius said completely calmly. “The Goblins could probably confirm it better than I can. I can’t say for sure that his shade was evicted from the land of the living because I didn’t see it. I did see his horcruxes, all of them, destroyed. He shouldn’t have anything to keep him alive anymore. If he’s not dead now, he will fade soon.”

Amelia noted that down, too. Because she was focused on her notes, she didn’t see the way Dumbledore went grey-faced. She didn’t notice the glare or the pronounced shake in his hands. Amazingly, Fudge did see it. He peered at Dumbledore, eyes beetled across his brow, before he licked his lips and scooted his chair ever so slightly away from Dumbledore.

Up in the gallery, Lacey frowned, too.

“He’s a problem,” Lacey commented to Sirius. “Harry advises that we avoid hitting him with the Potter curse.”

“Done,” Sirius agreed.

He didn’t want to cover that issue before the Wizengamot. A generations-old curse that had decimated the Potters? Absolutely not, Sirius wasn’t going to be the one who brought it up to Dumbledore or anyone else.

It was no one’s business other than Harry’s, anyway. Since he was free now, he could choose when to discuss it and with whom.

Sirius leaned back in the witness chair, smiling calmly as Amelia raised her eyes and spotted Dumbledore’s pale, glaring face. Her eyes narrowed enough that Sirius was certain that Dumbledore was going to be under watch as soon as this so-called trial was over.

At least the most important part was done.

The world now knew that Voldemort was dead. They knew that Harry had done it. And they knew that Harry was not at all the hero he’d been described to be all this time, though he was an entirely different sort of hero instead.

That was what mattered to Sirius. His own freedom was assured given that Fudge was Minister for Magic. A proper “donation” to Fudge’s pet projects that would be channeled away into his vault would take care of any lingering issues that might come up.

Sirius settled in to answer the final few questions and listen to the Wizengamot debate until they admitted the inevitable and let him go free.

29. Reunited Friends

Truly, if I could just get at the Potters! Mother’s death made the stump of the vassal bond burn and drag at my soul. Arianna cried for days. She swore that she would creep out and make her way to Potter Keep, that she would beg them to take her back and end all of our suffering.

#

“I didn’t even know that Fortescue’s had a private room upstairs,” Harry said, carefully peering through the gauzy white curtains guarding them all from people’s eyes outside.

“Oh, of course,” Theo said as he watched the stairs from the door. “There’s any number of Pureblood kids who rent the room to have private ice cream parties. Only the common sort would eat downstairs. Or those who want to pander to the public like Draco. And you.”

Harry glowered over his shoulder at Theo who grinned right back at him.

“I just said I didn’t know this existed,” Harry huffed.

“You are far too easy to rile,” Theo laughed. “Ah, here they come. Up here! Hurry. We’re hiding from Skeeter. She’s been an absolutely nightmare.”

Nightmare was a bit of an exaggeration. The last three days had been crazy, sure, but not a nightmare. Skeeter’s reporting had gone from wild baseless rumors of what had happened to Harry to the sort of meticulously researched reporting that won awards in the Muggle world. Frankly, Harry was kind of astonished that Skeeter was capable of it, not to mention willing to do it.

Might have something to do with Amal setting his jaw and glaring at the Prophet the day after Sirius got his trial. Between Amal in snit and Moody with that glint in his eye, the whole world would shake in their boots.

Neville was the first one through the door. He nodded politely to Theo even though he eyed Theo almost as warily Moody might have. Luna was on Neville’s heels, humming quietly, hands behind her back. She had the bottle-cap earrings in and a bright sunshine yellow dress with masses of flounces bouncing around her legs.

“Hello, Harry,” Luna said in her dreamiest tone. “You’re looking much better. The nargles are leaving you alone now. I was worried about how many of them you had.”

“I am doing much better,” Harry agreed. “Thanks for coming, Luna, Neville. I appreciate it.”

“Sure,” Neville said in a much more solid and calm tone than Harry had ever heard from him before. “My grandmother had a bunch of worries but what with you killing You-Know-Who for real she couldn’t really say no.”

“Why is he here?” Hermione asked as she edged past Theo as if he was a deadly poisonous snake about to strike at her. She’d chosen a pastel blue shirt with delicate lace insertion and positively Victorian styling to the high collar, lace-ruffled front and poufy sleeves. It was something Harry wouldn’t have ever expected to see Hermione in.

“Nott,” Ron said, nodding far too calmly to Theo for the rabid Slytherin hate that Harry was used to.

“That’s part of why I wanted to see you guys,” Harry said to Hermione. He stared at Ron who stared back at him with a mildly distant expression instead of the earnest and open one that Harry was used to. “Man, that curse really did a number on you all.”

Neville stiffened. “What curse?”

“Let’s order and then discuss it over ice cream like civilized people,” Theo said before Harry could do more than open his mouth to launch into the whole explanation. “There’s a menu on the table. Just tap the item you want, and the order will be carried downstairs automatically.”

If there was anything that could drive home just how badly Harry’s curse had affected the others before it was broken, it was Ron ordering just one scoop of cherry and walnut sherbet instead of a huge, complicated sundae with a dozen scoops and all the toppings in the world.

“Do you feel all right?” Neville asked once their orders popped into place on the table.

“Sure, why?” Ron asked.

“It’s the nargles,” Luna said as she plowed into a huge, complicated sundae with all the toppings that looked to be about half her body weight. “Harry’s nargles are no longer snarling his thoughts.”

“True,” Harry said.

He and Theo exchanged a quick grin as every single one of the others paused, spoons hanging there in mid-air, to stare at Harry. As those things went, it was a pitch-perfect opening to explaining the Potter blood curse, so that’s what Harry did. He expected Hermione to interrupt a thousand times with questions, then with demands that he tell her what books to study.

She didn’t.

Ron did.

Harry expected Ron to be the one who was horrified and trying to find ways to protect Harry from ever being cursed again.

He wasn’t.

Neville was.

Hermione sat there, ice cream melting, with her hands over her mouth as Harry explained. Luna hummed and suggested books for Ron while Ron tried to sort out exactly who at that time would’ve had cause to curse Harry’s bloodline. Scarily, Ron’s knowledge of the power brokers, bloodlines and alliances of that timeframe were as detailed and accurate as Theo’s.

“Look, do you need us to protect you?” Neville finally said, putting his hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezing as if to emphasize that Neville really meant it.

“Um, no,” Harry said. He laughed a little. “Allies are always good, of course, but no, I’ve got my vassals. Theo’s one. Mad-Eye Moody is another. So is my seneschal, Amal Swashlin. I’m fine on protection, especially with Sirius taking over as my Godfather. He’s got… so much stuff he’s doing to keep me safe. It’s kind of ridiculous except for all the ways that it really isn’t ridiculous at all.”

Harry braced himself for a surge of Ron’s jealousy, but all Ron did was nod as if that made total sense. To his utter shock, Hermione was the one who pouted as if she was jealous of all the stuff Harry had going on with his family.

“Are you sure it’s wise to, well, bind people that way?” Hermione asked.

“What have you studied about vassal bonds?” Theo asked Hermione an instant before Harry, Ron or Neville. He pointed his spoon at Hermione when she just bit her lip. “Exactly. I have six books on vassal bonds you can borrow, only borrow. I want them back. I can also recommend three autobiographies of people who had vassal bonds. One went swimmingly. One was absolutely average. The third was a disaster for everyone involved. That should give you a good idea of what Harry and I have going on.”

Hermione huffed and then nodded. “That would be helpful, though I honestly don’t need quite that much information.”

She leaned back in her chair as everyone, even Luna, stared at her. Harry grimaced and waved at them all, trying to get them to back off a bit. Seriously, it was like meeting all new people with the same faces and names as the kids he’d known at Hogwarts. They were all so different from what he was used to.

Which in and of itself told him a lot about what the curse had been doing.

“That is so strange,” Theo commented with a sharp shake of his head.

“Why him?” Ron asked with far less hostility than normal. He did frown at Theo, but it was more of the face he made when he was plotting out moves way in advance while playing chess than his normal Slytherin is Evil thing.

“Theo’s family have been vassals of the Potters for ages,” Harry explained. “His father got tossed out on his ear for taking the Dark Mark. Theo flatly refused to join up with the Death Eaters and when I offered—”

“I jumped at it,” Theo interrupted. “My father’s an idiot and a spiteful one, too. I’m much better off with Harry than I was with my father. Trust me on that one.”

“Shouldn’t you call him Lord Potter?” Neville asked in an arch tone that would’ve done Draco or Pansy proud.

Harry grinned as Theo rolled his eyes and glowered at Harry. That set Luna to giggling as she scraped the crystalline bowl that had hidden under her enormous sundae. How she’d eaten it all, and so quickly, Harry didn’t know, but there wasn’t anything left other than some ice cream streaks and a bit of whipped cream that Luna happily scraped up with her spoon.

“He specifically wanted me to be the vassal whose responsibility is to tell him when he’s being an idiot,” Theo explained just as archly as Neville. “Amal handles the business side of things. He’s the Potter Seneschal. Moody handles security. I’m the one who kicks his butt when he’s being dumb and suicidal.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Hermione said, slumping in her chair as she pushed her ice cream over to Luna who squealed and clapped her hands. “Someone certainly needs to.”

“Got that right, mate,” Ron agreed. “The things Harry gets into. It’s ridiculous sometimes.”

“It should be better now,” Harry said. “What with the blood curse having been broken and all. You’re all very different now.”

Everyone but Luna and Theo frowned at him. Luna nodded while Theo made a little gesture as if to say that of course they were all new people wearing the same faces. As Ron leaned back in his chair, hands on the table as if he was thinking about bolting from the room, Hermione shook her head slowly.

“Well, Ron and Hermione are acting differently,” Neville said, “but I’m no different. Am I?”

“Way more forthright and calm, mate,” Ron said. He swallowed, eyeing Hermione. “And you’re way nicer. I mean way nicer. I’ve never ever heard of you rejecting books before.”

“Well, really,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes, “too much information is just as bad as too little. You have to be careful to build a solid basis of understanding before you flood your memory with too many unconnected facts. And you’re far less greedy and jealous than normal. It’s so odd. This is the first time I’ve seen you eat where you didn’t take as much as you possible could.”

“It’s the nargles,” Luna said. Hermione’s ice cream was gone, leaving nothing but the empty cup and Luna’s spoon. “They’re not twisting everyone up anymore.”

Harry blinked at Luna. “Where is that ice cream going?”

Luna giggled and winked at Harry. “I always share ice cream with the heliopaths. They shine much brighter when they have some and that’s so good for everyone around them. You’re collecting heliopaths now instead of nargles. It should help you quite a lot in school next year.”

Harry opened his mouth, vaguely wanting to ask how an imaginary animal could consume that much ice cream. Except that no, an imaginary animal wouldn’t be able to consume ice cream and not a speck of ice cream was on Luna’s lips. Her fingers were dry. Her spoon looked like it had barely even touched the ice cream when everyone else’s, Harry included, had ice cream smears halfway up the handle.

“Right,” Harry said. He shook his head. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to see them.”

“Maybe,” Luna said, squinting at Harry. “But not for several years. You’re still recovering from the impact of the nargles.”

“Quite so,” Harry agreed. “Though I think it was the blood curse.”

“Nargles do like curses,” Luna said sadly. “Anything that negatively affects the mind makes people better prey for nargles.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask, oh, at least a thousand questions, then paused when Theo kicked his ankle. He shut his mouth again and let it go. Later. Back at school. He’d ask Luna about it then because seriously, if the nargles were as real as the ice cream eating heliopaths, they could be a diagnostic tool for finding and fixing curses.

“So, what have all of you been up to over the summer?” Harry asked instead. “Anything fun?”

He settled in as Ron and Neville told stories of games they’d played, plants they’d successfully grown and Hermione primly asked questions that she normally wouldn’t have bothered with, like the rules of Ron’s pick-up Quidditch game with his brothers and what the alihotsy Neville had grown was used for.

It was strange, watching the three of them. They had the same faces, the same voices. But they weren’t at all the same people. Ron’s determination to be Harry’s best mate seemed to have turned into mild indifference to Harry. The hallmark of Hermione’s character, her aggressive bookishness, was gone, leaving a sweet young woman who seemed more hesitant to interact with boys than anything.

And Neville spent all his time watching Harry, either directly or from the corner of his eyes.

That was something to follow up on later. Maybe Harry would ask Sirius once they got home. Sirius would probably have some clue as to why Neville seemed halfway obsessed with Harry.

At least Luna was still just Luna, if a bit more rational-sounding than before. That was a relief.

30. Challenged Again

As if I could allow that.

#

Amelia shook her head as she carefully sorted stacks of parchments full of reports on everything Sirius had told the Wizengamot. She looked blackly furious, jaw jumping, and eyes narrowed as she pointedly glared at her paperwork instead of meeting Sirius’ eyes. Kingsley lounged at the doorframe, giving off a yawn that cracked his jaw every few seconds.

“Have any of you slept since the Wizengamot session?” Sirius asked.

“I don’t think they could have,” Remus commented in that fake-mild tone that used to get Snape so incredibly furious back in Hogwarts in their early ears.

“None of that,” Amelia growled, eyes flicking up to spear Remus. “Your Lord here set a nundu loose in the Ministry. It’s no surprise that none of us has had a moment of peace. Even with Dumbledore’s full support, Fudge is running scared.”

“Is Malfoy behind Fudge or against him?” Sirius asked.

He smirked when Amelia’s glare flicked over to him. The bags under her eyes really were spectacular. Her scourgify must be a marvel because her clothes were perfectly clean, her hair had not a strand out of place, and yet she was so obviously exhausted that he was surprised she hadn’t gone face-first into her desk.

“Malfoy is absent,” Amelia said. “He’s gone off to France with his wife and son. Malfoy Manor is completely shut down, war wards up and locked so tight that I doubt that Merlin himself could get through them.”

Sirius nodded. “Interesting. I wondered how he’d take You-Know-Who’s death.”

“What’s Snape done?” Remus asked. He leaned forward in his seat, alert and curious in the ways that had always made him one of Lily’s best friends.

This time Amelia snorted and then shook her head while laughing softly. “Snape apparently disappeared from Hogwarts the very same day you dealt with You-Know-Who. Dumbledore was in just yesterday to ask me to track Snape down.”

“Twinkly bastard,” Kingsley mumbled from the doorway.

“He was exceptionally twinkly,” Amelia agreed. She lifted her chin to level a considering stare at Sirius that he did his best not to respond to. “He also had a very pointed series of questions about how you took custody of Mr. Potter, how you claimed your Lordship and how we could “believe such an untrustworthy friend” would take proper care of Mr. Potter.”

Fury flamed.

Sirius sucked a breath through his clenched teeth and then let it out in a long hiss that made Remus sigh and put a hand on Sirius’ knee. That…!

No.

Sirius banked the anger, refusing to let Dumbledore’s manipulations push him into doing something stupid. That had to be what he was after. Weakening Sirius was about the only thing that Dumbledore could do to get things back under his control.

To get Harry under his control again, more specifically.

There was no way that anyone could question his right to be Lord Black. The family magic had accepted him. No governmental body or teacher had any right to interfere in matters of family magic. Dumbledore might think that he was special and all-knowing, but he wasn’t.

At all.

Sirius had already explained in front of the full Wizengamot how he got Harry. That was a done deal, no take-backs.

The untrustworthy friend thing, though, that was a low blow.

Sirius wasn’t the one who’d been a traitor. He hadn’t turned to Voldemort. Dumbledore had to have known that Peter was a traitor and yet he’d been sowing distrust between the four of them as if it was his whole goal in life to see them break apart. He’d certainly done everything he could to keep Sirius and Remus apart what with all the stupidity in Hogwarts about taking care of Remus’ little furry problem.

“I hope you cut him off at the knees for that,” Sirius said finally, once he got his temper enough under control that he wouldn’t wake Kingsley up by bellowing in rage.

“Oh, yes,” Amelia said, nodding her approval for Sirius’ self-control. “He wasn’t at all happy with my response, but I don’t give a damn about his disapproval. Not after everything he’s done.”

“What’s he done?” Remus asked before Sirius could.

Amelia shook her head sharply as Kingsley let loose a rippling little snore while sliding down the doorjamb. He jerked awake, looking around wildly. When he saw Amelia’s angry expression, Kingsley immediately put his hand on his wand and pretended to be a bright, alert, determined auror intent on doing his job.

It lasted all of about two and a half seconds, which was how long it took him to realize that there were no threats, no politicians or problems.

“Go home, Kingsley,” Amelia ordered.

“No, ma’am,” Kingsley replied, rubbing his eyes and sniffing as he struggled to stand upright. “You’re still working. I’m fine. I’ll back you up.”

“The only thing you’re backing up is the wall,” Sirius drawled. “Go home, you idiot. Grindelwald himself could march in here and you wouldn’t even see him.”

Kingsley glowered. “I’m fine, I say!”

He opened his mouth to continue pretending that he wasn’t about to fall down only to snap his mouth shut and run for the lifts when Amelia glowered at him with the face of doom that promised all the paperwork in the entire department, special scut work duties for at least a fortnight and her wand up your ass so far that you saw stars.

Sirius snorted a laugh. “You need to go home, too. Really now, what’s so important that you can’t get some sleep? Your niece has to be worried about you.”

“I’m sure Susan is fine,” Amelia said but she sighed and pulled one sheet of parchment out of her stack. “This is what that busybody is up to. I’ve no idea how to deal with it, frankly.”

The single sheet of parchment was a breezy little request for the DMLE to research the laws related to appropriate assignment of magical guardians. Sirius looked at it and promptly started cackling. He passed it over to Remus who read it, swallowed a startled laugh, and then passed it back to Amelia. Remus’ hand shook from his silent laughter.

“What.” Amelia’s glare could’ve stripped meat from the bone.

“Oh, Merlin’s saggy balls,” Sirius wheezed. “He’s trying to cover his own ass, Amelia! James and Lily’s will was quite specific about who could have guardianship over Harry. Dumbledore was not on the list. In fact, he was specifically barred from being Harry’s guardian. Not to mention the whole thing where he put Harry with abusive muggles who were forbidden to get custody of him.”

“Don’t forget that he sealed the will instead of having it read,” Remus said. “I agree with Sirius. This is just Dumbledore trying to find a way to protect himself while making people doubt Sirius.”

Amelia dropped her face into her hands, mumbling threats against Dumbledore’s magic, life, and testicles.

“Go home,” Sirius told her much more gently than he normally would have. “Get some sleep. Have your staff prepare a report that answers my questions. Send it to Silverclaw at the bank or Amal Swashlin. They’ll make sure it gets to me. There’s nothing really urgent, Amelia. Dumbledore has no power to affect me or Harry anymore, not since I’ve taken the Lordship.”

“Right,” Amelia said. She dropped her hands to her stacks of paper and nodded. “You’re right. I’ll just make mistakes if I keep on this.”

“Good,” Sirius said. “I’ll send your aide in. Get something solid to eat, too. I know you and the “tea and a biscuit is good enough” thing when you’re busy.”

He waggled a finger at her and got a much more threatening finger wagged right back at him. Sirius grinned and scooted out the door with Remus sauntering on his heels. Amelia’s aide looked nearly as tired as her, but that was all right. They’d figure it out. He’d mostly come in to answer a few questions and then see if the Potter records could actually be handled now.

It was the surest sign that the curse was well and truly broken. After having an angry werewolf chase them all through the Ministry, Sirius was quite prepared to let other people test the Department of Records. That place was just too creepy for him.

Once they reached the lobby, there was a lull in conversation as soon as people saw Sirius and Remus. A good half the women had a speculative look in their eyes which got them peeved glares from Remus. The other half of the women looked like they were terrified. Sirius rolled his eyes at all of them.

The men were split in thirds, terrified as Fudge with a potential scandal coming his way, speculative and eyeing both Sirius and Remus, and then suspicious looks that were far too familiar from the way people had responded back at school.

When Dumbledore was manipulating everyone to his own advantage.

“Do you see it?” Sirius murmured to Remus as they headed for the exit.

“The wary looks?” Remus asked. He smiled tenderly at Sirius though his eyes were hard and cold with anger. “Oh, of course. Though I’m curious why so many people are looking at us like a banquet they’d like to partake of.”

“Witch’s Weekly,” Sirius replied and then grinned as Remus looked horrified. “What? Lacey didn’t toss the magazine in your lap this morning? She made a point of reading the article about our marriage aloud, complete with the bit quoting the Black family expectation that the Lord can take multiple consorts to “provide appropriate heirs of their blood”.”

“…No, she didn’t read that to me,” Remus complained, two octaves higher than normal and blushing like his face was about to spontaneously combust.

“She likes you more than me,” Sirius said, just to make Remus roll his eyes and huff.

It worked and Sirius laughed, well aware that there were photographers taking pictures of them. He took Remus’ hand and grinned at him. His heart about burst at the little ducked head thing Remus did, looking through his lashes into Sirius’ eyes.

Totally ruined by the women cooing at them, of course.

“Sirius, my dear boy,” Dumbledore called from behind them.

“I am not your “dear boy”, and you are one step away from being an enemy of the House of Black and of the House of Potter,” Sirius snapped at him, good mood blasted to oblivion instantly. “You will address me as Lord Black or not at all. Preferably not at all.”

Dumbledore had the unmitigated gall to saunter closer with that twinkly-eyed grandfather look that was, apparently, supposed to make you feel oh, so guilty about all your life choices. As if. Sirius threw up a shield between them, snorting as the shimmering wall of it transformed Dumbledore’s sad-face into a startled and then scowling one.

“I’ve no intention of letting you get close enough to meddle with my memory again,” Sirius said. He did his level best not to smirk for the cameras or even to pay attention as flashes went off. “You’ve done bad enough as it was. You had the power to see I got a trial at any point. You didn’t even attempt it. You placed Harry with those abusive Muggles and then failed utterly to follow up on how he was doing. You should have seen to money being disbursed for his care. You didn’t. You ran Remus off, didn’t allow the most basic of investigations into what Peter was up to, claimed that Harry was the one who defeated You-Know-Who when he was just a baby. You were the one who told Frank and Alice Longbottom to lower the war wards!”

“I could hardly have known—” Dumbledore started to say only to step back when both Sirius and Remus glowered at him.

“You knew perfectly well that You-Know-Who wasn’t gone!” Sirius bellowed at him. “You just didn’t want to risk ruining all your plans to turn Harry into the perfect suicidal pawn!”

“Siri,” Remus said, catching Sirius’ elbow and pulling him away in the perfectly solicitous way that they’d practices in front of Moody and Theo before they came out. “Don’t let him rile you. You know what your healer said.”

Sirius huffed and let Remus turn him away from Dumbledore, glowering over his shoulder for a moment before he nodded to Remus and smoothed his robe with hands that shook. On their own, damn it. He didn’t have to pretend to shake with fury. He actually was blindingly mad at Dumbledore.

“I can’t deal with you, you meddling old man,” Sirius said after fighting with his anger and allowing it to show for the cameras and people watching. “You’ve done so much harm to so many because you just can’t admit that someone else might be able to deal with a problem by themselves. Don’t attempt to contact me or Harry. Any correspondence will go through the bank, or I’ll call the full weight of the ICW down on your sparkly head.”

Dumbledore huffed. The rippling iridescence of the shield between them did strange things to Dumbledore’s expression. With its interference, Dumbledore’s grandfatherly disappointment in Sirius’ harshness looked more like a snarl of frustration. The twinkle of his eyes looked like an angry glitter of coal-black eyes.

There was… definitely something there.

He didn’t know what, yet, but he was going to find out. Those scrambled memories needed to be unscrambled as quick as can be so that Sirius could figure out just what to do about Dumbledore’s threat.

Preferably before Dumbledore had a chance to attack Sirius and Harry again.

31. New Path

After all of Father and Grandfather’s efforts, the Dumbledore family will certainly never be vassals. I can’t permit that. Aberforth hasn’t yet realized that I’ve been potioning Arianna into incoherence. The behavior control charms work a bit better on him. Not much but I think those changes will make it far more effective.

#

“This is really nice,” Ron said with a slow nod of approval that held not one tiny little bit of jealousy.

The look he leveled on Grimmauld Place’s library was cool, considering and ultimately approving, though more in that way Ron had when he was thinking over chess moves than what Harry was used to. It was so weird not getting waves of jealousy from Ron. He was almost as formal as Malfoy when he was being a ponce.

“The chairs were horrible until Kreacher and Sirius fixed them,” Harry said, glancing over at Hermione who was studying the books on the shelves, hands firmly behind her back. “Other than that, yeah, it’s pretty amazing. There’s a ton of books that I’d never even heard of before.”

Hermione’s hair bristled. “I noticed.”

“I expected that you would,” Harry said with a little grin as Hermione’s hair started floating up around her head like a halo. “Sirius and Lacey are pretty sure that Dumbledore pulled all these books and more out of the Hogwarts library. We’re not sure why but my mum thought it was so that Dumbledore could shape everyone’s minds and keep them ignorant.”

“Did he put that horrible curse on you?” Hermione asked with a dramatic huff. She flounced over and flung herself into one of the newly squashy, comfortable chairs.

“Nope, he didn’t,” Harry said. He shrugged away the disbelieving looks on both Ron and Hermione’s faces. “Seriously, it’s been on my bloodline for longer than Dumbledore’s been alive. It couldn’t be him. His parents would’ve been little kids at the time the curse was laid. I mean, he could’ve totally taken advantage of it, and I think he did, but he didn’t put it there.”

“The question is what he wants,” Ron said as he slowly sat in one of the chairs, the one closest to the fireplace. “There has to be a reason why he’s isolated you, kept you so ignorant and then locked Sirius up that way.”

“Power,” Hermione mused. “He’s got so many positions. He must be working to acquire and keep power.”

“Power’s a tool,” Ron said, shaking his head. “It’s not a goal.”

“Sometimes, for some people, it is the goal, though,” Harry said. He winced a little when Hermione went all triumphant and Ron frowned at him. “Just… Take Uncle Vernon. He’s spent his whole life working at Grunnings to get higher and higher positions. He doesn’t even like being a manager but it’s a big deal for him to get a promotion. He made Vice President of the firm back before first year and he’s been battling to keep that position ever since.”

Ron nodded as if that made total sense. “Yeah, but that’s not power. That’s rank. That’s being able to lord over everyone else and make them bow to him. It’s a class thing, not a power thing.”

“I think we’re using the same word to mean different things,” Hermione said slowly. “Because I think that what Harry’s uncle wants is authority, not rank or power.”

“Oh-kay,” Ron said slowly, nodding. “I can see that, too. Either way, power is a tool. It’s something that you use, not something that you gather and hoard. A tool’s only good if you use it. You pin it up on the wall and then never touch it, it’s worthless. What Dumbledore’s done is gather all the tools he can get at, Headmaster at Hogwarts, Head Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, added to as much, you know, hero worship as he can muster, and then tossed in a bunch of stripping everyone else of all their tools.”

“Control,” Harry breathed.

Hermione nodded, eyes as wide as Harry’s. It made sense. Every single minute of Harry’s life had been set up so that he had no control and no information. That, despite the stupid blood curse, was on Dumbledore. All Dumbledore had done was take advantage of the curse.

Their teachers ranged from massively overworked to completely incompetent. The library had been stripped of all kinds of books they needed. From what Lacey and Anthony had said, Hogwarts students learned a fraction of what the kids at Durmstrang and Beauxbatons learned, especially on culture, language, and history. All of which was purely Dumbledore’s fault.

All because Dumbledore wanted to be in complete control of everyone and everything.

“He’s gonna go at Sirius,” Ron said warningly to Harry. “You know that, right?”

“Already is,” Harry agreed.

“The question is what can we do?” Hermione asked with just a little bit of determination and a lot of hopelessness.

“No, the question is why Dumbledore’s so darned determined to control Harry’s life,” Ron said.

“That, I know,” Harry said. He grinned as both Ron and Hermione stared at him. “There’s some stupid prophecy,” Hermione rolled her eyes and Ron went very serious, “that says that I’m destined to be the one to destroy Voldemort. Which, you know, I was. And I did. But Dumbledore thought it had to be some grand sacrifice in battle sort of thing instead of killing all Voldie’s horcruxes. He’s all wrapped up in “guiding” me on my path to sacrificing myself.”

“Which you didn’t do,” Ron said with a huff that died as Harry grimaced.

Both Ron and Hermione stiffened in their squashy chairs, their glares intensifying until Harry slouched down in his chair in advance of the upcoming lecture.

Which was kind of epic. And weird. Really weird.

Ron was the one ranting at Harry about Heir of an Ancient and Noble this and irresponsible to your legacy that while Hermione huffed and glared at Harry with her arms crossed over her chest. Seriously, if anything showed that they didn’t really know each other, the real Ron and Hermione and Harry, it was that lecture.

Especially because Harry’s glare, once he had enough, stopped Ron in his tracks and made Hermione go blazingly red, then deathly pale.

“The only, and I mean that absolutely literally,” Harry said as he glowered at Ron, “way to break the bloodline curse was for me to outright sacrifice myself to the cause of destroying those horcruxes, Ron. If I hadn’t, the curse wouldn’t have died. I would have. If not that day, then definitely before I was old enough to claim my position. Trust Sirius, Remus, Moody, Amal, Anthony, Lacey, Silverclaw, Kreacher and Dobby on that one if you won’t trust me. There was no other way.”

“Ah, right,” Ron said, rubbing the back of his neck which had to be blazing hot given how hard he was blushing. “Sorry, mate.”

Harry shook his head. “No, it’s fine. It just doesn’t help us figure out why Dumbledore’s still so obsessed with getting his mitts on me.”

“There have to be records or something,” Hermione said thoughtfully. She made a face. “Well, maybe. You said something about them getting eaten? Disappeared?”

“By the Department of Records in the Ministry,” Harry agreed. “Though that’s not happening anymore.”

“Hm.” Hermione pressed her lips together and then bounced to her feet. “We need to go check that out. I want to do some research, see what exactly the relationship between the Dumbledore family and the Potter family was.”

“Let’s see if Amal’s available,” Harry said, waving for them to follow him downstairs. “If he is, he can take us there and you’ll get the joy of seeing the Department of Records.”

“That bad?” Hermione asked unhappily.

“It’s… Alice in Wonderland weird,” Harry explained. “And creepy. Really, really creepy.”

Predictably, Ron stared at Harry blankly. Hermione stared at him with her mouth dropped open in horror. Which didn’t stop until they were at the Ministry, going down into the Department of Records with Amal happily burbling about getting to update his and Silverclaw’s files with copies that would actually stay where they were supposed to for once.

“The man’s got no sense,” Moody complained behind them because of course Moody had insisted on coming with them.

“I know,” Harry complained. “But it would be good for the records to be up to date everywhere. Lord knows, my life would’ve been completely different if anyone could keep any sort of records on my for longer than a couple of seconds.”

Hermione followed along after Amal with no signs that she saw anything at all wrong with the Department of Records. She chirpily asked about how the records were organized and how far they went back and if there were fees for making copies. Amal answered her equally happily, bouncing along on the steps floating in a void of stars that absolutely had not been there last time as if it were perfectly ordinary.

Ron clutched Harry’s hand like he was Ron’s only lifeline. Which was cool. Harry was clinging to Ron just as hard.

“Harry, I think I found something I like less than spiders,” Ron said in a too-high-pitched, cracking voice.

“Me, too,” Harry agreed in his too-bright, cheerful tone that always freaked adults out.

“Both of you stop that,” Moody snapped, as expected. “You’ll just make it worse if you draw attention to it.”

Harry and Ron stopped on the fourth to last step before they entered the Potter records room. They stared at Moody who nodded solemnly. Harry shuddered.

“Now I know why Sirius acted that way last time,” Harry said.

The Potter records room looked more like a crystal globe now rather than the inside of an egg. The stars outside gleamed through the crystal, adding a lovely shimmer of light to the room. The records were neatly organized now, too, all labeled by year and subject in a way that Harry deeply appreciated because Hermione and Amal promptly put Harry and Ron to work gathering records and bringing them to the central worktable.

“All right,” Hermione said as she helped organize things for Amal, “I think we have everything we need on the time period.”

“Um, are you guys going to need us for a bit?” Harry asked.

“Why?” Amal replied, frowning at Harry.

“Well, I figured since we were here we might check on the Dumbledore family records,” Harry said. “Or maybe track down that lost vassal family that you said died out, Amal. No reason for us to just stand here and do nothing while you two work.”

“Good idea,” Amal said. He jotted down two things on a scrap of parchment and passed them to Harry. “You’ll find the records for both in the Drake room. That’s name of the vassal family.”

Moody snorted once they’d escaped out of the Potter room and arrived in the Drake room which looked like someplace deep under the bank, complete with stalagmites and stalactites scattered between the banks of records. It was dark and gloomy, dank and musty-smelling like a root cellar that had begun to leak groundwater so badly that thick, slimy mats of mold were creeping up over every surface.

They had to grab a lantern from the doorway because none of the lights in the room worked other than it, at least until Moody shot a lumos into the center of the room, brightening the gloom enough to reveal the records.

The Drake room was a mess, in every way possible. The room was shaped like a perfect globe and there was no floor or ceiling. You walked along and the room curved around you dizzyingly as you zigzagged around toppled file cabinets and overturned bookshelves with the contents strewn about the floor.

“This is a disaster area,” Ron said with a scowl. “Glad Hermione didn’t come with us. She’d pitch a fit.”

Harry nodded, looking around with a deep frown. “She’d be justified. Why does it look this way?”

“It’s recent,” Moody said. He just looked sad. “Very recent, actually. I’d bet that it happened during Sirius’ testimony in the Wizengamot.”

Harry turned to stare at Moody. During Sirius’ testimony. That had to mean that moment when Sirius swore to kill anyone who tried to take Harry away. With, what was it Sirius had said?

With all the power and skills of the Ancient and Noble House of Back.

That oath had knocked Dumbledore flat. Knocked him out. And, apparently, at the same time the oath had tossed the Drake room like a burglar had gone through it looking for every single valuable to steal. Harry bit his lip.

“How old is the Dumbledore family?” Harry asked Ron.

“Oh, real old but not Ancient,” Ron said, squinting at the “roof” and then shuddering as he focused back on Harry. “About seven generations, I think. If Professor Dumbledore or his brother had had kids, they’d be on the verge of hitting Ancient status.”

“Do you think we could find anything in here that show the Dumbledore family tree?” Harry asked Moody. “I’ve got this… gut feeling.”

“What?” Moody asked much more gently than he normally would have.

Harry shook his head. “Just… it’s odd, isn’t it? That the same room holds the Dumbledore family records and the lost vassal family’s records. What if they’re linked somehow? What if the reason Dumbledore is so hot to control me is his hope to get back what his ancestors lost? You know, like Theo, just with more weight from the time that’s passed. What if Dumbledore is the way he is about me and my dad because he wants to be ours but can’t because his family was, I don’t know, turned out or something?”

Moody stared at Harry, his magical eye spinning wildly for a moment. Then his eye slowed and locked onto Harry’s face as Moody went pale and far too still. Ron was equally still, though more blank-faced like he wasn’t sure he followed Harry’s reasoning.

“It affected Nott?” Ron whispered. “Like, really affected him? Made him act all different and weird?”

Harry nodded. “He said it was like carrying a huge weight all the time. When he took the vow, the weight was gone. Poof, just vanished.”

“Bloody hell,” Ron whispered. “Yeah, right. Let’s… find those records, why don’t we? Quick-like, I think.”

“Very quick,” Moody agreed. “Let’s get to work, boys. Time’s wasting.”

32. Lost Blood

It should all work out once the charms are in place. Aberforth takes care of Arianna, isolating her here at home so that she can’t go enslave us to the Potters. I work with you to take over the world and impose the Greater Good on first Magical society and then on the rest of the world. And, once we have power, I will be able to eliminate the Potters that much faster, freeing us from our suffering.

#

Sirius leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face with both hands. The upcoming Wizengamot meeting promised to be a pitched battle between Sirius, with his blooming group of allies, and Dumbledore. At least it looked like Dumbledore was leaking support. Half the table was covered with letters from various people on the so-called Light side requesting that Sirius meet with them to discuss “urgent matters”.

All of which boiled down to none of them wanting to openly betray Dumbledore, despite the growing pile of evidence to show that Dumbledore wasn’t anywhere as light or as pure as he’d always claimed.

“Well,” Remus sighed, “I suppose we should, I don’t know, throw a party or something. That’s the only way we’re going to get them all together at once. There’s not enough time to meet with everyone before the Wizengamot meeting.”

“Pfft, I’m not throwing a party,” Sirius drawled. He rolled his eyes when Remus frowned. “No, I’m not. I’d be willing to attend a party or two, but I’m not letting anyone in here until we’ve got Dumbledore nailed to the wall.”

“Much too risky,” Lacey agreed.

She frowned at the doorway for the umpteenth time. Lacey had nearly chopped Sirius’ bollocks off when she found out that Harry had traipsed off to the Department of Records with only Moody and Amal as escorts. Sirius had no intention of telling Harry, Ron or Hermione that in Lacey’s eyes, none of them were competent enough to be allowed out in public alone.

“They’ll be fine,” Sirius said. Again.

Lacey snorted.

All three of them went still as a herd of hippogriffs stampeded up the stairs. Harry flung open the door and ran in with an armful of records that looked kind of like someone had pissed on them, buried them in peat, dug them back up and ironed them flat by running over them with a lorry.

“We found out why Dumbledore is the way he is!” Harry exclaimed.

Ron ran in on Harry’s heels with a similar pile of nasty-looking records. Hermione rushed in after him with a three-foot-high stack of perfectly neat and tidy records that’d been carefully bound with one of Department of Records cords. It took another few seconds for Amal to bound in. Moody’s thump-clack up the stairs was much slower and more reasonably paced but Sirius could hear him cursing so this was, possibly, quite important.

“I’ve got it,” Lacey said when Amal reached for his wand.

She cast a quick spell to organize the stacks of invitations, notes and newspapers on the table, shrinking them and then flicking them off to the side to one of the end tables between the bookshelves. That let Harry and Ron fling down their stacks of records, which landed a bit like a pile of composting leaves drug in from a downpour.

“Boys,” Hermione sighed as she set her stack off to the side out of range of the dark brown fluid slowly seeping out of their stacks.

“What happened to these?” Sirius asked.

“Okay,” Harry said with far too much enthusiasm as he started going through his stack. “We went to the Department of Records and while Amal and Hermione worked on sorting out exactly when and how my family got cursed, Ron, Moody and I went to see what we could find out about Dumbledore’s family and that lost vassal family that Amal didn’t know much about.”

“What’d you find?” Sirius asked as he pushed back from the table enough that none of the fluid would drip off the table and onto his trousers.

Lacey and Amal both cast spells to dry the records off. It didn’t work. At all. If anything, they seeped more fluids, darker ones. Kreacher popped in with several very clean tea towels that he arranged like a dam around the records so that the fluids wouldn’t get everywhere.

“They’re the same family,” Harry said with a huge grin. He gratefully took a fresh tea towel from Kreacher, wiping his hands clean. Ish. Well, cleaner than they had been anyway.

“Yeah,” Ron said. “See, Professor Dumbledore’s grandfather on his mum’s side was the one who put the curse on Harry’s family. His mum, Dumbledore’s mum, was the one who lost the vassal position. And his sister, Arianna, was the first to bear the weight of the lost vassal bond, right up until she died when she was our age.”

He rubbed his nose and got a swipe of the dark fluid across his nose. It almost looked like watered-down ink. Maybe.

“From what these say,” Harry continued, eyes on the paperwork instead of on Hermione trying to help Ron clean his face off without touching him at all, “Pierre Drake married into the Drake line. They were matrilineal. The vassal position always went to the oldest daughter. His wife was Prudence Drake who served the Potters as head cook and housekeeper. Prudence and Pierre had two daughters, Kendra and Honoria. Pierre hated the idea of his daughters being bound that way.”

“Right berk he was,” Ron interrupted.

“I’d have to agree based on the records we found in the Potter records,” Hermione said. “Harry’s great-grandfather was strongly against the marriage.”

“So he worked with Percival, Dumbledore’s father, to curse the Potters,” Harry continued with a wave of a record that sprayed musty ink smears across the table. “We’ve got notes all about it, letters between Percival and Pierre. It was a whole plot behind the scenes. Kendra was apparently not all that hot to marry Percival. Honoria was outright against it, but she was still in school when it all went down.”

Sirius shivered as he stood and studied the records that Harry and Ron had brought. As nasty as they were, they said exactly what the kids claimed. Dumbledore’s grandfather and father had conspired to blood curse the Potters so thoroughly that all the Potters would die, freeing the Drakes from ever serving them.

“The Potters realized it?” Sirius asked Remus who was already going through the paperwork that Hermione had brought in.

“Yes,” Hermione said before Remus could do more than nod, stunned, as he stared at the neatly organized files. “Harry’s great-grandfather realized what happened and cast the Drakes out. It apparently broke Kendra’s heart because she wanted more than anything to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Prudence died about a month later. Just wasted away. Percival married Kendra and sired three children with her, Albus, Aberforth and Arianna. When Arianna was quite young, her father apparently killed some Muggles for attacking her.”

“Except not!” Ron said, grinning as he pointed at his stack of papers. “That’s what was reported popularly, but the Drake and Dumbledore records show that Arianna got in this huge battle with her dad about the vassal thing. She was powerful as all heck, like Harry, and she said something pretty similar to what you did in the Wizengamot.”

Harry fished one paper out and carefully read from it, squinting at the muddy lines.

“She said “I swear on my magic and my soul that I will never forgive you if you did anything to tear my mother’s bloodline out of the Potter’s care”,” Harry recited. “Since it was a formal oath on her magic, the Department of Records captured it.”

“Had no idea that the Ministry did that,” Ron muttered to Hermione who nodded.

“He was struck down, wasn’t he?” Sirius said. “Both he and his father.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “Not killed. Pierre was killed outright. Percival was struck down and when Kendra called the aurors, they took him away. The whole thing about attacking muggles was a story put out to hide the fact that Arianna was so upset she fractured her core. Albus and Aberforth tried to take care of her, but there was so much talk that they had to move. When Kendra died not too much later, Albus locked Arianna away until he got a chance to kill her.”

That record came out of Hermione’s stack, not out of Harry or Ron’s stack.

It was pristine, perfect snowy-white parchment with a detailed analysis done by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore on how to link a new curse into the blood curse killing the Potters. That secondary curse, if powered by the death of one of the family’s current or formal vassals, would make the records associated with the Potters disappear.

Wiping the slate clean moment by moment for any story Dumbledore might choose to craft.

Sirius collapsed back into his chair, staring at the record. “This is why he wiped my memory so much. Why he sculpted all our memories. He knew that he could get away with it as long as we were associated with James. Bloody hell.”

“Exactly,” Harry agreed. “But it’s more than that, Sirius.”

The excitement that Harry had been broadcasting all over the place faded into the sort of blank-faced iron control that had marked Harry killing the horcruxes. He stood tall, palms of his hands just outside of the dam of tea towels struggling to contain the puddle of inky fluid.

Harry looked determined. Strong. Dangerous in ways that no kid his age should ever be.

Which was neither here nor there since Harry’d had to be this way since he was a little child. Since he was born, really. It was Harry’s destiny to be the warrior who ended the threats pointed at his bloodline.

Voldemort was gone.

Now he had to deal with Dumbledore, the other architect of Harry’s suffering.

“What?” Sirius asked, very aware that everyone was focused on Harry. It felt like Harry’d sucked all the air out of the room when he went grim and determined.

“If we’re right,” Harry said with a wave at Ron, who raised his chin and stared down at Sirius like he was plotting how to stab Sirius to death, and Hermione, whose hair slowly rose into a halo around her head as her magic danced over her skin, “then Dumbledore feels the full weight of the vassal bond dragging at him at the same time he carries the full weight of the blood curse driving him away. He’s the oldest surviving child of the Drake family so the vassal bond wants to pull him in. And he’s the oldest surviving son of the people who blood cursed the Potters, so magic is pounding him to atone for that. It’s like he has the curse battering at him, and he’s got Theo’s yearning thing that was driving him crazy, just heavier. Stronger. Hitting him at a deeper level so that it distorts everything he does.”

Sirius’ breath caught. Across the table, Lacey started cursing under her breath while Moody nodded grimly. Remus looked sick to his stomach.

If anyone knew what it was like to be torn in two directions by your magic and your soul fighting against each other, it was Remus.

“This is what we’ve been looking for,” Sirius said. “This explains the whole thing.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “And it lets us deal with Dumbledore once and for all. We just have to make sure that there’s no way he can hide it all again the way he did with these records. Once we make this public—”

“Dumbledore goes down,” Sirius completed for him. “And we’re both free.”

33. Truth Shared

All I need is you, Gellert. With you by my side, I know we can do anything. Do come back soon. We’re better together than we could ever be apart.

#

“I have to admit that this was a brilliant bit of work,” Theo said as he studied the piles of stained records sorted and arranged on Grimmauld Place’s big library table. “I do wonder whether or not Dumbledore willingly did all this, but there’s no doubt that he did it. Excellent research.”

The records were finally dry. Between Amal, Remus and Lacey, they’d figured out that all of them were shedding alterations that Dumbledore had done to the records over the years. Layers upon layers of forgeries washed away by the magic of the Department of Records once Sirius disrupted Dumbledore’s magic that had been holding his house of cards together.

“Thank you,” Harry said smugly. “Ron and I are really proud that we pulled this together without Hermione’s help.”

Theo snorted a little laugh, nodding that they had cause for their pride. It was a huge stack of records and they’d found them all on their own. In the middle of chaos. Dripping wet, nasty, slimy chaos, no less.

“Between what you two gathered and what Hermione and I found,” Amal said as he took carefully detailed notes, “we should be able to get a good press release going. What else do we need to do?”

“The nobles need to know,” Theo said immediately. “So does the Board of Governors. I’d recommend informing the ICW first. They definitely need to know that the Supreme Mugwump is acting so irresponsibly.”

“And that he’s not exactly stable,” Harry agreed. “Parents of the kids at school need to know as soon as possible. Professor McGonagall, too. She’ll probably hex him up one side and down the other. What about his brother? Would he be affected by the whole vassal thing?”

Both Theo and Amal paused, looking at each other and then at Harry with slow, thoughtful frowns. Harry’d been thinking about it ever since they found out what Dumbledore’s father and grandfather had done. He didn’t think that Aberforth would be affected.

Maybe.

But he might be. It could extend out to him, too, since Arianna was dead. Except maybe not since it was supposed to go to the female line, not the male line.

“Come to think of it,” Harry said equally slowly, “why’s it affecting Dumbledore if the Drakes were matrilineal? Shouldn’t the vassal bond’s draw have died with Arianna?”

“Unless the vassal bond decided to punish the male line,” Theo said. He bit his lip, shrugging and shaking his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never been very comfortable with the fact that magic is fundamentally alive and aware.”

“…It is?” Harry asked, so startled that he sat up sharply, almost tipping his chair over. “Why weren’t we taught that at school?”

“Purebloods learn it at home,” Theo said with a little snort as he went back to work on the records. “Whyever would they teach that to Muggleborns? They don’t need to know that.”

The sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife. Harry grinned at Theo while Amal snickered as he bent back over his notes. Frankly, that was probably down to Dumbledore’s manipulations of magical society. And Hogwarts. If there had ever been books explaining that magic was alive in the Hogwarts library, they certainly weren’t there now.

Harry had looked, furtively when Ron was busy doing other things, during his first year. He knew that Hermione had looked, too. She’d commented repeatedly on the lack of any books that explained what magic was and how it worked during their first and second years.

Along with her plans to figure it out and write the definitive textbook on magic when she was grown up.

“Dobby?” Harry called.

He grinned when Dobby popped in wearing a pair of house elf sized trainers with bright red lightning bolts on the sides, jeans with cargo pockets and a black T-shirt with a single white lightning bolt on it.

“Nice,” Harry said, pointing at Dobby’s clothes.

“Friend Harry likes them?” Dobby asked, grinning. “Dobby got them because they reminded Dobby of you.”

“I do like them,” Harry said. “Quick question for you, since you’ve got a long memory. Are there books on what magic is and how it works?”

“Oh, sure,” Dobby said, rolling his eyes. “Are many of them. Dumbles removed them from Hogwarts library and got laws passed to make illegal to sell them. Books is still at Hogwarts, just hidden in Come and Go room.”

“Think you can pop over to Madame Pince and let her know that there’s books hidden in that room?” Harry asked Dobby.

Dobby’s grin took on an evil slant as he rubbed his hands together. “Dobby can do that! Madame Library will be very, very angry. She will get all the elves to go find all her books. It will be awesome!”

“Enjoy!” Harry said.

He held out a hand for a high five. Dobby smacked his palm against Harry’s and then popped off to wreak mischief in the Hogwarts library. That should make Hermione happy when they went back to school. Also every single Ravenclaw, of course, but also probably quite a few of the Slytherins, too.

Theo stared at Harry. “I will never figure out your relationship with Dobby.”

“He’s my friend,” Harry said with a shrug. “If things had gone differently, you know, if I hadn’t had that blood curse, I think I would’ve been really happy to be his master. He’s happy being free, now that the curse isn’t making his magic all wonky. It’s still a balancing game for him. He’s got a lot of stuff to learn about managing his magic and harvesting more.”

“Still very odd,” Theo said. He shook his head. “Either way, I think we’re ready. Let’s go over all of this and then we’ll get the others involved in putting it into action.”

There really wasn’t a ton of time to get Dumbledore out of the way. The summer wasn’t going to last forever. Harry did have to go back to school come September. More importantly, the next Wizengamot meeting was coming up. The world had to know who and what Dumbledore really was before that meeting if Sirius was going to succeed in getting rid of him.

Between Theo and Amal, they had detailed plans for every sector of magical society. The newspapers, the Wizengamot, Hogwarts’ board of directors, all of them were covered. Gringotts was already on board and working to put the information out in a million different ways.

The final nit-picky review of their plans with everyone on hand took about two hours, after which everyone sprang into motion. Harry spent hours writing letters to everyone under the sun. He started with the Prophet, moved on to the ICW, then went through the Board of Directors and wrote every one of them individually. He worked from the blue parlor, watching and listening as Grimmauld Place hummed with voices.

Sirius dashed around like an over-excited puppy, making sure that he touched everything and talked to everyone. Remus followed along behind him, fond amusement in his eyes as he made sure that Sirius’ mildly incoherent orders made sense. Moody tossed stinging hexes at Sirius more than once, not really aiming to hit but still making Sirius scamper away.

Ron wrote letters, too. His were shorter, blunter, but just as many. He wrote every single cousin, aunt, and uncle he had, marshalling his enormous family behind Harry. The brutal truth of Dumbledore’s actions and the motivations behind them sounded even worse coming from Ron’s pen.

Theo and Hermione worked together to gather records and make copies of them for Amal and Silverclaw. There were so many stacks of parchment to be copied, bound, and organized for the Wizengamot, the nobles, the Prophet and the ICW. Both Theo and Hermione looked utterly delighted to get that job.

More power to them. Harry certainly didn’t want to do it.

Come evening, Grimmauld Place went still.

Harry shook out his cramped hand and went in search of Sirius. He wasn’t in the library. Or the kitchen. Or any of the parlors. Eventually, Harry went to the tapestry room and raised an eyebrow that the trapdoor was open a crack.

The long stairs downwards didn’t feel anywhere near as ominous this time. They were clean and well-swept, as pristine as everything else in Grimmauld Place. The torches on the wall flared to life as he neared and then subsided to flickering dimness once he passed.

The wardstone room was open.

Sirius stood at the stone, one hand resting on its dark surface.

“You okay?” Harry asked.

“Hm?” Sirius blinked at him, eyes distant and gleaming with the Black magic. “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Just… fretting, I suppose. I hadn’t communed with the wards since everything happened. I came down to make sure that nothing was going to get in overnight.”

Harry nodded. “Makes sense. Neither of us were our best when we came down here.”

“That’s the truth,” Sirius said with a humorless little snort. “I still have gaps in my memory, Prongslet. Silverclaw said that Bannet was pretty sure that I’ll always have them.”

“He edited your memories so long ago,” Harry said softly, sad that Sirius would never have true closure on that point. “It’d probably mess you up even worse to try to force the memories back after all these years.”

“True.” Sirius sighed and shook his head. “Just makes it a bit hard to know that I’m doing the right thing.”

That was… maybe the stupidest thing that Harry had ever heard Sirius say, including the whole bit when he’d been visibly mad as a hatter back when they first met. Harry promptly shooed Sirius out of the ward room and back up to the tapestry room. No surprise, they both gravitated to the library where everything lay waiting for tomorrow’s meeting.

The right thing? Of bloody course taking Dumbledore down is the right thing! The man had caused so much trouble, so much pain and misery for just hundreds and maybe even thousands of people. And that was completely aside from the possibility that he needed help.

Dumbledore needed to be stopped in part so that he could be shoved at every sort of healer this is.

Not that Harry really cared too much about the success of any healing that Dumbledore got, but still. Dumbledore was a mess, and he was inflicting that mess on everyone else. Especially Harry. And Sirius.

Who still had that hangdog look on his face as if he still doubted that they were doing the right thing.

“The records say that he killed his little sister, Sirius,” Harry said. “He’s messed with so many people, caused so much damage. No matter why he did it, no matter if he was unduly influenced by the blood curse and the vassal bond, he can’t be left in those positions. He’s done this for years. Decades and decades. No one is safe while he has power. The only way to be safe is to get him out of those positions once and for all.”

Sirius’ jaw clenched but he nodded finally.

Not happily, but it would have to be good enough.

“Okay, so, you know how you’re going to handle tomorrow?” Harry asked. “Do we need to run through it all again?”

Sirius groan-laughed, rolling his eyes. “No, Prongslet, we do not need to go through it all again. Bloody hell, between Amal, Lacey, Silverclaw and Hermione, I’ll be reciting this stuff in my dreams for decades.”

Harry snickered. “Can’t say that I won’t be dreaming about writing all the notes up.”

Sirius leafed through his stack of parchment, the one that he’d be taking into the Wizengamot with him. It didn’t look like he was really reading any of it, at least until he stopped on one page. Harry craned his neck to see which one, even though he was pretty sure he knew which one it was.

The letter.

What else could it be? That letter was… damning. Revealing. Horrifying.

It showed everything that Dumbledore was, what he wanted, what he’d become over the years, scrawled down in a teenager’s hand. From Albus Dumbledore to Gellert Grindelwald

From his heart, forever.

“This is the key,” Sirius whispered. He tilted the page enough that Harry could see it, and yes, it was the letter.

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “It really is. To so much.”

Sirius smiled grimly. “He’s been watching and sabotaging everyone all this time. Now it’s his turn to be seen for what he really is.”

34. Lord’s Vote

Yours forever,

Albus Dumbledore.

#

“Welcome to the Wizengamot, Lord Black,” Dumbledore said with a gracious little nod of his head as if he was the one and only person who could grant Sirius the right to take his place.

Pompous ass. The sooner he was in either Azkaban or the Janus Thickey ward, the better.

“Chief Warlock,” Sirius replied sternly enough that most of the Wizengamot winced.

He and Remus sauntered across the floor of the Wizengamot, mounting the stairs to the Black box. Sirius had been there precisely once before when he was six and Regulus was five. Grandfather Arcturus had brought them in for a short session so that they could see what the Wizengamot was like.

It’d been the most boring experience of Sirius’ young life.

Sitting in Grandfather Arcturus’ seat with Remus by his side was anything but boring. Stressful, panic attack inducing, and potentially deadly if Dumbledore won this battle, but not boring. The Black family magic swirled around Sirius, setting the seal at the front of his box alight.

Dumbledore pressed his lips together disapprovingly and shook his head.

*I really wish we could throw him out right now,* Remus murmured through their bond. He folded his hands on top of the fine dragonhide folio that held all their paperwork for getting rid of Dumbledore.

*Without all the drama? Perish the thought.*

Sirius didn’t allow himself to grin the way he wanted to. It would’ve come out like a shark’s smile, all teeth and intent to kill. That was not the image he wanted to portray to the Wizengamot.

Not yet, anyway.

“Very well,” Dumbledore said, tapping the Chief Warlock’s bench with his wand. “I call this meeting of the Wizengamot to order. We begin with the old business.”

Old Madame Marchbanks read off the list of actions from the past Wizengamot meetings, noting that each of them had been dealt with over the last few weeks. Other than the trial of Peter Pettigrew for the murder of twelve Muggles and for conspiring to kill James and Lily Potter with You-Know-Who.

“Voldemort,” Sirius called, startling everyone, especially Dumbledore. “The man’s fully and completely dead, Madame Marchbanks. Say his name, please. Don’t grant him any more power.”

She blew out a breath and nodded sharply. “A very good point, Lord Black. Voldemort, then. That’s all the old news we have. We do have one new motion that, per our charter and ICW law, must be handled before any other new business.”

Both Dumbledore’s eyebrows went up. “Really? What is it?”

“I have here,” Madame Marchbanks said with a sense of theatre that would’ve put diva opera stars to shame, “a petition to vote for a new Chief Warlock due to mental instability, criminal behavior and low moral character of the current Chief Warlock. You, of course. I must say, it’s about damned time.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Dumbledore thundered as his aura spilled out all over the place.

Which…

…was actually quite interesting now that Sirius could look at Dumbledore’s aura and not be scared, awed and immediately apologetic.

Where Remus’ aura or Lacey’s or Amal’s auras were all smooth, unblemished things that flowed out like fine silk cast across a bed, Dumbledore’s aura was rough and tumble, jagged-edged and snaggle-toothed. There were gaps, holes that bubbled through his magic in an alarming way. The color was a muddy swirl of brown, sickly yellow and a pea soup green that looked like it’d been cooked for far too long. Sirius frowned that there were no places where the color of Dumbledore’s aura was bright, clear, or healthy looking.

“I can see that I was quite right to put that petition in,” Sirius said over the rumble of Dumbledore’s magic and the sharp whispers around them. “By Merlin’s beard, Dumbledore, what the bloody hell is wrong with your magic?”

Dumbledore’s eyes went wide. He stared at his own magic and then snapped it back inside of him as if he was Madame Longbottom and her petticoats had shown in a sudden gust of wind.

“There’s nothing wrong with my magic,” Dumbledore said. “And this, this, this petition of yours is ridiculous!”

“There most certainly is,” Sirius said. “This is worse than I thought it had to be. The Drake vassal bond must be tearing your core to shreds for your aura to look like that.”

“I am not a Drake!” Dumbledore bellowed, so abruptly furious that his face went as purple as his robes. He slammed a fist to his bench, glaring at Sirius as if he wanted to kill Sirius on the spot.

“No, but Arianna should have been,” Sirius said. “If your grandfather and father hadn’t cursed the Potters to break the Drake vassal bond, she would have been James’ father’s vassal. Perhaps James’. Though I do wonder if the damage to your magic has more to do with your murder of her so that you could be with your lover, Grindelwald.”

The silence was deafening.

No one moved, not even Dumbledore who stared at Sirius with wide eyes and an open mouth. Every bit of the color faded out of his face as Dumbledore collapsed back into his chair. Madame Marchbanks frowned at Dumbledore and then turned to Sirius with a grave nod.

“That’s a very serious charge,” Madame Marchbanks said. “I move that we choose a pro tem Chief Warlock to handle this issue. The rules do allow us to move selecting a new Chief Warlock to our next meeting if a sufficiently important problem is brought before this body.”

“This… qualifies,” Sirius said, deliberately pausing to give his words more weight. “Seconded.”

The vote was thirded and made in moments. Amelia Bones, much to her annoyance, was put in the Chief Warlock’s post with no other nominations being made. While she didn’t look happy about it, Sirius was delighted. He’d expected Lord Ogden to be chosen, or maybe Madame Longbottom. Amelia was perfect, though. She had the legal expertise to handle this whole thing smoothly.

Even if the ushers had to literally lift Dumbledore out of the Chief Warlock’s chair by his arms and drag him over to the witness table. One of them, wisely, took Dumbledore’s wand away from him before he overcame his shock.

“I hope you have proof of your allegations, Lord Black,” Amelia said once she was seated in Dumbledore’s chair.

“They’re very serious indeed,” Fudge huffed.

“Of course I do,” Sirius said, nodding for Remus to go give the packet to Madame Marchbanks. “The vast majority of this came from Harry, actually. He and his vassals researched the problem and discovered that my… vow… at the last meeting had far-reaching effects.”

Madame Marchbank’s head snapped right up, her eyes going hawk-like as she studied Sirius. “You’re why the Drake room is a disaster, then?”

“It seems the most likely explanation,” Sirius said. “Dumbledore collapsed that day because my vow protecting Harry and the Potter legacy snapped multiple spells he had on the records in the Drake and Potter rooms.”

“I never cursed him,” Dumbledore said.

Just that. Nothing more. Sirius raised an eyebrow at him and let the whispers do as they would. What with how both Madame Marchbanks and Amelia glared at him, there as going to be a very long interrogation after the meeting was over.

“No one mentioned a curse,” Amelia said, noting something down. “But we’ll definitely look into it.”

“There was a blood curse on the Potters,” Sirius said as Remus sat by his side once more. Across the floor, Madame Marchbanks went cherry-red as she started going through the packet Remus had given her. “Harry broke it by destroying Voldemort’s horcruxes. It’s a long story which really isn’t relevant here and now. What’s relevant is page six, Madame Marchbanks. Do us all a favor and expand the copies of the packet so everyone can read it.”

“Hm?” Madame Marchbanks blinked and then huffed at herself as she found the shrunken copies of the packets that Harry, Amal and Theo had spent so much time preparing. “Goodness, this whole thing has just knocked me right off my center. Right. Copies for everyone. You’ll want to impose the silencing protocols, Madame Bones. Trust me on this one.”

Amelia’s expression didn’t change but she immediately imposed silence on the entire crowd, Sirius and Remus included. The packets flew off to every member of the Wizengamot. Most started with the first page where Theo had created a dreadfully concise description of just what Dumbledore had done over the years to control, memory-charm and kill the Potters. The second page had detailed lists of all the spells that had been imposed on all the kids, from Harry and his friends to Theo and his friends. Page three listed the same for the adults that Amal, Moody and Lacey had been able to scan. Page four went into all the laws and Ministry edicts that Dumbledore had had a hand in. Putting them all on one page was… damning, to say the least. Page five did the same for all the laws, edicts and policies he’d implemented as Supreme Mugwump.

Page six was the letter.

Sirius watched as people made their way through the packets. He could see the exact moment where they read the first line, where they realized that this truly was a tender letter from Albus Dumbledore to Gellert Grindelwald. Amelia put one hand to her throat as she read it, white as a sheet and shaking with what looked like horror.

Madame Longbottom started shouting about halfway through the letter, not that anyone could hear a word she said. Given the profanity she spewed at Dumbledore, Sirius really didn’t need to hear her. Her expression, gestures and lips made it perfectly clear.

Lord Ogden collapsed in a dead faint. Malfoy wasn’t there. He’d escaped to France immediately after the last Wizengamot meeting. His cronies Goyle and Crabbe started shouting at each other and gesturing wildly at the letter as if they could understand each other without words. Perhaps they could. Sirius couldn’t imagine that Voldemort wanted to listen to their idiocy. They were probably used to being silenced and still having to communicate somehow.

He waited until a good two thirds of the Wizengamot made it all the way through the letter to the postscript.

Really, there couldn’t be anything more effective to piss the entire Wizengamot off than that postscript. It was perfect and Sirius nodded to Remus before carefully lighting his seal with a gentle tap of his wand against it.

“What?” Amelia snapped at Sirius while glaring at Dumbledore.

“Two things,” Sirius said with one of his bright, false, brittle smiles that always made people pause and stare at him in worry. “Dumbledore cast so many memory charms at me that I will… likely never know exactly what happened in my youth. It’s very likely that everyone who’s served on the Wizengamot with him is in similar shape. Including you, Madame Bones. He did it to the students at Hogwarts. I’d be stunned if he didn’t do it to everyone who annoyed him at the ICW, as well. We can’t rely on our memories. That’s why the rest of the packet is copies of every single record we could find to support our allegations.”

“Bloody hell,” Amelia whispered. Her eyes were locked on Sirius’ face now, pity and rage warring for dominance.

“Mm, quite,” Sirius agreed. “Second, Dumbledore’s crimes are international. He didn’t do it just here. He did it everywhere he went. There are so many people who may be affected. We need more information. We need to get the ICW involved.”

“And he has a phoenix bound to him,” Remus piped up. “It’s making me very nervous that he hasn’t called Fawkes to him yet.”

Dumbledore jerked to his feet and grabbed for his wand. The aurors guarding him shouted as they tried to shove Dumbledore back into his seat. One of them managed to get himself knocked backwards into the wall and knocked out but the one with Dumbledore’s wand had the presence of mind to fling it straight at Madame Marchbanks.

Who caught it like a dueling pro. She flipped it in her fingers and then stabbed it at Dumbledore.

“Stupify!” Madame Marchbanks shouted.

Dumbledore dropped like a rock, clocking his chin on the corner of the witness table on the way down.

“Nice technique,” Sirius said, a little stunned that she’d managed to knock Dumbledore out that easily.

Madame Marchbanks grinned and swirled the wand in her fingers again. “Thank you. Champion of the Hogwarts dueling club my seventh year. Good to see I haven’t lost the touch.”

Sirius grinned and offered her a bow. “I’m sending you roses, Madame. And chocolate.”

“Here here,” Amelia agreed. She laughed, shaky but with more color in her cheeks. “Very well. You made two very good points, Lord Black. Auror Delfin, get suppression cuffs, a suppression collar and a phoenix blocking talisman on Dumbledore immediately. I want rotating shifts guarding him, pairs. No one is to see him alone, not even his solicitor or his brother.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Auror Delfin, he of the good sense and strong throwing arm.

It took two minutes to make sure that Dumbledore wouldn’t get free. Then the meeting settled down to pick a new Chief Warlock who would then be responsible for managing both the Wizengamot and Minister Fudge.

Whoever it was, Sirius was sure they’d do a damn sight better than Dumbledore in his insanity and megalomania ever had.

It wouldn’t exactly be hard. With Dumbledore as the previous occupant, even Sirius could do a half-assed job and be accounted as the second coming of Merlin, for fuck’s sake.

35. Eyes Open

PS: Do you still think being a teacher is truly the best method for influencing people? I’m not sure about that even now. Yes, of course, it will make placing our control charms and memory alterations easier, but it seems so menial. I suppose one of us will have to do it and goodness knows, you’ve no talent for dealing with children. At least with all the techniques we’re developing, I’ll be able to make the little monsters forget any mistakes I make. That’s about the only bright spot in our whole plan.

Well, that plus that you’ll be the one dealing with the ICW and the Wizengamot. Those idiots would drive me to murder if I had to handle them all the time. Ah well, do come back soon, Gellert. I miss you terribly and we’ve so much work to be done to make the world a better place.

#

What a summer.

Harry hummed as he strode through the gate to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters with Sirius at his side, Remus and Theo on his heels. Moody was already on the platform and had been since pre-dawn to make sure that no one got the drop on them. Amal wouldn’t be there, thank goodness. He was too busy working with Silverclaw to make sure all the records were up to date, accurate and that all Harry’s investments were handled properly.

That’d taken ages, most of the remaining summer after Dumbledore’s fall.

His summers were always a challenge. When he was little it was the time when he was hungry, exhausted, and most confused at why his family hated him so much. Once he started school, he understood that it was just the way life was. Summer was a time to survive until school started up again.

He was always too thin come September.

“You’ve got your new trunk, right?” Sirius chattered as the crowd of parents and kids parted to let the two of them through, all of them pointing, whispering, making googly-eyes at both Harry and Sirius. “You didn’t forget anything?”

“No, Sirius, I remembered everything,” Harry said with a grin that he didn’t even try to hide. “I’ve got the library trunk. I’ve got my regular trunk, locked properly so no one can get into the hidden apartment we set up. I’ve got the elf trunk for Dobby and Kreacher to visit. I’ve even got the special treat trunk you insisted on getting me.”

The platform was loud and busy enough that Harry couldn’t see Moody anywhere. The vassal bond gave him a clear sense that Moody was happy that Harry couldn’t pick him out. Moody must have disillusioned himself and tucked himself away in a corner somewhere. Not close to the gate, of course. Too much traffic there for him to get a good angle to protect Harry against any on-coming threats. Maybe up on the roof?

It didn’t really matter. Except that Moody was sure to ask Harry in their next floo call where Harry thought he’d been hidden. More training for Moody’s lord. And it was kind of fun to try to figure it out.

“They might not be enough,” Sirius complained about the snack truck.

“Siri, don’t be ridiculous,” Remus said, shaking his head. “You bought two stores’ worth of snacks and put them all in stasis. Harry could sell them and make a huge profit. It’s more than even the entire Gryffindor tower could eat in a week. He’s fine.”

Harry grinned as Sirius bit his lip, fretting even though they’d spent the last week packing every single thing that Harry could possibly need. The apartment was a bit ridiculous, but Sirius had filled it with weapons, dragonhide armor and every sort of protective and detection charm known to Magi. Some of them had been brought in from as far away as Japan and Tibet just so that Sirius wouldn’t worry that Harry might come up against something dangerous during his fourth year at Hogwarts.

“I just don’t want you going hungry,” Sirius huffed at Harry, not Remus who rolled his eyes behind Sirius’ back. “Maybe we should get you a sandwich or something.”

“Dad,” Harry said, pulling out the big guns because calling Sirius “Dad” turned out to be the all-time best way to get him to stop in his tracks, usually with wide eyes and a panicky expression. “I’m fine. Dobby and Kreacher will be taking turns making sure that I have enough to eat. It’s good. I’ll be safe. There’s no one left to threaten me now.”

Sirius shut his eyes and then grabbed Harry for a desperate hug that Harry was more than happy to return even though he could hear Colin Creevy taking a million or so shots of him and Sirius together. Couldn’t be worse than all the pictures that they’d had to suffer through after Sirius failed to escape being made the new Chief Warlock.

The only person who hadn’t seen that one coming was Sirius.

Theo and Hermione had apparently had a private bet set up that Sirius would be nominated and elected. Theo had thought that there would be challengers. Hermione had been certain that no one would be nominated to challenge him, ensuring that Sirius was voted on and confirmed immediately.

Of course, Hermione won. As if that was ever a question. Everything that Sirius had done to keep Harry safe ensured that the rest of the magical world saw him as perfect, despite the reputation Dumbledore had crafted for him.

“I didn’t expect this to be so hard,” Sirius breathed into Harry’s ear, laughing a little. “I barely got you back and now you’re leaving.”

Harry pulled back and grinned at Sirius. “Oh, you’re totally stuck with me. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll be getting so many letters that we’ll have to buy a fleet of owls.”

Sirius threw his head back and laughed. He’d yet to trim the hip-length hair that he kept complaining about. Harry was very carefully not commenting on it, mostly because he’d happened to come downstairs one evening late and seeing Remus reeling Sirius in by his hair, both of them looking much too aroused by it for Harry’s comfort.

That hair was going nowhere if Remus had his way, and Remus always got his way with Sirius.

“We’d best get on the train,” Theo said, glowering through the crowd. “Before… Oh, damn. Too late.”

Draco Malfoy sauntered through the crowd, sneering already. He raised his chin at Harry, one lip curling up even though his cheeks went red at Harry’s stare and Theo’s raised eyebrow. Sirius rested one elbow on Harry’s shoulder, smirking as Draco stopped in his tracks.

“Cousin,” Sirius said.

“Chief Warlock,” Draco replied in the exact same snarky tone that implied that he thought Sirius was an idiot, just like Sirius had used on him.

“Draco, just leave us alone already, will you?” Theo complained.

“He stole you from us,” Draco snapped at him.

“Don’t be silly,” Harry said as mildly as he could when he really kind of wanted to laugh at all of this. “Theo wasn’t part of your group. He refused to be part of anyone’s group. The vassal bond didn’t allow it.”

Draco’s mouth dropped open. He stared at Theo who glowered at him, then turned back to Harry who just shrugged.

“He’s really your vassal?” Draco asked in a much quieter tone.

Neither of his parents were there. Harry had to think that Narcissa had delivered Draco to the train and ordered him to sit quietly until it left the station. Of course, Draco clearly hadn’t listened to her given that he was on the platform being a git in public.

Hermione slipped up next to Theo who went red and swallowed hard. Ron was behind her, eyes distant and expression a little disgusted. Neville was right behind Ron, pushing past all of them so that he could stand between Harry and Draco and loom a little. He had put on several inches in height over the summer and his shoulders were starting to widen dramatically.

“Yep,” Harry replied. “So is Mad-Eye Moody. He’s around here somewhere handling security.”

“Ah,” Draco said, paling abruptly. “Well. I believe I need to find a car. Good day, Potter.”

“Malfoy,” Harry replied.

He grinned as Draco darted off onto the train, picking up Pansy and Daphne and Goyle as he went. At least Draco’s retreat started an exodus of kids getting onto the train and parents doing the “write me and be good this year” thing that always happened.

“Make sure you write,” Sirius murmured in Harry’s ear. “Don’t be any better than you have to be, though. Never understood that whole “be good” thing. Where’s the fun in that?”

Harry laughed and stole another hug that lasted until the whistle blew for the first time. Ron and Neville were waiting to escort him once he and Sirius managed to let each other go for the third whistle. They barely made it onto the train before it started to leave the station. Sirius ran alongside the train, waving wildly, while Harry stuck his head out the window and waved back.

It was so weird and wonderful to have someone who could and would see him off to school.

“Come on, Harry,” Neville said. “Theo and Hermione already have a compartment. Let’s get there before Draco comes and stirs up trouble again. I swear, it’s like he’s vying to be your soulmate or something.”

Harry frowned at Neville as he let Neville pull him into the compartment where Theo and Hermione were comparing notes on their planners for the year while Luna hummed and read the Quibbler upside down. Ron settled down next to Luna, leaving Harry to sit between Theo and Neville.

“Are soulmates a real thing?” Harry asked Ron.

“Oh, sure,” Ron said with an entirely casual wave of his hand. “It’s pretty rare anymore, but that might be because of Dumbledore’s meddling. Who knows? You might have one.”

Harry groaned while Theo snickered at him. “I didn’t need to know that. I seriously didn’t. I mean, how do you even know that someone’s your soulmate? Come on, that’s bullshite.”

“Odds that Harry’s soulmate is Draco?” Theo murmured to Hermione.

“I’ll give you two to one that he is,” Hermione murmured back. She grinned wickedly. “Five to one that it’s Neville and twelve to one that it’s Ron. It’s certainly not me.”

“And how would you know that?” Ron demanded as his face went as red as his hair.

“Oh, Theo and I already know we have a magical affinity for each other,” Hermione explained much, much, much too casually. “We’re going to explore it this year. If it turns out that we’re right, then we’re soulmates already.”

Ron’s jaw dropped open while Neville jumped to his feet to shake both their hands while earnestly and completely honestly congratulating them. It didn’t take long before Ron was complaining like his old, curse-addled, self about everyone getting things and him getting nothing but leftovers, but there was an amused look in Ron’s eyes, so Harry didn’t take it personally.

How could he?

If Theo and Hermione actually were soulmates, it meant that Hermione would be kind of like his sister once she and Theo got married. He’d get to have her around all the time and Hermione would end up with someone who liked the things she liked and who cared about doing the right thing. That would be perfect.

Harry relaxed and let the chatter wash over him.

So much had changed. It was a whole new world. A whole new Harry, too.

Instead of fear, confusion and the ever-present threat of death, Harry got to have a normal school year. He had a guardian, a dad, who loved him. Two dads who loved him because Remus had quietly made it clear that he did think of Harry as his son, too.

Plus Lacey and Anthony. Silverclaw. Moody with his lessons and his paranoia. Theo. Dobby and Kreacher.

Instead of isolation, he had friends. Instead of powerlessness, he had control over his own life and his own magic.

As the Hogwarts Express chugged out of London and into the countryside, Harry smiled at his friends. There was still so much to figure out, so much to fix. All the spells that Dumbledore had cast on people needed to be broken. Lost memories needed to be restored. Hogwarts itself needed a huge amount of work to fix the damage that Dumbledore had done to its wards in his effort to test and mold Harry into a proper martyr to the Great Good.

Harry had a ton of things he needed to learn about his position. There was Dobby and his quest to be truly free, laws to ensure that House Elves were treated properly, developing relationships with all the other heirs to the other Ancient and Noble houses. His classes. Figuring out what he wanted to do with his life, too.

Which was fine. Good, even.

Because Harry was free at long last, and he would face the future with friends, vassals, and allies at his side.

Luna looked up over the top edge of her Quibbler. The corners of her eyes wrinkled as she smiled at him. It was nearly a grin even though her lips barely moved.

“It will be fine,” Luna murmured just to Harry. “You fixed it all.”

Harry sucked in a sharp breath and then let it out slowly so that the others wouldn’t notice. “Thanks, Luna.”

“No problem,” Luna replied, returning to her Quibbler humming a happy little song that matched with the joy thrumming in Harry’s heart.

Free and safe; Harry smiled as he turned back to Hermione, Theo and Neville’s detailed betting table of who might be soulbonds for whom. He shook his head.

“No way will Draco end up with Pansy,” Harry interrupted, diving into the argument purely for the fun of it. “Maybe Astoria or Daphne, but not Pansy. Pansy will end up with Blaise.”

“What?”

Theo squawked at the same time that Hermione gasped and clapped a hand to her chest like Harry had just stabbed her. Neville grinned and started nodding enthusiastically enough that Harry had to fight not to laugh.

Merlin, this was going to be the best year ever!

The End.

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