Reading Time: 106 Minutes

Title: Fate’s River
Author: MeyariMcFarland
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Kid!fic, Suspense, Urban Fantasy
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence-Domestic, Violence-Against Children/Child Abuse. Politics. (domestic violence and child abuse are canon typical)
Author Note: I like to give each of my Harry Potter stories a little twist. This one came from watching the new Dune movies and asking myself “what if there was more going on with Harry’s near escapes? What if he had not only different gifts than everyone thought but also an ally?” The story grew from there. Also, I should note that I mean it on the aro-ace Harry in this story. He’s got no interest in such things at all.
Word Count: 96811
Summary: Shoved back into Privet Drive without a) medical care, b) any books to help him learn to protect himself or anyone else, and c) any chance to say what he thinks about all of this, Harry has a small realization. A little one. Just a tiny thing, really. No one trusts him. Which, you know, fine. Aunt Petunia always said that politics is the most important skill anyone could learn. All right, then. That’s just what Harry’s going to do.
Artist: Penumbria
Artist Appreciation: Thank you so much for the awesome art–I adore the portraits and you really caught what I was going for

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1. Where Truth Goes to Die: Nightly News

Harry lay underneath the hydrangea where Uncle Vernon wasn’t like to see him. Nor anyone else. Normally at this time of day during the lazy heat of the worst day yet of summer, Harry would’ve been off in the park hiding in the shade of the trees because it was marginally cooler there. Dudley, logically, was off with his awful friends in Piers Polkisses’ back yard temporary pool, trying to bash the walls in enough that it collapsed and drained all the water.

Because of course having a water bill eight times the norm was hilarious. Better than the usual thuggery they’d been getting up to, but still, the sheer amount of money the Polkisses were spending on that pool had to be horrendous.

What he couldn’t have done with that money.

Harry’s stomach clenched at the thought of books to learn some real defense spells. Or a good solid knife with a boot holster. Boots, boots would be nice. Maybe dragonhide. A new school uniform with dragonhide lining, now that was the ticket since he wasn’t apparently allowed to know a single thing that would let him defend himself.

No, Hermione, he wasn’t still upset that his only way of dealing with a full grown dragon was to out-fly it. Of course not.

The Hermione in his head raised one eyebrow skeptically.

Justified.

Harry honestly could’ve gone on a swears-filled rant that would’ve set Aunt Petunia’s hair on fire if he was given a chance. Every single year, things got worse. First year was so very suspect looking back at it now. Those traps were far too easy for any adult wizard. They were easy for a pack of lazy and not very creative first years. To old Voldie, they must’ve been an outright joke.

Second year and the damned diary. So many things about that one bothered him. Sure, it made a certain amount of sense for Mr. Malfoy to slip the diary into Ginny’s cauldron. The Weasleys and the Malfoys were some sort of enemies.

What sort, Harry still hadn’t heard. The twins rolled their eyes when Harry asked. Ron just ranted about stuck-up gits and all the things they got that they so didn’t deserve. Unlike him. Ginny flinched at any mention of the diary, Malfoys or anything like the Chamber of secrets. And Percy had only ever scolded Harry for asking inappropriate questions without explaining why they were inappropriate.

So yes, the whole diary thing made a tiny bit of sense, but the questions spiraled out from it in ways that made his teeth itch. Why had Ginny written in it for so long? She was strong and smart, and Mr. Weasley was so very clear about Never Do That that Harry had to think that she must have had the lecture a million times. Especially in the Weasley house with Mr. Weasley’s… hobby.

Why hadn’t school been closed? Why didn’t Dumbledore just buy the ingredients? Why, in the name of anything holy, had not one parent ever sent a howler to Dumbledore about the threat their little darlings faced?

It just didn’t make sense.

Third year, more of the same, more questions and no good answers. Most specifically, why had Sirius never gotten a trial? That was… so very not good. And it made no sense. Did the Magical world have an actual government or what? If the coppers had rolled up and arrested Dudley for his very illegal hooligan behavior, he still would’ve gotten a trial, with representation, and all kinds of notice would’ve been given.

Yeah.

Questions.

He wasn’t going to ponder all the questions he had about the Tournament because he’d start pulling his hair and muttering under his breath as he paced. Harry absolutely didn’t need to get the reputation of being a nutter outside of the Magical world, too.

“Where is that boy?” Uncle Vernon asked as he peered out the window right over Harry’s head.

Aunt Petunia deployed Sniff of Disapproval Number Nine, the Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish sniff. “I’ve no idea. Outside, which is all I care.”

Uncle Vernon’s rant about kids actually watching the news was cut off by the news itself. None of which was helpful. Nonsense, pointless garbage, and budgies, of all things.

Just as Harry was about to roll to his feet and sneak away, the crack of apparition far too close to the house echoed like a car backfire.

Harry froze.

He froze even harder when Aunt Petunia screamed and Uncle Vernon bellowed and threw open the blinds to glare wildly around the neighborhood, what little he could see from that window. From underneath, Uncle Vernon’s jowls hung above his collar like the wattles on a chicken’s head, just pale instead of bright red.

“What was that?” Uncle Vernon spluttered without, thankfully, looking down. “What was that?!”

Harry stopped breathing. The only thing moving was the sweat creeping down his temples towards his ears and the hammering of his heart in his throat.

“Oh, Vernon, it must have been a car backfiring,” Aunt Petunia said but her voice was far too shaky, and it didn’t reassure Uncle Vernon at all. “Off on Wisteria Lane, I’m sure.”

“Best not be firecrackers,” Uncle Vernon muttered as he slowly, cautiously, closed the curtains again. “That boy would get up to nonsense. You know, Pet. He absolutely would.”

They went back to chatting about the horrible heat, the neighbors’ new car, and all the horrible things that Harry was obviously getting up to when he was out of sight. Harry stayed where he was through the light tinkle of broken pottery getting picked up. He stayed there as Aunt Petunia set to making Uncle Vernon a “light snack” of a roast beef and cheddar sandwich with a pound of meat and at least six slices of cheddar.

He stayed there as someone rustled through the shrubbery in the backyard.

Harry’s blood froze solid in his veins as he realized that yes, really, there was someone sneaking about in the back yard which meant that whoever it was had to have been the one who apparated in.

There was no one to see. Invisibility cloak, probably, which meant that Harry had to stay perfectly still other than his eyes tracking the way the shrubs opened by the back shed, shut again, opened by the back gate, shut again. Then the back gate quietly squeaked open and then slowly squeaked shut.

Five minutes after that, Harry carefully eased out of the hydrangea and went to check the two spots that invisible wizard had checked.

At first, he saw nothing. Branches, dirt, some scrubby grass and one dandelion that Aunt Petunia would have vapors over if she knew it was there.

Harry left the dandelion to do its thing, of course.

Second spot, same thing. When he went back and checked the first spot again, though, he noticed that there was a faintly glowing spot on the very bottom of the fence that looked a lot like the runes that Hermione had ranted about during final exams.

The ones that meant “Suppress” and “Contain”.

The second spot had two runes very low down on the fence that he thought, if he had it right, meant “Illuminate” and “Watch”. “Illuminate” could possibly actually be “highlight” or maybe “point a great big spotlight at” if Ron’s idle, just-to-be-annoying questions were to be believed. “Watch” though, that one was pretty much “Watch this because it’s Trouble and Might Be Out To Get You”.

“Not good,” Harry muttered as he curled into the shade behind the shed where he could study the two sets of runes without anyone seeing him.

Those four runes together, set in his so-called family’s yard without their permission or knowledge, did not mean good things. They couldn’t. Especially not when just putting a hand towards them made all the hair on Harry’s arms stand up straight.

“Right, so, now what?” Harry whispered as he pulled his wand only to put it back away again.

If he used his wand, the Ministry would notice. He couldn’t use his wand, but he might, if he tried really hard, be able to use his magic “accidentally”. Hopefully he wouldn’t get in trouble for a tiny little accidental burst of magic.

He didn’t know runes. The only things he’d learned about runes was what he’d gotten by osmosis from listening to Hermione rant her way through revisions. It just…

…those runes were not right. They did not belong here. He could not let them stay.

“Okay, let’s do this the stupid way,” Harry murmured.

He bit his lip as he very carefully heated the air around the tip of his finger and burned the circle-and-backslash symbol of “Do Not Do This” overtop the first set. Harry didn’t dare put too much power into it. That would make his finger glow, and he absolutely did not want anyone to notice what he was doing right now. He did, however, put as much… emphasis?

Maybe that was the right word. It wasn’t power so much as it was very firmly rejecting everything associated with the little rune pair, flipping them off, flipping them to the opposite, just very much “no, thank you, sir” in his firmest tone.

You know, without actually speaking.

He gasped as the air temperature in the back yard seemed to drop a good twenty degrees. Or maybe it was that the humidity dropped. Either way, Harry felt like he could get a breath for the first time since… huh. Possibly for the first time since he came back from Hogwarts, actually.

Odd.

The second set went the same way as the first, though this time it felt like the eyes watching Harry all around the neighborhood abruptly found something else to stare at. That was. Hmm.

Very hmm. Very hmm indeed.

He eased out of the bushes just in time for Aunt Petunia to stick her head out the back door and scowl at you.

“What are you doing?” Aunt Petunia snapped at him.

“Ah, saw a dandelion back behind the shrubs,” Harry said. “I was just checking to see if there were any more.”

Aunt Petunia gasped, rushing out to stare though the shrubs at the little dandelion’s yellow top. “Well, root it out, boy! We can’t let it go to seed or there’ll be dandelions all through the lawn.”

“Yes, Aunt Petunia,” Harry said, delving into the shed for the hand trowel. “Should I check the rest of the fence? What about the foundation?”

“Oh, absolutely yes,” Aunt Petunia exclaimed as she hurried back into the house. “Vernon! Vernon, there’s a dandelion in the back yard!”

“What?” Uncle Vernon bellowed.

He hustled out to supervise Harry checking every single inch of the fence and every millimeter of the foundation for any signs of dandelions. Uncle Vernon practically got down on his hands and knees with a magnifying glass to look for any signs of dandelions on the lawn.

By the time Harry got to wash up, eat his paltry cheese and dry bread sandwich with a wormy apple for dinner, they’d found two more dandelions and Harry had found eighteen sets of runes spread around the property.

All saying the same things.

“I’ll get weed killer tomorrow, Pet,” Uncle Vernon promised. “Won’t have those nasty things in our yard. What’s the world coming to, anyway? Weeds just sprouting up everywhere with no regard to a man’s authority over his own home.”

His glare was all for Harry, not for the three little dandelions, but that was fine. In fact, it was more like Uncle Vernon glared for habit’s sake than actually meaning it. All through their individual and joint grumbling about the dandelions, neither Uncle Vernon nor Aunt Petunia blamed Harry for it.

It was… odd. Distinctly odd. The first time in Harry’s memory where random happenings around Number Four were not immediately and unilaterally blamed on Harry.

He’d take it.

Harry escaped to his baking bedroom. Dudley arrived home late and got a light scolding for staying out too late with his friends, which was ninety percent more scolding than Dudley had ever gotten. Duds looked somewhat like he’d been hit in the back of the head with a cricket bat as he shuffled off to his bedroom. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon went to bed muttering about the garden instead of about Harry.

None of them woke up after midnight when Harry carefully crept downstairs under his invisibility cloak. No one was there to notice when he hit all the rune pairs with the circle-and-backslash Not symbols.

And no one was there to notice when Harry spotted a pair of Dementors drifting up Privet Drive towards Number Four.

Harry sucked a sharp breath between his teeth and then carefully edged backwards onto the grass because the last of the rune pairs had been out on the sidewalk by the gutter. The Dementors paused as he moved. Oddly, their aura of cold and misery didn’t seem quite as powerful as Harry remembered.

When Harry crouched down next to the set of rune pairs closest to the front steps, right behind Aunt Petunia’s prize pot of begonias, the Dementors’ aura faded away almost entirely.

Weirdly, the two Dementors stopped drifting closer and then began to fidget aimlessly as if they weren’t sure what to do.

Harry bit his lip and carefully touched one fingertip to the Not-Illuminate / Not-Watch runes.

They sent a thrill straight through Harry that crackled across his scar and rumbled down his spine. He clamped his jaw shut against the need to shout, the need to shudder and moan and shift away from the thing.

Out in the street, the Dementors gracefully, slowly, calmly, drifted up and away as if Privet Drive no longer held any importance to them.

Or, maybe, like Harry no longer held their attention. Like, at all.

“Oh,” Harry whispered as he watched the Dementors sail away, “I have to use this. Somehow.”

2. Dancing Along the Razor’s Edge: Judo Dojo

Three days later and Harry was pretty sure that those rune pairs were the source of most of his misery. On the first morning, Aunt Petunia had waved for Harry to sit at the table and eat along with Uncle Vernon and Dudley. Neither Uncle Vernon nor Dudley looked at him angrily. Neither protested. Dudley even passed Harry the bacon which had literally never happened in his entire life.

Harry still had to help in the yard with Uncle Vernon’s grand war against the dandelions, but so did Dudley who was wide-eyed about it but quietly willing. He glanced Harry’s way ever so often, sure, but he never said a word about it.

Day two was a repeat of day one, just with more wide-eyed Dudley and a quiet frown on Aunt Petunia’s face by dinnertime whenever she looked Harry’s way. It was like she was trying to figure out what she’d forgotten, and she just couldn’t get it.

Day three? Laundry and dusting day so the whole household was absolutely run ragged because Aunt Petunia was not going to let Mrs. Number Eleven see the house in anything less than perfect state, especially not when there had been dandelions in the yard. The neighborhood bridge game was coming, and Aunt Petunia was not going to be unprepared.

Goodness no, the world would come to an end.

Harry face-planted in his bed that night, too tired to even think about sneaking around to look for more rune pairs in the house. If they were outside, they probably were inside, too. He just had to find them.

Tomorrow. Or maybe in a few days after he stopped aching. Moving the furniture six times per room was just too much for his scrawny body.

At least Day Four of his new life was less moving furniture and more endless polishing of every single thing in the kitchen while Uncle Vernon escaped to work and Dudley grimly used a scrub brush, an actual scrub brush, on the stair railing to make sure it was perfectly clean and perfectly shiny.

Dinner on Day Four of his new life was all four of them plus Chinese takeout, plopped at the kitchen table with blank expressions of exhaustion. Well, Aunt Petunia looked grimly satisfied. The rest of them were blankly exhausted as they ate their Chinese out of paper boxes with forks instead of the provided cheap wooden chopsticks.

Harry actually got to have a fortune cookie.

His fortune said “Hidden forces move around you. Watch your back and wait by the river for news.”

Meant absolutely nothing to Harry on the second half though the first half was obvious enough. Dudley snatched his fortune up and nodded slowly.

“What’s yours say?” Harry dared to ask.

“Rubbish,” Uncle Vernon huffed as he tossed his fortune to Dudley. Aunt Petunia pruned her lips but passed hers to Dudley as well.

“Well, sure,” Dudley agreed while studying them as if they held the secrets of the universe. “Still kind of fun. They print some wild stuff on these. I started collecting them at Smelting’s.”

Aunt Petunia shooed them out of the kitchen so that she, not Harry, could wash the few dishes they’d dirtied. Not even he was thorough enough to withstand Mrs. Number Eleven’s scrutiny, apparently. Uncle Vernon went out to the yard to continue his War Against the Dandelions.

Dudley licked his lips and then waved for Harry to follow him upstairs.

There was a sort of wariness to his eyes that Harry didn’t much like. Not because it was pointed at Harry the way the Harry Hunting look used to be, but because he wasn’t used to Dudley looking that… smart.

Sharp, focused, intent, wary enough for a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. A mouse about to sneak across the kitchen when Aunt Petunia was in the next room.

Still, Harry followed Dudley upstairs because something was going on behind those eyes and Harry wanted to know what it was. He still needed to make sure there were no runes in the house, but what he’d done outside clearly had done something for Dudley, so yeah.

Right into Dudley’s bedroom.

The clothes scattered on the floor had a sort of studied perfection to them, like Dudley had tossed the striped red-and-yellow shirt and then tweaked the sleeve to drape over the crumpled body just so. His dresser had one drawer open instead of all of them. A single sock poked out of the drawer as if to shout “see? Nothing suspicious going on here!”

All his school books were tucked away into Dudley’s backpack, neat as Hermione would’ve. His shoes were lined up perfect in his closet which was open just a crack. All the clothes were hung properly.

Dudley’s bed was made.

Harry had never seen Dudley’s bed made. Not even Aunt Petunia had won that war. Dudley used to tear all the blankets and sheets off if Aunt Petunia dared to tuck the foot in a bare inch, and now Dudley’s bed was so perfectly made that Harry could’ve bounced a galleon off it.

“Mine says “Power locked away shall be released when blood calls to blood”,” Dudley said as he watched Harry studying Dudley’s room with wary, wide eyes. “Mum’s is “Old lies reveal new truths for one who listens”. Dad’s is “When called to war, follow orders and keep a calm head”.”

Harry looked over Dudley’s shoulder. “Okay… that’s creepy. Where’d Uncle Vernon get the takeout? Somewhere on my side of things?”

Dudley snorted a laugh. “Yeah, right. No, he got it up on Main. You know, the little place in the mall? This’s been happening for a while now. I’ll look something up and the quotes will mean something more. Fortune cookie fortunes mean more when I’m around than they do when I’m not. Or I’ll open a book to a random page and there’s a paragraph that exactly matches what I need to know or do.”

“Uh, how long?” Harry asked as a chill that compared to the one when the dementors went away slid up his spine.

“Since I went to Smelting’s the first time,” Dudley said. “Always goes away when I come home, though, so I thought it was a Smelting’s thing. Now it’s happening at home. Mum and Dad are all weird since the dandelions. What changed? I never could think at home. Even around the neighborhood. Went off to Smelting’s and all of a sudden, I could read books, memorize things, wasn’t hungry all the time. I know there’s something, you know, funny going on, but I don’t know what changed.”

“…Not here,” Harry said. “We can’t talk about it here.”

Dudley stared out his bedroom door for a long moment before nodding. “Yeah, I get that. Come on. I know a place.”

The place he knew turned out to be the little judo dojo off on Main in the same retail park as the Chinese restaurant. Dudley sauntered in with hesitation and then grabbed Harry’s sleeve to drag him in, too.

The dojo was empty, no one about, other than one very muscular teen who looked up, spotted Dudley, and then waved casually at Dudley. He barely even looked at Harry.

“Talked Dad into letting me take judo classes this summer,” Dudley explained as he dragged Harry through a door marked “dressing rooms” and then onwards to a little square cell of a room in the very back of the dojo that was filled with shelves and books.

“Hadn’t heard that,” Harry commented as he stared at the books and then at Dudley who plucked a bright red book off the shelf.

Dudley flipped the book open to a random page. “Let’s see. “Pretend inferiority to encourage his arrogance.” Not bad. What else? “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” Huh, yeah, that’s more useful.”

“Useful how?” Harry asked.

“Well,” Dudley said with a wave of his hand at the book like it was perfectly obvious, “the pretend inferiority bit is obviously about that headmaster of yours. He’s got you all under his thumb, like. You’ve got, we’ve both got, to act like nothing’s changed and you know nothin’ or he’ll come back and make things worse. Second one is what we’ve got to do. The battle’s gonna happen, you know? We gotta make sure that you’re set to win it long before the fighting starts. Need to get you trained up a bit more, so you know just what you’re facing.”

Harry stared blankly at Dudley as every single thing he’d ever assumed about his cousin just died a fiery death. “That’s divination.”

“It’s what?” Dudley frowned. “I don’t know that word.”

“Fortune-telling,” Harry explained as he licked his lips and clenched his fists so that he wouldn’t start shaking. “Magic. It’s magic, Duds. You just did magic. Not, you know, my sort of magic, but it’s still magic.”

Dudley’s jaw dropped open.

They both looked to the door of the little back room as if they expected Uncle Vernon to come in bellowing about “not allowed” this and “freaks” that. Didn’t happen, of course. Instead, Dudley eased down to the concrete floor with the red book in his hands.

Harry eased down next to Dudley, not pressed up against him but closer than he might’ve dared before the dandelions.

“Piers claims I’ve gone all weird,” Dudley whispered as he carefully shut the book and opened it again. “That this… thing I’ve got is weird. “Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.” Huh, yeah, that’s good advice. Dad’d lose his mind if you said that where he could hear it. Mum, too.”

Harry laughed as he shook his head. “I have never in my life done that. Found useful knowledge in a book like that. What book is that?”

“Art of War by Sun Tsu,” Dudley said, flipping it up so that Harry could see the cover. “It’s old. Dad said it’s useful for business, even if it is foreign. It’s one of my favorites. Lots of good things in it.”

“Okay,” Harry said.

If Dudley was a Seer, which he sure seemed to be even though Professor Trelawney sure never suggested looking for quotes in a book as a method of divination, then maybe he could help Harry figure out how to, you know, make things better. And maybe Harry could make things better for Dudley, too.

“First off, any other sneaky things in the house making everyone weird?” Harry asked.

Dudley raised an eyebrow but gamely flipped his book open. “Huh, probably. ”The wise warrior avoids the battle.” Says to me that yeah, there is, but nope, you’re not gonna be able to do much about it. Not without giving the game away.”

“Ugh,” Harry groaned. “Fine. I’ll… deal with it. Stupid spy runes. Fine. Okay, second, is it safe for you to get involved in my side of things? Necessary?”

“Good one,” Dudley said as he flipped his book shut and open again. “Safe? “Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.” Huh, maybe, but only if we’re really, really careful about it. Like, maybe pretend that I’m not your cousin, I’m your bodyguard. Or you’re there to guide me or something. We can’t be family or bad stuff’ll happen.”

“Or just don’t tell anyone who you are at all,” Harry said as his heart crawled right up in his throat. This was actually working.

Probably.

He wouldn’t know until later, probably too late to do any good about it, but having an ally instead of an enemy and a threat in Dudley was better. Good even. If he could trust Dudley for a while. Well, he’d just run with it until something blew up in his face.

“Even better,” Dudley agreed. “Necessary? “Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain.” Not just yes, but real quick-like, too. We gotta go do something or we’re gonna be in big trouble.”

Harry promptly rolled to his feet and offered Dudley a hand up. The need to act had been drumming away at the back of his head all this time. Having Dudley confirm it was a relief.

“One question of mine,” Dudley said though he bit his lip as he stared at Harry. “We gonna be able to trust each other long-term?”

“Oh, ouch, yeah,” Harry agreed. “I mean, very different goals in life.”

Dudley opened his book again and blinked. “Huh. “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.” Immediately followed by “Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day.” That make sense to you because I’m not getting much at all from that second part?”

“Yeah,” Harry said slowly as he stared into Dudley’s eyes. “Yeah, it makes sense. Us fighting is bad. The war on my side is killing not just people but the whole magical world. And you’re helping so absolutely yeah, we need to go see the goblins.”

Dudley frowned. “Right. Well, if we’re going somewhere, you’re getting new clothes. I am not being seen in public with you looking like that.”

He strode out of the back room with the book in his hand, leaving Harry to splutter and then hurry after him. Seriously? It wasn’t like Harry wanted to wear these rags. He didn’t have a choice!

 

3. Under Rock and Claw: Gringotts

Getting to London turned out to be as easy as Dudley stomping his way out of the back room, telling the guy watching over the dojo that he was borrowing the book, and then marching back home where Dudley complained to Aunt Petunia about Mrs. Number Eleven seeing them out and about and sniffing over Harry’s ratty trainers and stained shirt.

Aunt Petunia stared right at Harry as if seeing him for the first time ever, and then hissed with outrage.

“I know you’re busy getting ready, Mum,” Dudley said before she could start ranting or Harry could get all defensive about not being allowed to have his own clothes ever. “I can drag him off and get him something cheap and decent. There’s a big charity shop near one of my friends’ place. We can kit him out easy, save a penny along the way.”

“Excellent,” Aunt Petunia said as she delved into her purse and came up with fifty quid. “I expect receipts for the boy’s clothing but if you want to pick up something for yourself it’ll come out of your allowance, Dudley dear.”

“’Course,” Dudley said perfectly calmly. “We’ll probably get some food while we’re out. Save you washing more dishes.”

“You’re such a good boy,” Aunt Petunia said, kissing Dudley’s forehead and then his cheek as he spluttered and huffed and kind of vaguely pretended to wave her off.

Five minutes later, the two of them were on the local train headed towards London together. They did, in fact, stop at the charity shop where Dudley bullied Harry into buying three used but still nice T-shirts, two used but nice pairs of trousers, and one pair of spanking new trainers that actually fit Harry properly. Plus a shiny new backpack in forest green to carry it all in.

“Okay,” Dudley had said once they had things that were the right size, looked more or less decent and had been paid for, “put those on. I mean it. I won’t go anywhere with you looking like that.”

Harry had groaned mostly for show, but he’d ducked into the train station bathroom willingly enough. Clothes his own size that hadn’t been Dudley’s before felt like an unimaginable luxury. He kind of wished he’d gotten new pants and socks, too, but Aunt Petunia’s new-found awareness of Harry’s rubbish clothes reflecting badly on them might let him get them later. Hopefully.

He’d sneak out if he had to.

Before the train arrived at the little two-car-long station, Harry had carefully used a pen and a scrap of paper borrowed from the station master to create a paper version of the Don’t See Me rune pair. Dudley had frowned about it, but he’d not objected. Hadn’t asked, either, not even when Harry tucked the slip of paper away into his pocket and the station master seemed to forget Harry entirely.

The train trip to London felt like it took decades. Actually only took about an hour or so to get to the station closest to the Leaky Cauldron. Getting Dudley into Diagon Alley took nothing harder than walking straight through the Leaky, tapping the bricks and then hauling Dudley straight on through.

Diagon was just as it had been the first time Harry visited. The narrow street with its looming, hand-crafted buildings glittered with bits of magic. The people in the street wore cloaks despite the weather, though there were fewer hats.

There was a furtive feeling to the people in the Alley, though. None of them looked relaxed or excited, just nervous or steel jawed as they grimly did their business. Even the kids gazing with awe-filled eyes at the latest broomstick at Quality Quidditch Supplies glanced over their shoulders as if worried someone might attack them while they drooled.

Minister Fudge’s endless protests that no, of course You-Know-Who was not back clearly weren’t enough to reassure everyone.

“Whoa.” Dudley whistled, low and stunned, nothing but stars in his eyes which made the back of Harry’s neck prickle.

“Spies,” Harry muttered at Dudley as he hauled at Dudley’s sleeve to keep him moving. “We gotta get out of sight.”

“Bloody hell,” Dudley grumbled. “Fine. But I want to look around here someday. Where to?”

“Big white marble building, be extra polite to the Goblins,” Harry told him. “No smiles with teeth, Aunt Marge style bow. Be brief, accurate, gone.”

“Huh,” Dudley said as if he approved. “Right. Let’s go.”

He took the lead, striding right up the street as if he belonged there. The people in Diagon responded to his firm stride and direct gaze by assessing his muggle clothes with a glance and then getting out of his way. Harry scurried along behind Dudley, wishing for a cap, but Dudley seemed to be so much of a presence that Harry was almost invisible.

Or maybe it was the rune pair. That was possible, too. Harry earnestly wished that it was safe enough to test the rune pair to see if that was what directed people’s eyes away, but this wasn’t the time, and he couldn’t risk it.

If only he’d taken Runes with Hermione. He really, really wished that he had. Too late now.

There was so much stuff Harry needed to learn!

Either way, they went right on into Gringotts, got in line and then ten minutes later stood in front of one of the clerks.

“Ah, he needs to have a um, lineage test,” Harry said when Dudley frowned at him. “And to see if my mother left him a vault. Quietly. His parents might um, harm both of us if they knew he was here.”

Dudley snorted. “No “might” about that. Dad would beat us both to death and Mum would help him hide the bodies.”

“…One moment please,” the clerk said after eyeing the two of them very narrowly indeed.

One of the guards stomped over to lead them off down a hallway, up a short flight of stairs, down two long flights of stairs, through a series of doors and around about twenty corners that had Harry completely turned around. They ended up in an office with a big oak desk that Uncle Vernon would’ve approved of behind which sat a goblin with a poof of fine white hair like dandelion fluff.

He stared at Harry, then at Dudley, and then at Harry again while tapping his very sharp and very shiny claws against the table.

“I’m glad that you finally responded to our summons, Mr. Pot—”

“No names!” Harry squawked. “Please, sir, do not use names. Not for either of us. It’s not safe.”

Just the thought of anyone using his name at the moment had Harry’s heart about to beat straight through his chest. Dudley patted Harry’s back as the goblin frowned at them both. When Dudley pulled out his borrowed copy of The Art of War, the frown turned into pure puzzlement.

“Right, yeah,” Dudley drawled as he shook his head at the page he’d chosen. “That’s obvious now that I think about it. “All warfare is based on deception.” Both our side and the other sides.”

“How many sides are there?” Harry asked, a little surprised by the plural.

Dudley looked at Harry as if he was a blithering idiot. “There’s as many sides as there are people involved, plus everyone watching plus everyone behind the scenes. Everyone’s out for their own good and you gotta be prepared for that. Given that we’re both in really stupid-weak positions, we gotta use deception until our positions are stronger.”

“Fair,” Harry agreed. “I really have to stop thinking of this as black and white.”

“Please,” Dudley said before turning to the goblin. “Call him Young Sir. Call me… Judoka.”

The goblin tapped those very shiny claws against his desk as he studied the two of them. “Are you in fact a student of Judo?”

“Just started learning this summer,” Dudley confirmed. “Seems appropriate.”

“Very well,” the goblin said. “You may call me Silverclaw. I am the… account manager for the family in question. Testing your heritage and gifts can be done easily enough. The fee will be two galleons.”

Harry hesitated. “Will anyone be able to see that I paid for it?”

“As you have been emancipated by virtue of participating in a death tournament where death did, in fact, happen to one of your competitors,” Silverclaw said with the nastiest and smuggest smiles Harry had ever seen, “no. That was part of why we attempted to summon you to Gringotts. All your accounts are now available to you. No one can keep you from accessing them. And we have a great deal of work to do getting them up to date and running properly.”

Harry blinked at the very pointed way that Silverclaw said “death tournament” like he’d suddenly been served a slug sandwich in the middle of high tea. Next to him, Dudley stiffened like he grew six inches taller and gained fifty pounds of muscle in an instant.

“Wait,” Dudley squawked. “What’d’ya mean “death tournament”? You came home looking like you’d gotten a thrashing. What’s this tournament nonsense?”

“We are not discussing that until we have completely secure wards,” Harry said, glaring at Silverclaw and then at Dudley, both of whom bristled, “at least three layers of active defenses, and about three reams of paper so I can draw pictures, and you can take notes.”

Dudley grumbled but nodded. “Fine. Accounts. Plural. Not being handled properly, I take it? My… what are we?”

Harry frowned. They couldn’t say cousins. They certainly weren’t brothers. Aunt Petunia had ruined that when they were still in nappies. Definitely not friends.

“Allies,” Harry decided.

“I can work with that,” Dudley said, nodding. “Right. My ally has absolutely no education about business, accounts or estates. I’ve got some.”

“I trust him to tell me what’s wrong more than I do most anyone else right now,” Harry said. “And yeah, accounts? With multiple vaults?”

Silverclaw hummed as he steepled his shiny claws right under his chin, tapping his chin against the very tip of those clearly terribly sharp claws. Harry didn’t need Hermione to tell him that Silverclaw found this entire thing fascinating. Or that he was deeply curious but firmly on his own side.

Not Harry’s. Not Dudley’s. His side. Or, more likely, on the Goblin’s side.

“Yes,” Silverclaw finally said. “If I may request, Seer Judoka, what do you see about these many accounts?”

Dudley stared at him for a moment before turning to Harry.

“Totally up to you,” Harry said. “It’s your magic. It’s your vision. If you don’t feel up to it or the question bugs you, don’t. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Doesn’t make the back of my neck itch, anyway. Most everything else the last few days has.”

“You got some of this, too,” Dudley said, wagging his finger at Harry. “Just focused different than me. Okay. Let’s see what Sun Tzu’s got for me. “Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store.” Ha!”

Silverclaw hissed something between his clenched and suddenly very visible teeth. His claws gouged parallel lines on the surface of his desk, but his eyes were wide, a bit awed.

Dudley didn’t seem to notice because he just tapped his book and nodded as he grinned. “Okay, so there’s a butt load of people that’d love to get at those accounts to fund their own actions. And at least one who’s been doing just that. I think the one that you’re so fussed over. And the so-called other side is bleeding their people dry because I hit “Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance.” Idiot. And the next line is all doing that causes the people to be impoverished. They’re all bleeding out and you’ve got, apparently, a ton of money that could support them all.”

“…If they get me on their side,” Harry said through the rising haze of utter fury.

Exiled to Aunt Petunia’s house. Sent back to be abused year after year. Kept from learning anything actually useful, just on how to defend himself, much less on the rest of this nonsense. He didn’t know accounts. He didn’t know estates. He didn’t know politics.

Hell, Harry knew more about the Muggle political world than he did about the Magical one.

And the only way Harry could be free to live his own life was if he somehow learned to play the game and built his own power base where Dumbledore, Minister Fudge, Voldemort, and the pure blood families couldn’t see it.

But all Dumbledore and Mrs. Weasley did was pat his head and tell him that he was too young and that he ought to enjoy his life. They were using him. Preparing him to be a pawn and a bank account at the same time.

“Right,” Harry said, turning back to Silverclaw. “That answer what you needed?”

“It did, indeed, Young Sir,” Silverclaw said so softly that Dudley frowned at him. “My thanks for the boon of your Sight.”

“I ah… accept your thanks,” Dudley said just as softly. “So. Testing? I got thirty-two quid if that’ll help.”

“No, I’ll pay it,” Harry said. “Out of my oldest, least used vault that has liquid funds in it.”

Silverclaw’s smile went mercenary. “Very good. The Peverell vault it is. Let’s begin.”

He waved Dudley over as a sheet of paper and a knife appeared on the scarred top of his desk. The process for testing was as simple as three drops of blood onto the paper, with a little spell to ensure that Dudley’s blood couldn’t be used by anyone else, for anything else, now or ever.

Harry sighed. “Is there a spell to make sure blood previously spilled can’t be used or loses its potency?”

“Yes,” Silverclaw said, raising an eyebrow and then nodding that logically, yes, Harry would need to know that one. “One simply recites ego reicio omni tempore, focusing on any blood, flesh, hair, or other significant portions of one’s anatomy one might have lost.”

“And… people are losing chunks of their bodies a lot around here?” Dudley asked, voice all squeaky and face pale.

“Remind me to tell you about Mad-Eye Moody later,” Harry said.

He focused on all the blood he’d lost first year playing quidditch, second year with the Chamber of Secrets, third year and of course last year, up to and including that horrible ceremony he’d been forced to participate in by Voldemort. Probably wouldn’t take his blood back from Voldemort, but hey, it was worth a try.

His magic sang with the vicious desire to strike back so maybe it would do some good.

”Ego reicio omni tempore,” Harry recited as he pushed all his magic into the spell.

Something screamed as Harry’s forehead stabbed with pain. He gasped and toppled backwards into Dudley’s arms as a shadow boiled up and wailed…

…just like the diary had.

Just like Voldemort had first year as he erupted off Quirrell’s head.

As blood flowed down Harry’s face, Silverclaw lurched to his feet and goblin guards burst in with their spears and swords raised. Harry groaned, trying to blink hard enough to keep his eyes from crossing.

“Bloody hell, I hate that guy,” Harry complained as darkness slapped him in the face despite all his efforts not to pass right out.

 

4. Between Stone Walls and Cotton Sheets: Healing Halls

Harry woke up to Dudley in a strop on the other side of some lovely tan linen curtains that entirely surrounded his hospital-style bed.

“What do you mean you don’t care that he had another person’s soul trapped in his scar his entire life?” Dudley bellowed loud enough that even Aunt Marge would’ve backed off a few paces. “Who do you think you are? I just want to know who the fuck didn’t do their job. You cannot tell me that another person’s literal fucking soul wouldn’t show up on a proper bloody health scan!”

The torch beside Harry’s bed flickered in time with Dudley’s bellows which was pretty impressive, honestly. He’d always known that Duds had it in him. Something else to see it happening, though. He’d really changed while away at Smelting’s. Harry kind of wondered if Duds had gotten therapy.

For that matter, Harry could probably do with some therapy of his own, if Magicals had anything like that. Probably didn’t. That would be just Harry’s luck.

“Look,” Bill Weasley said in that forced calm voice that people always used when they were facing down someone who would not listen to reason, “I understand that you’re upset, Seer Judoka. I sympathize. The goblins are working on making sure that your… friend?”

“Ally and that’s all you need to know,” Dudley snapped at him. “I don’t give a bloody flying fuck about what the Goblins are doing. I’m fine with them. They’re lovely. They’re bloody helpful. I’m upset that my ally who is nearly fifteen bloody years old has had another person’s soul stuck inside him since he was less than two years old and absolutely not one magi did a fucking thing about it. Tell me that it wasn’t deliberate, and I’ll call you a liar to your face.”

Tellingly, Bill said nothing.

Silence echoed for long enough that Harry pondered sitting up and intervening, even though he really didn’t want any of the Weasley’s to know that he was at Gringotts. Bill was a nice guy. Very smart. Very talented.

Harry couldn’t trust him for the exact reasons that Dudley’d just said.

Harry was also pretty sure that he couldn’t’ve sat up if his life depended on it. He felt much like he had after the whole thing with Quirrell. And the Chamber, for that matter. Huh, and after the graveyard so apparently encounters with Voldemort left him feeling like he’d been run over by a whole fleet of lorries.

“Exactly,” Dudley said, low and vicious and utterly furious. “So swear your oath not to say one bloody word about any of this. Then take your poncy red-headed arse out of this room and do not speak a bloody word of this to anyone or I will take it upon myself to inform the Goblins exactly what sort of person they’ve got working for them.”

“I wouldn’t…” Bill trailed off with a sigh.

“Oath,” Dudley demanded.

“I concur,” a very cold woman’s voice agreed. “You were instructed not to get involved, Cursebreaker Weasley. Our supervisor is not going to be pleased that you’re here.”

“I… I was just worried about Ha—”

Bill’s voice cut off in a meaty slap and then a grunt as someone, probably Bill, fell to the ground. Harry levered himself up on his elbow, tugging at the blankets because oh, crap.

“You will not speak that name,” Dudley said. “Oath.”

Colder than the woman and mean enough that Harry would’ve been running for his life ages ago.

“Agreed,” the woman said.

“Bloody hell.” Bill sighed. “Very well. I, William Arthur Weasley, do hereby swear on my life and my magic that I will not speak of the individual allied with Seer Judoka, that I will not write, sing, dance, use sign language, convey any information at all through body language, or use any known or unknown magical means to communicate information about Seer Judoka’s ally up to and including memory extraction. Furthermore, I, William Arthur Weasley, do hereby swear upon my life and my magic that I will not inform anyone of Seer Judoka’s existence until such a time as Seer Judoka informs me in person that it is acceptable. So do I swear, on my life and my magic.”

There was a bright glow from the other side of the curtain.

“Finally,” Dudley huffed. “Could’ve been done with that an hour ago. Now get your poncy arse out of here and do not come back.”

“Indeed,” the woman said. “Take your arse straight to our supervisor, Cursebreaker Weasley.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bill said.

A door opened and closed. Dudley huffed as he pushed the curtains open, scowling like he wanted to be punching people’s faces in.

“I shoulda broken his nose the minute he walked in,” Dudley grumbled. He brightened when he saw Harry trying to sit up. “Finally. You’ve been out for three hours. This is Lacey Black. She’s here to make sure there’s nothing else on you now that you’re awake. They already checked and I had a whole bunch of spells on me to keep me from learning or using my gifts and whatnot.”

Harry studied the very stern young woman with black hair, very sharp blue eyes and a dueling grip on her wand. “Whatnot.”

“Whatnot,” Dudley said firmly enough that Harry just laughed and collapsed back on the bed.

“Well, go ahead,” Harry told Lacey. “Best get them all off while I’m already flattened.”

“Thank you, Young Sir,” Lacey said as she set to casting health scans the likes of which Harry had never seen.

They crawled over his body and through his magic like an army of ants, making him twitch and squirm despite himself. Several times Lacey stopped to curse under her breath before casting spells that felt approximately like having his bollocks wrenched out through his bellybutton. By the time she was done, Harry felt like he’d been wrung out like a rag by a giant.

But better.

“Okay, that helped,” Harry said once Lacey stopped casting and started recording notes in a little book she pulled from her pocket. “I feel a lot lighter. And like there are fewer people watching me constantly. How are we getting back home?”

“We’re not,” Dudley said so grimly that Harry tried to sit up again. “Oh, stop that, you idiot. You’re flattened. The goblins sent people to check on home. They’re up to their ears in spells that’ll tell everyone we could be worried about that we’re up to hijinks, plus enough control spells that I’m pretty sure that I’ve never spoken to my own mum and dad.”

“…Okay,” Harry said, shivering. “That’s not good. My trunk?”

“Still there,” Dudley said. “Lacey’s got a suggestion that should keep us safe and get Mum and Dad out of the line of fire. But my book says that they’re gonna be coming for you soon so you gotta be there or they’ll see all of this before we’re ready.”

“Tell me everything that happened after I passed out in order,” Harry ordered, nerves twitching all over again.

Very long story short, Dudley and Silverclaw had called in healers as soon as he passed out. The healers had done one very simple scan and found remnants of the soul chunk, apparently called a horcrux, in his scar. Plus remnants in his magic of the other encounters he’d had with Voldemort’s disembodied bits and pieces.

That led to a whole lot of yelling, sending a team to make sure Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were okay, and the discovery that everyone on Privet Drive had spells sculpting them to be different people. Even Mrs. Figg, who was apparently a squib assigned to keep an eye on him, had been spelled to compliance.

Part of the reason everyone acted so weird was that at least four different parties had put down control and monitoring spells without wiping out the previous ones. Interactions all over the place and, because it was just Muggles, no one cared.

“So, Dad’s getting promoted and sent to work in Ireland,” Dudley said. “Mum’s apparently over the moon because they’re getting a much bigger house in a swankier neighborhood. The goblins set up a place for me to live just two blocks off Smelting’s with “proper adult supervision” and then Mum and Dad both accepted that like it was logical. They’re already packing. Gleefully.”

“Wow,” Harry said, a little stunned by it all. “Four different parties? Who?”

“Albus Dumbledore,” Lacey said from her spot off by the entrance to the linen curtains, “Amelia Bones, Remus Lupin, and Narcissa Malfoy.”

Harry stared at her. “…Malfoy? As in Draco Malfoy’s mum?”

“The same,” Lacey agreed. One corner of her mouth quirked up as Harry spluttered.

“Who’s that?” Dudley asked.

His scowl had turned into the smirk that always preceded teasing. Which, fair. Not at Harry, of course. He was completely justified in being befuddled that Narcissa Malfoy would put tracking spells and whatnot on Privet Drive.

How’d she even find Privet Drive? Especially without being seen?

He could not believe that Narcissa Malfoy would’ve crept into their backyard under an invisibility cloak to put runes on the back fence. She would’ve destroyed her dress. Not possible.

“Mum of the blondest, ponciest, whiniest daddy’s boy that Hogwarts has,” Harry explained. “Every other sentence out of his mouth is “when my father hears about this” followed by stupid threats.”

Dudley frowned at Harry. “She’s poncy, too?”

“Classy,” Harry corrected. “Like… your aunt wishes she was. Except for real. Elegant.”

“What the bloody hell?” Dudley said as he very obvious asked the same questions in his head that Harry just had.

“It is a puzzle,” Lacey said. She blinked when Harry turned to stare right at her. “Problem?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Dudley may trust you but that doesn’t mean I do. I don’t want oaths.”

“Yet,” Dudley interrupted.

Harry waved at him, getting a snicker in return. The byplay made Lacey frown at him. Well, at least she wasn’t offering pronouncements about how he should just let the adults take care of things. Or that it was sadly necessary. Or that he should keep his head down and not cause trouble. Or any of the other nonsense adults had spouted at him over the last handful of years.

“I want answers,” Harry said. “Honest ones. I don’t care how brutal they are. I don’t care if they hurt my or Dudley’s feelings. You will be one hundred percent truthful with me or you’re gone.”

Lacey blinked. “All right. Ask.”

“What do you gain by helping us?” Harry asked instead of asking how she’d gotten here, why she was so harsh to Bill or a thousand other ideas that zipped through his head.

Lacey sucked a breath between her teeth as her eyes went wide. “Ah. I begin to see why Silverclaw warned me about this case. All right. My husband is Anthony Black. He’s the son of Marius Black who was thrown out of the Black family for being a squib. Both Anthony and I were denied the right to attend Hogwarts by Dumbledore for… bullshit reasons. Both of us are pulled to find Lord Black and swear to the Black family, only we can’t find him. It’s. Hm. Painful.”

“All right,” Harry said, pretty sure that she had told the truth. He’d always been good at seeing when people lied to him, even if he did nothing about it, like with Ron. “That’s nice. What do you, personally, gain by helping us, specifically. That’s all about the two of you. The Black family.”

“You are much smarter than I expected,” Lacey murmured as she ran her thumbnail over her bottom lip while narrowing her eyes at him.

Her sleek black skirt quivered a bit as if her knees shook ever so slightly. Harry noted it. Ignored it. Stared at her until Lacey sighed and Dudley shifted nervously next to the bed.

“I could fairly claim that I will get promoted for helping you,” Lacey said, flipping her fingers when Harry frowned at her, “but that’s irrelevant, really. I, personally, am helping the two you, specifically, because I want to destroy Dumbledore’s power base, strip many of the changes made to Hogwarts away so that the original curriculum is reinstated, and because leaving a horcrux in a baby pisses me off so much that someone is going to die over it.”

That was much more revealing. And helpful. Harry could work with that. He wasn’t sure what the original curriculum was, but finding out would help him know what he needed to learn. That Dumbledore had a power base was obvious. That it was strong enough to need destruction instead of being argued to Lacey’s side, that was interesting.

“Okay,” Harry said. “So, ally of mine, what’s the book say?”

Dudley flipped his book open. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

“Well, that’s pretty clear,” Harry said with a bark of a laugh that made Dudley snort.

Lacey blinked several times while cocking her head to the side like Hedwig. “If you say so.”

Harry pushed himself up enough that he could sit upright instead of lying flat on the bed. “It’s saying that I don’t know enough. I need to learn more. You’re on the team, provisionally. I need to know what resources we have. I need to know what the curriculum should have been. I need to know what Dumbledore, Bones, Lupin and Narcissa bloody Malfoy gained by spelling both of us and our home.”

“Ah,” Lacey said as she nodded slowly and smiled like a piranha sighting prey. “Know yourself. Know your enemy. I’m surprised You-Know-Who isn’t in there.”

“He didn’t spell us,” Harry said. “Let’s get back to work. I need… I need a place to stay. I need tutors. And I need access to my owl. Quickly.”

Because he couldn’t go back to Privet Drive without earning Lacey and her husband Anthony’s loyalty and that meant getting Sirius involved.

 

5. In a Library Old and New: Number Nine Grimmauld Place

Islington, London, turned out to be a rather nice area. Not much greenery, of course. Not like Privet Drive. The houses were all terraced with nice solid, white-washed steps and spanking black railings. Across the street was an acceptably nice square with some mature trees, bit of grass over mounds that hid a reservoir inside.

Number Nine Grimmauld Place stood at the very end of the block. They had lampposts just in front of the house and on the sidewalk that ran long the lefthand side of the building. If either Harry or Dudley were old enough to drive, they’d’ve been able to claim a parking spot right next to the building, no problem.

Back yard had brick walls about six foot high with a nicely mature mix of ivy, temperate palms and an easy-care assortment of begonias, petunias and lilies on either side of the postage stamp of a lawn.

Inside was nice, too, if a bit narrow. Three bedrooms, a good kitchen that Harry approved of with new appliances, two baths, too.

“Furnished. Good,” was all Dudley’d said when Lacey escorted them into their new home.

As if sleek white walls, gleaming silver trim and the palest of pale blond upholstery on everything was a comfortable thing to live in. Harry was absolutely hitting every single thing in the place with color changing charms at the first opportunity. If he wanted to live in a hospital, a minimalist’s dream of one at that, he’d go do that. Not that Dudley cared as long as there was somewhere to sit in their new home.

Well, Harry’s new home. Dudley’s home off at Smelting’s was an actual cottage that backed on the canal. He apparently had a dock, should he ever decide to take up boating, and a prize-winning garden of all things.

As if Dudley had ever given a rat’s fart about the garden. That was Harry’s thing. Harry’s and Aunt Petunia who had, apparently, insisted on digging up her prize rosebushes to take with her to Ireland.

It sat very odd under Harry’s breastbone that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were so willing to casually move off to another country without a backwards glance.

Yes, Lacey had confirmed that they and the whole neighborhood had been carefully obliviated so that they would more or less forget both Harry and Dudley over time when they were out of sight. Aunt Marge had been easily dealt with, too. She’d been much more suggestible since Harry blew her up. Something about the previous Obliviation being shoddy work, apparently.

Still. He couldn’t imagine that Duds was happy about his parents waltzing off and forgetting him. Dudley hadn’t said a thing. He’d just flipped through his book, grunted, and then never talked about it at all. Fine. If Dudley didn’t care about his parents taking a runner on him, then Harry wouldn’t care, either.

What Harry cared about was that while the neighborhood was firmly Muggle, Number Nine had been fitted with the best protective wards the Goblins could create. In addition, Lacey had set up a rock-solid Fidelus with Harry as the Secret Keeper, despite Lacey’s dislike for the Fidelus as a general rule.

“Since we’re not hiding the building itself,” Lacey said once she’d sealed it and Harry had managed to catch his breath, “it’s not as bad as a normal one. Usually the Fidelus means you can’t have wards or anything else. All we’re hiding is that Number Nine is your sanctum. You’ll still be listed and get the post. No one will be able to know that you have a sanctum or where it is unless you, personally, tell them.”

“I can work with that,” Dudley said while Harry nodded. “We’ll wait to see if we need to make my cottage into a sanctum secret thingie, too.”

“Agreed,” Harry said immediately since he’d have to carry that Fidelus, too, as Dudley didn’t have enough active magic to do it.

Better still, Lacey had helped Harry create a library for all the books he’d gotten from his multitude of vaults.

“I kinda don’t ever want to leave this room,” Dudley said as Harry flopped on the sofa next to the library’s fireplace. “This is amazing.”

“Agreed,” Harry said.

The room had been a bigger than normal parlor on the first floor. Lacey’s team of goblins charged with setting up the wards had expanded it two stories up and then quadrupled the length and width of the room. Even with all that, the bookcases spread from floor to ceiling. There were free-standing bookshelves all through the room, none of them standing higher than Harry’s waist.

Every single bookshelf was full of books.

New books that Lacey had ordered from four different bookstores after Dudley commented that it wasn’t just Art of War that gave him visions. It was all books, even old books from the Potter, Peverell, Black and Evans vaults.

Which, wow, Harry’s mum had filled not one but four vaults. One was strictly money, a sizeable stash that had kept growing after her death because she’d insisted on Muggle investments instead of just Magical ones. Two trust vaults, one each for Harry and Dudley, and then her book vault which had been stacked with books.

The Peverell vault had a small amount of money, which Harry had promptly increased because having an untraceable source of money was going to be so very useful. It also had four library trunks the size of a paperback, all of which had been stuffed to the gills with incredibly rare books that it was actively illegal to buy in Britian.

“Magic is like the best thing ever,” Dudley said as he ran his fingers along the spines of a series of law books from the fifteen hundreds. “This’d take months to catalog the normal way.”

“Catalogus is my friend Hermione’s favorite spell in the whole world,” Harry replied with a grin. “She’s a book worm and she burst into tears when she found out there’s a spell specifically for organizing your books and notes and stuff.”

“Makes me wish I could do active magic,” Dudley said.

He sighed and flopped on the other side of the sofa. Harry didn’t recognize the look on Dudley’s face. Not angry. Not scared. Not sad, really. Wistful? Vaguely regretful?

“Oh, stop,” Dudley complained at Harry. “I can see you worrying your head off from here. I’m fine.”

“They just left,” Harry complained. “I just. They’re your parents and they just left.”

“They’re my parents and they never once treated me like their actual kid,” Dudley countered with a grim twist to his mouth that surprised Harry. “I been talking to the counselor back at Smelting’s. Had to talk her down from filing charges at least a dozen times. I was never a child. I was a pet to them. Something to fuss over and praise and dress up, not a real person to care about, teach, and help become a good adult. Besides, I always knew that if I showed any signs of, you know, funny stuff the good times would end.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest that, but he couldn’t. Neither of them had been joking when they said that Uncle Vernon would absolutely murder them both and that Aunt Petunia would help him hide the bodies.

“You sure you’re going to be okay here by yourself, Duds?” Harry asked. “I could probably figure out something to tell That Man and his crew.”

Dudley snorted. “I won’t be alone. Lacey and Anthony both insist on staying here with me until you get back. Silverclaw’s planning on visiting like daily. You’re the one who’s going to be on his own, not me.”

“For only a few days to a week,” Lacey said from the doorway.

She strode in, all brutal efficiency and lethal intent. Her husband, Anthony Orion Black, sauntered in behind her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and fingers that twitched like they wanted to be fidgeting with something in his coat pocket.

The first time Harry saw Anthony at Gringotts, he’d done a double take. If Sirius got himself cleaned up, trimmed his hair, shaved off the ragged mustache, he’d be a spitting image of Anthony. Well. After he gained ten stone or so. They looked enough alike that they could’ve been twins.

Unlike most Magicals, both Lacey and Anthony favored Muggle clothes. Business casual for Anthony who had jeans, a polo shirt and a sport jacket. Business proper for Lacey whose pencil skirt was so sharply pressed that she could probably cut bread with it.

“You’re sure?” Dudley asked.

“Quite,” Lacey said with that grimly vicious smile that made Anthony sigh at her like a besotted fool and Dudley quiver. “When you did the blood ritual, you seem to have accomplished far more than anyone could have expected, Young Sir.”

“…What?” Harry asked warily enough that Lacey dropped into formal report mode instead of her lethal sort of victory.

Anthony pulled a small black box out of his pocket. “This is from the Department of Mysteries. They keep records of every prophecy ever uttered.”

“Including ours?” Dudley said, staring at the box in outright horror. “That’s horrible! How’re we supposed to keep any sort of operational secrecy if they’ve got some automatic scribing process that steals all our words?”

Anthony opened his mouth, shook his head and then waved a hand at Dudley. “I don’t know if they’ve got any of yours. It’s automatic but the key thing is that only someone directly involved in the vision can view the orbs. At least, no one can view them until they’ve been completed.”

He pulled a second box out of his other pocket, opening it to show them a shiny white orb. Probably quartz of some sort, definitely spelled.

“This is a prophecy for me,” Anthony said. “I can pick it up, listen to it as often as I wish, show anyone I want. If you tried to pick it up, you’d be stung with a light charge. If you persisted, you’d be blown across the room or killed.”

He opened the first box, showing Dudley and Harry the orb inside it. Instead of glowing, it was a dull grey, like smokey quartz. Anthony cheerfully tipped it out of the box into his hand before passing it to Lacey who rolled her eyes before passing it on to Dudley.

“Oh, I hate that,” Dudley said as he shoved it right on into Harry’s palms. “Ugh. Feels like static electricity and Mum screaming in my ear.”

It felt like Dumbledore staring right at Harry. It felt like Trelawney going vague as she croaked a prophecy at him. It felt like each and every time Voldemort had almost killed Harry, except now they were dry, dusty things consigned to the history books.

Dudley jerked the orb out of Harry’s hand. “Bloody hell, don’t sink into the thing.”

“He’s dead,” Harry said, throat aching as if he’d been screaming.

“Yeah, we heard,” Dudley said, all snappish and angry, except that was his worried face, not his angry face.

Harry stared at him as he slowly stretched his aching fingers out. “Did I start spouting prophecies?”

“Eh, not exactly,” Dudley said. “You started denouncing it as a fake that That Man, who you actually called “That Man” had magicked into being by sheer force of will. And a bunch of stuff about where the other bits and bobs of You-Know-Who were before you destroyed them.”

Harry sighed. “I really hate divination. It’s the worst subject ever.”

Across the room, over by the door, Anthony let out a sound that was probably supposed to be a giggle. It came out terrified and hysterical. Lacey had her wand in her hand, arm held stiff against her side so the tip of her wand pointed at the floor. She was pale as could be, but not shaking, not frightened, just very, very on alert.

“So,” Harry said, looking at Lacey who stiffened for a moment, “as I understand it, seers don’t generally remember prophecies. I don’t remember whatever that was. Don’t try and tell me about it. What I got from it was that Dumbledore manipulated Trelawney and now You-Know-Who is dead. That’s what you were gonna say, right?”

Lacey breathed out and sheathed her wand. “Yes, actually. From every means that the Goblins have to search with, You-Know-Who died exactly when you cast the blood refusal spell. We found one horcrux in the bank in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault. He’d imbued it into Helga Hufflepuff’s cup. The cup was partially melted, still identifiable, and the horcrux was utterly destroyed. Very likely, all his other horcruxes were destroyed as well.”

“How many fragments did this bloke chop off his soul?” Dudley asked Harry.

“No idea,” Harry said only to stop and frown. “No, actually, seven, I think. I killed the one in the diary second year. The cup’s another one. There’s a ring hidden… in his dad’s old shack, I think. There should be one in Hogwarts, but I think Dumbledore has that one. The wards should’ve told him when it died even if it hid from him before. Pretty sure Sirius has another one. And a snake, a really big-arse snake. Betcha she’s dead, too.”

All of them lingered in Harry’s mind like things he’d seen on the telly years ago, vague and distant but still quite distinct. Not like they were important. More like they’d just tweaked his interest enough that he mused on them just long enough for the image to sink in.

The image of Voldemort’s melted body was a good bit more distinct. That was a technicolor nightmare that Harry was going to be reliving every night for, oh, the rest of his life, but there was a deep sort of satisfaction to it, too.

“This is not how prophecy works,” Anthony complained.

“We’re not prophets,” Dudley countered with a little sneer that would’ve done Aunt Petunia proud. “We’re Seers and that’s something else entirely. I see things. I tell people about them. They do what they bloody well please about it.”

“It’s more… hunches and weird connections in my head,” Harry said. “I’m not very good at planning but you put me in a situation, I’ll figure a way out of it. I always know when I’m being watched. And I just kind of… know… if something is important, trivial, whatever. Not as strong as Judoka is.”

Took more than a little bit of effort to remember to say “Judoka”. Harry’s gut still didn’t trust Lacey and Anthony fully. They were mostly on Harry and Dudley’s side. They cared. They wanted to do right by Harry in particular, but also Dudley.

But they were only mostly on Harry’s side. Too soon for full trust.

Before Lacey could do more than frown disapprovingly at Harry, a very familiar tapping sounded at the library window. Harry turned, beaming when he saw Hedwig on the sill, looking utterly proud of herself.

“Hey, pretty girl,” Harry said once he’d wobbled his way over to the window to let her in. “Glad you found us. Got mail for me?”

Hedwig hooted, scooting up his arm to his shoulder where she set to grooming his hair. She did have a letter tied to her leg, which Harry took. When he flopped back on the couch, he opened the letter and sighed.

“Looks like our plans have to move up,” Harry said. “Dumbledore wants me out of Privet Drive tomorrow.”

 

6. On Doorsteps Muggle and Magical: Number Twelve Grimmauld Place

Privet Drive in the evening was a surprisingly peaceful place without his aunt and uncle around. The holes where Aunt Petunia had dug up her rosebushes had been loosely filled with dirt. Very obviously, no one had watered since they went because Aunt Petunia’s prize-winning flowers had begun to fade and wilt for lack of care. Harry sat on the front steps, his trunk by his side, watching the sun set and shadows slowly overtake the place he’d once lived.

Not his home. It had never been a home. It was at best a place that Harry had lived, much to his dismay and to his relatives’ horror.

Dudley had really wanted to come back with Harry.

They’d spent half the night arguing the point. In the end, Harry had insisted that Dudley reference the book. He’d kind of known that the answer would be on Harry’s side instead of Dudley’s, but with Dudley flat not listening, one did what one had to.

“I hate you,” Dudley had complained as he read and then tossed the book at Harry.

”O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.”

Harry had snorted and grinned. “Yeah, that’s pretty darn clear. I can’t sell the lie that your parents took you off on holiday and left me behind if you’re there with me.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dudley had grumbled before stomping off to bed.

Instead of sleeping, Harry had searched through the library, using catalogus of course, for spells that would help him hide from people watching him. And spells to make sure that no one could read his mind since Lacey had explained very pointedly that Harry’s habit of staring everyone in the eye was a dangerous, dangerous thing in the Magical world.

He’d found a few spells that he could try for directing people’s attention away. He’d found nothing much to help with the Legilimency thing, other than its partner Occlumency which took years to master.

Harry had one night. Not gonna happen.

Three hours of sleep, a hearty breakfast that Harry prepared for him and Dudley, and then he was on his way back to Privet Drive. Harry had then sent Hedwig off with his reply letter scribbled on the bottom of Dumbledore’s very brief “Will be picking you up tomorrow evening—be available after dusk”.

His note had been equally brief: “Good—relatives off on holiday so coast should be clear. Send someone who knows how to act among Muggles. Neighbors suspicious enough as it is.”

The rune pair on the front step had still been there when Harry sat down. He’d carefully run his fingers over it, destroying it entirely. Last thing he wanted was for whoever was sent to be affected and then wander off without him.

As much as Harry wanted to go do something about the others, he didn’t. The prickle of watching eyes was too intense. Mrs. Number Eleven made a point of strolling by, a kind smile on her lips that absolutely did not reach her eyes.

“Waiting for friends?” Mrs. Number Eleven asked while eyeing the gaping holes in the garden left by Aunt Petunia’s disappeared rose bushes.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “They should be here soon. Bit of a holiday. Aunt Petunia and Dudley are off with Uncle Vernon for a holiday, too. My friends are just a bit late picking me up. Won’t be long, though.”

“How nice for you,” Mrs. Number Eleven said with a smirk as she marched off back home to share the news that Aunt Petunia wasn’t going to be around for the bridge game which meant she’d be the queen of Privet Drive.

In perpetuity if Harry had anything to say about it, not that he was going to tell Mrs. Number Eleven that.

Sunset faded into grey dusk and then into sable night before a car purred up Privet Drive. Harry had kind of expected that someone would aparate in, so the car stopping right in front of Number Four was a surprise.

Mr. Weasley sat behind the wheel of a plain black Ford Anglia, near twin to the one that had gone feral off in the Forbidden Forest. He smiled and waved to Harry, but Remus Lupin was the one who got out on the other side.

“You’ve been waiting here all day?” Remus asked with a disapproving frown.

“No, just since sunset,” Harry said. “Can you shrink my trunk? I mean once we’re under way, of course.”

He nodded just a little bit to the way the curtains twitched open at Number Three, Five and Six. It took a moment for Remus to realize what Harry meant. Then he smiled that so-polite meaningless smile of his as he helped Harry settle his trunk in the back seat.

“We’d planned on apparating you out,” Mr. Weasley offered as he carefully and properly pulled away from the curb and set off down Privet Drive towards Wisteria Lane. “Dumbledore insisted that we find another way when you replied. Is spying really that much of a problem, Harry?”

Harry laughed despite himself. “Oh, yes. All the wives in the neighborhood spy on each other. All the husbands compete with each other. Mrs. Number Eleven is going to be over the moon with delight that Aunt Petunia is off on Holiday for a while. She’ll get to take Aunt Petunia’s place as queen of the neighborhood, you see.”

Remus leaned around and tapped Harry’s trunk with his wand. He smiled when Harry shoved it into his pocket for safe-keeping. There was something wary in his eyes, something watchful, like he was certain that Harry was up to something and just needed a piece of evidence as proof.

Proof of what, Harry didn’t know. Yet. He would figure it out later, hopefully.

“So where are we going?” Harry asked. “The Burrow?”

“Ah, no, Dumbledore thought you’d like to see Ron and Hermione,” Mr. Weasley said. “They’re staying with Sirius at the moment. We all are, actually. The place is a bit of a pit, so we’re all pitching in to clean it up proper.”

“Oh,” Harry said with an unfortunately obvious lack of enthusiasm as his eyebrows went up. He leaned back in the black seat as he mourned the loss of his own private bedroom. “That’ll be… nice.”

“The bedrooms are already done,” Remus said, suspicion dropping into amusement at Harry’s less than stellar job at hiding his dismay. “Molly’s not satisfied with the kitchen yet, but it’s getting there.”

A mile or so later, Mr. Weasley tapped a button on the dash. Instead of the new Ford Anglia taking flight, it seemed to shake itself and firmly take control. Rather like the Night Bus.

Alarmingly like the Night Bus since Mr. Weasley took his hands off the wheel and then gripped the dash as they zoomed forward at a terrifying rate.

“What happened to flying?” Harry squeaked as the Ford Anglia squeezed between two cars and then dashed to the right only to scamper across the sidewalk like a dog rushing home for a treat.

“Ah, well, this is a Ministry vehicle,” Mr. Weasley explained. “Not one of mine. It’s not got the capacity to fly. I’m still working out what went wrong with my last one. I think I’m close. Hopefully in a few months we’ll be able to test the functionality on some Ministry cars.”

“That’s nice,” Harry said. He desperately braced his feet and hands so that he wouldn’t slide around on the back seat.

“If he can work it out, he’ll get a royalty for every car that’s adjusted, plus a promotion,” Remus explained, doing the same as Harry.

“Oh, that is nice,” Harry said much more enthusiastically. “Good luck, sir!”

Mr. Weasley grinned in the rear-view mirror. “Thank you, Harry. Almost there. And… that’s done it.”

The Ford Anglia banged back into regular traffic. Mr. Weasley put his hands back on the wheel. They slid into a parking spot without any issue at all.

On Grimmauld Place.

Harry blinked. “Uh, this is where we’re going?”

“Close,” Remus said as he got out of the car with enough wobbliness that Harry didn’t feel bad about his rather queasy stomach. “It’s under the Fidelus, so read this first.”

Harry took the slip of parchment from Remus, reading ”The Order of the Phoenix is headquartered at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.”

The only reason Harry didn’t break into raucous laughter was that the row of houses ahead of him abruptly ground against one another just like the bricks did at the entrance to Diagon Alley. This time, instead of an archway opening up, an entire house appeared between Number Eleven and Thirteen.

Wait. Every other house on Grimmauld place is odd-numbered. Why did this one have an even number? Were there more houses folded away into wizarding space between each house?

His wild speculation screeched to a stop the next moment as the actual condition of Number Twelve smacked him in the face. It is, to put it mildly, a pit. Grubby, streaked with grime and age-old smoke, with windows so filmed over that they must be opaque from the inside.

“That’s what you meant by needing some cleaning?” Harry said as they all left the black Ford Anglia which promptly took itself away from the curb and sped off into the night. “I think it might need some serious professional assistance. Like, with a wrecking ball.”

“Don’t give Sirius any ideas,” Remus said seriously enough that Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “He loathes this place. His memories of Number Twelve are… all very bad.”

That was, huh. Something Harry kind of knew. He hadn’t had much time around Sirius, but he’d heard more than a couple bitter comments about his parents and running away from home. Given how terrible the place looked, Harry couldn’t blame Sirius.

Still, it was going to be very convenient, far better than what Harry and Dudley had planned for. Slipping up the block was a damn sight easier than making the trip from the Burrow to Grimmauld Place.

Inside, Number Twelve was even worse than outside. It smelled of mold and rot, mingled with the sort of thick layers of dust that came from a place sitting uninhabited for at least a decade. There was a troll’s foot by the door used to hold umbrellas and walking sticks. The wallpaper looked like it was one hard breath away from peeling straight off the walls.

“Yeah,” Harry said with a grimace, “I can see why Mrs. Weasley is in a strop. This is awful.”

“Harry?” Hermione poked her head out of one of the grime-blackened doors. “You’re here!”

She dashed over to tackle Harry with a hug that Harry took gratefully despite his internal squirm of anger at the total silence he’d had so far. Usually by now he would’ve gotten a dozen letters from Hermione and maybe one short note from Ron.

He’d gotten nothing.

Given everything that they’d learned so far, Harry was giving it good odds that Dumbledore was behind that. It just… hurt… that Dumbledore’s orders were more important to Hermione and Ron than their friendship.

Such as it was. Harry hadn’t exactly had many opportunities to make friends in his life, but he had eyes. The way that Hermione lectured and bossed Harry around wasn’t really friendship. Ron’s hot-and-cold attitude really wasn’t friendship at all.

And yet, and yet. His gut kept wibbling on whether or not he could trust them. Ron needed something of his own to be proud of and right now Harry was all he had, though only if he kept everyone else away. And Hermione only felt like she could be around people if she was of use to them, which meant her knowledge.

Not an ideal situation. But the hugs were nice, anyway.

“Are you all right? Do you need some food?” Hermione asked with her normal grace and discretion. “I have some that I saved.”

“No, I’m fine,” Harry said, waving her off while his cheeks burned. “Seriously, it’s okay. My relatives went off on holiday a couple days ago, so I’ve been free to cook and eat as I like. It’s fine.”

The expressions on Mr. Weasley and Remus’ faces were guardedly disapproving. Ron looked relieved as he joined them in the hall. From the look on Molly’s face, she outright didn’t believe that Harry had ever missed a meal in his life, so it must just be Hermione mothering Harry instead of honest concern.

“They just left you behind, mate?” Ron asked with his most thunderous scowl.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “It was seriously a relief. Uncle Vernon found a dandelion on the lawn, and he went full World War III on it. Roped both me and my cousin in on it and he never pulls Dudley into yard care.”

From the puzzled look on Ron’s face, as well as the rest of his family including Bill who stayed behind everyone else with a studiously casual frown in Harry’s direction, Magicals didn’t get the dandelions were the archetypal evil weed.

“Oh, really,” Hermione huffed as she rolled her eyes. “Tell me he didn’t start spraying herbicide everywhere.”

“Can’t,” Harry said with a grin at the way Hermione’s hair puffed up in outrage.

He said nothing else because Sirius pushed his way through the pack of Weasleys with Dumbledore on his heels. Harry latched onto Sirius in a fierce hug that was returned so firmly that his spine popped, and his ribs creaked.

“Get me out of here, Sirius,” Harry whispered right into his ear. “Please!”

There was no way he could stand there and have a civil discussion with Dumbledore, not after everything he’d learned. And definitely not when every single fiber of his soul screamed that Dumbledore was a danger to him, to Sirius, to Dudley, to everyone that Harry cared about.

 

7. Swept Clean of Dust and Misery: Master Bedroom

“Ah, Pup!” Sirius said with a loud enough sniffle that Harry relaxed into his brutal hug. “I’ve been worried sick about you!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Sirius,” Molly huffed as she tried to separate the two of them. “Come along now, Harry. There’s work to be done and then we’ll have a late dinner.”

“I…” Harry let himself choke up, let himself think for the first time since the dandelions about Cedrick and the cauldron of his nightmares, let himself shake in Sirius’ suddenly worried embrace. “I’m tired, Mrs. Weasley. Can I just go to bed?”

Molly cooed at him so much like Aunt Petunia cooed at Dudley that Harry flinched away from her fingers reaching out to cup his cheek. She stared, cheeks slowly paling as if she’d only just noticed that he was thin, and tired, and his scar was a bit red and puffy.

“Of course, dear,” Molly said very slowly indeed with a rather too considering wrinkle between her eyebrows as she studied his face. “We’ve put you in the same room as Ron.”

“Oh,” Harry said with as much forceful polite dismay trying to pretend that it’s not dismay that he could manage to punch into the word. Ron went blazingly red as Molly pressed one hand to her chest. “That’s… nice? Yeah, nice. We’ll go with nice. Um, did anyone do anything about your snoring yet, Ron?”

“Yeah, no,” Ron said. He huffed and crossed his arms over his chest as if that would hide that his cheeks were as red as his hair. “Mum says that it’s not a big deal.”

“You broke four layered silencing charms plus four layered muffling charms on the regular all last year, Ron,” Harry protested. “Even Madame Pomphrey said that wasn’t right.”

“Wait, what?” Molly and Bill said at the same time, though with completely different tones.

Bill sounded horrified. Molly sounded and looked offended. Her fingers twitched as if she was about to pull her wand. Or maybe as if she was planning on pulling a quill and writing one of her infamous howlers.

“Stand still, Ron,” Bill said as he pushed straight to Ron’s side. “This shouldn’t hurt at all.”

“Uh, what?” Ron squeaked as Bill hit him with one of Lacey’s really in-depth and really powerful scanning spells. “Merlin’s pants, Bill. I’m fine!”

Hermione leaned over Bill’s shoulder to read the scan as if Ron’s privacy was a trivial matter, nothing to be concerned at all about. When Bill frowned at her, Hermione didn’t seem to notice it, though she did step back half a step.

“Oh, sleep apnea,” Hermione said. “That’s bad. I mean, the level of it is dangerous. My parents would be insisting on you getting treatment if they were here.”

Sirius pulled Harry out of the knot of people who descended on an increasingly flustered and frightened Ron. The sheer number of questions flying at Ron, who spluttered and cursed and then flinched as Molly went all huffy at him for the cursing was a touch horrifying.

So was the fact that Molly and Arthur didn’t seem to think that fixing dangerous levels of sleep apnea was important.

Well, not until Hermione explained in the bluntest terms possible that it meant that Ron’s throat collapsed, his lungs stopped breathing, and his heart skipped beats all night long. Then it was the biggest of big deals and Molly wouldn’t hear of Ron escaping treatment for his sleep apnea.

Made for a great smokescreen to get Harry upstairs and away from watching eyes. Sirius didn’t quite manage to get Harry past Dumbledore. Unfortunately. In fact, Dumbledore made a point to step right into their path as Sirius and Harry exchanged looks of “yeah, no, not my problem, thank you” before turning towards the stairs.

Where Dumbledore waited, smiling blandly while refusing to meet Harry’s eyes.

“I’m glad to see that you’re well, Mr. Potter,” Dumbledore said. “I’ll be by tomorrow sometime to discuss several issues with you.”

“Sure, Headmaster,” Harry said, also not meeting Dumbledore’s eyes by the simple expedient of staring at the flying pigs and cats cavorting on Dumbledore’s grape-purple robes. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

While blinking at the pigs. Dumbledore blatantly twinkled at Harry as he brushed his hands over the horrible robes and waggled his eyebrows happily. All without meeting Harry’s eyes.

The master of Legilimency refused to meet Harry’s eyes. As if he was afraid that Harry could somehow steal Dumbledore’s secrets. Which meant… that Dumbledore knew something had happened to Voldemort, but he must think… that Voldemort had… taken over Harry instead of being destroyed.

Okay.

Lovely. Just… just what Harry didn’t need to deal with.

Terrific.

The hunch that had never gotten him killed yet screamed that yeah, Dumbledore was one hundred and eighty-nine percent certain without any evidence whatsoever that Harry wasn’t Harry anymore. Great.

Tomorrow was going to suck so hard. Not like Dumbledore ever listened to Harry. Given that he’d put Harry with the Dursleys, given that he’d forced Harry to go back, given that he was one of the people putting those rune pairs on Privet Drive that made sure Harry was miserable, Harry probably wouldn’t be able to convince Dumbledore that he was wrong.

You know, without pain.

So, yeah, very quick work at getting more allies and hopefully setting things up so that Dumbledore couldn’t squash Harry like a bug.

Dumbledore swanned off towards the back of the house. Harry nudged Sirius who took the cue nicely as he pulled Harry away from the loud squawks of dismay and outrage coming from Molly, right up the grand staircase past mounted house elf heads, what the hell, and grimy paintings that looked as grim as the house.

What sort of house was this and how soon could Harry get back to Number Nine without anyone stopping him?

“This is the room Molly wanted you to share with Ron,” Sirius said, opening a random door to a random sort of bedroom with two narrow beds. “I objected but she wouldn’t hear of you having your own room.”

“She expects Hermione and I to keep Ron from lazing about,” Harry said with a shrug. “I’d really rather my own room. Ron’s snoring is nothing to joke about.”

“Right, upstairs then,” Sirius said as the two of them scooted up the stairs like kids running away from a successful prank. “Second floor has the library. Thanks to my ancestors for being paranoid gits who loved the Dark Arts more than their lives, there’s whole chunks that aren’t safe to touch. Molly’d lock the whole thing up if she could. If she had her way, every single book in there would’ve been burned already. I’ve stalled her for now. Don’t know how long that’ll last.”

“…I object to burning books on principle,” Harry said with a scowl that he knew would be a pale shadow of Dudley’s fury at the very idea. “We need somewhere completely secure, Sirius. No one can listen in. Not Mrs. Weasley, not the twins, not Remus, not… That Man.”

Sirius paused at the next landing, staring at Harry who put one hand on the grimy black rail even though Harry was kind of afraid that his fingers would stick to it and never come free. He opened his mouth to ask, then closed his mouth again just as slowly. Then he ran up the stairs to the third floor with Harry on his heels.

“This’ll be your room,” Sirius said, pointing to the door directly opposite the stairs. “We’ll have to clean it but it’s one of the safer guest rooms. We’ll have to use the master bedroom. It’s the most secure place in this pit other than the wardroom.”

Oddly, the third floor had considerably less dust and grime than the other floors. The carpet was a deep forest green, not an indiscriminate greyish black. The wallpaper didn’t look half a second away from falling right off. Better still, it wasn’t black and grey that might have once been blue or green before mold and dust ground the color right out.

The third floor was, honestly, almost nice. Not great, but better than Harry would’ve expected from below.

“Why’s it nicer up here?” Harry asked as Sirius carefully opened the big double doors at the right end of the hall.

“This floor’s only for family,” Sirius said with a grimace. “I’m pretty sure that Kreacher has been making things worse downstairs in an effort to drive everyone out. Some of the junk down there has been in the attic for generations. I used to, my, my brother and I used to go up in the attic and play hide and seek when my mum was on a bender. Safer.”

“Fair,” Harry said.

No dust or mold tickled at Harry’s nose in the master bedroom. It looked almost like the last owner of the place had just walked out and would be back at any minute. The bed was one of the big old four-posters in a heavy, dark wood that showed black in the low light. Instead of grungy black and muddy grey blankets, curtains, and upholstery, everything here was emerald and silver.

As clean as if a servant had just finished dusting.

“Creepy,” Harry commented with a considering not. “Only in the cleanliness compared to everything else, but still, creepy. Yeah.”

Sirius snickered. “Gonna tell me what’s going on, Pup?”

“What’d my mum tell you about her mother and grandmother?” Harry asked.

“Oh, shit,” Sirius whispered.

His cheeks went white as chalk as he collapsed onto the master bed. When he stared at Harry it was like he was seeing ghosts. Or maybe like he expected Harry to start spewing prophecies like he was Professor Trelawny.

“Okay, that makes things easier,” Harry said as he sat in one of the surprisingly comfy Slytherin green chairs perched at the perfect distance and angle from the fireplace. “I need you to take this not as coming from Harry Potter, your godson and the Boy-Who-Lived but as Harry, son and grandson of the Evans family. You-Know-Who is dead. I killed him. Accidentally, but I killed him. Dumbledore thinks I’ve become You-Know-Who so he’s going to do something blind stupid tomorrow. We need to get to my new safe place so you can meet the Evans Seer. And, maybe, we can steal all the books here and take them there. We’ve got a nicely warded section that should keep the books safe but also controlled.”

Too much, too fast. Harry knew it. His gut, where his version of the Evans’ gift lived, clenched as the need to move gnawed at him.

“…Right,” Sirius said, eyes wide and uncomprehending. “I’m going to need to scream about that for a while, but how much time do we have?”

“Ehhhh, maybe three minutes?” Harry said with a shrug. “I mean, you also need to take… ownership? Responsibility? Whatever it means that you officially and formally take control of the Black family. Like. Now. I mean it. It needs to happen now.”

Sirius flapped his mouth as he made protesting noises that made no sense, but when Harry emphasized the timing, Sirius just groaned as his shoulders slumped.

“I, Sirius Orion Black, do hereby swear to protect and defend the Black family magic and the Black family honor,” Sirius proclaimed even though he grimaced for it. “I shall uphold our honor and ensure all Black family members adhere to Toujours pur as it was always meant to be.”

Magic crackled around Sirius for a long moment, easily a thousand years all crammed down into maybe a second and a half. Then something lightened in the room. The house? Both, because a house elf in the nastiest, most disgustingly dirty pillowcase the world had ever seen popped in to stare at Sirius while clutching a locket…

…that Harry recognized. Sort of.

“Did that die just a couple days ago?” Harry asked the elf who only took his eyes off Sirius when Harry pointed at the locket.

“…Yes, nasty mudblood heir of worthless master,” the elf said. He clutched the locket to his chest as if afraid that Harry might snatch it away.

Harry leaned over, staring right into the elf’s eyes. ”You’re welcome.”

 

8. Through Hidden Gardens of Old: Rooftops

Kreacher, Sirius’ new and old very-much-hated house elf, had a completely different sort of dramatics than Dobby. No shouting and wailing, no smashing his ears in drawers or almost killing Harry to save him. Dramatics for Kreacher were not-at-all under his breath muttering about the things he disapproved of, thunderous glowers, and staring at Harry as if he’d set the sun and moon in the night sky.

Unfortunately, between Sirius having hysterics about the revelation of a horcrux in Grimmauld Place that his little brother Regulus (said each time in the highest pitches Harry had ever heard from a grown man) had outright stolen from Voldemort (this only in the deepest tones of utter and complete shock), and Kreacher having raptures about Harry having destroyed the stupid thing completely by accident, time ran out.

“Sirius?” Remus called as he tapped hesitantly on the master bedroom door. “Are you in there?”

“Ah,” Harry stared at the door before turning to look right at Sirius who’d stood, sighed and then went beet red under Harry’s gaze. “Just how did he get up on the family floor, Sirius?”

“They is courting,” Kreacher explained before Sirius could do more than windmill his hands and splutter a little. “For certain sorts of courting Mistress would be having vapors over. Is much falderal with kissings and such, but not much in the way of proper courting gifts.”

“Ah,” Harry said very firmly indeed. “I don’t need to know anymore more than that. You trust him?”

“Um, yeah,” Sirius said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re still working things out between us, but I trust Remus with my life.”

“Do you trust him with mine?” Harry asked.

Sirius nodded very seriously indeed. “I insisted that he had to go collect you. Dumbledore wanted it to just be Arthur.”

Harry considered that, considered the hunch roiling in his gut that swore that this could go very, very wrong for them or maybe very, very right, and then nodded. “Let him in.”

Sirius did so. Remus frowned as he slipped through the barely open door. Then frowned more while sniffing the air.

“Are you ready for an Evans moment?” Harry asked Remus.

Remus went dead-white and stock-still. “Ah, no? I don’t believe I’m ever ready for an Evans moment.”

Harry nodded understandingly despite the way Sirius giggled nervously. “The three of you won’t be able to share this with anyone.”

Kreacher looked to the side as if he was convinced that he would still be able to tell someone. At least until Sirius waggled a finger at him, and then Kreacher sighed and nodded his acceptance. Remus just stared at Harry, still pale and still and visibly worried.

“Potter’s Sanctum is located at,” Harry said with what he hoped was a properly dramatic pause, “…Number Nine Grimmauld Place.”

“Your what?” Remus squawked, shoulders sagging and face twisting up in confusion.

“Just up the bloody block?” Sirius howled while tugging at his hair.

“Oh, that is being very convenient,” Kreacher said with a very approving little nod.

All of them pretty much at the same moment.

Harry snorted at them all. Yeah, just about what he’d expected. He turned to Kreacher who perked up like he might actually be willing to take orders from Harry.

“Is there a way we can get to Number Nine without anyone downstairs or outside noticing, Kreacher?” Harry asked. “We need to get there right away. The Evans Seer is waiting.”

Both Sirius and Remus went dead-white again. Kreacher blinked at that before nodding slowly. He waved for the three of them to follow him out of the master bedroom, to a little servants’ stairway tucked behind a door that blended into the wall almost perfectly, and then up a flight of stairs that went right up to the roof of Number Twelve.

“Why is this place so grungy?” Harry moaned once they came out on the roof into pigeon guano, owl guano and piles of rotting leaves. “This is so gross! Why? Why isn’t it clean?”

“Kreacher was not having strength to be keeping the house clean,” Kreacher admitted with a flicker of shame. “He was fighting Master Regulus’ horcrux. That was taking all Kreacher had.”

“Right,” Harry said grimly. “Well, that’s gotta stop. It’s just. Ugh! Why pillowcases? Why not spiffy little servants’ uniforms? So much stupid stuff.”

Kreacher shrugged as he glowered at Sirius who promptly glowered right back at him. “Kreacher can be wearing proper Continental uniform if Lord Black is saying he can. Bad Lord Black is not caring how the House of Black is looking.”

It seemed like a thing that Sirius automatically said no to whatever Kreacher wanted, but he also wanted desperately to say yes to anything Harry asked for, so Harry added a look of profound disappointment that made Sirius quail and then groan. Complete with drooping shoulders, a hang-dog look, and a sad sigh.

“Fine,” Sirius grumbled. “You can wear the proper Black uniform, Kreacher. But only if the house is properly clean from top to bottom. That means to Grandfather Arcturus’ standards, not to Mother’s standards.”

Kreacher smiled grimly. “Kreacher will be doing that. Once we is getting back from visiting Seer. Masters is following Kreacher. Path is supposed to being for House Elves, but Master can use, too, if they is knowing it.”

The path, such as it was, was literally just following Kreacher across the rooftops of Grimmauld Place. Number Twelve was, honestly, a complete pit even up on the roof. Harry couldn’t help but be just a little bit curious about how long it would take before Kreacher managed to earn his “Continental” uniform, whatever that meant.

The other rooftops weren’t much better. It took until they were on Number Ten before Harry abruptly stopped in his tracks.

“The houses aren’t only odd numbers,” Harry said, staring down at Kreacher.

“Of course they is not,” Kreacher replied with a disdainful sniff that Aunt Petunia would have approved of. “The even numbers is for Magic peoples. Wizards and witches. The odd numbers is for filthy Muggles. Used to being only Magic but then the city was growing, and this was put in place.”

Harry stared back across the rooftops. Even houses had cruddy roof tiles, debris everywhere, and grime coating everything. Odd roofs had relatively good tiles, no grime at all, and TV antennas. Electrical wires. The trappings of modern London.

“Does… anyone live in the even numbered houses?” Harry asked Kreacher while firmly ignoring Sirius and Remus’ puzzled looks.

“There is being no magical residents anymore,” Kreacher said. “They is being locked. Kreacher is not knowing if they can even being opened anymore.”

“Huh,” Harry said with a thoughtful nod and a growing smile that made both Sirius and Remus fidget nervously. “Interesting.”

That meant that, maybe, Harry and Dudley could possibly get Number Ten. Maybe also Number Fourteen and Sixteen, both of which were in the same block with Number Nine and Twelve. And then maybe possibly they could buy Number Eleven from whoever lived there and then it’d be even easier to get back and forth.

Maybe.

Harry would ask Dudley later.

Instead of continuing to lose his mind over the idea of being able to own an entire block of houses in London after spending his whole life confined to a boot cupboard and then a small, dingy bedroom, Harry followed Kreacher over onto Number Nine’s properly maintained roof.

Moments later, Lacey and Anthony burst through the door down into the house, wands at the ready. Harry grinned at them.

“Hey, guys,” Harry said. “I brought some guests over to meet the Seer. Can we head inside?”

“…Excellent response time,” Sirius said a little faintly.

Remus nodded behind him, looking just as impressed. At Harry’s side, Kreacher didn’t look as impressed, but Harry got the feeling that Kreacher was professionally Not Impressed by everything and everyone in the world. Except his Master Regulus. And maybe Sirius’ mum who sounded like a harpy.

“How?” Lacey demanded.

“If you will, Remus?” Harry said, gesturing towards Lacey and Anthony. “They’re gonna need to know anyway. Because of things we shouldn’t say outside of good wards and definitely not in public where people could possibly hear.”

Remus sucked a sharp breath between his teeth. He did, very properly, check with Sirius who nodded while staring at Anthony with very narrow eyes. Both Lacey and Anthony jerked as they got the Fidelus secret. Then it was their turn to stare at Sirius with narrow eyes on Lacey and wide ones on Anthony.

“Right, so time to meet the Seer,” Harry said with a casual wave for the lot of them to follow him downstairs.

It was deeply, deeply amusing that everyone other than Lacey quailed at that. While Remus looked like he might just pass out on the stairs and Anthony bit his lip so hard that Harry was surprised he didn’t start bleeding, Kreacher gulped, and Sirius cringed.

Which made it all the better when Harry sauntered into their library to find Dudley sprawled out on the sofa with his feet up on the back and his head hanging off the side, a book suspended in his hands where he could read it.

If it’d been right-side-up compared to him.

“Does that help?” Harry asked.

“Nope, but I thought I might as well try,” Dudley said cheerfully. “Thought you were locked in magic prison for a while. How’d you get out?”

“Remus, if you would?” Harry asked. He waved towards Dudley.

Remus sighed like he was getting Very Upset about including so many people in the Secret. He whispered in Dudley’s ear. Dudley stiffened and then shoved Remus to the side.

“The fuck you say?” Dudley yelled.

Harry grinned. “Even numbers are magical houses and only Number Twelve is taken. Odd numbers are Muggle, and we can probably buy them out pretty easily. Give it a couple of days and we might be able to set up a door that links straight through. Properly warded of course. We came over the rooftops since the Elves had ways to do that.”

“Elves,” Dudley said.

Then stared at Kreacher for a long moment before making the So Disappointed In You Face at Sirius.

“He has to earn a proper Continental uniform by cleaning the fucking house up!” Sirius yelped. “The little troll hasn’t done a damned thing in years!”

“Don’t care,” Dudley said. “What do you need to know?”

Harry considered it. “That Man thinks that Voldemort took over my body. I have to talk to him tomorrow morning and I already don’t trust the Weasleys, notwithstanding certain oaths.”

“Fair,” Dudley said as he snagged his Art of War from the end of the sofa. “So, can you talk to That Man and survive? Make him see reason and survive?”

“That,” Harry agreed. “It’s more… can I ever actually trust That Man for anything at all?”

“Let’s see,” Dudley said.

He flipped through Art of War.

Interestingly, both Sirius and Remus froze. Just outright froze as they clutched each other’s arms and tried not to breathe. Which made Harry’s million and one questions about his mum, his grandparents and previous generations that much more pressing. Something to pester them about later.

Dudley hummed and nodded. “We’ve got ”The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.” So yeah, we still don’t want him to know which means finding some way to get him to realize that Dead Dude is actually dead. You know, without poking at you. I’m gonna call Bill. He’s probably our best bet on that.”

Harry snort-laughed. “Bill’s over at Number Twelve right now. His little brother Ron has really severe sleep apnea that they’re treating. Despite his mum Mrs. Weasley acting like treating it is a terrible idea.”

“What.” Dudley frowned. “I don’t even need to reference a book for that. There is something officially Very Wrong With Her.”

“So noted and agreed,” Harry said. He turned to Sirius and Remus. “Okay, so, this is my cousin Dudley, the Evans Seer. He uses books. Kreacher and Sirius, we have a warded section that can safely protect all the books that Mrs. Weasley is going on about. You know, if you give permission.”

“Uh, yes?” Sirius said, glancing down at Kreacher. “Yeah, go ahead. Not the kids’ books, of course, but most everything else. Molly was talking about burning everything.”

Harry smiled as Kreacher popped away immediately. Then grinned and nudged Dudley when their Warded Section of Extreme Danger began filling with lots and lots of black-bound books. Dudley beamed.

“Lacey, Anthony,” Harry said, “Sirius is now, what? Lord of the Black family? Master? What’s the proper title?”

“Lord,” Sirius groaned.

“Sirius, Anthony is your cousin,” Harry continued with a nod to Anthony who looked hopeful and Lacey who had her ferocious glare pointed squarely at Sirius. “Lacey is his wife. She’s mean. Don’t do it. Anthony and Lacey, this is Remus Lupin who’s a werewolf and unofficially / officially courting Sirius. You know, the kissing way instead of whatever the proper way is. Kreacher doesn’t approve of the lack of courting gifts.”

“Pup!” Sirius whined.

“Claim them for the Black family,” Dudley ordered. “Now.”

Sirius sucked a breath between his teeth and then did exactly that. It amounted to taking their hands and welcoming them to the family and that was about it. Harry and Dudley nodded approval at the same time. Some of the urgency dropped, though nowhere near enough.

“Right,” Harry said. “Lacey, Anthony, I want to buy every other house on this block, both magical and Muggle. If you can get it done by tomorrow morning, that’d be amazing but by tomorrow night is acceptable. Right now, though, we need to plot out how to handle Dumbledore. He’s convinced that You-Know-Who isn’t dead.”

Lacey opened her mouth, squinting at Harry for a long moment. “Why?”

“He thinks I’m You-Know-Who.”

 

9. Down into Ancient Books: Number Nine Library

Harry was, unfortunately, very used to having to solve problems entirely on his own. From the time he’d been dumped with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, he’d been given duties and responsibilities that were far too much for him to handle and then gotten beaten if he didn’t handle them perfectly.

Made for really good training on how to handle steep learning curves. Did not make for a happy Harry, though.

Being able to flop on the couch next to Dudley and watch as four adults and one house elf plotted out how to prevent Dumbledore from showing up at Number Twelve tomorrow morning was kind of awesome.

Kreacher and Lacey made great partners for bloodthirsty vicious ideas that were right on the edge of legality. Remus did his best trying to keep them under control, which meant that Sirius and Anthony were free to plunge into the Dangerous Book Section for things that were highly illegal but very untraceable.

“This is kinda fun to watch,” Dudley murmured as he munched on a really amazing ham and Swiss sandwich while Harry plowed through a surprisingly tasty salad with shredded chicken and a fancy cheese of some sort that would’ve made Uncle Vernon go all purple in the face over “foreign” influences. Instead of Aunt Petunia’s normal chopped up iceberg lettuce it had all kinds of flowers and the sort of fancy lettuce that looked like weeds and tasted like pepper, mint and chicory.

“Mm!” Harry agreed. Swallowed. Considered for a moment. “Think we should poke them?”

He didn’t particularly want to. As nice as it was to have adults who would do things so that Harry didn’t have to, his gut said that they weren’t fully on his side yet. Sirius clearly loved the heck out of Harry, but he wasn’t seeing clearly at all. Azkaban.

Remus wasn’t on Harry’s side hardly at all. He was on Sirius’ side and Dumbledore had some kind of lock on Remus’ loyalty that Harry had to break. Given that Harry had no clue what that lock was, he was stuck for a bit there.

And then both Anthony and Lacey were on Sirius’ side, too. Mostly. Anthony was on Lacey’s side, first and foremost, but both of them clearly were going to support Sirius in every way possible so that they could have the Black family… whatever it was that you got when you were part of an Ancient and Noble magical family like the Blacks.

“Eh, not yet,” Dudley said. “They’re still making progress.”

Harry snickered at that. Really, it was awesome to have adults doing things to protect you. They hadn’t gotten close to how to convince Dumbledore that Harry was just Harry, but the thing was that it might not be necessary.

“So politics,” Harry murmured to Dudley under the covering noise of both groups of adults getting into highly energetic and increasingly loud arguments about what to do next. “Think we need to stick our feet in yet?”

“Mmm, probably,” Dudley said but he frowned over it. “I mean, you’re emancipated which means stuff, but we don’t know yet what that really means.”

“Huh, true,” Harry agreed. “Research?”

“Research.” Dudley nodded. “Do the catalogus thing and find books on politics that are helpful to dealing with meddling political and social enemies. Maybe a second one on what being emancipated really means, past and present.”

Harry nodded. Good targeting. Hopefully.

He waved down the adults as he did the first catalogus. The spell swept ten books off the shelves and onto the couch. Lacey raised an eyebrow and Remus frowned as if he wanted to stop them from even looking at them.

“Don’t,” Dudley warned Remus.

“Research into politics, etiquette, all that stuff,” Harry explained which made Remus blink and Lacey nod approvingly. “I never learned any of that stuff.”

“You need it,” Dudley said.

He laughed when Harry swiped at his shoulder which seemed to reassure the adults better than anything else might of. The second one gave them a stack of three books, all three very slim little ones with soft leather binding instead of the heavy leather-bound books in the other stack.

“You is needing this one, too,” Kreacher said, popping a bright cherry-red book on top of the stack of three. “Is most recent version.”

“Oh, thanks, Kreacher,” Harry said. “Any news from the goblins?”

“They is mostly done buying the magical houses,” Kreacher said happily. “Is in negotiations for the muggle houses. Are all owned by one person so is being handled as development project.”

“Good,” Harry said.

He started reading the emancipation books since Dudley had claimed the law and etiquette books like they were his due. Not that Dudley really read them. He flipped through them, glancing at pages here and there, noting stuff down in a spiral notebook as he went along. Kind of haphazardly instead of with real intent which seemed to mean that Dudley was feeling out the edges of what they needed to do on the political side.

Harry left him to it.

The red emancipation book was very clearly Ministry-Approved. It was all of twenty-three pages and six of those pages were blank with a little “Notes” header on the top. The content boiled down to “don’t even attempt to get emancipated” and “only the Ministry can emancipate a child under the age of seventeen” followed up by “in the case of ancient artifacts, laws which have not been overturned, or magical legacies of great power, the Ministry’s power to emancipate may be overwhelmed by other forces.”

“Nice,” Harry crooned as he grinned at that one.

“Oh, yeah,” Dudley agreed when Harry pointed it out. He snickered. “They’re gonna go spare, aren’t they?”

“Sure,” Harry agreed. “But the Ministry were the ones who insisted that I be part of that stupid Tournament. Their own damn fault.”

The second book was only about twenty years old. It had one more page, which specified that yes, the Goblet of Fire and the Tournament were one example of what could emancipate a minor despite Ministry disapproval. Third book was a bit long, with a whole chapter on ancient legacies that would emancipate minors including developing Seer abilities.

“Well, hell, that means I’m emancipated, too,” Dudley said, staring at the section. “Huh.”

He took the book and skipped through it though he didn’t record anything from it. While he did that, and while Remus got increasingly more nervous about Harry and Dudley reading, Harry read through the fourth and final book.

”When youthe is put to the test and discovered to have the metal of a grown man, it is Meet and Proper that youthe shall be granted full rights of adulthood, including the power to determine thy own destiny and to gather unto them allies moste potent. For it is these youthes who do set paths and chart destiny, especially when they are able to work together to accomplish wonders unseen since the ages of yore.”

Harry shook as he stared at the page. The words seemed to lift right off the page and hover in front of his eyes. They carried with them images of Harry and Dudley, both in nicer clothes, both facing down… huh, the Wizengamot? Yeah, and Dumbledore. And so many other people that they all blurred together to Harry.

“Hey,” Dudley said as he put his hand over the page, blocking the words. “It’s not good for you to do that, you know.”

“Yeah, but this is us,” Harry said, throat aching and hands shaking as he passed the book to Dudley. “That’s us. They’re talking specifically about us. It’s, it’s, we’ve got to… new clothes. A power block. Face down Dumbledore and, and, and…”

“Still not good for you to do it this way,” Dudley said as he read and nodded. “That’s what I’ve been looking for. You’re right. It is us, but you need to let me use the Word. You have your method.”

Harry wheezed and then moaned as Sirius appeared to wrap him up in a hug. It took a distressingly long time for Harry to manage to pull himself together. While he shook in Sirius’ arms, Dudley took to ordering everyone around.

“Dumbledore will hurt me,” Harry whispered to Sirius. “He will. He thinks that I’m Moldyshorts. He won’t, won’t even attempt to be careful when he checks on me in the morning. I can’t… I can’t fight him off, Sirius. I can’t.”

“What’ll stop him?” Sirius murmured as he gently rubbed Harry’s back exactly as no one ever, ever, ever had in his entire life.

“Politics,” Harry said. His gut calmed and then went firm. “Yeah, politics. We need to do something big, something really heavily political to distract him. I don’t know what, but we need to sidetrack him with politics.”

“That’s hard,” Remus said. “It would take some sort of action from the other side.”

Harry hesitated and then slowly sat up. “Duds. Scrap of paper and a pen.”

“Your rune thingie?” Dudley said as he tore out a sheet and passed Harry the pen.

“Yeah.” Harry drew the two set of rune pairs as perfectly as he could manage.

Sirius frowned at them. Anthony hummed and grimaced like they were a bad mix. Lacey sucked a sharp breath between her teeth as if they were utterly offensive.

Remus bolted to his feet, staring at them in horror as he went pale as a ghost.

“Remus,” Harry said. “You put these on Privet Drive. Why?”

“You did what?” Sirius squawked while Anthony’s wand appeared in his hand for the first time ever. “Mooney! Why?”

“Dumbledore said that it was necessary,” Remus admitted. He swallowed and put a hand on his throat. “He was… very insistent that they had to be there. I objected. I only put them on the back fence because that sort of surveillance and control spell is… so abusive.”

Harry nodded. “You used an invisibility cloak. Apparated in in the middle of the afternoon and carefully put them by the shed. Then you crept back out again.”

“Ah, yes,” Remus said.

“I was lying on the window listening to the news,” Harry said. “I heard you apparate in and then didn’t move. Remus, did you ever put them anywhere else? If you lie, Dudley and I will both know, so don’t.”

Remus licked his lips, staring at Harry and then at Dudley who sat there with his clenched fists on his thighs like he was about to leap right off the couch and attack Remus.

“I applied them to the fence three times over the summer,” Remus said. Truthfully. “But never anywhere else and no other times.”

Harry nodded. “All right. Albus Dumbledore, Amelia Bones and Narcissa Malfoy all put the same two sets of rune pairs on Privet Drive.”

“Plus there were a bunch of really invasive and really harmful control spells that sculpted everyone in the whole neighborhood to behave bad to Harry,” Dudley said, glaring at Remus. “My own parents never treated me like an actual human. I was a pet, not a kid. You’re part of a plot to control Harry, turn him into a puppet, and steal every single galleon he owns, all for Dumbledore’s precious little movement. Group. Whatever.”

Remus shook his head as he stumbled backwards two paces. He backed into one of the armchairs and toppled into it, staring at them both in horror.

“Your loyalty is a good thing, Remus,” Harry said slowly, trusting his gut to find the words he needed. “But you need to think really hard about whether the one you’re loyal to would ever allow you to be happy. You’re the one not letting proper courtship happen, aren’t you?”

The library felt like it was under a thousand feet of water, weight and pressure pushing down on them all, but it wasn’t real. Not to Sirius and Lacey and Anthony.

The weight was only there for Harry and Dudley who gritted his teeth as the Evans magic, the Seer magic pushed through them to hammer against Remus who gasped as he tried to breathe through the magic shoving Truth at him.

Down his throat. Displacing whatever lies he’d been fed or accepted in his life. The Truth wouldn’t let Remus lie to himself, not about this, no matter how much he wanted to believe that it was real and true.

Oh.

This is what made Sirius and Remus go so pale back in Number Twelve. This is what they’d feared, what Harry’s mum had shown them.

Done to them, perhaps, just as Harry and Dudley were doing to Remus again.

“I’m, I’m, I’m not allowed!” Remus’ words came out as a strangled shout. “Not allowed. I’m not, not good enough. I owe debts. So many debts. I, I, I, I can’t…!”

”There is no debt!” Harry said at the exact same moment that Dudley did.

Remus heaved like he was about to throw up but instead of vomit, liquid silver-white magic poured out his mouth to splash on the floor almost exactly like a fountain of water gushing out of him. It felt like Dumbledore and smelled like blood, sounded like whines of terror all alone in the darkness.

As soon as the Lies exited Remus, they frothed like boiling water going up into steam and then swirled away into nothingness as Remus sagged back into his armchair.

“Bloody fucking hell,” Anthony whispered.

Into the suddenly perfectly normal library that had no hint of the weight of fathoms of water bearing down on them all.

Harry smiled even though he felt about as wobbly as Remus. “Yeah. Welcome to Evans moments, Anthony. Sirius, Remus, we need a political distraction of such high caliber that Dumbledore won’t come at me tomorrow. Hopefully not for the rest of the summer. Get to work on that right now.”

“On it,” Sirius promised.

He gave Harry a little hug, arms shaking, before going to kneel at Remus’ feet to whisper to him like a lover. Which ew. Nice for them, but ew.

“Houses,” Harry told Lacey. “Get the other houses under our control right bloody now. And tell the goblins that if they can do anything to distract the Ministry and Dumbledore, we’d be very grateful. Like… owe a favor kind of grateful.”

“Any question they want to ask taken from a book that I can read levels of grateful,” Dudley clarified.

Lacey licked her lips and nodded. “Understood. You’d best get back to Number Twelve, Harry. You can’t be missing for too long.”

 

10. Through Dingy Windows Never Cleaned: Number Twelve Library

“Well, I’m glad that he finally saw reason,” Molly said as she bustled around the echoingly empty Number Twelve Library throwing dusting spells at the shelves and frowning at the filthy windows.

Hermione stood at Harry’s side, eyes wide and tragic as she stared around the bare library. “I can’t believe the books are all gone. Why would he do that?”

“Get Mrs. Weasley off his back?” Harry murmured low enough that Molly didn’t turn around and scold them. “Doubt they’re actually gone-gone.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Hermione whispered, breath hitching like she was half a second away from sobbing her heart out.

Ron grimaced behind her back. He looked more rested than he normally did at this time in the morning. Nine was usually the earliest that Ron was coherent, but today he was doing good, and it wasn’t quite eight.

“You doing okay?” Harry asked Ron. “I kind of sacked out after Sirius and I cleaned my room up.”

Ron huffed and nodded, speaking quietly as he kept an eye on Molly moving around the library. “Yeah, I’m… apparently way better than before? I mean, Bill was seriously bent about Mom and Dad not getting my snoring taken care of. He’d apparently told them it was serious when I was really little, and they both swore they’d taken care of it.”

Harry nodded. “Except they hadn’t. Dumbledore said it wasn’t necessary?”

“Headmaster Dumbledore, Harry,” Hermione said as she always did.

“Uh, yeah?” Ron replied, ignoring Hermione just as he always did.

“Yeah,” Harry drawled. “Not surprised. That’s kind of his thing.”

“He’s a great man,” Hermione protested loudly enough to draw Molly’s attention their way.

The twins, who’d been conscripted already to wipe the shelves down, tried to bolt the instant Molly turned to Harry, Hermione and Ron. They failed. So did Ginny who groaned like she’d been stabbed when Molly set her to scrubbing the window with a wet rag.

“All right, you three, get to work,” Molly said, waving for them to grab a mop, broom and another rag respectively. “There’s a lot to be done.”

“Mrs. Weasley, why are you doing this?” Harry asked instead of taking the mop. “This is ridiculous.”

“You kids can help out, Harry,” Molly said so condescendingly that Harry glared at her. “It’s important to clean this place up.”

Harry ran the tip of his tongue over his teeth and then took a step back, away from the mop Molly pushed at him. From the way all the other kids’ eyes widened as they cringed away, Molly’s explosion was going to be horrific.

“Kreacher!” Harry called.

Kreacher popped in. His pillowcase was blindingly white. His hands, feet, and face were all perfectly clean. He was still ugly and hunched over and glared at Molly like he thought she was the worst person in the entire world, but he was clean.

“Young Master Potter called?” Kreacher asked.

“Yeah, clean the library, please,” Harry asked. “I’m worried about the protection spells that the Black family had on the shelves. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“Now, you wait one minute!” Molly huffed.

Kreacher snapped his fingers, and every speck of dirt was gone. The filthy window that Ginny had been about to scrub was bright and clear. The shelves the twins had been half-heartedly wiping off gleamed. The floor looked fresh-polished. Actually, everything that could be polished in the library looked like it had been polished.

“Much better,” Harry said. “Thank you, Kreacher. Please get the common areas of the house fixed up. Um, can we do something about that troll’s foot? And the elf heads on the wall? They’re so creepy.”

“Kreacher can,” Kreacher said, sniffing at Molly’s squawk of outrage. “Must be asking Bad Master Sirius about heads, though.”

“Do,” Harry ordered. “Please. Off you go.”

“Harry!” Hermione squawked as soon as Kreacher popped away. “You can’t treat him like a slave!”

“My relatives treated me like a slave, Hermione,” Harry said with a ferocious glare at the way Molly scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I know the difference. You don’t. There is no reason for us to be cleaning when the only way Kreacher gets to wear a proper uniform is if he cleans the house, Mrs. Weasley. Stop trying to take away his chance to earn a proper place in the House of Black! That’s just rude and mean. It’s like you want him to be abused forever.”

Molly’s mouth dropped open. “Wait. What?”

“That… what?” Hermione asked at the same time with about the same level of shock.

“Oh sure,” Ginny said from the window. “Sirius mentioned it at breakfast. You were both there. I mean, come on, Mum. Sirius outright told you that you shouldn’t have us clean because it would mess up Kreacher’s chances.”

The lavender-fresh smell of the library was kind of nice. Better than the lemon scented products Aunt Petunia always used. It took a moment before Molly’s shock dropped into something ugly. Anger and resentment and more than a little bit of frustration. She opened her mouth to say something horrible only to snap it shut as Sirius came pounding up the stairs, shouting to them all.

“Emergency session of the Wizengamot!” Sirius bellowed as he flung open the library door. “Come on! Apparently, the goblins are threatening a full-on rebellion!”

“What?”

Harry said it along with everyone else. He’d expected something dramatic, but not that big. Molly stared at Sirius who turned and ran back down the stairs shouting to Remus to get the wireless going. He dropped a newspaper as he ran, which Harry scooped up and stared at.

The front page had a picture of four goblins hammering a parchment to the front door of Gringotts.

GOBLINS THREATEN REBELLION AFTER IRREGULARITIES WITH NOBLE WILLS! the front page screamed.

“Oh, no,” Harry groaned, passing the paper over to Molly who skimmed the article with her kids reading over their shoulders. “Please. Please tell me that it’s not my parents’ will. Please say that it’s not another stupid Potter thing!”

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes as Ron made those noncommittal muttering noises he always did when he didn’t want to say it out loud. The twins hummed. Hermione cleared her throat.

“Sorry,” Ginny said because it was Ginny, and she was just like that. “Your parents are on the list. Apparently, there’s issues with like thirty wills, though, so it’s not just you.”

“Seriously?” Harry asked, surprised. “Huh. I was expecting it to be all about me. Again. I hate that.”

Ginny grinned. “Nope.”

“The Wizengamot should be starting any moment now,” Molly said, still staring at the paper.

Harry turned and bolted out of the library. Everyone but Molly thundered down the stairs behind him. The elf heads were gone. Kreacher had cleaned the banister, so it wasn’t sticky and gross. Instead of musty, horrible wallpaper about to fall off and the smell of rot, the downstairs had silver and black wallpaper so perfect that it gleamed as they passed.

Every carpet was perfect. The paintings were bright and clear.

There was no sign of the decay that had been so gross the night before.

Good.

And not good. Harry’s gut groaned that Molly was going to be up in arms about her busy work for all of them being taken away. There had to be something that could replace it that would be helpful. Maybe.

Sirius grinned as they rampaged into the drawing room and clustered at the table where Remus had just gotten the wireless tuned into the correct channel.

“You lot sounded like hippogriffs coming down those stairs,” Sirius laughed. “And I ought to know.”

“Where is Buckbeak?” Harry asked.

“Had him up in one of the bedrooms I hated as a kid, but we’ve expanded the garden and let him out there for now.” Sirius shrugged, that wary little look in his eyes directed more at Molly who came in huffing her way up into a rant than it was for Harry’s question.

Or any worries about Buckbeak flying off and breaking the Statute.

“Sirius Black, you—” Molly gaped when Sirius flapped a hand and shushed her. “Well, I never!”

“So, what’s happening?” Harry asked.

“The goblins have identified thirty noble wills—” Remus said over the background flustered horror of the radio announcer.

“And counting!” Sirius interrupted with a manic grin. “Including my parents, grandfather, aunts, a couple uncles, whole bunch of Blacks.”

“And counting,” Remus confirmed with a sigh that made him look a good twenty years older, “that were interfered with. None of them were executed properly. Molly, your brothers’ wills, the twins, it’s on the list. So is Arthur’s father’s will.”

Molly went dead white. “What?”

For the first time that Harry had ever seen, Molly’s rant faltered and fell apart before it could be delivered. She staggered over to sit at the table, staring blindly at the section of newspaper that Remus handed to her.

“Three… quarters… of a million galleons,” Molly wheezed.

Ron, the twins and Ginny all froze. They stared at each other and then turned to Molly who had tears in her eyes. Justified ones. Harry put his hand on Hermione’s arm when she opened her mouth to ask for clarification.

“Mum, what are you talking about?” Fred asked.

“Your grandfather’s will would’ve given Arthur three quarters of a million galleons if it had been executed properly,” Molly said. The color started rising in her cheeks. “My brother’s house, the one they bought themselves with their inheritance, it should have come to me. And, and Aunt Muriel. She always claimed that there was a fortune stolen after her parents died. We’ve blamed the Malfoy’s for it for donkey’s years but, but…”

Remus put a hand on Molly’s shoulder to keep her from cursing a blue streak in front of them all. “But the goblins apparently have proof that it was someone tampering with the magic of wills. Someone made a change to that magic about fifty years or more ago and none of the big wills have been executed the way they should.”

The Evans magic hiding in Harry’s gut howled that this was important. Very important. Perhaps the biggest reason behind everything that had happened to Harry and Dudley.

It also muttered worriedly about Molly who was a bomb waiting to go off right in all their faces.

They needed to get out of the parlor. Harry, specifically, needed to get away from Molly. With Hermione and Ron, probably the twins and Ginny, too, but he really, seriously needed to get away from Molly.

And he knew just how to do it.

“Oh, wow,” Harry breathed very, very deliberately. “This is going to be an amazing session of the Wizengamot. I can’t wait to hear it all.”

Ten heartbeats later, the six of them were out of the parlor and forbidden to come back in. Sirius made half-hearted protests about it, but both Remus and Molly overruled him, especially once the rampant cursing at the goblins started up. Mixed into the cursing was a whole bunch of yelling about who was responsible, how it happened, and who was going to be thrown through the Veil for it, so yeah.

Sirius lost. Molly and Remus won.

“That is so unfair,” Hermione huffed as she jammed her fists on her hips and glared at the firmly shut and warded door.

“I got some books on how the Wizengamot works from Sirius last night,” Harry offered. “And some other stuff, too. Haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. Maybe we could go have a snack and look them over?”

Ron immediately started edging towards the gloriously clean and polished stairs. Ginny was right there with him, though the twins exchanged looks and shrugged as if they had nothing better to do with their time.

Hermione, of course, whipped around to stare at Harry like he was a steak, and she was a starving dog. “You have new books?”

“Eh, not new-new, but new to me,” Harry said. “Lemme run up and get them. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

“I can help,” Hermione offered hopefully.

“Family level,” Harry said and shrugged. “Sirius insisted. No one who’s not family can go up there.”

He ran up the stairs with Hermione’s rising complaints about things being concealed from her and “not fair” on his heels. The books he’d summoned last night were a good start, but he might want a few more from Dudley’s library. Well, it would only take a moment to run over. Hermione wouldn’t be done ranting for a while, so he’d just go do that.

And while he was there, Harry was totally going to ask Dudley to check and see if the goblin’s revelation was enough to keep Dumbledore off him for a while.

Plus how to get Molly from dangerous threat mingled with smothering, misplaced affection into an actual useful adult ally.

If that was possible at all.

 

11. At a Table Full of Secrets: Basement Kitchen

Harry dropped his stack of eighteen books on the kitchen table, startling the twins who stared at them and making Hermione frown at him. Most of them were older books, the kind that should, should, be long out of date because they’d been superseded by previous laws.

They weren’t. Lacey and Anthony had checked. What had happened was that the Ministry stopped letting the books be published, so nobody really knew this stuff. Especially because Dumbledore had pulled them from circulation and the Civics class had been decommissioned just after Sirius went to Hogwarts.

“Okay,” Harry said, hands on his hips as he smiled his best and worst horrible-cheerful smile at Hermione. “This is what Sirius found on civics. He’s never read them. Remus hasn’t read them. I haven’t read them. But this is what his grandfather Arcturus read way back in the day, so he decided that these are probably the best place to start to learn about, you know, how politics work in the Magical world.”

“Oh, wow,” Hermione said. “That’s… more than I thought you’d bring. Hogwarts only has a couple of very general books.”

“Yeah, Remus said last night that the Ministry stopped allowing these to be published,” Harry explained as he flipped through the one on the various departments and what they did. “I mean, these are like a century old so who knows how accurate they are, but it’s a place to start, I guess.”

“Right.” Hermione nodded and then pulled out her planner and her quill and got to work figuring out what each book was, what information it held and how it all fit together.

George frowned at her. “This is important why?”

“Because ignorance of the law is no excuse,” Harry said.

That was one of Uncle Vernon’s favorite sayings when he glared balefully at Harry. When Harry was a little boy, he’d assumed it mean that he’d done something wrong again and that he was going to be beaten and thrown in his cupboard without dinner for it. After he started primary school, he’d discovered that no, it didn’t just mean that Harry had somehow slipped up on rules he’d never been told.

You literally could be arrested for breaking a law that you had no idea existed.

It’d been a worry for him ever since he came to the Magical world, but if Hermione couldn’t find a list of the laws that they were all subject to, Harry knew darn well that he couldn’t. He’d just done his best to keep his head down despite all the craziness going on around him.

Frankly, he wouldn’t be surprised at all if Minister Fudge trumped up some excuse to try him for a long-unused, completely forgotten law. If anything, Harry expected it to happen. Probably soon, given everything that had been going right lately.

Fred and George both looked at Harry like he was crazy for even saying it. They exchanged skeptical looks that Hermione just shook her head over as she rapidly cataloged the books and worked up a rough draft of a study plan that would be a dozen times more intense than what Harry would have come up with.

“No, seriously,” Harry insisted. “You can be arrested for and outright executed for laws that you had no idea existed. It’s true in the Muggle world and it’s true here, too. Plus, I really don’t understand how the Ministry or whoever blocked all those wills. I suspect getting an explanation of that would be, you know, difficult.”

Fred swallowed a laugh while George grinned and waggled his eyebrows.

“Yeah, you’re…” George started.

“Not wrong about that one, Harrikins,” Fred finished.

“Still not sure about all of this,” George said, flipping through one of the books that Hermione was finished skimming over. “It’s dry.”

“Eh, true,” Harry agreed as he grabbed the one on wills and estates that Hermione had just put on the top of the stack. “I honestly don’t expect that I’ll understand most of it, but I have to start somewhere. Might as well be here. I mean, from what Remus said, the Wizengamot never takes a law off the books. They just add exceptions to it.”

Hermione paused to stare at Harry in horrified dismay. “Oh. No. You can’t be serious.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, flipping to a random page and humming as his eyes landed on a particular paragraph that was bolded, indented and put in a much more dramatic font than the rest of the text. “Afraid so. Sorry.”

He raised an eyebrow and pulled a sheet of paper out so that he could write it down.

”Whosoever can prove that a last will and testament provision has not been promptly and properly carried out shall be granted immediate remediation to claim their lost money, chattel, property and goods. If it is proven that the Ministry or any of their employees or elected officials have obstructed the will and testament provision, the harmed party shall claim matching compensation from the Ministry to ensure that such crimes are too horrifying to contemplate and thus shall never be committed.”

“What?” Fred asked.

“Just the complete bankrupting of the Ministry,” Harry said, shaking his head as he turned the page of paper around so that the other three could read it.

“Oh,” Hermione breathed, eyes going wide and then narrowing as a mean little smile curled her lips. “Yes, that’s going to be one that they’ll try and put exceptions on, isn’t it?”

“Bloody hell,” George whispered as he went so pale that his freckles looked like spots of rush decorating his face.

“Mum’s going to… I don’t even know,” Fred agreed, gape-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“Tell her that I found it while reviewing the books Harry brought,” Hermione said calmly, focused on her study plan, not them. “She’ll take it seriously, then.”

The twins exchanged a long look, visibly weighing the importance of the information against the risk of their mum going spare at them. Despite their nerves, they grabbed the sheet and then dashed out of the kitchen. Harry nodding approvingly.

Hopefully that would keep Molly out of his hair for a while.

“We’re alone now,” Hermione said in that so-intimidating crisp voice of hers that was too much like Professor McGonagall when she knew you’d been up to something. “I know something is going on. You’ve been dodging us ever since you arrived, and you have to be the reason that Ron has his own room instead of sharing. Mrs. Weasley had a fit about that. What’s going on?”

Harry winced and rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to assess just what he could tell her.

There wasn’t much. Hermione was one of his best friends, yes, but he couldn’t risk her finding out about the project of owning all of Grimmauld Place. He couldn’t tell her about Dudley or the whole Evans Seer legacy. He definitely couldn’t explain how he’d found the rune pairs and…

Wait. He probably could tell her that, if it presented it right.

“There’s a lot that I’m physically unable to tell you,” Harry said.

“Oh,” Hermione said, blinking and relaxing a little. “Like the Fidelus?”

“Exactly like,” Harry agreed. “Um. I’ve got two probably, maybe, I hope, separate problems. First off, I am… because of things I can’t tell you… one hundred percent certain, and it’s been confirmed independently, that You-Know-Who is dead. Fully, completely, all the way dead and never coming back.”

Hermione’s eyes went wide as her hands flew up to press against her lips. “Really?”

“Really,” Harry said and sighed. “And that’s a problem. Because I’m about ninety-five percent certain that Dumbledore thinks that I’ve become You-Know-Who. I don’t know why he thinks it. I don’t know how it could’ve happened. But I’m pretty sure that if he gets a chance when Sirius and Remus and, you know, you and Ron aren’t around, he’s going to tear right through my mind.”

“That’s… possible?” Hermione asked, going almost as squeaky as George had.

“It’s called leligmency,” Harry explained. “Takes forever to learn and is really hard to block and Dumbledore is a known master of it. So yeah, I’m a little bit worried about that.”

Hermione snort a very shaky laugh and nodded. “Understandable. I’ll see what I can come up with though I think the Goblins might have him distracted for quite a while. Especially with that law you found.”

“Yeah,” Harry said grinning. “Here’s hoping. The other problem is one that made me wish I’d taken Runes with you instead of Divination. I found these rune pairs on my Aunt and Uncle’s fence and I’m not sure who put them there, what they do, or why anyone would do it.”

He sketched out the rune pairs and passed them over to Hermione. Who frowned and then went very, very pale. Harry stared at her. Then stared at her even longer as she pursed her lips and fidgeted and then carefully folded the paper up, deliberately creasing it right in the middle of the runes as if trying to break them, before nodding to Harry’s books.

“I… need to verify something on that,” Hermione said as she tucked the paper into her pocket. “Would you mind if I got back to you on it?”

“That bad, huh?” Harry said with a tired sigh. “Great. Just what I didn’t want to know. Fine. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Sirius about it yet. I mean, I’m not there anymore. I hopefully won’t go back for, like, months, so there’s no real rush.”

Hermione didn’t relax. She did that brittle little smile thing she did where she wouldn’t meet his eyes and just fidgeted with the books and her notes instead of answering. So yeah, way worse than Harry thought it was. And he’d thought it was terrible to begin with.

“Can you tell me anything about how you know about You-Know-Who’s death?” Hermione asked in a poor attempt at seeming casual.

“No, sorry,” Harry said regretfully and utterly honestly. “The wording is… precise enough that I can admit that there’s a secret there but that’s all I can say. It’s… to… protect… a life. Not mine. But a life. And, well, hopefully I’ll be able to tell you soon, but I can’t now.”

“That is very precise wording then,” Hermione said with a frown.

“You have no idea,” Harry groaned. “The wordsmithing, I just about curled up and went to sleep.”

Total lie but it made Hermione’s smile go much more real as she relaxed back into looking at the law books. Harry went back to studying, too, because seriously, he needed to know all this stuff. Even if none of it really made sense.

Very quickly he resorted to Dudley’s method of just flipping pages and seeing what jumped out at him.

“You’re never going to learn anything if you just skim,” Hermione said primly.

“I need a law dictionary to read a single paragraph,” Harry retorted while flipping more pages. “I’m just waiting for you to develop a plan that we can follow. You’re way better at that than I am.”

“So, you’re not reading?” Hermione asked with that Professor McGonagall eyebrow of hers.

“Nah,” Harry said as Fred and George came back into the kitchen with shell-shocked faces and Molly on their heels looking pale, wan and painfully hopeful. “I’m just seeing if anything jumps out at me as “What is that?” because that’s usually something stupid that I can actually dig into.”

This time he got the judgmental looks from both Molly and Hermione, at least until he showed Hermione the incredibly dense text, all of it in eighteenth century legalese that even a proper barrister would have issues with. Then she grimaced and nodded that maybe Harry had a point. Molly came over to look over Harry’s shoulder, one hand resting oh-so-casually on his back.

“See?” Harry said, turning the book so that she could read it.

“Oh, my,” Molly said with a horrified grimace. “Why are you reading that?”

“Neither Hermione nor I have any idea how Magical law works,” Harry explained, still flipping through the book. “There are no classes on it, no books at Hogwarts, so I asked Sirius, and this was what he came up with. Since, you known, Magical laws aren’t ever taken off the books. They’re just given exceptions and clarifications.”

“So horrifying,” Hermione grumbled as she glowered at one particular page. “I am never, ever getting married in the old style. I’d be literal property of my spouse’s father or grandfather.”

“Wait, what?” Harry said.

He abandoned his book to read the bit that Hermione pointed out. Despite focusing on the book, which was dense and hard to read and in ridiculously small print, Harry was painfully aware of the way Molly watched the two of them together.

She wanted something from him. Very clearly. And given that she only got that pinched look about her lips and the corners of her eyes when Harry and Hermione sat too closely or spoke to each other for too long, he kind of suspected that what she wanted was Harry married to Ginny. Especially given the little summoning gesture Molly made with her wand, pointed out the door and up into the house.

Marrying Ginny was not going to happen. Not ever. Sure, Ginny was bright and beautiful and super-smart, but Ginny was also flighty and prone to attacking people before she thought things through. He didn’t dare flirt with her because if he made her angry, Ginny would absolutely blast him with a Bat Bogey Hex or maybe just punch him in the face.

No, thank you. He’d had enough emotionally unstable and violent people in his life. He didn’t need to get married to one.

Not that he wanted to marry Hermione, either. She had all of Professor McGonagall’s demeanor, all of Molly’s strident tones, and all of Aunt Petunia’s scolding, wrapped up in a very sweet, very socially clueless girl who needed someone steady to marry her.

Not Ron. Obviously not Ron given how they fought all the time. But, you know, someone.

“That,” Harry said once he’d puzzled over the relevant paragraph, “is the most horrifying way of saying that the men in the Magical world think that women exist solely to bear babies for them that I’ve ever seen. Ugh! I’m not getting married in the old style, either. If I wanted to own someone, there’s better ways to do that and no. Just no.”

“Thank you,” Hermione said with one of her firm little nods.

“Professor Dumbledore thinks old-style marriages are sweet,” Ginny said as she sauntered in with Ron and Bill on her heels.

“Yeah, read that passage that Hermione found and tell me what you think about it,” Harry said.

He scooted over and gladly let Ron sit between him and the girls. Bill looked over Hermione’s shoulder and grimaced before backing away rapidly. The twins eased back from the table, making Molly frown at them, but only until Ginny’s face went blood red and her magic began to crackle all along her hands and arms.

“Mum!” Ginny yelled. “You want to sell me off like cattle? What the bloody hell?”

Harry took one look at Molly’s rapidly reddening face, looked at Ron, then the twins and Bill. All of them bolted right out of the kitchen with Hermione who’d gathered up the books and her notes. They barely made it to the top of the stairs before the screaming started.

“Library, I think,” Harry said, grimacing at the shrieks of fury coming from the kitchen. “For a very long time.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, shuddering. “Good plan. I’d stay to watch over you kids, but I have an appointment I have to get to.”

He looked very blandly at Harry, not showing anything about the appointment on his face, but the Evans’ hunch reared to tell Harry that Bill would be meeting with Dudley very shortly.

“Cool,” Harry said. “I’ll be right down to the library, guys. I’m gonna go get some more books from my trunk. Might as well finally start work on my homework, you know?”

Bill nodded calmly. Hermione rolled her eyes. The twins grinned and Ron groaned, but none of them objected. Good enough.

Time to run over to Number Nine and see what everyone else had learned while Harry was dealing with the nonsense in Number Twelve.

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