Reading Time: 95 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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32. Tracking Shifts in Settling Sands: Number Nine

“Was that as awesome as it sounded over the Wireless?” Dudley asked as he lightly kicked Harry’s hip. “Because it sounded like the most awesome thing to ever awesome in the history of awesome.”

“Find a new word,” Harry complained as he batted at Dudley’s toes.

As soon as Hermione got over her shock that Dumbledore and Fudge had been voted out, and after Ron finished speculating about just what it would mean for Britain, Harry had retreated upstairs to change clothes with a warning to everyone that he was going to collapse in bed and hide under the covers so that he didn’t have to talk to anyone or do anything for at least the next few hours.

He’d gotten a bunch of rolled eyes, an understanding and sympathetic nod from Remus, and gone off listening to Molly grumbling that Dumbledore needed to be removed from all his positions as quickly as possible.

Which really was true.

Instead of hiding, Harry’d changed clothes with an almost physical sense of relief for getting out of those too-tight pants and then gone straight over to Number Nine where Dudley was lounging around waiting for his next client to arrive.

The client was, apparently, rather late due to the chaos caused by Dumbledore and Fudge being voted out. Fine by Harry. All he wanted was some peace and quiet.

Which wasn’t happening with all of Dudley’s play kicking.

“But yeah,” Harry confirmed once he’d wedged a pillow between him and Dudley’s feet, “it was pretty amazing. His robes went from this bright iridescent green that shaded purple as he moved down to a muddy brown while we watched. I didn’t realize that it was tied to his mood. Next time I see him, I’m totally asking him about it just to throw him off the scent again.”

Dudley snorted a laugh. “You keep asking about those robes and he’s gonna ask to tutor you on them.”

Harry grimaced. “Oh. Right. Bad plan. No more of that.”

Laughter sounded at the doorway. Anthony sauntered in snickering with Lacey on his heels. She shook her head at Harry, but she smiled as much as she ever did so it was okay. When Anthony flopped into the chair opposite Dudley and Harry, Lacey perched on the arm of his chair like Harry liked to perch on the edge of tables.

“Definitely want to lay off the questions about That Man’s robes,” Anthony said. He grinned. “I mean, unless you want to go all sparkly and twinkly at people.”

“Ugh, shut up,” Harry groaned. “It’s just been a reliable way to distract him when we’re in the same place. Whatever! What’s up on your guys’ side?”

“Well,” Lacey said so smugly that Harry straightened up and Dudley actually sat properly on the sofa instead of lounging all across it like a berk, “I’ve finally managed to contact your seneschal, Harry. He’s on his way here. Had to grab some files, apparently.”

Harry frowned. “I have a seneschal? I didn’t know that.”

“You do,” Lacey said, only a little bit annoyed for once at how much Harry didn’t know. “His name is Amal Swashlin. His family has been your seneschals for generations now. Even without contact with you personally, he’s been working to manage the Potter estates as best he can.”

They all turned as the floo whooshed and Kreacher popped in to welcome Mr. Swashlin. When Kreacher escorted him in, Amal was a short, swarthy man with thick curling hair and perfectly round glasses with bright gold frames that seemed to hide the color of his eyes perfectly. He beamed at Harry, smiled with pure delight at Dudley, nodded happily at Lacey and waved to Anthony who waved back with a little grin that made him look just like Sirius.

“I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Amal exclaimed. “Goodness, I’ve tried repeatedly to get a meeting with you, but ah, That Man kept putting me off.”

“Not surprised,” Harry said with a tired sigh that barely dented Amal’s good mood. “Thank you for not using his name.”

Amal’s lips twitched like he wanted to laugh. “Absolutely not a problem. I was warned about that. Now, I have a great many things to go over with you and I know we don’t have much time for it. This is the ledger for your accounts…”

Dudley grabbed the ledger and started flipping through it intently. He waggled a hand at Harry demandingly, then nodded his thanks when Harry put a fountain pen into it. Dudley immediately uncapped the pen and started taking notes right on the ledger, circling things and underlining others. In a couple of places, he put big stars with exclamation points.

When Amal frowned, Harry just shrugged and waved for him to continue.

“Okay,” Amal said. “Well. Um. You have three houses, including Potter Keep. I’m sorry to say that the house at Godrick’s Hollow was seized by the Ministry. I’ve had no luck whatsoever getting either an appropriate payment for it or getting it returned to the estate. Potter Keep is sealed at the moment, but the Goblins have confirmed that the wards are solid, and you could move there at any time. It’s got the best wards in Britian short of Gringotts.”

Harry groaned, slouching down on the sofa. “And there’s another thing that That Man messed up for my parents. Why weren’t they in the Keep instead of in Godrick’s Hollow?”

“Ah,” Amal said, grimacing. “That’s an excellent question that I never got a good answer to. The third house is in Italy on a private island.”

Both Dudley and Harry straightened up to stare at Amal intently. He grinned at them while Anthony laughed into his fist. But seriously, private Italian island? Come on, how could they not be delighted?

“It’s in great shape,” Amal said and laughed when Dudley offered a fist for Harry to bump. “If you need to flee Britian, I highly recommend going there. I’ve got emergency portkeys that will take you straight there, plus a set that will take you straight to Potter Keep. We’ll just need to get you keyed into the wards and you’ll have two secure places to flee to, if you need it.”

Harry blew out a breath, determined not to let himself rant and rave about all the many and varied ways that Dumbledore had destroyed his life. Possible before Harry was even born. Three houses, including the most secure place in Britian. An entire island in Italy.

“Right,” Harry said eventually. “We’ll definitely want the wards.”

“And he wants a house on the canals,” Dudley commented as he studied the ledger.

“So unfair!,” Harry complained mostly because Dudley started snickering before Harry said a single word. “I get townhouses with postage stamp gardens, and he gets a lovely cottage on the canal with an award-winning garden that he couldn’t care less about. It’s ridiculous.”

Amal blinked twice and then started laughing. “Oh, no. Your father would be delighted by this place. He was never one for gardens. Your mother, on the other hand, would be right there with you. She was all about the gardens.”

Harry’s breath caught. “You knew them?”

“Of course,” Amal said. He shrugged. “I was only a couple years ahead of them in school, but I knew your father fairly well. It was assumed that we’d be working together closely our whole lives. That… wasn’t what happened, obviously.”

Harry nodded. “And that was not accidental.”

Amal stared at Harry. Long and hard while his cheeks went paler and paler.

“Right, so I’ve marked this up with all the places where you’ve got discrepancies,” Dudley said as he capped the fountain pen and passed it back to Harry. “Stars are big damn problems. What you’ve got is completely wrong there. If it’s circled, there’s something off in the records but it’s not too major. Something to look at because it could become a big deal if you let it slide. The underlines are places where there’s incorrect documents, mismatched contracts, stuff like that.”

He shoved the ledger back to Amal who flipped through it frowning.

“You’ve marked something on every page since well before the deaths happened,” Amal said.

“Yep,” Dudley agreed. His eyes glowed. “You gotta understand. This goes way back. Not just one generation or two. It goes right back to Grindelwald and Word War Two. The… family under discussion… has been systematically undermined all this time. Carefully eliminated. Wish I could say that it was one person doing it, one villain we could all work to take down, but it’s not. They were just too powerful, too rich, and a bunch of people took their shots. A lot of them succeeded.”

“Oh,” Amal whispered. “Evans moment.”

Harry laughed. “Yeah. Judoka’s Seeing is all through books. I’m all gut instinct. Go here, do that, stuff like that. So yeah, check all that out. Make sure to work closely with Silverclaw. Anthony is working with Lord Black.”

When Harry held up the Black heir ring, Amal’s eyebrows went up.

“Lacey is of course Judoka’s seneschal, just like you’re mine. I’m…” Harry continued. He held up his other hand, letting the Peverell / Potter ring appear. It was in the Potter shape when the disillusionment faded. A moment’s concentration shifted it to the Peverell version. “I’m more complicated. Can you handle both sides, do you think?”

Amal sat back sharply, staring at Harry’s Lordship ring with wide, wide eyes. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, but eventually he licked his lips before turning to Lacey and Anthony.

“It will be a lot,” Lacey offered thoughtfully.

“A hell of a lot,” Anthony agreed. “I mean, we’re more than happy to help out, but it’s been a couple centuries since anyone’s worked with that estate.”

“True,” Amal said. He hummed. “I’ll need to talk to Silverclaw about the estate, what’s known, any work that needs to be done. Old estates revived like that tend to either be utter disasters that require full teams or very neat.”

“Not neat,” Dudley said, laughing as he lounged on the couch again. His toes nudged the pillow at Harry’s hip, trying to knock it off the sofa despite Harry’s grip on it. “Trust me on this one. It’s so very not neat.”

“Ah,” Amal said with a grimace. “Right. I’d love to lead the project, but I’ll need support staff. More than my secretary, that is. I assume secrecy is an issue?”

“Very much so,” Lacey agreed. “At least until That Man has been neutralized. Possibly until the Lord is a full-fledged adult.”

“Maybe after that,” Harry huffed. “Seriously, I really hate this being important thing. I’d much rather have a nice garden somewhere so that I could live a quiet life, but that doesn’t seem to be my destiny.”

Dudley outright rolled his eyes as he grabbed one of the other pillows. He started whacking Harry with the pillow despite the way Harry squawked and fought back with his pillow. Pretty soon they were laughing and tussling exactly as they never had before everything changed.

To Harry’s relief, Amal, Lacey and Anthony left them to it. It was… nice… having adults that would take care of problems for him. Really nice.

There was a ton of stuff still to do, but having the three of them there made it much less daunting than Harry would’ve expected.

Dudley caught Harry right in the face, shutting off any and all rumination. Harry shouted as he smacked Dudley right back, both of them laughing like idiots as feathers flew.

 

33. Prodigal Souls Enfolded in Ancient Wings: Number Twelve

Teatime was never going to be the same. Harry lamented the old days of wishing that tea was something that he could do. After all of Molly’s very aggressive teatimes, Harry sort of wanted nothing to do with it. All the sweet and savory little cakes and sandwiches in the world couldn’t make up for the way Harry twitched when someone mentioned taking Tea and Talking to Some People.

Seriously, never gonna be the same.

Her clotted cream and strawberry jam almost made up for it. Almost. Not quite.

Which was perhaps why Harry flinched and had to be grabbed before he could duck under the table when Molly marched in with the tea tray, chattering about having a nice relaxing Tea.

“Potter, what is wrong with you?” Draco asked from the door where he stood, pale-faced and just as twitchy as Harry, with his mother at his back.

“Oh,” Harry said, sighing with relief. “Oh, thank goodness. It’s just you, Malfoy. I was afraid it was another very formal Tea.”

“…What?” Draco asked but only after staring at Harry, Hermione and a rapidly huffing Ron as if waiting for the rest of the joke.

“Too many parties,” Harry explained. “Three and four parties a day. I’ve been to more teas than any human should have to bear, for days on end. I just, you know, can’t handle any more.”

Molly shook her head as she set out her very informal and completely casual tea with good hearty sandwiches, a simple black tea and fresh scones with clotted cream and that lovely strawberry jam. She speared Ron with such a fierce look that Ron snapped his mouth shut instead of shouting at Draco to get away from the table.

“Ah, what are you doing here?” Hermione asked because Hermione feared no one when there were questions to be answered.

“I’m afraid that I’ve… parted ways… with my husband,” Narcissa explained. “Draco chose to follow me rather than stay with his father. Sirius was kind enough to allow us to return to the Black fold so we’re no longer under the Malfoy name or magic. I’m Narcissa Black once more. Draco has become Draco Black.”

It must have been a difficult decision for Draco. He went green and pasty, eyes sliding away from them all. But he wasn’t all hunch-shouldered or clenched-fist at them. If anything, Draco stood tall and square-shouldered, just without meeting their eyes.

Harry sucked a breath between his teeth. “You’ve divorced him? Wow. Did you take at least half his money and property from him? Please tell me you did.”

“Potter!” Draco squawked, all high-pitched and horrified.

“Harry!” Ron squawked at the same time, just as horrified though Ron went squeaky because his voice cracked horribly.

“That’s so rude,” Hermione groaned as Molly shook her head in dismay at Harry.

None of which dimmed Narcissa’s suddenly vicious smile. She looked so utterly smug that Harry couldn’t help but grin back at her. At her side, Sirius snickered as he waggled his eyebrows.

“I did, actually,” Narcissa said with enough pride that Hermione smiled instead of being disapproving. “I had… some rather excellent advice from the new Seer Judoka on how to proceed if I wished to save myself and my son.”

“That’s lovely,” Molly said. “I’m so happy for the two of you.”

Every bit of her disapproval and huffiness disappeared the instant Narcissa mentioned the Seer Judoka. Which, honestly, was a bit obvious on her part but Harry would take it. The problem was that Hermione frowned, Ron huffed, and Draco scowled as if that was a ridiculous reason to do anything.

“Ah, Harry?” Sirius said in that “not a suggestion” sort of way adults always got when they wanted to talk without kids around to overhear. “Can you show Draco around the house? I’ve got to get him and Narcissa set up in the wards to get them up to the family levels, but I needed to… discuss… a few things with her and Molly first.”

“Fine,” Harry said with his very best annoyed kid sigh. “But I want to know what’s going on later.”

“Just more party stuff,” Sirius said.

He laughed like a donkey braying at the way Harry protested wordlessly and very loudly at the prospect of even more parties. Sirius’ laughter carried them out of the room and up the hallway towards the first of the drawing rooms on the ground floor.

That was the pearl drawing room which was decorated in soft shades of grey and muted silver. It overlooked the street where several people in poorly chosen Muggle clothes walked up the street towards Number Nine.

Though why anyone magical was walking to an appointment with the Seer Judoka, Harry had no clue. Weirdos.

“It’s much better decorated than I remember,” Draco observed so mildly that even Harry frowned at him. “The last time I was here was when I was quite small. It was… rather horrid.”

“Yeah, totally fair,” Harry agreed. “Sirius took the lordship and then only allowed Kreacher to earn his position by properly cleaning up the whole place, top to bottom.”

“Mrs. Weasley didn’t help,” Hermione said with a huff because she clearly still wasn’t over the whole house elves are slaves thing. “She kept trying to clean things or get us to clean things.”

Draco frowned as he sniffed disapprovingly.

“Nothing about the feud,” Harry warned Draco. “I know it’s a habit but you’re not a Malfoy anymore so you’re not part of the feud. You, too, Ron. You can’t fight the blood feud with Draco. You have to be at minimum polite.”

Hermione turned away to laugh into her fist as both Draco and Ron expressed their extreme disagreement with the sheer idea that they had to be mates instead of ruthless enemies who loathed each other. The outflowing of vitriol and dismay lasted through a tour of the ground floor, a brief glimpse into the kitchen where Kreacher speared them all with a stern look but still let them have a biscuit each, and then up to the first-floor library.

“Where are the books?” Draco squawked as soon as he stepped inside the library.

“Hidden,” Harry reassured him. “Mrs. Weasley is um, kind of obnoxious about keeping us kids from seeing anything she disapproves of. Especially anything that’s vaguely “Dark”.”

“She can’t do that!” Draco protested, about two octaves higher than normal.

“She is getting better about the books,” Hermione told Draco, prim and furious in that bushy-haired way that she got every time the Black library came up. “Harry knows where they are. Apparently, they’re up on the family floors, hidden away where Mrs. Weasley can’t get at them. He can bring things down if you need them.”

Harry hummed and then sighed because obviously neither Hermione and Ron realized what Draco not being a Malfoy anymore meant. Really, he needed to get Hermione some of the etiquette books that Dudley had been studying before his Seeings.

“Ah, actually?” Harry said, edging away from Hermione in preparation for the inevitable explosion of outrage. “Draco is a Black. He’s family. He’ll be up on the family floors with me, Sirius and Remus.”

Hermione stared at Harry for a long, tense moment, her hair getting bushier and bushier. The moment that Harry had explained, Ron had taken three big steps back and Draco had flinched as he ducked behind Harry, which was about the weirdest thing ever.

“…What.” Hermione gritted her teeth. “You mean to tell me that Draco no-longer-Malfoy gets to read the books, and I have to ask for each and every one individually?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” Harry said. “Draco won’t have access either.”

“What?” Draco exploded behind Harry. “But I’m Family! I should have access whenever I need them!”

Ron backed off several more paces, half-hiding behind one of the squashy brown chairs that Sirius had insisted that the library had to have. That left Harry to face two bookworms in the midst of book-snits all by himself, which was just about what he’d come to expect from Ron anymore.

Harry found himself unwilling to put up with either of them.

Every time something happened that his so-called friends didn’t like, he got yelled at, accused, threatened and Harry was the one expected to bite his tongue and suck it up.

“That’s enough!” Harry snapped at both of them as they got ready to yell. “I don’t want to hear it. No! I don’t care at all what either of you think. There are reasons why the books are not readily available. There are reasons why you,” he glared at Hermione, “don’t have access. You’re a smart young woman, Hermione. You know that there are social rules that are different. And you!” Harry glared at Draco. “Don’t yell at me. If you want access to the books, you need to appeal to Sirius, not me. You know that.”

Draco snapped his mouth shut as he went stiff and pale, visibly frightened about being thrown out.

Hermione huffed, but it was one of the lesser huffs that meant that she was uncomfortable instead of outraged. “But it’s not fair.”

“You of all people know that life isn’t fair,” Harry replied. “Don’t blame me for things that aren’t my fault, my initiation or mine to fix. Talk to Sirius, both of you.”

“You’ve grown, mate,” Ron said from behind his squashy chair. He leaned on the back of it, studying Harry as if he was seeing things he hadn’t seen in Harry before.

Harry refused to flinch from Ron’s gaze. “I bloody well hope so. What with everything that’s gone on and all the crap from last year, I think I’d be a goner if I hadn’t.”

That made Ron flinch, too. Clean sweep for Harry. Did that count as one point or three points? Harry didn’t much care. He was just glad that they’d all backed off a bit.

“Right,” Harry said. “Look. Draco, this is your home now. You need to learn to relax into that. The rules of living here have gotta be totally different from the rules back in your berk of a father’s house.”

Draco choked and then laughed shakily. “Well, you’re not wrong. Mother didn’t… explain… the expectations. It’s. Uncomfortable.”

“Right,” Harry said as he turned to Hermione. “You understand how things work here, Hermione. You don’t understand the social rules you’re being judged by, especially among the Pureblood lot. I can’t explain them since I know less than nothing. Ron’s family has deliberately rejected all those rules. But Draco knows them. I think the two of you should compare notes. I’ll go get books if you want, but helping each other seems like a much better idea.”

He waggled a finger at Ron who looked both outraged and as sour as if he’d just bitten into a lemon.

“Don’t,” Harry scolded Ron. “You know I’m right.”

“Fine, I do,” Ron grumbled.

He looked uncomfortably jealous, which was kind of weird given how much he and Hermione fought. But it was Draco so it might just be leftover from the Malfoy-Weasley feud. Or he might actually and truly fancy Hermione.

Harry’s gut firmly rejected that, so no, not whatever was going on in Ron’s head.

“Well, the first thing that needs to be addressed is definitely clothing,” Draco said, studying Hermione’s very nice slacks, pink twin set and plastic butterfly clips keeping her hair out of her face. “Also hair care but clothes does come first.”

“Oh, good point,” Harry agreed, much to both Hermione and Ron’s horror. “You really, honestly, have got to change your clothes. You’re looking all Malfoy, not Black at all.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s true,” Ron said, blinking along with Draco for a moment. “Hermione’s clothes are all right, though.”

“No,” Harry said. “They’re not. Neither are yours unless you’re deliberately going for looking like a hobo who’s pulled your clothes out of a dumpster.”

Hermione pressed her lips together as she turned away, shoulders shaking as she struggled not to laugh. From the squeaky noise that Draco made, he hadn’t expected that comment either. And Ron, obviously, went immediately flaming red and furious.

“Mate, I try and dress like you!” Ron protested.

“…Aunt Petunia literally pulled my clothes out of the trash after Dudley destroyed them,” Harry said. “Until this summer, I, in all seriousness, was dressed like a hobo because Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon refused to spend a single pence on me. The only reason I’ve got decent trousers and halfway properly fitting shirts is that Mrs. Number Eleven commented about my clothes and Aunt Petunia decided that they couldn’t possibly have me wandering about like that anymore.”

“Mrs. Number Eleven?” Draco whispered to Hermione.

“I have no idea,” Hermione whispered back apologetically.

Harry groaned. “Right, that’s Aunt Petunia’s thing. She’s the queen of the neighborhood so she doesn’t refer to them by name, only by the house number they live at. Sort of like the way Mrs. Weasley and Madame Longbottom only refer to the other women by their husband’s names at tea parties? Like that.”

Which was a huge ball of worms that Harry was most emphatically not getting into right now.

He waggled a finger at Draco and Hermione. “It doesn’t matter right now. What matters is you both need different clothes. Draco and Ron need to go to a charity shop. Ron, you need to decide what sort of image you want to project. I already know what Draco needs. Then, probably with Sirius’ help, I need a better, maybe a full, wardrobe. And Hermione? I kind of overheard Sirius being all twitchy and asking Remus if it would be okay to sponsor you in the Black family, you know, with your parent’s permission.”

“Say yes!” Ron and Draco said at the exact same time with the same startled but very encouraging nods.

“Ah, I’ll… ask him about it?” Hermione said, one hand on her chest. “But Harry, what are you thinking for Draco?”

“Punk, obviously,” Harry said.

“Oh,” Hermione breathed. She beamed. “Of course! That’s perfect. It’s very Black and it’ll drive Mr. Malfoy absolutely round the twist.”

Draco shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about but I’m in just for that. Let’s… go to your charity shop.”

And if Draco muttered under his breath about having fallen from grace and having to go get charity to dress properly, well, it was low enough that Harry could plausibly pretend that he hadn’t heard it.

 

34. New Vistas as Minds Expand: Charity Shop

As it turned out, there was a very nice little “charity” shop two blocks away from Number Twelve. It wasn’t like the shop that Dudley had taken Harry to. This was more like a boutique with lightly worn clothes cast off by rich people than the solid working-class stuff that Harry’d gotten.

Charity shops, in Harry’s limited experience, were supposed to smell musty. Slightly over-damp with the windows left shut for too long and not heated all the way through more than once a year or so. Maybe every two or three years.

They were supposed to have flickering fluorescent lights, squeaky linoleum tile that’d gone yellowed with age and too many feet, and rickety racks full of clothes that no one really actually wanted to wear. Things that were out of style, or odd sizes, or in sad combinations of neon colors that made exactly no one look good.

That was a charity shop.

Except not in Islington, apparently. The one that Remus led them all to was… bright. No flickering of the proper incandescent lights. The floors gleamed, white and black tiles that were actual tiles arranged in a checkerboard. Instead of wobbly racks that someone might have once used as cudgels, bending them over someone else’s head, there were solid wood tables and shelves and three very shiny circular racks full of lovely clothes.

Surreal, honestly; completely surreal.

It was good thing, though, given that he did have to clothe Draco no-longer-a-Malfoy Black.

Frankly it was far more than surreal to walk down the street in Muggle London with Draco glued to his hip while Hermione and Ron argued about what sort of image he wanted to present to the world. “Argued”, actually. Ron seemed to have no idea of how he wanted to be perceived so he kept saying he just wanted to look like an ordinary bloke but then getting upset at Hermione’s suggestions.

“We’re dressing you as Discount Draco,” Harry announced once they were in the shop and Remus had taken up a post leaning against the clerk’s counter where he could quietly gossip with the clerk.

The scars clearly worked for people other than Sirius. The clerk, an eighteen or so year old man, looked like he’d died and gone to heaven to get to flirt awkwardly with Remus. Who went all sly and smirky as he leaned on the table and obnoxiously, persistently and seductively met the clerk’s eyes.

Right. Not touching that one, not even with someone else’s ten-foot pole.

“Harry!” Ron wheezed.

“I… think I’m offended,” Draco said, huffing a little as he let Hermione pile torn black jeans, black band shirts for German death metal bands, and ratty vests on his arms. “Maybe. Not sure.”

“You’re not,” Harry said confidently enough that Draco started snickering. “Go try those on. Hermione, you’ve got Draco?”

“I do,” Hermione confirmed. “Get Ron sorted.”

Ron drug his heels as Harry hauled him over to the section full of nice dress shirts, knit vests and proper trousers in grey, black and navy blue. Each and every thing that Harry held up got a wordless sound of protest out of Ron, but after the first couple of blue shirts with tiny stripes and the one salmon-colored one that actually made Ron’s skin look amazing instead of all spotty, Harry got a sense of which Ron liked but wouldn’t admit to wanting.

“Mate, I can’t afford this,” Ron finally said after Harry chose five pairs of pants, four shirts, and six different jumper vests. “We can’t afford it. My mum’s going to blow her top.”

“Eh, this whole lot is like ten or fifteen sickles,” Harry said. “I’ve been checking price tags. See, the whole point of a charity shop is getting the look you want at the absolute lowest price possible. If I wanted to get you clothes for like two or three sickles, we’d be heading to one of the charity shops in Whitechapel, but then you wouldn’t get nice trousers or good work shirts. These’ll last for years. Good classic styles, nice fabric. Try ‘em on.”

Ron twitched one of the tags up to scan the eight different colored tags showing how it’d been marked down multiple times, but from the blank look he gave the tag, he had no idea that a two-pound shirt made of real cotton with true horn buttons was a deal. It’d started at eighty pounds, so seriously, it was one heck of a deal.

“How much is a pound in real money again?” Ron asked.

“Give or take, it’s five pounds to a galleon,” Harry said. “Go on. Try them on! Seriously, the deals are amazing here. It’s practically stealing.”

This time when Ron read the tags, his eyebrows went up and up until they all but disappeared into his hairline. His lips moved as he added up the original prices of the clothes Harry’d picked versus the final total.

And then he looked around at everything with a worryingly intent gleam.

Oh, yeah. Hooked on the Charity Shop Experience now.

Ron went to the dressing room finally, just in time to miss Draco coming out in strategically torn black jeans, a black T-Shirt with a scribbly, jagged white Death Metal logo on it, and a pair of fingerless gloves in soft charcoal grey that he scowled at instead of putting on.

“Put the wand holster over top,” Harry advised while Hermione nodded firmly. “That’ll look perfect. Especially if we get you a dragon necklace or something.”

“You’re both barking mad,” Draco complained as he did as ordered.

Then he stared at himself in the mirror as if he loved what he saw but was afraid to admit it. And really, it was a great look for Draco. He normally wore black and charcoal grey, so that was normal enough, but the punk outfit matched his sneer perfectly. Draco’s sneer was about a quarter its normal strength as he smoothed his hands over the edges of the tears striping across his pale thighs.

“Here, put the vest on, too,” Hermione ordered. “And then muss your hair up. It’s too perfect right now. You want wild, uncontrollable, defiant, not sleek and controlled.”

Draco studied her for a moment. Then he slung the blood-red vest over his shoulders and ran his fingers through his hair. A second pass, more violent with scrubbing fingertips and a decisive shake of his head had Draco’s hair going wild around his forehead and cheeks.

“That’s the ticket,” Harry agreed. “Yeah, that’s the look you need. Just think how your father would react if he spotted you on the street.”

“Oh,” Draco breathed.

His smile went wide and wicked as he laughed and ruffled his hair a bit more. Then Draco nodded and marched back into the changing room to try on the other clothes Hermione had picked for him. When Ron came out dressed in his new blue shirt, the grey and white Fair Isles knit vest and charcoal trousers, Hermione nodded her approval.

“It fits,” Ron said, biting his lip.

“Mate, you look great,” Harry said honestly. “This is a good style for you. Throw an open-front robe over top and you could go Muggle or Magical without anyone even commenting. Much better than hobo trash-clothes.”

“You think?” Ron asked with his eyes locked on his reflection instead of meeting Harry’s eyes.

“Yep,” Harry confirmed. “Go try on the others. I want to see how you look.”

It probably shouldn’t have surprised Harry that Draco and Ron promptly bonded over turning into charity shop clothes horses. They met coming out of the dressing rooms with their second outfits and immediately complemented each other.

Sincerely.

Which led to Draco searching through the shop for the style of shirt he thought Ron needed while Ron rummaged through the T-Shirts for wild, radical shirts for Draco. Harry wandered around after them, taking loads of clothes to the clerk to hang onto once Draco and Ron approved of them.

Hermione found herself a very nice gown that Ron and Draco both approved of as it was floor length, bias silk, and in a soft seafoam green that looked amazing on Hermione.

Harry eventually wandered off during an epic discussion of whether or not Molly would approve of a thick off-white Aran cardigan with leather patches of the elbows. Of course she would. She might even stop making Ron maroon jumpers once she saw that he’d not chosen a single maroon anything.

No idea why she thought maroon was Ron’s color. He loathed maroon. Oh, well, not Harry’s problem.

Back in the corner by the door out into the alley, there was a small, not-gleaming rack full of things that apparently no one anywhere wanted.

Horrible olive polyester monstrosities of tuxedo shirts vied with incredibly cheap and too-thin women’s tank tops that would leave nothing to the imagination. But there was one thing on the rack that caught Harry’s attention.

It was a jacket, except not like a normal jacket. This was like something that the Pakistani family on Wisteria Lane had worn for their niece’s wedding. Warm cream silk had been heavily embroidered with a gridwork of ivory leaves smaller than Harry’s littlest fingernail. It had two layers, an outer darker cream layer and an inner layer of lighter cream that had rows upon rows of delicate embroidery vines with plump ivory blackberries and stitched thorns.

Like a robe, it reached to mid-calf. Unlike a robe, it buttoned down the front to the waist. Harry bit his lip and carefully checked the price.

A hundred pounds.

Obviously, it’d been put on that Get It Out of Here rack by accident. Nothing this gorgeous and elaborately embroidered belonged there. He slid it on and then went to stare at himself in the mirror. Normally he preferred jewel tones but this…

“Oh, wow,” Hermione breathed. “Harry, that’s amazing.”

“Oh,” Draco said, coming over to study the fit over Harry’s shoulders and then too-long sleeves. “Yes, it is. Needs a bit of tailoring but I think it can be done without destroying the lines of the embroidery.”

“Mate, you gotta get that,” Ron agreed. “That’s amazing. Besides, we’re all getting stuff. You need to get something, too.”

“Okay, okay,” Harry said as he took the lovely embroidered jacket off and ran his hand over the stitching. “Yeah, I think I will. No idea where I’ll wear it or how to get it tailored to fit, but hey, we need to hit Sirius up on tailored outfits, too.”

That seemed to be the end of their shopping trip because the others trooped to the cash register where Remus waited with the flustered, brightly-blushing clerk and all their purchases. Remus’ eyebrows went up at Harry’s new jacket before he smiled and nodded his approval of it.

Remus paid. They took their carefully separate bags of clothes. Then they all headed up the street towards Number Twelve, listening to Hermione lecturing on the best places to buy new clothes responsibly and the damage that Fast Fashion was doing to the world. Amazingly enough, Draco was far more outraged by the idea of sweat shops than Ron was.

“This was fun,” Harry commented to Remus.

“It was, actually,” Remus agreed, lips twitching as Draco and Hermione rounded on Ron when he suggested that it wasn’t that big of a deal that people were paid starvation wages to make cheap clothes as long as other people got to buy the cheap clothes without going into debt.

At least, Remus was amused until Ron went on an epic rant about poverty, the cost of boots and how one unexpected bill could destroy an entire family when you were poor that made passers-by stare at him.

“I’m with Ron,” Harry commented as Remus shoved them all up the stairs into Number Twelve. “Yeah, it’s terrible that people are being abused to make cheap clothes, but survival is survival. If you need a coat to survive the winter and the only thing you can get is a twenty quid piece of junk, because you only have twenty quid, then you get the piece of junk and survive for another winter. There’s no ethical way to survive with the way the Muggle world is set up, guys.”

He sighed and shook his head at the explosions of outrage from Hermione and the deeply offended frown on Draco’s face.

Figured. Neither of them had ever been that poor. They just didn’t get what poverty, truly desperate poverty where you weren’t sure where your next meal would come from or if you’d have a roof over your head by nightfall, did to you.

Oh well. At least Draco and Ron had clothes that would fit them better. Now they just had to get Sirius to do his sponsoring thing with Hermione and, ugh, suffer though the magical version of buying new clothes.

Harry was so going to sneak out tonight and show his new jacket to Dudley. Maybe Duds could get Amal and Lacey to have some more clothes like it whipped up for when Harry was doing the Seer thing with Dudley. Looking that good would be… nice.

 

35. Trials Dark and Deep: Wizengamot

“Absolutely fucking not!”

Sirius’ bellow of rage startled Harry so badly that he fell off the library chair where he’d been working on his penmanship under Bill’s watchful eye. Not so much because Harry cared about improving his penmanship, but because Molly insisted that they all needed to be doing studying as they couldn’t clean.

Bill had been the one to tell Harry he needed to work on penmanship over everything else he could be doing. Which, honestly, fair. Harry just didn’t much care if his writing was fully legible. Written words were not his thing. At all.

“What?” Harry asked as he picked himself up off the floor.

“I have no idea,” Bill said as he glanced at the twins, who shrugged with actual surprise and shock on their faces, Ron who frowned, and Hermione who was already on her feet heading to the door.

Ginny was out with Luna at Diagon, having ice cream. So unfair that Harry couldn’t go.

Anyway.

When Hermione opened the door, the argument suddenly became clear.

“Sirius, my dear boy,” Dumbledore said in that grandfatherly tone that implied that you were being a ridiculous child.

“Do not “my dear boy” me, Albus,” Sirius snapped with furious venom. “When I needed you to save me, you ignored me. When I was thrown in Azkaban, you looked the other way. When I escaped, you let them hunt me across the island. Worse, you put Harry with his bloody Aunt and then flatly refused to reconsider, no matter what anyone said.”

“I admit that I might have had a few lapses of judgement,” Dumbledore said much more stiffly.

“A few?” Sirius roared at him. “You’ve made a bloody career out of assuming that you’re infallible and never wrong, you bloody bastard! And now, after failing me, after failing Harry, after failing every single child who ever came to Hogwarts you fucking dare come here and ask me to beg for you with the Board of Directors?”

Harry’s breath caught. He tiptoed to the railing so that he could peek over the edge. Dumbledore stood just outside of the floo room, stiff and angry. Even the enchantments on his robes were still, which probably meant that he’d done something so that he’d look more formal and important.

As if a lavender robe with bunnies running around the bottom hem was ever going to be appropriate anywhere other than the circus.

Sirius stood just outside of arm’s reach, his wand in one hand throwing sparks. Granted, his wand wasn’t pointed at Dumbledore. It threw the sparks at the floor where the lovely grey and burgundy carpet that Kreacher had found lay. None of them burned it, thank goodness. It was a very nice carpet.

The surprising thing was that the whole house hadn’t gone up in flames from Sirius’ fury.

“Sirius,” Dumbledore said in that stern tone that was so damned annoying, “everything that I’ve done was for the Greater Good. Surely you understand that.”

“No, it bloody well wasn’t,” Sirius snarled right back at him. “It was for your good. Yours, not anyone else’s. Don’t you try and convince me of anything else. Just get out. You’re no longer welcome at Grimmauld. You’re no longer welcome at any Black property.”

Dumbledore’s eyes went wide. His mouth opened a tiny bit as if that was the exact opposite of what he’d expected, and honestly, it probably was.

“You can’t,” Dumbledore protested.

“Oh, yes, I can,” Sirius said, holding up the hand with the Black ring on it. “Get. Out!”

Magic surged so hard and fast that Harry’s ears popped. There was a rush of light and air that tasted of silver and sounded like tiny bells ringing. Harry heard something like a distant shout from Dumbledore, but when he opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) Dumbledore was gone.

“Fucking bastard,” Sirius snarled before stomping into the floo room and making magic surge and ring and gust again. “There. Try and get past that ward, you spangly lying arse.”

Harry turned to stare up at Bill who had a sad, knowing look on his face. Not shocked. Not surprised at all. Just sort of resigned and regretful, but only the faintest hints of regret. Bill grimaced when he noticed Harry staring at him.

“You know,” Harry murmured so that Sirius wouldn’t hear him.

Ron and Hermione and the twins certainly heard. They all turned to Bill, too, with varying degrees of “spill it” on their faces. Surprisingly, the twins were the fiercest about it while Hermione had a mildly inquiring tilt to her eyebrow instead of grabbing Bill and shaking him until he talked.edrHH

“Back in the library,” Bill said.

Once they’d all taken seats around the big library table, Bill sighed and slumped in his chair. He looked tired all of a sudden, as if the calm, controlled façade was just that: a façade that he’d been keeping up by pure force of will.

“Mrs. Weasley said we weren’t to know anything, didn’t she?” Harry said.

Bill huffed a little laugh, nodding once towards Harry. “You always have been quick about seeing things like that. Yes, she did. Mum was of the opinion that if the parties were too stressful then the ICW’s investigation and the vote on Dumbledore was too stressful, too.”

“It wasn’t that the parties were stressful,” Harry protested despite Hermione covering her grin with a book and Ron grinning at him. “It was that I had to go to every single one of them. I mean, seriously, a break would’ve been nice. So, what’s been going on?”

Bill met Harry’s eye squarely as he sighed. “Some of it I literally, physically, cannot say due to an oath, but the short version is that the ICW interviewed everyone about the Ministry’s nonsense. There are… so many changes coming to the Ministry. The Muggle Queen has gotten involved. It’s… huge.”

“Good!” Hermione exclaimed. “It’s about time that place was shaken up properly.”

“I don’t disagree,” Bill said while waving for her to hush so that he could continue. “In the process of that investigation, it became obvious that Dumbledore had too much authority. Too much power. He’d already been voted out of the Chief Warlock position, a couple of days ago. Sirius was the one to decide none of you needed to know that yet. He didn’t want it to interfere with the interviews with the ICW. The Supreme Mugwump position went down yesterday because the ICW was able to prove that Dumbledore interfered with… a great many things that he should not, had no legal authority to touch, and which caused harm.”

This time he very pointedly did not look at Harry, but that made no difference because all of the others looked at Harry and nodded as if yeah, duh, that was obvious. The silence of the house echoed a little around them or maybe that was Harry blushing and squirming in his seat as he wished for something else to distract everyone.

Bill provided that distraction by going on. “The Board of Directors of Hogwarts met late last night. Apparently, the meeting lasted for several hours. They interviewed all of the teachers with the help of the ICW. Most of them had various compulsions, control spells and loyalty potions in their systems. All of that pointed to Dumbledore who, when questioned, admitted that he’d done it for “the Greater Good”.”

“The Board sacked him,” Fred said, not asked.

“On the spot,” Bill agreed. “Dumbledore pitched a fit, saying that they were threatening the survival of the entire Wizarding world. He’s convinced that You-Know-Who will come back despite evidence provided by the Goblins that You-Know-Who has been completely and totally eradicated.”

“How would the Goblins know?” Hermione asked, frowning.

Harry held up a hand and then blushed when Ron guffawed at him. “They’ve got Seers. And there’s that new Magi Seer Judoka that everyone’s talking about.”

“Also, the destruction happened in Gringotts,” Bill said, smiling at the way Hermione’s hair puffed out in outrage at the idea of anything vaguely related to divination. “Quite accidentally, from what I’ve been told. Either way, Dumbledore refused to believe it and got in a duel with Madame Longbottom and Professor Flitwick. Madame Longbottom claimed his wand. Professor Flitwick stunned and bound him. The ICW removed him from the property. He’s staying with his brother currently while the ICW and the Board go through all of his belongings at Hogwarts. There are… things that shouldn’t be there.”

Harry snickered. “Try not to sound so jealous of the people getting to work with all the “things”, Bill. Maybe you’ll get called in to help.”

“Oh,” Bill said, eyes shining with hope and excitement, “I sure hope so! What I’ve heard through the grapevine has been… Yeah. No. Can’t talk about that. Sorry. Just… bloody hell but I wish I was there.”

All the tension in the library dissipated into laughter and the twins teasing Bill who took it with good-natured amusement. He really did look like he wanted to go running out of Number Twelve, but he stayed and teased the twins and helped Harry figure out the proper angle to hold a quill so that it didn’t get smushed and splatter ink everywhere.

Weird just how light your touch had to be when writing with liquid ink instead of a proper Biro. Harry plugged through his lines, not willing to admit that the lighter touch made it way easier to write for longer periods of time. Or that cursive was much easier with a quill than it was with a Biro.

Now if he could just… write well… maybe he’d stop getting points taken off at Hogwarts for penmanship.

“A Seer,” Hermione said from the other side of the table where she was failing entirely to read her book.

“Well, sure,” Harry said, shaking his hand out as he passed the last page over to Bill to look over.

“And we’re supposed to believe what that hack said?” Hermione said, hair puffing out furiously.

Harry grinned at her. “You’re still not over Professor Trelawny, are you?”

Hermione glared at him silently. Which, yeah, obviously not. And fair given how much of a fraud Trelawny was. Harry hummed thoughtfully and then shrugged. The doors to Number Twelve would be open soon. He should probably prep Harry and the others for meeting Dudley.

And for seeing Harry’s gifts in person, too.

“Seers don’t use divination,” Harry said.

Hermione frowned. The conversation on the other end of the table stopped, even Ron frowning at Harry. Bill’s eyes widened just a little bit before he nodded his approval of the lines and passed them back to Harry.

“It’s all the same,” Hermione said. She hesitated. “Isn’t it?”

“No,” Harry said. “I’m sure Bill can tell you more about Goblin seers than I could, but it’s not the same at all. Divination is a spell. It’s something that you can do if you’ve got the gift, but its magic that you cast. Like potions or transfiguration or charms or runes. Seers don’t cast spells. Their magic just… channels… knowledge through them.”

“Exactly,” Bill agreed. “One doesn’t learn to be a Seer. One is born a Seer. The Gift, and it is a magical Gift on the same order as Green Magic or Metamorphagy or Mage Sight, can manifest in multiple ways, at different ages. It does run in bloodlines, so if you have a grandparent or a parent with the Gift, you’re more likely to have it, too. Luna’s a Seer. It’s part of why she is the way she is.”

“Seriously?” Hermione asked, eyes wide now. “I thought she was just… batty.”

She wilted when Bill speared her with a stern, disapproving look. Ron cringed, too, which got him a smack up back the head just casually delivered by Bill without his even looking Ron’s way.

“Luna has Mage Sight on top of being a Seer,” Bill explained. “She very literally sees the magic all around us and she’s open to the flow of fate. When I asked her about how the Seeing manifests in her, she said that for her it’s music that only she hears. Luna walks through rainbows every moment of every day with Fate singing to her. It’s no surprise that she’s a bit odd.”

“The Seer Judoka, from what I’ve heard at the parties,” Harry said as Hermione shrunk back in her chair with a painfully bright blush, “Sees through books. He’ll open a book, like, to a random page, and the knowledge he needs is there. Not just in the words on the page but also in what it implies.”

Bill nodded. “That. Some Seers do use Divination tools, but they don’t cast magic. They just are magic. Hunches, for the more action-oriented Seers. Weapons, for those who are warriors. Music, dance, art, math, there’re as many ways that the Seeing Gift manifests as there are Seers. Which honestly isn’t that much. There are generally only one or two Seers per line per hundred years or so. Luna’s mum was a Seer. Her grandmother and aunts were not.”

Hermione frowned down at her book as if it had personally betrayed her by not having information about Seers. Both of the twins got that fond look while Ron rolled his eyes and slouched down in his chair with a scowl at Hermione’s instant need to go read all about it.

Bill smiled at her.

“I’ve never read anything about Seers,” Hermione complained.

“Dumbledore didn’t think it was important information for students to know,” Bill said in a horribly cheerful voice that didn’t match his grim disapproval at all. “He removed all the books on Seers from Hogwarts’ library. Not that there were many, ever. It’s an under-studied field of magic.”

“I can go see if there’s anything in the books Sirius hid away if you’d like,” Harry offered.

“Oh, would you?” Hermione asked, relieved and delighted and still blushing violently that she’d been so rude to Luna for no good reason.

“Sure,” Harry said, bouncing up without his quill and pages of lines. “Be right back with whatever I can find.”

He ran out, grinning at the way Bill groaned that Harry left his lines behind. That could wait. Harry needed to talk to Dudley and Sirius and see if they could get the doors into Number Twelve opened. With Dumbledore banned and removed from all of his positions, it was finally safe.

And goodness knew, Hermione and Draco would both be over the moon at the libraries that Dudley had built in all the other houses up Grimmauld Place.

 

36. New Paths Opened Amid Tsunamis of Change: Number Eleven

The odd thing about waking up and realizing that his gut wasn’t as worried about Dumbledore was how very ordinary the morning was. Harry listened to birds twittering as the grey light of pre-dawn slowly shifted rosy. Not quite gold yet, but it wouldn’t be long before the sun edged up over the distant horizon to gild everything along Grimmauld Place.

Out in the hallway, he could hear Molly and Arthur discussing bangers and mash with a nice gravy as she made her slow way down to the kitchen, him heading off to work. Probably no one else was awake yet. The two of them were stupidly early risers, worse than Harry even.

Harry’s blankets were warm and comfy instead of thin and scratchy. The mattress had just the right level of firmness. Last night, Harry had tossed his clothes at the wardrobe. Sometime during the night, Kreacher had come and tidied up, so Harry had fresh clothes laid out waiting for him.

And this was what Harry could expect for… the rest of his life, more or less.

Sure, Dumbledore hadn’t been fully dealt with yet, but he had no access to Harry at the Wizengamot. He had no access at Number Twelve. He even had no access to Hogwarts which meant that the only way that Dumbledore would get his hands on Harry was a “random” encounter on the street.

How very… weird.

Harry blinked at the ceiling for a moment or two and then got up. No point to staying in bed with those kinds of thoughts. He wouldn’t be going back to sleep now. Harry put on his jeans and one of his better short-sleeved button-down shirts before heading upstairs, across the rooftops and down into Number Eleven.

“About time you showed up,” Dudley said, grinning as Harry startled and stared at Dudley, vertical, dressed properly, even. “Expected you at least half an hour ago. The doors to Number Twelve are ready to go.”

“Oh!” Harry hurried over, grinning. “Is that why I couldn’t sleep? All I knew was that something was up, and I felt safer than expected for some reason.”

“Well,” Dudley said, lightly whacking Harry in the shoulder with one meaty fist, “not sure about that, but since That Man’s no longer allowed access, Sirius and Lacey have figured out how to open the doors. Come on. We’re putting two up on the family level and two to either side down on the ground floor.”

The “punch” barely even brushed Harry’s sleeve, so he just laughed and mock-punched Dudley back. Once they got downstairs, Lacey was the only one in the front hallway. Most of the doors between houses had been placed near the middle of the house, generally in the libraries because that was what Dudley used most.

This one looked like it was going to be a door that led into the entryway, which, honestly, made more sense to Harry given that Number Twelve belonged to completely different people than the rest of the street. Namely, Harry since he owned everything else even if it was really Dudley who lived there and used the places all the time.

“Will it lock?” Harry asked as Lacey murmured spells, tracing faintly glowing lines over the stonework that slowly shifted until there was an arch and then the beginnings of a massive door.

“Of course,” Dudley said. He watched Lacey, calmly, with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. “All the doors between houses’ll lock. We made sure of that. The only tricky part here was that Sirius had to work on the other side in conjunction with Lacey for it to go right.”

Kreacher popped in with tea and little bite-sized scones, shooing both Harry and Dudley back into the closest drawing room where they’d be out of the splash zone if something went wrong. Not that anything did. They’d had their tea, demolished the scones, and then had a nice big second mug of tea that Kreacher popped to them before the door to Number Twelve actually looked like a real door.

The magic rose around Lacey, shimmering silver with the distant sense of ringing bells. Harry sipped his second mug of tea, trying not to wince as his ears popped, popped a second time and then ached fiercely before Number Eleven shivered around them.

All the weight and music and pressure disappeared at once.

“Kreacher brings tea,” Kreacher announced as he popped right next to Lacey with a big sturdy mug of steaming hot tea. “You is to come in and have breakfast now. All three of you is to come.”

Harry shrugged and looked at Dudley who shrugged right back. They rose as one, sauntered over to the door as one and then smirked as one when Lacey narrowed her eyes at the two of them over the top of her mug of tea.

She still pushed the door open for them.

Interestingly, it opened into Number Twelve. Harry had expected that it would open into Number Eleven for some reason. History and power of the Blacks, ancient wards, blah, blah, blah. It just felt like Number Twelve’s wards should’ve insisted on pushing the door to the Eleven side, not letting them in.

“Sirius Black!” Molly screeched from the kitchen in the basement. “What in Merlin’s name did you just do?”

Where Number Eleven was an oasis of peace and calm, Number Twelve was full of shouts, Molly screeching, and feet thundering down the stairs to the foyer where Sirius stood grinning next to the brand-new door.

“Hey, Prongslet,” Sirius said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “Judoka. Thanks for allowing the door.”

“Hey to you, too,” Dudley said, waving towards Harry. “It’s not my house. It’s Harry’s. He’s the one you should thank.”

“What?” Hermione stood on the bottom step in her nightgown with a dressing robe thrown over top, eyes wide and hair struggling to escape her braid. “Harry, what is he talking about? Who is that? What just happened?”

“That’s what I…” Molly trailed off as soon as she saw Dudley. “Oh.”

“What?” Hermione screeched loud enough that even Molly flinched.

“This is the Seer Judoka,” Harry said.

He gestured towards Dudley who waved casually at the Weasleys backed up on the stairs behind Hermione. Draco poked his head over the railing on the first floor to stare. Harry hoped that he didn’t topple right over. Draco had to be just barely hanging on to lean down that far from that spot on the railing.

“Judoka, this is Hermione, my best friend,” Harry said. “Behind her is Ron and his sister Ginny. The twins Fred and George are behind her. That’s Draco, the new Black, about to fall right on his head.”

“I am not, Potter!” Draco snapped but he stopped ogling and started shoving people down the stairs so they could all talk like normal people. “How do you even know the Seer?”

Harry looked at Dudley. They hadn’t actually discussed how to explain their relationship. It wasn’t quite safe to tell anyone what Harry had done, what the two of them had done.

But Dumbledore was still out there. He would try to interfere eventually, if only in an attempt to get Harry to support his right to return to Hogwarts.

Harry flat didn’t believe that Dumbledore would ever be elected for anything again. Just not happening. Hogwarts, though, that was possible. Maybe. If he had the “right” support and the only person left for that was Harry what with Sirius throwing Dumbledore out on his ear.

Dudley hummed, pulled his much-abused copy of the Art of War out of his back pocket to consult a random page, and then nodded that it was okay to say it.

“He’s my cousin,” Harry said. “It’s kind of a long story. Everybody, this is Lacey. She’s married to Anthony who works as Judoka’s Seneschal. She’s a curse breaker. It’s really cool. So, breakfast?”

“Absolutely yes,” Lacey said. “We’ve a bare three hours before the first appointment, Judoka. Which house needs to be ready?”

“Nine,” Dudley said, casually waving off the worries there. “It’s taken care of. I got Kreacher to take care of all the prep last night. Sirius, the Black library is back in place. You’ll want to ward the really dangerous stuff again.”

“Right, right,” Sirius agreed as he headed straight for the stairs to head upstairs. “Good plan. Go eat, kids. I’ll be right back down.”

Of course, Molly started huffing like Sirius making sure that the dangerous books weren’t dangerous to anyone was An Issue.

“None of that,” Judoka said, waggling his finger in her direction. “Those books are needed. I’ve already been over them. Every single one has a purpose, whether you like it or not.”

“Had!” Molly exclaimed though she bit her lip and clenched her hands in front of her chest. “Had a purpose. There’s, there’s no need for anyone to study them now!”

“You’re wrong,” Harry said before he could think about it.

“Utterly wrong,” Dudley agreed. “There’s a need and it’s not even that far off. You Magi types aren’t gonna stay hidden too much longer, not with satellites and cameras everywhere. They’re gonna be vital to figuring out how to protect your lot for the long term.”

“Can’t See it?” Harry asked as the two of them sauntered towards the stairs to the breakfast room, brushing right past Molly who spluttered and wrung her hands and then sighed dramatically as if she’d been overruled.

Because she had.

“Nope,” Dudley said. “It’s all on your side. You’ll have to spend some time mucking about with it later. Not, like, before school or anything. In the next few years. I know there’s important stuff there, but it’s not for me to find it and figure it out. That’s for you and your friends.”

“Oh, okay,” Harry said. “I’ll get with Hermione and Ron later, rope Draco in, too. Between the lot of us, we should be able to figure out whatever it is.”

Molly’s breakfast was, as always massive and delicious, not that Hermione or Draco or even Ron seemed to notice it. The three of them sat at the table and didn’t so much as glance at the breakfasts that Molly silently served them.

“Why is he saying that you’re gonna do things, mate?” Ron asked because of course Ron was the one blunt enough to ask a question that all of the adults looked like they’d bitten their tongues right through to keep from voicing.

“I can kinda do the Seeing thing, too,” Harry explained in his most practiced, deliberately casual tone. He waved a sausage towards Duds. “Not like Judoka. He’s all clear visions and obvious paths. I’m all hunches and just knowing what needs to be done.”

Draco scowled at Harry. He didn’t even need to say that he thought it was a load of bollocks. His face did it for him. Which was fair. Wasn’t like Draco had spent any amount of time around Harry other than picking fights. He’d only been on the receiving end instead of watching it all unfold.

Ron, on the other hand, frowned and then nodded slowly as if he saw it.

“But Harry,” Hermione protested, “you hate divination.”

“Not the same thing,” Dudley said, waving a sausage at her and then grinning when her chin came up and her lips went all tight with disapproval.

“Seeing isn’t divination, yes,” Hermione snapped at him. “Bill explained… it… before…”

Harry nodded as the pieces suddenly fell into place in Hermione’s head. “Yes, exactly. He was trying to prepare you for today. Bill knew about us. We made him take a very restrictive oath that you shouldn’t press him on. There’s more stuff that’s not safe to discuss.”

Bill’s hands went up when Molly and Sirius both turned to frown at him. “Oh, no. I’m not saying anything other than Judoka has a fist of doom. I mean, I totally earned that punch in the face, but I’m not risking another one.”

“Took boxing before I decided to try Judo,” Dudley said, smirking as he demolished his sausages. “Even with my father fixing the matches, I was pretty good.”

“He didn’t,” Harry protested.

“Kept paying people off so that I’d go up against lighter weight classes,” Dudley said, rolling his eyes. “I always practiced against the proper weight class, but Dad thought I needed the help for some stupid reason.”

They shared sad head shakes over the stupidity that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had gotten up to. Granted, the majority of it wasn’t Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia’s fault, but on the other hand, Aunt Petunia had apparently started another neighborhood war to be the queen bee in her new area and Uncle Vernon was still horrible, bigoted and obnoxious to everyone he perceived as lower than him.

Harry really didn’t want to know, but Anthony kept updating Dudley who made a point to inflicting the updates on Harry when he visited too late in the evening.

“You didn’t know, right Mum?” Ginny asked.

Molly looked away, smoothing her apron.

“Right, Mum?” Ginny repeated more slowly and with much sharper emphasis.

“I told her about it,” Harry said, taking pity. “She’s got another really restrictive oath of her own. So do Sirius, Remus, and Mrs. Black. We’ve been keeping things… very quiet. It’s the only way to stay safe.”

“We’re almost clear though,” Dudley said when all the kids turned to stare at Harry. “Should be good to just live our lives by the time the school year starts.”

Harry thought about it as he munched on his mushroom. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right. It won’t be long now. I’m glad. All this running around his stressful. Oh! That reminds me. Draco and Hermione need to see the libraries.”

“Plural?” Draco said, perking right up.

“How many libraries?” Hermione asked with the same intent excitement. “What sort of books?”

Dudley laughed before polishing off the last of his breakfast, just a couple of bites and a final swallow of his tea. “Come see. Easier to show you than to explain it.”

When Dudley pushed back from the table, he set off a rush of kids following suit. Harry scrambled to eat the last few bites of his breakfast, claimed a refill of his mug of tea that Kreacher doctored to perfection with a snap, and then sauntered after Dudley.

This was going to be interesting. And probably a hell of a lot of fun when they all realized that Dudley was effectively a squib while still being the newest and most powerful Seer magi had seen in generations.

Better still, Harry’s gut was purring about getting all of the other kids on their side. It wouldn’t be easy, but if they could do it, they’d have defenders right there with them instead of far away from school.

 

37. Secrets Shimmering Into View: Grimmauld Place

“So,” Dudley said as they all trooped through the door on Dudley’s heels, “this is Number Eleven. Used to be Muggle before Harry had his seneschal Amal buy it for him.”

“You bought a house?” Ron squeaked, horrified and jealous and awed all at once.

“I kind of bought the whole line of houses once I realized that Sirius owned Number Twelve,” Harry said with a shrug that made Ron scowl and Ginny narrow her eyes in the Bat-Bogey sort of way. “It’s part of the oaths that we can’t explain yet. I’ve got ah, way more money than I thought.”

“And still no cottage on the canal with a prize-winning garden,” Dudley said with his old mean grin.

“Aaagh! I know!” Harry groaned right on cue. “I can’t believe they bought you the cottage when you can’t stand gardening. It’s so unfair. Still, once this is all straightened up, I’m gonna invite Neville in so he can help me combine all the backyards into a real garden, one that doesn’t try to eat you when you step outside.”

The rant set Dudley to snickering, just as it always did. Poking Harry was never going to stop. They weren’t enemies anymore. Their agreement to be allies had shifted over time so now they were something like friends, something like actual cousins who cared about each other. Which was nice.

Didn’t mean that Dudley would stop poking Harry just to watch him react.

Of course, Harry was more than happy to do the same thing back at Dudley, so it was fine. It was fair.

Ranting about gardens as they strolled through Number Eleven on their way through Ten to Nine set the twins to snickering at Harry. Ginny was more watchful, one hand on her wand as they moved house to house. Ron sauntered at the back, hands thrust into his pockets as he studied everything with a mock-casual eye. The tension of his shoulders was really obvious when Harry turned to point at Draco after his not at all sotto voce comment about Harry’s dedication to gardening.

“This,” Dudley said, raising his voice to drown out Harry’s complaints, “is Number Nine Grimmauld Place. This is what Lacey found for us when Harry needed a place to stay that wasn’t… where he was before.”

“And… neither Lacey nor I nor the Goblins had any idea that Sirius was in Number Twelve,” Harry interjected. He rolled his eyes. “That was a surprise. Nice one. I mean, it doesn’t get much closer than this.”

“It is… convenient,” Draco allowed.

His voice went squeaky on the final syllable while his eyes went wide. Dudley grinned as he led the way into the Number Nine library. It was still pale, just not white hospital blech everywhere. Harry had won the battle for pale colors, all natural wood tones and creams and some good warm tans.

“The biggest portion of the Potter library is here,” Harry told the others. “There’re bookcases that’re full of really dangerous books. Those are glassed in and locked. You won’t be able to open them. I need Lacey, Anthony or Amal to open them. Some of the other bookcases are warded because there’s stuff that shouldn’t be allowed to be read casually. Family techniques and the like. Judoka and I are the only ones who can read those, though Amal can consult if he needs to.”

Dudley nodded, gesturing at the rest of the library. “Most of the rest is open if you guys need it. We’ve one blood-locked section that you can’t see that’s got… heh. What’re we calling those?”

“Personally, I call them the “oh shite, stay away from me” books,” Harry said and then grinned at the way Ron, Ginny and the twins cackled. “They’re… really nasty, really old, really illegal and really entailed. I might figure out what to do about them by the time I’m a hundred or so. For now, they’re kept very well away.”

“That,” Dudley agreed. “Harry’s mum updated most of the books here. You’ll find muggle and magi books, from Britian and from around the world. Lots of history and science, big section on mathematics that’s been brought up to the latest stuff printed. Including a fresh off the presses run of scientific journals, if that’s your thing.”

“Oh,” Hermione breathed, eyes shining with excitement. “I’ve missed reading journals.”

Dudley led the way back into Number Ten, though Harry had to put his hands in the center of Draco and Hermione’s backs to get them to leave the room. Ron did a double-take when he saw the books on the shelves in Number Ten’s library.

“Military history, strategy, tactics, all that in here,” Dudley explained. “Then in Number Thirteen we’ve got botany, social sciences and such. Number Fourteen is all in on the runes and arithmancy, with a nice meaty section on physics that I’m starting to work through. Number Fifteen has fiction, a lot of old and new stuff, plus philosophy, biographies, stuff like that. Plus maps. Got lots of maps in a special room in Number Fifteen. But it’s not set in stone. Books shift around as they’re needed, read, what have you.”

Hermione flopped down onto Number Ten’s couch, cheeks pale and fingers trembling. “So many books.”

Harry nodded as he sat next to her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder. “Judoka’s Seeing gift operates through books. So he’s gathered up as many books as he can.”

“So far,” Dudley said, waggling a finger Harry’s way. “As many books as I can so far. Anthony’s out searching out more rare old books, both muggle and magi, for me. I mean, I can work through just one or two books but the information I need to See with is easier when I have more books around me.”

Draco carefully eased himself down into one of the armchairs, just as pale and overwhelmed as Hermione. “They really did get the houses they bought you two backwards.”

Both Harry and Dudley laughed because, yeah, they sure as heck did.

It was fine, though. They’d work out later. Not like Dudley wasn’t making contacts and money hand over fist with his Seeings, since he’d long since finished with the people they needed information from. The people coming in now were all just, you know, ordinary folks asking ordinary questions. No need to lean on them for information that Dudley and Harry could get more easily.

Thus, all kinds of money flowing into Dudley’s new vault.

While they all sat, Ron prowled through Number Ten’s library, making startled and delighted noises every few seconds as he pulled books out, flipped through them, and then put them back so that he could grab another book that caught his eye. The twins had climbed up onto the ladder and were busily ransacking one of the upper-level bookcases to see what they could find out of easy reach.

They balanced together on the ladder gracefully. Easily. Like one person instead of two.

“I just…” Hermione sighed and sat up. “I don’t understand why you have all of this. Wasn’t one house enough?”

Harry wobbled one hand as he stared around the room. “Not really? I mean, yeah, I’d be perfectly happy with that little cottage on the canal. I don’t need a huge building or tons of books or anything like that. But Judoka does need them and, well, he insisted on staying close.”

“Damn right,” Dudley huffed with his best “I can’t believe you sometimes” scowl. “As much trouble as you find your way into, just randomly, no way was I going to leave you alone who knows where. I might not have been right by your side all this time, but I was just a couple of doors away. If you’d needed me, I’d have been there with backup.”

Harry nodded, laughing a little. “Oh man, Mrs. Weasley would’ve pitched a fit if you’d shown up during one of the stupid parties. I’m so glad you didn’t.”

Ron came over with a book that looked like a detailed breakdown of a specific battle from World War 2. “What were you two so scared of? All of this is how to survive a war.”

“There was a war coming,” Dudley explained, bland and calm and completely flat. “You know that. Your stupid Dark Lord was pushing the whole damned magi society towards war. Just because he’s gone, don’t expect the tensions to go away. That takes time and a whole chunk of work that no one in magi society seems willing to do. Harry’s stuck right in the middle since That Man painted a target on him—”

“That man?” Draco asked, bright and intent and so laser focused suddenly.

“The Headmaster,” Harry explained. “We don’t use his name when we’re somewhere we shouldn’t be.”

“Got taboos magicked onto his name so he knows when you talk about him,” Dudley confirmed much to Hermione, Ron and Draco’s horror. “Just like your Dark Lord did. Frankly, I think he got the idea from your Dark Lord.”

“Other way around,” Harry said as his gut screamed about it. “That Man’s been doing it way longer. No idea how long, but longer.”

Hermione opened her mouth to say something, frown slowly twisting her eyebrows, only to slowly shut her mouth again. She huffed as she leaned back in her chair, studying Harry as if she was going to start questioning him. Which would be perfectly normal for Hermione, even when she was trying very hard to be better.

“Right, sure,” Ron said, scoffing as he scowled at Harry in much the same way as he had during the Tournament.

Just like Ron. Always ready to pick a fight when he shouldn’t and so unwilling to admit that he might not understand something important. Like, oh, what someone else was able to do. Or more specifically, what Harry was able to do.

“Don’t do that,” Dudley said, pointing at Ron with one meaty finger as the air suddenly went liquid around them.

“Oh, bloody hell,” George said up on the ladder.

“Ron, you blithering idiot, apologize!” Fred finished for him as they slid down the side of the ladder to land in a splash of Dudley’s magic.

“What is this?” Ginny asked, one hand patting her chest. “I feel like I’m…”

“Floating in water,” Harry said, leaning back into the couch cushions as he studied Ron who started panting and shaking. “Like there are truths just outside of your reach getting ready to pour into your mouth, nose, eyes, ears. Like the weight of the entire world’s oceans are slowly pressing down on you harder and harder and harder.”

Ron whimpered as he clapped a hand over his mouth. It wouldn’t keep him from spilling his jealousy all over the floor like a waterfall of water flowing out of his mouth. Harry knew that.

“Let him go,” Harry told Dudley.

“He shouldn’t act like that!” Dudley complained, waving at Ron. “What gives him the right to treat you that way?”

“He grew up as poor as me,” Harry said, pushing his Seeing against Dudley’s.

The watery magic flowed away from Ron and staggered Dudley who stared at Harry, wide-eyed. Harry just watched Dudley. Calm and relaxed on the sofa as all of his friends, and Draco, watched and panted for air.

“The youngest son who never once in his entire life had clothes just for him,” Harry continued. “The one who could never do something that his brothers hadn’t done before, better than he could. The one who wanted recognition and who never, ever got it. Who spent his entire life wishing that someone, anyone, would see him instead of his Weasley hair and his Weasley clothes and his Weasley brothers and just… I get it. He’s not jealous of me, exactly.”

Dudley groaned as he let the weight of his Seeing go.

The magic flowed away, leaving Ron gasping great lungsful of air and Hermione with tears on her cheeks. The twins had caught Ginny in their arms, holding her up because she looked half a second away from passing out.

Draco swallowed, pressed his lips together, and then shut his eyes for a long moment.

“Fine,” Dudley grumbled. “He basically lived your life minus the abuse. I get it.”

Harry shrugged. “He’s my best mate, even if he is a right berk whenever something hits one of his triggers. It’s fine. We’ll help him find a path that none of his family’s ever been on and it’ll work out.”

“He’ll just be a berk from time to time,” Dudley said, laughing ruefully as he shook his head. “Fine. Can’t say that my former best mates were any kind of a prize.”

“Eerg,” Harry groaned as he grimace. “Piers. Just… Piers.”

“Yeah, he was…”

They both shuddered. Piers really was a piece of work. Harry had no doubt whatsoever that Piers was going to be just what he was for the rest of his life. His mum and dad were rich and powerful enough that Piers saw even less consequences than Dudley had.

“How…?” Ron asked, hoarse and shaken.

“I’ve always seen it, Ron,” Harry said, shrugging. “Just like I saw how desperate Hermione was for friends and Draco to belong somewhere that he wasn’t judged by his father. Ginny wants to be free from your mum’s expectations. The twins aren’t identical. They just pretend to be because it’s fun. I’ve always seen that sort of thing. I just never say it because I try not to bring attention to myself.”

Hermione sucked a sharp breath between her teeth. “Abuse.”

It wasn’t quite a question. Of all of them, Hermione had been the one that Harry had given bits and pieces of the truth to. She already knew. She still looked at Dudley who sighed and flopped on the couch next to Harry.

“Yeah,” Dudley said sadly. “It wasn’t good. At all. You should ask him someday.”

“You were abused, too,” Harry said, poking Dudley in the ribs and then snort-laughing as Dudley wrapped a meaty arm around his shoulders.

“Not physical,” Dudley agreed, “but yeah. Messes you up. Anyway. What did you guys need to learn? I’ll point you to the right library before I go off to my next meeting.”

Ron licked his lips before hauling himself to his feet. He waved at the books in the room, obviously content to study all of them. The twins did their twin thing as they set Ginny back on her feet. Hermione and Draco exchanged wary looks like they might just duel each other for first right to whatever books they needed.

It wasn’t fixed, Harry’s friendship with all of them. But it was better. At least they knew now. The real questions would come after Hermione and Draco had a chance to think and Ron had a chance to brood. Harry could handle that. He knew he could.

The only one who kind of worried him was Ginny who had narrow eyes as she stared at Dudley’s arm around Harry’s shoulders. What was that all about?

 

38. Twittering Voices Shape Into Angry Roars: Number Twelve

Harry jerked as Ginny dropped onto the biggest squashy sofa in Number Twelve’s library, so close to Harry that their thighs rubbed against each other. Her smile had that brittle brightness that tended to precede Bat-Bogey hexes, which made Harry’s gut sit up and take notice in a “run away right now!” sort of way.

Kind of like facing down the basilisk crossed with Aunt Petunia fingering the handle of the frying pan.

“So,” Ginny said in a similarly bright and brittle tone, “how did you and Judoka meet?”

Harry frowned at her. “…What?”

“Judoka,” Ginny said, clearly ignoring the way Ron and the twins started edging towards the door and Bill sighed like the weight of the world had just landed on his shoulders. “How did you two meet?”

“Um, we’ve known each other since we were two?” Harry said slowly. “Why?”

Ginny’s smile fractured at the edges. The wildness in her eyes went horrified and then deeply, deeply angry. “That, that long, huh?”

“I have no idea why you’re angry,” Harry said. “I mean, literally, none. My Seeing is clueless. Frightened, but clueless. I’ve no, not one single inkling, of why you’re upset at me.”

“He put his arm Ginny screeched as she jumped to her feet, “around your shoulders! And you let him! You barely let Ron and Hermione touch you! Why is he so special? What’s he got that I don’t?”

Harry stared at her for a long, long moment, waiting for any of that to make sense. Eventually he turned to Bill who had the “very disappointed in you” frown pointed right at Ginny. Ron and the twins were long gone, of course. Hermione sighed as she emerged from the stacks.

“Ginny,” Hermione said with a long, exhausted sigh, “I’ve told you before. Harry doesn’t get romance.”

“Oh, is this a courting thing?” Harry asked, desperately grateful that Hermione was actually there. “Really?”

“Really,” Hermione confirmed. She plopped in one of the armchairs opposite Harry with her stack of eight books, all of which looked like law and history books from a very long time ago. “Second year she kept trying to hex every girl you spoke with. Percy got seriously peeved with her about it.”

“With me?” Harry asked, trying to wrap his head around it. “But I don’t want to get married. I don’t even want to kiss anyone.”

“That’s, that’s just, just your age,” Ginny spluttered as Bill put his hands on her shoulder. “You’ll grow out of it! We can be good together. We can!”

Harry sighed and stood, waving for Ginny to follow him. He already knew that Dudley didn’t have any Seeings thing morning. He’d decided to take the morning off so that he could sleep late, not that Dudley really slept that late anymore.

Something about not having his parents treating him like an especially cute and promising dog had Dudley much more willing to get up, get exercise, do things. Which was awesome for Dudley.

Not so awesome for Harry when they walked in on Dudley in the Number Eleven library with his shirt off and Dudley all sweaty, looking like he’d dropped twenty stone or so.

“When did you get abs?” Harry protested. “What is this? I wasn’t told about this.”

“You chose to swishy-poke with wands instead of learning proper Judo,” Dudley said, cackling as he snapped his sweaty towel in Harry’s general direction. “Don’t blame me that you’re a scrawny runt and I’m not.”

Harry barely had a chance to whirl and slap a shield over Ginny before her wand was out. The bat-bogey hex bounced off the inside of Harry’s shield and hit Ginny square in the face. He groaned and dropped the shield so that Bill, who also groaned, could cancel the hex before Ginny had bats exploding out of her nose.

“She’s got it bad,” Dudley commented as he pulled on a shirt.

“Apparently,” Harry agreed. “I had no idea until she sat down and demanded to know what you have that she doesn’t.”

Dudley rolled his eyes. “Wow, not paying attention well, are you? Not that I really care, other than to warn you not to try and force my ally into a relationship that he doesn’t want.”

“But we’re destined for each other,” Ginny protested through her hiccupping sobs. “He saved me from Tom and the basilisk.”

Dudley frowned at Ginny for a long enough moment that the air went liquid and blue around them. Ginny slapped both hands over her mouth as tears streamed down her cheeks. Harry sighed and added the weight of his gift to Dudley’s. It was just enough to force Ginny to drop her hands and wheeze.

“He didn’t, didn’t do it for me,” Ginny cried. “He thought I was dead. He, he, he…”

“He what?” Dudley demanded as Ginny tried to shut her mouth on the truth that she really didn’t want to admit.

“I’m a little sister to him,” Ginny wailed.

The pressure dropped as Bill tugged Ginny into his arms. His hard look bounced right off Dudley’s hard look. Harry sighed and plopped into one of the library chairs.

“Don’t get mad at Judoka for making her face her delusions,” Harry told Bill. “I helped. I’ve told her and Ron and Hermione and most every single adult at those awful parties that I’ve no interest in marriage or dating. She keeps lying to herself about it and that’s dangerous when you’ve got a bat-bogey spell on speed-cast.”

Bill’s chest twitched as he caught a laugh before it could escape. “Fine. You’re right about that. It was just a bit brutal.”

“So is casting a hex at a squib who literally can’t defend himself,” Dudley said. “I’m strong, sure. But only in muscles and Seeing. I couldn’t use a wand to save my life. She might as well have decided to stab a puppy or something.”

“Big puppy,” Harry said and then spluttered when Dudley tossed the sweaty towel in his face. “Ugh! Gross! No fair!”

Dudley cackled his way through getting dressed properly and then followed them all back to Number Twelve where Molly was having a conniption at the Prophet while Narcissa watched with genteel amusement from behind her teacup.

“Oh, Rita’s article finally came out,” Dudley said with a huge grin. “Good. I thought it’d be today. Big part of why I took the morning off.”

“This, this, this can’t be true!” Molly hissed while glaring at the paper.

Which had a huge headline that filled the top half of the page screaming about Dumbledore’s scandalous affair with Grindelwald back before WW2. Molly was so distracted by reading and hissing at the many revelations that Rita had reported that she completely missed Kreacher serving them all breakfast.

“How could she even know all this?” Molly said, scowling at the paper.

“I told her,” Dudley said in that perfectly calm tone that meant he was highly amused and yet completely ready to rip people apart with either fists or words if he had to. “You upset you didn’t know ahead of time, or did you actually think he was a good guy?”

“No, no, she totally did,” Harry said as Molly’s cheeks went as red as her hair. “It was only recently that she saw through that twinkly grandfather thing he does.”

“Twinkly?” Dudley asked, staring at Harry with horror.

“It’s a good word for it,” Ron confirmed. “He’s got this kind of sparkly thing about the eyes.”

“That’s magic,” Dudley said so promptly that Harry frowned. “Deceptive magic.”

“It’s…” Harry thought about it and then turned to Narcissa who set her teacup down politely. “Could obscuring your eyes with a sparkle effect keep people from doing legilimens on you?”

Both Narcissa and Molly went still while Bill hissed something decidedly profane through his clenched teeth. Which kind of answered the question all on its own, really, but Narcissa still nodded slowly as she picked up her teacup with very careful hands.

“Yes, actually, it would,” Narcissa said. “And Dum… excuse me, That Man has always been known as a master of the art. He would protect himself, wouldn’t he?”

“Right.” Dudley huffed and shoved a whole rasher of bacon in his mouth so that he wouldn’t start cursing, too.

Both Molly and Narcissa refused to meet anyone’s eyes. Frankly, they spent the rest of breakfast glaring at the paper as if they wanted to set Dumbledore’s picture on fire with their minds. Or maybe set Dumbledore on fire. It was a tempting thought.

Ginny went from sullen to confused to incandescently angry after a bit. Harry studiously ignored her huffing on the other side of the table. He didn’t feel the least bit bad about it because Ron had his “I don’t see nothing” face on and Hermione had her nose so firmly in a book that the whole world might as well not exist.

“He was…” Ginny finally said, fingernails screeching on the tabletop, “he was so sure that I was fine. After the diary. He was so sure that I was fine. Because he poked in my head. He poked in my head and he saw the nightmares and the fear and the leftover voice nattering away at me all the time and he told Mum and Dad that I was just fine. When he saw,” her voice cracked, “that I wasn’t!”

“Oh, Gin,” Bill breathed as he pulled her into his arms and held her close though the storm of tears.

The Weasley’s disappeared off to their rooms, leaving Harry and Dudley and Hermione to the leftovers of breakfast. Dudley shook his head.

“She’s a right mess, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed sadly. “Not the only one messed up by That Man’s nonsense. I mean, basically anyone in Slytherin ever, me, Remus, Sirius, the entire Black family, anyone with a Grey family, anyone with a Dark family. All the Muggleborns. Most of the halfbloods.”

“Many purebloods,” Narcissa agreed as she finished her tea and set the cup down with a decisive little clack. “I’ve never understood why.”

Hermione finally put her book down, staring at it blankly as Kreacher popped the breakfast dishes away and cleaned the room perfectly. She looked tired, not the sort of tired that went with exams coming up or another of Harry’s death-defying ordeals, but emotionally exhausted.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hermione murmured. “I’ve never been able to make sense of it. Can you two…?”

Dudley grimaced. “I can tell you why he’s a threat to me and Harry. We See too much and undermine him automatically.”

“I mean, we literally are doing everything we can to make sure he loses every bit of power he’s ever had,” Harry agreed. He shrugged at the way Narcissa and Hermione both frowned. “He’s a deadly threat to me, specifically, but also to anyone who challenges his power. That’s why we went to the Goblins. That’s why we helped the ICW.”

“It’s why I went to Rita,” Dudley agreed. “Every bit of power he has is used to keep him at the top and everyone else down. Can’t tell you why it’s so important to him. I’ve not looked at that. Don’t much care, honestly.”

“It’s…”

Harry paused and thought about it. More accurately, spent a bit of time listening to what his gut had to say about Dumbledore and all of his nonsense.

There wasn’t much that was clear. The threat, the danger, sure, but the reasons why?

Not so much.

“Okay,” Harry said once he gave up waiting for his gut to make more sense out of it all, “this is my impression, and you need to bear in mind that it’s just an impression. I don’t work like Judoka does. It’s all gut instinct, no clear visions, no absolute truths.”

He waited until Hermione bit her lip and nodded that she understood. Narciss nodded and shifted in her seat so that she could squarely meet Harry’s eyes.

“Please,” Narcissa said.

“Right,” Harry said. “It’s like something horrible happened when he was young. To him, to his family. I’m not really sure. It shifted… something… in his mind so that he decided that he had to be the one to control everything or it would All Go Wrong. And… I get the feeling that he might have had a prophecy or something once? And he’s blown that up into this huge thing that means he’s the One True Leader Who Shall Save Us All.”

Hermione started giggling at Harry’s emphasis even though her eyes looked a little wild around the edges. The air hadn’t gone liquid, so Harry obviously wasn’t pushing at everyone with his gift.

“Yeah,” Dudley said slowly as he ran his fingers over the cover of his copy of Art of War. “That feels right. I mean, I got no clue exactly what happened or what his prophecy might’ve said, but it resonates like it’s true.”

Harry waggled a finger Dudley’s way. “The important thing is that he’s wrong. He’s absolutely wrong. His part’s long since over. He’s not specially gifted to lead everyone. All he’s doing is messing everything up by trying to impose his vision on the whole world. Which, you know, can happen to anyone.”

“It’s just dangerous to the two of you,” Hermione whispered. In the quiet of the breakfast room, her words sounded as loud as a shout. “Because you can prove magically that he’s wrong.”

Harry looked at Dudley. Dudley nodded that yeah, that was about the shape of it. Harry nodded at Hermione.

“Fascinating,” Narcissa murmured. “Should I be planning for an engagement for the two of you?”

“Ugh!” Harry groaned as he slouched down in his chair. “No! I don’t want to get married. I’m not interested in any of that. I wish people would stop that!”

“He’s asexual and aromantic,” Dudley said with a grin as he pretended to push Harry all the way under the table, much to Hermione’s startled amusement. “And I’m not interested in his scrawny ass. And no, before you can ask, I’m not interested in anyone setting me up, either. I’ll find my person in my own time. I already know they’re out there. Just isn’t time to meet them yet.”

Narcissa sighed. “Well, I had to try. Pity. Draco had hopes.”

Harry stared at her for a long moment before actually sliding under the table to hide. He stayed right there as Dudley burst out laughing and Hermione scolded him for being ridiculous. Nope. Not coming out. Especially not if he had to deal with people trying to flirt.

 

39. Strategy and Seeing Compare Notes: Number Nine

Four days before time to go back to Hogwarts and three days after Dumbledore was removed as Headmaster, Harry woke with the feeling of bugs crawling under his skin. Not real bugs. It was more like his magic was twitching with anticipation.

Very seriously, urgently, excitedly twitching.

It was kind of awful. And itchy.

He wasn’t at all surprised when Dudley pushed open his bedroom door and strode in with Amal, Lacey and Anthony on his heels. Harry pushed his glasses onto his face as he sat up to face them all.

Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Harry yawned and then sat cross-legged with his blankets still draped over his legs. Across the room, Remus closed the door while Sirius paced back and forth across Harry’s bedroom like he’d been caged again.

“What happened?” Harry asked.

Of everyone. Anyone. Dudley in particular, of course, not that Dudley answered him. Dudley was too busy gritting his teeth and breathing slowly and firmly through his nostrils.

Amal was the one who answered while wringing his hands. “That Man has requested a Seeing with Judoka. Preferably tomorrow early, but definitely before you kids go back to Hogwarts.”

The words hung in the air.

That was… surprising. Except not? Dumbledore did apparently put a lot of stock in prophecies. Maybe he thought he could get another one that would prove what he’d convinced himself, that he was special and Chose and Destined for Greatness.

“Interesting,” Harry said. “I take it there are mixed opinions on doing it or not?”

“You are absolutely not meeting with that man!” Lacey snapped while Anthony nodded so hard that his curls flopped wildly around his forehead. “He’s a threat and we haven’t spent all this time working to keep you safe just to expose you to him.”

“It has to happen,” Dudley said, just as fiercely. “I don’t care what you think, Lacey. It has to happen!”

She made a hissing kettle noise that made Amal edge away. Still wringing his hands like he was about to burst into tears. Anthony backed Lacey up by throwing up his hands and rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. He all but said that Dudley was being absolutely mad to even think of doing it.

Maybe from their point of view it was mad.

Harry’s gut agreed with Dudley.

Strongly.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sirius said as he flopped on the end of Harry’s bed. “That Man is a threat. A really big threat. He’ll twist every single thing that’s said, use every scrap of information he can get. This isn’t… it’s not a good idea.”

“That!” Lacey exclaimed. She pointed at Sirius while glaring at Dudley. “We just barely managed to save Sirius from That Man’s clutches. Now you want to go and leap straight into them.”

“It’s not leaping,” Dudley shouted. “It’s necessary. Why aren’t you people listening?”

Harry sighed. “It’s because they can’t feel it, Duds.”

Over at the door, Remus sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Oh, no. Not another Evans moment.”

Harry shrugged and let his Gift slowly creep out so that they could all feel it. The surprising thing was that Dudley started and stared at Harry when he felt the twitchy, itchy crawling of Harry’s magic’s excitement.

Both Anthony and Lacey flinched away from it, backing up until they were pressed against the far wall. Where Anthony had gone white as a sheet, Lacey went red-faced and trembling. Even her knees shook with was kind of odd. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Lacey respond like that before. It almost looked like fear.

“That’s awful,” Amal choked out. “Harry, that’s really awful. It’s, it’s painful. And, and, and urgent. And… excited?”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “All of the above.”

Sirius had his eyes shut as he hugged himself, rocking in place on the foot of Harry’s bed. “I don’t like it. Why does your magic feel this way? Why is it so excited?”

“That’s actually a good question,” Remus said in a perfectly normal voice despite having crouched down with his head between his knees. “Judoka’s magic didn’t have this excitement to it.”

“I think…” Dudley said slowly enough that Harry focused on him alone. “Yeah, just me. Share it just with me.”

Harry refocused his Seeing, his oh-so-excited gut on Dudley. This request from Dumbledore was for them, after all. They were the Seers Evans. Dudley was publicly Seer Judoka and all, but Harry was an Evans Seer, too.

As soon as the full weight of Harry’s magic swelled around Dudley like he’d been encased in a bubble of blue water, Dudley relaxed and breathed. His eyes drifted mostly shut. His hands relaxed out of fists into a loose curl as if he was holding a book that Harry couldn’t see.

Dudley’s hands flicked as if he turned a page, then another page. A third before Dudley nodded and opened his eyes.

They gleamed under the blue shimmer of Harry’s Gift.

“It’s a trick,” Dudley said, soft and certain. “We’ve worked together before, right? The two of us together, Seeing together. Well, this time we’re gonna do it together but flip the script.”

“Oh!” Harry breathed only to laugh and lose control over his Gift.

The blue magic spilled away from Dudley as his gut all but danced with glee at the thought of Harry playing Judoka while Dudley played the so-mysterious Ally that was only whispered about and never openly named.

It would work. He could feel it already. Dumbledore wouldn’t expect it at all. He would walk into the house and see Harry and be all grandfatherly only to get smacked through the floor by the weight of their Gifts pressing down on him.

“That’s glorious,” Harry said as he flung back the covers. “We’re doing it. Amal, Anthony, set up the Seeing in Number Nine. My house. My first house. Make it fully white again, just everything blindingly white. We’ll fix it afterwards.”

Harry tugged off his night shirt as he hurried into his bathroom, calling orders over his shoulder. Dudley was already going through Harry’s closet for clothes while the adults stared at the two of them in befuddlement.

“Lacey, we need full on wards to keep That Man from casting any magic,” Harry called as he hurried through a half-assed shower and making a vague attempt at taming his hair. “Have him sign and swear the oath before he’s even allowed in the building. Sirius, let the ICW guys know that That Man’s trying to get his positions back by consulting with us. And Remus, make sure that absolutely no one steps outside of Number Twelve when That Man is around.”

“Make That Man walk up the street to the meeting,” Dudley agreed as he pulled Harry’s deep navy trousers, his lovely golden coat from the charity shop and a cobalt blue dress shirt out of the wardrobe. “No flooing in. We don’t trust him with the floo address and we make him swear not to ever share the knowledge of the location, too.”

Harry scrubbed a towel over his hair, grinning at Lacey who looked kind of like they’d poleaxed her. “Actually, I want the full white everything so that he assumes that it’s a new location that has nothing to do with where Duds and I actually live. Make it feel as pristine as you possibly can. Give him nothing to work with.”

Sirius came over and pulled the towel out of Harry’s hands. His worry had slipped into that perky, twitchy excitement that Sirius always got when a prank was in the offing. He used his wand to dry Harry off properly and then set to work on Harry’s mop of disastrous hair.

“You’re going to prank That Man,” Sirius observed. Pure approval gleamed in his eyes.

“Mmm, more or less,” Harry agreed with a bright grin in the mirror as Sirius failed to work miracles with his hair. “Duds is right that this has to happen. Preferably today, sometime soon. Sooner the better so that he has basically no time to prepare. But it’s not quite a prank.”

“It’s totally a prank,” Dudley scoffed from Harry’s bedroom. “Just not only a prank.”

By the time Harry was dressed in his fanciest wizarding clothes, down to his shiniest leather shoes, Lacey had dropped from “going to kill someone soon” to “why do I have to deal with these idiots” which was a pretty good progression, really. She wasn’t happy, no, but she was doing as Harry and Dudley wanted, which was all that counted.

Someone, probably Amal given how badly he was fretting over the whole thing, had spilled to Hermione and Molly. When Harry and Dudley came downstairs to use the doors between houses, both of them began protesting at the top of their lungs.

Harry hit them both with the twitchy mess that was his gut’s magic.

“Oh!” Hermione gasped, nose wrinkling up as she clutched her hands against her chest. “That’s awful. Is this better than the Chamber or worse than the third task?”

Harry snort-laughed. “It’s Halloween Feast excitement levels, actually. Maybe a bit more than that. This isn’t bad, ‘Mione. This is… this is that moment where I know I’m gonna win. I don’t know how. It could still go wrong. I could flub. But I know there’s a path to victory here.”

Hermione nodded and bit her lip before carefully hugging Harry. Carefully because she clearly didn’t want to mess up his clothes, but letting Harry go into battle with Dumbledore without a hug was obviously not possible.

“But he’s so powerful,” Molly protested in a much weaker voice than normal. “And you’re so young.”

“True,” Harry agreed. “But he’s lost the majority of his power. It’s not like we’re really going to give him anything. What he wants to know is why it all went wrong. And, well, here we are. The reason that it all went wrong for him. It’ll be fine.”

“We’ve got our amulets and our rings and the wards over Number Nine will be a full power,” Dudley agreed. “Plus, you wizard types never expect a swift punch in the face. If I gotta, I’ll punch him so hard I knock all his teeth out. I know how. I’ve had lessons.”

“You are Judoka,” Harry agreed and grinned at the way Dudley preened. “If he doesn’t take the name as a warning, that’s his fault, not ours.”

No one else was up to interrupt them as they made their way through the houses to Number Nine.

It was pristine white again. White floors, white walls, white furniture, white curtains, white everything. The house had lost all the homey scents of Amal’s cooking and Anthony’s cologne. The library no longer smelled of old books.

In fact, Lacey had removed every single book from the library. The shelves were entirely empty, giving Dumbledore even less to go on. Harry nodded at that, looking at Dudley who grinned and pulled out his battered copy of The Art of War.

“What’s it say?” Harry asked as Sirius and Remus fussed about the precise placement of the single sofa and its corresponding coffee table and single white armchair.

Dudley hummed as he flipped randomly through the pages. He settled on a page about halfway through the book and nodded thoughtfully. As Dudley read, Sirius and Remus went still. Lacey paused, hand outstretched but not quite touching the doorknob she’d been reaching for. Amal bit his lip while Anthony held his breath, eyes wide.

“Interesting,” Dudley said. “To be near the goal while the enemy is still far from it, to wait at ease while the enemy is toiling and struggling, to be well-fed while the enemy is famished: – this is the art of husbanding one’s strength.”

“Makes sense,” Harry agreed. “That’s what we’ve been doing. Working away behind the scenes quietly while That Man loses power and struggles, not knowing how things have gone wrong. What else?”

“Same page,” Dudley said with a deep frown. “And it’s a good point, too. Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy. Do not interfere with an army that is returning home. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. Such is the art of warfare.”

Harry sucked a breath between his teeth, abruptly seeing, Seeing, exactly what Dudley had pointed out.

This was Dumbledore’s last stand. His very last chance, his very last hope of regaining what he’d had. He wouldn’t get any of it back. Harry and Dudley had made sure of that through their many allies. But Dumbledore wouldn’t know that.

They had to be very careful not to push Dumbledore until he did something really stupid, like attack them. As much as Harry wanted to confront Dumbledore and force him to tell them the truth, what would that benefit?

Dumbledore didn’t need to lie to twist the truth. He had decades and decades on both Harry and Dudley. No matter how good they were, no matter how strong their Gifts, if they gave Dumbledore an opening to twist them up, he’d take it.

He was almost done. Had almost given up.

They needed to find a way to send Dumbledore home with the impression that yes, he’d lost his positions, but no, it wasn’t a problem. Everything he’d aimed at was accomplished. Or, at minimum, Voldemort was gone. Dumbledore didn’t need his troops. Didn’t need his positions or to influence anyone anymore.

He didn’t need his destined-to-die pawn.

Because the war Dumbledore had been fighting was over. He could go home. He could retire. He could do all the things that he’d put off for all these decades.

And maybe they were just figments of Harry’s imagination, but his gut thought that if they played this right, if they struck the right tone and didn’t let Dumbledore trick them with his truths and lies and his “certain point of view”, Dumbledore would retire from the field of “war”.

And it would all be over at last.

 

40. Drowning Under the Weight of Fate: Number Nine

Dumbledore’s robes were a staid denim blue. The embroidery along the collar and cuffs didn’t glitter or shift or move at all. His eyes still twinkled, very slightly, but he looked old and tired and deeply depressed as he listened to Lacey’s low-voiced orders at the doorway to Number Nine’s very empty, very white library.

It was an act.

Just as much as Harry and Dudley’s planned switch was an act, Dumbledore being tired and dispirited was an act designed to present just the right impression. An old, broken man come to beg for insight into the state of his life.

Yeah.

Right.

Every couple seconds, Dumbledore’s eyes darted around the empty library. He didn’t frown. He clearly had far too much control over himself for that.

He would’ve done a lot more than frown if he could have seen Harry and Dudley hiding in the Do Not Touch These Books section of the library. Those books were still in place. Lacey had locked the wards on that section down so that anyone not keyed into them just saw another wall full of empty bookshelves.

Made for the perfect place for the two of them to wait and watch Dumbledore be brought in. Especially since Lacey had made sure that the Do Not Touch section was warded for sound, too.

“You know how you’re gonna handle this?” Dudley asked in a low murmur as Lacey finally allowed Dumbledore into the library and closed the door behind him, leaving him alone in the pristine white empty room.

Dumbledore blew out a breath as he smoothed his hands over his very plain blue robes. He looked around, studying the shelves both over the top of his glasses and through them. There were spells on those glasses, ones that told him things he shouldn’t know. Harry didn’t know what they told Dumbledore but he knew that they’d been spelled to give him an edge over everyone around him.

“Not sure yet,” Harry said in an equally low murmur. “We need to get him to stand down. That’s not going to be easy. Especially if I get his back up by cursing him out or scolding him. I mean, I really want to know what was behind the runes on Privet Drive. Really want to know. But it’ll set the wrong tone and we’ll be in a battle.”

Dudley’s grimace was pure agreement, though his clenched fists said a lot about how much he wanted to punch Dumbledore’s face in. Which, yeah. Just not a productive thing to do.

“That first Seeing,” Harry said, low and slow, “back in the beginning at the judo place. We need to be directors of his fate. We’ve taken his positions, removed his power, and shut down his whole army of blind followers. But he still thinks there’s a battle to fight.”

A breath hissed between Dudley’s teeth as his eyes went wide. He nodded and then grinned.

“Know your enemy and yourself and you’ll always win,” Dudley said as he stared at Dumbledore. “We know him. He thinks he knows you. Switch the roles, make you Judoka and he suddenly has no footing. But then you go in all gentle like, smooth him over and just… ease him into it. It’s not that he lost everything. It’s that he’s, what?”

“Fate is done with him,” Harry said and then rocked back on his heels as his gut shouted that yes! That! That exactly.

“Oh, yeah,” Dudley whispered. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

A grin bloomed on his face as Dumbledore hesitated next to the armchair and frowned at the couch as if trying to decide where to sit. Yeah, no, they were not giving Dumbledore the upper hand in choosing who sat where.

“Go first,” Harry told Dudley. “I’ll take the couch. You take the arm or loom behind him.”

“You got it,” Dudley said.

He sauntered through the ward, The Art of War in his hand. Dumbledore started when Dudley appeared. He started to open his mouth only to snap it shut again as Harry strode out from the ward with a little nod in Dumbledore’s direction.

Harry sat on the couch and relaxed back into it, crossing his legs at the ankle as Dumbledore stared between the two of them. To Harry’s amusement, Dudley flipped through The Art of War before snapping it shut and perching on the arm of the couch while staring flatly at Dumbledore. Not like he wanted to punch all of Dumbledore’s teeth in. More like a warning to be polite or else.

A lot like Lacey’s pointed stares. Dudley had been taking lessons, obviously.

“Albus,” Harry said. “Please, take a seat. It’s odd to see your robes so plain.”

“Harry, my dear—” Dumbledore gasped as Harry and Dudley let their Gifts roll outwards, filling the library with the watery blue magic that they’d both gotten so used to.

“I think titles are a better choice at this time,” Harry said in his best approximation of Sirius being all Lord Black at people. “You are here for a professional consultation, not as a friend or mentor. My ally and I have little that we can give you, though. Fate has completed her work through your hands. Your path is yours alone now.”

Dumbledore tried to say something, but the oaths he’d been required to make to get there prevented him from lying. Even by omission or by twisting the truth. Which, given Dumbledore’s normal habits, pretty much kept him from saying a thing.

He collapsed into the armchair, gripping its arms as he fought against their Gifts and against his own oaths.

“Really, Albus,” Harry said with a wry little smile, “you should just relax a bit. You asked for a consultation. About why everything slipped out of your hands. I know, I know. You didn’t state it openly, but that’s obviously why you’re here. It’s quite clear.”

When Harry held up one hand to wave off Dumbledore’s incoherent attempt to protest, Dumbledore huffed and shut his eyes. He stilled and leaned back in the chair as he pulled on that stern grandfatherly face that so cowed Harry whenever he got sent to the Headmaster’s office.

It really was an act, wasn’t it? Just another tool that Dumbledore used to make people do what he wanted.

“I did wish to understand what forces were behind my abrupt change in status,” Dumbledore finally said. “You… acted against me?”

“Mm, only in self-defense,” Harry said, shrugging. “The reports of Voldemort’s demise are quite accurate, you see. Your failure to accept that and to accept that your time leading the Magi world is over made you a threat to my life and my magic. That couldn’t be allowed. Fate has plans for me and my ally. Those who threaten what Fate intends will always be cut down.”

Dumbledore blinked, then blinked again as he sharply shook his head. “You… how can you be so sure? There are things—”

“His horcruxes were destroyed at the same time that he was,” Harry interrupted. He leaned forward just a little the way Bill did when he wanted to reassure someone that he was listening to them quite seriously. “You were right that it was my destiny to destroy him. Unfortunately, your failure to teach me more about my magic and my position in Magi society slowed it down a touch. What was needed was ego reicio omni tempore, with a focus on ensuring that all things taken from me, including my blood, hair and magic, were rendered magically useless. Given that Voldemort had fractured his soul so many times, as soon as the spell hit, it destroyed the body he constructed and all of his horcruxes were destroyed along with him.”

“You… ego reicio omni tempore,” Dumbledore said, hands starting to shake. “That. That was the power he knew not?”

“Oh, no,” Harry said, waving his hand between them and laughing as Dudley snort-laughed. “Not at all. The power he knew not is my Sight. I’m one of the Evans Seers. You’ve seen and tested my Gift every single year. That’s how I went through the traps first year, how I survived the Mirror, how I found Ginny and killed the Basilisk. Really, all the things that happened to me at Hogwarts showed my Gift so very clearly. It manifests to other people’s eyes as hunches and just… knowing… what to do.”

Behind his long, white, trembling beard, because Dumbledore had started shaking like a leaf in his pristine white armchair, Dumbledore’s cheeks first went pale as milk, then blazingly red, before fading back to a sort of bloodless pallor that made him look several thousand years old instead of his actual age.

“You see,” Harry explained in as companionable tone as he could manage when he wanted to fist-bump Dudley for having made Dumbledore this unsettled, “each Evans Seer shows their gift in different ways. Mum and I both tend, tended, towards hunches and leaping into action. My ally here is a traditional Squib Seer. He uses books and Sees what Fate’s web holds for us. Apparently, my grandmother was all about tea leaves. It varies depending on who you are and how much active magic you have.”

Harry actually had no idea that their grandmother was a tea leaves Seer until the words came out of his mouth, but once he said it his gut confirmed that yeah, that was accurate. As far as it went.

“You… mentioned Fate’s plan for me,” Dumbledore said. “And Fate’s web?”

He licked his lips as he smoothed his hands over the plain blue robe covering his thighs. Dumbledore’s palms left sweaty patches on his thighs.

Harry nodded. “Prophecy is one path, shown clearly and distinctly. When Trelawney has a prophecy, she sees exactly one path towards what might happen. What Seers do is different. We don’t see a path, one true thread that leads to what will happen. Fate doesn’t work that way. Fate has webs of plans and plots, patterns of things that will produce what She wants over time. If one thing doesn’t work out, well, She adjusts and sends the world and everyone in it down a different path until they get where they’re supposed to be.”

The blue of their magic shifted from an ocean into a series of rivers that branched and combined, like a river spreading out over a delta into thousands of tiny channels that all still flowed towards the sea.

It was beautiful. Harry smiled at it as Dudley stood and strolled over to run his fingers through one deep channel. It responded, splitting into hundreds of smaller channels that spread and drifted and slowly recombined further “downstream” into the original channel that had been disrupted.

“We all live in Fate’s waters,” Harry explained quietly. “But some of us are caught by the currents. That is my ally and me. And some, eventually, after they’ve served their purpose, drop into the deeper, slower waters where they get to live a quiet, content life. That’s you.”

Harry smiled at Dumbledore, making as wistful, quietly envious sort of smile as he possibly could. If he was thinking very hard about that lovely little cottage with its delightful English garden and dock onto the canals, well, that was fair.

Getting to live a simple life on the canal would be amazing.

“But… there’s still so much that I hoped to accomplish,” Dumbledore complained as he slumped in his armchair. “The Wizengamot had drifted away from the Greater Good…”

His voice trailed off as both Dudley and Harry shook their heads. Greater Good. Yeah, the only good that came from Dumbledore’s plans was good things for Dumbledore. Harry didn’t let his derision show.

“They’re following Fate’s plan,” Harry said with a little shrug. “Your Great Good was designed to get our society to this point, Albus. But now, as Muggles are advancing so incredibly quickly, what needs to happen isn’t unification. It isn’t one path. It’s dozens. There won’t be one great leader anymore. There will be dozens, hundreds, each working tiny miracles that will build up together to create the next great leap for Magi society.”

As he talked, without Harry or Dudley’s conscious intent, the drifting blue streams of their power moved around. Light sparked here and there, setting off rapids and increasing currents like Fate was pushing things faster and faster downhill. Off on the right side of the room, well away from the three of them, a huge light flared.

There was nothing to see beyond it. The light was too bright, too overwhelming.

“Oh,” Dumbledore whispered as tears welled up in his eyes that he blinked violently to keep from falling. “Oh, Merlin. This… I had no idea. No idea at all.”

“Of course not,” Harry said, hoping that Dudley had a better idea what Dumbledore saw on the other side of that light because yeah, no clue. “You were caught in Fate’s currents. Now you’ve settled down in the slower waters and you can, I don’t know. Have a garden. Write papers. Knit all the socks you’ve ever wanted! Enough to give away as presents.”

As Dumbledore started laughing, a delighted little chortle that didn’t change that he was also crying, Dudley stared at Harry like he’d gone utterly batty.

“Well, I do love a good pair of socks,” Dumbledore said. “I. I don’t know what I’ll do. But. Retire?”

Harry nodded and shrugged. “Might as well. Fate’s done with your work. You succeeded. You defended our world from both Grindelwald and Voldemort. You taught generations of kids. You lead both Britain and the world. You won. Your war is over. Now it’s time for us to start our battles.”

Dumbledore preened a little when Harry said that he’d won. He studied Harry over the top of his glasses, then through them. Whatever he saw, it seemed to reassure him. After a long moment, Dumbledore smiled wryly and stood.

He bowed to them both, very formally.

“My thanks for the gift of your Sight,” Dumbledore said.

“My thanks for your guidance,” Harry said.

If his smile was a bit brittle as Dumbledore sauntered out, robes already starting to brighten and sparkle more like normal, well, Dumbledore didn’t turn around and look. He walked out with his head held high, his twinkle back at full force, and that was all that Harry cared about.

“How did it go?” Lacey asked as soon as Dumbledore was out on the street.

Dudley flipped open The Art of War. He huffed a laugh as he read the passage.

“Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or peril.”

“And that’s not Dumbledore anymore,” Harry said.

“Got it in one,” Dudley agreed. “War’s over. The nation’s gonna be in peace now. At least for a while.”

“Thank goodness,” Harry groaned as he sagged back on the too-white sofa. “Now all I have to survive is tests and Hermione’s nagging.”

And that, Harry knew he could handle, especially with Dudley and everyone else by his side.

 

41. Walking Into a New Future: Hogwarts Express

Dudley stared at the Hogwarts Express with pure horror on his face. “That’s how you get to school? Are you pulling my leg?”

“Nope,” Harry laughed as he pushed Dudley onto the Express. “Come on. Let’s get a car before the platform gets too crowded. I don’t want to deal with all the stupid gawking and the press.”

It was weird as heck having Dudley on the Express. They’d been so busy plotting against Dumbledore that they hadn’t even noticed Sirius conspiring with Molly and Narcissa to get Madame Longbottom to change the rules on who could attend.

Yeah, Harry’d noticed that there were plans to revise the curriculum. That was easy. Hermione hadn’t shut up about it from the first moment she heard about it. Once Draco arrived, the two of them had been non-stop researching just what changes might be made. Should be made. In the last couple of days before school started, Sirius had started running for his life when Draco and Hermione spotted him.

The berk. That just meant that everyone else got an earful of their fretting about what shifts to the grading and educational standards were going to be.

Made for a very good screen for all the work going on in the background to revolutionize Magi education to bring it into the modern world.

Which meant not tossing squibs out and making sure that everyone got the basic culture lessons that they, personally, needed, no matter where they’d grown up or what sort of ancestry they had. Sirius, Molly and Narcissa had managed to completely revamp how students were accepted to Hogwarts.

Dudley had made a very effective club in getting their changes through the system once Dumbledore was gone.

The whole “Seer Judoka is a squib and still the most powerful Seer the world has seen in several hundred years” thing had led to changes that meant that Squibs of all kinds of levels and gifts being allowed into Hogwarts. New classes, new testing, new tutoring, loads more new teachers, all new books and the dorms were apparently remodeled and expanded dramatically.

This year was going to be so fascinating. And fun. Harry was really looking forward to Runes. He was figuring out the mess Dumbledore made with those rune pairs, no matter what.

“A train,” Dudley complained as he flopped on one of the seats and frowned. “Not even a magically comfortable train. Just a plain old ordinary train. That everyone has to take, no matter where they’re from. This is mental!”

Harry laughed. “Yeah, used to be everyone had to, but Narcissa managed to get the rules changed. Most people will be flooing in if they’re from the north. Its only us southerners who’ll need to take the train.”

“Floo is better,” Dudley grumbled as Hermione flounced in with her nose in one of the new textbooks, Draco right on her heels with his own new textbook. “Tons faster and more secure. I’m gonna give the headmistress such a lecture on this.”

Harry left Dudley to his grumbling so that he could help Neville get his trunk up onto the rack. Even featherlight, which Neville’s trunk was, it was an awkward reach to get it up on the top rack.

“Thanks, Harry,” Neville said. “How’s the garden going?”

Harry beamed and sat next to Dudley who rolled his eyes before smiling at Luna who came in just a bit hesitantly. “It’s amazing. All your advice on getting the plants to stop trying to eat us was super helpful. Still not a proper English garden but Duds and I are talking about swapping houses. I’ll get the cottage, and he gets the townhouse.”

He waved for Luna to come and sit down, which she did with a little frown as if she wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

“Dudley Evans, this is Luna Lovegood,” Harry said with his biggest grin. “Luna, this is my cousin Dudley Evans who goes by Seer Judoka professionally. She’s a prophet. I think you have mage sight, too, Luna?”

Luna relaxed as Dudley perked right up and smiled brightly at Luna. “I do. I thought you wouldn’t want me here.”

“Pfft, nonsense,” Dudley said with a huff. “Fate’s toys gotta stick together. So, do you see big events or little ones? Harry’s all dramatic events and life-threatening escapes. I seem to be open to lots of things, though politics and money come easiest for me.”

Luna’s smile grew bigger and bigger as Dudley talked. “Unusual creatures, actually. Daddy and I are looking for the crumple-horned snorkack. I know that it’s somewhere in southern Spain at this time of year, but we haven’t mapped out its migrations yet.”

“Oh, cool,” Dudley said as he pulled out his copy of The Art of War. While completely ignoring the way Hermione and Draco looked down their noses at Luna and her “imaginary” beasts.

“Feels like a multi-year migration to me,” Harry offered as Dudley flipped through and made notes on what he Saw.

“Definitely yeah,” Dudley agreed. “Big critter. Interesting how it’s out of phase with our world. That could be really useful. You know that we’re not gonna be safe forever. Figuring out how the crumple-horned snorkack bops in and out of phase with our world would be really helpful with setting up truly hidden enclaves.”

Hermione frowned as Luna clapped her hands and switched places with Neville who just smiled and let her lean over Harry’s shoulder so that she could read Dudley’s notes.

“But it’s not real?” Hermione asked.

“No, it’s real,” Harry said. “So are the other things that Luna talks about. They’re just very hard for people to perceive normally. You should read up on mage sight. It’s pretty cool. I mean, we can see magic when it’s actively being performed, but it’s always around us. Someone with mage sight can see the background magic of the world.”

Hermione opened her mouth. Bit her lip. Then she settled back into her book though she watched Harry, Dudley and Luna together as if she was trying to sort out something in her head.

Which was totally fine. Harry was more than happy for Hermione to figure things out on her own. Draco could help. Neville could help. Anyone else could help. Harry and better things to do than get lectured because Hermione hadn’t learned the difference between things that she thought made sense and things that were objectively true.

“You have far fewer nargles and wrackspurts now,” Luna commented as she snagged one of Dudley’s notes to study while holding it upside down.

“Boy, does he ever,” Dudley agreed. “Me, too. It’s way nicer without all that messing with my mind. Does the upside down thing help?”

“Mm!” Luna hummed, smile so bright and happy that Harry couldn’t help but smile with her. “It does. I can see the intent of the author and sometimes, if they have bit of the Gift, I can see glimpses of what they see. It’s very nice when I read the Quibbler. I get to see what Daddy’s been up to.”

“Oh, nice,” Harry said. “I had no idea that could happen.”

“Wouldn’t for you,” Dudley said, putting more effort into his notetaking and then passing that to Luna. “That better or worse?”

Luna gasped and almost dropped the slip of paper. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth hung open as she carefully cradled the slip of paper.

“It’s so… clear,” Luna whispered. “This.. we have to work on this together. It will help.”

Dudley nodded. “You got it. I’m more than happy to have a project with a pretty girl who gets it.”

When Luna blushed brightly, Harry groaned and switched places with Luna because he did not need to be in the middle of that kind of flirting, thank you very much. He shook his head and sighed when Neville gave Harry a sort of apologetic look, though Harry kind of thought that Neville wanted to switch with Harry so that he could keep Dudley from flirting too much or too hard with Luna.

Half an hour later, after Harry slipped out to use the loo, Neville was in his seat trying to interject himself into Dudley and Luna’s conversation. Worse, Hermione and Draco had their heads together like they were either quietly book-flirting or setting up a betting pool on how the whole Dudley, Luna, and Neville thing would work out.

Like that was a question. Threesome, obviously. Gross.

Harry headed up the train to look for the treats, the twins, someone else who wasn’t romance-obsessed.

He spent some time playing exploding snap with Ron and the twins, then slipped out of their car when Ginny came looking for them. Ginny was still more than a little weird about the whole not interested in romance or sex thing, so Harry was doing his best not to give her a chance to try to “convince” him that he was just a late-bloomer.

Pansy Parkinson cornered him and dragged him into a detailed discussion of the Wizengamot’s new laws, especially in regards to divorce. That was a bit scary, especially since it was all a bunch of pure-blood girls who, apparently, had marriage contracts their parents had signed.

“That’s something that you need to talk to Draco on,” Harry offered once he could get a word in edgewise. “His mum is plotting with Sirius. They’ve got plans for how to make marriage contracts illegal.”

“Really,” Pansy said as she ran her thumb over her bottom lip. “Where is he? He’s usually with us.”

“He and Hermione are going all book crazy on the new curriculum,” Harry warned Pansy. “They’re about halfway back the train. I’d ask him later, after we get there or in a couple of days. They got… intense… about it all.”

“Of course,” Pansy said as a couple of the Ravenclaw girls nodded solemnly. “Being prepared makes sense.”

“Reading over our year’s books, yes,” Harry agreed. “Reading every single year’s books, including the next few years, plus reading all the reference books, plus going over all the papers the authors ever wrote, plus writing something like a hundred letters to try and find out exactly how the grading system will work is not.”

Pansy rolled her eyes. “Oh, Merlin’s pants! He’s off on one of his benders. Fine. I’ll corner him a week about it.”

“Might be longer,” Harry said, standing and scooting towards the door before they could stop him. “He and Hermione are kind of bouncing off each other. It’s getting crazy.”

He darted out before they could drag him back into the complaint fest.

After that it was some first years who needed to be calmed down, an escaped snake who was not happy that his new owner had picked him up just after he’d eaten. And then candy from the trolly that he shared with a seventh year Hufflepuff who was all teary-eyed because it was his final year, and he still had no idea what he was going to do with his life.

By the time the blazing sunset faded into darkness, Harry had pretty much seen every car on the train for the first time ever. He’d talked to all kinds of people without anyone getting weird about his parents sacrifice or his scar or his fame. No one had even realized that he was a Seer, though more than a few conversations had circled around who Seer Judoka would turn out to be.

The squibs were frighted. Delighted. Excited. Bored to tears with the long train trip. Obsessively reading ahead or refusing to study at all or…

…just kids. Ordinary kids who were going to do something new that had never been possible before.

Harry made his way back to Dudley’s car, amused to find that it was just Dudley and Luna now.

“You disappeared,” Dudley commented.

“The nargles were circling,” Luna said.

“I just couldn’t deal with the flirting,” Harry admitted. “Not that you guys should stop on account of me, but yeah, it was a bit much. I think this year is going to be a good one. You gonna miss your friends back at Smeltings, Duds?”

Dudley rolled his eyes. “Like I had any. Nah, I’m not going to miss a single thing about that place other than the gym. This is better. Way better.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “It will.”

As Hogsmeade Station came into view around a bend in the tracks, Luna shivered a bit at the rising chill of the night. Dudley wrapped an arm around her shoulders just like he always did for Harry. A moment later, he did the same to Harry.

They rolled to a stop at the station, sitting quietly together with Dudley’s arms keeping them warm. Harry smiled when the whistle blew.

“Time to go, Duds,” Harry said, jumping up and offering Dudley a hand. “Let’s go get you settled into your new school.”

Dudley laughed and let Harry pretend to help him up. They both took Luna’s hands when she beamed and offered them. The three of them walked off the Hogwarts Express hand in hand together, striding happily into whatever Fate had planned for them now.

#

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