[From Litha to Lammas]: The Blood Incantation, gen, PG-13, 1/3
Title: The Blood Incantation
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen except for mentions of past Charlus/Dorea and Fleamont/Euphemia
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: AU, dimension travel, angst, violence
Wordcount: This part 4000
Summary: AU. It’s 1972. Charlus Potter has been part of a secret strike force that managed to put down Lord Voldemort permanently, but at a heavy cost, including the lives of every other single Potter. Desperate to keep his family alive somehow, Charlus summons the ideal heir-and gets a stranger named Harry Potter from another world where the war extended much longer. Slowly, warily, Harry and Charlus become a family.
Author’s Notes: One of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics for this year. This will most likely have three parts.
The Blood Incantation
Charlus stood in the middle of a ritual space so vast that most other wizards wouldn’t recognize it for what it was. He’d turned the whole of his ancestral grounds into the summoning circle. Flowers planted at strategic corners of the gardens, the shattered wands of his family members buried in other places, the earth soaked with his blood at three successive full moons, the channeling of ten years of life force into the altar…
He shuddered just to remember the preparations. But now it was ready, and those preparations were going to prove their worth.
Charlus raised his wand and closed his eyes. His mind filled with the faces of Potters: his own father Jack Potter who had defied the wizarding world to live mostly in the Muggle one; his dear wife Dorea; his cousin Fleamont, who had teased and smiled and been a formidable duelist; Euphemia, Fleamont’s wife; and James, their son, who had been high-spirited and laughing.
Well, he had laughed until the Dark Lord Voldemort had ambushed the Hogwarts Express on its way to the school in what should have been James’s first year and killed everyone except the children of his followers.
Charlus let the pain and the loss rush through him again. That had been the impetus that wizarding society had needed to band together and bring down the upstart, even using Divination to find and destroy his Horcruxes.
But that, and the fighting that had ensued before and after, had ended many wizarding families altogether. Charlus still didn’t understand why he had come through practically unscathed when Fleamont had been the better duelist.
And Dorea, who had known so many Dark Arts spells…
They had slaughtered her like a sheep. Literally like a sheep, strewing her entrails around the ritual site for him to find.
Charlus faced the north of his ritual circle, where the shattered pieces of Fleamont’s wand lay buried, and shouted, more than incanted, “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who can fight as well as my cousin!”
The fire that ignited on the north side was a brilliant, stinging blue. Charlus stood there long enough to acknowledge it, then turned and faced the south side.
“Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has as fierce a spirit as my cousin’s son!”
The fire this time was an ever-shifting green. Charlus would say that it reminded him of the color of the Killing Curse, but nothing ever would again-not grass, not a stormy sky, and not this fire. The Killing Curse looked like nothing but itself, flying across a battlefield.
Charlus turned to the east. “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has struggled through as many grievous things as my cousin’s wife!”
The white flames that erupted from the ground roared and made Charlus flinch back. But a flinch wouldn’t destroy the ritual. He breathed in deeply, and for a moment, thought about the Potter he would be dragging across dimensions, and the family he might be leaving behind who would need him.
But it didn’t matter. Charlus had walked the first steps of this course. He would persist. He would not turn back.
Now for the west, and the words were choked back in his throat by the tide of grief and longing. Once again, it didn’t matter. Charlus waited until the moment when he could actually speak them, and the three fires burned on steadily. The ritual wasn’t complete until the fourth one.
“Bring me an heir to the Potter family as comfortable with the Dark Arts as my dear Dorea!”
The fire that at once rose into the air was purest black, and the only one to scorch the ground. And it was the first one to reach the height it needed to be, although spikes of flame at once shot up from the others as if they had only been waiting.
Charlus watched as the fires joined together high above him, forming the four sides of a many-colored dome. Magic was being torn from the earth, ripped from the buried shards of his family’s wands, and from him. The few friends who had guessed his intentions had told him not to do this particular ritual, had warned him he was so old that his heart might give out.
But the crushing pain in his chest was nothing compared to the seeking power he could feel reaching out, across the universes, straight towards the right heir, who would be a Potter by blood in his own world and would serve the family the way he must here.
If Charlus did die in the seeking, the magic of this particular ritual would hand his memories on to his heir, and ensure that he knew why he had been summoned and that he would do what he could to recover the glory of the Potter family.
But I would prefer to be alive, Charlus thought, no longer having the strength to keep his eyes open, as he fell to his knees and heard his heart falter in his ears. I would prefer to know him, to guide him, to help him get comfortable in the new world he’s been stolen to-
The roar of his heart blended with the flames in his ears, and everything was ripped from him, and the world spasmed, and Charlus’s consciousness with it.
*
“What the fuck did you do?”
Charlus blinked his eyes open slowly. The voice was British, male, and he didn’t know it. That might be a good sign that the ritual had worked the way it was supposed to, or it might not. He rolled over slowly, getting an elbow beneath him.
A lit wand promptly jabbed the soft skin beneath his jaw and stopped him. Charlus met the man’s eyes as evenly as he could. They were a brilliant green that increased his worry. No Potter from any family line he was aware of had ever had eyes like that.
“I know that I’m not in my world anymore.” The man didn’t move his wand or change his tone. It remained calm and even. But Charlus could hear the pulsating rage in the back of the man’s voice. It would break any second now. “I want to know why you brought me here. Now.”
Charlus drew a long, slow breath. “What is your name? Please, believe me. It’s important. It’s possible that I might be able to reverse the ritual and put you back if it didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”
The man studied him a little longer, then said, “Imagine, a world where no one knows my name. It’s Harry Potter.”
It worked. Holy Merlin, it worked. Charlus picked up his wand, and Harry promptly tensed and jabbed his own back in again. Charlus said, “My word as a wizard that I’m only casting a Lumos Charm. It’s too dark to see your face now that the fires have burned out.”
The man let him do it, but remained so tense that Charlus wondered if he was long dead in Harry’s world. There was no guarantee that they were of the same generation, or close enough to remember each other there. Or maybe the darkness was just getting in the way of Harry’s eyes, too.
The Lumos flared through the night, and revealed more brilliant green-the man’s robes, which were fine, fancy dress robes, as though he’d been on his way to a ball when Charlus summoned him-and the messy black hair that had marked generation after generation of his family. Charlus couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face. “My name is Charlus Potter. I called you because our bloodline is almost completely dead in this world, and I needed an heir.”
“And what is that to me?”
Charlus’s mouth fell open a little. He’d never heard of someone disdaining the family they were born to that way. “You’re Harry Potter. You don’t care that your family is about to die out here because they were fighting against Voldemort?”
Harry settled his shoulders. He had a concentrated wariness in his eyes that Charlus supposed was the result of him calling for someone who had survived grievous things. “My whole family except for me died in my world. Some of them fighting Voldemort, some not. My parents were murdered by him when I was a year old. I grew up to defeat him. I have a world of my own, one that still needs me because it’s in a shambles after years of war.” His voice had started out low, but it was rising now into a rumbling growl. “Put me back!”
“I can’t reverse the seeking.”
Harry glared at him with a churning darkness in his face now. Charlus remained calm. He knew the look of someone who would commit casual murder, and Harry didn’t have it. Charlus held out his hand.
“You never knew me in your world, did you? Are you James’s son?”
The mention of James made Harry’s wand dip a little, as Charlus had hoped it might. Then Harry stepped back, sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. That gesture was familiar enough to make Charlus’s chest ache. “Yes. And he married a Muggleborn witch named Lily Evans.” Harry spoke the words sharply, his eyes on Charlus.
Charlus only laughed, which made Harry narrow his eyes. “We’re not blood purists, Harry. We believe in the persistence of family. It would matter if we had a child who was utterly unsuitable to take over the family because of character or magical problems rather than blood.”
“So you would exile a Squib child, then?”
“We would make other arrangements for them,” Charlus said smoothly. That sounded personal. Perhaps Harry had a friend who was a Squib, or believed to be a Squib. The thought pleased Charlus. He just needed to persuade Harry to expand that loyalty to encompass his blood family in another dimension, as well. “But we wouldn’t exile them, no. It’s just that sometimes non-magical children are comfortable in our world, and sometimes they aren’t. We would ask them what they wanted.”
Harry studied him for a second. Then he shrugged. “Better than what some of the people back in my world would say.”
“Help me up, lad, would you? And then you and I should talk.”
Harry hauled him easily to his feet. He wasn’t as tall as Charlus would have expected James’s son to be, but he moved with a warrior’s fluid grace. Charlus tilted his head a little. “Seeker, then?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes.” Then he abruptly bowed his head. “But I’ll never see the people I used to play with again, apparently.”
Charlus put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but said nothing. He couldn’t find the right comforting words right now. He was the one who had pulled Harry from his world, and he couldn’t put him back.
And even if he had known how desperately Harry would miss his world, he would still have done it. His own desperation was no less.
Harry abruptly glared up at him. “I had friends there. I had a life. And you think I can just make a life in this world?” He laughed sharply. “Haven’t I lost enough?”
“I don’t know what you’ve lost. Why don’t you come inside and tell me?”
Harry said nothing, but followed him inside. His footsteps were loud thumps that Charlus winced at a little as they crossed the marble floor. Then again, if Harry’s parents had died, perhaps no one had taught him proper manners.
Charlus turned around to see Harry gaping at the high arched entrance hall, with its galleries running around the walls and high crystal dome near the top. “Did you have a favorite room in Potter Place where you would usually sleep?” he asked. “You can have it here, too.”
Harry snapped a glance like a thrown dagger at him. “I’ve never been here in my life.”
Charlus blinked. “Did you have such a rocky relationship with my alternate self and his Dorea that you would never be invited over? Where did you grow up?” he added, because now that he thought about it, maybe his alternate self had died when Harry was young, too.
“I was raised by Muggles. My mother’s sister and her husband.”
Charlus only stared. He couldn’t comprehend it. There was some degree of relation between all pure-blood families in their world, and those families were both mostly fond of their relatives and fond of snatching power. They would have wanted, at the very least, to raise a child with Harry’s obvious resilience and magical gifts so that he would respect their values and continue their family, even if they didn’t have any personal affection for him.
“This is going to take a lot of telling, won’t it?”
Harry gave him a smile that had less of an edge than before, but was still sharp enough to cut. “You could say that.”
*
“You survived Voldemort’s Killing Curse.” Charlus felt dazed in a way that had nothing to do with the fine whisky they were both sipping or the aftermath of the ritual. “And that’s why they called you the Boy-Who-Lived?”
“Yes. Although it was my mother’s love that saved me, really. That, and the fact that I had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in my scar.”
Charlus had to hand it to Harry: he’d timed that revelation perfectly, so that Charlus sputtered a lungful of expensive liquid across the room. From the way Harry’s eyes gleamed, that had been deliberate.
“A living Horcrux,” Charlus whispered, feeling ill. He stared at the young man in front of him. He’d assumed he would summon someone who had grown up practicing the Dark Arts and that was why he was familiar with them, not someone who had literally been a Dark Arts object. “That’s not possible.”
“It didn’t work the way it was supposed to. I got Voldemort’s dreams and emotions and I had a connection that practically gave me visions. But he had another one, too, a giant snake. I can speak Parseltongue,” Harry added casually, and smirked as Charlus choked. “I thought it would go away when the Horcrux died, but it’s still here. Too disgusting and Dark for you?”
“Amazing,” Charlus answered honestly. He did put the whisky down, though. He obviously had to have his attention on the conversation at this point, not on drinking. “It will make you a more valuable heir to our family, not less.”
“Why? Did Salazar Slytherin not have the same reputation in this world as he did in mine?”
Charlus shook his head at once. “Only that Potters are capable of thinking beyond the reputation of magic to seeing the value of magic.”
Harry eyed him as if he doubted that, but only chose to say, “I grew up in the Muggle world, as I said. I attended Hogwarts, but I only really excelled in Quidditch and Defense. Most of my time was spent doing things like investigating whatever Voldemort or his Death Eaters were doing that year.”
“Why do you say it in that challenging tone, with your jaw thrust forwards like that?”
“Because I’m not a genius. I’m not a soldier who was trained to be one. I’m not a diplomat or a politician. The only politics I learned were after Voldemort died, and I had to spend some time repairing our world. I’m not going to be a good heir to your family.”
Charlus rested his cheek against the back of the chair. “Did it occur to you that I can train someone in that, but I can’t train someone to be brave when they aren’t, or to stand up against the Dark if the only thing they care about is learning Dark Arts?”
“I know some Dark Arts.”
“And you throw those words at me, when I didn’t say anything about that. Have you been weak enough to become addicted to them?”
Harry blinked. “Is that even possible? I mean, I use them when I have to and there’s no better alternative. Why would you get addicted to them?”
Charlus chuckled, pleased. “There are some people who enjoy the feeling of casting them or the rush of power they get from them so much that they become addicted, yes. I wanted someone who’s comfortable enough with the Dark Arts that they wouldn’t flinch away from the necessity, but not someone who was weak or power-mad. Talk all you like about what you’ve been through, Harry. It only makes you sound more like an ideal heir.”
Harry stared down into his whisky glass. “I got used to doing without family, you know? Blood family. I made family out of my friends.” His hand nearly crushed the glass he was holding. “And now I won’t see them again.”
His eyes gleamed at Charlus from across the sitting room. Charlus only shrugged. “I’ve already told that you I can’t put you back. I’m the only one you know in this dimension. Why are you struggling so hard to alienate me?”
“Because then at least I could leave and go out into a world where no one knows me. You act like you want to use me. It might be better to depart and lose touch with family than to be someone else’s pawn.”
Charlus nodded slowly. That kind of sturdy independence was a trait that his family favored, too, although usually it meant that Potters didn’t allow themselves to be used by other wizards or beings. “I swear that I can offer you a worthwhile life here, Harry. There will be some politics, but I can either teach those to you or take them up myself for the next few decades. I’ve got at least that long to live.”
“And if I said that politics don’t form part of a worthwhile life for me?”
“There are plenty of ways that you can make them such,” Charlus said. “And there will be chances to duel, and to live in wealth and comfort, and to fight for others if you want to do that. I know that I took you from your friends and those you love, and I’m sorry. But I hope you’ll forgive me and embrace this new world.”
Harry was quiet. Then he asked, “What’s the state of the world here, with Voldemort defeated? Did you get all the Death Eaters?”
“No,” Charlus said, smiling a little. It wasn’t in Harry to feel apathy. He would start interesting himself in the affairs of the Potters in this world whether or not he wanted to. But Charlus would do his best to express his gratitude for that attitude instead of being amused by it. “The most influential ones passed themselves off as being under the Imperius. Abraxas Malfoy is still a thorn in the side of the Wizengamot. But they’ll tread more cautiously for a while since they know that not that many people buy their stories, and the ones who do will still be looking for good behavior.”
Harry nodded, his eyes shadowed. “What about Hogwarts? Dumbledore?”
“He stayed out of this war,” Charlus said, a little surprised. He must have played a more active role in the one in Harry’s world. “He offered support services, like healing and shelter, at Hogwarts when needed, but that was about it.”
“Oh.” Harry stared at his whisky again. “He was the one leading the Order of the Phoenix, a vigilante group, against Voldemort in my world during the first war. Maybe it didn’t last as long this time.”
“No, it must not have,” Charlus said quietly. “Voldemort attacked the Hogwarts Express last year and slaughtered all the children that were on it and didn’t belong to his followers. That angered enough of us to bring a quick end to the war.”
Harry choked. “He killed children?”
“Yes.” Charlus looked away. “James was just eleven, and he died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Charlus closed his eyes, a little ashamed. That a man he had dragged away from his own world a little while ago was willing to offer those condolences…
Well, among other things, it confirmed that the ritual had made the right choice.
But Charlus wouldn’t voice that perspective. It would sound more than a little self-serving. He turned back to Harry and mustered a smile. “That’s one of the reasons that I conducted the ritual, you know. You and I are the only Potters in this world. A few of the other families are as badly-off, but not many. A lot of them have distant cousins or someone they can pass the family name and heirlooms onto. I don’t.”
Harry’s face cooled, and he picked up the whisky again. “I didn’t get to know my parents because they died protecting me when I was a baby. I didn’t know you or Dorea, either. And my grandparents died before my parents did.” He paused. “What I’m saying is, I’m not going to be interested in restoring the Potter line just because it’s the Potter line.”
“You are the right heir, or the ritual wouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I might be ideal in theory, and still mess everything up in practice.” Harry shook his head. “I never learned to care about the family in that pure-blood way you’re talking about.”
“But you wanted a family.”
“Yes. Of course I did. That doesn’t mean-”
“I can offer you one.”
Charlus thought about saying more, but he had the feeling that with Harry, less would be more. He sat back and watched Harry wrestle with the implications in his own head. Harry would make some of the arguments for himself, and probably come up with ones Charlus hadn’t thought of.
Harry sighed and finally said, “I need to think about it. I’ll give you a final answer in the morning.” And he set down the whisky glass with a final click and stood. “You said that I could sleep in any room in the manor that I want?”
“Yes. All of them are made up for guests, and all of them have their own bathroom. If you need water or something else in the night, call for Elsie. She’s the house-elf assigned to guests.”
Harry muttered something about “Hermione and house-elves,” but he was drooping with exhaustion, and Charlus didn’t expect to understand it. He did go over and stick a hand under Harry’s arm to guide him to his feet when Harry stumbled, though. “There’s a bit of a step down from this room,” he said.
Harry turned and stared at him. “Do you realize how crazy this is?” he asked, shaking his head. “You, my sort-of-uncle-”
“Great-uncle,” Charlus interrupted. It would be important for Harry to keep the family relationships straight.
Harry paid no attention. “Pulled me across dimensions into a world I can never leave, and now we’re talking about how we’re somehow going to become a family.” He snorted a little. “Ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous things have happened. There’s even precedent for rituals like this, and accepting the heirs they pull into this world as the real thing.” Charlus gently helped Harry down the step and towards the grand staircase.
Harry didn’t answer. He shook off Charlus’s hand after a moment and climbed on his own. Charlus watched him do it, and what he saw in the straight line of his back wasn’t fatal stubbornness.
It was strength.
I did what I was supposed to do.
Charlus performed the climb to his own room when Harry had vanished from sight, well-satisfied, and slept better than he had at any time since Dorea’s death.
Part Two.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1050764.html. Comment wherever you like.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen except for mentions of past Charlus/Dorea and Fleamont/Euphemia
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: AU, dimension travel, angst, violence
Wordcount: This part 4000
Summary: AU. It’s 1972. Charlus Potter has been part of a secret strike force that managed to put down Lord Voldemort permanently, but at a heavy cost, including the lives of every other single Potter. Desperate to keep his family alive somehow, Charlus summons the ideal heir-and gets a stranger named Harry Potter from another world where the war extended much longer. Slowly, warily, Harry and Charlus become a family.
Author’s Notes: One of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics for this year. This will most likely have three parts.
The Blood Incantation
Charlus stood in the middle of a ritual space so vast that most other wizards wouldn’t recognize it for what it was. He’d turned the whole of his ancestral grounds into the summoning circle. Flowers planted at strategic corners of the gardens, the shattered wands of his family members buried in other places, the earth soaked with his blood at three successive full moons, the channeling of ten years of life force into the altar…
He shuddered just to remember the preparations. But now it was ready, and those preparations were going to prove their worth.
Charlus raised his wand and closed his eyes. His mind filled with the faces of Potters: his own father Jack Potter who had defied the wizarding world to live mostly in the Muggle one; his dear wife Dorea; his cousin Fleamont, who had teased and smiled and been a formidable duelist; Euphemia, Fleamont’s wife; and James, their son, who had been high-spirited and laughing.
Well, he had laughed until the Dark Lord Voldemort had ambushed the Hogwarts Express on its way to the school in what should have been James’s first year and killed everyone except the children of his followers.
Charlus let the pain and the loss rush through him again. That had been the impetus that wizarding society had needed to band together and bring down the upstart, even using Divination to find and destroy his Horcruxes.
But that, and the fighting that had ensued before and after, had ended many wizarding families altogether. Charlus still didn’t understand why he had come through practically unscathed when Fleamont had been the better duelist.
And Dorea, who had known so many Dark Arts spells…
They had slaughtered her like a sheep. Literally like a sheep, strewing her entrails around the ritual site for him to find.
Charlus faced the north of his ritual circle, where the shattered pieces of Fleamont’s wand lay buried, and shouted, more than incanted, “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who can fight as well as my cousin!”
The fire that ignited on the north side was a brilliant, stinging blue. Charlus stood there long enough to acknowledge it, then turned and faced the south side.
“Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has as fierce a spirit as my cousin’s son!”
The fire this time was an ever-shifting green. Charlus would say that it reminded him of the color of the Killing Curse, but nothing ever would again-not grass, not a stormy sky, and not this fire. The Killing Curse looked like nothing but itself, flying across a battlefield.
Charlus turned to the east. “Bring me an heir to the Potter family who has struggled through as many grievous things as my cousin’s wife!”
The white flames that erupted from the ground roared and made Charlus flinch back. But a flinch wouldn’t destroy the ritual. He breathed in deeply, and for a moment, thought about the Potter he would be dragging across dimensions, and the family he might be leaving behind who would need him.
But it didn’t matter. Charlus had walked the first steps of this course. He would persist. He would not turn back.
Now for the west, and the words were choked back in his throat by the tide of grief and longing. Once again, it didn’t matter. Charlus waited until the moment when he could actually speak them, and the three fires burned on steadily. The ritual wasn’t complete until the fourth one.
“Bring me an heir to the Potter family as comfortable with the Dark Arts as my dear Dorea!”
The fire that at once rose into the air was purest black, and the only one to scorch the ground. And it was the first one to reach the height it needed to be, although spikes of flame at once shot up from the others as if they had only been waiting.
Charlus watched as the fires joined together high above him, forming the four sides of a many-colored dome. Magic was being torn from the earth, ripped from the buried shards of his family’s wands, and from him. The few friends who had guessed his intentions had told him not to do this particular ritual, had warned him he was so old that his heart might give out.
But the crushing pain in his chest was nothing compared to the seeking power he could feel reaching out, across the universes, straight towards the right heir, who would be a Potter by blood in his own world and would serve the family the way he must here.
If Charlus did die in the seeking, the magic of this particular ritual would hand his memories on to his heir, and ensure that he knew why he had been summoned and that he would do what he could to recover the glory of the Potter family.
But I would prefer to be alive, Charlus thought, no longer having the strength to keep his eyes open, as he fell to his knees and heard his heart falter in his ears. I would prefer to know him, to guide him, to help him get comfortable in the new world he’s been stolen to-
The roar of his heart blended with the flames in his ears, and everything was ripped from him, and the world spasmed, and Charlus’s consciousness with it.
*
“What the fuck did you do?”
Charlus blinked his eyes open slowly. The voice was British, male, and he didn’t know it. That might be a good sign that the ritual had worked the way it was supposed to, or it might not. He rolled over slowly, getting an elbow beneath him.
A lit wand promptly jabbed the soft skin beneath his jaw and stopped him. Charlus met the man’s eyes as evenly as he could. They were a brilliant green that increased his worry. No Potter from any family line he was aware of had ever had eyes like that.
“I know that I’m not in my world anymore.” The man didn’t move his wand or change his tone. It remained calm and even. But Charlus could hear the pulsating rage in the back of the man’s voice. It would break any second now. “I want to know why you brought me here. Now.”
Charlus drew a long, slow breath. “What is your name? Please, believe me. It’s important. It’s possible that I might be able to reverse the ritual and put you back if it didn’t work the way I wanted it to.”
The man studied him a little longer, then said, “Imagine, a world where no one knows my name. It’s Harry Potter.”
It worked. Holy Merlin, it worked. Charlus picked up his wand, and Harry promptly tensed and jabbed his own back in again. Charlus said, “My word as a wizard that I’m only casting a Lumos Charm. It’s too dark to see your face now that the fires have burned out.”
The man let him do it, but remained so tense that Charlus wondered if he was long dead in Harry’s world. There was no guarantee that they were of the same generation, or close enough to remember each other there. Or maybe the darkness was just getting in the way of Harry’s eyes, too.
The Lumos flared through the night, and revealed more brilliant green-the man’s robes, which were fine, fancy dress robes, as though he’d been on his way to a ball when Charlus summoned him-and the messy black hair that had marked generation after generation of his family. Charlus couldn’t help the smile that broke across his face. “My name is Charlus Potter. I called you because our bloodline is almost completely dead in this world, and I needed an heir.”
“And what is that to me?”
Charlus’s mouth fell open a little. He’d never heard of someone disdaining the family they were born to that way. “You’re Harry Potter. You don’t care that your family is about to die out here because they were fighting against Voldemort?”
Harry settled his shoulders. He had a concentrated wariness in his eyes that Charlus supposed was the result of him calling for someone who had survived grievous things. “My whole family except for me died in my world. Some of them fighting Voldemort, some not. My parents were murdered by him when I was a year old. I grew up to defeat him. I have a world of my own, one that still needs me because it’s in a shambles after years of war.” His voice had started out low, but it was rising now into a rumbling growl. “Put me back!”
“I can’t reverse the seeking.”
Harry glared at him with a churning darkness in his face now. Charlus remained calm. He knew the look of someone who would commit casual murder, and Harry didn’t have it. Charlus held out his hand.
“You never knew me in your world, did you? Are you James’s son?”
The mention of James made Harry’s wand dip a little, as Charlus had hoped it might. Then Harry stepped back, sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. That gesture was familiar enough to make Charlus’s chest ache. “Yes. And he married a Muggleborn witch named Lily Evans.” Harry spoke the words sharply, his eyes on Charlus.
Charlus only laughed, which made Harry narrow his eyes. “We’re not blood purists, Harry. We believe in the persistence of family. It would matter if we had a child who was utterly unsuitable to take over the family because of character or magical problems rather than blood.”
“So you would exile a Squib child, then?”
“We would make other arrangements for them,” Charlus said smoothly. That sounded personal. Perhaps Harry had a friend who was a Squib, or believed to be a Squib. The thought pleased Charlus. He just needed to persuade Harry to expand that loyalty to encompass his blood family in another dimension, as well. “But we wouldn’t exile them, no. It’s just that sometimes non-magical children are comfortable in our world, and sometimes they aren’t. We would ask them what they wanted.”
Harry studied him for a second. Then he shrugged. “Better than what some of the people back in my world would say.”
“Help me up, lad, would you? And then you and I should talk.”
Harry hauled him easily to his feet. He wasn’t as tall as Charlus would have expected James’s son to be, but he moved with a warrior’s fluid grace. Charlus tilted his head a little. “Seeker, then?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes.” Then he abruptly bowed his head. “But I’ll never see the people I used to play with again, apparently.”
Charlus put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, but said nothing. He couldn’t find the right comforting words right now. He was the one who had pulled Harry from his world, and he couldn’t put him back.
And even if he had known how desperately Harry would miss his world, he would still have done it. His own desperation was no less.
Harry abruptly glared up at him. “I had friends there. I had a life. And you think I can just make a life in this world?” He laughed sharply. “Haven’t I lost enough?”
“I don’t know what you’ve lost. Why don’t you come inside and tell me?”
Harry said nothing, but followed him inside. His footsteps were loud thumps that Charlus winced at a little as they crossed the marble floor. Then again, if Harry’s parents had died, perhaps no one had taught him proper manners.
Charlus turned around to see Harry gaping at the high arched entrance hall, with its galleries running around the walls and high crystal dome near the top. “Did you have a favorite room in Potter Place where you would usually sleep?” he asked. “You can have it here, too.”
Harry snapped a glance like a thrown dagger at him. “I’ve never been here in my life.”
Charlus blinked. “Did you have such a rocky relationship with my alternate self and his Dorea that you would never be invited over? Where did you grow up?” he added, because now that he thought about it, maybe his alternate self had died when Harry was young, too.
“I was raised by Muggles. My mother’s sister and her husband.”
Charlus only stared. He couldn’t comprehend it. There was some degree of relation between all pure-blood families in their world, and those families were both mostly fond of their relatives and fond of snatching power. They would have wanted, at the very least, to raise a child with Harry’s obvious resilience and magical gifts so that he would respect their values and continue their family, even if they didn’t have any personal affection for him.
“This is going to take a lot of telling, won’t it?”
Harry gave him a smile that had less of an edge than before, but was still sharp enough to cut. “You could say that.”
*
“You survived Voldemort’s Killing Curse.” Charlus felt dazed in a way that had nothing to do with the fine whisky they were both sipping or the aftermath of the ritual. “And that’s why they called you the Boy-Who-Lived?”
“Yes. Although it was my mother’s love that saved me, really. That, and the fact that I had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in my scar.”
Charlus had to hand it to Harry: he’d timed that revelation perfectly, so that Charlus sputtered a lungful of expensive liquid across the room. From the way Harry’s eyes gleamed, that had been deliberate.
“A living Horcrux,” Charlus whispered, feeling ill. He stared at the young man in front of him. He’d assumed he would summon someone who had grown up practicing the Dark Arts and that was why he was familiar with them, not someone who had literally been a Dark Arts object. “That’s not possible.”
“It didn’t work the way it was supposed to. I got Voldemort’s dreams and emotions and I had a connection that practically gave me visions. But he had another one, too, a giant snake. I can speak Parseltongue,” Harry added casually, and smirked as Charlus choked. “I thought it would go away when the Horcrux died, but it’s still here. Too disgusting and Dark for you?”
“Amazing,” Charlus answered honestly. He did put the whisky down, though. He obviously had to have his attention on the conversation at this point, not on drinking. “It will make you a more valuable heir to our family, not less.”
“Why? Did Salazar Slytherin not have the same reputation in this world as he did in mine?”
Charlus shook his head at once. “Only that Potters are capable of thinking beyond the reputation of magic to seeing the value of magic.”
Harry eyed him as if he doubted that, but only chose to say, “I grew up in the Muggle world, as I said. I attended Hogwarts, but I only really excelled in Quidditch and Defense. Most of my time was spent doing things like investigating whatever Voldemort or his Death Eaters were doing that year.”
“Why do you say it in that challenging tone, with your jaw thrust forwards like that?”
“Because I’m not a genius. I’m not a soldier who was trained to be one. I’m not a diplomat or a politician. The only politics I learned were after Voldemort died, and I had to spend some time repairing our world. I’m not going to be a good heir to your family.”
Charlus rested his cheek against the back of the chair. “Did it occur to you that I can train someone in that, but I can’t train someone to be brave when they aren’t, or to stand up against the Dark if the only thing they care about is learning Dark Arts?”
“I know some Dark Arts.”
“And you throw those words at me, when I didn’t say anything about that. Have you been weak enough to become addicted to them?”
Harry blinked. “Is that even possible? I mean, I use them when I have to and there’s no better alternative. Why would you get addicted to them?”
Charlus chuckled, pleased. “There are some people who enjoy the feeling of casting them or the rush of power they get from them so much that they become addicted, yes. I wanted someone who’s comfortable enough with the Dark Arts that they wouldn’t flinch away from the necessity, but not someone who was weak or power-mad. Talk all you like about what you’ve been through, Harry. It only makes you sound more like an ideal heir.”
Harry stared down into his whisky glass. “I got used to doing without family, you know? Blood family. I made family out of my friends.” His hand nearly crushed the glass he was holding. “And now I won’t see them again.”
His eyes gleamed at Charlus from across the sitting room. Charlus only shrugged. “I’ve already told that you I can’t put you back. I’m the only one you know in this dimension. Why are you struggling so hard to alienate me?”
“Because then at least I could leave and go out into a world where no one knows me. You act like you want to use me. It might be better to depart and lose touch with family than to be someone else’s pawn.”
Charlus nodded slowly. That kind of sturdy independence was a trait that his family favored, too, although usually it meant that Potters didn’t allow themselves to be used by other wizards or beings. “I swear that I can offer you a worthwhile life here, Harry. There will be some politics, but I can either teach those to you or take them up myself for the next few decades. I’ve got at least that long to live.”
“And if I said that politics don’t form part of a worthwhile life for me?”
“There are plenty of ways that you can make them such,” Charlus said. “And there will be chances to duel, and to live in wealth and comfort, and to fight for others if you want to do that. I know that I took you from your friends and those you love, and I’m sorry. But I hope you’ll forgive me and embrace this new world.”
Harry was quiet. Then he asked, “What’s the state of the world here, with Voldemort defeated? Did you get all the Death Eaters?”
“No,” Charlus said, smiling a little. It wasn’t in Harry to feel apathy. He would start interesting himself in the affairs of the Potters in this world whether or not he wanted to. But Charlus would do his best to express his gratitude for that attitude instead of being amused by it. “The most influential ones passed themselves off as being under the Imperius. Abraxas Malfoy is still a thorn in the side of the Wizengamot. But they’ll tread more cautiously for a while since they know that not that many people buy their stories, and the ones who do will still be looking for good behavior.”
Harry nodded, his eyes shadowed. “What about Hogwarts? Dumbledore?”
“He stayed out of this war,” Charlus said, a little surprised. He must have played a more active role in the one in Harry’s world. “He offered support services, like healing and shelter, at Hogwarts when needed, but that was about it.”
“Oh.” Harry stared at his whisky again. “He was the one leading the Order of the Phoenix, a vigilante group, against Voldemort in my world during the first war. Maybe it didn’t last as long this time.”
“No, it must not have,” Charlus said quietly. “Voldemort attacked the Hogwarts Express last year and slaughtered all the children that were on it and didn’t belong to his followers. That angered enough of us to bring a quick end to the war.”
Harry choked. “He killed children?”
“Yes.” Charlus looked away. “James was just eleven, and he died.”
“I’m sorry.”
Charlus closed his eyes, a little ashamed. That a man he had dragged away from his own world a little while ago was willing to offer those condolences…
Well, among other things, it confirmed that the ritual had made the right choice.
But Charlus wouldn’t voice that perspective. It would sound more than a little self-serving. He turned back to Harry and mustered a smile. “That’s one of the reasons that I conducted the ritual, you know. You and I are the only Potters in this world. A few of the other families are as badly-off, but not many. A lot of them have distant cousins or someone they can pass the family name and heirlooms onto. I don’t.”
Harry’s face cooled, and he picked up the whisky again. “I didn’t get to know my parents because they died protecting me when I was a baby. I didn’t know you or Dorea, either. And my grandparents died before my parents did.” He paused. “What I’m saying is, I’m not going to be interested in restoring the Potter line just because it’s the Potter line.”
“You are the right heir, or the ritual wouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I might be ideal in theory, and still mess everything up in practice.” Harry shook his head. “I never learned to care about the family in that pure-blood way you’re talking about.”
“But you wanted a family.”
“Yes. Of course I did. That doesn’t mean-”
“I can offer you one.”
Charlus thought about saying more, but he had the feeling that with Harry, less would be more. He sat back and watched Harry wrestle with the implications in his own head. Harry would make some of the arguments for himself, and probably come up with ones Charlus hadn’t thought of.
Harry sighed and finally said, “I need to think about it. I’ll give you a final answer in the morning.” And he set down the whisky glass with a final click and stood. “You said that I could sleep in any room in the manor that I want?”
“Yes. All of them are made up for guests, and all of them have their own bathroom. If you need water or something else in the night, call for Elsie. She’s the house-elf assigned to guests.”
Harry muttered something about “Hermione and house-elves,” but he was drooping with exhaustion, and Charlus didn’t expect to understand it. He did go over and stick a hand under Harry’s arm to guide him to his feet when Harry stumbled, though. “There’s a bit of a step down from this room,” he said.
Harry turned and stared at him. “Do you realize how crazy this is?” he asked, shaking his head. “You, my sort-of-uncle-”
“Great-uncle,” Charlus interrupted. It would be important for Harry to keep the family relationships straight.
Harry paid no attention. “Pulled me across dimensions into a world I can never leave, and now we’re talking about how we’re somehow going to become a family.” He snorted a little. “Ridiculous.”
“More ridiculous things have happened. There’s even precedent for rituals like this, and accepting the heirs they pull into this world as the real thing.” Charlus gently helped Harry down the step and towards the grand staircase.
Harry didn’t answer. He shook off Charlus’s hand after a moment and climbed on his own. Charlus watched him do it, and what he saw in the straight line of his back wasn’t fatal stubbornness.
It was strength.
I did what I was supposed to do.
Charlus performed the climb to his own room when Harry had vanished from sight, well-satisfied, and slept better than he had at any time since Dorea’s death.
Part Two.
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