[From Litha to Lammas]: Iron and Sapphires, Harry/Tom Riddle, R, 1/4
Title: Iron and Sapphires
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background Lily/James
Content Notes: Massive AU, angst, depression, unreliable narrator, past child death, suicidal thoughts, passive suicide attempt, dysfunctional relationships, child abuse, mindfuck, mental instability, dubious consent, past minor character deaths, violence, gore, Dark Arts, disturbing content.
Wordcount: This part 4700
Rating: R
Summary: After what he did to his brother when he was ten years old, Harry has devoted himself to atoning for it and to doing whatever he can for his younger sister, Amara. When she asks him to steal an artifact for her from the powerful Lord Gaunt, Harry agrees. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him, or how thoroughly it will end his world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. It should have four parts. Please look at the warnings; this is an extremely dark and disturbing fic.
Iron and Sapphires
“It’s been a while, Brandon.”
Harry spoke while keeping his eyes focused straight ahead. If he looked anywhere else, he might be too overcome to speak, and Brandon deserved more than that.
“I thought you should know that I have my magic better controlled than ever. It’s taken a lot of practice, but it doesn’t leak past the bracelet anymore. And Sirius has finally accepted that this is the course I want to take.” Harry sighed a little. “He-didn’t like it, but he knows that I haven’t been myself for a long time. Not the person I was meant to be.”
Sirius had outright screamed at him when he found out what Harry intended to do. There had been more than one broken teacup there, at the end. Harry smiled and shook his head a little. He loved Sirius, but speaking of someone who could stand to work on his control…
The smile slipped as Harry reminded himself that compared to him, no one needed to do that.
“Remus doesn’t like it, either. But he’s so busy helping Mum try to find a cure for you that he doesn’t pay as much attention to me as he used to. And I think he thinks…if they find the cure, then I won’t need to do this.”
Harry’s voice cracked at the end, and he closed his eyes and let the soft breeze blow across his brow. It was a mildly sunny day, but cool enough that it was pleasant rather than oppressive to be right in the sun. Harry could look out from the top of the small hill they sat on towards the edge of the Potter lands, where green hills rolled to meet the horizon.
“Amara’s the same as ever. Due back from Hogwarts in a few days. She’ll be a seventh year in a few months. Can you believe it? And she’ll probably have all sorts of missions for me to do this summer. She always does.”
Harry had to close his eyes and center himself again at the thought of his sister. He could never fail her like he’d failed Brandon. He had to be alert, had to pay attention, and had to be in control of himself.
“And Father is still working on trying to make sure that everyone knows about the necessity for the restrictions on underage sorcery. There are some people who want to relax the laws as long as an adult is around to supervise underage wizards and witches. Mostly purebloods. Father won’t let them do that. He tells your story, over and over, trying to make them understand.”
Brandon didn’t reply, of course. Harry didn’t expect him to. He hadn’t earned the courtesy of a response. He never would.
“Good-bye, little brother,” he whispered, and stood up. “I love you.”
Gently, he brushed his hand across the top of the curved headstone that bore the words, BRANDON NOAH POTTER, JANUARY 3RD, 1989-JULY 31ST, 1990. HE WAS BELOVED. Flowers were scattered at the base of it. Harry couldn’t conjure his own, but he laid down the handful of Preserved red roses Sirius had created for him, and turned away.
He hoped murderers were still allowed to leave gifts at their victims’ graves. But the answer to that question was why he came here by himself.
*
“Harry.”
Harry smiled a little as he embraced his sister. Amara hadn’t hugged him in public the last time he’d seen her, at the Easter holidays, but perhaps she’d missed him enough to risk the embarrassing gesture now.
“Hold still.”
Harry had to sigh, even though it was fond. No, of course Amara hadn’t got over the embarrassment. She had some ulterior motive in doing this. But he loved his sister, so he held still and let her peer over his shoulder towards the crowd of chattering people making their way off Platform 9 ¾.
“I wish he’d look at me,” Amara whispered a few minutes later. “And I wish you could tell me something about him. You know his older brother, don’t you?”
This time, Harry did have to turn his head, despite Amara’s hissed warning not to, because he had no idea who she was talking about. He blinked and shook his head a little when he saw two people he only knew were the Malfoys because of their hair color. Well, and he knew the younger brother was named Hyperion because Amara talked about him non-stop in her letter home. “I don’t know him.”
“But Draco would have been in your year at Hogwarts,” Amara insisted, finally drawing away.
“I didn’t attend Hogwarts,” Harry reminded her, and she pouted a little. He scooped up her trunk and slung it over his shoulder by a loop that he’d attached to it over Easter. “Just think, the next time we come here, you’ll have the ability to use your wand and any charms you want to on your trunk for yourself.”
Amara brightened at that, her brown eyes glowing as she walked beside him towards the barrier. “That’s true! Although, my birthday’s not until August, and I do hate to be bored until then…”
Harry rolled his eyes at the look she gave him. “What do you want?”
“I heard there’s an artifact that can make time speed forwards faster for you,” Amara whispered, leaning in to speak to him. “Just in a small area, and the effect stops when you leave the area. But what if I could make it be August just around me, and that means I’d be able to practice all the magic I wanted in that area?”
Harry stared at her. “Forget it.”
Amara laughed. “Like you ever say no to me.”
Harry sighed. That much was true. He loved his sister too much to refuse her anything. He had to make up for all the times that he hadn’t got to spoil Brandon. He had to make up for killing Brandon.
The word still struck through his mind like a crack of lightning, but Harry was getting better, each time, at absorbing the impact. After all, it wouldn’t be much longer until he didn’t feel it anymore.
Harry stole a glance at the bracelet around his right wrist as they walked through the barrier. It looked almost the same as it had that morning, a thick fan of iron pleats that resembled a metallic sunburst sticking out from his arm, with sapphires embedded at the edges of the pleats. But he didn’t think it was his imagination that one of the runes inscribed beneath the sapphires had gone darker.
Not long now, Harry thought, and even if he didn’t deserve the relief that swamped him, he couldn’t help feeling it.
*
“It’s wrong, what they’re doing to you.”
Harry sighed and leaned back against the chair in Sirius’s sitting room, staring into the dying fire. He’d come over several hours earlier, determined to spend time with his godfather and try to reconcile him to Harry’s impending fate. Harry had already done enough to tear his family apart. The last thing he wanted was to alienate Sirius from them.
But Sirius had got into the Firewhisky before Harry ever arrived, and he’d spent most of Harry’s visit ranting and raving about Father and how he had “no right to do this,” and Harry had had enough.
“Sirius,” he said, cutting across the tirade that he knew was about to emerge. “I’m the one who chose this. It’s the only way I know to atone.”
“Atone! You don’t have anything to atone for. It was a bloody accident.”
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. The room swayed around him, although he hadn’t had anything to drink himself. “If you could know how I felt, how much I envied Brandon for being the youngest, you wouldn’t say all that.”
“I played lots of pranks on Regulus when we were young. It doesn’t mean I hate him.”
Harry carefully didn’t say that it also didn’t mean they liked each other. From what little he knew of Regulus Black, he had turned his back completely on his family, moving to the Continent years ago and not maintaining contact with any of the Blacks. “You never murdered him, Sirius.”
Silence. Harry opened his eyes and looked at his godfather, who was pale and had a strained expression on his face and a half-empty bottle dangling from his hand. Harry so wished he could get up and remove that. He wished Sirius would go back to the laughing, careless man he’d known when he was younger, who would bound out of the Floo at unexpected hours and snatch him up and spin him around, and who got him gifts “just because.”
But part of Sirius had died when Brandon did. Part of all of them had died when Brandon did. Harry could accept that.
It was just something he needed a continual reminder of, which showed him the distinction between murder and accident that eluded Sirius.
“I can’t believe they let you do it,” Sirius whispered. “I can’t believe James put that bloody thing on your arm, and-”
“How else was I supposed to pay for what I’d done?” Harry snapped, exasperated. “The Aurors would have agreed with you that it was an accident. They might not have arrested me at all, given my age at the time. My mum was too heartbroken to punish me. Remus didn’t know what to do. What punishment is there, except what I’m paying?”
“It shouldn’t be a life for a life.”
“If I had the ability to control my fucking magic, it wouldn’t be!”
Harry’s ringing voice died away into silence. Sirius stared at him, and then down at the bottle in his hands. After a second, he tilted it back and swallowed with long gulps, even though Harry winced to think of what the Firewhisky must be doing to his throat.
“They won’t get Brandon back by sacrificing another child,” Sirius said at last. His voice was slurring, badly.
Harry sighed and stood up. He’d come back in the morning, when his godfather was sober, and hope to help him make peace. He went over to embrace him, and Sirius clung to him desperately, one hand reaching out to claw at the bracelet.
“Take that fucking thing off.”
“You know that would only hasten the inevitable,” Harry said gently. “It’s fed on too much of my magic at this point. This is the path I’ve chosen, Sirius. This is the only way I have to pay for what I did.”
Sirius held onto him, sobbing, but in a few minutes, he’d passed out. Harry carefully rearranged him on the chair and covered him with Sirius’s favorite blanket, a huge red-and-gold one decorated with leaping dogs. Then he lingered to touch Sirius’s brow.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I wish things were different. I wish I could be the godson you deserved.”
He touched his godfather’s shoulder one more time, and then picked up the Floo powder to travel through the fire. Luckily, that was something even Squibs could do. Or people who couldn’t be trusted to use their magic.
*
Harry hesitated on the stairs. Father was the only person at the table right now, and he wasn’t sure if he would be welcome to come down the rest of the way or have breakfast, knowing that.
But after a second, Father gestured at him without looking up from the Daily Prophet. Harry came down the rest of the way with legs that felt leaden. As he sat down, a plate with eggs and bacon popped into view in front of him. The house-elves never interacted with Harry, but they did make sure that he was taken care of, given that he couldn’t do things like Summon his own plate.
Until the end.
Harry applied himself to his food, since Father didn’t look in the mood to talk right now. Finally, Father laid the paper down. Harry put down his fork at the same instant and focused completely on James Potter.
He looked tired. He always did. Losing his son had carved deep lines into his face and placed seemingly permanent bags beneath his eyes. Those hazel eyes, a few shades lighter than Amara’s-than Brandon’s had been-were glazed with old fury.
“Your mother will require you in the lab this afternoon.” Father hesitated minutely. “At least, if your choice remains final.”
“It does,” Harry said. He tried to keep his voice as calm and gentle as Father’s, but he knew he failed. “As long as Mum’s sure she can make it work.”
“Yes. That variation, she can.” Father swallowed air, and finally said, “I want you to know that I’m very proud of you, Harry.”
Harry stared at him. He could only remember comments like that from before thirteen years ago, from before his tenth birthday when he’d killed Brandon.
“You’ve done the right thing,” Father said, his voice soft. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve borne it with grace. And in the end, you’ll make right what you put awry. You’re-not many people could have done that. Not many children could have understood at such a young age what they’d done.”
Harry wanted to reply, but his voice was too choked-up. He ended up looking down at his plate and nodding. Father still seemed to wait, so Harry finally managed to make his throat unlock, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Father’s smile was fleeting, but real. “Now, go visit your mother.”
*
“Mum?”
Lily Potter’s lab was softly dark, full of shadows that glided blue and silver across the floor, and walls that seemed to stretch out into a distance greater than they possibly could have. The center of it was the pentagram made with black stones on the floor, each stone a different kind. Harry only knew obsidian and onyx for sure. He’d wanted to help Mum with her research when he was younger, but she had made it clear that he couldn’t have anything to do with it until the end.
As he came down the stairs, Mum glanced up with a smile from her cauldron, which stood off to one side of the pentagram. “Hello, Harry.” She stepped away from the boiling silver liquid inside it to embrace him and lead him carefully around the pentagram. “You’re sure that you won’t change your mind?”
“I’m sure, Mum.” Harry said as clearly and strongly as he could, even though the smells coming from the cauldron and from the pendants of bone and dried flesh that hung from the ceiling made him want to gag. “He-he deserves a chance to come back.”
“I’m so glad you think so, Harry.” Mum kissed him softly on the forehead and then examined the bracelet for a moment. “The runes will probably darken all the way before Halloween, but that doesn’t matter. We can use a Preservation Charm.”
“Thanks,” Harry breathed, and then sat down in the chair she directed him to, the one he always occupied whenever he was in the lab, and watched her bustle around the cauldron, the pentagram, and the large mirror that stood against the far wall of the lab and would be broken the night they brought Brandon back.
Mum’s chant wound softly and strongly around him, bringing him down into a trance that felt almost healing. Harry let himself float, his eyes unfocused, and saw a figure slowly form in the mirror.
It was small, toddler-size. Harry didn’t let his eyes focus too much, but he could see a smear of red hair on the reflection’s brow, and he knew there would be shining brown eyes if he could get close enough, like Amara’s, but not exactly the same.
Mum had told him long ago never to speak aloud during one of her chants, but she didn’t mind if he added the strength of his voice in other ways. Harry let the words form on his lips without becoming sound. I’m sorry, Brandon. I’m doing all I can.
The figure in the mirror placed its small hands against the glass and stared at him. Harry twitched his left hand in a wave. It was the closest he could come to making a motion, when a lot of it would also disrupt Mum’s chant.
The world around him rotated and swept on, dreamily. Harry leaned back and let his guilt flow into the acceptance of helping.
*
“It would help if we could find out what killed Severus, of course. Imagine being able to add the blood of such a beast to the potion to bring Brandon back!”
Remus smiled wearily at Mum. “Yes, I imagine it would make it more powerful.” He met Harry’s eyes across the long dining table, and his smile changed. His eyes darted back and forth between Harry’s face and the bracelet on his arm.
Harry ignored him and dug into the warm noodles the house-elves had made for dinner. Remus accepted that this atonement had been Harry’s choice, the way Sirius didn’t, but Harry didn’t see the point of Remus’s awkward reassurances and the like. Things were proceeding the way they were supposed to proceed. That wouldn’t change.
“Were there no clues in that case?” Father asked, showing the first interest that he had all meal. Then again, he’d been busy today, arguing another law for restricting underage sorcery. Amara sat between him and Remus, poking her noodles with a fork, expression so bored that Harry would have kicked her under the table if he could reach her.
“None.” Mum shook her head so that her hair, braided with the bone charms necessary to a necromancer’s work, bounced. “Other than that there had to be a connection to Albus’s death. I mean, two powerful wizards dead in the exact same way, intestines ripped out and blood all over the walls in star-patterns? There must be a connection. But they don’t know what.”
“Mum, ew,” Amara complained.
“If you were to develop your necromantic talent, young lady-”
It was the beginning of an argument so familiar that Harry didn’t need to listen to it. He leaned his elbow on the table and finished his dinner, gazing into the fire. The flames weren’t exactly the color of Brandon’s hair in the mirror in Mum’s lab, but they were close.
He half-wished he could rush through the last stages of the bracelet’s killing him, so that his body could be given to Mum to use in the resurrection ritual now. But the ritual had to be on Halloween or it wouldn’t work, and skipping through the last months of the bracelet’s feeding on his magic wouldn’t be paying the full price for what he’d done.
The bracelet gave an abrupt hum and rattle on his wrist, and Harry looked down to see all the runes darken at once. He held his breath for a moment until the runes brightened again, all but the ones that had been dark before dinner.
“Harry.” Father’s voice was quiet. “Do you need to go outside?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Harry said at once, standing. Whenever his magic got too wild and attempted to escape the bracelet’s confinement, he’d leave, just in case he murdered people here, too. “Please excuse me, Mum, Father, Remus, Amara.”
Amara threw down her napkin and stood up. “I’m done, too,” she announced. “I’ll come and keep you company, Harry.”
Harry held back a snort. She wanted to ask him for something, and didn’t want other people in their family to know what the request was. “All right, but you have to come right back inside at the first sign of danger.”
Amara gave him a scornful look as she moved around the table to join him. “What do you think I am, stupid?”
“Anyone who turns their back on a magic-given talent,” Mum began.
“Let them go, Lily,” Father said softly.
At least that made it easier to walk away, Harry had to admit. He didn’t ever want to be disrespectful to his parents, while sometimes Amara seemed to live to be disrespectful.
*
Amara waited until they were near the edge of the grounds, opposite but not anywhere near Brandon’s grave. Harry always knew exactly where it was. He could have pointed into the darkness with his eyes closed and located it.
But this was a less tragedy-haunted part of the grounds, smoother and flatter, with a small copse of trees separating them from the house. Harry turned around the instant Amara stopped walking. “Spill.”
“What?” Amara’s eyes widened innocently in the light of the floating Lumos charm that she’d asked one of the house-elves to conjure for them. “Spill what? I don’t see anything liquid around here. Do you see anything liquid around here?” She glanced back and forth.
“You want me to get something for you,” Harry said flatly. “It’s that artifact that turns time forwards in a space around you, isn’t it.”
“It’s so brilliant, Harry!” Amara clasped her hands and looked for a moment as if she was praying. “It’s a clock of platinum and rubies, and all you do is set the hands on the clock for the date you want, and it grants you that time. It’s not like a Time-Turner. It’s not restricted, because there’s only one of it. And once you’re done with the future in that particular one spot, you turn the hands back to the original time and you return without anyone even noticing you were gone.”
“I suppose Tacroy Parkinson told you about this?” In Harry’s experience, he was the source of most of the “brilliant” artifacts, foods, books, and so on that Amara had sent Harry to fetch for her.
“Yes.” Amara bit her lip. “His family used to own the clock.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was stolen when his mother was killed. You know, in the same way that Mum and Dad were talking about at dinner.” Amara hesitated. “Tacroy says that everyone was too scared to search for the clock for years, because they all assumed she’d been murdered for it. But he thought she might just have surprised the murderer when she came into the room. There doesn’t seem to have been much reason to murder her otherwise. She wasn’t even the one who used the clock on a regular basis.”
Harry nodded. Severus Snape had been a well-known Potions brewer and spellcrafter, and Albus Dumbledore had been the Headmaster of Hogwarts and Chief Warlock before the beast, whatever it was, had taken his life. Melinda Parkinson, however, had been a witch of middling power, both magically and on the Wizengamot. “And let me guess, Tacroy has found a way to track this clock down?”
“Yes.” Amara leaned forwards. “He gave me the Apparition coordinates. I’d go myself, honestly I would, Harry, but…”
She trailed off. Harry nodded. She wouldn’t use magic while she was still underage, both because it would irritate Father and because there was the chance the Ministry might investigate and learn about Mum’s necromancy.
He did have to ask, though, “How do you think I can go? I can’t Apparate.”
“Ask Sirius to do it, and wait for you.” Amara took his hands and swung them back and forth a little, smiling at him. “You can do it, Harry, I know you can, and that bracelet does let you sneak past the most restless of wards.”
Harry nodded slowly. In taming and feeding on his magic, the bracelet also rendered him magically invisible. He had used that quirk before to sneak into the bookshops and nooks in Knockturn Alley and Ministry collections that Amara had asked him to raid. And he’d never been caught.
It helped that most people outside the family barely knew he existed. Harry didn’t have a wand, he’d never gone to Hogwarts, and he rarely left the family grounds except to do things like escort Amara to King’s Cross and go on these raids. If people thought of him at all, it was probably as the odd “Potter Squib” that his parents had chosen to keep at home for some reason instead of abandoning in the Muggle world.
“So, you’ll do it?” Amara demanded.
“Where are the Apparition coordinates for the clock leading to?” Harry asked, because it seemed odd she hadn’t told him.
Amara glanced off to the side. “Um.”
“Amara.”
“Um. All right. They go straight to Lord Gaunt’s house.”
Harry whistled before he could stop himself. Lord Gaunt was currently the only titled wizard or witch in Britain, since the title was granted based on magical power. Harry privately thought that his Mum could probably match Lord Gaunt in necromantic strength, and perhaps Brandon could have if he’d lived-there was no doubt that he would have been extraordinary in both his power and his control-but it wasn’t like they were ever going to test such a thing.
Maybe, when Brandon comes back, he’ll be a Lord someday.
“I can see why Tacroy doesn’t want to go himself,” Harry said dryly. “Don’t want to accuse the most powerful mage in Britain of stealing the clock, after all.”
“Maybe Lord Gaunt didn’t steal it! Maybe he bought it from whoever stole it.” Amara lifted her shoulders in a shrug to indicate how little the answer mattered to her. “But you need to go get it for me, Harry. I have to be able to practice magic before August fourth. Please, say you’ll get it for me.”
Harry studied her for a long moment. Amara was tense and trembling, and he believed that, for whatever reason she wanted the clock, it was a good one. Maybe she was going to assist Mum in the rite to bring Brandon back. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be mentioned to him, likely, given the obscure magical laws that governed necromancy.
“Okay,” Harry sighed. “I’ll tell Sirius it’s to get something for me. He doesn’t like the direction the bracelet is leading me. He might think that I intend to live, and he’ll get all enthusiastic.”
Amara’s smile twisted for a second, but then she launched herself into his arms and kissed him on the cheek. “Harry, Harry, thank you! You’re the best big brother!”
Harry could feel a grave in the distance that told him that idea wasn’t true, but he held Amara and kissed her forehead. It was nice to know that there was one sibling he hadn’t damaged.
*
Harry woke with a gasp in the middle of the night. He had had a dream, an odd one, where it had looked as if he was standing alone on a great white sheet of parchment and someone was scribing huge black letters in front of him.
Letters, and numbers.
August 23rd, 2003.
Harry breathed out slowly and turned his head to look at the bracelet. A sharp glow was dimming out of the runes, and he had no idea what the time was. But he knew the date.
He had two months to live.
Harry lay back, his head whirling with plans. He would have to tell his mother to be ready with the Preservation Charms earlier than they’d planned, when they’d thought he might last until September or October. He would have to go after Amara’s clock as soon as possible, because he might not get another chance. He would have to spend more days with his godfather, and as much as time as possible alone at Brandon’s grave.
But under the plans, an emotion moved through him, a great and singing joy.
It was good to know how little time was left. It was good to know how long he had to pay for what he’d done.
Finally, finally, he would have atoned.
Part Two.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, background Lily/James
Content Notes: Massive AU, angst, depression, unreliable narrator, past child death, suicidal thoughts, passive suicide attempt, dysfunctional relationships, child abuse, mindfuck, mental instability, dubious consent, past minor character deaths, violence, gore, Dark Arts, disturbing content.
Wordcount: This part 4700
Rating: R
Summary: After what he did to his brother when he was ten years old, Harry has devoted himself to atoning for it and to doing whatever he can for his younger sister, Amara. When she asks him to steal an artifact for her from the powerful Lord Gaunt, Harry agrees. He doesn’t know what’s waiting for him, or how thoroughly it will end his world.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics, being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August this year. It should have four parts. Please look at the warnings; this is an extremely dark and disturbing fic.
Iron and Sapphires
“It’s been a while, Brandon.”
Harry spoke while keeping his eyes focused straight ahead. If he looked anywhere else, he might be too overcome to speak, and Brandon deserved more than that.
“I thought you should know that I have my magic better controlled than ever. It’s taken a lot of practice, but it doesn’t leak past the bracelet anymore. And Sirius has finally accepted that this is the course I want to take.” Harry sighed a little. “He-didn’t like it, but he knows that I haven’t been myself for a long time. Not the person I was meant to be.”
Sirius had outright screamed at him when he found out what Harry intended to do. There had been more than one broken teacup there, at the end. Harry smiled and shook his head a little. He loved Sirius, but speaking of someone who could stand to work on his control…
The smile slipped as Harry reminded himself that compared to him, no one needed to do that.
“Remus doesn’t like it, either. But he’s so busy helping Mum try to find a cure for you that he doesn’t pay as much attention to me as he used to. And I think he thinks…if they find the cure, then I won’t need to do this.”
Harry’s voice cracked at the end, and he closed his eyes and let the soft breeze blow across his brow. It was a mildly sunny day, but cool enough that it was pleasant rather than oppressive to be right in the sun. Harry could look out from the top of the small hill they sat on towards the edge of the Potter lands, where green hills rolled to meet the horizon.
“Amara’s the same as ever. Due back from Hogwarts in a few days. She’ll be a seventh year in a few months. Can you believe it? And she’ll probably have all sorts of missions for me to do this summer. She always does.”
Harry had to close his eyes and center himself again at the thought of his sister. He could never fail her like he’d failed Brandon. He had to be alert, had to pay attention, and had to be in control of himself.
“And Father is still working on trying to make sure that everyone knows about the necessity for the restrictions on underage sorcery. There are some people who want to relax the laws as long as an adult is around to supervise underage wizards and witches. Mostly purebloods. Father won’t let them do that. He tells your story, over and over, trying to make them understand.”
Brandon didn’t reply, of course. Harry didn’t expect him to. He hadn’t earned the courtesy of a response. He never would.
“Good-bye, little brother,” he whispered, and stood up. “I love you.”
Gently, he brushed his hand across the top of the curved headstone that bore the words, BRANDON NOAH POTTER, JANUARY 3RD, 1989-JULY 31ST, 1990. HE WAS BELOVED. Flowers were scattered at the base of it. Harry couldn’t conjure his own, but he laid down the handful of Preserved red roses Sirius had created for him, and turned away.
He hoped murderers were still allowed to leave gifts at their victims’ graves. But the answer to that question was why he came here by himself.
*
“Harry.”
Harry smiled a little as he embraced his sister. Amara hadn’t hugged him in public the last time he’d seen her, at the Easter holidays, but perhaps she’d missed him enough to risk the embarrassing gesture now.
“Hold still.”
Harry had to sigh, even though it was fond. No, of course Amara hadn’t got over the embarrassment. She had some ulterior motive in doing this. But he loved his sister, so he held still and let her peer over his shoulder towards the crowd of chattering people making their way off Platform 9 ¾.
“I wish he’d look at me,” Amara whispered a few minutes later. “And I wish you could tell me something about him. You know his older brother, don’t you?”
This time, Harry did have to turn his head, despite Amara’s hissed warning not to, because he had no idea who she was talking about. He blinked and shook his head a little when he saw two people he only knew were the Malfoys because of their hair color. Well, and he knew the younger brother was named Hyperion because Amara talked about him non-stop in her letter home. “I don’t know him.”
“But Draco would have been in your year at Hogwarts,” Amara insisted, finally drawing away.
“I didn’t attend Hogwarts,” Harry reminded her, and she pouted a little. He scooped up her trunk and slung it over his shoulder by a loop that he’d attached to it over Easter. “Just think, the next time we come here, you’ll have the ability to use your wand and any charms you want to on your trunk for yourself.”
Amara brightened at that, her brown eyes glowing as she walked beside him towards the barrier. “That’s true! Although, my birthday’s not until August, and I do hate to be bored until then…”
Harry rolled his eyes at the look she gave him. “What do you want?”
“I heard there’s an artifact that can make time speed forwards faster for you,” Amara whispered, leaning in to speak to him. “Just in a small area, and the effect stops when you leave the area. But what if I could make it be August just around me, and that means I’d be able to practice all the magic I wanted in that area?”
Harry stared at her. “Forget it.”
Amara laughed. “Like you ever say no to me.”
Harry sighed. That much was true. He loved his sister too much to refuse her anything. He had to make up for all the times that he hadn’t got to spoil Brandon. He had to make up for killing Brandon.
The word still struck through his mind like a crack of lightning, but Harry was getting better, each time, at absorbing the impact. After all, it wouldn’t be much longer until he didn’t feel it anymore.
Harry stole a glance at the bracelet around his right wrist as they walked through the barrier. It looked almost the same as it had that morning, a thick fan of iron pleats that resembled a metallic sunburst sticking out from his arm, with sapphires embedded at the edges of the pleats. But he didn’t think it was his imagination that one of the runes inscribed beneath the sapphires had gone darker.
Not long now, Harry thought, and even if he didn’t deserve the relief that swamped him, he couldn’t help feeling it.
*
“It’s wrong, what they’re doing to you.”
Harry sighed and leaned back against the chair in Sirius’s sitting room, staring into the dying fire. He’d come over several hours earlier, determined to spend time with his godfather and try to reconcile him to Harry’s impending fate. Harry had already done enough to tear his family apart. The last thing he wanted was to alienate Sirius from them.
But Sirius had got into the Firewhisky before Harry ever arrived, and he’d spent most of Harry’s visit ranting and raving about Father and how he had “no right to do this,” and Harry had had enough.
“Sirius,” he said, cutting across the tirade that he knew was about to emerge. “I’m the one who chose this. It’s the only way I know to atone.”
“Atone! You don’t have anything to atone for. It was a bloody accident.”
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. The room swayed around him, although he hadn’t had anything to drink himself. “If you could know how I felt, how much I envied Brandon for being the youngest, you wouldn’t say all that.”
“I played lots of pranks on Regulus when we were young. It doesn’t mean I hate him.”
Harry carefully didn’t say that it also didn’t mean they liked each other. From what little he knew of Regulus Black, he had turned his back completely on his family, moving to the Continent years ago and not maintaining contact with any of the Blacks. “You never murdered him, Sirius.”
Silence. Harry opened his eyes and looked at his godfather, who was pale and had a strained expression on his face and a half-empty bottle dangling from his hand. Harry so wished he could get up and remove that. He wished Sirius would go back to the laughing, careless man he’d known when he was younger, who would bound out of the Floo at unexpected hours and snatch him up and spin him around, and who got him gifts “just because.”
But part of Sirius had died when Brandon did. Part of all of them had died when Brandon did. Harry could accept that.
It was just something he needed a continual reminder of, which showed him the distinction between murder and accident that eluded Sirius.
“I can’t believe they let you do it,” Sirius whispered. “I can’t believe James put that bloody thing on your arm, and-”
“How else was I supposed to pay for what I’d done?” Harry snapped, exasperated. “The Aurors would have agreed with you that it was an accident. They might not have arrested me at all, given my age at the time. My mum was too heartbroken to punish me. Remus didn’t know what to do. What punishment is there, except what I’m paying?”
“It shouldn’t be a life for a life.”
“If I had the ability to control my fucking magic, it wouldn’t be!”
Harry’s ringing voice died away into silence. Sirius stared at him, and then down at the bottle in his hands. After a second, he tilted it back and swallowed with long gulps, even though Harry winced to think of what the Firewhisky must be doing to his throat.
“They won’t get Brandon back by sacrificing another child,” Sirius said at last. His voice was slurring, badly.
Harry sighed and stood up. He’d come back in the morning, when his godfather was sober, and hope to help him make peace. He went over to embrace him, and Sirius clung to him desperately, one hand reaching out to claw at the bracelet.
“Take that fucking thing off.”
“You know that would only hasten the inevitable,” Harry said gently. “It’s fed on too much of my magic at this point. This is the path I’ve chosen, Sirius. This is the only way I have to pay for what I did.”
Sirius held onto him, sobbing, but in a few minutes, he’d passed out. Harry carefully rearranged him on the chair and covered him with Sirius’s favorite blanket, a huge red-and-gold one decorated with leaping dogs. Then he lingered to touch Sirius’s brow.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I wish things were different. I wish I could be the godson you deserved.”
He touched his godfather’s shoulder one more time, and then picked up the Floo powder to travel through the fire. Luckily, that was something even Squibs could do. Or people who couldn’t be trusted to use their magic.
*
Harry hesitated on the stairs. Father was the only person at the table right now, and he wasn’t sure if he would be welcome to come down the rest of the way or have breakfast, knowing that.
But after a second, Father gestured at him without looking up from the Daily Prophet. Harry came down the rest of the way with legs that felt leaden. As he sat down, a plate with eggs and bacon popped into view in front of him. The house-elves never interacted with Harry, but they did make sure that he was taken care of, given that he couldn’t do things like Summon his own plate.
Until the end.
Harry applied himself to his food, since Father didn’t look in the mood to talk right now. Finally, Father laid the paper down. Harry put down his fork at the same instant and focused completely on James Potter.
He looked tired. He always did. Losing his son had carved deep lines into his face and placed seemingly permanent bags beneath his eyes. Those hazel eyes, a few shades lighter than Amara’s-than Brandon’s had been-were glazed with old fury.
“Your mother will require you in the lab this afternoon.” Father hesitated minutely. “At least, if your choice remains final.”
“It does,” Harry said. He tried to keep his voice as calm and gentle as Father’s, but he knew he failed. “As long as Mum’s sure she can make it work.”
“Yes. That variation, she can.” Father swallowed air, and finally said, “I want you to know that I’m very proud of you, Harry.”
Harry stared at him. He could only remember comments like that from before thirteen years ago, from before his tenth birthday when he’d killed Brandon.
“You’ve done the right thing,” Father said, his voice soft. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve borne it with grace. And in the end, you’ll make right what you put awry. You’re-not many people could have done that. Not many children could have understood at such a young age what they’d done.”
Harry wanted to reply, but his voice was too choked-up. He ended up looking down at his plate and nodding. Father still seemed to wait, so Harry finally managed to make his throat unlock, and whispered, “Thank you.”
Father’s smile was fleeting, but real. “Now, go visit your mother.”
*
“Mum?”
Lily Potter’s lab was softly dark, full of shadows that glided blue and silver across the floor, and walls that seemed to stretch out into a distance greater than they possibly could have. The center of it was the pentagram made with black stones on the floor, each stone a different kind. Harry only knew obsidian and onyx for sure. He’d wanted to help Mum with her research when he was younger, but she had made it clear that he couldn’t have anything to do with it until the end.
As he came down the stairs, Mum glanced up with a smile from her cauldron, which stood off to one side of the pentagram. “Hello, Harry.” She stepped away from the boiling silver liquid inside it to embrace him and lead him carefully around the pentagram. “You’re sure that you won’t change your mind?”
“I’m sure, Mum.” Harry said as clearly and strongly as he could, even though the smells coming from the cauldron and from the pendants of bone and dried flesh that hung from the ceiling made him want to gag. “He-he deserves a chance to come back.”
“I’m so glad you think so, Harry.” Mum kissed him softly on the forehead and then examined the bracelet for a moment. “The runes will probably darken all the way before Halloween, but that doesn’t matter. We can use a Preservation Charm.”
“Thanks,” Harry breathed, and then sat down in the chair she directed him to, the one he always occupied whenever he was in the lab, and watched her bustle around the cauldron, the pentagram, and the large mirror that stood against the far wall of the lab and would be broken the night they brought Brandon back.
Mum’s chant wound softly and strongly around him, bringing him down into a trance that felt almost healing. Harry let himself float, his eyes unfocused, and saw a figure slowly form in the mirror.
It was small, toddler-size. Harry didn’t let his eyes focus too much, but he could see a smear of red hair on the reflection’s brow, and he knew there would be shining brown eyes if he could get close enough, like Amara’s, but not exactly the same.
Mum had told him long ago never to speak aloud during one of her chants, but she didn’t mind if he added the strength of his voice in other ways. Harry let the words form on his lips without becoming sound. I’m sorry, Brandon. I’m doing all I can.
The figure in the mirror placed its small hands against the glass and stared at him. Harry twitched his left hand in a wave. It was the closest he could come to making a motion, when a lot of it would also disrupt Mum’s chant.
The world around him rotated and swept on, dreamily. Harry leaned back and let his guilt flow into the acceptance of helping.
*
“It would help if we could find out what killed Severus, of course. Imagine being able to add the blood of such a beast to the potion to bring Brandon back!”
Remus smiled wearily at Mum. “Yes, I imagine it would make it more powerful.” He met Harry’s eyes across the long dining table, and his smile changed. His eyes darted back and forth between Harry’s face and the bracelet on his arm.
Harry ignored him and dug into the warm noodles the house-elves had made for dinner. Remus accepted that this atonement had been Harry’s choice, the way Sirius didn’t, but Harry didn’t see the point of Remus’s awkward reassurances and the like. Things were proceeding the way they were supposed to proceed. That wouldn’t change.
“Were there no clues in that case?” Father asked, showing the first interest that he had all meal. Then again, he’d been busy today, arguing another law for restricting underage sorcery. Amara sat between him and Remus, poking her noodles with a fork, expression so bored that Harry would have kicked her under the table if he could reach her.
“None.” Mum shook her head so that her hair, braided with the bone charms necessary to a necromancer’s work, bounced. “Other than that there had to be a connection to Albus’s death. I mean, two powerful wizards dead in the exact same way, intestines ripped out and blood all over the walls in star-patterns? There must be a connection. But they don’t know what.”
“Mum, ew,” Amara complained.
“If you were to develop your necromantic talent, young lady-”
It was the beginning of an argument so familiar that Harry didn’t need to listen to it. He leaned his elbow on the table and finished his dinner, gazing into the fire. The flames weren’t exactly the color of Brandon’s hair in the mirror in Mum’s lab, but they were close.
He half-wished he could rush through the last stages of the bracelet’s killing him, so that his body could be given to Mum to use in the resurrection ritual now. But the ritual had to be on Halloween or it wouldn’t work, and skipping through the last months of the bracelet’s feeding on his magic wouldn’t be paying the full price for what he’d done.
The bracelet gave an abrupt hum and rattle on his wrist, and Harry looked down to see all the runes darken at once. He held his breath for a moment until the runes brightened again, all but the ones that had been dark before dinner.
“Harry.” Father’s voice was quiet. “Do you need to go outside?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Harry said at once, standing. Whenever his magic got too wild and attempted to escape the bracelet’s confinement, he’d leave, just in case he murdered people here, too. “Please excuse me, Mum, Father, Remus, Amara.”
Amara threw down her napkin and stood up. “I’m done, too,” she announced. “I’ll come and keep you company, Harry.”
Harry held back a snort. She wanted to ask him for something, and didn’t want other people in their family to know what the request was. “All right, but you have to come right back inside at the first sign of danger.”
Amara gave him a scornful look as she moved around the table to join him. “What do you think I am, stupid?”
“Anyone who turns their back on a magic-given talent,” Mum began.
“Let them go, Lily,” Father said softly.
At least that made it easier to walk away, Harry had to admit. He didn’t ever want to be disrespectful to his parents, while sometimes Amara seemed to live to be disrespectful.
*
Amara waited until they were near the edge of the grounds, opposite but not anywhere near Brandon’s grave. Harry always knew exactly where it was. He could have pointed into the darkness with his eyes closed and located it.
But this was a less tragedy-haunted part of the grounds, smoother and flatter, with a small copse of trees separating them from the house. Harry turned around the instant Amara stopped walking. “Spill.”
“What?” Amara’s eyes widened innocently in the light of the floating Lumos charm that she’d asked one of the house-elves to conjure for them. “Spill what? I don’t see anything liquid around here. Do you see anything liquid around here?” She glanced back and forth.
“You want me to get something for you,” Harry said flatly. “It’s that artifact that turns time forwards in a space around you, isn’t it.”
“It’s so brilliant, Harry!” Amara clasped her hands and looked for a moment as if she was praying. “It’s a clock of platinum and rubies, and all you do is set the hands on the clock for the date you want, and it grants you that time. It’s not like a Time-Turner. It’s not restricted, because there’s only one of it. And once you’re done with the future in that particular one spot, you turn the hands back to the original time and you return without anyone even noticing you were gone.”
“I suppose Tacroy Parkinson told you about this?” In Harry’s experience, he was the source of most of the “brilliant” artifacts, foods, books, and so on that Amara had sent Harry to fetch for her.
“Yes.” Amara bit her lip. “His family used to own the clock.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was stolen when his mother was killed. You know, in the same way that Mum and Dad were talking about at dinner.” Amara hesitated. “Tacroy says that everyone was too scared to search for the clock for years, because they all assumed she’d been murdered for it. But he thought she might just have surprised the murderer when she came into the room. There doesn’t seem to have been much reason to murder her otherwise. She wasn’t even the one who used the clock on a regular basis.”
Harry nodded. Severus Snape had been a well-known Potions brewer and spellcrafter, and Albus Dumbledore had been the Headmaster of Hogwarts and Chief Warlock before the beast, whatever it was, had taken his life. Melinda Parkinson, however, had been a witch of middling power, both magically and on the Wizengamot. “And let me guess, Tacroy has found a way to track this clock down?”
“Yes.” Amara leaned forwards. “He gave me the Apparition coordinates. I’d go myself, honestly I would, Harry, but…”
She trailed off. Harry nodded. She wouldn’t use magic while she was still underage, both because it would irritate Father and because there was the chance the Ministry might investigate and learn about Mum’s necromancy.
He did have to ask, though, “How do you think I can go? I can’t Apparate.”
“Ask Sirius to do it, and wait for you.” Amara took his hands and swung them back and forth a little, smiling at him. “You can do it, Harry, I know you can, and that bracelet does let you sneak past the most restless of wards.”
Harry nodded slowly. In taming and feeding on his magic, the bracelet also rendered him magically invisible. He had used that quirk before to sneak into the bookshops and nooks in Knockturn Alley and Ministry collections that Amara had asked him to raid. And he’d never been caught.
It helped that most people outside the family barely knew he existed. Harry didn’t have a wand, he’d never gone to Hogwarts, and he rarely left the family grounds except to do things like escort Amara to King’s Cross and go on these raids. If people thought of him at all, it was probably as the odd “Potter Squib” that his parents had chosen to keep at home for some reason instead of abandoning in the Muggle world.
“So, you’ll do it?” Amara demanded.
“Where are the Apparition coordinates for the clock leading to?” Harry asked, because it seemed odd she hadn’t told him.
Amara glanced off to the side. “Um.”
“Amara.”
“Um. All right. They go straight to Lord Gaunt’s house.”
Harry whistled before he could stop himself. Lord Gaunt was currently the only titled wizard or witch in Britain, since the title was granted based on magical power. Harry privately thought that his Mum could probably match Lord Gaunt in necromantic strength, and perhaps Brandon could have if he’d lived-there was no doubt that he would have been extraordinary in both his power and his control-but it wasn’t like they were ever going to test such a thing.
Maybe, when Brandon comes back, he’ll be a Lord someday.
“I can see why Tacroy doesn’t want to go himself,” Harry said dryly. “Don’t want to accuse the most powerful mage in Britain of stealing the clock, after all.”
“Maybe Lord Gaunt didn’t steal it! Maybe he bought it from whoever stole it.” Amara lifted her shoulders in a shrug to indicate how little the answer mattered to her. “But you need to go get it for me, Harry. I have to be able to practice magic before August fourth. Please, say you’ll get it for me.”
Harry studied her for a long moment. Amara was tense and trembling, and he believed that, for whatever reason she wanted the clock, it was a good one. Maybe she was going to assist Mum in the rite to bring Brandon back. It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be mentioned to him, likely, given the obscure magical laws that governed necromancy.
“Okay,” Harry sighed. “I’ll tell Sirius it’s to get something for me. He doesn’t like the direction the bracelet is leading me. He might think that I intend to live, and he’ll get all enthusiastic.”
Amara’s smile twisted for a second, but then she launched herself into his arms and kissed him on the cheek. “Harry, Harry, thank you! You’re the best big brother!”
Harry could feel a grave in the distance that told him that idea wasn’t true, but he held Amara and kissed her forehead. It was nice to know that there was one sibling he hadn’t damaged.
*
Harry woke with a gasp in the middle of the night. He had had a dream, an odd one, where it had looked as if he was standing alone on a great white sheet of parchment and someone was scribing huge black letters in front of him.
Letters, and numbers.
August 23rd, 2003.
Harry breathed out slowly and turned his head to look at the bracelet. A sharp glow was dimming out of the runes, and he had no idea what the time was. But he knew the date.
He had two months to live.
Harry lay back, his head whirling with plans. He would have to tell his mother to be ready with the Preservation Charms earlier than they’d planned, when they’d thought he might last until September or October. He would have to go after Amara’s clock as soon as possible, because he might not get another chance. He would have to spend more days with his godfather, and as much as time as possible alone at Brandon’s grave.
But under the plans, an emotion moved through him, a great and singing joy.
It was good to know how little time was left. It was good to know how long he had to pay for what he’d done.
Finally, finally, he would have atoned.
Part Two.