05/14: Black Blood
Title: Black, in the Smothering Dark
Chapter Title: Black Blood 05/14
Words (this chapter): 6,976
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Story Info/All Chapters: HERE
Beta’d by littlevlahgirl and amelancholykiss.
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Black, in the Smothering Dark
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Chapter Five
Black Blood
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They stared at each other in complete silence, neither knowing exactly how it should be broken, if it should be broken at all. Sirius was studying Harry’s face intently, worrying his lip furiously and scrunching his brows in distress. Harry jumped, startled, when he saw his godfather’s hand reach up and pull his glasses off his face.
The magical contacts immediately readjusted so that he could see, and when the blurriness had passed, Sirius was still looking at him intently. He ran a finger down Harry’s nose-the same nose that Harry had once thought he’d inherited from a grandparent on one side or the other as it belonged to neither Lily nor James. Now, Harry realised, it looked a lot like Sirius’-pronounced and aristocratic with the slightest hint of a Roman ridge to it.
He bit his lip and watched as Sirius ran the same finger down the length of his own nose-testing and studying.
“Your chin,” Sirius muttered. “It kind of looks like mine.”
“And my nose?” Harry asked uncomfortably.
“It feels like mine,” Sirius said uneasily. “And your hair…”
“It’s darker than James Potter’s,” Harry continued. “It’s black,” he swallowed. “Like yours.”
“And straighter than James’ or Lily’s was.” Sirius looked away, uncomfortable and swallowing heavily. “And without your glasses,” he whispered.
“I look like you. Like Bellatrix. Like a Black without the grey eyes…” Harry guessed quickly. “Why didn’t anyone notice?”
Sirius shrugged feebly. “Because no one had a reason to…and there are Blacks in the Potter family,” he continued weakly. “We have a lot of the same attributes.”
Harry hugged himself tightly and looked down at his knees. “What does this mean?” he asked quietly.
Sirius pulled his knees up to his chest, too-looking for all the world like a scared little boy-and propped his head on them. He didn’t answer directly, shrugging. “Arcturus Black was my grandfather on my father’s side,” he said instead. “That’s where my father got his paranoia from, you know,” he said, swallowing heavily but trying to force himself calmer. “He was a very paranoid man. There are three portraits of him all throughout this manor guarding various places, and so far as I know, he’s never let anyone who wasn’t a Black past him.”
Harry looked up sharply, but Sirius didn’t acknowledge it. He answered Harry’s unspoken question, “He could always tell who had Black blood in them, you know. He can…feel it, I suppose.”
“He studied me before he let me through,” Harry murmured, face again pressed into his knees. “And the house-elves…” Harry continued, “I never thought about it before, but they can’t be bound to more than one family…and they’re bound to me. I felt it when it happened.”
Sirius inhaled quickly. “And they call you Young Master,” Sirius said, a hitch in his voice. “That’s what they call the young heirs before they become the heads of a family…And the portkey.”
“Yeah?” Harry asked desperately.
Sirius shook his head. “It shouldn’t have taken you with me, even if you were touching it. It only works for those of Black blood, but…I was so upset at the time, trying to keep myself from going crazy that I didn’t even think about it.”
Suddenly, his godfather unfolded himself and reached into his pocket, pulling out two muggle Zippo lighters-one with a black greyhound on it and another with a white greyhound. He handed the white one to Harry with shaking fingers. “It was Regulus’,” Sirius explained quietly. “It’ll take you anywhere you want to go, so long as you’ve been there before and know what it looks like.”
He nodded to the lighter in Harry’s hand and said, “Picture your bedroom and say it.”
Harry bit his lip, imagined his bedroom complete with the new four-poster bed facing a huge picture window framed with those black velvet and blue silk draperies. “Harry’s bedroom,” he said quietly and felt the unmistakably nauseating feel of his insides being tugged into the portkey and swirling around.
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on his bed. His breath hitched in his throat and as he clutched the lighter and said, “Black library,” his voice cracked.
Sirius’ head was in his hands when he returned. He didn’t look up as he said, “It worked.” Harry nodded slowly, even though Sirius couldn’t see him do it. “What do we do now?” Sirius mumbled.
Harry’s face took on a desperate look and he tried to grin as he said cheekily, “I don’t know…you tell me; you’re the parent,” but it didn’t come out the way he’d imagined it. Across from him, Sirius laughed-a disturbingly humourless laugh that slowly turned into a sobbing bark. Harry buried his face between his knees and tried to remember what breathing felt like.
“We have to go,” Sirius said suddenly, standing up and rubbing furiously at his face. He looked around anxiously, though Harry couldn’t tell for the life of him what Sirius was looking at or looking for. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sirius shook his head frantically. “We need to go…there. Lily-she would’ve left something, maybe, anything, I bet.”
Sirius’s words were coming out jumbled and he was pacing back and forth in the few feet of open floor in front of Harry. He tugged his hair and twisted it beneath his fingers. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he muttered to himself restlessly. “There could be an entirely different explanation. Don’t get your hopes up, Sirius,” he continued. “It could be anything. This is not the time to be a Gryffindor. We have to find all the facts.”
Harry stood up slowly and the movement caught Sirius’ attention. His eyes were wild, his hair was mussed from his fingers and he was still worrying his lips. “Touch the portkey,” he said, pulling his own Zippo lighter out again.
Harry slowly reached out and touched his finger to the portkey, and when Sirius muttered, “Potter Cottage, Godric’s Hollow,” he whimpered, closed his eyes and clenched his fists. It was too much. Too much, too soon, and he wasn’t sure how either of them would handle it.
He opened his eyes to destruction.
That’s all it was, really. Complete and utter destruction. It was a huge pile of charred wood and bad energy. Weeds were growing in sinister patterns through the debris and all around, everything else was perfect. The Potter Cottage was a tarnish in an otherwise ideal field full of mature trees and white flowers.
Next to him, Sirius was rubbing his face and squeezing his temples as if he were trying to squeeze his brain right out of his head. Harry touched his arm softly and Sirius whimpered.
In shock. Harry realised that they were both in shock. It was too much in one day-Sirius’ name being cleared even though the people who would have actually cared thought he was dead and then this-whatever this was. Harry’s eyes were wide and his breathing was coming more rapidly, but other than that, he felt calm.
Restless, but calm. He just needed to know-for certain-whatever the truth was, he needed to know. He should’ve felt as if he were betraying James Potter, but he didn’t and it scared him a little bit. He realised that he wanted their assumptions to be true. He loved James Potter as much as he could love someone he couldn’t remember, but…but Sirius knew him.
Knew him better anyway. They’d only had a little more than a year of clandestine meetings and fire chats to get to know each other before that summer, but he was comfortable with Sirius. He knew what his voice sounded like and he knew what kinds of things set him off. He knew what Sirius looked like when he was trying to pull off a prank and when he was trying to impress. He knew none of that about James Potter.
And all the pieces fit.
And secretly, Harry hoped.
“Come on then,” Sirius said, pulling himself together. He started walking, haltingly at first, towards the demolished house and stopped next to what looked to be an old trellis, though the vines covering it now were certainly not beautiful. “This was the porch,” he said to himself, and Harry noticed that his god...father’s voice had risen in pitch.
Harry whimpered, low in his throat, and carefully followed Sirius through. Pieces of furniture could be seen, mostly crushed from the roof’s collapse. There was a table-possibly from the dining room-and a poster from a bed, and off to the side, a broken wardrobe lying face down in the overgrowth.
Harry stepped over to it, carefully dodging splintered pieces of wood, nails, glass, and listening for any snakes that might be hiding within. Behind him, he could see Sirius lifting up a piece of wood and tugging on something beneath it. He turned back to the wardrobe and pushed it over.
The front of it was decorated in intricate little white calla lilies and he sucked in a lungful of air as he realised that it must’ve been his mother’s. He could feel his chest tightening and squeezing his lungs painfully as he realised that at least he knew for sure that his mother was really his mother. He had her eyes after all.
Reverently, he ran a finger over the flowers trailing along the front and gasped as something flickered in his mind, kind of how he felt when he’d slipped his mother’s wedding ring on his finger. He pulled his finger back hastily and tried to concentrate on whatever it was, but it slipped away from him like a dream. The more he concentrated, the further it slithered away. Carefully, he pressed his finger to the design again.
Red hair. White teeth. A woman smiling and giggling a trill, lilting laugh as she put something inside the wardrobe and closed it carefully.
Harry jerked open the doors quickly and stared inside. It was dusty and dirty with rotted clothes and the smell of deteriorating wood. He couldn’t breathe and he wasn’t sure if it was only because of the smell or the dust. Something gleamed beneath the rotted clothes and he carefully reached inside, fingers contacting with something cold and metallic.
Carefully, he closed his fingers around it and pulled it out, but was disappointed to find that it was only a key. A Gringotts key marked ‘Evans - 460’. His mother’s vault key, but…what did he want with gold? He already had enough of it. He sighed unhappily and jumped, startled, as a hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
“What did you find?” Sirius asked, and Harry was happy to note that his voice sounded steady again.
Harry shrugged. “My mother’s vault key, but I really don’t care for the money.” He wondered now, if he really wasn’t a Potter, whether or not he should pay back the money he’d used from the Potter vault. There were no other Potters to inherit it, but it wasn’t his to begin with.
Sirius gasped and struggled to grin. “Don’t you know, Kiddo?” he asked in an overly cheerful voice. Harry stared at him blankly, so he continued, “Witches don’t keep gold in their vaults after they marry. They move their gold to their husband’s vaults and keep their valuable possessions in their vaults.
“Jewellery, trinkets, antique furniture, posh textiles, familial possessions…documents,” Sirius explained pointedly. Harry bit his lip and Sirius forced a smile. “If your mother left anything for you to find that she didn’t want anyone else to find, it would be in that vault. Only children can access their mother’s vaults, and even that is after stipulations.”
Harry suddenly felt very tired, but he was determined. “We have to look,” he said quietly. “I have to know.”
Sirius nodded, but frowned. “You’ll have to go by yourself.”
“Why?” Harry asked, becoming frantic again. He couldn’t do this by himself. He just couldn’t.
“If I’m spotted then what will we do? It won’t make much of a difference what the outcome is if I’m arrested again,” he said worriedly. Suddenly, his voice grew anxious and broken again. “If…if this isn’t some big joke,” he said trying to smile, “and James was pretty good at those. Always better than me…I wouldn’t put this past him,” he laughed humourlessly, as if he were trying to keep from getting his hopes up, “then…I can’t go back there. I…”
“Sirius,” Harry interrupted, confused.
“…If this is all real, then,” he started to shake again and Harry grabbed his forearm forcefully.
“Sirius!” he growled. Sirius looked up, all wild eyes and very close to a panic attack. “My birthday present, remember?” he asked pointedly. Sirius scrunched up his brows in confusion. “From Voldemort?” Harry prompted.
Sirius suddenly looked very pale. “Sweet fucking Merlin, he knew.”
“What?” Harry asked.
“The Dark Lord…he knew,” Sirius muttered to himself. “Oh fucking hell, this is about to hit home all at once and I’m going to go insane after surviving over a decade in Azkaban.”
“If you know you’re going crazy, you can’t really be crazy,” Harry interjected logically.
Sirius looked at him sharply and barked out another hysterical laugh. “Alright, I’m a free man, yes,” he told Harry quickly, “but don’t you understand? The Dark Lord knew. He knew.”
“Knew what?” Harry asked again.
“He knows you’re not really a Potter. He knows.”
“What makes you say that?” Harry asked, suddenly remembering in disturbing clarity the conversation he’d had with Voldemort recently. ‘I know many things,’ Voldemort had said. And all that he’d known about his mother. Harry felt a chill run down his spine.
“Life debt,” Sirius said, pulling on the hair by his temples. “You brought him back to life, whether by free will or not, and he owed you, and Pettigrew owed you.”
Harry scoffed. “Right,” he drawled, completely forgetting about everything but that one argument. “And how does that explain how Voldemort knew I wasn’t James Potter’s son…assuming this isn’t one of his jokes like you said,” he added quietly.
Sirius shook his head. “You really know nothing about pure-blood etiquette, do you?” Harry gave him a withering glare. “Life-debts are paid by saving the life of the person who is owed the Life Debt or by saving the life of an immediate family member, unless otherwise specified by the wizard to who the debt is owed.”
“And?” Harry pressured pointedly, crossing his arms across his chest.
“And,” Sirius stressed, “The Dark Lord wouldn’t have saved my life if I wasn’t your immediate family. He’s paid his debt now. He doesn’t owe you anything.”
Harry inhaled quickly and closed his eyes. “How did he know?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Sirius said, shaking his head. He pulled the Zippo lighter from his pocket again and held it out to Harry. “But I bet your mother would’ve known.”
They arrived in Diagon Alley right in front of Gringotts several seconds later and there was an immediate crowd surrounding them.
“I thought you said everyone thought I was dead!” Sirius yelled over the cheering, encroaching crowd as he grabbed for Harry’s hand to keep from losing him. Harry laughed genuinely.
“It never made it to the papers. The general public didn’t know!” he yelled back happily. Sirius scowled as a young, swooning witch exclaimed to him how absolutely, devilishly brave he was and pulled Harry closer. “And I own all of your stuff now,” he added with a grin. “Thanks for Kreacher by the by,” he added with a sneer.
Sirius growled and pushed through the crowd, dropping hurried smiles as he went. “I want my stuff back,” he said petulantly. “It might have been stupid dark arts stuff, but it was mine and I enjoyed the destroying process. You will, of course, be returning it.”
Sirius paused, and then said, “What happened to Kreacher anyway?”
Harry laughed wickedly as they finally reached the doors to Gringotts. “He wanted to be on the wall at Grimmauld Place, so I put him there,” he said as the door-goblin greeted them with a bow and Harry smiled his thanks before rushing inside, Sirius right behind him. The doors shut and they each sighed in relief as they realised that the goblin had kept all non-customers of the bank outside.
They approached the desks and waited patiently to be acknowledged, which, admittedly, didn’t take as long as it usually did. Harry assumed that the goblins could smell Sirius’ money.
“Yes?” the goblin asked uninterestedly, looking up from a huge pile of paperwork.
Sirius grinned roguishly and nudged Harry with his elbow. “Harry Potter to see his mother, Lily Potter nee Evans’ vault-number 460-escorted by Sirius Black.”
The goblin only hummed-not caring at all that just a year before Albus Dumbledore had told them that Sirius Black was dead-and held his hand out for the key which Harry handed over hurriedly. Goblins, incidentally, did not have eyebrows, but Harry was fairly certain that if they did, this one would’ve raised his at the state of the key. It was tarnished and dirty with little bits of cloth stuck in odd places.
“Follow me, if you please,” the goblin droned. He stood from his desk and made towards the carts without even bothering to see if Harry and Sirius were following. The ride down was nothing different from any of the other rides before, but Sirius seemed to be handling it well and as Harry was only slightly nauseated by the end, he supposed it was something to get used to.
“Entrance requires the child if the mother is deceased. Mr. Potter,” and neither Harry nor Sirius missed the pointed enunciation, “if you will please place your hand on the door as I insert the key.” Harry did so. “Thank you,” the goblin said flatly. “If Mr. Black would like to enter as well, Mr. Potter will have to escort him inside.”
The door sprung open to reveal a vault no bigger than Harry’s bedroom at the Dursley’s house. It wasn’t very full, and there was not a coin in sight, but what was in there excited Harry beyond imagination. These were his mother’s things.
The first thing he noticed was a portrait of a witch and a wizard, middle-aged, slumped against each other asleep. He walked over to it after gesturing Sirius to follow him in, and stared at the inscription. Frank and Laurel Evans.
He gasped, realizing that he was staring at an actual magical portrait of his grandparents, and the witch-a thin woman with a ski-slope nose and strawberry blonde hair-sleepily blinked open her eyes. She looked at Harry bemusedly for several seconds and then elbowed the sleeping wizard next to her.
“Five more minutes, Lar,” he muttered and moved around a bit, presumably to get more comfortable. Consequently, his head rolled off the witch’s shoulder and landed with a thump in her lap. He began to snore and the witch’s lips twitched into a smile.
She nudged him again, harder this time, and he sat up quickly-so quickly in fact that he fell completely out of the chair he was sitting in, and thusly, out of the viewable area of the frame. Harry laughed and the sound alerted Sirius, who wandered over to see what was going on.
“Mrs. Evans,” Sirius nodded solemnly. The witch quirked her lips again, nodded to Sirius and looked down. She jerked her leg and a petulant ‘Ow!’ was heard from somewhere near the bottom of the frame.
“You don’t have to kick me, Laurel,” the wizard said, his salt-and-pepper hair peeking over the bottom edge of the frame as he struggled to get up. She shot him a withering look and nodded towards Harry and Sirius. The wizard pulled himself back into his chair and looked out of the frame before doing a rather comical double-take. “What’s this then?” he asked, getting out of his chair yet again and stepping to the front of the frame.
He bent down and looked Harry in the eye, removing a pair of reading glasses as his greying moustache twitched in thought. Suddenly he grinned. “Definitely an Evans boy,” he called over his shoulder proudly. The witch snorted and elegantly lifted herself from her chair, gliding over to stand next to her husband.
“Whose do you suppose he is?” the wizard continued to his wife.
In response, she rolled her eyes and Harry noticed that they were the same green eyes that he and his mother had. “Probably too much of a chore to ask him yourself instead of all of this speculating, isn’t it Frank?” she asked rhetorically. It was, in fact, the first time she’d spoken at all, and Harry noticed that she had a distinctly American accent. She sounded like one of those tourists that he saw snapping pictures of Buckingham Palace that one time he’d been allowed to go on a field trip in muggle school.
Frank turned back, seeming to finally notice Sirius. “No need, dear,” he said sarcastically. “This one’s Lily’s; I can tell. Finally took up with you, did she?” he asked Sirius with an amused, raised eyebrow.
Sirius turned his head to the side and spotted something shiny. “Would you look at that!” he exclaimed overly cheerfully, pretending not to have heard Frank’s question. He wandered off, muttering excitedly to himself and Harry turned back to the portrait, fighting a grin.
“You are Lily’s then, aren’t you?” Frank directed at Harry. Harry nodded and the wizard smiled brightly. He stood up straight and scratched his moustache with his head cocked to the side as Laurel hid a grin behind her hand. Finally, he nodded, and quite decisively at that. “We’ll like a spot above a fireplace,” he decided.
Laurel snorted delicately.
“I’m sorry?” Harry asked.
“You are taking us with you, aren’t you, boy?”
Harry opened his mouth and then quickly shut it. “Of course,” he said quickly. He pointed over his shoulder and started backing up in minute steps. “I’ve just to find a few things. I’ll grab you on the way out then, hey?”
Harry gave them a quick grin and hurried over to Sirius who was pouring through a stack of papers. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the pile with his hair falling in his eyes as he read. “Anything useful?” Harry asked as he flopped down next to him.
Wordlessly, Sirius handed over an old, faded piece of parchment. It was bordered in a Celtic knot pattern, but had very few words on it. Those words just happened to be rather startling.
This certificate verifies the birth of
Castor Harry Black
On the 31st of July, in the year of Merlin, 1980
To Lily Evans Potter and Sirius Seth Black (unmarried)
Witnessed and confirmed by Narcissa Black Malfoy
Harry cringed and looked over to Sirius who was staring down at his hands silently. “That’s my birthday,” he said uselessly. Sirius nodded because he already knew. Of course he knew.
“That’s not all,” Sirius said, as he handed Harry another piece of parchment. It was identical to the first one, except the name read ‘Harry James Potter’ and the father was listed as ‘James Charlus Potter’. Narcissa Malfoy was still listed as witness, but Harry didn’t have the presence of mind to think about that at the moment. “She tried to cover it up,” Sirius said with a shrug, “but she purposefully made an authentic one, too.
“It makes no sense,” Sirius growled. “If Narcissa was witnessing…well that could mean anything, but James wouldn’t have been in the room at your birth. It’s sacred to a lot of families-only the mother and the midwife and the grandmothers are allowed in, you know-there was no reason for Narcissa to even bother with a real one if she was just going to make a fake one, too.”
Harry fidgeted. “Then why would she?”
Sirius growled in frustration. “I don’t know. I suppose your mother wanted us to find out.”
Harry smiled. “I hope so.”
“So it’s true then,” Sirius sighed, standing up. He reached down to help Harry to his feet and gave him a small smile. “You really are mine.” Harry smiled shyly, red-tipped hair falling over his eyes as he ducked his head. “What do you think about that?”
Harry looked up, suddenly sure that he was about to be rejected. “Happy birthday to me?” he ventured. Sirius barked out a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder heartily.
“I don’t know how happy I’d be about it,” Sirius said, waggling his eyebrows. “I think I’d be dreadfully frightened. Who would want me as a father, after all?” he asked with a laugh.
“I would,” Harry said, and Sirius smiled quickly before turning his head and rubbing suspiciously at his eyes.
“Let’s shrink all this and take it with us,” Sirius suggested. “We can sort it out at the house, yeah? I’m sure that goblin’s tired of waiting on us.”
-x-
Back at the manor, owls were already waiting for him from Ron and Hermione. Sirius unshrunk everything from his mother’s vault and stacked it up in the drawing room for further perusal while Harry read the letters, cringing and wincing appropriately.
Apparently, Hermione was perturbed that Harry had spent over a month with Sirius without alerting anyone-especially since Sirius was dead, legally of course.
Harry,
Are you insane?
Neither Ron nor I hear from you since leaving the platform in June, and you suddenly write to us and tell us that you’ve been staying with your dead godfather for almost two months?
Are you sure this is wise Harry? Are you certain he isn’t a Death Eater? Well, I suppose that you’re right-he wouldn’t have been able to enter Grimmauld Place if he wasn’t who he said he was, but if all of this is really true, then who DID die in the Department of Mysteries?
Harry this is mind-boggling. I looked through several books that I have with me and have come up with some ideas.
She suggested the possibility of Polyjuice and a golem. Additionally, Hermione reinforced the same question that Harry and Sirius had been unable to answer, but that Harry was now fairly certain Professor Snape had-in some round about way. She wanted to know why Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry the truth if he in fact knew that Sirius had been in America the entire time on an Order mission-and who had been acting in Sirius’ place at Grimmauld Place their entire fifth year.
Hermione mused that that was rather shady. Harry agreed.
Ron, on the other hand, was ecstatic. He’d not even thought of how odd it was that Dumbledore led Harry on for so long, and instead gave him a written pat on the back, telling him that he was glad things were finally going Harry’s way.
He’d alerted his mother, who in turn had contacted Dumbledore to confirm it. Then, she’d had a merry time of telling everyone else in the Order and the rest of the Weasley family. Ron said to expect a melee of questions when Harry made it to the Burrow.
Unfortunately, Harry had no plans of going to the Burrow this year, so he wrote back to both of his friends and invited them over to River House instead. After consulting with Sirius, he’d included the rest of the Weasleys in the invitation. They had plenty of room for everyone, but Harry wasn’t sure how well either Sirius or he would be able to handle the questionings. He was rather thankful that it would be divided between the two of them.
Dear Ron and Hermione,
Instead of me visiting you at the Burrow this year, why don’t you all come here instead? I’m sure Sirius would love to see everyone again. We haven’t seen anyone from the Order, obviously, since arriving. Of course the rest of the Weasleys are invited too. We’ve got plenty of room for everyone and the view is amazing.
Also, Hermione, the library is three floors. Floor to ceiling books. Most of them old. One of a kind. I can almost see you shivering in excitement.
Write back soon to let me know whether or not you’ll come. You can stay for the rest of the summer, Sirius says.
Harry.
He finished with an exhausted sigh and decided he needed a nap before he did anything else for the day. It was just before dinner, and he still had to get over his shock from the morning. He suspected that when it hit him, he would be an utter wreck, but for now, he would sleep.
Voldemort, conversely, had other plans.
Harry suspected that he’d been slinking about in his mind all day just waiting for him to fall asleep because as soon as his head hit the pillow, his mind left his body. Harry decided that he should probably resume his Occlumency lessons sometime in the near future.
“Can’t you let me sleep?” Harry asked petulantly. “I’ve had a long day.”
Voldemort was sitting on a leather Chesterfield absently flipping through the pages of a ratty old book with a mark in the middle that looked like acid had been poured on the cover. It looked vaguely familiar. “You’re welcome,” he sneered, not looking up from his book. “Mr. Black,” he added several seconds later.
Harry sat up, interested. “So you did know then, didn’t you?”
“I know many things,” Voldemort said disinterestedly, repeating his words from before. Harry scowled.
“How did you know?” Harry asked, scowling.
Voldemort finally sat the book down on a side table, marking his page, and asked, ‘Tea?’ somewhat rhetorically because he didn’t, yet again, give Harry the opportunity to answer. Harry sat down on the coffee table and waited with his arms crossed over his chest while Voldemort gathered up his tea things.
He politely took the tacky little tea cup-this time it was a horrible set with pink roses-and sipped while Voldemort stared him down. “No lemon drop?” Harry asked snidely, when Voldemort refused to speak for nearly five minutes. The whole ordeal was reminding him of Dumbledore.
Voldemort cackled with mirth and finally sipped his tea from his unmatched cup. “Tell me the prophecy,” he said bluntly, catching Harry off guard.
“Excuse me?” Harry asked incredulously, nearly dropping the tea cup. “No way!”
Voldemort smirked. “What difference will it make? My knowledge of it will not change the outcome.”
“Prophecies are tricky things…” Harry hedged, but Voldemort was not to be distracted. He waved his hand impatiently and gave Harry a look.
“Exactly,” Voldemort said. “So just tell me. Perhaps,” he said with a leer, “if I knew it, we could end this war with no more bloodshed.”
That was, in fact, a rather strong argument as far as Harry was concerned. It was just words, he decided. It wasn’t as if it told Voldemort how to beat him, and prophecies could easily be interpreted the wrong way-some didn’t come to pass at all. He was so tired of hiding it-it wasn’t like it was even useful. Harry weighed his options very carefully and hoped that he wasn’t making a terrible, terrible mistake when he finally sighed in resignation and repeated the prophecy.
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have the power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”
Only seconds later, he decided that he was entirely too easy to manipulate and was rather glad that he hadn’t just told Voldemort where all of his friends lived or who was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He could have slapped himself for being so ignorant. He would never win a war if he kept giving away all of his information. Wars were won on information and now Voldemort had the upper hand.
Well, maybe not. As he’d thought earlier, it was just words. It offered no assistance either way in how to defeat the other.
“Doesn’t sound very promising, does it?” Voldemort mused, snapping Harry out of his thoughts.
“What?” Harry asked, utterly confused. He seemed to be confused a lot lately and that didn’t sit well with him.
“The prophecy, boy,” Voldemort said exasperatedly, waving his white hands around wildly. Harry almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “So everything adds up, yes,” Voldemort said, “Seventh month, thrice defied, marked as equal,” he was nodding to himself as he counted off the points of the prophecy in a disturbingly logical manner.
“The key words, however,” Voldemort said, “are vanquish, die, live and survive, though we mustn’t neglect to give thought to the power I know not,” he continued blandly. Harry was openly staring at him by now, mouth slightly agape.
“Vanquish,” Voldemort said pointedly, red eyes boring into Harry’s, “means ‘defeat’…‘conquer’…even ‘subdue’ in addition to those other, less pleasant, synonyms. This power-whatever it is-that you have, can do anything from disable my forces to kill me.”
“Prophecies are tricky things,” Harry interjected once again, for lack of anything more helpful to say. Voldemort looked as though he was barely restraining himself from rolling his red eyes. He set his tea cup down and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his no doubt bony knees.
“Indeed,” Voldemort replied dryly, but was quickly back in lecture mode. Harry wondered why he’d never tried to become a professor instead of a dark lord. It must have paid better, at the least. “‘Die’ on the other hand,” Voldemort continued abruptly, “does not necessarily refer to either of us in a literal sense, and, additionally, could possibly be metaphorical.”
“You lost me there,” Harry said, chin propped up on the palm of his hand. He’d had over a year to get used to the prophecy and he still wasn’t interested in it. He didn’t like to think about it, and he certainly didn’t like to think about Voldemort trying to weasel his way out of it. He could’ve been napping.
“You are rather insolent, aren’t you, Mr. Black?” Voldemort asked him casually. Harry flinched at the name. It sounded so odd to be referred to as anything other than Harry Potter. Voldemort noticed the flinch and smirked.
“It makes you uncomfortable,” he said. Harry nodded, though he didn’t know why exactly it made him uncomfortable. He finally had a family and he had Sirius back. They had plenty of time to get to know each other now and everything was finally going semi-right. “Why?”
Harry shrugged. “It’s just a lot of information to take in. I’m still recovering from the shock of my god…father actually being alive. It’s…just strange. It’s like my entire existence was a lie.”
Voldemort studied him carefully. “Will you accept it?” he asked carefully.
“Accept what?” Harry asked. “Accept that Sirius is my father? I pretty much have to-I saw my birth certificate.”
Voldemort shook his head. “No,” he answered. “Will you accept your heritage? Your blood-your line-your name?” he asked pointedly.
Harry had honestly not thought of that. Of course, he’d seen the tapestry labelling him as Castor Black-which Harry supposed was because names seemed to be recycled in pure-blood families-and his birth certificate, but he’d gone by Harry Potter all of his life.
“Should I?” he asked curiously. Harry didn’t think there was much of heritage to accept, but what would people think if he changed his last name? What would Sirius think?
Voldemort shrugged elegantly. “It is your name.”
“But I’ve always been Harry Potter…” Harry insisted.
“But you are not a Potter,” Voldemort countered.
Harry hummed noncommittally, pondering the thought, and opened his mouth to reply, but was suddenly jerked away and into consciousness.
Blearily, he opened his eyes to find himself being shaken sharply. Sirius was standing over him, grinning like a fool and holding one of his floo disk boxes with a saucy little redhead on the cover.
“Let me borrow this one, yeah?” Sirius asked excitedly.
Harry groaned and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. “Gross,” he muttered. Sirius laughed and Harry waved him away petulantly, but Sirius didn’t leave. “I wish you hadn’t asked,” he said. “That’s more than I needed to know.”
Harry could almost feel the nonchalant shrug he received in reply, even though his eyes were still closed. “I’m sure there’s a lot you found out today that you didn’t need to know,” Sirius replied cheerfully.
“Yeah,” Harry muttered, “Like I’m not a Potter.”
There was a pregnant silence, and the sound of feet shuffling on the floor before Sirius replied, “Yeah-like that.” Harry couldn’t help but note the miserable tone of Sirius’ voice. He’d not meant to insult him, but he suspected that Sirius had taken it that way. He lifted his head to explain, but he was already gone.
Harry groaned and sat up on the bed. He had a feeling that this was going to be one awkward moment after another.
-x-
Deciding that both he and Sirius needed some time to let the day’s events soak in, Harry did not immediately go after him. He certainly didn’t want to walk in on the floo disk being used, after all.
Instead, he wandered down to the drawing room where Sirius had left everything they’d found in his mother’s vault and rummaged around. The spot above the fireplace in that room was, ironically, empty, and he went ahead and hung up the portrait of his grandparents-much to Frank’s over-enthused delight and Laurel’s quiet amusement.
There were all sorts of things to catch his attention and as he sorted through pile after pile after pile of expensive jewellery, he was graced with amusing little anecdotes from Frank and elegant snorts of laughter from Laurel.
“Laurel wore that at our wedding, you know,” Frank said proudly, gesturing to the pearl necklace Harry had in his hand. “I say all women need to wear a pearl necklace at least once in their life,” he continued with a lascivious look at his wife. She slapped him soundly across the back of his head, and Harry laughed heartily, blushing only slighting at the innuendo.
He found a couple pictures of his mother when she was a teenager and tucked them into his pocket along with a few other trinkets that just ‘felt right’ when he picked them up. He found some old jewellery boxes in the attic and packed away all the jewellery in it neatly before storing it under his bed for safekeeping. There wasn’t much else left, other than the documents and Harry didn’t think he would be able to deal with those at the moment so he left them on the writing desk and pulled out Death in the Wizarding World to pass the time with.
He supposed that since Sirius was alive and France wasn’t really a euphemism for Hell, it wasn’t really necessary to continue reading it, but now that he wasn’t overwhelmed with guilt and despair, he found that the book was actually quite interesting.
Chapter twelve, which was where he’d left off the last time, discussed necromancy, which Harry thought was entirely too coincidental for his tastes, but he read anyway. Somehow, during the excitement of the morning, he’d completely forgotten that he wanted to exchange that gruesome book for another one. It was still tucked away in his robe pocket, but he could do that later.
-x-
Excerpt from the Journal of a Necromancer, 190th page.
4 March, 846
S,
I loathe you. Your son spoke today. No matter how hard I tried, his first word was not ‘Mother’ or even a babbled variation of-not even ‘Merlin’. It was ‘fada’.
I have reason to believe that Leo is the cause of this, though if I find that you have been visiting our son and teaching him that word even as I have tried-and failed, thus far-to contact you, I will be sorely displeased.
You do not want to displease me, Lover. I promise you that. I will find you sooner or later and when I resurrect your sorry body, I will scold you so fiercely that you will regret you are no longer beneath the earth. I promise you that.
I have, under cover of night and many wards, unearthed your body recently. The preservation spells placed on you at your end were still intact, but you stank of death. I hope that tramples your arrogance. Nevertheless, I have flayed you and stolen your bones.
What do you think of that, Lover? Do you feel humiliated?
I hope that you do.
But fear not, for I have not done this to humiliate you posthumously-I merely needed your relics for other purposes. I have been meeting with the necromancer from the village, as I told you, and learned that I will need your bones for resurrection. I decided to retrieve them before your stubbornness overrules the preservation charms.
The skin, I admit, was for my own selfish purposes. I miss the scent of you. It has long since faded from my pillows. I have bound this journal in it and preserved it with bronze. I can smell you in the pages and it gives me determination when I feel ready to falter.
Sam is wailing now. I must attend to him.
Yours,
R.
-x-
A/N:
1. Circular logic at its best. In reference to Joseph Heller’s 1961 WWII-based novel Catch-22. I’m not going to repeat the entire thing because if you don’t know it, you need to read it, but basically, Catch-22 says that if you are concerned about your safety in the face of real and immediate dangers, then you’re sane. And if you’re sane, you have to fly dangerous missions. If you don’t mind flying those missions, then you’re not sane, but you won’t be taken off the missions until you prove that you’re crazy, and if you think you’re crazy then you can’t really be crazy because crazy people don’t know they’re crazy.
NEXT CHAPTER
Comments=Love.
(Thank you to serpentclara for whipping my ass into shape last chapter. ♥ ♥ ♥)
Chapter Title: Black Blood 05/14
Words (this chapter): 6,976
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Story Info/All Chapters: HERE
Beta’d by littlevlahgirl and amelancholykiss.
-x-
Black, in the Smothering Dark
-x-
Chapter Five
Black Blood
-x-
They stared at each other in complete silence, neither knowing exactly how it should be broken, if it should be broken at all. Sirius was studying Harry’s face intently, worrying his lip furiously and scrunching his brows in distress. Harry jumped, startled, when he saw his godfather’s hand reach up and pull his glasses off his face.
The magical contacts immediately readjusted so that he could see, and when the blurriness had passed, Sirius was still looking at him intently. He ran a finger down Harry’s nose-the same nose that Harry had once thought he’d inherited from a grandparent on one side or the other as it belonged to neither Lily nor James. Now, Harry realised, it looked a lot like Sirius’-pronounced and aristocratic with the slightest hint of a Roman ridge to it.
He bit his lip and watched as Sirius ran the same finger down the length of his own nose-testing and studying.
“Your chin,” Sirius muttered. “It kind of looks like mine.”
“And my nose?” Harry asked uncomfortably.
“It feels like mine,” Sirius said uneasily. “And your hair…”
“It’s darker than James Potter’s,” Harry continued. “It’s black,” he swallowed. “Like yours.”
“And straighter than James’ or Lily’s was.” Sirius looked away, uncomfortable and swallowing heavily. “And without your glasses,” he whispered.
“I look like you. Like Bellatrix. Like a Black without the grey eyes…” Harry guessed quickly. “Why didn’t anyone notice?”
Sirius shrugged feebly. “Because no one had a reason to…and there are Blacks in the Potter family,” he continued weakly. “We have a lot of the same attributes.”
Harry hugged himself tightly and looked down at his knees. “What does this mean?” he asked quietly.
Sirius pulled his knees up to his chest, too-looking for all the world like a scared little boy-and propped his head on them. He didn’t answer directly, shrugging. “Arcturus Black was my grandfather on my father’s side,” he said instead. “That’s where my father got his paranoia from, you know,” he said, swallowing heavily but trying to force himself calmer. “He was a very paranoid man. There are three portraits of him all throughout this manor guarding various places, and so far as I know, he’s never let anyone who wasn’t a Black past him.”
Harry looked up sharply, but Sirius didn’t acknowledge it. He answered Harry’s unspoken question, “He could always tell who had Black blood in them, you know. He can…feel it, I suppose.”
“He studied me before he let me through,” Harry murmured, face again pressed into his knees. “And the house-elves…” Harry continued, “I never thought about it before, but they can’t be bound to more than one family…and they’re bound to me. I felt it when it happened.”
Sirius inhaled quickly. “And they call you Young Master,” Sirius said, a hitch in his voice. “That’s what they call the young heirs before they become the heads of a family…And the portkey.”
“Yeah?” Harry asked desperately.
Sirius shook his head. “It shouldn’t have taken you with me, even if you were touching it. It only works for those of Black blood, but…I was so upset at the time, trying to keep myself from going crazy that I didn’t even think about it.”
Suddenly, his godfather unfolded himself and reached into his pocket, pulling out two muggle Zippo lighters-one with a black greyhound on it and another with a white greyhound. He handed the white one to Harry with shaking fingers. “It was Regulus’,” Sirius explained quietly. “It’ll take you anywhere you want to go, so long as you’ve been there before and know what it looks like.”
He nodded to the lighter in Harry’s hand and said, “Picture your bedroom and say it.”
Harry bit his lip, imagined his bedroom complete with the new four-poster bed facing a huge picture window framed with those black velvet and blue silk draperies. “Harry’s bedroom,” he said quietly and felt the unmistakably nauseating feel of his insides being tugged into the portkey and swirling around.
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on his bed. His breath hitched in his throat and as he clutched the lighter and said, “Black library,” his voice cracked.
Sirius’ head was in his hands when he returned. He didn’t look up as he said, “It worked.” Harry nodded slowly, even though Sirius couldn’t see him do it. “What do we do now?” Sirius mumbled.
Harry’s face took on a desperate look and he tried to grin as he said cheekily, “I don’t know…you tell me; you’re the parent,” but it didn’t come out the way he’d imagined it. Across from him, Sirius laughed-a disturbingly humourless laugh that slowly turned into a sobbing bark. Harry buried his face between his knees and tried to remember what breathing felt like.
“We have to go,” Sirius said suddenly, standing up and rubbing furiously at his face. He looked around anxiously, though Harry couldn’t tell for the life of him what Sirius was looking at or looking for. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sirius shook his head frantically. “We need to go…there. Lily-she would’ve left something, maybe, anything, I bet.”
Sirius’s words were coming out jumbled and he was pacing back and forth in the few feet of open floor in front of Harry. He tugged his hair and twisted it beneath his fingers. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he muttered to himself restlessly. “There could be an entirely different explanation. Don’t get your hopes up, Sirius,” he continued. “It could be anything. This is not the time to be a Gryffindor. We have to find all the facts.”
Harry stood up slowly and the movement caught Sirius’ attention. His eyes were wild, his hair was mussed from his fingers and he was still worrying his lips. “Touch the portkey,” he said, pulling his own Zippo lighter out again.
Harry slowly reached out and touched his finger to the portkey, and when Sirius muttered, “Potter Cottage, Godric’s Hollow,” he whimpered, closed his eyes and clenched his fists. It was too much. Too much, too soon, and he wasn’t sure how either of them would handle it.
He opened his eyes to destruction.
That’s all it was, really. Complete and utter destruction. It was a huge pile of charred wood and bad energy. Weeds were growing in sinister patterns through the debris and all around, everything else was perfect. The Potter Cottage was a tarnish in an otherwise ideal field full of mature trees and white flowers.
Next to him, Sirius was rubbing his face and squeezing his temples as if he were trying to squeeze his brain right out of his head. Harry touched his arm softly and Sirius whimpered.
In shock. Harry realised that they were both in shock. It was too much in one day-Sirius’ name being cleared even though the people who would have actually cared thought he was dead and then this-whatever this was. Harry’s eyes were wide and his breathing was coming more rapidly, but other than that, he felt calm.
Restless, but calm. He just needed to know-for certain-whatever the truth was, he needed to know. He should’ve felt as if he were betraying James Potter, but he didn’t and it scared him a little bit. He realised that he wanted their assumptions to be true. He loved James Potter as much as he could love someone he couldn’t remember, but…but Sirius knew him.
Knew him better anyway. They’d only had a little more than a year of clandestine meetings and fire chats to get to know each other before that summer, but he was comfortable with Sirius. He knew what his voice sounded like and he knew what kinds of things set him off. He knew what Sirius looked like when he was trying to pull off a prank and when he was trying to impress. He knew none of that about James Potter.
And all the pieces fit.
And secretly, Harry hoped.
“Come on then,” Sirius said, pulling himself together. He started walking, haltingly at first, towards the demolished house and stopped next to what looked to be an old trellis, though the vines covering it now were certainly not beautiful. “This was the porch,” he said to himself, and Harry noticed that his god...father’s voice had risen in pitch.
Harry whimpered, low in his throat, and carefully followed Sirius through. Pieces of furniture could be seen, mostly crushed from the roof’s collapse. There was a table-possibly from the dining room-and a poster from a bed, and off to the side, a broken wardrobe lying face down in the overgrowth.
Harry stepped over to it, carefully dodging splintered pieces of wood, nails, glass, and listening for any snakes that might be hiding within. Behind him, he could see Sirius lifting up a piece of wood and tugging on something beneath it. He turned back to the wardrobe and pushed it over.
The front of it was decorated in intricate little white calla lilies and he sucked in a lungful of air as he realised that it must’ve been his mother’s. He could feel his chest tightening and squeezing his lungs painfully as he realised that at least he knew for sure that his mother was really his mother. He had her eyes after all.
Reverently, he ran a finger over the flowers trailing along the front and gasped as something flickered in his mind, kind of how he felt when he’d slipped his mother’s wedding ring on his finger. He pulled his finger back hastily and tried to concentrate on whatever it was, but it slipped away from him like a dream. The more he concentrated, the further it slithered away. Carefully, he pressed his finger to the design again.
Red hair. White teeth. A woman smiling and giggling a trill, lilting laugh as she put something inside the wardrobe and closed it carefully.
Harry jerked open the doors quickly and stared inside. It was dusty and dirty with rotted clothes and the smell of deteriorating wood. He couldn’t breathe and he wasn’t sure if it was only because of the smell or the dust. Something gleamed beneath the rotted clothes and he carefully reached inside, fingers contacting with something cold and metallic.
Carefully, he closed his fingers around it and pulled it out, but was disappointed to find that it was only a key. A Gringotts key marked ‘Evans - 460’. His mother’s vault key, but…what did he want with gold? He already had enough of it. He sighed unhappily and jumped, startled, as a hand landed heavily on his shoulder.
“What did you find?” Sirius asked, and Harry was happy to note that his voice sounded steady again.
Harry shrugged. “My mother’s vault key, but I really don’t care for the money.” He wondered now, if he really wasn’t a Potter, whether or not he should pay back the money he’d used from the Potter vault. There were no other Potters to inherit it, but it wasn’t his to begin with.
Sirius gasped and struggled to grin. “Don’t you know, Kiddo?” he asked in an overly cheerful voice. Harry stared at him blankly, so he continued, “Witches don’t keep gold in their vaults after they marry. They move their gold to their husband’s vaults and keep their valuable possessions in their vaults.
“Jewellery, trinkets, antique furniture, posh textiles, familial possessions…documents,” Sirius explained pointedly. Harry bit his lip and Sirius forced a smile. “If your mother left anything for you to find that she didn’t want anyone else to find, it would be in that vault. Only children can access their mother’s vaults, and even that is after stipulations.”
Harry suddenly felt very tired, but he was determined. “We have to look,” he said quietly. “I have to know.”
Sirius nodded, but frowned. “You’ll have to go by yourself.”
“Why?” Harry asked, becoming frantic again. He couldn’t do this by himself. He just couldn’t.
“If I’m spotted then what will we do? It won’t make much of a difference what the outcome is if I’m arrested again,” he said worriedly. Suddenly, his voice grew anxious and broken again. “If…if this isn’t some big joke,” he said trying to smile, “and James was pretty good at those. Always better than me…I wouldn’t put this past him,” he laughed humourlessly, as if he were trying to keep from getting his hopes up, “then…I can’t go back there. I…”
“Sirius,” Harry interrupted, confused.
“…If this is all real, then,” he started to shake again and Harry grabbed his forearm forcefully.
“Sirius!” he growled. Sirius looked up, all wild eyes and very close to a panic attack. “My birthday present, remember?” he asked pointedly. Sirius scrunched up his brows in confusion. “From Voldemort?” Harry prompted.
Sirius suddenly looked very pale. “Sweet fucking Merlin, he knew.”
“What?” Harry asked.
“The Dark Lord…he knew,” Sirius muttered to himself. “Oh fucking hell, this is about to hit home all at once and I’m going to go insane after surviving over a decade in Azkaban.”
“If you know you’re going crazy, you can’t really be crazy,” Harry interjected logically.
Sirius looked at him sharply and barked out another hysterical laugh. “Alright, I’m a free man, yes,” he told Harry quickly, “but don’t you understand? The Dark Lord knew. He knew.”
“Knew what?” Harry asked again.
“He knows you’re not really a Potter. He knows.”
“What makes you say that?” Harry asked, suddenly remembering in disturbing clarity the conversation he’d had with Voldemort recently. ‘I know many things,’ Voldemort had said. And all that he’d known about his mother. Harry felt a chill run down his spine.
“Life debt,” Sirius said, pulling on the hair by his temples. “You brought him back to life, whether by free will or not, and he owed you, and Pettigrew owed you.”
Harry scoffed. “Right,” he drawled, completely forgetting about everything but that one argument. “And how does that explain how Voldemort knew I wasn’t James Potter’s son…assuming this isn’t one of his jokes like you said,” he added quietly.
Sirius shook his head. “You really know nothing about pure-blood etiquette, do you?” Harry gave him a withering glare. “Life-debts are paid by saving the life of the person who is owed the Life Debt or by saving the life of an immediate family member, unless otherwise specified by the wizard to who the debt is owed.”
“And?” Harry pressured pointedly, crossing his arms across his chest.
“And,” Sirius stressed, “The Dark Lord wouldn’t have saved my life if I wasn’t your immediate family. He’s paid his debt now. He doesn’t owe you anything.”
Harry inhaled quickly and closed his eyes. “How did he know?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Sirius said, shaking his head. He pulled the Zippo lighter from his pocket again and held it out to Harry. “But I bet your mother would’ve known.”
They arrived in Diagon Alley right in front of Gringotts several seconds later and there was an immediate crowd surrounding them.
“I thought you said everyone thought I was dead!” Sirius yelled over the cheering, encroaching crowd as he grabbed for Harry’s hand to keep from losing him. Harry laughed genuinely.
“It never made it to the papers. The general public didn’t know!” he yelled back happily. Sirius scowled as a young, swooning witch exclaimed to him how absolutely, devilishly brave he was and pulled Harry closer. “And I own all of your stuff now,” he added with a grin. “Thanks for Kreacher by the by,” he added with a sneer.
Sirius growled and pushed through the crowd, dropping hurried smiles as he went. “I want my stuff back,” he said petulantly. “It might have been stupid dark arts stuff, but it was mine and I enjoyed the destroying process. You will, of course, be returning it.”
Sirius paused, and then said, “What happened to Kreacher anyway?”
Harry laughed wickedly as they finally reached the doors to Gringotts. “He wanted to be on the wall at Grimmauld Place, so I put him there,” he said as the door-goblin greeted them with a bow and Harry smiled his thanks before rushing inside, Sirius right behind him. The doors shut and they each sighed in relief as they realised that the goblin had kept all non-customers of the bank outside.
They approached the desks and waited patiently to be acknowledged, which, admittedly, didn’t take as long as it usually did. Harry assumed that the goblins could smell Sirius’ money.
“Yes?” the goblin asked uninterestedly, looking up from a huge pile of paperwork.
Sirius grinned roguishly and nudged Harry with his elbow. “Harry Potter to see his mother, Lily Potter nee Evans’ vault-number 460-escorted by Sirius Black.”
The goblin only hummed-not caring at all that just a year before Albus Dumbledore had told them that Sirius Black was dead-and held his hand out for the key which Harry handed over hurriedly. Goblins, incidentally, did not have eyebrows, but Harry was fairly certain that if they did, this one would’ve raised his at the state of the key. It was tarnished and dirty with little bits of cloth stuck in odd places.
“Follow me, if you please,” the goblin droned. He stood from his desk and made towards the carts without even bothering to see if Harry and Sirius were following. The ride down was nothing different from any of the other rides before, but Sirius seemed to be handling it well and as Harry was only slightly nauseated by the end, he supposed it was something to get used to.
“Entrance requires the child if the mother is deceased. Mr. Potter,” and neither Harry nor Sirius missed the pointed enunciation, “if you will please place your hand on the door as I insert the key.” Harry did so. “Thank you,” the goblin said flatly. “If Mr. Black would like to enter as well, Mr. Potter will have to escort him inside.”
The door sprung open to reveal a vault no bigger than Harry’s bedroom at the Dursley’s house. It wasn’t very full, and there was not a coin in sight, but what was in there excited Harry beyond imagination. These were his mother’s things.
The first thing he noticed was a portrait of a witch and a wizard, middle-aged, slumped against each other asleep. He walked over to it after gesturing Sirius to follow him in, and stared at the inscription. Frank and Laurel Evans.
He gasped, realizing that he was staring at an actual magical portrait of his grandparents, and the witch-a thin woman with a ski-slope nose and strawberry blonde hair-sleepily blinked open her eyes. She looked at Harry bemusedly for several seconds and then elbowed the sleeping wizard next to her.
“Five more minutes, Lar,” he muttered and moved around a bit, presumably to get more comfortable. Consequently, his head rolled off the witch’s shoulder and landed with a thump in her lap. He began to snore and the witch’s lips twitched into a smile.
She nudged him again, harder this time, and he sat up quickly-so quickly in fact that he fell completely out of the chair he was sitting in, and thusly, out of the viewable area of the frame. Harry laughed and the sound alerted Sirius, who wandered over to see what was going on.
“Mrs. Evans,” Sirius nodded solemnly. The witch quirked her lips again, nodded to Sirius and looked down. She jerked her leg and a petulant ‘Ow!’ was heard from somewhere near the bottom of the frame.
“You don’t have to kick me, Laurel,” the wizard said, his salt-and-pepper hair peeking over the bottom edge of the frame as he struggled to get up. She shot him a withering look and nodded towards Harry and Sirius. The wizard pulled himself back into his chair and looked out of the frame before doing a rather comical double-take. “What’s this then?” he asked, getting out of his chair yet again and stepping to the front of the frame.
He bent down and looked Harry in the eye, removing a pair of reading glasses as his greying moustache twitched in thought. Suddenly he grinned. “Definitely an Evans boy,” he called over his shoulder proudly. The witch snorted and elegantly lifted herself from her chair, gliding over to stand next to her husband.
“Whose do you suppose he is?” the wizard continued to his wife.
In response, she rolled her eyes and Harry noticed that they were the same green eyes that he and his mother had. “Probably too much of a chore to ask him yourself instead of all of this speculating, isn’t it Frank?” she asked rhetorically. It was, in fact, the first time she’d spoken at all, and Harry noticed that she had a distinctly American accent. She sounded like one of those tourists that he saw snapping pictures of Buckingham Palace that one time he’d been allowed to go on a field trip in muggle school.
Frank turned back, seeming to finally notice Sirius. “No need, dear,” he said sarcastically. “This one’s Lily’s; I can tell. Finally took up with you, did she?” he asked Sirius with an amused, raised eyebrow.
Sirius turned his head to the side and spotted something shiny. “Would you look at that!” he exclaimed overly cheerfully, pretending not to have heard Frank’s question. He wandered off, muttering excitedly to himself and Harry turned back to the portrait, fighting a grin.
“You are Lily’s then, aren’t you?” Frank directed at Harry. Harry nodded and the wizard smiled brightly. He stood up straight and scratched his moustache with his head cocked to the side as Laurel hid a grin behind her hand. Finally, he nodded, and quite decisively at that. “We’ll like a spot above a fireplace,” he decided.
Laurel snorted delicately.
“I’m sorry?” Harry asked.
“You are taking us with you, aren’t you, boy?”
Harry opened his mouth and then quickly shut it. “Of course,” he said quickly. He pointed over his shoulder and started backing up in minute steps. “I’ve just to find a few things. I’ll grab you on the way out then, hey?”
Harry gave them a quick grin and hurried over to Sirius who was pouring through a stack of papers. He was sitting cross-legged in front of the pile with his hair falling in his eyes as he read. “Anything useful?” Harry asked as he flopped down next to him.
Wordlessly, Sirius handed over an old, faded piece of parchment. It was bordered in a Celtic knot pattern, but had very few words on it. Those words just happened to be rather startling.
This certificate verifies the birth of
Castor Harry Black
On the 31st of July, in the year of Merlin, 1980
To Lily Evans Potter and Sirius Seth Black (unmarried)
Witnessed and confirmed by Narcissa Black Malfoy
Harry cringed and looked over to Sirius who was staring down at his hands silently. “That’s my birthday,” he said uselessly. Sirius nodded because he already knew. Of course he knew.
“That’s not all,” Sirius said, as he handed Harry another piece of parchment. It was identical to the first one, except the name read ‘Harry James Potter’ and the father was listed as ‘James Charlus Potter’. Narcissa Malfoy was still listed as witness, but Harry didn’t have the presence of mind to think about that at the moment. “She tried to cover it up,” Sirius said with a shrug, “but she purposefully made an authentic one, too.
“It makes no sense,” Sirius growled. “If Narcissa was witnessing…well that could mean anything, but James wouldn’t have been in the room at your birth. It’s sacred to a lot of families-only the mother and the midwife and the grandmothers are allowed in, you know-there was no reason for Narcissa to even bother with a real one if she was just going to make a fake one, too.”
Harry fidgeted. “Then why would she?”
Sirius growled in frustration. “I don’t know. I suppose your mother wanted us to find out.”
Harry smiled. “I hope so.”
“So it’s true then,” Sirius sighed, standing up. He reached down to help Harry to his feet and gave him a small smile. “You really are mine.” Harry smiled shyly, red-tipped hair falling over his eyes as he ducked his head. “What do you think about that?”
Harry looked up, suddenly sure that he was about to be rejected. “Happy birthday to me?” he ventured. Sirius barked out a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder heartily.
“I don’t know how happy I’d be about it,” Sirius said, waggling his eyebrows. “I think I’d be dreadfully frightened. Who would want me as a father, after all?” he asked with a laugh.
“I would,” Harry said, and Sirius smiled quickly before turning his head and rubbing suspiciously at his eyes.
“Let’s shrink all this and take it with us,” Sirius suggested. “We can sort it out at the house, yeah? I’m sure that goblin’s tired of waiting on us.”
-x-
Back at the manor, owls were already waiting for him from Ron and Hermione. Sirius unshrunk everything from his mother’s vault and stacked it up in the drawing room for further perusal while Harry read the letters, cringing and wincing appropriately.
Apparently, Hermione was perturbed that Harry had spent over a month with Sirius without alerting anyone-especially since Sirius was dead, legally of course.
Harry,
Are you insane?
Neither Ron nor I hear from you since leaving the platform in June, and you suddenly write to us and tell us that you’ve been staying with your dead godfather for almost two months?
Are you sure this is wise Harry? Are you certain he isn’t a Death Eater? Well, I suppose that you’re right-he wouldn’t have been able to enter Grimmauld Place if he wasn’t who he said he was, but if all of this is really true, then who DID die in the Department of Mysteries?
Harry this is mind-boggling. I looked through several books that I have with me and have come up with some ideas.
She suggested the possibility of Polyjuice and a golem. Additionally, Hermione reinforced the same question that Harry and Sirius had been unable to answer, but that Harry was now fairly certain Professor Snape had-in some round about way. She wanted to know why Dumbledore didn’t tell Harry the truth if he in fact knew that Sirius had been in America the entire time on an Order mission-and who had been acting in Sirius’ place at Grimmauld Place their entire fifth year.
Hermione mused that that was rather shady. Harry agreed.
Ron, on the other hand, was ecstatic. He’d not even thought of how odd it was that Dumbledore led Harry on for so long, and instead gave him a written pat on the back, telling him that he was glad things were finally going Harry’s way.
He’d alerted his mother, who in turn had contacted Dumbledore to confirm it. Then, she’d had a merry time of telling everyone else in the Order and the rest of the Weasley family. Ron said to expect a melee of questions when Harry made it to the Burrow.
Unfortunately, Harry had no plans of going to the Burrow this year, so he wrote back to both of his friends and invited them over to River House instead. After consulting with Sirius, he’d included the rest of the Weasleys in the invitation. They had plenty of room for everyone, but Harry wasn’t sure how well either Sirius or he would be able to handle the questionings. He was rather thankful that it would be divided between the two of them.
Dear Ron and Hermione,
Instead of me visiting you at the Burrow this year, why don’t you all come here instead? I’m sure Sirius would love to see everyone again. We haven’t seen anyone from the Order, obviously, since arriving. Of course the rest of the Weasleys are invited too. We’ve got plenty of room for everyone and the view is amazing.
Also, Hermione, the library is three floors. Floor to ceiling books. Most of them old. One of a kind. I can almost see you shivering in excitement.
Write back soon to let me know whether or not you’ll come. You can stay for the rest of the summer, Sirius says.
Harry.
He finished with an exhausted sigh and decided he needed a nap before he did anything else for the day. It was just before dinner, and he still had to get over his shock from the morning. He suspected that when it hit him, he would be an utter wreck, but for now, he would sleep.
Voldemort, conversely, had other plans.
Harry suspected that he’d been slinking about in his mind all day just waiting for him to fall asleep because as soon as his head hit the pillow, his mind left his body. Harry decided that he should probably resume his Occlumency lessons sometime in the near future.
“Can’t you let me sleep?” Harry asked petulantly. “I’ve had a long day.”
Voldemort was sitting on a leather Chesterfield absently flipping through the pages of a ratty old book with a mark in the middle that looked like acid had been poured on the cover. It looked vaguely familiar. “You’re welcome,” he sneered, not looking up from his book. “Mr. Black,” he added several seconds later.
Harry sat up, interested. “So you did know then, didn’t you?”
“I know many things,” Voldemort said disinterestedly, repeating his words from before. Harry scowled.
“How did you know?” Harry asked, scowling.
Voldemort finally sat the book down on a side table, marking his page, and asked, ‘Tea?’ somewhat rhetorically because he didn’t, yet again, give Harry the opportunity to answer. Harry sat down on the coffee table and waited with his arms crossed over his chest while Voldemort gathered up his tea things.
He politely took the tacky little tea cup-this time it was a horrible set with pink roses-and sipped while Voldemort stared him down. “No lemon drop?” Harry asked snidely, when Voldemort refused to speak for nearly five minutes. The whole ordeal was reminding him of Dumbledore.
Voldemort cackled with mirth and finally sipped his tea from his unmatched cup. “Tell me the prophecy,” he said bluntly, catching Harry off guard.
“Excuse me?” Harry asked incredulously, nearly dropping the tea cup. “No way!”
Voldemort smirked. “What difference will it make? My knowledge of it will not change the outcome.”
“Prophecies are tricky things…” Harry hedged, but Voldemort was not to be distracted. He waved his hand impatiently and gave Harry a look.
“Exactly,” Voldemort said. “So just tell me. Perhaps,” he said with a leer, “if I knew it, we could end this war with no more bloodshed.”
That was, in fact, a rather strong argument as far as Harry was concerned. It was just words, he decided. It wasn’t as if it told Voldemort how to beat him, and prophecies could easily be interpreted the wrong way-some didn’t come to pass at all. He was so tired of hiding it-it wasn’t like it was even useful. Harry weighed his options very carefully and hoped that he wasn’t making a terrible, terrible mistake when he finally sighed in resignation and repeated the prophecy.
“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have the power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”
Only seconds later, he decided that he was entirely too easy to manipulate and was rather glad that he hadn’t just told Voldemort where all of his friends lived or who was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He could have slapped himself for being so ignorant. He would never win a war if he kept giving away all of his information. Wars were won on information and now Voldemort had the upper hand.
Well, maybe not. As he’d thought earlier, it was just words. It offered no assistance either way in how to defeat the other.
“Doesn’t sound very promising, does it?” Voldemort mused, snapping Harry out of his thoughts.
“What?” Harry asked, utterly confused. He seemed to be confused a lot lately and that didn’t sit well with him.
“The prophecy, boy,” Voldemort said exasperatedly, waving his white hands around wildly. Harry almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “So everything adds up, yes,” Voldemort said, “Seventh month, thrice defied, marked as equal,” he was nodding to himself as he counted off the points of the prophecy in a disturbingly logical manner.
“The key words, however,” Voldemort said, “are vanquish, die, live and survive, though we mustn’t neglect to give thought to the power I know not,” he continued blandly. Harry was openly staring at him by now, mouth slightly agape.
“Vanquish,” Voldemort said pointedly, red eyes boring into Harry’s, “means ‘defeat’…‘conquer’…even ‘subdue’ in addition to those other, less pleasant, synonyms. This power-whatever it is-that you have, can do anything from disable my forces to kill me.”
“Prophecies are tricky things,” Harry interjected once again, for lack of anything more helpful to say. Voldemort looked as though he was barely restraining himself from rolling his red eyes. He set his tea cup down and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his no doubt bony knees.
“Indeed,” Voldemort replied dryly, but was quickly back in lecture mode. Harry wondered why he’d never tried to become a professor instead of a dark lord. It must have paid better, at the least. “‘Die’ on the other hand,” Voldemort continued abruptly, “does not necessarily refer to either of us in a literal sense, and, additionally, could possibly be metaphorical.”
“You lost me there,” Harry said, chin propped up on the palm of his hand. He’d had over a year to get used to the prophecy and he still wasn’t interested in it. He didn’t like to think about it, and he certainly didn’t like to think about Voldemort trying to weasel his way out of it. He could’ve been napping.
“You are rather insolent, aren’t you, Mr. Black?” Voldemort asked him casually. Harry flinched at the name. It sounded so odd to be referred to as anything other than Harry Potter. Voldemort noticed the flinch and smirked.
“It makes you uncomfortable,” he said. Harry nodded, though he didn’t know why exactly it made him uncomfortable. He finally had a family and he had Sirius back. They had plenty of time to get to know each other now and everything was finally going semi-right. “Why?”
Harry shrugged. “It’s just a lot of information to take in. I’m still recovering from the shock of my god…father actually being alive. It’s…just strange. It’s like my entire existence was a lie.”
Voldemort studied him carefully. “Will you accept it?” he asked carefully.
“Accept what?” Harry asked. “Accept that Sirius is my father? I pretty much have to-I saw my birth certificate.”
Voldemort shook his head. “No,” he answered. “Will you accept your heritage? Your blood-your line-your name?” he asked pointedly.
Harry had honestly not thought of that. Of course, he’d seen the tapestry labelling him as Castor Black-which Harry supposed was because names seemed to be recycled in pure-blood families-and his birth certificate, but he’d gone by Harry Potter all of his life.
“Should I?” he asked curiously. Harry didn’t think there was much of heritage to accept, but what would people think if he changed his last name? What would Sirius think?
Voldemort shrugged elegantly. “It is your name.”
“But I’ve always been Harry Potter…” Harry insisted.
“But you are not a Potter,” Voldemort countered.
Harry hummed noncommittally, pondering the thought, and opened his mouth to reply, but was suddenly jerked away and into consciousness.
Blearily, he opened his eyes to find himself being shaken sharply. Sirius was standing over him, grinning like a fool and holding one of his floo disk boxes with a saucy little redhead on the cover.
“Let me borrow this one, yeah?” Sirius asked excitedly.
Harry groaned and rolled over, burying his face in his pillow. “Gross,” he muttered. Sirius laughed and Harry waved him away petulantly, but Sirius didn’t leave. “I wish you hadn’t asked,” he said. “That’s more than I needed to know.”
Harry could almost feel the nonchalant shrug he received in reply, even though his eyes were still closed. “I’m sure there’s a lot you found out today that you didn’t need to know,” Sirius replied cheerfully.
“Yeah,” Harry muttered, “Like I’m not a Potter.”
There was a pregnant silence, and the sound of feet shuffling on the floor before Sirius replied, “Yeah-like that.” Harry couldn’t help but note the miserable tone of Sirius’ voice. He’d not meant to insult him, but he suspected that Sirius had taken it that way. He lifted his head to explain, but he was already gone.
Harry groaned and sat up on the bed. He had a feeling that this was going to be one awkward moment after another.
-x-
Deciding that both he and Sirius needed some time to let the day’s events soak in, Harry did not immediately go after him. He certainly didn’t want to walk in on the floo disk being used, after all.
Instead, he wandered down to the drawing room where Sirius had left everything they’d found in his mother’s vault and rummaged around. The spot above the fireplace in that room was, ironically, empty, and he went ahead and hung up the portrait of his grandparents-much to Frank’s over-enthused delight and Laurel’s quiet amusement.
There were all sorts of things to catch his attention and as he sorted through pile after pile after pile of expensive jewellery, he was graced with amusing little anecdotes from Frank and elegant snorts of laughter from Laurel.
“Laurel wore that at our wedding, you know,” Frank said proudly, gesturing to the pearl necklace Harry had in his hand. “I say all women need to wear a pearl necklace at least once in their life,” he continued with a lascivious look at his wife. She slapped him soundly across the back of his head, and Harry laughed heartily, blushing only slighting at the innuendo.
He found a couple pictures of his mother when she was a teenager and tucked them into his pocket along with a few other trinkets that just ‘felt right’ when he picked them up. He found some old jewellery boxes in the attic and packed away all the jewellery in it neatly before storing it under his bed for safekeeping. There wasn’t much else left, other than the documents and Harry didn’t think he would be able to deal with those at the moment so he left them on the writing desk and pulled out Death in the Wizarding World to pass the time with.
He supposed that since Sirius was alive and France wasn’t really a euphemism for Hell, it wasn’t really necessary to continue reading it, but now that he wasn’t overwhelmed with guilt and despair, he found that the book was actually quite interesting.
Chapter twelve, which was where he’d left off the last time, discussed necromancy, which Harry thought was entirely too coincidental for his tastes, but he read anyway. Somehow, during the excitement of the morning, he’d completely forgotten that he wanted to exchange that gruesome book for another one. It was still tucked away in his robe pocket, but he could do that later.
-x-
Excerpt from the Journal of a Necromancer, 190th page.
4 March, 846
S,
I loathe you. Your son spoke today. No matter how hard I tried, his first word was not ‘Mother’ or even a babbled variation of-not even ‘Merlin’. It was ‘fada’.
I have reason to believe that Leo is the cause of this, though if I find that you have been visiting our son and teaching him that word even as I have tried-and failed, thus far-to contact you, I will be sorely displeased.
You do not want to displease me, Lover. I promise you that. I will find you sooner or later and when I resurrect your sorry body, I will scold you so fiercely that you will regret you are no longer beneath the earth. I promise you that.
I have, under cover of night and many wards, unearthed your body recently. The preservation spells placed on you at your end were still intact, but you stank of death. I hope that tramples your arrogance. Nevertheless, I have flayed you and stolen your bones.
What do you think of that, Lover? Do you feel humiliated?
I hope that you do.
But fear not, for I have not done this to humiliate you posthumously-I merely needed your relics for other purposes. I have been meeting with the necromancer from the village, as I told you, and learned that I will need your bones for resurrection. I decided to retrieve them before your stubbornness overrules the preservation charms.
The skin, I admit, was for my own selfish purposes. I miss the scent of you. It has long since faded from my pillows. I have bound this journal in it and preserved it with bronze. I can smell you in the pages and it gives me determination when I feel ready to falter.
Sam is wailing now. I must attend to him.
Yours,
R.
-x-
A/N:
1. Circular logic at its best. In reference to Joseph Heller’s 1961 WWII-based novel Catch-22. I’m not going to repeat the entire thing because if you don’t know it, you need to read it, but basically, Catch-22 says that if you are concerned about your safety in the face of real and immediate dangers, then you’re sane. And if you’re sane, you have to fly dangerous missions. If you don’t mind flying those missions, then you’re not sane, but you won’t be taken off the missions until you prove that you’re crazy, and if you think you’re crazy then you can’t really be crazy because crazy people don’t know they’re crazy.
NEXT CHAPTER
Comments=Love.
(Thank you to serpentclara for whipping my ass into shape last chapter. ♥ ♥ ♥)