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Chapter Twenty-Nine—For Your Entertainment

“Are you sure that you have control of your magic, Harry?”

“Yes, Professor Riddle.” Harry kept his voice quiet and confident. It was much more impressive, he had learned in the last four years, to show off by sounding calm and restraining his power until he called for it, instead of flailing around with it. He breathed slowly and steadily, eyes shut, aware of Professor Riddle walking around him in a wide circle.

“Let it go,” Professor Riddle said at last.

Harry opened his eyes, careful to do it in such a way that he could slam them shut again in an instant if Professor Riddle was in the way. Not that he truly thought Professor Riddle would be that careless, but anyone could be unlucky.

The moment Harry’s eyes were fully open, the boulder in front of him ceased to exist.

Harry let his magic go with a little smile and shake of his shoulders. He stared at the blankness left behind by the boulder’s vanishing. There was nothing of it that still existed this time, no expanding atoms or dissolving trails of dust, the way there had used to be when he used this most powerful of a war wizard’s spells. It looked as if the stone had gained the ability to Apparate and had gone on a one-way journey.

Professor Riddle’s hand rested on his shoulder for a second. “Very good, Harry. I believe that our enemies will fear you more than a basilisk unleashed on the field of battle.”

Harry laughed, even as the compliment warmed the inside of his stomach. “Well, I think Belasha is probably more terrifying than me just because she’s a giant snake.”

“That may be true.” Professor Riddle glanced at him thoughtfully. “And what happened on your expedition to Malfoy Manor last week?”

The warmth turned to cold. Harry swallowed and tried to smile. “Sir?”

“I know that you went to Malfoy Manor,” Professor Riddle explained. “I suspected that it would be the first place you traveled when you learned to Apparate. And I know that you tried to kill Gellert Grindelwald.”

Harry sighed. He should have known his mentor would find that one out. “I just thought that maybe I could, since I’m a war wizard. But my first attack was too widespread and ripped through most of the wards instead of just one, and then those hellhounds of theirs came out, and I didn’t want to try and fight my way past them.”

Professor Riddle nodded. “I believe that the Elder Wand is protecting Grindelwald.”

“How, sir?”

“In a variety of ways. Certainly it must be responsible for summoning and controlling the hellhounds, something Lucius Malfoy could never have managed on his best day.” Harry liked the way that Professor Riddle sneered when he said Malfoy’s name. “I believe that it simply redirected my mind away from the thought of killing him the day that I put Grindelwald into a coma, or convinced me that I was so exhausted I didn’t dare attempt it. When your godfather and Professor Lupin went to Malfoy Manor, they found themselves facing that illusion of your parents who begged them to spare the wards that protected children. It was only after they left that they remembered that the Malfoys only had one child, and he was at Hogwarts at the time.”

“So we can’t kill him unless we can get the Elder Wand away from him?”

“Yes.” Professor Riddle’s fingers sped for a second over the bark of the tree that had grown stately and tall in the past few years, the major one on the grounds of his protected safehouse. Harry leaned on the tree, too, and watched him. “And we can’t get the Elder Wand away from him unless we kill him. Perhaps.”

“Why ‘perhaps,’ sir?”

“I believe there might be a way for us to do it. But it depends on the cooperation of someone who has so far refused to obey me.”

“Andromeda Tonks, sir?”

Professor Riddle’s head swung sharply, and then he relaxed with a snort. “I should have known you would figure it out.”

Harry shrugged a little, smiling. “Sirius complains about her all the time. Says her goals should coincide with ours, but apparently she wants things that you don’t want.”

“I only recently allowed her to see through my guise as Roland Peverell, in the hopes that it would help her make up her mind.” Professor Riddle stared into the distance across the hidden estate, frowning. “I thought her goals were simple, revenge on Lucius Malfoy and the others who forced her to kill her child. But now she’s fussing, saying that our goals are too complex and Dark for her, and we shouldn’t be using children in the battle. And she refuses to harm Narcissa Malfoy.”

“Does she have to?”

“She doesn’t want to take any action that would even potentially harm her, and that includes assaulting the Manor’s wards.”

Harry frowned. “Well, I would be willing to go the Manor with her for you, sir. But I don’t know how that works if she would be upset both about going and about the fact that I was with her.”

Professor Riddle nodded. “And there have been too many attempts that I and others have made which simply failed. Sneak attacks, brutal and open assaults on the wards, attempts to manipulate the Elder Wand from a distance, thestrals who volunteered to try and use their kindred’s influence on Grindelwald to open up a way…none of it has worked. I suppose that I made a stupid mistake after all in allowing the Elder Wand to seal itself behind the wards of Malfoy Manor.”

Harry moved uneasily. He hated it when Professor Riddle criticized himself. “You did the best you could at the time, sir,” he said. “You won us four years of peace.”

“Ones that could end at any time,” Professor Riddle muttered, and then shook himself. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I do have another plan in progress, and if that one works, then we will not need Andromeda to go near the wards at all.”

“Will you tell me, sir?”

“In a short while, if my preparations for it work.” Professor Riddle’s hand glanced over Harry’s shoulder. “In the meantime, I’d like to see you vanish part of this boulder, not the whole thing.” He conjured another rock and dropped it smoothly onto the earth in front of Harry.

Harry sighed and flexed his shoulders. “All right, sir. Which side?”

“The left corner up to that white mark on the flank.”

Harry closed his eyes and once again summoned the thrumming magic that had become second nature to him since he was eleven.

*

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?” Sirius replied, rolling over and smiling at his godson as he barged through the door.

“Me,” Harry said, completing their stupid little ritual of setting up a Muggle knock-knock joke, and then flopped onto the bed and smiled at him. “Sophia and Constance are in classes?”

“Yes. I still worry that Constance is too young, but she’ll be eleven next year…”

Harry rolled towards Sirius and squeezed his hand. “You’ve been the best foster father they could ask for. I’m sure of it.”

Harry’s quiet, unwavering confidence made Sirius smile. “Where were you today? Riddle took you to his secret location to vanish rocks again?”

“I wish you’d call him Tom. You know that he’s perfectly willing to be friendly and use your first name if you use his.”

Sirius shook his head. He wasn’t sure that he could explain the semi-friendly, semi-antagonistic relationship he had with Riddle to Harry, and more sure that he didn’t want to try. “We do well enough.”

“Yeah, I reckon so.” Harry draped himself on the bed and closed his eyes.

Sirius had to hide his smile as he watched Harry. With his eyes shut, he looked so much like a thinner James that it was incredible. His hair stood almost straight up from his head, thick and black, and he even had James’s fingers and palms and lean muscle.

But where James’s muscle had come from Quidditch and the brutal training regimens that the Gryffindor team put its players through, Harry’s came from the equally brutal training that Riddle had put him through to become a war wizard.

Sirius breathed out. He had become reconciled to Riddle and the way he was training Harry over the past several years. It was the best outlet for Harry’s magic, which might otherwise have consumed him, the way that Riddle had finally deigned to explain to Sirius. And Harry was utterly committed to using it against the same people who had killed James and Lily, the ones who had imprisoned Sirius and driven Remus to become almost a wild beast.

Sirius couldn’t ask for Harry to have a better cause or to completely suppress his magic, and he knew it. He reminded himself of that every time he looked at Harry and wondered what James and Lily would say about the way their son had turned out.

They can’t say anything because the world he’s fighting killed them.

And their spirits guarded the school along with many others. Sirius remembered that, remembered Riddle telling him that. He didn’t think he needed to worry about them coming back and scolding him for not properly taking care of Harry.

“Remus said that your friend Hermione is really blossoming in history,” Sirius went on, recalling the conversation he’d had with Remus a few hours ago. “But his star student is Theo.”

Harry popped his eyes open. “I’m not surprised. Theo never met a truth that he didn’t want to use to take vengeance on people.”

Sirius snorted. “True enough. That test pamphlet Nora dropped off at the Leaky Cauldron a week ago is apparently attracting attention.”

“And burnings?”

“Of course. Can’t have anything that undermines the Malfoy regime.”

“No matter how true it is that Lucius Malfoy has got more and more erratic in the last few years.”

They grinned at each other. Sirius didn’t know if he would have noticed if he hadn’t already known that Malfoy had summoned some kind of odd creature who had the Elder Wand in its possession, because the change had been gradual, but Malfoy had tilted further and further towards extremes. There were no Muggleborns left at Hogwarts now; the last seventh-years had been chivvied out and new students had been barred two years ago. Riddle was constantly busy recruiting them now, and their houses bristled with traps and wards and alarms to let him know if Hunters got near them. Some Muggleborns chose to go abroad rather than become involved in Riddle’s war, but at least that meant they weren’t falling victim to Malfoy.

And Malfoy was preaching against Muggles, too, convincing more and more people that they needed to engage in war there, too, and dominate and crush them.

Sirius had to shudder when he thought of why the Elder Wand, or Grindelwald, or whatever the creature really was, would want that kind of total destruction.

A glance at his watch reminded Sirius of the mission that Riddle had given him, and he started and stood. “Have to get going, kiddo. There are a few Hogwarts students Riddle wanted me to fetch.”

“Those twins Professor McGonagall told you about?”

“Yeah. It’s a miracle they’ve survived this long. Only because their father’s friends with Malfoy and the youngest boy’s friends with Malfoy’s son, I think. But Riddle found out that they’re due to be slaughtered as entertainment at the feast in June. We have to get them out of there.”

“Don’t let me keep you.” Harry shoved at Sirius with one foot. “Come on, hurry up and rescue them.”

Sirius laughed as he reached for his cloak. “From what Minerva said, they probably won’t be very grateful for the rescue.”

“Who cares? They still need it.”

Sirius nodded and strode out the door. If necessary, he would invoke his own days of mischief-making when it came to rescuing the Weasley twins. It was unlikely they would have heard of the Marauders, but at least he could convince them, with his knowledge of secret passages and pranks galore, that he was like them, and that they were on the same side.

*

Minerva sighed a little as she watched Fred and George Weasley whisper together at the Gryffindor table. She didn’t even have to look across the Great Hall to know that their younger brother would be watching them with a judging gaze from the Slytherin one.

Ron Weasley had come to her several times during the last several years to ask questions about Gryffindor, the system of Sorting, purebloods and half-bloods, and how important proper student behavior was to staying in school. At first Minerva had thought he wanted to understand how likely his brothers were to die or get expelled before their seventh year ended. Then she had thought he wanted to take revenge on his brothers for their pranks.

Now she thought that it had fit into the larger pattern of his indoctrination into Draco Malfoy’s beliefs.

“Minerva.”

Minerva turned and inclined her head to Headmistress Carrow, who had come to a halt behind her seat. “Yes, Headmistress.”

Carrow raked her with careful eyes. “You are to bring the Weasley twins to my office tomorrow.”

Minerva felt as though someone had punched her in the throat, but she managed to hold her face calm, although her heart leaped and bucked and fought her. Just in time. Sirius is coming just in time. “Yes, Headmistress. At what hour?”

“Eight in the morning, I think. Best not to delay, and I believe that you have a class at nine-thirty?”

“I do, Headmistress. Thank you for your consideration.”

Carrow nodded and swept on in the direction of the Great Hall’s doors. Minerva struggled to swallow through a dry throat. Carrow had been—well, not an ally, exactly, but treating Minerva as though she was a loyal minion since the day Victoria Weasley had died and Minerva had “cooperated” in “covering it up.”

Minerva stood, casting a glance at Ginevra Weasley, seated at the Hufflepuff table. There was a girl who saw the value of keeping her head down.

For right now, it wasn’t either of the two younger Weasleys at Hogwarts who needed her help. It was the twins. Minerva stalked towards her House’s table and glared down at them as though she could make them respect her by the force of her eyes. Alas, if it was that simple, she would have managed to protect them better.

“Yes, Professor McGonagall?” George Weasley said a moment later, turning around and beaming at her.

Minerva ignored the edges to his smile and to the matching one on Fred’s face, so present since the death of their younger sister and their older brother’s shameless arse-kissing of Minister Malfoy in his Ministry job. “You need to come with me.”

“And why’s that, Professor?” Fred Weasley’s hand twitched towards his wand under the table.

Minerva gave them both a look so unamused that they actually froze in place, their eyes widening. Then she said, “You will know why. My office,” and led them out of the Great Hall, listening to the way they scrambled over the bench and reassured their friends with loud, boisterous voices.

I wish I could know that you’ll see those friends again.

But Minerva knew better than to make false promises. She glanced back only once, to make sure that they were following her, and caught Severus’s still eyes on the way.

Severus inclined his head sharply.

Minerva nodded back, and marched Fred and George through the corridors.

*

George remained close to his brother, his only ally in the whole family, as they walked. Ron and Percy had both turned into some kind of Malfoy minions, Bill and Charlie had essentially fled the country, Mum was abroad with Evangeline seeking a cure to her illness, Dad was serving as the Minister’s right hand, all Ginny wanted was to stick to herself and her Hufflepuff friends, and Victoria was dead.

No matter how long he and Fred ended up living—which he knew not might be very much longer—George wasn’t going to forget that.

Professor McGonagall guided them into her office, and indicated that they should sit on the chairs in front of her desk. Then she sat down behind it, clasped her hands, and gave them a look so weary that George blinked.

He exchanged a glance with Fred. They had thought they’d been hauled in here for more bollocks about respecting fellow students or professors—both of them had seen Headmistress Carrion pause next to their Head of House’s chair—but perhaps this was something different.

“You know as well as I do that you stand very little chance of surviving the end of the year,” Professor McGonagall said quietly. “You are now of age, and despite your status as sons of Arthur Weasley, you’ve simply got into too much trouble, harassing the Slytherins and making loud pro-Muggleborn statements.”

“If you’ve called us in here to tell us to stop it,” George began.

“You’re wasting your breath.” Fred leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. He might look arrogant or lounging, but the position put his hand much closer to his wand, something that no professor had ever noticed, as far as either of them were aware.

Professor McGonagall sighed. “I didn’t call you in here for that. I called you here to ascertain how much you knew about the danger you were in.”

George wanted to say that no one ever used the word ascertain outside the pages of a book and Professor McGonagall didn’t need to use it with them, but he glanced at Fred and bit his tongue. Fred’s eyes were bright, and he was leaning forwards a little.

“You want to protect us,” he said, and the notion fell into place with a clonk in George’s head as well.

“Yes,” Professor McGonagall said, as though she hadn’t essentially just declared herself a traitor to the whole of Minister Malfoy’s regime. George could feel his foot bouncing with excitement. This was honestly the best thing that had happened to him and Fred in years, at least since Victoria’s death. “Headmistress Carrow told me that I was to bring you to her office with me tomorrow morning. There is no time to waste if we are going to spare your lives. I thought we had until the end of the year, but…”

“Might have been that prank we pulled on the Slytherins yesterday,” George said.

“Not that they didn’t deserve to be covered with spots,” Fred pointed out.

“But I can see how it might have driven—”

“Headmistress Carrion over the edge.”

Professor McGonagall didn’t even scold them for the nickname. In fact, her lips twitched a little before she sat back and cleared her throat. “You can come out now, Professor Black.”

George wheeled to his feet, his back braced against Fred’s, as the flicker of a Disillusionment Charm in one corner of the office vanished. He cursed himself for not seeing the man before—well, the stranger before. He certainly was no one George had ever met.

The man had black hair and grey eyes and the kind of mad grin that George might have appreciated, if he hadn’t feared that he and his twin were about to die courtesy of the man’s wand. He bowed and said, “Sirius Black, at your service. Also known as Padfoot, one of the four Marauders.”

George heard the sound of his own wand dropping to the floor, but distantly. His mouth was open, his attention fixated on Black. Fred managed to keep hold of his own wand, from the lack of a matching sound, but he was clearing his throat loudly and nudging George with a backwards elbow in the ribs, as though George would have somehow failed to appreciate the announcement.

“Padfoot?”

“The Marauders?”

Black glanced back and forth between them and Professor McGonagall with his eyebrows raised. “Well, yes,” he said slowly. “I understand that you might not have reason to know that name, but I don’t know—”

It was George’s turn to carry the map that day, so he ripped it out of his pocket. Then he held it up and waggled it back and forth. Black’s eyes focused on it in fascination.

“We have the Marauder’s Map,” Fred said breathlessly. “We know you were—you were one of the four greatest students to ever walk the halls of Hogwarts!”

“We’ve considered ourselves your apprentices in spirit since we were first-years,” said George, and bowed at the waist, Fred echoing him. He couldn’t stop smiling. The world seemed to have filled with light for the first time since Victoria’s death. “We would—”

“Be honored to make the apprenticeship real,” said Fred. They were both breathless. George leaned heavily on his brother as they stared hopefully at Black, who blinked several times before he threw his head back and laughed.

“Well, this’ll be easier than I thought,” Black muttered, running his hand through his hair. “I was going to talk myself up and promise that you can come with me somewhere you’ll be safe, but this ought to work better…how would you like to come with me, meet Mr. Moony, and take up that apprenticeship?”

“Creating chaos?” George asked. He knew that Black had escaped from prison several years ago, and he must have some kind of backing if he’d managed to survive this long, and in what looked like fine condition.

“Sowing mischief and mayhem?” Fred added.

Black smiled at them, and there was something sharp and mad at the edges of it. Frankly, George didn’t care. It wasn’t worse than anything they saw when they looked into the mirror. “More than that, kids. Fighting a war. Bringing down the regime that says purebloods are better than anyone else and which imprisoned me and corrupted your father and, from what I hear, caused the death of your sister.”

“You don’t have to say more than that,” Fred said.

“We’re your men,” George said, and he bent down and picked up his wand.

“Excellent.” Black glanced at Professor McGonagall, who had her hands folded on her desk and seemed perfectly placid about a notorious fugitive in her office. It made George regret fiercely how much he and Fred must have underestimated their professor’s total coolness. “And what about you, Minerva? We have to account for their absence somehow. Constructs?”

Minerva shook her head. “Carrow wanted me to bring them up to her office tomorrow. I think Malfoy or someone else has become impatient, and they were going to become entertainment much sooner than the third week in June.”

George swallowed nausea. Both he and Fred knew what that word meant in the context of the end-of-year feasts at Hogwarts.

Black nodded. “So we’ll stage a scene where you called them here to tell them about the appointment with Carrow and they overpowered you and escaped. Do you want me to cast the spells, or should we allow Fred and George to?”

“Please,” said George. They’d never begged for anything in their lives, but now they would.

“I suppose we’ll allow them to,” Professor McGonagall said, and gave them both a small smile as she stood up and moved away from behind her desk. “Have at it, boys.”

Fred grinned at him, and George grinned back, and they cast some of the spells they had been working on in secret and flung some of their specialized Dungbombs and Decoy Devices at the walls. Black laughed and clapped his hands as he watched the scorch marks form, and Professor McGonagall shot them small smiles. George blinked a little as one of their pranks blasted off the corner of her desk, and glanced at her, but her smile didn’t waver.

When they’d finished, Professor McGonagall gave them both a swift hug, utterly startling both of them, and then stepped back. “It probably won’t take long for the noise to attract attention, but it’ll take them longer to break through the wards I have on the door,” she said. “You can take them safely to Fortius, Mr. Black?”

“Fortius?” George interrupted in utter shock.

“That ruddy little school for Muggleborns and half-bloods in the middle of nowhere?” Fred asked.

Black winked at them. “Not so ruddy, not so little. The grounds have to be fairly big to house the guardian basilisk, after all.”

“Basilisk,” said Fred dreamily.

George grinned at him.

“Yes, I can take them, Minerva,” Black said, and gave Professor McGonagall a one-armed hug. George was a little stunned that anyone would be permitted to do that. “Take care of yourself.”

George had all sorts of questions, most of them about what their professor was involved in, but Black had grasped both their hands and reached down to press his elbow against something round in his pocket. The world dissolved into the shimmering colors of a Portkey, and George’s last glimpse of Hogwarts was Professor McGonagall smiling wistfully after them.

They landed in the middle of a grove of trees. George turned his gaze outwards and gaped at the sight of a building that shone like the white stone of a temple nearby. Fred was drooling over something that looked like a hoofprint in the grass.

“Welcome,” Black said softly.

George knew, with a fervor as deep as his bones, that they had made the right decision.