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lomonaaerenTitle: Beyond the Sacred
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of background canon pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Hogwarts “eighth year,” humor, parody, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: Members of the “Sacred Twenty-Eight”: “Don’t you wish you were sacred like me?” Harry: “Not really, no.”
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It mocks the concept of the Sacred Twenty-Eight that I’ve seen treated ultra-seriously in some fics, so if you really like that concept, this is not the fic for you.
Beyond the Sacred
“I don’t know how you can walk around breathing air.”
Harry looks up in perplexity from his stack of Transfiguration books. “I mean, my lungs work.”
The boy standing beside the library table glares at him. It takes a moment for Harry to place him. Theodore Nott, right. Harry can’t recall that they’ve ever spoken, although he remembers a few things like Nott being able to see thestrals and snickering with Malfoy in Slughorn’s class.
“I would die of shame if it was me.”
“Okay.”
Harry thinks that just saying that will make Nott storm off and leave him alone, but Nott’s brow darkens and he leans in. “Your father married a Mudblood,” he hisses. “How can you bear the shame?”
Harry swallows back the immediate rage, and stares at Nott. No, he’s never spoken to him, because he wasn’t Marked, but Harry did spend a lot of the summer at Death Eater trials, which means he knows something about the git’s family.
“I think having a mother who loved and died for me is better than having a dad who’s in Azkaban for being a Death Eater, at least three-quarters of my money taken away by the Ministry, and people testifying they were kept in the dungeons in my home.”
Nott’s eyes widen. Harry waits. The git still doesn’t seem inclined to leave. This is annoying.
“Do you know who the Sacred Twenty-Eight are?” Nott asks abruptly. He seems to have calmed down, but Harry doesn’t trust someone with mood swings this extreme.
“No.”
“That explains it,” Nott says, and smiles and nods. “If you look them up, you’ll understand better what an affront to wizarding traditions your father’s marriage was, and your existence is.”
“Okay.”
Nott turns and saunters off, confidence apparently restored. Harry shakes his head and turns back to his Transfiguration book.
*
“The Sacred Twenty-Eight?” Ron laughs hard enough that he snorts pumpkin juice out his nose, and casts the charm to clean himself up before Hermione can. “Yeah, that’s a concept that one of Nott’s ancestors came up with. Or on of his cousins did. Or both. They’re as inbred as the Blacks are, if you go back far enough.”
“I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it,” Hermione says, with a small frown. Harry gently reaches out and plucks A History of the Goblin Wars from her hand. She’s planning to take the History NEWT with self-study, but their rule is “no books at the dinner table.”
“Yeah, because it’s only a few inbred wankers who care about it anymore.” Ron shrugs. “Cantankerus Nott—”
“You’re having me on,” Harry says.
“No, no, that was really his name!” Ron waves his hands around, and Dean scowls as he ducks. Ron grins at him. “Anyway, Cantankerus Nott came up with this list of twenty-eight families he thought were really pureblooded by the 1930s. It’s not even accurate. He has us on there, and we married half-bloods and Muggleborns all the time, for the love of Merlin. And he has the Ollivanders on there, and Mr. Ollivander is a half-blood and at least that old. It’s nonsense.”
“Why do people cling to it, then?” Hermione asks.
“What else do they have to be proud of?”
Neville leans over. “Ron’s right. Nott listened Longbottom on there, and we basically ignore it and the people who prance around acting all proud of it ignore us. And the Weasleys. And the Prewetts.”
Harry grins and sticks his spoon in the mashed potatoes. “Thanks for explaining. I’ll continue to ignore it.”
“Do,” Neville says, and grins. “You should hear what my gran has to say about Cantankerus Nott. It’s how I learned my first swear words.”
*
A heavy book drops on the library table in front of Harry.
Harry looks up with a sigh. What is it about his studying Transfiguration that attracts Slytherins intent on irritating him?
He squints a little at Draco Malfoy. They’ve avoided each other since the trials. Sometimes Harry thinks his testimony about Draco and Narcissa saving his life was a little too generous, since it let Lucius avoid Azkaban, but what’s done is done. He just wants to study for his NEWTS and then decide what he wants to do after that in peace. Being an Auror has sort of lost its appeal.
“What do you want, Malfoy?”
“This is the Pure-Blood Directory,” Malfoy says, his hand splaying out over the book. “By Cantankerus Nott. It explains the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”
“And I would be interested why?”
Malfoy leans forwards. “Nott only codified what many of us already knew, and some of it was based on his own dislike,” he whispers. “He left the Potters out of his list because they had a last name he thought too common. But your father was as pureblooded as they come, Potter, and you can earn your way back into the list.”
“Earn my way?”
“Learn the customs. Demonstrate contrition for any sins against magic you may have committed in the past. Cantankerus Nott’s is only the most well-known version of the list. There are others. You could be on it.”
“No, thanks.”
Malfoy pauses, long enough that Harry tries to return to Transfiguration. Of course, that’s the cue for Malfoy to start whining again. “But why?”
“Why would I want to?” Harry asks. “I have a good enough life, and I can’t think of any sins I’ve committed.” He’s committed crimes, things like the Unforgivables during the war, and those are going to trouble him a lot more than whatever Malfoy’s imagining. Harry’s considering swearing a vow to never use any of them. “And Nott already informed me that he doesn’t understand how I can walk around with a Mudblood mother and be proud of it, so I wouldn’t even want to.”
Malfoy shifts. “Some of us are more conservative than others,” he admits sulkily. “You’d have to atone for your mother’s blood. But you could do it. You have powerful magic, Potter.”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to learn more about wizarding traditions? Things we do that separate us from Muggles?”
“Things like calling people slurs? Sorry to tell you, Muggles have that covered, too.”
Malfoy steps back with a scowl, and then recovers himself and shakes his head. “Just read the book, Potter. It’s far more than a list. You’ll understand the Sacred Twenty-Eight better when you have.” He leaves.
Harry keeps reading, and ignores the book.
*
“Why are you reading that book, Hermione?”
“I wanted to see what it said.”
Hermione’s nose is wrinkled, and Harry holds back a laugh as he sits down on the couch beside her in the common room. “That bad?”
“It’s ridiculous!” Hermione waves the book around, nearly braining Harry with it. “All about how these bloodlines are pure, and pure in heart and intention, and a true pureblood would never hurt anyone—”
“Huh, I wonder how the Death Eaters—”
“Except for people who aren’t purebloods, who apparently aren’t human!” Hermione’s eyes flash. “Muggles and Muggleborns and half-bloods and goblins and house-elves and Veela and centaurs and…oh, right, you can hurt other purebloods if they’re blood traitors, can’t forget that!”
Harry rolls his own eyes. “So they’re the center of the universe, and no one else compares to them?”
“Right. And there are all these pages where Nott acts as if the only reason someone would believe differently would be—oh, here, let me read it to you.” Hermione flips through a few pages of The Pure-Blood Directory and begins to read in a high, nasal voice that is probably her attempt at what Cantankerus Nott would sound like. Harry hides laughter behind his hand. “They are not enlightened by the sacred tide of blood in their veins, the way we are. One can but pity them. Correction would be a waste of time.”
“So is pity, right?”
“Well, on the very next page he says you should torture people to death if they make fun of you or insult you or break some nitpicky little rule, because of course manners are more important than kindness.”
“Let me guess, people who do that are no longer sacred?”
“Right!” Hermione flings the book on the table and glares at it. “Why Nott and Malfoy thought you would want to join this…”
Harry shrugs. “They probably just assume what you said, that anyone else isn’t worth their time. Except people are treating me like I am worth their time, including some purebloods, and they’re struggling with it.”
“Did you know that he says you should feel free to slaughter someone’s entire family if that person says something that could be construed as you cheating on your spouse? Ridiculous!”
Harry leans back with a little smile and listens to Hermione rant.
*
“I don’t know why you don’t want to join the Sacred Twenty-Eight. I would.”
Harry is being disturbed by a Gryffindor in the library this time, but he reckons that it’s because he’s studying for Charms instead of Transfiguration. He leans back and looks at Romilda Vane. “Why would you?”
“Oh.” Vane fidgets. Harry feels as if he’s almost hallucinating when he looks at her. He can see the loyal member of Dumbledore’s Army who fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, and the girl who tried to feed him a love potion. At the moment, she looks more like the latter. “Well, I mean, I’m a pureblood, but…”
She trails off. Harry just waits, because he doesn’t know what comes next, and finally Vane coughs and finishes, “The Sacred Twenty-Eight are better than the rest of us, you know? It’s what everyone aspires to be.”
Harry feels a surge of pity for her. “They aren’t really better,” he says gently. “Think about your prospects for getting a job in the Ministry or in Diagon Alley—where do you want to work?”
“I want to be an Auror.”
Harry smiles. “I might, too. But,” he adds hastily, as she looks a little starstruck, “you have a better chance of doing that than Malfoy does, or Nott, or Bulstrode, and they’re all on that silly list. What matters more to you, being an Auror, or being on that list?”
Vane frowns, clearly struggling with this. Harry waits patiently. At least this is more interesting than his conversations with Nott and Malfoy.
Finally, she sighs and says, “Being an Auror. It would just be good if I could do both. And be considered special by other people, you know.”
“Do well enough at being an Auror, and you would be considered special.”
“That’s true,” says Vane, and bites her lip. Then she says something in such a quick rush that Harry has to ask her to repeat it. Vane turns bright red and says a little more slowly, “I’m sorry for giving you a love potion.”
“Thanks for the apology,” Harry says. “I did things I’m not proud of, too, and working as an Auror, or a Healer, or whatever I choose, I hope will let me make up for that. Maybe you should try to make up for the love potion by going out and being the best Auror you can be.”
Vane leaves the library with a little bounce in her step. Harry smiles and turns back to reading Summoning Charm theory. Stupid written portion of the exams.
*
Millicent Bulstrode walks past his table in the library with flowers in her hair.
Harry blinks at her, then shrugs. Maybe it’s something she liked to do before and he just never noticed. He notices the eighth-year Slytherins more often now, when there’s so few of them. Or maybe it’s a spell gone wrong.
A few minutes later, she walks by again. Harry ignores her and keeps scratching with his quill on the Summoning Charm theory.
Then she steps by his table and clears her throat. Harry sighs. He comes to the library to study because it’s quieter than the Gryffindor common room, but lately, that’s not true.
“Yes, Bulstrode?” Harry is aware that his smile is a little fixed when he looks up, but honestly, he is trying to study.
“Weren’t you going to ask about the flowers in my hair?” Bulstrode asks, and gestures to them.
“No.”
Bulstrode pauses. Then she says, “It’s a custom for the witches of the Sacred Twenty-Eight to wear flowers in their hair.”
“Okay?”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“I mean…why?”
“It’s not the sort of thing we tell outsiders,” says Bulstrode triumphantly.
“Okay.”
Bulstrode stares at him. Then she walks away, muttering something about how “They said he would be curious, they said he would want to know…”
Harry shakes his head and turns back to his Charms book. No, he’s only curious about things that actually matter, like what Voldemort or Marked Death Eaters in the school are doing. It’s not the same as wanting to know why someone wears flowers in their hair, although Harry did want to ask if there was a reason they were wilting.
*
“Did you read the book?”
Malfoy has come back now when he’s studying Potions. Harry was so careful not to bring his Transfiguration book with him, and then it turned out not to matter.
Harry leans back in his chair, exasperated, and shakes his head. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to read the stupid book, Malfoy?”
Malfoy shoots a glance around the library as if looking for someone who would overhear them, and then turns back to Harry, shaking his head. “I know that’s not true.”
“Malfoy—”
“Because you grew up without a family.”
Harry can feel himself going still in the way that almost never happens anymore, the way that says he’s going to lash out with his magic in a second. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks softly.
Malfoy ignores the danger signals, if he even sees them, and draws out the chair on the opposite side of the table from Harry, sitting down with what he probably thinks is a wise nod. “I mean that you have no family, and that means you should be curious about things that involve family. You could become Sacred Twenty-Eight if you accepted your heritage, Potter. Aren’t you curious about your heritage?”
Harry thinks about his parents dying for him, and smiling in their wedding pictures and out of the Mirror of Erised. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know the most important things!”
“Like what?”
“What flowers in a woman’s hair mean. How to grip your fork correctly at dinner. The proper depth of a bow—”
“If I didn’t bow before Voldemort, Malfoy, I sure won’t be doing it in front of anyone else.”
Malfoy flinches so hard his chair goes over backwards. Harry sighs and starts packing up his books. He knows that Madam Pince is going to descend in three, two…
“Mr. Malfoy, what is the meaning of this?”
“Potter and I were just having a conversation, Madam Pince,” Malfoy bleats, and sits up, pushing dust off his sleeves with little impatient movements. He shoots a glare at Harry, who shrugs. “We were just talking about the Sacred Twenty-Eight and the importance of recognizing a wizard’s heritage.”
Harry wonders if Madam Pince’s family is on the silly list, too. It’s not like he read the book.
But it seems to have just been a plea for sympathy that Malfoy misjudged. Madam Pince’s eyebrows snap together. “You think I want that kind of bigotry in my library, Mr. Malfoy?” she snaps.
“Well, you do have the book,” Malfoy says. Then he visibly flushes as she swells with rage. “Sorry, Madam Pince—”
“Out.”
For once, the librarian isn’t shouting. Her voice is so low that it seems to make the shelves and floors shake. Harry shakes his head, stands up, and gathers his books and papers together, then walks towards the entrance of the library.
Malfoy catches up with him as he’s leaving. “Don’t you want to know about your heritage, Potter?”
“So far, nothing you’ve mentioned seems like something I’d want to know about.”
“Then what would?”
“How my grandfather laughed. If I look like him. What foods my grandmother liked. The names of their neighbors. Can you tell me that?”
Malfoy gapes at him. Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says, and leaves.
Some things are lost beyond recall. He knows that. He’s accepted it. He might have pretended at it before, but it was full acceptance by the time he opened his eyes in the King’s Cross train station.
Some things, he will learn and know and hold dear. And other things, he’ll learn when he makes his own family.
Harry doesn’t need to go back to the past. The future is what matters.
*
It’s been a few weeks since any Slytherins showed up to make odd remarks, and Harry isn’t thinking about it as he paces towards the lake, wrapping a thick, warm scarf around his neck. It’s well into the middle of November now, and leaves are blowing across the grounds. Harry watches them, feeling a distant ache in his heart.
This time next year, he won’t be at Hogwarts. He isn’t entirely sure if he’ll be in Auror training, despite the advice he gave Vane, but he won’t be here.
“Potter!”
Harry doesn’t bang his head against his arms, but it’s a near thing. He turns around and nearly runs into Blaise Zabini. Harry takes a cautious step backwards, his eyes narrowed. He hasn’t had anything to do with Zabini this year, but Harry knows that he has blood purity beliefs, or at least had them in the past.
“Yes? What?” Harry asks, when he realizes Zabini is glaring at him.
“Why are you resisting becoming part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight?”
“Why do you believe everything Malfoy says?”
“So you are considering becoming part of them?”
“No.”
Zabini gives him a look of outrage mingled with confusion. Harry shrugs. He reckons those feelings should be spread around.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be?” Zabini waves a hand. “It’s incredible social cachet here in Britain! You can do anything you want once you’re part of that group. People have to bow to you. They have to respect you and admire you and look up to you. You’d practically have people mobbing you wanting to hear your opinion—”
“You mean,” Harry says, as dryly as he can, “the way they do right now?”
Zabini pauses again.
Harry nods. “I don’t have any reason to want to belong to it, and the more I hear about it, the less I like it.”
“They’ll never let me in,” Zabini says abruptly, turning away to stare at the lake.
“Why not?”
“I’m pureblood, but I’m from Italy. No foreigners are allowed in.” Zabini shrugs, but his mouth is twisted with bitterness. “I’m at the height of the social hierarchy back home, but here I just…I don’t have that kind of power.”
Harry half-shrugs back. “They should let you in. You’d fit better there than I would.”
“They should let me in,” Zabini agrees. Already his anger is vanishing back behind a smooth surface that, from what Harry knows, is more characteristic of him. “It’s not even really the Sacred Twenty-Eight now, since some families are effectively extinct. The Lestranges, for example, and the Gaunts.”
Harry laughs.
“What?”
“The Gaunts were Voldemort’s family. The only thing I really know about them is that they could speak Parseltongue. Well, and they were pretty weak magically before they died out, and awful people.”
Zabini stares at him. “The Dark Lord was a Gaunt?”
“Through his mother, yeah. His father was a Muggle.”
Zabini looks as though Christmas has come early. “I can’t wait to tell certain people that,” he says, and trots off again, presumably in the direction of the Slytherin common room.
Harry shakes his head and starts walking around the lake again. At least Zabini has cheered him up, and Zabini himself has been jolted out of his mood. It’s probably the best thing the Sacred Twenty-Eight has done all decade.
*
“Hast thou besmirched mine honor?”
“I have not besmirched thine honor!”
“Have you not indeed?”
“Indeed!”
“Indeed!”
Harry watches in bafflement as Malfoy and Nott trade louder and louder comments before Potions. He’s not sure what it’s about, since none of them have actually mentioned anything substantial in all the “Indeed” portions, but he supposes he doesn’t need to understand.
“Purebloods are weird,” he complains under his breath to Hermione, as Slughorn sweeps into the class and Malfoy and Nott get all fawning and polite and deferential.
“Oi,” Ron says without looking up.
“Some purebloods are weird.”
“Oh, it’s okay. It’s about ninety percent of us,” Ron says comfortably.
*
Harry sighs as he packs the books away. He’s going to the Burrow for part of Christmas, but he’s also going to spend some time in Grimmauld Place. He feels like he needs some time to himself, and not just to study. He wants to talk to Kreacher, and think about Sirius, and decide whether he wants to clean the house up or sell it.
“Potter.”
It’s Malfoy, because of course it is. Harry should have packed his trunk last night instead of floating everything down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower and doing it in the entrance hall, but, well, he didn’t.
“What, Malfoy?” Harry asks, when Malfoy stands there staring pointedly at him and there’s no use in pretending that there’s anyone else Malfoy is trying to talk to.
Malfoy folds his arms. “You’re part of the House of Black.”
“Sirius left his grimy old house to me, if that’s what you mean.’
“You must have seen the Black family motto.”
“Um, right. Some French phrase?”
Malfoy draws in a breath of what sounds like shock and outrage, but Harry doesn’t know why the shock. After all, Malfoy knows perfectly well what Harry is like now on the subject of blood purity and the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Harry glances at his watch, and Malfoy gets to the point.
“The Black Family are pure,” he grinds out. “And ancient and noble.”
“Really? I just thought that was Sirius’s family being up their own arses.”
Malfoy seems to be holding himself under rigid control, because all he does is sigh and stare at the wall for a moment. Then he turns back to Harry with an expression of long-suffering saintliness. It reminds Harry so much of Aunt Petunia when she had to deal with neighbors that it’s hard to control his laughter. “You should give me the house.”
“Why?”
“You don’t deserve it.”
Harry shrugs. “I don’t care about what you think I deserve, Malfoy.”
“Mate, come on!”
Ron is waving to him from the doors. Harry nods to Malfoy and picks up his trunk to sprint after his friend.
“Malfoy bothering you about the sacred nonsense again?” Ron asks, as they walk towards the carriages. Harry pauses to scratch a thestral behind the ear, and the creature turns its head and nibbles his hair.
“Yeah. Something about not living up to Sirius’s family motto.”
“He thinks that you’re—what? A Black by adoption or something?”
“Something like that.”
*
“Kreacher is not liking the house anymore, Mr. Harry.”
Harry looks up from his book and nods at Kreacher. “I know. I thought about getting rid of it. But,” he tacks on hastily when Kreacher looks horrified, “I decided that wasn’t the best thing I could do. What if we cleaned it up some? Made it bright and cheerful?”
Kreacher’s ears rise slowly. “Mr. Harry would do that?” “Mr.” is what they’ve compromised on, given that Harry is uncomfortable hearing “Master” and Kreacher seems to think just talking to him with “you” is disrespectful.
Harry nods. “Sure. What was it decorated like when you were young?”
*
“I like what you did with the kitchen, Harry,” Hermione says with a smile, and hands him back the sheaf of photographs as the train rumbles and begins to move. “The bright yellow wallpaper really makes it look more cheerful.”
“Mum liked the look of the roses in the front entrance,” Ron says, with an enormous yawn, as he sprawls along the front of the seat. “Said she might put up something like that in her sewing room.”
“What did you do?”
Malfoy’s voice is a low, horrified croak. Harry blinks a little at him and holds out the pictures. “Changed Grimmauld Place so it looks like a habitable place.”
“It looks Muggle.”
“You can’t even see the pictures from where you’re standing, Malfoy.”
Malfoy shakes his head slowly back and forth. “I can’t believe I thought you were worthy of joining the Sacred Twenty-Eight,” he whispers, sounding dazed. “I thought you deserved a chance, blood traitor father and all, but—no, you’ll never be able to atone for your heritage. For your Mudblood mother—”
Harry’s magic flares, and Malfoy’s mouth disappears. He claps his hand over his face with a muffled shriek. At least that proves that he’s still got a mouth somewhere under the smooth skin that’s grown over it.
“Harry, honestly, you’re not thirteen years old anymore,” Hermione snaps, and waves her wand. The hex ends. Malfoy runs away.
“Sorry,” Harry says, and lets his anger go. At least if Malfoy has given up on his efforts to get Harry to join the Sacred Numpty-Tumpty, then he might get some actual studying done in the library this term.
“Potter.”
This is another Slytherin Harry’s never spoken to, and he struggles to place her for a moment. “Daphne Greengrass?”
“Yes.” Greengrass lowers her eyes. Harry doesn’t know why. He’s seen her stare at lots of people and make cutting remarks. “I wanted to let you know that I am available for bonding contracts.”
“Uh. No, thanks.”
Greengrass smiles, still not looking up. “Your modesty becomes you, sir. But I am available to someone who has the glory of the Blacks in his veins, nonetheless.” She turns and sashays off in a manner that’s presumably meant to be enticing.
Harry drops his head into his hands while Ron laughs at him.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of background canon pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Hogwarts “eighth year,” humor, parody, present tense
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 4300
Summary: Members of the “Sacred Twenty-Eight”: “Don’t you wish you were sacred like me?” Harry: “Not really, no.”
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It mocks the concept of the Sacred Twenty-Eight that I’ve seen treated ultra-seriously in some fics, so if you really like that concept, this is not the fic for you.
Beyond the Sacred
“I don’t know how you can walk around breathing air.”
Harry looks up in perplexity from his stack of Transfiguration books. “I mean, my lungs work.”
The boy standing beside the library table glares at him. It takes a moment for Harry to place him. Theodore Nott, right. Harry can’t recall that they’ve ever spoken, although he remembers a few things like Nott being able to see thestrals and snickering with Malfoy in Slughorn’s class.
“I would die of shame if it was me.”
“Okay.”
Harry thinks that just saying that will make Nott storm off and leave him alone, but Nott’s brow darkens and he leans in. “Your father married a Mudblood,” he hisses. “How can you bear the shame?”
Harry swallows back the immediate rage, and stares at Nott. No, he’s never spoken to him, because he wasn’t Marked, but Harry did spend a lot of the summer at Death Eater trials, which means he knows something about the git’s family.
“I think having a mother who loved and died for me is better than having a dad who’s in Azkaban for being a Death Eater, at least three-quarters of my money taken away by the Ministry, and people testifying they were kept in the dungeons in my home.”
Nott’s eyes widen. Harry waits. The git still doesn’t seem inclined to leave. This is annoying.
“Do you know who the Sacred Twenty-Eight are?” Nott asks abruptly. He seems to have calmed down, but Harry doesn’t trust someone with mood swings this extreme.
“No.”
“That explains it,” Nott says, and smiles and nods. “If you look them up, you’ll understand better what an affront to wizarding traditions your father’s marriage was, and your existence is.”
“Okay.”
Nott turns and saunters off, confidence apparently restored. Harry shakes his head and turns back to his Transfiguration book.
*
“The Sacred Twenty-Eight?” Ron laughs hard enough that he snorts pumpkin juice out his nose, and casts the charm to clean himself up before Hermione can. “Yeah, that’s a concept that one of Nott’s ancestors came up with. Or on of his cousins did. Or both. They’re as inbred as the Blacks are, if you go back far enough.”
“I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it,” Hermione says, with a small frown. Harry gently reaches out and plucks A History of the Goblin Wars from her hand. She’s planning to take the History NEWT with self-study, but their rule is “no books at the dinner table.”
“Yeah, because it’s only a few inbred wankers who care about it anymore.” Ron shrugs. “Cantankerus Nott—”
“You’re having me on,” Harry says.
“No, no, that was really his name!” Ron waves his hands around, and Dean scowls as he ducks. Ron grins at him. “Anyway, Cantankerus Nott came up with this list of twenty-eight families he thought were really pureblooded by the 1930s. It’s not even accurate. He has us on there, and we married half-bloods and Muggleborns all the time, for the love of Merlin. And he has the Ollivanders on there, and Mr. Ollivander is a half-blood and at least that old. It’s nonsense.”
“Why do people cling to it, then?” Hermione asks.
“What else do they have to be proud of?”
Neville leans over. “Ron’s right. Nott listened Longbottom on there, and we basically ignore it and the people who prance around acting all proud of it ignore us. And the Weasleys. And the Prewetts.”
Harry grins and sticks his spoon in the mashed potatoes. “Thanks for explaining. I’ll continue to ignore it.”
“Do,” Neville says, and grins. “You should hear what my gran has to say about Cantankerus Nott. It’s how I learned my first swear words.”
*
A heavy book drops on the library table in front of Harry.
Harry looks up with a sigh. What is it about his studying Transfiguration that attracts Slytherins intent on irritating him?
He squints a little at Draco Malfoy. They’ve avoided each other since the trials. Sometimes Harry thinks his testimony about Draco and Narcissa saving his life was a little too generous, since it let Lucius avoid Azkaban, but what’s done is done. He just wants to study for his NEWTS and then decide what he wants to do after that in peace. Being an Auror has sort of lost its appeal.
“What do you want, Malfoy?”
“This is the Pure-Blood Directory,” Malfoy says, his hand splaying out over the book. “By Cantankerus Nott. It explains the Sacred Twenty-Eight.”
“And I would be interested why?”
Malfoy leans forwards. “Nott only codified what many of us already knew, and some of it was based on his own dislike,” he whispers. “He left the Potters out of his list because they had a last name he thought too common. But your father was as pureblooded as they come, Potter, and you can earn your way back into the list.”
“Earn my way?”
“Learn the customs. Demonstrate contrition for any sins against magic you may have committed in the past. Cantankerus Nott’s is only the most well-known version of the list. There are others. You could be on it.”
“No, thanks.”
Malfoy pauses, long enough that Harry tries to return to Transfiguration. Of course, that’s the cue for Malfoy to start whining again. “But why?”
“Why would I want to?” Harry asks. “I have a good enough life, and I can’t think of any sins I’ve committed.” He’s committed crimes, things like the Unforgivables during the war, and those are going to trouble him a lot more than whatever Malfoy’s imagining. Harry’s considering swearing a vow to never use any of them. “And Nott already informed me that he doesn’t understand how I can walk around with a Mudblood mother and be proud of it, so I wouldn’t even want to.”
Malfoy shifts. “Some of us are more conservative than others,” he admits sulkily. “You’d have to atone for your mother’s blood. But you could do it. You have powerful magic, Potter.”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to learn more about wizarding traditions? Things we do that separate us from Muggles?”
“Things like calling people slurs? Sorry to tell you, Muggles have that covered, too.”
Malfoy steps back with a scowl, and then recovers himself and shakes his head. “Just read the book, Potter. It’s far more than a list. You’ll understand the Sacred Twenty-Eight better when you have.” He leaves.
Harry keeps reading, and ignores the book.
*
“Why are you reading that book, Hermione?”
“I wanted to see what it said.”
Hermione’s nose is wrinkled, and Harry holds back a laugh as he sits down on the couch beside her in the common room. “That bad?”
“It’s ridiculous!” Hermione waves the book around, nearly braining Harry with it. “All about how these bloodlines are pure, and pure in heart and intention, and a true pureblood would never hurt anyone—”
“Huh, I wonder how the Death Eaters—”
“Except for people who aren’t purebloods, who apparently aren’t human!” Hermione’s eyes flash. “Muggles and Muggleborns and half-bloods and goblins and house-elves and Veela and centaurs and…oh, right, you can hurt other purebloods if they’re blood traitors, can’t forget that!”
Harry rolls his own eyes. “So they’re the center of the universe, and no one else compares to them?”
“Right. And there are all these pages where Nott acts as if the only reason someone would believe differently would be—oh, here, let me read it to you.” Hermione flips through a few pages of The Pure-Blood Directory and begins to read in a high, nasal voice that is probably her attempt at what Cantankerus Nott would sound like. Harry hides laughter behind his hand. “They are not enlightened by the sacred tide of blood in their veins, the way we are. One can but pity them. Correction would be a waste of time.”
“So is pity, right?”
“Well, on the very next page he says you should torture people to death if they make fun of you or insult you or break some nitpicky little rule, because of course manners are more important than kindness.”
“Let me guess, people who do that are no longer sacred?”
“Right!” Hermione flings the book on the table and glares at it. “Why Nott and Malfoy thought you would want to join this…”
Harry shrugs. “They probably just assume what you said, that anyone else isn’t worth their time. Except people are treating me like I am worth their time, including some purebloods, and they’re struggling with it.”
“Did you know that he says you should feel free to slaughter someone’s entire family if that person says something that could be construed as you cheating on your spouse? Ridiculous!”
Harry leans back with a little smile and listens to Hermione rant.
*
“I don’t know why you don’t want to join the Sacred Twenty-Eight. I would.”
Harry is being disturbed by a Gryffindor in the library this time, but he reckons that it’s because he’s studying for Charms instead of Transfiguration. He leans back and looks at Romilda Vane. “Why would you?”
“Oh.” Vane fidgets. Harry feels as if he’s almost hallucinating when he looks at her. He can see the loyal member of Dumbledore’s Army who fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, and the girl who tried to feed him a love potion. At the moment, she looks more like the latter. “Well, I mean, I’m a pureblood, but…”
She trails off. Harry just waits, because he doesn’t know what comes next, and finally Vane coughs and finishes, “The Sacred Twenty-Eight are better than the rest of us, you know? It’s what everyone aspires to be.”
Harry feels a surge of pity for her. “They aren’t really better,” he says gently. “Think about your prospects for getting a job in the Ministry or in Diagon Alley—where do you want to work?”
“I want to be an Auror.”
Harry smiles. “I might, too. But,” he adds hastily, as she looks a little starstruck, “you have a better chance of doing that than Malfoy does, or Nott, or Bulstrode, and they’re all on that silly list. What matters more to you, being an Auror, or being on that list?”
Vane frowns, clearly struggling with this. Harry waits patiently. At least this is more interesting than his conversations with Nott and Malfoy.
Finally, she sighs and says, “Being an Auror. It would just be good if I could do both. And be considered special by other people, you know.”
“Do well enough at being an Auror, and you would be considered special.”
“That’s true,” says Vane, and bites her lip. Then she says something in such a quick rush that Harry has to ask her to repeat it. Vane turns bright red and says a little more slowly, “I’m sorry for giving you a love potion.”
“Thanks for the apology,” Harry says. “I did things I’m not proud of, too, and working as an Auror, or a Healer, or whatever I choose, I hope will let me make up for that. Maybe you should try to make up for the love potion by going out and being the best Auror you can be.”
Vane leaves the library with a little bounce in her step. Harry smiles and turns back to reading Summoning Charm theory. Stupid written portion of the exams.
*
Millicent Bulstrode walks past his table in the library with flowers in her hair.
Harry blinks at her, then shrugs. Maybe it’s something she liked to do before and he just never noticed. He notices the eighth-year Slytherins more often now, when there’s so few of them. Or maybe it’s a spell gone wrong.
A few minutes later, she walks by again. Harry ignores her and keeps scratching with his quill on the Summoning Charm theory.
Then she steps by his table and clears her throat. Harry sighs. He comes to the library to study because it’s quieter than the Gryffindor common room, but lately, that’s not true.
“Yes, Bulstrode?” Harry is aware that his smile is a little fixed when he looks up, but honestly, he is trying to study.
“Weren’t you going to ask about the flowers in my hair?” Bulstrode asks, and gestures to them.
“No.”
Bulstrode pauses. Then she says, “It’s a custom for the witches of the Sacred Twenty-Eight to wear flowers in their hair.”
“Okay?”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“I mean…why?”
“It’s not the sort of thing we tell outsiders,” says Bulstrode triumphantly.
“Okay.”
Bulstrode stares at him. Then she walks away, muttering something about how “They said he would be curious, they said he would want to know…”
Harry shakes his head and turns back to his Charms book. No, he’s only curious about things that actually matter, like what Voldemort or Marked Death Eaters in the school are doing. It’s not the same as wanting to know why someone wears flowers in their hair, although Harry did want to ask if there was a reason they were wilting.
*
“Did you read the book?”
Malfoy has come back now when he’s studying Potions. Harry was so careful not to bring his Transfiguration book with him, and then it turned out not to matter.
Harry leans back in his chair, exasperated, and shakes his head. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to read the stupid book, Malfoy?”
Malfoy shoots a glance around the library as if looking for someone who would overhear them, and then turns back to Harry, shaking his head. “I know that’s not true.”
“Malfoy—”
“Because you grew up without a family.”
Harry can feel himself going still in the way that almost never happens anymore, the way that says he’s going to lash out with his magic in a second. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks softly.
Malfoy ignores the danger signals, if he even sees them, and draws out the chair on the opposite side of the table from Harry, sitting down with what he probably thinks is a wise nod. “I mean that you have no family, and that means you should be curious about things that involve family. You could become Sacred Twenty-Eight if you accepted your heritage, Potter. Aren’t you curious about your heritage?”
Harry thinks about his parents dying for him, and smiling in their wedding pictures and out of the Mirror of Erised. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know the most important things!”
“Like what?”
“What flowers in a woman’s hair mean. How to grip your fork correctly at dinner. The proper depth of a bow—”
“If I didn’t bow before Voldemort, Malfoy, I sure won’t be doing it in front of anyone else.”
Malfoy flinches so hard his chair goes over backwards. Harry sighs and starts packing up his books. He knows that Madam Pince is going to descend in three, two…
“Mr. Malfoy, what is the meaning of this?”
“Potter and I were just having a conversation, Madam Pince,” Malfoy bleats, and sits up, pushing dust off his sleeves with little impatient movements. He shoots a glare at Harry, who shrugs. “We were just talking about the Sacred Twenty-Eight and the importance of recognizing a wizard’s heritage.”
Harry wonders if Madam Pince’s family is on the silly list, too. It’s not like he read the book.
But it seems to have just been a plea for sympathy that Malfoy misjudged. Madam Pince’s eyebrows snap together. “You think I want that kind of bigotry in my library, Mr. Malfoy?” she snaps.
“Well, you do have the book,” Malfoy says. Then he visibly flushes as she swells with rage. “Sorry, Madam Pince—”
“Out.”
For once, the librarian isn’t shouting. Her voice is so low that it seems to make the shelves and floors shake. Harry shakes his head, stands up, and gathers his books and papers together, then walks towards the entrance of the library.
Malfoy catches up with him as he’s leaving. “Don’t you want to know about your heritage, Potter?”
“So far, nothing you’ve mentioned seems like something I’d want to know about.”
“Then what would?”
“How my grandfather laughed. If I look like him. What foods my grandmother liked. The names of their neighbors. Can you tell me that?”
Malfoy gapes at him. Harry shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says, and leaves.
Some things are lost beyond recall. He knows that. He’s accepted it. He might have pretended at it before, but it was full acceptance by the time he opened his eyes in the King’s Cross train station.
Some things, he will learn and know and hold dear. And other things, he’ll learn when he makes his own family.
Harry doesn’t need to go back to the past. The future is what matters.
*
It’s been a few weeks since any Slytherins showed up to make odd remarks, and Harry isn’t thinking about it as he paces towards the lake, wrapping a thick, warm scarf around his neck. It’s well into the middle of November now, and leaves are blowing across the grounds. Harry watches them, feeling a distant ache in his heart.
This time next year, he won’t be at Hogwarts. He isn’t entirely sure if he’ll be in Auror training, despite the advice he gave Vane, but he won’t be here.
“Potter!”
Harry doesn’t bang his head against his arms, but it’s a near thing. He turns around and nearly runs into Blaise Zabini. Harry takes a cautious step backwards, his eyes narrowed. He hasn’t had anything to do with Zabini this year, but Harry knows that he has blood purity beliefs, or at least had them in the past.
“Yes? What?” Harry asks, when he realizes Zabini is glaring at him.
“Why are you resisting becoming part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight?”
“Why do you believe everything Malfoy says?”
“So you are considering becoming part of them?”
“No.”
Zabini gives him a look of outrage mingled with confusion. Harry shrugs. He reckons those feelings should be spread around.
“Why wouldn’t you want to be?” Zabini waves a hand. “It’s incredible social cachet here in Britain! You can do anything you want once you’re part of that group. People have to bow to you. They have to respect you and admire you and look up to you. You’d practically have people mobbing you wanting to hear your opinion—”
“You mean,” Harry says, as dryly as he can, “the way they do right now?”
Zabini pauses again.
Harry nods. “I don’t have any reason to want to belong to it, and the more I hear about it, the less I like it.”
“They’ll never let me in,” Zabini says abruptly, turning away to stare at the lake.
“Why not?”
“I’m pureblood, but I’m from Italy. No foreigners are allowed in.” Zabini shrugs, but his mouth is twisted with bitterness. “I’m at the height of the social hierarchy back home, but here I just…I don’t have that kind of power.”
Harry half-shrugs back. “They should let you in. You’d fit better there than I would.”
“They should let me in,” Zabini agrees. Already his anger is vanishing back behind a smooth surface that, from what Harry knows, is more characteristic of him. “It’s not even really the Sacred Twenty-Eight now, since some families are effectively extinct. The Lestranges, for example, and the Gaunts.”
Harry laughs.
“What?”
“The Gaunts were Voldemort’s family. The only thing I really know about them is that they could speak Parseltongue. Well, and they were pretty weak magically before they died out, and awful people.”
Zabini stares at him. “The Dark Lord was a Gaunt?”
“Through his mother, yeah. His father was a Muggle.”
Zabini looks as though Christmas has come early. “I can’t wait to tell certain people that,” he says, and trots off again, presumably in the direction of the Slytherin common room.
Harry shakes his head and starts walking around the lake again. At least Zabini has cheered him up, and Zabini himself has been jolted out of his mood. It’s probably the best thing the Sacred Twenty-Eight has done all decade.
*
“Hast thou besmirched mine honor?”
“I have not besmirched thine honor!”
“Have you not indeed?”
“Indeed!”
“Indeed!”
Harry watches in bafflement as Malfoy and Nott trade louder and louder comments before Potions. He’s not sure what it’s about, since none of them have actually mentioned anything substantial in all the “Indeed” portions, but he supposes he doesn’t need to understand.
“Purebloods are weird,” he complains under his breath to Hermione, as Slughorn sweeps into the class and Malfoy and Nott get all fawning and polite and deferential.
“Oi,” Ron says without looking up.
“Some purebloods are weird.”
“Oh, it’s okay. It’s about ninety percent of us,” Ron says comfortably.
*
Harry sighs as he packs the books away. He’s going to the Burrow for part of Christmas, but he’s also going to spend some time in Grimmauld Place. He feels like he needs some time to himself, and not just to study. He wants to talk to Kreacher, and think about Sirius, and decide whether he wants to clean the house up or sell it.
“Potter.”
It’s Malfoy, because of course it is. Harry should have packed his trunk last night instead of floating everything down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower and doing it in the entrance hall, but, well, he didn’t.
“What, Malfoy?” Harry asks, when Malfoy stands there staring pointedly at him and there’s no use in pretending that there’s anyone else Malfoy is trying to talk to.
Malfoy folds his arms. “You’re part of the House of Black.”
“Sirius left his grimy old house to me, if that’s what you mean.’
“You must have seen the Black family motto.”
“Um, right. Some French phrase?”
Malfoy draws in a breath of what sounds like shock and outrage, but Harry doesn’t know why the shock. After all, Malfoy knows perfectly well what Harry is like now on the subject of blood purity and the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Harry glances at his watch, and Malfoy gets to the point.
“The Black Family are pure,” he grinds out. “And ancient and noble.”
“Really? I just thought that was Sirius’s family being up their own arses.”
Malfoy seems to be holding himself under rigid control, because all he does is sigh and stare at the wall for a moment. Then he turns back to Harry with an expression of long-suffering saintliness. It reminds Harry so much of Aunt Petunia when she had to deal with neighbors that it’s hard to control his laughter. “You should give me the house.”
“Why?”
“You don’t deserve it.”
Harry shrugs. “I don’t care about what you think I deserve, Malfoy.”
“Mate, come on!”
Ron is waving to him from the doors. Harry nods to Malfoy and picks up his trunk to sprint after his friend.
“Malfoy bothering you about the sacred nonsense again?” Ron asks, as they walk towards the carriages. Harry pauses to scratch a thestral behind the ear, and the creature turns its head and nibbles his hair.
“Yeah. Something about not living up to Sirius’s family motto.”
“He thinks that you’re—what? A Black by adoption or something?”
“Something like that.”
*
“Kreacher is not liking the house anymore, Mr. Harry.”
Harry looks up from his book and nods at Kreacher. “I know. I thought about getting rid of it. But,” he tacks on hastily when Kreacher looks horrified, “I decided that wasn’t the best thing I could do. What if we cleaned it up some? Made it bright and cheerful?”
Kreacher’s ears rise slowly. “Mr. Harry would do that?” “Mr.” is what they’ve compromised on, given that Harry is uncomfortable hearing “Master” and Kreacher seems to think just talking to him with “you” is disrespectful.
Harry nods. “Sure. What was it decorated like when you were young?”
*
“I like what you did with the kitchen, Harry,” Hermione says with a smile, and hands him back the sheaf of photographs as the train rumbles and begins to move. “The bright yellow wallpaper really makes it look more cheerful.”
“Mum liked the look of the roses in the front entrance,” Ron says, with an enormous yawn, as he sprawls along the front of the seat. “Said she might put up something like that in her sewing room.”
“What did you do?”
Malfoy’s voice is a low, horrified croak. Harry blinks a little at him and holds out the pictures. “Changed Grimmauld Place so it looks like a habitable place.”
“It looks Muggle.”
“You can’t even see the pictures from where you’re standing, Malfoy.”
Malfoy shakes his head slowly back and forth. “I can’t believe I thought you were worthy of joining the Sacred Twenty-Eight,” he whispers, sounding dazed. “I thought you deserved a chance, blood traitor father and all, but—no, you’ll never be able to atone for your heritage. For your Mudblood mother—”
Harry’s magic flares, and Malfoy’s mouth disappears. He claps his hand over his face with a muffled shriek. At least that proves that he’s still got a mouth somewhere under the smooth skin that’s grown over it.
“Harry, honestly, you’re not thirteen years old anymore,” Hermione snaps, and waves her wand. The hex ends. Malfoy runs away.
“Sorry,” Harry says, and lets his anger go. At least if Malfoy has given up on his efforts to get Harry to join the Sacred Numpty-Tumpty, then he might get some actual studying done in the library this term.
“Potter.”
This is another Slytherin Harry’s never spoken to, and he struggles to place her for a moment. “Daphne Greengrass?”
“Yes.” Greengrass lowers her eyes. Harry doesn’t know why. He’s seen her stare at lots of people and make cutting remarks. “I wanted to let you know that I am available for bonding contracts.”
“Uh. No, thanks.”
Greengrass smiles, still not looking up. “Your modesty becomes you, sir. But I am available to someone who has the glory of the Blacks in his veins, nonetheless.” She turns and sashays off in a manner that’s presumably meant to be enticing.
Harry drops his head into his hands while Ron laughs at him.
The End.
