lomonaaeren

Thank you for all the reviews!

Part Two—Fifth Year

Harry opens his eyes and shakes his head irritably. He’s still not perfect at Occlumency, even after a year of studying it with Justinian, but he ought to be good enough to keep these dreams at bay.

He stands from bed and wanders over to the window, staring across the Nott family gardens to the far horizon. An illusion makes it look as if the ground is covered with millions of deep violet and white flowers in that direction. Harry leans an elbow on the windowsill and studies them, letting the sight of them calm the pounding in his scar.

Someone knocks on the door.

Harry sighs and turns around. “Come in, Justinian.”

Justinian flows into the room. Harry watches with admiration. He’s due to start his fifth year tomorrow, and his appreciation for the way the man moves and talks and gestures has only grown.

Harry doesn’t intend to do anything about it. He doesn’t think Justinian would want him to, anyway. But sometimes, when they’re in the same room, Theo watches both his father and Harry with glittering eyes before he smiles and goes back to his book.

“Did you need something?” Harry asks quietly.

“I felt your disturbance from down the corridor,” Justinian says. Harry nods, not surprised. Their minds are so intimately connected now because of their Occlumency practice that things like that happen. Justinian has even borrowed Harry’s visualization of the ebony house for his own mind. “Another dream?”

“Yes. This time, of a small, baby-like creature sitting in a chair, with a giant snake and a rat-like man accompanying him.”

“Ah. The same dream as before.”

Harry nods. There was only one time that the dream changed, shortly after the Quidditch World Cup last summer. Justinian got an odd look on his face when Harry described the haggard young man with the baby-like creature, and the next time Harry had the dream, the young man was gone.

“You know as well as I do who that man is.”

“Not a man. The creature, yes.”

“Yes, the creature.” A corner of Justinian’s mouth quirks up. “What I want to know is why you do not demonstrate more fear of the Dark Lord.”

Harry leans back against the windowsill and locks his eyes on Justinian’s. “Do I need to, Justinian? Is there, say, a loyal servant living in the same house as me, who might betray me to that creature because he has a different definition of freedom than I do?”

“There might have been a loyal servant who would have done that,” Justinian says, and then pulls back his sleeve from his left forearm, something he has never done before in Harry’s presence. “If he had not learned techniques that neutralized the brand of his slavery.”

A great sigh goes out of Harry when he sees the Dark Mark. He’s only seen active ones in some of Justinian’s memories, but that’s enough to know that this is not one. It’s not only a faded, dull grey, but it’s overlaid with what seems to be a series of runes or scars. Harry squints, trying to understand.

Justinian turns his arm, and suddenly Harry can see better. There are marks imprinted across the Mark. Scars that resemble the outline of a house.

He looked up at Justinian. “I gave you that idea?”

Justinian inclines his head. “I have found that your vision of freedom has…inspired me, Harry. I have no desire to serve a master.” He looks at Harry and smiles in the way that makes his eyes glow like tunnels diving into a deep sky. “Unless I decide to take one from far different motives than I did at first.”

Harry swallows. The declaration surprises him a little, although given some of the things he’s seen in Justinian’s memory concerning the Dark Lord, he supposes it shouldn’t.

He holds Justinian’s gaze steadily, searching for some sign of deception. There doesn’t seem to be any. Of course, Harry acknowledges that Justinian is more than clever enough to cover it up if it exists.

But sometimes one has to take a risk, and Harry finds, his hands twitching, that he wants to do that.

“There was some plan to interfere with the Tri-Wizard Tournament last year, wasn’t there?” he asks softly. “To enter me as a contestant? And it had something to do with the man who was in my dreams and then disappeared.”

“How clever you are. How dedicated to your goal of making sure that no one can control you.” Justinian turns his head back and forth as if examining Harry. “Yes, there was such a plan. When the…facilitator of his plan died, the Dark Lord was left simply with Peter Pettigrew. I wouldn’t be surprised if the man tried to sneak into Hogwarts, but rumors of Sirius Black appeared in the area not long after the beginning of the school year.”

Harry nods. Professor Snape tried to make Harry stay in the school the way he did in third year, but Harry just smiled to his face and slipped out behind his back. “So Pettigrew didn’t manage it.” He knows now that Black is innocent, based on Justinian’s explanation of the rat-like man in his dreams, but it doesn’t matter very much. Black has never tried to contact Harry in any way whatsoever. “But the Dark Lord is still seeking some way to return.”

“He is indeed. You will need to find a means of putting yourself beyond his power before he manages it.”

Harry smiles. “I have more than one means in mind. One of them needs a ritual circle, however. May I borrow yours in the future as needed?”

Justinian dips into a bow that could feel like a grown man lowering himself to the speaking level of a child, but it doesn’t. Harry feels the thrill growing along his veins, though, and pictures his blood as shining with it.

“I insist on being involved,” Justinian says softly. “Ritual craft is nothing to be messed with at your age.”

“And neither is Occlumency, according to some of the authors I’ve read.”

“It’s true that Occlumency lessons and Legilimency can cause damage to your mind, but rituals done unsupervised can do damage to your soul.” Justinian reaches out and lets his fingers rest for a moment on the crown of Harry’s head. “Please allow me.”

“I will,” Harry says, with his heartbeat still thudding through his veins. “But you have to know that I care more about damage to my mind than my soul. I would still exist if soul magic went wrong, from what I’ve read. I need my mind to be clear and guarded so that I can enact my plans.”

“What a shining thing you are,” Justinian says softly, and Harry meets and holds his gaze.

*

Harry’s really not sure why he’s been asked to Headmaster Dumbledore’s office. They didn’t interact at all last year, and that’s the way Harry prefers it. But he sits in the chair in front of the desk, and nods to the phoenix, which looks at him with sad eyes and doesn’t sing.

“What did you need to talk to me about, sir?”

Dumbledore sighs and takes off his half-moon glasses, putting them on the desk. Harry looks him politely, once, in the eye, and feels a little pressure against his Occlumency walls. He promptly raises them higher and imagines all the cracks disappearing from the smooth ebony. Dumbledore looks away.

“Your godfather would like to meet you, my boy.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. “I was under the impression that he wanted nothing to do with me.”

Dumbledore looks as though someone has slapped him across the face. “Why is that, Harry?”

Harry thinks about asking the Headmaster to call him by his last name, but it would only be a distraction in the middle of a conversation that really doesn’t need any. “Because he escaped Azkaban two years ago, and then custody here more than a year ago, but he hasn’t made any attempt to contact me? An owl would be hard to trace. I can only assume that he doesn’t care.”

Dumbledore stares down at his desk again. “We thought it would be—dangerous.”

So you’re admitting to being in contact with a wanted fugitive and known mass murderer. Harry tucks the information away in case he ever needs it and shrugs a little. “All right, but what’s changed? He’s still being hunted by the Aurors, so I don’t think the situation is any safer than it was.”

“I—the situation has changed,” Dumbledore says, and tries to sound determinedly cheerful. Harry always thought that was the kind of thing he was good at, but he isn’t right now. “Sirius would very much like to meet you, and I’m willing to offer my office Floo for that. If the chat goes well, then of course we could see about your meeting in person.”

Harry thinks about it. He supposes this is a ploy by Dumbledore to control him somehow, but he doesn’t think it will work. And going along with it might make the man lower his guard around Harry, or involve him in plans that would give Harry more information about what Dumbledore’s side of the war is doing.

And Harry has to admit, he is curious to meet his godfather.

“All right,” he says, and Dumbledore gives a smile that looks to be full of relief.

*

“Harry!”

Sirius Black actually reaches his arms forwards through the fire as if he thinks that he can just sort of absorb Harry or something. Harry smiles at him a little and sits back as comfortably as he can on Headmaster’s hearth. “Mr. Black, hello.”

“You don’t have to call me Mr. Black! Call me Sirius!”

Black’s voice is desperate, his eyes shining with a manic light, his arms still sweeping back and forth (although thankfully he does seem to have remembered that he can’t actually reach Harry through the Floo). He’s pretty thin, Harry thinks. Life on the run must not allow him to eat in gourmet cafes often.

“All right, I will. Can you tell me why you never contacted me before now? And what the Headmaster meant about its being a dangerous situation that changed? Why can you speak to me now but you couldn’t before?”

Sirius winces a lot, a whole-body shiver that makes Harry wonder if he’s an Animagus. It looks like the way a cat would try to shake off water, maybe. “I—well, the fact of the matter is, Harry, we thought it would be too dangerous with you being in Slytherin and under a Death Eater’s wing.”

“Neither of those two things has changed, though,” Harry points out, instead of defending Justinian. Sirius won’t listen anyway. “Or do you think you can convince me to live with you? I don’t think that’s a possibility unless you can be pardoned.”

Sirius takes a deep breath and then says in a rush, “I was supposed to raise you. I would love to raise you. But the main thing is that I had—a dream.”

“A dream.” Harry doesn’t bother to hide his skepticism. Dreaming the future is the rarest kind of Sight. And Harry knows full well that his own seemingly prophetic dreams are the result of his link to Voldemort, not actual visions.

“Yeah,” Sirius says, nodding so hard that he doesn’t seem to have noticed or been affected by Harry’s tone. “I dreamed about your parents, James and Lily. James was my best mate, and Lily was wonderful. And—they told me they were ashamed of me and holding back from you and distrusting you because you were a Slytherin and close with the Notts. They said that it shouldn’t matter. You’re still my godson. So I decided I had to contact you.” He gives Harry a desperately hopeful look.

Harry arches his eyebrows. “Well, all right. That’s what changed, your dream?”

“That, and I wore Dumbledore down by begging and begging to see you.”

Harry laughs in spite of himself. “Well, I can understand the power of that.” Theo sometimes begs his father like that. He does it quietly and persistently and with a calm smile, and Justinian smiles back and says he won’t give in, and he always ends up doing it.

“Good! So you’ll visit me?”

“I don’t know that I can,” Harry says calmly. Dumbledore was unable to find someone for the Defense position this year, so some Ministry plant is filling it, and although she’s simperingly respectful to Harry, there are rumors she’s intercepting students’ post. “Unless you think you can come to Hogsmeade.”

“Dumbledore won’t let me out of the house.”

“Uh, all right,” Harry says, wondering how that works for a brief moment. But he doesn’t think he really needs to know. “Then I suppose we can wait for Christmas and Justinian can accompany me to your house.”

“Justinian Nott?”

“Yes, do you know him?” Harry asks in a pleasant tone, even as he struggles to keep from laughing.

“That bastard is one of the worst of the Death Eaters! Listen, there was a time during the war when I met him on the battlefield, and he was trying to kill me, and I used a curse on him like this—”

Sirius is off into a story that seems more like a rant. Harry sits and listens patiently to his godfather. Sirius is entertaining, at least, and Harry doesn’t feel the need to defend Justinian. He would be annoyed if Harry did that, in fact. Just let your godfather think whatever he wants, Harry can hear that deep voice saying.

Harry shivers. He’s in his fifth year now, and, well, his fantasies are more mature than they were the first time he met Justinian.

“Harry, are you okay? Is it too cold in there? I could do something! I could send you a really warm cloak! I could—”

“No, I’m fine,” Harry says. “But what you ought to know is that Justinian is the father of my best friend, Theo Nott. I stay with them during the holidays ever since my Muggle relatives decided that they didn’t want me.” Which is always. “So he would be the one bringing me to your house.”

“He’s a Death Eater!”

“You said that.”

“I don’t want you associating with him.”

Harry sits up, and he knows that his expression has changed. Sirius chokes a little and falls silent.

“I don’t like it when people try to control me,” Harry says, very softly. “I understand that you were in Azkaban and that you have a reason to hate Death Eaters. I also understand that Justinian was there for me when you weren’t.”

Sirius looks ill now. “I—you know why I wasn’t there…”

“I also know that you escaped two years ago.” Harry leans forwards and looks Sirius dead in the eye. That seems like the kind of thing a Gryffindor will appreciate, and is less likely to make him realize what Harry is doing. “That you haven’t contacted me until now, and that only because of a dream that my parents would disapprove of your actions. Not because of me. Not because of your own sense of morality. If you hadn’t had that dream, would you just have gone on being as absent in my life as you always had?”

Sirius stares at him with his mouth slightly open. Harry watches him, and waits.

“I never meant to do that,” Sirius finally whispers, sounding stunned. “Oh, I never meant to do that.”

Harry waits a moment until it sounds as if Sirius might start rambling again, and then pretends to relax and let out a huge breath. “I know,” he says soothingly. “I know. But Justinian was there for me, and so was Theo. So you see why I’m reluctant to simply accept what you’re saying about them and treat Justinian like a Death Eater enemy of mine.”

“Of course!” Sirius beams at him and again acts as if he’s going to reach through the fire and embrace Harry. “If Nott brings you to my house over Christmas, I won’t say anything to him. I promise.”

Harry nods and smiles, and goes about getting to know his godfather. It sounds as if Sirius could be even more useful than he imagined. He’s both loyal to Harry and easily manipulated, a great combination.

*

“Theo? Are you all right?”

Harry’s best friend is always quiet, but he’s been not reading over the past fortnight, which is a really bad thing. Still, Harry wouldn’t have approached him this bluntly if he had a choice. He thought Theo would retreat if he did, the way he usually does from confrontation, and so Harry waited as long as he could for Theo to come to him.

But Theo now looks as if he isn’t eating, either, with the shadows and hollows under his eyes deepening, and Harry has to intervene.

Theo swallows unsteadily and looks around. They’re in a corner of the common room with Privacy Charms around them, but Harry twitches his wand and raises a few more. Theo bows his head and sits there a moment.

“It’s the Dark Lord,” he finally whispers.

Harry stares at him. “What?” The Dark Lord is still a powerless baby-creature, as he knows from his dreams; why would he be trying to approach Theo? And how? Of course, maybe Pettigrew is doing it for him.

Theo sits back on the couch and closes his eyes. “I’m getting—I think I was cursed, somewhere, by one of his followers. I’m dreaming about the first war and what he was like during the height of his power. And I keep feeling a burning sensation here.” His fingers tap his left forearm for a moment, too quick for anyone outside their private bubble to see. “He’s telling me in the dreams that there’s no escape, that I won’t be able to do anything to help myself. And that you and Father can’t help me, either.”

Harry feels a cold darkness gather at the heart of him, the way it does in his mind when he’s using the ebony house to protect his thoughts. “I will destroy him,” he whispers.

Theo looks at him with haunted eyes. “How can you? He’s so old, and so strong, and you’re—you’re strong, you’re my best friend, but we’re teenagers, Harry.”

“He threatened you,” Harry says calmly, stroking down Theo’s left arm and letting his hand press for a moment over the spot where Voldemort is trying to burn a Dark Mark through dreams. “He’s going to die for that.”

Theo still has skepticism in his eyes. Harry meets his gaze and lets the ebony house flood his own face.

Not the actual house; Theo has little interest in Occlumency and hasn’t learned it the way Harry has. But the sternness and the strength and the sense of raw and gleaming ebony, of a heart made of the same.

Theo leans towards him, shaking. Harry wraps an arm around his best friend’s shoulders and holds him close. A few people outside the Privacy Charms look askance at them, but Harry doesn’t care, can’t care.

What matters is that he has a goal to protect his freedom and Theo’s. Before this, Theo didn’t need his help. Now he does. Harry will give it to him.

It’s that simple.

*

“You Side-Along Apparate so smoothly,” Harry murmurs to Justinian as they come out of the Apparition near the street where Sirius told them his house was. He emphasized that it’s under a Fidelius Charm, and that the Secret-Keeper (who is probably Dumbledore) absolutely refuses to let Justinian see the secret. That’s all right. Harry will read it for himself and then enter the house and see what happens.

“You’re a flatterer, Harry.”

Harry turns and smiles up at his favorite person. Justinian’s eyes are like two stars, as usual, unwavering and fixed on him, like usual. “No, I’m not,” he says. “You know that I only grant you the praise you’re due.”

“And why are you so interested in doing that, I wonder.” Justinian’s voice is soft and would-be-lethal, his hand reaching back to touch Harry’s hair for a second. Harry has grown it out and tied it back like Justinian’s. It will never look as sleek, but it makes him look more grown-up and at least gets his fringe out of his eyes.

Justinian pointed out when Harry first started doing it that it also leaves his lightning bolt scar more visible. Harry just smiled at him, and Justinian laughed and let it go.

“I wonder,” Harry echoes back, and for a moment, he lets the ebony house into his expression again.

Justinian gives him a dip of his head and a smile with his eyes deeper than a smile with his face. Then he steps back and walks down the street, out of earshot but close enough in case the Dumbledore follower who’s supposed to meet Harry does something to him.

Harry probably wouldn’t need help, but it’s flattering in its own right to know that Justinian stands ready to provide it.

To Harry’s private amusement, the man sent to meet him is Mad-Eye Moody, who taught Defense last year and spent a lot of time snarling about Dark Arts and Slytherins and moral lessons and so on. He stumps up to Harry and stares at him with both eyes, then sniffs, an impressive trick with a missing half a nose. “I don’t think you’re trustworthy,” he announces.

“Do you own the house?” Harry asks. “I was under the impression that my godfather did.”

Moody’s scowl gets uglier, but he does pull out a curl of parchment from his pocket and holds it so that Harry can read it.

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

Harry registers the shift and change of the magic in his head at the same time as he glances up to see the houses seemingly rearranging themselves around the Black home. He nods to Moody. “Thank you.”

“None of your cheek, boy.”

“I was under the impression I was thanking you, professor.”

Moody gives an ugly laugh that doesn’t have any amusement in it and walks ahead of Harry as they make for the door. Harry is prepared for it to fly open, and it does, but he’s not prepared for the large black dog that rushes out barking and nearly tackles him back down the stairs.

Harry raises his hands, wand already in his right one, ready to curse, and then registers the dog’s clear grey eyes and its furiously wagging tail. He sighs in exasperation.

“You didn’t tell me you were an Animagus, Sirius,” he murmurs, and waits until the dog pulls back and transforms into a man again, one with long flyaway black hair and laughter distorting his face.

“Of course I was! So was your dad, he was a stag. And Wormtail was a rat. And Moony—well, you know that Professor Lupin is a werewolf, of course.” Sirius runs a hand through his hair. “He told me that he got exposed as one at the end of your third year.”

“Yes. Interestingly, he never mentioned to me that he knew my parents.”

Sirius sighs. “Oh, Merlin’s balls,” he says, and ignores the yell from someone further inside the house about his language. “Fine, you have a reason to resent some of us. But I’m going to make it up to you. You wait and see.”

*

It turns out that the house is filled with the Order of the Phoenix—whatever that is, but Harry thinks he can make an educated guess that it’s a group of Dumbledore supporters. A lot of them are Weasleys. Harry would have expected to feel a bit uncomfortable around them, given that he didn’t manage to save their daughter from the possessed diary.

But no one says anything to him about it, although the twins and Ron cast a few dubious glances at Harry’s thick, green-edged robes. He actually just bought them because he liked the color, not because they remind him of his House, but their reactions are sort of hilarious.

Hermione Granger studies him with a frown, asks him a few sharp questions that Harry replies politely and blandly to, and then avoids him as much as she can. That’s all right with Harry.

Mrs. Weasley is a tall woman with grey-streaked red hair and a strained smile. She does plop a plate of very good food in front of Harry, although he hadn’t planned to eat. He just wanted to talk to Sirius and explore the house. But he eats it because of the smells, and he’s glad he did.

“You look so thin, dear,” Mrs. Weasley says, whisking the plate away and dumping another one in front of him. “Whatever are they feeding you, those guardians of yours?”

Harry gives her another smile as he digs in. “Oh, they feed me enough, just not as good as yours, Mrs. Weasley.”

She preens.

It’s as easy to win over Mr. Weasley. He mentions Muggles in the first three sentences he speaks, and Harry promptly tells him that he was raised with Muggles. He earns the man’s eternal gratitude by explaining what a rubber duck is.

Professor Lupin—Remus Lupin, now—is a little more difficult.

*

“Hello, Professor Lupin.”

The werewolf starts, sloshing tea over the side of his cup, as he twists in his chair to look back at Harry. After a second, he chuckles weakly and faces the book spread out on the table in front of him again. “You don’t need to call me that, Harry, I told you. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a professor.”

“All right, Mr. Lupin.”

“Remus, Harry, please. I was such close friends with your parents…”

Harry gives him a bright look as he sits on the opposite side of the kitchen table from Lupin. “Oh, all right. It’s just hard to remember that, given that you spent a whole year in the castle and never talked to me about them.”

Lupin stares down at his hands. Harry folds his own hands in his lap and looks continually bright and expectant, nodding absently as the house-elf clatters a bowl of porridge down in front of him. Harry has already shown Kreacher what he looks like with the ebony house in the forefront of his mind, and Kreacher knows what will happen to him if he tries to poison Harry or even just spit in his food.

“You are nothing like I expected,” Lupin whispers finally.

“Is that your excuse for not talking to me?” Harry cocks his head when he sees Lupin wince. “I don’t actually blame you that much for that. After all, I didn’t know at the time about the connection between you and my parents. But I want to know why you didn’t speak about it.”

Lupin takes a deep breath and looks up. “Albus told me to be wary of you.”

“A werewolf, and someone who was a professor, should be scared of a thirteen-year-old.” Harry lets his skepticism show as he eats some more porridge, eyes locked on Lupin, who is looking increasingly uncomfortable.

“Not—physically. But Albus knew how much I longed for a connection with you. I couldn’t do it when you were a younger child, because I might have lost control and—infected you. But I thought I would have a chance when I was teaching you. He was the one who told me how close you were with a Death Eater’s son, and that I couldn’t chance opening my heart to you when it might mean that you betrayed us later.”

Harry rolls his eyes, and lets Lupin see it. “If you really thought I was walking the wrong path, then why didn’t you try to turn me onto a better one?”

Lupin’s throat bobs as he swallows. “I have no excuse.”

“But I want to know why you didn’t.”

“I thought I would make it worse,” Lupin whispers. “I thought I would make everything worse. I would say the wrong thing, and you would cling to the Death Eaters more tightly than ever. I would get upset with you, and you would have no idea why, and I wouldn’t be able to explain myself adequately. I would lose control and infect you.”

Harry shakes his head a little. Lupin can say all those things, and to some extent they’re true, but Harry understands something more profound about Lupin, something the werewolf would probably have difficulty admitting to himself.

Lupin is a coward. He fears to act because he fears making things worse, and those hypothetical possibilities overwhelm any morality or ethics urging him to simply go and do. Lupin must be one of those Gryffindors who got put into his House because he valued and admired bravery rather than because he has it himself, much like Draco Malfoy is a Slytherin who got Sorted for admiring cunning rather than having any.

“Thank you for explaining,” Harry says politely. At the very least, this will make Lupin incredibly easy to manipulate.

“And do you forgive me?”

Lupin appears to be holding his breath, Harry notes in amusement. “If you never do anything like that again,” he says, and shoots Lupin a blinding grin before he starts talking about Quidditch.

Lupin nods and beams along and makes little observations about how brilliant Harry is, which Harry takes as the compliments they’re worth.

It will be so easy to get Lupin under his sway. But he does have to speak with Sirius first.

*

“I want you to give up staying with the Notts.”

“No. Next demand.”

Sirius blinks at him. They’re sitting in his room near the top of the house, and Harry has a hard time controlling his sneers for the Muggle posters. It’s one thing for people who live Muggle to have them, but why would someone who grew up in a world of speaking portraits and moving photographs want them?

“I have this house, and you’ve seen that I want you to stay with me,” Sirius says, sounding as if he’s forcing the words through a thickened throat. “Why would you want to continue to stay with them?”

Harry smiles a little at him. “Theo is my best friend. His father has been nothing but kind to me.” And supportive of my ambitions, and my desires. “I don’t know much about you yet, except that you want to get to know me now and you’re more loyal to Dumbledore than to me.”

Sirius winces. Of course. Harry made his tone as gentle and understanding as possible. That’s going to sting more than if he got upset. “I promise that I’m loyal to you first!” Sirius says quickly, stretching out his hands as if to warm them before a fire. “I want to protect you and guard you and—and tell you all my secrets.”

“You can’t even do that, though, Sirius. You’re compromised because Dumbledore is the Secret Keeper for the house.”

“That doesn’t compromise me!”

“It means that I wouldn’t be able to invite my friends here, if he didn’t approve of them.” Harry sighs a little. “I would have understood if you were keeping everyone under the age of seventeen out, but there’s Granger and Ron.”

Sirius swallows sort of the way Remus did at breakfast this morning. Then he said, “I’ll tell Albus that I want to be the Secret Keeper.”

“Would he agree to that?”

“He damn well better agree,” Sirius says, a growl coming into his voice. “It’s my house. And if this is something I can do to make up for running away and leaving you to your relatives’ tender care, then I will.”

Harry, of course, didn’t ask outright that Sirius do this to make it up to him. That will help a lot, both because Dumbledore might use Legilimency on Sirius and he’ll see that Harry just spoke to him, and because Sirius is more likely to fight strongly for it if it’s his own idea.

“Will you—really?” Harry lets dawning hope creep over his face.

“Yes, I will. I promise I will!”

Harry smiles at him and shakes hands with his godfather, even enduring another hug. He doesn’t make any promises about coming to live with him, but he says that he enjoyed meeting Sirius properly and that he’d like to spend time with him.

Another person so easily manipulated. But Harry doesn’t intend to hurt Sirius. Just make sure he’s useful.

*

“Welcome home.”

The depth of quiet in Justinian’s voice warms Harry to the bone, far more than the mug of mulled cider that Theo comes to press into his hands. He smiles and nods to his friend, then to Justinian, and sips from the mug.

“I’ve heard that Grimmauld Place has some of the oldest books in the magical world,” Theo says, sounding wistful. “Did you get to see any of them?”

Harry laughs. “No, everyone was intent on feeding me, talking to me, or pledging their loyalty to me.”

“Really.”

Harry winks at Justinian. He knew that would catch his interest. But for now, he does have something for Theo. He takes a book on casting the Patronus Charm out of his robe pocket. Apparently Remus Lupin actually got it published abroad, but couldn’t find a British publisher for it since he’s a known werewolf. “Lupin gave me this.”

“What is it?” Theo snatches the book from his hands so fast that Harry’s fingers sting.

“The theory behind the Patronus Charm—”

“Goodbye,” Theo says, and runs out of the entrance hall towards his room. Harry snorts. That’s it. Neither he nor Justinian will see Theo for at least two hours. Well, maybe an hour and a half. Lupin’s book isn’t that long.

“What did you have to promise them?”

Harry looks up at Justinian and smiles, because there isn’t a smile in Justinian’s eyes, and Harry feels the need to reassure him. “Nothing, because I played on their guilt over abandoning their poor defenseless godson and best friends’ son.” Harry widens his eyes and lets disappointment creep over his face. “It was just so hard, you know, growing up with Muggles and believing that they’d left me behind.”

“And you’re sure that they will stay bought?”

“Sirius is going to make himself the Secret Keeper of the Fidelius Charm, after I told him how sad it made me that I wouldn’t be able to invite my friends over with Dumbledore controlling it. I’ll shower praise on him, and he’ll lap it up.”

“Good.” Justinian half-smiles. “Theo told me about what the Dark Lord is doing to him through his dreams.”

That half-smile is one that Harry loves to see, because it always promises such glorious violence. “Did I also tell you what I’m going to do to him?”

“Destroy him. Theo said. I have woven walls around Theo’s mind that should keep the dreams away and set about stripping the curse from him.”

“Set about?”

“It’s a very specific curse that can only be removed at a very specific time. We must wait until the next new moon.”

Almost a month away, Harry thinks, and winces before he nods. “That’s all right. I’m going to make sure Voldemort is too preoccupied with something new to continue trying to get to Theo.”

Or to you, he adds silently, but Justinian would be offended if Harry said that. His extremely careful elimination of threats means that Voldemort has no reason to suspect Justinian isn’t loyal at this point. He probably thinks that Theo is rebelling against his father by being friends with Harry, and that Justinian is plotting how to use Harry.

“What are you going to do to him?” Justinian’s voice is as bright with interest as a crackling fire.

Harry smiles.

*

Harry closes his eyes and floats in the middle of a crystalline space that doesn’t exist, there and not there. It’s the space between his dreaming mind and Voldemort’s. Reaching out this way isn’t easy when he’s awake.

But Voldemort is asleep, and so a bridge can be built.

Harry is, admittedly, shamelessly leaning on Justinian’s magic. This kind of magic needs someone to anchor the caster’s body, so that they don’t just drift off into the space between minds and never return again.

Harry breathes out slowly and extends his mind. He feels the edges of Voldemort’s magic beating around him like a hungry ocean. It orients on him, but seems confused. The link between Harry and Voldemort, whatever it actually is, means that Harry feels just enough like Voldemort himself to puzzle it.

Harry slips further along, and further, and then he is in Voldemort’s mind.

Legilimency without eye contact, across a distance. This is different from whatever dreams he’s been getting from Voldemort, which Harry is sure aren’t consciously projected to him. He wishes that he could explore the magical theory with Theo, but right now, Theo is perhaps vulnerable to having the information scooped out of his mind until the curse on him can be defused.

(Besides, all Theo will want to talk about for the next three days is the theory of the Patronus Charm and why he’s pretty sure Lupin is wrong).

Harry slips further on, until he’s sure that he’s in the middle of Voldemort’s dreaming mind. Bizarre shapes dash and cascade around him, and voices that sound like great, murderous birds shriek in the distance.

Harry waits until he’s pretty sure he’s as deep as he can go. A gentle tug on the “rope” tying him to his body tells him it wouldn’t be a good idea to go further.

Then Harry breathes out, pushing with all the power of his Occlumency.

An ebony house appears in Voldemort’s mind.

Harry flows back along the “rope,” and opens his eyes to bone-deep exhaustion and Justinian’s arm curled around his shoulder. Justinian’s magic flows back into his body with a snap. Harry sighs and wishes he had the strength to protest.

Or that he’d listen.

“You managed to do it?” Justinian whispers. His fingers lightly stroke Harry’s shoulder, and his tone conveys firm, absolute confidence.

Harry nods, drowsy. Maintaining the house in Voldemort’s mind will take some effort and be a drain on his magic. But it doesn’t matter that much, not next to what he expects to gain from it.

Voldemort won’t notice the house, not when it isn’t supposed to be possible to create one in another Legilimens’s mind in the first place, and not when his mind is the chaotic world Harry glimpsed. Harry, though? He can step into the ebony house any time he wants, and gather information about Voldemort’s plans.

“I managed,” he says around a yawn. “Totally worth it.”

“Yes, you are.”

Harry closes his eyes, too tired to object as Justinian eases him down into the bed and tucks the covers around him. For a moment, Justinian’s hand lingers on his forehead, over the scar, and then withdraws.

Harry falls asleep to happy dreams of the future.