lomonaaeren

“You will not play on the Slytherin team next year.”

“Yes, Stepmother Euphemia.”

“You will cease speaking Parseltongue aloud.”

“Yes, Stepmother Euphemia.”

“And you will not carry that snake around again! If I see you with that dreadful thing again…”

“Yes, Stepmother Euphemia,” Harry recited dutifully. He was doubly glad that he had sent Asilos off with Regulus for the summer, even though she hadn’t wanted to go, because it meant Stepmother Euphemia wouldn’t be able to find her no matter how many times she searched Harry’s room.

Stepmother Euphemia sniffed and swept out of the room. Harry promptly jumped up. Regulus was the one who had given him a lot of advice that had turned out to be practically prophetic, like telling him he would need to send Asilos away for the hols and telling him to just agree to everything his stepmother or James or Fleamont said, even though he didn’t intend to keep any of those promises.

Regulus was also the one who had given Harry the Galleons and the name of the right person in the Ministry to bribe into setting up a Floo connection through Harry’s fireplace. They could do it from an office in the Ministry and not alert anyone in the house, which Harry thought was the best thing he had ever heard in his life.

He tossed the Floo powder he’d owl-ordered before the end of term into the flames, and smiled as they turned green.

“Number Twelve Grimmauld Place!”

*

“Hmmm.”

Regulus stiffened his shoulders and was glad to see, from the corner of his eye, that Harry was mimicking his posture as Walburga Black prowled delicately around them.

This was the test, Regulus knew, the most important one. Father would probably not notice that Harry was coming or going during the summer; he had his wagering and his drinking and his Dark Arts to preoccupy him. But Mother certainly would, and foe the plot that Regulus and Harry had come up with to work, Mother had to approve of Harry.

Mother finally halted in front of Regulus and looked him directly in the eye. Regulus looked back at her as quietly as he could, hoping that the pulse in his throat wasn’t beating too obviously. That had been one of the things Mother had often scolded him for, in the past.

Mother smiled at him.

Regulus relaxed, because it was that or gape like a fool. And gaping was the quickest way to get approval withdrawn again.

“He is quite the aspirant to a greater place in our society, Regulus,” Mother said with a small nod. “Despite his unfortunate blood.” She cast Harry a sharp glance. So did Regulus, but he was glad to see that Harry was just standing stiff and straight and didn’t even seem to have heard the insult, like Regulus had told him to do. “I approve. You may visit, Mr. Potter. Just make sure that you stay out of Sirius’s sight, as he will report the matter to your parents.”

“Yes, Mrs. Black!” Harry looked ecstatic, which was an odd contrast to the way that he kept his face as straight as possible. “Thank you, Mrs. Black!”

“Less emotion, child.”

“Of course, Mrs. Black. Thank you.”

Mother eyed Harry one more time and then nodded. She smiled at Regulus and said, “Mr. Potter, you may take the back stairs to Regulus’s room. I have something I need to speak with my son about.”

“Yes, Mrs. Black.”

Harry left the room, and Regulus was left alone to meet his mother’s eyes, suddenly a great deal cooler. Regulus didn’t know for sure what this was about, but he thought he could guess. He and Mother had of course exchanged letters during his first year, but they hadn’t had a chance to discuss everything in those letters since he came home.

“What do you know of that boy’s blood, Regulus?” Mother asked. “How could he possibly be a Parselmouth?”

“I don’t know for certain, Mother. Harry claims that his mother was a Muggle.”

“But?”

“She could have been a Squib. We know, of course, that Squibs are often so rightfully ashamed of what they are that they don’t talk about it in front of their children. Unless the children force them to by manifesting accidental magic.”

“Where is Harry’s mother now?”

“I don’t know, Mother. Harry would close up whenever I tried to get him to talk about her. I had the impression she was dead, and that was another reason that Fleamont Potter was able to get Harry to live with him so easily.”

“You will have to find out,” Mother said, and waved a hand at Regulus, which he knew meant he was free to go. He half-bowed and then went up the back stairs the same way Harry had, to avoid Sirius and James laughing in the front room.

Once it would have been Sirius and me laughing in the front room.

Regulus shook his head and kept climbing. Just because it would have been at one point didn’t mean it would be now, and he should start wishing for what he could have instead of what he couldn’t.

*

“What happened to your mother, Harry?”

Regulus had asked the question several minutes ago, but Harry had let the silence hang and pause, pause and hang, hoping that his best friend would forget about the question. Still, when he looked sideways, Regulus continued to watch him, even though he was lying on his bed with his arms folded under his chin and he could have looked casual to anyone else.

More fool them if they thought that, Harry mused. Regulus was never casual.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry said. He was letting Asilos wind around and in between his fingers, and he was listening to her tell him about the doxies and smaller pests that got into Grimmauld Place and how she would hunt them. He wanted to go on listening to her.

Not talking about this.

“Please, Harry. It could be important. That you’re able to speak Parseltongue and you have no known connection to the Slytherin line…” Regulus took a deep breath. “That might have meant your mother was a Squib who was kicked out of the Slytherin family.”

“You mean she could have known me about magic and never told me? Regulus, that’s awful. I don’t want to ruin the memories I have of her.”

“Isn’t it better to know the truth no matter how horrible it is, Harry?”

True. That was something Regulus had started saying about the middle of last term, when he had told Harry that Sirius was never going to look at him the same way again, and James was never going to think of Harry as the little brother he had once thought of him as. And Harry had nodded and admitted that it was better to know the truth instead of uselessly hoping for James to act like a family member.

But…

“This is different,” Harry whispered.

“Will you tell me about her?” Regulus reached forwards until he could touch Harry’s knee where Harry sat in the window seat beside the bed. “That’s all. And maybe I can figure out for myself if she was a Squib of Slytherin’s family or something else. Without having to ask you.”

Harry stared out the window, and then took a deep breath and asked, “What happens when a Memory Charm is cast on a Squib?”

Regulus took a minute to think about it, which was one of the things Harry enjoyed about being best friends with him. Regulus was serious in a way that it was difficult for Harry to be, and he thought about things instead of just leaping into them. Harry was a Slytherin and not a Gryffindor, as he had proven over and over again by now, but he was more impulsive than Regulus was.

“I don’t know,” Regulus said at last. “I don’t know much about Squibs, really. Why?”

Harry bit his lip against the temptation to say something about how Regulus wouldn’t know if Harry’s mum was really a Squib, then, and just said, “Her name was Patricia Keeley. Or that’s what she said her name was, at least.” He hated the idea of distrusting his mum. If her name was really Patricia Slytherin or something and she had been lying to him all along…

Regulus touched his knee again. Harry took a deep breath and focused on what he knew.

“She had green eyes like mine and blonde hair. I reckon I get my hair from Fleamont.” Harry tried to smile, but it didn’t work very well, and Regulus didn’t laugh. “She was really thin. She got jobs in shops doing whatever she could, because she didn’t have any of the qualifications that she needed for really advanced ones, and she was—sickly. I suppose because she was so thin?” It was hard for Harry to think back and remember what he had thought of his mum’s illness. He had just thought it was the way things were. “She got scared sometimes when I did accidental magic. She never acted like she knew what it was.”

“Some of the families who kick Squibs out threaten them with death if they ever tell anyone where they came from,” Regulus said softly. “It’s considered shameful to have a child without magic if you’re a pureblood. She might not have wanted to lie to you, Harry. But she could have done it if she thought it would keep you safe.”

Harry nodded and sniffled. He supposed he would take Regulus’s view of it. It was better than thinking that his mum had just wanted to keep secrets from Harry. “But she loved me. I know she loved me. She never acted scared when I spoke to snakes,” Harry added suddenly, struck by something. “Do you think maybe she could understand them, too?”

“I don’t know,” Regulus said again. “I’ve never heard of a Squib Parselmouth, but I suppose it’s possible.”

Harry nodded and stared out the window while he stroked Asilos and listened to her tale of a complicated doxy hunt. “She—the day before Fleamont came to take me away, I had a bout of accidental magic where I shattered a bunch of windows. The shop we were in and several of the ones nearby. And then the shards of glass started to gallop back and forth like horses. I was thinking of how I really wanted some toy soldiers and it wasn’t fair that I never got to buy any. I s'pose that’s why they did that.

“The Muggles were terrified. Someone alerted the Aurors. I don’t know who. They came and found me, and one of them put me to sleep. I woke up a few hours later in St. Mungo’s. I asked what happened.

“They Obliviated the Muggles who saw my magic. And they Obliviated my mum, too. If she—if she wasn’t a Muggle, they didn’t know that, and they didn’t care that she was my mother, just that she didn’t know about magic. Her mind broke under the magic and her skin turned blue. She went into a coma. They b-brought her to St. M-Mungo’s even though she was a Muggle because they—they thought it was too strange for a Muggle h-hospital.” Harry took the deepest breath of his life. “I got to see her one more time. Then she died.”

Regulus was staring at him. Harry stared down at his clenched hands. Regulus swallowed a few times, and then he whispered, “That’s not what you said happened to her the first few times we talked. Or that time Snape asked you.”

“I just implied that she was still alive.” Harry gave Regulus a half-smile. “There’s a reason I’m in Slytherin, Regulus. I may not be the most ambitious, but I’m as cunning as the best of them.”

Regulus was quiet for a few minutes. Asilos reached the end of her hunt story and reared her head back, flickering out her tongue at Harry.

“You smell wounded.”

“It’s not a real wound,” Harry said, and smoothed his hand down her scales. “It’s like a wound in the inner part of me.”

Asilos didn’t really understand the concepts of heart or soul, and Parseltongue didn’t have words for them, from what Harry could hear. But she had learned to accept what he meant by “wounds in the inner part of him,” and she immediately coiled up along Harry, hissing comforting nonsense sounds.

“That’s one kind of ambition.”

Harry blinked and pulled his attention away from Asilos. “What is?”

“To want to find out what happened. To keep your secrets close to your heart until you know who you can trust.” Regulus was smiling at him. “I don’t know what happened to your mother, but we can try to find out. And we’ll find out more when we do that research. No knowledge is ever wasted.”

That was another thing that Regulus was always saying, and it made Harry smile at him. “Are you sure that you shouldn’t have been Sorted into Ravenclaw?” he teased.

Regulus smiled wistfully instead of laughing the way Harry had expected. “Maybe then Sirius would still think of me as his brother.”

“He has no right treating you the way he does.” Harry got up from the window seat, making sure to take Asilos with him, and went over to sit with Regulus. “Not only did he probably know that you were going to be a Slytherin just because everyone in your family has been until him, he also knows that the Sorting Hat doesn’t change who you are. You’re still Regulus, and you’re clever and funny and a good friend to have.”

Regulus stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Harry smiled a little to hide his nervousness. He had thought Regulus was used to compliments like that with the load of cousins he had, but apparently not.

“Thanks, Harry,” Regulus whispered at last.

Harry found Regulus’s hand and gripped it tight.

*

Regulus stood with his hands behind his back and sweating under the formal robes. He had been given a very important task: the moment Harry came through the Floo, Regulus was to immediately bring him to Mother’s drawing room through a secret passage that would ensure neither Father nor Sirius saw them.

Harry stepped out of the Floo into Regulus’s bedroom, started to smile, and then stopped. “Why do you look as though you’re going to a funeral?” he asked cautiously, eyeing Regulus’s black robes with silver and gold trim.

Regulus didn’t lecture him about how funeral robes would look substantially different, even though he really wanted to. He grabbed Harry’s sleeve and said, “You have to come with me now,” then hauled him out of the room.

Harry turned to look at where Asilos was in a glass tank on Regulus’s bedside table. “But As—”

“We can’t be late!”

Harry was clearly mystified, but he let Regulus tug him along down a hidden staircase, then a passage hidden behind a tapestry of a griffin hunt, and then back and forth through a maze of twisty corridors. It came to a dead end before a black wooden panel with a silver griffin’s head on it. Regulus took a deep breath, straightened his robes, waved his wand to spell the dust away, and then knocked.

The door opened at once, and Mother reached out and hauled Harry inside. “You will hold still while I Transfigure those rags of yours into proper robes,” she hissed, and began to cast spells.

Regulus saw the way Harry’s eyes flashed, probably because hearing his clothes called rags reminded him of growing up poor with his Muggle mother. But he held his tongue. That was good, because Mother was so nervous that she would verbally flay anyone who interrupted her.

At last Mother stepped back from Harry, looked him over critically, and then nodded. “There,” she said. “You look a proper young wizard and guest of the Blacks now.”

“What is going on, Mrs. Black?”

Mother didn’t scold Harry for his tone, although Regulus winced and held his breath. “We’re about to have a very important guest,” she said, and reached out and laid her hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry gave her a stunned look. Mother shook him slightly. “You will not tell anyone that you saw him, do you understand? He will probably make you swear an oath to that effect. You are to answer him promptly and clearly and not offer him any defiance.”

“All right, Mrs. Black.”

Harry was the sort to defy everyone and everybody at least once—he had even refused their classmates’ offers to bring him home for the summer—but he looked shaken now. Mother nodded firmly, then turned around and faced the main door of her dressing room, her motion flashing back from the half a dozen mirrors embedded in the walls.

Harry turned to stare at Regulus. Regulus started to open his mouth to explain, but just then, the main door clicked open.

Walburga dropped to one knee. Regulus followed. Harry copied him, thank Merlin.

They all bowed their heads as a tall, extremely pale figure paced into the room, his own black robes swirling around him. Regulus shivered a little as the man paused in front of them. He didn’t look up, of course, but he could imagine the strong jaw and the cruel eyes.

“This is the boy?” The man’s voice had an odd blurring noise running along the edges of it.

“It is, my lord.”

Regulus trembled and bowed a little further still. Having the Dark Lord in the same room with them was overwhelming. The man’s magic came with him like a storm surge, and Regulus knew he could drown underneath it.

“Then—”

And the blurring sound extended until it covered all of the Dark Lord’s words, as he spoke in Parseltongue to Harry. Regulus clasped his hands together and hoped, as fiercely as he had ever hoped for Sirius’s friendship back, that this moment hadn’t been a mistake and Harry would pass the test.

*

“Can you understand me, child?”

Harry was about to reply that of course he could, when he realized that the words were in Parseltongue. Harry had never spoken Parseltongue except when Asilos or another snake was right there.

This was important. He concentrated as hard as he could, not daring to look up at the man’s face because Regulus and Mrs. Black weren’t, and said, “Yes, sir.”

The man’s breath caught. Then he strode across the room like a storm coming in, grabbed Harry’s chin, and wrenched his face up. Harry couldn’t help a little cry of pain as his neck got twisted and pulled.

The man didn’t seem to notice the cry, although Harry heard the way that Mrs. Black sucked in her breath and thought she would probably scold him later. The man’s eyes seared into Harry’s, a brilliant red. Harry shook. For some reason, he had thought they would be blue, or green like his.

“Where did you come from?” the man whispered. “How is it that you can speak my family’s sacred language?”

This man must be one of the Slytherin family that Regulus had talked about. Harry swallowed and spoke as carefully and slowly as he could. What had Mrs. Black called him? “My lord.” “I don’t know for certain, my lord. I could do it since I was young. Since I grew up in the Muggle world, I didn’t know until I came to Hogwarts that it was something rare or special.”

The man pulled back and took out a long, pale wand. Harry held still, shivering, as the man pressed the wand squarely to the scar in the center of his forehead.

“Revelio mentem!”

There was a sharp spark of crystal off to the side of Harry’s vision. He could see what seemed to be a cage of light forming around him. He shivered. It was hard not to look away from the man, but he had the feeling that trying to do that would be a very bad idea.

The man examined the cage, or whatever it was. Harry could see dancing shapes out of the corner of his eye that also seemed to be made of light. Again, he didn’t turn away from the man, no matter how much his curiosity burned.

For a few moments, they all held still, although the man gave a few harsh breaths and hisses at whatever the spell was showing him. Then he waved his wand and banished the images, before he turned his eyes back to Harry. “The woman you call Mother in your memories has the look of a Gaunt.”

Harry hesitated, swallowed, but then asked, “My lord, what does that mean?”

“The Gaunts are my mother’s family. The last of the Slytherin line.” The man’s wand swirled lazily around Harry’s forehead, and then moved down his face to his throat. “You will tell no one of that name, just as you will tell no one that you met me today.”

“No, my lord. I promise I won’t tell anyone.” Harry had no doubt that this man could kill him if he was displeased. Slytherin—or Gaunt, or whatever his name really was—was the scariest man Harry had ever met in his life.

“Good boy,” the man hissed, mocking, and pulled back, not letting of Harry’s gaze until he glanced over at Mrs. Black. “Walburga, you will be Bonder.”

Regulus made a choking noise as if he were going to be sick, but Mrs. Black was hurrying over and the man was kneeling down to reach out a hard, cold hand to Harry’s, and Harry didn’t dare look over at his friend.

He knew this was important, though. Maybe as important as being Sorted into Slytherin or becoming friends with Regulus.

Before they began the vow that turned out to be Unbreakable and able to kill Harry if he broke his word, the man hissed at Harry, “You will become my servant, child. You will write to me regularly of what happens to you at Hogwarts. You are in Slytherin, are you not?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You will write to me,” the man reported, the bobbing motion of his head reminding Harry of Asilos when she was in the middle of an especially intense hunting story. “Do not dare to leave anything out when I ask you to answer questions or when you are relating something that has to do with Parseltongue.”

“No, my lord. I promise.” Harry summoned up the courage that he had always thought would see him put in Gryffindor someday, and added, “How should I address the owls to you, sir? Slytherin? Gaunt?”

Those red eyes flashed, and Harry felt as if he stood next to an exploding star that hadn’t killed him only because it had forgotten to. “Owls in the name of the Dark Lord will always find me.”

Harry bowed his head, shivering. Now he knew who this was. The older Slytherins spoke of the Dark Lord in whispers and always stopped when they noticed the younger students listening, but Harry had still picked up enough to know that the Dark Lord was beyond powerful and was the enemy of Dumbledore and a lot of the other wizards and witches in the world, like the Potters.

This was important.

Maybe his mother had been important, too. Maybe the Dark Lord could help Harry find out what happened to her.

In the burning wonder of that hope, Harry swore the Vow the Dark Lord made him take.

*

“Harry.”

Regulus hadn’t dared say a word while the Dark Lord was in the room, although he’d come close to it when the man had made Harry swear an Unbreakable Vow. He knew well how dangerous those were, and Mother had never punished Sirius harder than when she caught him joking about making Regulus swear one.

But now the Dark Lord was gone, swept out of the room, and the Vow was made, and they were back in Regulus’s bedroom. Officially, they had to wait until the Transfiguration on Harry’s robes wore off. Unofficially, Regulus knew that Mother was giving them some time to think through things and stop shivering.

Harry looked up from where he was staring at the silver around the cuffs of his sleeves. “Yes, Regulus?”

“How can you—you seem so calm.”

Harry laughed in a little croaking way. “I didn’t know who I was meeting before I did, Regulus. And then when I did, I just had to go along to survive.”

“But you swore to—serve him.” That had been the second part of the Vow, after the part not to tell anyone the name the Dark Lord had revealed to Harry in Parseltongue and before the part where Harry had sworn to speak with no one except Regulus or Mother about meeting the Dark Lord today.

“Yeah?”

“You—it’s a big decision, Harry.”

Harry turned, earnestly, to face Regulus. Regulus had never seen him look like this, his eyes shining, blazing, except the day when he had decided to stop hiding his Parseltongue and carry Asilos around.

“I know. But, Regulus, he wants me. He thinks I’m valuable. You’re the only one who’s ever done that before.”

Regulus sat back on the bed. Yes, he could see how that would get Harry. He had been a poor Muggle child, and then the Potters’ unwanted half-blood child, and then someone that people in Slytherin respected but were wary of because he could speak Parseltongue and no one knew why.

Now, Harry had a reason, and he had a place. Regulus slowly nodded.

“Then I suppose I’ll have to serve him with you.”

Harry blinked and gasped, and then gave Regulus a strange look. “But you don’t have to. It’s a big decision. Don’t make it suddenly. I had to make it, because I’m a Parselmouth, but you don’t have to.”

Regulus raised his chin proudly. By the end of their first year, he had had some friends in Hogwarts, because of his last name and not being a stupid prankster like Sirius, but none who had ever valued him like Harry, just because he was Regulus, instead of Black.

“I want to practice Dark Arts anyway,” he said. “I always thought I would probably end up serving the Dark Lord sooner or later. And I’m going to make sure that you aren’t alone, Harry. We’re friends. I want to be with you.”

Harry came flying off the window seat, and Regulus scrambled backwards on the bed, heart pounding, old reflexes telling him Run, run, danger—

But instead of hitting him or cursing him, Harry flung his arms around Regulus and burst into tears.

Regulus held him, not crying. Whenever he cried, Mother’s voice whispered in his head about how unworthy he was of his name.

But he held him, and he swore he would always be there for Harry, the way Harry would always be there for him.