lomonaaeren

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Part Seven

“Sirius Black is your godfather.”

Harry frowned as he studied the picture of the madman on the front of the Daily Prophet. The Notts got it, although Theo seemed to use it to make fun of the articles and headlines more than anything else. “And he betrayed my parents?”

“Yes. Friendships often burn in the fires of war.”

Mr. Nott was looking at Theo as he said that. Theo raised his eyebrows. “You can look at me all you want, Father, but that isn’t going to happen to Harry and me.”

“No one can predict the future, Theodore.”

“Then why do Divination and Arithmancy exist?”

Theo and his father started bickering, and Harry smiled absently as he continued to look at the picture of Black. It wasn’t the way Harry would have related to his parents if they were alive, he was certain. Theo and his father, though, seemed to enjoy having arguments about academic subjects constantly.

And if his parents had been alive, Harry wouldn’t have been sitting at the table in Nott Manor and listening to the Notts’ bickering.

I like the person I am now.

“And you think that Black might come after me?” Harry asked, as soon as there was a pause in the argument, caused by Theo drawing runes furiously on a piece of parchment Heidi had brought him.

“Yes, it seems that the Ministry is certain. Not that the Ministry’s consensus is always a good thing, but in this case, there would be no reason for him not to do so.”

Harry nodded. He had met Minister Fudge this summer, a bumbling fool if there ever was one. Harry would just have to put up with the man as leader of the magical world the way everyone else did.

“Then we need to focus more on Defensive spells this summer,” Theo said.

“I was just about to suggest the same, Theodore.”

Harry felt left out for a moment as Theo and his dad locked eyes across the table, but he took a deep breath and reminded himself again of Mr. Nott’s welcoming words. They would stand beside him.

And Harry having no parents was only a fact of life. It didn’t matter at all.

*

“Now this incantation. Gelo!”

Theo ducked beneath the spell. The flutter and flare of ice particles said well enough what it was meant to do. Harry dodged the other way, and Father nodded as the remnants of the spell settled to the floor.

“Well enough for a beginning. Now, Harry. There is another incantation that will accomplish this same effect, and with a little more power, Congelo corporem. Tell me why you would want to use the Gelo incantation most of the time instead.”

Harry frowned and cocked his head. Theo felt a little smug that he and Father were the only ones who usually got to see Harry in the middle of his intense thinking phases. Everyone else with sense would fear him if they could.

“Because most of the time, in battle, you’ll want to speak the shorter incantation,’ Harry said at last. “Or think it, I reckon, once you’ve got used to casting wordless spells.”

“Very good.” Father’s smile was like the dawning of winter. He turned to Theo. “Explain circumstances when you might want to use the longer incantation, Theo, even in the middle of a fight.”

“If you’re good at wordless spells, and if you know that the enemy coming at you is powerful and might be able to escape the weaker charm.”

“Correct, both of you.” Father clapped his hands. “Come. I want you to practice both, and get as good as you can at casting the Ice Heart Spell—Congelo corporem—fluidly and quickly. Stand across from each other.”

Harry’s eyes glowed as he stood across from Theo. Theo half-smiled back at him. At the moment, he was better at these duels, just because he had had more training, but Harry had a dedication and fervency that meant he would catch up soon.

That was fine. Theo would work to get better, too, and together they would push each other to heights that neither would ever achieve alone.

Theo had never thought he would care that much about academic excellence when he was preparing for Hogwarts. Of course he had always planned to do well, but Slytherin was also a House of survival, and Theo had expected to learn all sorts of spells he would never use in class just to protect his bed and belongings and back.

I’m glad that I’m in Ravenclaw.

*

“The wards picked up something interesting last night.”

Harry blinked and glanced up from his bowl of porridge, admittedly a little bleary-eyed. He had stayed up late last night reading a book on the use of Runes in Defense, and his head was still buzzing with potential applications and lack of sleep. “What, sir?”

Mr. Nott took a long, deliberate drink from his teacup before he put it down. “I told you to call me Eustace. Harry.”

Harry regarded him. He knew that Mr. Nott was trying to create intimacy between them, and from the uneasy way Theo shifted next to him, he thought Harry might take that wrong.

But Mr. Nott acted openly for his own self-interest and Theo’s, and all Harry had to do was make sure that he never forgot it—and that his own self-interest was now tied to the Notts’. He nodded. “All right, Eustace. What was it?”

“A large black dog. The ward impressions were confused. They recoded it as a Grim, then not a Grim. And it didn’t leave with the onset of sunlight, as I would have expected a Grim to do. It’s curled up on the edge of the grounds still. Sleeping.”

Harry blinked and sat up. That was unusual. He had begun to read about magical creatures on his own since he wasn’t going to take the class, and Grims were both rare and had an unmistakable magical impression that would wear on wards as strong as the Notts’. “As if it were a regular dog?”

“Yes. Or an Animagus.”

Theo was the one who blurted, his mind making one of those leaps Harry envied, “You think that the Animagus might be Sirius Black?”

“It would explain how he escaped from Azkaban when no one has managed that before. Animals are of no interest to Dementors, while they would note the passing of a wizard or a magical creature like a Grim. And an Animagus form reflects the inner core of one’s being in numerous ways. It would make sense for someone named after the Dog Star to have a dog as a form.”

Harry sighed a little. “Then why do you think that he’s just waiting instead of trying to attack the wards?”

“We don’t know that he’s insane, Harry. That’s just the Prophet’s speculation.”

Harry nodded. “Although it doesn’t explain why he betrayed my parents if he isn’t mad. I think it would take a certain kind of madness to plot betrayal for years on end.”

“Or a certain kind of Slytherin mindset, but Black was not a Slytherin, unlike the rest of his family, and hardly old enough to have developed his own cunning.” Eustace blotted at his mouth with a napkin and then put it down. “I shall be interested to see what our Animagus has to say for himself. Interested indeed.”

*

“We know it’s you, Black.”

Theo watched Harry’s face as they stood in front of the dangling net of wards that held the black dog. It was set like stone, and his voice flat and calm. Theo didn’t think he could have been that calm about the betrayal of his parents.

Or else Harry was in a rage so great that it just came out like this. Theo decided that made more sense.

The dog went from thrashing and snarling to a complete stillness that mirrored the way Harry was standing. For a long moment, it sat there with its eyes fixed on Harry. And then it uttered a long, shuddering sigh, and changed.

Theo had never seen an Animagus transform before. It was a whirl of magic and over a lot more quickly than he had heard a werewolf’s transformation would be. And there was the mad, lank-haired wizard from the newspaper photograph, although older.

“Harry,” he whispered.

He didn’t sound mad, Theo had to admit. Then again, he had only ever heard cackles and so on in his nightmares, not in real life.

“Why did you betray them?” Harry folded his arms. “That’s what I want to know. You were their best friend, they trusted you enough to make you my godfather—why did you betray them?”

“I didn’t! It was our friend, Peter Pettigrew, a rat Animagus.” Black’s eyes shone like the stars he was named after, and his hand, without dog nails now, tore at the wards. “Him! Him! He’s still alive, and I’m going to hunt him down!”

Theo stared at Black, and then at his father, who looked much older suddenly. Father gestured with one hand, and the wards bore in and twisted around Black, who yelped and fell silent.

“Where is your proof of this?”

“We switched Secret-Keepers!” Black gasped, his hands tearing at the strands of the wards as if he couldn’t help himself, more than as if he really thought he would break free. “I was practically James’s brother, I would be too obvious, but Peter was a coward and no one would think to look at him. Then he betrayed the secret, and he ran, and I confronted him, and he accused me and cut off his finger and blew up the street and turned into a rat to escape into the tunnels—”

A desolate howl rose from Black’s throat, basically the sound of a Grim for all that he was human at the moment. Harry swallowed and then swallowed again. He looked shaken. When he reached out a hand, Theo held it tight.

“Why did you only break out of Azkaban now?” Father asked.

“I saw a picture of Peter in the paper.” Flecks of white foam decorated the sides of Black’s jaws. “I was going to make him pay, and I had to keep Harry safe—Peter’s at Hogwarts—Harry, Harry—”

Before Theo could decide what he should do or whether Harry should ask a question next, Father flicked his wand and neatly Stunned Black. Black slumped in the twists of the wards, his mouth wide open and eyes staring. Theo shuddered. He hadn’t realized how loud Black’s voice was or how much quieter it would be without him speaking.

“Do you think,” Harry said, and then cut himself off with a long slow breath and a blink. Theo squeezed his hand. Harry found the strength to go on a minute later. “Do you think what he said is true?”

“I don’t know for certain.” Father’s voice was low, and Theo saw him stroking his left arm, a gesture he hadn’t done in a long time. “I don’t remember a Peter Pettigrew reporting to the Dark Lord, or a rat Animagus among our ranks.”

He turned around, and Theo stood taller. Harry echoed him a moment later. It would have been difficult not to. Father’s eyes blazed like torches.

“But I am going to find out.”

*

Harry hesitated before he stepped through the dungeon door and let it fall shut behind him. He had never been told specifically that he shouldn’t come down to the Nott dungeons, but he had the feeling he shouldn’t be here. Mr. Nott was still brewing the Veritaserum that they needed to interrogate Black.

Harry, though, just wanted the chance to talk to the man who should have been his godfather. And slipping down here in the middle of the night, when even the elves would probably be asleep, might be his only chance.

He padded down the stairs, torches on the walls flaring to life as he passed them, and paused at the bottom of the steps. Corridors of cells ran away from him like spokes in a wheel. He didn’t know which way to go.

But then a voice groaned from down one of the corridors, “Harry? Is that you?”

Harry swallowed, told himself sternly that Black had probably only known that because even in human form he would have an enhanced sense of smell, and marched towards the voice. “Yes,” he said, as he drifted to a stop in front of the cell.

Black lay on a small bed in the center of the cell, surrounded by a bubble of wards. The wards surrounded a loo and a soft rug and a chair, plus a tiny table where Harry reckoned the house-elves would probably put his meals. Mr. Nott wasn’t torturing him.

But.

“How can you stand being in that small cell?” Harry blurted out.

Black laughed, a little less madly than he had when he was caught in Mr. Nott’s ward net. “It’s an improvement over Azkaban. No Dementors.”

Harry nodded, and then stood there fidgeting from one foot to another. Black just lay still and watched him.

“Why did you go hunting Pettigrew instead of taking me and going somewhere safe?” Harry whispered. He and Theo had talked about this before Theo went to bed. Theo had destroyed all Harry’s fantasies of a godfather who cared about him with brutally honest logic, pointing out that Black could have just told somebody from the Ministry or Hogwarts about Pettigrew, and stayed with Harry.

Harry knew that. But he wanted to come and find out Black’s side of the story anyway.

“I couldn’t stand the thought of the rat getting away with it. And Hagrid had you. I knew Hagrid would never harm any living thing.”

Harry relaxed a little. It didn’t sound as though Black had just done it because he had cared more about killing Pettigrew than taking care of Harry. He couldn’t have anticipated the way everything had worked out. “You—don’t know where he took me?”

“No, the papers haven’t said anything about that,” Black said in a curious tone. “I wouldn’t have known you were with the Notts if I hadn’t made my way to Hogwarts already and heard Dumbledore discussing it with Hagrid. Why are you here? Where did you stay?”

“I grew up with my mum’s relatives, and they were terrible. Theo and his dad are a lot better.”

“Do you know that his father is—”

“Yeah, a Death Eater, I know. I heard about it the second week of my first term.”

“And—you’re here anyway?”

“He swore welcoming words not to hurt me, and to protect me,” Harry said simply. “And I meant it when I said my mum’s relatives were terrible.”

“You’re not a blood purist, are you?”

Harry snorted, and then bent over and laughed. Black had just sounded so wary of him! He laughed and laughed into his arms, while Black watched him with increasing bafflement.

“Sorry,” Harry gasped, just before he thought Black might have started asking him if he were all right. He straightened and wiped the helpless tears from his eyes. “No, of course not. I think blood purity is stupid. One of my best friends at Hogwarts is a Muggleborn girl.”

“But…”

“But my Muggle relatives made me sleep in a cupboard, and do chores, and let my cousin beat me up, and called me ‘freak.’” Harry shrugged. “It’s not your fault you went to Azkaban, but you weren’t there. And they were. And now Theo and his dad are.”

Black looked as though Harry had cut open his stomach. “They abused you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why—I—” Black stared at his hands. Then he whispered, “Who made the choice to take you to your Muggle relatives?”

“Dumbledore. And Hagrid would have done what Dumbledore told him to do.”

Black nodded slowly. “Yes, Hagrid was always very loyal to him.” He stared at the wall for a minute, and then turned and faced Harry again. “Someone said something about how you were in Ravenclaw instead of Gryffindor. Is that true?”

“Someone?”

“My memory is foggy because of the Dementors.” Black grimaced and pushed his fingers through his thick hair. “I don’t always remember everything that happened to me. Even if it’s recent.”

Harry tucked that information away. It might mean that Black was lying about Pettigrew even if he thought he wasn’t, and that Veritaserum would be useless. “Yeah, I’m in Ravenclaw.”

“Why?”

“Because the Hat offered me Slytherin, and I didn’t want that, and then it said Ravenclaw, and that’s where I am.”

“I can’t think of any Potter for years who Sorted anywhere but Gryffindor.”

Harry shrugged, knowing his shoulders were a little stiff. “It’s not like I knew that. I don’t know anything about my father’s family, except a little about what he looked like, because people have told me I look like him.”

“You didn’t grow up with pictures…” Black trailed off and then shook his head like a dog. Harry was sort of surprised that no one had apparently figured out he was an Animagus before he went to prison. “You didn’t. Of course you didn’t. Petunia is a horrible bitch.”

Surprise made Harry laugh, and Black grinned at him. “Agreed,” Harry said. “And no. I didn’t know I was a wizard until I was eleven. Petunia just told me that both Mum and Dad were drunks who’d died in a car crash.”

“You thought you were a Muggle?”

“Yeah.” Harry shrugged again. “I knew strange things happened around me sometimes, but I didn’t have any reason to think it was me specifically. For all I knew, I was a freak exactly the way the Dursleys said I was.”

Black snarled. The sound bubbled through the cell bars, and Harry flinched. Black immediately lay back down on the bed and tried to look harmless. Harry eyed him and decided that Black was a bad liar.

“And so you just came into the magical world?”

“Yeah. Hagrid had to come get me because my relatives kept tearing my letters up and wouldn’t let me look at them. And then he took me to Diagon Alley, and he told me about how my parents really died and that I had this ridiculous fame because I’d supposedly killed the Dark Lord as a toddler.”

“You call him the Dark Lord!”

“You make factual statements.”

Black deflated a little, but he said, “That was what the Death Eaters called him. And the others, the blood purists who had some kind of sympathy for his cause even if they liked to pretend they didn’t.”

“That’s what Theo calls him,” Harry said. “I’m not going around calling him by his name because it would make Theo and Eustace flinch and be—”

“You call him Eustace!”

“Lots of factual statements.”

Black didn’t look beaten down this time, though. He jumped off the bed and paced back and forth in the bubble around the bed, rubbing his hands furiously through his hair. “I should have broken out sooner,” he whispered. “I have to find someone to believe me as soon as I can, so I can protect you from the Notts.”

“I’m not the Harry you knew.”

“What?”

Harry waited until Black stopped pacing and turned to look at him, because he had to be sure about this. He leaned forwards, as close as he could get to the bars without the charms worked on them stinging him. “I’m not the baby you abandoned to go running after Pettigrew,” he said, and the words cut into Black, but that was deliberate. Harry wanted him to think. “I’m my own person, and Theo is my best friend, and Eustace took me in when no one else would or could. Don’t think that I’m going to go along happily with you if you try to separate me from them.”

“They’re evil!”

“Until earlier today, I thought the same thing of you. And I suppose it could still be true. I don’t know if the Veritaserum will pull much truth out of you if you’re that damaged by the Dementors.”

Black recoiled. His eyes were wide and wounded. Harry just looked back at him some more, and waited until he saw Black’s chest heaving and a few tears crowding around the edges of his eyes.

“I’d like to get to know you as my godfather. But I’m not a Gryffindor, and I didn’t grow up the way you think a Potter should have, and I don’t know anything about you other than what you’ve said and what’s been reported in the paper. Just keep that in mind, all right?”

Black didn’t answer. Harry turned around and walked away, back to the stairs and up to his rooms, where he lay down on the bed and fell immediately asleep.

*

“You did it?”

Theo had been as tense as a unicorn around hunters since Harry had left earlier that day to visit the Weasleys, but it wouldn’t have made sense for him to go with. Harry gave him a small smile now and took a warded metal cage out of his robe pocket.

In it was a rat, asleep.

Theo felt his lips lift in what wasn’t a snarl, but was pretty close. It was also an expression that Father had once told him no one outside the family should see.

Well, Harry’s as close to family as someone can come when Father won’t marry again and all his cousins are dead.

“How did you get it away from him?”

“Just went up to Ron’s room and replaced Scabbers with an illusion spell the way we did with Hagrid’s egg that time.”

Theo snorted. “Good one.”

“Isn’t it? I’m glad that I kept up with studying that spell and improving on it, even though at the time I didn’t think we’d ever have to use it again.”

“Father always says that no knowledge is ever wasted.”

“I suppose not.”

Theo went back to staring at the rat in the cage. Harry stared with him. Theo knew that Father had agreed with Harry about the chance that Veritaserum wouldn’t work on Black’s damaged brain, which meant grabbing the rat and testing the Animagus reversal spell on him the best option to prove that Black was telling the truth.

If he was.

“What do you think?” Harry asked suddenly, his eyes still locked on the cage. “Is it him or isn’t it? Black could still be mad, and maybe Pettigrew is long dead and he just latched onto the picture of a rat that happened to look like his old friend’s Animagus form. He could do that if he was mad enough.”

“I think it’s him,” Theo whispered. “But we won’t know until you bring the cage to Father and let him perform the spell.”

“Then let’s do it.’

*

Harry stared down at the ward bubble that contained the whimpering and shivering Pettigrew and thought he had never known what the word hatred really meant until now, when it poured like blazing oil over his insides.

*

“You’re really letting me out of the cell?”

“Yes,” Theo said, and stepped carefully off to the side as the charms on the bars, reacting to the presence of a Nott, flared and settled. “But only if you wear this.” He held up the thick leather collar his father had designed for Black, which had a silver tag at the front of it. Father had thought it amusing to inscribe If found, return to Harry Potter on it.

“Like I’m a dog?”

“Aren’t you? If you spent more time in dog form than human over the past twelve years?”

Black scowled at him. “What does the collar do/”

“Prevent you from transforming into a dog without Father’s permission, and keep you from attacking any of us.” Theo shoved the collar at him as Black stepped slowly out of the ward bubble, which had collapsed into glowing embers when Theo opened the cell door. “And keeps you from casting magic if you get a wand.”

Black came to a stop with his nostrils flaring. “I’m not wearing that.”

“Then you’re not getting out of the cell.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“Safe.”

Black eyed Theo sullenly, but at least he seemed to be smarter than Dumbledore, and didn’t try to bribe Theo. He took the collar from Theo and clasped it around his neck, wincing as it shut. “I reckon you believe me now? Or the Veritaserum is ready?”

“Something like that,” Theo said vaguely. Father had told him sternly not to mention Pettigrew, and Theo agreed. He didn’t know that Black would come along quietly instead of ranting or something like that if he knew.

Black walked out of the cell behind Theo and towards the entrance from the dungeons onto the grounds, around another corner and near a cell large enough to hold two people. Then he said, “I don’t know why Harry trusts you.”

“That’s all right.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you don’t need to know.”

“I am Harry’s godfather. And I’ll be part of his life if Harry believes that I’m innocent.”

Theo paused and glanced over his shoulder at Black. Black glared at Theo with his hands randomly opening and clenching in midair, as if squeezing invisible necks. Yes, it was hard to believe that he was sane.

“And if Harry accepts you and trusts you, that’s his right,” Theo said simply. “But that doesn’t mean that he’ll trust me any less, or not be my friend because of you. Our friendship is separate from you being his godfather.”

Black gaped at him, then blinked and said, “I don’t understand you.”

Theo just smiled and turned around to lead the way out onto the grounds again.

*

Harry had been a little worried at first when Eustace had said that he wanted Black to wear the collar. It seemed to be putting Black in something worse than the cupboard the Dursleys had kept Harry in.

But he saw the wisdom of it when Black stepped out into the open and saw Pettigrew cowering in the floating cage, in human form. The charm that Eustace had performed to turn him back had indeed shown he was an Animagus.

“Peter!”

Black exploded into motion, straight towards the cage. Harry had to step out of the way. His heart twinged a little at the way Black was so focused on Pettigrew that he didn’t even notice Harry was there.

Then he pushed the thought away. He had already known that Black wasn’t very sane and would have to go through some extensive healing before he would be. He couldn’t blame Black for what had happened to him in Azkaban.

Just if he went on being stupid and focused on vengeance instead of taking a place in Harry’s life.

Black leaped into the air as he got near the cage, and obviously tried to transform into a dog. He ended up flopping into the long grass at the base of a flowerbed next to the cage.

Theo coughed, hiding a laugh. Harry grinned back at him, and Theo tilted his head towards Black.

He was worth looking at, Harry had to admit. He’d sat up and was clawing at the ward around the cage, not even paying attention to the way little flickers of lightning scorched his fingers. “Let me go! Let me go!”

“You are not going to kill him. No one will believe that you are innocent of you do,” said Eustace, his hands behind his back, watching Black with a blank face but burning eyes. It reminded Harry of the way he had looked when they gave him Riddle’s diary.

“I don’t care about that!”

Eustace gave a very long sigh before drawing his wand and aiming it at Black. Harry tensed in sudden alarm, but the only thing that happened was the leaping of a lightning-like flicker of Eustace’s own from his wand in Black’s direction. Black crashed to the ground again, this time with his hands clasped around his head.

“What did you do?” Harry asked, striving to keep his voice as neutral as possible. All the while, he remembered that the welcoming words Eustace had spoken for him didn’t include Black.

Of course not. We had no reason to believe that he was innocent at the time. I didn’t even know about him.

Black screamed. Harry shivered, but Theo pressed his hand against Harry’s back, and Harry nodded. Yes, all right. He could be still.

“Father isn’t torturing him,” Theo murmured, divining the source of Harry’s reluctance as always. “He’s forcing him back into sanity for a few moments. It’s painful because Black’s mind is so broken.”

Harry bit his lip and nodded again, although it was hard to watch Black writhe on the ground and howl. Still, when he sat up, although he was pale and shaking, he said, “You’re right. We need Peter for the alibi.”

“Of course we do,” Eustace said. He faced Pettigrew and smiled a little. “And for the truth of what happened the night he went with the Dark Lord to Godric’s Hollow. We still don’t know it. For all the convenience of an instant child hero, I do not believe that it was simply Harry’s innate goodness that reflected the Killing Curse.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “People say that?”

“You really should read some of the books about you sometime,” Theo murmured.

“I have better books to read.”

Theo snickered.

“You want me to cause chaos for you in the Wizengamot,” Black said, staring at Eustace with clear eyes. “Your excuse to make a political power move.”

“And for that reason, you are alive and not dead for threatening my ward. And about to be proven innocent.” Eustace watched Black like an owl. “Still opposed to working with a Death Eater?”

Black swung his head to look at Pettigrew. Pettigrew squeaked and cowered.

Black bared his teeth, probably the closest he could come to being a dog right now. “Not when it’s to take down another one.”

And something in Harry woke up and cheered.