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lomonaaerenTitle: The Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge
Pairings: Gen, other than mentions of minor canon ships
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, humor, rich Harry, magical creatures, angst, present tense, discussion of animal harm
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the war, Harry determines that the only people who have never truly betrayed him or spoken against him are unicorns. However, their numbers are declining in Britain. Harry decides that he will start a movement to rescue them, using all the millions of Galleons that Sirius left him. And if he can rescue other innocent magical creatures while he’s at it? He’ll do that, too!
Author’s Notes: This is part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series of chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have three to five chapters. It’s somewhat of a parody of the genre where Harry is a billionaire and decides to change the world with his money, and everyone wants to steal from him/betray him. If you are looking for seriousness, you are in the wrong place. Just look at the title, for one thing.
The Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge
“You could change the world with your money, Harry.”
“Yeah, I could.”
Hermione frowns at at Harry, who is standing by the window in Gryffindor Tower and scowling across the grounds. He always seems to be scowling lately. Hermione is starting to worry about him. For one thing, even though he came back to Hogwarts specifically to pass his NEWTS, he doesn’t seem to worry about them as much as Hermione thinks he should.
“Then why don’t you?” Hermione puts down her Charms book and slides the correct color-coded bookmark into the page she was browsing. “Free house-elves, for example?”
“House-elves have betrayed me.”
Hermione blinks. “What?”
“Don’t you remember? How Kreacher ran to Bellatrix Lestrange and told her about Sirius and helped cause Sirius’s death?” Harry turns towards Hermione grinding his teeth, a vein in his forehead bulging out so far that Hermione feels like she could touch it from where she’s sitting. “House-elves aren’t perfectly innocent.”
“I—don’t think anyone is?”
Hermione has to admit Harry has caught her by surprise. Is this really the same boy who walked to his death in the Forbidden Forest? The one who shrugged off people talking about him as mental in the papers when they stopped? The one who didn’t even try to kill Umbridge when they got the locket out of the Ministry? Has he changed so much in the few months since they came back to Hogwarts?
That’s worrying. It’s not even Halloween, yet.
“But someone must be.” Harry folds his arms and broods as he turns back to the window. “Can’t you think of anyone who’s perfectly innocent, Hermione? Someone who needs my protection and isn’t getting it?”
“Babies?”
Harry shakes his head so hard that Hermione winces for him. “They could grow up to be people who hate me and think I’m the next Dark Lord.”
“Harry, you know that’s a stupid Skeeter headline that no one’s paying attention to—”
“Explain to me why I heard Seamus and Dean talking about it in the library the other day, then.”
“Weren’t they making fun of it?”
Harry stares at her with angry, tragic eyes. Hermione lays a hand on her wand, wondering if she’ll need to Stun him and get him to the infirmary so Madam Pomfrey can check him over.
“Um.” She forces her mind back to his question. “I suppose thestrals and hippogriffs aren’t, since they’re predators. Giants—no. I don’t know what you would think of unicorns, but—”
“Unicorns.”
Hermione glances at him, wondering if the tone of his voice should make her uneasy. Harry seems to be shivering all over as he stands at the window, and the blinding smile he turns on her makes Hermione again consider reaching for her wand.
“That’s it,” Harry says. “They’re the only ones who have never betrayed me. They’re absolutely innocent. You’re even cursed if you kill one. They’re perfect.”
“Pardon me, Harry, but Ron and I have also never betrayed you—”
“Walking away during the Horcrux hunt, thinking I put my name in the Goblet of Fire, keeping the secret of the Time-Turner—”
“None of that has anything to do with betrayal!”
Harry sniffs at her and turns back to the window. “Unicorns,” he says reverently. “I can’t believe I never thought of them before. Of course. They’re perfect. And they’re endangered in Britain. They must be, if the only herd is here in the Forbidden Forest.”
“You still might want to talk to Hagrid about that before deciding that they’re endangered.”
“Yes. Of course I must.”
Harry strides so quickly out of the common room that he nearly runs down a second-year coming in. Hermione sighs and goes over to make sure that the second-year is all right. Headmistress McGonagall wasted absolutely no time in offering Hermione the Head Girl badge at the start of the year, and Hermione of course accepted. She’ll do her duty, even if it means protecting children from her own best friend.
Ron comes into the common room a few minutes later, shaking his head. “Harry walked past me like he was on a mission, but he just put up his nose like Malfoy when I tried to talk to him. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, really. He was asking me for people who hadn’t betrayed him, and then he seemed to decide unicorns were the only candidates, and—I don’t know. Did he get hit with a Confundus Charm earlier when you were practicing?”
“Us.”
“What? You both got hit with a Confundus Charm?”
“No, Hermione. I’m saying that we never betrayed him.”
“I said that, but then he brought up that we’d kept secrets and—well, you walking away from him during the Horcrux hunt.”
“That was you-know-what’s influence!”
Hermione nods. They don’t talk about Horcruxes by name in the common room, even to just call them “the locket.” “I know. But Harry seems all stirred up about this for some reason, and I didn’t know why. I thought a Confundus Charm would make more sense than his really being all that upset that people think he’s a Dark Lord.”
Ron shakes his head. “Nothing happened this morning that I know about. Maybe someone said something to him, though. Hopefully he’ll just forget about it.”
*
Ron opens up the Daily Prophet and then gives a distressed wheeze as his scrambled eggs sprint towards his windpipe.
Harry Potter to Found Unicorn Sanctuary!
Ron skims the article, which isn’t written by Rita Skeeter but by someone named Alona Flaverly, with growing disbelief. Harry went and talked to Hagrid, and then apparently Apparated to London and demanded to speak with whoever is currently in charge of regulating unicorns and their habitat at the Ministry. And he’s hired some kind of person to help him manage publicity. And there’s an actual line in the article about, “I have billions of Galleons from the Black vaults, why not put them to a good use?”
Ron shakes his head and puts the paper down, then looks along the table. Harry is sitting next to Hermione, who has the paper in front of her and is gesturing with wide sweeps of her hands. They’ve read it, then.
Not that Ron retains much hope she’ll make an impression on Harry. For one thing, Harry is looking politely bored. For another, there’s not much to argue about, is there? It’s Harry’s money, and he can establish a unicorn sanctuary if he wants to.
Ron moves towards them and sits down next to Hermione just in time to hear her say, “—more socially responsible things you could do!”
“But I don’t want to do them.”
Harry’s mouth is tight. It’s the way he looked right before he said “Voldemort” and got them captured by Snatchers. Ron sighs and breaks in. “Harry can do what he wants to do, Hermione. Maybe someday he’ll donate the next batch of money towards what you want him to use it for.” He swallows more eggs in a safer manner.
“But he says that he’ll never use it for house-elves!”
Ron blinks at her, then at Harry. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Why not?”
“Because Kreacher betrayed me.”
Ron thinks about that while he eats some more. Then finally he says, “But you stayed in Grimmauld Place this summer, and Kreacher worked for you. You said.”
“That’s not spending money on him.”
Ron has to concede that. Unlike Dobby, there’s no way that Kreacher would ever accept so much as a Galleon, even if he wanted to be treated differently. “Fine. Then go spend all your money on the unicorn sanctuary, if you want to.”
Harry peers at him suspiciously for a moment, as though thinking that Ron is going to change his mind, and then slaps Ron on his back hard enough for more bits of egg to fly out of Ron’s mouth. “Thanks, mate,” he says, and jumps up to walk towards…the Ravenclaw table?
Ron squints. Oh, he’s meeting with Luna. That makes sense. Probably only Hagrid knows more about magical creatures than Luna.
“Ron!”
“What?” Ron asks, and once again begins helping his eggs make the journey to his mouth.
“You know that Harry could spend all that money on all sorts of things that would be better for the magical world in the long run—”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to. And if you keep pushing him on it, then he’ll just double down and never spend any on house-elves.”
Hermione blinks, then looks back and forth between him and Harry. “Oh. You think that he’ll calm down when he sees that I don’t want to push him that hard?”
Ron nods and opens his mouth to explain further, but a shrieking breaks out from the Slytherin table, where Malfoy has apparently discovered what Harry is spending the Black Galleons on and thinks that he has the right to an opinion. Ron jumps, and his eggs go flying.
He sighs. Maybe he should try eating something else.
*
“This is wonderful, Harry. Are you going to try doing this for Heliopaths next?”
Harry smiles at Luna. She holds out her hands, and the foals in the healing corral crowd around her, flicking their tails and nudging her fingers with the gentlest, softest muzzles. Luna is enthralled. She can admit unicorns are beautiful, even if she’ll always prefer thestrals.
“I don’t know, Luna. Are Heliopaths endangered?”
Luna likes Harry Potter, but sometimes he is a bit stupid. She kneels down next to a pregnant mare and holds out her hand. After a moment, the mare condescends to sniff at her. “Of course they are, Harry. Why do you think that no one ever sees any floating around? The Ministry either kills them or confines them in the Department of Mysteries.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Luna looks over in time to see one of the foals prance up to Harry. He holds out his hand without seeming to know how remarkable it is that he can stroke the feather-soft mane. Usually, unicorns prefer a woman’s touch.
But maybe they can understand when someone wants to help them, and they know they don’t have to panic about a wizard in that context. Sort of like how the monsters under Luna’s bed always understood that they could talk back to her and her mother, but they had to run when Father showed up.
“Are you going to help Heliopaths?”
“I think I need to sponsor research into what they are and what we can do to help them first.”
Luna smiles. “All right. I can help you with that.” She pets the pregnant mare’s head under the horn one more time—unicorns love it when people do that, because they are sad from losing the clear blue stones they used to carry there—and stands up. “What have you done besides the healing corral?”
Potter beams. “We have a warded sanctuary where they can come if hunters pursue them. Come look at it.” And he leads Luna around the side of the gleaming silver fence that bounds the healing corral and into the Forbidden Forest.
Luna smiles as she follows him. It’s so nice that someone is using money for the important things.
*
“No, Mr. Potter.”
“But why not?”
Serenity Shacklebolt sighs. She never thought she would meet the famous Harry Potter except in passing now and then at Ministry functions, given that he seemed destined to become an Auror and she’s only a distant cousin of the interim Minister. But no, Harry Potter decided to start a unicorn sanctuary, and hired Serenity’s Shining Words to give him good publicity.
For the most part, he’s easy to deal with. An eager young man, with plenty of money to sweeten the way when he might otherwise get in trouble. But now Serenity is running into her first challenge.
She leans forwards to put her hand on the scroll that Potter’s laid out on the podium on the other side of her desk. Everything shimmers under an illusion that makes it look as if it’s made of silver. Serenity has found that it calms her customers. “Look carefully at the name of your organization, Mr. Potter.”
“I know what it says.”
Serenity studies him, but he either really doesn’t see the problem or is an extremely good actor. So she says, “You cannot call your organization F.U.C.K.”
“I wouldn’t be calling it that,” Potter says, with an air of patience that makes Serenity regret accepting this job. “I’m calling it Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge.”
“But you’ve put the initials on the scroll in such a way that it spells FUCK.”
“That would only be a problem if you’re a dirty-minded idiot who insists on looking at it that way.”
Serenity raises her eyebrows. “I saw the latest article about how you should have spent your vaults on rebuilding the statue in the Atrium of the Ministry, Mr. Potter. What gives you the impression that you are living in a magical world surrounded by calm and fair-minded geniuses?”
Potter pauses. Then he says, “Well, how could you suggest a better name?”
Serenity gives him a polished smile. This is what she does for a living, what he’s hired her to do, and she doesn’t think he’ll be disappointed. “For one thing, you could adapt the—the name that you have now, to include some of the same elements, while not being exactly the same.” She draws the scroll towards her and makes a few passes over it with her wand, then turns it back. “What do you think of this?”
“The Harry Potter Unicorn Conservation Foundation.”
“Yes, exactly. It retains three of the same letters, simply—in less provocative positions.”
“But I don’t want one that has my name on it.”
Serenity nods. She did suspect that might be a complaint. “Very well. How about this?” She takes the scroll back and changes the name to a few different ones, then holds it back out so that Potter can read over it.
He does so, scowling. Serenity watches him. He’s entirely different than the reports she heard of him either through the papers or through more personal contacts like her cousin Kingsley. The papers painted him as a spoiled child who thinks that he should be able to cheat his way into an international Tournament and who is now due to become the next Dark Lord. Kingsley described a good and brave young man, astonishingly humble.
Spoiled does not apply to the wizard in front of her, but neither does humble.
“We could call it the Sirius Black Foundation for Unicorn Conservation?” Potter’s voice is very soft as he touches her top suggestion.
“We could.”
“But—Sirius can’t endorse it.”
“But you are using his money to fund it. I think the connection would be close enough for many people, Mr. Potter.” Serenity flashes a professional smile. “Besides, I have never heard that any of the Black family wanted to participate in such a thing, and Mr. Black, from what I know of him, was a rebel against his family’s choices and values. So this will be more pointed and more appropriate than otherwise, won’t it?”
Potter begins to smile, and then does smile more broadly, and nods. He looks up, and Serenity jumps. Despite being prepared for it—mostly—it’s a bit of a shock to find herself pinned by eyes that bright.
“Many people have been telling me what I ought to spend my money on,” Potter murmurs. “Even my best friend thinks I ought to use it to better the situation of house-elves. But I need to make sure to find people and beings that have never betrayed me. What do you think about using the foundation to better the lot of Grims as well as unicorns?”
“Grims?” Serenity echoes weakly, not sure that she’s heard him right.
Potter nods earnestly, leaning forwards with his hands linked together around his knees. “My godfather was innocent, not the mass murderer that people thought he was. He had an Animagus form, and it was a huge black dog that most people mistook for a Grim…”
Dazed, Serenity listens to the story that follows, which is frankly incredible. Peter Pettigrew, the deceased war hero, hiding in his rat Animagus form for literally years? Black breaking out of prison when he saw Pettigrew’s picture in the paper? Potter holding off a hundred Dementors with his stag Patronus at the age of thirteen?
When Potter finishes, there’s a ringing silence. Serenity takes a deep breath and touches her braids for a second. She’s not sure whether she wants to be involved in a situation like this, with all the complexities that go along with it.
And then she remembers why she agreed to do this in the first place, back when she thought Potter was hiring her to rehabilitate his image and steer people away from accusations of potential Dark Lordship. He will pay her. He will pay her a lot, and if some of it is as simple as coming up with other names for his foundation, other parts are necessarily going to be more complex.
“So what do you think?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten the original question.”
“Using the foundation for Grims as well as unicorns?”
Serenity stares at him and wants to say something about the ingrained superstitions that come with Grims, and how there isn’t a pack of them just running around in a defined place the way there’s a defined herd of unicorns in the Forbidden Forest, and how unicorns have mostly become endangered because of how slowly they breed, while no one even knows how Grims breed.
But Potter is looking at her with faith that’s frankly touching, probably because so few people have ever heard that impossible story before. So Serenity finds herself answering even though she thinks that it might not be the wisest thing. “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Potter.”
He leaps to his feet and pumps her hand. “I’m so glad that Minister Shacklebolt recommended you. You’re really the best.”
Serenity relaxes and tries to smile, only to freeze as Mr. Potter’s smile freezes and he leans towards her.
“Just remember,” Potter says with intensity that seems like it ought to leave ice crystals on the desk and chairs, “if you ever betray me, then I can use a small portion of the Galleons I inherited to make your life miserable. The Grims and the unicorns won’t miss that much of the money.”
Serenity swallows and nods, and then weakly waves Mr. Potter on his way out the door. Then she sags back against her chair.
The money is worth it. The money has to be worth it.
She hopes that she has no cause to regret it in the future, at least.
*
Hagrid looks up uneasily as the door opens. Of course he knows that Harry wants to help unicorns and Grims, but that doesn’t mean that he’ll want to help the little creature squirming under Hagrid’s arm now.
But how can he not want to? She’s a little one.
“Hagrid, do you know—oh, hello, what’s this?”
At least Harry doesn’t seem to be running away screaming. Then again, he’s a good one, a Gryffindor of Gryffindors, Hagrid often thinks. Even his dad and mum don’t hold a wand to him. “She’s a little baby,” he explains awkwardly, and twists towards the table so that he can set the young dragon down on top of it.
Harry is smiling at her. Hagrid relaxes. He should have remembered that Harry helped with little Norberta, didn’t he? And helped get her away when she was growing too big for Hagrid’s house, the wee thing.
This time, he shouldn’t have to worry about that. If Harry will take this little one into his sanctuary and give her a place, then Hagrid can go and see her whenever he wants. The unicorn sanctuary takes up most of the Forbidden Forest now. Whatever objections the Headmistress had dried right up when Harry walked into her office, tipped a big of Galleons onto the desk, and walked out.
“I don’t recognize her species,” Harry says thoughtfully, reaching out to run his fingers down the spines on the lass’s back. She rolls over on her back, tail lashing like a cat’s, and grabs for his hand. Harry only looks delighted.
Hagrid coughs. “Well, she’s not supposed to exist.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went to Gringotts on an errand for the Headmistress,” Hagrid says. “Escorting a Muggleborn witch who was supposed to come here last year but didn’t, see?” Harry nods. “And just providing some protection since she and her parents were a mite overwhelmed by our world. But it turned out she had a magical uncle who left her a bit of money, and we went down to the vaults. And I heard this little one crying.”
All right, so Hagrid also had to tear through a few walls and doors to find her, but how can anyone resist her? She’s so cute, with her little razor-sharp teeth and the spines on her back that sting Hagrid when he pets her. And her scales are a deep purple-black ornamented with silver edges. It’s a crime, what the goblins wanted to do to her.
“All right. Why isn’t she supposed to exist?”
Hagrid scowls as he remembers. Bloody goblins, breeding dragons and then not watching what they do with them. “Two dragons that protect the vaults mated, but they weren’t supposed to, or some such nonsense. She’s the last of the clutch. They crushed the others because they didn’t know how to predict what they would do in the future. Different species are always a bit tricky when they hybridize, see? She’s half Swedish Short-Snout and half Hungarian Horntail.”
Harry blinks and rubs his eyes for a second, as though he never knew such a thing could happen. Hagrid beams. He didn’t, either, before a few hours ago, but he hopes more exist, if they’re as cute as the little one.
“It’s going to upset the goblins if I take her,” Harry says slowly, his eyes on the little thing. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Hagrid says, and winces. “I don’t have a vault there, but they, ah, invited me never to come back.”
Harry watches the little dragon roll around and chase shadows with her claws for a moment more, and then sighs. “I can’t just let her go back to them. And what does it matter? The goblins hate me for breaking into Gringotts, but I can also pay them enough money not to care about this.”
“Does that mean little Egberta has a place in the sanctuary?” Hagrid demands.
“Egberta, huh? I like it. Yeah, of course.” Harry scoops up Egberta and hisses at her in Parseltongue. Sometimes Hagrid forgets he can do that. But it’s useful right now, as she twitches her tail and snaps at his face like the playful little demon she is.
Hagrid settles back in his large seat with a smile. Now Egberta’s future is assured, and he can visit her whenever he wants. He wonders for a moment what people will say when they know that Harry’s foundation has a dragon, but he dismisses the notion. She’s just a little bit of a thing, why should they worry about it?
And if they do, Harry has a lot of money, he can make them shut up.
Pairings: Gen, other than mentions of minor canon ships
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, humor, rich Harry, magical creatures, angst, present tense, discussion of animal harm
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After the war, Harry determines that the only people who have never truly betrayed him or spoken against him are unicorns. However, their numbers are declining in Britain. Harry decides that he will start a movement to rescue them, using all the millions of Galleons that Sirius left him. And if he can rescue other innocent magical creatures while he’s at it? He’ll do that, too!
Author’s Notes: This is part of my “From Litha to Lammas” series of chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have three to five chapters. It’s somewhat of a parody of the genre where Harry is a billionaire and decides to change the world with his money, and everyone wants to steal from him/betray him. If you are looking for seriousness, you are in the wrong place. Just look at the title, for one thing.
The Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge
“You could change the world with your money, Harry.”
“Yeah, I could.”
Hermione frowns at at Harry, who is standing by the window in Gryffindor Tower and scowling across the grounds. He always seems to be scowling lately. Hermione is starting to worry about him. For one thing, even though he came back to Hogwarts specifically to pass his NEWTS, he doesn’t seem to worry about them as much as Hermione thinks he should.
“Then why don’t you?” Hermione puts down her Charms book and slides the correct color-coded bookmark into the page she was browsing. “Free house-elves, for example?”
“House-elves have betrayed me.”
Hermione blinks. “What?”
“Don’t you remember? How Kreacher ran to Bellatrix Lestrange and told her about Sirius and helped cause Sirius’s death?” Harry turns towards Hermione grinding his teeth, a vein in his forehead bulging out so far that Hermione feels like she could touch it from where she’s sitting. “House-elves aren’t perfectly innocent.”
“I—don’t think anyone is?”
Hermione has to admit Harry has caught her by surprise. Is this really the same boy who walked to his death in the Forbidden Forest? The one who shrugged off people talking about him as mental in the papers when they stopped? The one who didn’t even try to kill Umbridge when they got the locket out of the Ministry? Has he changed so much in the few months since they came back to Hogwarts?
That’s worrying. It’s not even Halloween, yet.
“But someone must be.” Harry folds his arms and broods as he turns back to the window. “Can’t you think of anyone who’s perfectly innocent, Hermione? Someone who needs my protection and isn’t getting it?”
“Babies?”
Harry shakes his head so hard that Hermione winces for him. “They could grow up to be people who hate me and think I’m the next Dark Lord.”
“Harry, you know that’s a stupid Skeeter headline that no one’s paying attention to—”
“Explain to me why I heard Seamus and Dean talking about it in the library the other day, then.”
“Weren’t they making fun of it?”
Harry stares at her with angry, tragic eyes. Hermione lays a hand on her wand, wondering if she’ll need to Stun him and get him to the infirmary so Madam Pomfrey can check him over.
“Um.” She forces her mind back to his question. “I suppose thestrals and hippogriffs aren’t, since they’re predators. Giants—no. I don’t know what you would think of unicorns, but—”
“Unicorns.”
Hermione glances at him, wondering if the tone of his voice should make her uneasy. Harry seems to be shivering all over as he stands at the window, and the blinding smile he turns on her makes Hermione again consider reaching for her wand.
“That’s it,” Harry says. “They’re the only ones who have never betrayed me. They’re absolutely innocent. You’re even cursed if you kill one. They’re perfect.”
“Pardon me, Harry, but Ron and I have also never betrayed you—”
“Walking away during the Horcrux hunt, thinking I put my name in the Goblet of Fire, keeping the secret of the Time-Turner—”
“None of that has anything to do with betrayal!”
Harry sniffs at her and turns back to the window. “Unicorns,” he says reverently. “I can’t believe I never thought of them before. Of course. They’re perfect. And they’re endangered in Britain. They must be, if the only herd is here in the Forbidden Forest.”
“You still might want to talk to Hagrid about that before deciding that they’re endangered.”
“Yes. Of course I must.”
Harry strides so quickly out of the common room that he nearly runs down a second-year coming in. Hermione sighs and goes over to make sure that the second-year is all right. Headmistress McGonagall wasted absolutely no time in offering Hermione the Head Girl badge at the start of the year, and Hermione of course accepted. She’ll do her duty, even if it means protecting children from her own best friend.
Ron comes into the common room a few minutes later, shaking his head. “Harry walked past me like he was on a mission, but he just put up his nose like Malfoy when I tried to talk to him. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, really. He was asking me for people who hadn’t betrayed him, and then he seemed to decide unicorns were the only candidates, and—I don’t know. Did he get hit with a Confundus Charm earlier when you were practicing?”
“Us.”
“What? You both got hit with a Confundus Charm?”
“No, Hermione. I’m saying that we never betrayed him.”
“I said that, but then he brought up that we’d kept secrets and—well, you walking away from him during the Horcrux hunt.”
“That was you-know-what’s influence!”
Hermione nods. They don’t talk about Horcruxes by name in the common room, even to just call them “the locket.” “I know. But Harry seems all stirred up about this for some reason, and I didn’t know why. I thought a Confundus Charm would make more sense than his really being all that upset that people think he’s a Dark Lord.”
Ron shakes his head. “Nothing happened this morning that I know about. Maybe someone said something to him, though. Hopefully he’ll just forget about it.”
*
Ron opens up the Daily Prophet and then gives a distressed wheeze as his scrambled eggs sprint towards his windpipe.
Harry Potter to Found Unicorn Sanctuary!
Ron skims the article, which isn’t written by Rita Skeeter but by someone named Alona Flaverly, with growing disbelief. Harry went and talked to Hagrid, and then apparently Apparated to London and demanded to speak with whoever is currently in charge of regulating unicorns and their habitat at the Ministry. And he’s hired some kind of person to help him manage publicity. And there’s an actual line in the article about, “I have billions of Galleons from the Black vaults, why not put them to a good use?”
Ron shakes his head and puts the paper down, then looks along the table. Harry is sitting next to Hermione, who has the paper in front of her and is gesturing with wide sweeps of her hands. They’ve read it, then.
Not that Ron retains much hope she’ll make an impression on Harry. For one thing, Harry is looking politely bored. For another, there’s not much to argue about, is there? It’s Harry’s money, and he can establish a unicorn sanctuary if he wants to.
Ron moves towards them and sits down next to Hermione just in time to hear her say, “—more socially responsible things you could do!”
“But I don’t want to do them.”
Harry’s mouth is tight. It’s the way he looked right before he said “Voldemort” and got them captured by Snatchers. Ron sighs and breaks in. “Harry can do what he wants to do, Hermione. Maybe someday he’ll donate the next batch of money towards what you want him to use it for.” He swallows more eggs in a safer manner.
“But he says that he’ll never use it for house-elves!”
Ron blinks at her, then at Harry. “Okay,” he says slowly. “Why not?”
“Because Kreacher betrayed me.”
Ron thinks about that while he eats some more. Then finally he says, “But you stayed in Grimmauld Place this summer, and Kreacher worked for you. You said.”
“That’s not spending money on him.”
Ron has to concede that. Unlike Dobby, there’s no way that Kreacher would ever accept so much as a Galleon, even if he wanted to be treated differently. “Fine. Then go spend all your money on the unicorn sanctuary, if you want to.”
Harry peers at him suspiciously for a moment, as though thinking that Ron is going to change his mind, and then slaps Ron on his back hard enough for more bits of egg to fly out of Ron’s mouth. “Thanks, mate,” he says, and jumps up to walk towards…the Ravenclaw table?
Ron squints. Oh, he’s meeting with Luna. That makes sense. Probably only Hagrid knows more about magical creatures than Luna.
“Ron!”
“What?” Ron asks, and once again begins helping his eggs make the journey to his mouth.
“You know that Harry could spend all that money on all sorts of things that would be better for the magical world in the long run—”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t want to. And if you keep pushing him on it, then he’ll just double down and never spend any on house-elves.”
Hermione blinks, then looks back and forth between him and Harry. “Oh. You think that he’ll calm down when he sees that I don’t want to push him that hard?”
Ron nods and opens his mouth to explain further, but a shrieking breaks out from the Slytherin table, where Malfoy has apparently discovered what Harry is spending the Black Galleons on and thinks that he has the right to an opinion. Ron jumps, and his eggs go flying.
He sighs. Maybe he should try eating something else.
*
“This is wonderful, Harry. Are you going to try doing this for Heliopaths next?”
Harry smiles at Luna. She holds out her hands, and the foals in the healing corral crowd around her, flicking their tails and nudging her fingers with the gentlest, softest muzzles. Luna is enthralled. She can admit unicorns are beautiful, even if she’ll always prefer thestrals.
“I don’t know, Luna. Are Heliopaths endangered?”
Luna likes Harry Potter, but sometimes he is a bit stupid. She kneels down next to a pregnant mare and holds out her hand. After a moment, the mare condescends to sniff at her. “Of course they are, Harry. Why do you think that no one ever sees any floating around? The Ministry either kills them or confines them in the Department of Mysteries.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Luna looks over in time to see one of the foals prance up to Harry. He holds out his hand without seeming to know how remarkable it is that he can stroke the feather-soft mane. Usually, unicorns prefer a woman’s touch.
But maybe they can understand when someone wants to help them, and they know they don’t have to panic about a wizard in that context. Sort of like how the monsters under Luna’s bed always understood that they could talk back to her and her mother, but they had to run when Father showed up.
“Are you going to help Heliopaths?”
“I think I need to sponsor research into what they are and what we can do to help them first.”
Luna smiles. “All right. I can help you with that.” She pets the pregnant mare’s head under the horn one more time—unicorns love it when people do that, because they are sad from losing the clear blue stones they used to carry there—and stands up. “What have you done besides the healing corral?”
Potter beams. “We have a warded sanctuary where they can come if hunters pursue them. Come look at it.” And he leads Luna around the side of the gleaming silver fence that bounds the healing corral and into the Forbidden Forest.
Luna smiles as she follows him. It’s so nice that someone is using money for the important things.
*
“No, Mr. Potter.”
“But why not?”
Serenity Shacklebolt sighs. She never thought she would meet the famous Harry Potter except in passing now and then at Ministry functions, given that he seemed destined to become an Auror and she’s only a distant cousin of the interim Minister. But no, Harry Potter decided to start a unicorn sanctuary, and hired Serenity’s Shining Words to give him good publicity.
For the most part, he’s easy to deal with. An eager young man, with plenty of money to sweeten the way when he might otherwise get in trouble. But now Serenity is running into her first challenge.
She leans forwards to put her hand on the scroll that Potter’s laid out on the podium on the other side of her desk. Everything shimmers under an illusion that makes it look as if it’s made of silver. Serenity has found that it calms her customers. “Look carefully at the name of your organization, Mr. Potter.”
“I know what it says.”
Serenity studies him, but he either really doesn’t see the problem or is an extremely good actor. So she says, “You cannot call your organization F.U.C.K.”
“I wouldn’t be calling it that,” Potter says, with an air of patience that makes Serenity regret accepting this job. “I’m calling it Furtherance of Unicorn Conservation and Knowledge.”
“But you’ve put the initials on the scroll in such a way that it spells FUCK.”
“That would only be a problem if you’re a dirty-minded idiot who insists on looking at it that way.”
Serenity raises her eyebrows. “I saw the latest article about how you should have spent your vaults on rebuilding the statue in the Atrium of the Ministry, Mr. Potter. What gives you the impression that you are living in a magical world surrounded by calm and fair-minded geniuses?”
Potter pauses. Then he says, “Well, how could you suggest a better name?”
Serenity gives him a polished smile. This is what she does for a living, what he’s hired her to do, and she doesn’t think he’ll be disappointed. “For one thing, you could adapt the—the name that you have now, to include some of the same elements, while not being exactly the same.” She draws the scroll towards her and makes a few passes over it with her wand, then turns it back. “What do you think of this?”
“The Harry Potter Unicorn Conservation Foundation.”
“Yes, exactly. It retains three of the same letters, simply—in less provocative positions.”
“But I don’t want one that has my name on it.”
Serenity nods. She did suspect that might be a complaint. “Very well. How about this?” She takes the scroll back and changes the name to a few different ones, then holds it back out so that Potter can read over it.
He does so, scowling. Serenity watches him. He’s entirely different than the reports she heard of him either through the papers or through more personal contacts like her cousin Kingsley. The papers painted him as a spoiled child who thinks that he should be able to cheat his way into an international Tournament and who is now due to become the next Dark Lord. Kingsley described a good and brave young man, astonishingly humble.
Spoiled does not apply to the wizard in front of her, but neither does humble.
“We could call it the Sirius Black Foundation for Unicorn Conservation?” Potter’s voice is very soft as he touches her top suggestion.
“We could.”
“But—Sirius can’t endorse it.”
“But you are using his money to fund it. I think the connection would be close enough for many people, Mr. Potter.” Serenity flashes a professional smile. “Besides, I have never heard that any of the Black family wanted to participate in such a thing, and Mr. Black, from what I know of him, was a rebel against his family’s choices and values. So this will be more pointed and more appropriate than otherwise, won’t it?”
Potter begins to smile, and then does smile more broadly, and nods. He looks up, and Serenity jumps. Despite being prepared for it—mostly—it’s a bit of a shock to find herself pinned by eyes that bright.
“Many people have been telling me what I ought to spend my money on,” Potter murmurs. “Even my best friend thinks I ought to use it to better the situation of house-elves. But I need to make sure to find people and beings that have never betrayed me. What do you think about using the foundation to better the lot of Grims as well as unicorns?”
“Grims?” Serenity echoes weakly, not sure that she’s heard him right.
Potter nods earnestly, leaning forwards with his hands linked together around his knees. “My godfather was innocent, not the mass murderer that people thought he was. He had an Animagus form, and it was a huge black dog that most people mistook for a Grim…”
Dazed, Serenity listens to the story that follows, which is frankly incredible. Peter Pettigrew, the deceased war hero, hiding in his rat Animagus form for literally years? Black breaking out of prison when he saw Pettigrew’s picture in the paper? Potter holding off a hundred Dementors with his stag Patronus at the age of thirteen?
When Potter finishes, there’s a ringing silence. Serenity takes a deep breath and touches her braids for a second. She’s not sure whether she wants to be involved in a situation like this, with all the complexities that go along with it.
And then she remembers why she agreed to do this in the first place, back when she thought Potter was hiring her to rehabilitate his image and steer people away from accusations of potential Dark Lordship. He will pay her. He will pay her a lot, and if some of it is as simple as coming up with other names for his foundation, other parts are necessarily going to be more complex.
“So what do you think?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Potter, I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten the original question.”
“Using the foundation for Grims as well as unicorns?”
Serenity stares at him and wants to say something about the ingrained superstitions that come with Grims, and how there isn’t a pack of them just running around in a defined place the way there’s a defined herd of unicorns in the Forbidden Forest, and how unicorns have mostly become endangered because of how slowly they breed, while no one even knows how Grims breed.
But Potter is looking at her with faith that’s frankly touching, probably because so few people have ever heard that impossible story before. So Serenity finds herself answering even though she thinks that it might not be the wisest thing. “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Potter.”
He leaps to his feet and pumps her hand. “I’m so glad that Minister Shacklebolt recommended you. You’re really the best.”
Serenity relaxes and tries to smile, only to freeze as Mr. Potter’s smile freezes and he leans towards her.
“Just remember,” Potter says with intensity that seems like it ought to leave ice crystals on the desk and chairs, “if you ever betray me, then I can use a small portion of the Galleons I inherited to make your life miserable. The Grims and the unicorns won’t miss that much of the money.”
Serenity swallows and nods, and then weakly waves Mr. Potter on his way out the door. Then she sags back against her chair.
The money is worth it. The money has to be worth it.
She hopes that she has no cause to regret it in the future, at least.
*
Hagrid looks up uneasily as the door opens. Of course he knows that Harry wants to help unicorns and Grims, but that doesn’t mean that he’ll want to help the little creature squirming under Hagrid’s arm now.
But how can he not want to? She’s a little one.
“Hagrid, do you know—oh, hello, what’s this?”
At least Harry doesn’t seem to be running away screaming. Then again, he’s a good one, a Gryffindor of Gryffindors, Hagrid often thinks. Even his dad and mum don’t hold a wand to him. “She’s a little baby,” he explains awkwardly, and twists towards the table so that he can set the young dragon down on top of it.
Harry is smiling at her. Hagrid relaxes. He should have remembered that Harry helped with little Norberta, didn’t he? And helped get her away when she was growing too big for Hagrid’s house, the wee thing.
This time, he shouldn’t have to worry about that. If Harry will take this little one into his sanctuary and give her a place, then Hagrid can go and see her whenever he wants. The unicorn sanctuary takes up most of the Forbidden Forest now. Whatever objections the Headmistress had dried right up when Harry walked into her office, tipped a big of Galleons onto the desk, and walked out.
“I don’t recognize her species,” Harry says thoughtfully, reaching out to run his fingers down the spines on the lass’s back. She rolls over on her back, tail lashing like a cat’s, and grabs for his hand. Harry only looks delighted.
Hagrid coughs. “Well, she’s not supposed to exist.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went to Gringotts on an errand for the Headmistress,” Hagrid says. “Escorting a Muggleborn witch who was supposed to come here last year but didn’t, see?” Harry nods. “And just providing some protection since she and her parents were a mite overwhelmed by our world. But it turned out she had a magical uncle who left her a bit of money, and we went down to the vaults. And I heard this little one crying.”
All right, so Hagrid also had to tear through a few walls and doors to find her, but how can anyone resist her? She’s so cute, with her little razor-sharp teeth and the spines on her back that sting Hagrid when he pets her. And her scales are a deep purple-black ornamented with silver edges. It’s a crime, what the goblins wanted to do to her.
“All right. Why isn’t she supposed to exist?”
Hagrid scowls as he remembers. Bloody goblins, breeding dragons and then not watching what they do with them. “Two dragons that protect the vaults mated, but they weren’t supposed to, or some such nonsense. She’s the last of the clutch. They crushed the others because they didn’t know how to predict what they would do in the future. Different species are always a bit tricky when they hybridize, see? She’s half Swedish Short-Snout and half Hungarian Horntail.”
Harry blinks and rubs his eyes for a second, as though he never knew such a thing could happen. Hagrid beams. He didn’t, either, before a few hours ago, but he hopes more exist, if they’re as cute as the little one.
“It’s going to upset the goblins if I take her,” Harry says slowly, his eyes on the little thing. “Right?”
“Yeah,” Hagrid says, and winces. “I don’t have a vault there, but they, ah, invited me never to come back.”
Harry watches the little dragon roll around and chase shadows with her claws for a moment more, and then sighs. “I can’t just let her go back to them. And what does it matter? The goblins hate me for breaking into Gringotts, but I can also pay them enough money not to care about this.”
“Does that mean little Egberta has a place in the sanctuary?” Hagrid demands.
“Egberta, huh? I like it. Yeah, of course.” Harry scoops up Egberta and hisses at her in Parseltongue. Sometimes Hagrid forgets he can do that. But it’s useful right now, as she twitches her tail and snaps at his face like the playful little demon she is.
Hagrid settles back in his large seat with a smile. Now Egberta’s future is assured, and he can visit her whenever he wants. He wonders for a moment what people will say when they know that Harry’s foundation has a dragon, but he dismisses the notion. She’s just a little bit of a thing, why should they worry about it?
And if they do, Harry has a lot of money, he can make them shut up.
