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Chapter Twenty-Three—Unexpected

Sirius lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thinking about the wild turns his life had taken in the last few days.

Azkaban had become the same after so long. He hadn’t really been alive. He was a dog, he wasn’t a dog. There were Dementors, and then there weren’t. There were times with food and without it. No matter how different he might have considered those experiences in the outside world, they had become a blended—paste, really. That was what his life had been like. Like swimming through a thick paste constantly.

And then he had opened his eyes and seen his godson.

Now that his mind was clear again after the forcible healing, Sirius was a little embarrassed about mistaking Nott the Younger for Harry. They were so intensely different. Everything from the way they held themselves to the feel of their magic to the color of their eyes. So what if they both had dark hair?

But neither of them seemed to hold his mistake against him, so Sirius did his best to shake off that embarrassment.

He had emerged. There was light and darkness again. There was something that might be life again.

There was a war that had never really ended.

Somewhere, there was Wormtail.

Sirius was utterly sure that the traitor was still alive. If he had faked his death and hidden this well, he might be somewhere on the Continent, or the States, or in China for all Sirius knew. But now he had the chance to hunt Peter down, which he never would have had if he’d remained in Azkaban.

He had the chance to get to know Harry, who he should have put first on that night long ago. Both he and Harry had suffered for his choices.

But now Sirius had better ones. He would make better ones. If either of the Notts turned on Harry, Sirius would be there to pick up the pieces, but he was slowly coming to accept that that was unlikely to happen.

It was there in the way that Nott the Younger stared at Harry with his heart in his eyes.

It was there in the way that Nott the Elder had offered the shelter of his house to Sirius as well as Harry.

It was there in the way that Harry and Andromeda and Nott had come to rescue him, or just to yell at him, which no one had in the sixteen years he’d been in prison.

Sirius took a long, slow breath, and sank into the meditative practice that he’d done as a child when his parents still gave a shit about him learning Occlumency, and which the Healer had said was absolutely necessary for him to recover all his scattered thoughts.

He was going to do this, and that meant focusing on the steps to get better, no matter how boring they would have been to him when he was younger.

Sirius could never go back to the person he had been, and Harry could never go back to the childhood that he should have had. But no one could prevent them from reaching out and grasping the future.

No matter how sharp-edged it is.

*

“She wants to see you alone.”

Helios watched Harry’s eyes as the young man paused in the doorway of the room where Andromeda Tonks waited. Harry glanced back at him, and then at Theo, who had tensed as if he were going to charge ahead and break down the door to confront Andromeda.

“Do you really think she’ll harm me?” Harry asked Theo. “After all, she helped us get Sirius out of prison.”

“And she knows that her cousin’s well-being depends on my grace now,” Helios drawled. He saw some sense come back into his son’s eyes, thank Merlin.

“There’s that, too.” Harry brushed a hand down Theo’s shoulder and gave him a look that made Helios turn around to study the frame of a landscape nearby. “I promise you can stand right outside the door, and you’ll hear me if I need you.”

“You still don’t have complete knowledge of the ways that your magic has changed,” Theo muttered, but he was obviously giving in. Helios was doubly glad that he had turned away when he heard the sound of lips meeting.

“I know enough to keep myself safe.”

Harry sounded amused, but not condescending, and Helios turned back in time to see Theo nodding reluctantly. “But I’ll be here.”

“I would never want you to be anywhere else.”

Were Eloise and I ever that sappy?

Helios started a little as Harry disappeared through the doorway, and Theo turned and looked at him. “Father? What is it?”

“Nothing that matters,” Helios said, and shook his head. He need not confess to Theo that for the first time in his memory, the thought of Eloise did not hurt him. “Now, at least conjure a chair so that you might wait in comfort.”

As Theo did so, Helios turned and moved down the corridor. He trusted that Theo and Harry could protect each other, and he wanted to spend a little time with his wife’s portrait.

With the reminder that there was love in the midst of pain.

*

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Harry.”

“Why did you want to talk to me alone?”

Andromeda swallowed as she watched the young man standing in front of her. She had thought he might be a pawn of the Notts when she first accepted Helios’s invitation, she remembered. That idea seemed impossibly distant now. He was so much more than even magical theory or understanding could contain, let alone manipulation.

“Because I wanted to know what you are going to do about Sirius.”

“Do about him?”

“Are you—how will you treat him?”

“I mean, I think the treatment plan is really up to the Healers. I don’t know anything about Healing magic.”

Andromeda shook her head impatiently. She didn’t think Harry was deliberately being obtuse, but she needed to know more than this. “I mean, do you intend to let him play a part in your life as your godfather? If not, then I think it might be kinder if you let me take him home. I can make sure that he continues to follow his treatment plan and recovers, and has the chance to put you out of his mind.”

Harry’s eyes widened. Andromeda had only met Lily Potter a few times, and didn’t know if her eyes had been this bright. Somehow, she thought not.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk with my godfather in any depth yet. He’s the one who needs to make those decisions. I plan to let him act as my godfather if that’s something he wants to do.”

“Then you won’t shut him out?”

“Not unless he wants to be.”

Andromeda closed her eyes. All right, there was one worry assuaged. Time to go on to the next. “What is your goal after this?”

“Survival.”

“I know that you were meeting with me originally as a tutor so you could take your NEWTS. I assume you’ll do that. But what are your plans for the war against You-Know-Who?”

“Unless you plan to help me, I don’t see why I should tell you that.”

Andromeda paused, then nodded slowly. Yes, fair. She had to give in order to get. “I would like to help. But until recently, there were only rumors here and there. That some Death Eaters were active again, that wealthy purebloods were donating suspicious sums of money to suspicious causes, that a few people had disappeared. Certainly it didn’t seem as if Albus Dumbledore were worried.”

Harry gave a soft, bitter laugh. “He keeps so many things to himself that I don’t believe he would tell anyone if he did think that Voldemort was already back and moving around before this year.”

“Then you know he’s back?”

“I’ve faced him. Both of him.”

Andromeda swallowed and fought back the impulse to be sick. “Explain what that means, please.”

“There are two versions. One of them, Tom Riddle, posed as a wardmaster who offered me an apprenticeship, and he seems to be in control of the other one, Voldemort, who’s more like a beast.” Andromeda controlled her flinch at the name, and told herself she would just have to get used to it. “He tried to trap me and Theo. We did manage to escape, but I think that he’ll want to hunt us down and make us pay for it.”

“And Mr. Nott?”

“Well, he won’t want to follow Voldemort when the man wants to hurt his son, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I had the impression that the Dark Mark might not give him a chance.”

“He’s been talking about rebelling against Voldemort since I got here. I don’t think he would have said anything like that if he really thought the Dark Mark was like a compulsion to make him obey.”

Andromeda fought back her instinctive distrust of Helios Nott. Yes, more than likely, Harry was right. And Nott was also the type who would take steps if he did think he was close to helpless, so that he could fight freely.

“What is your plan?”

“I haven’t really planned much,” Harry admitted. “I was kind of busy with the escaping Hogwarts, making plans for my academic future, and freeing my supposed traitor godfather from Azkaban thing.”

“You must think.”

“Yes, maybe so.” Harry’s voice audibly chilled. “But your pushing me into it and wanting me to rush isn’t going to make anything better, and it might mean that I make mistakes I wouldn’t otherwise.”

Andromeda clenched her hands. She didn’t do well with being told to slow down, and never had since she’d been at Hogwarts. But it was possible that it really was better, this time, to listen to the young man who had a kind of magic she had never seen before.

“How can I help?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Andromeda curbed her impatience. “What is your sense of what these two versions of—” She took a deep breath and committed herself to the name. “Voldemort want?”

“Revenge, and also, I think the Tom Riddle version is capable of careful plans and the long game. He’s existed long enough to establish himself as a wardmaster with a certain reputation. He hasn’t just started to destroy things or burn the wizarding world down. So I don’t think he’s as insane as Dumbledore believes.”

“Then—you might join him?”

Harry stared at her for a moment, and then silver snakes flared into being around his shoulders, as if he were draped in a corona of serpents like Medusa. Andromeda recoiled, and Harry moved a step in her direction before he visibly reined himself in. The snakes vanished, and he turned his head away from her.

“He tried to kill me. He would have enslaved me if he could have. He would have killed Theo. I don’t know how much help you’ll be, if you can ask stupid questions like that.”

Andromeda said nothing. The sight of the snakes had shocked her, since it was yet another manifestation of magic that she’d never seen before, and she didn’t know what Harry might have done to her. And it was hard for her to find the words that would retrace her thought process for him.

But he was staring at her in a cold way that might mean she wouldn’t get to see Sirius again, if Sirius sided as fully with Harry as Andromeda expected him to do. She swallowed and said softly, “It only sounded as if you were saying that Dumbledore was wrong about him and he wasn’t insane. That—I have heard such language only from people who are on his side, or thinking about joining it.”

Bellatrix. Narcissa.

Harry looked at her, and then he snorted, and some of the sense of imminent danger around him diminished. “No. I won’t join him. I said that the Tom Riddle version of him seemed saner because it’s true and I don’t believe in lying about that just because it might fit your preconceptions better.”

Andromeda opened her mouth, then closed it again and nodded. “Very well,” she murmured. “But I would like to know if you have any idea what I can help with. Even if it is merely telling people not to trust the name of Tom Riddle.”

“Actually, that might help,” Harry said, and Andromeda blinked. “I don’t think that he’s famous under that name, but if they know it is his name, then it might take away some of the mystique that clings to the name Voldemort. And it would make him seem more mundane to people who might be afraid of him.”

“You are better at planning than I thought you might be.”

“I did spend six years in Slytherin.”

Andromeda gave him a small smile. “Do you think there is any possibility of cooperation with the Headmaster in the future? I know you don’t like him, but he is a powerful wizard and the only one that—Voldemort ever feared.”

“He hasn’t made any progress in keeping either version contained, that I can see. And let my Head of House torment me for six years and only acted disappointed when I retaliated. Given what he told me right before I left Hogwarts, I think that he might pretend to work with me, but I could never fully trust him.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That there’s a prophecy saying I’m the one who has to face and defeat Voldemort. But he never even hinted at this before, and he certainly did nothing to prepare me for a war that you’d think he’d have some interest in making sure I win.”

Andromeda’s heart pounded oddly. Harry Potter had been a symbol of hope for so many in the wake of the war. If they had known he was truly chosen by fate, then he might have been even more of one. He might have soothed some of the wounds because people like Lucius Malfoy who still had hopes of their Dark Lord returning someday might have given up and accepted that they would lose the war.

“And instead, we have this,” she whispered.

“We have what?”

“We have a situation where the Headmaster and the Boy-Who-Lived aren’t speaking to each other and have no collaborative plans about how to handle—Voldemort.”

“Yes,” Harry said, and shrugged. “That’s the reason we need to act on our own to defeat him. I won’t say that Dumbledore couldn’t make some contributions, maybe by making sure that Hogwarts students are protected. But I‘m not going to go running to him. He would nod and smile and keep secrets.

“Do you want to start spreading word about Tom Riddle’s real name? Like I said, it would help.”

“Yes,” Andromeda said, clutching the concrete action with some relief. “I’ll let a few people who use my husband’s services privately know.”

“Your husband’s services?”

“It’s not what he does publicly, but those who know the truth think he’s the best Healer who’s ever lived.”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t want him to treat Sirius.”

“He treats the body only, not the soul or the mind.” Andromeda set her shoulders. “Whatever I can do to help you defeat Voldemort, that I’ll do,” she said, and infused her words with enough magic to make them an oath.

Harry blinked as the air snapped around him, and looked at her carefully. He probably didn’t know enough to recognize all the nuances of an oath, but he knew she had done something.

“If you’re sure,” he said.

“I am. I lost enough people I loved to this war already. And I might have recovered Sirius, but I’m not even the one who did that. You got him out of Azkaban, and you were the one who wanted to go there and speak to him in the first place.” Andromedas took a deep breath. “I don’t like owing people.”

Harry murmured something.

“What?”

“I never had the chance to owe people debts before this, I said.”

Andromeda just nodded. She didn’t think that starting to talk about Harry’s troubled past in Slytherin would lead the conversation in the best direction. “That is completely understandable.”

Harry gave her a faint smile and said, “I’ll let you know what other plans I have to fight the war as soon as I know about them.”

“That is completely understandable,” Andromeda repeated.

Harry paused, as though wondering how the conversation was supposed to conclude. Andromeda honestly had no help to offer him. This hadn’t gone in any direction that she’d thought it would when Harry walked through the door.

“Thank you for your help,” Harry finally murmured, and then turned and left.

Andromeda closed her eyes and stood still, trembling a little with the force of the emotion that she refused to express fully in the house of a Nott. That full expression would have to wait until she could go home and bury herself in her Ted’s arms.

But ultimately?

She was finally moving, finally taking some steps in a war she’d never managed to fully fight in last time.

Finally getting some vengeance for Sirius, whom she’d never known she would have to get vengeance for.

And it felt wonderful.

*

“She didn’t demand more of you than you were willing to give?”

Harry shook his head as he leaned into Theo’s arms. He found himself oddly calm now that he was past the moment when he had thought he might have to lash out at Mrs. Tonks. He had an ally, someone who wasn’t Theo and wasn’t Helios.

And he thought she might even have been his ally if Sirius wasn’t in the picture, which was an odd feeling.

Something occurred to him, and he laughed. Theo drew back so that he could look Harry in the face, one eyebrow rising. Harry supposed he must look strange.

“I told Mrs. Tonks that I wasn’t used to owing debts,” Harry murmured. “I don’t think that I’m used to having allies, either. I mean, obviously I’m not, but she brought it home to me in a way that nothing else has.”

“You never need be afraid of that again,” Theo said softly, and kissed him in a way that seemed to pour strength into Harry’s body through his lips. “Shall we go and see if Black is up and about?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and closed his eyes, trusting Theo to lead him safely through the corridors.

He had gone from no one to four people—five, if he counted Eloise’s portrait—to support him in less than a month.

He thought he had the right to feel a little dizzy.