[Songs of Summer]: Growing Up Grimmauld, 5/5

[lomonaaeren]

Harry looked up as he heard the thing in the cellars slam into the walls again. He sighed.

“Leave it alone, Harry.”

Phineas had come to stand in the portrait frame in the library, his expression chiding. Harry nodded. “I know, but I just want to know what it is. Just a name. Then I could look it up somewhere and not question the house about it.”

“Why do you want to know so badly?”

Harry blinked at Phineas, but the man didn’t seem to realize he’d asked a stupid question. So Harry said, “What I know, I can survive. If I don’t know something, I can’t use it and I’m not ready for it. I didn’t even know what magic was before the house brought me here. How can I survive something else I don’t know about?”

Phineas had a complicated expression on his face. “You didn’t have anyone to protect you before. Now we will protect you.”

“Even when I go to Hogwarts, and the house can’t reach me?”

“You forget that I have a portrait at Hogwarts. And there are many pictures there that are only landscapes or whose inhabitants froze long ago. I can go freely from frame to frame and watch over you.”

It sounded wonderful, especially since Harry knew going to Hogwarts would put him closer to the Albus man. But he knew that he still had to protect himself, too. “All right, sir,” he said obediently.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I just want to be sure that I can protect myself too, for the moments when you’re not around. That’s the way someone in the Black family would do it, right? Depend on their family members but also depend on themselves?”

Phineas appeared to give up as he laughed. “Well-argued, young one. Yes, perhaps you should do that.”

“But you still won’t tell me what the thing in the cellars is.”

Phineas rolled his eyes.

That was all right. Harry was certain that he would find out someday, and it only bothered him a little not to know. Someday, he would find out.

Someday, he would find everything out, from how to destroy the locket to why the Albus man had left him in the Muggle world. All of the knowledge would be his.

*

Dora grinned as she looked at the little kid who had made her mum so interested in talking about the past. If nothing else, Dora had to appreciate Harry Potter for that. She had often wanted to hear more stories of the Black family, of her ancestors, but Mum had always refused, claiming that talking about it was too painful.

But for the last two hours, they’d been sitting on a bench in a Muggle park while snow fell gently around them and talking and laughing about the past. Dora had never known that her cousin Sirius was such a prankster. Or that he’d been Sorted into Gryffindor, either.

She would remember him like that, she decided. Like her mum did. He was never getting out of Azkaban, he had been a traitor, but it was okay to laugh about the kid he had been.

“It’s getting a bit late,” Mum said, frowning at the darkening sky. “Can we walk you home, Harry?”

“Oh, no thanks, Aunt Andromeda. Remember what I said about my relatives not liking witches and wizards?”

“But surely they wouldn’t mind an escort to their doorstep?”

“Surely they would.” Harry smiled with all his teeth, and Dora blinked. With a grin like that, she didn’t think he would be getting Sorted into Gryffindor, where of course everyone was already betting on him to go. “They won’t like it if you show up.”

“And so what? I am more than a match for Muggles.”

“But I’m not.”

Dora drew herself up. That sounded horrible. “I can turn into one of your relatives and humiliate them!”

“Nymphadora!”

Dora scowled at her mum. Honestly, she didn’t know why Mum wouldn’t just accept that she hated the name Nymphadora. Going by a short version of it was fine. It was still using the name. Maybe Dora would pick another one, a name that was completely different, and see how Mum liked that.

“You can turn into them?” Harry stared at her with wide, fascinated eyes. “I knew you could turn your hair different colors, but you can actually turn into different people? How?”

“I’m a Metamorphmagus,” Dora said, and beamed at the look of interest on Harry’s face. It had been a while since she’d been able to explain it to someone new. “It’s a talent I inherited from the Black family. I can change the shape of my face and my nose and my body and my height just like I can change my hair.”

“Wow.” Harry sighed a little. “That must be brilliant.”

“It is,” Dora said, smugly, leaving out the part where she hadn’t completely learned how to control her talent yet and sometimes cycled between different shapes or turned back into herself in the middle of a prank.

Mum frowned at her and shook her head. “Let us escort you home at least, Harry. We’ll stop when we’re around the corner.”

“I would really prefer that you didn’t.”

Mum opened her mouth again, but Dora reached out and laid a hand on her arm. She was more familiar with the ways that kids acted than her mum was, even though the firsties at Hogwarts were older than Harry. She saw a lot of it as a prefect. And she knew when one of them was deadly serious. That was on Harry’s face now.

Whatever was going on with his Muggle relatives, it wasn’t simple, and they wouldn’t make friends out of Harry by pressing.

Mum looked at Dora and then back at Harry. She sighed a little and nodded. “If that’s the way you feel about it, Harry.”

“I do, Aunt Andromeda. But thanks.”

Dora watched Harry wave and walk back down Grimmauld Place alone. She hoped that he was heading back to a good Christmas with lots of gifts, but she didn’t think he was. She looked at her mother.

“Already taken care of,” Mum said firmly.

Dora beamed. She should have known that her mother would have sent gifts to Harry already, but it was nice to know for sure that her little almost-cousin wouldn’t be forgotten.

*

“I got presents!”

The house stirred slowly at the shriek that rang through the corridors. It watched as Harry ran back and forth from the small pile of packages delivered by owls the house had come to recognize as Andromeda’s and Arcturus’s, and waved his arms, and danced and sang his delight in the kitchen.

The house thought. Had it ever given Harry a gift?

Of course it had. It had given him freedom from the Muggle world, and the wand, and his bedroom. It had preserved his life when potions exploded and from the thing in the cellars, and it had ensured he knew defensive spells.

But perhaps not a present in the way that Harry meant it, a Christmas gift.

We will have to do something about that.

The house watched Harry dash and dance and sing, and clap his hands when he opened boxes of new robes and shoes and a book on bloodline gifts like the Metamorphmagus talent that had once run in the Black line, and began to plan.

*

“I do not think it safe. It’s much safer to just conduct all your business by owl, the way you have been.”

“But I have this potion that lets me become a Metamorphmagus for a day,” Harry said, looking patiently at Phineas. He appreciated his many-times-great-grandgodfather, or whatever title Phineas would want to claim, but he also thought Phineas was being stupid. “So I can look like whatever I want.”

“The goblins will see straight through such a disguise.”

“I don’t want to fool them, do I?” Harry just shook his head when Phineas made a sound of disgust. He and Phineas were never going to agree about goblins, and that was fine. “I just want to fool the people in Diagon Alley.”

“You have too much tolerance for goblins.”

Harry ignored the portrait and drank down the potion that the house had taught him how to brew. He shuddered a little as it fizzed in his stomach. It had been months and months since he had stolen a fizzy drink from a Muggle shop, but this felt like it, except more so.

He felt—

He felt as though he could do something about the scar on his forehead that was so recognizable, if he wanted.

He’d deliberately brought a mirror down to the Potions lab to look into and see if the potion had worked. He took a step forwards and peered into it. His reflection wavered for a second, and then he had bright blue hair that was straight and flowed down almost to his shoulders.

Harry laughed. He hadn’t been thinking about blue hair, really, but it made sense, because one of his first pieces of accidental magic had been turning one of his teachers’ hair blue.

“That will attract too much attention.”

Harry rolled his eyes in Phineas’s direction and changed his hair, somehow just knowing how to do it, until it was a soft mousy brown color and was just short waves. He nodded. He liked that. He leaned forwards and peered at his eyes. He sort of wanted them to be blue, but that might be too attention-grabbing. He was going for ordinary.

He made his eyes brown, too, and then he concentrated on the scar.

That turned out to be more difficult than either his hair or his eyes. Harry had the odd impression that the scar was fighting him, not wanting to be covered up. Maybe it had something to do with the way that it always looked red and fresh, as if the Killing Curse had just struck him there?

Well, whether or not it wanted to be covered up, Harry was in charge here. He concentrated some more, and the skin of his forehead crawled across the scar.

He did get the feeling that it wouldn’t last long, and also, he was breathing as though he’d run all the way from Diagon Alley back to Grimmauld Place. He gasped and turned towards the door.

“You are to be safe out there.”

Harry waved his hand at Phineas and kept walking. He had to visit the goblins not because of money, which he could handle from a distance, but because there were questions he wanted to ask them, and he didn’t want to just ask them by an owl.

*

“You are not a natural Metamorphmagus.”

It was something a goblin guard had said to Harry before he could even enter the bank with his potions disguise, and now the goblin they had escorted him to, named Griphook, leaned forwards and said the same thing. Harry thought Griphook was the one who had taken him to the Black vault the year before last, but he wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” Harry agreed. “It’s something that I brewed a potion to mimic. It will just last one day.” He smiled at Griphook. “Could we talk about the amount of money I have and if I have enough to buy a Preserved Trunk?”

Griphook paused for a long moment. Then he said slowly, “Those are very expensive.”

“I know. I just wanted to know if I had enough money to buy one, or if I would have to wait until I could access the Potter vault, or if I would have enough money even then.”

“Why do you need one in the first place?”

“To hide if someone tries to kill me,” Harry said, a little surprised. He’d read all about Preserved Trunks in the books the house showed him. They followed their owner around, invisible, and perfectly preserved the things their owners put into them. If their owners needed to hide in them, then it would be as if the owners had taken a Draught of Living Death. They would be safe until the danger was past.

“You think someone might?”

“I live in a house with things that might.”

Griphook paused again. Then he said, “I am afraid that there is not enough money available to you to buy one. There is money enough in the Black and Potter vaults combined, yes, but not that you can access.”

“Oh,” Harry said, a bit crushed. But then he perked up. He would just have to study long enough to enchant an ordinary trunk in the same way. Or maybe the house knew a potion that could make a trunk like that. “Thanks anyway.”

He started to turn away. Griphook cleared his throat, and Harry turned back to him, carefully controlling his hair, which for a moment had wanted to turn a bright pink like Dora’s.

“Are you aware that there is a wizard hunting for you, Mr. Potter? He came to the bank and asked if you had accessed your trust vault. Of course, we did not need to tell him about your access to the Black vault.”

“Oh, is it the Albus man?” Harry asked, not really surprised. “I thought he might. Yes, I’m hiding where I’m living and being very careful.”

“Do you have any idea why Albus Dumbledore is looking for you so frantically?”

“He knows my Muggle guardians somehow, so I assume he thinks I’m supposed to be living with them.”

Griphook waited, and Harry waited, a little amused. He might not hate goblins like Phineas did, but he wasn’t going to trust them with everything that was important about him. Phineas didn’t seem to think he could do one thing without doing the other.

Griphook finally gave a very loud sigh. “You are saying that the Headmaster of Hogwarts wants to find you and put you back with your Muggle family.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And none of the people you have surrounded yourself with are in a position to tell him that that is not a wise idea?”

It took Harry a moment to work through the sentence, but then he shook his head. It was true, after all. Maybe Andromeda knew the Albus man and would have told him, but Harry had let her think he was still living with Muggles, and Phineas hadn’t put himself in that position because he thought Harry living at Grimmauld Place was fantastic. “No, sir.”

“Do you know why he is looking for you so frantically?”

“I assume it has to do with my fame. And maybe he does want me safe and protected from evil wizards and thinks this is the way to do it,” Harry added, trying to be conscientious. Phineas had said that he would have to speak calmly and not as bluntly once he’d got to Hogwarts. “But I’m safer than I would be with them.”

“What would you do if we told the Headmaster where you were?”

“Say you were untrustworthy and take all my money out of Gringotts.”

“Would you really.”

“Yes.” Harry faced Griphook unflinchingly. He might be afraid of what would happen if the goblins told the Albus man the truth, but he could make it hurt them. “And because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, I think a lot of other people would start believing the goblins were untrustworthy and take their money out of Gringotts.”

Griphook stared at him. Harry stared back.

Finally, Griphook broke into laughter. It was startling, hearing the deep bark come up his throat and seeing the way he shook after that without a sound, but Harry just stood there and waited for him to make his decision.

Griphook finally closed his mouth and grinned at Harry without showing his teeth. “You are a clever child.”

“Thanks, sir.”

“And polite, at that. I do not think that we will tell the Headmaster where you are. Not when you have woken the Black vaults from slumber and their money is growing again.” Harry still wondered how that worked. “Go your way.”

Harry nodded and walked back out of the bank, delighting in the way people just glanced at him and then away. He wasn’t anyone remarkable, and that was just the way he liked it.

Meanwhile, he would pick up some of the rarer ingredients it was hard to order by owl, and think about a way to convince the house to let him enchant a trunk. There had to be old trunks sitting around in the attic or the cellars or other places Harry wasn’t allowed to go, just like there had been shoes and robes and a wand.

(What was the thing in the cellars?)

*

Walburga had, by now, resigned herself to the child not going away.

He was always around. He brewed potions and he cooked meals and he harvested the garden. He talked to the house and other portraits. He danced giddily around when he got gifts. He was the son of a Mudblood and a blood traitor, and he would not go away.

Walburga had taken to screaming whenever he passed her portrait. At first the child had jumped, but now all he did was give her a vague look and wander away, as if whatever occupied his attention was far more important than she was.

Walburga wanted to murder him, but there was the problem of not having hands and not being able to travel into other portraits.

However, she had heard the conversations with Phineas and Grimmauld about his curiosity, and so she called to him sweetly when he was walking past her portrait on the way upstairs. “Oh, child?”

“My name is Harry.”

The annoying brat wasn’t coming closer. But it wouldn’t matter as long as Walburga’s words worked. She gasped and worked her mouth a little as if she had forgotten, then said reluctantly, “Harry.”

He stepped closer.

Walburga was grateful for the training in her childhood that had kept her from showing her smile, and more grateful than it had persisted into the portrait. Now, she smiled as warmly as she could at the boy, despite how much she hated him, and asked, “You want to know what the thing in the cellars is, correct?”

“Yes, but no one will tell me.”

Such a sulky, whiny thing. The House of Black would be better for it when it was gone. “They have not told you because even the sound of its name can compel children to seek it out,” Walburga said, and lowered her voice. “But I know that you have a strength they don’t realize. It’s not everyone who can ignore me as they walk past.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you want in trade for the name?”

“I want nothing in trade for the name.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Walburga took a deep breath. The child had taken all the wrong lessons from Phineas, like disrespect for authority figures. She would have thought that her great-grandfather would overcome those tendencies once he was Headmaster of Hogwarts, but—

She pushed the irritation away. It wouldn’t serve her here. “Well, I want you to prove that you’re a worthy child of the House of Black. You know that I don’t think you are because of your blood. But if you can resist hearing the name? I would have to acknowledge that.”

The child looked at her with his Mudblood eyes, and waited.

It irritated Walburga to be compelled to speak by the boy’s ignoring her, but at least he had got close enough that the house couldn’t shield his ears to prevent him from hearing the name. “It is called the irrimvelat.”

A dreamy look came over the child’s face. He turned and walked off as if he were gliding across the floor.

Walburga waited until he was gone to chortle. Soon the irrimvelat would have a meal, and the irritating child would be gone. She couldn’t wait.

*

The house was at work on the gift for Harry when it felt its child’s magic crash into the door seal around the cellars.

It had never felt anything so powerful. The other members of the Black family had never attacked it, but they had done plenty of spells within Grimmauld’s walls, and it knew the nature and strength of their magic. This was something beyond that.

It hurled itself through wood and plaster as it felt the seal break.

Harry was just opening the door of the cellar when the house manifested its face on the wall next to him and shouted, “NO!” in as loud a voice as it could.

Harry did start, but didn’t react the way he usually did to loud noises. He turned to the house and said in a low, hoarse, dreamy voice, his eyes glazed, “I’m going to see the irrimvelat, you know.”

“Where did you get that name?”

“Walburga.”

The house felt the irrimvelat’s magic winding up the stairs. It was a lulling song that would call out to any child. Harry nodded in time to the tune and put his first foot on the cellar stairs, smile bright.

The house said the only thing it could think of. “You will lose your bedroom.”

Harry blinked and turned so that he was only facing the cellar stairs with his right side. “What?”

“You will lose your bedroom if you go down those stairs. Your potions, your knowledge, your ability to destroy the locket, any food you might have eaten in the future, your ability to live on your own. They will all vanish, because the irrimvelat will eat you.”

“No—no, it won’t…”

“Yes. And you will have nothing left. It will be able to eat your bones and leave the cellars and go in search of more children. It will have the future that you always wanted to have. But you will be dead.”

Harry staggered backwards. The irrimvelat’s song grew stronger, and Harry turned his head in its direction.

“Do you want to be dead? Perhaps we shouldn’t have wasted our time on you.”

“You didn’t waste your time!”

“Perhaps we should have sought out a true heir. A strong heir. One who would not dedicate his strong magic to being fooled by a portrait who hates him. Perhaps we should let the irrimvelat eat you.”

Harry flung himself backwards this time far enough that the house could close the door. In an instant, it had sheathed the door itself with wood, blocking it off. The irrimvelat’s song collapsed into a howl.

Harry stared at the face, his chest heaving in a way that the house knew indicated great distress, and said in a broken voice, “You wouldn’t.”

“No. Because you survived.”

Harry burst into tears. The house did not know what to do with him when he wept this way, and sent a silent pulse through its walls, a summons to Phineas Nigellus. The portraits didn’t have to answer when it called, but perhaps he would.

Phineas arrived, took one look at Harry, and started crooning in the way that only a human could. The house watched for long enough to make sure Harry would be all right, and then went upstairs to finish the gift.

Perhaps that would soothe Harry’s upset better than the words.

*

Harry carefully bottled the potion he’d been working on and walked out of the lab. He hadn’t happened on anything that could destroy the locket yet, but he had a lot of time to work on it, and hope that things would turn out well.

For now, he had another mission.

“The irrimvelat didn’t eat you.”

Walburga sounded disappointed. Harry had to brace himself against the sigh of the name past his ears. He didn’t know why it was so compelling, but it really was.

“No. But you tried to kill me.”

“You’re filth,” Walburga snapped. “Why wouldn’t I try to get rid of you? You don’t deserve to be here, don’t deserve to live in or represent the House of Black!”

Harry had wanted to see if she would regret it, even a little bit, but she didn’t. And the house had already made it clear that it couldn’t directly affect the portraits. So Harry took a step forwards, uncorked the flask, and flung the potion he’d just brewed on her face.

The potion dug into the surface of the painting, eating away at the contours of Walburga’s face. Still, Walburga laughed for a moment.

“You think any ordinary potion can destroy me, little boy? You are even stupider and filthier than I thought you were—”

Then she screamed.

Harry raised his voice to be heard over the shrieks. “I didn’t say it was any ordinary potion, did I? I don’t think I did.”

He stood and calmly watched as the potion devoured her, the way that she would have had the creature in the cellars devour him. Then he nodded at the blank canvas that was left as Phineas appeared inside it.

“How does it feel?”

“Good to be able to go a new place, but I don’t think I’ll spend much time here.” Phineas’s voice was soft as he looked around. “There’s no furniture or anything of the kind. She—only had herself painted as a head.” He took a deep breath. “You—you truly destroyed her.”

“Do you think I shouldn’t have?” Harry asked curiously. He wouldn’t have listened if Phineas had advised him to spare Walburga—he couldn’t tolerate living with someone who had truly tried to kill him—but he did want to know what Phineas would say.

“Shouldn’t have?” Phineas sighed. “I’m not going to tell you that, Harry. But she was still my great-granddaughter. I’m allowed to mourn her.”

“I think most of her died long before she became a portrait. What was left was hatred and violence.”

Phineas nodded slowly. “Yes, it might help if I can think about her that way.”

Phineas could think about Walburga any way that he liked, as far as Harry was concerned. He had things to do. “So, you think that a variation of this potion might be able to affect the locket?”

The portrait shuddered and visibly pulled his mind away from what had just happened. “It might at least tell us whether the thing in the locket that makes it so dangerous resembles a portrait’s soul in any respect.”

“Yes, I thought that as well,” Harry said contentedly, and trotted off to the Potions lab. He only had a few months left before he would go to Hogwarts, and some potions he could probably only practice here, unless one of the older portraits could tell him about a private place at the school.

He was determined to go to the school with what he needed to survive.

*

Arcturus shook his head as he opened the letter from Harry Potter, or the person pretending to be Harry Potter. They were persistent in their charade, he would give them that.

If it was one.

Rikki had begun to say that he thought the person really was Harry Potter. Arcturus still didn’t know why Harry Potter would be writing to him when the boy lived in the Muggle world and had dropped hints that his relatives weren’t the most magic-tolerant people. But perhaps he had a private way to receive owls.

Perhaps, Arcturus thought as he read through the latest letter, he could suggest a private place in Hogwarts for an enterprising student to set up a Potions lab.

If nothing else, it livened up his days.

*

“Do you get birthday presents, Harry?”

Harry bit his lip, and his eyes had a shine to them that didn’t turn into tears, which relieved Andromeda—she never knew what to do with tears—as he shook his head. “My relatives don’t believe in them for me,” he said softly.

“For you?”

“My cousin gets lots of presents.”

Andromeda sighed. She wished there was a way to get Harry away from his relatives, but she was following Nymphadora’s advice and taking it slow. Maybe, after he went to Hogwarts, Harry could at least visit them. “I promise I will get you a birthday present, Harry.”

“Thank you, Aunt Andromeda! You’re the best!”

With Bellatrix in prison and Narcissa estranged, Andromeda had once thought she would never hear anyone call her aunt. The way that Harry said it, and how he beamed at her as he did, was…

Surprisingly endearing.

*

“We’ll survive, Pet. Never worry.”

Petunia embraced Vernon, her shoulders shaking. She didn’t understand how Vernon could have been sacked. He was only taking a little money that was owed to him ahead of time to feed his family. Most of the other people he worked with didn’t have children or didn’t raise them the right way. They didn’t understand.

Despite what Vernon was saying, Petunia didn’t know how they would survive without his job.

But at least, Petunia thought, they were away from the freaks. There was that.

*

Albus stood tensely over the quill as it inscribed the letter to Harry Potter. He had been forced to admit that searching for the boy was impossible. No one had bragged about having him. The instrument on Albus’s desk still said that the boy was alive and considered himself at home. And Albus could not construct a more delicate instrument since he had used the last of Harry’s hairs to track down his aunt.

But now…

Now he could find out where Harry had been living for the last two years, at least.

The quill scribbled the first line, Mr. H. Potter, and paused.

Albus thought he could have been excused for wringing his hands together, but he did manage to avoid that, although he kept staring.

Then the quill wrote a few more lines, but they were obscured as though by ink blots. Albus cocked his head and stared and stared, but the magic of the wards had apparently reached out to cover them even here.

There might be a method to deal with the blurred lines as there had not been with the wards, however, since Albus hadn’t known where the wards were. He drew his wand.

A barn owl swooped down and grabbed the letter, soaring out the window of the Headmaster’s tower before Albus could even bring his wand to bear.

Albus stared after it and closed his eyes. He only hoped that by the time Harry actually got to Hogwarts, it wasn’t too late to make sure he was all right.

*

The house had finished the gift.

It formed the wooden face and looked carefully at it, from all sides. It was not looking for such things as a human might notice, but still, it thought Harry would be pleased, considering that he had not been able to acquire one on his own.

It formed wooden hands pair by pair and passed the gift down the front stairs until it reached the ground floor, where Harry was eating in the kitchen. He looked up and blinked, and his eyes went wide.

“For me?” he whispered.

The house formed the face. “We have made it for you,” it said, and then shoved the trunk a little harder at Harry.

Harry touched it with shaking fingers. The house watched closely. It had embedded some of its own magic in the trunk, and that made it a special Preserved Trunk, one that would follow Harry around even more faithfully and allow him to remain awake, but invulnerable, while hiding in it.

The house intended to keep him safe in Hogwarts, no matter what. With the connection that it had to the trunk, it might even be able to manifest a face out of the trunk’s wood at the school and talk to him.

Harry looked up, his eyes shining. “Thank you!”

“You are welcome, child,” the house said, and withdrew the face to preserve its power. But it continued to watch as Harry slid his hands over the trunk and smiled harder than he had since yesterday, when he had received the Hogwarts letter.

Harry was a survivor, someone who would get rid of his enemies when they hurt him and already knew more defensive spells and potions than any child of comparable age living within its walls that Grimmauld Place could remember.

It had chosen well.

The End.