Harry stared at the ceiling.
Seventeen cracks in the paint. There had been sixteen last year. Sixteen-now-seventeen cracks whose shapes he could draw from memory after so many years lying in this bed and staring at the ceiling when he was bored. He’d even tested that, gotten out a bit of paper when he needed a break from his summer homework and scribbled for a few minutes. When he leaned back and held the paper up, the lines were almost a perfect match for the ceiling cracks.
At present, he was staring at the ceiling because he’d been confined to his room, he’d finished all his books and homework, and if he let himself get up, he’d go looking for something to entertain himself. That would probably result in one of the Muggle children getting hurt, since they were his main source of entertainment lately.
Not one letter.
Harry’s eyes narrowed. Davis and Bole he’d kind of expected to write. Longbottom was valuable and Harry had actually written him first, along with Theo, but neither of them responded. He would be having words with Theodore when they returned to school, about how annoying it was to send off two letters and not get a response. It was the end of July, and nothing.
Well, technically, he’d sent Aoife off with the second two days ago and she wasn’t back yet, so she could come with a letter. But he refused to get his hopes up.
A door slammed over his head. People shouted. Harry glared and his magic crackled, begging for release, but he couldn’t do anything after the thing with Giles and his crony on his first night back. The Sisters suspected Harry and were keeping an annoyingly close eye on him even though the two boys never said a word.
In fact, they’d both joined the ranks of people who flinched away whenever Harry came near them. After years of being the one running from them, Harry found it very satisfying.
Something tapped the window.
Harry tore his eyes away from the seventeen cracks and summoned a ball of soft light with a thought. Wandless magic, fortunately, slipped through the Trace’s notice. He couldn’t do nearly as much with it as he could with his wand but it was better than nothing. He’d survived years here with only wandless magic. He could handle a few more summers.
Aoife clung to the windowsill, practically glowing in his light. Harry opened the window with a sigh. “Nothing?”
She hooted softly and jumped restlessly to his shoulder. He grunted under the weight and closed the window. “I know, I know, you want something to do, I’m sorry they won’t write back.”
Her next hoot was a little louder. One wing clipped Harry’s head and her talons dug into his shoulder.
“Ow! Watch it—is that blood on your talons?”
Aoife clattered her beak and jumped from his shoulder to the end of his bed. The owl glared at him with feathers fluffed up in classic angry body language.
“You’re mad at me,” Harry guessed.
Hoot. He took that as a yes.
“I really wish I could talk to birds as well as snakes,” Harry muttered. “Wait. Actually. Raza, can you help with this conversation at all?”
“Sshassng.”
“What?”
“What, wormfood! I was sleeping!”
“I need you to help translate this conversation.”
“It is the middle of the night! I am sleeping!”
“No, you were sleeping. Since you’re already awake you might as well help out.”
“I should bite you.”
“You won’t. Don’t you want to know why Aoife came back pissed at me with blood on her talons?”
Pause. “Fine.”
Raza slithered out of Harry’s rumpled sheets, blinking irritably at the light hovering above all their heads. It was much more pleasant than the ugly electric bulbs but still a little harsh in the darkness. Harry dimmed it a bit.
“Why are you angry with my hatchling, bird?” Raza said, glaring at Aofie.
A stream of hoots, beak-clatterings, and body language cues followed. Raza’s hissing turned into something wordless that Harry didn’t really understand.
Finally, Aoife settled. She still looked annoyed but less so now.
“I don’t understand her well,” Raza admitted. “All animals communicate best with their own species. It’s only because she’s spent so much time around a magical that she’s intelligent enough to communicate with me at all. She’s angry because she can’t talk to you, not at you so much. And I got something about problems with the letters.”
“Problems.” Harry got out his wand and started spinning it around his fingers. The gesture was comforting even if he couldn’t actually cast anything with it. “Problems… like they’re not getting delivered kind of problems?”
Aoife hooted and hopped along the rail, fluttering her wings.
“That’s a yes,” Raza said.
“Got that, thanks. Are they choosing not to respond?”
Between body language and Raza’s interpretations, he got a no, then a yes to they were trying to write back, and then he asked—
“Is something stopping any letters from going back and forth?”
More happy hooting.
Harry frowned. That was really weird. “The blood on your talons. Does it belong to someone I tried to write?”
“Yes,” Raza said. “That’s a yes.”
“What is going on,” Harry muttered. “This is… all… okay. Aoife, meet me at Mrs. Figg’s.”
He let her out the window, closed it, and changed quickly into Muggle clothes. There was no sense spending any of his precious money on his Muggle wardrobe when he had no intention of living Muggle for a day after his seventeenth birthday. Also, he didn’t care what the other orphans thought about his clothes, but in Slytherin it mattered.
Harry had shut down the secondhand robes comments the previous year but it was an easy insult for his stupider opponents to fall back on. Not really hard to deal with but still annoying. It would keep happening.
Which all meant he was stuck in third-hand jeans two sizes too big, a worn cotton T-shirt, and a flannel shirt that smelled faintly of sweat no matter how many times he washed it. Even magic hadn’t helped. Harry was going to burn this thing before next summer and the Sisters could get him something else.
There was still some of his parchment left. Harry had meant to owl order more with some of his few remaining sickles if he ran out, but then he hadn’t actually had a reason to use much except for homework. He chewed his lip for a few minutes before he used one of the last three rolls to write a brief letter to Theo. There was plenty of Muggle paper around the orphanage but that wouldn’t go over well with the Notts.
He locked his room behind him with magic when he was done. Raza’s complaints echoed from the hallway’s shadows as Harry sneaked away. Sister Agatha was on duty tonight and she wouldn’t be sleeping so he had to get creative.
Luckily, he was skinny and still fit through the window in the bathroom. The problem was that his room was on the second floor and he couldn’t just drop.
“Here’s hoping I don’t just die,” Harry muttered, and swung away from the windowsill.
His fingers found the drainpipe, scrabbled, gripped. Heart pounding, Harry braced his feet on the building and started to inch his way down. The brackets complained about his weight but they held.
Raza just wound his way down the pipe and beat Harry to the ground. “Finally,” he said when Harry’s feet hit dirt. “You landplodders are so slow.”
“It’s not my fault I was born with legs,” Harry said, peering around before he darted into the bushes. Going across the front lawn and down the driveway would be way too easy to see if any of the Sisters got up for a late-night walk. Some of them, the older nuns, slept lightly, and it was a nice night.
Harry crossed the street and found a deep patch of shade under an oak tree next to Mrs. Figg’s house. Her windows were dark and the whole place was silent.
A soft downdraft was his only warning. Harry raised a hand and Aoife landed on his arm. “Okay,” he muttered, tying the scroll one-handed to her leg. “For Theo, again. Bring his reply back here if there is one. Don’t try to come to the orphanage, I’ll drop by tomorrow and the day after at midnight to wait for you. I’m assuming you had a reason last time but try not to claw him up too badly, yeah?”
Aoife nibbled his ear.
“Ow,” Harry said, grinning.
The owl hooted, sounding weirdly similar to a laugh, and took off.
“You like her more than you like landplodders,” Raza noticed from the ground.
“Yeah, well.” Harry watched Aoife’s white figure disappear into the night. “She’s a bird. A smart bird, but still a bird. She’s not about to betray me or hurt me.”
***
Two nights later, Harry sneaked out again. Raza didn’t bother to come, so he was on his own in Mrs. Figg’s garden when Aoife appeared and landed on a bush next to him.
There was a letter tied to her leg.
Harry,
Your last letter told me that you haven’t received anything from me so far. I have not heard from you, either. I was wondering why your owl showed up and attacked me a few days ago and I had my father’s business associate look into things. There are owl wards up around wherever you’re living. I didn’t go, seeing as I’m 12, but the business associate did. There’s a spell on the envelope so when you open it, we’ll know. Someone will come to pick you up the day after that. She’ll say “pineapple” so you know this isn’t some ridiculously convoluted plot to kill the Boy Who Lived.
I wrote Longbottom and Bole so they know you’re not blowing them off. Try not to kill any of the Muggles, there might be an investigation and that would complicate things.
Theo Nott
“Initiative,” Harry said, smirking a bit. “I can work with that. Thanks, Aoife.”
***
“Potter, there’s someone here for you,” Sister Agatha said stiffly. “Come to Sister Rachel’s office.”
Harry didn’t look up from his book. “Be there in a moment.”
She huffed and glared.
Harry waited until she turned and left before he jumped into action. Pissing the nuns off was fun, and worth a thirty-second delay, but he still wanted out of here as soon as possible.
He chucked the book in his open and mostly-packed trunk, tugged on the stupid flannel with a sneer he couldn’t help, and slammed the trunk shut. It bumped behind him down the stairs. Raza complained about the noise from Harry’s leather messenger bag. Other kids peeked at him from behind their doors.
Sister Rachel was in her office with a vaguely familiar woman in neat Muggle clothing. She was tall, square-jawed, brown-haired, and pretty in the vaguely terrifying way of a statue.
“Hi,” Harry said, beaming at her. “Thanks for coming.”
“Of course,” she said, smiling back. It probably fooled Sister Rachel but Harry could tell it was just a mask. “Theo and his father are really sorry they couldn’t be here, but they had an errand in the city. They’ll meet us at the house. Theo said you loved pineapple, so I’ve made sure there will be some with dinner.”
“Harry, do you know this woman?” Sister Rachel said.
“Yes?” He blinked at her in fake confusion. “She’s here because my friend Theo, from school, he invited me over for a few days.”
Sister Rachel frowned at the woman. “You’ve mentioned this Theodore and his father. Is there a woman in the family?”
The woman didn’t blink. “Theodore’s mother passed several years ago. I stand in as his governess when his father has business.”
“Hm.” Sister Rachel frowned at the woman for several more seconds.
Harry had a pretty good idea of what caused her disapproval, and he didn’t care for it. “Sister Rachel?” he prompted. “I’d like to get going. Just for a few days.”
“This Theodore goes to your school?” Sister Rachel said, finally looking away from the other woman.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Not a single person in the office was fooled by the innocent little schoolboy mask.
“I suppose you may go,” Sister Rachel said stiffly. “For five days only.”
“Thank you, Sister Rachel!”
“Mm.”
He felt her eyes boring into his spine on the way out, and it rankled, but Harry dealt with it.
In the hallway, he and the woman eyed each other. She had to be close to six feet tall.
“Larkin Haigh,” she said.
“Harry Potter.”
Ms. Haigh raised an eyebrow. “I was aware, yes. This is your trunk?”
He nodded.
“Bring it along, then. We can Apparate from outside the wards.”
“One problem,” Harry said, lugging the trunk along after her. “There’s a Squib across the street. One of Dumbledore’s friends. She’ll notice if I’m not with the rest of the kids for church on Sunday.”
Ms. Haigh sighed. “Well, let’s see what kinds of wards she has on her home.”
Mrs. Figg, conveniently, had only some basic wards, none of which had been put there by her. “Someone’s keeping an eye on this woman as much as she’s keeping an eye on you,” Ms. Haigh muttered, fingering her wand. She and Harry stood on the edge of the road across from Mrs. Figg’s. “I can’t confund her.”
“I’ll handle it,” Harry said. “Give me… twenty minutes.”
“What do you want me to do, sit here?”
He shrugged and laid a hand on his trunk. It looked like an idle gesture but he was pumping as much power into it as he could. His things were his things and he wasn’t about to let her at them. “I imagine you could Apparate somewhere for a cup of tea and back in that time.”
“Hm.”
The crack of her Apparition reached him just as Harry walked up Mrs. Figg’s front steps. He grinned a little and knocked.
“Harry, dear!” The little old Squib beamed at him when she opened the door. “Come in, come in…”
“Thank you, Mrs. Figg,” he said, stepping in and holding his breath. He’d found that the smell wasn’t as bad if he didn’t breathe until he’d been in the house a few seconds. “How have you been?”
“Oh, well, the same as last week, not much really changes around here,” she said, leading him into her kitchen and settling him at the table. Harry took the same chair as usual, the one with the least cat hair on it. “And yourself?”
“I got a surprise visit this morning,” Harry said. “One of the kids in Muggle school… He and I lost touch last year, but he was… you know, my only real friend, and he wrote me a few weeks ago. His aunt just arrived to pick me up for a few days, and I wanted to let you know I’ll be gone for a bit.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, dear!” Mrs. Figg beamed at him and handed over a mug of tea. “Who is he?”
“His name is Henry Williamson,” Harry said.
“Henry and Harry, how sweet… It’s so good of you to keep up contact with your Muggle friends, dear, too many muggleborns have to choose between one world and the other when they get their letter, even if they don’t realize it.”
Harry sipped his tea. “Which do they usually choose?”
“Oh…” Mrs. Figg frowned, trying to remember. “My brother used to talk about this all the time, you know. One of his best friends was muggleborn. Very passionate. Something like sixty percent accept the Ministry’s offer, even those who go to Ignacio’s Bridge instead of Hogwarts.”
“Ignacio’s Bridge?” he said.
She blinked at him. “The other school, dearie.”
“There’s… another school?”
“Well, yes, you didn’t think Hogwarts held all the magical children of Britain, did you?” She laughed.
Harry searched for words. “I thought—I thought most of the others were homeschooled.”
“Most born to magical families are, or they seek apprenticeships, and sit their OWLs and NEWTs on their own. There are about two thousand children in Ignacio’s Bridge, compared to… six hundred in Hogwarts? A bit more? I was never too good with numbers, I’m afraid. Of those… hmm, about thirty or forty are muggleborn. And in Ignacio’s Bridge, it’s about a hundred?”
“What happens to the other muggleborns?” Harry said.
Mrs. Figg frowned at one of her cats. “Oh, dear, Pinkie needs a grooming, he’s got matted fur again…”
“Mrs. Figg?” he prompted.
“Ah—sorry, dear, what was that?”
“The other muggleborns,” he said. “Who don’t go to Hogwarts or Ignacio’s Bridge. What happens to them? Why don’t they go to one of our schools? Do they get apprenticeships?”
She laughed. “No, dearie, they haven’t the connections to get a magical apprenticeship. The others’ families don’t want them joining us. Their magic is bound and their memories wiped so they can live as Muggles.”
It felt like a rock had just been magicked into Harry’s stomach. Forty percent. Forty percent of muggleborns, every year, chose to stay away. At eleven they were forced to make that choice. At eleven, most kids had their parents’ opinions, so it wasn’t even the kids choosing, it was Muggles choosing for them. Muggles who might be the decent few and treated their odd children well, or Muggles like the Dursleys who hated anything that stood out—the Ministry just handing the Muggles a golden opportunity to cripple them. No wonder some of the purebloods ranted about magic dying out. Forty percent of the new magical children, every year, opting out of magic!
“Harry, dear, are you quite all right?”
He snapped back into the kitchen. “Yes, sorry, Mrs. Figg. Just thinking. If… you don’t mind me asking… is there some kind of database of population numbers?”
“I think the Ministry runs one,” she said. “Their archives are open to the public. You can request things for a small fee, by owl. If you’re really interested, I might be able to owl Walden’s friends, and see if any of them have his notes anymore, he passed, oh, ten or so years ago…”
The Ministry would have to wait until after his birthday, then. “I would really appreciate that,” he said with a wavering, sweet-innocent-child smile. “It’s just that, you know, growing up Muggle, I don’t really understand a lot of things, I want to learn about this world more.”
“It’s so wonderful,” Mrs. Figg said, beaming. “You’ve certainly taken to it like a duck to water.”
“Thanks,” Harry said, grinning wider. “Oh, and didn’t you say one of your cats was about to have kittens?”
He kept her talking for fifteen more minutes, said goodbye, and left the house with a great deal of relief.
Haigh was sitting on his trunk at the edge of the road. “This is the most boring town in existence,” she said.
“I’m aware,” Harry muttered. “I grew up here.”
“I am so sorry. Have you Apparated before?”
“No.”
“Hold my hand, do not let go, and don’t scream.”
He did as she was told, clutching his trunk in the other hand.
There was a crack, and then the sickening feeling of being squeezed through a very small tube, and Harry couldn’t see but not like his eyes quit working, it was like suddenly he didn’t have eyes—
Then his body fell back together and he stumbled. They were nowhere near Nup End anymore.
“Welcome to Kieldren Heights,” she said, pointing to a massive stone house sitting on a hill. “Ancestral home of House Nott.”
“Where are we?” Harry said, looking around. He and Haigh had appeared at the base of the hill. If he squinted, he could make out a Muggle road, and then a lake. Small, round-topped mountains covered with pine trees stretched away under the summer sun.
“Muggles call this area Northumberland,” she said. “There’s several families’ manors in the area. They pulled some strings and got a few national reserves and parks declared to make it easier for us to hide. Come on. No Apparition through the wards; we’ve got to walk through and then I’ll jump us up to the house.”
“That’s not a house, it’s a castle,” Harry muttered, hefting his trunk and setting off with her. This seemed to be a regular occurrence; there was a faint but noticeable path worn into the ground.
“That’s a manor,” she corrected. “Most wizarding families have an ancestral seat, although a lot of the unnobled families have lost their seats to the Muggles because they couldn’t afford all the tricks the nobles worked out to keep them away. And don’t worry, Theodore insisted I be sworn to secrecy before he sent me after you. I won’t tell where I found you.”
Weirdly up-front for a Slytherin. Unless—“Out of curiosity, what was your House in Hogwarts?” Harry said.
Haigh laughed. “Hufflepuff.”
That explained that, then.
“We’re through.” She stopped. “Hand.”
Another crack and another few seconds of unpleasant squeezing, and they were standing in front of the house—manor. On closer investigation, it looked like an improbable miniature castle. Turrets stuck out where you wouldn’t expect them to, massive and irregular windows of stained and clear glass spotted its outsides, and the manor appeared to have three different-sized wings branching off the main part. Some of the balconies were basically saying fuck you to physics. But even with its bizarre appearance, the house had a sort of quiet dignity and power, a sense you shouldn’t try to get inside without permission.
It looked like no Muggle building Harry had ever seen, and he loved it.
Haigh marched right up to the massive oak doors. They were set at the top of a staircase that dead-ended in what looked like a very overgrown garden.
“The grounds around the Manor used to be beautiful,” Haigh said quietly, seeing where Harry was looking. “Magical gardening is not like the Muggle. It’s an art form that takes decades to master, very delicate and particular. It is an honor for a garden artist to agree to work for a noble family’s land and they never do it for the money, only the chance to have free rein without worrying about Muggles seeing some of their more obviously magical ideas. For over ten years, it has been social suicide to give that honor to the Notts.”
Harry nodded slowly. “What manor homes still have magical gardens?”
Haigh heaved open one of the oak doors and led him into an entrance hall. It might have been gorgeous once, with the stained glass windows and marble floors, but now it was dusty and felt abandoned. “The Weasleys have one, but the turnover rate for artists is really high. The matriarch insists on involving herself with the gardening and she has… strong opinions. Tends to piss the artists off so they quit, but the family’s political status means more keep coming. The Vances, the McKinnons, the Pritchards, the Shacklebolts, the Longbottoms, and the Macmillans all have gorgeous active gardens. All Integration Party families.” Harry couldn’t help but notice how much information she was giving him other than magical homes. Clearly she’d seen through his trick to indirectly get hold of what families were powerful enough to have artists lining up outside their doors. Except, unlike a Slytherin, Haigh had decided to go ahead and give him what he’d asked for, plus a little more. “The Smiths, Haughsmoores, Boneses, and Slughorns of the Neutrals have well-kept gardens as well. The Rosiers used to but the last Heir died in a Death Eater mask and his daughter’s in the orphanage. Only reasons the Ministry didn’t take their seat is because the wards held them off.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “I’ve heard about the orphanage before, but not… in detail.”
“Ask Theo.” Haigh glanced over her shoulder at him. “Come on. I’m supposed to take you to Viscount Nott. He said ‘immediately’ but I’m guessing you want to get out of Muggle clothes first, so we can go to your room.”
He’d asked enough questions already, so Harry just nodded and followed her. They left the entrance hall through one of many doors along its sides and went up a grand marble staircase.
It turned out not to matter that he didn’t ask questions, because Haigh narrated as they went. “Three quarters of the Manor have been closed off. House-elves cost money to maintain and there’s no one to live in those rooms, anyway. We pretty much stick to the west wing.” She grinned over her shoulder at him. “I brought you in the front because it’s more impressive. Family has two house-elves, a kitchen, the library, a few bedrooms, and a drawing room that they use regularly. And the quidditch pitch. All the brooms are pretty dated but Theo likes flying anyway. He’s put you in the room across from his.”
There was something odd in her voice, there, when she talked about Harry’s room. He tensed a little.
“In case you’re wondering where all the furniture is, they pretty much sold it all to keep the Manor,” Haigh said quietly, when she saw him look at a blank patch of wall. It was a little lighter than the surrounding area like a portrait had once hung there. “That was an original tapestry of the battle between Arthur Pendragon and Mordred. It had been in the family for centuries; Morgana le Fay herself gifted it to them in gratitude for Galadriel Nott’s aid in the battle. He sacrificed himself to save Arthur minutes before he fought his way through to Mordred. The Crouches have it now.”
“Haigh is not a noble family,” he observed.
“No.” She shrugged one shoulder. “No, it’s not. We’re sworn vassals of the Notts like the Crabbes are vassals of the Malfoys, which is like being… noble by association, I guess. Crabbes are nobles on their own, of course, but the family’s gotten right pathetic since they were nobled in the first place. Even with their fortunes fallen, I still serve.”
“And you don’t… wish to leave?” Harry said, raising an eyebrow. To stick around even with the family this bad…
Haigh shook her head. “Slytherins. Of course I don’t. Viscount Nott has been like a father to me since my parents died of dragon pox. I was the one who held Theo at his mother’s grave since Thoros wasn’t allowed to leave the manor. Should the Ministry break our wards and take the house and throw them into the Muggle world, I’ll be right there with them.”
“Admirable loyalty,” he said. “You were in Hufflepuff for a reason.”
“As are you in Slytherin,” she said.
He grinned.
They stepped off the staircase onto the fourth floor, a winding hallway empty but free of dust, and well-lit thanks to several skylights. Wooden doors bound in iron lined the hall, and witchlight burned in sconces, offering steady clear light.
“Here you are.” Again that weird tone. Haigh pushed open the last door on the left.
Harry very cautiously stepped over the threshold. The room didn’t appear to be anything special, other than huge—the four-poster bed, dresser, and desk barely took up any of the room. Another door off the bedroom probably led to an in-suite bathroom. “Is there something special about this room?” he asked.
Haigh snorted from the door. Harry hauled his trunk over to the foot of the bed. “You could say that. This is where the family puts high-ranking visitors. Yet you, Heir Potter, are only a baby Lord.”
“What can I say,” he drawled, “Theo likes me.”
“Uh-huh.” She leaned on the doorframe. “He’s at the Greengrasses, by the way, dealing with Heir things. He’ll be back in about an hour. Change quickly.”
He had his trunk open before she even closed the door. Harry pulled out one of his school robes, stripped off his Muggle things, and pulled it over his head, along with one of two pairs of trousers designed to be worn under the robes. His Muggle trainers looked awful under it all but at least the robes had been made with some room to grow and he could mostly hide the shoes if he stood carefully.
Lastly, he pulled out his wand. For a few seconds Harry just let himself trace his fingers over it and relish the feeling of having it in his hands and being able to work magic again. Theo had told him, once, that the Notts’ wards canceled the Trace. Then he shook off his thoughts and started hitting his hair with a pile of hair charms. They didn’t work as well just thrown on randomly like this, but they’d hold for the next thirty minutes at least, and that was hopefully all he needed to get through this meeting with Viscount Thoros Nott.
Harry just prayed to Merlin that the noble manners he’d picked up so far would be enough for today.
Haigh looked him over and nodded in approval when he stepped out. “Not bad. Glasses need work.”
He aimed a cold look her direction.
“Theo wasn’t kidding, you’re creepy,” she said. “C’mon, he’s this way.”
Haigh led him halfway back along the hall and down one floor via a different staircase. Harry spent the whole way trying to decide if he was annoyed or not that Theo had described him as creepy.
“Here.” Haigh stopped outside a set of doors that looked just like all the rest. “Be polite. He also knows about your childhood and he won’t be expecting you to know every nitnoid noble etiquette rule.”
Harry nodded stiffly.
Viscount Nott’s bedroom was large, airy, well-lit, and stuffed with books. He paused just inside the doors and looked around with not a little awe. It was basically a library with a bed by the big bay windows.
“Heir Potter, I presume,” a raspy voice said from the bed.
“Heir Harry of House Potter,” Harry said, stepping forward. He approached the bed and paused just within view of its occupant to bow, deeper than he would have for a teacher.
“Tip for the future, boy, when meeting a noble of equal or higher rank on his or her own property, you greet them first. Don’t wait.”
“It is an honor, then, Viscount Nott.”
“You learn quickly. Good.” Nott struggled to sit up, jamming a pillow under his own back.
He was more in the light, now, and Harry could get a better look at him. There was something of Theo’s narrow features and skinny frame visible in his father’s face and shoulders, and they had the same nose, but there the resemblance stopped. Nott’s hair was gray and lank and cut shorter than his son’s, and instead of the skinniness of an active boy, his was sickly and weak.
“I look awful, I’m aware.”
“I was just comparing you to Theo,” Harry said, truthfully. “I see the resemblance.”
“He’s the spitting image of me at his age. You, on the other hand…” Nott narrowed his eyes, and even with the rest of him looking on the verge of collapse, his gaze was still sharp and clever. “Similar to your father, but not identical.”
“I’m told I have my mother’s eyes,” Harry said.
Nott wheezed out a laugh. “More often than you’d like, I’m sure.”
Harry was silent.
“I saw you liked the books.”
“I like reading,” Harry said. “Knowledge is power, when properly applied.”
Nott smirked. “How clever. A Muggle quote, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re often mistaken,” Harry said, to cover his surprise that Nott recognized a Muggle quote.
“No, I’m not. Hasn’t been much to do for the last ten years but read,” he said, waving around the room. “I ventured into Muggle literature eventually. I suppose with a population that large it was inevitable they’d turn out their share of brilliant minds.”
“Wish I’d met that kind of Muggle,” Harry muttered.
Nott laughed. “Ten years in bed has tried my patience, Potter, so I’m going to be blunt. When my son first mentioned his… association with you, I assumed he was playing you.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Harry said.
“Most of Slytherin no doubt thought the same,” Nott said. “And I’m sure you suspected he was trying.”
“I still think he was,” Harry said. “At the beginning, at least.”
Nott shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I detest metaphors but this one suits, so I will use it. Our star has fallen, and almost been suffocated by the circumstances. Yours, on the other hand, is rising. Theo is a clever boy. Clever enough to notice where the future power lies.”
“With those who take it,” Harry said.
“Yes…” Nott examined him. “I see what he meant. Indeed, Potter, with those who take it. I assume you plan to.”
Harry smiled a bit.
“Don’t give my son cause to regret his allegiance.”
“I don’t plan on it,” Harry said quietly. “Unlike… certain others, I don’t plan to engage in childish acts of violence and terror.”
Nott snorted. “That wasn’t subtle.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
“So you know what I am.”
“I know you used to have a certain tattoo on your arm,” Harry said. “I know you managed to talk your way into a room full of books in your own manor while Lucius Malfoy rots in Azkaban.”
“I’m only here because I’m dying,” Nott said.
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Really. I hadn’t noticed.”
Another rasping laugh. “Curse damage. Alice Longbottom’s wand, although I don’t know that her son knows that. I had a choice of a painkiller regimen that would ruin my mind, or live the rest of my life in excruciating pain but keep my mental faculties. I’m sure most of the Light were praying I’d take the former, but I needed to stay focused and raise my son to be the Heir our family needed. He has been the acting Lord since he was five.”
No wonder Theo was messed up. That much pressure from so young would affect any kid, no matter how strong, or how well prepared.
“Unfortunately, moving makes it worse. I’ll probably sleep for a few hours just to recover from this conversation. I have a spell that holds books up and turns the pages for me. Means I only have to move my eyes. Still hurts. And it gets worse the longer it goes, until eventually my heart will give out from the strain.”
“I’m surprised a Longbottom knew a spell like that.”
Nott laughed so hard he shook and tears sprang to his eyes. “Dammit, Potter, don’t amuse me. The Ministry authorized their Aurors to use a broad range of Dark Arts in the last years cleaning up our ranks. Made it harder to tell who’s who without the brand, and they got desperate. Clipped me in eighty-four. I was one of the last. The Longbottoms have their share of blood on their hands and Dark curses in their wands, if you look back far enough. They just convince themselves they did it for the Greater Good.”
“Didn’t you?” Harry said.
“I too used Dark magic,” Nott agreed. “And I did it in pursuit of a vision I believed in, even once the wizard leading it became a monster and a madman. The difference is I didn’t cast moral judgments on my enemies for using the same magic I aimed at them.”
Logical. Harry was glad he’d spent years listening to the snakes’ weirdly philosophical life lessons, most of which he hadn’t understood fully at the time, because it helped him keep track of conversations like this one.
“You’re at a disadvantage against your House mates because you don’t have access to a library like ours, the Malfoys’, even the Greengrass’,” he said. “While you’re here, have at ours. Borrow our books if you want and owl them back to me before you go to Hogwarts so no one catches you.”
“Thank you, Viscount Nott,” Harry said.
Nott grinned. If he could walk, he’d make a killing in a Muggle haunted house with that expression. “Don’t thank me, Potter. We are getting as much out of this as you.”
Harry grinned back. “I know. Why else do you think I’m trusting you even this much?”
“Oh, yes, Theo’s chosen well,” Nott said.
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