17 Blood of the Covenant

Harry 

Both Dylan and Veronica were going to their families for the Yule break, and Graham had been moved to Grimmauld Place via private medical portkey for health reasons, so all Harry had to do on the platform was find Rio. Easier said than done. The kid was short even for his age, and quiet. It took Harry several minutes of searching to clap eyes on his ward. 

Harry waited a moderate distance away for Rio to say quiet goodbyes to his friends, and then approached the kid. “Ready to head home?”

“Yes,” said Rio in a quiet voice. His eyes darted around. “Is—is Mr. Black here?” 

“You’re welcome to call him Sirius,” Harry said gently, steering Rio into the queue for the floo, “and no, he… didn’t want there to be a fuss. People are still upset about last year.”

Rio frowned. “That’s silly of them.” 

Silly wasn’t the word Harry would most like to use, but Rio was still young enough that Harry tried to speak with some moderation. “People are silly. You remember the floo address?” 

“Obviously,” said Rio, so scornfully Harry had to smile, and then he whirled away into the flames, trunk clutched to his side. 

Harry followed him, and stepped out in the Grimmauld Place kitchens with the wards’ welcoming magic shivering over his skin. It felt stronger than he remembered, clearer, and it took Harry a moment to focus on his surroundings, just in time to see Rio hug Sirius around the waist and then dart out of the room. 

Sirius stared after him. “What—?” 

“He looked for you on the platform. I think he feels bad that people are still pissed at you about James.” 

“Pity from a twelve-year-old. Look what my life has come to,” said Sirius, but he looked pleased. 

Harry went around the table and followed Rio’s example, hugging Sirius briefly but with feeling. He let go in the second before it would have crossed the line from tolerable contact to discomfort. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know. Muddling along.” Sirius waved a hand. “Going out with Ian tonight. He loves the bike.”

“Sounds like a match made in heaven,” said Harry with a grin. “Is he coming for Yule dinner?” 

“I hope so.” Boyish excitement transformed Sirius utterly, and he levitated Harry’s trunk with a grin. “C’mon. Wanna see what I did to the muffler before I have to leave?” 

That was suspicious. Harry narrowed his eyes at the back of Sirius’ head as they proceeded up to the entrance hall. “Did you take it off so you can make more noise?” 

“No, but I spelled it so it stops working when I want it to,” said Sirius, sounding very smug. 

“All the better for dramatic entrances?” 

Sirius turned around and gave Harry a haughty look worthy of Draco. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

His air of snobby reserve lasted all of three seconds before dissolving into cackles. 

In Sirius’ defense, the runework on his muffler was ingenious, and Harry memorized a few of the more interesting configurations to tell Theo about later. Theo wasn’t planning to come within a mile of Grimmauld Place this holiday but Harry hoped to get Sirius and Theo together sometime in the future. Between the two of them, they could probably create a motorcycle with enough enchantments to stand up to a dragon. 

He excused himself before long to put his trunk away, and then Harry had no more excuses, and went to Graham’s room despite the strange churning feeling in his stomach. 

Graham was in bed when he got there, but sitting up and reading, dressed in normal robes and no longer looking as sickly as he had for the last few weeks. His whole face lit up when Harry knocked on the door jamb. “Harry!” 

“Mind if I come in?” 

“No—yeah—come in.” Graham kicked a decorative pillow aside to make room, and Harry perched on the bed by Graham’s feet. 

“What’re you reading?” 

Graham tilted the book to show Harry the cover. Ender’s Game. “It’s a Muggle book. Veronica loaned it to me—can Muggles really do all this?” 

A smile playing around his mouth, Harry shook his head. “It’s called science fiction. Muggle writers think about their existing technology, and they imagine what would happen if some aspects of that technology got a lot better, or what the world might look like with theoretical technological advances. Muggles have been to space, and they have a space station up there that’s permanently staffed by people—astronauts—who do scientific experiments and stuff, but they don’t know how to change gravity’s effects like in this book. And they haven’t had any contact with aliens.” He winked. “Or if they have, the Muggle governments aren’t telling anyone.” 

Graham’s eyes were big as saucers. “They might be keeping it a secret?” 

“Well, it’s a theory, anyway.” 

“Wait, have you read the book? How’d you know about the gravity thing?” 

“I read it when I was younger.” Harry grinned. “We should go on a trip to a Muggle bookstore sometime. I bet Veronica and Rio would have a good time showing you and Dylan around. There are so many more Muggles than wizards that they’ve come up with a lot more fictional stories. Did you know Ender’s Game has a bunch of sequels?”

“It does? No, don’t tell me, I don’t know how it ends yet,” said Graham, clutching the book close to his chest as if to protect it. “But… yeah, that sounds fun, we should totally go.” 

Well, now Harry knew what he was getting Graham for Yule. “I’ll try to find some time in the next week or two. How are you feeling?” 

Graham deflated a little. “Better. I should be okay to go to all my classes again by the time we go back.”

“And you’ve been keeping up with your homework?” 

“Yes,” said Graham, rolling his eyes. “I have, promise. Did you… do you know yet who…”

“Who did it?” Graham nodded, and Harry sighed. “No, unfortunately not. The Auror Dumbledore had look at the lounge and vials and such only found traces of the spells used, and it looks like the kinds of self-cleaning vials you can buy in bulk from any major potions supplier. It looks like either runes or alchemy was used to weld shut the doors to the potions cabinet, and there was no evidence whatsoever of how they got past the school’s perimeter wards. All we really know for sure is that they didn’t cast anything like the Unforgivables that might have tripped one of Dumbledore’s sensors.”

“Oh.” Graham chewed on his lip. “So they might…”

“Try again?” Harry refused to sugarcoat this. “Yes. They might. I’m going to be much more careful from here on out, and talk to everyone else about that, too. It was most likely aimed at myself, Celesta, or Draco, so you younger lot should be safe.”

“From assassins, anyway.” 

Harry cocked his head. “Is this about Alex and Ginny?” 

“And ‘Ronica, yeah. Pym’s being a pain in the arse lately, and we’re all worried for Ginny. Did her mum really threaten to pull her out of school?” 

Having gotten the whole story out of Ginny after she had an evening to calm down and talk about it, Harry could confirm that Molly did indeed threaten to homeschool Ginny, and, further, that the matter was by no means settled. Ginny had gone home in a state of humming-wire tension. But he didn’t want to worry Graham more than necessary, so all he said was, “Yes, but Dumbledore talked her out of it. I do think Ginny’s probably going to be grounded for…” ever seemed appropriate, but— “quite a while. At least the whole of the Yule holiday.” 

“I’m so glad Sirius doesn’t ground us,” said Graham. 

“No, but I will if I have to.” 

Inexplicably, Graham grinned. “I know.” 

Before Harry could ask why Graham looked happy about the prospect of being grounded, a quiet knock at the door alerted him to Rio’s arrival, though the youngest of all Harry’s informal wards lingered on the threshold instead of coming in. “Hi.”

“Hey, Rio, how’s everything?” Graham said. 

“Pretty good.” Rio looked at Harry. “Can I talk to you?” 

“Yeah, of course. Write Dylan and Veronica about the bookstore trip,” Harry said to Graham as he got up. 

The last thing he saw before closing Graham’s door was Graham hunched over his journal, writing furiously. Harry half-smiled but made sure to look appropriately serious before he turned back to Rio. The kid seemed tense. 

“I got a letter,” Rio said quietly. “From… um, my great-uncle.”

Harry frowned. “Here?” Muggle postmen couldn’t find the house.

Rio just shoved a scroll of parchment at him.

Wait, a scroll? 

Bemused, Harry took it and began reading. He stopped halfway down, skipped to the end, read the signature, and then read it all over again more slowly. 

“Thank you for showing me,” said Harry, well aware of the kind of trust that took. He handed the scroll back. “Why don’t we go sit in the drawing room and talk?” 

“Okay,” said Rio. 

Harry’s mind spun. How on Merlin’s green isle had Rio even found the connection? 

The house flexed around them, and the drawing room door popped open of its own accord. Rio barely paused, but Harry stopped to give the door a narrow-eyed look before he followed his ward into the drawing room. 

Almost immediately, the door clicked shut, though Harry had not touched it with either hand or magic. 

He had other problems right now than the house. Harry took a seat across from Rio and said, “Talk to me, kid.” 

Rio launched into the story. Nerves left him rambling and chronologically inconsistent. Harry nevertheless pieced it together easily: Rio had been talking to Dylan about his grandparents last summer, and admitted he was suspicious they already knew about magic before McGonagall showed up at their house. Dylan asked if perhaps one of Rio’s parents had been magical. Rio knew her name, Leah, and a search through old Hogwarts class photos soon turned up a Leah Ingram who attended in the sixties; in her seventh year she was shown in a couples photo with Daksh Majmudar, an Indian magical family name Dylan recognized, which sent the two young detectives on a hunt for any Majmudars who had lived in England in the last century. 

There was only one: Amit Majmudar, a squib, whose wife Darcy was one of two Honeywells of her generation. Her older brother, Dickon, turned out to still be alive. 

“He’s got a wife, and a daughter, she’s seven,” Rio said at the end, in a rush. “It’s weird—they’re so old, right? He’s my… my grandmother’s brother? But he has a kid younger than me!” 

“Wixen live very long lives,” Harry said, keeping his voice soothing and slow. “With good health and the help of fertility rituals, a witch can safely conceive and bear a child well into her eighties. I don’t know why they waited so long, but it’s hardly unheard of.” 

Rio nodded. His hands wrapped around each other tightly enough to cast his knuckles paler. “Right…”

“He seemed pleased to hear from you,” Harry probed. Pleased was an understatement, really; Dickon Honeywell’s letter overflowed with happiness and relief—where it wasn’t explaining the series of tragedies that led Rio to be raised in ignorance. 

“Yeah.”

Harry was so wildly out of his depth. Wasn’t this something to be happy about? “He wants to see you for Yule, he said… and he seems like a kind wizard.” 

Rio nodded, and looked miserable. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry said, resorting to directness. 

“I—just—” Rio struggled with himself, looking everywhere but at Harry, before blurting, “What if they don’t want me?” 

Harry leaned forward a little. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t want you, okay? I’ve heard the Honeywells’ name—they’re mostly not political, and not a large family, but they’ve been around for quite a while and they’ve never associated with blood supremacist movements. Their reputation is excellent. And you?” Harry waited until Rio made at least glancing eye contact. “You are a smart, polite young wizard doing well in your classes. Dickon sounds absolutely sincere in that letter: he loved his sister, and adored your mother, and they searched for you when your parents died.” 

Rio’s face twitched at the last few words. Harry played them back mentally and wanted to hit himself. Rio wasn’t expressing a rational fear of a pureblood family being unhappy to find a debatably halfblood descendant. This was something else: Rio’s Muggle grandparents didn’t want him—let Sirius take him without much of a fight—and now he wondered if anyone else ever would. 

Abandonment issues, said a voice in Harry’s head that sounded a lot like Justin. 

“Rio,” Harry said, trying for gentle, “I mean it, okay? They’d have to be idiots and fools to not like you, and if they do, fuck ‘em.” As intended, the profanity got a twitch and a flash of a grin. “Blood kin are supposed to be a built-in family, and sometimes that works, but even blood family still have to choose each other, or it doesn’t count. If they don’t choose you, that’s their loss, not yours. And no matter what, you always have a place here.” 

A slight wobble of his lower lip was all the warning Harry got before Rio sobbed. Just once, and then he caught himself, blinking tear-bright eyes furiously; Harry pretended to be deeply interested in an end table, so that Rio would have time to collect himself. Breaking down in tears in front of someone was its own level of trust, and if Rio wasn’t there yet, then Harry wouldn’t force it. 

“I don’t want to go there for Yule,” Rio said with an air of pushing the words out against enormous pressure. “I want to… I want to do it here. With—you and Graham and Mr.— Sirius. If that’s… okay.” 

Harry had to speak around a sudden tightness in his throat. “Yes, Rio, of course it’s fine. Look—why don’t you write your uncle back? I can look over the letter for you, if you want. Just… tell him you have plans for Yule with a friend’s family, but you would love to meet him a day or two before or after the holiday.” 

“Okay, I’ll—do that.” Rio got up jerkily. “Um. Thanks, Harry.” 

“Anytime,” said Harry with the warmest smile he knew how to make. 

Rio left at a quick pace, and Harry sat back, thinking. He or Sirius or both of them would need to write Dickon Honeywell at the very least, and possibly meet in person as well. And Harry would start looking into the Honeywells tonight: he wasn’t about to let Rio go traipsing off to visit a family he didn’t know unless he knew everything was as it seemed. 

The whole situation felt eerily, uncomfortably familiar. Rio had grown up with grandparents instead of an aunt; the letter from Dickon described a potions accident that killed both Leah and Daksh in their home in 1985. 

Rio had been just over a year old. 

But Rio had wound up with his Muggle family by accident, not design: Leah and Daksh never married, and with their deaths the wards on their house collapsed. Living as they did in a Muggle neighborhood, the police responded, and took the baby Rio off to a hospital; later, having been obliviated of any knowledge of Daksh Majmudar, who had no Muggle identification papers, they called Leah’s parents to come pick up their grandson. 

Dickon, meanwhile, had searched high and low for his niece and great-nephew. Both Darcy and Amit were killed in the late seventies by extremists who may or may not have been associated with the Death Eaters—it was never solved—and Dickon had seen Leah, Daksh, and Rio regularly. Unfortunately, his and his wife Amanda’s efforts were for naught. The Ministry had still been reordering itself after the turbulent end of the war years and the elections and trials that followed; they weren’t about to bestir themselves for the child of a Muggleborn and a foreigner, not on behalf of the Honeywells, who were old and respectable but by no means awash in gold or influence. 

The difference between Rio and Harry was that Rio’s magical family wanted him. Harry might take precautions, but if Dickon and Amanda Honeywell were sincere, if they cared for their great-nephew like family should, then the last thing Harry wanted to do was get in the way. 

So why was he—distressed? That was the only word Harry had for this feeling, tight and stomach-turning and nervous. In distress. 

At least he knew he was glad to have Rio for Yule, and flattered or honored or something along those lines, that Rio had chosen to stay rather than go to the Honeywells’ for the celebration. 

Barty 

Just over two years of freedom, much of it spent hiding amongst Muggles, and Barty still found their world confusing. There were just so many of them, all moving so quickly, with alien fashions and what they called technology, a word for which Barty would give them credit: the Muggles knew their classical languages and utilized them well. 

To be precise, it should mean the study of tech-, which as Barty understood it derived from the Greek tekhno-, which referred to the systematic application of some craft or technique. So technology as a noun for all the Muggles’ many clever devices wasn’t entirely accurate. He still found the word pleasing, and its referent, though overwhelming, intrigued him. 

Even something as simple as a small cafe had examples of their technology. Wixen used simple household charms for most tasks related to the heating and preparation of food and drinks. Ovens and stoves ran on magical fires or, in some cases, artifice that incorporated heat enchantments to bypass the need for individually cast spells. Here, all the Muggles’ devices, powered by electricity (another word Barty quite liked), took much more time, and made much more noise, to perform the same tasks. The inner workings of espresso machines and microwave ovens—both words he had only learned in the last year—appeared as complex as the mechanics of upper-level charms and enchantments. Beyond that, there was the television, another new word and something Barty wanted to study purely out of academic interest. Magic and these Muggle devices almost never cooperated, so it was of little personal use, but he supposed that mentality was what made him a Ravenclaw. 

Unfortunately he wasn’t here to make a detailed study of the ways Muggle technology could compensate for Muggles’ lack of magic. 

Barty sipped his coffee. Plain, and as always tasting just a fraction flatter, less vital, than crops grown by magical beings, in areas suffused with the ambiance of natural magical flora and fauna. According to a series of clever experiments done in Peru, Muggles could not taste a difference, but purebloods and Muggleborns alike could, as well as almost all other magical beings that participated in the trials. Not that the Peruvian magical community even thought of things in terms like ‘pureblood’ and ‘Muggleborn,’ hence why Barty, despite his best efforts, could never persuade his compatriots to take the study seriously. 

Another of the (several, and increasing) number of irritations he harbored of late. 

It was still decent coffee, and certainly provided as much caffeine as any grown under magical care. Barty took another sip and checked his pocket watch. Five minutes late. How unlike Harry. 

Nine minutes past their scheduled meeting time, the bell at the door jingled and Barty looked up. He didn’t recognize the woman stepping inside, but his instincts prickled, a suspicion confirmed almost immediately, as she came over to Barty’s table and said, “The weather sure is appalling today, luv.” 

“Fortunately I find it charming,” said Barty, subtly palming the inside of his right arm, where his wand holster lay. 

With a wink, Harry—for that was him, in a borrowed body—turned and walked over to the queue for drinks. Barty watched him go and quickly worked out what had bothered him: Harry was unused to the biomechanical differences between the average male and female pelvis, and in that body, his stride was ever so slightly awkward. None of the Muggles would notice, and Barty doubted whether any magical folk would, either. Most wixen simply weren’t trained to look for signs of magical disguise and deception. 

Barty wasn’t most wixen. 

Harry returned with gently steaming paper cup and settled into the chair opposite Barty. Wordlessly, Barty cast a sound-scrambling jinx on their table, so that its field of effect would allow them to speak but keep any of the Muggles or their clever auditory-recording devices from listening in. “Harry.”

“Barty,” said Harry, in a voice smoother and slightly higher-pitched than his natural one. He made a face. “Oh, I sound weird.”

“Who is she?” 

“Daughter of a squib, visiting London on holiday, or so the records claim. Really she’s gone off on some hiking trip along Hadrian’s Wall, but all the records of that are Muggle so it’s not like any of your lot will figure it out.” 

Barty nodded. “Plausibly meeting me here for a date, or because I am cultivating a source.” He was impressed: it was a good cover. “You’re well?” 

“As I could hope for. I had—an incident with a bad potion, a few weeks ago,” said Harry, and held out one hand: it betrayed a faint tremor. Nerve damage, Barty wondered, or muscular? “I’m still recovering. I tire more easily than I should.” 

“It’s unlike you to have an incident that severe with a potion. I know for a fact I taught you better safety precautions.” 

“I didn’t brew it,” Harry said drily. 

Barty took a sip of his coffee, thoughts racing. Harry would never let something like that slip accidentally—it could only be a deliberate show of trust, even if it was obvious Barty didn’t have the whole story. Even without the oaths that once bound them to one another’s secrets… 

You shouldn’t trust me this much, Barty thought, with a bell-peal of unease that rang through his entire being. 

“And your wards?” Barty asked, instead of probing for more information, as his training would require. 

Harry shrugged. “Wards is an overstatement. Everything’s still unofficial. They’re well, though. We may have found a living magical relative of one of them.” 

“Oh? I’m sure they’re excited.” 

“We’ll need to… do some background checks,” said Harry with a trace of a smirk that sat oddly on his borrowed face, “before we really make contact, but I’m optimistic.” 

“That this ward of yours might get the happy ending you didn’t?” 

Harry paused. “Yes.”

“Don’t tell me you forgot what it’s like to speak directly,” Barty needled with a grin. This felt more familiar. Both of them jousting, jesting. 

“No, of course not, I have Hermione for that, it’s just that she’s not mean.” Harry lifted his coffee cup in a toast, took a sip, and asked, “And you? Keeping busy?” 

“Busy is putting it mildly.” As long as he kept it vague, Barty could complain; Harry, unlike anyone else save possibly Narcissa, would just listen without potentially judging Barty’s inadequate dedication or some such rot. “I’ve only recently completed a long-term project—” no more Quigley-suit, thank Merlin— “and had to take on three others.” At least two of those were research, which helped, but— “One of them is a group effort and my teammates are, shall we say, a few bowtruckles short of a bickling.” 

“Bickling?” 

“It’s the word for a group of bowtruckles. I know you didn’t take Care, but really?” 

“I have other priorities,” said Harry. 

Yeah, okay. “So I have to keep this idiot on track, and the third person on the team is—”

Barty stopped. How did one describe Augustus Rookwood? 

Mad, certainly. Brilliant. Erratic. Subtle. 

Some labeled him a sadist, or cruel. Barty… didn’t think so. Whatever was going on with Rookwood was much more unsettling than sadism. 

“Is what?” Harry said, watching closely with an expression that Barty knew well, even filtered through facial muscles unsuited for it. It was the same cocked-head stare of a wolf assessing the scent of what might be prey. 

“I don’t like him,” Barty admitted. 

Slowly, Harry nodded. “Personally, or—?” 

“Personally. I’m not sure he has what you might call an ideology to disagree with.” 

“Sounds like another Ravenclaw,” said Harry with a curling half-smile. 

“You always were too clever for your own good.” Barty consciously pressed his shoulders back, though they wanted to hunch forward over the table. Then he gave up and let his body do what it wanted. Who cared if Harry saw his exhaustion? 

“Pepper-up?” Harry said quietly. 

Barty shook his head and took a steadying breath. “I asked to speak in person for a reason.”

“I’d assumed as much.”  

For days, Barty went back and forth on whether to even bring this up. It felt like all that time spent agonizing over the decision, and all the time actively not thinking too hard about what it meant, should translate into some idea of just how to say this at all. Such was not the case. His tongue was lead in his mouth. 

Maybe he should just—but if Harry’s occlumency slipped at a critical moment—

Barty dropped into Old English, which he knew Harry understood well enough for verbal communication, and which, more to the point, Barty’s Lord did not. “Your friends need to be careful.” 

“Careful of what?” Harry said with the studied pronunciation of someone most familiar with a language’s written form. That was fine. The point was that Harry could occlude the words’ meaning more easily than the precise sound of them from a legilimens, and it wouldn’t be unusual for Barty to drill his erstwhile apprentice in one of the languages they’d studied. 

“Force from their families,” said Barty. “The Mark cannot be taken against the individual’s will, but—coercion, or blackmail—those don’t count as unwilling. Not to the magic of it.” 

Harry’s expression gave nothing away, not even to Barty. He’d come a long way in the two years since Barty first met him. “And my friends?” 

“Have families. Any person can be leverage.” 

Not just over their families, either: Harry would be smart enough to hear that subtext, and indeed, as his face darkened, Barty saw that he had. 

“Are you satisfied I haven’t forgotten everything you taught me now?” Harry said, switching so fluidly to a student’s wry challenge that even Barty was nearly at a loss. 

“Passable,” sneered Barty in his best imitation of Snape. 

Harry laughed. Not his natural laugh, which Barty had heard fewer than five times, but a smoother, more manufactured thing, even though they were here behind sound wards. Then his expression grew ever so slightly pained. “Oh, have I mentioned? Potter has been doing oddly well in Potions this year—like he’s got some kind of tutor, or cheat sheet.” Only because he knew Harry so well did Barty hear the slightest hitch on Potter, as if Harry were unsure which name to use. “Slughorn thinks he’s Merlin come again. Some kind of shocking prodigy.”

“That’s not possible.” Potions was such a sprawling field, infinitely complex, so much of it internally contradictory or poorly understood, that amateurs found targeted self-study largely impossible. Harry’s self-study had been untargeted for years, and only by reading widely and often had he accumulated a broad enough understanding to even know where to look for a specific problem. Most students didn’t even approach that level until NEWTs or a formal apprenticeship. 

Harry’s shrug was jerky. “And yet he’s done it. I can’t work out how. It’s irritating.” 

“Could he be an imposter?” Barty mused, more out of curiosity than anything else. It seemed an odd amount of effort to go through when Potter was a passable potions student, and certainly had nothing to gain by excelling in the subject. 

The idea seemed to take Harry aback. “I… suppose it’s possible, but I’m inclined to say no. I can ask Neville and Hermione to keep an eye on him when we go back in January, just to rule it out, though.” 

“One can never be too sure.”

“Yeah, you’d know.” 

Barty raised an eyebrow and his cup in sync. “My thoughts exactly.” 

They spoke only of superficial things until their drinks were gone—of quills lost in Hermione Granger’s hair, of Barty’s (personal, irrelevant) research into possible arithmantic applications of the I Ching, of pranks played on Sirius and of a house-elf who spilled tea on Barty’s robe last week. Barty did not ask about Draco Malfoy’s public courtship of one Muggleborn, or Pansy Parkinson’s rumored dalliance with another, or Harry’s plans for a potions apprenticeship, or of anything that even smelled of politics. 

And when Harry left—after one more admonishment to be careful that Barty couldn’t quite contain—Barty stayed in the Muggle coffee shop, alone, staring at the cooling dregs of his flat coffee, clinging to the anonymity and freedom here for as long as he could. 

He could only hope that Harry would hear what Barty could not put into words, and act on that information. 

It was a betrayal. Not an explicit one, true—Barty knew no actual plans to force the Mark onto Parkinson or Nott or any of Harry’s other friends, nor had he received any orders pursuant to that end—but a betrayal nonetheless. A deliberate attempt to forestall what Barty suspected was his Lord’s goal. Just thinking about it made him queasy but Barty did not tolerate self-deception. Having gotten it over with, he could finally think about his motivations directly, which he had been unable to bring himself to do before today. A weakness that Barty would allow himself no longer. 

The answer presented itself immediately, with the force of the Hogwarts Express at full speed. 

Worse than the thought of being a traitor was the idea of the Mark being forced. Barty’s fingers spidered compulsively over the inside of his left forearm, though his Muggle shirt hid the Mark. It was a vassal oath. It was a binding. It was not slavery, but neither was it trivial; the Mark was more than a political allegiance, than a family alliance, in some ways more than a marriage. The Mark was not something to be taken lightly. 

When Barty thought of someone kneeling under threat of a parent’s wand, or for fear of a friend’s welfare—when he imagined them shrinking from the enormity of giving one’s very self for a higher cause, rather than reaching towards it—he felt like killing someone. 

In his youth he’d been disgusted by the thought of coerced Markings, but it was an arrogant disgust, an assumption that only those who saw the truth deserved such an honor. Barty now found himself uncertain whether it was an honor, which in itself felt like a critical support had given way somewhere in his worldview, but more to the point, his personal revulsion at the idea of a forced Marking echoed all the way to the bottom of his soul. 

That was new. That was—well, obvious in its origins.  

Barty had spent a decade enslaved on every level to another’s will. It was a violation that he tried not to think about: remembering it sent his mind skittering sideways, into pain, into violence, into desperate grasping for proof that he was his own person again. To trap and bind someone against their will was—the highest crime. He thought of Theodore Nott and pictured a wild animal, a predator, caught in a trap, collared and pinioned, forced onto a leash, and his wand was in his hand before he knew he’d moved. 

Breathing slowly, Barty put it away, and rose. It was time to leave before he came any closer to a pointless and unprompted public murder. 

The parallels between the Mark and the Imperius followed him relentlessly out into the chill winter sunlight and down the Muggle street. Snow had come early this year and Barty dragged his feet through it in a weak attempt at distracting himself. He did not tolerate self-deception, and to shy away from this thought was to remain willfully blind. That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, Barty told himself—a sort of mantra among the Ravenclaws, in his day—and made himself look at the idea head-on. 

The Dark Mark was not the Imperius. It did not subjugate one’s will, or control one’s actions. But the symbolic power of it—the weight of all it represented—

Barty inhaled, and cold air seared his lungs all the way down. 

Do you bind yourself freely to our noble cause? his Lord had asked, and Barty, kneeling in a line of other supplicants, had said yes. 

He had believed wholeheartedly in the cause, and in the man. He had believed so strongly that he combined the two into one entity. An idea distilled into a person. A man made into something more. 

Looking back, it felt like weakness. It felt like Barty had signed away responsibility for his own beliefs and let another person do his thinking for him. The very idea disgusted him. Repelled him on every possible level. 

Was that what he had done? 

No. Not entirely. Barty had his own opinions, and Azkaban and his father might have taken much from him but nothing could steal those. His hatred of the corruption and stagnation plaguing the Ministry was not happy; dementors hadn’t wanted it. And while the Imperius was powerful and insidious, the most fundamental things about a person remained deeply resistant to change. Everything about who Barty was stood in direct opposition to the narrow-minded, short-sighted, self-destructive idiocy that had dominated magical Britain’s government for centuries. 

But—it had been far too long since he seriously evaluated the dissonance between his beliefs and those of his peers. Far too long since he questioned. 

No authority was above questioning. Not the gods, and certainly no man; and his Lord might be more than a man, but that did not exempt him from fallibility, from being doubted. When had Barty come to believe that? When had Barty put the idea of his Lord in an untouchable, unquestionable, infallible box, and just stopped asking? 

Barty stopped where he was, and turned his head up, and looked directly at the clouds and gently falling snow despite the pain in his eyes and the irritation of other pedestrians. 

He had signed himself away and grown addicted to the freedom in surrender. The freedom from any responsibility. If he recoiled from this idea any harder he’d find himself astral projecting, but it was undeniable, it was true, and so he would accept it, even if it hurt. 

It was long past time he began to think for himself again, and if—if doing so brought him in opposition to his Lord—

Unease reverberated through Barty all the way down to his feet—as if he had heard a death-knell somewhere in the distance, tolling a warning of ill fortune. 

Theo 

“You asked to see me?” 

Father looked up, and gestured. “Yes. Apologies, I lost track of time.” 

Theo came fully into the study and closed the door behind him, feeling its wards lock into place as he did. Father had launched the second-heaviest warding protocols on his study: that alone sent wariness prickling down Theo’s spine, as if he needed more of a sign that something was going on. 

The Notts were still playing host to nearly a dozen of Lord Voldemort’s associates, as ill-mannered and irritating as the last, although Theo had not yet found an excuse to use any of them as stress relief. Then again, Theo had just gotten home from Hogwarts yesterday afternoon. He was sure something would come up before January. 

“Sit,” Father said, and Theo obeyed, slouching back with studied nonchalance. “My son… you are nearly a grown wizard. I will speak directly to you, as one adult to another. This conversation is bound by the magic of the House of Nott.” 

Theo felt the family magic settle on him like a geas. He would be able to speak of this conversation, and its contents, with no one. “I can handle it.” 

Father looked grim. “I know. But you will not like it.”

The sense of foreboding grew stronger. 

“He is growing… impatient… with many of our allies. Progress has been slow on several critical projects.”

“This is a shadow war. Things are bound to move slowly so long as His operatives work in the shadows.” Theo carefully avoided using we. 

“Yes. And he is aware of that, up to a point.” Father flattened both hands on the table, the way he always did when bracing to deliver an ultimatum or an offer. “We are the wands of the Dark Lord, and when he grows impatient with our progress, he wishes to expand. Many wands make light work.” 

Theo felt his magic ripple and surge, a banked fire begging for escape. “Are you telling me—”

“I know you have no wish to take the Mark.” Father’s eyes were dark and inscrutable. Whether he regretted the tattoo on his own arm, Theo could never determine. “Nor would I see it forced upon you. There have been murmurings of recruitment. The Malfoy boy is of yet the only underage name I have heard, but a—credible source—believes you may soon find yourself in a similar position.” 

No. Theo couldn’t breathe. All this time—the last few months isolating himself, avoiding his closest friends, avoiding Harry, so that he would be no danger to them—and now, to learn that it may have been pointless, that he may be taken and bound against his will, kept as a political chip, as leverage against one of two people for whom Theo would ever stay his wand—

“Theodore,” said Father in a voice like iron. 

Theo looked down, and saw the wood of his chair smoking where his hands gripped the armrests. Immediately he snatched them back, but the damage was done—scorch marks in the shape of his fingers marred what had been a varnished heirloom furniture piece. 

“What do we do in order to achieve our ends?” Father asked. 

The answer came easily. “What we must.” 

“As we Notts always have,” said Father, “and always will. Bring the Dark Lord something of use before you are ordered to do so. Prove your loyalty before he sees fit to demand it.”

“Something—”

“You are well positioned to be a spy.” Sometimes Theo wished he and Father were not so similar: that Father was not as ruthless as Theo himself. “If you are proactive, you will retain some agency. If you are not, your hand may be forced.” 

Theo could not hate Father for this. Theo knew his own position, and knew Father spoke true. 

“Was that all?” Theo said, and hardly recognized his own voice, for the coldness of it. 

“That was all,” said Father quietly. 

Theo left without excusing himself. 

Only once safely back in his own room, where the manor responded to him most keenly, where the layers and layers of his own wards meshed seamlessly with the family magics permeating this place, where he was safe, did Theo sit down and think. 

Prove your loyalty before he sees fit to demand it. 

Theo’s lip curled. Such a poor excuse for a liege, to treat his vassals’ children like disposable pawns. 

But even his anger and contempt for the Dark Lord could only distract him for so long from the yawning horror of what Theo now had to do. 

Was this a betrayal? To deliberately seek information from within Harry’s circle that the Dark Lord may find interesting—to seek that information with the intent of giving it up—a betrayal, almost definitionally, but to refuse would be a worse betrayal, if doing so resulted in Theo finding himself forced to kneel for Father’s power-mad liege. 

He could give the Dark Lord something trivial, or the Dark Lord would take something that wasn’t trivial at all, namely Theo himself. 

Theo wondered what Harry would do for him, and knew immediately that he could not allow himself to be so irrevocably compromised. His magic juddered through him like an earthquake. 

All he could do was hope to Merlin that when this was over Harry would forgive him. 

And if he didn’t find some outlet soon, he was going to snap and kill someone over the dinner table, and then Father was going to be angry with him. 

Theo remembered some of Harry’s old tricks, and held up his hand, examining the unmarked skin. 

He snapped his fingers. 

A tiny flame sparked to light on the tip of his index finger. Theo felt the heat, but no pain, and his hand did not burn, even when he concentrated and it grew far larger than any candle. 

It would be so easy to grow it larger yet. To turn it loose. 

Theo sat there for a long time, turning his hand this way and that, with fire licking up and down his skin, singing its violent promises in a melody only Theo could hear. 

Pansy 

Cutlery clinked against porcelain. Wine and water glasses rose and then settled back to their places on the table. No one spoke. 

Under the table, Pansy rocked her foot back and forth, the only outward sign she could allow of her tension, and that only because it was invisible to her parents. 

Mum finally broke the silence over the entre course. “How are your marks doing, dear?” 

“Well,” said Pansy, slicing into her asparagus. “I’m doing best in Potions at the moment, I believe, and in History.”

“Good, good,” said Father approvingly. 

Mum made a noncommittal noise. “I do wish you’d work harder on your Defense marks. Learning from Severus Snape is a valuable opportunity, and those skills are useful.” 

“I may not be top of the class, but I’m more than capable of handling boggarts and petty thieves,” Pansy said with a delicate shrug. “It’s just not my favorite subject.” 

“Whether you like it isn’t the only factor,” Father said in his considering way. 

“I agree, self-defense is important.” Pansy smiled sunnily. She could be deliberately obtuse all night, and if they expected her to crack first, well, they’d have to think again. “But I’ll never hold a candle to Daphne or Theo, or even Potter, really. He may be a self-righteous fool but he’s good in a fight.” 

She took a bite of food and couldn’t have said what it tasted like. 

“Pansy,” Mum said forbiddingly, “you mustn’t just give up from the start. Think of your future!” 

“But I am.” Pansy affected puzzlement. “History is really more valuable, don’t you think? Some careers need a high Defense NEWT, but I’m not really interested in any of them.” 

Mum’s wineglass hit the table with a thunk. “Don’t be a child.” 

“Apologies,” said Pansy with demurely lowered eyes. Mum would recognize that tactic: Mum had taught it to her. 

Rock rock rock went her foot under the table. 

“Enough of this.” Mum’s voice cracked like a whip. “Don’t you think it’s time to stop playing games? You know your place, you always have. We finally have a chance to take back what is ours!” 

Pansy looked up again and her stomach did a backflip. Just like in the paper, Mum’s eyes blazed, and passion tightened her face and body like a drawn bow. A weapon, Pansy thought distantly, in someone else’s hand, a weapon ready to fire. 

“I have no interest in fighting,” Pansy said coolly. “Or in taking, for that matter. What is mine I already have, or can make for myself.” 

Loyalty. Trust. Affection. Power. 

Pansy needed no Dark Lord to give her those things, or give her leave to take them from someone else. Why would she want something handed to her? What value was there in something one didn’t earn? One bought loyalty with loyalty, trust with trust, power with care. Gold and servitude bought only pale imitations. 

If Pansy had power only because the Dark Lord granted it, then it wasn’t really hers at all. 

Obviously not liking this answer, Mum scowled, a fiercer and more revealing expression than any she’d taught Pansy should be shown over the dinner table. “What are you saying?” 

“I said, I have no interest in—”

“What did you mean?” Mum cut in. 

Blunt. Direct. Where was Pansy’s subtle, clever parent? Who was this person left behind, burning like a sacrifice on the pyre? 

Pansy wanted to believe Azkaban had done this, and maybe it had been the final catalyst, but if she was honest the damage began at least a year before, when news of the Dark Lord’s return filtered through their circles. 

“I meant,” said Pansy, with precision, “what I said. I do not care for fighting. I do not believe I must take from other people to have what I want.”

“You have a duty to your House! To your kind!” 

“There are different interpretations of what my duty entails—or, for that matter, who qualifies as my kind.” Pansy met Mum’s eyes and felt like everything was unraveling around her. She hadn’t expected the holiday to be easy, exactly, but that this confrontation had burst into the light on her second night home—that it was already so serious, the first time Mum had been able to sneak back into the manor to see her—

“I see.” Mum’s expression hardened. “Well, if you’re going to persist in this childish, selfish behavior, I suppose we’ll have to treat you like a child.” 

“Darling—” Father began. 

Mum cut him off with a sharp gesture. Her eyes bored into Pansy’s. “Go to your room. You’ll not be eating with the adults until you prove yourself responsible enough to behave like one.” 

“I will not be a warrior for your crusade,” Pansy hissed, and even to her own ears her voice sounded like Harry curled up before the fire murmuring to Eriss, sounded serpentine and cold. Father twitched. “Do you hear me, Mum? I am not you.” 

“Obviously not,” said Mum with oceans of disdain. 

There was nothing else to say, really. Pansy set her cutlery down on her plate in the position that indicated to the elves she was finished, and rose. Her heels bit into her feet. Weapons Mum had taught her to use. Pansy focused on the regular clicks they made against the stone floors until that was the only sound in the room. Maybe in the whole world. 

She went to her room, but didn’t stay there: Pansy put a few things in her pockets, slung a cloak around her shoulders, and pushed open the window. 

Their townhouse had a small rear garden, contained by a stone wall that anchored their generations-old wards. The Parkinsons had another property, a manor like the Malfoys’ or Notts’, out in the countryside, but they’d moved to London in the 1700s when it was in vogue to be near the fledgling Ministry, and never reopened the old family place for anything but major events like weddings and funerals. The wards here were strong, but nothing like the wards that built up over five hundred or more years: the only property in London that had wards that strong was the Blacks’ townhouse, and that because they’d owned the land it sat on since London was called Londinium.

Only because the wards were comparatively young, and because Pansy was a Parkinson and so belonged to them, could she slip through their grasping tendrils of magic and the tiny access door set into the wall in the back. It let into a dingy alleyway choked with Muggle trash and, at this time of year, puddles of rank half-melted snow. Pansy wrinkled her nose and longed to be seventeen already so she could just start throwing vanishing spells around like mad. 

She picked her way to the end of the alley, raised her wand, and leapt back when the Knight Bus appeared with a crack. Pansy tugged her hood down further over her face—she wasn’t particularly recognizable, but it never hurt to be cautious—and climbed aboard with a few sickles ready in her hand and an address on her tongue, both of which she gave to the conductor with as little fanfare as possible. A few other people dotted the squashy chairs cluttering the ground level; Pansy avoided eye contact, and took a seat at the very back. 

The ride was short, violent, and nauseating: Pansy staggered off the bus and leaned up against a fence until her stomach stopped threatening to bring up the soup, salad, and half an entre course she’d gotten to eat. 

“Alright there, lass?” 

Pansy looked up, and found an older Muggle man, leaning on a cane and peering inquisitively at her face. It was past sunset and this part of London wasn’t the best; she had another street or two to traverse before she got to her destination, and anyone noticing her immediately set her on edge. 

But he seemed harmless. Concerned, but staying a respectful distance out of her personal space. 

“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, straightening. “Just a… bit of a dizzy spell.” 

Oh, Merlin, she wasn’t at all dressed for Muggle London. She hadn’t thought this through at all. Pansy might as well have stayed on the bus if she was going to feel this uncontrollably off-balance. 

The old man nodded and peered at her cloak and robe. “Lord above, you young folk and your fashions.”

“It’s for a costume party,” Pansy said, straightening with purpose. “Thank you for your concern, sir, but I’d best be going.” 

“Enjoy your party,” he called after her, and Pansy glanced over her shoulder, frowning, before carrying on down the street. 

Two lefts and a right. Ten minutes of walking. Not bad. Not difficult at all, really. Click click click went her heels, where the sidewalk was bare, and where it wasn’t she stepped around puddles and dirty snow as best she could, wishing again that she’d thought this through a little more, and changed her shoes at least. 

Harry had given them all an address a short distance away, so that they could take public transportation to Grimmauld Place without actually saying the street name, since it was reasonably well-known that the Blacks owned a property there. It made perfect sense. Pansy still resented it, on behalf of her shoes, by the time the sign came into view. 

The block was deserted. Pansy hurried along, feeling painfully exposed, until she got to Number 12, and banged the door knocker with enormous relief. 

Kreacher opened the door in under a minute. The wards had already taken her measure when she crossed the property line but they wreathed around her again as she crossed into the house—ancient threshold magics, powerful enough, she suspected, to kill, in the right circumstances. 

These were not those circumstances. The house knew and welcomed her just as did its custodian and protector, who bowed low and offered, in his bullfrog voice, to take her cloak. 

Pansy handed Kreacher her cloak, thanked him, and asked, with the last of her composure, if Harry was home. 

“Yes, he is being in the study,” Kreacher said. “Is you needing a guide?”

“No, it’s alright. I know the way.” 

Pansy climbed the staircase with mechanical steps, and none of her usual grace. She could hear the kids’ voices somewhere and hoped they wouldn’t encounter her on the stairs. She didn’t have the energy for that right now. 

The door to the house’s large study was closed. Pansy knocked and resisted the urge to lean against it. 

“Come in,” Harry’s voice called, and when she turned the knob she felt its lock catch and then yield under her touch. Interesting. The house responded much more to Harry’s will lately than she remembered it doing before. 

Harry did a double take when he saw her step inside. “Pansy? What—what’s happened? Are you okay?” 

“I’m—I just,” Pansy said, and then, at a loss, she sank onto his sofa and began to shake. 

In seconds, Harry had come around his desk and sat down next to her, one hand hovering ready to draw his wand. “Pansy—are you hurt? Can I cast a diagnostic?” 

“No, not… I had a fight with my parents.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Harry actually looked a little relieved, and slowly reached out and covered her hand with his. It was cool to the touch. “What… do you want to talk about it?” 

“She wants me to fight,” Pansy said. “To be a—a Death Eater. To take my place.” 

Harry didn’t seem to know what to say. That was alright. Pansy couldn’t think of anything that might help. It was enough just to sit here and know—

“They just want me to be like them. They don’t care—she wasn’t always like this,” Pansy said, in a near whisper. 

“I know.” Harry squeezed her hand gently and let go: Pansy was surprised he’d even held on that long. “This war is… making things difficult.” 

“I hate him.” The quiet savagery in her voice surprised Pansy, and judging by Harry’s blinking, him as well. “I hate that he—that he—he took my mum. And he made her into—that.” 

“I think,” said Harry carefully, “that it’s easy to think in absolute terms, and some people are more prone to that, and other people take advantage of it.” 

“When did you get so clever about people?” Pansy asked half-jokingly. 

Harry’s smile was bitter. “It’s only ever been the nice parts of people that confuse me.” 

Wasn’t that the truth. 

“She’s always liked things… black and white. Either-or. But this is—it’s just so much worse, and—after Azkaban?” Pansy’s shivering made a return as she remembered the bottomless, endless fire that consumed her mother from the inside out. “There’s no… I just, I got home, and—she supported him, before, you knew that, she’s been a—since the first—but it’s like Azkaban just took—everything else and left her with… only—that.” 

Had that even made sense? Pansy wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember the last time she was at this much of a loss for words. It was not a pleasant experience. 

Harry was quiet for a bit, and Pansy found herself steadying the longer they sat there. Most people—Daphne, Justin—Hermione—reflected emotions back, if Pansy went to them in a moment like this. That could be cathartic, she supposed, but not like this. 

With Harry, she could just let it all go, and know it would break and wash over him without leaving a mark behind, and on the other side find something like peace. 

He finally broke the silence, voice soft and eyes down. “Even when the dementors aren’t around, their aura has seeped into the very stones of the place. Sirius said, once, that when you’re in there, the only way to get through it is to—pick something and hold on with all you have. Just one thing.” 

“And you think that was her… thing.” 

“Maybe.”

“What did Sirius pick?” 

“Hating Pettigrew,” Harry said with a twist to his lips. 

“Not… you?” 

Harry’s eyes went distant. “No. Not until after he escaped.” 

“Maybe he couldn’t think about you too much,” Pansy said. “If you needed him, and he was stuck in Azkaban, then—then it would be like he let you down, and that could turn into despair.” 

“It’s possible. Do you think your mother let you down?” 

“Isn’t the more important question whether she thinks that?” Pansy countered. “And no. I don’t think that myself, or think she thinks it, either. I think she really thinks she’s right and—and that’s what frightens me.” 

The last part came out in a whisper. Pansy may not be a Gryffindor, but she did not like to feel afraid, or at least to show it when she did: fear was a weakness. Exploitable. 

“Are you afraid she will force you?” Harry asked, with a dark undertone to his voice. 

Pansy shook her head, though it felt like, at best, a half-truth. 

He shifted his weight, as if he didn’t believe her, but said only, “You are always welcome here, as you are at the Greengrass or Longbottom homes, if anything happens. Or if you just want to get away.” 

“Thank you,” said Pansy quietly. 

Harry tapped his fingers against hers twice and let go, and allowed her to sit in silence for a few minutes, just breathing. In and out. Until she could say in a more normal voice, “Families are complicated.”

“You’re telling me,” Harry muttered. 

Pansy looked sharply at him. That was rather more direct aggravation than she’d expect, unless—  “Have you spoken to Julian lately?” 

For a second, she thought he might not answer, and then he sighed, tilted his head back, and said to the ceiling, “He followed me out of Slughorn’s party and asked if we could talk. And then he… apologized.” 

“He what?” Had Pansy just hallucinated? 

“For everything,” said Harry, in the tone of someone repeating a direct quote. “Since back to first year, basically. Judging me, distrusting me. Siding with James. And specifically for last June.” 

“And did he seem to… mean it?” 

“He seemed like he got coaching on what counts as a legitimate apology,” said Harry with a slight grimace, “but—yeah, he seemed… sincere. He made a point of saying he didn’t expect forgiveness, but that he wants to have some kind of a—a relationship with me, if it’s on the table. I—nearly lost my temper.” 

Pansy’s eyebrows rose involuntarily. Harry was not patient, exactly, but his temper was on a very short leash. “How close is nearly?” 

Harry did not seem aware of the way his wand hand flexed. “I couldn’t help thinking enemy,” he said lowly, “or that it was a trap—some kind of trick. I don’t know. I couldn’t look at him without seeing James. I think he was being peaceful on purpose. He’s not subtle—he was very pointedly keeping his hands visible, trying to stay relaxed—and…” Something young, and deeply wounded, made itself known in Harry’s face. “I don’t think he was judging me, Pans. It felt like he meant it. So I didn’t—I don’t want to fight him.”

“But you can’t trust him.” 

“The balance of evidence is against it. I gave him an ultimatum. That he has to prove he meant it, if he wants to ever have a chance with me again.” 

It was Pansy’s turn to reach out, laying a featherlight touch on Harry’s wrist before withdrawing; his boundaries were so fragile in moments like this, both open to comfort and hypervigilant for threats. “Then we’ll just have to wait and see. It’s—not impossible for siblings to have fights, bad ones, even, and still be okay. If he’s willing to choose you…” 

Harry blinked. Blinked again. His brow furrowed, and Pansy watched his eyes go distant, the way his spine unconsciously straightened. He was occluding. She held in a sigh. 

“Oh,” he said, after half a minute or so, in a subdued tone. “I said something similar to Rio yesterday. About—about blood kin still having to choose each other, and…” 

“She isn’t choosing me,” Pansy said, just as soft. 

Harry glanced up at her. Again she saw a darkness move in him, and wondered, not for the first time, how so many of their peers had missed this, back when they were younger. Missed what he was and would become. 

“We will,” he said. “That’s what we do, all of us.” 

All of us Vipers. Deep in the bottom of her soul, Pansy wished he’d said something else—but selfishly, foolishly, because this meant at least as much. 

“All of us,” Pansy agreed, knocking her foot against his. “And… if Jules chooses you, this time… I think you should at least see where it goes.” 

“If it goes poorly?” 

She smirked. “You know Theo’s been dying to be let off that particular leash for years.” 

“You’re right. He’d solve that problem handily.” Harry studied her. “You’re okay?” 

“I’m—better. Thank you.” 

“Do you want to stay? I can have tea brought up.” 

Pansy shook her head. “I should get back before Mum notices I’m missing. I tricked the wards, but eventually Father or one of the elves will go looking for me.” 

A smile bloomed on his face. “If you ask nicely, Sirius might take you back on his motorbike. 

“You know… that’s actually kind of tempting.”

Harry got to his feet and held out a hand for her, still grinning in a way that reminded her eerily of Fred in his wilder moments. “Come on, then. He’s probably still in the garage.” 

The ride took twenty minutes—longer than expected, but if Sirius took the long way Pansy wouldn’t be complaining, not when the rumble of the engine drowned out all sound, and the wind reached frozen fingers into every seam of her robes, and the stars wheeled dizzily overhead. 

At one point, Sirius drove the bike up into a full reverse loop, and Pansy, secure in the charms holding her legs to the passenger seat, threw her hands out, stretching them out towards the ground at the apex of their curve. For that moment she was breathless, weightless. Then it was over and gravity pinned her into place again, and she found herself laughing for the joy of it. 

But of course it had to come to an end sometime, and when it did Pansy stepped down to the Muggle paving material with a lingering smile. “Thank you, Sirius,” she said, only faltering a bit over the use of his name: Sirius insisted that all Harry’s friends use the familiar given name, an informality Pansy both enjoyed and found disconcerting. 

“Anytime,” he said. Always so easygoing, unlike Harry. 

Sirius still lingered, so Pansy turned fully to him and raised an eyebrow. 

“Don’t hurt him,” Sirius said. Always so easygoing, until he wasn’t: his grey eyes cut into her like ice chips.

Pansy mustered up another smile from somewhere, and feared it was rather more pained than she wanted. “It’s more likely to be the other way around.” 

Sirius did not appear to know how to respond to that. 

“Fly safe,” Pansy added, with a meaningful little shooing gesture. Normally she wouldn’t be so unsubtle but the longer they lingered the higher her chances of getting caught. 

“Be sneaky,” Sirius replied, winking, and apparently fully recovered. 

Pansy watched him gun the bike to life (he’d assured her Muggles couldn’t hear it) and launch skyward. With camouflage enchantments dulling its reflective sheen, and Sirius’ dark hair and cloak, the lonely figure vanished against the clear winter sky within seconds. 

“I wish I could be free,” she whispered to the empty alleyway, testing the words, and then cringed back from the force of them. Free of what? A nice home, an inheritance, her title and her name? What was a little responsibility, really, in exchange for all that? 

The wards pressed against her as she stepped back through the little garden gate, with a heavy, suffocating feeling that did not go away until well after Pansy had sneaked back into her bed.