Harry
Dickon and Amanda Honeywell responded to Sirius’ invitation to dinner with a warm acceptance that seemed, as far as Harry could tell, completely genuine. Harry couldn’t bring himself to put it off for long considering the excitement Rio tried and failed to hide, and so found himself playing host on the second full day of the holiday break.
“You have ink on your nose,” said Sirius when Harry came downstairs.
Harry rolled his eyes. “I do not. I checked.”
“You do have ink on your fingers, though,” said Graham with a smirk.
“Yes, that’s the price of doing office work all day.” Harry tried, for the fourth time, to spell the ink stains off his fingers. The faint shadows of his black ink refused to lighten any further. “I’ll just have to live with it. Sirius, is Ian coming?”
“Should be here any minute, I’ll go check—”
Sirius fairly bounded towards the receiving room, where the floo would be routed for the evening while their wards were temporarily slackened to allow new guests. He’d been a whirlwind of activity for hours to the point that Kreacher found Harry in the study to complain about Sirius getting in his way. The imminent arrival of their guests—Ian, whom Harry didn’t yet know well, and the Honeywells—only seemed to galvanize him more.
“He’s, uh, excited,” Graham said, still standing on the parlor threshold.
“He misses having a full house while we’re all at school.” Harry took the last step onto the ground floor and swept his eyes over Graham. Winter-formal robe of blue embroidered with burgundy flame patterns. Probably nicer than this evening called for—Harry himself wore a fairly casual robe with no embroidery, just a gradient of gold to brown from shoulders to hem—but it would do. “Where’s Rio?”
Graham glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “I think he’s anxious.”
Well, that was fair. Harry would have been anxious too, the day he met James, if he had known that morning it was going to happen.
Rio was, as it turned out, already in the dining room, pacing, and also irritating Kreacher, if the elf’s passive-aggressive cutlery-polishing was anything to go by. Harry sent Kreacher a look. The elf bestowed a truly impressive sneer on him in return and vanished with a crack, leaving eight sets of perfectly polished silverware laid out by the plates.
“It will be fine,” Harry said. Rio did not look over at him. “They’ll like you. They’re good people.”
“Everyone’s good people to some people,” said Rio.
Graham piped up from behind: “Yeah, even you, Harry!”
Harry aimed a rude gesture behind his back without turning around. “Rio. Hey. Do you trust me?”
Now Rio looked up, and studied Harry across the table—and nodded, hesitantly.
“You will be fine,” Harry repeated, more firmly, and hoping to Merlin that he wasn’t wrong.
“Okay.” Rio took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Okay.”
“That’s the spirit. Come on. Let’s let Kreacher finish in peace.”
Rio followed him back out into the sitting room, where Graham threw an arm around the smaller boy’s shoulders. “If they’re rude, I’ll jinx ‘em.”
“You wouldn’t jinx an old man,” said Rio, but he smiled a little and didn’t step away from Graham, so Harry counted that as an improvement and went out with Sirius.
He found his godfather fussing over Ian in the receiving room. Harry smiled; he liked Ian, whose towering height and warm face gave the impression of a mild-mannered perambulating tree. “Hi, Ian.”
“Good to see you. Lovely evening, this. Oh. Here.” Ian thrust out a handful of flowers—daffodils and jasmine, a weird combination but nice enough. “Sirius said you could put these in water?”
“Yes, of course, thank you,” said Harry, shooting a dirty look at Sirius while Ian was occupied with his robe. The ash had apparently taken a dislike to him and wouldn’t budge no matter what charms he used. Sirius, for his part, looked unrepentant; they both knew if Sirius gave the flowers to Kreacher, there was a fifty-fifty chance all of them would lose their petals by dessert.
The way Kreacher sniffed when Harry handed over the flowers suggested he knew exactly who had brought them, but Harry saw no sign of malice on the part of the elf. Hopefully Ian’s gift would at least last to the end of the night, and if they wilted by morning Harry could probably blame it on the house, which still bore Sirius a bit of a grudge.
They had only just shuffled Ian into the sitting room when Harry heard the floo again. Blood drained from Rio’s face and left him with an ashen grey undertone to his skin. You’re okay, Harry mouthed to him, before he had to go greet their guests.
He had looked them up, naturally, and so was not surprised by Dickon Honeywell’s slight stature or startlingly dark eyes, but the pictures didn’t capture how Mr. Honeywell gave the appearance of having been dipped in gold as a child and been unable to quite wash it all off. Amanda Honeywell née Dunbar looked nearly exactly as she had in photographs of her aged forty-seven and seventy-seven alike: strong-boned, broad-shouldered, freckled and fair. She’d lost some of the muscle from her younger pictures but still Harry thought she could probably break her husband in half, wands notwithstanding.
Emilia Honeywell had her father’s eyes, her mother’s build, and straight dark hair that must have come from somewhere else in the family tree, so different was it from her parents’. Harry smiled at her—people generally liked those who were kind to their children—and then greeted the small family. “Well met, and welcome to Grimmauld Place. Heir Harry Black.”
“It’s a pleasure, Heir Black. Dickon Honeywell; this is my wife Amanda of Dunbar and our daughter Emilia.” Dickon was not, Harry could see immediately, much of a liar; his face betrayed equal parts interest and caution. “And your lord father?”
“In the sitting room—if you’ll follow me? I hope the floo was pleasant, we’ve only just had it reconnected to that fireplace.”
“It was no trouble,” Dickon assured him.
Amanda peered around the entrance hall and then at Harry with a raised eyebrow. “I was given to understand the Black family’s residences were rather more… antique.”
Harry smiled thinly. How very direct. “We’ve renovated. The house was, as I’m sure you can imagine, in rather poor shape when Sirius and I moved in. Here we are.”
“Welcome!” Sirius fairly bounded forward, and Harry wondered whether the doglike enthusiasm came before or after he became an animagus. “Sirius Black, it’s a pleasure to meet you—this is Ian, my partner—“
Sirius abruptly checked himself, and Harry interjected swiftly: “Dickon and Amanda Honeywell, and their daughter Emilia.”
Now introduced, if not—Harry thought fondly—with much respect for the stiffest of magical society’s social rules, Sirius was free to jump forward and shake Dickon and Amanda’s hands. Ian followed suit with less energy but equal levels of sincere welcome.
But Dickon and Amanda’s attention had strayed already, towards the two younger boys, both standing just to the side and a step back, waiting. Rio fairly vibrated with tension he wasn’t quite old enough or detached enough to hide.
“These are our wards,” Harry said, going in order of age, “Graham Pritchard—”
“Well met,” said Graham, easy as breathing—he’d been born and raised to the formality of wizards’ culture.
The Honeywells returned murmurs of greeting.
“And Rio Ingram,” Harry finished. He rested a brief hand of support on Rio’s shoulder as Rio stepped forward.
For a moment the long-lost relatives stared at one another, Rio still as stone, Dickon anguished, Amanda staring intently.
“You look so very much like your father,” Dickon whispered, and opened his arms, and Rio, rather to Harry’s surprise, accepted the embrace.
Graham
The conversation moved along in jerky starts and stops over the salad and soup courses: Dickon Honeywell seemed determined to stay on light topics, asking Sirius and Ian about their preferred restaurants, briefly discussing potions with Harry, and of course talking to Rio.
They had so many questions for Rio. About his favorite subjects, and his friends, and the books he liked to read, and what he wanted to do when he grew up, and if he played quidditch or any Muggle sports—
And they had so much to tell him, too, or at least Mr. Honeywell did. His sister, Darcy, had been Rio’s grandma, so it made sense that he knew so much about her and her husband Amit and their son Daksh and daughter-in-law Leah. Rio’s parents. Who had loved him, and protected him, and then died and left him.
Graham kept an eye on Rio, but Rio never gave the predetermined signal for I’m getting overwhelmed please distract them, so manners and the desire not to mess this up for his friend kept Graham quiet while Rio got to know his great-aunt and uncle.
And in the meantime Graham tried to figure out why he was unhappy.
He shouldn’t be. Right? He should be happy for Rio. Well—he was. Really. But he was unhappy, too, and for some reason Graham thought Harry wasn’t happy either, even though Harry was the best at pretending of anyone Graham knew, and didn’t give any sign Graham could see of anything less than welcome, warmth, and happiness for the Honeywells.
Graham admitted the answer to himself over the soup course: he was jealous.
An ugly thing to feel, but there it was anyway. Graham childishly wanted to slurp his soup, and didn’t. He was jealous of Rio.
Rio, whose family wanted him.
Was Harry jealous? Graham sneaked a look at Harry. No, he didn’t think so. Harry was way past being jealous about that. Harry might have been jealous when he was younger, though that was just a guess because Graham hadn’t known him then. But Harry had Sirius now, and a house, and a family to claim him. Harry had proved he didn’t need the Potters. And anyway, James was dead and Harry still here, so Graham guessed it was kind of moot.
But Harry wasn’t happy, or at least, not just. Emilia started telling a story about the Honeywells’ cottage on the southern coast, and the garden, and the beach, and could Rio visit because he would love it—and Graham saw, just for a fragment of a second, Harry’s smile tighten, and he realized all at once: Harry didn’t want Rio to leave.
Their empty bowls vanished from the table. Graham kept his eyes down and a second later the main course arrived but he didn’t really see it. He didn’t want Rio to leave either. Graham liked their life. He liked Grimmauld Place and its creaky walls and the rug that playfully tried to trip him in the upstairs hall and even cranky old Kreacher. He liked messing around in the lab with Veronica and sitting quietly with Dylan and playing exploding snap with all of them and nights when everyone sat in the drawing room and Harry explained Rio’s homework and Sirius told stories.
Don’t leave, Graham thought, and then he knew he was angry with these people who might take Rio away.
He did not, however, have long to dwell on it, because the conversation unexpectedly turned to him. “And you’re in Slytherin as well, aren’t you, Graham?” Madam Honeywell said crisply.
“Yes, ma’am,” Graham said, putting down his fork. “I’m in the year above.”
“And how are you liking it?”
Harry’s left hand tapped at the table—innocuous, but to Graham it was a warning, one of the Vipers’ slowly growing lexicon of hand signals. “I love it,” he said cheerfully. “Have you ever visited the Slytherin commons? We have windows looking out into the lake!”
Briefly, Harry’s hand flattened on the table: approval.
“I have not, but that does sound lovely,” said Madam Honeywell. “I myself was a Gryffindor. We only saw the lake from far above. I presume that you met Hadrian in your House?”
Merlin, it was weird to hear someone call Harry Hadrian. “Yeah, he and some of the other older students have a sort of study group, to help the younger years with homework and stuff.”
“Admirable,” said Madam Honeywell in a tone that suggested she was not yet sure whether she was lying.
Mercifully, that seemed as much as anyone wanted from Graham as far as socializing: the adults and Rio kept up a steady patter of uncontroversial conversation until after the dessert course, when Mr. Honeywell suggested that perhaps Emilia might like to see Grimmauld Place’s garden.
“Of course,” said Sirius without missing a beat. “Rio, why don’t you show her?”
“Is it safe?” Madam Honeywell interjected.
Harry did his fake-polite smile. “Oh, yes, perfectly. Any potentially dangerous plants are grown in a warded greenhouse.”
“Professor Sprout’s really serious about plant safety,” Rio assured his great-aunt, “I know better than to mess with magic plants.”
Under cover of Emilia and Rio getting to their feet, Harry gave Graham a pointed look.
Right. He was being dismissed. Graham swallowed a flash of resentment; he hated being treated like a kid even though he technically still was one. “May I be excused?”
“Yes, yes, go on,” said Sirius, who was clearly running low on patience for this level of formal manners. Graham didn’t much like using his company manners either but Father had—he suppressed a flinch—made sure all the Pritchard children could comport themselves well.
Graham trailed after Rio and Emilia. They both seemed shyly fascinated with each other, Rio paying close attention to his… Graham did some quick mental family tree arranging. First cousin once removed, that’s what Emilia was to Rio, since despite being the younger her parents were the same age as Rio’s grandparents would be had they lived. Things might be a little awkward between the cousins but it wasn’t even close to the weirdest pureblood family situation Graham had ever seen.
Behind them, the door closed, and Graham heard a low murmur of voices start up immediately. His steps slowed. When Harry and Sirius had important political allies over for dinner or tea, they usually silenced the door of whatever room they were talking in, be it the dining room or the study or somewhere else; and lately, Sirius had been leaving control of the house’s wards more and more in Harry’s hands. So if the dining room hadn’t been silenced, that was probably on purpose.
Rio glanced back quickly: Graham waved at him, go on, and Rio grinned back before he and Emilia turned out of sight towards the back garden.
Graham made a snap decision and crept back towards the door to the dining room on cautious feet. The tone of their voices came through clearly—sharp, but not combative, it didn’t sound like anyone was fighting, just getting tense—but he couldn’t make out specific words. He drew his wand and whispered “amplius auri” as quietly as he could manage.
The bloody spell gave him an instant, stabbing pain in the sides of his head like always, where Hermione explained to them all were his brain’s auditory processing systems. Harry promised that it got better with practice. Graham was just happy he could finally concentrate through the pain well enough to actually make use of the spell.
“—to have so many children in your household who are not yours.” Madam Honeywell, clipped, direct.
“Their circumstances have all been particular.” Harry, precise, less direct because of course he was circumspect about this too. “If you are asking specifically about Rio—”
“The Pritchard boy.”
Graham tensed.
A few seconds went by. “I won’t speak to details of his private family concerns,” said Harry, even more precisely, “but I can assure you that he was not safe in his father’s house. He needed somewhere to go. People who would support him.”
“We mean no insult.” This was Mr. Honeywell, soothing, which meant Harry must have shown on his face that he was upset at the insinuation of some kind of underhanded play. Graham didn’t much like it himself. Harry hadn’t give him a home for—for personal gain or anything. Harry just wanted to help, in his own way. “It is unusual,” Mr. Honeywell went on, “and I am sure a young wizard versed in history understands that adoption is a time-honored mechanism by which to provide good families to children without such, it has less palatable applications as well.”
Family. Graham’s chest felt oddly tight.
“You mean in the old days when infertile purebloods just kidnapped Muggleborn infants.” Sirius: blunt as ever.
“Yes,” said Madam Honeywell, and yeah, Graham could see how she’d been a Gryffindor.
“None of them has been adopted. None of them has been removed from their families against their will. You are welcome to ask Graham as much, or, for that matter, Rio.”
A brief, loaded silence. “His Muggle grandparents…” Mr. Honeywell trailed off.
“Rio was not safe there. They are the sort who don’t… take well to magic.”
Madam Honeywell made a noise like laughter but utterly humorless. “You would know all about that, hm?”
Oh Merlin’s saggy balls. She had to bring that up.
“My experience was certainly unpleasant. Not to mention more publicized than I would prefer.” A distinct chill creeping into Harry’s voice now, counterpoint to the thumping in Graham’s head.
“Harry’s childhood is a private matter,” Sirius added in a tone that for the first time all evening was how you’d expect the Lord of Black to sound.
“Apologies.” Madam Honeywell didn’t sound very sorry. “But you understand our concern. Your House has a reputation, Heir Black. I would be remiss to ignore that just as I would be a fool to judge you exclusively by it, or by your House of birth.”
“I understand. Let me be plain. I had no personal motives, political or otherwise, when I offered Rio sanctuary here. The arrangement has been largely private and unofficial out of respect for his wishes. Neither I nor Sirius plans to uphold the House of Black’s recent reputation, and Rio will have a place here as long as he wishes it.”
Graham fancied he could hear the tension draining from the room. Though maybe that was just his head spinning.
“We don’t want to take him from you,” Mr. Honeywell said. “He seems happy and safe here—Merlin knows disrupting a child’s life too frequently never goes well. If it is his choice to stay here—but first we had to verify…”
“It reflects well on you.” Harry’s tone gave nothing away. “For our part, we would never wish to stand in the way of Rio connecting with his own birth family. I’m sure you will understand me, in that I do not trust blood ties alone to ensure a child will be treated well.”
“Would that they were,” said Madam Honeywell. “The world would be a kinder place, and a gentler one. But compassion is a choice as much with kin of the blood as of the heart.”
Graham started. It was so like what Harry had said.
“A concept unfortunately familiar to this house,” Sirius said in an irritated grumble.
Madam Honeywell’s next words fuzzed into high-pitched nonsense. Graham screwed his eyes shut and concentrated. The conversation swam back into clarity, kind of—he could pick out three words in four—but his head was really beginning to pound, like a team of goblins were going at it with war-picks, and he’d already pushed himself too far. This spell could do bad things if you weren’t careful with it. Graham ended it with a flick of his wand and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the floor.
He blinked at the carpet. Huh. The world wasn’t really supposed to be spinning like that. And his ears seemed stuffed full of cotton.
Somehow Graham made it upstairs, wrote a quick note for Harry that he stuck in the door, and collapsed facedown in bed. Thoughts turned circles in his head like runaway hippogriffs. He disliked the idea of Rio leaving, and equally the idea of the Honeywells coming around Grimmauld Place more often, if they kept being so rude and suspicious. But more than anything else Graham couldn’t stop remembering what Madam Honeywell had said about providing families to kids whose birth families treated them badly, and that last thing, about kin of the heart instead of blood.
Graham had a family, alright, and they were horrible. He’d never thought of Harry and Sirius adopting him, and certainly not of calling Sirius Dad. Graham was pretty sure Harry didn’t exactly think of Sirius as a father, and Sirius was legally Harry’s parent. Sirius didn’t act like a father, or at least not the fathers Graham knew; Harry didn’t act like—like a cousin or a brother, but then, Graham’s real brother sucked.
Imagining Rio leaving to live with the Honeywells made something hot and tight sit in Graham’s chest. You can’t have him, he wanted to say, except the could have him if they fought for it, since they were Rio’s blood family and Graham and Harry weren’t—but Rio wanted to stay, so—Graham thought about calling Rio his brother and it felt weird, but not exactly wrong, either.
Kin of the heart. Madam Honeywell had said that like family was something other than how Graham always thought of it. To him, family was your parents and siblings, people you didn’t choose and might want to run from. Graham had run far and fast as soon as he had anywhere to go.
His head still pounded. Graham rolled over and looked unseeing at the ceiling of a room he thought of as his in a house that felt like home. He only knew what home felt like because of Hogwarts—home was safety, was where you were yourself, was where you were wanted and welcomed and—
Graham had never once heard Harry talk about love. Love you was what Father said to Graham’s sisters when they went to work, or Toby. Love you was what Father said to them all when he tucked them into bed at night when they were small. Tears pricked Graham’s eyes when he remembered that long-ago version of Father, who had at least had his moments of quiet and, yeah, love. Father loved him, once. Maybe Father still had loved him when—Graham ran a hand up an arm free of the small round scars he still saw sometimes in his dreams. Madam Honeywell had said that, too.
Love wasn’t enough.
But maybe it didn’t matter what you called it. Maybe the point was the choice. Graham had chosen to trust Harry, and so had Rio, and Harry and Sirius had chosen them back, in whatever way, and here they all were. Here was where Rio had chosen to stay.
A dizzy wave of affection washed over Graham for this big old house, sometimes malicious and usually contrary though it might be. It was a lot like Harry, actually, in that Graham knew it liked him without it ever communicating as much. He fell asleep thinking about that and dreamed of sheltering under the wings of a great bird of prey, unafraid of the viciously curved talons inches from his face.
Theo
Now that the un-graduated Vipers were free of Hogwarts’ walls, they could all meet up for the first time since the summer. The note had turned up in the journals not twenty-four hours after Theo’s conversation with his father, and he arrived at Grimmauld Place wound tighter than a spring. Magic sparked along his fingertips but Theo, with an effort, kept it from manifesting as the small fires he had begun conjuring when bored. Even among the Vipers that would be cause for the others to worry.
Words tangled and knotted in Theo’s throat as the meeting dragged on. Celesta talked, and then Harry, and then the Carrows, and then Hermione and Daphne in tandem, and then they all broke up into smaller groups as time ticked by and Harry and Pansy and Blaise retreated to a corner to talk about exploitable weak points in the Ministry bureaucracy and all the while Theo said nothing.
Neville noticed, and looked a question at Theo now and then. I’m fine, Theo tried to telegraph back. He didn’t know how well it worked because the looks kept coming. When Neville was worried, his forehead got a little pinch in it. Theo should not have found that so distracting.
He half-participated in Hermione and Daphne’s ongoing conversation about DMLE internal regulations, so he’d look busy, but Theo couldn’t resist the instinctual way he kept tabs on all the other conversations in the room. Blaise knew, through means unspecified, that certain officials in the Department of International Cooperation were quietly moving to restrict magical emigration; Pansy had identified a witch in that Department who’d recently been demoted after arguing with her superiors over a few policies. Justin and Aaron were talking finance—nothing particularly relevant. She’d be willing to work with you, Pansy said, and Theo looked straight at Harry and thought: you should not have invited me.
But here Theo was. And there they were, discussing plans that Theo could so easily give to the Dark Lord, where Theo could overhear them without half trying.
Would it be enough? Was it inconsequential enough? What was better to compromise—the point of contact in IC, or the wizard in the Floo Network Authority who someone had told them was being blackmailed by the Death Eaters to turn over floo travel records, who Harry wanted to co-opt into the Vipers’ own asset? Theo excused himself from Hermione and Daphne, both of whom were far too engaged in their discussion to pay him much attention, and slipped out of the sitting room with a halfhearted mutter about bathrooms.
He did not go to the bathroom. He went instead to Harry’s study. The door creaked disapprovingly at him, but Theo was in the wards (you should not trust me) and so the house did nothing to really stop him going in.
The room felt like Harry. Its dark wood paneling and oversized desk could have come out of the home of any old magical family, but one of the bookshelves was crowded with the Muggle science fiction novels Hermione forcibly loaned to anyone who would sit still long enough, and the neat rows of magazines included Quidditch Quarterly and Advances in Potions. A flat piece of grey stone on an empty shelf low to the ground may have passed for decorative but Theo knew it was charmed for warmth so Eriss could coil up on it if she chose.
Harry clearly wasn’t expecting company. The desktop was still Harry’s brand of mess—piles that looked disorganized but actually obeyed some arcane system of Harry’s invention—and his broom and its care equipment waited on the coffee table to one side. Normally Harry would tuck all of those personal bits away if he had a formal meeting here, just as Father did in his study at the Nott home. Theo ran his fingers over the Muggle novels’ spines and wondered if Harry warded those to look magical the way Father hid some of his Muggle philosophy and finance titles when certain associates came to meet him. Somehow Theo thought not: Harry could be almost Gryffindor in the way he tested people, putting something out in front of them in a challenge. Make a fuss, if you dare.
Lucius Malfoy would have conniptions if he saw Muggle books in the master study used by the Lord and Heir of Black. The thought brought a rare, thin smile to Theo’s lips.
Almost without conscious thought, his feet carried him over to the desk. Theo touched nothing but he looked at the papers carefully. Brittle tension wound tighter through his body with every moment he spent cataloguing and assessing their contents. Finances: too dry, too personal. Correspondence with Gatlin: too irrelevant and at any rate not a project Harry exactly kept hidden. Theo needed something both private enough to be of interest and harmless enough that sharing it would not compromise Harry’s real plans.
His eyes snagged on an open scroll half-hidden under a messy scrawl of research into potion antidotes and the effect of Saturn on brewing cycles. Interesting. Theo nudged the top scroll aside and let his eyes track over what was clearly none of his business.
The only reason Theo heard the approaching footsteps was that he’d left the door open. Immediately he slid the top parchment back into place and took several quick, silent steps, so that when, a few seconds later, a body filled the doorway, Theo was once again perusing the Muggle books, reading the back of one called The Foundation.
“Theo?”
Oh, he knew that voice. Theo looked up and smiled. “Nev.”
“Are you okay?” Neville said, coming all the way inside. “Did you… need something?”
“In here? No, I just…” Theo slid the book back into its place and turned fully to face his friend. “Needed out of there, I guess. I shouldn’t overhear…”
Neville’s lips pressed unhappily together. “You wouldn’t betray us.”
Is it a betrayal if it protects you all? “My occlumency is good, but not that good. You know why I have to—be wary of what I hear.”
“I hate it,” Neville grumbled. But his eyes still flicked over Theo, over the desk, and Theo didn’t need to be a legilimens to see the thought forming. The suspicion that would soon break into conscious thought and, once there, be difficult to dislodge.
Theo swallowed and stepped closer to Neville. Was it a lie to speak the truth with an ulterior motive? “Most of them don’t bring it up.”
Neville’s gaze snapped back to him. There was worry, but the safe kind—for Theo rather than about him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know,” Theo admitted, “but I—appreciate that—I know you’ve been doing what you can.”
“Spending time with you isn’t a chore,” Neville said, grinning, with red staining his cheeks. “So you don’t need to act like it’s a noble sacrifice I’m making.”
“You’re a Gryffindor.” Theo took another step forward. “You’re predisposed to noble sacrifices. Can’t blame me for thinking of it.”
Neville studied his face, searching, uncertainty making him hesitate before he spoke. “Well… not this time. You’re—I like you. I like spending time with you, just being quiet or…”
“I like it too.”
When Theo reached out, Neville did not back away, and when Theo kissed him, Neville responded eagerly, and when Theo waved a hand, Neville just grinned at the sound of the door banging shut.
Neville kissed exactly how Theo might have expected: steadily, eagerly, holding nothing back but demanding nothing in return. The feelings Theo had been pushing aside for weeks surged up with a vengeance and he clutched Neville’s robes in hands that shook. Relished the warm steady pressure where Neville wrapped his arms around Theo in return. It felt like safety, like coming home.
It was a diversion and it was the most honest Theo had been in months. It was an attempt to make Neville forget any suspicion and it was all Theo wanted. It left an ashy taste in his mouth even as Neville stepped back against the wall and tugged Theo after him with a delighted smile.
Theo would have to come clean eventually, and he didn’t know that Neville would ever forgive this.
Harry
Snow blanketed the rooftops and awnings of Diagon Alley, though it had been mostly charmed off the cobblestones underfoot. Overhead arched the particular pale blue of a clear winter sky, shot through with sunlight that did little to warm them: everyone in sight wore heavy winter cloaks, boots, hats, and scarves.
Harry himself preferred to keep his head bare. Numb ears were worth the way cold wind in his face made him feel oddly, forcefully awake. He breathed deeply, walked slowly, and let himself smile.
A group shopping trip had been Sirius’ idea. Veronica’s parents had eaten with their daughter in the Leaky before leaving her with her friends to be picked up later, and Dylan turned up too; they were dashing all over the Alley with Rio, Emilia, and Graham while Vanessa, Hazel, Sirius, Ian, and the Honeywells had a late lunch at one of the Alley’s nicer restaurants. Harry had declined joining them with the excuse that someone had to keep an eye on the kids. It wasn’t exactly a lie—someone probably should, even if the Alley wasn’t exactly outright dangerous—but really he just wasn’t in the mood for small talk over appetizers today.
He stepped aside for a trio of older witches hurrying by and amended his thought. Diagon wasn’t dangerous, but there was a distinct air of tension that he didn’t remember from winters past, which the festive holiday decorations didn’t really diminish.
Up ahead, the kids paused outside a small boutique shoe store—specifically one that catered to outrageous preferences in appearance, enchantments, or both—and then vanished inside with a distinctly conspiratorial air. Harry cast a weak charm at the door of the shop that would alert him when they left and kept wandering up the crooked, colorful street.
Fred and George had set up some kind of magic snowball-shooter outside Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Harry paused far enough away that no one would recognize him to watch a gaggle of children running around and trying to dodge the snowballs it fired at anyone who walked by. Wherever the snowballs hit, they made a sound like plastic New Year’s noisemakers. Thank Merlin the twins hadn’t lost their sense of humor.
Unnoticed among the chaos, Harry slipped into the store. Holiday flair had taken over here too: displays advertised Monstrous Mistletoe: Colorful Stains for Up To Five Hours! and Yule Logjam: Light it on fire and watch what happens! Wreaths of evergreen and holly spun through the air emitting periodic ghostly shrieks and sprays of silver tinsel. Harry laughed out loud when he saw a bin of Yule trees enchanted to move around the room when no one was looking: Replace your family’s tree in secret!
Yeah, he was definitely picking one of those up before he left.
He spotted George up by the counter and lingered off to one side until he caught his friend’s eye. George brightened, waved, and led Harry briskly through the back rooms and up to his and Fred’s first-story office.
“We’re absolutely slammed,” he said without preamble. “It’s bloody brilliant but I don’t know if Fred—”
“No problem.” Harry waved him off. “You’re busy, I know how it is.”
George snorted. “Yeah, by all reports you are working yourself off your feet lately.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“Right.”
Harry rolled his eyes and conjured a chair rather than risk sitting down in this office—every surface in here was liable to be either charmed on purpose for humorous purposes or liable to hex him anyway thanks to an experiment gone wrong. Safer to just make his own temporary seat. “I’ve been doing work for my apprenticeship, there’s my House business, everything at school is going to shite—someone keeps writing bigoted anti-Muggleborn graffiti in the boys’ loos—the whole thing with Rio’s family—” he gave a quick summary of the situation with the Honeywells— “and… stuff… with the Ministry.”
“Only you would refer to organized espionage as stuff.” George grinned at Harry’s raised eyebrow. “Pansy came in for some Extendable Ears and that sort of thing. Sounds like she and Blaise have been busy, too.”
“Everyone has been. Thank Merlin the Soothsayer isn’t on me—I already barely sleep.” Harry perked up. “Did you hear about the new office?”
“Out in Riasmoore? Bit obvious, that.”
Harry shrugged. “It’s one of the biggest all-magic settlements outside direct Ministry acknowledgement. We weren’t going to put it here, and Hogsmeade’s little better. And, really, if I were behind it, would I really be so dumb as to put it on my own lands?” He waved a hand. “I’ll send in some letter to the editor with my own name with a counterpoint to something in the last volume and a general appreciation for their journalism. People will take it as my tacit support for the paper, not my direct ownership of the publishing token.”
“Slytherins,” George said. “Not everyone thinks on that many levels.”
“Voldemort does, and it’s him I want to throw off the trail a bit… Hermione tells me they’re going to run some pieces that will set the fox among the Death Eater hens, so to speak.”
George leaned on the edge of his desk and watched Harry in silence for a few seconds. “You’re worried.”
“I—” A grimace twisted Harry’s face; he allowed it to linger. “Yeah. Lately everything feels like two steps forward, one step back. We stopped that stupid law passing, but then the Greengrasses took a hit. The younger Vipers are recruiting but there’s an increasingly vocal blood purist contingent among the students. I finally got my formal apprenticeship offer—”
“Congratulations, by the way.”
“Thanks, yeah, it’s brilliant, he’s brilliant, but there’s just no time. I’m worried about Theo and Blaise, there was that whole thing with Ginny…”
At that, George blew out a long breath and slumped down until he sat on the floor against the desk, staring at his empty hands. “She turned up at our flat last night, near tears. Mum’s been hounding her up and down the house. I’m honestly glad Gin doesn’t have a wand right now.”
“She’s not rash enough to hex your mother,” Harry protested.
“Not directly.”
Harry had to concede that point. Ginny held grudges, and she learned how to fight dirty long before her Sorting; Slytherin had only taught her to be cannier about it. “Any word on if she’s getting a new one?”
“Well, she can afford it, thanks to you,” said George wryly, “but obviously Mum doesn’t know about that, and word from Bill and Ron is Mum wants to make Ginny use Great-Aunt Muriel’s old wand.”
“That’s…”
“Not ideal. Yeah. Still can’t believe she burned out her wand.”
“I’ve given everyone a lecture on caution with regards to old or untested sources, and we’re being more careful with the books and such, but…”
“It’s impressive, what she did,” George said lowly. “Most people would’ve lost control and Merlin only knows what the backlash might have done. She might have died. They might all have died.”
“It’s a war.” Remembered fear echoed up from the depths of Harry’s mind; he pushed it back down. “Any of us could die.”
“My little sister better bloody not,” George snapped.
Harry didn’t answer, and after a bit of silence George shifted his weight restlessly. “But you didn’t come here just to talk about Gin, did you? Or everything you have going on?”
“I can’t just want your company?”
“You don’t do anything without at least two separate reasons.”
“That’s not true. I have never had an ulterior motive for cleaning my teeth.”
George picked up an unidentified prank product with a threatening air.
“Okay,” Harry conceded, raising empty hands in a show of surrender that meant nothing from a wizard who could perform any level of wandless magic. “Yes, I had a—question.”
“Well?” George prompted, when Harry didn’t immediately continue. “Spit it out, Black, I don’t have all day.”
“You have… lots of siblings. How do you… what does it feel like to…” Harry made a face. Hours of thinking and he hadn’t been able to come up with a way to say this that didn’t sound stupid even in his own head.
George squinted at him. “To have siblings? I… dunno. Is this about Jules?”
Harry opened his mouth to say yes but, much to his own surprise, the word stuck in his throat. Which made no sense. He only had the one brother, and even that was debatable, what with the whole ritual disownment and adoption. Jules and he weren’t brothers in any legal or magical sense: Harry wasn’t sure but there was a chance it affected biological relations too in a way Muggle science could measure. They were only brothers insofar as they wanted to be.
“You’ve been at odds with Ron for years,” Harry said. “How do you know if he’s—can you just—stop considering him a brother?”
“I… no, not really. It would take a lot for me to say he’s no brother of mine. I don’t even know what he’d have to do for Mum and Dad to disown him—take the bloody Dark Mark, probably. You can acknowledge someone as a sibling and still dislike them, avoid them, disagree with them on every level from the personal to the political, and so on.” George looked at him. “But we grew up together. I think it’s different from if you have a sibling you don’t meet until you’re older.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“You asked.”
He had. Harry pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “So you’re saying… you’re automatically brothers because you grew up together, but you might not see him that way if you hadn’t?”
“Did you really think of Jules as a brother right away?” George countered. “Like, you knew he was your brother in blood, but I mean, you didn’t know him. Ron filled our room with maple syrup when we were little. We sort-of-accidentally burned a hole through his tongue with an Acid Pop. I still remember the time he wet himself at Ginny’s fifth birthday party. That stuff—it doesn’t go away, and, look, I’m not trying to overstep here, but I’d guess if you meet your sibling later, you have a lot more work to build that kind of bond.”
That made an unfortunate amount of sense, and tracked with everything Harry had been putting together. “Jules apologized.”
Both of George’s eyebrows climbed towards his hairline. “Oh?”
“For… well, it was pretty much a blanket apology.” Harry waved a hand to encompass the years of animosity, aborted attempts at friendship, arguments, physical fights— “And it seemed… sincere. He said he wants to—to be something other than strangers. Brothers. If that’s still possible. I didn’t… say no.”
“But you want some kind of effort on his part,” George said, not really guessing. “That makes… sense to me. And you’re…”
“You have six siblings and one’s your twin.” There hadn’t been much choice once Harry really considered his options. The Carrows were out of the question; he liked Hestia and Flora both, but wouldn’t trust them with this, and most of his other friends were only children or had dysfunctional families of their own. Fred and George had a bone-deep sense of honor that would keep Harry’s vulnerability safe and either one of them, Harry had guessed, was likely to at least say something helpful.
“I can see why you’d want… but you’re afraid he doesn’t mean it, or he can’t commit.”
Harry nodded.
“I don’t know him. But—Harry, he was immature as anything when we all started at Hogwarts. James raised him to handle the press and whatever pretty well, but spoiled him rotten in some other ways, and Merlin knows Jules didn’t have an independent thought in his head until at least age twelve,” George said. He looked down. “Don’t underestimate the power of a parent’s opinion. Even when you know, deep down, they’re wrong…”
“Your mum?” Harry guessed.
“I still feel guilty when she springs the irresponsible and reckless or going to get yourself killed and then where will I be on Fred and me.” George rubbed his hands over his face. “I wish I wouldn’t, but there it is, y’know? It’s hard to shake. The circumstances were shite, but Jules has been away from James for half a year now.”
“I hope he means it.” Harry tried to smile. “Guess we’ll see.”
“Mmm.” Canny blue eyes assessed him as George dropped his hands to his lap again. “But it’s not just Jules, is it? The kids?”
The kids. Harry rocked backwards in his chair, feeling like someone had just punched him in the sternum. “Rio’s family—when I thought they might take him away—and Graham…”
“Harry, you idiot,” said George. Harry jerked his head up and stared at his friend. “No, I mean it, you are such a dumb arse. You’ve been taking care of those kids for years. Like, housing them on the holidays, buying them presents—you bloody tortured Toby Pritchard for cursing Graham that one time, you help them with homework, and unless I miss my guess either you or Sirius has already given them the sex talk.”
“I hate you,” Harry said with feeling. “So much.”
George burst out laughing.
Harry waited for it to die down, and in the meantime took several deep breaths, trying to sort out why this bothered him so much. He couldn’t possibly be a worse brother than Toby fucking Pritchard. It wasn’t like he thought he’d done wrong by any of the kids. Just—he ran through a mental list of people he knew with siblings and winced. It seemed like things went sour more often than not.
It all went back to Jules, didn’t it? The fucking twit. Harry wanted to hex something. He pressed his palms flat to his thighs and concentrated on keeping his magic in. Jules just had to go and ambush him with an apparently sincere apology of all the fucking things and drag all this shite to the surface. Locking it all away in some deep dark psychic hole with occlumency sounded so tempting but Harry’s better judgment was quite firm on that being a terrible idea.
He should admit— “I did kind of give Graham the talk.”
That nearly set George off again, but he controlled himself with a visible effort. “Okay. Okay. Sorry. I should’ve realized your emotionally constipated arse hadn’t worked that out yourself. You act like their big brother, Harry. They look at you like one. Rio chose to stay with you over running off with his family he barely knew—and they aren’t trying to take him because they know he has a home with you.”
“It’s not just those two, either,” Harry forced himself to say. “Veronica. Dylan…”
“Not surprising. You aren’t what I’d call particularly loving or selfless,” George smirked at him, briefly every bit as knife-sharp and biting as Fred, “but we all know the lengths you’d go to for your people. You don’t do this shite by halves.”
Harry turned that idea over in his head. It was true that if he had limits to how far he’d go, he hadn’t found them yet. And if he really thought about it, he didn’t fear Graham or Rio turning on him like Jules had in the past, constantly putting other things first.
“Jules won’t compromise his principles,” Harry said. “Not beyond a certain point, anyway. Not even for the people he loves.”
“He’s a Gryffindor. That’s our thing. It’s just some of us make people our principles.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’re a Slytherin,” said George solemnly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Prat.”
“Arse,” George said. “But—I mean, there’s stuff you wouldn’t compromise for your people.”
“They wouldn’t ask me to, though.”
“You don’t let anyone in who would ask for more compromise than you can make,” George corrected. “If you really want to make it work with Jules—you’ll have to accept that there’s beliefs he won’t bend, and he’ll have to accept you’re not like that, and you will both have to be up front with each other.”
“This much emotional openness is going to give me hives.”
George burst out laughing again, and that was how Fred found them when he walked in a second later—George on the floor, cackling, while Harry looked, he was sure, extremely put-upon.
“I was wondering where you’d got to,” Fred said, eyeing them. “Do I want to know?”
“We had a nice little heart-to-heart about siblings and I think Harrikins just spent his whole quota of emotional conversations for the next six months,” George said, still snickering.
“Jules apologized to me,” Harry supplied. “For basically everything. Said he wants to be brothers if it’s possible and he’s willing to prove he means it and apparently I’m having a whole moment about it. And this arsehole prescribed compromise and you’ll both have to be up front with each other.”
Fred snorted. “Sounds tedious. You could also just write up a list of terms for siblinghood going forward and mail it to him and see if he agrees.”
Oh. Hm. That—
“Do not do that,” George said, launching himself to his feet. “Harry, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s not the worst idea,” Harry said.
George paused. “You know, that’s true, I can think of at least three things that would be worse—no I’m not telling you what because I don’t trust you not to try them, so don’t ask—” Harry shut his mouth— “but I guarantee you some kind of brother contract isn’t going to help.”
“Justin would probably kill me in my sleep,” Harry conceded.
“When did you turn into the boring twin?” Fred said to his brother with a comically exaggerated scowl.
George rolled his eyes and poked Fred in the ribs with something that let out a flash of light and a squawking sound. Fred jumped. “Someone needs to be at least a little bit sensible around here.”
Harry felt for the charm he’d put outside the shoe store. Still in place. He could safely do some shopping without the kids knowing what he bought. “Before I get going—you wouldn’t happen to have any of those creepy moving Yule trees to spare, would you?”
Fred and George lit up with matching unholy grins. “Oh Sirius is going to hate you so much,” Fred said.
“Fifty galleons says he curses one of them by Yule,” said George, already heading for the stairs.
“A hundred he curses one by tomorrow,” Harry countered. “And don’t either of you dare saying anything to him.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Fred gently shoved him out of the room and pulled their office door shut again with the clunk of an automagic lock. “C’mon, if you want to see all our holiday products—”
Harry thought about spending Yule at home. Home. With Sirius and the kids—his sort-of-little-siblings—and felt lighter than he had in months. “Absolutely I do. And if they come in here to shop in the next hour—which I bet they will—tell them they get a Vipers discount or something, and bill me for whatever they pick out.”
They’d probably blow the roof off the Grimmauld Place in a spray of magical tinsel and exploded prank trees, but that was all right. Sirius had enough gold to fix the roof. Harry might not be able to stop the war brewing in every corner of magical society but he could bloody well make sure his weird little—he made himself think it—family had a good Yule.
Blaise
The night was dark, the wind was cold, and Blaise was afraid.
Of what, he could not say. Not of Mother, walking ahead with her typical open stride, nor Matteo, next to her, moving as always with inhuman grace. Nor even about what Blaise was about to do: not really. Blaise had been raised to this. Blaise had known Death before he could spell his own last name.
So no, he was not afraid to kill. But he was afraid nonetheless.
Mother glanced over her shoulder, as if to check he was still there. Blaise raised a calculatedly irritated eyebrow at her. He had decided to play this as if it was all beneath him, and Mother’s little test an inconvenience at worst, a bit of theater in which he condescended to participate. She was not yet convinced.
At least she looked away again and let him walk in peace.
Blaise prepared himself, mentally, as Mother had taught him years ago. Cutting out all feeling, all forethought, all doubt. Honing his mind to a clear, cold point, sharp as any blade and just as direct.
They made no sound, wrapped as they were in various enchantments, shielded by the blood ward Matteo drew on each of their foreheads an hour past. Blaise concentrated on the leaf loam beneath his feet and the bite of air rasping into his lungs.
No one had told him where they were, or who their target was. Blaise did not expect to be told. Blaise, in this moment, did not expect much at all. Expectations, as Mother said, were disappointments and mistakes still in the womb.
Up ahead, light glimmered between the trees. Blaise lifted his head and looked closer. A large house, set several dozen yards from the tree line. White, ivy-draped, glass-windowed. Ordinary. Vaguely English. Not particularly magical, though the wards told him neither was it a Muggle home.
Matteo was already at work peeling the wards apart. This, at least, Blaise could appreciate; Matteo had an artist’s touch for wards of hearth and home, of blood and bone. Vampiric magic had developed over the years into a thing specialized for slipping through wards such as these meant to keep the night’s monsters at bay. Most vampires lacked Matteo’s skill, and could do no more than slip themselves through, but Matteo, with his centuries of practice, with hands that dripped Zabini blood, could open a hole large enough for Blaise and his mother to step inside.
The wards closed on their heels, none the wiser.
Mother’s eyes glittered. She waved her wand, and cloaked them, all three of them, in disillusionment, a variant of her own design that rendered them truly invisible and discouraged attention besides, which she had never taught to anyone else.
The charm on Blaise’s forehead burned. His mother’s blood and his mixed, it bound them, allowed them a sense of one another for as long as the magic lasted: following her, though he could not see her, caused him no difficulty.
Garden and porch passed him by as if in a dream. Blaise hardly felt the chill lessen as Mother charmed the rear door open and they ghosted inside; he absorbed only some relevant details of the kitchen (knife block, accessible, paring knife in optimal reach—curtain cord, effective garrote in a pinch—olive oil set aside, an obstacle to pursuit if spilled—) and could not have said in what style or color it was decorated.
He was a blade, seeking only the essential. Indifferent to all else.
Up the stairs they went, Blaise in the middle now, feeling Matteo at his back through the blood-rune and nothing else. Vampires made no sound if they so chose, and certainly had no body heat or breath to give them away. Was Matteo there to stop Blaise from running? Had he fallen to the back by chance? Blaise would never know.
Mother did not pause at the first landing, continuing up another, narrower flight of stairs at the same pace. A renovated attic, perhaps.
No, Blaise reminded himself. No expectations.
It was not a renovated attic. Just a normal extra story. Two doors faced the top of the stairs, and—Blaise’s stomach lurched painfully—a child’s colorful drawings decorated one of them. A poster of a junior quidditch league the other. Were they—was his target—
But Mother turned, walking down a hallway to the right.
Blaise could breathe again.
A hand touched his shoulder, for just a second. Less than a heartbeat’s time but Blaise knew the signal for what it was. Keep moving. I am with you.
Mother may have placed Matteo there as a deterrent to keep Blaise on track, but Blaise took comfort from their romesse in that moment.
Several other doors lined the hallway, standing open to reveal a bland guest bedroom, a small sunroom with enormous windows, a bathroom with fairy lights dancing by the ceiling. Tension mounted with every step Blaise took. The expectations—the doubt and speculation—he could hold at bay, but not the desire to just end this already.
Mother stopped. Blaise felt her reach out, saw a doorknob turn in silence, watched the door inch open to show a shadowed gap through which Mother stepped. Again a touch of Matteo’s heatless hand reminded Blaise to move: he followed.
A prickle from the blood-rune preceded an odd pinching sensation in his eyeballs, which Blaise did not appreciate, but which also resulted in the pitch-black bedroom becoming visible in shades of grey and silver. Mother remained invisible, but he could feel her, standing at the side of a bed that held a sleeping person.
Blaise glanced around. (Vase on the dresser, bludgeoning weapon—freestanding bookshelf, easy to tip over—) Ever so briefly he lost his center, felt a sick rush of gratitude that this at least appeared to be no child’s room.
Hone your mind. Disregard the irrelevant. He closed it all down again. Reduced himself to only what was necessary for the task at hand. Stepped up to Mother’s side.
The sleeper—the mark—lay quietly, still, hair strewn across the pillow and half their face. Older than Blaise, but not by much.
Mother’s hand rose and cupped the back of his neck. An instant later, Blaise felt something pressed into his left palm. The hilt of a knife. Removed from the person who had been carrying it when their invisibility spell took place, it was visible again, slender and long and perfectly balanced.
Blaise looked at it, then up at where his mother’s face must be. He wondered what her expression said.
“Mi angelo,” she whispered, as soft as an owl’s flight. “Go on.”
Go on. Yes.
Blaise leaned down. Covered the mark’s mouth with one hand. Slid the blade into their throat with the other.
Blood rushed. They convulsed—screamed into his palm. Blaise did not yield.
He was the blade.
He was the pieces of himself it cut away.
The mark took nearly a minute to die.
Blaise stood up. Numb. The blood-rune on his forehead pulsed, and he did not think he imagined a dim red glow just visible at the upper edge of his peripheral vision, or the bone-deep chill that lanced into him where it lay.
Mother’s hands were gentle as she took the blade. It vanished, and with it the blood, though more remained on Blaise’s hands, staining them red like the rune’s dark glow, already cooling. Blaise rubbed his forefinger and thumb together in a slow circle, fascinated by the slick viscosity of it, as Matteo murmured the words of a spell that would erase any of Blaise’s essence from this room. An ancient magic that lay beyond wizards’ grasp.
“You have done well,” Mother said, still death-quiet.
“Yeah,” said Blaise, channeling every iota of haughty disdain he had ever felt, “I know,” and he sauntered out of the room before he vomited on her.
On the inside, he was breaking, because he knew now what he had feared to learn.
Blaise saw none of the house on his way back out, moving only by memory, and waited at the ward line for Mother and Matteo to catch up. He only just remembered to rearrange his expression into insouciant disdain before the spell faded and he became visible again, and thank Merlin, because Mother was staring directly at Blaise before the shimmer of disillusionment even left his skin.
“Are you satisfied?” Blaise drawled. Matteo, back to them and pulling the wards open, paused fractionally.
Mother smiled, cupped Blaise’s cheek. “You are my son, angelo. I did not doubt that you would impress me.”
From the very bottom of his soul, Blaise summoned a grin. It seemed to please her, enough at least that she let go and turned to where Matteo held the wards open like a curtain for his liege.
Blaise glanced back at the house. Still quiet. Still lit only by random light-charms no one extinguished before going to sleep. They would wake in the morning, wonder why their son or nephew or guest or whoever he was had not arrived for breakfast; they would go to check on him, thinking perhaps he’d taken ill, or overslept, and find…
“Blaise,” Matteo murmured.
Yes. Time to go.
Blaise cut through the gap in the wards in one step. He didn’t look back again as they walked away.
Later, it was Matteo who brought him water and a potion after Blaise threw up in the bathroom. “You did well.”
“Yeah.” Blaise downed the potion and then the water in short succession. No more nausea tonight, thank you. He wanted to sleep and forget all this for a few hours. “I know.”
“It is good to assuage her worries.”
Blaise looked sharply at his mentor. “Of weakness?”
“Of divided loyalties,” Matteo corrected. “Family above all. Is that not the way of House Zabini?”
“It is indeed. Yes.” Blaise looked down and away: tonight, and especially right now, he could not meet Matteo’s eyes. Not with his occlumency held together by a thread. Not with Matteo’s own loyalties divided as they were between Zabinis, mother and son.
He stalked out of the bathroom and towards the stairs Mother had already taken up to the master suite when they came home. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
Matteo’s eyes were heavy on his back. “Sweet dreams.”
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