Hermione
For the first time, Hermione found herself looking forward to the day she would leave the Greengrass home for her house in the Muggle suburbs: her parents might not really understand magic but at least there Hermione would be free from this unbearable tension.
She had spent most of her time since leaving Hogwarts either riding with Astoria, visiting her other friends—including Sue Li, so they could work on their extra credit Arithmancy project—or else alone. Daphne spent long hours every day behind closed doors with her parents and when she wasn’t in Greengrass-specific meetings she was clipped and withdrawn. Hermione never felt unwelcome or unwanted, but there were problems here to which she was not privy, and the unspoken knowledge of the Greengrass’ uncertain future filled the normally welcoming house like smog.
“I offered,” Astoria said quietly, one evening when Daphne had gone straight back to her suite and locked the door after dinner, leaving Hermione and Astoria alone. “To… but she wouldn’t… and Mum just ignored me.”
“Neither of them would want that for you.” Though Hermione hated the thought of Daphne in some forced marriage just as much. Long conversations with her friends had persuaded Hermione that an arranged marriage could work well, if conducted with the participation and autonomy of the parties involved, but Daphne didn’t want one, and now might have no choice.
Astoria stared at her embroidery. It was a prelude to placing rune-magic on one’s own clothing, and normally something she enjoyed, but tonight she’d unraveled as many stitches as she made. “It’s not fair.”
“She’ll be okay. I promise.”
“How can you say that?” Astoria threw her embroidery loop down. “You can’t do anything about it.”
It was such typical teenage sullenness that Hermione nearly smiled—couldn’t quite manage it, though, not while groping for a response that would be both honest and comforting. “Every problem has a solution, and Daphne’s not alone, okay? She’s got your parents, and us, and all the Vipers. No matter what happens, we will find a way to make it alright.” Hermione waited until Astoria looked up and made eye contact. “I promise.”
Astoria’s contrary facade cracked. Her eyes welled up with tears, and abruptly, in near-silence, she started sobbing.
“Oh, Tori,” Hermione said, helpless, hating this—she never knew what to do with herself when she cried, let alone other people! But it was Astoria, who was all but Hermione’s little sister, so she shifted over to sit next to the younger witch and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and let Astoria cry silently into her robe.
All while Hermione turned her rash promise around and around in her head. She disliked empty words. Never made promises she did not think she could keep.
Was this such a promise?
Only Daphne could answer that, so, after Astoria had gone back to her rooms for the night, Hermione did what she’d avoided doing the last few days, and knocked on Daphne’s door.
For a long few moments there was no answer. Then, without warning, the door jerked all the way open to reveal Daphne at her most coldly furious, looking fit to lead a battle charge despite her pink dressing gown. She blinked at Hermione for a moment and then softened back into the friend Hermione knew. “Oh.”
“Expecting someone else?”
“Thought you were Father,” Daphne said shortly, and stepped back. She didn’t invite Hermione in but she didn’t shut the door, either, so Hermione took it upon herself to enter the suite and close the door gently behind herself.
Daphne threw herself into one of the three small chairs in her suite’s anteroom and stared moodily at the fire.
“Why your dad?” Hermione prompted, taking another chair. “And why’d you look so angry to see him?”
“He’s… there’s nothing that can make this better, but he thinks—if he can just come up with the right platitudes, the right… I don’t want to hear it. At least Mum admits it’s awful and doesn’t try to pretend—I’m not going to just miraculously fall in love with some foreign wix and solve all my problems like this.” Daphne flicked a hand, miming the casting of a spell, and both girls flinched when a tiny spray of frozen water droplets hurled themselves away from her hand to scatter over the stone floor.
Hermione looked at the little ice chunks melting on the hearthstones, and then back at Daphne. “That’s… new.”
“Emotional upset.” Daphne scowled at her hand. She hadn’t made eye contact since she saw Hermione in the doorframe. “If you’ve been practicing wandless magic… it comes to the surface when you’re upset. I don’t know how the fuck Harry keeps it in all the time.”
“Practice? He has been doing it since he was a child. I haven’t been. Practicing, I mean, without a wand…” Hermione rolled her eyes at the look Daphne sent her. “I have bigger problems.”
“The Mark?”
“Mostly, yes. It’s—” surely this called for forceful language— “bloody frustrating. He’s brilliant. I’m starting to suspect he’s mad, but brilliant.”
Daphne raised one manicured eyebrow. “Mad?”
“To—well, it’s a form of a vassalage oath, or at least I’m pretty sure that’s the case. Nothing else quite explains…” Hermione batted a hand rather than list everything the Mark was known or suspected to do. “But it’s unprecedented that someone should bind so many people.”
“True…” Daphne sat back and her eyes grew unfocused. “I can’t think of any other examples, at any rate. Even the greatest of houses—the Pendragons supposedly had a dozen vassal Houses, but not for more than a few generations.”
“Some theorists postulate that the duration of a vassal oath is inversely proportional to the number of other vassals sworn to a given liege,” Hermione said. “I’m not sure they’re correct—certainly some vassal oaths outlast others by a dozen generations or more—but there’s enormous variation, that much is true, and it is a measurable trend that fewer vassal bonds tend to last longer.”
Daphne looked uncomfortable. “It’s… not something really studied, but… it has to do with the relative strength of the family magic. The Pendragons were robust magically, but their line wasn’t actually very old. Think of it as…” She conjured a quill and parchment, then set her wand aside and scribbled a quick equation. “See? This is rough—there’s no actual calculation done about it, too my knowledge—”
“Is there a way to measure the potency of family magic?” Hermione demanded. Daphne had picked a generic symbol for that variable, but if it really existed—
“Ha. No. That would require family magic be studied.”
Hermione deflated. She couldn’t really imagine the Blacks and Malfoys of previous generations consenting to that. “Right.”
“To me, it feels like…” Daphne frowned at her hand, and a little spark of blue-white light sprang into being over her palm, flickering. “Age and power are two different components. Age is—well, obvious. Power—if you comb through diaries of previous Greengrasses—no, I can’t show you, I’m sorry, they’re magically entailed to only the bloodline—they suggest, at least to me, that it’s a matter of the living members of the House, their use of magic, the… depth and care of their relationship with their craft.”
“You make it sound almost… religious,” said Hermione with a little frown.
Daphne shrugged and closed her hand. When she opened it the light was gone. “Not really in the way that Muggles think of religion. We know magic is real. Old family magic doesn’t make an individual stronger. It just—flavors what sorts of spells you might favor, or what skills you are better at. You follow?”
“Yes.” Hermione had heard most of this before, in pieces over the years, though, honestly, she had focused on other—less vague—branches of magic. Family magics were little-studied and, once she was assured her peers from ancient magical families weren’t inherently better casters than herself, Hermione had put the whole subject aside. She glanced again at the arithmantic formula. “So… vassals.”
“The Greengrasses have had vassals in the past, and been vassals,” Daphne said. “That much is known publicly—not that people outside the noble houses really study any of it—but personally I think the strength and weakness of vassal oaths fluctuates depending on the personal and familial magics of both parties involved. Say you swore vassalage—as a first-generation witch, you’ve no generational magic to draw on, but you approach your own craft with enormous care and respect—it’s not really a matter of personal power, but your—” Daphne made a frustrated sound.
“I study and cast magic with intention and care, I respect and am open to the gift that it is, and so my personal relationship to magic is strong regardless of how powerful a spell I can cast,” Hermione summarized.
“Yes. Whereas someone like, ah, Ernie Macmillan? He has nearly twenty generations of Macmillan magic to draw on, but he personally is a shallow fool obsessed with trivial minutiae. He swims on the surface of what he does not even realize is an ocean.” Contempt rippled over Daphne’s face and through her voice.
“Some magical houses are documented as arising from two Muggleborns,” Hermione said. “So their… family magic can take root in new lines… how quickly does that happen?”
Daphne smiled thinly. “It varies. Why do you think people like the Malfoys oppose bringing Muggleborns into our world too early? Why do you think the Ministry flat-out ignores Muggleborns until they turn eleven? You and Justin could enter into a magical marriage—don’t look at me like that, it’s a thought experiment—and the earliest stirrings of family magic would be noticeable as your children reached puberty, most likely. You’re both focused, driven, and attentive to whatever parts of magic interest you. But Muggleborns who are less educated, less aware—who fuck around with silly little charms all their lives—they’re much less likely to see the formation of new family magic, at least not as quickly. It might take seven generations or it might take two.”
Fascinating. Hermione had so many questions, starting with whether the Greengrasses could formally name her a member of their House in a way that would let her read those old diaries, but she dragged her attention back to the subject at hand. “And vassal oaths can be overridden if the vassal family gets stronger?”
“I think it’s more about the relative depth and age of the vassal and liege Houses, but yes. Vassal houses tend to make such oaths when they are weakened—many of their number dead, for example, or financially struggling or what have you—and likewise most vassal oaths that dissolve do so when the liege house suffers an abrupt and major drop in its magical potency.”
Considering what Hermione knew of magic, especially this kind of arcane, upper-level ritual magic— “A vassal House could take advantage of that to shed an unwanted vassalage, is that what you mean?”
“Or choose to sustain the oath until their liege House recovered… something like that. I haven’t exactly had time,” Daphne said drily, “to make a study of this—it’s just impressions and hypotheses I’ve gathered reading my family’s private histories. Tori hasn’t—it’s generally a duty for the heir.”
“But she could,” Hermione pressed. “What about Harry?”
Daphne snorted. “Harry became the Black heir at age fourteen on the cusp of our decade-long detente turning back into a shadow war, when would he have had time? I honestly doubt Sirius even knows how important the old family records are. His contempt for his family…”
“I didn’t know you… felt that way,” said Hermione, eyeing Daphne’s disdainfully curled lip with some surprise.
“I don’t speak of it. Harry adores him, with good reason… and it doesn’t matter what Sirius has to say on the subject. I’ll eat my favorite boots if the Black family magic doesn’t latch onto Harry like a hungry devil’s snare.”
“He has been leaning towards… well, I don’t want to say dark magic, but—”
“Spells that can hurt people?” Daphne smirked. “The Blacks have been known for that. Not really for potions, though, that’s all Harry—it’s not as if the family magic overrides an individual's preferences. Harry would actually make a great case study, should anyone be inclined to make a study of such things. Adopted, Muggle-raised, yet the last heir to his House…
“He could serve as a sort of control!” Hermione’s fingers itched for quill and parchment. “The extent to which his interests and skills change post-adoption—bloody hell, Daph, stop distracting me.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose.” Looking marginally less tense now, Daphne shifted lower into her chair, feet stretched towards the fire. “I don’t know what might or might not be useful to you. More information can’t hurt.”
Hermione couldn’t help a smile, then—to be known, to be trusted like this, to be handed answers to questions she hadn’t even asked yet by someone as clever as herself—that would never grow old. “Then the Mark… if it’s a vassal oath, it’s dependent on Voldemort’s personal power, yes? And on the willingness of the oathbound Houses? I mean, couldn’t they have cast off the vassalage if they wanted, while he was discorporated? I can’t imagine a House’s magical potency being much weaker than that without actually going extinct.”
Waggling her hand side to side in a so-so gesture, Daphne said, “Maybe, but you’ve got to consider the age of the Gaunt and Slytherin lines. They were both, at one time, intensely magical, and they’re very old. The Gaunts who came before the Dark Lord were near-squibs, inbred and so stupid they hadn’t been accepted among magical society in over a century. They’d let themselves and their magic go so badly it probably would’ve died out if not for—well, I can only assume the Dark Lord isn’t himself a pureblood.”
“Oh,” Hermione said softly. “Because someone from any of the known magical lines being with a Gaunt would’ve been noticed, and if that didn’t happen—”
“Then I think it’s likely his other parent was somewhere between halfblood and first-generation, yes.” Daphne shrugged. “It’s just a theory, Mi. All of this. Regardless, he is personally immensely powerful, and his family is known to have been weak as fuck—disgraces to magic everywhere, really—before him. So—if the Mark is a vassal oath, then he has to make sure his vassals don’t eventually overpower him.”
“By creating a cult,” Hermione said with growing horror, “so that they venerate him as almost a deity—so that they can’t really fathom disobeying—and—do you think he’ll start intentionally weakening their families?”
Daphne’s lips twisted. “Every noble House known or suspected of swearing themselves to the Dark Lord is down to one main branch and maybe a cadet branch clinging to existence somewhere. The Yaxleys, Carrows, Jugsons, Gibsons, Fawleys—don’t get me started on what’s happened to Lestrange—and Black? One of the strongest rival Houses in England, one of very few who rivaled the Gaunts in age, and until very recently immensely powerful in its living heirs—within twenty years of the Dark Lord’s rise,” Daphne began ticking off on her fingers, “two cadet daughters married into his vassal houses, one’s been disowned and is probably a priority target, their parents are both dead of moderately suspicious circumstances, the direct male heir was a Marked Death Eater and died also suspiciously, the alternate male heir—who I’ll remind you everyone assumed was ritually disowned—nearly died two dozen times over during the war, the direct heirs’ parents both went mad and then died, in that order; all their great-aunts and great-uncles are either ill, decrepit, senile, or all three…”
Hermione’s mind raced along the branches of what she knew of the Black family tree. “Fuck.”
“Yes.” Daphne looked directly at her. “If Sirius had not been exonerated—if Harry had not been illegally blood adopted—the House of Black would be all but defunct. As it is, Harry not only is the sole support for two millennia of family magic, but he’s also the second most direct heir to Gaunt and Slytherin, unless the Dark Lord has a child.”
“He’s going to want Harry,” Hermione said. The truth unfolded in increasingly awful dimensions, and she swallowed. “No—he already does want Harry. Your family, Pansy, Theo… Draco… if he wants to control the other noble Houses, then he can’t have the Blacks independent, can he?”
Slowly, Daphne shook her head. “Don’t tell Tori this?”
“Obviously.”
“Part of the reason it’s so difficult for our family is—” Daphne pursed her lips. “The Dark Lord was courting overseas allies before he fell. There are plenty of blood supremacists in European and American magical communities—not so much in North Africa or the ancient enclaves in the Himalayas, but in those regions people are wary of getting too close to Britain and its… problems… so my options are—limited. Of the single wixen near enough to my age, it’s difficult to determine who might favor the Dark Lord, or have been sympathetic to him in the past… I put my foot down in that respect.”
“If you didn’t—would you already…”
Daphne shrugged. “Mum is—she understands. She doesn’t like that bastard fucking with our House any more than I do. It’s her legacy. It’s everything to her.”
And to me, Daphne didn’t say. That was all right; Hermione knew perfectly well how much the Greengrass legacy meant to Daphne—not its wealth or its political power, necessarily, but the work that it represented, centuries of Greengrasses building on each other. After today’s description of family magic she thought she understood, too, although the whole concept of aristocracy still seemed, to Hermione, archaic and potentially exclusive.
“Do we… do we tell Harry?” Hermione asked quietly.
“Not until you have something more than my speculations.”
Hermione grasped for words. How to phrase this—
“I’ll get you whatever I can that talks about family magic,” Daphne said, smirking at Hermione’s immediate flush: that was exactly what she’d been trying to ask. “Though be warned, much of it is likely to be guesswork, or else understood in abstract terms.”
“Abstraction,” Hermione said derisively, and as she’d intended, drew Daphne’s smirk out into a full, proper smile. “Thank you, Daph. And—and if there’s anything I can do—”
In a heartbeat, Daphne retreated again, though outwardly she didn’t move. A pang struck Hermione’s chest to see her friend, her sister, going somewhere Hermione couldn’t follow. “There isn’t. Trust me on this one.”
“But if there is.”
“I’ll tell you,” Daphne promised, and though she didn’t soften, she reached a hand out, let Hermione tangle their fingers together and hold on.
Though they sat like that for a long time, Daphne’s skin never quite grew warm to the touch.
Harry
Old magical buildings often developed both a personality and a dubious relationship to Cartesian space. Hogwarts was probably the best example of that in Britain. Harry expected its stairways to shift at particularly convenient or inconvenient times, for certain rooms to move around, and the like. But he hadn’t expected it from his own bloody house—at least not on the level Grimmauld Place was showing lately.
“I know for a fact that Sirius deactivated that tree,” Harry said to thin air. Apparently the twins had enchanted the trees so that if they were hit with a stray curse they would turn into a life-size inflatable balloon of Fred and George in their most obnoxious Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes uniforms. When one of Sirius’ curses finally connected—after two days of him insisting the tree was stalking him around the house—he’d gotten so creative about his swearing that Rio took notes.
And yet here the tree was, standing innocently in the corner of the first-floor drawing room.
Harry turned his back, counted to twenty, and looked at the tree again. It had moved—three feet to the left. “Right. That’s the limit. Floristruire!”
The curse, eerily silent, summoned lashing thorny vines out of thin air, wrapping around the target and squeezing with vicious force until it was nothing but a lethal ball of magically constructed plant life. Then, with what always sounded to Harry like an inverted gunshot, the whole mess collapsed in on itself, taking the tree with it. Nothing was left but a drifting of spiny leaves that settled to the floor.
Closing his eyes, Harry started counting.
He looked again. The tree was back, and in a different corner.
“This is penance, isn’t it,” he said, and in the dim dark corner of his mind where he felt his connection to the house’s wards, he swore he felt amusement.
He found Sirius in the drawing room by their real tree. “The house absorbed that bloody prank tree.”
“Serves you right,” Sirius said without looking up from a gift in his lap. For some reason, he insisted on taping all the paper down the Muggle way, despite having entirely forgotten whatever he’d once known about how to do that, and like all the other gifts from Sirius under the tree already, this one was lumpy and irregular.
It was, Harry supposed, charming.
“You didn’t tell me the house’s magic could do that.” Harry grabbed a scrap of ribbon, charmed it silently into a bow, and tossed it to Sirius before he could ask.
Sirius gave up on the tape and used a sticking charm to hold the bow in place. “I didn’t really think it would, to be honest. When I was little it responded like that to my grandfather—never my parents, which they fucking hated.” He sounded gleeful, but then made a guilty grimace. “Sorry. Guess it likes you?”
“It hates me,” Harry said, though he didn’t mean it. “I just hope it only spits that tree out over the holidays. If I have to put up with that year-round…”
“It’ll probably only show up around Yule,” said Sirius, with a lot more cheer than that uncomforting statement warranted, and chucked the latest present over towards the fifteen-foot-tall tree. A last-second charm caught it and floated it down to rest among the heaping piles of colorfully wrapped presents already there: Sirius had bought two dozen different rolls of wrapping paper, all featuring colorful patterns that sparkled and whirled and cartwheeled, so that the pile resembled nothing so much as a dizzying, demented kaleidoscope. Harry couldn’t look at it for too long without his eyes starting to hurt.
It also clashed horribly with the tree’s tasteful red-gold-and-green trimmings, which Harry suspected was the point.
He made himself look long enough to do a fast count. Over two dozen gifts immediately visible, and more underneath them for certain. “You do realize there’s only four of us?”
“Five, Ian’s coming over for Yule lunch.” Sirius surveyed his work with satisfaction.
“Still.”
“I have more gold than I can spend in a lifetime,” Sirius said, “and if I want to spoil all of you then I bloody well will.”
His mouth was mulish, eyes mischievous, and Harry couldn’t tell him no. Besides, it wasn’t like Graham or Rio was likely to turn into another Dudley because they got loads of presents—and Harry found himself looking forward to both of his wards’ excitement when they got to unwrap all of this.
And, he had to admit, he was excited too. Harry had never quite gotten over the thrill of being given things by people who knew him—gifts that weren’t coat-hangers or small change or old socks with holes in them. Gifts that mattered.
“Which reminds me.” Sirius waggled his eyebrows in a way that only ever meant trouble. “Have you gotten anything for Jules?”
Harry glared, but his heart wasn’t in it and Sirius remained uncowed. If Harry hadn’t told Sirius about that awkward apology he wouldn’t have to deal with this. “Yes.”
“Oh?”
“Just… a protective amulet.” One that Harry had purchased from a shop in Knockturn where vendors from abroad often went to sell their goods without having to register imports with, or pay tariffs to, the Ministry. Who actually owned the building was a mystery and the people inside it changed often. You might go one day and find Greek, Kenyan, and Russian magicals jockeying for space, and come back the next day to find all three of them had departed, leaving the cramped shelves and patinated old furniture for a new set of people. Harry had heard mention of a wizard from Peru selling genuine coatl scales, but the second he set foot in the door, a startlingly ancient woman with steel-grey braids piled on her head had whipped around and stared at him.
One didn’t just ignore things like that, in the magical world. Harry had changed course and angled for her corner of the room instead. Egyptian artifacts, judging by the hieroglyphs, which some magical communities in northeastern Africa used in a manner analogous to Britain’s runes. It wasn’t his area of study or focus, but Harry didn’t need to be fluent in the magical traditions of the region to recognize the symbol the witch had pressed into his hand. The ankh, key of eternal life.
“To save a life,” she said in what Harry still thought wasn’t English, though he understood her as though it had been.
Harry had paid the asking price without question and taken it home.
Whatever magic was in the amulet defied most of the spells he knew to reveal its purpose. Unsurprising—one would struggle to unlock a Japanese cipher using the Elder Futhark and having only a passing awareness of kanji—but he’d worked out at least that if worn against the skin, it would heat up in the presence of life-threatening danger, and that its purpose was benign.
A narrow strip of mokeskin, spelled so that none but the wearer could remove it, served as a simple way to wear the ankh. The note Harry sent with the gift curtly explained that much and little more. Maybe it was too soon, or too high a bar to set, but he needed to know if Jules would actually put it on.
But Harry explained none of this to Sirius. He couldn’t find the words. Half-suspected Sirius would find the test Harry set for his brother too harsh or too manipulative. So he shut his mouth on further details and stood unyielding under Sirius’ attentive stare until Sirius got bored and rolled his eyes with a dramatic huff.
“Fine, keep it to yourself then, you cryptic snake,” Sirius said affectionately. “D’you think he’ll…”
“Send anything back?” Harry shrugged. “We’ll see.”
That was part two of the test. If Jules would send Harry a gift unsure of its reciprocation, and what that gift, if any, would be.
Sirius’s expression flickered, like he knew there was more to that, at least, than it seemed—knew Harry wasn’t just placidly curious about a potential gift. But he didn’t probe further. “Nothing like Yule to bring up every family’s bullshite,” he said instead. “It’ll work out, pup. You can’t… you can’t break siblings up that easily.”
There were so many things Harry could say to that, all biting, mostly cruel. He kept his mouth shut and nodded and let Sirius have his way. Sirius needed to believe that with time he and Regulus might’ve reconciled. Far be it from Harry to judge or stop him. There were just too many counterexamples for Harry to agree.
A blood tie was a chance, nothing more and nothing less, of family. It might improve your odds but it was no guarantee.
One had only to look at the Black sisters to see that much.
Ginny
Plates were passed, second helpings served, glasses raised and lowered, and cutlery clinked on ceramic, and through it all Ginny didn’t say a word. She had not, in fact, said more than a few words at a time since she came home from Hogwarts, and didn’t plan to change that state of affairs anytime soon.
Who needs a political war, she thought sourly, when I’ve got one in my bloody house?
Mum hadn’t let up even a little. So far, on top of everything else at school, Ginny had spent the last few days doing her own usual chores as well as Ron’s and whatever else Mum could think up. She toppled into bed every night exhausted from manual labor and woke up every morning with a gut-churning mix of dread and anger at the idea of facing another day of this.
And she didn’t talk, other than to say yes or no or okay, Mum and so far Mum either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
When the twins were here, or Percy, or Bill, it was okay, but tonight it was just Ginny and Mum and Ron and Charlie, and if there was conversation at all it was stilted and left Ginny out entirely. Ron kept trying to make these little snubs at her. Comments about snakes, or Slytherins, or wands. Comments about rule-breaking and Dark magic.
He wanted to get a rise out of her, that was obvious, and neither Mum nor Charlie seemed arsed to stop it, but mostly Ginny just felt numb.
Now, for instance: “Cowards,” said Ron, about a story Charlie told, but when he said it he was looking at Ginny.
Who looked back, and took all her fire, all her fury, banked it down down down until her fingers tingled with the lack of feeling, until she could say dully “Pass the spinach, please?” in a voice that didn’t shake.
As soon as dinner was over she had chores. Dishes, laundry, sweeping and mopping, cleaning the pantry, all without magic, all a punishment, all Mum trying to heap work on her, break her into compliance. Click clack went Mum’s knitting in the living room while Ginny scoured her knuckles raw on Ron’s and Charlie’s plates of gluey mashed potato residue and smiled daggers at the back of Mum’s head.
“I’m done, Mum,” she said when it was over, the most consecutive words spoken to her mother all day.
Mum looked up from a red scarf (red, always red, never any green since Ginny’s first year) and fixed bright-hard eyes on Ginny, who shivered. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“May I go to bed?”
Last night Mum said no and invented another chore. Apparently she was too tired to do that again: she just lowered her eyes and said, tiredly, “Yes.”
The hearth-fire cast shadows across Mum’s face. It had more lines on it than Ginny remembered. Tension had carved a home for itself on Mum, living in the pinches at the side of her eyes and the line between her brows and the corners of her tight-drawn mouth. Mum looked old, for a second.
Ginny wondered, if she was less numb, whether the sight would make her feel anything like sympathy.
Probably not. Ginny had inherited a few of her family’s Gryffindorish tendencies and one of them was this: there would be no compromise.
She fled upstairs without a word to the trunk long since disguised as her first, old, battered one, and inside it to the journal Mum hadn’t found even as she took a fine-tooth comb through all of Ginny’s belongings. Steady unfeeling fingers turned the pages to one marked Luna Lovegood and Ginny put quill to page and breathed.
Harry
The solstice dawned cold, windy, and grey. By all rights the weather should have been oppressive, dreary even, but Harry, leaning out his bedroom window, found it peaceful instead. Inside the house’s wards there was no ambient traffic noise or city smog. The world was on pause. You sat down to wait out the winter and its harsh talons scraped all pretense away.
His quiet moment couldn’t last long; preparations for the holiday were already underway and contrary to popular belief, having a house-elf didn’t magically absolve wizard residents of any role. Kreacher offered only a narrow-eyed glare in token protest when Harry corralled Graham into the kitchen to help prepare lunch.
Roast pork and honey-glazed ham, a curry recipe from the Butlers that set the whole kitchen smelling warm, potato salad and baked apples, assorted roasted and sautéed vegetables, deviled eggs and cream of tomato soup: Harry had rarely seen so much food at one time in his life outside of Hogwarts. Graham had minimal cooking experience and mostly wound up chopping, mixing, or keeping things warm, simple tasks he could accomplish with a wand and close attention.
Rio came in to say a quick goodbye and filch a few baked apples before taking the Floo to the Honeywells’. Traditionally, the Yule feast was held after dark, with just the members of the household; in more recent generations and among the less traditional set, it had become more common to celebrate around midday with a large gathering of family and friends as well. Rio would join the Honeywells for lunch and come home for the household rite.
Harry tried not to feel jealous about it. There wasn’t really time for jealousy, anyway. People started arriving at ten—Ian tumbled out of the Floo at almost the exact time that the Butlers’ cab arrived on the street outside—and Sirius, with all the frenetic good cheer of his animagus form, folded them into the house easily. Harry monitored the oven and sustained strings of half-practiced culinary charms and let himself relax into the low burble of laughter and conversation filtering down the kitchen stairs to his ears.
Justin and his mother arrived in a chauffeured town car (according to Veronica, who periodically darted downstairs to steal food and share updates with Harry and Graham), and then, much to Harry’s surprise, the kitchen Floo fired and spat out the Carrow twins.
He paused in the middle of brushing an egg wash over a tray of dinner rolls. “I wasn’t sure if you’d make it.”
“Our aunt and uncle are fulfilling our family’s other holiday obligations,” Hestia said in a tone that discouraged further inquiry on the topic. “We can only stay a few hours.”
Translation: no one knew they were here specifically. Harry grinned. “Well, you’re more than welcome. Anyone else coming?”
“Aaron might drop by, Everett too.” Flora eyed the rolls. “Do you not have an elf?”
“He decided it would be more fun to serve hors d'oeuvres—I think he just likes eavesdropping on every conversation in the house. We’ve taken over down here.”
“We’re gonna have leftovers for days,” said Graham.
Hestia delicately excused herself, but Flora surprised Harry again by asking if she could help, at which point she proved even less familiar with cooking than Graham. Harry set her to piping filling into halved and hollowed hard-boiled eggs and immediately had to hold back a laugh at the expression on her face: she scowled at the eggs with every bit of ferocious intensity as she ever aimed at an opponent in a no-spells-barred duel. I’ve never seen someone terrify the food into obedience before, Harry thought with a hidden smile, imagining sharing this story to his friends later—a smile that immediately faltered at the reminder of who was not and could not come today. Theo. Pansy. Blaise. Celesta. Ginny. So many of his friends.
That was not a good holiday mood. Harry shoved all such thoughts aside and focused on the here and now, the smell of spices and cooking meat, the skeins of magic he wove to pull hot trays from the oven, slide others in, stir three pots at once, arrange the garnish on the eggs just so. Any actual pleasure in culinary tasks had been drilled out of him at a young age but there was a soothing sort of satisfaction in this, Graham and Flora and other people rotating in and out of the kitchen to help, a job done well for the purpose of a shared holiday meal.
Realizing it was all done came as a surprise. Harry blinked himself out of the focused zone he’d been in for the last hour or two, saw plates vanishing as Kreacher invisibly popped them upstairs. Graham was drying his hands on a towel and at some point Veronica had come back down to stay, perched on a counter and talking to Graham about some gossip among their year-mates that Harry half-listened to.
“Ready to go?” Harry interrupted them.
Veronica grinned at him. “Let’s hope there’s any food left by the time we get up there. Fred and George are here.”
“When did they arrive?”
“Hour or so ago? They came by the front door, for some reason.”
They had a fondness for the Knight Bus, so Harry wasn’t that surprised. “They won’t have eaten it all, if only because they’ll have spiked some of it with pranks.”
“I bet Sirius gets pranked first,” Veronica said immediately, dashing for the stairs with Graham hot on their heels.
Harry followed them up at a more sedate pace. The house, now that he was paying attention, flexed discontentedly; it wasn’t sure what to do with the presence of several people who had a conscious mind but no magic to speak of. At least it wasn’t actively hostile towards the Butlers and Mrs. Finch-Fletchley. Harry didn’t imagine many Muggles had ever spent time here, or if they had, that it had been a short and unpleasant stay. Hm. Did Grimmauld Place have a dungeon? He wouldn’t have put it past the Blacks of old, but they’d long since cleared out the sub-basement, which, while weird and creepy, had no dungeons to speak of. Maybe Sirius would have heard some old stories about a family dungeon either here or under the Manor in Riasmoore.
When he stepped into the connected dining and living rooms, Harry had to blink a few times. He was pretty sure he hadn’t invited this many people. Aaron and Adrian, the Carrow and Weasley twins, and Everett weren’t unusual sights, but he hadn’t expected Finn Sullivan and his parents to be here, nor—Marcus Flint?
“Hard up for Yule plans?” Harry said, wandering over to Marcus with a smile that showed all his teeth.
If possible, Marcus looked even more uncomfortable. “Oh, uh, Adrian said I should… I can go, if—”
“You’re welcome here,” Harry cut him off, “but try to respect our privacy, hm?”
“It’s a holiday. You don’t go spreading ‘round stories about people’s holidays,” Marcus said into his mulled wine.
Harry eyed the slightly too-shiny surface of said wine and made a note not to drink any until he’d checked with the Weasleys what they did or did not spike. They usually gave him advance warning about those things on account of Harry reacted poorly to surprises. “You don’t have to stand here in the corner like a lump, either. Ian has opinions about quidditch, if you want to ask him.”
“I’ll… do that. Thanks, Black.” Marcus lifted the glass towards Harry in a half-toast and ambled off in the direction of Ian, Sirius, and Justin’s mom, which was sure to be a fascinating conversation.
The lights were low, the air thick with the scent of oranges and cinnamon, pine and cloves and fresh-cooked food. Someone, Kreacher and Sirius probably, had charmed plates of appetizers to float around the room, and glasses refilled on command with people’s drinks of choice. Harry let the atmosphere soak in as he subtly began shuffling everyone into the dining room. It wasn’t quite large enough—he tugged and prodded at the house until it gave them a few extra feet of space and lengthened the table; Kreacher popped in a few extra chairs from Merlin knew where and just like that everyone was settled.
Time passed in a smear of laughter and good food. Harry had never had a feast quite like this, not even at Hogwarts, food he’d made with his own two hands and could savor as much as he liked, shared with half of the people he genuinely cared about in the world and a few others whose company he at least liked.
It was more than he had thought to ever have, when he was eight and whispering Merry Christmas to himself in his cupboard while the Dursleys shared their holiday roast, when he was eleven and not invited to the home of his father. It was a precious, if imperfect thing, and he hung onto it with both hands.
By the time everyone had gone and Rio come home, it was past sundown, and Yule officially begun.
Sirius, Rio, Ian, and Harry pitched in to help Kreacher clean up from lunch. The elf complained, but Harry told him that he didn’t care what his old Mistress Walburga had done, elves were bonded members of the household and had better turn up to the Yule rite whether they liked it or not, so they might as well help him with his cleaning.
The rite itself wasn’t complicated. An incantation in Old English that Sirius would recite, seats on the floor in front of the hearth, a sacrifice, wreaths to weave of holly and ivy while meditating or talking about the year’s darkness and what it was for. Strength-gathering, resting, planning, preparing.
Everything was quiet, on Yule.
Then they’d light the Yule log together, trade wreaths and memories, take brands lit from the Yule fire to their respective rooms at the end of the night for the fires there.
The four of them plus Kreacher finally gathered well after sundown. Tussling over pillows and throw blankets, they made a nest on the hearth-rug, close enough the flames licked welcomingly near Harry’s feet when he stretched them out and leaned back on his hands.
Kreacher perched gingerly on a cushion from the sofa that Graham had pulled down onto the floor. His nose wrinkled up with distaste at the boys bickering over pillows and Sirius charming blanket-tassels to tickle Rio when Rio wasn’t looking, but Harry knew the old elf by now and was sure he saw affection there too.
When Kreacher caught his eye Harry grinned.
“Hmph,” said Kreacher, looking away with a scowl.
Eventually they all got settled down, passed around goblets of fire-warm spiced wine, and Sirius pulled out a book that Harry recognized. One that had been smuggled into the castle to him once, under heavy wards, rippling with old magic. Sirius handled it with, if not distaste, then a certain lack of enthusiasm; Harry saw it and thought the book felt it too. Its pages did not turn half on their own for Sirius like they had when Harry studied its contents.
Still, he was the Lord of Black, and hatred of his family had lessened into convoluted acceptance, and when Sirius spoke the words they fell into the room like polished stone, sending ripples through the air. The hearth-fire leapt and flickered in time with his voice. Harry stared at its hypnotic glow. The world narrowed to the sound of Sirius’ voice and the dancing all-encompassing flame and the magic rising around them, magic like winter itself, quiet, heavy, ancient and implacable, but familiar too and loving. It was the howling gale that kept intruders from your door. It was the deep silence of a snowy wood, solitude, safety.
It was home. He was home.
Sirius finished the incantation and Harry turned his head, feeling as if in slow motion, and saw Rio and Graham’s faces both gone faintly slack with wonder. Under the blankets it looked like they were holding hands.
“We make this sacrifice,” Sirius said, in English now, this part of the rite fluid and less scripted, “in gratitude to the darkness for protecting us, and in hopes of a bright and burning spring to come.”
That was Kreacher’s cue: a snap of gnarled fingers and he held a larger goblet, polished silver wrought with the Black crest and spiraling runic inscriptions and twisting vines that seemed to shift of their own volition in the dancing light of the fire. It was filled with a mixture of blood and mulled wine and a potion to act as binder: Sirius had caught the hare, in his grim shape; Harry had killed it and collected its blood; Kreacher had cleaned the carcass; Graham and Rio had brewed the potion base. Now Kreacher passed the goblet to Sirius, who drank. “So mote,” he murmured.
Harry accepted the goblet from him, raised it to his lips. Rich flavor burst across his tongue—the spices in the wine, and then the sweet-bitter tannins and sugars, and then, lingering after he swallowed, the copper-tang of blood. “So mote.”
Then it was Kreacher’s turn, and Graham’s, and Rio’s, and as they each successively drank and added their words to the rite Harry felt the magic settling more deeply into the room. On Yule there were no ancestral presences. This was an eddy in the ever-present magic of the world, given shape and form by generations of people anchored to it through blood and practice and ritual, a complex and borderline sapient pattern that had grown over more than a millennia. This was the Black family magic.
When Rio had drunk, Sirius took the goblet back and poured out the last of it into the hearth-fire. Flames snapped and flared; instead of being doused they consumed the sacrifice and grew brighter, stronger. Blood and wine and spices accented the smoky scent gently permeating the room.
Sirius sat back with a huff and a grin. “Well, that was dramatic.”
“Wicked,” Rio said, eyes wide.
Graham nodded like a bobble head doll. “Wreaths now?”
“Wreaths now,” Sirius agreed, too enthusiastically. Harry cast a suspicious sideways look at him but Sirius had his back turned, grabbing the bags of holly and ivy vines set aside for this, and by the time he faced forward again he’d been able to wipe any hint of mischief off his face, if ever it had been there.
Slowly, Harry reached out for the bundle of ivy Sirius held out.
As soon as his fingers touched it he knew he’d been right: magic tingled and rushed and before Harry could withdraw he felt the spell settle somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.
Hm. His ability to feel magic, especially other people’s spells, wasn’t usually this acute. Sirius sure didn’t look like he expected Harry to have noticed anything… maybe an effect of being mid-ritual, the family magic heavy on the air? Or of the solstice itself, a day of power lending depth to Harry’s senses?
The prank made itself known only minutes later, when Rio asked a question and Harry found himself able to talk only if he sang his words to the tune of The Holly King Is Come To Town, a popular older Yuletide carol.
“I’m going to get you back for this,” he threatened to Sirius, who was laughing far too hard to take it seriously.
Harry considered shredding the spell apart—felt their laughter, and Kreacher’s reluctant smile, as daggers, and instinctively curled in on himself deep inside, bracing against mockery and humiliation—but this was neither. Graham rapidly sprouted a pair of antlers hung with mistletoe and bells and tinkling tree ornaments, and Rio, in a puff of silver glitter, found himself stuck in a dumpy old mummer’s costume complete with a wooden mask carved into comically exaggerated features. Their laughter could be a balm, if Harry chose, rather than a wound. Their laughter was a joke he was invited to share.
So share it he did—though not without spelling Sirius in return, a hex that normally conjured feather dusters to tickle the target, but modified so that Sirius was instead attacked by pine boughs thick with needles. Rio laughed so hard at the sight of Sirius having near-convulsions on the floor that he fell over and spilled his (normal) wine on the half-finished wreath in his lap.
No one dared to prank Kreacher: the elf summoned his own greenery with a snap and a sneer when Sirius offered him the bag.
By now Harry was on his second glass, and a less diluted wine than what the boys were drinking; he felt light and loose, though still himself, still relatively clear-headed. Still more than coordinated enough to finish weaving ivy and holly together into a wreath, albeit a slightly lopsided one.
Sirius held up his own, much more even wreath with a delighted hoot, set it on his head, and wiggled his fingers. Lights sprang to life in the wreath and Harry’s eyes widened. Tiny pinpricks of yellow-white glow, like perfectly round candle flames, but heatless and unwavering and, obviously, not burning the leaves or Sirius’ hair. “What…”
“The family magic!” Sirius grinned at him, boyish and wide. “It did this sometimes when we were little—wasn’t sure if it’d be strong enough this year—try it!”
“I don’t think wreath-weaving is my strong suit,” Harry said-sang, though he settled the wreath on his head nonetheless, and, frowning, tried to… reach out.
The family magic responded so eagerly it must have been waiting for the invitation. Harry felt it flow into the circle of ivy-and-holly, settling into the shape waiting for it. Old magic, quiet magic, subtle and slow. When Harry held up a hand he could see the light from his head on it and found himself smiling.
Of course Rio and Graham had to try it too—Blacks they were not, by blood or by adoption, but they were of the household and the family magic imbued in the house and wards knew them, and the Lord, the Heir, and the family’s sole elf were here too, welcoming the two wards into their household and hearth for the rite. It only took a little nudge from Harry and lights popped to life around the two boys’ wreaths too.
Everyone looked expectantly at Kreacher.
Who rammed his own small and perfectly even wreath down onto his head and glared viciously at them all while lights came to burning life around it.
“That’s the spirit!” Sirius hooted.
Judging by the increasing glare, Kreacher was in more of a murderous spirit than a holiday one right now.
They hadn’t done much meditating or talking about their restful winter, but that was alright. Harry didn’t think the rite would mind. It certainly didn’t seem bothered. This was its own form of rest, of safety, of strength-gathering—laughing and warm, surrounded by—Harry made himself think it—family.
An odd little family but a true one. Even if the idea made him want to twitch away. Family had never gone well for him. Or at least no family he’d chosen.
He banished those thoughts as Sirius picked up the Yule log, a section of a pine tree bigger around than Harry’s thigh, and longer. “Ready?” Sirius said.
They crowded around him—Rio most eagerly, as he’d never done a version of this rite before, not even the watered-down ones repackaged as Christmas for families like Graham’s—so everyone had a hand on the log, down to Kreacher.
“May we stay safe and warm in the darkness of winter, and carry its peace into the spring,” Sirius said quietly, and together they all tipped the log forward.
It hit the already-burning fire with a crunch, a puff of ash, a spray of sparks and embers. Graham shrieked happily when one landed on his sleeve, and blew on it so it tossed into the air again, driven white-hot by the movement and fading to orange, then red, then black soot as it fell to settle on the hearth-stones.
“Here you go,” Sirius said, passing around little bundles of ash, pine, and holly branches bound together. “Remember—no running with these. This is not the night to brass off the house by setting the floors on fire.”
Harry emphasized the point with a stern look. He didn’t want to make the holiday cheer any less, but the family magic was powerful tonight, and the house deeply saturated in it, and Grimmauld Place could still be unpredictable for all it had settled down and decided it liked its current residents. Rio, wide-eyed, nodded; Graham did a teenage eye-roll suggestive of yeah, I knew that, I’m not an idiot, but at least he seemed to have listened.
All five brands were thrust into the fire at once. Flames licked up the sides of the Yule log—much too thick to have caught already, but beginning to scorch around the edges—and eagerly embraced the smaller, drier wood of the bundles offered now. Harry looked at the ends of his and felt the moment the fire, and the magic, sank in. A small, cheerful, bright-hot burning bit of Yule, bound up with hearth and home, loyalty and love. Fire was a medium for energy transfer. This fire would hold and keep alive all the magic of the rite as long as it didn’t go out; traditionally the Yule-fire would be kept burning nonstop until Imbolc, and Harry knew Kreacher fully intended to make that happen now that the Blacks had again done the whole, uninterrupted rite.
He rose. By unspoken agreement they had all fallen silent. Merriment faded into solemnity as this moment sank in. Harry cupped Graham’s and then Rio’s shoulders, a quick touch but a sincere one, and both smiled at him, gave Sirius one-armed hugs, and turned to Kreacher, who held his brand in the way like a sword. Rio snickered and the boys were gone.
Sirius slung an arm around Harry’s shoulders and pulled him in for a loose hug. Let go just as quickly, and grinned. “C’mon, pup. Sleepy?”
“Getting there.” At least the caroling-jinx had worn off. Between the wine and the warmth and the long day, yes, Harry knew he would sleep easily tonight, and likely not dream.
“Adopting you is the best decision I ever made.” Sirius looked him full in the eyes with the most sober expression Harry had ever seen him wear. “You know that, right?”
Harry managed a smile; his throat felt tight. “And accepting was the best I ever made too.”
Sirius’ face softened. He pulled Harry in for another one-armed hug, and Harry persuaded himself to reciprocate, which still felt stiff and unnatural to him but seemed to satisfy Sirius, who pulled back with one last ruffle of Harry’s hair. “Night. Happy Yule.”
“Happy Yule,” Harry echoed, softly, and followed Sirius out of the room with one glance back.
Kreacher still sat by the fire, crowned with a wreath of green and light, holding a brand that he’d use to kindle the kitchen fire and a candle in his den. He glanced up at Harry and their eyes met. In the stark and leaping shadows of hearth and wreath and brand, the rest of the room dim, with his bulging eyes and leathery skin, Kreacher looked more like an elf out of stories than he had in a long time. Something canny and alien and not altogether friendly.
It was a wonder anyone ever thought house-elves harmless.
Harry smiled at Kreacher, a flash of fangs in a winter wood. Kreacher did something back that was not entirely a smile but echoed the sentiment. This was the flip side of Yule. The howl in the distance, death on the wind. The biting numbing cold that sank into your flesh and the equally numbing realization that this was the end. The patience of winter that would outlast.
As Harry climbed the stairs to his room, his mind quieted and opened and he drew that patient cold into himself, the family magic, potent, powerful, sinking into sinew and bone; and for a moment he was not the warm hearth inside the house but the gale and the cold around it that drove predators away. The little flame in his hand—so small, so fragile, so easily snuffed out by a chill breeze—guttered slightly.
Not you, Harry whispered to it with his mind and magic. Watched it surge back to life. Carried it into his room and lit the fire, as was the last step of the rite, but instead of going to bed he went to the window and threw it wide and leaned out into the biting late-night air.
When he opened his eyes it had begun to snow.
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