Harry
“You arsehole,” said Harry, voice cracking, and stumbled forward to the edge of the bed. His knees cracked against the frame and he sank down half-sitting against the mattress.
Sirius lifted a hand and took Harry’s. His skin was warm. Alive. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to—” he broke off, coughing weakly— “to talk to invalids like that.”
“Two weeks,” said Harry, “two weeks and that’s the first thing you say?”
“I’ll have you know I’ve been working on that since Nick woke me up.”
Harry laughed, helpless and shaky and as thin as Sirius’ cough had been. “Merlin, Sirius, you’re…”
Alive.
Was this a dream? Harry’s hand tightened on Sirius’. If it was a dream, if he woke up and this slipped through his fingers, he was going to find whoever controlled dreams and kill them.
“Hey, ow, watch it,” said Sirius, wincing, and Harry loosened his grip immediately.
“I’m—I didn’t mean to…”
Sirius slumped back against the pillows. The giddy wave of relief had started to fade and now Harry could properly take in the gaunt shadows in Sirius’ cheeks, the unhealthy grey cast to his skin, the lank hair and shallow breathing. “I know,” he said, and, shit, his voice was reedy and weak too. “It’s… everything kind of hurts. I—Nick hasn’t told me much, I only woke up a bit ago and he was doing all kinds of checks—I—” He broke off and swallowed. “Harry… two weeks?”
“Seventeen days, technically.”
A tremor went through Sirius. “Nick said… Nick said people think I… died?”
“We held a burning,” Harry said. His own voice sounded very far away. “I claimed the title. You were—it was—it was bad. Healer Taleb said… the odds of you ever waking up… and even if you did, the recovery time… secrecy was the best defense. Taleb’s employment contract means he’ll keep it secret but—no one else knows.”
And now that he knew it was okay—that Sirius was okay—all the worry and the fear and the stress that Harry had been holding at bay for two and a half weeks, all the times he’d shut down any thoughts of Sirius—
“Okay,” Sirius said, shaken. “Okay, I… yeah, that… makes sense.” He shifted in the bed. “Merlin. Ow. Fuck. What curse–?”
“We aren’t—we aren’t sure. It’s just me and Taleb that know. He’s not an enchanter or a cursebreaker. Maybe if we could get an expert in to look—but—Taleb’s best guess is it was one or two different spells that got… caught up and warped in the distortion magic when the bike exploded. The effects were accelerated. Really accelerated. He had to regrow a bunch of your internal organs.”
Sirius gingerly touched his abdomen with a faintly queasy expression. “Right. Wait, just you two? Not Ian?”
“I—Sirius, he—” Harry braced himself. He did not like causing his family pain. He didn’t want to be the bearer of this bad news. But it would be a disservice to Sirius to shirk his duty and leave the job to Taleb instead so Harry steeled himself for the words: “He didn’t make it.”
For just a second Sirius’ face showed nothing but blank incomprehension. Harry saw the words sink in. Saw emotion battering Sirius like waves driven before a gale. Saw the tears begin to form and the tremble overtake his mouth.
“How?” Sirius whispered.
Harry met Sirius’ eyes and in one crystalline instant—
Felt the rage and grief radiating off Sirius, remembered threatening Remus Lupin and the fight that followed—Shouldn’t! And shouldn’t be capable!—
Would you really have done it?
Remembered watching Sirius walk away from him.
“We were falling.” Harry closed his eyes and just like that he was back there again. Panic nipping at his thoughts, wind tearing at his eyes. “We—the people chasing us, they just watched—we were falling and I—I couldn’t think, it was too—fast and I could see you, I got hold of your arm but you looked bad, Sirius, you looked dead, and the ground was coming up and I couldn’t find Ian and I didn’t—”A sharply indrawn breath. “I didn’t know what to do,” he whispered, and let all his recent helplessness show, the bleak futility of everything painting itself over his face as he stared unseeing down at his hand tangled with Sirius’. “I apparated, once, when I was a kid. Accidental… but I thought… maybe if I… could do it again…”
“You got me out,” Sirius said hollowly.
“Yes.” Harry made himself look up. “I couldn’t save him. I… I tried, Sirius, I did, I just—”
“Hey, no—Harry, it’s—it’s not your fault, okay? Listen to me.” Sirius’ voice was fierce, eyes bright with tears and rage. “Listen. You can’t save everyone. You’ll only break yourself if you try.”
Again with the save everyone rhetoric. That wasn’t it at all.
Still, the relief was a gut punch release of tension, and the shuddering exhale Harry let out wasn’t feigned in the slightest.
Losing Sirius over what Harry did to Ian would almost have been worse than losing him to the pyre for real.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said quietly.
Sirius gripped his hand with surprising strength. “No… I’m sorry. Harry—you never should have needed to—you shouldn’t have been there.”
“Oh bullshite,” Harry snapped. Sirius blinked. “I’m not some bystander. I’m in this war. I have been since I was a kid, it’s not like it gave me a bloody choice! That was Rio they went after. And if I hadn’t been you’d be dead and I can’t—”
He cut himself off harshly, leaving a weighted silence blanketing the room.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
Which was an impossible thing to promise.
I can’t lose you.
Harry made himself nod.
The silence settled and made itself at home, a silence made up of the tiny sounds one never notices except in unusual quiet. The rasp of his breathing. The shift of fabric against skin when Harry shifted his foot. The quiet ticking of a clock on one wall.
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Sirius said. The silence swallowed his unsteady voice with scarcely a ripple.
Sirius was no stranger to death. Had only just crawled back from its door himself. None of that seemed to make it easier. Harry’s free hand flexed helplessly at his side as Sirius lay in the bed and shook with sobs he was too weak to truly let out.
I’m sorry, thought Harry, unable to tell even in the privacy of his own mind whether he meant that, or how. Because he hated that Sirius was in pain. He wished he could have taken the risk of trying to save Ian. He wished things hadn’t gone the way they did.
But Sirius was here. Alive. Skin warm against Harry’s fingers. Alive to mourn his partner, alive to feel the tears tracing down his cheeks, alive to make his impossible, idealistic promises. He was alive.
Harry had done that.
His lungs expanded in what felt like the first full breath Harry had taken in weeks. Longer.
No. He wasn’t sorry. Not really. He’d do it again. For Sirius. For any of his friends.
A laugh bubbled in his throat and Harry swallowed it down. It wasn’t happy, wasn’t joyful, but there was no fucking way he could explain where it came from if Sirius heard it. It was giddy and relieved and more than a little mad. Sirius was alive. If he could do that—
Harry was so fucking tired of being helpless.
Restless energy did backflips in his stomach but Harry held himself still. Sirius’ sobs were subsiding, though less because he’d purged his grief, it seemed, than simple physical weakness: the wan tone of his skin had gotten more pronounced and his breath came rattling and shallow.
Harry squeezed his hand gently.
There was no response for a moment, and then Sirius turned towards him, lips twisting up into a bitter expression that might, if one were charitable, have been a distant cousin of a smile. “It’s… how he would’ve wanted to go. Fighting for something that matters.”
It didn’t look like the thought was actually comforting. Harry squeezed his hand again, unable to think of a verbal reply. Particularly in light of his private certainty that Ian would not have wanted to die the way things actually went.
Another sob slipped out. Sirius held his breath on the tail end of it and shut his eyes while a brief, stronger tremor overtook him. “Fuck… fuck.”
“What can I do?” Harry half-whispered. “Do you need… Healer Taleb, or…”
Sirius tightened his grip on Harry’s hand, in spite of the pain he had to feel. “Just. Be here? For a few minutes? I know I need to see Nick, but… just…”
“Yeah. Of course. As long as you need.” Screw getting back to Hogwarts in a timely fashion, Harry wasn’t leaving until he absolutely had to.
They sat for what couldn’t have been more than half an hour but felt like thrice that, time lapsing into an odd liminal haze while Harry sat, silent and unmoving. With the weight of this worry lifted off his shoulders none of the rest of Harry’s problems could quite touch him. For the first time in weeks his mind was quiet.
Eventually, though, Sirius fell back into a fitful half-sleep. Harry waited to make sure he wouldn’t wake again quickly and then slipped out to the hall to call Taleb.
“He needs rest,” Taleb said after he had checked Sirius over. “He’ll probably be out for hours more. His body is weak and a surplus of emotions takes its toll.”
“He deserved to know.”
“It wasn’t a rebuke.” Taleb raised an eyebrow and Harry looked away, not letting himself feel chastened but recognizing he had gotten too defensive too quickly. “Just an observation of fact. And you must return to Hogwarts.”
“I know.”
Taleb hesitated. “He can’t stay in my spare room forever, Harry.”
“I’m… working on it.” Which wasn’t entirely true. Harry hadn’t been able to face the task of figuring out what to do with a convalescent Sirius. He’d thought about it, occasionally, approaching the idea sideways even in his own mind, and then shied away from following through.
Mostly he just hadn’t been able to let himself hope.
“I would advise getting him out of the country.”.
Harry snapped back to the present. “I—do you mean to Ireland?”
“The continent, preferably. I know of several good clinics… Many of my more affluent private patients find themselves in need of, ah, discreet services from resolutely neutral healing staff,” said Taleb delicately. “The more common situation is one of averting social scandal, but it would apply in this instance as well.”
Harry was quiet, letting the idea sink in and take shape. “I’ll… take it under advisement. Thank you. Er… how long until he can safely be moved?”
“A week at least, I should think. Perhaps two.”
“So long?”
“His heart stopped,” Taleb said, as if Harry could have forgotten, “and then his body went through a very rough apparition, and then—you know, you never did explain where you learned the cardiac stimulation charm. That one is normally only taught to healer apprentices.”
The implicit question was as pointed as a knife. “It was an archaic version, I think,” Harry said. “Our family’s libraries have lots of… old books. I read widely.”
“That would do it,” said Taleb, nodding. “Well, Sirius should count himself exceptionally fortunate that you could keep stimulate heart palpitations long enough for me to arrive, but that charm is not easy on the body and he’d already taken curse damage—if it weren’t a dire situation I would tell you not to move him by magical means for a month at least. But the situation is indeed dire and so I must weigh optimal healthcare against my patient’s physical safety. Every day he spends here is a risk.”
“And we both appreciate your pragmatism as well as skill,” said Harry, meaning it. “Not to mention discretion. You saved his life, Healer Taleb.” He forced the words out. “Thank you.”
Taleb set a hand on Harry’s shoulder, gentle and brief enough that Harry didn’t even have time to get twitchy before it was taken away again. “You saved him first.”
“Barely,” said Harry’s mouth before his brain could catch up.
“That matters. It’s been a long time since I did any emergency care, but the first rule of triage—the first rule—is that we can treat anything except death. Number one priority is always, always to keep the patient alive, preserve vital organs and brain function at all costs. Atypical means—less-than-ideal solutions—in a classroom or a textbook a trainee healer might be taught to do things the “right” way, but in a situation like yours… trust me. Barely is all that matters.”
Taleb’s gentle tact meant the reassurance didn’t land too directly and Harry could accept it for what it was. He jerked his chin in a nod.
“You should be getting back now,” said Taleb, deftly changing the subject. “Is there anything else I can…”
“No, not tonight. Just… tell him, when he wakes up, that I’m sorry I had to go, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Of course.”
The healer’s words dogged Harry all the way back to Hogwarts, lingering in his mind even after he’d confirmed his egress point remained undisturbed, portkeyed back, and begun the walk down to the Slytherin commons. Barely is all that matters.
You saved him first.
Not revolutionary ideas. Still, Harry found himself staring wide-eyed and awake at the inside of his bed’s canopy that night, replaying the evening’s events and pausing, every time, on the feel of Sirius’ hand in his, the restless urge to act that remained with him still, and that last conversation with Taleb, turning words over in his mind like polished river stones.
Jules
Apparition lessons were the only thing the older Gryffindors could talk about. Stories of splinched cousins ran laps around the common room, getting wilder with each telling. Dean and Seamus had their heads together with Lavender, while Hermione had cornered seventh years Katie Bell and Matt Munwhistle to interrogate them about their lessons the year before.
Jules sat near his roommates and half-heartedly turned the pages of a book about famous Auror cock-ups. Moody had sent it to him (in a package with six different hexes for Jules to unravel, of course) with a note that he wanted Jules to figure out how all of the different disasters could have been done better. Normally Jules would have been excited. He wasn’t much of a reader, but this sort of thing was worth the effort. Tonight, though, too many other things weighed on his mind.
The Order, for one, specifically his lingering unease about what Ethan was getting up to. Toby Pritchard had said something about a mission his sister did that went wrong… and for another thing, there was Susan, still grieving; and Harry, who Jules still hadn’t spoken to since the funeral—and more pressing than any of it, his awareness of the clock counting down to eight o’clock.
He thought Parvati noticed, when he stood up to go, but she kept her head down over an essay and didn’t react. Another person he needed to talk to more often. She’d come back from the holidays prickly and stiff and avoiding her sister in the halls. Jules forced his shoulders down from the defensive hunch they wanted to do and walked faster. Susan, Parvati, Ron, the whole DA, Ethan, Andromeda, the Order, the Headmaster, the bloody Minister for Magic—
Everyone wanted a piece of him.
Or, more specifically, of the Boy Who Lived. Their Chosen One. Their savior.
It wasn’t even that Jules minded the role. He got it—got why people looked to him, why they needed someone to look to at all.
It was just that the space around him where the Boy Who Lived existed had gotten wider, a gulf only a few people seemed to know how to cross. It was just that he’d never felt so separate from his peers, his friends, and he hated it.
The gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office looked at him with its blank, beady stone eyes, and for one bitter second Jules thought he’d give anything to be a normal kid gossipping in the common room, still able to hold the war at arm’s length.
The second passed quickly, though. Jules was doing this for them. Jules was doing this for all the kids who didn’t have to stop being kids yet. Who wouldn’t have to stop being kids too soon because of a fight that didn’t give a shit about age when it came for you.
By the time he stepped off the moving spiral staircase he’d sorted himself again, which was good, because talking to Dumbledore always left him feeling off-kilter.
“Ah, Jules, come in. Precisely on time, too!” said Dumbledore as Jules pushed open the door and the clock struck eight. “Punctuality. Such a lost virtue. Take a seat, my boy. Lemon drop?”
Jules took a seat in the usual chair and a candy from the proffered bowl. “Thanks, sir.”
“You’re very welcome.” Dumbledore steepled his hands on the desk. “Did you have a pleasant holiday?”
“Yeah,” said Jules, and ate the candy. Lemon burst sugar-sweet and citrus-sour on his tongue. “It was nice.” He tried to figure out what Dumbledore was getting at.
“I hear you spoke with the Minister.”
I saw him loads, Jules almost said, since Kingsley came to most all-hands Order meetings, but then paused. Sure, he’d spoken to Kingsley multiple times, but he’d only spoken to the Minister the once.
“I did,” he said slowly. “He… wanted to talk about… things at the Ministry being unstable, and the Wizengamot…”
Dumbledore did not smile, but his face did something that suggested both approval and an enigmatic reserve. Jules would never understand how the Headmaster was so good at that sort of shite. And, come to think of it, when had Jules gotten good enough at reading the Headmaster’s expressions to pick up on that sort of thing?
Two minutes into the conversation and he was already developing a headache. Jules ate another candy.
“It is indeed a precarious time,” said Dumbledore, and Jules dragged his attention back to the present. “Undoubtedly the Minister is right to be concerned.”
“I don’t think anyone expected, uh, Lord Black to die.”
“No.” Dumbledore looked away. “It was a major shift. The ramifications are as yet unclear… particularly, if you will permit me a bit of self-centeredness—” this was delivered with a wry smile— “as pertains to the Department of Education and the Board of Governors.”
“But the Ministry doesn’t control the Board.”
“That is true, but the members of the Board are, to a one, prominent political figures, and their decisions on the Board reflect their families’ politics.”
Jules understood then. “So if they can’t stay out of the politics anymore with the more neutral group falling apart, that affects what they do about Hogwarts too.”
“Yes. I have been… preoccupied of late.”
“The Inquisitor?” said Jules, daring to press a bit harder than he usually would. Dumbledore was either distracted enough to be this talkative or he was pretending to be distracted because he wanted Jules to know this. It didn’t matter to Jules, not really. He just wanted to know.
“Our new Inquisitor is, unlike the last, and however… disruptive his ideas may be, acting in good faith,” said Dumbledore, and paused.
In Jules’ memory, Andi said: damning with faint praise.
“The Board have faith in him, for now. They have rather less in me. I fear losing several votes to the sway of the Dark, and if I am forced to prematurely depart from Hogwarts’ halls…”
He trailed off, but Jules knew where that would lead. Without Dumbledore there’d be no one to hold back against the Governors that Voldemort could pressure or the presence of another Inquisitor like Umbridge. Let alone a Headmaster who sympathized with the Dark.
“I must say,” there was another smile, “I do not envy our Minister his position, playing dual roles of elected official and, shall we say, volunteer keeper of civic peace.” Which had to be the most Slytherin way of describing the Order that Jules had ever heard. “But we are fortunate to have him leading the Order when I cannot.”
Jules blinked. Kingsley leading—is that what Dumbledore thought happened at the meetings he missed? Which, come to think of it, had been all of them but one, at least that Jules knew of, since the winter holiday started. “Well… Kingsley’s not the only one…”
“No, no, naturally. It takes a village!” Dumbledore chuckled gently.
Suspicion stirred. “Sir… about the Order…” Jules tried to marshal his thoughts while Dumbledore looked at him attentively. “Is it, er. Well. Do you think it’s enough? Protecting the Wizengamot members? Aren’t we kind of just staying on the defensive?”
The best defense is a good offense, said echoes of Ron in his memory, young and grinning over a chess set, tall and fierce leaning over a map.
“Have you perhaps been listening to Ethan?” Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling. “Your courage is admirable, as is his, as is that of the many young people coming to support our work. There will come a time for offensive tactics, certainly, but I believe that has always been a weakness of Lord Voldemort’s. Particularly by the end of the last war, the Death Eaters showed a marked preference for wanton violence, and paid inadequate attention to the political sphere. They may spread fear and discord but without a major voice in government they cannot affect lasting change.”
Jules opened his mouth.
Then he closed it again. It sounded like Dumbledore didn’t know what Ethan and Andi were getting up to with the Order’s youngest recruits. And if he didn’t know, Jules… wasn’t sure about bringing it to his attention.
A spike of unease set his hands to flexing in his lap where Dumbledore couldn’t see them. When had Jules’ trust in the Headmaster taken this much of a turn? What right did Jules have to decide to keep this from the Headmaster when it was Dumbledore who’d founded the Order, run it, led it through one war and was now shepherding it through another?
Did he have any less of a right to keep things secret than Andi, or Ethan? Who was Jules supposed to trust?
Too many questions. Not enough answers. Jules’ head was full of gobstones rattling around and threatening to explode.
The silence had gone on too long. “That makes sense,” said Jules.
“You sound as if you have some doubts, my boy.”
“I… guess so, yes, sir. It isn’t only politics that matter. And—and what about all the people who get hurt in the meantime?”
“We have limited resources.” A weight seemed to settle on Dumbledore’s shoulders. “We can only protect so many. Sacrifices have to be made, in a war. If I could step between every Death Eater’s wand and its intended target myself, I would, in a heartbeat. Regrettably… that is impossible. Lord Voldemort wants to divide us—to use our care for human life against us, to distract us with violence so that we cannot hold our ground in the Ministry.”
Which is it, Jules wanted to ask, does Voldemort not care enough about politics or is he trying to distract us from politics, but he knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer. Maybe there was no straight answer. Maybe the answer was just “both”.
Besides which, as much as he hated it, he saw Dumbledore’s point. He believed the aging Headmaster meant every word. That Dumbledore would use his own body as a shield against every curse every Death Eater ever cast if that would stop the war.
But it wouldn’t.
Jules knew that.
Jules had spent years watching Ron annihilate people in chess. He knew sometimes you had to give up a piece in order to win.
But he fucking hated it.
“Ethan just wants to keep people safe,” he said instead of pushing harder. “He’s worried. About losing people, about you being gone…”
“Yes.” Dumbledore’s weary expression vanished behind one of indulgent good cheer. “I’m sure you would quite like to know where I am when not in Hogwarts or the Order, as well.”
Jules looked steadily at him. “I can’t do anything unless I know what’s going on, sir.”
Then he blinked, because his voice had sounded the same way Dad’s used to, when Dad needed to make people listen.
“You are correct.” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled at him over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “But the time is not quite right for you to know that. Now, I suggest we press on, unless there’s anything else — ?”
For Dumbledore, that was direct. Jules considered and discarded things in rapid succession: Malfoy had been sickly and twitchy for weeks now, Nott had even more of a creepy shark’s-eye glare than usual since the holidays, Harry walking around like a shadow of himself, students fighting in the halls, shouting matches in History classes taught by the professors Selwyn brought in, the heaving sea of uncertainty Jules felt about being Lord Potter—what was he supposed to do with that, politics?—but none of it seemed worth the effort.
Jules would have to figure it out himself. “Yes, sir.”
“Excellent! I have two more memories to show you this evening, both obtained with enormous difficulty, and the second of them is, I think, the most important I have collected.”
Jules nodded while his stomach busily tied itself into knots. What could it be, that it was the most important? Some crime the young Tom Riddle did? A moment when he turned into Voldemort?
“So,” said Dumbledore, in a ringing voice that must have captivated his classroom back when he taught transfiguration, “we meet this evening to continue the tale of Tom Riddle, whom we last saw poised on the threshold of his years at Hogwarts. You will remember how excited he was to hear that he was a wizard, that he refused my company on a trip to Diagon Alley, and that I, in turn, warned him against continued thievery when he arrived at school.”
Jules remembered things a little differently than that, but okay.
“The start of the school year arrived in due course and with it came Tom Riddle, a quiet boy in his secondhand robes, who lined up with the other first years to be sorted. He was placed in Slytherin House almost the moment that the Sorting Hat touched his head,” continued Dumbledore, waving his blackened hand toward the shelf over his head where the Sorting Hat sat, ancient and unmoving. “How soon Riddle learned that the famous founder of the House could talk to snakes, I do not know — perhaps that very evening. The knowledge can only have excited him and increased his sense of self-importance.
“However, if he was frightening or impressing fellow Slytherins with displays of Parseltongue in their common room, no hint of it reached the staff. He showed no sign of outward arrogance or aggression at all. As an unusually talented and very good-looking orphan, he naturally drew attention and sympathy from the staff almost from the moment of his arrival. He seemed polite, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. Nearly all were most favorably impressed by him.”
“You didn’t tell them, then, how it went at the orphanage? When you visited?” asked Jules, trying not to think about how familiar that description sounded. Other than the bit about secondhand robes. Dad had gotten that much right with Harry if basically nothing else.
“No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”
“I mean… even if he wasn’t sorry, he could still have learned to do better,” said Jules before he could think twice. “It isn’t as if anyone had taught him how to be decent at that place.”
Dumbledore paused and looked inquiringly at Jules. “Your capacity for remorse, for empathy—that is what separates you from Lord Voldemort. He lacks both of those things. I suspected as much from the start, though I hoped in time he might learn, since, as you mentioned, his childhood was regrettably devoid of what one might call positive role models.”
“You didn’t really trust him, sir, did you? He told me . . . the Riddle who came out of that diary said, ‘Dumbledore never seemed to like me as much as the other teachers did.’”
“Let us say that I did not take it for granted that he would be able, or willing, to change,” said Dumbledore. “I had, as I have already indicated, resolved to keep a close eye upon him, and so I did. It was difficult, at first, to glean anything useful. He was very guarded with me; he felt, I am sure, that in the thrill of discovering his true identity he had told me a little too much.”
Or, Jules thought, he’d just remembered Dumbledore as harsh and unforgiving, and had done the same in reverse—had not taken it for granted that this was an authority figure he could trust.
“He was careful never to reveal as much again, but he could not take back what he had let slip in his excitement, nor what Mrs. Cole had confided in me.”
Again Jules had to bite his tongue: Mrs. Cole had talked a lot, yeah, but he didn’t think it could be called confiding in Dumbledore when she’d been tricked into speaking so freely.
“However, he had the sense never to try and charm me as he charmed so many of my colleagues.” Dumbledore paused, stretching the story, and Jules found himself somewhat unwillingly drawn in. Wanting to know more. “As he moved up the school, he gathered about him a group of dedicated friends; I call them that, for want of a better term, although as I have already indicated, Riddle undoubtedly felt no affection for any of them. This group had a kind of dark appeal within the castle. They were a motley collection; a mixture of the weak seeking protection, the ambitious seeking some shared glory, and the thuggish gravitating toward a leader who could show them more refined forms of cruelty. In other words, they were the forerunners of the Death Eaters, and indeed some of them became the first Death Eaters after leaving Hogwarts.”
In Jules’ mind, he saw Neville and Malfoy, Greengrass and Zabini, Nott and the Carrows. All the people who had gone to Harry for protection. For success. For—well, he couldn’t call any of Harry’s friends thuggish, but there were times, when he remembered the rumors about Hestia Carrow, or of some Slytherins flinching from Nott in the halls—
“Rigidly controlled by Riddle, they were never detected in open wrongdoing,” Dumbledore went on, and Jules refocused. “That said, their seven years at Hogwarts were marked by a number of nasty incidents to which they were never satisfactorily linked, the most serious of which was, of course, the opening of the Chamber of Secrets, which resulted in the death of a girl. As you know, Hagrid was wrongly accused of that crime.”
“I have not been able to find many memories of Riddle at Hogwarts,” said Dumbledore, placing his withered hand on the pensieve. “Few who knew him then are prepared to talk about him; they are too terrified. What I know, I found out after he had left Hogwarts, after much painstaking effort, after tracing those few who could be tricked or persuaded into speaking, after searching old records and questioning Muggle and wizard witnesses alike.
“Those whom I could persuade to talk told me that Riddle was obsessed with his parentage. This is understandable, of course; he had grown up in an orphanage and naturally wished to know how he came to be there. It seems that he searched in vain for some trace of Tom Riddle senior on the shields in the trophy room, on the lists of prefects in the old school records, even in the books of Wizarding history. Finally he was forced to accept that his father had never set foot in Hogwarts. I believe that it was then that he dropped the name forever, assumed the identity of Lord Voldemort, and began his investigations into his previously despised mother’s family — the woman whom, you will remember, he had thought could not be a witch if she had succumbed to the shameful human weakness of death.”
Jules could not keep silent in the face of what he considered a creative interpretation of what little the eleven-year-old Tom had said about his parents. “But, sir—did he say anything along those lines? That he hated his mum, or—or that he still thought a witch wouldn’t have died? It’s not like he knew, at eleven, what magic could do, and all the Muggleborns I know, they’ve shared some really weird ideas about magical stuff from Muggle stories.”
But Dumbledore just shook his head. “He was a deeply secretive young man, you must remember. Whatever confidences he may have allowed himself to give were shared only with his closest associates. No, I have had to draw upon a bevy of evidence and recollections from a number of students and staff who were at Hogwarts alongside him, but not so close as to have been traumatized into utter silence; and, naturally, on my own observations of him, which I had ample time to make, as he was in my classroom for seven years.” He fixed Jules with a stern look. “And while I commend your curiosity, we have quite a bit to get through tonight, so perhaps you might save further questions for later?”
Right. Message received: no more interruptions. Jules throttled his irritation and nodded with his best attempt at a politely interested expression.
“Thank you.” Dumbledore appeared completely sincere. “At any rate, all he had to go upon in his search for his family was the single name ‘Marvolo,’ which he knew from those who ran the orphanage had been his mother’s father’s name. Finally, after painstaking research through old books of Wizarding families, he discovered the existence of the Gaunt family, who were known to claim descent from Salazar Slytherin but held in such general contempt by wizarding society that the claim, whether true or false, meant little. In the summer of his sixteenth year, he left the orphanage to which he returned annually and set off to find his Gaunt relatives. And now, Jules, if you will stand . . .”
Dumbledore rose, and Jules saw that he was again holding a small crystal bottle filled with swirling silver memory.
“I was very lucky to collect this,” he said, as he poured the gleaming mass into the pensieve. “As you will understand when we have experienced it. Shall we?”
Jules stepped up to the stone basin and bent over it until his face sank through the surface of the memory. Gravity vanished. He hurtled through nothing, weightless and adrift, holding still where his limbs wanted to flail only thanks to practice until his feet slammed to a stop on a filthy, dimly lit stone floor.
It took him several seconds to recognize the place, by which time Dumbledore had landed beside him. The Gaunts’ house was now more indescribably nasty than anywhere Jules had ever seen. The ceiling was thick with cobwebs, the floor coated in grime; moldy and rotting food lay upon the table amidst a mass of crusted pots. The only light came from a single guttering candle placed at the feet of a man with hair and beard so overgrown Jules could see neither eyes nor mouth. He was slumped in an armchair by the fire, and Jules wondered for a moment whether he was dead. But then there came a loud knock on the door and the man jerked awake, raising a wand in his right hand and a short knife in his left.
The door creaked open. There on the threshold, holding an old-fashioned lamp, stood a boy Jules recognized at once: tall, pale, dark-haired, and handsome—the teenage Voldemort. Or, no, he corrected himself, the teenage Tom Riddle, for as cold as Riddle’s eyes were, as flatly emotionless his expression, he still seemed human.
Riddle’s eyes moved slowly around the hovel and then found the man in the armchair. For a few seconds they looked at each other, then the man staggered upright, the many empty bottles at his feet clattering and tinkling across the floor.
“YOU!” he bellowed. “YOU!”
And he hurtled drunkenly at Riddle, wand and knife held aloft.
Riddle said something in Parseltongue. The man skidded into the table, sending moldy pots crashing to the floor. He stared at Riddle. There was a long silence while they contemplated each other. The man broke it and more incomprehensible hissing emerged.
Dumbledore waved a hand. Around them, the memory froze.
“I was fortunate enough to solicit the services of a parselmouth hailing from Beijing in translating this conversation,” he said, drawing a scroll from one pocket. “For your perusal—I confess to having viewed this so many times it is memorized.”
Jules undid the scroll and saw two lines of writing descending from the top to the bottom in parallel, one in Chinese characters and the other in English. “Beijing, sir?”
“I had to search rather far afield,” said Dumbledore drily, “to find a parselmouth who did not immediately fall silent and refuse the minute they realized who this memory shows. There are vanishingly few snake-speakers in Europe, and scarcely more in North America; all those that I could speak to had heard of Lord Voldemort and were unwilling to cross him, lest he learn of it and hunt down the one who had done so. In such a small community, for a man willing to sink to such depths, it would not have been particularly difficult. The search abroad was complicated further by the necessity of finding someone relatively fluent in English, so that the translation could be as close to the truth as possible.”
That made sense, Jules supposed. He read the first few lines: Stop followed by You speak it?
Dumbledore waved, and the memory sprang to life around them again.
“Yes, I speak it,” said Riddle, according to the scroll. He moved forward into the room, allowing the door to swing shut behind him. Jules could not help but feel a resentful admiration for Voldemort’s complete lack of fear.
“Where is Marvolo?”
“Dead,” said the man the scroll identified as Older male, which had been crossed out with Morfin written under it in Dumbledore’s hand. “Died years ago, didn’t he?”
Riddle frowned.
“Who are you, then?”
“I’m Morfin, ain’t I?”
“Marvolo’s son?”
“Course I am, then.”
Morfin pushed the hair out of his dirty face, the better to see Riddle, and Jules saw that he wore Marvolo’s black-stoned ring on his right hand.
Now Morfin’s hissing dropped to something like a whisper, if snakes could whisper.“I thought you was that Muggle. You look mighty like that Muggle.”
“What Muggle?” The hissing noises from Riddle were sharper now, and his attention more fixed.
“That Muggle what my sister took a fancy to, that Muggle what lives in the big house over the way. You look right like him. Riddle. But he’s older now, in ’e? He’s older’n you, now I think on it. . . .”
Morfin looked slightly dazed and swayed a little, still clutching the edge of the table for support. Jules assumed this was why the transcription began again on a new line with:“He come back, see.”
Riddle was looking at Morfin with a calculating air. Now he moved a little closer.“Riddle came back?”
“Ar, he left her, and serve her right, marrying filth!” [Spits upon the floor], the scroll helpfully supplied, though words on parchment couldn’t really get across just how disgusted Morfin looked when he did so, or how disgusted Riddle looked in turn—though likely, Jules thought, reluctantly amused, not for the same reasons as Morfin.“Robbed us, mind, before she ran off! Where’s the locket, eh, where’s Slytherin’s locket?”
Riddle did not answer. Morfin was rapidly working himself into a rage: he brandished his knife and the hissing noises got sharper and faster, though not really louder. Jules supposed it would be difficult to shout and hiss at the same time.
“Dishonored us, she did, that little slut! And who’re you, coming here and asking questions about all that? It’s over, innit. . . . It’s over. . . .”
He looked away, staggering slightly. Jules saw Riddle go for his wand.
Morfin did not.
A red flash suffused the scene, and then there was nothing.
Dumbledore’s fingers closed tightly around Jules’ arm. Once again gravity vanished, leaving only the sickening sense of movement without direction, thankfully over within seconds as Jules slammed back into his body.
There was a pause as both he and Dumbledore found their seats again. Jules thought back on what he’d seen, then, realizing he’d clutched the scroll so tightly it had crumpled a bit in his fist, he smoothed it out as best he could against his leg and handed it back to Dumbledore. Heat climbed his cheeks but Dumbledore made no mention of it and just tucked the scroll away again.
“So… Riddle stunned Morfin?” Jules guessed.
“Correct. He awoke the next morning lying on the floor, quite alone. Marvolo’s ring was gone.
“Meanwhile, in the village of Little Hangleton, a maid was running along the High Street, screaming that there were three bodies lying in the drawing room of the big house: Tom Riddle Senior and his mother and father.
“The Muggle authorities were perplexed. As far as I am aware, they do not know to this day how the Riddles died, for the Avada Kedavra curse does not usually leave any sign of damage—the exception sits before me,” Dumbledore added, with a nod to Jules’ scar. “The Ministry, on the other hand, knew at once that this was a wizard’s murder. They also knew that a convicted Muggle-hater lived across the valley from the Riddle house, a Muggle-hater who had already been imprisoned once for attacking one of the very same people now lying dead in their own home.
“So the Ministry called upon Morfin. They did not need to question him, to use veritaserum or legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know. He was proud, he said, to have killed the Muggles, had been awaiting his chance all these years. He handed over his wand, which was proved at once to have been used to kill the Riddles. And he permitted himself to be led off to Azkaban without a fight. All that disturbed him was the fact that his father’s ring had disappeared. ‘He’ll kill me for losing it,’ he told his captors over and over again. ‘He’ll kill me for losing his ring.’ And that, apparently, was all he ever said again. He lived out the remainder of his life in Azkaban, lamenting the loss of Marvolo’s last heirloom, and is buried beside the prison, alongside the other poor souls who have expired within its walls.”
“Riddle stole Morfin’s wand and used it,” said Jules, thinking it through the way Moody had taught him. “He must have been of age, or else the Trace would’ve picked up that he was in the same area as three AKs… and then he used legilimency to put the memories in Morfin’s head and make him think they were real, stole the ring, and left.”
Dumbledore blinked. “Precisely. That was well reasoned.”
“Thank you, sir. I assume Morfin never realized he hadn’t done it?”
“Never. He gave, as I say, a full and boastful confession.”
“Riddle didn’t obliviate him?” That would have been the logical thing to do, and Jules knew full well you could learn the memory charm if you had enough money or connections, however tightly the Ministry controlled access to it. Surely by seventeen, with everyone he knew in the rich pureblood houses, Riddle could’ve gotten his hands on enough of the theory to cast it himself.
“It’s difficult to say. Morfin was, to be blunt, not the most mentally able to begin with, and a lifetime of malnutrition, drink, and hate had poisoned his mind even further. Combine that with a stint in Azkaban… Based on the state of his mind when I retrieved this memory, it was only preserved in such clarity because of whatever Voldemort did to erase or suppress it, whether the Obliviate or legilimency or both. Memory charms behave strangely when cast on the inebriated or otherwise mentally impaired.”
“How did you retrieve it?” said Jules, who had his suspicions.
“I secured a visit to Morfin in what turned out to be the last weeks of his life, by which time I was attempting to discover as much as I could about Voldemort’s past. I extracted this memory with difficulty. When I saw what it contained, I attempted to use it to exonerate Morfin of his crimes. Before the Ministry reached their decision, however, Morfin had died.”
Extracted. And no actual explanation. Knowing what he did of Dumbledore, Jules was pretty sure some brutal legilimency was involved, and as much as it was fucked up, he couldn’t really bring himself to feel bad for Morfin Gaunt. But Dumbledore’s unwillingness to be honest rankled.
“Figures they were so slow,” he said, focusing on the Ministry being terrible at its job.
“Yes, it was unfortunate,” said Dumbledore. “Whatever Morfin was, he did not deserve to die as he did, blamed for murders he had not committed. But it is getting late, and I want you to see this other memory before we part. . . .”
Dumbledore took from an inside pocket another crystal phial and Jules fell silent at once, remembering that Dumbledore had said it was the most important one he had collected. The contents proved difficult to empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed slightly. A thought prickled… something he’d heard Dad or Moody or someone say, about memories and evidence…
“This will not take long,” said Dumbledore, when he had finally emptied the phial. “We shall be back before you know it.”
Again Jules fell through the silver surface, landing this time right in front of a man he recognized at once.
It was a much younger Horace Slughorn. Jules was so used to him bald that he found the sight of Slughorn with thick, shiny, straw-colored hair momentarily stupefying. It looked as though he had had his head thatched, though there was already a shiny galleon-sized bald patch on his crown. His mustache, less massive than it was in the present, was gingery-blond. He was not yet quite as rotund as the Slughorn Jules knew. Instead he was built a little like, Jules was startled to realize, Neville, or at least the figure Neville was growing into: large with both muscle and fat, showing the signs of exercise and life fully lived. Pictures on the wall showed him climbing a mountain, grinning and dirt-smeared in a cave with a small group of wizards in sturdy work robes, scowling over a cauldron, clapping just behind a podium while a young witch accepted an award before the picture version of her turned to give him a fierce hug.
But when not out doing a rather startling array of pretty interesting things, Slughorn clearly enjoyed comfort as much as his present-day self. In the memory he sat well back in a comfortable winged armchair, feet up on a velvet pouf, holding a glass of wine in one hand and reaching with the other for an open tin of candied fruit.
Jules got over the dissonance of this Slughorn as Dumbledore landed beside him, and looked around Slughorn’s office. Half a dozen boys and two witches sat or lounged around the room. It was a bit like the Slug Club parties Jules knew, but smaller, more intimate, certainly more comfortable. All these students were sixth or seventh years by the look of them. Mature, confident, bearing all the trappings of inherited pureblood wealth that Jules had only learned to recognize as such once he started going to school with people who lacked them.
And, of course, he recognized Tom Riddle at once. By now Riddle had figured out how to look every bit the moneyed heir as his peers, with the quality robes and aristocratic bearing and, Jules saw with a start, the jewelry, which included the black-and-gold ring of the Gaunts on his hand.
He’d already killed his father. And here he sat, sipping wine and looking around with glittering eyes at his coterie of followers.
For just a heartbeat, Jules saw not Riddle but Harry sitting there, dark-haired and confident and cold, surrounded by his close circle while an indulgent professor looked on—
He shook off that thought and ignored the questioning look Dumbledore sent him. Harry wasn’t Riddle. Even if Jules found it a lot easier to sympathize with this younger version of Voldemort than he’d like.
The memory-conversation carried on, flowing easily from person to person while Slughorn nudged things along here and there but generally kept to himself, for just long enough that Jules was starting to wonder what Dumbledore wanted him to see—but then there was a lull, and into the silence, Riddle spoke.
“Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?”
“Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn’t tell you,” said Slughorn, wagging a reproving, sugar-covered finger at Riddle, though ruining the effect slightly by winking. The other students obligingly paused their conversations and reoriented to focus on their leader and their professor. “I must say, I’d like to know where you get your information, more knowledgeable than half the staff, you are.”
Riddle smiled, and one of the witches laughed, a tinkling high-pitched sound that Jules knew from Susan some pureblood families taught their daughters on purpose. “People tell me things, sir,” he said. “I’m trustworthy.”
At that Jules couldn’t help a tiny scoff. In his peripheral vision, Dumbledore looked amused.
“Oh, naturally,” said Slughorn, though a certain wry note in his voice—similar to how Andi sounded when she was being sarcastic, actually—suggested that he had not missed the hilarity of Tom bloody Riddle saying that. “We’re Slytherins. We know how to value silence. And other things!” He gestured with the tin of candied pineapple. “Such thoughtful gifts, for example!”
Another low ripple of amusement went around the room. Jules saw now what he would’ve missed as recently as last year—the self-aware irony of it, the way everyone present knew Riddle’s gift to Slughorn was pure flattery, and that Slughorn took advantage of that, turned it into a joke. It was honest, in a weird and twisted way. Not that Jules would ever want to live by this kind of honesty, but—he couldn’t help watching hungrily, wanting to understand how they did this, wanting to have a better chance, maybe, of understanding Harry in the present—
Jules had forgotten what he was doing here. He remembered, forcefully, when memory-Slughorn cut off in the middle of saying something about his friend the Master of Rune-warding wanting to meet Riddle. Jules’ skin crawled. The scene around him jittered as though the memory was stuck on a specific split second, shuddering against a force that prevented it from playing out. Slughorn’s voice, tinny and distant and out of time with the memory-image’s motions, snarled “You’ll come to a bad end, Riddle, mark my words”—and then with a pressure on his eardrums like the absence of sound, things started moving forward in smooth real time again.
Disconnected, though. Jules mentally scrambled to reorient and discovered the remembered conversation had moved on to a wholly different topic, namely a boy named Avery’s kneazle familiar being ill. “Sir—”
Dumbledore hushed him with a gesture.
The memory, Jules decided, had to have been altered. He’d heard of such things from Moody. There were DMLE experts who had to attest to some memories being real before they could be used as evidence, but not always, because the level of skill it took to alter one and make it convincing was insane. Slughorn, obviously, did not have that skill. Which begged the question: what was he trying to hide? Surely he wouldn’t have been so… so clumsy as to hand over a memory this obviously faked unless there was something really bad in it—much worse than just him complimenting an adolescent Voldemort.
“Good gracious, is it that time already?” said memory-Slughorn. “You’d better get going, boys, or we’ll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it’s detention. Same goes for you, Avery.”
There couldn’t be much more to the memory. Jules frowned. Had he missed something? Some detail that would make this scene more than it seemed? But Dumbledore wasn’t looking at Jules to see his reactions; the Headmaster’s attention was steady and focused on Slughorn still.
The boys began to file out of the room, jostling each other, one pausing for a parting shot that Slughorn good-naturedly laughed off. Riddle, however, stayed behind, loitering politely but obviously by the sofa.
Slughorn went to the sidebar and picked up a bottle. “It’s getting on towards curfew, Tom. Unless you’ve a patrol tonight…”
“Sir, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Ask away, then, m’boy,” said Slughorn, smiling indulgently. Amber liquid trickled into his glass. Jules thought absently that Slughorn seemed to have mastered the trick of always having alcohol in hand but never actually being drunk.
“Sir, I wondered what you know about…” Riddle paused, and in his mostly perfect posture there was something anticipatory, predatory, that made Jules’ hair stand on end and every instinct honed by Moody sit up and take notice. His fingers itched for a wand. “About horcruxes?”
The memory stopped—
Jules blinked. Everything had frozen. It technically looked the same but like earlier, he got the sense it had gotten stuck on a particular bit of time, only a much smaller bit now, a fragment of a second vibrating too fast to see. Or mostly to see: Jules’ head began to hurt almost immediately and the longer he looked the more he was convinced his brain was papering over something very, very wrong about this image.
Everything in him screamed to leave.
“Steady,” Dumbledore murmured, and Jules sucked in a gulp of air, nodded, stilled his restless feet.
This whole exchange had lasted only a second or two in Jules’ subjective sense of time but it had felt almost endless, and so he startled when that same tinny, twisted version of his professor’s voice banged against his eardrums: “I wouldn’t tell you even if I did! Now get out of here at once and don’t ever mention such dark magics in my presence again, not if you value your future!”
“Well, that’s that,” said Dumbledore placidly beside Jules. “Time to go.”
The memory twitched and shuddered back towards normalcy. Jules got only a glimpse of the scene after this second alteration before he and Dumbledore fell up and away.
Never had Jules been more grateful to return to the real world from a memory. He sank down into his chair to ease his oddly weak legs and stared at the middle distance and tried to bloody think.
That last glimpse of the memory burned more strongly in his mind’s eye than any other part. Specifically, the look on Riddle’s face, as fascinated and focused as a falcon on the wing that’s just caught sight of a mouse.
“Sir,” he said, “what?”
“As you might have noticed,” said Dumbledore, reseating himself behind his desk, “that memory has been tampered with.”
“Yeah. I did notice.” Jules rubbed at his forehead and thought longingly of the headache potion in his bedside table. “Is… is it always like that when a memory’s been faked?”
“No. Professor Slughorn is remarkably skilled in the use of occlumency to keep prying legilimens out of his mind, but the finer applications of the art, such as memory alteration, are mastered by exceptionally few. There are spells that can achieve similar results, but much of that research is controlled strictly by the Ministry, and is understood only by a vanishing few rarefied academic mages. The typical attempt by a criminal at altering a memory results in much less unsettling effects. A fog overtaking the scene, perhaps, or all the participants speaking for a moment in the voice of whomever altered the memory. An expertly altered one, on the other hand, is nigh seamless.” He tapped thoughtfully at the lip of his lemon candy bowl. “My esteemed colleague seems to have landed in an unusual position of being skilled enough to approach the higher level of memory alteration but lacking the expertise to make it effective. Really, if not for the sensitive subject matter, the result would be worth prolonged study. I have experienced very few things in my life as…”
“Unnatural,” Jules supplied.
“I had thought to say viscerally unsettling, but yes, that certainly applies.”
“Sensitive subject matter… I take it those things Riddle asked about were important? And… Slughorn doesn’t want people knowing… I guess he didn’t really just kick Riddle out like he’s pretending.”
“Certainly not,” Dumbledore agreed.
Jules waited, but the Headmaster did not seem inclined to share. “So what was Riddle asking about?”
“That,” said Dumbledore, “is a topic best explored another day. For now, Julian, I have another task for you. It is imperative that we obtain an unaltered copy of this memory.”
Playing that sentence back in his head did not make it make more sense. “You want me to get it from him? Sir—”
“Yes, I do. Professor Slughorn is an extremely able wizard and, I fear, quite wary of me. I’m afraid that the conversation in which he provided me this memory left rather the wrong impression.”
Uh-huh. Yeah, Jules sure bet it had.
“It would be unwise to attempt to take it by force,” Dumbledore went on, “and even were I to bring the full force of my legilimency to bear—which, naturally, I am averse to doing on an ally barring the direst of circumstances—I am not confident in my own success.”
“And you can’t just… ask?” said Jules. This, he felt sure, was pushing how informal he could be with the Headmaster, but Dumbledore didn’t treat Jules entirely as a child in these meetings. Not as an adult or an equal, yeah, but not purely someone to be coddled either.
As frustrating as Jules found the Headmaster sometimes, Dumbledore was at least willing to drip feed him information, as compared to many among the Order who didn’t want anyone underage to have even that much. Never mind that Voldemort wasn’t going to politely wait around for Jules to turn seventeen to try to kill him again.
“Theoretically, I could, but it can be dangerous to provide someone of Horace’s cunning with such leverage,” said Dumbledore, which Jules translated to mean Slughorn would try to extort something out of Dumbledore in exchange for the memory. “No, my boy, I believe that the only possibility is to approach him from a different angle. The most important single piece of information about Voldemort hides in Horace Slughorn’s mind; we shall have no further lessons until we can ascertain its contents.” He caught Jules’ eye and oh, right, there was the wizard who’d defeated Grindelwald looking at Jules across the big oak desk. “Understand me: it is imperative that we get this memory, and that no one beyond the two of us knows what we seek or why.”
“Yes, sir.” Jules sat very still.
Dumbledore kept looking at him for a few more seconds, Jules guessed to make sure Jules really meant it, and then in a blink the defeater of Grindelwald and general of two wars was gone, replaced by the dotty old man most people knew him as. “Excellent. Now, it is getting rather late, and I think you had best be off to your dormitory.”
That was… abrupt. Jules stood. “Yes, sir. Thank you. Er… goodnight.”
As he closed the study door behind him, he distinctly heard Phineas Nigellus say, “I can’t see why the boy should be able to do it better than you, Dumbledore.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” replied Dumbledore, and Fawkes gave another low, musical cry.
Jules rolled his eyes to himself on the way down the spiral staircase. Supposedly Phineas Black had been a Slytherin, but even Jules could piece together that Dumbledore thought this might work because Slughorn would just see a favored student instead of a threat. Might feel—Jules set his teeth—pity for the poor orphaned Chosen One.
Well, no. He considered what he knew of Slughorn. As far as Jules could tell, Slughorn never really made explicit tit for tat deals, but doubtless he’d jump at the chance to have Jules feeling like he owed the man a good turn or two. Which, manipulative though it might be, was actually preferable in Jules’ opinion to pity.
Draco
A dozen things battered at his mind. Draco had homework to finish and a letter from his mother that awaited an answer. With Father in Azkaban and Mother frequently… busy… at home, it was on Draco to juggle a great deal of his family’s finances. He still had to make time for Hermione. And then, of course, his… other problem.
But Harry needed help, so here Draco was.
No one among the Vipers could beat him for facility with the imperius curse. Draco knew this for a fact: they had held a (very quiet, very private) competition in the Chamber last week.
“Are you ready?” Theo asked for the fifth time.
“Yes,” said Draco, also for the fifth time, although with markedly more of a bite to his voice than the first few. He made no attempt to rein in his impatience. Theo should bloody well know better than to be this anxious; Draco had plenty of nerves to deal with on his own, thanks very much.
Theo turned and glared over his shoulder. Ever since—Draco’s mind skittered away from the memory—since Yule, when Theo so much as got annoyed, he’d get a look on his face like he was trying to decide whether cursing you to pieces was worth the consequences. Like something barely held back. A crawl went down Draco’s spine. He had seen more or less that look on other people but it was so much worse coming from someone he considered a friend.
Still. Draco narrowed his eyes right back and held Theo’s attention until Theo turned back to the corridor they were supposed to be watching. Creepy Theo might be. Draco had no intention of backing down.
“You have to get a grip,” he said lowly.
Theo’s shoulders stiffened. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“Apparently you do, since—”
“Unless you can help fix the problem—”
“What exactly is the problem?” Draco sensed weakness, or at least, an opening. Those weren’t the same thing but they worked similarly and right now he just needed— “Do you even know? Or are you just hanging on by your fingers hoping you can outlast it and it doesn’t fuck up one of us on the—”
“You’re one to talk about hanging on and hoping you can outlast. Although in your case I guess it’s more hoping someone else will come fix your problems for you.” Theo didn’t turn. The malevolence in his voice filled the corridor like smog. “You always were a mummy’s boy. Better hope you find your spine before she takes a curse someone meant for you.”
There was a pause in which all Draco heard was his own harsh breathing.
You know when to push, Draco, but you’re bad at knowing when to back off, Justin said in his memory, a long-ago conversation over butterbeer in the light of the Knights’ Room braziers.
“It was Yule,” he said into the quiet, “right?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you…”
“If you ask whether I’m okay, I will turn around and curse you.”
That was—fair, honestly. “Yeah, okay,” Draco conceded.
Theo laughed harshly. “You’ve been spending too much time with Hufflepuffs. You’re going soft.”
As opposed to you, who’s so sharp no one wants to be within five feet of you, Draco thought but didn’t say.
“It’s not getting to you?” Theo said after another few uneasy heartbeats.
Draco opened his mouth—
Theo jerked one hand up. Wait. Draco shut his mouth, and a second later, Theo nodded sharply. His proximity ward had been tripped: Tyller Wengrow would be around the corner in less than thirty seconds.
A strategic sound muffling charm would’ve made sure none of their conversation got more than a few feet away, but still, Draco had to fight back nerves that somehow Wengrow knew they were here, or would come around the corner and manage to outdraw Theo, or worse, that Draco’s curse would fail and Wengrow would know what he’d tried to do and—
Theo slid back towards Draco, pressing his back flat to the wall with his wand ready to hex or shield. He was protection, offense and defense both. Draco had another job.
Three fingers held up on Theo’s off hand, then two, then one, and Wengrow swung around the corner and checked his stride. His expression didn’t even have time to settle into surprise before Draco, wand out, cast “Imperio.”
The connection unspooled between them. Threads of shining silver and gold like a relapse, a relief, a release of breath held far too long.
A sigh eased out of Draco’s lungs. He could, he thought, get drunk on this power.
Theo snapped his fingers sharply between Draco and Wengrow. Draco startled. Shook his head. Right. They had a plan.
A mental nudge had Wengrow walking docilely with him and Theo into the storeroom they’d scoped in advance for this. They all went in and paused while Theo shut the door and then just kind of… stood awkwardly for a few seconds.
“Right,” said Draco. Adrenaline crashed through him. They were really doing this. To a classmate. In school, under their professors’ noses. “Should we…”
“Tell him to answer me,” Theo said.
Draco made a small mental adjustment. Nodded.
Theo proceeded to work through a list of questions they had for Wengrow while he was here. Using the imperius to compel honesty like this was tricky: Wengrow had no willpower left with which to decide to lie, but the corollary of that was that he didn’t care enough about anything to think clearly about it either. Half-answers and vague indifferent rambles tumbled out of his mouth one after the other and Draco fought to refine his control. To make of his magic a demand.
Slowly they pieced together a sense of what they needed. Wengrow was far from the brightest or strongest willed of Seaton’s circle, but that was exactly why they’d chosen him; someone who knew occlumency could at least resist an imperio and the whole point of this was to go undetected. As of now, Wengrow didn’t know all that much. But he could tell them enough to be getting on with.
After a few minutes, Theo exhaled and looked up from the parchment where he’d been taking notes. “At least we know who’s behind those stupid pamphlets now.”
“We kind of knew that already.”
“But it’s confirmation.”
And Wengrow would allow them to find out how Seaton and his lot were making the pamphlets. Yeah. Draco cracked his neck and looked at the blank, washed-out face of his classmate and resisted the urge to tell Wengrow to break his own finger just to see if Draco’s hold over him was that strong.
“You’re sure you can do this?” Theo said. “Hold the curse for… days, weeks even? Very few can, Draco, there’s nothing wrong with—”
“I know there isn’t,” and Draco did know that, it was just— “I can hold it.”
Theo studied him for a second. “Alright. Then…”
“Yeah… one minute.”
Draco licked his lips. This was the hard part, the real test. Implanting suggestions, commands that Wengrow would follow. Easing the curse so seamlessly into his mind that he’d be wandering around in a happy, helpless daze as long as Draco wanted.
Absolute control, and no one, not even Wengrow’s friends, would have a bloody clue.
It helped, at least, that all they wanted their patsy to do was go about his business as usual. Draco spent almost a minute quieting his mind and settling the curse both in himself and in Wengrow. When he was confident that it would hold for, at minimum, enough time to refresh the curse in the event that it failed, he lowered his wand and gave Theo a nod.
“Could you make him do a cartwheel?” Theo said.
“A cartwheel? I could make him do six in a row and then a back handspring onto a flying hippogriff.”
Theo’s eyes gleamed. “Do it.”
“We don’t have time. And the more nonsense we do the more the curse is strained.”
“You can’t tell me you aren’t tempted.”
If there was anyone Draco could tell— “I did think… whether I could make him break a finger or something.”
“Oh? And here I said you didn’t have a spine of your own yet.” Theo pushed himself to his feet. Got up in Wengrow’s space and tapped a finger right between the cursed boy’s eyes. “Merlin, that’s creepy. Just like some kind of puppet. You could do anything to him.”
Draco… did not like that tone. He blinked. Sense trickled back in just as he saw Theo’s hand curling in on itself, ready to pop his wand from his holster, and Draco moved without thinking, taking one sharp step forward. He caught Theo’s shoulder and half-yanked half-shoved so Theo stumbled back and away.
In an instant Theo’s wand was out and up and aimed at Draco’s heart.
“Put that away,” said Draco, best sneer fixed in place, hoping Theo couldn’t see the sudden fear that set his heart to racing. “We have a plan, remember? We’ve taken too long as it is.”
Theo breathed in. Out. Shut his eyes and lowered his arm all at once. “Right.”
Okay then. Draco sent a nudge through the magic and as easy as that Wengrow left, heading out and back to the common room along the same route he always followed coming back from the library of an evening. This, Draco figured, was exactly why Alastor Moody—or, well, Crouch Jr. pretending to be Moody—had gone on at such lengths about habits getting people killed.
Merlin. They could’ve killed Wengrow right here and gotten away with it too.
A shiver went down his spine. Draco liked the thrill of that as much as it made him uneasy.
He leaned back against a table and let his breathing fall into a pattern, pulling on occlumency to detach. Across the room he thought Theo was doing much the same except where Draco found occlumency to be relaxing Theo had just gotten if anything more tense. Wound tight as a coiled spring. Draco eyed his housemate and sort-of friend and resolved to leave Theo alone however long he needed to collect himself.
Not that Draco did not also benefit from the break. He could feel the connection to Wengrow, lingering unchanged in the back of his mind and magic, and it was all too tempting to go and… and wallow in the feeling of it. But that was a really fucking awful idea. He wrapped himself in logic and refrained.
“I hate to break it to you,” Theo said at last, looking up at Draco without raising his head, “but I don’t think you were as unaffected by Yule as you claim.”
“Shut up,” Draco said. Halfheartedly, though, because… well. Theo wasn’t wrong.
Theo rolled his shoulders and stood up straight. “I think it’s been long enough.”
“Any of your wards trip?” In the event that the school’s wards tripped for an Unforgivable, Theo had set a bunch of proximity wards, the crude rune-based kind that most detection spells didn’t even register, so they would have enough time to vanish into the Chamber’s network of secret passageways if an adult came running.
“Nope. Looks like we’re good on that front. In the dungeons at least.”
They’d have to test again somewhere aboveground to be sure. Draco was really not looking forward to doing that. But, well, problems for another day, and with any luck, another of the Vipers.
“Let’s go, then,” he agreed.
Neither of them spoke another word on the walk back. Theo, however, did catch Draco’s eye outside the common room door, and in that split second Draco knew they would never speak of the words they’d hurled at each other in that dungeon hallway.
He could live with a truce. Draco let Theo open the door and followed him back into the warm, well-lit commons, pasting a bland expression back on his face.
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