Chapter One
October 5, 1999
Harry Potter, current resident of number 12 Grimmauld Place, considered himself to be perfectly normal, thank you very much. There was, of course, the small matter of being responsible for the downfall of one of the most powerful Dark Lords in modern history and, technically, one of two people in existence to ever hold all three of the Deathly Hallows—minor points, he was sure.
Now, at the ripe old age of 19, he simply wanted to be left alone.
That, unfortunately, was never going to happen.
His fireplace crackled and gave little warning before a face appeared in the coals—one of the five he’d allowed after strictly warding Sirius’s ancestral home. He’d sworn Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Andromeda, and Mrs. Weasley to secrecy regarding his new home; after seeing the storm of press he’d had to deal with this past year, especially after the Death Eater trials died down and the tabloids were lacking their daily dose of gossip, they’d all been more than accommodating.
“Harry, have you heard?” Ginny asked, her fiery hair literally ablaze as the simmering coals formed around her face. It was just as beautiful like this, he marveled silently.
“Probably not,” he replied, carefully closing the Muggle book. It was fiction, written by some professor in the 1930s, and he was enjoying the light jaunt through the mountains by the hobbit Bilbo and his dwarven friends. Hermione had told him there was a dragon later on—he was curious to see how it stacked up to the real thing.
“Ron proposed!”
“Oh, yeah I knew about that,” Harry said, instinctively ducking at the sound of something breaking on Ginny’s end. He grinned at her, picturing how it was likely flushed with happiness and anger. “Was it in the library then? That was this thought a few days back.”
“You’ve known about this for days, and didn’t think to mention it?” she huffed, but her anger faded just as fast as it came up. “Of course it was—he charmed rose petals to fall around her favorite table, where of course she was already studying… you should have seen Madame Pince’s face,” she said, snorting at the memory. “Merlin, Harry, if you’d told be about it, I wouldn’t have given him so much trouble about dragging me there. I was on the pitch.”
“He wanted it to be a surprise,” he said simply, still grinning from ear to ear. It sounded like it’d been perfect—he was sad he’d missed it. Ron had told him his plan, though, and he’d made his choice. Part of him wished Ron’d waited until they were in Hogsmeade—he supposed it wouldn’t have meant as much to Hermione that way, though. The library was the right choice. They hadn’t called him yet—he assumed they were busy celebrating. “No after party?”
“They’re waiting for you to come up this weekend,” she said, her expression softening as she watched him. She’d started to read him like an open book in the last year; no doubt she knew just as well as he did what he was feeling. “You’re still coming, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, love,” he said, looking forward to being able to hold her again.
I still don’t see why you didn’t want to come back,” she said absently.
He looked down, fiddling with the paperback, not really having an answer that would satisfy her. He loved Hogwarts, he did, but he just couldn’t bring himself to go back. Hogsmeade was close enough—it didn’t have the memories the castle did. Dumbledore, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, Colin—there were too many names. He couldn’t picture every place they’d fallen, and he didn’t think he could ever look at the Great Hall the same way again. To Harry, it was still filled with bodies.
“Oh, you know me, Ginny. Studying was never my strong suit. Besides, the Ministry waived all our requirements—I’m just the only one smart enough to take them up on it,” he said. He felt he’d perfected his “see if I care” smile; Ginny knew him too well, though, and her eyes narrowed briefly before she nodded.
“Well, it’ll be good to see you. I think Ron and Hermione are coming back—don’t want to hog your fireplace. Merlin knows they’ll want to tell you all about it. Night, Harry. Love you.”
“Love you,” he replied, not letting his face fall until she left. He stared blankly at the fireplace before leaning back, picking up the glass of firewhiskey he’d left on the side table. Beside it were the letters he’d received that day—the only one that wasn’t fan mail was also the last he’d expected. Snape wanted to have tea and chat… Harry could only imagine what that meant. Harry suspected he was in an apologetic mood, if his behavior right after his trial was any indication. Still, that’d been a year earlier, and enough had changed that it gave him pause.
Truth be told, Harry wished he could go back, desperately. The mind healer he met with weekly said it’d be good for him; something about facing his fears. Harry wasn’t sure the man really understood. He wasn’t afraid. He’d never had an issue with facing fears anyway—for Merlin’s sake, that was the root of most of his issues.
He knew he wasn’t the only person who’d lost people that day. Everyone he knew had lost someone important to them, and somehow they were still pushing through. He was too—just, in his own way. A way he hadn’t quite figured out yet.
Hogwarts was his past. He didn’t need it to continue on to his future.
October 9, 1999
Harry Apparated to Hosmeade—any other form of travel was too conspicuous, and he really had been improving his skills in recent months. He could Apparate straight from Grimmauld Place now; hundreds of miles, gone in a flash. Hermione would be proud, when he told her.
It helped that the Ministry’d set up a designated Apparation zone for the returning Battle of Hogwarts heroes—everyone had assumed, rightly so, that King’s Cross Station would’ve been mobbed otherwise, what with Hermione, Ron, and Neville all returning for their seventh year. Not to mention Ginny, Luna, Seamus, and the dozens of other students who had defended their school. It was a celebrity reunion—everyone except the Chosen One.
Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were waiting for him, bundled in nondescript robes likely warding off both attention and the unseasonable chill, and he was immediately pulled into a tight hug sandwiched between Ron and Hermione.
“Oh Harry, we’ve missed you terribly!” Hermione squealed, apparently dead set on squeezing the life out of him. “It’s just not the same here without you.”
“’Mione, I think he’s turning blue.” Ron said, gently peeling her off him. He grinned down at Harry. “She’s right, though. Per usual?”
“It’s only been a few weeks,” Harry said, though he’d felt their absence more sorely than he’d expected. Going from the constant companionship at the Burrow to only Kreature for company had been an adjustment, to sat the least, and not one he was dealing with very well. He tucked Ginny into a tight hug, ignoring Ron’s fake retching. “You all surviving? Can’t imagine you’re drowning in school work yet.”
“Actually—”
“They won’t stop taking it easy on us!” Hermione exploded, cutting over Ginny with righteous anger. “I had to practically beg Slughorn to assign me the same scroll length as everyone else, and I can’t even step foot in the library without someone clearing a table.”
“You never complain about that,” Ron said gently, and she blushed.
“Yes, well, it’s still blatant favoritism.”
“Professor Jones more than makes up for it,” Ginny said sullenly.
Harry vaguely remembered that Hestia Jones, former member of the Order of the Phoenix, had taken over for McGonagall when she’d resumed her position as Headmistress. Apparently, the two were peas in a pod.
Together they walked the short distance to the Three Broomsticks, where Madam Rosmerta was happy to get they a private room. Harry was grateful for it—the curious stares were a bit much, and all the continued attention made his heart race.
“So, Harry,” Ron eventually said, after they’d seemingly gone over every new development at Hogwarts. “What have you been up to in that dusty old house?”
“Oh, nothing much. Sorting through all of Sirius’s things… it’s practically a full time job,” he said, grimacing. For once, it wasn’t an exaggeration. Though there had been very little that Sirius had cared about in Grimmauld Place, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black had generations of junk piled up in their ancestral home. Most of it was Dark, and nearly impossible for him to manage on his own, and it was proving a nearly impossible task to handle it all himself.
“Any luck with the heads yet?” Hermione asked; Harry shook his head sadly.
“Even had someone from the Ministry come by—damn things are stuck. They said it was Blood Magic, and that only a Black could pull them down,” he said, scowling. The house elf heads had been his first self-appointed challenge, and his first failure. Now he just tried to ignore them. “I did manage a good sound cushioning charm around Walburga, though, so she doesn’t scream as much anymore. I can’t tell if she can’t hear me, and thinks the house is empty, or if I can’t hear her.”
He sipped his butterbeer quietly, building up the courage to mention his more pressing news.
“You need help,” Hermione said sternly. “Its not good for you to be locked up all on your own—what about Bill? He’s a curse-breaker after all.”
“I can’t drag him away from Fleur, especially now,” he replied—Bill and Fleur had only just the week before informed the rest of the family, to Molly’s great delight, that they were expecting. The baby was due some time in April or May—it was hardly the time to ask for help.
Harry cleared his throat. “Actually… I was going through some old Black family records, and I found something interesting. It seems that Siruis’s grandfather, Pollack or Pollux, I don’t remember—well, he had a brother. A squib. They cut him out—he was one of those scorch marks I’d never really looked at—and he moved to America. Had a family and everything, and… well… his granddaughter is a witch. Sirius’s second cousin, technically. And I, uh, well I reached out. Sent an owl and everything.”
They took in his awkward rambling for a moment, and Ginny’ hand tightened reassuringly on his arm. This he had told her in advance, the moment he’d found out, and they’d already gone over his options.
“That’s great!” Ron exclaimed. Harry looked at him in surprise, and he faltered. “I mean, isn’t it? That sort of makes her your cousin too,”
“Are you going to try to meet her?” Hermione asked.
Harry smiled. “She’ll be in London on Tuesday.”
October 12, 1999
Allie had decided to take No-Mag transportation ‘across the pond’—mostly to reassure her mother that she was, in fact, being safe. She had no idea why a tin can flying across the Atlantic felt safer to Dorothy Black-Taylor than a portkey, but it did allow her to make sure that Grandpa Marius’s clingy Cat Baxter stayed safely in New York with him, rather than somehow sneaking into her luggage at the last second.
Her first impression of London, and England as a whole, was that it wasn’t quite as dreary as she’d been led to believe it’d be. It was overcast, sure, but she’d seen worse in the Pacific Northwest. It was chilly but not freezing, and the people even seemed more pleasant than Grandpa Marius warned her about.
To be entirely fair to him, she’d only encountered No-Mag so far. They hardly knew enough to be judgmental—well, some of them looked at her clothes a little oddly. She supposed plaid pants and a leather jacket was a bit out there, even for here. Wasn’t this where punk had started? She shrugged it off and kept moving, wondering absently if she’d stay long enough to think of them as Muggles. She doubted it—the word just seemed too silly.
The letter from her newfound ‘cousin’, a young sounding ‘Mr. Harry Potter’, couldn’t have come at a better time. She needed a break—she’d be the first to tell you that. While wizarding Europe was busy blowing itself up, the States hadn’t been doing much better. As an Auror, third class, Allie had quickly found herself in the thick of it and had paid the price—more than most knew. The leave of absence she’d been unceremoniously forced into had felt like a prison sentence at first, but now that she was a few months in she was grateful for the breathing room. Getting out of her parents’ house and hopping over to England was the icing on the cake.
Harry had arranged a portkey to bring her to his home at 12pm sharp. She checked her watch—a No-Mag custom she found comforting—and saw she had just five minutes to find the office and collect whatever trinket had been assigned. She followed his carefully written directions, grateful he’d broken it down into terms even a child could understand, and found herself standing in front of an old newspaper stand. Unseen to No-Mag, a glimmering sign declared it the ‘Ministry-authored transit office’.
“Excuse me—sorry,” she said, setting down her bag and checking her watch. Two minutes, now. “Alcyone Black-Taylor. There should be a portkey registered under my name.”
“Should be, indeed,” the woman said, sniffing disapprovingly as she looked her up and down. “What’s a Yank like you doing here? Off to the Ministry?”
Allie frowned. “Meeting distant relations.”
“Hmm… there we are,” the woman said, peering down at the tag and empty silver chewing gum wrapper. “Cutting it a bit close, aren’t we?”
“Yes. Do you have a—ah, thanks,” she bit out, following the woman’s lazy gesture to the small door built into the right of the stand. Taking the wrapper and her bags, she stepped through and heard the satisfying click as it shut behind her. In the privacy of what appeared to be a small storage space, she waited for a few moments before she felt the distinct tug behind her navel as she was laughed through space.
Landing with a grunt on a carpeted, dark floor, Allie shook herself free of the fatigue from the place and the strangeness of the whole situation and looked around the room.
It was a living room, and it was fill the to the brim with stuff. Most was magical, and nearly half of it felt tinged with Dark magic. She felt it even from here—it was piled in the corners of the room, gathering dust and cobwebs, and the heavy tapestries hung open like there’d been an attempt at brightening the place up a bit. It hadn’t done much; it was a cave-like space. Standing before the crackling fire was a young, dark-haired an. He was thin, and stood with a restrained energy she recognized from her fellow Auror’s, and he wore wire-frame circular glasses.
He grinned, a bit of the nervous energy dissipating, and reached out a hand.
“Harry Potter, please to meet you. Welcome to Grimmauld Place,” he said; it sounded a bit rehearsed, but just as earnest as his letters.
Allie crossed the room to take his hand, matching his grin with an easy smile of her own. “Allie Black-Taylor. So… we’re cousins then?” she asked. He laughed, but it was awkward and he ran his hand through his messy hair.
“That’s a long story… sort of. My godfather was your second cousin, and he named me heir. So, as far as the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is concerned, yes,” he said firmly.
She’d done some reading up—she knew now who exactly Harry Potter was, as well as who her late cousin Sirius Black had been. Not to mention Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange—the tabloids had made it clear that her whole family tree had gotten a hell of a lot more complicated.
She looked around appraisingly. She could deal with complicated. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink. Noon isn’t too early, is it?” she asked, cocking her head at him. “We could get some questions out of the way. I’m sure you have just as many as I do.”
Harry snorted out a laugh. “I don’t have any plans for the rest of the day,” he said, gesturing toward a doorway that led out into the hall. “Butterbeer, or firewhiskey?”
Dealer’s choice—depends on how deep we’re gonna get.”
“Firewhiskey it is then. Just to be safe,” Harry replied.
Allie had a strange feeling that she was going to like him more than she’d first thought.