Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Return to Britain
Cassia Black pulled her hood lower over her face as she stepped onto the damp London streets. The scent of rain clung to the air, mingling with the city’s familiar grime and distant warmth of bakeries still open in the early evening. It had been years since she set foot in Britain—years spent in the cold halls of Durmstrang, far from the country where her father and uncle had fought and fallen.
Or, at least, where the world believed Regulus Black had fallen.
Cassia glanced over her shoulder. No one followed her, but she could never be too careful. Regulus had drilled that into her since childhood.
"You are a Black. People will either want to use you or destroy you. Never give them the chance to do either."
She had memorized every map of Britain’s magical and Muggle regions before stepping off the ship, but the address she was headed to wasn’t in any book. No, this place was a secret—one that should have never existed.
Number Four, Privet Drive.
The home of Petunia and Vernon Dursley. The people raising Harry Potter.
Cassia’s stomach twisted with unease as she approached the quiet, pristine street, the kind of place where people peeked through their curtains and gossiped about the neighbors. She had known Harry was placed with his mother’s relatives, but the little she had uncovered about the Dursleys was unsettling. They were Muggles, unfit to raise a magical child, but it wasn’t just that. It was the way people who had seen Harry spoke about him—whispers about oversized hand-me-downs, a boy too thin for his age, a child who never received letters or gifts.
Regulus hadn’t wanted her to come here alone.
"It’s dangerous, Cassia," he had warned. "If Dumbledore knows you’re back, he’ll move to stop you."
But Cassia had to see it for herself. She had to see him.
She pressed herself against the shadowed side of a tall hedge, peering across the street at the house. The lights were still on, revealing silhouettes moving inside. She spotted him immediately—the small, thin boy with messy black hair, dragging a mop across the floor while a large, mustached man barked orders at him.
Cassia clenched her fists.
Harry Potter—the so-called Boy Who Lived—was a servant in his own home.
Her blood ran cold. This was worse than she had expected.
Dumbledore had left him here?
Cassia didn’t care what Regulus or anyone else said. She wasn’t leaving without her cousin.