Floo Powder
Harry’s in the kitchen with a piping hot tea when Hermione floos in unannounced. She’s a veritable storm to the kitchen, trailing a dusting of floo powder across the house that she didn’t bother shaking off, mouth already rattling about what she’d found.
“You really won’t believe it, Harry, it’s actually rather interesting how these shapeshifters came to be and—”
“Hermione? Where’s Rose and Teddy?”
The only reason Harry is up so early is because Ron is due to bring the two around. Harry has organised a whole day for it, too, complete with the brooms he’d bought the kids for Christmas that Andromeda and Hermione had forced him to “keep them at Uncle Harry’s house because we have no room.” After getting them on their brooms, he plans to take them on a forest picnic—decidedly away from where he first met the shapeshifters.
“Oh, sorry, Harry. Play date is cancelled—Teddy came down with whatever Rose had earlier this week and I needed to come talk to you before your meeting tomorrow.”
He tries not to let the disappointment show on his face too much. Hermione is also fun to be around. She’s his best friend for a reason. Although, maybe she’s not a heap of fun when she’s on an abstract research rant, but he’s learnt to appreciate how happy they make her. How solving a problem makes her soul shine a tiny bit brighter. Harry finds peace in those moments, and he’s even learnt to keep up with the trails of clues in her information dumps. He’s always been rather good at solving mysteries.
“Let’s go to the library,” Harry says, eyeing the pile of loose papers wrapped in Hermione’s arm and the overflowing bag of books in her other. He takes the bag from her, lugging it with him as he focusses to keep his tea steady.
“Right, so, as I was saying,” Hermione continues, following him out of the kitchen. “These shapeshifters are extremely interesting. Did you know they actually are magical?” Harry pushes the library door open and sends her a disbelieving look over his shoulder. He tries not to laugh at a smudge of floo powder along her nose.
“I met them, Hermione. I’m telling you, they had no magic.”
She dumps her things on the large desk at the front of the library, stacks of books lining the room behind them. Harry stops her and gently removes the smudge off her face. She smiles at him sheepishly, muttering a small thanks. Grimmauld library used to be a dark and dreary affair filled with only Dark Arts books, many of which were missing pages or destroyed by damage through the years. The library is still filled with Dark Arts—thanks in part to Kreacher and in part to Harry’s morbid interest in the topic—but it’s also been supplemented with the books from the Black and Potter vaults. Hermione spent a lot of time here when it was first finished. These Dark Arts books are what helped her transform the fidelius charm that hides Harry. Ron’d nearly had a conniption when he realised Hermione was delving into Dark magic.
“Harry is literally the Master of Death, Ronald,” she’d said back, and it truly did shut down all conversations about Light and Dark magic. Whatever Harry is now is decidedly not Light, and really, when he thought about it, Harry has probably been more Dark than Light since he was one. He’s even thought to research Dark magic a bit more, since he has centuries ahead of him after all. Might be something fun to pass the time.
“You don’t understand,” Hermione says, cutting off his tangent thoughts. “They’re not magical. They have magic! It’s in them, inherited. Just like magical creatures they were created by magic, and continue to exist thanks to it, but they cannot use magic. They are a by-product of magic, like an echo through generations.”
Harry settles into the chair across from her, watching as she shuffles through her piles of research for the information she wants.
“Look here—” she shoves a photocopied piece of paper in his hands. He raises an eyebrow at it, questioning her. “Oh well, the Department of Mysteries was very adamant that the journals couldn’t leave the department, so I photocopied them. It’s rather silly, really, how easy it was to take this supposed-to-be-classified information from under their noses. They really need to increase their muggle—”
“Hermione,” Harry cuts her off. He shakes the paper. “Journal?”
“Right so, this is a journal of Phineas Black.”
“Black?”
“Yes, he was one of those burnt off the family tree. Phineas Black is the brother to Sirius’s great-grandfather,” she explains, pulling out a book detailing the Black family tree. She flicks to a page and plops it in front of Harry, pointing to a name that’s been removed from the page with a blast of fire. “See?”
“Right, okay.” Harry nods slowly, still not sure where she’s going with this information.
“Phineas was removed from the Black family because of his support for muggle-born wizards—truly before his time, he was. Can you imagine? Arguing for muggle-born rights in the 1890’s?” She plops herself into a chair and leans forward across the table excitedly. “Phineas Black is exiled from the family and eventually leaves the Wizarding World. Guess where he ends up?”
“Forks?” Harry offers, sipping on his tea. Hermione reaches and takes the tea from his hand, taking her own sip as she nods excitedly. He supposes that’s fair, since he was a bad host and didn’t offer her any.
“Right. Forks. Well, technically, he ends up on the Quileute Reservation. There he marries a local girl and has a son—Ephraim Black.” She shoves the mug back into his hands and pulls out a different book, this one old and weathered, cracked on the spine, the leather crying for an oiling. She flicks through the pages haphazardly. “Now, Ephraim is born as a Squib, or so Phineas reports anyway, and that’s what’s recorded in the Black family history.” She gestures to the family tree still in front of Harry. “Now the Black family doesn’t bother keeping track any further. Squibs rarely produce magical children and even if they did they would be ‘half-bloods’, so the Blacks effectively write off this line of their tree.”
Hermione dumps the book she’d been flicking through in front of him, on top of the Black family tree. Her eyes are sparkling and he can’t help the small laugh rumbling from his chest. She looks gorgeous. Her hair frizzing out the edges and her shirt slightly skewed, as though she simply didn’t have time to straighten it during her rush out the floo.
“Oh, hush,” she scolds, even as a smile spreads across her own lips. She giggles too but straightens her shirt and finally dusts herself off. “Now, here’s where we get a bit theoretical, but the Quileutes have their own tribe legends, and one of those is that they are descendant from wolves.” She holds a hand up stopping Harry from cutting her off. “There’s this whole section on astral projection, which in of itself is such an interesting concept—theoretically, the arithmancy needed to even conceptualise such magic is just unheard of.” She pauses on her own, narrowing her eyes at Harry before he can even utter a word to keep her on-track.
“Anyway,” she huffs. “Of those capable of astral projection, one of them in particular, Taha Aki entered the body of a wolf when his own body was unavailable.”
“Wait, his body was unavailable? What does that mean?” Harry asked, swigging down the last of his long cold tea.
“Well, there was a whole internal dispute and what-not ending with his body being possessed by a different person’s astral projection.” She waved the thought off. “It’s not terribly important right now, but Taha Aki effectively shared the wolf’s body. Their souls co-existed within the wolf and, eventually, Taha Aki could change between his original spirit form and that of the wolf.”
Harry furrows his eyebrows. “So that’s how the shape-shifters were made? How’s this relate to Phineas and Ephraim?”
“Taha Aki’s children could shapeshift just like him, but their children could not. It seemed to end after Taha Aki’s direct descendants.”
“Until Phineas,” Harry concludes.
“Right! Phineas is a pureblood!” Hermione looks ecstatic as she says it and Harry tilts his head.
“Right…” He trails off. “But pureblood magic isn’t any stronger than muggle-born magic.”
“Oh tosh, that’s not what I’m saying. Phineas is a Black! The Black family has been participating in magical rituals with nature for as long as they’ve existed—they have a connection to naturally occurring magic that we will never understand, especially Blacks from so many decades ago. Phineas’s wife was a descendant of Taha Aki! Phineas’s magic and his wife’s genetics allowed the shape-shifter gene to reactivate. His magic woke the dormant nature magic hidden in the genes of Ephraim.”
Harry lets out a harsh laugh, shoving his chair back and pacing the carpet.
“So what you’re saying is these shapeshifters are magical? They’re descendants of the Blacks? Hermione, that’s brilliant! That’s—”
“They’re not all descendants,” she cuts him off, standing now. “That’s what I can’t figure out. They can’t all be—the Black line of Quileutes is rather limited, only a father and son exist now. You said there were three shapeshifters in the woods.”
The hole in Harry’s chest expands and contracts at the thought and he stops his frantic pacing.
A father and a son.
Members of the Black family. Members who don’t know their family line is almost gone now, left puttering along in the half of it that exists within Draco Malfoy, in the quarter found in Teddy, in the memories of Sirius that Harry keeps stored in his chest. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, reduced to a few straggling survivors after the war. A war they actively participated in, wrongly. A war that destroyed their family and those who survived it. Harry stumbles back into his chair, clenching his eyes tight, pressing his palms into them.
His skin buzzes, stretches, too tight over him, restrictive and cold. He wants to curl into himself again. To escape from the pain that is to outlive all you know and love. That will be Harry one day—the last to exist. The last to know of the sacrifices of the Black line, how Sirius lost his family when he left home; how Regulus existed alone and, ultimately, died alone, sacrificed himself in an action that no one knew about; how Narcissa stood and lied to Voldemort with all the honesty she could muster, her face calm, voice strong; how Andromeda lost her family to persue her love; how Draco stood with his wand shaking and tears streaking his face and how his voice wobbled when he denied it was Harry he was looking at.
Bones wrap around his neck and Death wraps itself around him, encasing him, whispering in his ear, “take a rest, Master.”
“Harry!” Hermione calls for him, her voice ragged from use. “Harry just listen to me,” she pleads, gripping his hand tighter.
He doesn’t know when she’d grabbed them. Or when he’d opened his eyes again. How long she has been calling his name. He can’t help feeling like he wants to climb out of his skin and leave it behind. As though he isn’t designed to be encased by such mortal weakness. The hole in his chest isn’t a hole any more. Perhaps, it’s him. Who he truly is.
“Harry, come back, please,” Hermione cries, tugging him close and wrapping him in her scent, in her warmth. In the fire of her magic that crackles across her skin and through the frizz of her hair. “Please, Harry. Don’t get lost in there. This isn’t something sad, this is something beautiful. Something magical. It’s a gift, Harry. Don’t you see? These are people related to Sirius, people who are magical, who exist. More family you can find.”
“More family to lose,” He replies, voice muffled in her chest. “More family to die.”
“More family to love,” she whispers.
She pulls back and grips his face holding tight until he looks into her eyes, alight with fury and devotion and love, rendering him helpless in front of her. “That’s what you are, Harry. What you’ve always been.”
He crumbles in her tight grip, letting the tears well from his eyes.
“Do you think he knew?” He whispers back. “Do you think Sirius knew he had family out there?”
“No, I don’t. I think Sirius would have come here if he did. Imagine him? Padfoot, free with a pack of shapeshifters.” Hermione’s voice is soft, wispy. “He could have run as much as he wanted out here.” Harry laughs a little, sobs a little, a joint sound mixing at the thought of Padfoot racing behind those giant wolves he’d met—dwarfed by their size and nipping at their tails.
“He would’ve loved it.”
Hermione wraps him in her arms again. She grips him, fingers clenching on his shoulders, breath shaky against his neck.
“Next time, perhaps,” Death whispers, its grip loosening on his neck. Harry shivers. Maybe Death is the master of him.
“Sorry, Hermione.”
“Don’t, just—don’t.”
She lets him go, sitting back on her heels, kneeling in front of him. “I might not understand what you feel, not to the extent, but I understand, Harry. You’re doing the best you can. I know that.” She grips his hand, her thumb rubbing circles over the scar on his hand: ‘I must not tell lies’. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise how this information might make you feel. I was too trapped in the research of it.”
“No, you’re right,” he says, gripping her hand back. “It is magical. What are the odds? That I end up here, where Siruis’s estranged family is.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” Hermione looks thoughtful for a moment, furrowing her eyebrows. “Isn’t that rather peculiar? What are the chances of that?”
“Quite low, I’d assume,” Harry mutters.
Hermione stands up, turning to the desk and shuffling through her papers. She’s muttering to herself now, Harry forgotten behind her. He rubs his hand against his chest and remembers her warmth, tries to push it through his skin and deep inside, to the cavity of death in him.
“The Black family stopped tracking the line after Ephraim’s birth but that doesn’t mean everyone did. Harry, what if the goblins knew?”
“Knew what? That there were Blacks here?”
“Precisely. Isn’t it odd? That they recommended this town—out of all others, out of the thousands of choices that suited our needs. Why this town? Why here, of all of them? Why didn’t they know of these shapeshifters?” She gestures to the table of information. “They’re documented. Sure, not overly so and the findings are limited, separate pockets of information, but they are there nevertheless. The goblins must have known.”
Harry considers it. There’s a high possibility. The goblins are part of a separate society to wizards. They border the line between wizards and magical creatures, engaging with both. They have an unprecedented ability to wrangle nature magic. Every wizard knows the goblins have access to historical blood magic that allows them to define heirs to houses, to test the lineage of wizards. Why would they stop tracking the lineage of a family just because of a squib child?
“So you think they sent me here on purpose?”
“I don’t know. But isn’t it too much of a coincidence? For you, Heir Black, to end up here, in the homeland of long-lost Blacks? With shapeshifters?”
Hermione spins back around, picking up the book with a cracked spine, the one filled with the Quileute legends.
“Here—” she thrusts the book in his hand. “They talk about dangers, about entities threatening the tribe. When danger lurks, their abilities reawaken. Think of it like a complex blood ward, or protection charm, that only activates when necessary, when the tribe needs protection.”
“So there’s a threat nearby.”
Harry wishes he didn’t feel a sinking in his stomach. That he didn’t feel a bone deep weariness at the idea, the very concept of danger, of a fight to be fought. Maybe the threat to the tribe is him. His very existence may have woken them. A call in the night to protect them from Harry, who he is now with darkness roiling in his bones, with magic that leaks from his crevices unwittingly, from the green flashing in his eyes when he’s angry.
“Perhaps, but it’s hard to tell. Apart from their origin and a few journals from an over-zealous researcher, there’s very little information on them and how many shape-shifters there may be. I’m still unsure on the connection between Ephraim and the rest of the shape-shifters. Are they all Blacks? All descendants from Ephraim?” Hermione waves her hand in the air, between them, between Harry and the research. “But you said there were three wolves. How? There are two Blacks. How did Ephraim, reawakened by Phineas’s magic, change the shapeshifters? I still don’t know. We need more information.”
“And that’s where I come in?”
“You were already going to see them anyway,” she dismisses. “I’m just asking that you question a bit more. Find out who is a shape-shifter—their names—and who is not. I can continue to research myself. And,” she glares down at her research. “I think it’s time I visited Griphook again.”
“Can I tag along? I’d rather like to see the sneaky old bugger.”
“Oh, you must. I’d love to see his face. You’re rather scary when you scowl.”
Harry laughs, feeling some of the heaviness of earlier lift. Hermione’s right. Perhaps this is something good. Something purely magical. Harry’s aware that he’s a threat to those around him. He’s under no delusions that if the Ministries of the world knew what he was now, knew the extent of his abilities, that they would join hands to hunt him down. To eradicate him like the powerful wizards before him.
Simply the concept of the Elder Wand was enough to start wars over in the past. He cannot imagine the destruction if they learnt that not only was it truly his, but so too were the stone and the cloak. That to collect three is to become entwined with Death intimately. Not free from it, but enslaved to it, to the contentment it brings and the inevitability of those around you.
If the shape-shifters could feel that threat, if their magic, unknown and unique in its abilities, given to them from nature itself and invigorated by Phineas, if they could recognise his unnatural existence, then it would make sense that they’ve awoken with his proximity. However. However there is one more possibility.
“Hermione, look,” Harry sighs and rubs his finger along his scar. “I wasn’t going to tell you this—” she lets out an indignant squawk as he says this, hands promptly falling to her hips. “Look, I’d decided to do some of my own research. I didn’t want you kicking me out of Forks just yet, and I truly thought you were going to.”
“I would not—”
“Anyway! It’s just, with everything you found, and the possibility of Griphook having pulled the wool over our eyes, I think you should know. There’s…muggle vampires here.” He peeks from behind his hand, wincing at her infuriated face.
“There’s WHAT?!”