SUMMER I
SUMMER I
At the end of a long night of talking and with very little sleep, it was agreed that a meeting with the Goblins of Gringotts the very next morning was the most reasonable course of action. They were independent contractors who held no loyalty to individual witches or wizards, despite sometimes being hired to do just that. They could not be swayed easily, but accepted gold for information. They would validate her story, if only for the pleasure of penalizing her for any possible lies told under oath in their domain.
Violet knew this. It had been her intention to bring him there since before she had even crossed over, but it was nice that they came to that conclusion on their own.
Or at least with very little input from Violet herself, though by the narrowed eyed look all three Grangers threw at her during different points in that conversation, she wasn’t fooling anyone but Harry.
“You planned this whole thing didn’t you?” Hermione had hissed while they were setting up places to sleep that night. They’d all taken turns napping in the living room while Mr. Granger kept a bleary-eyed watch from his armchair.
It was like they didn't trust her or something.
Violet had suppressed a smirk, rolling over so her back was to Granger, not-quite-drifting-off to the sounds of her furious huffing in the sleeping bag next to her, Harry snoring with one arm hung limp off the couch.
///
She was rather pleased with how everything was going so far. She could imagine far worse ways to begin this whole thing than seated around the Grangers kitchen table and being reluctantly served a breakfast of fried-eggs and toast. Mr. Granger had even blackened her bacon by request, giving her a strange, wary look that she was happy to ignore in exchange.
Harry seemed equally unconcerned, tucking gratefully into his eggs. Hermione's knuckles were white clenched around her butter knife and her mother hugged a porcelain mug to her chest, rubbing her temples every few seconds as if suffering from a migraine.
It was then Violet noticed that none of the Grangers had moved to eat. How peculiar. She decided she didn’t particularly care and was soon distracted slathering red jam over her toast and stacking strips of bacon over that. Harry regarded her curiously and his fingers twitched like he was considering copying her but stopped at a sharp look from the youngest Granger.
Cowed, he hesitantly went back to his much less interesting breakfast still eyeing her toast from the side with unmistakable envy.
Violet did not preen, she just enjoyed her meal immensely.
There was a surge like static in the air, Violet inhaled too quickly and could smell apples, ozone, something salt-y like a surging tide. When she glanced up at the future Gryffindor Prefect, something behind those dark eyes sizzled with barely restrained power and a familiar burning dislike, she felt goosebumps and the hair on her arms stood on end.
Mrs. Granger placed a steadying hand on her daughter's shoulder without looking up from her mug, and the pressure in the atmosphere lifted, all their spines straightening out with the relief of it.
Violet restrained herself from whistling and instead pointedly lifted a brow, impressed. Granger kept glaring at her with the same focused intensity as if she had not even noticed what she’d just done. Well, that’s … huh. Weird.
Mr. Granger finished clearing the stove and slumped down into the chair beside his wife.
Sighing, he took off his glasses to clean on the soft corner of his shirt, regarding Violet with the same cautious calculation that he had been all night. Nothing about the man's demeanor was harsh, nor was it unwelcoming so far as she had seen, but still Violet got the sense that if she made one move in a direction he did not like, that would change very, very quickly.
The fact that he allowed her to see him pack away his handgun for the journey to London only reinforced that notion.
As they all piled on the sidewalk next to Mr. Granger's wood-paneled Honda Accord, Violet considered him with a newfound respect.
///
Gringotts, as always, was glorious.
The goblins, as ever, were prideful.
And the results, as expected, were crystal clear.
“You’re me,” Her brother whispered, awe filled and unable to look away from the parchment containing the results of the un-tamperable goblin’s blood test. There, right below James Fleamont Potter and Lily Josephine Potter nee Evans was a line that twisted shimmering black ink across the page. Harry James Potter and Violet Euphemia Potter-Black shuttered into and out of existence, fighting for dominance, squeezing between their counterparts letters only to be jostled back out again. Shuffling forwards and backwards, combining into one illegible scrawl before finally settling side by side to be read clearly for a few short seconds, and then jumbling and starting all over again.
Their godfather bond with Sirius flickered between red and black, without end.
“We-we’re the same,” He choked out, eyes wet, strangely emotional or so Violet thought. She nodded, faux relaxed in the uncomfortable (designed especially for wizards to hate) chair in Potter Account Manager Sharpclaw’s office, and reached to pat him awkwardly over his unkempt hair.
“Close enough, anyway,” she agreed with a wry sort of grin, hoping to blow past this as quickly as possible. “I am much more handsome.”
His smile was weak but genuine as he pushed her hand away and coughed, clearly ready to move on from that pathetic moment of vulnerability as she was.
Granger was still staring dumbfounded at her copy of their respective blood test results, mouth opening and closing like the deafened-cry of a baby mandrake, both her parents peering at it curiously over her shoulder.
“I can’t-... I-I-I don’t-” Hermione stammered, eyes flickering rapidly over all parts of the document, completely overwhelmed, “You’re a Lord twice-over?!”
“I’m what?” Harry remarked with such innocent curiosity that now it was Violet's turn to pin him with a disappointed stare. Other-her reallywas rather stupid at times, wasn’t he? This couldn’t all be Gryffindor influence, could it? From the-other-one-currently-present’s equally incredulous face, she didn’t think so.
“Well, how about that,” Mrs. Granger murmured, dark eyes bright and curious, trailing one finger down the list of inheritance laid out below the family tree.
“Mmhmm,” Violet confirmed, rocking her seat back and forth on the back legs, beginning to grow bored. “We are the Lord/Lady and last living heirs to both the Noble House of Potter and the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.” She continued before Mr. Granger could start to question, “Basically it's a really-rich-old-family and a really-really- old- and -really- rich-and-also-racist-old-family.” She tilted her head onto the back of her chair and turned to look at her brother. “I think between the two of them we own, like, a 7th of Magical Britain and a good portion of Muggle properties and business too.”
“Really?”
“I mean, I think so.”
The kettle-whistle-esque noise Hermione made was one of inarticulable agony.
///
With the titles and the bank vaults (which Violet was ever so excited to dig through a second time without any informed supervision) there also came the Heir Rings. Glinting rare pieces of undefinable worth forged deep in the hidden capitol city of Gwydr Tràag, (meaning city of eternal glass, did you know the welsh language developed partially from proximity to the goblin nation because Violet certainly hadn’t, Sharpclaw may be annoyed with her today but she was learning so much) and with imbued with the Family Magics, sealed to their bloodlines and enchanted against all manner of poison, curses and bewitchments (including mind magics like legilimency or veela thrall).
Basically, something Harry should have gotten his grubby little hands on a long time ago. The frustrated slant to his mouth told her he’d very much thought the same and couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t. That talk would not be fun.
But shiny things first.
The Potter Family ring was bright in its splendor, a thick strip of gold and silver melted one on top of the other into a single band. At the head of the ring was a centerstone of polished obsidian, red flecks glinting in the black from the sapphire accent stones. When Harry put it on, the magic shivered in tangible delight and pulsed once to resize over his finger. The gold of the ring grew brighter with his touch, and a crown of darkened silver antlers bled into being along the band.
He gasped a shocked breath and looked at the changed ring with bright eyes as it accepted him as the Heir-Apparent. Neither of them would officially inherit the title of Lord or Lady until they were of age.
(Or recognised as such by a powerful magical artifact, because Mage Law could be very silly, but Violet was keeping that under her hat for now. Best not worry him if she could prevent it. He had a lot to process already.)
They’d decided, rather quickly and without fuss (once the goblins pointed out her right inherit would have to be contested in a Full Wizengamot Trial if they could not come to an arrangement in the next 48 hours, but otherwise remarkably disinterested in the bizarre nature of their current affairs) that Harry would continue the Potter line, and Violet would be allowed to fully take ownership of the Black. He hadn’t know about either so didn’t care either way and as Sirius had made him his Heir even before being sentenced to Azkaban. As he was promptly stripped of his title as Lord and Head of Family upon said imprisonment and status as an international fugitive (which she’d probably have to do something about eventually) it was a quick and painless process to have him sign the rights of inheritance and title of Heir Black over to himself (despite Granger’s loud and vehement protests only just shushed by her parents).
Or that’s what he joked he was doing, scribbling his untidy signature across the bottom line of a document that would forfeit half of his rightful inheritance to a near stranger. Violet was both in awe of and disgusted by his brazenness, she would have slept on a decision like this for a night at the very least but Harry truly couldn't care less.
He was adorably caught off guard when Violet still offered him full-access to the Black Family Vaults, and to name him next-in-line after her just in case of the worst and he quickly promised the same (Powers that be, he was just too easy), and in a little under two hours it was settled, bound by ink, blood, and magic.
Incredible.
(All three Grangers seemed similarly stunned, their tightly wound daughter only barely containing her fury due to the placating hands of her parents on either shoulder reminding her with tight frequent squeezes that this was none of their business)
The Black Family ring was darker in comparison to the Potters, but no less gleaming. Polished black band with a simple emerald center stone. When it reconsitiuted to fit her finger, the wings of a raven appeared, shimmering like they were coated in stardust.
Different from her old ring, but she was quite happy with it.
“-so Mote it be.” Sharpclaw and Breakbones, the Black Family account manager, finished together. A final flash of white runic light snapped above Harry and Violet, she shivered from the full body tingles of the Black Family Magic settling over her like a shroud of lightning and dark space and cold fire, it was bubbly on her skin, crackling with layered laughter and the smell of vetiver. Harry looked similarly affected, a flush to his cheeks and glazed eyes.
And just like that they were legally siblings. God-siblings, but siblings.
Heir-apparents Potter and Black looked at eachother and, unsure what they were meant to do next, shook hands. Neither were much for hugging.
“Great, now we just need them to undo the dampener put on your core and have them put a crude psychic block up until we can find a safe way to deal with that Horcrux in your head and then we’ll be pretty much set.”
Her hope of blasting by that and getting out of the office early enough to hit the shops before it got too late was probably pretty misguided.
///
“Remarkable.” The Goblin Healer did not sound like it bared remarking, speaking in a slow annoyed voice the belayed his words at every turn to the clear confusion of the entire Granger Family.
“I am amazed.” His tone didn’t even shift and Mrs. Granger blinked back at him, baffled.
“I’ve never seen a bound core on someone from such a young age. You’re lucky we got to this when we did, young wizard,” this was said with such a mocking sneer that both Gryffindors leaned away from the sharp smile and acerbic tone, Violet continued to stare blankly at the ceiling and twidle a strand of hair, bored.
“-the ramifications of such long term magical repression can be quite extensive.” Sharpclaw actually laughed a little to himself and Violet found her own lips twitching at the way the others flinched at its glass-in-a-blender, nails-on-a-chalkboard quality.
“As it is, you'll have to be very careful with your magic this coming year. You’ll be used to forcing a lot more of it through your wand than should be necessary, it will be an adjustment to tone it down to a manageable level of power. Be aware, Mr. Potter, that until you do so the result of even a simple expelliarmus could potentially become fatal.” Account Manager Sharpclaw looked positively giddy at the prospect and by now even Mr. Granger was looking a bit ill. Harry just continued to sit there with a dumb, confused puppy-dog look of hurt.
“But who would possibly…?” Violet cleared her throat, twinkling blue eyes filled her mind.
“Ah, well. About that...”
///
“And see here, he placed himself as your magical guardian without unsealing mum and dad’s will, where I promise you, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were nowhere listed. We never should have been there, Harry. There were plenty of people to take us in.”
“Like who?”
“Like the Longbottoms, or the Bones’s, or Andi and Ted, or Remus or Minerva-”
“You two could have been raised by Professor McGonagall?!?!”
“Focus up, Granger.”
“Right, sorry.”
“But see if we never go to any of those people, he regains guardianship and control of our seats on the Wizengamot and our house votes, so he can bolster his own political agendas. He can also control and manipulate our lives so we make choices he wants us to make. We’ll have to get new proxies by the winter solstice but it’d probably be best to keep this under the radar for as long as possible, he can’t do much more harm between then and now than he’s already done.”
“Okay, okay, sure. What's the Wizengamot?”
“Oh, Harry.” Hermione had never sounded more disappointed in him.
///
“Apologies, but would you mind explaining the Horcruxes again, Heir Black.” Account Manager Sharpclaw droned, one brow quirked in mild intrigue, at his back Account Manager Breakbones curled his lip over his pointy black teeth.
“Sure, see I had one too but the ritual Voldemort did to get here ripped the soul pieces out of his other horcruxes to send them all here with him, mine too. It wasn't painless or anything, it totally sucked, my scar bled for days and I was laid out sick and magically depleted for over three months. I almost didn't survive it. We’ll hopefully find a better way to get yours out Harry.”
“But how did this happen?”
“Okay so, the night He came to kill mum and dad--”
///
“Are you sure my Dumbledore knows about all of this?”
“I mean probably Harry. With the prophecy and everything I can’t really imagine he’d-”
“The what?!”
“... oh wow. I am so sorry.”
///
When Violet led the Grangers and Harry from the bank (after bribing the sneering goblins for their silence, they were oathbound to keep their secrets anyway but it was just good form, and also goblins were sneaky little blighters who could absolutely find a way around their own contracts if not tipped well), it was hours later, well into the early evening and they were all exhausted. Violet had invited the Grangers to a late dinner at the Leaky (Where she would be staying for the foreseeable future, she’d go back to the Dursleys again for murder and for no other reason) but they had begged off. Citing a brunch date the next day, but Violet suspected they were about to brew another pot of coffee and grill their daughter over all that had happened over the last day (and possibly years, whoops).
She didn't begrudge them that and besides Harry had decided to depart as well, head back for the Dursleys. He was shaken, clearly, all pale and sallow-eyed, feeble like one good breeze would blow him over.
She’d let him rest for now, but what she wouldn't do is allow him to remain in such conditions for much longer and after much badgering he agreed to meet her back at the Alley in two days time, where she would make him spend his goddamned money if it killed her.
So Violet let them go without fuss, tolerating the not-so-veiled -finger-in-the-chest-evil-eye-threat from Granger without so much as a twitch in her placid expression. She also gained Mr. Granger's personal cell number. His furrowed brow and reluctant pause before passing it over made her suspect this was a great honor indeed.
She waved them off from the shadow of the hidden magical street, watched them trudge off like a line of slump-shouldered-garden-gnomes, and disappear into a double-decker bus that cracked away in a sudden blur of purple.
Violet stayed standing there for a moment longer, waving at a street full of muggles who passed her by without a second glance, her plastered smirk and sparkling eyes slowly slipping into a much more haggard expression.
She slumped, barely catching her weight against the rough brick of the alley, and tried to steady her breathing into something less panicked and strained.
///
Violet got a cheap room at the Leaky under a false name (Berta Ivett Pollock, because Voldemort is stupid but anagrams are fun) and took her dinner in her room.
It was a decent stew of beef and potatoes that she barely tasted as she stared blankly out the window, mashing the vegetables absentmindedly with her spoon. Unable to relax the stiff muscles in her neck and back, her chest constricting with each breath until she could barely draw in air, she felt shadows in the corners of the room and eyes in the walls and no she could not just calm down.
Not while everything still hung so precariously in the balance, hammers and axes ready to come falling down to the earth like meteors meant only for utter wanton destruction. Not while everyone she has ever loved or cared for still stood so vulnerable and naive and weak. Not while the lines are not yet drawn in the sand, each side still sizing each other up, waiting for the moment to draw their metaphorical swords.
She knows He’s out there, both of them are. Likely already piloting the puppet corpse of that one year old boy born to some poor, probably desperate, witch out of wedlock. She never knew his name or where he came from, so she knows she couldn’t have saved him. Not ever. That doesn’t stop her from twitching and scratching at her chest whenever she thinks about it.
And the Other One. Who knew what foul shit he was up to in this brand new playground. He’ll be looking for a way to become corporeal again, maybe by possessing someone but she thinks it far more likely he hunts himself or his other servants down first. She needs to get to the bones, as soon as possible and maybe get the locket while she’s at it? Those protections are nasty though and the last thing she wants to do is come swanning in reeking of black magic. Not until they trust her more, and He knows that she knows so would he even bother with them at all?
Moves and counter moves. There is so much to do in such a short amount of time, but there are only so many hours in a day and only so long she can go without sleep and between enacting the ritual and keeping herself awake while pretending to sleep under Mr. Granger's watchful eye (and also gun) she’s been awake for about 80 hours straight now. She needs to rest, she knows she does.
Her eyes went to the locket, she’d taken it from her neck and placed it across the table from where she was eating at the beginning of her meal, despite the dangers of doing so, and it would almost be like having a friend sitting there with her if it wasn't incredibly sad and pathetic.
She missed him. She wouldn’t quite say she needed him, she was brilliant and excellent at being alone thank you, but if he were here things would be so much more… It would just be easier to handle.
No. No use in thinking like that, she’d have him back soon. He wasn’t the top priority right now, despite how she longed for his steadfast companionship and unending unsolicited advice. And it was always possible she would not regain it for sometime, if plan A didn’t work out, as they’d predicted it might not, she’d just have to wait awhile longer.
But she’d see him again. She would.
Her heart fluttered and her magic swelled and so she looped the golden locket back over her head and felt something in her soul settle down again.
She finished her meal in uneasy silence, flinching at each thump from the residents in the adjacent rooms, warded her door within an inch of her life and then collapsed gratefully into dusty sheets and slept like the dead for the next sixteen hours.
///
Harry lay on his bed, and then on the floor, and then finally moved out into the back garden.
He thought about the last twenty four hours. And about the first fourteen years of his life. About Quirrell, and the diary, and Sirius still on the run. He thought about Voldemort and what hell his not-really-sister promised that awaited them both in the not so distant future. But mostly, mostly, he thought about Dumbledore. Something hot and hard squirming in his throat, squeezing his heart until the blood ran warm in his cheeks. Tears filled his eyes.
He wasn’t sure Violet was all-the-way-right. And he wasn’t sure he completely trusted her yet.
But something didn't make sense, and Harry felt the stings of betrayal despite not knowing whose feet to lay the blame at.
He closed his eyes, exhaled shakily, and under the watchful stars twinkling in the inky black sky he made a promise to himself that he would find out.
///
The Granger parents had argued with their young daughter on the bus home. They’d argued all the way up their walk and spent the next several hours arguing all over the corners of their charming two story townhouse, pacing and yelling and, once in the case of Mrs. Granger, throwing some dinnerware at the wall in a fit of overwhelming despair.
It was worse than the Great-Granger-Extended-Family-Christmas-Debacle of ‘89, and that was really saying something.
Hermione had yelled back and misled and finally done her level best to undermine the very real threats to her life and the so far unknown to them dangers of the wizarding world at large and her precarious place in it specifically, but in the end her parents were steadfast in their interrogation of their only daughter.
They closed ranks, cornered her and demanded answers that Hermione found herself completely unwilling to give.
When the truth was finally squeezed out, tortuously and bit-by-bit, they were only incensed further. All three Grangers were well-known for their explosive tempers and it really showed that night. Screaming and crying and cruel words and finally, slammed teenage bedroom doors and a long week of strained silence between all parties involved.
Hermione cried hot, silent tears into her pillow and wished bitterly that girl had never come here. She had ruined everything.
Downstairs at their small kitchen table, Mrs. Granger smoked a cigarette for the first time in nine years and whispered furiously to her husband. Mr. Granger scribbled her words frantically down beside his own ideas in a small brown notebook.
They loved their daughter. They had plans to make.
///
The old man spent a content, quiet night in the company of his wife of many years, working in agreeable silence on projects of their own respective interests. Tonight she was experimenting with some obscure transfiguration theory about the brains of mice and he was pursuing an exotic blood magic tome as a refresher.
It's a peaceful way to spend the later years of one's life, if occasionally a bit dull.
Across the room, an odd device of twisted metal and colored glass started to hiccup and spin. The air filled with the delicate ringing of bells and a whispering distant echo of a song, an ethereal tune that one could almost make out if they strained their ears, continuously gaining speed as it chimed ever louder. Rune-notes flashed in the air around the device, designing melodies of crossways and the Other Space. The divine potential of benevolent destroyers. Eihwaz stood out bright and bold against all others, a blazing slash of golden light amidst a confusing whirl of reds and blacks.
They regarded it curiously as the thing frantically reached its crescendo, a straining, wheezing note that pitched higher and higher until suddenly it stopped. They both squinted as the bright light pulsed blindingly three times in quick succession before finally fading without warning, a flicker of blue flame snuffing itself out. The device crooned tiredly once more and then folded back in on itself to rest. Presumably for another century or so.
The study rang louder in the silence it left behind, a tension in the air now not dissimilar to the kind found in the rope of a guillotine, taught and just begging to be cut, shivering and aching to bring down something sharp and powerful on whatever lies just below with all of it’s force.
When the quiet storm is finally broken it's to semi interested words and quirked lips, a dangerous spark in the eyes reignited.
“Oh, how delightful.”
“Truly very intriguing, my dear.”
///
He is not. He is but isn’t but he has been here before. He knows. He always knows. What to do next, he has plans, grand plans, great plans he just needs the Rest. The rest of Him and of Them and of It All.
He’s still a mess. Still scattered and jumbled in the wind, held together by the sheer force of his incredible power.
The House first. The House and The Rat and The Twitchy Boy. First steps towards something far greater.
He slithers like a snake made of smoke and bad dreams through grass still wet from last night's rain, the dawn is breaking red and bloody over the hill, graves of dark stone make little shadows on the grass, he slithers and slinks and finds the house. The stairs. Nagini.
And then finally a twisted little horror with blood red eyes.
The Wraith would smile if it had a mouth or teeth. Its shadowy visage rises higher above the demonic baby, twisting two smoke tendrils out like the loving arms of a parent and its child blinks back at it with gleaming scarlett eyes.
A small ratty thing whimpers and sniffles in the corner, trying to make himself as unassuming as he possibly can.
This is bad, he thinks desperately, beady eyes watching the slow terrible grin cracking the little things pale lips, this is so very, very bad.