SUMMER II
Harry spent the two long gray days before he’d agreed to meet back up with Violet in a fog of energized distraction, doing his chores and dodging the Dursleys with practiced ease, almost not noticing the confused suspicious scowls on their faces as he trudged absentmindedly through the hours.
He tucked in his elbows, jumped over Dudley’s smelting stick and finished everything in record time to the bedrugding acceptance of his extended family.
His reward meant being shut out of the house for the entire sweltering afternoon but it was nothing he was not thoroughly used to, and besides it gave him plenty of time to fret over this whole Do-I-Should-I-Trust-Her issuewithout interruption.
(And if he was being entirely honest; for the sick tendrils of hope to worm their way deep into his gut, he felt stirred, buzzy and excited in a way he hadn't really since boarding the train to Hogwarts first year, the anticipation of newness and magic and adventure that he suspected by now lay just before the steep fall into terror and fear and possible death.
But he was sure this time it would probably be fine.
…
He actually may need to call Hermione again.)
///
Walking up the polished steps of Gringotts he could not stop checking over his shoulder, flattening his hair nervously and picking the dry skin at his lip. Her letter this morning; a tea stained scrap of parchment carried by a nondescript barn owl that blasted into his room at the crack of dawn in an angry burst of feathers, bearing just the words-9 am. Gringotts. Take care NOT to be seen- had done nothing but stoke his own natural paranoia.
He also had not been sure what she meant by that, she was him, she had to know how semi-impossible it was for Harry Potter to venture anywhere into the magical world without attracting some kind of notice. Did she want him to be in disguise? He’d fretted over his near empty wardrobe for nearly thirty minutes before deciding that an overly large stained sweatshirt with the hood pulled up was his best (and really, only) option for subterfuge.
He pulled it on over his tee shirt despite the high temperatures and then used the little remaining pocket money he’d exchanged at the end of the year with Hermione to catch the Knight Bus into Longon, grimacing and sweating all the way but overall feeling rather confident in his disguise.
Though now, lingering in the gleaming entrance hall of Gringotts, a sore thumb dressed in rather conspicuous muggle clothing sticking out sharply amongst the traditionally robed witches and wizards who side-eyed him while the goblins sneered and whispered behind his back, he wondered if his decision had been a foolish one.
Judging by the exaggerated noise of exhaustion at his back, Violet did.
“What the fuck are you wearing?”
He didn't try to hold back the sheepish (but otherwise delighted) grin on his face as he turned to meet his sister. Family, he had actual family now who seemed to care and value him, sort of a bit, at least enough to want his help and care for his living conditions (if she was being honest about that… but she probably was! Harry had a good feeling despite the nearly fourteen pages of furious ranting on parchment he’d received from Hermione yesterday outlining all the reasons why he shouldn’t) but he still could barely believe it.
However his look of poorly contained joy quickly shifted to one of shocked uncertainty.
The girl standing before him was not the same as yesterday.
He squinted, tilting his head this way and that. It was her. Same untamed hair in a lopsided ponytail, same bright green eyes, lips curved up at one side in the same mocking smirk. She was just a bit… softer, maybe? The cut of her cheeks and chin were a little less sharp and she was shorter than before, her eyes now level with his chin rather than his nose.
All in all, she looked remarkably younger.
“What’d you do?” He blurted out, roving his eyes over her face like it alone would give him the answers. She rolled her eyes in response, crinkling her nose as she did and turning away to lead him further into the bank (and away from the many many curious eyes at their backs), waving one hand to the armed and armored goblin beside the tellers desk. He spit on the ground as they passed by and Violet saluted him mockingly.
Harry had to duck as a gilded battleax went soaring over their heads and embedded itself into the soft metal of the archway with an affronted clang.
Violet ignored it and just continued walking so Harry did too, but he sent one last nervous glance over his shoulder in time to see the growling teller still puffing angrily and being held back by two of his scowling brethren before the heavy ornate door swung shut between them.
Hesitant, he turned back around and kept walking.
“You left me a whole day on my own. Had to do something to fill it.” Violet said in a tone of ‘this is very obvious, Harry, please do keep up’ and turned on her heel, walking backwards briefly to grin at him as she continued, “And do you think they would have let me come with you to Hogwarts looking like I did before?”
Harry frowned, he supposed not. He hadn't really thought about it, there had been too much going on at the time for it to register but she had definitely beenolder than him. Eighteen, maybe nineteen, if he had to guess, but way too old for Hogwarts. Strolling confidently (if shortly) beside him now, she looked much closer to his own age.
“...So how-?”
“Fifteen now. We are going into fourth year, correct?”
“Uh, guess so. Yeah.”
“Excellent.”
“Is it, um-” He looked around the near empty (and surprisingly long) corridor for eavesdroppers, recognising the futility of the gesture now but feeling a need to retroactively make up for his blunder in the lobby, and her smile widened until her teeth caught the light from the torches.
“Polyjuice?” She asked, eyes dancing with glee and he shrugged uncertainly, she giggled a little crazily (taking apparent delight in his familiarity with the illegal brew) knocked her shoulder into his, abruptly unbalancing his stiff hesitant walk, and then shook her head.
“Nah--though gotta say I sense a story there you’re gonna have to tell me later--it’s way too expensive, notoriously unreliable and it tastes like horseshit on the best day-” He grinned at the disgusted expression on her face, laughter bubbling like golden sunlight in his chest at the familiarity of it and felt himself relaxing, was this how the Weasleys felt seeing their expressions mirrored in each other? Did they love it as much as Harry did? Did they feel like this all the time? “--something slightly more permanent and less likely to attract unwanted attention.” At his questioning look she clarified. “It’s just an aging potion.”
“Those exist?” He asked, a little concerned (and wrinkling his nose the same way she had moments before) thinking of the philosopher's stone. He thought that was the only thing that could grant immortality and didn’t like the idea of other things floating around out there that could prolong a dark lord's life.
“It’s not how you’re thinking. This doesn't actually alter my age, I’ll still die around the same time I would have had I taken this or not. It just makes me appear a bit younger.”
Then she went on to tell him about the history of the brew. How it had been developed in the early fifteen hundreds by some vain nobles to make their appearances linger in the prime years of their lives far longer than should be possible. It couldn’t make drastic changes, just a few years either way from your current age at ingestion, and you didn’t stop aging once taken either. You could retake it every so often if you wanted, but it would still tack on the years little by little as they slipped by. Getting older a bit at a time until you died looking like a fresh faced forty year old, having lived until one hundred and twenty.
Everyone who’d ever lived died eventually. (Except of course, Mr. Flamel, the smug bastard as Violet called him with far more disdain than Harry would have thought appropriate.
Neither of them mentioned the other hippogriff in the room, though both their gazes smoldered with the same burning hate, Violets bright like hellfire though Harrys was by no means dim.)
The most important thing about the potion , she said with a crooked smile, was that even if someone detected it’s presence and discovered that she had used it, it would not reveal her true age, just give a foggy, ballpark result that could not legally disprove her claimed age as long as it was within the acceptable range of a Hogwarts school-child, and a blurry 14-18 result should do it. “They might have me bumped up a couple years or something, if Dumbledore’s feeling really shady, but I can make that work.” She replied flippantly to his concern of other potential consequences to her discovery.
During this impromptu lecture, they were shuffled through the gilded torch-lit archway onto the platform that held the mine carts by a heavyset goblin who adamantly refused to give his name and actually swore at him when Harry politely inquired for it.
“I am in awe of you.” Violet told him flatly after a few beats of baffled silence, quickly striding ahead like she was embarrassed to be seen next to him, the goblin in question tight on her heels.
Harry hadn’t felt this light in years.
///
Her brother was in a remarkably good mood, which boded well for Violet’s various schemes.
She needed him to be happy. She didn’t have time to just sit around and wait for his trust to build naturally, though in the back of her mind she pondered whether it would really take that long, he had an endearing youthful gullibility to him that made something in the left of her chest twang like a off rift chord on a guitar whenever she thought about working him. She tucked it away with occlumency, uninterested in indulging whatever fleeting emotion that it might develop into.
The locket hummed a low disapproving note against her sternum and the tattoo currently tucked against her collarbone tittered and whacked a paw uselessly against her skin, she knew without looking that the runes etched into its belly were pulsing softly with pale orange light and she felt it send a tingling swell of magic across her chest as it settled in further, tear jerkingly familiar, sizzling like soft flesh laid bare against a sun-hot stone.
She swallowed the crawling spidery feeling in her throat, coughed discreetly and kept a tight wrangling grip on her composure, determined not to be swayed from her current approach despite the flickers of hope steadily growing in Harry’s earnest expression.
She could not indulge this. Sincerity was a luxury Violet had not been able to afford in a very long time.
And with what was at stake, it was far too important to risk it right now.
Maybe, someday.
So she kept it light, bouncing her tone between playful and dismissive, a strange mixture she’d discovered he responded to best after some trial and error the day before. Casual disinterest mixed with fond assurances, some physical touch and just a smidge of trust shown to him seemed to be the recipe her brother most desired, at least at this period in his life, which was not a great baseline for him long term, probably, but she’d have time to teach him how to be less manipulatable once she’d manipulated him into saving the world with her.
It’d all be fine. Really.
After the familiar but never-not-nauseating cart ride Violet skipped up to the vault door with genuine stars in her eyes. Harry regarded her curiously but without judgment from her side as she all but trembled with anticipation and bit her lip in an attempt not to scream ‘hurry up!’ at the unmoved goblin taking his painstaking time to open their vault.
From the gleeful spark in his eyes, he was enjoying her impatience.
He dragged one yellowed, crooked fingernail down the middle of the dark iron doors, a hundred tiny intricate locks gleaming and clicking open as he passed each one. The sound like a discordant symphony in the echoing cavernous space around them, otherwise silent except for the distant sounds of grinding rails and other bank patrons frightened screams.
For a moment it was like she was eleven again, being shepherded into the unbelievable space with the ghost of Hagrid's sweaty palms on her either shoulder to hold her still, her astonished gawking illuminated by the golden shimmer reflected off the absolute hoard of galleons, sickles and knuts piled haphazardly throughout the spacious chamber.
She remembered the feeling vividly, crashing into her tiny chest like a trainwreck of relief, of the sudden unbelievable certainty that she was safe. For the rest of her life, she would be safe and provided for, and never stay up hungry or cold in the night needing anything ever again.
She remembers being eleven, scrawnier, and sicklier than she was now, standing bug eyed amidst a towering heaps of treasure, her magical inheritance, and thinking I’m set. I’m set for life.
Though the feeling wasn't nearly as intense after all this time, there was no one holding her back as she slipped through the narrow gap of the doors still creaking open. Harry made an amused but startled sound as she snatched his hand and pulled him through the wards behind her.
///
Over six hundred kilometers away, a tinkling silver charm on an overcrowded desk flips itself over part-way, a little confused.
It was a baby, really. Young in the sense that it’s magic was rather new, less than two decades old, a veritable child, nothing like those older ancient enchantments set by strange gnarled hands (so different from his caster) deep deep into the rock and stone of the twisting, never ending tunnel-y home that they all shared.
He was just a simple monitoring charm with only one real task or understanding of the world. He was responsible for watching the Potter Vaults, and looking for anyone Not Potter to alert his caster of their presence crossing the wardlines.
He’s a very special boy, lots of the older enchantments (true real belonging goblin enchantments, they sneer at him night and day out from the long long dark) they don’t like him very much. Usually he wouldn't be allowed, see, but the old-Potters (the Gone Potters) had signed the enchanted parchment with their own Potter-blood and said he was allowed to stay.
Just for extra safe keeping.
And so he kept safe. He sat and he watched and he waited and he listened and he was good at following his two very clear instructions.
But, he was realizing with frantic uncertainty, he had no instruction for two Potters (so near in magic and spirit tucked together so close physically clasping twin hands pumping with Potter-blood that was just so so similar) so much the very same that the little wardline was certain that even the more ancient-right-mean-belonging-goblin-enchantments would barely be able to tell two drops apart if put side by side. He sure couldn't.
Two pairs of feet and hands, two Harry Potters crossing at the same time.
He had no instructions and therefore no reason at all to tell anyone about that.
The instrument leaps and bounds and mountains away stopped itself mid turn and flopped back over with a quiet satisfied chirrup.
The little wardline was proud of himself and a little tired from thinking so hard.
Blue eyes flick curiously up from the teetering stack of letters and missives but eventually drift away when there’s nothing amiss amongst the sea of small, twirling devices set out along the many crowded shelves of his office.
Several of the portraits of headmasters-past eye it, and then their current charge, with speculative interest. One, a thin-haired man with a rather alarming mustache, opens his mouth as if to alert the three dimensional wizard to the source of his query but a sudden sharp slap to the back of his head delivered by his neighbor stops him, he whirls around to glare at them--still leaning through the frame of their own portrait into his precious space and shaking a finger frustratingly under his nose.
Most of the Headmasters of Hogwarts Past are asleep (they keep shifts and share information in the dead of night while the current headmaster retires to his quarters, as so the charter goes) and so several important figures (loyal to the man himself) do not see the interaction take place, one prominent witch with an unfortunate mole shakes her head vigorously at the impetuous youngster and leans down from her place hanging up and to his right to whisper ‘Let’s see how it all plays out’.
Somewhat affronted, but undeniably curious as the rest of them, he straightened out his robes in a single huffy movement, shifting his pipe to the other corner of his mouth to take another long drag and then nodded his agreement, not without scowling one last time at his other undignified neighbor to the left who stuck out their tongue and waggled their fingers in taunting wordless response.
The Headmaster noted the interaction with no more than a distracted sort of amusement and it was quickly forgotten in the face of more important matters on his desk.
After all, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
///
Two hours later Harry was finding her apparent dragon-like love of all things glimmering and gold far less amusing.
He huffed in not-so-mild-irritation, slumping back further into a pile of dusty fabric (mostly his ancestors robes and cloaks that all smelled slightly of mildew despite their otherwise impeccable condition) he’d situated into a lumpy chair across from his sisters pile of plunder.
She was sat cross-legged amidst her spoils, a chin perched on her hand and lip puckered in consideration as she shuffled items from one stack (‘maybe, possibly’) to another (‘I think so, probably’) and finally graduating them from the final (‘okay, yes I will keep this’) pile and into one of two trunks.
One for herself and one for Harry.
She had spent the last three hours tearing through the mounded treasure and unearthing objects from all different corners of their vault. She had made a beeline for a teetering stack of old vintage furniture and pulled down an antique trunk with golden fastenings, the Potter crest stamped proudly into the rich dark wood. She’d made him prick his finger on the spinning golden clasp, stuffed her fingers in her own ears while he set the passphrase and then explained to him how to work the many expanded compartments.
He was most impressed by the ‘Study’, an entire room where you could climb down a ladder into it, there was a small circle for dueling practice, a single enchanted dummy to spar with, a fireplace, two squishy purple couches and several wide tables for working. He had immediate daydreams of dragging a cooler stuffed with charmed-ice, cold cuts and bottled water inside and using it to hide from the Dursleys in the summer. He could live in this thing if he really wanted to.
He’d been rather excited for their excavation of the chaotic vault after that, but that quickly soured in the face of his sister's unending enthusiasm for stuff.
She was suffering under the delusion that he had far too little of it.
She piled him with outfits and robes of expensive colored silks, cufflinks and watches and earrings studded with precious gemstones and heavy with charms that tingled unpleasantly against his skin. Dress shoes and boots of dragon skin, dueling robes that were enchanted against dark curses, dress shirts and trousers and vests and coats, all things that he just could never see himself wearing.
He already had his heir ring, which felt warm and soft against his magic and hummed on his pinkie finger. He liked to twist it absentmindedly when he got frustrated or nervous.
He was doing it now.
Violet made him try on four separate outfits in various degrees of ostentatiousness before he finally put his foot down, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in them all, like a kid playing dress up in his grandfather's clothes. She pursed her lips and gave in but refused to stop packing them away on the extending racks of the wardrobe section of his trunk.
After thirty minutes, he had a wardrobe fit for a king. (Or a Lord, he guessed, which he technically would be soon)
And she didn’t stop there.
She found him a beautiful silver telescope and a very old looking crystal ball that he felt bad about touching. She completely overhauled his potions set up, new stirring rods of glass, silver and enchanted oak. Two cauldrons of much higher quality than his own, one had various runes carved painstakingly all around the outer edge and along the bottom, it looked very advanced and Harry was sure he would not know how to use it but she tucked it away into his trunk anyway. Tons of tiny glass bottles and stoppers that she said they would fill with top quality ingredients later. A golden scale that chimed softly when the desired weight had been reached.
She forced him to take an ancient dusty set of practice runes carved into rich cherry wood and a well worn tarot deck that frayed at the edges that tingled happily in his front shirt pocket where he’d stored it immediately after she handed it to him. After several minutes digging through a particularly dusty pile she unearthed a wand holster carved from the bones of a hidebehind that would remain hidden from all eyes, to all enchantments spells and attempts to be summoned that she commanded he strap to his left arm right then and there but then refused to allow him to put his wand in it, to his annoyed confusion.
And then there were the books. Dozens of them. Some faded and torn others gleaming with an unnatural glow to their stark white pages, all thrown into the bottomless cavern of his new library section to be automatically sorted and cataloged for his search and viewing later.
She also tucked a good number of things into her own dark trunk (she’d produced it from her pocket unlike how she had found his own), she showed him a number of the items she decided to claim but not all of them. He was fairly distracted with his own trunk and so did not think much of it, and didn’t much care either way.
(Somewhere in North Hampstead, in the midst of re-working the seventh iteration of her summer potions essay, Hermione Granger abruptly snapped the pen in her hand and then stared at her ink stained fingers with shock.
She would never know why.)
Harry felt uncomfortable with just how many things were going into his own new trunk (he had picked out two pairs of simple dress robes and an antique set of wizards chess he idly considered gifting to Ron for Christmas) but did not dare try and stop her. After another hour or two though the trepidation faded and was quickly replaced with annoyance.
She was taking it all very seriously, and apparently that meant excruciatingly slowly. Comparing each item with the dozen other possible replacements and going over each pro or con outloud to him, much to his dread.
Harry groaned, for what felt like the fifth time in as many minutes and slumped even further into his mound of laundry, dislodging a few loose articles from above and down onto him. A horrendous amaranth tie featuring animated cauldrons that continuously exploded with tiny puffs of lilac smoke flopped over onto his face and he tossed it away somewhere far out of sight.
He rubbed his palms into his eyes, groaning even louder, and so did not see Violet wordlessly summon it back, consider it for a long moment and then pack it away in her trunk.
He'd never particularly liked shopping, never having money for it most of his life, and then having the unfortunate honor of being best mates with someone whose family struggled to afford their supplies and also routinely accompanied him on every occasion he had to spend his own, he’d just never gotten used to it.
Even now, surrounded by things that he technically owned, he felt like he was rifling through someone else's things, or things meant for someone other than him. It made him uncomfortable and awkward, he wished she’d hurry up.
“But you must be done now, surely?” He asked, for what felt like the hundredth time. Violet made a noncommittal noise, too distracted comparing two sets of crystal phials, one a slightly darker shade of pearl, and Harry felt any earlier affection he had towards his sort-of-sibling was a far forgotten past.
“Oh, just pick one already.”
She tutted at him, sounding so like Aunt Petunia in that moment that Harry couldn’t help but startle.
“Sheesh, fine. These are for you by the way, I was just trying to be helpful.”
“But I don’t need any of this stuff.”
“Uh, yes you do. Trust me.”
“Fine, whatever. The pale ones.”
She packed away the darker ones and Harry scoffed so hard he then started coughing, much to his embarrassment.
///
Violet tried very hard not to snap, but it was getting increasingly difficult. The almost unassuming dope she’d met earlier in the hall had been replaced by a sullen petulant child almost the moment they had crossed into the depth of the vault, past the dozen or so ceiling-height-mounds-of-gold and deeper into the main portion of the chamber somewhere she was shocked to discover that he had never known existed.
He’d said it so casually too, just a flippant “Oh, cool. I never knew this was here”, so completely unbothered by his utter ignorance of the vast majority of their inheritance and birthright, a virtual treasure trove of enchanted objects and forbidden texts and ancient familial masterpieces of magic just sitting there forgotten and apparently uncared for by her idiot self!
Other self. Brother. Whatever!!
The point was his casual disregard of what so many others had actually literally historically killed and bled and died for--the complete disinterest in a room so many others would do anything to get their hands on the contents of-- Oh, she just wanted to strangle that little--
It was possible she was getting a bit heated.
Violet shrugged off her outer layer, a thin green coat, not quite muggle-cut, enchanted to keep their wearer perfectly cool or warm despite the weather but not her own emotion fueled body heat, apparently. She’d probably just get something from the Black Vaults, there were lots of weird fun clothes there and all those enchantments were fucking solid, plus she’d need to have some recognisable Black Family articles in her wardrobe for her future plans anyway.
She considered the current object in hand, it was old but not old enough to hold any particularly valuable enchantments or sentimental value. She didn’t need to keep it. She tossed it away in a vague direction other than her three very well categorized piles and moved onto the last few items she wanted from the Potter Vaults before they moved on.
Harry better be thrilled, she’d cut her usual perusal time in half thanks to his whinging.
“Alright, you absolute baby,--”
“I’m just saying that it’s been three hours!”
“--get over here we're almost done.”
“Really!?”
His face lit up and she sarcastically gestured to the final object waiting for their approval. He moved off his self made robe throne (made of all the things even she was not cruel enough to force him to consider, that tie was a diamond in the rough) and sat cross legged across from her, eyeing the single thin box with an underwhelmed grunt.
Powers, he was so uncivilized.
“This?” He asked, unable or simply not bothering to mask his incredulity. She scoffed right back, clearly mocking him which made him scowl bitterly in response.
“Oh, this? Just the, so far as we know, bottomless collection of Potter Family wands. Every wand held by every single ancestor of the Potters, Peverells and any other vassalage house eventually absorbed into the family line? This unnamed number of wands claimed from other families, through conquest, marriage and just general switching of allegiance. This infinite potential for power untracked by the ministry.” She picked it up and shook it obnoxiously in his face. “Just this?”
“Alright, alright! I get it.” He grumbled, swatting her hands away but unable to keep his eyes from bouncing back to the unassuming black box clutched in them.
There was a gleam there Violet recognised, she knew she’d had the same one the first time she truly understood what this was, what it could do and mean for someone like her (like them) sometime after her fifteenth birthday standing in nearly the exact same spot with the two people she loved and trusted most in this world.
She probably shouldn't be so hard on him, she’d needed someone to explain it to her too.
She grinned at her brother, less bite this time (as close to an apology as he was going to get) and mimed tossing it to him. He stumbled, unprepared with even the idea of having to catch something and then shot her a disbelieving look at her audacity to handle a thing so precious with such disregard. She snorted.
“Don’t worry. It’s charmed to high heaven, there’s no way anything short of fiendfyre, or I don’t know, maybe a nuclear blast is gonna damage this thing.”
To prove it she tossed it into her other hand theatrically and knocked it twice against the floor. He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms, obviously stopping himself from grabbing it. When he spoke his words were cautious but Violet was watching him very closely and she could see the hungry glint in his eyes.
“Erm--but…Sorry, you said untracked by the ministry? They wouldn’t activate the trace?”
She nodded eagerly, stoking the flame that grew brighter and brighter despite his clear attempts to snuff it out. Gryffindors, so righteous and upright. It was honestly adorable.
“But we’re-or I-am still underage. Is that not illegal?”
“Not if you’re rich.”
They sat there and both very much did not turn and stare at the ungodly mountains of silver gold and precious gemstones all around them that together could probably buy and then fund an entire small kingdom for decades.
“I don’t know if I like that.”
Violet hummed in patient understanding, letting the moment rest and being sure to choose her words very carefully.
“Will it stop you?”
The fire flared and Harry bit his lip, his fingers clenching into knuckled fists before finally reaching for the scuffed wand box that would not look so out of place amongst Ollivanders shelves.
“How does it work?”
///
Oh, before he forgot, the little monitoring wardline had a cousin! Or at least that’s what they were calling themselves, or what he was calling them anyway.
They couldn’t really talk, she was so far away in the very back of the big stone room they both lived in, and so could just barely see each other's rainbow flaring auras when they flexed and strained at the edges of their territory.
They did that a lot, much to the never ending fury of their much older and crankier neighbors. He thought of it as their own way of saying ‘Hello!’
But anyway she had a very similar job to him, but it was a little bit different. It was her responsibility to alert any time someone accessed the Potter-wands at all--but especially the Young-Potter.
The Gone-Mrs. Potter had been very clear (and loud and yell-y during her casting much to the annoyance of his newborn not-ears) she didn’t want the Young-Potter to have access to them unsupervised (“-after what you and your mates got up to? Over my dead-fucking-body, James-”) unless he really really needed it. But she did not want anyone else to know either. And she wanted someone who would tell her immediately and not ‘brush it off as just harmless fun’ (“-like I’d let you or one of your bloody friends have final say, are you kidding me?!-”)
So the little not-cousin of Albus’s monitoring charm (who tolerated and accepted his presence at best from her own point of view) was cast by a very different pair of hands and commanded to alert someone else entirely.
///
Far, far away someone (or something, depending on one's perspective) was very very close to crossing back over to the Place-Where-She-Came. She was withering and starving, unable to feed from the magic that had sustained her power, providing her purpose for the last thirty years.
She was listless, master-less. Waiting to fulfill a final standing order with no other instructions as she had for nearly fourteen years. She had waited so long for the young master to claim the box, to provide her with the step she needed to continue any form or purpose or existence again since her poor lovely mistress had passed over.
She was a patient elf, a loyal elf and such such a good elf (she was) but even the best elf could only wait for so long in a place so decrepit of magic before succumbing to the rules of the original covenant.
The new Potter-villa had none of the ancient wards, the deep wells of magic that could keep her going for decades and decades. But she had been ordered to wait here and so she had.
(She was a very good elf. She was.)
She felt her breath coming out in rattling gasps now, it was so so close to the end.
And she wasn’t ready, but she was a loyal elf to her last. And she had done all that she could.
So , she supposed, she could be at peace.
The very-good-very-loyal-elf closed her eyes and felt the shallow pool of her remaining magic begin to trickle out, floating out and back up to the shining stars where it could linger and belong once she’d faded away.
///
A ripple in the air. A crack like a distant branch snapping in the woods.
Or maybe a bomb going off.
///
“--Ow! It stung me!”
“It what?”
///
A very old pair of eyes popped open wide to reveal a startling inhuman blue.
Shadows bent and were banished as stardust and flames burst forth from their nearly ice cold embers, erupting into supernovas of crashing cosmic power that flared in the dusty darkened room, bathing the small wrinkled figure in golden, ethereal light.
Mixy fell over and gasped as the rush of her magic flooded back in like a tidal wave. Her senses felt sharp and her small body felt strong like it hadn't in ages.
She cracked the sound barrier without so much as twitching a muscle just to see if she could and then laughed until she cried.
She could hear it suddenly and on a beautiful never ending loop, the most perfect wonderful music, the only song she could ever want to hear, her mistresses' last orders to watch and protect her son.
She had tried, the bright stars and good powers knew she had tried but the bad tricky no good wizard had done too much to hide and conceal her young master until even poor Mixy’s magic was not enough to break through them. The bad-no-good-fuddy-duddy had even twisted her poor mistresses' final sacrificial protection, the pure lovely wall of red, blood-like-an-evans-red, wrapping the house in powerful soul magic meant to shield her young master from badness had kept poor Mixy out instead.
Mixy would never harm the young master, she had gasped Never, never! She argued with the twisted remnants of her poor mistress' power for days, for weeks! Pushing and scraping at the pulsating wards with her hands until they bled. She loved young master Harry, she wouldn't hurt him. She wouldn’t! She wouldn’t! But they growled and snapped, confused and hurt and oh-so protective and they would not let her through.
She hated the white-bearded-wizard, oh how she hated him.
But she had tried, as hard and in as many ways as she could think to try, and then when she failed she was not despairing. She was a good elf, a loyal elf. She stayed and waited for the last order she could fulfill. The last tie to her young master that would allow her to finally break through the many protections and reach him.
“Under absolutely no circumstances on Earth, Mixy!” Mistress Lily had commanded, her voice lovely and loud, clear and cutting and beautiful like a bell while the foolish-Master James had cringed deeper into his cushion beside his red-faced dog-Brother Sirius. “None! Zero! Zilch! If Harry so much as touches that thing you come tell me immediately! And, god forbid I’m not there, you use your best judgment but my son will not have an illegal immoral wand unless he is in dire fucking need of one! Do you all understand me?!”
Mixy did understand, of course she did. She sobbed on the floor and clutched her dirty stained sheets in her hands for exactly one trillionth of a second before snapping to attention.
Mixy had purpose again.
The dull gray of her skin lightened to a healthy blue-ish tint. The stains and tears of her once cherished uniform banished and ironed out until they were crisp and clean and perfect. Her proud Evans Family crest bright and shining pinned to her chest.
The young elf grasped it tight in her now smooth hands and beamed. She would do her mistress proud. She could now, she promised. She would protect the boy.
Master Harry had touched the box and now she had to use her best judgment.
Mistress Lily often gave open-ended orders like these, as kind and fair and wonderful as she was, the girl could sometimes be a bit foolish about the nature of House-Elves. Mixy didn’t mind, she was being a very smart elf.
“Not unless he’s in dire fucking need of one!”
Mixy had not seen the young master in a very long time. She did not know if he needed it or not. She would just have to wait and watch for a while to see if he did.
She was very good at watching and being excellent at waiting. And above all, Mixy was having a deep understanding and love for one of the core tenants of being a good proper elf, despite silly mistress Lily’s attempts to sometimes have her behave otherwise.
A good elf is not being seen.
Mixy cleared her throat, wiped her tears and then snapped her fingers and melted away into nothing.
To the vault--to Harry.
///
Harry sucked his smarting thumb while Violet almost frantically turned the box over in her hands, muttering little revealing spells under her breath and glaring out at him from underneath her wild bangs.
“You’re sure it stung you?”
“Yes!” Harry exclaimed loudly, frustrated seeing as this was the tenth time she had asked him. “And you can’t find anything wrong with it and it didn’t do anything else so can I please have it back now? It’s technically mine after all.”
“It’s technically mine after all.” She mimicked in a high unflattering voice and he snatched the box back from her hands.
She’d explained to him how it worked, the box was an infinitely expanding space, designed to hold exactly however many wands as was needed and to retrieve the best fitting option, if there was one, for a Potter in need of it and send it smacking into their palm once they reached into the box.
Ten minutes later they were back in the carts on their way to the surface with two trunks and Harry's new hidebehind holster one secret illegal wand heavier.
It hadn’t worked for Violet, but she had not seemed surprised.
“Technically I’m more of a Black than a Potter now.” She said, with a sad little smile she could not quite hide. His own magic, and the very magic heavy in the air around them, had flared angry and defiant (scarlet and gold) at that statement but Violet appeared not to notice and Harry wasn’t quite sure how to tell her and so said nothing at all.
But riding the rickety roller coaster back up to the surface (he had successfully begged off visiting the Black vaults for the day as she still wanted to take him shopping in muggle london) and looking at her pensieve distant expression he wondered if maybe he should have.
Neither of them sensed the hawk-eyed presence tucked into the shadows at their backs, vibrating with powerful intensity.
Nor did they hear the solemn vow that gently rattled the foundations of Gringotts once uttered to Mother Magic herself.
“Mixy will be keeping both her Young Master Harrys safe. She Will.”