ANANKE

The inside of the Leaky Cauldron is just as grubby-looking as the outside, but that doesn't make it any less extraordinary.

As the door swings shut behind him, Hagrid's massive hand heavy on his shoulder, the reality of it finally hits him: there's a whole new world out there, far from Aunt Petunia's shrill screech and Uncle Vernon's punishing bellow and Dudley's casual cruelty, and he is part of it. It feels too good to be true, but it is.

Everyone seems to know Hagrid. They wave at him as he passes, staring unashamedly at the eleven-year-old boy scuttling in his wake.

The barman reaches for a glass. "Got time for a drink?"

"Can't, Tom. I'm on official Hogwarts business," says Hagrid.

Tom the barman peers across the counter at Harry, or more accurately, at his lightning-bolt scar, the only reminder he bears of the night of Voldemort's defeat. That and the fact he is an orphan.

He goes still, eyes widening almost comically, and asks, "Is - is that Harry Potter?"

The pub goes dead quiet, like the calm before the storm, before a veritable horde of wizards and witches surge towards Harry.

Harry hadn't put much stock in Hagrid's insistence that he was famous - because surely the Wizarding World has better things to do than worship a child, especially one like Harry - but he is now abruptly confronted with the proof.

A witch with boils on both cheeks asks for his autograph. A man wearing a wobbly purple hat shakes his hand until it almost falls off. A man he vaguely remembers seeing in the street as a child actually bows to him. Harry can't breathe for the life of him; all his life, he has been treated as less than dirt by his own family, and here are complete strangers treating him like someone… like someone.

Because he defeated a Dark Lord, who according to Hagrid, isn't even dead. Because he is the Boy-Who-Lived. Because he survived and his parents did not.

He shakes hands again and again. Hagrid calls over a twitchy man called Quirrell with an awful stammer.

"He'll be your Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts," Hagrid tells him.

Harry eyes Quirrell dubiously. He looks terrified at the thought of his own subject, not at all capable of teaching, but maybe he isn't always so nervous. Harry hopes so fervently; he doesn't think he can survive a whole year listening to that stammer.

Doris Crockford congratulates him one last time (for what? he asks himself) before Hagrid leads him through the bar and out into a courtyard with nothing but dustbins.

He whips out his umbrella - the same one that he used to give Dudley a pig's tail - and taps three bricks with its tip. Nothing happens. The sound of plastic on mortar echoes through the courtyard, the sound oddly hollow in Harry's ears.

"Hagrid, what's -"

"Wait fer it." The wall splits in the middle, jagged bricks jutting out as it parts. "Welcome ter Diagon Alley," says Hagrid as he smiles down at Harry, beetle eyes crinkling.

Around them, witches and wizards mill about, all dressed immaculately in old-fashioned robes. Shops selling everything from cauldrons to broomsticks to dragon liver line the street. Hagrid takes him to the end of the alley, to a towering white building with marble columns. Standing beside the gleaming bronze doors is a little man with pointed ears and long fingers.

"Gringotts," says Hagrid. "Run by goblins. It's where we'll get your money."

After a stomach-dropping cart ride deep underground and seeing more riches in his vault than he'd ever dreamed of possessing, Harry leaves Gringotts with a bottomless sack full of round gold coins called Galleons. He vows to himself then and there to look after his fortune, to never take it for granted. He will keep his wealth safe. He's sick of having nothing. He's had enough of that in the clutches of Aunt Petunia's talons at Privet Drive.

Hagrid leaves the bank with a small, "top secret" package tucked in his pocket. Harry can't help but wonder what on earth requires such discretion from the giant man.

Feeling ill after the admittedly harrowing cart-ride, Hagrid points Harry towards a robe shop called Madam Malkin's and tells him to get his uniform while he goes back to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink. He does look a bit peaky, so Harry slips inside alone, feeling nervous.

Madam Malkin leads him to the back to get his uniform fitted, where two other children, a girl and boy, stand next to each other on footstools.

"Hullo," says the boy, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," replies Harry.

The boy barrels on, "My father's next door looking at wands and my mother's buying my books. Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I think it's a crime that first-years aren't allowed their own. Maybe I'll smuggle one in somehow."

Harry blinks at the tirade of information, momentarily seeing the image of Dudley in all his selfish pig-like glory superimposed over the boy.

The boy opens his mouth, doubtless to impart some other personal wisdom Harry has not asked for - when the girl elbows him gently, eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. She seems to be doing her best to pretend they do not exist.

The boy scrunches his nose but slows down. "I'm Draco Malfoy, by the way. And this is my cousin, Ananke Black."

Harry looks at them. They don't look anything like cousins. The boy is pale as parchment and his blonde hair is slicked back against his skull, making him look bald in places. The girl is pale too, but if anything she looks ill, a grey tinge to her cheeks and dark circles under her eyes. Her short dark hair is straight, cropped to the length of her chin.

"Hello," Harry says to her.

She turns to look at him, eyes as dark as her name, piercing like a spear. They look empty and void. Fathomless, but somehow Harry gets the feeling he's being x-rayed. Secrets laid bare for her mind to pick apart. A chill trawls down his spine.

He hurriedly averts his eyes. Black's flick briefly to the scar on his forehead, but she says nothing.

"Er - why aren't you shopping with your parents?" he asks, seized by a desperate urge to fill the silence.

Black turns her head to stare at him coldly and it dawns on him that he may have been a bit tactless.

Before he can apologise, or master time travel and erase the past few seconds, Black says, "My father is sick today." And that's that.

Then Draco Malfoy is talking about something called Quidditch, and Harry feels more stupid by the minute. Black does not look at him again, and she does not speak again, or even move again. If Harry didn't know better, he would think she was a very life-like statue.

"Both our whole families have been in Slytherin," Malfoy prattles on, "so of course we'll be there too. Imagine if I was in Hufflepuff. I'd think I'd leave." Malfoy laughs. Harry stands there awkwardly. Black pretends they do not exist. "Look at that man!"

Malfoy points to the front window, where Hagrid is grinning at Harry, two large ice-creams in his hands.

"That's Hagrid," says Harry, mood lifting. "He works at Hogwarts."

"He's the gamekeeper, isn't he?" says the other boy. "My father says he's some sort of savage - gets drunk every now and then and tries to do magic and ends up setting fire to his hut."

"I think he's brilliant."

Malfoy snorts dismissively, before chattering about Quidditch and Slytherin and oh how rich he is. (Harry hadn't even thought it was possible to fit all that in a single sentence, but Malfoy manages somehow.) At last, Harry hops off the stool to pay for the robes. 

"See you at Hogwarts," says the drawling blonde boy.

Next to him, Black raises a hand in what could either be dismissal or a very pathetic wave goodbye. Harry starts. To be honest, she had blended into the background so well that he'd almost forgotten she was there.

He is quiet as he eats the ice-cream Hagrid bought him. The giant man asks what's on his mind, and Harry tells him about the boy and girl in Madam Malkin's.

At the mention of their names, Hagrid gives a little start. "From dark families, those two, very dark. Ol' Lucius Malfoy served You-Know-Who, but only just managed to bribe his way out of prison. I dare say yer parents would've fought against him many times. The Blacks were even worse. Rotten to the core, the lot o' them, and I've no doubt their kids are just as bad."

"They served Vol -" Hagrid flinches - "sorry, You-Know-Who?" Harry says, eyes wide.

Hagrid nods gravely. "So mind you be careful of those two."

Harry absorbs this. "The boy - Malfoy - he said all his family had been in something called Slytherin. And then he mentioned - er - Hufflepuff."

"They're school houses," explains Hagrid. There's four o' them. Everyone says Hufflepuff is fer duffers, but better Hufflepuff than Slytherin. There's not a wizard or witch who went bad who wasn't in Slytherin. You-Know-Who was a Slytherin." Hagrid pauses. "Now, best be gettin' yer books."

With that abrupt change in subject, Hagrid bustles Harry towards the bookshop, and Harry's mind swims with thoughts of Malfoys and Blacks and Dark Lords.

---

Truth be told, Ananke has never wanted to go to Hogwarts.

She doesn't want to leave her father, or Kreacher, or even the screaming mad portrait in the entryway. She wants to stay at Grimmauld Place, in the too-big, too-empty house, because deep in her bones, she knows the too-big, too-empty house is home.

Ananke has never liked loudness, so she finds solace in the quiet. She has never liked talking much either, so she finds peace in the isolation. 

And isolation really is the right word; sometimes she goes months without leaving the house. They have visitors, of course, usually family. But their visits are sparse and never last long. Something about the house, Ananke gathers, though she doesn't understand why it makes them so nervous. Draco once said he felt like the walls would eat him alive if given the chance. Ridiculous. Grimmauld, cold and dusty and filled from floor to rooftop with dark objects and curse residue has never felt hostile to her.

She knows all the other Purebloods families think the world revolves around the Hogwarts acceptance letter, but Ananke has never thought leaving home to stay in a draughty old castle in Scotland sounded in any way appealing. From the day she learned what Hogwarts was, she dreaded the day she had to go. 

Her father insists, though. Something about wanting her to socialise (doubtful, at Pureblood functions she is always glued to her father's side, and never talks to anyone her age) and make friends (impossible, Ananke has never made a friend in her life apart from Draco, who is really her cousin, and even then she only sees him about once a month), and she agrees to not make a fuss.

Fuss. Ananke wouldn't have made one anyway, because she hates fuss, much like her father. They are similar in that respect. And in pretty much every other respect.

So when a tawny owl swoops in to deposit a letter with a purple wax seal and the Hogwarts crest on the dining table, neither of them say anything, but they both just understand that Ananke will go to Diagon Alley to pick up everything on the list.

She accepts the fact that she will go to Hogwarts (even if she wants to stay and play chess with the house-elf) with the same quietness she has always accepted everything else.

The next day, her father sees her off at platform nine and three-quarters a whole two hours before the train is due to depart, mostly to dodge the Malfoys. Ananke knows they mean well, and Merlin knows she loves them, she really does (though nowhere near as much as she loves Father or even Kreacher), but sometimes they're just too much. What other people never understand, something that only Ananke and Regulus ever seem to understand, is that sometimes a whisper goodbye in the night is better. It means more.

The platform is empty when they arrive, which is of course the goal. This means, as there is no-one anywhere near earshot, that Ananke is quite surprised when her father suddenly leans in and lowers his voice.

"Don't worry," he says carefully, eyes dark and intelligent as ever, "if you don't do so well in your Defence Against the Dark Arts class."

Ananke wonders if he is referring to the fact that she is so entrenched in the Dark Arts they're beginning to seep into her very skin. She thinks so, but she doesn't really understand why that would make her automatically bad at Defense. She asks him.

"We are Blacks, Ananke," he whispers, like it's some grave secret.

"Yes. I'd hope I'd know that," she says back, at a normal volume, thank you very much.

He rolls his eyes. "I mean, Blacks have always been more suited to offensive magic. Curses and hexes and jinxes. Defence… it just won't click with you."

Ananke says nothing. She does not think she will be very good at offensive magic when all she really wants to do is stay locked up in Grimmauld Place and peruse the copy of Magick Moste Evile buried in her trunk.

They stand there in silence for a while. Eventually, Father says, "Harry Potter will also be starting Hogwarts this year."

"I know." She does know. She saw him in Diagon Alley.

(She finds it hilarious that Draco, after gushing about how he simply couldn't wait to meet the Harry Potter, didn't even recognise the boy when he turned up at Madam Malkin's, not five feet away.)

Father rests a cold pale hand on her arm and squeezes gently, like one simple action can somehow communicate everything he cannot say out loud. Perhaps, if they were anyone but Regulus and Ananke, it would not be enough, except they are and Ananke thinks she gets it.

She boards the train.

The trunk is heavy and Ananke doesn't yet know how to cast the Feather-light Charm. Father has taught her some magic - a few basic charms but mostly runes and arithmancy, and dark curses because she is good at them - but learning to make things weightless hasn't been much of a concern. 

Ananke settles in a compartment near the end of the train. It's empty, but all the train is empty so that's not saying much. She pulls out a copy of the Charms textbook and reads the hours away. As the day goes on, the train gets more crowded, and the silence on the platform turns into a burble of chatter which turns into a roar. The Malfoys arrive, each clad in the finest silk robes money can buy, and Cousin Narcissa makes a massive fuss over Draco leaving. An idiot with a pet tarantula causes pandemonium as red-headed twins scamper about like monkeys. 

Somewhere in the midst of all this chaos, the compartment door slides open and a boy Ananke knows is Harry Potter sticks his head in. He struggles for a moment to get his trunk in before the red-headed twins - Weasleys, Ananke guesses - help him shove it in the corner. They don't seem to notice her (she wonders if she's just that good at pretending to be invisible or if they're all just stupidly unobservant) so when the twins leave and the boy is alone, he jumps a little when he spots her.

He stares at her with wide, owlish eyes, green as grass and surprisingly innocent - until she jerks her head towards the opposite bench. Sit.

He does, hesitantly, eying her warily. He opens his mouth to - well, Ananke's not sure, but he seems to lose his nerve, and she never finds out what he would have said.

Then Harry spends the next few minutes eavesdropping on the rest of the Weasley family outside the train, which is a bit weird, to be honest,  and then one of them - Ron - comes into the compartment and starts chatting with Harry.

They seem sort of uncomfortable with her in the compartment but she doesn't take any offence; she knows she doesn't have the most open and welcoming air about her - dark hair, dark eyes, dark magic, the word dark may as well be stamped on her forehead. The boys learn to get past the unease, and soon they're talking to each other like they've been best friends their whole lives.

Part of her aches distantly as she watches them. She has never had a friend before, she has never needed one. But being that easy with another person - it's like a dream that will probably never come true.

(Or maybe she's developing a headache; the two of them are loud.)

Ron asks what Harry remembers about the night the Dark Lord fell, and Ananke tunes back into their conversation.

It turns out the Boy-Who-Lived has been raised by Muggles and knows practically nothing about the Wizarding World. Ananke thinks that a) Father would most definitely like to know this, and b) Harry Potter is a blank slate ripe for the educating. She also thinks she's mixed her metaphors a bit, but what can you do?

Then the conversation turns to houses. Ron exalts Gryffindor, (of course he does, he's a Weasley) and disparages Slytherin.

Which house, she wonders, will she be in? Blacks have traditionally been sorted into Slytherin, but Ananke's never been particularly ambitious. Not Gryffindor either - she definitely wouldn't call herself brave or chivalrous or anything like that. Besides, her Uncle Sirius was the only Black to get into Gryffindor, and he's not exactly a great example to follow. She supposes Ravenclaw would support her reclusive tendencies, but she's not particularly studious - she knows some magic, but that's more because she finds it interesting than out of any desire to do well. That's not to say she doesn't want to get good marks, she does, it's just that sometimes she just can't be bothered.

Hufflepuff then. Except Ananke's not particularly hard-working. She could be described as loyal, but her loyalty really only extends as far as her Father and Kreacher, so probably not Hufflepuff. Besides, if she did end up a badger, it would result in a conversation with Father, where he'd mostly mutter under his breath, "What did I do wrong?"

So, Ananke's still deliberating when someone else barges in - really, doesn't anyone knock anymore? - and it's a girl with curly hair and someone's missing a toad and everything's suddenly moving too quickly. The other girl, Hermione Granger, is talking a mile a minute about what she's read about the Boy-Who-Lived in The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. Ananke sort of wants to tell her not to waste her breath, that the book's just anti-Dark propaganda and rhetoric about how evil the Olde Ways are, but she can't quite get the words out.

The boys roll their eyes. Hermione huffs and turns to Ananke, the only other female presence in the compartment. "Do you know what house you'll be in? Gryffindor sounds by far the best, but I don't think Ravenclaw would be too bad."

She should reply, if nothing else for the sake of politeness. But the words sort of lodge in her throat and she knows that if they come out they'll come out a scream.

"I'm Ananke Black," she manages to say. "And I don't know. I suppose I'll see when I get there and until then there's no point fretting about it."

Hermione looks thoughtful. "Black. I think I've read about your family."

Ananke fixes her with a stare she knows via Draco is incredibly unnerving. If she brings up Sirius...

Luckily, the other girl doesn't. "Your father's Regulus Black, a Lord on the Wizengamot, right? I think it's fascinating how the wizard governing body works. I'm not from a wizarding family, you know, so this is all terribly exciting... Anyway, we've got to be off to look for Neville's toad. See you at Hogwarts."

Hermione leaves as abruptly as she arrived, the small pudgy boy - Neville, apparently - trailing behind her. A Longbottom. Ananke recognises that name. The boy is one of her cousin Bellatrix's victims, which is awkward. She hopes he won't hold it against her.

The boys are talking about Quidditch - haven't they already done that? - when the compartment door slides open yet again and this time it's Draco and two of his thugs who enter. Ananke lifts her book so it hides her face, because the ensuing chaos of putting a Weasley and Malfoy in the same room without at least ten other people is bound to be bad, at the very least, and she'd rather not be caught up in the middle of it. There's some sort of ancient blood feud between them that nobody remembers starting, only that it did start and that the two families have been at it like cats and dogs ever since.

"Is it true?" Draco asks, rather aggressively, which won't endear him to anyone, Ananke could tell him. "I've heard Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?" Then he spots Ananke in the corner. "And you! We were looking everywhere for you on the platform!"

Ananke doesn't say anything in response to his last statement, because it is just that: a statement and not a question and so requires no answer. But it does seem a bit pathetic to say nothing, so she says, "Yes. This is Harry Potter."

Draco shoots her a final look she doesn't have the energy to decipher the meaning of, before he turns back to Harry. "Well, you must remember me. We met in Diagon Alley."

Harry nods cautiously. "You're Draco Malfoy."

Ron gives a small cough, which might be hiding a snigger.

Draco sneers, "You think my name's funny, do you? Well, you need no introduction. My father says all the Weasleys have red hair, second-hand robes, and more children than they can afford."

This, while very true, is plain rude, and Ananke feels Harry Potter is entirely justified in refusing Draco's proffered hand. Then Draco gets steadily ruder, and the conversation becomes more of a confrontation, and the boys are now geared up to throw hands instead of shake them.

Enough, Ananke both thinks and says, standing up and shutting her book sharply. "Draco, I think you've overstayed your welcome. Take your vassals and go. You two -" she points at Ron and Harry, one after the other - "need to get a better lid on your tempers. If you're so delicate that you can't handle Draco, you'll never survive Snape."

If Ananke doesn't like to talk, she hates arguing. But she is good at talking people around to her point of view. At the beginning, when she and Father moved into Grimmauld, Father would sometimes go days at a time without talking, wrapped in grieving for Mother and all else they had lost. Grandmother Walburga's portrait was pretty much the only human interaction there was, except all she talked about was mudbloods and how to stand properly and which robes were the right robes for a proper Pureblood to wear. Ananke disagreed with much of what the portrait said and spent a lot of time debating - well, debating was the nice word - with her.

When Father was speaking again, he told her, "You can't argue with a portrait, Ananke. They're created with complicated soul magic, and reflect the subject's mannerisms and beliefs at the time the portrait was commissioned. She's only a reflection. She doesn't have a soul. You can't change her mind."

Ananke still spoke to Walburga's portrait though, and practiced sort of - talking her around. Weaving her words so that they aligned with both Walburga's beliefs and hers. You cannot argue with a portrait, she knew, but perhaps you can talk it around.

As Ananke predicted, Harry and Ron are confused at the mention of Snape, and about everything she's just said really, which takes the steam from their sails. Draco, while angered after being essentially told to get lost, is mollified by the reminder of how Snape will surely torment them and exits with little to no fuss.

They soon arrive at Hogsmeade station, and Hagrid waves them over to small boats with which they will cross the Black Lake. Ananke manages to evade Draco again and ends up sharing a boat with Hermione Granger and an Italian boy who, with his smooth voice and curled lip, is destined for Slytherin. His name is Blaise Zabini.

Ananke's heart thuds, and suddenly they are halfway across the lake. Hermione rambles, did you know there's a giant squid in the lake, I read all about it in Hogwarts: A History, and Ananke shares a look with Blaise.

In the depths of the lake, she sees something that could be a tentacle, or just a trick of the light. Or, rather, darkness, because the sky is now the colour of her name. Her father doesn't like large bodies of water, Ananke remembers. Lakes, in particular. His fear seems very sensible now.

Then Professor McGonagall, as stern as Father described, is calling them into the Great Hall. The ghosts - when did they show up again? - part as they file into the room in decidedly not-neat lines.

Ananke can hear the upper-years whisper to each other, isn't Harry Potter starting this year but also isn't that Black girl starting as well, and it's a bit disheartening, because she knows whatever they say about her next isn't particularly nice.

The Sorting Hat sings its song, and Professor McGonagall calls, "Black, Ananke!" but it's soon, too soon; her name is second one on the list.

Ananke knows she would - should - be nervous, but nervousness requires energy and she has none to spare. All she feels is tired, a bone-deep tiredness, and not even the weight of all the stares and whispers in all the Great Hall can make her feel something as she walks to the stool. She is numb.

McGonagall settles the Hat on her head. Her heart beats once. Twice. Three times.

The Hat bellows for Gryffindor, and Ananke hears someone - probably Draco - make a strangled sort of noise behind her, but she does not look back as she walks towards the end of the Gryffindor table. There is cheering, but it's sort of lackluster, and shocked too, and the whispers are much more prominent. She sits down and looks back at the High Table. The Professors all exchange glances and Ananke can guess they are thinking of Sirius the Gryffindor, Sirius the mass-murderer, Sirius the Azkaban inmate.

The Sorting continues, and Ananke notices that a few of the housemates around her - mostly the Purebloods - have edged away from her like she has a contagious disease, because she's a Black in the house of blood-traitors. Ironically, it's the Muggleborns who end up welcoming her. After all, they're the only ones who actually don't know the illustrious history of the Noble and Moste Ancient House of Black. Ananke kind of wants to laugh, except she hasn't laughed in years and it feels like her vocal cords will snap if she tries.

Draco and his vassals get into Slytherin, as does Blaise Zabini and a collection of other boys and girls Ananke recognises from various Pureblood functions. Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom are Gryffindors, and Hermione Granger too, though Ananke honestly thought she'd be a Ravenclaw. She supposes that people are not always as they first seem.

Dumbledore says some nonsense - ("Don't be fooled, Ananke. The man may appear senile at times, but he is far more powerful than either you or I have a hope of becoming," Father said once.) - and food appears on the plates.

Her fellow first-years don't seem to have any reservations about being friendly towards her, but Ananke knows it's because they are young and innocent and don't really know the full illustrious history of the Noble and Moste Ancient House of Black.

Hermione is talking to her about the Herbology textbook. Ananke gives monosyllabic responses when necessary and thinks about the immediate consequences of her Sorting.

One is Draco, who is very pointedly not looking at her on the other side of the Great Hall. Another is Father, but he's more of a non-issue, because she knows he'd love her even if she became a serial killer, but she also knows they'll probably have a talk when she goes back to Grimmauld for Winter break.

She shoves a piece of a surprisingly tasty lemon-chicken abomination into her mouth and chews before responding to Hermione - because she's not an animal, Ronald.

Mostly, Ananke just feels confused about the whole thing. Gryffindor is the house of bravery and slaying dragons with ruby-encrusted swords and charging into battle naked - and the point is, Ananke doesn't really know why she's here. Ananke has never been brave in her life, and she certainly doesn't feel up to doing any of the other stuff.

Hermione has now trapped Percy, one of Ron's older brothers, in conversation, though the latter doesn't seem to mind somehow. Harry clutches his scar and winces when he meets Snape's eyes.

Up in Gryffindor tower, past the portrait of a very fat lady, apparently named the Fat Lady - how basic, and also a bit demeaning, though the portrait doesn't seem to mind - Ananke shares a dorm with Hermione, who is still talking, by the way, and two other girls. Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, she learns, are even more vain than Draco, which is a real achievement, and five times more vapid than the most vapid Muggle fairy-tale princess.

"Perhaps you'll make a friend," Father had said.

Yeah, right.