Summer Routine
Harry had a great day with Susan and Babbling. After Susan had flooed over, they went canoeing on the river nearby, laughing and screeching together as they did their best not to turn their canoe over. Babbling had to catch them once with a floating charm, but the two teenagers just laughed uproariously at almost falling into the water and went on fishing their paddles out together. When they came back to Babble House that afternoon, they found two cups of hot chocolate waiting for them in the kitchen under a stasis charm.
The evening found Harry and his guardians sitting together in the living room, wrapped comfortably in blankets and working on their respective crafting projects while Harry energetically told them all about his outing that day. Aurora bemoaned that she had forgotten to charm her camera to follow them on their trip and asked Bathsheda to take it with him on the next one. The rune master agreed with a smile, offering to let Snape collect a memory from this afternoon to retroactively produce a picture, if an unmoving one. All the while, Snape was leaning comfortably against Aurora´s shoulder, knitting on… something. To be honest, Harry still couldn´t quite believe he was knitting.
On Wednesday, the Gryffindor had his next Mind Healer appointment. This time, he was much less nervous and even a bit happy to see Genevieve again. He picked out another board game for them to play called Two-Faced Angels that was about cats trying to get annoyance points from their “hoomans”, written exactly like that. Genevieve started off their game strong, getting ten annoyance points from “pushing a glass of the table staring the hooman right in the eye” and “stealing the blanket”, but Harry quickly closed her lead by playing the “shadow the hooman in the bathroom” and “making noise at 2am” cards.
They talked, too, while playing, but it was surprisingly easy for Harry to tell her about his last year at Hogwarts, and even a bit of the summer before that. She didn´t even take notes or anything, though the Gryffindor imagined she probably did that after the session was finished. He found himself thinking a lot about what she told him in that session, even while he was cleaning the winter tearoom that afternoon, chatting a bit about his Mind Healer appointment with the portraits, too.
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Thursday morning brought another Daily Prophet and with it excitement into Babble House. On the very front page of the newspaper, there was a headline declaring the “Sirius Black Case” to be reopened as new evidence suggested the alleged mass murderer to be innocent of all crimes. Listening to his guardians conversation about the article, Harry was surprised to note they were all convinced of his godfathers innocence already. Even more puzzling, when he had asked how they had known, Aurora told him that Snape had confided in them after his run in with Black in Harry´s third year and expressed his frustrations in the Wizarding World´s justice system.
Then, on Friday, Harry was finally standing in front of Hermione´s house. It was a nice house, very posh looking, but still showing a few personal touches. Harry had been exited about the upcoming visit all week, so much so that he could barely get a minute of sleep the night before. The Gryffindor took a step towards the front door, glancing back at Aurora uncertainly, when the door was ripped open from inside.
“Harry!”, Hermione called exited and barrelled into her friend. “You´re here!”
He stood there for a moment, before catching his wits again: “And you´re heavy”, he told his friend teasingly.
Hermione huffed at him for that, but she extricated herself from the hug nevertheless: “Good morning, Professor Sinistra. Will you be staying for tea?”
Aurora laughed lightly, shaking her head: “Oh, no. I´m just here dropping Harry off. Harry, I will be back to pick you up at four. Now go on, have a good day.”
“See you later”, the Gryffindors told her politely.
Hermione led her friend into her house. Harry toed off his shoes in the entrance way. The inside of the house reminded him of Privet Drive in that it was spotless. Coats and summer jackets were hung up neatly in a row along the wall and even the shoes were straightened out to line up in perfect parallels. Just to be careful, the Gryffindor aligned his own shoes in the same way.
“So…”, he said awkwardly. “I´m here. What do we do now?”
“My parents are out”, Hermione told him, already leading Harry through the house. “They left us some sandwiches for lunch, but we can just take them up to my room.”
“Has your summer been nice so far?”, Harry asked her. “Mine´s been… weird.”
They climbed the last stairs and stepped into Hermione´s room. It wasn´t a big room and on first glance, Harry thought they might have accidentally entered a library instead. Every wall had bookshelves filled to the brim, the books neatly sorted into rows and stacks. In the corner shelf, the Gryffindor spotted their Hogwarts course books, as well as some reference material he had seen his friend borrow from the library for the summer.
“Oh, this is nice”, Harry commented as Hermione set the platter with sandwiches down on a small coffee table that was crammed into a corner. “Reminds me of the library at Babble House.”
“About that”, the bushy-haired girl said cheerfully, “how is it living with the bat? – And company.”
“Not as bat-like as I thought”, the raven-haired boy answered cheekily. “No, really, they´re really nice. It´s kinda disconcerting. And I really don´t know what to tell Sirius.”
Twirling her hair through her fingers, Hermione frowned: “You haven´t talked to him yet? Well, written… You know what I mean. Anyway, you should really write him.”
Harry stalled a bit before answering, picking a sandwich and nibbling on a corner: “I know. I just… I don´t know why I haven´t written. I… can we talk about something else?”
“Alright”, she agreed. “But you´re going to have to deal with it sooner or later.”
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Saturday passes peacefully for Harry, bringing with it the last of his summer assignments. Once he is finished, he gleefully spends the last hours of the morning raiding the library for more interesting books than the boring reference books he had to read for bloody History of magic. Eventually, he settles for a collection of fairytales by the brothers Grimm and a rather lengthy book series written by an author called Terry Pratchett that is so out of whack, he is rolling on the floor laughing after getting no more than a few pages in. He takes his books over into the treehouse in the gardens, forgetting the time until his stomach reminds him of the existence of food.
„Welcome back“, Rita Lestrange greeted Harry as he comes into the tearoom with some sandwiches.
“Hi Rita”, the Gryffindor mumbled. “I finished my summer homework, so I have some free time now. Thought you could continue to tell me about the families of the sacred circle, if you don´t mind.”
“Oh, not at all”, the blond girl in the portrait told him. “Sit down, sit down. Now…. Where did we stop last time?”
“MacMillan”, the man in the portrait beside her interjected. “Next is Malfoy, if we continue alphabetically.”
“Oh yes, you are right! So, Malfoy. They have a fascinating history, truly. Steeped in spiritualism and religion, too. About a century before my time, the light and dark religious factions were fighting a war, because they did not respect the other´s faith.”
“It was much more complicated than that”, Mr. Lestrange interjected again, then sighed. “Though for the sake of simplification that description may be accurate enough.”
Rita rolled her eyes, making Harry laugh and having to set down his sandwich for a moment: “So, there was a war between religious factions. However, after the current high priestess of the dark faction was killed, her successor, the Lady Mórrígan, did not like state of affairs and decided to approach the high priest of the light faction directly under parley law. Her attempts at reaching an understanding ultimately lead to what we call Mórrígan´s treaty. With it, peace between both pagan beliefs is secured in marriage between the high priest of the light and the high priestess of the dark. Considering the way these positions are handled in the different sects, this means the Malfoy heir will always be contracted to be married to the next in line for the head of the dark sect, whose headship is rotated between member families. The treaty also decides the way in which the children of the Malfoy family need to be educated, as the male children need to follow the beliefs of the light sect for the treaty to work, while the dark sect was not willing to give up the daughters of their high priestess to their religious rivals.”
During her explanation the Gryffindor sat up straight, noticing the importance of what he was told quickly: “Wait, so the Malfoys are actually more important for the Wizarding World than the other families of the sacred circle?”
“Not necessarily”, Mr Lestrange answered his question. “But in times of unrest, they become the spiritual leaders for both factions which means they hold considerable political power, both Lord and Lady Malfoy.”
“So that´s why Malfoy is such a snob”, Harry commented. “You said the high priestess for the dark pagan belief comes from a rotation of families. His mother was a Black, I think. Do you know which family comes after that?”
“That most likely has changed over time”, Mr Lestrange told him sincerely. “Also, the succession of high priestesses isn´t bound to nobility, so there is a chance, it will be someone from a family that isn´t part of the sacred circle.”
„Huh“, said Harry. „Why is so much of this not written down. Like, I can find most of the information on the members of the circle, but as soon as it comes into contact with religion, there´s almost nothing in the books.”
“Well…”, Rita started hesitantly. “Many of our religious practices date back to times when people could not read or things just were not written down. They might have kept the practice of teaching their traditions through stories and direct contacts, if they see it as traditional.”
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