When Patterns Are Broken

“Who’s that from?” Sirius asked.

They were eating breakfast at the kitchen table, where they took all their meals. Though Sirius had renovated Grimmauld Place over the past year, the dining room held bad memories for him, and it was still too big for Harry’s comfort. 

“It’s from Theo,” Harry said, turning the letter over.

“Theo?”

“Theodore Nott.”

Sirius took a sip of his coffee. He’d gotten the whole house drinking it, though Kreacher was restricted to only half a cup after nearly polishing the paint off Walburga’s portrait. “You haven’t talked about him before.”

Harry poked at his eggs. “No one knows we’re friends. I think his family is kind of like how yours was. At least his dad is. He doesn’t talk about it much.”

Sirius leaned back in his chair. “Thaddeus Nott, I believe. He was at Hogwarts when my parents were. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had the same parenting method, if it could be called such a thing.”

Harry scratched his head. “He said he might not be able to write to me over summer.” He picked up the letter again. “I’m worried he’ll get in trouble for it.”

“Kids who grow up like us,” Sirius said, including Harry in that category, “know how to handle our families. I knew, I just chose to ignore my better judgment. If he thinks it’s safe to owl you, it probably is.”

“He has a gyrfalcon,” Harry said, then went back to his food, reading the letter with one hand.

…Father and I dined at Malfoy Manor. Malfoy was tedious. His father was invited to the Quidditch World Cup. They have seats next to the Minister. I have only remembered this as he made sure to remind the table every five minutes…

…I have not been able to locate a loupe powerful enough to examine the runes on Hedwig’s accessory, nor have I been able to acquire a muggle microscope, as you suggested…

…you may send replies with Ranog using a pseudonym…

Harry folded the letter back up and put it in his pocket. He liked that Sirius hadn't asked what it was about. He was really big on privacy.

The Daily Prophet arrived on the table. 

“Thank you, Kreacher,” Sirius said, picking it up. He stiffened, then his face grew hard. 

“Did something happen?” Harry asked. Sirius handed him the paper.

Alleged Death Eater Peter Pettigrew Escapes from Ministry Custody

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Harry exclaimed. “What kind of Mickey Mouse operation are they running?”

“Am I supposed to say something about his language?” Sirius asked the ceiling. “I’m sure mother would, so I’ll do the opposite and ignore it. I don’t even understand the second thing you said.”

“I heard it on the television,” Harry said, reading the short article. “It means they’re doing a poor job of running things.”

“And I’m case in point,” Sirius said, standing up. “I need to owl Gwen, though I doubt this will affect my case. We’ve already got his confession, and the Minister himself as a witness. Are you okay on your own for a bit?”

“Yeah, I’m going to work on the garden.”

During Harry’s third year, the garden gnomes had renewed hostilities. The snake had moved on, and had been a rather mercurial hunter anyway. The gnomes had no natural predators other than kneazles—Sirius was allergic to cats—and the ferret-like jarveys, either of which Harry knew would end in a bloodbath. That left Harry.

Harry had reached out to Neville for help designing a kitchen and potions garden, and though Harry had been necessarily vague, Neville took to it enthusiastically. Between them they had it all planned out. He just needed to get rid of the gnomes. Without other magical gardens nearby, they had migrated back. Harry was going to ship them off somewhere.

He kicked at the ground, curious gnomes popped up, and Harry stunned and levitated them into crates, where they stood around complaining. 

Buckbeak suddenly flew down from the owlery-cum-stable and took to the crates of gnomes like a pig to the trough. It got messy.

Harry went back inside. 

Sirius found Harry in the parlor taking apart a wizarding radio.

“Did you know muggles have something called patents?” Harry asked. “If you have an invention, you can register it with the government and make it illegal to copy it. Basically.”

Sirius sat down. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Copy it?”

“I wanted to see if I could enchant a tape player to bring to school,” Harry said. “I thought maybe something like the record player, but that isn’t the same thing. You can make it work using magic, but that’s different than using magic to work. So I thought that the wireless might be similar, before I realized that just because something transmits sound doesn’t make it the same. Muggle radios literally use radio waves. I have no idea how the wireless works. I don’t think magical people know what radio waves even are. If they were using a frequency by accident, muggles should be able to pick it up, but they don’t.”

“Doesn’t your friend Ron’s father work for the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office?”

“He’ll cover it up for me.”

Sirius barked a laugh. “If you say so.”

“Actually,” Harry said, setting down the wire he’d been unraveling, “Mr. Weasley had that flying car I told you about. And you had a motorcycle. How did you get it to run on magic instead of petrol? Where does the energy come from? I could do the same thing, with magic instead of batteries. I should have thought of that…”

“It’s been a long time since I worked on the motorcycle,” Sirius said. “I’ll see what I remember. Or we can steal it back from Hagrid.”

“I’ll steal it,” Harry said decisively. 

Sirius smiled for a moment. “There was something I thought we should talk about. Two things, actually.”

“What is it?”

Sirius took a steadying breath. “If you’d ever want to talk to someone about what it was like for you growing up, we could find a muggle healer for you.”

Harry frowned. He didn’t want to talk about it at all. He wanted to pretend it never happened. “Maybe. Have you?”

“Lily suggested it, actually,” Sirius said. “Though I think Azkaban undermined any progress. It was tricky because I had to avoid mentioning magic at all.”

“What if the reason is because I have magic?” Harry said.

Sirius had a pained expression. “That’s one thing they might talk about. Saying it was because you have magic makes it sound like it was your fault, which it wasn’t.”

Harry stared at the rug. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“It’s something that might help. It might not, we don’t know. But it’s an option, if you want it.”

“Okay. What was the second thing?”

“Remus.”

“I’d rather not,” Harry said, turning back to the partially dismantled radio. “I don’t like him, but I also feel bad for him.”

Sirius sighed. “Not very positive emotions. I understand. Sometimes I think I only like him in the abstract. The idea of Remus Lupin.”

“A Platonic ideal,” Harry said. 

Sirius laughed. "Not quite."

“Are you talking to him?” Harry asked. “Did you want to invite him over?”

“We’ve spoken. There’s a lot of history between us which I may tell you about later. But our relationship is…fraught. If we meet it would be outside.”

Harry looked up again. “Then what’s there to say?”

“Would you be upset if he owled you? Or would you burn the letters?”

“That depends on the contents,” Harry said.

“I’ll tell him that’s a ‘yes’.”

When redoing the house between his visits to Hogwarts, Sirius had left his old room mostly alone. He had told Harry he could do what he wanted with it, having taken out his more personal items and moved into the master bedroom. Harry wasn’t sure what he wanted it to look like. His decorations in the cupboard had consisted of drawing in the dust. 

The posters were all stuck with permanent sticking charms, though Harry wasn’t sure about how permanent the magic was. He practiced charms and transfiguration on all of them, turning the walls into an eccentric medley that pulsed with magic. It gave Sirius a headache. 

Harry had steadily increased his meditation from fifteen minutes to an hour, and Sirius agreed he was at the point where he could begin clearing his thoughts. 

“Is there a way to test me?” Harry asked. 

“I’m not a great legilimens,” Sirius said. “It wasn’t something I wanted to do, after the way I had been taught.”

“What happened?”

Sirius hesitated. “One method of training is to break into someone’s mind repeatedly. Like how a bird will push her chick out of the nest to force it to fly, but doing it over and over again. It’s horrid.”

“Neville’s uncle dropped him out of a window to make sure he wasn’t a squib,” Harry said. 

“Right, it’s like that, except the legilimens invades your deepest, most private thoughts, digging up your worst memories, forcing you to relive them. The only choice you have is to either end the spell somehow or stop thinking."

"That's brutal."

"It is. It's important to understand that something like that is a relic from a time when we were hunted. Children who displayed accidental magic had to learn how to control it quickly, or put their whole family at risk."

"So what should we do?" Harry asked.

"I can test you," Sirius said. "Like I said, I'm not a great legilimens, not subtle at all. We would start slowly, and gradually increase the pressure. We'll also give you time to focus. Want to try?"

"Alright," Harry said, closing his eyes for a moment. "I'm ready."

"Legilimens."

Harry instantly hated the feeling. It was invasive, and violating. He didn't know if he could ever fail to recognize someone doing this to him. It was worse because he knew Sirius was making it obvious, and knowing that people existed who could do this without you noticing was profoundly disturbing. 

Harry couldn't focus at all.

He realized after a moment that he had fallen over on his bed. His head was pounding.

"I hated that," Harry said. It was hard to get his mouth to make the right shapes. "How long was that? It felt like forever."

"Five seconds."

He buried his face into his pillow.

"You did a good job," Sirius said. "I'm not exaggerating. I stopped because I could tell you were starting to spiral." Sirius rubbed his nose. "Everything smells like smoke right now."

Harry sat up, massaging his temple. "What about clearing my thoughts?"

"Try putting the fire out."

Later, when his headache went away, Harry tried that. He pictured a flame, burning steadily, then doused it.

He immediately started hyperventilating. His eyes snapped open. He pinched himself to make sure he was still real. Harry had never felt so empty, not for a long time. And he was angry that he was reminded of his cupboard, of nights where he couldn't sleep, crying until there was nothing left but to stare at the darkness.

He shuddered, then went to find Sirius.

They tried going to Godric's Hollow once in early July. Sirius apparated them there, and it took a while for Harry to realize his lingering nausea was not related to their mode of transport.

"The Potters weren't—aren't—like the Blacks," Sirius said. "Your grandparents only had the one house, which your dad sold after they died. As far as I know he used the money to buy this house, and put the rest into a vault for you."

"I was really worried about dealing with a big estate," Harry said, looking at where the roof was missing. At a house where all the people were missing. "I think I want to go home."

"Then let's go."

"Would it be okay for me to work on potions?" Harry asked. He was studying in order to understand the relationships between ingredients, and other aspects of brewing. What he learned at school was making much more sense.

"If Kreacher can supervise, of course. Are you doing your summer work?"

"No," Harry said. "I wanted to work through what I've learned since first year."

"Why?" Sirius asked. "You won't have OWLs for almost two years."

They were in the library, where Harry had discovered a small fiction section. He was intrigued by what magical people envisioned as fantasy, such as speculative magic. Sirius was working on something that he said he would show Harry later, and which involved an entire herd's worth of parchment.

"Because it's impossible to learn in class. People try throwing things in my cauldron, and Snape takes points off us for no reason. I think he grades my work lower on purpose." Harry closed his eyes, frustrated. "He hated me from the beginning. On the first day he asked a bunch of questions I didn't know the answers to. Is it just because of that thing that happened with Lupin?"

Sirius shut his book, a sober look on his face. “It’s more complicated than that, though that was one of the worst pranks we did. It was one of the worst things I did,” he added. “I could have gotten someone killed, and turned one of my closest friends into a killer." Sirius closed his eyes and had a pained expression. "I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things. That’s pretty much all you can do in Azkaban.”

Sirius sat up. “What I’m going to tell you should stay between us. I would prefer it if you didn't tell Hermione, or Ron, or even Theo."

Harry nodded.

"It started when we met on the train."

Harry listened, at first seeing parallels between how his friends and Malfoy's interacted, though he doubted Malfoy secretly fancied any of them. But as he listened to how his father, and Sirius, were essentially bullies, he grew increasingly distressed. It reminded him more of Dudley and his gang. 

Harry appreciated how candid Sirius was. He didn't try to make excuses or justify the things he had done. Harry didn't think he could stand to live with Sirius if he'd ended up acting like Snape about it. He couldn't imagine Sirius assigning essays on how to kill potions masters, or yelling in first-years' faces.

"Basically, you and dad were bullies, but so was Snape, and he was friends with mum, who dad harassed for years?" Harry paused, frowning. "And Snape's obsessed with my dad and my mum."

"I wouldn't put it exactly like that," Sirius said. "But that's a fair summary."

"He shouldn't be working at a school," Harry declared. "He's the worst to me, but he's awful to almost anyone who isn't in Slytherin. I've thought maybe if I'd let the Hat put me there he'd be nicer, but after hearing all this I think he would have been worse."

“I can see that happening,” Sirius said. “I don’t know why Dumbledore keeps him on. He is one of the best potioneers around, but that doesn’t make one a good teacher.” He paused, then asked, “Are you interested in potions? It wasn’t my best subject, but I could help.”

Harry shrugged. “I was thinking about how muggles make batteries. They’re made up of chemicals, which is like their version of potions. It’s a lot more complicated though, from the muggle library books I’ve looked at. I was thinking, what if there was a magical battery? Would that work on muggle electronics?”

“That’s an interesting idea,” Sirius said. “It sounds similar to alchemy, which involves advanced potions.”

“Oh.”

Sirius grinned and stood up. “Come on, let’s get your books. We’ll start ordering ingredients.”

“I paid good money for this to go well,” Sirius said, straightening his robes. "Are you sure you don't want to stay home? It's going to be dull."

"I'm coming with," Harry said firmly. "I'm bringing my cloak too."

"Looking out for me?" Sirius said, grinning. 

"Of course!"

Sirius chuckled, ruffling Harry's hair. He scowled and tried to flatten it again.

"James used to do that on purpose," Sirius said. "Said it made him look like he just got off a broom."

"He sounds like…"

"A bit of a prat?" Sirius smiled sadly. "He was. We all were." Sirius checked the time. "Alright. Remember, it's Ministry Atrium."

"I've only messed it up once," Harry said, grabbing some floo powder and tossing it at the fire. He'd helped relocate the ashwinders to the kitchen hearth, and learned how to freeze their eggs for use as ingredients in potions.

He was flung out into an ostentatious hall bustling with ministry workers. The floors and walls were paneled in warm, expensive looking wood. The ceiling was a deep cerulean, painted with unreadable golden symbols twisting around each other. It made his head hurt to look at. Sirius flooed in just behind him, and picked Harry up off the ground.

Sirius brushed the soot off Harry’s clothes. “It takes getting used to. You should have seen Regulus—” He stopped, then patted Harry’s shoulder. “Gwen said she’d meet us by the fountain."

A pink-haired woman in red robes materialized next to them. Startled, Harry moved quickly back into Sirius.

"Wotcher! I'm Auror Tonks, I'll be your escort this evening!"

"It's half seven in the morning," Harry said, before his thoughts skidded to a halt. "Tonks? As in Nymphadora Tonks?"

Tonks briefly turned her nose into a pig snout, ostensibly to wrinkle it better. "Just call me Tonks."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sirius said. "I've been meaning to owl Andromeda, but with the trial…"

"It's alright," Tonks said cheerily. "We can catch up later. Let's get a move on, Madam Bones docks you if you're tardy."

Tonks cleared a path for them through the crowd, drawing even more attention than Azkaban escapee Sirius Black and Boy-Who-Lived Harry Potter had on their own. It was impressive.

"How'd she change her nose into a pig's?" Harry asked.

"She's a metamorphmagus,” Sirius said. “It's a rare Black family trait, a sort of specialized transfiguration. She can change her body parts at will, make herself look like other people. And animals too, it seems."

"Do you think she could turn herself into a tree? Or a rock?"

"I tried to turn myself into a cream horn once," Tonks chimed in. "Didn't work. And here we are!” She said, spreading her arms out. “The Fountain of Magical Brethren. Constructed in 1719 by…”

Harry stared up at the fountain while Tonks rambled on like an actual tour guide. “Are we living in a fascist regime?”

“It is rather shameless, isn’t it?” Sirius said, frowning at the solid gold witch and wizard at which the centaur, goblin, and house-elf gazed in adoring supplication, water fountaining from the strangest places. “How do you know about something like that anyway?”

“Vernon likes World War II documentaries.”

“Ah.”

Tonks was still going on, but finally wound down when Sirius’ solicitor, Gwen Davies, arrived. She was an older woman with blunt brown hair and an implacable mien.

“Good to see you, Mr. Black,” she said, shaking his hand. She turned to Harry. “And it’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Potter,” shaking his. Harry gave her a fixed smile, unsure as always at how to deal with people’s treatment of the Boy-Who-Lived.

Tonks led them to the lifts, which they rode down to Level Ten, a dark and cavernous basement with architecture committed to intimidating them. 

“Never been here before,” Sirius said casually, looking around. The walls absorbed the sound of their words, even as their footsteps echoed. “I heard all the Death Eater trials were down here. I was never given the courtesy.”

“We’re here,” Tonks said. Even her cheerfulness had been diminished. “Good luck, cousin,” she said.

Sirius gave her a ridiculous bow, then followed Davies into the courtroom. Tonks stopped Harry before he went in. “What is it?”

“If things go badly,” Tonks said, “we can look after you. My mum, that is.”

Harry wasn’t sure how to feel about this, so he just said, “Thank you.”

Tonks nodded firmly, then pushed him gently into the courtroom. It was a large, spherical room, with rows of seating stacked along the walls. Sirius and Davies were down in the well, far below the judge’s bench. Anyone sitting there had to lean back to see anything. Harry scanned the room, noted that he was drawing stares, and hastened to join them. 

Sirius was right in that it would be boring. Harry couldn’t follow half of what was going on, which didn’t help with the anxiety coursing through him. Sirius was made to take a truth-telling potion and relive what happened the night Harry’s parents died, and his search for Pettigrew. Davies had vetted the list of questions, so he wasn’t forced into revealing anything very personal before receiving the antidote. His animagus status was exposed, but as far as Harry knew that had already been taken care of by registering him and paying a fine. He’d been looking into animal transfiguration to see if he could turn Sirius into different kinds of dogs. 

It had been hours, and Harry had thought it was over until a smug Lucius Malfoy asked about Buckbeak.

“Is it true you fled Hogwarts on a stolen hippogriff?”

“‘Fleeing’ implies I was evading justice,” Sirius said. “As we’ve just established I was, and am, innocent of the crimes I was imprisoned for.”

“Allow me to simplify it for you. Did you leave Hogwarts on a stolen hippogriff?”

“I was not aware that it was stolen.”

“But you did leave on a hippogriff?”

“I did.”

“Are you aware that hippogriffs are Classified XXX Magical Creatures, and that possession of such creatures is—”

“If I may,” Davies interrupted. “The hippogriff at issue is one that had been in Ministry custody. We have five witnesses, including our Chief Warlock Albus Dumbledore and our Minister Cornelius Fudge, both in attendance, who have testified the hippogriff escaped on his own prior to a dubiously legal execution. My client is not on trial for possession of a restricted creature, nor is the hippogriff’s legal status relevant to this case.”

Madam Bones said, “Agreed. Please stay on task.”

Lucius Malfoy struggled to contain his annoyance. “I have no further questions.”

“Ms. Davies?”

“Nor I.”

“Then we shall recess. Ms. Davies, Mr. Black, please exit the courtroom.”

They sat outside of the courtroom for what felt like an eternity. Tonks had gone off somewhere and brought back food, and kept changing parts of herself into different animals to make Harry laugh. The doors finally creaked open, and they were called back in. 

“In the case of Sirius Orion Black III, the defendant is cleared of all charges,” Madam Bones pronounced. “The defendant shall receive compensation for wrongful conviction and imprisonment, the amount totalling to…”

They left the courtroom in mixed spirits. Harry was thrilled Sirius no longer had the threat of Azkaban hanging over him. However, no one was being held responsible for what happened. 

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” Sirius said as they parted with Tonks, then Davies, and made their way through the Atrium. They decided to have dinner somewhere in muggle London as Sirius wanted a victory curry. 

“More like a bottomless pit,” Harry said, thinking of going over the Black vaults with Griphook. “Has anyone in this family ever had a job?”

“Not since Phineas,” Sirius said. “Actually, I believe being headmaster was more of a hobby for him. He’s considered one of the worst headmasters in history.”

“Why do you sound proud of that?”

“Sirius, Harry, if I could have a moment of your time.”

They stopped and saw Dumbledore approaching in shimmering robes of lavender, covered in kittens playing with balls of yarn. 

“Good afternoon, headmaster,” Sirius said politely. 

“Congratulations on your trial,” Dumbledore said, smiling. 

“Thank you.”

“I was hoping I could speak with Harry,” he said, switching his focus. “I have to say I was surprised to see him here today.”

Sirius put an arm around Harry’s shoulder. Harry tried to relax. 

“Yes, sir?”

“I was wondering if your family knows you’re here?”

“They do,” Harry said guilelessly. Sirius and Tonks were family, after all. 

“How has your summer been?” Dumbledore asked. “I know Little Whinging isn’t very engaging for a young wizard, but—”

“I’m sorry, headmaster,” Sirius cut in, “but we’ve got a reservation to get to.” Sirius steered Harry away towards one of the fireplaces. “Where does he get off, interrogating you in the middle of the ministry?” Sirius muttered. 

“I don’t think they take reservations,” Harry said.

“Well, he doesn’t know that.” Sirius tossed some floo powder in. “We’ll go to the Leaky first, we don’t want to be tracked. In you go.”

"Who's Bobbin Threadbare?" Sirius asked, handing Harry the letter. 

"An American pureblood studying abroad at Durmstrang."

Sirius gave him a look. Harry suppressed a grin.

"It's what me and Theo came up with for him to tell his father. The name's a character from a computer game."

"Computer game?"

"It's sort of like a television you can put things into? I don't know how it works. I can look it up at the muggle library next time we go. Have you heard of video games?"

"I've been to an arcade before," Sirius said, nodding. "We should go sometime."

"Imagine magical video games. What would that even look like?” Harry trailed off, then shook his head. “I've never played any. Dudley would have chucked his Nintendo out the window before letting me touch it."

"That settles it, we're definitely going. I think I've got an album with a song called Pinball Wizard on it. I bought it for a laugh."

A little over a week before Harry’s birthday, Sirius presented him with a leaf. 

“What’s this?” Harry said, taking it. It looked familiar, like something he’d seen in Herbology.

“You roll it up and stick it under your tongue for a month,” Sirius said. 

“Are you serious?”

Sirius’ smile approached maniacal. “Yes, I am. I recall you telling me about a book which you, and I quote, liberated from the restricted section but had to put back because you heard Filch coming?”

“It started roaring,” Harry said. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“I’m sure one day you’ll be an accomplished thief,” Sirius said consolingly. “It took James and I nearly three years to get it ourselves.”

Harry sat up. “What was it?”

“A book on the animagus transformation.” He gestured to the leaf. “You start off by keeping a mandrake leaf in your mouth for a month, from full moon to full moon. If you lose the leaf somehow you have to start over.”

“What do mandrakes have to do with it?” Harry asked, doing what Sirius said and rolling it up as tight as possible. He popped it under his tongue, and knew it would quickly become an annoyance.

“No idea. You’ll have to do the rest on your own, it’s a very personal process. I’ve written it all out for you.” He passed Harry a scroll. It was only one page of instructions. 

“It doesn’t look that hard,” Harry said thickly. It was already difficult to talk. Some of the instructions were inconvenient, like soaking a vial in moonrays, collecting dew before dawn, and finding a lightning storm. “Does it have to be a natural lighting storm?”

Sirius’ eyebrows rose. “Weather magic is illegal. And before you tell me that this is too, it’s dangerous in a different way than becoming an animagus. Weather has worldwide effects, and is immensely hard to control. A sporadic, out of control lightning storm in the middle of London could flood the Thames, or travel and destroy crops and livestock, damage homes, take lives. I doubt even our library has books on that sort of magic.” He paused, narrowing his eyes at Harry. “I should check.”

“I wasn’t going to do it in the middle of London,” Harry slurred, wiping saliva from his chin. 

“Nevertheless. You’ll have to be patient like the rest of us delinquents.”

"You haven't talked much about your birthday," Sirius said casually, flipping through the Daily Prophet. His trial was still big news, only eclipsed by the upcoming Quidditch World Cup. "Is there anything you'd like to do? What is it normally like?”

“Nothing,” Harry said, stirring sugar into his coffee. He’d never been allowed sugar at the Dursleys, or anything really. He was experimenting. 

Sirius looked up, concerned. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Harry said, trying to moderate his tone. “I’ve never really had a birthday. I only knew what day it was from school forms. The first present I ever got was Hedwig.”

“When Hagrid took you to Diagon Alley?” Sirius asked. 

Harry nodded. “I usually stay up until midnight the day before. The past few years I’ve gotten presents from my friends. Food, books, things like that.”

“What would you like to do?” Sirius asked. “I know we can’t invite your friends round, but you could meet them somewhere.”

Harry’s custody situation was nebulous. Godfather wasn’t a legally meaningful term, according to Davies, and while they knew Harry’s parents had intended for Sirius to be his guardian they hadn’t been able to turn up documentation to that effect. Harry being a distant relative made things easier, but not simpler. Whether the Dursleys had any rights to him at all was an open question, but if they did Harry was certain they’d sign them away as soon as possible. Sirius had gotten Vernon to sign his Hogsmeade permission form, but neither wanted him to use that spell again.

“If it’s in Diagon Alley, maybe you and Theo could arrange to meet? You’ve still got that disguise of yours.”

Harry perked up. “Ranog's still here, I’ll write to him,” he said, getting up to run to the owlery. 

When he got back downstairs, Sirius gave him a smug look. “What?”

“Did you forget about Ron and Hermione?”

Harry blushed. “I’ll owl Ron and ask if we could do something at the Burrow. I’m sure Mrs. Weasley would be okay with it. And I don’t think Hermione knows about the Knight Bus. She’s in Hampstead, we could go together. You’ll come too? Maybe Tonks as well.” Harry’s eyes lit up. “Fred and George idolize the Marauders. They’d die of shock if they met you.”

“Clearly I have to attend,” Sirius said, amused. “I have been putting off owling Andromeda. She was always my favorite cousin, but we lost touch after,” he waved his hand around, indicating the house. 

“Still going on about that?” Walburga shouted from the hall. “Make sure you give Harry a portkey if you’re sending him off on his own! I swear, I have to think of everything around here…”

“Yes, mother,” Sirius shouted back, rolling his eyes. “I was going to make one.”

“What's a portkey?”

The morning of his birthday, Harry and Theo met at the Leaky Cauldron and set off into Diagon Alley. Harry was disguised as the forgettable sandy-haired boy, and attempted to speak in an atrocious American accent which he swiftly abandoned. They started off exploring Knockturn Alley, nearly deserted in the morning with shuttered shops and only a few stragglers walking off the previous night. Theo was impressively aloof, which Harry tried to emulate as they wandered. 

When they stopped for lunch, Theo gave Harry his present. It was a manual and schematics for a tape player. 

“How on earth did you get something like this?” Harry asked, looking through it in amazement. “I could build my own from scratch.” Theo just gave him an enigmatic smile. 

“When is your birthday?” Harry asked.

“April 6th.”

“I missed it?” Harry said, dismayed. 

“I don’t care much for my birthday,” Theo said. 

“Neither did I,” Harry admitted. “I’ll remember, though.”

Theo stopped him when he tried to pay for himself, which confused Harry, but he allowed it. 

“What kind of coin was that?” Theo asked as Harry put his money away. “It was too small for a galleon.”

Harry took it out again. “Sirius called it a loonie.” he said, showing him the back where a loon floated on water. “It’s Canadian money.” He didn’t mention it was also an emergency portkey. 

“Interesting.”

That afternoon Sirius took Harry to Hermione’s house, where Sirius was introduced to her parents. They were a little disquieted by the abrupt and loud appearance of the Knight Bus, but fought through their nerves and got onto one of the worst conveyances ever created. Sirius was kind enough to place sticking charms on them all. 

The Burrow was as boisterous as usual. Hermione had brought Crookshanks along, who ran off to decimate the gnome population. The Weasley children pressed Harry into a game of pick up quidditch while Mr. Weasley and the Grangers took turns questioning each other on their respective worlds. Andromeda and Ted Tonks arrived with the mononymic Tonks, who immediately grabbed a beater’s bat and joined the game. Sirius spent time catching up with his older cousin, while Mrs. Weasley and Ted discussed knitting patterns. They’d gotten Hermione on a broom too, and she hovered around the garden, making sure Crookshanks didn’t drive anything to extinction. 

Dinner was absolute chaos, and it was the best birthday Harry ever had. 

Harry was surprised to be woken up before dawn the morning after his birthday. He got dressed and followed a curiously silent Kreacher down stairs. 

“What’s going on?” He asked through a yawn. 

“We’re going on a hike,” Sirius said brightly, slinging a bag over his shoulder. Kreacher pushed a cup of tea into Harry’s hand and urged him to drink. 

Sirius apparated them to the bottom of a hill somewhere and set off, Harry trailing behind. The sky was still dark, and the air was bracing. Harry had never gone on a hike before, or been out in nature for any significant period of time. He was kept home during any school trips, and chased out of the local parks. The closest he’d been was the Forbidden Forest, which was never a casual excursion. So while he was sleepy, it was a novel experience, and he was glad Sirius wasn’t in a rush. 

“Are there any snakes nearby?” Sirius asked.

“It’s too early for them to be moving,” Harry said. “They don’t like the cold. I did see some robins, and a fox I think.”

It wasn’t a large hill. They reached the top just before the sun started to rise. Sirius sat down, so Harry joined him, watching as Sirius unpacked what turned out to be breakfast. 

“Do you remember what day it is?” Sirius asked, looking at the horizon. 

“August 1st?” Harry chewed on an oatcake covered in bilberry jam as he watched the sunrise. 

“What season is it?” Sirius asked in a leading tone.

“Summer? Oh! It’s Lughnasadh. The start of the harvest season. Are we getting a bull to sacrifice?”

Sirius laughed. “Not unless you want to clean up after.”

“Why are we out here then?”

Sirius smiled at him. “It’s a nice way to start the day, don’t you think?”

“Kreacher has finished cleaning the cells,” Kreacher said one afternoon. “Young Master will come look.” 

“It’s been nearly a year,” Harry said, following him out of the library. They passed Walburga’s portrait, who uncharacteristically said nothing but watched with a shrewd look that Harry was mistrustful of. They went through the kitchen, and potions lab, into a small closet that concealed a trap door. Kreacher snapped his fingers and wall sconces flared to life. 

“I want to say I can’t believe we have an actual oubliette,” Harry said quietly as they went down the narrow staircase. “But I’ve seen the rest of the house.”

“Young Master is very funny,” Kreacher said tonelessly, leading him past the cells. “An oubliette doesn’t have a staircase.”

“An important distinction,” Harry said, peering into a cell with suspicious stains on the stone floor. 

“Kreacher will take young Master to the oubliette later.”

“I’m sorry?”

After the last cell there was a thick door strapped with metal. Kreacher opened it to a massive domed hall that would more accurately be described as an arena. Sirius was standing near the middle.

Sirius, very anticlimactically, said, “Hey.”

“Kreacher threatened to put me in an oubliette,” Harry replied, looking around. The hall hummed with magic, almost dense enough for him to see, giving it a shimmering quality. To one side there was a row of remarkably life-like dummies with targets painted on them.

“Kreacher did not threaten,” Kreacher said. “Kreacher said he would show young Master.”

"That is not what you said."

“We can see the oubliette later,” Sirius said.

“It actually exists?”

“Welcome to the Black family training hall!”

“It’s amazing,” Harry said honestly. It was dark, and echoey, and grim with all the latent threats of torture and imprisonment, but it was a massive space. There were spells he wanted to test out he didn’t dare do in the house lest he cause too much damage. 

“You’re free to use it as long as Kreacher or I are with you,” Sirius said. “Many of our family’s favorite traps are installed down here, and I don’t want you to get speared by a poisoned dart without someone nearby to help.”

“Is that a possibility?”

“Absolutely. Now, I want to show you these targets. They have what I shall reluctantly call a special feature.” 

Harry walked up beside Sirius and watched him cast a simple cutting charm at one. The dummy got sliced on the arm and started bleeding in a very realistic way.

“It’s real blood,” Sirius said. “After a certain point it will begin to heal damage on its own.” Sirius turned to look at Harry, placing his hands on his shoulders. “I’ve seen some of the spells you’ve looked up. I’m not going to tell you what you’re allowed to read or learn, but you do need to know the consequences of those spells if you use them against someone.” He turned Harry to face the targets again. “You’ve read about the entrail-expelling curse?”

Harry nodded. “It could be used in cooking, for gutting animals. I don’t see how it’s considered purely a dark curse.”

“Try it out.”

Harry glanced at Sirius.

“It doesn’t feel pain, Harry, it’s just a tool. But this will show you what happens if that spell is used on a person. If it helps, my brother and I were down here before we started Hogwarts.”

He turned back to the targets and raised his wand. “Exintero.”

A burst of vibrant red slammed into the target. Its abdomen exploded in a shower of viscera, intestines slithering on the floor like grotesque worms, organs slipping out to splash in the blood.

Harry took a step back, gagging at the violence. He could even smell it. As he watched, the carnage slowed, stopped, reversed, until it had all returned to the target and its torn skin sealed over as if it never happened at all.

“You have a tendency to overpower your spells,” Sirius said calmly. “I wouldn't try that in the kitchen.”

It took a while for Harry to find his voice. “I didn’t know it would be like that.”

“I know,” Sirius said gently. “And I know this is a harsh lesson, but I think this is better than testing on actual people. It will help you learn discretion in what kind of magic you use, and what you’re willing to use.”

Harry looked at the restored target. There wasn’t even blood on the floor. “I understand.”

Pain exploded in Harry’s head and he fell out of his bed with a cry. His scar felt like a branding iron had been pressed to it, and he clutched his head ineffectively. His limbs wouldn’t work, and he didn’t dare open his eyes, afraid he had gone blind. 

“Kreacher,” he said hoarsely. “Get Sirius.”

Moments later Sirius, or Padfoot as his dog form was called, burst into the room. He transformed immediately and lifted Harry back into his bed. Kreacher brought him a cold cloth to press to his forehead. It didn’t help much, but Harry appreciated it. 

“Get a headache potion, please,” Sirius said. “Harry brewed some the other week.”

“Sirius…”

“It’s okay, you can talk when you’re ready.” Sirius sat on his bed and brushed his hair back.

“Nightmare…Voldemort…” 

A vial pressed against his mouth and he drank. Slowly the pain retreated, but a dull ache lingered in his scar. Sirius helped him sit up, and Kreacher handed him a glass of water. 

“The last time it hurt was when he was near,” Harry said, hand still pressed against his scar. “In the same room.”

“Kreacher?”

“There is no one else in the house, Master.”

“I saw him, in my dream,” Harry said. “He was in a room with Pettigrew. He called him Wormtail. There was a big snake on the rug. Nagini. And an old man. And green light.” Sirius looked disturbed, but Harry kept going, not wanting to forget. “They had talked about someone who they had killed. And about killing me.”

“I’ll look into it,” Sirius promised. “Let’s keep this to ourselves until I find something out, okay?”

Harry readily agreed. He vividly recalled how him hearing voices in second year turned out to be a basilisk in the pipes. He didn’t think his own dreams would be so scripted as what he had just seen. 

“You’re still doing your meditation before bed?” Sirius asked. 

“Yeah, it usually helps with the nightmares.”

“I think you should move on to clearing your mind. I know you don’t like it,” Sirius quickly added. 

“It’s like I’ll never feel anything again,” Harry mumbled.

“You know that isn’t true. Remember that.” Sirius stood up. “You should get some more rest. Do you want me to stay with you?”

Harry nodded, a little embarrassed as Sirius turned into Padfoot and jumped on his bed, curling protectively at his side. 

Later, at breakfast, Kreacher appeared with a tiny gray owl trying to escape his clutches. “It refused to deliver unless it saw young Master,” Kreacher explained, releasing the bird. The owl slammed into Harry with all the force of a pillow then, upon Harry removing the letter, fluttered like a moth around one of the sconces. 

“Is that the owl you gave Ron?” he asked Sirius, opening the letter. 

“Despite Peter being Peter, I did feel bad that he lost his pet. From what you’ve told me, he’s sensitive about money, so I didn’t think he would appreciate a big gesture.”

“His name is Pig,” Harry said, reading the letter. “Oh, no.”

“What is it?”

“They’ve sent a letter to the Dursleys, and are planning to kidnap me from Privet Drive tomorrow.”

Sirius sat up. “What? Why?”

“His dad’s got tickets for the World Cup.”

“I feel like you should have led with that.”

Harry grinned at him. “I’ll tell them I’ll meet them at the Burrow.”

Harry felt a little bad about not telling Hermione or Ron about his living situation, but Mr. Weasley worked for the Ministry and he didn’t trust Hermione not to tell some authority figure. He didn’t want to be forcibly removed, so he kept it to himself. 

“Pig, I’ve got a reply.” The little owl snatched up the parchment and tried to fly through a wall. Kreacher recaptured him and took him outside. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” Harry asked. “I could ask if pets are allowed.”

“I’m not much of a spectator,” Sirius said, over Harry’s snickers. “I liked playing, and I’d love to attend your matches, but a game like the World Cup…it could go on for days, Harry.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’ll trust Arthur to keep an eye on you.”

Sirius dropped Harry off at the Leaky Cauldron, double checking Harry had everything he needed and making sure he got through the floo. Harry stumbled but kept his feet as he was ejected into the Burrow’s kitchen. 

“Harry, there’s a good lad,” Fred said, clapping his shoulder.

“Good show, old boy,” George said, holding up a brightly wrapped sweet. “Have a toffee.”

“Don’t eat that!” multiple voices shouted. Harry looked around at the collection of Weasleys. There were two new ones. They were multiplying. 

“How’re you doing, Harry?” one said with a disarming grin. He was shorter and stockier than your typical Weasley, absurdly muscled, with shiny burn marks. Harry could feel calluses and blisters as they shook hands, identifying him as Charlie, the fit Weasley. 

The other one who stood up to greet him was, by process of elimination, Bill, the cool Weasley. “You’re a curse-breaker, right?” Harry asked him as they shook hands. “Do you know any good books for learning Gobbledegook?”

As Harry settled in among the pack, he learned about Fred and George’s fledgling enterprise, and managed to get a few order forms for Sirius. Hermione had set Crookshanks on the local wildlife once again. Ron was rude about Percy’s cauldron bottoms, but Harry was actually interested, less in standardizing thickness and more in the impact cauldron thickness had on potions and temperature distribution. 

Dinner began somewhat awkwardly with Mrs. Weasley disparaging the twins, saying they had no ambition despite having invented multiple products. Her grabbing a wand that turned into a giant rubber mouse was just schadenfreude. 

After Bill and Charlie battled tables, Harry got confirmation that Mr. Weasley was susceptible to corruption: he’d smoothed over things for Ludo Bagman’s brother—something about a lawnmower—in exchange for World Cup tickets. 

He got a cold feeling when he learned that a woman named Bertha Jorkins had been missing for over a month, her last known location being Albania. That had been where Quirrell had run into the wraith of Voldemort né Tom Riddle. He’d been on edge since his dream the night before. He needed to tell Sirius. And about the top-secret event Percy kept talking about, whatever it was. 

Far too early in the morning, Harry was driven out of bed to watch Mrs. Weasley divest the twins of their Ton-Tongue Toffees. As they argued, Harry covertly dug them all out of the bin; it had taken them six months to develop them, after all.

After a long walk to the portkey, they crested the hill to find Amos Diggory and his son, pretty boy Cedric Diggory. 

“Merlin’s beard. Harry? Harry Potter?”

“Yes,” Harry said.

“Ced’s talked about you, of course. All about your match last year. Imagine, falling off a broom! That’ll be something to tell your grandchildren!”

“Dad…”

“I’d like to see how you’d fare if dozens of dementors forced you to relive Voldemort murdering your mother,” Harry said coldly. 

“Yes, well,” Amos spluttered. 

After a moment of awkward silence, Mr. Weasley cleared his throat and said, “Must be nearly time.”

They gathered around an old boot, and Harry learned that day that there was something worse than the Knight Bus. After traveling through what Harry desperately hoped wasn’t a blackhole ripping him apart for eternity, he landed on his feet and remained there until Ron knocked him over. Cedric merely looked windswept. 

While helping Mr. Weasley sort out his muggle money, Harry watched in numb horror as the muggle landowner, one Mr. Roberts, was obliviated. The man had grown too suspicious.

“Is that really the best thing to do?” Harry asked, watching as Mr. Roberts adopted a slack expression as a result of magical brain damage. “This isn’t right.”

“Ah, we have a responsibility to protect muggles,” Mr. Weasley said, taking a map from the man. “But also to maintain the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Ignorance is bliss?” Harry said sarcastically.

“Got it in one,” Mr. Weasey said, looking over the map. “This way, children!”

The Ministry obliviator followed them to the campsite gate. “Been having a bit of trouble with that one…needs a memory charm ten times a day…”

Harry fell back to walk alone. He remembered Sirius using the Imperius Curse on Vernon, and couldn’t help but feel that was preferable to destroying someone’s memory dozens of times. But it was an Unforgivable, and somehow the Memory Charm wasn’t. Because the Ministry used it on muggles all the time?

The pandemonium of the campground tried to grab his attention. Tents with chimneys, live peacocks, turrets, gardens—the inside of their own borrowed tent was remarkable—and it was a fantastic opportunity to see magical people from other cultures. It was also an education in how out of touch they were with the muggle world. Harry didn’t care if someone wanted to go around in a nightgown and nothing else, but it would be hard to blend in at Tesco. 

After being kidnapped by Oliver Wood, someone Harry feared he would never be free of, they returned to find Mr. Weasley with a match box. 

“There’s a muggle saying about that,” Harry said as Hermione went to help him. 

“Is there?” Mr. Weasley said, intrigued.

“Yeah. It’s ‘don’t play with matches.’”

“Fascinating,” Mr. Weasley said effusively as he continued to play with matches. 

Harry sighed, then went to go find the twins and return their toffees, which they hid away before placing a bet with Ludo Bagman, a singularly untrustworthy looking man. Harry decided to ask Sirius how he felt about investing in pranks. He already knew his answer. 

Mr. Weasley got into a conversation with Bagman and a man named Barty Crouch.

“...Carpets are defined as a Muggle Artifact by the Registry of Proscribed Charmable Objects—”

“Mr. Weasley?”

Mr. Weasley broke off to look at him. “Yes, Harry?”

“Why aren’t brooms considered a muggle artifact?”

“Well, Harry—”

“They’ll never replace the broom in Britain!” Bagman boomed. 

Crouch cleared his throat. “My grandfather had an Axminster that could seat twelve…”

Harry didn’t bother breaking into their conversation again, instead going around the booths with Hermione and Ron. He caught Ron staring at some kind of charmed binoculars and offered to buy them all a pair.

“No—don’t bother,” Ron said. 

“It’s from Sirius,” Harry said, lying through his teeth. “He still feels bad about what happened last year. You did break your leg…”

Newly armed, draped in team spirit, they proceeded into the stadium. 

Harry had met a friend of Dobby’s named Winky, Narcissa Malfoy who had given him a thin smile, watched in confusion as men and a few women around him lost their collective sanity over the veela’s performance, was showered in leprechaun gold, realized his omnioculars were a remarkable device for studying quidditch plays, saw a successful Wronski feint, and watched a man get stampeded by veela. Somehow, the twins winning their strange bet was the least surprising thing. 

He was relieved to be out of the crowd and back at the tent. He was used to how loud games got at school, but the World Cup had been on an entirely different level, and the mass of people preyed on his nerves. He eventually fell asleep despite the raucous partying that promised to last all night, but soon after woke to Mr. Weasley shouting. The singing and laughter had changed to running and screams. Harry found his glasses and wand, grabbed his bag, and ran out of the tent.

Outside with Ron, Harry watched as fires were set, tents blasted out of the way, and as a crowd of masked people marched below the hovering bodies of Mr. Roberts and his family. Harry saw a small child spinning crazily. Without thinking, he pointed his wand. “Arresto momentum.”

“Harry, what are you doing!” Hermione shrieked. Mr. Weasley appeared with Ron’s older brothers. 

“You lot, get in the woods!” Mr. Weasley said, before the four adults ran to help the Ministry deal with the mob. Hermione grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled him away. Not wanting to abandon his friends, hoping the adults would do something for the muggle family, he ran with them to the woods. Other people had that same idea, and the trees were filled with children crying, screaming, shouts of concern and confusion. 

They stumbled across Malfoy, who Harry briefly considered taking along with them until he opened his mouth, then Winky struggling by herself. Hermione had an awakening about house-elf welfare that Harry was curious to see the result of. 

“They like being bossed around,” Ron tried to explain.

“You’ve never even met a house-elf before today, Ron,” Harry said. 

“It’s people like you propping up rotten and unjust systems,” Hermione said. 

Then an explosion cut that conversation short and they kept running. 

They came across Bagman, who popped off somewhere after learning about the riot, and they discovered Ron had lost his wand somewhere. They stopped when they found a clearing. It was silent. 

“Morsmordre!”

A skull made out of emerald stars rose above the trees, a serpent crawling out of its mouth. 

“It’s the Dark Mark,” Harry said, eyes wide. He knew one of the last times it had been seen was thirteen years ago, in Godric’s Hollow. Those old enough to recognize it began to scream. He grabbed his friends. “We need to go.”

He heard the sound of apparition around them, and pulled his friends to the ground when he saw wands drawn. Voices shouted, “Stupefy!” and Harry witnessed egregious incompetence as the Ministry wizards stunned each other and shot at random into the dark, hitting who knows how many civilians. 

“Stop! That’s my son!”

Harry stayed where he was, not wanting to be attacked.

“Which of you did it?” Crouch demanded, pushing Mr. Weasley aside. “Which of you conjured the Dark Mark?”

“We didn’t do anything!” Ron said. 

“I’m Harry Potter, you absolute idiot,” Harry said angrily. 

“You’ve been discovered at the scene of the crime!”

“Where did the mark come from?” Mr. Weasley asked. 

A few minutes later, Amos Diggory emerged with Winky, Crouch’s elf, holding Ron’s wand. 

After all that had happened, Harry was not very interested in camping. He asked Ron’s older brother Bill to apparate him back to London, disregarding all protests, and took the Leaky’s floo back to Grimmauld Place, where he woke Sirius and told him everything.