skybreaker (Harry Potter OC)
“He fucked me because I had green eyes,” she sighed, caressing her swollen belly. “He spent the whole night staring at them and called me Lily when he came.”
She sneered, before pausing.
“My blood is as pure as it gets. My mother was from a travelling coven of witches from everywhere around the world, who cursed their bellies so they would only birth girls. I shall not name them; it will do you no service to seek them out. But know that they despised muggles and sometimes made a sport of killing them. We didn’t interact with them. We didn’t learn their language; we didn’t trade with them. With no understanding between us, fucking them was considered akin to fucking animals. Unthinkable. My father was from the O’Arawn clan of Eire. I’m sure you can trace his pedigree easily. I never met him, and I’ll never get to; he and his clansmen were culled by the Dark Lord some years ago when they laughed to his face after he tried to get them to join him.”
“Why are you telling me this?” rasped the old man, his fingers twitching on the arm of his armchair.
She ignored him. Her eyes were kept low, her expression thoughtful.
“I left the coven because our seer said I was destined to give birth to a boy. They cursed me for the betrayal and threw me out. I am dying from this curse. I cannot raise this child. And you have no heir.”
“So you came here,” he said.
She nodded. “So I came here. You won’t accept your daughter’s son because of his tainted blood and his muggle upbringing. I offer you a more acceptable alternative. An heir with purer blood to mould in your own image.”
Aldrich Prince stayed silent for a long time.
“I will take him,” he finally said.
She bowed.
“Name him Lorcan, if you would. That was my father’s name,” she murmured.
He inclined his head.
“Lorcan Severus Prince. So it shall be.”
***
Great-Grandfather died when Lorcan was six. The House elves wept and wept, clinging to each other and letting fat tears fall on the old man’s grave.
Lorcan found it hard to do the same. The fact that Aldrich Prince had survived this long was already noteworthy, and the young boy had to admit that he had wished many times it was not so. Eileen Prince had fled her father for a reason. And Lorcan, reincarnated into the son of a book character, had only the remnants of his adult mind to thank for the patience he offered the man who deserved much less from him.
When he had overcome the horror of his death and his subsequent rebirth into a world too familiar for comfort, he had decided he would be the change he sought to see in wizarding society. In his previous life, he had been no one note-worthy, only one of the countless youths terrified of the future awaiting them, in a society who cared naught if they lived or died, if they survived or thrived. He had chewed at the leash on his neck with no avail, helpless against the endless onslaught of terror this world would unleash upon him ceaselessly. There was nothing good to remember from this past life.
In this one, he was the scion of a great House, with magical power at his fingertips and political power in the form of a ring bearing a beryl two-headed eagle on the face of a rose gold signet. He would not be helpless.
But to be Lord Prince, he needed to be an exemplary heir. He needed to bear the anti-muggle sentiment, the scornful comments about the disgrace Eileen had brought into the family, and the corporal punishment when he behaved himself in ways that were considered subpar for an Heir of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Prince, descendants of Mordred the last Pendragon.
Funny that. A bastard was the founder of House Prince, and another bastard would be the last Lord of its line.
He glanced away from the grave of his great-grandfather to gaze at that of his mother, which read the name Masire O’Arawn. The only kindness Aldrich Prince had done to him was to take a picture of the woman who birthed him, so he would know who to thank for the new life he was given. She was a beautiful woman; fat, with a lovely round face and dark red curly hair, green eyes, dimples, and a golden-brown skin adorned with magical tattoos. She was not a good person. If she was, she probably wouldn’t have been attracted to a Death Eater when she knew very well her own father had been killed by Voldemort. But she had cared about him enough to grant him a good life. The last months of her life were dedicated to ensuring his future. Lorcan could respect that. And he would cherish the gift he was given.
In the wake of the late Lord’s death, Lorcan studied the ward stone of Deathbound Manor. On it were engraved the arrays that guaranteed the protection of the manor’s inhabitants, but it used to have more functions. Which was how Lorcan learnt that the Princes had not always owned House elves, and that if he could figure out how to reinstate the old self-cleaning array that his ancestors had depowered when they had purchased their slaves, he would be able to free them.
“You cannot give a sentient being freedom though,” he murmured later that day, staring into his mirror. His olive-green eyes contrasted with the tan of his skin and the dark of his hair, which he kept long and braided away from his face. “They have to take it for themselves.”
He hummed. “Well. We'll see how that goes.”
And so he commissioned the construction of small houses on the Manor grounds. He contacted his stewardess, a middle-aged woman by the name of Celia Shafiq who was the wife of a branch member of House Shafiq and asked her to draft some papers. She did so and sent them off along with a tutor to continue his education. He wrote her a thank-you letter, not bothering to point out that choosing her own daughter to tutor him was not in the least subtle. At least Naima Shafiq was competent, and not overly obsessed with the purity of his blood.
***
When Lorcan turned eight, he activated all the defunct wards and rounded up the elves. They would no longer be working in the Manor, he announced.
They all exchanged looks and asked why. He told them he would be freeing them. Their hysterical cries would ring in his ears for days on end.
“I’ll be giving you clothes,” he said. “And you can choose if you wish to leave or to stay.”
They stopped then and stared with mournful eyes.
“The houses built are yours,” he said, holding the deeds to said houses, “and on these contracts are monetary reparations for your enslavement. You can live here still if you wish, and feed on the magic of the manor as you have. But you do not have to work to do so. I’ll let you pretend you aren’t free to other elves if you wish, I know freedom is seen as a disgrace by most of your species” He paused and admitted. “This is selfish of me. But I do not need you, and I want to see what house elves do when they are not bound to their masters. Will you take up hobbies? Will you laze away indolently for the rest of your life? Whatever it is, you are free to do so.”
And he pulled out small colourful hats with cut-out space for their ears. He handed them out to the shell-shocked elves along with the deed to their new properties.
The following years were an exercise in patience.
Only one of the four elves, an old thing called Rumble who had handed him back the deed and begged him to take him back left for brighter pastures, though not before trying to sneak back into the manor and cook for Lorcan. He now served House Prince’s stewardess happily and her daughter always gave Lorcan an update on his wellbeing when he asked, though never without staring at him like he was some sort of alien.
Giggle took up residence in the house meant for her and brought back another elf, with whom she summarily had three children. She cleaned the gardens of the estate as if she hadn’t been freed at all, and ignored Lorcan every time he told her and her husband that they didn’t have to do that. The gardens looked better than they ever had.
Clatter tried to have hobbies and to laze around at once. He alternated between fishing, painting, sculpting and embroidering, then had long periods where he did nothing at all. Then Lorcan lent him a book from the Prince library to occupy his time during his idle periods, and Clatter took an interest in magical theory. Soon enough, Lorcan had an elf scholar on his lands.
Howl... became obsessed with pranking. First it was a way to get back at Lorcan for freeing them. Then they seemed to genuinely enjoy it and tried his nerves even more. He swore to introduce them to the Weasley twins when it was time. Howl brought a rotation of elves to their home, recently freed elves looking for work who used their house as a temporary haven. Two of them stayed, and the population of the manor grew.
All in all, the experiment was a success.
***
When Lorcan turned nine, he visited the forest bordering Deathbound Manor. Within, he found a centaur colony and would have been killed if not for his proximity to the wards.
The centaurs did not speak English, so he had to reach out to Gringotts to find a translator who would translate his letter to them. The goblin nation rarely had dealings with the centaur colonies, but sometimes needed their agreement to mine on their territories and as such had people on hand that could communicate with them.
He asked if they wished anything from House Prince. They replied and said that as long as the stars were right in their assessment of him, they wished him well and sought no further dealings with humans. That his great-grandfather had been too old to keep hunting them for sport and that he’d not thought to teach his heir to do the same was enough for them, as far as they were concerned. Lorcan sent back a ward stone that would keep humans from their territory, along with a map of the boundaries of Deathbound Manor so that his House’s own stone wouldn’t cannibalise on the magic he had given them.
They sent back a crafted bow and a note that said, “Thank you, Skybreaker.”
The goblin translator looked very interested in what the centaurs could have seen. He was approached by a teller of his clan who asked if he was interested in investing in creatures'’ businesses. Lorcan gave the teller the key to an old vault – not the fullest, but it held a reasonable number of galleons – and told her that she would have twenty percent of the profits if she managed to double the contents of the vault by the time he came to Hogwarts.
His stewardess came to witness the drawing of the contract and eyed him approvingly.
“My elf calls you the Mad Hatter, you know. And he’s quite right, you, boy, are crazier than a bag of kneazles. But madness often goes hand in hand with greatness. I look forward to seeing where you will steer this House of yours.”
Lorcan laughed. “I’m glad I have your approval, Mrs Celia. Do you think I will be ready to join Wizengamot sessions by my eleventh birthday?”
“You are already ready, child. You only need a wand.”
His eyes gleamed.
“Good.”
***
Lorcan went to Ollivander’s as soon as he got his letter and left the shop with a redwood wand of phoenix feather. The next day, he joined his peers at the Wizengamot.
Confused murmurs filled the room as he entered and rose when he sat down on the Prince seat, which lit rose and gold to confirm his legitimacy.
“Lorcan Severus Prince in attendance,” he announced with a firm voice.
The session was long and tedious; the legislation discussed had to do with the regulation of potions ingredients and Lorcan found the droning tone of the man reading it out especially grating, but he still listened intently and cast his vote when it was time.
When it was all over, Lucius Malfoy approached him.
“Lord Prince. Well met. I didn’t know Severus had a son,” he said silkily, his cane lightly tapping on the wooden floors.
Lorcan bowed slightly. “Well met, Lord Malfoy. He didn’t know either,” he replied cheerfully. “Though I suppose he will find out today.”
He looked at the man searchingly. This was the wizard who would welcome Voldemort into his home. The man who would give a cursed object to a child Lorcan’s age, and try to kill Harry Potter, who was barely a year older than he was. This was also the man who would bitterly regret serving a madman, and who made more strides for the Death Eaters’ cause than his Liege ever could.
Because blood supremacy strived in the Ministry, though dark magic did not, which Lorcan suspected was because Albus Dumbledore cared more about the latter than he ever did the former, and used his considerable influence to make sure this type of magic would die out. He wondered what could be accomplished if the old man ever extended the same effort to the eradication of prejudice.
But Lorcan was not the type to rely on elders to do the work. He would make this world a better place or die trying. Even if that meant maintaining polite relations with an asshole like Lucius Malfoy.
“Oh?” said Lucius interestedly.
“I was raised by Great-Grandfather until his death. Mother was clever enough to appeal to him before House Prince died out.”
“And your mother is...”
“Was,” he corrected. “As I understand it, she was from a travelling coven.”
Lucius blanched. Lorcan concealed a smirk. Nomad witches had a reputation.
“Her father, though, was of the O’Arawn clan. I bear his name, apparently.”
His reaction to that was even better. The O’Arawn clan was called as such because they considered themselves the descendants of the Celtic king of the Underworld.
He would let the man assume that it was out of respect for her father that Lorcan’s mother hadn’t sought the Death Eater who impregnated her, though he’d keep in mind that she’d managed to convince Aldrich Prince to make her son the future Lord of his House despite the tainted blood of his muggle grandfather when the old man hadn’t even deigned to recognise his own grandson, who had until then been his only hope to see his family line prosper.
“Fascinating,” murmured Lucius. “I am sure Severus will be thrilled to find out about you.”
Lorcan tilted his head and leaned forward.
“You think so?”
He seriously doubted that his father would find any thrill in meeting the child of a woman who was not Lily, the child who was given the name he had wished to have, the name he had joined the Death Eaters for.
But Lorcan could be wrong. He would find out in four months, when he entered Hogwarts.