hadrian sirius black

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James apparated onto the gravelled drive leading up to Potter Manor, bone-tired from a gruelling day at work with the Aurors. He was more than a little miffed that he had been called in on the one day he had specifically requested leave to see his children off to Hogwarts, but he had known better than to shirk his duties.

Amelia was almost as much of a slave-driver as Crouch had been in his day, and he had no doubt she would have had his hide if he did not offer his assistance in the, admittedly very important, raid on Knockturn Alley which had taken up the majority of his day.

The sun had long since set, and he could only hope his girls were still up so he could wish them goodnight. He loved his job, he really did, but the days when he got home to find all of his children already in bed had more than once forced him to contemplate quitting.

With a sigh, he set about making his way towards the house. It was a good minute’s walk down the gravel drive, but he didn’t dare push the anti-apparition wards any further in than they already were - if they were ever to be attacked like the Longbottoms were after the fall of Voldemort, he would never be able to forgive himself if the enemy was able to apparate onto his doorstep due to his own desire for convenience.

Finally, he reached the front door and unlocked it, to be greeted by absolute silence once inside. The anticipatory smile he had affixed to his face was wiped away, and he closed the door with another little sigh. The twins were evidently already asleep - the house would not be anywhere near so quiet if they weren’t.

Regardless, he made the trek up to their room just to be certain, and sure enough found them both sleeping soundly in their bunk beds. The sight made him smile fondly, recalling how fiercely they had protested the first and only time he had suggested moving them into separate rooms, before it dimmed slightly when he realised that that was nearly three years ago now.

His children were growing up fast - more often than not, it felt like they were doing so without him. With a new resolve to ask Amelia about cutting back his hours tomorrow, he pulled back the covers which Avalon had somehow disturbed enough for them to be draping over the side of the bed and waved his wand to send the half-finished gobstones game on the floor back into its case before leaving the room, taking care to close the door quietly.

He lingered a moment before he was satisfied that he had not woken them and retreated back downstairs, where he retired to the drawing room. Lily was still nowhere to be seen, but it was easy to get lost in a house this big. He was sure he’d bump into her eventually.

He busied himself with fetching a bottle of firewhisky from the cupboard along the back wall, pouring himself a generous measure before collapsing into his seat by the roaring fire. He told himself that it was just a nightcap, but he knew he would be having a few more before he actually went to bed.

The day had been a stressful one, with more than a few close-calls. He needed to unwind some before he would be able to sleep. He downed the firewhisky in one and waved his wand to pour himself another, which he drank at a more measured pace.

“James.”

James looked up at the sound of his wife’s voice, and smiled at the sight of her in her floral nightgown. He had bought it as a gag gift because it had lilies on it, along with a pair of matching boxers for himself, but it had been nearly a decade now and each item was still in regular use.

She sounded uncharacteristically flat when she said his name, but he just assumed she was upset with him for being away and leaving her with the duty of seeing Charlie and Archer to the platform and corralling the twins. He couldn’t say he blamed her - the latter was certainly no mean feat on the best of days, never mind on one’s lonesome.

“Hey, Lils,” he replied, gesturing for her to take the other armchair. She obliged, and James was momentarily distracted by the beautiful way the fire reflected in his wife’s sleek, red hair before she spoke.

“I had Sirius over while you were gone,” she said blandly. James felt the blood drain from his face, and he slammed his glass into the table with enough force that it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. He had feared this - he had always feared this, that she may one day seek out the man he had always secretly believed to be better than him.

Sirius, with the perfect hair. Sirius, with the easygoing charm. Sirius, with the pockets deeper than James could ever hope to achieve. By Merlin, he hated Sirius. He had opened his mouth to start shouting, but Lily had continued talking while the cold dread of her initial statement washed over him, and what she was saying gave him pause.

“We talked. Just talked. I would have hoped you knew me better than to assume otherwise,” she continued. Her tone was still flat, but managed to convey a level of deep disappointment which made James slump in his seat.

“What did you talk about?” he asked in monotone, knowing he wouldn’t like the answer. As far as he knew, his wife hadn’t spoken face-to-face with Sirius since the end of the war. Whatever cause she had seen fit to invite him into his home over was evidently not a good one.

“Harry,” was her clipped response. James felt something rear up inside of him at that - something angry and jealous, much like what he had just been feeling when he had thought his wife had slept with his former-best friend once more.

“What about him? Did he get a girl pregnant over the holidays?” he sneered. He detested Hadrian - for, despite the fact that Lily never actually used that name to refer to her son, the boy was still dubbed so, such was the snobbery of one Sirius Orion Black - simply for the fact that he existed. There should be no child of Lily Potter with the surname Black - it wasn’t right. Wasn’t the natural order of things.

A half-remembered conversation swirled around in the back of his mind, hidden behind the haze of the type of drunk you could only get without children at home waiting for you, of Lily confessing she had been the one to insist upon the name, despite Sirius being the one to initially suggest it, apparently in jest. 

He pushed that malformed thought aside, choosing instead to refocus his attention on the present, where his wife was looking at him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips which made her look unfavourably like that awful sister of hers.

“How did I let this go on right under my nose?” she muttered, shifting her gaze away from him and to the fire.

“What, pray tell, did you let go on ?” he asked, not liking her tone. Perhaps, if he did not have the faint thrum of firewhisky in his veins, or if the topic of conversation was not the product of his former-best friend’s betrayal, he would have let the comment pass, but right now he found it inflammatory. 

He had let her come crawling back to him after her fling with Black when, by all rights, he should have left her out to dry. In his mind, they had clearly been angling for a relationship, and she had as good as cheated on him. He would not hear of her letting him do anything when he had already granted her such a major concession.

Obviously, this was not the right thing to say. His wife leapt to her feet, looking as though she were an inch away from throttling him, and began pacing in front of the fire.

“The abuse of my son is what I let go on, you arrogant toerag!” she hissed venomously. James mentally scoffed at her construing his treatment of Hadrian as abuse - he’d never bloody well hit the boy, had he? - but was more stung than he would like to admit by the epithet she had used to describe him.

It was one she hadn’t used since the incident with Snape in fifth year, and just like it did then it incensed him because he could not understand why she had said it.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, rising from his own seat.

“The kids are scared to mention Harry around you, James. They’re scared, because of you,” she repeated, moving so that she was directly in front of him as she said it; it did not feel intimate, as it usually did when they were having some petty spat and she moved in on him, but stifling, as though she were itching to rip his throat out.

“What business have they got mentioning him?” he asked, playing ignorant. He was unwilling to give even an inch where this matter was concerned - Hadrian Black would stay well out of his life, come hell or high water. 

“What business- he’s their brother, you dolt!” she exclaimed. That hot anger and jealousy he had been feeling throughout the entire conversation bubbled over, and he bit out the first retort he could come up with without thinking.

“You certainly don’t act like he is,” he snapped. She paused, evidently taken off-guard by the pronouncement, and he took the opportunity to twist the knife in the wound.

“If he’s so near and dear to you, where’s his room? Where’s Harry’s room in the Manor, love? When did he last visit? Strange thing, but I don’t recall him popping over even once this summer. Terribly distant for a son, wouldn’t you say? When was the last time he wrote you a letter, for that matter? When was the last time you wrote him a letter?” he taunted.

Lily looked stricken, and he was glad for it. She had the gall to stricture him on the matter, as if she hadn’t let her son detach himself wholly and completely from her life of her own accord. Perhaps he had finally knocked some sense into her - shown her that Hadrian was Black’s problem, not theirs.

“Yesterday,” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper. He blinked, and reexamined her facial expression. She still looked stricken, but she was also staring at him with an inscrutable look to her face which put him at deep unease. “I wrote to him yesterday, telling him to stay out of that death-trap tournament and that I love him. He wrote to me a week ago, saying that he was excited for Archer to come to Hogwarts.”

She took a step back from James, her throat bobbing as though she were holding back tears. “He last visited the day after Charlie’s birthday, when you were away on Auror business. He stays in the guest room between Archer’s room and Charlie's,” she concluded. That look was still affixed to her face, and it made him want to squirm - it was as though she was seeing him for the first time, and she did not like what she saw.

“Why bother? He’s just like his father,” he sneered, taking his own step back from her. His mind was so crowded with images of his one-time best friend and the similarities between him and his damned son who stood between himself and a perfect family that he hardly caught Lily’s parting words, but catch them he did - to his own detriment.

“You sound like Severus,” she whispered, before she swept out of the room. The colour drained from James’ face as he stared at her retreating back, recalling the meeting he and Lily had had with Snape concerning Charlie’s terrible Potions grades in the middle of his first year.

“He’s lazy, arrogant, just like his father,” Snape had sneered at the pair of them, an ugly smirk across his face as though he weren’t lying through his teeth. It filled him with a cold dread that anyone may think him comparable to that sorry excuse for a man, let alone his own wife, and he was struck with the realisation that this debacle was most assuredly not going to blow over as he had hoped it would.

With a shudder, he waved his wand for another glass of firewhisky, and downed the whole thing in one. There was a niggling thought in the back of his mind that perhaps Hadrian was not quite so similar to his father as he had been characterising him in his head and, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to dislodge it.

With a great sight, he got to his feet and left the drawing room, making his way to one of the guest bedrooms - he had a feeling he wasn’t welcome in the master bedroom at present. He needed to sleep on this.

-hadrian sirius black-

“Harry. Harry. Harry!”

Harry grunted as a hand jabbed him in his side, waking him from his blissful slumber. He threw back the covers and rolled over to glare at whoever had disturbed his sleep, to be met with Adrian’s face looming over him.

“You need to get up, mate. Breakfast is over in like twenty minutes,” he informed him, before leaving him in the now-empty dormitory.

Harry groaned, rubbing his tired eyes. He hated getting out of bed with a passion. He was sure the Quidditch team would thank him for that once he got to organising practices - there would be no more of Flint’s ridiculous 4AM training sessions.

Still, he could probably do with some breakfast, so he got to his feet and slipped out of his pyjamas and into his school robes, casting a quick spell to get rid of some of the creases they had acquired after being dumped on the floor. His hair was a mess, but he didn’t particularly care - he could fix it up later, when he had more time.

He ducked into the bathroom to brush his teeth and shave off the stubble which had grown overnight, before returning to the dormitory to put on his watch and a few rings. After casting an air-freshening charm in lieu of taking a shower, he was satisfied that he looked put-together enough outside of his mass of untamable hair, and made his way into the common room.

It was mostly deserted, save for a few seventh years who seemed to have decided that cramming in some extra revision was more important than breakfast. Harry pitied them - he’d not bothered putting in much extra effort for his OWLs until the month before the exams, and the only evidence he hadn’t been revising all year like these swots was his 'Troll' in History of Magic - he had put his name on the paper before falling asleep - and his 'Acceptable' in Transfiguration - apparently, he really should have put some extra effort into that one.

Then, his eyes locked onto two little figures with their heads bowed together - one with red-trimmed robes and the other with green - in a corner hidden away from the over-studious seventh years, and his eyes narrowed. He made his way over to them, and coughed theatrically. Adhara looked up at him guilelessly, the very picture of innocence, but was given away by Archer, who was avoiding his gaze and looking at her shoes.

“What are you doing here, Addy?” he asked, thoroughly unimpressed by her attempts to appear innocent. It would have worked better if she wasn’t getting into trouble on the daily at home, and he awaited whatever shoddy excuse she was going to give him.

“Waiting for you, obviously! I missed you,” she exclaimed, throwing herself at him. He caught her with a grunt, wishing she would stop doing that - she had been too big for it at eight, as their father had told her, but she had still not given it up. Probably because it did a good job at getting her out of trouble.

It worked in this case, anyway. They now had an audience, as the seventh years had turned to look at them at her loud proclamation. He heard an ‘aww’ from Delinda Yaxley - how she got into Slytherin, Harry had no idea; soft as a Hufflepuff, that one - and a derisive snort from Damien Rowle.

Deciding he’d much rather be on Yaxley’s good side than Rowle’s, he let the matter drop - so long as word didn’t get back to Snape that Adhara was infiltrating the common room, there was no harm done.

“Missed you too, you little whelp. Now come on, you wouldn’t want to miss getting your timetables, would you?” he asked, with a pointed look at the seventh years as he spoke. Rowle swore and clapped a hand to his head, while Yaxley turned slightly pink and began stuffing her things back into her bag, with the others doing much the same.

Evidently, seven years at Hogwarts was not enough for them to remember that the timetables were given out at the first breakfast of the term. Dolts.

He set Adhara back down on the ground and motioned for her and Archer to follow him, deciding he’d do his brotherly duty and show them some secret passages. He went through a tunnel accessed by stroking the bald head of a bust of a nutty wizard called Perseus the Pigheaded, who had developed a theory that one only needed to learn a single spell to be an exceptional wizard if they knew said spell well enough, and had died in a duel after attempting to use the tickling charm to take down a dark wizard.

On the other end of the tunnel, he ushered them through a tapestry which depicted nothing in particular - Harry suspected it had been charmed to be deliberately bland - and finally walked backwards through a seemingly solid wall which spat them out a corridor away from the Great Hall. 

He and Archer bid Adhara goodbye at the entrance and the two of them made their way to the end of Slytherin table to sit with Cassius and Adrian. Adrian gave Harry a nod, looking bemusedly at Archer, while Cassius issued a grunt of acknowledgement without looking at either of them, tucking into a bacon sandwich.

“What do you think of the other first year girls, Archer?” Harry asked, while motioning for Cassius to pass the plate of bacon sandwiches from down the table. He asked both out of curiosity and to see if there was anyone else she could sit next to besides himself.

It wasn’t that he disliked having her around - far from it, in fact - but he did want her to make some of her own friends. Thus far, she seemed to be clinging on to himself and Charlie, which would not do her any favours after they each graduated.

“I don’t like them,” she said, which was just the answer he hadn’t wanted to hear. “Selwyn stole my glasses, and none of the other girls helped me get them back,” she complained, swinging her feet as though she wanted to scuff them on the ground, but was not tall enough to do so.

Harry let out a disparaging sound, taking the plate of sandwiches from Cassius and putting two on his own plate before holding it out to Archer, who took one despondently.

He had had aspirations for the Selwyn girl, knowing that she would one day helm a formidable estate which would be beneficial to have on his side, but this complicated matters. 

He’d have to set her straight if she was bullying his little sister, which wouldn’t do him any favours in ingratiating himself with her, but some things were more important than his vague political aspirations - he didn’t take that stuff as seriously as he might have done thanks to his father, although his great-grandfather and grandmother had done a good enough job instilling it within him why it was important.

He gave it a moment’s thought, and then remembered that there was another Selwyn a year below him - Wendell, he believed. She was a branch member rather than a main-liner but, like Desdemona, she was a sole heiress, so she had considerable influence in the family.

“If she doesn’t stop, tell me and I’ll have a word with her older cousin. She’ll sort her out,” Harry assured Archer, who nodded, looking relieved. She began taking small bites out of her sandwich while Harry scanned the table up and down, paying more attention to the new first years than he had done during the sorting.

His gaze lingered briefly on the muggle-born boy - Harry thought his last name was Foster, although he wasn’t sure - who was sitting on his own, looking rather put-out, before he caught sight of Millicent and a boy who could only be her little brother - in his celebration of Adhara’s sorting, he had forgotten that little Archie Bulstrode was starting Hogwarts this year.

He smirked a little at the fact that ‘Archer’ and ‘Archie’ were going to be in all the same classes - he was sure that was going to be a treat for the professors. 

“Hey,” he said, tapping Archer on the shoulder. “You see that boy over there?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Millicent and Archie.

“Mmm,” she agreed through a mouthful of bacon, looking confused.

“He’s called Archie,” he said. When Archer continued looking confused, he slowly enunciated, “Arch-ie… Arch-er…” 

She groaned loudly when she realised what he was getting at, but didn’t say no, which Harry took as a win. “Please at least try and be friends with him. It’d be hilarious,” he implored her. Reluctantly, she nodded, and he grinned widely at her.

“You’re a weirdo, Harry,” Adrian said fondly from behind a glass of pumpkin juice.

“Always has been,” Cassius agreed, wiping the crumbs from his mouth with his sleeve.

“Oi, I’ll have you know we’re friends for that exact reason, Pucey. Hadrian and Adrian - would’ve been a wasted opportunity if we weren’t,” he informed Adrian. The other boy just shook his head, looking amused, before he jumped as though electrocuted at the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him. He hit his knees on the table and swore loudly - Harry grimaced, having a clear view of Professor Snape looming behind his friend.

“Charming, Pucey,” Snape drawled, causing Adrian to blanch.

“My apologies, sir,” he muttered, rubbing at his knees.

Snape did not deign to offer a response to that, instead dropping a piece of paper in front of him. He did the same to Cassius, with a pointed look at the stray crumbs the boy had missed on his front, before stopping behind Archer, who had turned in her seat to look at him.

“You won’t be causing me any undue trouble will you, Miss Potter?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. She sat up straighter at the attention, flushing slightly from the implication of his words.

“No, sir,” she replied - Harry thought she had done an admirable job at measuring her tone. Snape gave her a single nod before dropping her timetable in front of her, and leaning across the table to do the same for Harry.

“I trust that you will be putting in a more concerted effort in Transfiguration this time around, Black?” he asked pointedly.

“Yes, sir,” he replied, the only sign of his being chastened being the reddening of the tips of his ears. Snape gave him a single, sharp nod as he had done to Archer before giving him his timetable and moving away down the table in a flurry of robes. 

Professor McGonagall had allowed him to continue to NEWT level with Transfiguration under the condition that he attend tutoring in the subject over the summer holidays and resit his OWL privately. He had done so, and just barely managed to scrape an ‘Exceeds Expectations,’ which was good enough for him to continue with the subject, but with the warning from McGonagall that he ought not to allow himself to fall so far behind again, which he had emphatically agreed to.

“Don’t know why you bothered, mate. I would’ve just taken it as a blessing in disguise and gone on about my life,” was Adrian’s wise advice from across the table, where he was frowning down at his timetable. He himself had gotten a ‘Poor’ in Transfiguration, and had not been granted the same offer of clemency as Harry.

“Because my dad would kill me if I flunked out of it. He got an Outstanding in his NEWT, and he loves McGonagall,” Harry replied blandly, studying his own timetable. It was, in a word, awful - he had heard from the upper years all throughout his Hogwarts career that you were supposed to have more free periods in sixth year, but his timetable seemed to be almost completely full, beside a single period break on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

He supposed that was a consequence of taking nine NEWTs - most people only did seven. He swapped timetables with Adrian to compare, and saw that the other boy had multiple double free periods, which was most decidedly not on.

“Adrian, do your prefectly duties and show my little sister where…” he paused, leaning over the table to read Archer’s timetable. “The greenhouses are. I’ll meet you in Charms,” he said, getting to his feet.

“What? No, I’ll be late!” Adrian protested, staring at Harry as he walked around to the other side of the table.

“Will you? That’s too bad - I’ll just have to dob you in to professor Snape for letting little firsties get lost around the castle. I’m sure he’d be all too eager to give your badge to someone who’d make better use of it,” Harry assured him, clapping his friend on the shoulder before leaving.

As he walked off, he could hear Cassius laughing as Adrian grumbled, before he got to his feet and began collecting Archer and the other first years to show them their way to the greenhouses.

Served him right for having more free periods than he did. Perhaps, in future, he would be more considerate.

-hadrian sirius black-

Harry sat down heavily at the end of Slytherin table, feeling as though he had been wrung for all he was worth. Flitwick had spent the entirety of Charms expounding upon them the difficulty of the NEWT level material, and even the arrival of Adrian, five minutes late and red in the face, had been unable to bring much levity to the situation.

Arithmancy was dire - he didn’t even particularly like the subject, and he certainly didn’t appreciate Professor Vector sticking them with a two foot homework on the first day of class - and Potions was positively miserable, with Snape breathing down their necks as they brewed a Draught of Peace as recap - a sign that even worse was to come.

Harry had been tempted to sneak some of his brew at the end of the lesson, but knew his head of house was too eagle-eyed for that, so he had handed in the potion and trudged off to Care of Magical Creatures. He had some fun there at least - Hagrid let them play with Nifflers as a welcome-back, apparently not having received the memo that the other professors had done that he was to make their first lesson as miserable as possible.

The day had ended with Transfiguration, where McGongall had decided upon a recall lesson in which she called upon Harry time and time again to answer, leaving him thoroughly in need of reprieve as he slumped into his seat in the Great Hall.

“Bad day?” Cassius asked, affecting sympathy in a very unconvincing manner as he visibly restrained his smirk.

“Shut up, Cass,” he groused, carding a hand through his hair. “I should’ve bloody well listened to Pucey. McGonagall is a slave driver.”

“Too right you are, Harry,” Adrian agreed, having appeared from seemingly nowhere. “Perhaps it’s time you start listening to your betters.”

“I will transfigure you into a toad, and they’ll never be able to put you right again,” Harry threatened, resting his elbows on the table and burying his face in his hands.

“Chin up, Harry. Only gets worse from here on out,” Cassius assured him, before a pop indicated the arrival of the food. Harry had a feeling he would not be getting much more conversation out of his older friend for a good while now.

With a sigh, Harry lifted his head up and began loading his plate, albeit more sparingly than usual. He absently picked away at his meal, wondering if he could truly get away with turning Adrian into a toad. In the end, he decided that he probably couldn’t, and instead settled on transfiguring his tie into a snake, which yielded much more entertaining results than he could have expected.

Adrian stiffened up like a board when his tie began hissing, and Cassius actually put down his fork to observe the spectacle going down in front of him. The snake flicked its tongue out, its tail tightening around Adrian’s neck as it straightened up until its head was level with Adrian’s, who remained paralysed in his seat, staring at the snake with wide eyes.

Then it flicked its tongue out again, licking Adrian’s face, and he let out a girlish shriek, attempting to get to his feet before falling face-first onto the floor as he tripped over the bench. Cassius burst out into raucous laughter as Adrian struggled to get to his feet with a now very agitated snake hissing indignantly at him, while Harry allowed his lips to curve into a smirk as he waved his wand, muttering the spell to reverse the transfiguration under his breath.

“Pucey, you seem to be having some trouble navigating tables today.”

Adrian paused from where he had been attempting to smooth down his rumpled robes, turning around to face Snape, who had a look on his face as though he wished Adrian dead where he stood.

“It wasn’t my fault, sir! It was Harry, he-” he began, only to trail off as he realised his tie was exactly as it should have been, and he had no evidence to offer Snape to prove that he wasn’t a bumbling idiot.

“Blaming others for your shortcomings is unbecoming, Pucey. Sit down, before you make even more of a fool out of yourself,” Snape instructed him, before turning around and making his way back to the staff table.

“I will make you pay for this, Black,” Adrian hissed as he resumed his seat, with most all of the Great Hall’s eyes trained on his back.

“I think McGonagall’s way ahead of you, mate,” Harry replied casually, although his stomach was sinking as he met McGonagall’s thin-lipped glare. He had the slightest feeling his demonstration of his Transfiguration skills hadn’t been appreciated by his professor.

“Good. Hope she bloody well turns you into a toad, you great prat,” Adrian groused, massaging his neck where the snake had been constricting it. Harry reached into his bag and tossed Adrian a pain salve, which the other boy took with a begrudging grunt of thanks.

There was silence for a few minutes as the three of them worked at putting away their food, before it was disturbed by someone sitting down bodily next to Harry. He looked up from his now mostly clean plate, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Millicent had joined them, although she didn’t look too happy about it. Before he could get a word in, she started speaking.

“What have you done, Harry?” she demanded. At his raised eyebrow, she gestured down the table, to where Archer and Archie were shoulder to shoulder, heads bowed as Archer gestured to something on the table while Archie nodded thoughtfully.

Just slightly down from them, the muggle-born boy who Harry was now fairly confident was called something-Foster leaned forward and whispered something into Archer’s ear, causing her eyes to light up.

“It’s been one day. I won’t have you turning them into… into-” she tried, searching for the right word before Harry cut her off.

“Delinquents? Hoodlums? Me ?” he asked sarcastically.

“Exactly,” she replied, giving a mock-shudder. “Anyway, I’d still like an answer to my question. Those two came back from lessons joined at the hip, and I know it's your fault,” she stated, crossing her arms in front of her.

“Alright, you got me. I told Archer to try and be friends with him because it’d be funny. Seems she listened a bit too well,” he confessed, looking down the table at the two with no small amount of amusement. He could already picture it in his mind - Archer Potter and Archie Bulstrode, successors to the Weasley twins after their graduation.

“What? Why would it be funny?” she demanded, sounding slightly offended.

“Arch-ie… Arch-er,” he repeated slowly, as he had done that morning. For a moment, Millicent was confused, and then she sighed, hiding her face in her hands.

“I hate you, Harry,” she muttered.

“You love me really,” he countered, knocking her knee with his own. She elbowed him in the side, which he took as confirmation.

Befriending Millicent had been somewhat of an accident on his part. She had sat next to him after being sorted, and was summarily ignored by all of her yearmates as they arrived at the table. He had done little more than pass her the cheesecake when she asked him and make a little bit of polite conversation, but it had apparently been enough.

After about a month of going on like that, she had come running into his dorm in tears after one too many comments about her weight from her dorm-mates, and snotted all over his robes about how mean they were. 

It had made him so sad that she had had no-one else to go to about the issue other than the third-year boy who she was at best a passing acquaintance of that he decided then and there to take her under his wing. As Cassius had rightly pointed out during the Sorting, he was something of a mother-hen.

Plus, she had gotten snot and tears on his favourite cashmere jumper - the only punishment befitting such a heinous crime was for her to have to endure his friendship.

He took a slice of steak and kidney pie from the plate in front of him - one of his favourite dishes at Hogwarts - and then watched as Millicent plucked two more from the plate, before Cassius leaned over and stole the remaining three, and wondered if he should have bothered befriending either of them.

He knew for a fact that Millicent didn’t like steak and kidney pie, and Cassius had put away enough food to feed a family of four by that point - this was a coordinated effort to spite him, although for what reason he could not determine.

“For corrupting my little brother,” Millicent helpfully informed him, as though reading his mind.

“For creating a new set of Weasley twins,” Cassius supplied, nodding towards Archer and Archie, who were currently laughing as Desdemona Selwyn wiped mashed potatoes off of her face, looking disgusted.

“I hope you both choke on that pie,” he said, seeing no other plates of the stuff around him. Millicent just smiled wanly at him before shoving one of the slices into her mouth whole, while Cassius made a point of eating his three slices at an excruciatingly slow speed, ostensibly so as not to choke.

Harry wanted to hex him, but was distracted by Adrian saying his name.

“What?” he asked warily, surprised that Adrian had formulated his plan for revenge so quickly. It usually took him a few days at least to come up with a suitable plan.

“There’s an owl headed straight for you, mate,” he replied, pointing upwards. Harry’s gaze flicked up in the direction Adrian had pointed to, and he locked eyes with his mother’s eagle owl, Rufus. This couldn’t be good.

The owl dropped off a letter which was suspiciously lightweight in front of Harry, pausing to allow himself to be stroked by everyone in the vicinity and to steal two slices of bacon off of Millicent’s plate before taking flight once more. 

Harry eyed the letter in front of him with great suspicion. His mother never wrote at the start of term - never, ever, not even to Charlie. He searched the Great Hall until his eyes landed on his little brother at Gryffindor table, who gave a slight shrug before turning back to his friends. Very helpful.

With a sigh, he picked up his dinner knife and cut off the wax seal of the letter, deciding to get it over with. He withdrew the single sheet of parchment contained within, and frowned deeply as he read its contents.

“What is it?” Cassius asked as Harry dropped the letter to the table, looking like he had just sucked on a lemon.

“She wants to meet with me,” he replied. An outsider may have thought his tone disgusted, as though meeting with his mother were beneath him, but Cassius was no outsider. His friend was bitter - it was a bitterness he understood, perhaps better than anyone else on the table at which they were seated. He remembered receiving a similar letter from his father on his seventeenth birthday, asking him for a meeting after years of absence. Cassius hadn’t bothered showing up.

“How’s she plan on doing that?” Millicent asked, her nose wrinkling in confusion. It was a rarity for parents to visit their children outside of Hogsmeade visits - so much so that she did not think she had ever seen it done.

“Floo call. I’ll ask Snape and invoke her name - I’m sure he’ll be all too eager to please,” Harry snarked, letting out a mirthless chuckle at his own joke. Cassius and Adrian shared a look at that - it was common knowledge among the upper years that Snape harboured something of an obsession towards Mrs. Potter, but neither Harry nor Snape usually cared to address it.

“Don’t do something stupid, mate,” Adrian warned. Cassius nodded emphatically, suddenly wishing they had not been spending this entire dinner ribbing each other. It might have made Harry more agreeable.

“Am I known for doing stupid things, Adrian?” he bit back, glaring at the letter on the table as though he wished it to burn. There was no response offered - Harry had a reputation as something of a prankster, but he had never done anything so stupid as to venture into the realm of idiocy. He typically thought things through before acting, even if he could sometimes have benefitted from thinking them through a little bit more.

After a tense beat of silence, Harry grabbed his letter and got up from the table. It seemed as though he were making to leave, but he went straight past the doors and right on over to Gryffindor table, where he came to a stop behind Charlie, showing him the letter.

“Do you know anything about this?” He asked. Charlie was silent for a beat too long for any answer besides ‘yes’ to be truthful.

“Dad’s angry,” was his eventual response - slow and measured, just as Charlie always was. “Thinks mum’s being unreasonable. Could be why she wants to speak to you.”

“About what?” Harry pressed, aggravated with his brother’s half-answers.

“About you. He found out that you were over after my birthday,” he elaborated, sounding almost… angry about it. “Thanks for that, by the way,” he added sarcastically. Definitely angry, then.

“Fine. I won’t bother in future. Thanks for your ever-so-helpful information,” Harry said frostily, snatching the letter back. Charlie made a face that was evidently meant to be insulting, although in Harry’s opinion it just made him look like an idiot.

“Don’t pull faces, Charlie. It might get stuck,” he cautioned his younger brother, parroting back words he knew James to be fond of. Charlie scowled at him, but Harry was already sweeping out of the Hall. 

He made his way back to the Slytherin Common Room, where the same seventh years from this morning were sitting with their heads bent over parchment. He cast a subtle jinx which tied Rowle’s shoelaces together and ignored Yaxley’s concern at his stormy expression, hastily making his way up to his dormitory.

Montague was in there, but he didn’t seem in the mood to cause trouble. He cast a single, baleful glance towards the Quidditch Captain badge glistening on Harry’s lapel and turned away, back to what looked to be a letter of his own.

Harry set the letter down on his bedside table before climbing into bed, staring at the ceiling. He had spent much of his life wishing his mother made more of an effort - now that it seemed she was finally doing just that, why was it that he found himself so repulsed by the idea of accepting it?

He fumbled for the letter without looking up and, once he finally had it in hand, read it through once more. Then once more after that, and he read and read until he thought he had an inkling of what was wrong.

She had never said sorry. The letter was full of nice words, and inquiries after his studies and the like, all topped off with the promise of a visit, but she had never once apologised for keeping him at arm’s length for essentially his entire life.

He was under no illusion that this was a social call. She was going to make a statement here, and the prelude to it had included not one indication that she was sorry.

In all of his fantasies where his mother had welcomed him home with open arms, there had always been an apology. Probably because he had been dreaming about it since he was seven, and that was the type of wish-fulfilment seven year olds tended towards.

Perhaps it was childish to expect one, but he didn’t think so, and he didn’t particularly care if anyone else did. He’d had enough of playing grown-up where his mother was concerned. Perhaps it was time he indulged his more childish wishes.

With a murmured Incendio, he set the letter alight and vanished the ashes as they fell, taking satisfaction in watching the thing disappear in its entirety before he put down his wand. 

“Bad news?” Montague asked, his voice slightly hoarse.

Harry issued a grunt - whether it was affirmative or not was up to Montague to decide. Evidently, he settled upon the former.

“Too true, Black. Too true,” he murmured. There was some rustling, and then the sound of curtains being drawn. If he were less drained, he might have wondered how it was that his first civil conversation with Montague in years had come only a day after he stole the Quidditch captaincy from the other boy.

As it was, that thought couldn’t have been further from his mind as he curled up under his covers, still dressed in his school robes. 

Perhaps he had proven Adrian right and done something stupid. Strangely, he found that he didn’t particularly care either way; not when his bed was so enticingly warm, and he was so dreadfully tired. Consequences were a thing for future-Harry to worry about - right now, he could afford a moment’s rest.