Switched

The third-years, miraculously, had not managed to set anything on fire in the roughly ten minutes it took for Severus to make his way to Poppy's domain, wake Potter, and return. The vast majority of them hadn't managed to do anything else, either — he'd left them preparing ingredients for the day's potion — and so did not have sufficient time to complete their assignment, but that would hardly result in anyone else making their way up to the Hospital Wing or destroying hundreds of galleons worth of supplies and lab equipment so, all in all, probably the best possible outcome. He had awarded both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw five points for avoiding causing some actual emergency while he was otherwise occupied dealing with the paranoid Healer's non-emergency. (After they had filed out of the classroom, of course — it wouldn't do to let them think they would regularly be rewarded for something as simple as not harming themselves.)

That wasn't entirely fair to Poppy, he knew. Nor had it been entirely fair to throw that barb about not trying the obvious solution at her. Her background was that of a children's healer. She had decades of experience with various student ailments and accidents by now, but the vast majority of accidents and even emergencies could be corrected or at the very least stabilised with a few charms, giving her plenty of time to figure out exactly how two students had managed to acquire each other's left arms in an otherwise routine Transfiguration lesson, or get rid of the gills a fourth-year Hufflepuff had accidentally given herself with a deliberately-incorrectly-brewed animal transformation potion. (She had, thankfully, retained her lungs, but had not managed to transform her lower half into a "mermaid" as muggles envisioned them). She was careful and thorough, and cared deeply about the wellbeing of her patients. She would only ever attempt a cure which might itself have negative side-effects or complications after having exhausted all other options and preparing to deal with any such complications should they occur — and of course she considered scaring the shite out of a child to be a detrimental side-effect, as opposed to a vaguely amusing one.

Severus's training as a healer, such as it was, had been conducted in field-hospitals so overwhelmed that they had pressed into service any Death Eater who wasn't in need of medical attention themselves and was capable of keeping a cool head under pressure. The first time he'd seen Saint Mungo's A&E intake, he'd been shocked. He'd been there to tear one of their cursebreaker-healers a new arsehole for half-breaking a particular curse the week before — which had only superficially solved the problem, and had made the cause of the related symptoms which had turned up several days later unrecognisable to the twats up in Spell Damage — and one of the Assistants had gotten short with him because couldn't he see they were busy?

There had been half a dozen cursebreaker-healers on shift, each of whom had been working on only one patient, and there had only been four lower-priority patients awaiting their attention. That was a lull for the Death Eaters' healers. And only one of the patients receiving treatment was actually in a critical state. Sure, the others' conditions would have worsened if they weren't tended to as soon as possible, and obviously civilians didn't have the same expertise in stabilising their own condition and those of other less-urgent wounded as even the least competent Death Eaters, but it was hardly as though they had a dozen patients on the brink of death because some bright spark thought he'd try a curse he'd found in an ancient grimoire in his grandfather's library in the middle of a training exercise, on top of the usual parade of stupid warlocks doing stupid shite.

Severus, who, at the age of twenty-three, had only been treated by healers at Hogwarts and Ancient House, had been under the impression that Emergency Intake was for actual emergencies, and anyone who couldn't juggle multiple critical cases at once — often sharing patients and so having to pick up where someone else had left off in breaking a particular curse — had no business calling themselves a cursebreaker-healer or being in the emergency side of the hospital at all, because they'd just be getting in the way. Bellatrix hadn't been the only Lieutenant with insanely high standards and expectations. He'd only ever met one official healer who believed him when he said he'd seen a team of five healers coordinate to cover eighteen critical cases simultaneously in the wake of the Glastonbury battle, and they'd only lost four — she'd been a veteran of Grindelwald's war and had known Chief Healer Pulaski personally, before his (British) Healer's credentials had been revoked.

Suffice to say, taking a few moments to consider whether there were kinder ways to wake a sedated child than with a Move Or You're Dead wasn't something he'd been trained to do. On the other hand, he very much had been trained to see that the more time he spent trying less extreme options was more time the bloody third-years would be left unattended, in a potions lab (which so far as he was concerned held the potential to constitute an actual emergency), and therefore start with the least-extreme remedy which he considered very likely to work. If he had somehow made the situation worse, he likely would have ended up spending much more time on Potter, but Nora Sterling's presence had been a fairly obvious clue that this was a problem related to the ritual the majority of the Slytherin and Ravenclaw students had participated in over lunch, which he was familiar with due to having approved its use in the holiday celebration and was aware involved a mildly hallucinogenic sleeping draught, which might ameliorate or entirely prevent an attempt to activate the physical mechanisms involved in the standard Reviving Charm from taking effect (and had almost certainly resisted simply shaking him, or poking him with a stick), and Potter was young and healthy. The odds of the shock of a Move Or You're Dead giving him a heart attack were negligible, even with potentially unknown magics in effect. It had been a calculated risk.

Plus, as a side-benefit, he had been able to evaluate the boy's psychic and metaphysical response to the spell, which had been entirely consistent with Severus's expectations. If he were possessed, the sudden awakening would almost certainly have elicited some obvious response from the possessing entity. In the event that he were possessed by something which managed to keep itself from reacting to such an unexpected attack (the probability of which was very small), it would most likely have the skill to avoid notice until after dinner, whereupon he would almost certainly detect it with legilimency — unless the hypothetical possessing entity were to force Potter to avoid him, which would itself be something of a red flag. But he really didn't think the boy was possessed.

Judging by the scraps of memory Potter had let slip in the wake of awakening, if an external influence had been attempting to exploit the ritual, it was most likely the Black Family Magic — he couldn't imagine what else had projected the image of a harpy-like creature to argue with a teenage Bellatrix (it had just been a flash, but it had been clear from their body-language that it had been a confrontation, at least on the harpy's side) or kneel beside her as she 'nursed' what he could only assume had been her newborn son with bloody soulfire (the depths of Bellatrix's madness would never cease to astound him), with the corpse of the woman who had actually borne the child cooling in the background.

Why the Black Family Magic needed to attempt to break into a Mabon ritual to speak to Potter, Severus could not possibly guess. One would think it could at the very least send him dreams without resorting to such measures. He was very clearly a Black by blood, and since the Blacks used more blood magic than a bloody vampire clan, he'd be shocked if their family magic wasn't invested in the bloodline at least to some degree. Probably to a degree that most other longstanding Houses would consider completely mad. And Potter was intuitive enough, he ought to be able to pull whatever information it was attempting to communicate out of even the most muddled dreams after a few repetitions.

Indeed, the greatest part of the reason Severus had demanded the boy come down to his office after dinner was to ascertain exactly what Potter knew about the memories. Certainly not as much as he wanted to know — Severus expected he would have been far less frustrated if he actually understood what was going on — but equally certainly more than Severus did at the moment. And while it wasn't exactly Severus's business what the Black Family Magic was doing with or to one of its children, he hadn't been lying when he told Petunia Evans that he cared about the wellbeing of Lily's child. It was the very least he could do to ensure that he wasn't being tortured at home or psychically traumatised by his sire's Family Magic.

And Severus could be mature enough to admit that he did rather like the boy, despite absolutely despising his sire. (And his father, for that matter.)

Petunia's approach to raising him had been undeniably abusive, favouring her own son in an obvious effort to degrade Potter's sense of self-worth — especially when he was very young — and setting entirely unreasonable consequences — harsh corporal punishment and deprivation of basic needs like food — for minor offences and even accidents, but the boy didn't seem to be any the worse for it. Pomona had voiced her concerns about his too-serious, too-quiet demeanour, his perfectionism and preoccupation with the consequences which would result if he (or anyone) should do something wrong in her class, which Severus too would consider troubling signs...in any other child. But he would much rather have a quiet, serious, respectful Black who took the likely consequences into account when deciding whether to do something he knew was against the rules, like wander the corridors at two in the morning — Aurora, much to her bemusement, had made a friend — or skive off History, and did his best to be unobtrusive while not paying attention in lessons, than an obnoxious, egotistical clown who would break rules simply because they were there, and did his best to prevent any learning from taking place in any of his lessons.

Having spoken to the boy at length that first day and observed his interactions with Petunia (both in real-time and in Petunia's memories), as well as his behaviour in lessons and (through Blaise Zabini's memories, in his weekly legilimency lessons) when he was entirely outside adult supervision, he couldn't say that Potter seemed to be particularly cowed by the presence of adults in general or even his abuser specifically. He clearly didn't know how to relax and have fun with other children — that Blaise Zabini had quickly become his best friend spoke volumes — but he wasn't incapable of interacting socially with older students and adults, and he had no trouble asking questions or making even unreasonable requests he had to know were not likely to be granted (like sitting in on the seventh-year astronomy lessons), wasn't prone to acting out (Severus was aware now that Black's obnoxious attention-seeking was likely due in part to his own home-life, but that didn't make it any less obnoxious) or particularly untrusting of or unwilling to rely on others despite his apparent self-sufficiency, and his magical development clearly hadn't been stunted by Petunia's treatment of him (despite displaying any evidence of magic being one of the accidents for which he had been repeatedly and unreasonably punished when he was small).

He had gotten a detention from Minerva for talking back and refusing to practise the assigned transformation in lessons, but given that Severus recalled getting several similarly-worded detentions himself, he strongly suspected that "talking back" meant "complaining about being bored", and "refusing to practise" meant "refusing to make ten-thousand bloody needles". And he probably spent more time out of bounds — either out after curfew or exploring the Forbidden Forest — than he did in lessons, but as long as he didn't drag any other students into danger along with him, Severus didn't have a problem with that.

The boy wasn't stupid enough to wander further into acromantula territory after coming across one giant spider, and a single scout-spider (generally no more than three or four feet in diameter) could be driven away with fire or killed relatively easily. The acromantula colony was the biggest reason the Forest was Forbidden these days, and most likely the most serious danger he might encounter out there. Technically, most of the Forest was centaur territory, and it had originally been easier to forbid students access to the entire Forest than to mark out the edges of the treaty line, but the centaurs would just escort the children out and be miffed with Dumbledore for failing to keep his humans on human land. They wouldn't try to eat them.

Given that had anyone asked him to consider such a horrific possibility ahead of time, he would have expected any child of Lily Evans and Sirius Black to be a narcissistic little psychopath with Attention Deficit Disorder, the Potter they'd actually gotten was a welcome surprise, abuse or no abuse. Severus would certainly oppose any attempt to force the boy to stay at the Dursleys' home over the summer holiday, but that would likely only become an issue if Dumbledore were to realise that his "Boy Who Lived" had flown the coop and decided to live independently in Charing in August. He should probably oppose the boy's decision to live on his own as well, but had Severus had the resources to move out of his father's house at the age of eleven he was quite certain he would have been capable of looking after himself for a few months at a time, and told anyone who thought otherwise to go to hell. Potter was more confident than Severus had been at eleven — more like Lily — and far more competent at wizardry, if Filius's raving was to be believed. (Which it was — excitable he might be, but the Charms professor was hardly prone to exaggeration.) He would be fine on his own.

He was slightly surprised that Potter had apparently willingly spent the past five hours in the Hospital Wing. Severus certainly hadn't expected him to. He had to have been bored out of his mind. But he didn't appear to be put out when he finally appeared — accompanied by the Healer, who must have insisted on keeping him under observation until she could hand him off to Severus directly. Mildly exasperated, perhaps. Less so than Severus himself.

"He's not possessed, Poppy," he snapped. "I would have mentioned it if I thought he needed to be observed or quarantined. I am aware of the dangers of extraplanar ritual interference."

Poppy huffed at him, because of course she did. "You are also aware that using dark arts on schoolchildren is incredibly unacceptable, up to and including your bloody Wake the Dead charm! That variant has not been thoroughly tested, and especially not on children! And I am aware that it takes far longer than your thirty-second appearance on the ward to fully verify that a mind has not been tampered with!"

Severus snorted. "It's Move Or You're Dead, Poppy, and it only takes about five seconds to ascertain whether a mind hit unexpectedly with it is under possession. Even if the possessing entity is not itself affected, it will be forced to react to the sudden return to consciousness and the sudden emotional shift in the host-mind, thus making it very obvious to a legilimens, if only for a moment. The external shape of his mind is unchanged, there is no evidence of a forcible intrusion, and asking me to sift through all of his memories is a far more flagrant ethical violation than using fear-inducing spells for diagnostic purposes."

"Fine, then! Don't check him for mental tampering!" ("I already did," Severus inserted, though he didn't really expect her not to talk over him.) "But don't you dare go using dark magic on my patients without my say-so, young man!"

He felt his eyes tip involuntarily toward the ceiling. "My apologies, Poppy. I was under the impression that it was an emergency situation which needed to be resolved with all possible haste, due to the fact that you sent an elf to fetch me out of a lesson. I'll be sure to wait and ask whether your summons is an overreaction next time."

Perhaps he should have realised that it wasn't a truly urgent case from the fact that she had clearly told the elf to tell Severus he was needed in the Hospital Wing immediately rather than bring him to her immediately — the elf hadn't stayed long enough for him to demand it pop him upstairs, save five minutes of walking — but that could easily have been a case of an elf being overly literal. That had been known to happen.

"You smug little— So you turn around and use a dark spell on a student to punish me for overreacting, instead of telling Miss Sterling to try the bloody antidote or any number of other, less violent methods of waking him up?! I don't believe you!"

"No, I turned around and used a dark spell on a student because I was reasonably concerned that my unattended third-year class might create an actual emergency, and if less extreme measures had failed they would have wasted more time, since I presumed you would demand I stay until Potter was conscious. Plus, as I just explained, it provided diagnostically relevant data."

"A Cheering Charm would have provided the same data, Severus!"

"It wouldn't have woken him up, though. And you probably shouldn't use Cheering Charms on him anyway — in fact, make a note in his file that he's allergic to euphoria-inducing charms," he added. Just in case.

"He's not— You can't be allergic to a charm, Severus!"

"No, and I have no evidence that he inherited the Black Madness either, but I'd rather err on the side of caution rather than see someone spark off an easily-avoided manic episode by exposing a child who is genetically predisposed to the condition to euphoria-inducing charms."

Poppy gave him an almost patronising frown. "I realise James Potter's mother was a Black, Severus, but I hardly think that's reason enough to suspect —"

"Poppy. Look at the child and ask yourself: does he look more like Potter's son, or Sirius Black's?"

In the brief moment of silence which followed, as Poppy attempted to decide whether Potter's overwhelming resemblance to Black or her certainty that Prefect Evans would never have cheated on her husband was stronger (she'd known Lily better than most of their professors, but not that well), Potter offered, "It's fine, Madam Pomfrey. Really. Er. The Move Or You're Dead spell. It didn't hurt me, it was just...startling. Like if someone sneaked up on me while I was asleep. And Professor Snape may have a point about me being a Black, really. I mean, I don't know anything about the Black Madness, but everyone knows I'm a questionably sane demon-child, and I really don't look that much like James Potter, so just in case? I mean, when would I ever need a medical Cheering Charm, anyway?"

Poppy's eyes narrowed at questionably sane demon-child, most likely thinking that children shouldn't refer to themselves in such terms, that his muggle family had conditioned him to think of his magic as some sort of curse, but Severus suspected it was more to do with the boy's personality than his magic. It was not a secret, after all, that he was trying to recruit other students to form a Castle-Climbing Club.

"And, was there something we needed to talk about, Professor? Because if you two are just going to argue, I should go back up to Ravenclaw. Danny's probably worried about me. I mean, he came up after Defence, but I don't think he believed me when I said I was fine and just waiting to make sure I wasn't possessed, and studying healing charms is a lot more useful than going to Quirrell's lessons so I didn't mind hanging out for a few more hours."

"Studying healing charms?" Severus raised an eyebrow at Poppy.

"Don't give me that look!" she snapped, going slightly pink. "It was a book on Healing Theory, not a practical guide. Perfectly legal."

"Oh, yes, because giving a student just enough information about how healing works to start experimenting with developing their own biological charms is a much better idea than letting them read about the Five Fundamentals and practise Sterilising Charms for a couple of hours," he scoffed. He couldn't help it, he'd always thought that law one of the most absurd. Yes, healing charms could be horribly abused — suffocating due to your skin having been 'healed' to seal your nose and mouth was an objectively awful way to die — but Severus could probably find a way to weaponise any charm given a moment or two to think about it. (The real danger a rogue healer posed in a fight was in their knowledge of human anatomy and every way the human body could fail, not their charms.)

Poppy actually agreed with him that information on basic healing spells should be much more widely available, primarily because students learned what they knew of healing from their parents — who were rarely competent healers themselves — or worse, other students, often without consideration of basic principles like the importance of washing wounds or the limitations and any discussion of situations in which it might be inadvisable to use a particular charm. Which of course resulted in students thinking it a perfectly fine idea to re-grow the skin of a scraped knee or use a numbing charm on a sore wrist, and ending up in hospital a week later with a nasty subcutaneous infection or a highly exacerbated tendon injury. She was, however, far more particular about following laws, such as those restricting access to texts describing charms classified as 'medical' to mages who were of age and had an OWL in Charms.

Any mention of any topic even tangentially related to this always annoyed and distracted her, in this case long enough for Severus to add, "Yes, Potter, I would like to discuss exactly what happened in the ritual, and how, exactly, it might have gone wrong, to rule out possibilities other than external interruption." He had been planning to tell the boy to tell people that Severus had been checking to make sure he wasn't possessed, but since Poppy now knew that he already knew Potter wasn't possessed that wouldn't work.

"Okay."

Poppy huffed, yet again. It was her go-to expression, much as his was an inscrutable raised eyebrow, into which the person he was speaking to was welcome to read anything they liked. "Very well, then. I'll leave you to it."

As soon as the door closed behind her, Potter said, "Pretty much as soon as I closed my eyes, I was in this dreamscape. Um. It was a forest, and there was freezing rain, and there wasn't any path at all, which I didn't really realise or think about until right before you woke me up, but—"

Severus let him rattle on for several seconds, activating the privacy wards and throwing isolating charms at the listening spells Dumbledore thought he'd been so sneaky in placing. (Paranoia died hard. For both of them.) "You do realise that was just an excuse for Poppy, Potter. We both know that it was the Black Family Magic attempting to interfere which derailed the ritual."

The boy scrutinised his face for a long moment, very obviously attempting to suss out how much Severus had seen when he'd been "startled" (a term Severus was definitely going to use if Poppy went to Dumbledore telling tales) into projecting recent memories, earlier.

Of course, there was no way for him to know, and after a few seconds he very clearly decided that there was no way he could possibly guess, and apparently that it would be the path of least suspicion to simply come clean, rather than attempt to offer an explanation which might adequately excuse the things Severus had seen without admitting, "So, you know I'm actually Bella's son now."

...What?

No.

No, he had most certainly not known that! He'd thought the Black Family Magic had been affecting the ritual, somehow affecting the recounting of the Path Behind to communicate that Potter was actually a Black and should come renew his bond with the Family Magic or something. Maybe come claim his place as the Black Family Heir in the absence of any other option, or go find Bella's son so he could do it. He certainly hadn't thought Potter was Bella's son!

Potter, still scrutinising his face, despite leaning against the back of one of the student chairs in what could be termed a casual pose if it weren't for the obvious tension in his shoulders, swore. "Shite! You didn't know that. Er. I don't suppose I could convince you to pretend I didn't tell you?"

Severus threw his words from the first day they met back in his face, almost without thinking. "Not a chance."

Setting aside for the moment that Severus had been so easily drawn into believing that Potter was Lily's son — that all the traits he had attributed to Lily over the past three weeks were actually traits Lily apparently shared with Bellatrix bloody Black — if Potter was really Bella's son, then where the hell was Lily's son?!

The boy scowled at him. "Well, can you at least not tell Dumbledore? Mira and Madam Tonks have been keeping it a secret they know — and Blaise, and me — because they want to see if he actually has a plan to switch Danny and me back somehow, or if it's all going to just explode in his face when one of us turns seventeen and tries to claim to be the heir of a Noble House we actually have no connection to."

Danny? Danny Tonks?

Danny Tonks was Lily's son?

Now that it had been pointed out he could definitely see it, the younger Tonks did bear a striking resemblance to James Potter, it was just...

Just a relief, really.

Severus had seen very little of Danny Tonks in the past three weeks that might suggest he was related to Lily or James Potter. Even thinking about it now, he couldn't think of anything which reminded him of Lily in any particular way. There had been artistry in her rituals and, from Zabini's memories, Danny Tonks was a very talented graphic animator, but the similarities were hardly immediately obvious, given the difference in their disciplines. The younger Tonks (Severus was still in the habit of thinking of Doriel Tonks as "Tonks") was far more grounded than Lily had ever been, and simultaneously less driven. Not lazy — Severus didn't imagine Ted Tonks, Stereotypical Hufflepuff, would approve of either of his children developing a habit of half-arsing anything — but Lily had been every bit as determined as Severus to make a better life for herself, get the hell out of Cokeworth and never look back.

He also didn't remind Severus particularly of James Potter (aside from his looks). He had probably taken after Potter in temperament, given that he seemed so different from his mother at that age — he had to look for similarities to see even a hint of them — but...Severus couldn't actually say that was a bad thing, necessarily. Danny Tonks had not been an only child, doted upon by parents with the wealth to give him whatever his spoilt little heart desired. He had not been raised to believe that "no" meant "yes, if you beg long enough", or that all the world was a stage and he was the star of the show. He was a bit more confident than most first-years, presumably because Andromeda had given both of her children a much more thorough pre-Hogwarts education than even most noble children received these days, but hardly conceited.

Quite frankly, Danny Tonks was...very normal.

More clever and level-headed than the average first-year, perhaps, but that was hardly a high bar. Slightly more mature, too — students with older siblings did tend to be a bit more aware of the world outside of their own homes, even when they weren't sent to muggle primary schools. More talented with wizardry than most of his year, if Filius and Minerva were to be believed (Transfiguration especially — it had been gratifying to hear that Minerva's relationship with Andromeda Tonks remained unchanged, despite the two-year howler-hiatus granted by the elder Tonks's refusal to suffer Minerva's NEWT-level lessons), and to be perfectly honest, there was little opportunity for those more talented with witchcraft to distinguish themselves before third year — Severus did not encourage experimentation at the elementary level (despite having been somewhat notorious for playing around in lessons himself), and the potions he had chosen for the elementary curriculum were rarely complex enough to hold much opportunity for deviation or artistry.

But Danny Tonks was sane in a way that Lily hadn't been — preoccupied with the goal of developing a portraiture technique that could capture his elder sibling's transformative nature, with making friends and engaging in life, rather than wandering around with his head in the clouds, never entirely focused on the mundane world around himself and speaking to gods in his dreams. And he was sane in a way Potter — Bella's son, the one everyone thought was Potter — wasn't either. Which, given that Severus had sworn to protect Lily's son, and the Dark Lord almost certainly would claw his way back to life someday, was definitely a good thing. Yes, he would most likely come after the Boy Who Lived, both as a means of reasserting his own abilities and as a means of posthumous triumph over Lily, as well as with the motivation of the Prophecy, but even if it did come out that Danny Tonks was the true Boy Who Lived he would still be safer than Potter in that role.

Danny Tonks was a reasonable, level-headed young man — prone to silliness as boys tended to be, but sensible enough to take precautions against being summarily murdered. Harry Potter would probably go looking for the Dark Lord because he was bored and/or intended to deal with the looming threat as thoroughly and efficiently as possible. Severus had expected as much when he'd thought the boy Sirius Black's son, and knowing that he was in fact Bellatrix Black's son made approximately zero difference. Were he her son, and had he inherited it, Lily's own insanity would not have been any sort of ameliorating factor. She'd been absolutely ruthless when it suited her, and shared the Blacks' utter lack of concern for her own life. (Necromancers did tend to fear death significantly less than sane people. Especially when they'd been flirting with Persephone their entire lives.)

No, he had no idea who he was — or at least Severus presumed he didn't, since Potter hadn't listed him along with Zabini and himself — but he was safe and well cared for, and had been raised by people who were stable and loving and most importantly, not Petunia, and—

Oh.

Oh, good God...

He began sniggering, entirely unable to help himself because — on top of the overwhelming relief that it was to hear that Danny Tonks was the boy Severus had sworn to protect, and the lunatic in front of him was actually the spawn of a woman who could go die in a fire — the Old Goat had given Bellatrix's son, product of two-thousand years of inbreeding conceived specifically to save the oldest family of purebloods in Britain...to Petunia.

That might be the funniest thing Severus had ever heard of.

It could only possibly be better if Bellatrix knew — the look on her face, he could see it now...

"Er... Professor?"

He shoved the hilarious revelation away, clearing his throat. "No, Potter, I will not tell Dumbledore that his oh-so-crafty scheme has been uncovered. One does have to wonder how he possibly thought that Andromeda Tonks wouldn't notice that she's not actually raising her sister's son—" She had done a damn good job keeping it quiet, though, that her younger child was adopted. Severus hadn't known. "—to say nothing of Mirabella." Speaking of whom, had Potter said Zabini knew as well? Apparently he was significantly better at occlumency than Severus had been led to believe, because he hadn't noticed so much as a hint of the secret in the younger legilimens's mind. Not that he'd been looking, but. "She is your godmother, I believe."

"So I've been told. And also that it's really obvious to her that Danny's not me because of some magic godparent bond. So, yes. From what Blaise told me, Dumbledore didn't actually want to give Danny to the Tonkses, he was supposed to go to some light family, but Mira sort of strong-armed him into it, because at least Andromeda was raised a Black, right? Bella would have wanted me raised by her before some light family even if she did disown them. Actually, Blaise said Mira said Bella said that I should be raised by Bella's mother, if Narcissa couldn't do it for some reason, but Mira vetoed that on the grounds that Druella would probably murder me before agreeing to raise a clone of Bellatrix, and Dumbledore wouldn't let Mira have me — or, definitely Danny, by the time this was going on, Aunt Petunia found me on the front step the morning after Bonfire Night — so Andromeda was, I don't know, the fourth choice, but." He shrugged.

"Clone of Bellatrix?" Severus repeated, because that was the only part of that little ramble which was actually surprising — mostly because he was fairly certain that the child before him was male. He supposed it was possible Dumbledore had used bioalchemy to change his sex as well as his eye colour, though that seemed like the sort of unnatural application of the art the Headmaster would refuse to touch.

Said child obviously understood the basis of his scepticism. "Yes, sir. Well, clone with a few very minor changes, I guess. The Family Magic wanted Bella to exist to take over the House, but she couldn't do it, so she made it a new Bella, but male, because it would be easier for a male heir to repopulate the House."

There was something deeply disturbing about the completely matter-of-fact tone the boy used in discussing the incredibly mercenary reasoning behind his own existence. (He couldn't really bring himself to be surprised that the boy would characterise being the opposite sex as a "very minor" difference.)

"But, um. Since you didn't know I'm Bella's son, that can't be what you wanted to talk about, so...what was?"

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile effort to ward off a tension headache. "I had intended to ask if you were aware of your Family Magic's attempts to reach you, why it would be unable to do so without resorting to external measures, and whether its attempts to communicate trouble you."

"Oh. Of course I know, I've been dreaming about it for years...though I didn't know it was the Black Family Magic until today; I don't know, it sees me as being buried under light magic, but I don't see anything when I look at myself; and mostly no? More the fact that it can't reach me troubles me. And that it's dying, and I know how to save it now, or at least how to start, but I don't know where I need to go to do it. It's this big altar of black stone, somewhere on one of the Black properties. It's round and not very high, but big, like twenty feet across or something. There might be a tower, too. I don't know, that was in the more dream-like part of the ritual. Do you know where it is? Because that would be really convenient."

No, he didn't. But he suspected the boy would be much more likely to answer, "What do you need to do?" if he asked that first.

The boy hesitated long enough that Severus knew his words would be a lie even before he answered. "I just need to get there."

Severus raised an eyebrow at him.

"It's really better for both of us if I don't tell you," Potter offered instead.

Which meant that it was almost certainly something illegal, something he suspected that Severus would be obligated to report to other authorities. An altar implied a ritual, and Potter was well aware from their conversation at Petunia's house that Severus found the fact that ritual magic was banned simply because it was powerful and potentially dangerous absurd. (It had come up in conjunction with Lily.) He also had to know that Severus deliberately turned a blind eye to the breaking of laws he considered ridiculous — he'd let Zabini keep his bloody boggart, after all. Ergo, the fact that it was a ritual was not the thing Potter was reluctant to tell him. He could not possibly think that Severus would object to self-sacrifice or animal sacrifices, given that he'd simply encouraged the boy to keep any gratuitous killing of animals well out of sight when directing him to Grey's rather than warning him against killing (more) small animals at all.

It had seemed wise, given Petunia's mention of a certain cat, to direct any proclivity the boy might have toward torture and killing in a minimally destructive direction. Taking out any sadistic urges he might have on animals in the forest was infinitely preferable to the boy developing a habit of terrorising his peers.

Severus was well aware that his fellow staff members (and most actual mind healers he'd ever spoken to) would absolutely not agree with his strategy of encouraging less destructive behaviours rather than discouraging all destructive behaviours, but one of the most valuable lessons Severus had learned in his decade of herding snakes — and the decade before spent fending for himself among them, and an entire childhood spent managing Lily — was that attempting to force a child to suppress certain inclinations, demonising and forbidding the associated behaviours, was not conducive to said child learning to control those urges. On the other hand, acknowledging the non-optimal situation(s) caused by those inclinations and providing a (comparatively) acceptable outlet for them made it possible to steer children to develop less destructive habits than they otherwise might — keeping a boggart to play with, for instance, rather than attempting to surreptitiously enthral one's more annoying yearmates — and in the long run led them to be more willing to consider the motivations behind the behaviour in question and change it than if they were simply told constantly you're a sick freak, this is wrong, don't do it.

And perhaps even more important than opening the door to future modifications of anti-social behaviours, offering compromises and alternatives rather than unequivocally condemning dark inclinations and the students themselves for holding them — or worse, trying to make them talk about their feelings like a bloody mind healer — tended to encourage even the least trusting of his students to consider him an ally of sorts, rather than an enemy. (A depressing proportion of his students were wont to consider any adult or figure of authority an enemy, no matter how kind and well-meaning they were. The better part of his duties as the Head of Slytherin came down to just...managing troubled children, and the better part of that was just getting them to trust him.) Most of them weren't truly dark-minded, just ill-raised and taking out their pain and frustrations on the world around them. Treating them like monsters would only encourage them to act like it, which simple fact none of the non-Slytherin staff seemed to be capable of comprehending. (Despite the fact that it certainly had with his generation, and nearly all of them had been here to see it.) And even most of the more genuinely dark-minded students were rational enough to not want to indulge their least socially-acceptable fantasies for various reasons, such as the ever-present threat of Azkaban if they were to get caught.

In any case, Severus was quite certain he'd made it clear that he would hardly be so appalled by the idea of an animal sacrifice or two that it would be better for both of them not to tell him. And if their Family Magic were supported by human sacrifice, that would be entirely in keeping with the reputation of the House of Black. Regulus had never admitted as much, but Severus had had his suspicions when they were in school. And looking down at the wary, calculating expression on the face of Bellatrix's eleven-year-old (male) clone, Severus was absolutely certain that he was not one of those dark-minded students who would ask Severus to help him stop himself from hurting someone, but rather more like one of the young ritualists who were absolutely convinced that it was necessary to murder someone for the voices in their head. And in this case it actually might be.

He honestly had very little idea how Family Magics worked in general, but from a few things Regulus had told him over the years (half a lifetime ago) it was an integral part of the individual Blacks' own magic, in much the same way the Dark Mark was anchored in the Death Eaters' souls. And much like the Dark Mark had drawn on the magic of all of the Death Eaters to help anchor the Dark Lord when his body was destroyed, the Family Magic would likely syphon energy away from its peripheral members to support the primary in times of crisis. It seemed a reasonable assumption that it might be attempting to contact Potter through external means to limit their connection and slow the inevitable draining of his life. If he didn't make the sacrifices it required of him, he would die with it. (In Severus's under-informed estimation — he would add it to his endless list of topics which required further research.) It might be possible to break the family bond — Andromeda Tonks had — but Severus knew a good deal more about soul-wounds than the Family Magics of ancient Houses, and the shock of such an extreme measure as amputating part of his soul would probably also kill an immature mage. At the very least, he would almost certainly become a squib, which most mages considered a fate worse than death.

Severus truly hated endorsing his students killing people (murder was a terrible habit to get into), but in matters of self-defence, life-or-death situations — which this likely was, despite the lack of a definite and immediate threat — he could hardly tell them not to. In this case, it would be as unreasonable to ask the boy not to kill anyone as it would be to ask a tiger to become a vegetarian. The only reasonable thing to do was advise him on how not to get caught if and when he finally found his way home.

Damn it.

Today, however, was not that day.

"It doesn't count as plausible deniability if there's only one reasonable explanation for your blatant attempt to offer it," he said waspishly. "The Blacks used to hold their family rituals at a property they referred to as the Keep. I don't know where it is or how to get there — the family kept the locations of their major estates a closely guarded secret." Severus still didn't know exactly where Ancient House was physically located. He certainly could have figured it out when he had access to the property, and it was almost certainly recorded in a Ministry file somewhere now, but he'd never needed to know its geographical location to apparate to it, only the place itself. "They won't be on any maps — there are very complex wards which prevent them from being mapped, hide them from aerial surveillance and so on — and while some of their long-standing enemies might have a descriptive account of some locations, they are hardly likely to share it with anyone who might be able to revive the House."

Most of the Sherwins and Wellingtons and Carmichaels, off the top of his head, would think it bloody hilarious that the last heir of the House of Black couldn't find his own estates. The Boneses and Longbottoms would probably have some idea — they were similarly old Houses — but Augusta Longbottom would sooner curse Bellatrix's son into a coma than help him after what she'd done to Frank and Alice, and Amelia Bones would certainly ask enough questions to reveal why Potter so urgently needed to get to the Keep. The Director of the Department of Law Enforcement could hardly turn a blind eye to an impending human sacrifice. She'd probably order him arrested 'for his own safety,' and they'd end up being forced to attempt the soul-amputation option. Andromeda and Narcissa...might know. Possibly. But then, they'd likely only ever apparated or floo'd there, so Severus honestly doubted it. Regulus had once told him that he hadn't known where in London his parents' home — the one he'd physically lived in for his entire life — was until he was thirteen, and then only because these were things the Heir had to know in order to manage the properties.

Potter frowned. "Well...shite. Still, it helps to know what it's called, so thank you. Also...if there's only one reason for plausible deniability... You don't seem like you're planning on telling anyone."

"Was that a question?"

"Ah... Are you planning on telling anyone, sir?"

"Tell them what?"

"Is that a no?" Severus raised an eyebrow at him. Obviously. "Er...why not, exactly? I mean, thank you, I would prefer you didn't—" That understatement startled a little puff of laughter out of Severus, all the funnier for the boy's apparently genuine inability to recognise his deflections (and indeed his initial refusal to explicitly recognise that reason) as a subtle, No, I'm not going to tell anyone. "—but I'd trust that's the truth a lot more if you have a reason. Especially since I suspect you were only being nice to me because you were friends with Lily, and she's not actually my mother."

Severus very nearly let out another puff of laughter at Potter assuming that Severus could be lying about whether he was going to tell, but that he wouldn't lie to come up with a reason to suggest that he wasn't lying, but managed to contain himself. "You may not be a Slytherin, Potter, but you are a student, regardless of who your mother is, and since none of the other senior staff are prepared to acknowledge that there are questionably sane demon-children outside of my House, let alone try to teach you how to be a functional and indeed successful member of society, that job invariably falls to me. Dying or being permanently institutionalised before you leave school are not outcomes I would deem functional or successful, and it is not my job to teach you to behave altruistically or follow the law." That would be extraordinarily hypocritical of him. "It's my job to teach you not to get caught behaving antisocially or breaking the law. Granted, convincing you that it is far easier to simply behave pro-socially and follow the...less stupid laws—" He couldn't quite bring himself to endorse following the law in general. "—is the most straightforward way to ensure that you are not caught doing the opposite and assure your successful integration into the world outside of this school, and therefore the strategy I most often and most strongly recommend.

"Sometimes, however, there are no so-called 'good choices'. I cannot reasonably fault you for considering your own life a higher priority than that of anyone else. In much the same way, I cannot hold your life to be inherently more important than any other student, because you are all equally my responsibility, but I can and do consider your life, future, and general wellbeing more valuable, and therefore a higher priority to preserve, than that of any non-student, and particularly any adult, out there in the wider world."

"...Oh." After a moment, the boy seemed to realise that he was just sort of staring, stunned, at Severus, and added, "Okay. Yeah, I get it. No killing Hogwarts students or kids in general. I assume the consequence if I do is that you turn me in — murder charges, soul-sucking monsters, et cetera?" Severus gave him a solemn nod. "Yeah, okay, noted. But I was just thinking...is there...I don't know, some sort of list for that, or something? Of like, students are more important than non-students, and children are more important than adults, I mean. And, I don't know, is it better — or, well, less bad, you know what I mean — to hurt a child than to kill an adult or like, kid versus a lot of adults? Because that could be...really useful."

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose again. He probably should have realised that Potter hadn't been indoctrinated into the decision-making paradigm the Dark Houses used — if he had been, he likely wouldn't have needed Severus to give him a reason he had no intention of turning him in for planning to murder someone (who Severus was not responsible for), and in any case, who would have taught him? His excuse was that he'd been too distracted by considering the ethical position he'd been put in to consider whether and how Potter had evaluated the rightness or wrongness of killing someone (likely a whole string of someones, in the future) to save his own life. "There is, yes."

"I knew it!"

Severus raised an eyebrow at the sudden exclamation, complete with glaring into the middle distance and clapping of fist into hand in an unmistakable ah-ha! gesture.

"I knew there was some sort of agreement about what's right and wrong no one ever bothered to tell me about! Aunt Petunia said there wasn't, just use some bloody common sense and don't kill any non-insects unless I wanted my arse whipped halfway back to hell, but she thinks it's good for problem solving skills to make me figure things out myself, no matter how long it takes. But I am fully prepared to admit that I don't get it and I'm giving up on this one, Dudders can lord it over me forever that I had to ask for the answers, I don't care, because not knowing what other people are going to do just because it's the right thing to do bloody well sucks and I hate not knowing the rules, because how'm I supposed to decide if it's worth breaking them if I don't even know what they are?!" He was forced to pause for air, at which point he apparently realised he was ranting at a professor. "Anyway," he went on, much more calmly, "I don't think I have any common sense, sir, so could I please have a copy of the list? Please."

"Sorry to disappoint you," he drawled, trying not to laugh at I don't think I have any common sense, which might be the single most self-aware thing any member of the House of Black had ever said, "but I don't have an actual, explicit list. Most people don't." He was positive most (if not all) of the Dark Noble Houses explicitly taught their children their priorities, but he rather doubted they all had a nicely enumerated, four-foot long scroll like the one Narcissa had given Lily to memorise in their first year. They hadn't been sure at the time whether Narcissa was just taking the piss because she didn't want to teach Lily how to fit in, but Regulus had confirmed several years later that the list was legitimate, because if you're in battle and you have to make a split-second decision about who lives and who dies, you're not going to have time to think about it. "The House of Black did, though. I expect Andromeda Tonks will write it down for you."

Honestly, he expected that Andromeda would be appalled that no one had ever written it down for him before, along with an overview of the points where the scheme varied significantly from the virtue ethics which the Light Noble Houses espoused; a list of hard rules like don't escalate conflicts with your peers and don't let anyone use euphoria-inducing charms on you; an order of precedence for the entire bloody Wizengamot; and a seven-generation family tree. Severus had only exchanged a handful of letters with Andromeda over the course of her elder child's Hogwarts career, but that was more than enough to gather the impression that she was still every bit the lady she'd been raised, regardless of whether she was also the biggest class traitor in Britain.

Potter huffed. "Well...fine. I mean, thank you, sir. If that's all, I need to go write a letter explaining, yes, hi, I'm secretly the son of the sister you disowned twenty years ago, I realise this is sort of out of the blue, but could you please send me a list of people it's wrong to hurt and/or kill, in order, because you might have been able to guess this about me from Danny's letters, but I have no common sense. Also, anything else people haven't told me because they assume I already know, but which I am completely oblivious to. Cheers, Not Actually Harry Potter," the boy declaimed, with overly-dramatic sarcasm and eye-rolling which an hour ago he would have called worthy of Lily. "P.S., Danny says hi, no one has told him or Dumbledore, but Professor Snape figured it out because of wacky Mabon hijinks, and on a completely unrelated note, where is the Black property known as the Keep?"

"I recommend you put it exactly like that," Severus drawled, smirking. "Though you should be aware she — and Narcissa — likely won't know the physical location of the Keep or be able to apparate freely through its wards anymore."

"Why— Oh, right. Everyone just apparates or uses the floo, don't they?" That question was apparently rhetorical, because he fell into a pout and immediately added, "You know, a month ago I thought magic was so incredibly convenient..."

"Who knows your true identity? Just to be clear."

"Blaise, Mira, Mister and Madam Tonks, and me. And now you. And I wrote to Aunt Petunia and she told Uncle Vernon, and will probably tell Dudley and Marge — my cousin and Uncle Vernon's sister — but not the part about who exactly Bellatrix is, just that I'm not really their nephew."

Very well. Petunia and her family hardly counted, given that they had no interaction to speak of with the magical world. And the other four had apparently been keeping at least part of this conspiracy a secret for years.

"Er...come to think of it, I don't know if anyone's told Missus Tonks that I'm Bella's son. Aunt Petunia said I should, and ask her to start a legal case, but Blaise says she's had one ready to slap on Dumbledore's desk the second he announces the truth for about five years now. So I haven't." Severus suspected that neither of the Zabinis had either, given that Andromeda hadn't written to Potter. "But she definitely knows Danny's Lily's son."

"But you're certain you haven't mentioned it to anyone else?"

The boy pouted at him. "Sir, I think I would remember telling literally any student other than Blaise that I'm actually Bella's son, not their precious Boy Who Lived. I think it would be memorable." ...That was fair. "Theo Nott might know about Danny, but I think he worked it out himself and was just fishing to see if anyone else knew — he made some comment on the train about a sketch of James Potter looking like a self-portrait — and... I don't know, if Blaise were going to tell anyone I'd think Daphne Greengrass, but it's none of her business, so he probably wouldn't... Oh! And Dumbledore, obviously! And anyone he's told, I guess."

Obviously. "Very well. I shouldn't need to advise you not to tell anyone else, but I invariably find that when I think that and don't issue such a warning, I apparently should have."

"I'm not that bad at people! And besides, Aunt Petunia already told me, so no, you didn't need to say it."

"I prefer to err on the side of caution. When you discover the location of the Keep, I expect you to inform me. I have no interest in being directly involved with any of the affairs of the House of Black—" If Potter was capable of fending for himself for several weeks at a time, Severus certainly wasn't going to insist that he only kill people under adult supervision and hold his hand through the whole thing. "—but I do, as I mentioned, have an interest in ensuring you aren't caught attempting to abduct a potential sacrifice, or after the fact. We will therefore discuss the precautions which one might hypothetically take to avoid drawing the attention of magical or muggle authorities while practising magic outside of school, as you no doubt intend to do over the holidays, as well as strategies for selecting victims no one will miss before you make any such attempt, by which I of course mean things you certainly should not do while living alone in Knockturn Alley lest you be abducted by some unscrupulous dark wizard because you look like an easy target no one will miss."

In order to cover his own arse, at least to some degree, Severus would also be using that opportunity to isolate the memory of this conversation from every other memory aside from the temporal stream, so that in the event the boy was caught red-handed and his memories inspected the DLE mind mages would have to trawl back through weeks or months if not years of memories to find Severus saying anything explicitly incriminating of anything more than facilitating a breach of the (Un-)Reasonable Restriction for Underage Sorcery, and the DLE interrogators had never been incredibly thorough.

The boy grinned — a disturbingly Bellatrix-like expression. "Yes, sir."

Severus nodded. "You may go."

(God, Severus needed a drink...)