Switched

They reappeared somewhere that was definitely not the Keep, or wherever they were going to kidnap someone to murder.

"Er..."

"Costume change," Mira explained shortly. "I can't wear something like this out in Muggle London without attracting too much attention, and I can only imagine how you managed to get that much blood on you in the course of Andromeda's ritual. Blaise's rooms are that way—" She nodded to the left. "Turn right at the end of the corridor, second door on the right. I expect he's still there, since he's not expected to attend the pre-dinner party. Get cleaned up and see if he has anything muggle that will fit you." Harry sincerely doubted that he would, since Blaise was a good eight inches taller than Harry. "I'll come find you when I'm ready to go. Fifteen minutes, perhaps."

He liked slightly-annoyed, impatient, businesslike Mira better than overly-sincere, happy-to-meet-you Mira, Harry decided.

And it took all of two seconds for Blaise to remind him why he was Harry's best mate, even if Harry was Danny's. (Which was...sort of weird? Danny had to have other, better friends than Harry. Just because they lived together...) When he knocked on Blaise's door, and the taller boy opened it to find Harry standing there, covered in blood, he just raised an eyebrow, asked deadpan whether he'd changed his mind on the invite to stay with the Zabinis over the holiday, then, and demanded a "quick quotes recap" of the night's (afternoon's — it wasn't even five, yet) events.

After which, his only comment had been, "So, that's a yes, then, on staying with us? After you go commit your first murder, obviously."

"Er...probably?" Honestly, Harry hadn't thought that far ahead. "Not the whole three weeks, probably. I'm supposed to be at school. Andi sent a note to Flitwick that I would be back on Christmas, or maybe Boxing Day."

"Brill. Though I was sort of hoping we could use your sudden company as an excuse not to attend Mira's family's Christmas party. Christmas in Milan? Beautiful. Mira's family? Awful, regardless of the season... Here, try these." He threw a pair of trousers at Harry, which he had to have outgrown years ago, since they actually fit reasonably well. "I don't think I have any shirts small enough to fit you, but I do have an old coat here," he added, digging it out of the depths of his closet after a few more seconds.

"Cheers. Er. You do know I'm probably going to ruin these, right?" There had been a lot of blood in Socks, and she'd been a relatively small dog. He could only imagine killing a human would be messier.

Blaise blinked at him. "Harry. Look around yourself. Does it really look like I'll suffer from losing a single muggle outfit?"

...That was fair. The Zabinis' home was very nice, probably actually a manor or something — Harry had the impression on the way here that the two corridors he'd seen weren't even most of it — all heavy wood and thick carpets and drapes and fancy textured wallpaper and shite. Actual paintings on the walls, even here in Blaise's room (still-lifes, not portraits, Blaise didn't like the walls having eyes), and no clutter or books and toys strewn about. (Harry wasn't entirely certain Blaise had toys. It was sort of hard to imagine him playing with action figures or a model racetrack or something like that...) The sort of place Aunt Petunia wanted Number Four to be like, but would never manage.

"If I were you, I'd be more concerned about whether Danny's going to want a new roommate than whether I'm going to want a pair of trousers back that are five inches too short."

Harry felt uncomfortably as though he'd suddenly lost the plot. "Why would Danny want a new roommate?"

Blaise sniggered. "You did try to eat him. I mean, he already thought you were sort of creepy, but attempting to tear a bloke's throat out with your teeth is sort of its own level of disturbing."

Harry huffed at him. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"That doesn't really make it better," Blaise said, laughing even harder. "I can't wait to see Danny's memory of you trying to fight off Andromeda."

"Shut up, I wasn't in my right mind. I'm sure I would have done better if I'd really known what was going on. Or if I'd had claws. Humans are really not good predators..."

"Now, Harry, there's no shame in losing a wrestling match to a witch who's almost forty and hasn't been in a serious fight in decades," he giggled, grinning like a loon.

"Piss. Off."

"Seriously though, about Danny."

"I was possessed. I'm sure he'll understand."

"I'm not sure he will. I mean, I can let Coco sneak up on him to find out, but I'm guessing his roommate going feral and trying to kill him is a little scarier than Andi burning his sketchbooks. Maybe just...think about it. What you're going to tell Flitwick if he wants to switch, when we all go back to school."

Well, if he really did, that would be a problem, because none of the other Ravenclaws would want to share with him, and Harry somehow doubted that Corner and Cornfoot were going to let Danny triple up with them so Harry could have his own room. That just wouldn't be fair, especially since their room wasn't as big as Entwhistle, Goldstein, and Boot's.

"If he cares enough to actually say something, I'll just move my shite down to your room, how's that? I mean, McGonagall's already practically decided that I'm a Slytherin anyway."

Blaise shrugged. "I snuggle in my sleep, and you'll have to convince Snape or one of the prefects to let you have our password, but sure? Does that mean I don't need to air out a guest room?"

"Do I need to air out a guest room?" Harry repeated, in a deliberately overly-posh tone. "Christ, Blaise, I don't care — unless murdering people is really exhausting, I'm probably not going to sleep tonight at all..."

Mira, wearing a significantly higher-cut, less-formal looking dress and a long muggle coat, reappeared halfway through Harry's mockery, though he didn't actually notice until she spoke from the doorway: "Yes, Blaise, you should air out a guest room. It's only polite to offer your guests a space of their own, even if neither of you anticipate a need for separate beds." ("Yes, Mira.") "Ready to go?"

Harry nodded eagerly. "Don't wait up, Blaise."

"Wake me when you get back, I want to know how it goes..."

"I sincerely hope it doesn't take that long. Ideally, I would like to be back before dinner. I am in the midst of hostessing an event, at the moment..."

Oh, right. "Thank you, by the way. Did I say thank you? Because I really appreciate this," Harry said, giving her his most winning smile.

"It's really not fair for you to look so much like Bella."

How it went was shockingly smoothly. They walked around Muggle London for an hour or so, with Mira explaining the finer points of choosing a good victim and a good location from which to apparate with him, pointing out different types of muggle security cameras and so on. They scouted out a nice hotel with the intention of convincing their victim to invite Mira up to his room, where she could knock him out with a potion, and then apparate him to the Keep. (Being able to apparate was clearly the most useful magical skill for the purposes of kidnapping someone — Harry made a mental note to learn as soon as possible, since he didn't want to have to keep asking people to help him kidnap victims.)

She brought Harry there first, to a heavily-overgrown outbuilding at the edge of a small wood, and left him to explore while she fetched a suitable sacrifice. As she flatly informed him, bringing along a child tended to be a turn-off to unsuspecting arseholes trying to pick up women in hotel bars. (Clearly, Harry would also have to develop his own strategy for luring appropriate sacrifices to out of the way spots in order to apparate away with them.)

It felt like it took a very long time for her to come back — long enough for Harry to find his way out to the circle of black stone in the middle of the wood and, bearing in mind Andi's advice from earlier, make a stab at a purification ritual. Since he really had no idea how to do that, properly speaking, he decided that getting rid of any extraneous magic or enchanted objects, like he would for Potions class, and washing up a bit more thoroughly than he had in Blaise's bathroom would have to be good enough.

Which was why he was starkers when Mira reappeared with an unconscious man in a suit, his tie half-undone and her lipstick on his mouth.

He went back to the spot where she had left him, because he didn't want her to come back and find him missing, then faffed about for a while trying to decide whether he ought to have his wand with him for the ritual (he had a suspicion that no, he shouldn't bring it into the circle, even if he would probably need it to get the sacrifice to the circle in the first place), and then whether he ought to bring his wand holster. He decided to leave his boots, which were the only other enchanted thing he was wearing, but if he was going to leave his wand outside the circle, he didn't want to just leave it lying out, so he'd eventually decided yes, he ought to bring the holster, too.

Then he'd realised that he didn't have a weapon with which to kill the sacrifice. He had nearly resigned himself to just bashing the poor sap's head in with a rock, when he realised that he could probably transfigure a downed branch or something into a knife. Wood to steel was a transformation he did, after all, have plenty of experience with, now. And focusing a little differently than usual, like Dora had been trying to teach him earlier for free transfiguration, but while also using the matchstick-to-needle transformation spell, he managed to transform a stick into a reasonably blade-shaped shard of metal he judged was probably sharp enough to stab someone to death.

After that, though, he'd realised that transfigurations were ongoing magic, and he was trying not to bring extraneous magic into the ritual. Faced with the choice of rock-bashing or using the transfigured knife, he'd sort of...done the same thing he did to sharpen a pencil or that sword. Except...instead of reminding a sword that it ought to be sharp, he just sort of...convinced the knife that it was, in fact, actually supposed to be a knife. Which might be breaking one or more laws of magic, but...seemed to work? It sort of made Harry feel a little weird, like being dizzy from doing too many corkscrew spirals in a row in flying class, and there was a burst of not-light behind his eyes, like hitting his head too hard (it didn't hurt, it was just really disorienting), and a humming like the telly being on in the other room with nothing playing for a few seconds, but that faded quickly, and it...seemed to work?

At least, when the ringing in his ears and the flash of non-light faded and he looked at the knife again, it wasn't being held in its current shape with a transfiguration. Stimulating its fundamental identity like Danny had taught him as a general un-transfiguration spell didn't do anything, either. So that was cool.

And then, because Mira still hadn't been back — when Harry checked the time, it had only been about twenty minutes, which wasn't that long, it just seemed like it when he was waiting for something to happen — he'd decided that he might as well wash up a bit better and try to get in the right mindset, or whatever it was Andi had said exactly. It was a bit chilly, but he'd spent several rainier, colder nights out in the Forbidden Forest over the past two months just because, well. It was there, and he didn't want to be inside, even if the weather outside was sort of terrible.

He'd gotten used to the cold relatively quickly, to the point he honestly wasn't sure whether he was using magic to keep himself (relatively) warm somehow, or if he was just ignoring the cold somehow (Blaise said that was a thing people could do with occlumency, like mind over matter shite), but either way, it didn't bother him to spend a few hours creeping around under the trees, soaked to the skin, seeing whatever there was to see when the rain killed his scent and the sound of his footsteps, and it bothered him even less to strip off his borrowed trousers and coat out here under the moon, washing himself with a leaf transfigured into a small cloth and water from the aguamenti charm.

Because Mira was a good sport, and probably expected Harry to just do stupid and/or crazy things for reasons he couldn't really explain after knowing Bella for years, her response to apparating back to find Harry outside, naked, in the middle of winter, washing himself under the full moon, was: "I'm fairly certain the ritual doesn't require participants to be skyclad, but to each their own, I suppose."

"I didn't think it did. Andi mentioned a ritual purification thing... Whatever, it's not important," he said, pulling the trousers he'd borrowed from Blaise back on.

"Okay," she said, clearly trying not to laugh at him. "Do you...know what you're doing from here?"

"Yeah, I think so. I mean, most of the ritual — the old ritual, I mean — was to include the whole House and like, decorative, sort of? Aesthetic, that's the word. The only important part is that I have to kill him in the circle, and I have to do it for the Family Magic." Harry wasn't entirely certain how he knew that, but then, what else was new? "You don't have to wait," he added. "I don't know how long it will take — well, I know it won't take that long for him to die, but I think afterward I'm probably going to just stay and...be with the Family Magic for a while — and I know you have a dinner party. You could just come pick me up in a couple of hours. I'll come back here after."

"You're sure you don't want me to come with you?"

He shook his head. "I think I have to do it alone. Thank you, though."

"Oh, thank God. I thought I should offer, but I hate seeing people bleed." She sounded so relieved, Harry couldn't help giggling just a little. "Alright, I'll come check on you in an hour, and if you're not here, I'll just assume you're not done yet, and try again an hour after that, yes?"

"Yes. Thank you," he repeated, probably sounding no less relieved than she did. He hadn't realised he was a little concerned that she might try to...butt in on what was really supposed to be just him and the Little Crow, just because he'd had to ask her to get the sacrifice for him.

"Think nothing of it. Good luck." She gave him an encouraging smile, and then she was gone, leaving him alone with the unconscious man.

Harry cast a Hover Charm on him, pulling him through the dark trees by one arm and reflecting that if Danny wasn't still freaking out about Harry trying to eat him in a few days, Harry would have to admit that perhaps this spell wasn't entirely useless.

There should probably be more...ceremony to this whole ritual than simply dragging the sacrifice to the centre of the circle — his Hover Charm failed as soon as the body came to the edge of the black stone — and finishing removing his tie so it was easier to see the pulse in his throat, but Harry and the Family Magic had been waiting far too long to delay it even a second longer for such a stupid reason as that.

He set the knife against the man's throat, leaned into it, and pulled, opening an ugly gash, much as Andi had done earlier, with Socks. Unlike the dog, though, this man — Harry hadn't thought to ask his name, if Mira had even bothered to get it — didn't sleep peacefully through his death. His eyes shot open, wide with pain, and he tried to scream, to move, hands scrabbling up to his throat as though he could stop the blood from flowing.

It was already too late. Harry felt it as soon as the first drop fell on the black stone beneath his knees, the magic — not so desperate as it was before the Dark had interceded earlier, but still hungry for that warmth, for life — seising onto it and ripping it away, the light fading from the man's eyes before the blood stopped flowing.

It spread through the magic in the air and through Harry himself in a way he couldn't quite describe, allowing him to relax in a way that he hadn't realised he was tense, almost like...almost like being at Hogwarts, surrounded by enough magic to really breathe for the first time.

The Little Crow, by contrast, had definitely known they were tense and anxious, scared that this miracle might be somehow snatched away from them at the last moment, not daring to truly believe in their salvation until they felt that warmth flooding through them again. They pulled a body together for themselves — younger and smaller than Harry — just to cry tears of relief and throw themselves on Harry, clinging to him so tightly that he was certain their claws were drawing blood.

But that was fine. He didn't mind. They were together, finally, that was what mattered.

Harry didn't know how long they stayed like that, kneeling beside the cooling corpse in the middle of the circle. It seemed like a very long time and also (weirdly) like no time at all before they were interrupted by a now-familiar chuckle, Angie stepping out of nowhere with a wry smirk. "How very touching."

Harry wasn't exactly sure what the Little Crow said back (he was...pretty sure that was Welsh?), but he suspected it wasn't entirely friendly. More like a wary, what do you want?

Angie grinned. "Someone offered anything to save you," she told the Little Crow. "I'm here to find out whether he meant it."

"Of course I did," Harry said immediately. And she had saved the Little Crow, feeding them...however much magic she had, restoring their strength, even if Harry had still had to find a sacrifice to anchor them to life. He didn't know how he knew it, but he was certain that a single human life wouldn't have been enough to have brought them back from the edge without that extra magic. It would have stopped them from dying, but they would still be craving more. He'd probably have needed to make at least half a dozen more sacrifices before they would have felt as safe and secure as they did now. "What do you want me to do?"

"Oh, nothing much." Harry strongly suspected that was a lie. "You're just going to join me in serving the Dark."

The Little Crow interrupted immediately, scared and possessive, their claws digging more deeply into his back, and not at all happy with that price. No! He's ours, you can't have him!

"Oh, relax, we're not going to take him from you. His soul is certainly open to our influence, but he's a little too...innocent to be Avatar material." The Little Crow relaxed significantly, though Harry wasn't certain in what world he could be considered innocent. He had just killed someone... "We simply require his service."

"Which means...what, exactly?"

"You formally devote your life to worshipping the Dark and promoting its interests in the mortal world; we'll continue to support your Family Magic as long as you do so. When you die, or if you leave our service, the House of Black is on its own again — but if you play your cards right, you could have centuries to revive the Family so it can sustain itself."

...That sounded suspiciously good. There had to be a catch... "But what does that mean, exactly — worshipping the Dark and promoting its interests? What do you want me to do?"

Angie's grin stretched wider, predatory and exciting. "Nothing you won't enjoy. Torturing a few people to death for us now and then. Living your life in such a way as to be a destructive and/or corrupting force on the mortal plane. Giving in to the urge to act like the little monster we all know you are on occasion, and revelling in the pain you cause."

O...kay? Still sounded too good to be true, but. "Just to be clear, I don't have to torture and kill anyone specific, or, I don't know, go on a rampage at Hogwarts the next time I just hate everything and can't stand the world existing, do I? Just someone, sometimes?"

"Well, no, if you go on a rampage at Hogwarts, a certain self-righteous prick will snuff you out, and that would be no fun at all. Clearly it's preferable that you not be caught doing our bidding. And generally speaking, no, there isn't anyone in particular we want you to kill, like, I don't know, little Blaise Zabini or Doriel Tonks. People you like or who are likely to kill you if you try. You can choose your own victims. That's fine, except..."

"Except?" Harry repeated suspiciously.

Angie sighed. "Except, we've decided that we want you to put Tom out of his misery. We do enjoy watching him suffer, but removing him from the board affords greater opportunities in the long run."

"...Who's Tom?" She said that like Harry ought to know who he was, but...

The Avatar of the Dark pouted. "The Dark Lord Voldemort. Silly name, but he was a delightfully overly-dramatic child. If you kill him, the tynged that Evans bitch rooted in his soul will stop affecting Bella through him, and then she can stop being boring."

Oh, right. Harry remembered the memory of her talking to the Little Crow about that, how it was spreading to her through him. And he was pretty sure that if the tynged wasn't an issue, the Family Magic would be able to root itself in Bella, which would be better than waiting until Harry was old enough and could channel enough magic to support it himself. He could tell the Little Crow agreed, tensing excitedly and saying something like, You would save Bella for us?

"Not for you, because leaving her in Azkaban is a waste. Sort of funny, because the dementors think she's creepy, but she's not actually doing anything there."

The Little Crow nodded eagerly. "Yes! We agree! Tell her yes! Please," they begged, clinging to one of his hands with both of theirs and giving him wide, desperate eyes, feeling hope spark to life in them, almost painful, even now that they weren't in danger of starving to death. Maybe more so because they felt safe — they were afraid that this chance, especially on top of the miracle of their reprieve, was too good to be true.

Most people, Harry supposed, would find the little crow-child alien and even more disturbing than they found him, but he couldn't say no to them when they were being deliberately adorable. (He probably wouldn't be able to tell them no anyway, even if they looked like they were fifteen or so instead of five, but still.)

"Alright. I still kind of feel like I have to be missing something, but yes, I'll do it. Serve the Dark, or whatever. I mean, I did say anything, so... I just need to kill the Dark Lord who's already mostly dead anyway?"

Angie sniggered. "I'm sure we'll find other things for you to do too, but yes, killing Tom so Bella will stop being boring is a good start. Oh! While you're getting Bella out of Azkaban, you could get Sirius out, too. He is an annoying little shite, going and rejecting us, but honestly, breaking the Covenant as a fuck you to the House is the most House of Black thing any of them had done in decades. And he never did get a trial for Pettigrew's murder. Which kind of sucks, because Pettigrew's not even dead. Again, I can't tell you where he is, or exactly what happened — I really shouldn't even mention that he's still alive. But that's like, the most basic necromancy, it's barely a secret."

Now Harry was sure he'd missed something. "Er...again?"

The witch paused, apparently confused. "What?"

"You said, again, I can't tell you, but—"

"Oh! Right. I didn't actually tell you — we can't tell you how to kill Tom, or where he is, or anything like that, because that would be telling. I was going to, but then the conversation went in a different direction and that didn't actually happen in this timeline. Oops. Aspects of Magic can't just give mortals all the answers to their problems. Well, we could, but it would make the story much less interesting, and we can't have that. We can, however, advise you to visit your grandmother. It's not telling if mortals ask each other the right questions. Even if one of those mortals is Druella bloody Rosier, which is practically cheating, but she's not an Aspect of Magic Itself so she doesn't have to follow the same rules. And we have nothing against cheating, so."

Harry really didn't know what to make of any of that. "Okay, so: Ask Druella for advice on killing the undead Dark Lord; kill him so Bella will...be herself again; find Peter Pettigrew; get Sirius a trial and clear him of murdering said traitor. And maybe occasionally kill someone with you in mind, if it strikes my fancy."

Angie nodded. "Yep, that's it. For now." She leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead, magic jumping between them like an electric shock to his soul, agonising and exhilarating, leaving him gasping for breath, and popped to her feet. "Also, I'll take this," she added, gesturing to the corpse. It proceeded to startle Harry rather badly by sitting up and clumsily climbing to its feet — clearly still dead, but...animated? Was that the right term? Like a zombie or something. He scrambled to his own feet, pulling the Little Crow with him and causing Angie to giggle hysterically. "I'm headed to a party with a bunch of sirens," she explained. "It's only polite to bring snacks." (Which really wasn't much of an explanation at all, honestly...)

And then she was gone, leaving the two of them in the circle to simply be together until dawn.