Switched

Harry wasn't sure, but he suspected that Druella might be the single most freakish person he'd ever met. That wasn't a bad thing, just... Like he was a freak among magic freaks for being able to do magic on purpose before getting a wand, or learning spells six or seven times faster than everyone else by himself, or being unnaturally pretty and graceful, she was too. Except more.

That had been his first impression of her, stepping out of the fire — an instantaneous sort of recognition. (Oh, she's like me!) He couldn't say exactly why he felt that way. She didn't look especially like him. She was tall, though not as tall as Aunt Petunia — maybe five foot six or seven — and blonde, her hair swept up with magic, not a strand out of place. Her complexion was darker than his (enough to suggest that she had at some point in her life seen the sun, at least), her nose and chin sharper (more reminiscent of Draco's generally pointy face, but it looked better on her), her eyes less deeply set.

But her face was perfectly symmetrical and he could tell she wasn't using the charms witches normally used to look like real-life airbrushed magazine photos, and she looked much younger than she actually was, even accounting for mages ageing slowly. He would've guessed she was in her early thirties at most, if he hadn't known that she was really in her mid-sixties. She definitely looked younger than Mira, rather than twenty-plus years older. And the way she moved, returning Mira's greeting with the fluid precision of a ballerina, probably without even trying — that was familiar.

He could see why people didn't think she was entirely human. There was just something slightly...unreal about her. Like she was in the world, sure...but only mostly. And in other ways much more a part of it than most people, her every motion choreographed to some music no one could hear — to magic — surrounded by a strange sense of order and certainty, almost as though anything she did was fated to happen.

Harry didn't really believe in Fate, like everything was all planned out and even when you thought you were making a choice you were really just doing what you were always destined to do, but standing in the same room as Dru, catching her eye for the first time, he wondered just for a second if maybe Fate was just as real as gods.

And then she'd been so upset about him being left in Little Whinging, not because the Dursleys were muggles — zipping through his memories, forming an impression of who he was, she'd said Aunt Petunia did an admirable job raising him, which he suspected was high praise, coming from Druella — but because she knew what it felt like to be deprived of magic, and exactly why he never wanted to go back to Little Whinging, even if it hadn't been as bad as she probably thought, growing up there before he'd ever known how much better life was with enough magic around to let him breathe properly.

He wasn't sure, she didn't say when he'd been thinking about it at the time, but he didn't think that was a problem other people had. Everyone he'd tried to explain it to since he'd first realised how much better Hogwarts was than Little Whinging seemed to think he meant that he could use magic at Hogwarts, which, no, he could use magic at Aunt Petunia's house just fine — and had, pretty much all the time, even if he was just absentmindedly playing with the ambient magic, attuning it to himself but not really doing anything with it. He knew Druella was listening because she'd said something about that being a coping strategy to make up for the low density of ambient magic, consciously and continuously drawing it to himself, making a little field of artificially higher density, but she still hadn't said anything about whether it was a normal thing or not.

He was guessing it wasn't.

And maybe it was weird, but the fact that Dru got it sort of made him feel like he'd found someone who got him, someone he belonged with in a way he didn't belong with anyone else. And the fact that she cared, that she was upset, on Harry's behalf over him being left out to dry in Little Whinging, sort of made him like her. Sort of a lot. Even if it really hadn't been as bad as she thought (he hadn't really known anything else, before) and she would hate it on principle if any magically sensitive child were forced to grow up in a place like that... Harry wasn't really sure anyone had ever cared about him like that before. Well, probably Narcissa when he was a baby, and like...the house elves — his understanding was that his nurse would've been an elf — but no one he could actually remember.

(Between being invited to Andi's Yule ritual, meeting Dru, and finally making contact with the Family Magic again, Harry was actually starting to feel like he had a real family for once, instead of just...trying to make the Dursleys fit into that role. Not that he didn't still appreciate Aunt Petunia undertaking the thankless task of raising him, but comparing his feelings for her to the sense of belonging he felt with Dru and the Little Crow, it was sort of obvious he'd been trying to convince himself for years that the Dursleys were his family when he didn't even know what that meant.)

It didn't hurt either that she was scary smart and had a reputation for being terrifyingly good at magic.

Harry had already known that, of course — he'd even tried to read one of her papers, the one Sinistra had recommended, about geomancy and the influence of intra-system objects and other planes where magic itself worked differently. (He'd understood...some of the words. In his defence, it was both over his head and written in French. And he'd only just started learning French then.) But knowing that someone was good at magic and seeing them casually spell coffee into existence (even if it wasn't conjured, it was still really impressive to see it charmed and glamoured so quickly and smoothly) including suspending a charm in water?! (Harry definitely wanted to learn how to do that!) to mimic caffeine were two very different things.

And designing a spell to build specific, edible molecules — which she'd apparently done as a side project, her actual research was mostly on time and the nature of the multiverse, like the paper he'd (tried to) read — might be the single most impressive feat of magic he'd heard of yet. Though, the fact that literally everything he saw in her flat (except that painting in the sitting room and the built-in cupboards and flooring and stuff) was conjured was also impressive as hell. (No, he wasn't sure how he knew it was all conjured, it wasn't as though it felt magical like a transfiguration — conjured things were the thing, until they unravelled and went back to being magic; transfigurations were only temporarily being held in a different form by the spell — it was all just...cleaner, somehow, than real furniture and clothes and stuff. Unreal almost in the same way as Druella herself.)

Overall, he'd gotten the impression that Druella used magic for practically everything, which was sort of great, because why wouldn't you, if you could? He was aware that most people (inexplicably) thought that using magic all the time for everything was weird, but those people were simply wrong. Legendary mages like Merlin and Morgen and the Founders of Hogwarts, Harry thought, would have been like Dru, living and breathing magic. In many ways, she was exactly the sort of mage he hoped he would grow up to be.

So, not only did Harry like her and need a favour from her, but he also found he had a good deal of respect for her. Knowing that she didn't like kids or anyone who was loud and messy and chaotic — Andromeda had warned him when Mira had taken him to her office to fill her in on the situation with the Family Magic and assure her that he wasn't in any danger of being possessed and trying to eat Danny again, seemingly genuinely concerned that Druella might make Harry feel bad or something, like he'd never been told off for being unintentionally annoying — Harry had been trying to be on his best behaviour. And up to this point, it had been going pretty well, he thought. Yes, he had been sort of...overly enthusiastic earlier, asking about the alchemic charm, and he had been entirely unable to sit without fidgeting even before drinking whatever magic had been in that 'coffee', but she hadn't seemed annoyed, even if he hadn't been quite polite enough to be considered a young gentleman by Aunt Petunia's standards.

Now, though, he was having serious trouble not interrupting, because Druella had decided that they were going back to Hogwarts to talk to Dumbledore — the idiotic confusion surrounding Harry and Danny's identities was a much easier problem to solve than how to kill Tom Riddle and thereby almost certainly ensure Bella would leave Azkaban without starting the war back up again, and unless Dumbledore had a very good reason for having done it in the first place this little charade ended now — but they weren't apparating or taking a portkey like Harry and the Zabinis had to get to Brittany earlier. (The floo network didn't cross the Channel, so they'd had to portkey over here first, which was fun, in a merry-go-round ride from hell sort of way.) Instead, she was casting a spell by carving dozens of runes into the ambient magic, sort of like Harry had when he'd been waiting for Master Ollivander to find wands for him, but much more purposefully. He could feel the spell building around them, taking shape, and he had to physically bite his tongue to keep himself from begging her to explain what she was doing.

Finally, after several minutes of building suspense, there was a sort of ripple. A hole appeared in the space defined by her runes — a hole in reality, leading to an absolutely blinding well of magic.

Harry yelped, wincing — he couldn't help it, it was just suddenly and overwhelmingly there, and far too bright to ignore, like he could mostly not pay attention to wards and such now. It blotted out his perception of every other piece of magic in the room — Harry was a little surprised it wasn't physically (metaphysically, whatever) spilling through the hole and drowning them. Turning away from it physically didn't help, obviously, but that didn't stop him from doing so, purely on reflex.

Dru turned to him, almost as startled by his reaction as he was by the sudden appearance of a hole in the bloody universe. "Oh. Too bright?"

"Yes, Jesus Christ! What is that?"

She reached out to his mind, seeking out his perception of magic and... It felt like clamping down on something, like kinking a hosepipe somewhere between whatever part of him actually sensed the magic and his brain, drastically reducing his awareness of it. Of course, it reduced his awareness across the board — he couldn't sense any of the other magic around them at all now — but at least the Hole wasn't completely monopolising his attention anymore. Not Jesus Christ, though I suppose an argument could be made for the Holy Spirit... Hold that.

Hold what? he wondered, though it became obvious as Dru began to withdraw and whatever she'd done eased slightly. Oh, shite! He sort of mentally flailed at it, trying to flatten his perception again. After a few seconds he...mostly got it. Sort of. His control over it didn't feel very secure or precise, but he...more or less had it. "Thanks. But seriously...what is that?"

Druella gave him a slightly absent smile, most of her attention still on the Hole. "Magic. Most transport spells — apparation, portkeys, gate spells, even shadow-walking and other elemental magics — involve moving from this plane to an adjacent plane, through which it is considerably faster and easier to travel, or which does not correspond to physical space in this plane at all, then back to the Mundane Plane in a different physical location. This isn't a plane. It's...just magic. The Beyond, the Void — what lies Outside all other, physical planes, separating them from each other, and connecting them to each other."

Harry wasn't exactly sure how that was different from it being another plane, but he also wasn't sure this was the time to ask. That seemed like a big question. "...So we're going to go through there to get back to Hogwarts? How?"

The witch gave a little hum. "Not really, actually. This—" She gestured at the Hole. "—is what I call a Floating Gate. It opens a portal directly to the Outside through which physical materials may pass. Magic not tethered to a physical vessel cannot. Physical materials cannot, however, exist Outside, with no reference to a physical plane." She conjured what appeared to be a billiard ball and reached through the Hole. When she let it go, it vanished immediately. "Theoretically, this includes conscious beings. We might last a little longer, since we have our own magic maintaining the integrity of our bodies — that's what allows us to cross to and from Apparation Space, for example, without simply vanishing — but there's no ethical way to test that hypothesis. Therefore, in order to use the Beyond as a physical short-cut, one must first open a Floating Gate to the Outside, then open a second Floating Gate from the Outside to one's destination without losing contact with the physical plane.

"Space has no meaning Outside — nor does time, for that matter — which means the second Gate can be opened directly adjacent to the first. The process is somewhat complicated, however, because the second Gate must be opened using a freeform or wandless expression of will. Traditional wizardry simply doesn't work Outside. Once your Gates are aligned, you simply step from one physical point to the other physical point, making very sure to always keep at least one foot firmly Inside, ensuring that you have a physical reference and don't vanish yourself. We won't be entering the Beyond itself, so much as...stepping from the deck of one ship to another — the point, in fact, being not to fall into the ocean."

She grinned at the expression of awe on Harry's face. "That is so cool! Will you teach me?"

"No, I most certainly will not."

"But— Why?"

"Because I don't trust you to use the power to go anywhere responsibly, or even without falling into the Beyond or becoming horribly lost," she answered absently, reaching out into the Void again with her eyes closed, clearly focusing on what Harry assumed was the Second Gate.

How lost could you get if you just opened a doorway straight to wherever you were going? he wondered. He waited until Dumbledore's office appeared on the other side of the portal, with just a thin, brilliant curtain of magic separating here and there before asking, "Okay, but if I prove I can be responsible and promise not to vanish myself, could you teach me?"

She shrugged. "Honestly, I have no idea. Possibly? Certainly not before you come into your power, and I spent years spirit-walking Outside before I learned how to shape magic out there." She held out a hand for his. "I'd like to say so, but I really have no idea. And theoretically, if you don't define your destination properly, you could end up anywhere, any when, in any timeline or plane in the infinite multiverse. Knowing that you've dedicated yourself to the everloving Dark, I think it a near-certainty that you would stumble into trouble at the earliest opportunity. Come," she said, stepping into Dumbledore's office and tugging him after her.

Harry would like to say he could be trusted not to stumble into trouble, but he was aware that simply defining any mishap as a "fun adventure" rather than "trouble" did not actually change the fact that it was still getting into trouble, and basically saying that stumbling into trouble was fun probably wasn't a very convincing argument to teach him anyway.

He was thoroughly distracted from his attempt to come up with an argument she might accept as he stepped through the portal — specifically, as he stepped through the thin veil of magic separating the two halves of the gate.

It was brief, a split-second impression of infinity washing over him, but it sparked an almost painful, longing certainty that he was meant to be out there, floating in an endless sea of magic, not in this cold, dark, terribly mundane world. It very nearly brought tears to his eyes. If Dru hadn't been holding his hand, pulling him onward, he might have stopped, let himself fall, because he knew it would feel right. He didn't need a physical body, he didn't want it, he could just stay out there forever...

Dru very clearly knew what he was thinking, closing the portal behind them before she let him go. "Could you keep a promise not to vanish yourself?" she asked, genuine curiosity on her face and in her voice, both of which suddenly seemed very foreign and...wrong.

"Ah...I...don't know," he managed to say, after several seconds spent attempting to recall how lips and tongue and breath coordinated to form words. "You said something about spirit-walking?" If that was what he thought it was — it sounded like going out into the Beyond as like an astral projection or something — he didn't just want to learn it, he needed to, as soon as possible.

"Mmm. Later," she told him, as Dumbledore's phoenix appeared (with Dumbledore) in a burst of brilliant golden flames and painfully light magic, which instantly gave Harry a headache, but did do a very good job of bringing him crashing back to earth.

Right. Dumbledore. They were here to talk to him. Focus, Potter!

He looked furious, wand out and wary, as though he was under attack, hot magic roiling in the air around him almost as strongly as around the phoenix, which was saying kind of a lot. Harry was about ninety per cent certain that he would have cursed them if the bird hadn't immediately fluttered over to perch on Druella's arm, trilling and whistling at her, meaning projected across magic to convey that he was glad to see her, but not glad to see Harry.

She made a trilling, twittering response which Harry figured was probably a greeting, with a soft little pulse of magic conveying a flare of light as the setting sun sunk below the horizon. The phoenix's name, maybe? She switched back to English to add, "Be nice to Harry, please."

The bird gave a more hostile sounding warble, glaring at him over Dru's shoulder with a single beady eye.

"Yes, I know, but he's only a fledgling, and he knows to behave himself."

Harry got the distinct impression that the response to that was the phoenix equivalent of a grudging fine, but I'm watching you, boy... The sense of light magic on the air lessened dramatically, though. Had the bird been doing that on purpose? What the hell?

It fluttered back to its perch, behind the Headmaster, who was apparently tired of being ignored in favour of talking to a bloody bird. He had relaxed substantially when he realised that the light creature was welcoming them (or at least Dru) — he put his wand away — but he was still clearly on guard. "Druella? Forgive my abruptness, but what on earth are you doing here? How did you get here? And how do you know Fawkes?"

"You call—" that same twittering sunset flash, which Harry was going to say was definitely the bird's name, "—Fawkes? As in Guy?"

"I do, yes. He seems not to mind. But—"

"They've been keeping you as a companion for well over three decades, now. How on earth have you not managed to learn their proper name?"

"Truly, my dear, I think the better question is how you have managed to learn his proper name. I'm sure you're aware that Phoenix is a notoriously difficult language to master."

"Well, I hardly speak it fluently, but I do recall them introducing themself the first time you asked me here to discuss Bellatrix's lack of engagement in her lessons, and I did pay enough attention to pick up the usual greeting and farewell." Dru glared at him. "Why are we talking about this? I'm not here to discuss 'Fawkes' or myself, I'm here because you appear to have deliberately misplaced my grandson." She pointed at Harry.

"Er. Happy Christmas, Headmaster," Harry offered.

"Harry. Happy Christmas." Dumbledore barely glanced in his direction, returning his greeting. "And yet I truly feel, Druella, that we simply must discuss how, precisely, you managed to so thoroughly circumvent the school's wards."

Dru raised an eyebrow at him. "Magic." When Dumbledore glared as though that answer was insufficient, she added, "We traversed the Void, Albus. Not even Salazar Slytherin could ward against the very existence of magic."

"You what?"

"I opened a gate out of any and all physical planes, then one back into this particular place and time," she explained patiently, smirking slightly at his astonishment. "It's really a very simple concept, and extremely convenient. Why no one else ever bothers, I have no idea." Harry was almost positive that was a joke, despite the slightly annoyed tone in which she said it. "But as they don't, you really needn't worry about anyone else exploiting it."

Harry nodded. "She said she wouldn't teach me because I couldn't be trusted to use it responsibly and not get lost."

Druella nodded too. Dumbledore just sort of stared at her, his astonishment slowly morphing into edgy fear, like she'd done something terrifying and impossible, making him even more certain that that had been a joke. Yes, that was a joke. It's possible that I have on occasion been known to do things other people consider somewhat extreme simply because they are more convenient or comfortable than conventional alternatives, Dru thought at Harry, which he took to mean that it actually was terrifying and impossible, and other people didn't do it because they couldn't. "Now, can you please tell me what you were thinking, leaving my grandson with Harry Potter's muggle family in Surrey of all places, under the impression that he was Harry Potter? I say 'can' rather than 'will' because I remain unconvinced that you were in fact thinking anything at all, and not acting on a purely chaotic whim."

Dumbledore's beard twitched, brow furrowing. If Harry didn't know better, he'd say the old man looked slightly ashamed of himself. "If this is about Harry having been raised by muggles..."

"It's not. I happen to believe that allowing young mages to discover and explore magic independently before burdening them with artificial limits and expectations is beneficial to their magical development. It's not even about you leaving him to grow up in a magical wasteland, regardless of how horrifying I find the very idea. I know you likely didn't realise that you were doing so and would have no reason to expect it to matter if you did, and I'm sure Harry will recover from the trauma of being raised in a low-magic environment perfectly well. In fact, he will likely benefit from it in some way — develop a greater sensitivity to magical subtleties or a stronger gift for the Sight, perhaps. Which is not to say that I approve — that you have likely caused no long-term damage in your ignorance is a matter of chance, and a comparatively slim one at that. Any other magically sensitive child growing up in such an environment would likely have simply failed to thrive. Bellatrix, however, always was perversely resilient, and I have no reason to suspect that her little clone isn't the same."

"Her clone?"

Druella shrugged. "Essentially. Most likely using Sirius as the source of a male chromosome, but no other substitutions. Not only would both she and the Black Family Magic have considered Bellatrix herself to be the epitome of perfection and the most likely candidate to revive the House, but so far as I am aware she only ever dabbled in blood alchemy. It is, in any case, irrelevant for the reasons you are concerned about. Certain traits have, of course, been preserved, but their very different childhoods would have rendered them different people even if he were an exact clone. Harry, for example, is much better behaved than Bellatrix at the age of twelve. The muggles did an excellent job with him.

"No. This is about you not only having Harry and Danny raised as each other, but allowing them to be introduced to society under the wrong identities. Why did you do it? What is your plan to reverse the switch when they come of age? Is there a reason I shouldn't simply print an announcement in the Prophet tomorrow? Because it's only going to become more difficult to straighten this out the longer you allow it to go on."

Dumbledore stiffened, clearly offended to have his decisions questioned. "I don't believe the matter is any of your business, Druella. The Wizengamot granted me the authority to—"

"Albus," Druella interrupted calmly. "I realise you have difficulty accepting that other people — especially other people who are younger than you, female, self-educated, and whom you consider morally inferior — may in fact know more about a given situation than you, but remember who you're talking to." Harry snorted.

Dumbledore wasn't nearly as amused. He fixed her with a patronising...almost sneer. Definitely a sneer-adjacent expression. "Oh, believe me, dear girl, I'm well aware of who you are. Forgive me if I find the judgement and advice of a witch who raised a monster like Bellatrix to be questionable, regardless of your own academic notoriety."

Dru raised an eyebrow at his blatant, patronising disapproval, but refused to be distracted by his dig at her parenting skills. (Everyone knows I'm rubbish at parenting. I've never claimed otherwise.) "The Wizengamot didn't have the authority to grant you custody of the boys, and you know it. The fact that the current arrangement has passed unchallenged until now due to the political difficulties in doing so in the immediate wake of Thom's fall does not render the action legitimate. I have no interest in returning to politics, but I will if I must. My circumstances are very different from Narcissa's and Mirabella's, and if I choose to make it my business, you certainly have no authority to stop me."

"You had no interest in making it your business ten years ago, or at any point since," Dumbledore snapped.

"No, for the past ten years, I've thought that my grandson was living with Andromeda — who is a perfectly acceptable guardian, by all accounts much more qualified to raise a small child than I ever was — and that Thom's grandson was living with his muggle relatives in Surrey."

"Thom's grandson?" Dumbledore repeated, apparently stunned. As was Harry, honestly. Thom was Tom Riddle, right? As in, the Dark Lord? Harry hadn't heard anything about him having a kid...

Dru raised an eyebrow in false surprise. "Oh, but of course you were already aware of that detail, were you not? Or perhaps your own failure to direct Bellatrix onto a lighter path in the years she spent primarily under your supervision somehow impedes your ability to observe the blatantly obvious patterns developing around particular individuals. I will admit that I myself cannot see how those two abilities are connected, but presumably that stems from my own inability to control her, since you clearly believe them to be so — and of course your expertise in the field of temporal and historical development far exceeds my own."

Dumbledore went very red, magic flaring around him for a brief moment, before he regained control of himself and bit out, "I take your point, Druella. What do you mean by Thom's grandson?"

"There's no such thing as coincidence, Albus," the witch said, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world. "You'd have to do a lineage test to confirm, but the patterns surrounding Thom and Danny are clear, albeit somewhat muddled by your interference with Danny and Harry, and Lily's role is easily deduced from them, at least in hindsight. I doubt either she or Thom knew about their relationship at any point in her life." Dumbledore sat down in one of the visitor chairs, a bit too quickly, with an unmistakable that explains so much expression plastered across his dumbstruck face. "In any case, the point is tangential to our purpose here today. You've made a mess of Harry and Danny's futures, tangling their identities up as you have. Mira and Andromeda, in their infinite wisdom, decided to wait and see how deep a hole you're planning on digging for yourself—"

"They know? How long...?"

"Of course they know, Albus. Mira realised what you must have done the first time she met Danny — I believe he was four. Andromeda supposedly realised that he wasn't Bella's son several months later, though I can't imagine she hadn't had her doubts for quite some time. I haven't met the boy, but I presume his magic is nowhere near as naturally dark as would be expected for a child of the House of Black. Believe me, I will be speaking to both of them about the wisdom of allowing you to perpetuate this confusion as long as you have. What other actions I take depend entirely on your reasons for having done so — and the boys' opinions on the matter, of course — but you must see that they cannot continue to live each other's lives indefinitely. They will eventually be expected to step into their roles at the heads of their respective Houses, and must accordingly be prepared to do so. And if you will forgive my stating the obvious, the longer this goes on the worse you will look when you are eventually forced to come clean. So. What did you hope to accomplish here?"

When Dumbledore didn't immediately answer, his eyes darting toward Harry with something like guilt lurking in their depths, she added, "I'm not angry with you, Albus. I'm disappointed. Granted, I can count on one hand the individuals who haven't disappointed me in some way or another over the years. You fell off the list with your complete failure to handle your role in Gellert's revolution with any degree of maturity to speak of — and allowing Bellatrix and that idiot Crouch to escalate their conflict to the level of open warfare rather than swallowing your pride and negotiating with Thom did nothing to redeem you — but such personality flaws as cowardice and an excess of self-righteous hubris are somehow less glaringly offensive than blatant idiocy from a man I know to be more intelligent than the extraordinary lack of foresight you appear to have displayed by adopting this strategy suggests.

"I require an explanation. If you refuse to provide one, I will feel no regret for upsetting any plans or goals you may have in mind by simply publicising the fact that you switched the boys for some ineffable reason, and leave you to attempt to salvage your own political career. You are not in a position to negotiate, and I am quickly running out of patience with your reticence."

The old man, suddenly looking even older than he usually did, winced slightly. "I— Harry, please, you must understand, I did not intend to harm you or disadvantage you in some way when I did what I did. I simply..." He looked down, apparently unable to meet Harry's eyes. "It seemed like providence. I could place you, who would be in no real danger from retaliation from Death Eaters still on the loose, with Harry Potter's muggle relatives, protecting you from any light mages who might wish to kill you as revenge against Bellatrix, and well... I didn't think it likely that she would be able to track 'Harry' to Lily's muggle sister, but if she did, it seemed preferable that she find her own son there rather than Lily's. And 'Eridanus' could simply disappear, the true Harry hidden away in the heart of a Light family, to be raised as his father would have wanted. I was confident that the family I chose would not allow their hatred of Bellatrix to prejudice their treatment of the boy they believed to be her son, but raise him as their own, keeping his 'true' identity a secret even from the boy himself. They might have taken unnecessary efforts to preserve him from any dark influences lest he be influenced to take after her, but certainly not to his detriment.

"And you Harry, raised by muggles, would be similarly protected, insulated from our world entirely — rather than forced to grow up faced with your mother's legacy, pressured to reject her and your House, while perhaps being tempted by the dark arts which come so naturally to the Blacks. You might be at a disadvantage in terms of your pre-Hogwarts education, but no more than any muggleborn student, and I judged that a small price to pay to allow you an uncomplicated childhood, uninfluenced by the traditions and political propaganda of the Dark, but, as I had promised certain factions, equally uninfluenced by the Light."

Harry couldn't help but smile a bit at that. It was just sort of funny, because, "You weren't worried about Danny feeling pressured to reject Bella and the Blacks? I mean, either he would have, or I could have been raised with the same ignorance you thought he was being raised in, so...yeah, that's kind of ridiculous. Also, I don't know about anyone else, but my only interaction with Magical Britain being repeated obliviations didn't really give me a great impression of the Light."

Druella closed her eyes, fingertips massaging her temples. "How many times were you obliviated, Harry?"

"Er...at least nine, that I remember. I know I rediscovered magic on my own seven times, and Aunt Petunia just told me the last couple, so I could avoid doing anything too big accidentally, you know? But the first few times remembering I'd already discovered magic was sort of like maybe I dreamed it? So there might've been a couple times before I remember, like when discovering magic again didn't entirely break the spell."

"Very likely — it generally takes several exposures of magically hidden memories before the mind begins to instinctively resist obliviation. Before the age of...?"

"Six. It took a while to figure out exactly how big a spell I could do before I tipped off the Goon Squad." He shrugged. It's not that big a deal, really. Annoying, I bloody well hate them, but I can defend myself from them now, and I'm allowed to know about magic anyway, so it's fine.

No, it isn't. Druella opened her eyes to glare at Dumbledore. "You are aware that obliviating a child under the age of seven more than three times in any two consecutive years — especially of a major, life-altering event such as discovering magic — is considered highly abusive behaviour under the Child Protection Statute of Nineteen Fifty-Two? It's one of the few grounds on which the custody of even a Noble House can be disputed."

"There is an exception for obliviations necessary to the preservation of the Statute of Secrecy," the Headmaster said defensively.

"There is an exception to the Statute of Secrecy for muggleborn children under the age of eleven who are known to be using magic consciously, Albus! Section Five, Sub-section Two: Inclusion of non-magical households of magical minors whose nature cannot be reasonably concealed from their own household. Magical minors whose nature cannot be reasonably concealed from their household may be removed from the household. Alternatively, in cases where the household is judged to be capable of concealing the minor's nature from the non-magical community outside of the household, the household may be included in Secrecy regardless of the age of the minor in question. Case One is muggle children bitten by werewolves. Case Two is muggleborn children under the local age of inclusion who use magic consciously and intentionally.

"Obliviating a small child as many as twelve times in the space of five years is absolutely unreasonable, Albus! Not just unreasonable like I think it should be considered torture to raise my grandson in Surrey and everyone who isn't me thinks I'm insane, but objectively unreasonable! There's research showing detrimental effects on children's long-term memory function which is directly linked to excessive obliviation early in life — have you even had him evaluated by a mind-healer for potential side-effects?"

He hadn't, of course, but Harry didn't want to be evaluated by a mind-healer. It seemed like a bad idea, what with having recently murdered someone... And he was pretty sure there was nothing wrong with his memory.

There's not, and you're not going to be legilimised. Not only would it reveal his duplicity, but it would also reveal the conditions under which the child believed to be the Boy Who Lived was raised, which would not be considered acceptable to anyone lacking the example of the childrearing strategies of the House of Black to compare them to. That's not the point. The point is that Albus Dumbledore has utterly failed to perform even the most basic functions of a legal guardian. Leaving you with muggles — which most mages would consider reprehensible — in a magical wasteland like Little Whinging — which I consider reprehensible — was bad enough, but ignoring blatant mind magic abuse of his charge by the DLE — with whom I will also be discussing this issue — proves him unequivocally unqualified to hold that position. He will be officially remanding you into my custody before we leave this office.

What? I thought you hated children...

I hate small children who are unable to control themselves and so completely undeveloped I can't even teach them anything, much less hold a conversation with them — which is the vast majority of them. Children who are capable of behaving like rational creatures and intelligent enough to ask good questions or at the very least quietly observe and learn from adult interactions are perfectly acceptable. I like Blaise. Mira has always been charming — though to be fair, she was rather precocious in developing adult interests, and I didn't meet her until she was twelve. Andromeda and Narcissa were reasonably tolerable even when they were just out of the nursery. I did hate Bellatrix at your age, but you are far less deliberately obnoxious than she was, and I am much better equipped to deal with a certain degree of chaos in my life now than I was thirty years ago.

...Harry had no idea what to say to that.

"Severus Snape, while not a mind-healing specialist, is widely recognised as a qualified general practitioner of mind magic, and assures me that there is nothing seriously amiss with young Harry's mind, aside from his natural inclinations toward dark-mindedness and thrill-seeking, which I think you will agree he comes by honestly," Dumbledore said, somewhat pompously. "And this is no more pertinent to the topic at hand than Lily Evans's heritage."

"I beg to differ, but if you would rather attempt to justify your decision not to switch the boys back after Bellatrix allowed herself to be arrested and the threat of a Death Eater attack on Little Whinging had become insignificant — when Mira insisted that Danny be raised by Andromeda rather than the Millers would have been an opportune moment — please feel free to do so." She gave him an overly-sweet smile, as though daring him to refuse.

The old man stiffened defensively. "As I've already said, I felt it was in Harry's best interests — this Harry's — to be raised with no preconceived notions regarding the Light or the Dark, or anything to do with our world. It would have benefitted no one to exile Danny from magic in his place!"

"You needn't have done so, you realise. You could simply have left him where he was, explained to the Millers that he was really Harry Potter, and placed thisHarry with Andromeda, as you explicitly agreed to do as a condition of Mirabella's truce. Since I doubt you share my opinions on early childhood magical experimentation, I can only presume you intended not only to give the original Harry Potter the advantages of being raised by a daughter of the House of Black, but to inhibit this Harry's magical development — albeit no more than any child 'unfortunate' enough to be born into a muggle home."

The old man went somewhat pink, giving Druella a narrow-eyed glare from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. "What do you want me to say, Druella? That I feared Bellatrix's son would follow in his mother's footsteps? I would be a fool not to have! That I suspected Andromeda would be better able to prepare Danny for—" He cut himself off abruptly. "I had no intention of deliberately disadvantaging Harry."

"No...you simply considered Danny's education a greater priority...why? To prepare him for what?" She paused.

Dumbledore refused to say, but that didn't really matter, because apparently Fawkes thought Druella deserved to know...whatever the reason was. His cooing warble was accompanied by a heavy sense of certainty, not unlike Harry had felt on first seeing Druella, but much bigger, wider-reaching and...more significant, maybe.