Switched

For a long moment, Dumbledore simply stared at her. Not that Harry could blame him, he was sort of staring, too. Also grinning, because it sounded like an awfully good plan to him. "You want to take custody of Harry."

Dru let out an unamused little ha. "Want is a strong word. But I can think of no one else who would be willing and able to drive him to reach his full potential, and to allow a mind with as much potential as Harry's to go uncultivated is practically criminal."

"Surely there are other more qualified teachers who..." He trailed off as Druella shook her head.

"There aren't. I doubt there's anyone more qualified as a general tutor anywhere in Europe, and certainly not for Harry. I know you are aware that I failed to graduate from Beauxbatons, that I'm primarily self-educated, and have never taken any OWLs or NEWTs. I know that's part of the reason you consider yourself superior to me — despite holding the same number of Masteries, and the fact that I've published more in the past year than you have in the past decade — so I'm quite certain you don't know that I chose to sit C.I.S. Proficiency Examinations rather than NEWTs simply because they are more widely recognised outside of Britain. I took thirteen magical subjects and eight non-magical, earning fives across the board, including practicals — despite the fact that I hadn't yet come into my power." She said this completely matter-of-factly, as though it was hardly unexpected, though the look on Dumbledore's face said otherwise.

Harry sniggered. He didn't think he'd ever literally seen someone's jaw drop before, though it was probably justified. He wasn't sure how many magical A-levels most mages took, but he was pretty sure muggle students going into uni usually only took three or four.

"You hadn't yet— How old were you?" the old man demanded to know.

"Oh. A few months past fourteen." ...So she would have been a third-year if she'd been at Hogwarts? Harry was pretty sure she would have been a third-year. She shrugged. "That would have been the spring of Nineteen Forty-One, if you'd like to look up my results for yourself, but if I were going to lie about my qualifications I would give a more reasonable number. I didn't spend the twenty years I lived with the Blacks poking away at my Mastery theses, either," she admitted, "though I generally don't bother to correct that assumption now that I'm aware how long these things are expected to take. As I said, I'm probably the most qualified general tutor in Europe. Well, in the sense of having qualifications. Not in the sense that I'm any good at teaching normal children. But we're not talking about a normal child, we're talking about Harry, who, as her clone, shares most if not all of Bella's abilities — which are many — and limits — which are few.

"They are nearly as intelligent as I am, far more driven, and obnoxiously energetic. When Bella was a child, she would happily study or practise practically anything anyone wanted to teach her — it didn't matter what, honestly — but she was never capable of not doing anything or even doing something she found less than fully engaging for more than ten seconds without becoming bored, and if she wasn't kept productively occupied at least sixteen hours a day, she quickly resorted to annoying any adult she could find to entertain herself. Arcturus gave up on finding a governess for her when she was four — they simply couldn't keep up with the maddening little terror — and instead decided that her basic education should be my problem, and that of any other members of the House I could enlist to help me. Cygnus, Orion, and Cass, primarily, and Thom, of course, later.

"Contrary to popular belief, I didn't start out holding her to my standards, I started holding her to standards my Rosier cousins assured me I could reasonably expect normal children to meet. I had to keep moving the bar for acceptable performance because she kept meeting it with no apparent effort whatsoever. To actually keep her busy for any significant length of time — weeks or months — we resorted to giving her projects I considered somewhat absurd challenges. She translated the Epic of Gilgamesh for me when she was eight. Cass began teaching her free transfiguration and conjuration when she was seven, holding her to a mastery-level standard of realism. The only way Orion could get her to meditate was through hours of repetitive physical or magical exercises, and I'm positive she could apparate before she went to school — most likely because she'd annoyed Thom and he thought it would be amusing to see her splinch herself. He also gave her advanced torture curses to practise on conjured animals when she was nine or ten and he had meetings he didn't want interrupted — he found it perversely adorable watching her attempt to perfect a flaying curse with the same determination and attention to detail she put into mastering Repairing Charms and Babbling Jinxes, or conjuring rabbits on which to practise."

Dumbledore winced, frowning as though this was not entirely unexpected behaviour for Bella and/or the Dark Lord, but also somewhat horrifying. Harry didn't really see why, especially if they were only conjured rabbits — they'd eventually dissolve back into magic anyway (he didn't think Aunt Petunia would consider magic-pretending-to-be-a-rabbit to really be a living thing, therefore it wouldn't even be against the rules to kill them) — and why wouldn't she have tried her best to learn torture spells the same as anything else? but he knew better than to say as much.

Druella raised an eyebrow at him, as though to say that's nothing. "She knew her Unforgivables before she went to school, too. The Imperius and the Cruciatus she picked up herself because Cygnus was a moron who left no room to escalate in his attempts to coerce her into obedience, and Thom taught her the Avada because he thought she ought to have the full set, and what harm is there in teaching someone the least dark Unforgivable Curse when they already know the other two?"

The old man's face took on an odd, greyish cast behind his silver whiskers. "She couldn't actually cast them, surely..."

Dru gave him a don't be thick look. "Of course she could. She never was very good at the Imperius, and she wasn't allowed to practise them on beings, so she couldn't have tested her Avada properly, but she had the channelling capacity to make it effective and it was certainly correctly shaped. I didn't teach her to cast sloppy charms. And I do recall telling you in Nineteen Sixty-Two that sketching curse effects in lessons rather than paying attention to information she'd learned years before, presented inaccurately for the presumed comprehension level of the average eleven-year-old, might be disturbing to you but wasn't going to kill anyone, so you'd do well to encourage it. Besides, her drawing skills were terrible, I daresay the practice was good for her.

"Did you think I was exaggerating when I implied she might instead decide to alleviate her boredom by taking up activities which could kill people? Granted, she probably wouldn't have intended to, not then, but she was a dangerous child, accustomed to interacting with and pitting herself against adults, with very little idea of what normal children were capable of. She considered dueling with potentially lethal spells to be playing, and murdered some poor viv alchemist just a few months before she started school!"

"Wasn't he trying to kidnap her?" Harry asked, trying not to laugh at poor viv alchemist. Producers of the magical world's most addictive and deadly drug weren't exactly sympathetic characters, generally speaking.

"Yes, but regardless of what she told the Aurors, I guarantee that she deliberately decided to dismember him rather than simply incapacitating him, which she easily could have done, simply because she wanted to see him bleed and thought she could get away with it."

"...Oh. Right."

Dru rolled her eyes, giving Dumbledore a look suggesting that Harry's response ought to mean something to him, beyond that Harry had sort of forgotten that dismembering someone might be considered overkill, even if they were going to kidnap and murder you. "That's what we're dealing with, here, Albus. Harry is comparatively well behaved, presumably because he has never been subject to the sort of disciplinary escalation which took place between Cygnus and Bellatrix. The muggles who raised him simply didn't have the capacity to force him to comply with their demands, so he hasn't had the same incentive to fight those demands that Bellatrix did. He hasn't had the same exposure to cruelty or been encouraged to cause pain and suffering as Bella often was. But I guarantee he shares her intelligence, manic energy, and propensity for finding 'exciting' — dangerous — ways to entertain himself when he's bored. Which is often. I would be shocked if he doesn't share her entirely barbaric propensity for violence and gift for fighting. I have no doubt that he is capable of catching up with his peers well before he comes of age — assuming you can find a tutor who will take his abilities and capacity for study seriously, rather than treating him as they would any other child.

"Given that he will need to be trained to eventually take responsibility for the political institution which is the House of Black, your options are limited to Andromeda, Narcissa, and myself. There are other former daughters of the House of Black, of course — Lucy Prewett, for example. Andi Burke or Ophelia Nott. Phillippa Brown. None of them were raised anywhere near the heart of the family, and they all married out of the Family around the time I married in. None are familiar with the House as a political entity, or the details of its financial resources and obligations, its treaties and contracts with other Noble Houses, or its House Law. Certainly not to the extent they would need to be to educate an heir. Granted, Andromeda and I are no longer even peripheral members of the House, but either of us would be better able to educate Harry than most former daughters of the House.

"Narcissa would be the best option from the standpoint of having been formally educated as the heir of the House ought to be — her education and Sirius's were identical — but as I mentioned earlier with reference to Danny's upbringing, neither she nor Andromeda would likely be willing to push Harry as much as Bella and I or even Walburga pushed them as children. The fact that Harry will almost certainly find anything less to be incredibly frustrating doesn't change the fact that they would consider it cruel to expect him to study or practise magic sixteen to eighteen hours a day all summer."

Harry couldn't quite parse the look Dumbledore was giving her. Somewhere between 'uncertain whether she's taking the piss' and 'horrified', maybe? "And I would agree with them! Simply because a child is accustomed to unreasonable expectations being heaped upon them does not make the burden of such expectations any less heavy, Druella! Miss Zabini and I may have our differences, but at least we agree on that — her department recommends six to eight hours of cumulative instruction and homework per day, at most. Personally, I believe that to be on the high side of acceptable! Children need free time to socialise and develop other interests — time to be children!"

"Yes, I'm aware of the official stance on the issue. You seem to have missed my statement that Harry would likely find being forced to find some other way to entertain himself for the greater part of the day — to be faced with a project as massive as catching himself up on everything he ought to have learned in the past eight years, and not allowed to work on it, but instead expected to go have fun with the other children — to be incredibly frustrating. Especially since on top of not being allowed to sink his teeth into the challenge at hand, he's not allowed to actually have fun as he defines it, and certainly not with other children."

"Well, there's no rule against climbing the Castle unless I'm planning on sacking it," Harry informed her. "But no, I haven't been able to convince anyone to come with me. And I don't really care that I'm not allowed to explore the Forest — it's fun enough getting detention for being out of bounds is worth it."

Dru gave him an exasperated sigh. "Undoubtedly because there's a very real possibility of being killed by a triffid or kelpie or frost-wight, or whatever other predatory creatures you find out there."

Harry hadn't even heard of a frost-wight, he was going to have to try to find one specifically now. "Well, yeah. In case you didn't know, almost but not quite dying is pretty much the best thing ever." He was pretty sure she did, since she clearly knew everything else about him, so that was sort of a joke. "But you're right I'm not allowed to take anyone else with me, because they're sort of useless and probably wouldn't just almost be killed, and Professor Snape has made it very clear that he will take exception to me murdering other children. I presume leading other children into situations which result in their deaths is...more or less the same."

"I really must speak with this Snape character at some point. Is that the same Snape who was playing both sides in the war?"

Dumbledore nodded. Harry gave her a little affirmative hum. "I've been informed that questionably sane demon-children are inevitably his responsibility regardless of whether we're in Ravenclaw and not Slytherin, and if he thinks I pose a threat to the children of this school, who are also his responsibility and higher than me on the list of priorities because they can't take care of themselves as well as I can, he will take steps to neutralise that threat. Which is apparently not the same as swearing to kill me if I kill another student, but I'm pretty sure it's what he meant."

The Headmaster glowered. "I, too, must speak with Severus, it seems. Harry, why did you not report Professor Snape's threats against you?"

"Threats?" Harry repeated, genuinely confused. "He didn't... You mean saying he would 'neutralise' me as a threat to the other students?"

"Yes, he does, and Albus, don't you dare reprimand this professor for warning Harry that there will be consequences for his actions if those actions negatively impact his peers. Doing so can hardly be considered a threat, given that it only applies under conditions which Harry has no need and now negative incentive to fulfil. And once again, we have strayed from the topic at hand.

"Harry, what would you say to five to six hours of reading and three to four hours of discussion and direct instruction every day? I'll make you a list of a hundred and fifty or so books you'll need to read, in the order you should read them. To start with, obviously — if you finish them, there are always more books."

Well, honestly? That sounded pretty good, if a bit light, given that she'd clearly implied that he would be spending every waking moment studying (which was fine, it wasn't like he had other plans). Maybe the rest of the day would be time to practise spells independently? "Um, two questions: What am I supposed to do for the other eight hours a day, and couldn't you just give me a reading list now?"

She raised an eyebrow at him with the tiniest of smirks, then conjured a piece of parchment with a list of twenty books on it in the air before him with a casual swirling flick of her wand. At a glance, he could pick out three which were obviously etiquette books, including the one Andromeda had sent him, as well as two genealogies, half a dozen law and government books, and the Common Conventions of the Council of Celtic Peoples, which he was pretty sure was the rules of order for the Wizengamot. "Start with those."

Harry let out a startled laugh. He hadn't meant right now, and he was positive Dru knew that, she was just being silly...in the least silly way possible, which was itself much funnier than the list, and therefore sort of meta-silly.

"Summer reading would be topics which require further discussion — history, political philosophy, magical theory and so on — rather than information for you to simply memorise. And I sincerely hope I can convince you to join a duelling gym to occupy yourself for the other eight hours a day, because I'm certainly not a fighter, and I have no illusions about my ability to keep up with your sugar-high pixie impression, especially when you have no physical outlet for your destructive tendencies." He grinned. Convince him to join a duelling gym? As though he wouldn't jump at the chance? "I doubt there will be any formal training so far as learning defensive and offensive spells goes and I'm sure there will be rules you will be expected to follow, but I also doubt you will have any trouble picking up new spells through exposure. And while I suspect most people would consider spending more than a couple of hours a day actively duelling to be somewhat intense, I know for a fact that you don't have a problem spending six to eight consecutive hours practising spellwork, and running around attempting to avoid being hexed while doing so will almost certainly only make it easier for you to focus."

Harry's grin stretched almost wide enough to hurt. "Yes. Absolutely. I'm in. Do we have to wait until summer?" Danny and Blaise might be annoyed with him if he just vanished in the middle of the year — well, Blaise might, but, if he was right about the impending fall-out from the whole attempted vampiring incident, Danny would probably be relieved that Harry was gone — but he really didn't care. They (or just Blaise) would get over it.

"Yes, we have to wait until summer." Harry pouted. "It's politically important that you stay here and develop social relationships with your peers — at the very least, they should be accustomed to seeing you as one of them — and you are, if you recall, bait for a mostly-dead Dark Lord." Oh. Right. "Also, we'll be speaking a different language every week, none of which will be English or French. I expect you'll want to use the next six months to at least learn some basic grammar and vocabulary. Gobbledygook, Latin, Greek, and Welsh are non-negotiable. You can choose the other four. Let me know which by New Year's Day."

Harry felt his eyes grow very wide. Okay. A reading list was one thing, but that was a challenge. And yes, he would want the next six months to study grammar and vocabulary.

"That...seems excessive, Druella," Dumbledore objected weakly, apparently unable to help himself, which was ridiculous. That sounded awesome!

Dru raised an eyebrow at him. "It does, doesn't it? Have you not been paying attention, Albus? 'Excessive' by anyone else's standards is exactly what we're aiming for. There are very few ways to better prevent boredom and thereby keep attempts to engage authority figures' attention by deliberately annoying them to a minimum than giving a child an overwhelmingly large task he cannot possibly complete within the available time no matter how intensely he pursues it, but on which he may make substantial progress, the degree of which will determine whether his efforts are considered successful or failing. This one will keep him occupied for the entirety of next term.

"Now, since you apparently have no objections to my plan, Harry and I must go consult with Danny and Andromeda regarding their cooperation therewith. Before we leave, however, I will require a written statement, to be signed by all three of us in blood, to the effect that you hereby agree that I hold full legal custody and responsibility for Eridanus Black, alias Harry Potter, and that Harry and I consent to this change in guardianship, in the event the Wizengamot questions the arrangement — that their authority to grant custody to you in the first place was illegitimate does not change the fact that I am not in a position to challenge their decision by force of arms, and I have less than no interest in returning to politics. Not to mention, I would prefer our relationship remain passably amiable — even if I don't quite admire you in the same way today that I did when I was Harry's age, and you were a famously brilliant alchemist whose politics I neither knew nor cared about. Were I obliged to destroy your political career, I somehow doubt you would be capable of not taking it personally. Two copies, obviously," she added, over his attempt to rebut her casual assumption that she would be able to destroy his political career.

He huffed at her. "I haven't agreed to any such thing!"

"Why not?" Harry demanded. He'd been sitting here quietly and politely long enough, he thought. The prospect of spending the summer with Druella, practising duelling and talking about magical theory in Russian or whatever all day sounded great — even better than just hanging out in Charing by himself. He'd never had a teacher who was willing to teach him as much as he could possibly learn, about (he assumed) practically anything he wanted to know (other than the Floating Gate spell). Yes, he'd just met her, but he liked her a hell of a lot more than Dumbledore, and, "What do you want me to do all summer?"

"Why— Do you not wish to go home and see your family, my boy?" the old man said, apparently taken aback by the fact that Harry had a positive opinion of what honestly sounded like the best summer plans ever. Hadn't he just said he was totally in? Adding the challenge of speaking a bunch of different languages to the mix didn't make the idea of staying with Druella any less awesome!

"If you mean the Dursleys, they still live in Little Whinging, so no, I'd rather not. I've already discussed the matter with Aunt Petunia, and she said I can make my own plans. Not the fact that there's not enough magic there to breathe properly, the fact that I'm not actually her nephew. I might visit, but probably not. We were only ever allies against the Ministry Goons, and sort of in taking care of the house and Dudley. We don't have a lot in common, you see. If you mean Druella, who actually is my grandmother, yes, I would, you're the one who hasn't agreed to any such thing, for no apparent reason!"

"I haven't agreed because it is absolutely unreasonable to ask a child to study or practise magic for sixteen to eighteen hours a day! to ask you to do so!"

"I don't care if you think it's unreasonable!" Harry interrupted, aware that his tone was bordering on whinging, but not really caring, because honestly, he didn't think he could think of a better way to spend his summer. Studying magic at his pace and learning a bunch of foreign languages and spending half his time fighting and not being told to slow down or take a break, but actually being challenged to do more and be better was pretty much a perfect holiday, as far as he was concerned. "I want to do it!"

Dumbledore ignored him. Jerk. "And that is hardly relevant because quite frankly, I am concerned that while Druella may be better able than anyone else to prepare you for the political and legal challenges of becoming the next Lord Black, that she lacks a certain appreciation of the effects of the choices one makes on a human scale, rather than a historical one, and consequently lacks the ability to give you an ethical perspective which will stand you in good stead as a leader of our society!"

What?

"I believe what Albus means to say is that he believes me to be morally deficient simply because I subscribe to a different ethical paradigm than he does. Specifically, he believes that people have some inherent understanding of right and wrong, that there is an objective 'good', and that there is an underlying conflict between his notions of good and evil which is affected by the turning of historical events. He refuses to define this so-called objective 'good', but insists that it is reminscent of pornography, in that he knows it when he sees it." ("I most certainly do not!" the Headmaster snapped, two little red spots appearing above his beard.) "I, on the other hand, consider any notion of the inherent goodness of humanity to be so much rubbish, and have embraced the idea of moral relativism in the face of the reality that every person and society is the villain of someone else's story. Albus, for example, betrayed the cause of the common people of Europe due to his personal falling-out with Gellert Grindelwald and eventually betrayed Gellert himself, siding with the elites of our society in exchange for the privilege of becoming one of them."

"The cost of Gellert's revolution was far too high to accept, Lady Druella," the old man said pointedly.

"In that case, you ought to have intervened directly years earlier instead of waiting to cut its knees out from under it until the price had largely been paid, or stayed and attempted to temper the violence of the movement. And I have never claimed to be exempt to the rule of being someone else's villain, only that exercising class mobility as you have done makes you a traitor to the commons, in much the same way Andromeda is a traitor to the nobility."

Dumbledore's nostrils flared, his lips pressing into a very McGonagall-esque line. "The Light has made tremendous progress in passing legislation to improve the lives of commoners and muggleborns since I took on the position of Chief Warlock, Druella! We've even managed to reverse most of the damage done to the Muggle Protection Statutes in the Forties and Fifties!"

"You've also managed to further marginalise werewolves and other non-humans who are nominally citizens of this nation — you may think that no one noticed that the addenda in your revisions of the Muggle Protection Statutes make it far more difficult for those on the outskirts of our society to get a muggle education or take non-magical jobs, while continuing to live in protected magical enclaves like Charing, but you would be wrong." She gave him a tiny, smug smile, like a cat. "I'm not saying you're a bad person, Albus. I don't believe in the concept. I'm just saying there are Starlighters who consider you the face of everything wrong with Daylight society."

"You don't believe in the concept. So I suppose then that even Bellatrix is a good person, in your eyes. Setting aside any maternal affection you may or may not be capable of holding for her."

That was probably supposed to be a hard-hitting rhetorical jab, but Druella very obviously didn't consider it to be one. "I also don't believe in the concept of a good person, Albus. But Bellatrix is exactly what the House of Black wanted her to be, and what circumstances forced her to become. She is deliberately aggravating, frustratingly unpredictable, and occasionally terrifying, but she played the part she was born into to the best of her ability, and her failures are ultimately rooted in choices she made long before the consequences could have been foreseen, which were the best she could have made given the options and information available at the time. I have never been disappointed in her any more than I would be disappointed in a nundu cub for growing up to become a nundu and acting according to its nature. Nor would I be sorry to see it brought down by the people it terrorised, acting in their own best interests."

"She's a mass murderer who enjoys torturing people!" Dumbledore objected, clearly outraged.

Dru smiled again, which very clearly only made him more furious. "I'm aware. She's also incredibly naïve in some ways, appallingly self-sacrificing, and absolutely loyal. She keeps her word and her promises at all costs. She considers the biggest problem with British society to be that progressive leaders of our nation fail to fulfil the responsibilities to the commons that the nobility — in the idealised version of feudal traditionalism she was taught to uphold as a child — is supposed to, and walked into Azkaban voluntarily at least in part to ensure her people were tried rather than summarily executed, because it was her duty as their Lady to protect them. She was quite possibly the best First Daughter the House of Black ever had — her sisters and cousins idolised her for standing up to their parents for them even when she knew she was going to be beaten and raped for doing so. If she and Thom had managed to carve out their New Avalon for themselves, I believe she would have been a fair and just ruler."

"I refuse to believe that you believe that, Druella."

She shrugged. "That's your prerogative, of course. But reality is complicated, Albus. People are complicated. Yes, Bella slaughtered innocent muggle schoolchildren to provoke the Aurors and can be horrifically cruel to her enemies, but she also opened a free healers' clinic in Starlight — which is more than anyone else has done for the most disadvantaged segment of our society for well over forty years, despite plenty of Houses having the resources to do so — and would die before betraying those she has sworn to protect.

"Surely you don't believe Master Flamel is a bad person, but he's been claiming to have discovered the secret to eternal life and refusing to share it for the past six centuries. The Council of the Accords unilaterally declared that the Signatory States would take action against any individual or organisation which broke Secrecy to aid their muggle brethren and neighbours in both the Great War and the Second World War, even in a non-combat capacity — even in alleviating hunger and disease — ultimately resulting in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, but I know you consider the Statute of Secrecy good. And you consider everyone who has any contact with the University and any research that comes out of it bad, but conveniently ignore that many of the healing techniques used around the world today were pioneered in the Americas and only refined in states where they're more selective with their declarations of Anathema Classification before being adopted in Britain.

"Not only are individuals and organisations complicated, but the development of historical events is always a collective effort. Are the deaths which occurred in Gellert's revolution on his shoulders or yours? He did credit you in his memoir with shaping a good deal of his political philosophy, you know. Are they the fault of the people who rose up for daring to rebel against the established order, or the nobility for keeping them so oppressed that they felt they had nothing to lose by doing so? Neither you nor Gellert made anyone else's choices for them, after all. Or perhaps it was inevitable that the pressures which developed in previous generations would explode at the smallest spark by the time Gellert arrived on the scene, and the fault truly lies with mages long dead.

"Whoever is responsible, are they also to some degree responsible for the success of Thom's counter-revolutionary rhetoric? or is that all on him? Again, what about the people swayed by the rhetoric? If Candidus Malfoy and the other early Knights hadn't believed in his Cause, Thom would ultimately have been just a queer, snake-obsessed serial killer. There's Bella, of course, but blaming Bella is easy. Lazy. Personally, I like pinning it all on Cygnus — if he hadn't so thoroughly traumatised Bellatrix, she wouldn't have abandoned the House for Thom; and while Thom was a talented strategist, he didn't have half the knowledge or connections he would have needed to build an army for himself alone. You could even, if you were so inclined, blame me for failing to notice and stop Cygnus's abuse myself.

"I could keep going — I do teach a seminar on this very subject every second term — but I think I've made my point. Your insistence that there is such a thing as good or evil, that a person or organisation or even an action can be considered good or bad, is childishly simplistic, and I have no patience for that sort of nonsense — especially when it's being spouted by a man older than my father. I would refuse to believe that you truly believe such an undeveloped understanding of people and society makes for a better leader than a more nuanced perspective such as my own, but it explains so much about the current state of the nation." She paused, glaring at him as though daring him to respond.

Dumbledore, who had been looking very troubled since she started in on Flamel and the Statute of Secrecy, shook off his distraction to say, "You may claim that there is no good and evil, no right and wrong, but you clearly see unnecessary death and suffering and selfishness as bad, Druella. Denying that fact to excuse the behaviour of people you personally do not wish to condemn does not mean your view is nuanced, it simply means that you are a hypocrite."

"That I choose examples which I know my audience will agree with when making an argument does not make me a hypocrite, Albus. Even that I myself prefer to act in an orderly, prosocial manner does not make me a hypocrite. Though it does render moot your claim that I do not have the moral foundation to educate Harry appropriately. My claim is not that any given person cannot have their own sense of right and wrong, it is that regardless of their sense of right and wrong, any major choice or action is to some extent both right and wrong. Any choice or action might ultimately have consequences which any given person considers good and bad, anticipated or otherwise. Well, that and, is it really a so-called bad thing if the leaders of a society consider the impact of their choices on a historical scale, rather than a deeply personal scale? Really? No, it's not. Though I suppose I should expect nothing else from a coward who claims that the price of the Revolution was too high, but whose actions show he cared more for whether he could face his former lover in the wake of a personal tragedy — which was, like so many tragedies, no one person's fault — than the lives of tens of thousands of mages throughout Europe."

That made an impact, Dumbledore visibly flinching as her words hit him. His face grew red, heated little spots of pink high on his cheekbones, but he seemed to have no rebuttal to a personal attack such as that. "What—" He had to stop and clear his throat. "I will thank you not to talk about situations and events of which you have no knowledge, and on which you have no business commenting, Madam Rosier."

"It's Magistra, Your Excellency, and I do, in fact, have knowledge of the events in question. Gellert is allowed to correspond with the outside world, you know — and he, unlike you, is not too afraid of what he might discover to ask whether he was responsible in whole or in part for the death of your sister and the dissolution of your relationship."

"What—" He cut himself off abruptly again, now looking somewhat ill as well as very upset, hot magic flaring out of his grasp just for a split second, furious and pained, but undirected.

Fawkes cooed at him, light magic that was obviously meant to be soothing coiling around the old man like an invisible hug, then fluttered over to perch on his shoulder and chitter disapprovingly at Dru, defensiveness and protectiveness and a feeling distinctly like a warning to back off on the air.

Her response was the helpless horror of a man caught in the path of an avalanche he himself had started; the inevitability of waves wearing the stone of an island into black sand; the sting of a slap on the back of a small hand, reaching out to touch a beautiful shard of broken crystal without realising it would cut; the pain and regret of reaching out to grasp it anyway. It was the loneliness of a little girl, longing to be a part of the world, but simultaneously horrified and repulsed by it; a suspiciously familiar sense of recognition and belonging; and the fury of a man the pain of whose past has been used against him by someone who has no right to know of it, much less speak of it. The feelings and magic were accompanied by a sharp trilling, the tone rising and falling in a decidedly discomfiting melody, something in a minor key, Harry thought, and her eyes flashed silver, just for the briefest of moments, glaring at the bird.

It quorked at her, a harsh, crow-like sound Harry hadn't even known phoenixes could make (was that a phoenix swear-word? it sort of sounded like a birdy piss off to him...), but subsided into glaring, rather than throw more hot, angry magic into the space between them.

"This is not a negotiation, Albus. The inconvenience it will pose to me to re-enter politics is nothing compared to the damage it will do to your reputation and career if I am forced to bring the matter of Harry's custody before the Wizengamot, and the matter of my grandson's education and summer accommodations are no more your business than the circumstances of your sister's death are mine. I do not want to ruin your life or even your Christmas, but I will not let you stand in the way of Harry's future. Whether you voluntarily step aside or whether I am forced to remove you is your choice."

If looks could kill, Dumbledore's glare would be committing murder, but he summoned a piece of parchment and a quill from a drawer, scribbling out the notes she had requested, passing them to her without a word. She nodded, conjuring a pen of her own and signing her name with a flourish before passing both pen and notes to Harry.

I, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, hereby transfer all powers and responsibilities of guardianship over Eridanus Black, alias Harry Potter, to his maternal grandmother, Druella Rosier, effective as of sunrise this day, the Twenty-Fifth of December, A.D. Nineteen Ninety-One.

I, Druella Annette of House Rosier, acknowledge this charge and accept responsibility for my grandson, Henry James, son of Bellatrix Druella of House Black. 25 December 1991

Harry wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to put down, he probably should've been paying more attention earlier when Dru had said it, but he figured, 'I, Harry Potter, consent to this transfer of guardianship. 25/12/91' was probably good enough.

Dru, peering over his shoulder, nodded, comparing the copies before handing them back to Dumbledore to check over as well, but Harry barely noticed because as soon as he set nib to parchment, he realised that, for the second time in his life, he'd been handed a pen which used his own blood as ink. The first time he'd been too distracted by the binding magic of Odysseus's contract to wonder how the writing utensil worked. This time, though, it definitely had his attention.

"Can I keep this?" he asked, peering closely at the pen, which was clearly enchanted. There were dozens of tiny runes carved into it — or rather, conjured at the same time as the pen itself — barely visible against the black wood and silver nib.

"I suppose? It will only last a few days, but I don't need it back..."

Dumbledore, apparently satisfied that both parchments said the same thing, gave one back to Dru. "Get out."

Dru gave him what was obviously a very well-practised smile. "Very well. Thank you, Albus." She gave Fawkes a brief, trilling farewell. "Come, Harry. We have places to be."

"Er. Bye, Sir."

Dumbledore just nodded. Harry had the distinct impression he was put out with them, though he really didn't know why. Honestly, it was perfectly reasonable for Harry to stay with Dru over the summer, and the Headmaster had sort of started that last little argument, saying that he shouldn't, just because they didn't agree on philosophy stuff Harry sort of thought Dru had the right of, anyway...