Switched

"Why are you three being so weird around each other?" Hermione demanded, glowering at Blaise and Harry across the table in the second-floor storeroom they had claimed as a study before turning to include Danny as well. "Did I miss something over the holiday?"

"Nothing major," Blaise lied, impressively smoothly in Harry's opinion. "Harry visited Danny for Yule and got caught up in some family drama between Andi and her mother. Danny is currently not speaking to Harry and doesn't want to room with him anymore because he thinks Druella is great and basically everything any reasonable person could possibly want in a parent, and Danny hates her on Andromeda's behalf because Dru was objectively a terrible mother and her response to finding out that she and Andromeda haven't spoken for the past twenty years entirely because an owl went astray was basically, fine, I'll put you on my holiday card list, please stop being bafflingly emotional at me."

"That was a perfectly reasonable reaction," Harry noted.

"Yeah, that's the problem," Danny snapped.

They weren't actually fighting about Dru and Andi, obviously, Danny just claimed that he couldn't sleep in the same room as Harry anymore, even though Harry had assured him multiple times that he wouldn't kill him. He was obviously a little uncomfortable even just sitting together in class now, though not obviously enough that anyone other than Daphne had noticed over the course of their first week back to lessons (and she was subtle enough she hadn't really said anything, just asked Danny if he would be willing to switch Herbology partners with her, because Lilian was annoyed with her reluctance to actually do anything that might get her hands dirty — he'd leapt at the chance). And now, apparently, Hermione.

Honestly, he was a little surprised that Danny had come to join them today. Perhaps he was getting over his fear of Harry? That would be good, because while Harry didn't mind moving in with Blaise (if Blaise minded sharing, he hadn't actually said anything) and it wasn't really all that difficult to just lurk around the entrance to the Slytherin dorms until someone said the password a little too loudly, it had apparently slipped Blaise's mind when he agreed that the first- (and second- and third-) year Slytherins' bedrooms were warded so that only the student they belonged to could enter. It was actually very annoying, because over the past couple of weeks — since Yule — spending too much time in the sun had started to give him headaches, and Ravenclaw Tower was approximately sixty percent windows.

They did disagree on whether Dru was totally the worst or not too, though, so she and whether her treatment of Andi like thirty years ago was completely unforgivable and Harry's plans to spend the summer with her were a decent thing to tell people they were fighting about, since they couldn't exactly tell people that Danny thought Harry was going to try to eat him. (Again.)

(Well, technically they could, but Danny wasn't afraid enough of Harry to want to get him sent to Azkaban, and if he told anyone that oh, yes, the Dark Itself showed up to my mum's questionably legal Yule ritual, Andi would be in serious trouble, too.)

"Druella's always perfectly reasonable — logical, emotionless, and cruel, Harry. She's awful. Mum was so upset, and she didn't even care! I can't believe you really like her!"

Actually, on second thought, Harry wasn't entirely certain about that. He thought they were just saying they were having a fight about Dru and Andi, but over the past two days, Danny seemed to have become increasingly serious about it. And Harry didn't think Danny was that good an actor.

Blaise, are Danny and I actually fighting? he asked, carefully tuning the thought to the frequency of Blaise's mind like casting a blue lumos (except Blaise wasn't blue, he was orange, the same shade as the flecks in his eyes...no, Harry had no idea what that was supposed to mean, that was just the closest metaphor he could come up with) and slipping it into his awareness.

Theo owes me a galleon. He thought it would take you at least another day to notice, he informed Harry, pushing away his recurring curiosity about how the hell they — he and Dru — did that, which Harry really couldn't explain anyway.

Watching/feeling Dru legilimise him through Blaise (which was different than normal legilimency and the legilimency charm), he'd sort of figured out how to do it, too. He'd followed Blaise back to his mind while he was using telepathy to talk to Harry at the New Year's Bash, the transition he established between them fluid and continuous enough that Harry couldn't exactly say when that little extension of his mind became more like Blaise's than his own, but he knew what Blaise felt like, now. He hadn't quite figured out how to do that for himself, making and maintaining a continuous connection between them, but tuning a single, distinct thought to actually enter his mind, rather than just letting it float in the "space" between them, was like humming a note to match one played on the piano. Easy. And as completely inexplicable as having perfect pitch.

Blaise knew all that, and found it equal parts annoying and amusing. The former because he didn't understand it, and the latter because Harry didn't either, and it bothered Harry significantly more than it bothered Blaise, because actually doing it was easy and felt perfectly natural, he just couldn't articulate it in a way that made sense outside of his head any more than he could explain how his pencil-sharpening spell worked.

It's also amusing that you can't focus on anything for literally more than two seconds...

...Right, focus, Potter. So, they — or at least Danny — actually were fighting about this. Fine. So good of Danny to inform him of that fact. (Not.) "She's not emotionless, and she did have a point. I mean, Andi has every right to hate her, but what the hell was she supposed to say? It's not like they were close before your mum ran away." It had been pretty clear, Harry thought, that Dru had liked Andromeda better than Bellatrix, but for all her protestations to the contrary, he'd gotten the impression that she was closer to Bella. They clearly had more in common than Dru liked to admit, if Dru's initial estimation of Harry's character — as a version of Bella who hadn't been raised by abusive crazy people — was a more energetic, dark-minded version of herself, which Blaise said it had been.

He didn't address I can't believe you like her, because that was a flat lie. Danny was well aware that Harry was insane, and he'd been very clear on Christmas about why he liked Dru. Andi might've hated that Dru was more of a teacher to her than a parent, but Harry didn't need or want a parent, and a teacher who had every intention of pushing him to learn more than anyone else thought was remotely reasonable sounded like someone he'd been looking for all his life, without even knowing it.

"I don't know, maybe I'm sorry? One it sounded like she actually meant, I mean. Maybe give Mum a bloody hug and offer to catch up over drinks or something? Not tell her that she never loved her and that she resented having to have kids in the first place and oh, by the way, I'm not human, that's why you'll never be as good as I am at anything, but I'm never going to apologise for holding you to literally impossible standards because Bella managed to meet them, it's not my fault I thought they were reasonable!"

All of that had happened before the Mystery of the Missing Letter had been solved, but that didn't really matter, Harry supposed. "Well, it wasn't her fault, really. It's not like she had other kids around to compare them to," he pointed out, over Hermione's attempt to interrupt ("Wait. Not human?").

"Did she tell you that? Because if she did, it's dragonshite. She has six younger siblings, two of whom have kids between Bella's and Mum's ages — that'd be the Uncle Felix and Aunt Claudia Mum mentioned. I've met most of them at big Farley family reunion things, and all of them are perfectly normal."

("If she's not human, what is she? Wasn't she married to one of the Blacks? Aren't they all crazy pureblood supremacists?")

"No, she didn't tell me that, I just assumed because of some things she said in their argument. But she told Dumbledore that she originally held Bella to the Rosiers' standards, not hers. She had to keep raising them because Bella kept meeting them too easily."

Danny glowered at him. "A, it's completely mental to decide that if your kid meets your expectations, your expectations were too low, and B, she all but admitted that Bellatrix is the same non-human whatever that she is! And C, even if she didn't know that at the time, comparing Mum to Bellatrix has got to be like comparing me to you, you little psycho!" ("Why would you...?") "Literally anyone should be able to tell that yeah, I'm really bloody good at magic, but not unnaturally, impossibly, just show me a couple of times and I'll pick up free conjuration over the course of an afternoon, at the age of eleven -good!"

"Oh, yeah, conjuring half a bloody pin is so impressive. Also, wouldn't it be more like comparing Dora to me? I mean, you're adopted, so..."

("Pst," Blaise hissed, in a rather resigned tone that suggested he knew they weren't going to heed his advice to "Ix-nay on the who's who, you twats.")

("What? You don't mean...")

"Fine, comparing you to Dora, then! She's a metamorph and therefore a cheater, but fine. Conjuring half a bloody pin — A.K.A., worked cold metal — with free conjuration, less than an hour after you started practising the spell, is bloody absurd. And I know for a fact that it takes her longer than you to pick up new charms, and she's been practising magic longer than you've been alive. My point was, you'd have to be an idiot to look at someone as good at magic as you — better, probably, since Bellatrix was raised around magic and taught focusing exercises and shite as a kid—" ("Oh, my God. You do.") "—and think that you could expect literally anyone to measure up to your abilities! And Druella isn't an idiot. Mum says she knows she and Bellatrix — the three of you, now, I guess—" ("You totally do!") "—are freaks and Bella is literally the only person Druella can point to when she insists that other people can do magic like she does if they try hard enough, she shouldn't have—"

"Hey!" Hermione interrupted more firmly, slapping a book on the table to get the word in edgewise. "I didn't know you're adopted!"

"I am, yes. And I've never been happier to not actually be related to Mum's family!" Danny snapped back. "What of it? She's still my mum, if that's what—"

"No, that's not where I was going with that. You said that it was a bad comparison because Danny's adopted," she said accusingly, turning to Harry.

"Er, yes?"

"Not because you're not related to Bellatrix, but because Danny's not related to Andromeda."

Oh. Harry was pretty sure he knew where this was going now. Hermione really was sharper than he gave her credit for. (He blamed underestimating her on the fact that she was always looking for answers and quoting shite from books rather than working things out for herself.)

Oops. "Yeah, that was the implication," he admitted.

"And you," she said, turning back to Danny, "just said, the three of you. As in, Druella, Bellatrix, and Harry are— You shouldn't call people freaks, by the way, it's rude." Harry snorted as Danny tried to defend himself. ("He calls himself a freak all the bloody time!") "As though they're all the same non-human... What are you?"

Harry was fairly certain that was directed at him. He shrugged. "Dunno. Dru just found out on Christmas, from something the Black Family Magic said in passing. It's probably some eldritch soul-symbiote, since she's definitely biologically human. If she's had time to research it yet, she hasn't told me anything. And obviously I can't just owl Bella and see if she knows."

"But you are... Oh, what was his name? The lost Black heir."

"Eridanus," Blaise supplied. "Don't tell anyone. Seriously. This could get Harry killed if the wrong people find out. Bellatrix hurt a lot of people who might try to kill him for revenge, and it's not out of the question that a few people would think it sounds like a good idea to kill him before he grows up and potentially becomes just as big a problem as Bella."

Harry could practically see the gears turning behind her eyes as she put the name together with the fact that he obviously wasn't the Potters' son and Danny being adopted and raised by Bella's sister. She turned back to Danny. "Does that mean you're really Harry Potter?"

Danny let out a strangled little argh, like it was really that difficult to put together, and he was trying to convince himself he wasn't an idiot for not noticing for literally years, especially when actually knowing what people looked like, like, well enough to draw them, was totally his thing.

"Don't tell anyone that, either," Blaise said.

"But— How? Why?"

Harry groaned. He hated repeating shite, which included filling people in after the fact about shite they'd missed. Especially multiple people, and he'd already told Blaise and Snape about everything he'd learned sitting in on Dru's meeting with Dumbledore. "Blaise, can you just use legilimency to fill her in?" he whined, doing his best imitation of Dudley's kicked-puppy eyes.

"What makes you think I like repeating shite? Make copies of the memories and I'll pass them over, though."

"What do you mean, pass over memories?" Hermione asked suspiciously. She didn't think mind magic was nearly as neat as Harry did, and had accordingly spent quite a lot of last term learning the same basic occlumency technique he'd started learning over the summer. She was, according to Blaise, getting pretty good at it, especially since he'd let her borrow Coco for a couple of weeks.

"Er...I take the memories from Harry and give them to you? I'm not really sure how else to explain it..."

"It's sort of like being a legilimens, just for a memory or two," Danny told her. "You sort of live out the memory from Harry's point of view, remembering it as though it happened to you." Her expression took on a rather doubtful cast, as though she wasn't certain she wanted to know what it was like to be Harry, even just for a memory or two, but she didn't actually object to the idea. "Did I know you can do that one?"

Blaise grinned. "Nope. I just got it down over hols."

Danny pouted at him. "Not fair you came into the talent so young." He was also a latent legilimens, apparently, but unlike Blaise, would probably come into the talent when he came into his power, in a few years. That was how it normally went. Blaise was just weird.

You're weirder.

Well, yes, obviously. (Blaise had warned Harry not to tell Danny that he could kind of, sort of do mind magic — even if it was only in very specific circumstances, with people who legilimised him first — because Danny would probably be jealous about it.)

"Think of it this way: I can show you all sorts of cool shite when you finally catch up, and you won't even have to spend months convincing Snape you're responsible and aren't going to abuse mind magic for fun and profit, just because you could."

"...Good point." He gave a heavy sigh. "Still sucks waiting, though."

"How do you copy memories?" Harry asked.

Rather than try to explain, Blaise just pressed a memory of his own on him, someone using a spell to copy a memory to remove and place in a pensieve so other people could view it. He felt really young at the time...

I wasn't that young. There was an investigation after Husband Number Five disappeared under mysterious circumstances, so I would've been seven, almost eight. I was Mira's alibi. The memory the blue-cloak is copying is actually from a night the week before, tailored to fit into the chronological through-line in place of me helping Mira murder that paedo arse. Obviously I don't leave the natural connections between the really incriminating memories and my primary memory structure. I'm not a complete idiot.

Okay, first, I want to see— For some reason, the idea of seven-year-old Blaise murdering someone struck Harry as almost absurdly adorable. —and second, you should probably teach me how to do that. Seeing as he hadn't really considered the fact that of course the DLE would use mind-magic to question suspects, as well as to obliviate everyone and their mum whenever they liked.

First, not right now — don't tell anyone about murdering Number Five, by the way. Daph knows, and Snape, but that's it.

Snape knows?

He thinks it was justified. See: paedo.

Harry wasn't really questioning the fact that Snape apparently condoned Blaise killing people on occasion, too, so much as commenting on the fact that it was apparently impossible to keep secrets from the Head of Slytherin.

He's teaching me legilimency, of course I can't keep secrets from him. Not when he's looking for secrets, at least. Secondly, I'm trying to teach you how to do this. Circe's tits, is the concept of an attention span completely lost on you?

...Not completely...

Look, watch what the spell actually does.

It sort of...wrapped around the memory, making an impression of the 'shape' of it, almost like making a mould or something, creating a 'negative' which it then...pulled energy out of the background of Little Blaise's mind and compressed into that 'shape', like a really complicated compulsion...but then, unlike a compulsion, which normally sort of 'let go' after it was impressed, the memory-negative stayed locked around the memory, dragging it out of Blaise's mind-space entirely.

Yeah, you don't need to worry about that. And you don't actually need the spell to copy and extract memories. You can do the same thing by making the 'shell' the same way you solidify your thoughts to create an external occlumency barrier and press energy into it to mimic the original memory sort of the same way you compress magic to do a conjuration.

Right, that...sort of made sense. It seemed sort of...clunky, though, and something about Blaise's 'tone' felt like there was another option.

A feeling like an exasperated eye-roll surrounded him. Yes, if you're completely insane. Which I suppose means you're going to think it's perfectly reasonable and not at all weird. I don't even know if it works for non-legilimens. You sort of have to legilimise yourself badly — make part of your mind different enough to give you enough distance and perspective, more than you do with normal occlumency exercises, to...basically do a duplication charm, just...using mind magic. On yourself. Wandlessly, obviously.

Well, it didn't really sound completely insane. Obviously if you were casting magic inside your own mind, it would be mind magic by default, and you probably wouldn't need a focus because it was internally targeted and couldn't take that much energy. And if you were basically using the background energy of your mind — the same stuff that normal memories and thoughts were formed out of — rather than ambient or extra-planar magic to fill in the holes when you split your target object — a duplication charm sort of took half the matter of the object and used it as the foundation of a very sophisticated, multisensory illusion, but both copies would deteriorate unusually quickly, because they would both be half illusion — it would really just...duplicate the memory, permanently. Both memories would be made of the same energy throughout, they should both be stable, he was pretty sure. (He didn't really know the arithmancy to prove it or anything, but just based on the basic concepts as he understood them.)

Yes, they are, but you're underestimating how hard it is to cast anything resembling a real-world spell within a mind-space, and you're ignoring the part where you have to force part of your mind to adopt a different frequency first, which means you're 'casting' in an entirely different 'key' than you're used to. I can't do it. I don't know if Snape can do it. I haven't asked because Dru showed me in the context of making copies of memories so I could practise subsuming, stabilising, and integrating them into my own memory-structure, which is somewhere near the top of the list of shite I'm not supposed to do because it's wildly unethical to steal knowledge from people. Especially when you're not just making a copy, but taking the whole memory.

Show me!

This memory was a little weird, Young Blaise distracted trying to pay attention to Mira and Dru's conversation as well as what Dru was doing, and her explanation of what she was doing. He was extended into her mind to watch, and she was slipping the explanation directly into his mind, not the probe, the part that was still 'him', and it was all very confusing. (Which was the point, giving him something to distract himself with while they talked about adult matters he would have to ask a lot of questions about to understand.) It was entirely unfair that Dru — who was talking to Mira and making memory-copies for him, and explaining the idea of stealing someone else's memory for himself, making it his without letting it fall apart — seemed to be doing so with no trouble whatsoever.

She sort of...pulled back, extending part of her away from herself like she did to legilimise Blaise, but not reaching for another person, just...forcing part of her mind into an entirely different frequency, distinct from both of them—

[Had Young Blaise not noticed that little shift, there?]

[What?]

[That, Harry thought, dragging Current Blaise's attention to a sort of background change a moment before, something Dru had done, but not actually doing anything, just sort of...changing how she was looking at a problem?]

[No, I didn't notice that at the time. I didn't even notice it now. You think it was some kind of perspective shift?]

[I guess, if that's what you want to call it. I mean, it sort of felt like something coming into focus? It reminded him more than anything of seeing light shot through a prism for the first time, realising that white light was actually all different colours. Except mind-magic metaphors were usually sound-based — all keys and resonating and finding the right note or frequency or whatever — so, maybe more like realising how chords worked? That wasn't quite a perfect metaphor, since all chords weren't contained within a single note, but maybe more like—]

[Harry? Blaise interrupted his train of thought.]

[What?]

[Focus.] He started the memory, which had sort of 'paused' relative to their perception of it when Harry dragged them back to the shift, moving again.

Dru forced part of her mind into a different frequency, distinct from both Blaise and her usual frequency [except, not entirely distinct, Harry could still tell the extension was related to the rest of her mind] then reached back around into her memories with the extension (taking Blaise's point of focus with her) to...sort of pluck at a memory? forcing it to resonate differently somehow, weakening the original and making an 'echo' of it, with all the same connections and associations as the original. Both of them strengthened after a few moments, more energy drawn in from the background, fitting into the pattern of the memories without any effort on Dru's part, as far as he could tell, forming two identical little twists of memory-energy, where before there had been only one. She excised one with the extension, associating it with the current moment chronologically, rather than decades ago, before allowing the extension to return to its usual frequency.

You can take this one, she said calmly, as though that wasn't extremely weird.

How did you do that?

You claimed that you were already familiar with the concept of copying a memory, she thought accusingly.

Not like that... He pushed what might have been the same memory he'd just shown Harry at her.

Morrigan, grant me patience... she 'muttered', quickly making copies of half a dozen more memories — not taking him with her this time, the whole process was much faster — You're a legilimens, Blaise. Mind-magic charms emulate the effects of various legilimency and occlumency exercises. There is absolutely no reason to develop legilimency and occlumency exercises to mimic mind-magic charms...

When the memory ended there, Harry reached out to poke at the edge of Blaise's mind. Hey, those other memories were the explanation, right? Where are they?

Most of them, I didn't manage to stabilise quickly enough to preserve them, but they were all de Mort teaching Dru elementary mind-magic, mostly by demonstration — basically what I just showed you, but from both of their perspectives — a discussion of the similarities between legilimency and freeform magic, and arithmantic descriptions which didn't seem worth saving. I was eight, he added defensively. They were complete gibberish!

Harry 'huffed' at him. Yes, the arithmancy would be gibberish to him, too, but it would've been nice to have a couple more perspectives. But fine. He'd just try copying what Dru had done, that little perspective-shift that let her conceptualise her mind as a potential chord rather than a single note, not matching someone else's 'note' like following Blaise's probe back to his mind or creating a contact of her own, just...shifting part of it to resonate in harmony with the rest, clearly still integrally connected, but distinct, like playing different parts with his left and right hand on the piano (which Harry was actually getting pretty good at).

He stretched the 'right hand' (more complicated, needs-more-attention) part, like craning his neck or twisting his arm around to reach an itch between his shoulder blades and turned his attention to his own mind, the 'left hand' (steady, regular) part, which was...really weird, looking at his memories from 'outside'. It wasn't really foreign, just like...if he moved his bed to the other side of the room, or something, everything just looked and felt slightly different.

It didn't take that long for him to find the memory of Dru's conversation with Dumbledore. It took slightly longer for him to figure out how to split it up and only focus on the things he'd physically seen or heard, without any potentially incriminating thoughts, or anything he'd talked about silently with Dru. (He figured there was a difference between telling Hermione that he was actually Eridanus Black, and telling her that he'd murdered someone for the Little Crow over the holiday.)

He sort of had to 'un-twist' the little knot of energy actually holding the memory and pull apart the different aspects of the experience, setting aside the non-physical part for the moment, twisting the physical aspects back together into something stable that he could copy without it entirely falling apart.

He had no idea what Blaise was talking about, it being harder to do magic in a different 'key' than he was used to — he would actually compare it to casting a spell he learned right-handed with his left instead, not a key-shift, but that wasn't the point. The point was, it wasn't difficult, shaping the magic inside his mind the same way he would ambient magic. In some ways, it was actually easier, since the 'left-hand' part of his mind was also still him, and knew his intent in a way ambient magic didn't. He did get why it was necessary to do the 'pulling back' thing, he wouldn't have the 'leverage' to shape as delicate and specific an effect without doing so — he sort of doubted he would be able to do anything quite this fine-tuned in the real world without a wand — but it wasn't that difficult a concept to wrap his mind around. Metaphorically. ...And also literally, he supposed.

The 'spell' swept through the memory, carrying half of the energy of the memory with it, but maintaining its shape, like if every second pixel on a television screen jumped a screen-width to one side — he could still tell what the picture was supposed to be, his mind filling in the holes, it was just a little fuzzy and 'translucent' for a couple of seconds. (Until his mind literally filled in the holes.)

When he inspected them a moment later, they appeared to be identical. Neat! He did still have to pull one apart again to put the thoughts and thought-conversations and feelings and stuff back in the version of the memory he wanted to keep, but that didn't take long at all, now that he knew how to unravel a memory in the first place. He let the 'right hand' part collapse back into the still-doing-what-it-normally-did part, playing the same notes (if maybe not in the same octave), and dragged the copy to Blaise, who was lingering on the outskirts of his mind, eavesdropping and emanating a sense of disbelief.

Here, give this to Hermione.

What the hell even are you, Potter? Blaise asked, probably rhetorically, but he did take the memory, carefully enclosing it in a little bubble of his own magic and pulling it away, like the spell in the first memory he'd shown him.

Harry just shrugged, turning his attention back to the outside world for the first time in what had to have been several minutes at least — mental conversations could go much more quickly than physical conversations, but it felt like he'd spent quite a bit of time screwing around trying to figure out how to dissect the experience and put it back together.

They seemed to be talking about Defence, now. "I'm just saying, he looks even worse now than he did before the holiday," Hermione said. "Did you notice his hands are shaking all the time, now?"

"Er. I try not to notice anything about him, honestly," Danny admitted. "I don't know what it is about him, but whenever he's around, I get this splitting headache."

"Well, pay attention next lesson, and tell me after if you think he looks ill. I think he looks ill. Honestly, at this rate, I don't know if he'll make it to the end of the year."

"Defence professors generally don't," Danny said with a shrug. "Dora said only one of hers made it the whole year."

Harry was sure Hermione had to have heard that before, but she didn't seem to have, staring at him with a blatant expression of disbelief. "One out of seven?"

"That's why we have study groups," Blaise informed her. "Do you want this memory, or not?"

"It's not going to be...weird, or anything, is it?" she asked, biting her lip somewhat anxiously.

"It's one of Harry's memories," Danny said scathingly. "What do you think?"

"Hey! I took out all of the thoughts and talking to Dru with legilimency! That's practically all of the weird stuff! Oh, except, I didn't take out my perception of magic, that might be sort of weird."

Of course, this being Hermione, seeing magic was a selling point. She perked up immediately. "Oh, well, I have always wanted to know what magesight is like. Go on, then..."

While she was distracted viewing the memory, Blaise asked, "So, Danny, did you find out anything else about that invisibility cloak?"

"Invisibility cloak?" He hadn't told Harry about any invisibility cloak. Though, to be fair, he hadn't really talked to Harry much at all.

"Er, yeah. It just...showed up, Christmas morning, under the tree. I sort of forgot about it while you were there, what with, you know, everything, but no, Blaise. Mum still has no idea who sent it. I mean, it was probably actually brought by a house elf, but the wards didn't ping, so it had to be an elf bound to someone who has free passage through them, and we don't know anyone who would send me an invisibility cloak, especially anonymously. Double especially because Dora says it doesn't look like any invisibility cloak she's ever seen."

"Well...it wouldn't look like anything, would it?" Harry asked. "Well, magic, I guess, but..."

"Yeah, that's sort of the thing. Usually they're made of demiguise hair, or spider silk embroidered with concealing enchantments, and yeah, you can see them with magesight. We have no idea what this one is made of. Mum says it doesn't look magical at all. Definitely not enchanted. Dad suggested that it might be alchemised moonlight, or something, and Mum even suggested that maybe it's the Invisibility Cloak, as in, Death's, you know, from the story?" Harry in fact did not know the story. "And I guess that almost makes sense, if it's something to do with me being Harry Potter — gods, that's still so weird to say... — because the house was actually founded by a Peverell witch and her husband, but how many people even know about that? and who would just give someone a Deathly Hallow as a bloody Christmas present?" He sighed. "So, no. We know nothing. Did either of you do anything cool with the rest of the holiday?"

"Hagrid took me out to meet the thestral herd," Harry volunteered.

Despite their somewhat rocky start, he'd actually been getting along pretty well with the giant gamekeeper. They'd bonded over their shared disgust over Fluffy being locked up in the school all the time and the fact that dragons were so freaking cool. (And also their shared disgust over the idea of the goblins keeping dragons down in the bank to guard vaults — that was even worse than Fluffy!) Harry had still spent the vast majority of the hours he'd been helping out mucking out niffler cages (without magic, because casting spells around them freaked the nifflers out), collecting eggs from chicken coops (also without magic, because attempting to summon them out resulted in a lot of broken eggs smashed against the inside wall, rather than floating out the door like he'd wanted them to) and turning compost piles (with magic, but there were a lot of piles — five-hundred students and another hundred or so elves made for a lot of table scraps), but apparently being willing to work and not complaining about it made him different enough from Sirius Black that Hagrid was able to stop seeing Harry's 'father' when ever he looked at him, and while he still wasn't entirely forgiven for killing the damn spider, the groundskeeper did at least seem willing to consider that Harry wasn't just going to murder anyone who happened to stumble across his path out in the Forest.

He at least trusted him enough to deputise him as the official Centaur Liaison. Technically, part of Hagrid's job was to represent Dumbledore and the school to the various groups of beings within the Forest, but Hagrid really didn't like the centaurs. (The centaurs didn't much like him, either, seeing as he'd introduced the acromantulae to their forest.) He found them confusing to talk to, with their poetic and heavily metaphorical style of speech. (Hagrid was even more special than Dudders. Harry had very politely not mentioned this.) If Harry was willing to puzzle out what they meant and relay it in plain English, Hagrid wasn't about to look a gift-thestral in the mouth.

Visiting the thestrals had been a bit of a treat, a sort of reward for not being a little monster anywhere Hagrid could see him — one which Hagrid apparently hadn't thought through very well, because he got all bitter over Harry being able to see them, because he thought Harry could see them because of the fucking spider. Obviously Harry hadn't been about to tell him, no, I actually murdered someone for real last week. (He actually didn't know if just the spider would have counted, because he hadn't found the thestrals on his solitary explorations.)

"And I finally got to meet the wilderfolk."

Apparently six months of following them around making a nuisance of himself was enough to make him a common enough feature around the Forest to earn their trust, at least provisionally. Either that or helping that one wolf who got caught in one of the centaurs' spider-traps right before Yule counted for a lot more than he'd thought. He'd also gotten to meet a dryad, because it was one of the tree-spirits that had come to ask him for help on the wolf's behalf. (According to Bianca, the dryads were even more shy than the wolf-people.)

Wilderfolk were, hands-down, the best people to hang out with. Harry had spent most of the last two weeks of the holiday with them. Most of the time they were wolves, though a couple of them were curious enough about humans to shift to their human forms to try to talk to him (and a couple were swans, and he'd also met an owl-woman once). Even when they were human-shaped, though, they still acted more like wolves, communicating with body language and touch more than facial expressions and words. It was relaxing hanging out with them. They would play with him, in a way that no one else he'd ever met would, snarling and furious and totally serious when they were scrapping, but it was just playing, because they would also include him in puppy piles to nap when they were all thoroughly exhausted.

Oh! Maybe he could just go sleep with the wilderfolk when he actually wanted to sleep! There were caves out there, too, he could just pack all his shite into his Bag of Magic Shite and use magic to make a comfortable little clubhouse for himself. Obviously he would come up to the school to shower and eat, but Danny could have their room all to himself.

"You can have our room," he informed the other boy. "Like, ward me out or something if you want. I'll just crash with the wolves."

"What? You can't just join the wilderfolk, Harry! You're not wilderfolk."

So...he didn't want their room all to himself? "Maybe I'll become an animagus. It doesn't seem that hard. Oh! Maybe I can be a baby nundu for real! That would be wicked."

"Half the reason phoenix animagus was so funny was that animagi can't become magical creatures or beings," Blaise said, very clearly trying not to laugh at the idea that just popped into Harry's head: stalking Malfoy as a baby nundu, like when Blaise had scared the ponce off the first time they met.

"Fine, a panther then. Close enough. And I am so, anyway. They let me come to their dens, and one of the swan-ladies told me that all you have to do to get in the club is act like you belong, and acting like I belong with the wilderfolk is a lot easier than acting like I belong with humans." Well, for a while, at least. He didn't think he could be wilderfolk all the time forever, he'd miss learning magic too much. But they were still the best people to hang out with.

"Who or what are wilderfolk?" Hermione asked, apparently done watching the memory.

"They're the offspring of human animagi and an animal they shagged in animal form," Danny explained. "They're usually animals, wolves or swans or whatever, but they have human minds and life-spans, and can shift to human form if they want to."

"That's..." Hermione very clearly didn't know what to say. Harry suspected she thought the idea of beastiality was disgusting, even when the human was also an animal at the time. (He didn't really think that should count.)

"People don't talk about them in polite circles much," Blaise explained. "For exactly that reason." (So, yes, he was guessing he was right about what Hermione was thinking.)

"Hey! Stop that!" she snapped. "I didn't say you could keep reading my mind!"

Blaise made an overly-exaggerated put-upon pout at her. "You just want to use me and throw me away when you have what you want from me! Heartless wench!"

She stuck her tongue out at him, though she couldn't help smiling just a little. "It's creepy. You know it's creepy!" Blaise just shrugged, so she changed the subject. Or maybe she'd been planning on changing the subject anyway, just to get away from wilderfolk and where they came from. "On the one hand, Harry, Druella does seem to hold unrealistic expectations for you, and I presume she did for Danny's mother, too, but on the other hand, Danny, I think I'm on Harry's side, if only because I'd like to be her when I grow up."

Danny's mood, which seemed to have recovered somewhat while Harry was distracted by copying the memory, instantly grew sour again. "Yeah, so would mum have, when she was our age. It's just literally not possible for anyone other than Bellatrix and Harry, because she's not human."

"Well, maybe not the magic and— Are you really planning on trying to learn eight languages in the next six months?"

Harry shrugged. Nodded. "Not fluently, obviously, but like, the basics, sure. Should be fun. I also picked German, Danish, Russian, and Arabic."

Blaise turned the pout on him instead. "Not Italian? You wound me."

"You can teach me Italian, though."

"Anyway," Hermione interrupted, as though she wasn't the one who had gotten them off track in the first place. (She was almost as bad about that as Harry.) "It might not be possible for humans to do magic or learn languages like eldritch bloody soul-symbiotes, but I think it should be possible for anyone to learn to make dramatic speeches and put entitled, misogynistic jerks like Dumbledore in their place. And what the heck is this about a prophecy? Wait, first, prophecies are real? And then, why is your grandmother so certain it's been fulfilled, and Danny doesn't still have to kill this Riddle character?"

"I don't have to what, now?!" Danny exclaimed, unwontedly surprised, given that he did know that Harry and Dru were going to do that. "Why would I have to? What prophecy?!"

Oh. Right. That part. "Well, I didn't really think it was important since Dru said it's already been fulfilled by Lily blowing him up, and you're not even really Harry Potter anymore, but—"

"Tell me anyway!" Danny demanded. "If I'm in a bloody prophecy, I think I deserve to know about it!"

"Well, apparently it doesn't really matter. Or else, that's how they get you. And I don't know the words anyway, Fawkes told Dru in Phoenix. Or maybe Veela, I guess." The Speech had been on his list of possible languages to learn, but Dru said he should probably work up to languages with tones, especially when he'd have to use magic to actually make a lot of the sounds, too. So that ruled out Mandarin and High Elvish, which people didn't usually speak anyway, as well.

"What about neither can live while the other survives?" Hermione reminded him, spurring Danny to even greater seriousness and concern.

"What?! So if I don't kill him, he'll kill me?! Tell me everything! Right now!"

Harry sighed. This could take a while. Especially since Danny didn't seem any more eager than Dumbledore to accept that it had totally already happened.