Switched

"I'm going to need a better explanation than that, kiddo," Mistle said, leaning back against a counter with a very unimpressed crossed-arms, raised-eyebrow expression. It was even more impressive than Snape's unimpressed expression, because Missy's eyebrow was pierced with three little silver rings, which really highlighted raised-eyebrows-of-scorn. She also had about a dozen piercings in her ears, one in her nose, and two in her lower lip; wore her hair short and spiky; and her glamour charms reminded Harry of the goths he'd occasionally seen when Aunt Petunia would take him out to the shops. They, like Harry, tended to do a lot of shopping at second-hand stores. The Dursleys hated them, obviously, because they were so very freakish, but Harry liked them. With their dyed-black hair and heavy white makeup, all he really needed to fit in with them was fancier clothes. (Though most of them were teenagers, he'd never seen a ten-year-old goth. So, fancier clothes and an ageing potion.)

Missy's hair was charmed orange and red, though, rather than black, and she tended to wear short, muggle skirts and low-cut vests to show off her tattoos — not her own work, obviously, since she wouldn't be able to see to tattoo herself properly, but she had friends who were also tattoo artists, and they practised on each other, and did tattoos like, as gifts, which was just the absolute most wicked thing Harry could imagine getting as a Christmas present or whatever. Those were actually stranger and more scandalous to the Uncle Vernons and Aunt Petunias of magical society than the sort of shite muggle goths wore. When practically everyone wore robes or fancy Victorian-esque costumes just, all the time, even the most elaborate muggle goth styles would probably be dismissed as 'a little fae' and 'slightly inappropriate' but not shockingly so.

"I mean, I'm not going to do a full back piece on a fucking eleven-year-old no matter how good a reason you have — I should probably talk to your guardian and get his permission to do anything—"

"Her," Harry corrected the artist. "Dumbledore gave me to Dru Rosier as a Christmas present. And why not?"

The eyebrow rose another millimetre, which he hadn't thought possible. "I'm sure there's a story there, because I can't see Dumbledore just giving custody of one of his kiddies to anyone, especially you, when Black's going to be a free man in a matter of months."

Getting Sirius out of Azkaban was definitely the easiest thing on the list of tasks Angie had given him to work on. All Harry had had to do was tell Andi when Mira had taken him to her office to talk to her that Angel said Sirius never got a trial for killing Pettigrew, and Pettigrew wasn't even dead. Harry had sort of thought that he'd have to somehow track down Pettigrew before he could get a trial for Sirius, but Andi had given him a look like, don't be stupid, Potter, and pointed out that between truth potions, legilimency, memory-based scrying, and whatever actual evidence the bumbling fools had collected at the scene of the crime, if Sirius hadn't done it, a trial would easily establish as much. (Pettigrew or no Pettigrew.)

And Andi was sort of scary effective. Harry didn't know how, but she managed to establish before New Year's that no, Sirius in fact had not had a trial, or even a court-martial or whatever and somehow strong-armed the DLE into giving him a trial despite having "confessed". He was pretty sure there had been strong-arming involved, because the story printed in the Prophet on the second of January announcing that Black would be receiving a trial had been very, very clear that it wasn't Fudge's administration that had fucked up (or Bones's DLE), this was the first it had been brought to their attention and they were proceeding with all possible haste to correct the grave injustice which lingered even ten years after the war officially ended.

Blaise, Daphne, and Theo thought she'd probably threatened to publicise it in the Prophet herself if Bones hadn't arranged a trial, because the Wizengamot would not take it well if they realised that one of their own — a man who, yes, had been a blood traitor, but who was the last of his House and should be a sitting Lord himself, now — had been locked up for ten years with the dementors, without so much as a trial, and furthermore, that the bloody Ministry was trying to cover it up.

And they did mean all possible haste. Bones had had Sirius transferred to Ministry holding and Andi had talked to him even before the announcement in the Prophet, establishing that he was at least sound enough of mind to testify on his own behalf. Apparently he'd said the sooner they started his fucking trial, the better, so an Emergency Session of the Wizengamot was convened on the sixth, the first Monday of the year, which was completely absurd, but both parties apparently waived the right to a month-long discovery period to gather their evidence — Blaise, Daphne, and Theo thought Bones must already have seen the evidence Andi was going to present and knew it was an air-tight case — and technically Sirius's innocence was established by Friday.

Literally nineteen days after it had been brought to Harry's attention. He hadn't even met Sirius yet, and he was absolutely furious on his behalf that he'd spent ten years in prison, when it literally took three weeks and one person giving a damn to clear his name. (Yes, Andi was a hell of an advocate, apparently, but still.)

"If he really is your father, he'll get custody of you automatically. Or maybe there'll be a blood test, or something, and technically the House will have custody or whatever, I dunno how all that Nobility shite works."

Harry didn't either, really. "But he's not yet, and Dru won't care. Why won't you do it?" he pouted at her. The idea he and Blaise had come up with was a nundu looking out of his back, enchanted to yawn and blink and generally act like a real cat. It would be so cool! "Like I said, it's really important!"

"Well, A, you said you only have a couple of hours, and something like that would take half a dozen decently long sessions, so it's not practical. B, no matter how warlock-swagger you think a giant fucking nundu on your back looks now, it's both stereotypical — normally with a lion or tiger or something, but still — and corny as hell. I'm not going to give an eleven-year-old a tat he's going to regret when he finally grows up. And most importantly, you're eleven."

"I'm not going to regret it! And what does it matter that I'm eleven? I have money, and I don't care if it hurts—"

"Yeah, that's not the problem. The problem is, I assume you're going to grow up at some point, at least a little—" Harry scowled at her. She wasn't much taller than he was. "—and the way a tattoo is anchored into the skin, even if it's enchanted to move, it will still be distorted by you growing under it. Also — and I know I told you this over the summer, because I distinctly recall you saying, that is so freaking cool — the enchantments are like wards anchored in your animus."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, the more complex they are, the more likely they are to be fucked up when you come into your power and start channelling way more magic. And removing an enchantment anchored in your flesh and magic is an enormous fucking pain, even if it's just your animus — soul brands are way worse — and altering one, as in, to fix it, after however many years of you growing around it, would be fucking impossible, just forget about it."

Harry glowered into the middle distance, wishing that he had a rebuttal, but that actually was a really good point. "Okay, fine, not a nundu, then, or something that big. But I need to get a tattoo. Specifically one that uses that Inksmoke stuff."

"Which brings us back to my question of why. And it's just really important isn't going to cut it. If I'm risking Sirius Black coming after me for tattooing his underage kid, because he insisted it was important, isn't going to cut it."

"He won't. Or Dru. I promise."

"Kid. Level with me. I'm not promising to ink you even if you do tell me why you need a tattoo, but I'm definitely not going to if you don't tell me."

Harry hesitated. Much as it sucked, he probably wasn't going to be able to find anyone else to do a tattoo for him at all — Mistle was the only one he'd really talked to at all over the summer, so she was the most likely to not just laugh him out of her shop because he was eleven — and definitely not in the next six hours. He'd already gone and grabbed the replacement cauldron which was his excuse for leaving school in the first place and a robe to replace the one he'd accidentally burned, but he figured he should try to make it back in time to make an appearance at dinner.

"Fine. But you have to promise first you won't tell anyone."

"I swear it, on my good right hand."

Most people Harry knew would swear on their wand or their honour or something, but she was an artist, her right hand might be more important to her than her wand. (Wands, after all, could be replaced.) "Okay. And there's no way anyone could be spying on us here?"

"Honestly? Look around yourself, kid."

Okay, that was a point. Missy's shop was a tiny little storefront, built on the same design as the Bookshop or half a dozen other places in Knockturn, with a small front-room and one or two somewhat larger (but still small) rooms behind it. Normally shop owners kept their wares in the back, and fetched them out on request, or like here, or at a tailor's, they'd do business in the front, like with the money or whatever, and then bring clients into the second room for the actual fitting or tattooing, and keep supplies in the third.

The second room here was probably the cleanest, most brightly lit place he'd seen in the Alley, and the wards were some of the simplest — just anti-scrying and fire-resisting spells. The third room was, he was fairly certain, the alchemy lab where she concocted her inks, and that was warded almost as heavily as the Bookshop, but in here, the magic was as minimal as the furniture — an adjustable table-chair thing for clients, a stool for Missy, and the counter she was currently leaning against, with a couple of stacks of paper, a few sketchbooks, and totally normal ink and quills and charcoal pencils for designing tattoos neatly arranged on it. There was a small chest under the counter, and an inactive circle carved into the floor around the client seat, but nowhere that so much as a listening charm could be hidden.

"Alright. So, the thing is, and why is kind of a long story and has to do with my Family Magic, so I'd rather not talk about it, but I was exposed to the ichor of a corruptive entity over Yule, and now I'm turning into something called shadowkin, apparently. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I do know that there are only like, three ways to turn into one, and the only one that's not entirely illegal is to accidentally be exposed to distilled darkness — like, for example, in Inksmoke."

Mistle snorted. "You know that much, then you have to know you'd have to inject like half a litre of Inksmoke directly into your bloodstream to poison yourself with it, right?"

"Yeah. Well, Snape said it'd be more than any tattoo could possibly have in it to trigger the metamorphosis. But I figure if that's the only possible explanation I give anyone, they'll have to assume that I had some weird freakish over-reaction to it."

"As opposed to having some weird freakish over-reaction to some freaky Black Family Ritual, or something?" she asked, with an entirely undeserved degree of scepticism, in Harry's opinion.

"Or something. So, it doesn't have to be a nundu, but I do need to get a tattoo."

She worried her lip for a moment, thinking it over, before relenting with a sigh. "Fine. But it's going to be something relatively simple and geometric, and I think I can enchant it to dissolve and reform or shift between a couple different patterns, and the worst that will happen if it's affected by you coming into your power will be that the shifting speeds up.

"I think," she repeated, over Harry's "Yes!"

She pulled a sheet of paper to herself, already tracing out a basic design as she explained, "Personally, I'm a fan of radial symmetry, but that will almost certainly look terrible when you grow up — even minor deviations from the intended pattern are much more noticeable in a symmetrical piece. Obviously you're going to want it somewhere it's not immediately visible, if you're supposed to have gotten it weeks ago and no one's noticed it yet, and I imagine that wicked back-nundus aside, you'd prefer to be able to see it?"

"Well, yeah, kind of," Harry admitted, peering over her arm at the sketch — two heavy lines, so far, about two inches apart, with thinner lines on the "inside", marking off an area she was filling with a wavelike pattern that sort of reminded him of Ancient Greek pottery.

She chuckled like, yeah, I thought so. "Well, in that case, I'm thinking an arm-band, just above the elbow—" She broke off sketching for a moment to indicate the area on her own arm with the pencil, before going back to it "—animated to shift between two basic patterns."

The second one, apparently, was a more floral design, which Harry almost objected to, but she did the charm to merge the two sketches and animate them before he could, the wave pattern picking up and "crashing" into a sea of darkness from left to right, then sort of looping around to throw out little pinwheel things that looked a lot less like flowers when they were spinning. After a second, they dissolved into a smoky mist, which subsided over a few more seconds to form the sea and the waves again.

"That is so cool," he said, entirely unable to stop himself grinning at the little animated picture. Magic art was, he thought, one of the best kinds of magic. It was possible that it seemed more magical just because he couldn't do it himself, or at least, not like the portraits Danny drew. He might be able to do something like this, he supposed, it would just...never occur to him to try.

"Yeah, and unlike a giant bloody nundu, it will still be cool in twenty years. Except..." She reversed the animation and merging charms, then did them again, this time so every time a wave crashed and threw up a spinny thing 'behind' the wave, it faded out instead of dissolving into mist, and the next wave rose out of the 'sea' in the opposite direction as it did, sort of giving the impression that the spinny things were the wind, creating the next wave in a way similar to (though not exactly the same as) the waves creating the spinny things.

"Okay, yeah, that's better."

She made an agreeable little hmm, like yeah, I know, which of us does this for a living? "All in black, for the contrast and to give you as much Inksmoke as possible, and... Right or left arm?"

Harry shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me..."

"Are you right- or left-handed?"

"Either? I usually write with my right so I won't smudge the ink, I guess." He'd been practising spells with both hands, though he usually wore his wand-holster on his left arm, because he was expected to perform them right-handed in lessons.

"We'll do this on the left, then." She didn't explain why. "Take off your robes, under-shirt, and anything enchanted and throw them in the box—" She nudged a small chest under the counter which Harry expected must be enchanted to contain magic or something. "—while I fetch the ink."

She returned with a bottle of heavy black smoke, a tattoo gun modified to work with magic instead of electricity, and a small brass inkwell, which she laid out on the counter, a smaller bottle of a yellow potion (or alchemy product), and a perfectly muggle tub of petroleum jelly.

"Alright, into the circle."

As soon as he crossed the line, the runes lit up, and she poured the yellow potion onto his head with no further ado. It felt absolutely peculiar, magic sweeping over him in a rush, little white wisps of residual magic he hadn't even noticed clinging to himself burning off.

"Okay, so. This is a simple animation loop. We'll do the framing and anchor level first, and then reversing the pattern means we're going to need eight stages to complete an iteration. For each stage, I ink the pattern, then use a temporal displacement to shift the target area — inside the border lines — back a few seconds, ink the previous stage — we build it up from the bottom, in the opposite of the animation order — and shift it again, and so on, until we've done all eight. Then we merge all of the stages so they'll flow into each other. The displacement might feel weird, but it shouldn't hurt. If it does, let me know immediately."

Harry nodded. "Do I need to do anything else?"

"Try not to move? And don't talk to me. I need to concentrate for the enchanting."

He nodded again, watching, fascinated, with his arm perfectly still, as she sketched in the border lines and the runes for the base of the enchantment with a normal, muggle biro, her own magic sort of inspecting his, he thought, a feather-light contact almost like Blaise touching his mind, except she was just focused on his arm, and how the enchantment would interact with his own magic. After what seemed like a very long time, and also no time at all, she poured a measure of the heavy smoke into the inkwell, dipped the needles, and began to etch the magical ink into his skin, starting with the frame.

At that point, it became much more difficult not to move. Not because it hurt, or, not because it hurt in a bad way. It wasn't quite as overwhelmingly nice as the dark magic racing through his veins when he signed Anomos's contract, but it was similarly intense, and sort of...tickled. Like, halfway between someone tickling him with the end of a quill, and cutting him very slowly, with a very sharp knife.

Mistle must have caught his sharp intake of breath, because she paused almost immediately. "Alright? We can still stop now. I can pull the ink out before it heals, you won't even have a weird random line tattooed on you," she assured him.

"What? No! I'm fine! Good, even. I like it, I was just surprised."

She peered at his face for a long moment, as though she thought he might be lying, but after a few seconds, she shook her head like, okay, weirdo, and kept going.

The anchor layer took the longest, and Harry could feel the magic in it burning, even under the minor, tickling, scratchy pain of the stages etched in on top of it, the enchantment active, but only half complete. He figured that had to be normal, though, because Missy hadn't said anything about letting her know if that part hurt. The scratchy pain also grew more intense as she continued, especially on the few square inches of skin where she had to fill in the 'sea' over and over, like scratching him raw enough it definitely didn't tickle at all anymore. But it still decidedly wasn't a bad feeling, the methodical, slowly-sharpening pain making his head go all fuzzy and...happy probably wasn't quite the right term, but it was the only word he had.

His focus narrowed down to that little band of skin and ink and magic like it was the whole bloody world — more focused on one thing than he thought he had ever been in his life — and nothing else mattered at all. He definitely didn't want her to stop, but she did finish the design eventually, after what was probably a few hours, even though it seemed like way less.

Slowly releasing the charms displacing the different stages, letting them settle into each other and the anchoring enchantment was like letting out a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding, and as soon as the enchantment circuit completed, the burning vanished, the magic merging seamlessly into his own magic, in a way that was just...

"That is so cool!"

Missy just grinned, spreading a little petroleum jelly on it and conjuring a bandage. "Glad you think so. Okay, so you need to keep it clean and you can't use magic to heal it or you'll mess up the enchantment."

"What?" Harry asked, somewhat alarmed. "I don't think I can not use magic to heal!" He was already — it just happened automatically now with minor injuries like this, especially since he started spending so much time with the wolves, little nicks and scratches fading away in an hour or two. But he definitely didn't want to mess it up! "How'm I supposed to—?"

"Wait, what?"

"I can't not use magic to heal myself," he repeated. "It just happens! Even when I don't try to make it go faster, I mean." He might be able to slow it down, but it would still be magic... "It's already happening!"

"Here," she said, gesturing for him to give her his arm again. She laid one hand above the tattoo and the other below, closing her eyes for a second as her magic settled on him again, at first focused on the tattooed area, but then spreading out to cover his entire body. And then, after a few seconds, she withdrew. "Focusing your energy on healing a specific injury is fine," she assured him. Oh, good. "It's weird as hell you're not consciously trying to heal yourself, but it's a function of your own magic, it's not going to fuck with the enchantment the same way an external charm would."

Harry let out a sigh of relief. "You had me worried for a second, there."

"Sorry. In my defence, I've never tattooed another energy-healer before." She shrugged. "You did integrate the enchantment more smoothly than I expected, but I figured it's because you're so young, your magic isn't really settled yet the same way it will be after you come into your power."

"Energy-healer?" Harry repeated. He'd never even heard of that...

Mistle shrugged. "It's a talent for kenning how magic moves through a person's body. Real healers, it helps them figure out what the problem is, use the patient's magic to fix it like you're healing your arm. I never had the money for that kind of schooling, though, so I just use it to set tats a little bit better than anyone else in the Alley," she said, totally matter-of-fact about it, like we all know I'm the best.

"Oh. I don't think I am one, then," Harry said, trying not to laugh. (Not that he thought she wasn't, it was just kind of funny the way she said it, and he was still a little fuzzy-headed from the tattooing.) "I know what the magic in my body is doing, but not other people's, like when you were checking out my arm when you started."

Mistle smirked at him. "Oh, to be young again." Harry wasn't sure what his age had to do with anything. It would be highly hypocritical of him to object to someone changing the subject because something he said made her think of something else, and then something tangential to that, but his confusion must have shown on his face because she explained anyway: "I wouldn't have thought so at your age, either. Give it a couple of decades, and if I'm wrong, I'll do your fucking nundu for free."

There was only one reasonable response to that, especially since she'd already made it clear she didn't think he would still want the nundu in a couple of decades: he stuck his tongue out at her. Then he added, "You're not that old...are you? I thought you were like, not even thirty."

She giggled. "I'm forty-three, kiddo." ...Seriously? Harry was approximately the worst at guessing people's ages, but he didn't think he was that bad! Maybe she was cheating somehow, like Dru. "I knew Sirius Black when he called himself Paddy and spent summers slumming it with the wilderfolk. Bellatrix, too, though de Mort did most of her work."

"You never told me over the summer you knew Sirius." Harry didn't really know anyone who'd known Sirius that well. Well, maybe Snape, but he wasn't exactly likely to sit down and chat about his school days, Harry didn't think. Andi had run away when he was Harry's age, and obviously Mira had been close to Bella, but Sirius was like a baby cousin to her, and one she hadn't really seen much after he was fifteen or so.

"You never asked."

"Yeah, because I thought you were way younger than him. What's he like?"

She shrugged, finishing wrapping up the tattoo with conjured bandages. "Well, he was a moody teenager the first few times we met. Kind of came off as a poncy arse a lot of the time. Not intentionally, just— You know, one of those rich idiots who just put their foot in their mouth all the time assuming shite like that the werewolves and upyri had enough food to go around.

"He did legitimately like them, though. Spent a few weeks doing little spells that make a big difference to people around here — fixing leaking roofs and broken windows, renewing the fire wards on a couple of buildings, banishing mould, making amulets to hide the werewolves' scars so they could get work in the muggle world — some people hated him for doing that shite so casually, like as a matter of course, they didn't ask for his help, they didn't want to owe him for anything, and then others hated him for having a choice about being here, and for just disappearing one day and taking that casual help with him. He got on well enough with most people, though. The wilderfolk especially. Not surprised to find out he was an animagus."

That had come up in the first day of Sirius's trial, and had been in the papers by Tuesday morning.

Missy grinned. "Not surprised he's trying to get the clinic open again, either."

Harry had never met Sirius, but he was already furious on his behalf about being in Azkaban at all, and he already liked him, because when the Wizengamot had tried to offer him money as compensation for the ten years he'd spent trapped in hell, he'd basically called them all a bunch of nouveau riche pretenders to nobility, because you didn't just offer to pay someone off if you wronged them. You apologised and you offered to actually do something to make it up to them.

The House of Black had more gold than they would ever be able to spend. Sirius didn't want more money, he wanted everyone to see what absolute hypocrites the Light were — Dumbledore's political allies had been more or less running shite the entire time he'd been locked up, so Sirius was even more angry at them than he was at the Dark. He wouldn't have expected his enemies to get him a trial. That was the reason his trial was still going on, despite his innocence being proven weeks ago, now. Sirius and Andi were still negotiating with the Wizengamot over what they would be giving him as compensation.

Establishing a clinic that was free and open to anyone, regardless of their citizenship or species was one of a long list of demands he had made of things Blaise said were basically just shite the Light really didn't want to do for various political reasons. It had also included recognising non-human beings as full citizens, with the same rights as human citizens (that had been knocked down in negotiations to just rolling back most of the "gains" the Light had made in further restricting the rights of non-humans in the past decade, but that was still going to be a huge improvement in their lives — they'd been seen as being aligned with the Death Eaters, and had been punished accordingly as a community, the past ten years leaving them poorer and more downtrodden than ever before) and opening a primary and secondary school of magic which would be free and open to anyone as well.

Someone had leaked that to the press, and the commoners who couldn't afford good schools were not going to let the Wizengamot weazel out of giving them a school now that the suggestion had been raised. Sirius wasn't even asking them to pay for it with taxes, just to recognise it as a legal, chartered institution, or something. (Harry wasn't entirely clear on the details, but he knew Sirius had said he'd pay for it or like set up a fund to pay for it or something.) So that was almost definitely going to happen (to the gall of basically eighty-five per cent of the nobles) because there would be riots in the streets if it didn't, but they were still arguing over the other points on Sirius's list.

The free clinic especially seemed to be a sticking point for some reason, Harry didn't really know why. "Why is that such a big deal, actually? I mean, I know it is, it's been in the Prophet, but none of the articles really say why so many people are against it."

"Ah... Basically because Bellatrix set it up in the first place. Well, Bellatrix and old Doc Pulaski. He was the Death Eaters' chief healer, good man, never heard what happened to him after the end of the war. Dead or fled." She shrugged. "The Blackheart gave the order that the Death Eaters' healers were to treat any Starlighter who came to them for help. Pulaski set up the clinic because he wanted his healers to be well-rounded, you know, able to deal with normal healers' work, not just battlefield healing.

"So the Light are opposed to it because supporting it would put them on the same side as Bellatrix, and also because most of them would rather all the non-humans just die. And the Death Eaters who weasled their way out of Azkaban at the end of the war by claiming they were imperiused don't want to look like they support any of the Death Eaters' initiatives. Though a lot of them don't give a shite about commoners in general and never really supported it in the first place. They just went along with it because their Lady said so."

"You said you knew her, too?" Harry hinted. He hadn't gone around openly asking people about Bella and what she was like as a person, because he hadn't known over the summer that she was his mother. He'd heard quite a lot about Lady Blackheart, though, and setting up a charity hospital seemed...sort of out of character for the sadistic madwoman most people — everyone other than Blaise (and by extension, Mira) — had described her as.

Missy made an agreeable little hmm. "Sure. Not well. Dunno that anyone really knew her well. Not around here, anyway. She's a couple of years younger than I am. My parents are bakers, used to have me bring the day-old stuff to the Starlighters. First time I met Bella I was maybe nine or ten? So I guess she would've been about seven. Stuck out like a sore thumb because she was the only human around other than myself — I didn't know Cass was a metamorph, I thought they were some kind of fae, definitely didn't look human — and dressed up like a little princess in her fancy bespoke robes and her hair all done up. Well, that's how it seemed at the time, I know now those were probably the plainest robes she owned, but." She shrugged. Presumably but I was a kid and didn't know anything about rich people, okay? "I tried to talk to her a little. She wasn't really interested. Not in a snobby way, just... I got the feeling she didn't really know how to make friends or make casual conversation with other kids. Very intense, she had this way of watching everything that was going on around herself, even after she started relaxing a little. Looking back, sorta like dropping a wilderfolk into the middle of a new place, you know? Edgy.

"The second time I met her — first time I ever really talked to her — she was about your age. I guess you've probably heard the story about her killing that viv-alchemist by now?"

Harry nodded. It was pretty much universally agreed that he'd had it coming, even if Bella technically hadn't had to kill him.

Missy nodded, too. "Good riddance. He'd already kidnapped and killed five other kids. We knew kids were getting snatched, so no one was supposed to go anywhere alone. My mum saw her running errands by herself and tried to make her take me with her, but she insisted she could take care of herself. And then not an hour later, there was a scream from a little way down the street, half the alley came running to see Bella holding this twisted fuck under some curse that took him apart, joint by joint, just cool as you please. He was screaming bloody murder the whole time, of course. Someone went for the aurors, but no one tried to interfere. I mean, this was a rough area even back then, but a ten-year-old fucking dismembering someone in broad daylight was way beyond anything we'd ever heard of actually happening, much less seen.

"And then the aurors finally got there, just in time to see him bleed to death, and she tells them that he tried to use the Imperius on her, she acted in self defence, now if they didn't mind, she had errands to complete, just as cool and calm as she was watching him scream. Of course, they did mind, they had more questions, like how she knew it was the Imperius, and how she got out from under it if it really had been. So she looks around, and I must've been the only other kid there that she recognised, and she says, 'Miss Shaw, would you mind picking up a few things for me?' hands me a purse, fucking conjures a list — it was just a bunch of stuff she could have gotten anywhere, potions ingredients and whatnot, nothing even borderline illegal — and adds, 'I'll come to the bakery to collect them after I've concluded my business with these...fine gentlemen,' just dripping scorn.

"No idea what she told the aurors to get out of an official investigation, but she turned up about two hours later to collect her shite and I asked her why the hell she was shopping down here when she could have gone to one of the nice apothecaries out in Diagon, especially after Mum warned her about the kidnappings, and she just stared at me all confused for a couple of seconds and says something like Knockturn could use the business, and she'd rather do business with werewolves and warlocks and hedge witches than some clerk who was hired to be a pretty face in the storefront and doesn't know shite about their wares. And then, with the cockiest fucking grin, 'Plus, nobody ever tries to kidnap and murder you out in Diagon.'

"So of course I had to ask her if she really just intentionally lured out this child-snatcher using herself as bait, and she says something like, I wasn't really planning on it, but I was aware that it was a possibility, and better me than some helpless little kid. And I— I was thirteen, mind, and she's younger than I am— I'm just appalled and like, weren't you scared?

"She fucking laughed. 'Of course not. As I told your mother, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Most cowards who prey on children aren't trained battlemages, after all,' and then cold as ice, 'Besides, everyone knows the aurors don't come down Knockturn if they can help it. They didn't even know there'd been a string of disappearances down here. And I'm a Black. I know you're not my people, but it's still the responsibility of the nobility to protect the commoners, and you don't have a lord to appeal to or even the Ministry, so as far as I'm concerned, killing that slimy little worm was pretty easy arithmancy.' I don't think I'll ever forget the look on her face, no older than you and dead serious, telling me that it was her duty to do whatever she could to protect and take care of me, and all the rest of us the daylighters refuse to acknowledge."

"Wait," Harry interrupted. "Why can't you go to the Ministry if there's trouble?" He knew the Starlighters weren't considered real people by the "daylighters" (aka, the Aunt Petunias and Uncle Vernons of Magical Britain), including the Ministry and the aurors, but he didn't think the poor commoners who lived and worked in Knockturn technically counted as Starlighters, even if they weren't respectable daylighters, either. "You're human...aren't you?"

"I am, yeah. My mum was bitten by a werewolf when I was about three, though. My parents did everything right," she said, with a note of bitterness and an absent glare directed at no one in particular. "Went to Saint Mungo's to get what help they could give her, volunteered her name to the Werewolf Registry, believed the R. and C. when they said that as long as Dad could keep Mum contained on the full moon, we wouldn't have any trouble. Fucking dragonshite. Even if they didn't come around harassing us and telling them every other month they needed some new change to the wards or security feature, trying to convince her to just go to one of their safehouses where they could guarantee she wouldn't be a danger to anyone else — because they would just murder her after a month or two with the excuse that she tried to escape and bite one of the guards. Everyone knows it happens, but no one who matters ever questions that line. Thankfully my parents said no because Dad wanted to be with her to support her and they got suspicious when the goons kept pushing for it, and stuck to their guns. When they said no the first time, the R. and C. 'warned' every mage for fifty miles around — every single one of their customers. And no one wants to eat bread baked by a werewolf or a werewolf-lover."

That, Harry thought, was complete dragonshite itself — he'd learned about werewolves less than a year ago, and he knew they were only contagious if they bit you on a full moon. He scowled at the same absent arseholes. "That's so bloody stupid. I don't even have words for how stupid that is!"

For some reason, that actually startled a laugh out of Missy. "Thanks, kid. I'm sure they'd've appreciated the sentiment. They were shunned until they were all but forced to move here and take jobs working in the muggle world. And they were lucky. They both passed for human back then — Mum had too many scars to go out without people staring after a few years — and actually had skills that could get them jobs in the muggle world.

"Anyway, I could technically walk into the Ministry and report a crime to the auror office, but as soon as they found out where I live, the report would go to the bottom of their priority list. And if they actually came down to investigate, they'd like as not spend more time nosing around trying to catch locals breaking laws that are designed to see them starve to death than actually helping anyone. Better all around if we stay off their radar. So for all intents and purposes, there's no one we can go to for help, even if there's a fucking serial killer on the loose.

"And that's actually about the least problematic part of being non-citizens. Most of the time, we can enforce what laws we want just fine. But we don't have a school — the Starlighters or the humans too poor to afford to send their kids to a day school — and we can't send upyri to muggle schools. They won't pass for human, and even if they did and they wouldn't get sun-poisoning the first day, they don't have papers or anything. That's a problem for poor mages, too. There have never been many werewolf kids, but if there were, they wouldn't be allowed to go to muggle schools either, thanks to the new creature-being laws the light passed a few years ago. Sure, we teach the kids as best we can, but it's not enough. Only about half of the upyri and humans born down here can read. I don't know if any of the wilderfolk can, they don't seem to care much about human education. But they should still have the option, if they want it.

"And even for the people they would actually see — poor humans and registered werewolves, no upyri or wilderfolk, and if you don't want your name on R. and C.'s lists, no werewolves, either — Saint Mungo's costs money we just don't have. People die from sicknesses that could be cured with one potion, and are crippled by what would be minor injuries, if we had a real healer. We have a couple of hedge witches and midwives, but they can't do too much. Anyone caught practising healing without a licence gets a year-long sentence in Azkaban, and there's no one to teach them anything more than gets passed down by word of mouth, either. That was true then, and it's true now, which is why the clinic is a big fucking deal."

No kidding. Harry had thought it was stupid before that anyone was fighting against a free clinic they wouldn't even have to pay for out of taxes or whatever, but now he officially wanted to strangle every single one of them. It was such a little thing for them to do, and it would make a huge difference to the Starlighters— He just couldn't wrap his mind around the idea of hating someone that much just for existing. Even Uncle Vernon wouldn't actually argue against a free clinic in the hopes that, say, all the foreign refugees who'd come to Britain over the past few years would just die. Uncle Vernon hated foreigners, he'd probably have some choice things to say about Sirius being soft in the head for wasting charity on the likes of them, but if it wasn't coming out of his taxes or bleeding the NHS dry (which he complained about whenever there was a story about Somali refugees on the news), it wouldn't be any of his business.

And not doing it just because it was the Death Eaters' idea twenty years ago or whatever was just asinine. Sirius wasn't a Death Eater — they'd just had a trial about that! — and he was the one trying to do it now.

"There has to be a way to do it, whether the Wizengamot wants to or not," Harry insisted. "I mean, what are they going to do if Sirius just hires a bunch of licensed healers and pays them to treat anyone who comes in?"

"Probably try to shut it down with a ton and a half of red tape — you know, new regulations about wards and how many staff you need, or having separate facilities for 'dark creatures' — they might even try to make it illegal for licensed healers to treat 'dark creatures' as humans, require some special training or some shite — and send in the aurors to arrest the healers if they just keep on.

"It worked for Pulaski because the Death Eaters were already at war with the Ministry and he had a thrice-cursed army to back him up. Sirius might have a reputation as impressive as anyone else on the light side of the war — before the Potter scandal and him being sent to Azkaban, most people knew him for single-handedly holding the healers' tents at Glastonbury while the Ministry and their allies evacuated — but he wouldn't be able to park his arse there twenty-four seven. Lords of Noble and Most Ancient Houses have more important shite to do than guard an illegal free clinic. Plus they could legally throw him back in Azkaban for obstructing justice or whatever. They come up with trumped up shite to arrest Starlighters all the time."

Harry pulled a face, because that sounded all too plausible, given what he'd seen of Magical Britain so far.

"And that's assuming he could get any licensed healers to work for him in the first place. I mean, healers don't like Starlighters any more than most humans. You'd think if they did, some of them would volunteer down here occasionally, you know, just work for whatever people can afford to pay them. Plus, the Healers' Guild controls licensing, and they run Saint Mungo's for a tidy profit. They're not going to want the competition of a free clinic. Even if Sirius is paying good enough for some individual healers to take the job, the Guild can pretty easily come up with reasons to strip them of their licences. That might actually be the main reason he needs the support of the Wizengamot in the first place — so he can pressure the Healers' Guild into going along with it, or establish some new healing licence outside of the Guild's control, or get a specific ruling preventing clinic staff from being charged for practising healing without a licence."

"Okay, but the House of Black has more gold than Midas," Harry pointed out. "He could just pay the Guild whatever they would lose from people going to the free clinic instead of Saint Mungo's."

"He could, but I doubt that he would. I mean, that's basically just paying protection money, the Guild could raise the price at any time, with the threat of shutting down his clinic if he ever refused." Okay, that was fair. Harry probably wouldn't want to go for it either, in that case. Damn. Missy hesitated for a moment, drumming her fingers on the counter as she apparently turned something over. "Okay, I take it back. They're probably not hesitating over the Death Eater thing and this being Bellatrix's idea, even if that's what they're implying in the papers, or the fact that they don't want to help the Starlighters in any way, shape, or form, even though they absolutely don't. They're probably trying to negotiate with the Healers' Guild behind the scenes, because if they take licensing power away from the Guild, that's a blow to all of the Guilds, and they'll all band together to make the nobles' lives a living hell over it."

...That was...

Harry groaned.

Mistle gave him a raised eyebrow of do-I-even-want-to-know-what-you're-thinking. (How this was different from a raised eyebrow of scorn, Harry honestly couldn't say. It just was.)

"Why is politics so dumb? Seriously! That's just— aaargh! I hate people," he declared. "Human people. Daylighters. They suck."

Missy giggled, even though he wasn't trying to be funny, here. Even if he had thrown himself back on the bench thing a little dramatically.

"No, really. I mean it. What's the point of being a bloody magical Lord with all the gold in the bloody world if you can't even do something nice when you want to?" he asked the ceiling.

"Well, to be fair, I don't imagine they try to do nice things for anyone very often. Not outside of their own Houses, at least. And they can do pretty much whatever they want within their own Houses. So it probably doesn't—"

"Wait!" Harry interrupted, sitting up quickly enough to startle the artist.

"What?"

"What if we just adopt all of the Starlighters? Or make them like, what do you call them? vassals, or something! Then it wouldn't be anyone else's business, would it?"

"Er... I'm sure you can't just do that," Missy hedged. "Also, we?"

"Well, he's obviously my father — sire, whatever — so I should get a vote in what the House does, right? And why not? I bet there's no law against it. I mean, who would expect someone to try to just take all the second-class citizens no one wants and make them part of their House? They have to think a thing is possible to make a rule against it! I'm going to write to Sirius and ask him if that's a thing we can do!"

Harry was so excited about this idea that he barely heard her instructions on how to take care of his tattoo. He paid her twice what she asked for, promised to let her know what Sirius said about his brilliant plan to force the Wizengamot and the Guilds and whoever else to piss off, and practically skipped back to the Leaky Cauldron to floo back to Snape's office. He had a letter to write.

Dear Sirius Black,

My name is Harry Potter. Not your godson Harry Potter, actually your son James Black, but actually actually Bella's son, Eridanus. It's sort of a long story, Andi can explain, basically, Dumbledore switched the original Harry and me and had us raised as each other. Okay, maybe it's not really that long of a story. I was raised as Harry Potter by Lily's sister, Petuna. Harry was raised as Danny Tonks by Andi and Ted. Technically, you're my sire, I guess, because Bella wanted me to be male because it would be easier for a male heir to revive the House. I just finally made contact with the Family Magic at Yule. It was dying, but now it's not, and I probably shouldn't put the details of why in a letter, but you can probably guess, at least the basics. I sort of get the feeling your magic is too light for us to really reach you like we should be able to, so once you get out of custody, you should come to one of the Black properties so it can invest itself in you. I don't think it needs to, but it would still feel better with a living adult mage supporting it. That's not actually why I'm writing though. Well, it's sort of related, I guess, to you getting out of custody.

See, I was talking to my friend Missy the other day — she's a tattoo artist in Knockturn, she says she used to know you — and she says that the real reason it's taking so long to hammer out the compensation thing is probably that the Healers' Guild doesn't like competition and they're probably going to try to take the licence of any healer who agrees to work in the clinic, and then they'll be arrested for practising healing without a licence. My thought was, is there any reason that we can't just make them all our people somehow, like vassals or clients or adopt them or something, and then it won't be anyone else's business, right? Like, you don't need official ministry or guild permission for your mum to give you a headache potion or whatever, it should be basically the same thing, just internal House business right?

Missy thinks that can't possibly be legal, though she didn't have a reason why it wouldn't be, and Theo says I was right that it wouldn't be anyone else's business if it was within the House, and I'm pretty sure they don't make rules against things that are so crazy no one else has done it, because they'd have to think of it first. So, what do you think?

—Harry

Dear Harry,

What do I think? Well, for one thing, I think it's total dragonshite I apparently have a kid with Bella of all people, and I didn't even get to shag her in the deal. I think that's a hell of a way to introduce yourself — Andi didn't mention you or the switch, probably because she didn't want me to go ballistic about my godson Harry not having a damn clue who he was until Yule. I think I'd like to strangle Albus Dumbledore with my bare hands, but I'll settle for you sharing the memory of Dru smacking him down when I finally get out of here and find a pensieve. (I love it when she does that to people who aren't me.) Also, what's this about you, Bella, and Dru not being human? More not human than most of us, I mean.

Most of all, I think we need to talk, in person. Not yet, though. I'm still in Ministry Holding because they're trying to pressure me into conceding more just to wrap up the reparation negotiations more quickly and get the fuck out of here. Joke's on them, though. Compared to Azkaban, Ministry Holding's a day at the spa. Speaking of which, Andi's been talking about checking me into a sanatarium for a few months to try to get my head on straight (probably a lost cause), so I'll probably be in Nice trying to convince a mind-healer I'm not any more insane than I was before Azkaban by the time the Easter holiday rolls around. I'll send you an owl when I get settled in wherever, so you can plan to come visit.

Missy — is that Mistletoe Shaw? I do know her, she did a Breakwater Shield tattoo for me in '78 — is more right than she is wrong about why these bloody negotiations are taking so long. It's not illegal to adopt/accept the fealty of as many commoners as we want, but you'll have to get up earlier than that if you want to come up with something so crazy no one else in our family has ever done it. Like, several centuries earlier. Ask Harry or Zee's kid, or literally anyone who got a decent pureblood education about Henry Black. He's the reason that if we start just drawing anyone and everyone into the House, literally the rest of Britain will close ranks against us. You may or may not know by now, the House of Black is not well liked by practically anyone, and most of our 'peers' would prefer we not regain the heights of power and influence Henry once held. Honestly, most of them would prefer if I had died in Azkaban and you had never been born, but fuck them.

It's fine, though. Andi's fucking brilliant. She's put forth the argument that if the Wizengamot refuses to recognise the non-human Starlighters as beings rather than creatures (which they are refusing to do), all they need to do to appease the Healers' Guild and give me what I want is (officially) define "healing" as practising healing arts on beings (or specifically humans, even). Then it doesn't matter if the clinic healers have licences or not, because they won't technically be practising healing, and the Guild probably won't even bother trying to punish them by taking their licences away because if we're only treating non-humans, we won't be cutting into their patient base at all. We can set up a fund or something to just pay the damn hospital fees for any human commoners who can't afford Saint Mungo's, they'll probably end up with more business overall.

We're currently stuck on how R&C would confirm that we're only treating non-humans — they've decided that department would be the appropriate one to deal with a clinic serving non-humans — because they're saying they'd want access to all patient records. "Creatures" don't have a right to medical privacy, especially if they're not even going to be seen by "real" healers — and there's no way in hell I'm going to let them turn this into a scheme to get the names and species of every damn person in Knockturn, or institute a universal identification system and use it as some kind of precedent to demand papers for basic shite like renting a flat or whatever. Our counter-proposal was having the unlicensed staff make weekly statements under a Veritor's Charm that they have not knowingly provided any healing or medical services to a human outside of their own family, which is perfectly reasonable, but R&C caught a glimpse of an opportunity to abuse their power, and they don't want to let it go. Rat bastards.

Still, I'm sure we'll come up with something. Probably within a couple of weeks. Andi said she's going to talk to a couple of friends at the Prophet and turn up public pressure to get this done.

So, nice to unofficially meet you, I guess? Don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of being a father seriously wigs me out. I don't know how to be a parent, and if you're anything like Bella or me, I'm guessing you're pretty self-sufficient and not too keen on the idea of having parents, either, and, well, if you do want a parent, I'm officially referring you to Dru. Not sure how or why she thought it was a good idea to take on your guardianship, but as far as I'm concerned, she can keep it. I don't need to be legally responsible for a small, undoubtedly insane human (or whatever you are), so if you don't mind (and, hell, even if you do mind), I'm going to just think of you as a nephew.

Call me Sirius, is what I'm trying to say. 'Dad' would just be weird.

Cheers,

S.O.B., Cool Uncle

Notes:

Sirius's trial goes so quickly because Andi and Cissa negotiated behind the scenes to ensure that Sirius would vow not to give evidence that the Death Eaters who escaped Azkaban were not in fact under the Imperius in exchange for their support in his exoneration. It's also a significant factor in the trial being expedited that Druella stopped by to have a word with Amy Bones about the repeated obliviation of her ward as a small child. Bones came to the understanding that if she didn't want Druella to create the scandal of the decade over the DLE abusing Harry Potter (doesn't matter if it was technically legal, it would still be cause for public outrage), she could make it up to Harry by getting his godfather out of prison ASAP.

The Fudge administration announced something like 'It has recently been brought to our attention that there is at least one high-profile prisoner in Azkaban whose guilt was not thoroughly established by the previous administrations. We will be re-examining the cases of every prisoner on the island over the coming months, beginning with Sirius Black.'

It's quickly established that Black is not a Death Eater — he was a member of the fourth circle as a child, but broke with the House of Black in his late teens and never took the Mark. Snape testifies that the original "accusation" of Black as the Dark Lord's Right Hand was intended as sarcasm, which is very clear in the context of the transcript.

The actual charges on which Black was being held were for the murder of Peter Pettigrew (and bystanders) and conspiracy to murder James and Lily Potter.

Sirius testifies in his own defence under truth serum and a pile of veritors' charms. Explains about the Fidelius Charm and Lily switching the Secret Keeper; that his 'confession' was due to his guilt over having been responsible for the switch and for insisting on Pettigrew, that it was his fault, he still felt responsible to some degree for their deaths, but he wasn't the one who betrayed them to the dark lord. He intended to kill Pettigrew, but the fucker managed to fake his own death and escape, leaving Sirius holding the bag on the murder of a dozen bystanders. Explains about the animagus thing, demonstrates that he is in fact a dog animagus; has no idea whether Pettigrew is still alive or whether he's died of misfortune or disease in the past decade.

Dumbledore corroborates the existence of the Fidelius and that Lily certainly could have modified it

The nail in the coffin is that Sirius's wand, which they've had in an evidence lock-up for the past ten years, shows no trace of any spell which could have blown up a street. It was never examined because Sirius confessed at the scene of the crime and went quietly.

I honestly don't know how they're going to make the clinic thing work yet.

I promise, I'm not going to just start doing all of my fics as epistolaries. Probably.