Switched

“So, is Druella meeting you at the station, then?” Hermione asked hopefully. She’d been wanting to meet the seer in person since Harry and Blaise had shared the memory of her argument with Dumbledore just after the Yule holiday. 

Unfortunately for her, “No, she has a lecture this afternoon, so I’m going to just meet her at her flat.”

Harry was pretty sure the fact that Dru had a lecture wouldn’t stop her from coming to pick him up if she really wanted to — it really wouldn’t take that long to apparate here, collect him, and apparate back — but she couldn’t open a portal to the middle of King’s Cross without attracting all kinds of attention, and he suspected that she was letting him make his own way to Magical France as both a test of his ability to fend for himself in the real world and something to entertain himself for the first few hours of the Easter holiday.

She’d sent him a purse of francs, a UK passport (in the name of James Black), the muggle address of one of the access points to the little magical neighbourhood where her flat was located and the address of the flat, a map of the magical train station at Calais (obviously he was meant to take a second train from Dover across the Channel), and a note to the effect that if he hadn’t arrived by nine, she would be going out for supper without him. 

“You’re just...going to meet her at her flat? In Paris? ”

“Er...yes?” Immigration wasn’t a big deal on the magical side, really — mages didn’t really have passports, even (he’d been paying attention when they visited Dru over Yule, he would just need to register his wand before he left the magical train station, for their version of the Restriction of Underage Wizardry) so Harry didn’t see the problem. Obviously she knew his French was good enough to get through a train station or two, they’d spoken French more than English the last couple of weeks, so... “They have magical trains that run across the Channel,” he assured her, in case that was it. There were also portkeys, but those were more expensive, and besides, he’d already done that. He hadn’t taken an underwater train yet.

Judging by the way she shook her head and Danny’s “Are you really surprised? I’ve been telling you for months that Druella’s a terrible parent...” it probably wasn’t.

“Seriously, Danny? I think I can figure out how to catch a train by myself, reading a time table and buying a ticket isn’t exactly rocket science.”

Danny snorted. “Maybe, but those of us who aren’t complete psychos think travelling to a foreign country we’ve never been to, completely alone, is a little intimidating .”

“He did move to Knockturn Alley alone over the summer,” Blaise pointed out. “That’s practically a different country from a muggle suburb. I’m sure Dru considers that more than enough evidence that he can mind himself and get to Paris without any trouble.”

“And she would be right ,” Harry said pointedly, because he was pretty sure Blaise was on his side, here, but he was also pretty sure that Danny would consider that a bad judgement somehow, just because he hated Dru. “And I’m not a complete psycho! Also, I have been there, over Christmas.”

Danny ignored his excellent rebuttal. “You’re at least ninety-five per cent psycho.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“You’re always ridiculous. At least ninety-five per cent of the time.”

“I do actually sleep sometimes , Danny.”

“In the Forest, with the wilderfolk, like an animal , being ridiculous while unconscious.”

“I still can’t believe you’ve been sleeping in the Forest, ” Hermione said, probably intentionally changing the subject before he could take exception to Danny implying that the wilderfolk were animals. 

He could mean animal-shaped person , or even just be referring to their habit of forming puppy piles regardless of their current shape, but Harry was pretty sure he didn’t. He’d gotten better since they first came up, especially since everyone was talking about Sirius’s clinic all the time for months , but Danny still pretty obviously thought that wilderfolk were kind of inherently weird and uncomfortable to talk about, even if it wasn’t their fault that their parents had been different species.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with being friends with the wilderfolk, but it’s outside . And it’s not even summer.”

“I’ve been sleeping with Blaise when it’s raining and I don’t want to smell like wet dog,” he said somewhat defensively. He hadn’t told anyone other than Blaise that the undead dark lord might be trying to kill him because he didn’t want them to freak out or report it and scare him off, so he didn’t mention that he’d recently moved into Slytherin full-time, either.

“But aren’t you scared , sleeping out there in the wild?” Hermione asked, her tone very clearly implying that she would be, despite that being possibly the silliest question anyone had ever asked him. “ I would be!” Called it.  

“Hermione, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it: you’re a pansy.”

“I’m a girl , you toad.” So, what? Pansy wasn’t a good insult? He had sort of meant it just to be funny, but. “Seriously though, I mean, I know you can see in the dark, so maybe that doesn’t bother you, but there are triffids and all sorts of things that might try to eat you! Danny told me there are giant, man-eating spiders out there!”

He shrugged. “Seriously, there are, yes, and they are a problem, but they don’t usually attack the wolves and centaurs in their camps and villages.” 

Even though they could just roll over the entire Forest, if they really wanted to, or send small parties to sneak out of the Valley and start new nests all over the place — the wolves and centaurs wouldn’t be able to stop them all. Harry had been talking to Hagrid and Dumbledore, and apparently the situation was a little more complicated than he thought. The main problem, not just at Hogwarts but with acromantulae in general, was that they literally couldn’t stop reproducing. 

They were thinking, feeling beings. That was undeniable. They just didn’t have the ability to control themselves when mating season came around. It was hard-wired into their brains, and they weren’t just saying that. There had been experiments, apparently, and even when they were threatened with death for getting it on — even when they knew those threats would be carried out, because they had seen other acromantulae killed for exactly that — they couldn’t stop themselves. Asking them not to breed was like asking them not to eat . 

Keeping the males and females apart either drove them wild, like cats in heat, or made them positively suicidal. That, apparently, was why Hagrid had brought Mosag, Aragog’s wife, here in the first place. He had been starving himself to death. Maybe it would’ve been kinder to let him, or just put him out of his misery, but Harry did understand that Hagrid hadn’t understood how big a problem they would become with no natural predators, and the awful position he was creating for everyone by bringing in a second acromantula — including Aragog. 

Because, see, he was trying to keep to his agreement with Dumbledore and the centaurs, and with finite resources and an exponentially growing population, there really wasn’t enough food for his (very) extended family in their territory. There was a lot of competition within the colony, to the point that the youngest spiders, up to about five years old — the ones who weren’t big enough yet to be considered sentient — had begun resorting to cannibalism when they couldn’t compete with the bigger, smarter, older spiders for any other resources. There was growing pressure to allow the colony to expand — it was probably only a matter of time until Aragog’s children killed him and just did what they wanted — and he couldn’t entirely stop them pushing back the borders of their territory. The founders of a colony held a lot of sway, influencing their offspring to obey them on an alchemical level, like pheromones or something, but not enough to stop them from stepping just a little past the border to get to the food they could see right there , especially if Aragog wasn’t also right there to hold them back.

So Aragog’s choices were: Fight his children trying to keep them contained, and watch the younger generations starve and eat each other; or let them run wild and get the whole colony exterminated. 

And they would be exterminated, because as Alpha had said, if they had more food they would make more spiders, until there was nothing else left alive. Literally every intelligent species and nation outside of their native range, where they had predators that kept them in check, had an agreement to just kill all acromantulae wherever they were discovered, because they would inevitably have to fight them for resources, and letting the population grow first just made it all worse in the long run.

Dumbledore apparently considered Aragog’s obvious efforts to fight his instincts and keep his family to his territory worthy of praise, so obviously he didn’t want to punish him even though he was clearly failing. He also didn’t want to commit a spider genocide — Harry wasn’t sure who had taught Hagrid the word “genocide” because it didn’t seem like something that would come up in casual magical conversation, but that was how he characterised just killing all of them, and he wasn’t wrong — so he was trying to come up with literally any other solution, like sterilising them (which...would still be a spider genocide? Harry was pretty sure...) or doing something with bioalchemy to make them only have one or two females in every brood or reduce their clutch size to something on the order of five to ten spiderlings in each brood, rather than a hundred and fifty . (Harry was pretty sure the acromantulae wouldn’t go for something like that either but, maybe, if the alternative was death and most of the hundred and fifty died every time anyway...)

There was also the option of trying to do something with bioalchemy so they could control their instincts, that was apparently a thing a bunch of researchers in Indonesia were working on (just one team, because even there, where they weren’t as much of a problem, the idea of trying to help the spiders become recognised as beings was considered sort of mad), but Dumbledore thought accomplishing anything in that research area was cloud-castle dreaming. Bioalchemy dealing with the body , like reproduction and shite, was fairly straightforward. Bioalchemy meddling with the brain was a lot more complicated because, well, people just didn’t understand brains and minds and the magic of consciousness and how they all worked together to form a thinking, feeling person . Not well enough to intentionally alter instincts like that. Dumbledore thought that if the Indonesians did find a solution, it would be down to dumb luck, and Harry had to admit that their fifty years of research with nothing to show for it did sort of argue he was right.

In the meanwhile, Bane and Alpha knew all that now (or at least Bane did, Harry had told him about the studies where the acromantulae were literally murdered for shagging and still couldn’t help themselves because that was just wild ), but they were absolutely unwilling to give up any more of their territory to the acromantulae, and Harry was pretty sure they were right not to do so. Having a few dozen or even a few hundred more acres would just mean that more spiderlings would survive this year. It still probably wouldn’t be enough for all of them, so it wouldn’t really reduce the pressure on their population at all, and even if it was, they’d be back to square one as soon as next year’s brood hatched.

There had been a diplomatic breakthrough when Hagrid had admitted that there were factions within the Colony that did want to break off and just take everything — but Aragog’s been keeping them in line! — and Dumbledore (and Hagrid, who had a surprising amount of gold saved up from selling unicorn tail hairs and stuff he just happened across out in the Forest, and nothing to spend it on) had offered to pay for wardcrafters — goblin wardcrafters, not humans, because humans still weren’t welcome in the centaurs’ territory — to come and set up wards around the villages so just in case the worst should happen, they’d have safe places to hide out until Dumbledore and the Ministry (who he swore he would call in if the spiders abandoned their efforts to contain themselves) could kill the invaders.

That didn’t really fix anything, though, since there would still be more spiders next year and some of them were still slowly advancing into the centaurs’ lands because the alternative was starving to death. It just served as a sort of gesture of goodwill and dialled back tensions to the level they had been before Harry and the wolves had been attacked. 

Things were still pretty damn tense though, especially within the Pack, because Alpha had forbidden the wolves from retaliating for One Ear and Blackpaw because if it really wasn’t the spiders’ fault, and they had been bewitched (which Bane believed and Alpha at least half believed), that would actually be a major escalation, and if the spiders decided to send all of their resources against the wolves and the centaurs, it wouldn’t matter that they couldn’t kill them in the villages, they could still overwhelm their warriors and put them under siege, and no one wanted to have to count on the humans rescuing them before they all starved to death behind their wards. (They were stockpiling food, just in case, but it was spring — nothing was ready to harvest yet — so it would take time to build up their reserves to last more than a week or two.)

Star, Blondie, Patches, and all the other younger wolves who wanted revenge had to content themselves with scouting out the perimeter of the spiders’ territory, surveilling them to make sure they didn’t start sending out seed-colonies, and updating the map, in preparation for Ministry wizards coming in and setting up palings so they couldn’t escape and just killing everything in the spiders’ territory with fire. (That was how they collectively figured the Ministry would have to go about it. It wasn’t as though the spiders hadn’t already killed practically everything there anyway.) So far, they were waiting to see if Dumbledore could come up with another solution, but most of the wolves expected him to fail, or else that he would suggest sterilising all of the spiders or something equally insane that they would never accept voluntarily or otherwise tip them off that he couldn’t come up with anything and they were going to be exterminated, and they’d split up and make a break for freedom in every direction, founding little satellite nests in the hills and any hidden spot they could find, building up their numbers and spreading until it was impossible to get rid of all of them.

Harry wasn’t sure , but he suspected that part of the reason Star (who was usually one of the most aggressive wolves) had argued that they should let Dumbledore try to solve the problem without killing all the spiders was that he thought the only way they would be able to successfully root out the nest was if they took the spiders by surprise, and wanted to lull them into a false sense of security. Bane and Alpha, he suspected, thought Dumbledore might deliberately tip off the spiders if they tried to exterminate the colony before he admitted that there was no other solution, and Dumbledore would definitely at least be notified that the Ministry was sending up a bunch of aurors or whoever to fire-bomb a pretty substantial track of his land and everyone living there into oblivion.

He couldn’t even do that much, help with the surveilling and mapping, because Bane and Dumbledore kept him too busy carrying messages between them to disappear for three or four hours at a time. Plus he did still have to go to lessons and his muggle courses and do homework and play with Fluffy and muck out niffler cages and answer letters and hang out with his friends and shite. That didn’t mean that he was actually too busy to help with surveillance, he definitely had three or four spare hours every day. They just weren’t three or four consecutive hours, and he really couldn’t predict when someone would come looking for him to run a message. 

It was annoying , because he was acutely aware that Things Are Happening and he felt like he should be doing something (everyone else was), but he also felt like he was spending an awful lot of time hanging around Dumbledore’s office or the Village waiting to play post-owl.

Dumbledore said if he wanted to help, he could read through the Indonesian acromantula research and xenocultural studies (most of which were in French, not Indonesian) and let Dumbledore know if he found anything that seemed important. Harry was pretty sure that this was just to keep him busy and make him feel useful, because everything Harry found that he thought was important, Dumbledore said wasn’t, and he wouldn’t let him read any of the really important background information on basic bioalchemy stuff he really needed to understand what the Indonesians were trying to do. (Snape let him check out a book on it to read in Potions, but that wasn’t the point.)

Down in the centaurs’ village he spent a lot of time just mindlessly practising spells and studying the languages he was supposed to be learning for the summer. He actually got one of the goblin wardcrafters to talk to him for a while so he could work on his accent in Gobbledygook, which was cool — they’d just finished the wards yesterday — but on the whole, it was just... very frustrating .

He’d almost stayed at the Castle for the holiday so he could spend more time out in the Forest, helping watch the spiders, without the distractions of school and shite, but Sirius had sent a letter finalising the plans for Harry’s visit (they were meeting up on Sunday), and Dru had told him that they needed to talk about the killing Riddle project in person and he wanted to meet the horcrux. Plus, he knew he wouldn’t be able to just sit by and watch the spiders. If he was helping surveil them, he just knew he’d be at least this frustrated that they couldn’t just attack them, already. (It was just so frustrating !)

It was probably for the best that he was taking a break from all of that for the next week.

Well, he might ask Dru if she had any ideas about the bioalchemy stuff, but aside from that.

“ Don’t usually ,” Hermione repeated. “As in, they do sometimes.”

“Wait, no, that’s not the important thing, here,” Danny said. “There are ?!” 

“Um, yes? I know I told you that...”

“ You told me that!” Hermione reminded him, apparently slightly outraged that he’d been telling her shite he didn’t even believe was true, but he ignored her.

“Um, no? I’m pretty sure I heard it from one of Dora’s friends, like oh, yeah, people say the real reason the Forest is Forbidden is there are giant man-eating spiders out there . And he told me there were werewolves out there, too! People say all sorts of shite like that, I didn’t really believe it! ”

“I definitely told you. I was having a bad day and went back up to our room to grab my cloak, and you pointed out it was almost dinner, and I told you I needed to get out before I clawed someone’s eyes out, and you were terrified, which really didn’t help, and I told you it was fine, I just needed to get out for a while, and if I wasn’t back by morning, I’d gone native and joined the spiders. I know I did.”

Danny did, too, frowning as he remembered. “Okay, fine, but I was paying more attention to you being a creepy, dark little psycho and threatening to claw my eyes out and—”

“I wasn’t threatening you , knob head! I was explaining that I needed to get out of the bloody Castle before I did something like that.”

“Whatever.” Wanker . “I figured you’d just heard about it from the upperclassmen and were just saying shite . But you’re serious? There are actually acromantulae in the Forest?!”

“Yes, and I know what you’re going to say— Yes, we have to get rid of them, but that’s a much more delicate operation than you’re probably thinking, because it’s a big bloody colony, and if even one breeding pair gets away they’ll come back, so we have to be very, very careful not to spook them and send out a couple thousand seed-colonies, so you can’t tell anyone.”

“And how does that follow, exactly? Because I don’t know if you know this, Harry, but acromantulae are really bloody dangerous, and if there’s a big bloody colony —”

“If you tell your parents or Dora, they’ll report it, and then the Ministry will send someone to investigate the tip, tip off the spiders that they’re under attack, and they’ll scatter,” Blaise explained.

Harry nodded. “We know it’s probably going to come down to an all-out war eventually, but the centaurs and wilderfolk aren’t ready yet to withstand a siege, and if we’re going to get palings or something up so they can’t get out of the Valley or down to Hogsmeade when they realise they’re under attack, we’re going to need Dumbledore’s cooperation, and he’s still convinced he can save them somehow with bioalchemy or something and not do a spider genocide because they really have been trying to stay in their territory, like they genuinely want to be good neighbours, or at least the colony founder does, so we don’t know what way he’ll break if we move before he’s accepted that there’s no way to save them and he might just warn them we’re coming, or tell Hagrid and he’ll warn them.”

“Harry. We can’t just let an acromantula colony live at Hogwarts ! I have to tell someone!”

“I just told you , we’re working on it! When the centaurs and wilderfolk are ready, I’ll tell the Ministry myself! I’ll kidnap a little one and take it with me or something so they won’t have to go up and maybe tip off the spiders trying to get a look at them to prove they’re real, and they can put containment wards over the Valley, because the worst case is, they escape to the rest of the island and we can never get rid of them. But if you tell your parents now , more people are going to die, damn it!”

“But—”

“But nothing! It’s none of your business, it’s between Dumbledore and Bane, and neither of them asked for your help! You don’t know anything about the situation, Danny, and if you tell anyone, you’ll make it worse, so don’t .”

Danny froze, his eyes going wide, swallowed hard, and then nodded. “Fine. I won’t tell anyone. For now.”

“Thank you!” For now would have to do. Hermione gave him an odd look. “What?”

“What did you just do to your eyes?” Oh, oops . That would explain why Danny had suddenly remembered that he was terrified of Harry. “And, question, did you say spider genocide? As in...?”

“As in they’re intelligent beings, yes,” Blaise said. 

“And you want to commit genocide against them?” she said, aghast. “But— If they’re intelligent, why can’t you just talk to them? Negotiate? It’s not because they’re spiders , is it? I mean, I hate spiders as much as the next girl, but Blaise just said they’re people , and—”

Harry groaned. “I’ll explain on the train.”

So much for taking a break from this shite ...

You do realise that Dru is going to read your mind and probably have opinions on the matter.

She already knows.

She had supposedly come up to discuss the prophecy with Bane the same day she got Harry’s letter. (Harry had completely missed her because he wasn’t spending nights in the Forest anymore.) They’d discussed the spider situation too, because, well. It was the biggest thing going on in the Forest. It had come up. Dru had claimed that it wasn’t her place to intervene in the machinations of Fate, which was a position Bane respected because she’d used a Floating Gate to get to the Forest, which had convinced him and every other centaur who had seen it that Dru was definitely one of the Greater Fae, and also because the centaurs’ philosophy was very big on predestination. 

What Would Be had been set in motion in the Beginning, from the dance of the stars in the heavens to the choices which would eventually be made by every single person in the world. They looked to the skies in the hope of recognising patterns which reflected those in the mortal sphere and would help them prepare for the Ultimate Inevitability, give them some understanding of why things happened as they must. Not as in, searching for meaning , like why would God do this to us , just...understanding the causes and effects which had brought them to this confluence of events, and the echoes of it which would carry into the future.

Dru, as one of the Greater Fae, a being from outside the universe, was not, according to Bane, part of the events set in motion in the Beginning. The actions and impacts of the existence of such outsiders and their descendents, their cumulative effect throughout history, were the reason the patterns of the stars didn’t always correlate exactly to the patterns within the mortal sphere. The centaurs were convinced that she could change the course of history if she wanted to, because her actions weren’t predetermined and she had the perspective to know how her choices would change the future, but Harry got the impression they considered it deeply respectful of her not to deliberately interfere with the course of events, even if it meant there would be a war and a lot of centaurs were likely to die. 

Like, they thought she was being respectful of the universe , or something, not making it her plaything and intentionally messing it up any more than she did just by existing. They hadn’t really talked about it in the few letters they’d exchanged since the spider attack, but Harry was pretty sure she just didn’t want to get drawn into solving everyone else’s problems for them.

“What is there to explain, Harry? Either they’re people or they’re not, and genocide is evil is not up for debate!”

Debating whether genocide was always evil occupied most of the train ride back to London. Harry was pretty sure he won, because Hermione got increasingly uncomfortable and made increasingly unconvincing arguments until she finally just changed the subject to whether Blaise had been serious about bringing her parents to Mira’s for a few days so she could show off (yes) and whether he needed Mira’s permission to do so (no). 

Hermione obviously didn’t want to show up with her parents on the doorstep and be turned away, or worse, ‘welcomed’ as unwelcome guests, which would, yes, be awkward as hell, Harry got that. If Dudley had invited a school friend and their parents to come over for a couple of days without warning her, Aunt Petunia would probably let them use the spare bedroom, but she’d make it clear at every possible turn that she hated them for dropping in unannounced. He would think that Hermione would trust Blaise’s judgement on how his mother would react, though.

Harry was beginning to think that Hermione just liked arguing about stupid shite (he’d had his suspicions for months, but this one really took the cake), but at least it wasn’t whether Harry could and should make his way to Paris alone. They didn’t get back to that particular subject until after meeting up with the Grangers and Mira on the platform.

The first thing Blaise said to Mira after they got through the introductions was, “I’ve invited Hermione and her parents to stay with us over Easter weekend because the Restriction on Underage Wizardry is completely unreasonable and she wants to show off a bit.”

Mira, completely predictably, nodded smoothly. “Of course. I believe Blaise has mentioned that you live in Oxbridge? We’re in Athlone, in the Westmeath–Roscommon area. Call ahead just before you get on the ferry, and I’ll send a car to meet you in Dublin.”

“Oh,” Missus Doctor Granger said, obviously startled by the suddenness of the invitation. Clearly Hermione hadn’t mentioned the possibility at all. “Thank you, but I’m sure that won’t be necessary. That is, we’d love to come over for a few hours and see Hermione do magic—” She shot a look at her husband, who was nodding in agreement, giving Hermione a one-armed hug around the shoulders. “—but we wouldn’t want to put you out, especially on such short notice. I’m sure we can find a hotel or—”

“Nonsense. What on Earth is the point of a country estate if you can’t invite new acquaintances to weekend there? If you’re concerned about celebrating the holiday, I don’t anymore myself, but I’m sure arrangements can be made...?” Harry attempted to escape while they went through the dance of politely declining and then accepting hospitality, before anyone could point out that no one had come to fetch him. “Harry, dear, you weren’t leaving without saying farewell, were you?”

She definitely knew he had been. “Ah...no?” Not anymore, at least. “I really should get going, though.”

“Oh, are you meeting your family on the other side of the barrier?” Mister Doctor Granger asked politely. 

“Something like that.” Paris was, in fact, not within the train station, so, technically ...

Mira frowned at him. “I thought you were staying with Druella.”

“Er...yes?”

“In Paris?”

“Yes, which is definitely on the other side of the barrier. About three-hundred miles on the other side.”

Mira made an exasperated little sigh, probably directed at the absent Dru, “Let me guess, Druella gave you an address and said see you when you get here ?”

“And money and a passport, but it was if you’re not here by supper, I’m eating without you , so I am kind of on a time limit.” He sort of thought that sort of cancelled out the advantage of being given travel money and an ID, especially since he did have money, he just would have had to change it, which wouldn’t have taken that long, and no one had asked him for ID when he’d port-keyed over with Mira, anyway. Granted, by nine wasn’t really a challenging time-limit to meet. He was planning on flooing down to Dover, the channel crossing couldn’t take more than a couple of hours, tops, and then he could find a public floo address in Paris and just take a normal taxi the rest of the way, or walk, if he was already in the right little magical enclave. It was only half three, so. 

“I have a meeting at four,” she said, rolling her eyes at the idea of just letting him go by himself. “I’ll take you over after.”

“What, no! Mira! I can get there on my own! I have a plan!”

“I’m sure you do, but—”

“No! No buts!” he protested, feeling somewhat betrayed. Sure, maybe most adults would look at him and err on the side of assuming that he was about as competent as Dudders, but Mira knew him! She’d kidnapped someone for him to murder a few months ago, for God’s sake! “I’m almost twelve , I don’t need a minder to get on and off a train! I got here alright, didn’t I?”

Mira asked me to ask you to play along for Hermione’s parents. She wants them to think she’s a responsible adult, you see.

Dragonshite. Granted, he was sure Mira had asked Blaise to tell him that, and he didn’t know what other motivation she could possibly have, but, Tell her she could’ve let them think I was meeting Aunt Petunia on the other side of the barrier if she wanted to look like a responsible adult, couldn’t she have?  

She frowned at him (‘responsibly’). “You’re almost twelve, which is far too old to have a public row over your travelling arrangements, and I might as well take you, since it seems I need to have a word with Druella regarding the fact that it is no longer Nineteen Sixty-Two.”

She says yes, but she was legitimately confused because she was distracted by the logistics of the Grangers’ visit and surprised that you would be so rude as to try to sneak away, and there’s no way Dru would meet you on the muggle side of the platform, and then it was too late. If the Grangers are going to be visiting us for several days, she would prefer that they see her as a reasonable, responsible adult, not a terrible, neglectful mother who would leave her son’s eleven-year-old friend to fend for himself in the middle of London, having entirely unreasonably been told to find his way to Paris on his own. They don’t realise you’re... you , so leaving you or letting you go off on your own looks bad. Like leaving Danny— Or, well, no, Danny would probably be smart enough to know he’s not prepared to travel alone, actually. Like leaving Draco to try to get to Paris on his own.

...Fine.  

Harry gave Mira his most charming smile, the one normally reserved for adults who didn’t already know that he was a questionably sane demon-child. “I strongly suspect that people would’ve considered it a bad idea to let the average eleven-year-old travel alone in Nineteen Sixty-Two as well, and probably a worse idea to let Bellatrix travel by herself, but I suspect that Dru would say that eleven is old enough to know there will be consequences if I kill anyone or blow up a train, and if I do it anyway, well, everyone knows there’s a chance of being trapped in a car with a crazy person when they use public transportation. That’s a risk they chose to take.” 

“Very funny,” Mira said, frowning, which was unexpected, because that had been very funny.

She finds it unnerving that you look so much like Bella, and yes, that sounds exactly like something Dru would say. (Yes, Harry knew that. They had exchanged several letters, now.) She also can’t tell what you’re playing at. I can’t tell what you’re playing at.

Making it clear that I’m me , obviously. If the problem was just that the Grangers didn’t know he could take care of himself, that was clearly the thing to do. If he shut up and just did as he was told, he’d have to do that every time he saw them, or they’d think he was acting weirdly out of character and going off the rails or something.  

As opposed to never having been on the rails in the first place?

...Yes? “I won’t, I promise. Your concern for my fellow travellers and the entire country of France is admirable, but unnecessary. Mister and Missus Doctor Granger, I must apologise for my entirely uncouth attempt to slip away without saying goodbye. My only excuse is that I am almost twelve, which is far too old to have a public row over my travel arrangements, and I knew that Mira is far too responsible to release me unsupervised on the unsuspecting French public without protest. Unfortunately, the only way to truly determine whether I am old enough to travel alone is to allow me to do so. If I end up in police custody, well, then we’ll know, won’t we?”

“Really, Harry?” Hermione sort of looked like she wished she knew how to apparate so she could vanish on the spot. He didn’t even need Blaise to tell him that she thought he was making a bad impression on her parents, and reflecting badly on her for her choice in friends. 

“Your mum thinks I’m funny.” She did. She was trying not to laugh. Her father looked a little more disapproving, like he didn’t think much of smart-mouthed little yobs, but hey, one out of two wasn’t bad, especially since he wasn’t trying to make a good impression on them, just not give them a completely false impression of himself. “Anyway, have fun at Blaise’s. Mira, I’ll ring you when I get to France, even if I do get arrested. I’m sure the police will let me call an adult. I am only eleven, after all.”

“I didn’t agree that you can go, Harry,” Mira frowned.

“Mira, with the utmost possible respect, I don’t care. You’re not my guardian, you can’t physically stop me—” If he was too old to get in a public row without embarrassing both of them, she was definitely too old to get into an actual fight with him in the middle of the platform. “—and you have a meeting in twenty minutes, which I presume is more important than making sure I don’t get lost in Calais for a few hours with only my juvenile overconfidence to blame. I guess I can’t stop you coming over to tell Dru off afterward, but.” He shrugged. There really wasn’t anything more to say, other than, Maybe remind her that if she does, Dru will probably be annoyed with her and might make her cry?

She’s not going to try to tell Dru off. I think you’re missing the point. Mira doesn’t really care what you do after the Grangers leave, she just has to make a show of objecting for their sake. After you leave, she’ll probably tell them she’ll ring Dru and tell her to go find you before you actually do blow up a train or something, you know, exasperated and deliberately hyperbolic... Kids these days, honestly sort of thing.

Oh, well, fine then. While Mira glared at him over crossed arms, to all appearances legitimately angry with him but temporarily stymied (he really didn’t think he could be blamed for missing the point — she was very convincing ), he turned to the Grangers. “Please don’t judge Mira too harshly for her inability to coerce me into obeying her. Crueller women than she have tried and failed. I’m told being a questionably sane demon-child runs in the family. I should, however, take my leave, so. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m sure I’ll see you again at the end of term.” He offered them a polite little bow, just because.

Blaise laughed silently. Suave. Definitely just saved your first impression, right there.

Hey, Emma likes me. And, I dunno, did they come to the same, poor woman, clearly she has to pick her battles with this one attitude as Aunt Petunia’s neighbours? 

He dropped the sarcasm. Eh...more or less? Dan did, at least. Emma’s harder to read. I’d say she likes you personally, but doesn’t know if you’ll be a good influence on Hermione. Dan’s sure you won’t be. Hermione’s about ready to throttle you.

So I’m encouraging her violent tendencies already, is what I’m hearing?

You’ve been encouraging her violent tendencies since before you were properly introduced, and you know it. 

It’s a gift. “Blaise, Maïa, until Tuesday. I’ll tell Dru and Sirius that you said hello. Mira, I’ll tell them that you said Dru is a terrible parent, and Sirius is clearly slacking on his cool uncle duties, because letting me travel to France alone is definitely the sort of thing he should be doing, not Dru.”

“Please stop taking the piss, Harry,” Mira said, with a distinct note of resignation. ( She just remembered that you’re being introduced to Sirius. You’ll probably like him, and he’ll probably only encourage you to be a little shite.) “And no, I can’t make you stay, but you had better ring me when you arrive. I can and will alert the French authorities to the fact that you’re missing, and imagine being taken into custody for something so boring as forgetting to telephone me when you said you would.”

“Yes, fine, whatever,” Harry called over his shoulder, already skipping away. “Bye, all!”

Dru wasn’t home when Harry reached her flat, just over three hours later. He was sure he was in the right place, but the door was sealed with a complicated-looking locking spell he’d never seen before. 

After poking at it for a few minutes and deciding that there was no way he could figure out how to break it and just let himself in, he went back down to the lobby. “Pardon me, sir.”

The doorman looked down at him like he had no idea why there would be a child speaking to him. “What is it?”

“Did you notice Magistra Rosier leaving the building today?”

“I might have. Why do you ask?”

“Did she happen to mention when she would return, or where she was going? I’m supposed to meet her here, but I don’t think she’s in.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, his face lighting up. “Are you James Black?” Harry nodded. “My apologies, I was expecting someone older. She did not say when she would return, but she did ask me to give this to you if you happened to arrive before she did so,” he said, pulling a small book from one of his pockets and handing it over.

Simple Security Spells: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Home Defence

Well, that answered the question of what he was supposed to do with himself until she got home.

The doorman hesitated briefly before asking, “Would you like me to unshrink it for you?”

“No, I’ve got it.” It was a transfiguration effect, not hard to break. “Thanks, though. And thank you for the book,” he added, already edging back toward the stairs.

“Ah...I beg your pardon, but where are you going?”

“To figure out how to break into Dru’s flat, obviously.”

For a moment, it looked like the French wizard would object to Harry’s baldly stated plan to spend the evening housebreaking, but then he seemed to realise, as Harry had, that the book was clearly a clue, and that if she really didn’t want him to get in, she would have used something more complicated than a “simple security spell” and decided it was fine. “Fortune’s favour,” he offered instead, clearly trying to suppress a smirk, like he thought there wasn’t a chance in hell Harry would manage it.

Well, they’d just have to see about that! “Cheers!” 

He grinned, taking the stairs two at a time. This was already the best holiday he’d ever had, even accounting for the argument on the train. (How Andi and Dumbledore could possibly expect summer to be anything less than great was just baffling .)

Two hours later, he was beginning to think the doorman — Harry hadn’t even thought to ask his name — was right, there was no way in hell he was getting through this door. It hadn’t taken him that long to figure out what he was dealing with, here. (The diagrams in the book were stupid and didn’t look anything like the actual magic, but once he’d figured out how to read them.) It was a pretty simple enchantment, apparently, despite his initial impression of the magic. The book called it a charm-lock. Basically, when a mage was setting it up, they cast a spell at the enchantment to create a sort of impression of the shape of the magic, which would then become the ‘key’. He just needed to figure out what spell to cast on the lock, and it would open. 

Really he didn’t even need to figure out that much, because the intent behind the magic wasn’t important. The book had a warning about using destructive spells as the key, to the effect that the spell should be cast without destructive intention or it would blast a hole in the door or whatever while you were trying to unlock it. It suggested that using something like that in conjunction with more complicated retaliatory wards would make it much more difficult to break, without technically being very difficult to set up. (Though of course one would have to be able to shape and express the spell in question without the proper intent to initialise the intended effect, so it might be really hard for the owner to open as well, but still.) 

That might be a problem for most people, he guessed, because they’d have to use a bunch of different analysis charms and stuff to figure out the key-spell, but he could see the shape of the “mechanism” and it really wasn’t hard to figure out the shape of the magic needed to complete it and open the door (even though he wasn’t sure what charm actually had that particular “shape” inside its envelope, which was usually the only part of a spell Harry could “see” when they were cast). And then he could just twist ambient magic into that pattern, not as like an actual cast spell, but more like what he’d thought of as “big magic” before starting school...but on a very small, much more delicate scale than creating traps for Ministry goons or whatever. It was kind of tricky, finicky — not unlike using lockpicks, he imagined — but not impossibly so.

He was sure he had that part right. 

But there was something else woven through the “mechanism”, a thin little barrier stopping his key-spell from properly coming into contact with the entire recognition “plate” (It really looked nothing like a plate, more like a sort of mould.) and putting the right magical “pressure” on the scheme to release the lock. It was integral to the locking spell, not a secondary thing, so he couldn’t just try to disrupt it alone somehow (and he didn’t know enough about spell-disruption to disrupt the entire locking spell...and if he did, it would probably blow up in his face, anyway). He had a suspicion that it was an identity-recognition element, which the book mentioned was really simple to operate , but actually very tricky to set up, especially for someone else, so it wasn’t included in the ‘Introductory’ spellbook.

The basic idea was, you had a switch or tripline circuit or a key-spell, in this case, that could only be operated by the person whose magic it was keyed to. If the magic wasn’t right, the switch couldn’t be released or the circuit wouldn’t be completed, or the key-spell wouldn’t be able to make contact with the entire “plate” because there was this annoying little ribbon in the way. If Dru cast the key-spell, he was pretty sure it would sort of merge with the ribbon, and the plate would read it all as one spell of the correct shape to unlock the door. 

Which was really bloody annoying . He refused to believe that she would have given him a puzzle that he literally couldn’t solve, but he also couldn’t figure out how to solve it. He’d tried going around the problem, just breaking the spell, or even breaking the door, but it was protected like the bloody Crown Jewels. Better, probably. The only thing even vaguely approximating a weak spot was the charm-lock.

“Well,” Dru said drily, startling him badly. He hadn’t noticed her arrive (which was weird, because he could usually feel people through the magic around him), and had no idea how long she’d been lurking behind him. “I can’t really say I expected that you would realise what you need to do immediately, but I had hoped that you might figure it out given a couple of hours to poke at it.”

Maybe she’d only been there for a couple of minutes, then. He hadn’t just been sitting here glaring at the impossible puzzle that long. “I know it’s a charm-lock,” he snapped. “I know the shape of the spell I need is like this —” He’d constructed his “lockpick” enough times now he could almost just cast it. It only took a second to shape the magic into the correct form. “—but I’m pretty sure that weird ribbon thing is keyed to your magical signature, and I have no bloody clue how to get around it.”

“It’s not keyed to my magical signature. Honestly, it barely has anything in common with the natural character of my magic.”

That was true, and very obvious now that she pointed it out. Harry had just assumed that she had set up the spell, and who else would it be keyed to? “Well, it’s sure as hell not keyed to mine , so—”

“ So the first way you might have succeeded — though I would admittedly consider it a rather less impressive success — would be to ask the person it’s keyed to to open it for you.”

Harry pouted at her. “And I would figure that out how , exactly?”

“Well, you might first have given some thought to who else might need to have access to my flat.” When he continued pouting — that was a terrible hint, he couldn’t imagine anyone needing access to her flat, so... — she added, “One of several. In a building I do not own or maintain.”

“So...it’s a building manager, or someone like that?”

She nodded. “And then you might have taken a short walk around the building, comparing the magic of the staff to that of the lock, eventually concluding that if Jean knew to expect you to give you a book, he might also be willing to unlock the door for you, if asked.”

Harry scowled. He hadn’t even been paying attention to the doorman’s magic. Maybe if he’d taken him up on the offer to unshrink the book he would have noticed — that might have been meant as another clue he’d completely missed — but... Damn it . (That explained why he was so sure Harry wouldn’t manage it, though, didn’t it?) “Okay, fine, what’s the other, more impressive way I could’ve done it?”

“Tune your Detangling Charm — it’s the same one commonly used on hair, but it can also be used to untie practically any knot — to match Jean’s magical signature?” She said it like there was an unspoken obviously? at the end, there. 

“...Is that a thing people can do ?” The book had made it sound like one of the security advantages of an identity-based locking spell was that they couldn’t.

“I maintain that it should be. I know I’m not the only person who can key a Messenger Charm, for example, to a specific recipient, or who can recognise others by their magic.”

“So, no, then?” Harry said, just to confirm, amusement tugging at his lips in spite of his frustration. She just seemed so indignant about it.

“Not that I think whether others are capable of a particular achievement ought to hold any influence whatsoever over your own attempts to accomplish it, but no. It is, however, a thing I can do, and I presume that if you put your mind to it, you will be able to as well.

“Granted, I didn’t expect that you would have experimented with such tricks before, but it’s really a very small step from tuning a thought to match another mind.” She sounded a little disappointed that he hadn’t worked it out for himself at some point in the last hour, despite having no idea that such a thing might even be possible , but she smiled and added before he could ask how she knew he’d figured out how to tune a thought, “Blaise mentioned that you’d figured out how to mimic him. I gathered he thought I might like to know that you also prefer my approach to copying memories, though his teacher has since assured him that most legilimens prefer to imitate the charm, which I can only attribute to a failure of the educational establishment, teaching them to become complacent and comfortable with such awkward work-arounds, rather than fully mastering their natural talent.”

She gave a little shrug. “I’ll make a block for you to practise with before I go to bed. At the moment, however, we have a dinner reservation, so.” She flicked her wand at the door, unlocking it. “The restaurant is muggle, semi-formal. Do you prefer male or female clothing?”

“Er...what?” he said, taken aback by the matter-of-fact-ness of what was really a very odd question.

“Please don’t stutter, James.” Being called James was even weirder than being asked if he wanted to dress as a girl for dinner. 

“I need to know what type of clothing to conjure for you. Unless you have had occasion to develop a muggle wardrobe and have brought something suitable with you, I suppose.” Harry was pretty sure she didn’t think that was really likely . Not that he had . “I refuse to believe that you are unaware of how androgynous your features are, and your hair is positively feminine compared to current muggle fashions, which I presume you are also aware of.” Oh, right, he hadn’t gotten it cut since he’d gone to school, so it was getting kind of long, all the way down to the bottom of his shoulder blades. He probably should do that at some point this week. “Honestly, it’s a bit feminine by current magical fashion, too, though it would more likely be taken for old-fashioned if you otherwise present yourself as male in your manner and style of dress. Still, I sincerely doubt that any of your male classmates wear theirs similarly, so I imagine that you are emphasising your androgyny intentionally, but I would hardly wish to presume.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Well, he was more accustomed to trousers and people addressing him as Mister Potter (not to mention, Dru was apparently calling him James ), but he’d rather wear a skirt to dinner than have to do something with his hair right now , and he was guessing Dru had more experience conjuring women’s clothing. It didn’t really matter. He could be Jamie for dinner. “Female, I guess?”

She blinked at him for a second, then shook her head. “I realise that this may be an unreasonable request, but please be decisive when you make a choice. If you can’t be decisive and truly have no preference on some matter, that is a valid answer, and one I vastly prefer over constant snap resolutions of near-equal-probability potentialities.”

Well, he could see how that could seem like a weird, unreasonable request, but potentialities sounded like a seer thing, in which case, he was guessing it was probably perfectly reasonable to Dru , just one of those things non-seers didn’t think was important, and sometimes acted like she was crazy for asking them to have stronger opinions like it was any of her business.

Besides, he didn’t actually like having to come up with an opinion on things he didn’t care about, he’d just gotten in the habit of it because “whatever” and “I don’t care” sounded like backchat to Aunt Petunia, and it wasn’t worth a smack across the face when he could just do a mental coin-toss and pick something when it really didn’t matter.

“Fine, then. I don’t care.” Oh, wait. If he was allowed to give an answer outside the choices she’d initially offered, “Is ‘trousers, but not doing anything with my hair’ an option?”

“If by not doing anything with your hair you mean leaving it in that half-unravelled plait, with all those frizzy little curls escaping, no, absolutely not. If you mean re-styling it in a way that muggles will almost certainly consider feminine, yes. Women are allowed to wear trousers these days, you know.” Well, yes , obviously, but he’d automatically thought he’d have to wear a skirt as a girl because Aunt Petunia always wore dresses for nice dinners and nights out with Uncle Vernon. He’d thought it was What One Does when going out to fancy restaurants. It was hardly as though he’d ever been brought along to observe the other diners. “Being generally unkempt, however, is not.” 

She clearly knew what he meant, though, because she conjured trousers and a jacket for him as she spoke, along with a shirt that matched his eyes and had a wider, ruffley (girly) collar that obviously wasn’t meant to be worn with a tie.

That was fine. He didn’t mind people thinking he was a girl nearly as much as he minded having a collar right around his neck. He normally left the top button of his button-up shirts un-done for exactly that reason. He hadn’t considered that, but it was a much better reason to prefer a girl’s blouse over a normal shirt than because it went better with his hair in the muggle world.

“Go get dressed.”

A/N: Harry was the one who taught Hagrid the word genocide, back in their first meeting.