Settlers Settle
Harry slept in for the first time in his life. He stretched, he yawned, he smiled – everything after remembering that no Aunt Petunia would pound on the door and no Dudley would dump a bucket of cold water on him.
As he wiped his bleary eyes, Harry glanced around the room, something he hadn’t done yesterday in all the excitement. It didn’t stretch wider or longer than the Dursleys’ smallest bedroom, but still it fascinated him much more than that graveyard of treasures had ever done.
This room breathed life. Thrills of excitement pierced through him every time Harry inhaled because wherever he looked, he noticed the particles of soul left by the other people who had lived there: although the bedroom was done in an almost violent mixture of blacks and vermilions, in some places the wallpaper peeled to reveal patches of grass-green and yellow dots. A few small carpets decorated the wooden floor, each of them in a different style, while the bookcase and the wardrobe both endured the presence of a multitude of posters, stickers, photos, newspaper clippings…
Harry traced the history of an entire family with his eyes alone, a fact he found both breathtaking and humbling.
After stretching once more, allowing himself an indulgence he rarely experienced, Harry found his daily clothes to put on and discarded his nightshirt given to him by Arthur the other day.
Tom, of course, had already left. His bed was already made, and Harry remembered with a snort the pinched expression on his solemn face when he had rejected the blanket with a bright sunflower-pattern. As much as Tom frightened and angered Harry with his ‘evil-ness’, sometimes his malignance and disdain looked so funny considering their poverty that Harry burst out laughing.
He was almost fond of the boy. Almost. With several hundred big ‘but’s.
The stairs creaked when Harry stepped on them, and he fell in love with the house even more, because the Dursleys would have never allowed anything to fall out of perfection in their normal little house.
Harry skipped down the steps and turned up in the kitchen with a grin splitting his face.
Tom, sitting at the table with his back perfectly straight and a charming smile on his face, interrogated Molly Weasley, who cheerfully replied while waving her wand around as she organised stuff and did the washing-up and knitted mittens all with her words and hand motions alone.
“-Oh dear! No, Tom, I can’t let you borrow my wand or buy your wand for you. I’d love to, of course, but-“
“The wand chooses the wizard,” finished Tom with a blank expression. A moment later he blinked almost imperceptibly, as if shocked at his own words.
“Why, yes!” Molly exclaimed. “Has Professor Dumbledore already told you about this?”
Tom smiled grimly. “Sometimes I just know things.”
A shudder ran through Harry at these words but he didn’t pinpoint why – didn’t have the time to, since Molly noticed him standing awkwardly to the side, and immediately rushed to push him down onto a chair and levitated food around to drop on the plate she set in front of him.
Harry shifted uneasily in his seat.
“Um... Thank you, but really, you don’t have to-“
“Shush, dear, you must be starving,” she silenced him. Tom scrutinised Harry intently but didn’t move or greet him. Simply watched. Harry scowled back at him. “Your brother’s told me about all sorts of atrocities you had to endure in the orphanage. Poor, poor boys! Want another sausage?”
“No, no, really. I’m fine,” Harry mumbled over a threatening pile of food that could last him for weeks. When, after a few more offers, Molly relented and turned away, Harry leaned over the table and ordered Tom, “Take half of it! I’d burst if I ate it all.”
Tom the Git only smirked at him before calling out, “Mr Weasley! I believe my little brother would like some more eggs but is too shy to-“
Harry didn’t let Tom finish: with a furious hiss he lunged and slapped his hand on Tom’s mouth, to which the other boy replied with a furious glower that screamed promises of broken limbs and endless torture. As if Harry was the one in the wrong here!
“You don’t wanna finish that sentence,” Harry warned seriously. Tom bit on his palm in response, and hard. “Ouch! It hurt!”
Harry quickly pulled his hands out of Tom’s mouth and rubbed the bite which glared brightly from the pale skin, while Harry glowered even brighter, righteous anger devouring his very being.
“Of course it did,” Tom spat his indignant response. He ran his hands over his jaw and chin, as if wiping the invisible taint Harry’s hands had nefariously inflicted on him with a mere touch. “I will maim you if you dare stick your grubby hands into my mouth agai-“
The beginning of Tom’s furious rant – they were his hobby, Harry noticed – was interrupted by the arrival of Arthur Weasley who merrily entered the kitchen with a bright disposition and a newspaper in hand. His nightcap dangled precariously off the one side of his head, obviously holding on because of a spell to glue it to the receding hair until the caster wanted it off.
At least they didn’t force Harry and Tom to wear the ridiculous headgear. Well, Harry supposed he could put it on for fun, but Tom would kick and scream and throw such a feat that no one would get a wink of sleep. Harry didn’t know his ‘brother’ all that well yet, but he certainly viewed Tom as a demanding, snippy, and erratic person who didn’t appreciate either fun or good humour. A boring, boring bore, as Mrs Figg sometimes called half the Little Whinging neighbourhood.
“Such a bright, happy morning!” Arthur exclaimed, dropping into one of the six vacant seats, choosing the one at Tom’s right and opposite Harry – because Tom obviously occupied the head of the table position. To boost his ego or to show his superiority, Harry didn’t know, but he bet that the big-headed git already fancied himself the main person in the house already.
“Why does anyone insist on interrupting me in this household?” Tom murmured angrily to himself. Harry ignored him. And he was getting better at it, too!
To reward himself for not responding to Tom’s heated stare, Harry stabbed a piece of sausage with a fork and popped it into his mouth, closing his eyes as the heavenly taste carried him off to umami rapture.
“Sleep well, boys?” Arthur asked over the newspaper. Harry caught sight of the headline, “Dark Arts Banned in Knockturn!” and a moving picture of a signified man with a lion’s mane of hair: rich chestnut and voluminous, framing his noble face in an attractive way.
“Yeah. The bed’s really comfy,” Harry replied enthusiastically, adding extra cheer when Tom only shot the man a sneer.
Harry didn’t know why Tom complained: the claret-eyes boy had immediately snatched the less motley bedspread, dark blue with a depicted dragon, leaving Harry with some plant-patterned one, bright orange and acid green.
“Nice to hear, nice to hear!”
“What about our education?” Tom asked the man, while Harry rolled his eyes. He did well at school, but he never liked the endless studying they wanted children to do. Harry would rather embark on an adventure of sorts than stick around in a library with heaps of tomes around him.
Speaking of adventures…
He couldn’t wait until Ginny woke up. She had promised to introduce Harry to the ghoul whose wails he heard the entire night, and then she would show him the wonders of the garden and the pond, show him how to dispose of the gnomes and how to find fairies curled up in the blossoms of large flowers, and then they would sneak into the broom shed and filch brooms for a couple of hours, and play Quidditch just beneath muggles’ noses…
Harry didn’t have time for education. Not really.
“You can read, write, and count, I suppose?” Molly cut in, placing food onto her husband’s plate before fetching a tea for herself and sitting down with it.
“Of course.”
“Well, there are two ways to educate children who grow up in a magical community,” Arthur started between taking bites to eat. “The richer purebloods hire tutors for their children who teach them, aside from the basic skills, etiquette, politics, family arts, and the like. Seeing that we don’t have- Ehem, we use another method: some times a week we gather pre-Hogwarts children into group in whatever family has the time and the spice for the day, and older witches and wizards teach them.”
“And if we already know how to read, write, and count?” Harry asked, twiddling his thumbs. He wasn’t sure he was ready to face a whole community of wizarding children yet. “There’s no need for me and for Tom to attend, right?”
Arthur and Molly both laughed and traded a look.
“Well, dear,” Molly began with a kind smile, laying a hand on Harry’s shoulder. It warmed him. “The children are of many age groups, and while the littlest ones indeed learn such simple things, there’s plenty of other activities for you.”
“What are they?” Tom interrupted with a frown. “You told me you cannot buy me a wand, which means we will not be able to cast magic- unless you lied.”
“Well, wand magic isn’t the only magic worth learning. Isn’t the only magic that exists, I mean.”
Hunger swam in Tom’s eyes as the boy leaned forward. His eyes darkened to a burgundy shade, and Harry wanted to make them lighter again, because Tom’s face in that moment frightened him, almost twisted into a countenance of dangerous craving.
“You mean the Dark Arts?” Tom asked. His voice swiped over Harry’s skin like a velvety caress. “We will learn them?”
“No!” Molly gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. She frantically glanced around, as if afraid that a mere mention of the arts would force them to appear in the kitchen and sweep them away under a carpet of darkness. “ No, no, no- how can you say such silly things? Dark Arts live in Azkaban and in old households of hereditary blood-thirsty maniacs, not with- normal people.”
Harry frowned at the mention of ‘normal people’ since it reminded him of the Dursleys and their own insistence on belonging to the normal sort.
Dark Arts sounded ominous, but after all the hype Harry really longed to see for himself if they were worth the fear they inspired.
“We meant the Old Ways, of course,” Arthur said, the calmer one.
Tom scowled. “Dumbledore didn’t mention it.”
“Well, no one requires you to learn this sort of magic, of course,” Molly explained patiently, worrying her bottom lip with her fingers. “You see, it’s quite different from the wand magic you learn at Hogwarts – it’s not wandless or wordless magic either, even though it rarely requires a spell. Mostly the Old Ways are built on rituals and ceremonies invoked on certain holidays, and they rely heavily on details and frequent sacrifices to magic-“
“It’s like- It’s like religion!” Arthur exclaimed, brightening as he remembered a word from the muggle culture. “Only with magic instead of a God. You live and breathe with magic in your soul-“
“Which is why no one treats it seriously,” Molly finished with a smile. “Us wizards don’t like admitting that we have to worship or deeply appreciate something. At the same time, although the Old Ways depend on rituals and lengthy incantations when you dabble into the higher magicks, if you only want to brush the surface of this magic, it doesn’t require much. It’s very easy, which is why people call the Old Ways children’s magic.”
Harry frowned, since he didn’t really understand half the explanation, while Tom looked bored, apparently already deciding that something invoked only during specific time and which required a lot of preparation wasn’t worth wasting time on. Tom in general looked like someone who would prefer a simple and fast way to attain his goals, waiting very impatiently if at all.
“Are they dangerous?”
Molly looked scandalised. “I wouldn’t let my children touch anything dangerous with a ten-foot pole.”
Harry believed her.
“So, we will learn parlour tricks to pass the time,” Tom loftily concluded. He wore a pinched expression, and Harry supposed it had something to do with their no learning those Dark Arts things – Tom found the name particularly thrilling and even cracked smiles of sorts when anyone mentioned them. Or were they smirks?
Frankly, Harry didn’t want to care.
Arthur shook his head. “If you don’t want to learn children’s magic, it’s all right. At the lessons you’ll also listen to the reading of out fairy tales-“ Harry lit up at that. “-be taught basic etiquette, be told about our professions and subjects to learn, our holidays, our traditions, our clothing. You’ll learn about plants and animals, as well as some geographical facts and find out the communities restricted to wizards only.”
“Cool!” Harry whispered as he changed his mind about skipping out on the whole education business. Even the Old Ways magicks sounded wicked interesting, and while he wasn’t a fan of etiquette-thingy, he loved animals and didn’t mind plants.
The Weasleys smiled at his flabbergasted but happy face.
“Depending on the ‘teacher’ of the day you might even get to visit Diagon Alley or magical garden, zoos, or greenhouses even,” promised Arthur.
“When is the next lesson?” Tom asked sharply. “I don’t suppose we study on Saturdays.”
“No, Saturdays and Sundays are one hundred per cent free – we can’t overload you with too much work.”Arthur grinned. “On Monday, though, Augusta- That is, Mrs Longbottom for you, agreed to host children at her home. You’ll get to know her grandson, too – a fine lad, a tad too shy though. You might want to help him with that.”
“Yeah, Tom doesn’t have any problem here, that’s for sure,” Harry muttered. “They won’t laugh at us, will they? The other children. Mr Dumbledore told us ‘bout those purebloods…”
Molly sighed and raised his chin with her finger. Harry looked into her warm and compassionate chocolate-coloured eyes.
“Harry, dear, I don’t know how to say it… But there will be children – and adults, let’s not forget those – who might tease you because of your blood. It’s the great disease of our community. But there are just as many people who don’t care, and you’ll easily find friends among them.” She winked.
Harry mumbled an ‘okay’ before cheering up and chirping happily, “Now that this education stuff is settled, can I go wake Ginny? She promised to show me the ghoul yesterday!”
“Oh, the ghoul!” Molly mumbled under her breath, “Should have disposed of the things long ago… Oh well, anyway, Ginny is awake already.”
“Really? But last time I peeked into her room-“
“She always places pillows under her blanket to make it seem like she’s sleeping.” Molly shook her head in discontent and rose when the last plate in the sink stopped washing itself. The woman waved her wand to make Arthur’s and Harry’s plates land in it instead. “That girl… The twins are a bad influence.”
“Hmm, at least we have a girl in the family,” Mr Weasley protested, rising, too. “The first one in generations!”
He looked very proud when he proclaimed that, and Harry liked the family just a little bit more.
Harry discovered a rule of the Weasley household: no matter what you do or where you aim to go, you end up in the kitchen.
So, he waited for only ten minutes – enduring a stilted discussion with Tom for that time – before Ginny appeared in the doorway. Her trousers, different from yesterday’s, were ripped in a few places, too, and bore smudges of dirt on her knees. Her hands looked dirty, too.
“I tripped and fell,” Ginny told her mother dismissively when Molly started kicking up a fuss.
“Your knee is bleeding! We should disinfect it immediately-“
“You disinfected it yesterday.” Ginny blinked up a few times, surprised that someone would waste time on repeating the same action day after day. She always tripped. It annoyed others, it annoyed her, but she had learnt not to make a big deal out of it.
“You might feel sick-“
Ginny didn’t see the point of listening anymore, since neither of her parents ever listened to her logical conclusions. They believed that as the only Weasley girl she would vanish like a phantom if a bee stung her or if she fell off the broom, and Ginny disagreed.
So, she grabbed her new ‘brother’s’ hand and dragged him out of the kitchen before her mother fussed some more. She offered her hand to Tom, too, but the older boy only glared at the dirt stuck to it, and Ginny awkwardly retracted it.
She adored Harry: he shared her mischievous and adventurous spirit, and Ginny felt she could forge a real friendship with him, even stronger than that between her and Neville. Tom, on the other hand…
There was something off about Tom. It wasn’t a question of politeness that he lacked in regards to her. Rather, he gave her a bad vibe – like a bloodhound. Or, better yet, Cerberus, someone who guarded terrible secrets and ripped apart with his teeth anyone daring to invade his turf and his personal space. His glare scared her, too, because his eyes looked weird half the time.
She dreaded Ron’s coming home. He hadn’t been happy to find out he would have to share, and a conflict was bound to happen. Ginny only hoped that Tom wouldn’t retaliate too much.
“You shouldn’t have been so rude to your mum,” Harry told her, returning Ginny to the present time. She blushed.
“I’m just tired of repeating that this stuff doesn’t really hurt me,” Ginny explained herself. “I want to be a Quidditch player! So of course I’ll fall down the broom and get hurt more, more, more – might even get seriously injured, like it happened to the Chudley Cannons Keeper! If she coddles me, I’ll cry on the field, and everyone will be laughing at me.”
“So, you’re learning to carry on with it,” Harry summarised. She nodded, her face bright.
“Yep.”
She snuck a curious glance at him. Harry was looking around the house as they climbed the stairs to the ghoul’s living place, the attic. He frowned when a trinket or item of furniture confused him, and gasped at the brushes with magic, and laughed when he noticed something funny. She enjoyed watching his face much more than Tom’s solid countenance of disenchanted boredom.
Really, if not for her infatuation with the legendary Harry Potter, a crush would be blooming wild right now!
Like the rest of the house, the attic and the ghoul disappointed Tom. The place was stuffy and cluttered just like the entire house, and while Tom didn’t mind the darkness and the gloom, he minded the cobwebs and insects crawling all over the attic. Some packages and chests and trunks occasionally shook or moved, and Tom felt defenceless against the unknown creatures dwelling there, which only further soured his mood.
What was worse, when he hissed Harry that, the other boy only replied with, “Well, lower your freakishly high expectations, and nothing in the world would disappoint you.”
Harry didn’t seem to understand that if you expected nothing, you got nothing – as simple as that. So Tom aimed to grasp it all, and when he couldn’t… Well, he never claimed to have an easy character.
Back to the ghoul…
The creature disgusted him. Tom expected ghouls to be macabre and fascinating and hold secrets of the afterlife and necromantic arts, but in reality it turned out to be an artless creature which only wailed, whimpered, and banged the pipes to remind others of its existence.
Useless. Disappointing. Repelling.
Tom wanted out of this house, because his opinion was dropping so fast that by the end of the day he would probably escape and run in the direction of where a real wizarding family lived. Someone with dignity and self-respect, someone Tom wouldn’t be embarrassed to claim kinship with.
He hatched a plan for that, too.
That daily ‘school’ of amateurs provided Tom with a splendid opportunity to mix with scions of worthier families – and eventually convince them to take him in. He would drag Harry with him, most likely, since the other boy appealed to Tom in his own way. Harry wouldn’t refuse if Tom blackmailed him with all the knowledge he held over the other’s head.
Actually, Tom would blackmail Harry anyway: he didn’t appreciate being ignored, especially not in favour of some chit who had not even half of Tom’s wits.
Yes, Tom would show everyone who the main man of the ‘family’ was. And the family included only two people.
“I am perfection,” Tom solemnly told the ghoul without boasting. The creature whimpered in response.
“I can’t believe that Rufus Screamgeur managed to wheedle a ban on casting Dark Magic in Knockturn,” Molly said with a shake of her head. Tom hid just behind the staircase in a comfortable alcove made specifically for the purpose of spying on the parents in the kitchen, from the Weaslette’s words. A cookery book sat innocently on his lap in case they caught him – which wouldn’t happen, of course.
“I’ve always told you that ol’ Screamgeur’s the best of the Law Enforcement lot. And, well, Amelia Bones, but she’s going to retire soon, I hear.”
“That man’s a politician and I don’t trust him one bit.” Worried notes crawled into the woman’s tone.
“Well, he’s an Auror, too, and rarely dabbles into real politics-“ Arthur contradicted before the woman cut him off.
“A well-disguised politician. This is even worse.”
There are no ill-disguised politicians, because such are lowly blighters dabbling in the arts, not the true masters, Tom thought smugly. He would either be a politician or a warrior and then a politician – either way, when Tom controlled the world, he wouldn’t make mistakes himself.
“You’re awfully cynical as far as Ministry is concerned,” Arthur remarked after taking a loud sip of whatever liquid he drank.
Molly scoffed, just as loudly. “Ministerial matters would make a cynic even out of a house elf. You could try to find a better job while you’re at it, by the way. The only reason I tolerate your profession is because your department doesn’t concern themselves with politics.”
“That’s what you say,” Arthur mumbled, making Tom’s ears perk up, before throwing the most pathetic attempt as changing topics that Tom had ever seen. “Um, how about our new boys?”
“Harry and Ginny seem such good friends already.” Molly sighed dreamily and Tom heard the chair creak as she shifted weight. “I saw them out de-gnoming the garden mere minutes ago – they look so sweet and homely together already. Can’t help but match-make them!”
Something snapped in Tom at the words, and he scowled. He loathed moments when the attention drifted away from him – unless he specifically arranged it for a dastardly scheme of sorts himself – and the appearance of a couple in the household would do exactly that. He had to talk to Harry. Tom pulled at the strings perfectly, and Harry would hate the girl by the end of their talk.
“Right,” Arthur said dubiously, and Tom knew he had an ally there. “What about Tom? He seems very quiet, clever, and polite.”
Tom smirked, part of his bad mood vanishing.
They had no idea how clever he was.
“Oh, he is. Asked me a lot about magic, he did, and Dark Magic, too-“
“If he is still interested by the time he goes to Hogwarts, I could give him my mother’s grimoire,” Arthur suddenly offered.
An enraged silence followed before Molly bellowed, “You will not saddle a child with that vile book!”
Tom ricked sneaking a glance out, figuring that they would be too furious with each other to notice him anyway, and wasn’t mistaken: while the pale colour of Arthur’s cheeks stood out in the slightly dark place, Molly’s face blazed with red.
A scrap of long-forgotten information in the mental recesses of his head supplied Tom with an answer: grimoire – a handbook each member of a proclaimed Dark family started wherein they wrote their observations, ideas, opinions, inventions, spells, rituals, etc. The Black family the ‘twins Hadrian and Thomas’ descended from belonged to such, too, and Tom wanted to buy himself a book like that at one point, too – but it seemed he would earlier acquire another one’s instead.
“Cedrella Black was my mother,” Arthur started. Anger laced his voice. “She wasn’t as bad as other Blacks are, and I want to pass down her knowledge, because this way I’m passing down the memory of her. I’ve come to terms with the fact that none of our children are interested in exploring their ties with the Blacks, but if Tom expresses a desire to do so – in a few years I’ll gift him with the book.”
Or Tom could talk to the man and speed up the process..
Or he could steal it for himself. Surely, Harry wouldn’t say ‘no’ to an adventure?