o_mayari | The Comfortable Wound 2/3

12 Grimmauld Place, London

5 May 1998

Dear Blonty,

I am not dead. Oh dear. Even I thought I was, so disappointing in a way because it turns out I was not interesting enough for hell. What would Snuffles say now it turns out he was right. I do not want to give him the satisfaction but I suppose I am not because Kreacher says he is killed.

Funny because I think I thought of him as dead when he left & I suppose he thought of me as dead all this time, & it is really like we passed each other on the street, neither recognizing the other. Now it is too late to turn around & give a greeting. I always joked he might end up in Azkaban but not like that, though with some of the persons he befriended who is surprised really. Who. Did you think he really deserved it all this time? You did think I was dead, or you would have come.

You are not dead either. Do write & say you’ve missed me.

RAB

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

7 May 1998

What did I give you for your fifth birthday?

12 Grimmauld Place, London

7 May 1998

Blonty,

How unnecessary, I think Kreacher should make you believe it is really me, but I will answer. The first junior-model Cleansweep, which Bibby would not let up about costing all your pocket money & Dropsbody charmed so Snuffles couldn’t touch it, & then he locked himself in the elves’ room & you had to talk him out because he’d taken Burgie’s wand in with him & was threatening to blow up the house.

I almost wish he had. It is very dusty, doxies everywhere. Horrors. Someone installed the shade of Albus Dumbledore in the hall which is in poor taste as I was lukewarm on the fellow when he lived & now I cannot abide him because of what Kreacher has told me. I cannot find the door to the garden anymore, I’m sure Snuffles hid it in a fit of anger. I shall have to ask Kreacher which is trying because he keeps crying every time I speak to him. When people do that it is very hard to get things done because of course one cannot take tears seriously. Remember how Dropsbody used to say they always made her want to smack the offender. I do understand now even if usually the offender was me.

Also. You have not said. But Blonty I’ve missed you.

RAB

Regulus Black looked like his brother. Mostly. The nice features were still there, all fine cheekbones and large grey eyes and a well-formed, haughty mouth. He was less handsome, though. The proportions weren’t perfect, only rather more youthful. Regulus didn’t at all look like he’d spent nearly two decades mindlessly hungering after flesh. There was nothing wasted or disturbed or corpse-like about him. The stone had called up a vague and fresh-faced young man of about eighteen; that was all.

This was almost the young man Harry had imagined courageously stealing Voldemort’s horcrux all those years ago, only the terrific creature of Harry’s mind was warm and passionate and steadfastly heroic. And this fellow was a bit cold, imprecise, and politely disinterested.

After a moment, he apologized for taking back the vault and all the money Sirius had left Harry. Harry said that this was all right, he hadn’t even noticed, which was true. Then Regulus said it was a shame but he really did need the house in Knockturn, and anyway Harry hadn’t been using it so there was that. Harry said: there was a house in Knockturn? Regulus said oh in that case please don’t worry about it, and added carefully that of course he was also sorry about this house but it needed some renovation anyway, and really Harry might not be equipped to deal with that sort of thing, not having the right contacts, you know Borgin and Burke’s and so on, really they were somewhat limited in those clients they chose to take on. And Harry said, no, no, though he’d come to like the house in his own way probably it wouldn’t be fair to rip it from the hands of Sirius’s own brother. It was rightfully Regulus’s.

And Regulus said that was rather nice of him, wasn’t it? Thanks so much. And if Harry liked he could of course have some of Sirius’s things, because otherwise he would have to store them in the attic somewhere which did seem like a waste because surely there were other persons besides his brother who enjoyed red and gold, roaring Muggle modes of transportation, and pictures of bare stomachs.

And Harry said yes, and sort of blinked at him after that.

This was, he reminded himself, a very significant person. Regulus was the last son of an ancient and severely twisted house, one of the only – if not the first of the – Death Eaters to turn against Voldemort, a Slytherin who’d nonetheless displayed remarkable courage, hitherto a tragic casualty of the first war, and the sole living reminder of Harry’s own similarly-tragic godfather. And yet here they were having a perfectly mundane conversation which ended in a trivial offhand remark about girls in bikinis. Perhaps this was what people did now that war was ended and they all entered the age of cosy home comforts.

Harry wasn’t used to it, though; it almost made him uneasy. And he couldn’t shake the sense that they ought to be discussing more important things: the mysteries of life and death, for example, and how to heal the wounds of the war, and so on. In this, as in all things, he called for Ron and Hermione.

Ron had some wit and a grasp of basic strategy and a great deal of loyalty and the occasional flash of perspicacity that always took people by surprise, because it was not generally expected of him. Hermione was simply the cleverest person Harry knew. She had a tendency towards being overbearing and even sometimes tactless in displaying her knowledge, but often she was clever enough to realize—and to be kindly apologetic—about it. They were the best friends he had, a tag-team who shared tactlessness and insight between them, and who doled both out with equanimity on Harry’s behalf. As he was inexperienced in the art of conversing with resurrected Inferi, he thought he could use their support.

Introductions were made. On Regulus’s end everything continued to be vaguely polite and slightly befuddled. Hermione noted in an undertone that research would have to be done to determine if newly-resurrected Inferi were apt to wake up confused. Ron noted in an undertone that, c’mon, this could just be Regulus’s personality for all we know. Regulus noted (not in an undertone) that Harry looked shockingly like his father; Ron from his looks must be part Prewett, like old Ignatius who used to come over and say things like “These boys are awfully soft and sweet, Burgie, you’ll have to toughen them up” until his brother set the man on fire purely to disprove this assertion; and that Hermione was an awfully nice name, wasn’t it?

“Sirius set a man on fire?” Harry said.

The Sirius in the photo album looked tall and handsome and very good-natured. He did not seem poised to set anyone ablaze.

“Well, we knew he wasn’t the kindest person when he was younger,” Hermione said, rather tactlessly, yet with a hint of apology in her tone.

“We heard he could be a handful,” Ron translated, a tactical maneuver for Harry and Regulus’s benefit.

“Oh, yes. I can see you knew the hound quite well,” Regulus said agreeably, and then moved on to discussing how his mother had removed the scorch marks from the dining room and how there were now new scorch marks near the library and how only Salazar knew how they’d gotten there and how removing them would mean a great deal of work for himself and for Kreacher.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, for their part, stared at him in shock. He seemed to feel that this was because they commiserated with him about the scorch marks, and also about the doxy-infested curtains and the dust everywhere and the ill-maintained elf-heads which Snuffles ought to have known must be sent to the preservationists in Diagon Alley and the—

“Sorry,” Harry said, “The hound? Snuffles?”

“Excuse me, I mean Sirius,” Regulus said, “I called him that sometimes. I suppose he abandoned the nicknames after he left because he one day he would be Phineas Nigellus out to Muggle-hunt and by the next he was Godric Gryffindor, always trying on new names because he didn’t like his much. I don’t know how he kept track of it.”

Then he returned to discussing the holes in the carpets and the rot between the floorboards and the possibility of obtaining new house-elves to handle all the work.

Ron noted in an undertone that perhaps they really would have to do some research on his condition, the man was obviously cracked; who strolled out of the grave purely to discuss the pitfalls of home renovation? Hermione noted that they didn’t even know how the stone had managed to bring him back from the dead when it hadn’t done the same for Sirius and Lupin and Harry’s parents—

“No, no,” Regulus said, breaking in here and embarrassing them all with his exceptional ability to hear even their most careful undertones, “It didn’t bring me back from the dead. I was an Inferius. I was never dead; I was un-dead.”

“You ought to have died; you drank poison,” Harry pointed out. This was an uncomfortable and morbid observation, and seemed to him to bring things back on track. They were not supposed to be discussing curtains and carpets. That sort of thing hardly suited when the situation included a formerly undead former Death Eater.

It wasn’t that Harry didn’t want to have a comfortable and polite exchange with absolutely no wands out or blood drawn. Of course not. Easy happiness and levity were all he wanted, like how he wanted a nest and a family and lots of photos of children captioned Our Rubeus or Our Minerva or something in that vein, and maybe a crup or two, etc. That was normal. Only normal – particularly the normal that came about as soon as we all got some rest and recovered and patched up the issue of those Muggles cursed here and those children cursed over there, and once we all said some nice words about all those death notices in the paper – that kind of normal he couldn’t quite understand.

How did people accomplish it? Especially here in the Wizarding World, which was supposed to be extraordinary, and yet here was everyone willing to forget the extraordinary bits, and very adeptly bandaging over all those extraordinary wounds that, the wounds having names like Fred and Lupin and Tonks and so on, really were difficult to just cover up.

They would heal well enough (and anyway the core of them was gone, had boarded a train and gone on to eternal rest) and someday you could look on them with a kind of dutiful sadness, but there was still that one painful instant where you realized there was a cut in you. Someone had been carefully sliced out by a wildly-aimed hex or curse or prophecy-motivated Dark Lord, and somehow knowing you would have to resign yourself to moving on made it worse. It was terrifying: here he or she had been, right here. And he or she loved me, and I suppose they’re alright now, but given time it will start to matter less and less that they’re gone, and I suppose I’ll be comfortable with it in the end.

Terrifying.

And here was terrifying, come back from the un-dead, and so reassuringly familiar because he had the same dark hair and the same grey eyes and the same articulate, elegant way of speech. Like he’d never been sliced away at all. If Harry squinted he could imagine it was Sirius (which was a wound, a reasonably well-bandaged one, and yet one that Harry would pick at sometimes because Harry was like that), returning from perdition and in so doing terribly and mysteriously profaning the normal way of doing things, which was exactly what Harry had come to expect of people and which, morbidly enough, put Harry at ease.

Regulus said that poison took time to kill. He’d hardly had that much time before he was turned into an Inferius. Either way, puzzling over the mysteries of the resurrection stone wasn’t something he liked to do. The whole exercise bored him to tears and so he’d been avoiding it. He really didn’t have the head for it. Of course they were welcome to think about it as much as they liked, but for his part he would focus on the restoration of his house.

Just look at the state of the drawing room chandelier. Just look at it.

“He’s a bit empty-headed,” Ron said, in an under-undertone.

“A bit!” said Hermione, “Do you think he’s hiding something?”

“No,” Ron said, “He wouldn’t be this stupid about it if he were.”

“True,” Regulus said politely. He really had the most tremendous hearing.

“Look,” Harry said, searching desperately for conversation topics that suited this discomforting scenario, “You were a Death Eater, right? And then you switched sides, and you were cursed for it, and you hid Voldemort’s horcrux beyond his reach for years—“

“No, that was Kreacher,” Regulus said, “But otherwise yes, yes, and yes. Didn’t you know that already?”

“Yes,” Harry said, “And that’s how I know that the house and the carpets and all of that—it’s not really important. What’s important is clearing your name now that you’re back.”

“And figuring out how you are back,” said Hermione, “How the stone works. And how—“

“How no one knew it could work like that before. How that remained a secret for so long. And if we could get it to work properly, like in the story,” said Ron.

Regulus blinked at them.

“Inter-esting,” he said, in a tone more suited to conveying ‘oh, alright,’ or ‘if you think it’s best,’ or ‘I really have no opinion either way,’ or ‘I think I’ll go off and have a lie down.’

After a moment, he offered the use of his library and said it was terribly nice of them to worry about this. But naturally he had new curtains to order, so. Also, he did not really have a head for books. Hermione looked personally affronted at this, so he added that of course Harry was welcome to stay in Snuffles’s bedroom in the meantime, until they completed their little research project, and that he’d just leave Snuffles’s things there for him if he wanted, and that he was really very sorry about all the dust.

“We’re trying to figure out if there’s something wrong with you!” said Ron.

“Yes, it’s a mystery that you’re here at all,” said Hermione, “It’s extraordinary. We can’t let this sit; there might be something terrible at work, Dark magic or worse!”

“And I’ve offered to clear your name,” Harry said, “All this is a little research project, is it?”

“Of course. You don’t know very much about my name,” Regulus said, “So in this case I think some research is required.”

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

8 May 1998

For the last time, house-elves are not people.

I know better than to trust one.

& anyone could have known that, because any one of us could have told about the Cleansweep. If I were Meddles, how would I address this letter?

12 Grimmauld Place, London

8 May 1998

Darlingest, most suspicious Blonty,

Then why ask the question. Why I ask you why. If I were not me, I would not have to be told about the house-elves all the time.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

8 May 1998

Why?

12 Grimmauld Place, London

8 May 1998

Because that is a certain person’s mental age, he being the very picture of silliness & inanity, going about with the house elves all the time, crying at the slightest provocation, etc. Oh dear what a trial for all the rest. What a trial.

Speaking of, have I passed mine yet because you must understand all these tests & things make me nervous.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

8 May 1998

Do not speak to me of trials.

What would Burgie say to Lyra Mulciber whenever she came over for tea?

12 Grimmauld Place, London

8 May 1998

Dear Blonty,

Now this is too much because no Mulch ever came over for tea & you know it. On account of the business with Eltanin Mulch’s soiled table napkin which Burgie said he could have Banished like a decent person but he didn’t did he he left it on the windowbox like a common Muggle. She was so enraged she said, Oh BOYS I do not know how I can bring you up in such a world. Fancy. Over a napkin. Hound shrieked until there were tears in his eyes.

Please write properly. Harry Potter came to stay today & I think I cannot throw him out for boring life debt reasons. The house is a shambles. I cannot restore it myself. Only Blonty will do to help because did you hear the rest are dead or not responding to my letters. How rude.

Anyway I did not even know there was a Harry Potter in the world & now Kreacher tells me he is the person who inadvertently brought me back. Which he did I suppose but really it was a matter of carelessness on his part so I do not feel too indebted. What to do oh dear.

RAB

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

9 May 1998

Do not let him out of your sight for a moment.

Make friends. You will need him if your name is to be cleared.

How did he bring you back?

12 Grimmauld Place, London

9 May 1998

Well really he did not. It was Kreacher who is as good as a person shall we say that. No I suppose you shan’t but I shall.

Time for explanations. I am so bad at these. HERE, if I must:

You-Know-Who used Kreacher to hide a horcrux, was very cruel to him, & it made me upset, you know how I get. That is a slight to the family, which I think you must understand even if you no longer go by the name. You know when I get thoughts like this I must act on them, no matter the consequences (so this is why I do not think very much, it is such a bother) so I went to retrieve the horcrux & I will not bore you but it involved drinking poison & being cursed for my troubles. Inferius. So unpleasant.

Too funny, Kreacher hid the horcrux away & gave it to Harry Potter & the first thing he said to me when he saw me again was that he thought he needed to iron his ears for that. He is worth a million, of course I said NEVER, His Venomousness deserved a slight in return. Now that I think about it gnawing at my own thighs for twenty years really was preferable to serving him for another minute. I had assumed there was the person to fix the world & lead the rest but really it is not that simple.

& the tattoo was ghastly!

HP only enters into it because he gave Kreacher the resurrection stone. Yes, Beedle’s stupidest tale is grounded in reality, well I won’t complain as that’s been a boon to me, it undid the curse. I am very whole now, how nice. So of course I cannot throw HP out of my house. Have you spoken to Dropsbody & do not worry about the name-clearing thing. I think probably I will be alright.

You still have not said.

Ginny Weasley only found out about Regulus Black’s return because Ron came home and told Charlie but then told Charlie not to tell George about it, and Charlie told Bill who told Fleur, who stupidly brought it up with Dad who explained the whole business to Mum, who told Percy to get to the bottom of it which he did by pointlessly lecturing Ron about it in front of George.

“We have to get the stone to work properly,” George said, after he’d relayed the story to her.

“It sounds like it works just fine,” she said, “Only on Inferi.”

“That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

George was adamant. George thought that if Regulus Black had made it back alright then so could anyone else. George couldn’t see why Regulus Black should get to return and not other people. George thought they wouldn’t have put the bit about the stone bringing back the dead – not the undead, but the dead – in the story if it weren’t true. Ginny thought about asking him if he wanted to go find Babbity Rabbity’s cackling stump while he was at it.

She didn’t. She could be callous when she wanted to be, but not to George or to Fred.

Well, not to George, anyway. Fred was effectively a non-issue these days.

George thought Harry, Ron, and Hermione ought to have told them everything straight away. Ginny agreed. They were often delightful people, their Harry, Ron, and Hermione. But a strangely exclusionary fog could descend upon their merry band as soon as a harrowing, foolhardy, and seemingly-unwinnable undertaking presented itself. The latest of these undertakings seemed to be getting to the bottom of this Regulus Black business, a mysterious and discomforting business if there ever was one and truly a business for Harry, Ron, and Hermione, who positively thrived when it came to mysteries and discomfort.

Ginny found Hermione, and said, “Planning on introducing him to us any time soon?”

Hermione was organizing her things in Ginny’s room. She was there because, according to Molly Weasley’s Dictums for Discouraging Scarlet Behavior, she was required to stay in Ginny’s room and not Ron’s though everyone knew perfectly well she’d already gotten it on with Ron a million times and obviously she was clever enough to know her contraception charms and Harry wasn’t staying with Ron anymore because he was wrapped up in Inferi business at Grimmauld Place. So what was the point, really.

Ginny had brought this up with Mum earlier in the day. This was not because she disliked Hermione staying in her room. She liked having Hermione around just fine. Hermione was a wonderful friend, with all the good sense of Bill and none of the arrogance, all the intelligence of Percy and none of the pompousness.

Hermione was also, however, an unmarried surrogate daughter. She therefore made a wonderful test case when determining what Mum’s reaction might be in the case of an unmarried regular daughter who might want to spend some time alone with a boyfriend. Mum had of course been scandalized and insisted that Hermione and Ron couldn’t have possibly and what was she insinuating and she ought to go apologize to Hermione at once.

To which Hermione said, “No harm done, since Ginny hasn’t said anything untrue.”

And Molly said, “Don’t be ridiculous, dear, we all know you’re as good as Fleur about these things and she waited until marriage, didn’t she?”

She hadn’t. Neither had Mum. Neither, for that matter, had Ginny. But they would not be discussing this in the frank and modern manner of those fashionably angular, careless mother-and-daughter sets that appeared in Witch Weekly’s illustrated novellas; they were not that kind of mother-and-daughter. They were both too rounded (Ginny in a rather more shapely and attractive way than Mum; but that, Aunt Muriel always said horribly, was only the difference between the past and the future) and too unstylish, and they weren’t careless in the least. In fact they cared an awful lot and would even kill for each other, but this was small comfort when she and Mum could only ever seem to talk at cross-purposes.

Hermione was beginning to pick up the talent of talking at cross-purposes herself.

Oh, there wasn’t much to meet and anyway he was very concerned with collecting all the house-elves in the world, which honestly Hermione thought was disgusting, and also he didn’t even read. Can you imagine. Etc.

“An illiterate Inferius,” George murmured from his chair just outside the door, “Would he give his left arm for some refinement, some culture, some knowledge? It ought to be detachable, so there’s that.”

He was staying outside the door because he never wanted to stay in his old room anymore, because in fact it was someone else’s old room too, and his flat was someone else’s flat too, and his shop was someone else’s shop. He’d found a reclining chair that seemed to be no one’s at all and placed it outside Ginny’s door and now inhabited that instead. No one commented on this. Percy had tried, once, and been furiously stared down by every other member of the family for his troubles until he’d drifted off with a weak, “…well, it can’t be good for his back.”

Hermione shot George a worried look. It had all the tender care and knowing self-righteousness of Molly Weasley’s worried looks. Ginny began to develop a headache and to miss her other best friends, Neville and Luna, whom she loved as much as Hermione but who had the grace and decency to not be pseudo-Weasleys.

“George wants to know if you’ve figured out whether the resurrection stone could ever actually work on the dead,” said Ginny.

“Using it on Fred is out of the question,” Hermione said firmly, “The story is very clear—“

“But you’re a facts and figures girl, Hermione,” George said, “Stories aren’t for you.”

“Neither is messing about with things I don’t fully understand,” said Hermione, which was probably a lie when you considered what she, Ron, and Harry got up to, but at least it was a lie Ginny could get behind.

Privately, she didn’t think using the stone to bring Fred back could lead to anything good. The stone made life-and-death decisions: leave the beloved brother in the tomb, call up only the shades of kindly parents and godfathers and former professors. And resurrect completely the Death Eater who doesn’t even have any family around to miss him anymore. These were clearly the judgments of a diseased mind, and the worst of it was that they couldn’t even see where it kept that mind.

Ginny had some experience with things like that. Best to leave it alone.

But George very deftly put down any of Hermione’s attempts to quash the Fred idea. Hermione, Ron, and Harry had probably already considered it themselves. But they could be very stubborn about doing the hard things themselves and probably had some notion that George was too mired in grief and easily affected to be permitted to help. George himself wasn’t having any of this. Ginny was inclined to throw her weight in behind him, if only so he wasn’t alone.

You had to stop with the harrowing, mysterious, discomforting things sooner or later. You couldn’t wallow in them. And probably George would learn that soon enough, and move on. But in the meantime he needed someone around to make sure he didn’t stumble onto anything truly Dark or evil. Really, one Weasley making that mistake was enough.

So Ginny accompanied George, himself accompanying a disapproving Ron and Hermione, to Grimmauld Place the next morning.

Harry was there, eating toast and thumbing the pages of an ancient grimoire. Next to him, an unknown man attacked candlesticks with a furious barrage of polishing charms. He was doing it wrong, Ginny knew, because Mum said the trick to it was to keep a stiff wrist and his was flexible, as though he thought cleaning amounted to dueling the dust and grime around him. Ron pointed out his mistake. The man nodded, almost miserably, and then said rather inanely that he supposed house-elves never had problems with this sort of thing.

“Hello, Ginny. George,” Harry said, looking up from his grimoire and noticing them for the first time. He seemed very pleased to see them; his very nice bright green eyes were even brighter than normal. Otherwise he wasn’t shown to best effect next to the man. This was of course resurrected Death Eater Regulus Black. He looked too much like Sirius to be anything else, pulling off pale and dark-haired rather better than most people and with cheekbones that spoke for themselves, really.

Lucky him. Pity about his murderous, evil, dead family. Pity about his poor life choices.

“Let’s meet your new friend, Harry,” George said.

“Oh, not much to meet,” Regulus Black said, “Are you Ron’s siblings? Or perhaps Prewett cousins? I have a Prewett cousin.”

“Yes, well, you also have a cousin who tried to kill my sister,” George said, in that easy way that had always better suited Fred, who’d been the more dangerous twin.

Regulus Black asked which one. Hermione put in that it was Bellatrix Lestrange. Regulus said, “Oh, Bibby,” in tones of vague surprise.

“Bibby,” Ginny said.

“We all had our nicknames for her,” Regulus said easily. He went on, sounding charmingly bored or maybe just boringly charming, about how this must be Ginny and here was another Weasley boy, and this meant that their mother had killed Bibby. Oh dear. This was sure to make things uncomfortable between their two families.

“Quite right,” George said, “Now you’re getting it.”

Regulus nodded. This was really a bother. He always found it difficult to keep up with old grudges and things.

“Is that so?” said George.

“Yes. Because we were supposed to hate the Wilkeses over a cursed basket of carrots we sent them or they sent us in 1546, but I went ahead and made friends with one anyway because I forgot and Mum was furious and I expect I’ll forget this too, eventually, and I’ll feel a bit guilty I suppose but that’s it.”

“Er,” George said.

Regulus smiled.

This inane and disarming back-and-forth was a tactic worthy of George himself, and he ought to have known better than to get reeled in like that. Ginny decided they’d better get to the point before he realized he had been reeled in. She said, “We’ve come to see if we can fix the resurrection stone for use on Fred.”

“Oh,” Harry said. He did not seem pleased at the prospect of this. He shared a look with Hermione that was not unlike the somber, know-it-all, annoyingly priggish looks Percy sometimes shared with Mum. Lovely green eyes notwithstanding, Ginny did not find this attractive on him.

Regulus Black said to take free rein of the library. He expected they needed bedrooms as well. Ginny could take his; it was dirty, but the bed was in decent condition. The other fellow could bunk with Harry until the guest rooms were fixed.

“No,” Harry said, “The story said—“

“Weren’t you planning on doing the same? Researching the stone’s uses?” said Regulus.

“Yes, but George is grieving, aren’t you? You might not be the best person for it,” Hermione said tactlessly, with an apologetic look at George.

“And I wasn’t planning on researching the stone,” Harry said, “Just helping you clear your name. The dead are—well. They’re not in any pain, trust me. They’re alright. I think people are too ready to forget about them, of course. But for the most part they stay dead.”

“Present company excepted,” Ginny said sharply.

Harry sighed.

Ron said, “Well, she’s right, isn’t she?”

Harry and Hermione shot him a slightly betrayed look. Ron shrugged.

“Ickle Ronniekins,” George said fondly, “Weasel-ly till the end. We’ll stay, won’t we, Ginny?”

Hermione insisted that they might not see the results they wanted. Harry insisted that probably the stone was originally meant to work on Inferi and not dead people and that the real issue was clearing Regulus’s name. Regulus insisted that they were very kind, really, they were already shaping up to be such terrific house-guests, but all this fuss on his account wasn’t necessary. Ron insisted that Regulus was a bit delusional and maybe they ought to first concentrate on whether something was wrong with him. George insisted that Regulus was the most pleasant Death Eater he’d ever met, actually.

“If George and I are here,” Ginny said, “It’s only a matter of time until Mum shows up and starts making noise around Grimmauld Place, and then you, Hermione, and you, Ron, get the all-clear.”

Hermione and Ron, at least, were less insistent after that.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

10 May 1998

Yes I missed you & I’m in accords with you on You-Know-Who. You are not the only one to try & give him his due, but only Harry Potter could make the slight stick. Of course I think it was prophecy that did that for him, but I say make friends because he could be helpful when you go to trial.

Have you researched your condition, maybe there is some of you still cursed, maybe not. Please check either way, Inferi do not just lurch back to humanity with no aftereffects. Do say you are walking properly & not leaving limbs about the house. & worry for yourself, if I am not to worry for you. The world is very different, old Crouch the tip of the iceberg. There are some people who do not want the war over & want blood & such. I suppose the public needs amusement.

Your Dropsbody & I are still not on speakers. I saw her once in Diagon & it was like a bad smell beneath her nose. I would think with Bella gone she would want to forgive & forget but persons will stick to their old ways, etc.

Blonty

12 Grimmauld Place, London

10 May 1998

Well I thought I saw a limb out of the corner of my eye but what do you know it was just that awful mandolin Snuffles always swore he knew how to play. & walking is fine, but you know flying was always more in my line I ache to buy one of these new brooms, so nice of the Dark Lord to hold off for a few years so the Wizarding World could forget about him long enough to develop something like the Firebolt Supreme. It looks gud as Creechr. I cannot wait to get one, but Kreacher keeps reminding me that the new upholstery must come first, very true the old is so STAINED, I’m almost scared to ask what Snuffles did to it.

I do not research because you know reading books is very difficult. If you like one then you have to finish it very quickly which is a bother because then it runs out & what are you to do. It is not like Quidditch where a good game lasts forever, a much more rewarding hobby. HP & his friends have made it their new project to research for me, isn’t that sweet. I will just give him anything I don’t want anymore & say it belonged to Snuffles because 1. he worships Hound, will accept just about anything in his name, & 2. Kreacher hates waste.

I do not know what else to do to make friends though. He is very to-the-point, always moving about with purpose as though on a terrible & mysterious secret mission, seems to like the dustiest and darkest corners & speaks like a Muggle although Kreacher tells me he is a half-blood. Fancy. Just like someone else I used to know: you know who I mean. Dead. Well let me know if you know the details, Kreacher doesn’t.

Drops – not responding to my letters. I suppose the best way to say she is off speakers with me is not to speak to me, my she always was clever. I thought I might visit but probably she wouldn’t like it & I’ve enough to keep me here for the time being, unless there is a funeral for Bibby which I think I must attend.

RAB

Mum was understandably displeased, but Muriel went from being Ginny’s least-favorite relation to being perhaps somewhere above Percy in the ranked scale of family members when she said, “At least the girl isn’t eloping like you did, Molly, only announcing a pleasant visit to the home of her intended. With George as a chaperone. That gives him something to do.”

George was deeply ill-suited as a chaperone of any kind, of course. And Harry was not Ginny’s intended, just her boyfriend. And Muriel might have changed her tune had she known about the existence of Regulus Black. Mum didn’t dare tell her. Muriel was something of a gossip.

But Mum didn’t dare disagree either, not after bringing Muriel down on all their heads. Mum had invited her to stay, probably because she’d thought it would help to channel all their grief into slowly mounting rage at the inevitable interferences of a horrible old busybody.

Grimmauld Place was not much of a break from the cycle of grief and rage, however. George showed no signs of giving up hope about the resurrection stone despite the fact that Regulus’s library ran more to boring tomes on family history, awful tracts on the responsibility of the pure-blood orders to keep lesser beings in check, terrifying curse books, and endless pamphlets on wizarding gastronomy and pseudo-scientific diseases. These were all signed: A VALIANT REBEL!

This was a bit much. The author mostly rebelled against modern witches daring to feed their children anything other than a traditional pumpkin-based diet. The underlying thesis was that feeding children anything other than pumpkin weakened their magic, produced more Squibs with each generation, and would eventually result in their world’s overthrow by Muggle and half-breed hordes.

Also, he or she was terribly afraid of:

Mundanism. The affliction which creates Muggles. An unknown & fearsome illness that saps the magic, causing children born with no talent whatsoever. Transmitted through the blood. Those who choose to consort with Muggles & their spawn do so at their descendants’ peril.

Drapetomania. A sordid mental condition that causes house-elves to turn against their masters, curable only by Antedrapetomany.

and

Xenothaums. Magical animals that can masquerade as proper witches & wizards, & that spread their bestial nature through the bite, the breath, & the blood. Examples include werewolves, goblins, & veela.

Ginny showed a few of these to Regulus. She thought she’d like to test his devotion to patently ridiculous racist claims. Maybe Inferidom had cured him of this. Maybe not. His old bedroom, now her guest room, still had creepy newspaper clippings on the walls: Voldemort strikes again! Fifteen Muggles Burned Alive! Half-Blood Family Disappears! This was discomforting. He deserved some discomfort in turn. She passed him a pamphlet and asked if perhaps a Black had written this because they did seem to go in for bad ideas and mindless bigotry, didn’t they?

“Oh, those silly old things,” was all he said.

He added, with a touch of sadness, that everything in the library was so very dusty. He managed to clean the pamphlets by transposing most of their dust onto himself. Kreacher scolded him for this and sent him upstairs to bathe. Like any properly molly-coddled pure-blood heir, upstairs he went.

Ginny supposed further testing was needed.

She followed him upstairs. She wanted to talk to Harry. And she wanted to get away from George, who was furiously taking notes in the margins of a priceless volume; and Hermione, who was furiously glaring at him over her own one-of-a-kind Death Magic hardback; and Ron, who was furiously avoiding actual research in favor of gaping in befuddled horror at the gastronomy pamphlets.

She found Harry in Sirius’s old room, sorting through a truly unmanageable pile of junk. There were cabinets and divans, mirrors and sideboards, music boxes and an old harpsichord and a mandolin carved of some kind of bloodstained bone. Everything was piled high enough to block out Sirius’s old pictures and Gryffindor banner and it all sent up clouds of dust that made Harry sneeze. A pair of many-legged tweezers scuttled out of the wreckage. Harry said, “Aha!” and dove for them, but even his seeker reflexes couldn’t help him when blockaded by three end tables and several boxes of full of moldy yellow parchment.

“Those couldn’t be Sirius’s. He smashed them himself,” Harry muttered.

“All this garbage is supposed to be Sirius’s?” Ginny said.

Harry said, “I guess it’s not garbage if it really was his, but I’m starting to wonder.”

Then he looked up at her and said, “Do you really think this business with George is a good idea? You’d both be happier at home with your mum and dad.”

This was the chief problem with Harry: the Burrow, in his mind, was forever cosy and tranquil. It oozed comfort and affability from every angle, it was the snug center from which radiated all proper joy, the ideal and most sacred home for a young witch or wizard, a hallowed shrine to the magical family. This was awfully nice of him because most people thought the Burrow was a dump and the Weasleys a sorry example of magical persons. Harry insisted that it – and they – were ideal. Ginny could still remember peering at him from around her cereal bowl long ago, as he’d reveled in her family’s shabby and rather boring surroundings, and being terribly, terribly flattered that he was strange enough to like them so much.

That’s Harry Potter! Harry! Potter!

And he really likes us.

Well, you had to admit that this was good of him. It echoed Ginny’s own devotion to them, except that Ginny was an actual Weasley and so devotion was basically required. It did not have to be blind devotion, though. Harry’s was. Nothing ever seemed to alter his opinion of the Burrow: not the awful jumpers or the hand-me-downs or the ghoul in the attic or the gnomes in the garden, not Mum’s occasional outdated and loudly-expressed opinions, not Dad’s outright-silly fascination with Muggle gadgets, not Bill and Fleur being arrogant together, not Charlie disappearing every time he got the chance, not Ron being a surprisingly-egotistical little twit, not Fred and George’s occasional cruelties, not even Percy.

Ginny was beginning to think that this persistent adoration, although one of those delightfully humble oddities that could make you love Harry so much, was also a sign of his ability to cling stubbornly to even his poorest judgment calls.

“You’re not at the Burrow, either,” Ginny pointed out, “Understandable.”

Up until yesterday, George wouldn’t stop needling Percy, who took it out on Ron, who was awful to poor Charlie, who drove Dad mad, who kept annoying Mum, who argued furiously with Fleur, who turned up her nose at Muriel, who then harangued Bill, who proceeded to make snide remarks to George.

“Obviously you flew straight to Grimmauld and sidestepped that whole mess entirely,” Ginny said sweetly. Honestly, her boyfriend was awfully clever.

“Oh,” Harry said. “Well I’m not so sure this business of resurrecting Fred is a good idea.”

“Me neither,” Ginny admitted, “Thankfully I think it won’t work. But somebody’s got to watch George to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

Harry nodded. Ginny relayed to him how Muriel and Mum thought she was paying a chaperoned visit to her intended, wasn’t that funny.

Harry said, “Well, aren’t I your intended?”

And Ginny said excuse me, and also a kind-of shocked, “What?”

“Not right now!” Harry said, dropping the mandolin he’d been absent-mindedly strumming, “Obviously. There’s so much to do here with Regulus, and you probably want to go on dates at some point, after we’ve gotten proper careers and things, and then, you know, later on we can get serious and maybe have a house and some ki—crups. We can have crups.”

Crups were obviously bizarre Harry-code for “endless succession of red-haired children in lettered jumpers.” Ginny supposed that she couldn’t be surprised.

She said, “Yes, proper dates usually come first.”

Harry agreed. Dates were the normal thing, weren’t they? They could get around to having dates as soon as he finished this extraordinarily mysterious and shocking and discomforting Inferius business. Something in his voice suggested that perhaps he wasn’t as shocked and discomforted by the Inferius business as he wanted her to believe.

“Or we could go on dates while you do that,” Ginny said, “Because I think you can date me and read some grimoires in the same month, and I think I can date you and find a career in the same year; neither of us is that high-maintenance.”

This did seem to discomfort Harry. Well, how did people go on dates, he asked, and also was it really advisable to mix up their own comfort in his potentially dangerous and shadowy mission to aid Regulus? The more he discussed this, the more hazy and shadowy the particulars of the mission seemed to become. Ginny, having an endless succession of older brothers, instinctively understood that this was because, while Harry probably liked her a lot and didn’t want to let her down, he really preferred being constantly mired in danger to having to put up with something as mundane as a normal date. He just didn’t want to admit it.

“But of course we can go on one eventually,” Harry said, “I really want to! That’s all I want. When all this is over.”

Eventually. Eventually like they would eventually have crups and children and a house to keep all the crups and children in, Ginny supposed.

“If this means you want me to wait around indefinitely so that I can be your little Weasley endgame,” Ginny said, “Then I think I’m going to have to decline.”

She turned on her heel and went back downstairs. Harry at least had the decency to follow, though he made loud protests as he did so. Really, they had to take some time to truly know each other.

Well, they did, had known each other for seven years, had even lived in the same tower for most of five.

Harry could not dispute this. Instead he said that her parents would not approve of such a young marriage.

True, and neither did Ginny but that wasn’t the point because why did he care about Mum and Dad’s opinions and not hers? Anyway her parents had no room to argue, having eloped at barely-seventeen, and Harry was as good as a member of the family already. Dad kept a picture of him in his wallet right across from the picture of Ginny and made cryptic remarks about it. Ginny always remarked right back that he only put the pictures in because he had no money to keep in there anyway.

Harry didn’t seem to know what to make of this. He wasn’t trying to be overbearing. He only wanted to give her a chance to live her life.

“And then you want me to settle down to the apparently-inevitable task of marrying you,” Ginny said, “Oh no, Harry. Not overbearing at all!”

Harry had the good grace to look ashamed. He apologized. Ginny opened her mouth to accept the apology, only just then she reached the ground floor and the front door opened and she never got the chance to.

Bellatrix Lestrange walked in. Ginny, reflexes honed from a year of Hogwarts Resistance efforts, gave a blood-curdling shriek and hurled a bat-bogey hex at her. Bellatrix screamed and shoved some kind of bundle into Harry’s arms, right before Kreacher appeared and pulled her out of harm’s way.

That treacherous little worm.

Ginny tried to hex him as well, but found that she couldn’t. He was using some kind of elf magic to keep her frozen in place.

“I is saying that blood-traitors is terrible guests,” he muttered, “and my Dear Poor Brave Stupid Master Regulus is never listening.”

“An infant’s capacity for reasoning, Kreacher,” said Bellatrix, “That’s the problem.”

Harry, shocked to find the bundle in his arms squirming, said, “I have an infant!”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, don’t drop him or anything. I think he’s still rather squishy,” said Bellatrix.

Harry appeared to be only mildly affronted by this. Ginny thought that, yes, he was adorably strange and all, but this was taking his oddities rather too far. She pointed out that he was talking to some kind of resurrected and revitalized Inferius version of Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry, with a smarmy ‘I know better than you’ tone leaching into his voice (he must have picked it up from her brothers, damn them), said, no, not at all.

“Ginny, meet Tonks’s mum,” he said.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

10 May 1998

I will research your condition for you as well. Believe it or not, my library here is not inconsiderable.

About Bella’s funeral, since you asked, I do not know and do not even want to think of it. For me she is like Snuffles is to you and was dead for some time before, but we never passed on a metaphorical street. It is just that the person I loved was gone, Banished herself somehow. She was mad & unbearable at the end. But about the funeral, I will tell you as soon as I do know. I suppose I must ask about the body. How awful, & you know the Headmistress is sure to moralize about it for Gryffindor/Scottish reasons.

As for your friend, we had limited contact. But I will ask around. There is so much to do & with everything this year I sometimes think I cannot do it all but at least I am glad it is alright for you, you are alive &well. Do give Harry Potter everything he wants, he is the Savior of us all & you can read about it in the Prophet.

All my love, Blonty.

12 Grimmauld Place, London

10 May 1998

Dear dreadful Dropsbody,

There is no call to throw Kreacher out, honestly. I know you never are kind to elves, but he is just the post owl in this case & one should never hex the post owl, as Cassiopeia used to say. Anyway, it really is me. Blonty put me up to all sorts of tests but I suppose you won’t even do that, you will go on being cold and superior, which is worse.

I am sorry for everything that happened, really. I’ve missed you so much. That is all. Probably I will write you again but maybe not because Harry Potter, who is still in my house because I think he really likes grimoires & danger & dust, takes up so much time offering to clear one’s name, etc. Always looking for trouble, oh it is just like having my Hound around. Snuffles at least never brought his friends but I do think the caliber of the old lion’s den has gone up, some of them are positively venomous underneath it all & simply don’t know it about themselves, it is almost a delight. It would be better with a visit from you, of course.

Yours truly,

Mr. Barely-3

“I do look shockingly like my sister,” Andromeda Tonks noted, once Kreacher had safely installed her on a shabby chaise lounge covered in stained raspberry upholstery. She really did, only with kinder eyes and somewhat lighter hair, and where Bellatrix had been skeletal she was only fashionably angular.

“You probably want your baby back,” Harry said.

“Don’t be silly,” Andromeda said, and stretched out on the chaise lounge. Teddy continued to squirm and beat at Harry with tiny fists. Harry thought probably Teddy wanted Andromeda back. Andromeda thought she’d told him not to be silly. Teddy didn’t want anything; he wasn’t old enough. At that age they had no real desires beyond rudimentary needs. Harry said that he didn’t think that was true, because Teddy seemed to have real personality.

Andromeda said, “No, he really doesn’t. He’s a lump, you know. I expect you think you can get to know him or something but that’s ridiculousness: he doesn’t speak, he doesn’t move, he hardly does anything at all. There’s nothing to get to know.”

“Er,” said Harry.

“Oh, she’s delightful,” Ginny told him in an undertone.

“Yes, that’s true,” Andromeda said, probably just to prove that she could hear them talking about her, “Someone here has to be. Where in wizardry is my cousin?”

As if on cue, Regulus appeared. His hair was slightly damp. So were his eyes.

“Oh, good Grunnion,” said Andromeda, “Tears.”

Regulus resisted tears valiantly, but ruined this endeavor by embracing his cousin far too much and besides this making an enormous fuss about her to Kreacher. Harry was slightly uncomfortable on his behalf. For her part, Andromeda patted Regulus absentmindedly and otherwise did not move from the chaise lounge. She’d only come because she didn’t think she could get Regulus to stop writing letters. He should know that his letters were a bore. If Too was going to make a nuisance of himself he could at least get creative with it, perhaps by using floo or magic mirror or by training owls to defecate in enchanting patterns on her windowsill.

Andromeda said ‘too’ an awful lot. Harry began to discern that this might be another odd nickname. He wondered what Andromeda’s might be. It came out after a few minutes, something about dropped bodies. He shared a look with Ginny. She didn’t seem to want to ask either.

“Is that a baby?” Regulus said, once he’d sufficiently and embarrassingly welcomed his cousin, “You and Ginny move awfully fast.”

Ginny, still looking very prettily furious (Harry’s fault, since normal things like relationship conversations did not come easily to him), said, “I think it’s your cousin’s.”

Andromeda urged Regulus to pick the child up. Harry gratefully surrendered Teddy. Andromeda then pointed out, untruthfully, that Teddy had a high chance of being horribly infected with lycanthropy and of passing it on to almost anyone who dared to touch him too much. Regulus almost dropped the baby. Andromeda seemed to find this very funny.

“Merlin’s balls, she’s exactly like Fred and George,” Ginny said.

“Well, who is this eminence, then?” came George’s voice from the stairs. He, Ron, and Hermione appeared soon after.

Introductions again. Andromeda seemed to find so many Weasleys in the house terribly amusing. She asked them if they’d discovered their cousin Prewett’s pamphlets, whatever those were, and was for some reason elated when this made Ginny, Ron, and George turn green. Then she told Harry he would have to start taking his godson evenings.

“Sorry, evenings?” Harry said.

“Evenings, if you are confused, and I’m working from memory here because I haven’t a spare dictionary on hand and so you will have to trust me on this – evenings are of course the periods which follow afternoons,” Andromeda said.

“I can’t!” Harry said, almost on reflex.

Privately, Harry felt that he couldn’t possibly know anything about babies. Only people with families knew that sort of thing, and he only had a photo album. Also, there was an awful lot of potential danger ahead, such as Regulus possibly having come back wrong and George possibly driving himself mad with grief and accidentally summoning some horribly twisted version of his twin, and anyway obviously if Harry was going to dive right into cosy family normalcy he’d have to start with Ginny first, because he didn’t want to lose her.

Ron and Hermione supported him despite not being privy to all of this reasoning. They began to explain all the tremendous work the trio was doing to determine Regulus’s condition and clear his name.

“Do you want this, Too?” Andromeda asked.

“Oh,” Regulus said vaguely, “Not really.”

Dammit. Harry pointed out that the house was a shambles and that Teddy couldn’t possibly stay here. There was so much dust. Regulus nodded his agreement at this.

Andromeda said wryly, “Dust. How appalling. Well, nevermind the rogue Death Eaters and the Dementors and the escaped Snatchers and all these persons coming back from the dead and disturbing the natural order of things. Clearly what we have most to fear is dust. You’ve convinced me. No, I couldn’t possibly leave Teddy in what I know to be one of the safest houses in England. There’s dust.”

“Why do you need Harry to take him?” Ginny asked.

“Kingsley Shacklebolt’s called me in to do some Ministry work. He’s dreadfully hard-up for help,” Andromeda said, “And I know something of what was required of my daughter’s old position.”

But it turned out she was not going to be an Auror or anything; she assured Regulus that this was of course out of the question for her (and something about the casual and elegant and very much Black manner in which she stretched out on the chaise lounge told Harry that she would make a very careless Auror indeed, so that was alright), and really she would probably be bored to tears in a Ministry office somewhere but she did think everyone had to do their part.

“Right,” Harry said, “And I’ll probably have to focus on – on something really bad. Like escaped Snatchers and Death Eaters. If that’s what Kingsley needs. So I can’t start taking care of a baby.”

“Silliness again,” said Andromeda, “ Probably you should get your N.E.W.T.s before embarking on a law enforcement career.

“Nah, you don’t really need them,” said George, “Plenty of people don’t sit for them.”

“I didn’t,” Regulus said, “I mean, because I was bound to inherit, not because I was doomed to spend nearly twenty years gasping for air in an underground lake surrounded by Muggles.”

“Muggles, how awful,” Andromeda said archly.

Regulus flushed. “Well, what I mean was that I didn’t take them because I was of age to decline and I knew I wouldn’t need them for a job or anything. Harry’s father didn’t either, if I recall. It’s not required.”

“My father didn’t take his N.E.W.T.s?” Harry asked.

“Hardly surprising, given his background,” said Andromeda carelessly.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure your mother did, given her background,” said Regulus.

Although up until now he had been a pleasant and good-humored sort of resurrected pure-blood, more hare-brained that harmful, this offhand, superior reference to Mum’s circumstances reminded Harry that Regulus had been a Slytherin and a Death Eater and was probably still something of a bigoted snot.

“My mum’s sort wouldn’t have thought N.E.W.T.s were below them, thanks,” said Harry.

“They aren’t like some people,” said Ron.

“Hear, hear,” Hermione said.

Regulus looked at them with some disdain and said that he was only trying to be a comfort, and anyway Harry didn’t know the first thing about it. Ron put in that Regulus couldn’t be expected to know the first thing about Harry’s mum, so there was that, and anyway they all ought to be discussing this business of sticking Harry with babies.

“Of course he knows about Harry’s mum,” Andromeda said, “Little Jilly Evans. He went to school with her, didn’t you, dear?”

Regulus at least corrected her. No, her name had been Lily. She’d been a Gryffindor prefect and a Head Girl and had taken her N.E.W.T.s. That was all.

Andromeda said, “Well, probably you only knew her from what Snuffles would say about her.”

Regulus said, “Yes, exactly,” rather sullenly.

“Oh, honestly, just because she’d been a Muggle-born,” Harry said, “And likeable, and clever, and good!”

Andromeda blinked. Really, had she been?

Harry nodded. Yes, Lily Potter had in fact been Muggle-born.

Andromeda said, “No, dear, not Muggle-born. I know about the Muggle-born bit. That’s obvious enough. I was asking about the likeable bit. Because Snuffles—“

Then she seemed to notice Harry’s furious face, Hermione’s grim mouth, and all the reddening Weasleys. She fell silent.

“Well, nevermind,” she said, and laughed to herself about something.

Regulus said, “Dropsbody. Do remember. The Hound had a way of making jokes about people, jokes of people.”

Regulus added that it had been almost cruel. Sirius’d had a talent for figuring out exactly what would upset someone most and then using it against them in a barbed way that he’d thought was hilarious. Regulus remembered it. He remembered that he’d hated it.

“Did you hate it, really?” said Andromeda.

“Yes,” Regulus said shortly.

“Well, you never gave any indication of it,” Andromeda said sweetly.

For a moment, silence reigned. Regulus looked nervous. Andromeda looked strangely calm.

“Did Sirius do that to my Mum, you mean?” Harry said, addressing Andromeda.

“No,” Regulus said quickly.

“Old Snuffles’s opinion hardly matters,” said Andromeda, “In the first place: dead. In the second, while living he was a horrible judge of character. Look at the company he kept: werewolves even he didn’t trust, and rats that he did, and—“

“And my mum,” Harry said, “Who liked him, and who he—“

“Oh, do let’s stop talking about your mum. Your mum is below the belt, I think,” Regulus said. “I’m sorry I said anything; I suggest we forget it.”

Hermione and the Weasleys chimed in with their agreement.

“No,” Harry said, “Look, I know my dad could be hard to like, but my mum was a good person!”

“He never said that she wasn’t,” Andromeda said, “I doubt Regulus ever even spoke to her directly, so he couldn’t possibly tell you otherwise.”

“But Sirius told you otherwise,” Harry said.

“I never listened to what he said. Neither should you,” Regulus said, “When people are being nasty for no reason beyond their own amusement, then it’s better to just ignore them.”

Only it was rather too late for that. Because here were two terrible wounds, and the Blacks had lifted up a corner of the bandages. Now Harry had to rip them off completely. Better and healthier to patch himself up again, but Harry almost didn’t know how to leave well enough alone in that respect. Because of course all this had occurred before he was born, or when he was too young to remember, and so he didn’t even know how he’d gotten these wounds.

He thought he ought to know.

“So, what?” Harry said, “Did he fight with her or something? Did he—Did he bully her?”

Andromeda’s large grey eyes widened. Oh no, dear. Oh, no, she didn’t think so. It was only that her cousin would’ve liked to take Ms. Evans down a few pegs sometimes. It was only that he’d thought she was crueler and more arrogant than she had any right to be.

“She wasn’t arrogant!”

“Oh, of course not,” Regulus said desperately, “Let’s forget the whole thing.”

Andromeda said yes, lets. It was just some schoolboy silliness, all over some friend she’d rejected. Some friend who was believed to be cleverer and better-situated than Harry’s mum, and who could have had someone worthier of him, but who’d only ever wanted her. And it was just that her cousin had never competed for anyone’s affection before, and anyway the Blacks hated losing.

“Compete?” Harry said.

“Yes,” Andromeda said lightly, “And so, you see, he wasn’t very nice about her, as far as I could tell.”

“Compete. For a friend. For my dad?”

“He loved him,” Andromeda said, “He thought he was wickedly funny, and enormously clever, and very wonderfully unlike anyone he’d ever met before.”

Regulus said, “No, no,” and began to look very uncomfortable. Harry understood this completely.

“It wasn’t a romance. Sirius has girls in bikinis up in his room; he couldn’t have been—“

“Yes,” Regulus said, “Bikky-knees. So you see, Drops, this is very silly and clearly untrue. Please stop it.”

Andromeda said, “Those were to annoy your parents.”

Apparently Sirius had loved to do that. If he’d put up a few muscled wizards, the Blacks would have sternly told him it was still his duty to produce an heir and left him to it. So instead he put up something that made them purple with rage, which made him happy. He did that to everyone when he thought they needed taking down, didn’t he? Even to Harry’s mum.

“You said he didn’t bully her!” Harry shouted.

“To our set it’s never been bullying if you’re just pointing out what a Muggle-born doesn’t know,” Andromeda said.

Then she added that Sirius hadn’t been very nice about it, all the same. Because Jilly Evans had some friends outside her house, and not being reared in the wizarding world she of course had no idea that in Hogwarts at that time that just wasn’t done. So he took great pleasure in making it difficult for her to see them, and making their lives miserable and making sure she knew it was because of her, and getting them to treat her horribly just to make him stop.

Merlin. So it wasn’t just about Mum and Sirius and his dad. It was about Snape, too.

Harry thought he was going to be sick.

This was why people were so quick to forget. This was the problem with letting wounds bleed out over everything. Sooner or later they would hurt, and so it was better to patch them up and accept comfort and move on. And with Snape involved it was even worse, because Snape wasn’t exactly a wound. Oh, he’d known how to inflict them, sure. But at the end he’d been something stripped bare of flesh and blood and memory, just the raw bones of everything they’d given up to end Voldemort once and for all, a kind of creaking and lurching thing in the back of the mind that even Harry didn’t want to examine too closely.

Only now it lurched into the spotlight and pointed out that Sirius wasn’t just a wound. Sirius was a wound-maker as well. And with him gone it you still had all the wrongs he’d left behind, a skeleton of hurt that probably you could only eliminate by bandaging it up to resemble something like a good person: the dearly departed, will be missed, isn’t it comforting that they’re all in a better place now.

Regulus seemed eager to do this.

“I think we shouldn’t talk about this anymore,” he said stiffly, “The important thing is that my Hound obviously cared for you a great deal. And I think your mother eventually forgave him. And your father always managed to consider Sirius a friend despite any unpleasantness on his part.”

“He shouldn’t have,” Harry said hollowly. “He shouldn’t have let Sirius get away with it!”

Andromeda laughed to herself, and explained that people always let the Blacks get away with things. This was the family’s special gift: getting others to overlook what they were really like.

“Although I suppose that caught up with dear Snuffles,” she said, “In the end.”

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

11 May 1998

Darlingest,

Kreacher tells me you have a houseful of Weasleys. As old Cassiopeia would say, “Good Grunnion, the troubles appear like freckles across one’s nose!” MP says to tell you they are real connivers, the father has set Ministry goons on us in the past. And my adored says all of the children were monsters at school, this is likely part schoolboy grudge which I never involve myself with, but one really hates & despises their bullying as he describes it, made worse by the natural Gryffindor assumption that it is not bullying but extreme wit.

So please do say all is well with you. Otherwise I will be dreadfully sad. Though you’ve always been the best-adjusted of us & you survived a childhood with Snuff, who was the king of cruel pranks, really, so I suspect Weasleys can do nothing to wound you, I am a mum now, so naturally I’ve taken on this hectoring, lecturing persona, SO embarrassing. Personally I don’t give a shrivelfig whom one chooses to associate with, it is all the same to me, & yet I can’t help but want the best for you so there is that. So do forgive me this absurd worrying.

Love, Blonty

p.s. oh this is silly but I also keep meaning to ask, do you still have any books on acclimating half-bloods & such to the proper ways of wizarding thought? I mean focused on all our everyday things like saying ‘Merlin’ and Flooing and life debt reminders, that sort of thing. I expect yr. Hound can’t have destroyed all the books & anyway those ought not to have offended him because really they are all about a kind of charity to exactly the sort he adored.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

11 May 1998

Darling,

It is silly for me to worry. PLEASE forgive. I can’t believe I’ve gone & treated you like a child over something as insignificant as Weasleys in the house. Really the important thing is the books. We are dealing now with the worst prefect to come out of Hufflepuff (MP says dullness & wrongheadedness are naturally the chief qualifications for his new position) & he is focused on a kind of cooperative approach with the foreign element, & you know people like to say MP & I hate them & would never assist but that has never been true, we’ve always supported thorough education & conditioning though of course no one ever says anything about that.

In any case I do want to help the half-bloods that want to learn (like your friend, haven’t forgotten, more news on him when I have it), and so for example one wonders what they think of life debts. It came up once that they tended to think this was real magic. Were you there? I cannot remember, it was on a day Naughty Nott, Risks, & a few others happened to come down, & one of the half-bloods was so confused, it broke my heart to think of the sleepless nights imagining some ephemeral LIFE DEBT PULL he thought he felt. Of course we set it right & said it was just something you say to remind someone that they could have let you die, and didn’t, but MP did roar at the idea that one might go through life taking such an insubstantial old wives tale as Merlin-divined truth.

It IS inconsistent how blood traitors never want to see them properly taught. Oh darling can you beat it. Well if there are any books on the topic then please send to me, better that than to have Harry Potter stumble across them & fall into a fit of rage over all the monstrous blood supremacists trying to help him. DO send them, darling, DO.

Blonty

12 Grimmauld Place, London

12 May 1998

Dearest Blonty,

But that was ONE’S FRIEND!

I mean about the life debt thing. I’d forgotten completely. It was around fourth or fifth year, you were terribly married by then, & he did think he owed someone something because of a life debt. Oh Blonty it was sad. I had to tell him that it was only meant to remind that you owed someone a kind of good turn & ought not to harm them if you really wanted to be a kind person, it naturally wasn’t real magic or anything. One did love him, Blonty, because he wanted so badly to know everything & to be very very properly magical, you know. Oh if only I knew something about his later years. Do say, do tell.

But about the books. There are two or three on life debts & fifteen left on reeducation, according to Kreacher. I’ve made him take you all those & another forty or so, including pamphlets by Ignatius Prewett, which have upset the Weasleys. GOOD OF YOU TO TAKE THE BOOKS OUT OF MY SIGHT. It’s less to clean, you know.

There isn’t the slightest need for me to forgive you about the Weasleys, I know you are only alarmed because of Bibby. George & Ginny Weasley are staying to help HP. You may not like their family, but really neither do they or they would be living at home instead of running away. Or maybe the running away is a general Gryffindor trait, they’re always so adamant about standing their ground that I think it must be a cover-up. Both Weasleys are quite fierce & good-looking & angry all the time, such a shame about the upbringing & the murderous relations. This is an observation one does believe people used to make about us, so really I count it a bonus. Alphecca Wilkes all over again oh no.

Now the development of the hour: Dropsbody was here. She is angry at me for something. I made an off-hand comment about Potter’s ruddy, muddy mum, & she spun it into one of those horrible stories she likes to tell. Of course it was aimed at me but she didn’t even mind that HP was upset by it. She is the same as ever, as long as she can laugh she doesn’t care about collateral damage. She is also making the poor fellow take her baby some days. Kreacher says Nymphadora is dead & the whole business is sad, really. The child is very small still & can change its hair color & probably is not really a werewolf, I think that is another joke from its wicked gran.

I had hoped she was not like Hound & would want to make peace because even if we didn’t particularly want anything to do with her Muggle & if I suppose we would have cursed him dead at some points, really at some points I think he would have done the same to us & so there is no reason not to be friends otherwise. Especially with him & Snuffles & Nymphadora & Bibby all dead I cannot understand making such a fuss. In the end we all lost so really we ought to move forward & stop being so cruel to one another. Well probably wild hippogriffs couldn’t achieve this with Drops. Pity.

Well, this is too long. Kreacher is now promising to get me a Quick-Quotes Quill for next time because my wrist hurts.

Love,

Are. A. Bea.

P.S. I hope you are not worrying over Drops ruining any chances of friendship between me & HP. Not so. We are very amicable. & anyway I don’t think he knows very much about the Hound or his parents from the way he talks, so her silly prank won’t amount to much. He did at first seem to think my Hound was NEVER EVER in the wrong, so funny & sweet of him, but Drops has made him rethink it. She painted a pretty dire picture & made much of homosexuality, but aside from that was very clever & put in plenty of his actual character. Poor Snuff, he deserves to have all that forgotten, but Drops is a part-time ghoul so no chance of it, I think.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

12 May 1998

Darling Bea,

Harry Potter: so surprised, I did not expect you to actually like him. Fairly rude whenever I’ve met him though I think our last meeting was quite peculiar. When you & I finally meet I might tell you the details but until then it is my little secret. You know how the snitch is, one must keep an eye on it & never let on one is doing so.

Awfully cruel about Meddles’s little prank, but you know that is her way. I told MP about the baby & Harry Potter & he said, “After all that bother she and your cousin made, in the end they are the only Blacks to have ever left a half-breed in the lurch!” All this fighting the blood was for nothing, she & Sirius both ended up the same as ever. Well if the child is not diseased like its father it should be alright to have it in the house, but remember that you are only just recovered & are not to go get yourself infected with lycanthropy. You’ve shown yourself partial to life as a Dark Creature, but I could not bear it much if you were a werewolf.

Now I’m cutting my letter awfully short. MP just left for the Manor, we are permitted only a weekly visit until his trial, & all we do is fight. I’m sad over it, I must be kinder. His health was already poor before house arrest, & he now is nothing like what he was. You remember: so handsome, clever, strong, & powerful. It ruins one in turn to think of it, but the adored needs me to be strong. The adored – haven’t written of him because I know Kreacher has told you all the essential things, but it does gall that I couldn’t tell you myself. Your fault for going & getting yourself cursed before we could make you a godfather, it went to Ossius Mulch instead who I did not like but was a friend of MP’s & supported him publicly. Really MP never forgets an ally, still sometimes he cannot tell when people are thuggish & only want to use him.

Oh dear, I am almost too angry to write. Really I should not send this. BURN IT as soon as Kreacher hands it to you, there’s a love. Blonty.

12 Grimmauld Place, London

12 May 1998

Blonty,

It is very late but still I am writing now to give my condolences. Kreacher did not tell me the extent of it until now & so I had no idea things were so bad. Oh poor Mister M, it doesn’t seem possible. & the adored! Finally a boy on your side how thrilling, I’m sure he is a real hound. Kreacher is saying the Mark is enough to get one put away nowadays, so is there any way I can sway Harry Potter over to his defense? Because really I do not need him, he hangs about the house entirely unused which is a pity, even he balks at it & seems to want something terrifically dangerous to do such as defending Death Eaters, & I do think I ought to do something for Draco. Is he under house arrest as well?

Have my support it’s better than my love, really.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

12 May 1998

Darling, you are too wonderful. I am sure you do not know the extent of how bad things are now. So many on our side being condemned, & others on the run, etc. After so many didn’t even have a choice, & yet now they are being punished so that half-breeds & such can feel vindicated. It is horrifying & unfair. Listen to this:

DO NOT USE HIM FOR DRACO’S BENEFIT IF IT HARMS YOU TO DO SO.

You will need him, they do not care about anything as long as they see one punished. It is not so bad for us, I still have the snitch & Draco did not do anything serious & anyway he could never harm anyone, he is a lamb. MP will bear the brunt of it, that is really my worry. If you must do something, go meet Draco. My darling must stay at Alconleigh all alone and can only see me Wednesdays under heavy Auror Guard, so it is difficult for him. But there is a small opening when they change shifts in the morning, usually I send an elf with good food, warm clothes, etc., but it would be better if he could see you tomorrow. I think he ought to know his cousin & having family near is always such a comfort. Do tell me if you can, if you cannot of course I understand but we could use you, you know.

Such love, darling, Blonty

Discovering the truth about Sirius rather soured Harry on Grimmauld Place. This was unfortunate. Grimmauld Place was only just becoming habitable. Kreacher by now had the ground floor rooms sparkling, each antiquated nook tastefully redecorated in shades of grey, blue, green, and gold. Little wooden serpents wound their way elegantly down chair legs, and miniature greyhounds bayed an endless hunting call through the painted jungles of the wallpaper. If ever Fred had cut a hole in the wall here, well, one would never know about it now that the space contained a taxidermied infant centaur. Better to temporarily forget Fred than to remember him alongside that. And where Lupin and Tonks used to sit, right here, there now hung a stunning painting of hounds and serpents righteously murdering badgers and rabbits. So you sliced Lupin and Tonks from your mind because you thought they might prefer not to be included in your contemplation of that sort of thing.

Harry thought maybe it was time he took a trip to Hogwarts. Hogwarts didn’t supplant memories with stuffed and painted trash. It didn’t try to make horrors cosy. And it was time he took a look at Snape’s memories again. After the conversation with Andromeda, it didn’t seem right to let things sit.

True, he couldn’t do anything about what Andromeda had told him. Sirius, Snape, and his mum and dad were all long gone. Three of them had loved him enough to form an honor guard when he needed them, and one had at least not wanted him dead (which was more than Harry could say about a lot of people, and, coming from Snape, he figured he would just have to settle for it). But it didn’t seem like they would ever be long gone to Harry. They would always be there in the back of his mind, acting out a childish play of first friendships and train compartments and loyalty and humiliation and broken relationships and prophecies and death: all the things that made Harry who he was and that had foisted these last seven years of war on him.

This was the root of him, really. This was why he didn’t understand comfort, why he couldn’t quite manage to pursue cosy normalcy after all this war, why he was always looking for some new bit of danger and terror, why he bristled at himself every time something inside him gave in and contemplated a relationship or a baby or some rest because he’d earned it. Well, his parents and Snape and Sirius had as well, and probably they were resting somewhere now, but maybe he wasn’t ready to comfortably and dutifully let them go just yet. He thought he ought to at least know who they really were.

Even if who they were turned out to be awful.

Only he’d let the memories go to Hogwart’s newest Headmistress, figuring she’d know better than anyone else what to do with them, and when Harry asked her if he could have them back she only looked at him, thin-lipped, and said, “Certainly not.”

Harry pointed out that Snape didn’t need them anymore. McGonagall said they’d been returned to him, all the same, and just in time for the funeral, which she expected Harry would attend. There was to be one for everyone on their side, right at Hogwarts. The surviving staff felt their heroes should have the privilege of resting on the grounds.

“Can I talk to Snape’s portrait, then?” Harry said.

He didn’t really want to. Talking to Snape’s living person hadn’t exactly been a joy, and he wasn’t sure what to say. ‘Thank you for ultimately caring whether I lived or died?’ ‘Thanks for loving my Mum rather more than I think was probably healthy for you or her?’ ‘Sorry about, er, your life; I expect you really are in someplace better now because it does seem like you might not have much trouble finding any place more enjoyable than you found it here?’

Probably the portrait would think Harry was making fun of him. Snape had been like that: cheerless and comfortless. But he still deserved to know that Harry appreciated his sacrifice and that Harry didn’t condone the behavior of any wound-makers who happened to be in his photo album.

McGonagall sighed. There wasn’t a portrait.

“Why not?” Harry said, “Don’t they just show up? Or did someone get rid of it? Because he was on our side and so that’s really unfair.”

“No one got rid of it; there simply isn’t one,” said McGonagall. Snape had abandoned his post, and the Founders’ magic had very strict rules about that. If he’d been truly evil and stayed, they might have something left of him now. But instead he had some glimmer of good in him and didn’t try to duel anyone to the death, and so there was nothing.

This didn’t seem right: both the lack of a portrait and her take on it. But Harry didn’t say this aloud, because the Headmistress looked cross and, in a certain light, almost sad. He hastened to tell her that it wasn’t her fault because Snape had been a spy and had needed to keep his cover, etc. She hastened to tell him, rather firmly, that she most certainly did not feel at fault and that he could keep his comfort to himself, thank you very much. After that things went quiet for a bit. Snape, even in death, seemed to have the most remarkable ability to sour a conversation.

“He did leave you some things,” McGonagall said, relenting. “I’m sure I have them around here somewhere.”

“What, really?” said Harry, “He didn’t even like me.”

McGonagall supposed there was no one else because she hadn’t liked him very much at the end, either, but he’d still given her some things from his chambers. All were in Slytherin colors and naturally charmed to resist alteration, but she might come to enjoy them, given willpower and all of her patience. Indeed, in that respect it would be very like he never left.

“Did—“ Harry began, as she rifled through the contents of her office, mostly packed away in boxes, ready to be levitated up to the Headmaster’s tower, “My dad and Sirius. I know they weren’t very nice to him, Sirius especially. Did you ever think that—“

McGonagall looked up, and said sharply that that was nothing to do with him, no matter what Severus Snape might have made him think. Harry understood this, but thought Sirius might have targeted Snape because of his mum, and McGonagall said of course not because Sirius Black was mostly spirited and a little bit stupid, like all young men are, and Severus Snape was much the same and gave as good as got (he always did, when he needed to), and if people were bothered by Snape’s friendship with Harry’s mother it was mostly Slytherin people. The finest of Gryffindor house generally didn’t give a shrivelfig for that sort of thing, and what Harry needed to take away from Snape’s memories was that his mother had been a very fine Gryffindor indeed.

It was perhaps telling that she didn’t extend this compliment to Sirius.

Kingsley’s Great Grey arrived, bearing important-looking documents. McGonagall located a very shabby box and held it out; then they exchanged goodbyes and Harry returned to Grimmauld Place feeling discouraged. He walked right into Ginny as soon as he opened the door. She looked very cross.

“What’s that?” she said, when she saw Snape’s box.

“A bequest,” Harry said, “From Snape. Are you angry at me?”

He asked this question because he was very courageous and foolhardy and never one to back down from a fight. A cleverer and more cowardly boyfriend would have let it sit, but Harry didn’t think that was fair because probably she deserved a chance to yell at him. He couldn’t seem to get the hang of being into her the normal way; either he wanted her so badly that his chest hurt and he began to think in ill-advised metaphors, or he wanted to put her aside until he was ready and had patched up his wounds and made himself more cosy and comforting, as he imagined the boyfriend of the youngest and bravest and prettiest and cleverest Weasley ought to be. He meant to be noble about this, but he suspected that actually it just made him kind of a prat. No wonder she was furious at him.

Ginny said, “Thanks, Harry, but I have had bigger problems just now.”

“I think your family is awfully nice, actually. They could be worse,” Regulus said. He had a foot propped on the new umbrella stand Kreacher had recently erected in the foyer. The stand had hoofs instead of a troll leg this time. Harry didn’t even want to know what the elf had killed to obtain it. Kreacher was helping Regulus unlace his sturdy black boots and shrug out of his very tweedy, outdated cloak. Regulus wouldn’t have needed assistance if he weren’t simultaneously trying to scribble something out on some parchment, or if his clothing weren’t so ridiculously old-fashioned, even by wizarding standards.

Harry asked him if he’d been out and about, and he said that, yes, he had just paid a visit to an old family property. He’d found it strangely unwelcoming. Harry said he expected it just needed to be renovated like Grimmauld Place. Regulus said that he thought the remedy would have to be rather more drastic. Harry looked at Ginny. She shrugged and told him her parents wanted to talk to him.

Harry put Snape’s box down. It was an untidy box, and it was harrowing to contemplate what it might contain. Undoubtedly something mysterious, knowing Snape. Potentially something dangerous. All in all, bound to be something exciting. It was the sort of thing that ought to be in Harry’s line, really. He’d been considering devoting an hour or possibly three or possibly a year to it.

Harry tended to devote his years to mysteries and danger and discomfort.

But now the Weasleys wanted to see him. So down the box went. Ginny and the Weasleys were Harry’s only link to family normalcy. And he would show that he could shelve life’s dangers for them. Possibly. Temporarily. And anyway he already had Regulus’s harrowing problems to deal with, so Snape’s might have to wait an hour or three or possibly a year.

Harry went to greet the Weasleys. Arthur and Molly were waiting in the drawing room. So were Percy, Fleur, George, Bill, Charlie, Ron, and Hermione. It took Harry a moment to identify them. This was not because they looked any different. It was more because the drawing room did.

Once a gloomy, well-sized space that rather grew on you the more you got used to moldy furniture and stained upholstery, it had by now simply grown. It was cavernous; Harry thought it might make a good indoor Quidditch stadium. Kreacher’s magic apparently leaned towards the grandiose now that he had recovered his Poor Dear Brave, etc., Master Regulus, and so he’d stretched the room to account for three grand pianos and two large fireplaces. Also several chaise lounges, lolling chairs, sofas, end tables, glass tables, gilt tables, tables to play chess on, tables to organize sockets on. This was exactly what Arthur Weasley was doing, on the far side of the room next to the very tall windows. Molly knitted placidly beside one of the fireplaces. Ginny took a wainscot armchair stuffed with silken grey cushions; Hermione had an identical one several feet away, near Ron’s upholstered green ottoman. Percy had a blue chaise lounge all to himself. Charlie waved from a bench quite far off. George reclined on a sofa nearby, with his feet on an upholstered lolling chair. Bill and Fleur hung near the entrance to the dining room and were therefore almost too far away to make out.

Harry thought the new seating was probably necessary, as the old all had doxies living in it. But all the grand space in between didn’t make much sense; the entire Weasley family was spread out like a succession of tiny red-haired islands in a vast sea of plush silver carpet, and really it did seem to be difficult to get anyone to talk to anyone else. If this was the result of Kreacher’s decorating, then no wonder the Blacks had been so dysfunctional.

He approached Mrs. Weasley first. She burst into tears and hugged him and told him they all appreciated what he was doing for Fred, really, Harry, but didn’t he think it was dangerous and a terrible idea? She and Arthur couldn’t agree with it. Not in the slightest. But did he think it would work? But the old story was very clear and of course they were only very, very distantly related to the Peverells, not at all like being a direct descendant, and so they did not have the slightest thing to do with any of the Deathly Hallows and so they could hardly know. But the old story did seem like a warning, didn’t it? But they appreciated his valor anyway.

Privately, Harry agreed that the story was a warning. Something told him Mrs. Weasley wasn’t as ready to heed it as she said she was.

Mr. Weasley made his way over the vast silver sea, tucking spare bits of socket into his waistcoat. He said he couldn’t countenance it. Molly couldn’t either, of course not. But Molly added that Harry will do what he needs to. Mr. Weasley added that he thought Harry knew better.

Harry did know better, actually, sir.

Mrs. Weasley thought Harry shouldn’t let Arthur bully him about this. You do what you think is best, dear. Although of course we can’t agree. Of course.

“We don’t much agree with you about Ginny right now, either,” said Mr. Weasley.

“Sorry?” Harry said.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Weasley, drying her eyes, “You have to tell her to come home.”

Harry pointed out that this would be very heavy-handed of him (exactly the sort of thing Ginny didn’t like, and sure to ruin things even more between them). Mr. Weasley pointed out that this hardly mattered when she was only sixteen and ought to be at home with her family.

Mrs. Weasley said, “Our only daughter, dear, you must understand. This sort of thing was only ever accepted by our generation if there was a proper chaperone on hand.”

Harry pointed out that George and Regulus and Kreacher were always about. Mr. Weasley pointed out that this was a house-elf and a Death Eater and George, so honestly, Harry, he didn’t think much of his and Ginny’s list of chaperones.

They both looked at Harry very sternly.

“Really I just want to see if Regulus came back wrong and to make sure he gets credit for turning against Voldemort in the end,” Harry admitted.

“He seems perfectly healthy to us,” said Mr. Weasley, “And turning against Voldemort doesn’t necessarily mean turning against all of Voldemort’s ideas. People are often more complicated than the sides they find themselves on.”

Harry was uncomfortably reminded of the dismissive way Regulus had talked about his mum.

“Let’s discuss Ginny,” said Mrs. Weasley, “That’s really the important thing.”

Harry had to be grateful that Ginny was too far away to hear the ensuing discussion. It was not much of a discussion; it was really more of a lecture. Also, if Harry did not in fact know Ginny, it would have led him to believe that Ginny was excessively naïve, not terribly sensible, far too pretty for her own good, possessed of a mental age far below that of her brothers, and likely to accidentally fall into holes or trenches or the ocean or dens of murderers if left to her own devices for more than two seconds. Harry could not quite believe Ginny had been permitted to attend Hogwarts, considering all the dangers present this past year. This observation made Mrs. Weasley burst into tears again and say that, really, they had never wanted to put her in danger and Hogwarts had been so much nicer when they were younger because there was none of this leading the other houses into one large Resistance group so that Death Eaters would know to target you and of course they were terribly proud of her for being so heroic, but after Fred, well. Mr. Weasley thought that after Fred Ginny should know better than to go looking for danger. Harry looked around at the very plush ocean of carpet and its archipelago of furniture, and said frankly that the only danger present was Kreacher’s poor interior decorating.

Mr. Weasley told him, very sharply, that he supposed Harry thought that was funny.

Harry realized that Mr. Weasley was angry with him. And that Mrs. Weasley was looking on him in disapproval. This felt terrible. The Weasleys were the source of the only real comfort and easy happiness he’d ever known. They were wonderful. They did not deserve to have him disappoint them, especially not now that they were going through a rough patch.

“I’ll go talk to Ginny,” he said, and made his way across the silver sea.

“No,” she said, before he even said anything.

He pointed out that he hadn’t said anything. She said that was fine because she knew her parents and so he didn’t need to say anything.

“You realize, of course, that they can no longer control anyone but me, legally, and that anyway they always liked controlling me best, and that they’re overreacting because Fred is dead and they can’t decide if they want to wallow in pain or not, but they won’t have to decide if they can just fill their days with worrying over me. That will mean they can forget about him eventually and not even feel guilty about it,” she said.

She added that she resented being used in this fashion.

“Could you just go talk to them?” Harry said, “I’m sure if you explained this—“

“Could I just go talk to them so you don’t have to?” she said.

“They’re angry with me!” Harry said, “Over you. That’s not fair!”

Families are all about unfairness, Harry,” said Ginny, “Welcome to the Weasleys.”

Why postpone his eventual conversion to full Weasley-hood when he could have all the home comforts of the clan right now? Harry had known she was still angry with him about that. Awfully nice of her to pretend like she hadn’t been.

Ginny said, “Yes, ordering me back to my parents’ house is absolutely the way to keep me from remembering how domineering you are. Well, let’s just get married whenever you want, then, because you’ve obviously learned domineering from the Weasley boys, who’re the best at it, and I reckon you’ve earned the right to stand among them!”

By this point they were shouting. Even the farthest of the Weasleys had noticed. It was very embarrassing. Ginny had pushed herself up in her chair and caused some of the cushions to topple to the floor. Harry was almost thankful when Kreacher appeared with a loud pop to gather up the mess; it was a sudden and noisy distraction that made them both fall silent.

“Kreacher leaves the drawing room and it is perfect,” Kreacher muttered, stuffing the cushions back in around Ginny, “Kreacher returns and it is ruined. Kreacher does not know why he is shocked.”

“Oh, fine,” Ginny said, and moved to a nearby sofa.

“Kreacher is fixing that one next!” Kreacher said, “And also the chair which the filthy Mudblood has spilled pumpkin juice on—“

Hermione contested this. Everyone in the room derided him for his language. The house-elf was unmoved.

“Kreacher is still fixing that one! And also the blue méridienne and the ottoman and the piano bench and the green sofa and the grey sofa and the lolling chairs. All ruined! Kreacher must fix them all!”

In short time, he had forced everyone onto George’s sofa. George loudly complained that Kreacher hardly had to do this right now. Hermione loudly complained because Kreacher should hardly have to do it at all. She didn’t see why she should accept this house-elf business if it was all so people like Regulus could keep excessively grand drawing rooms with perfectly-arranged cushions.

“There are problems with the system, but you’re really missing the point,” Regulus said, coming in and, with a flick of his wand, drawing out the lolling chair under George’s feet. He levitated it across to Kreacher in exchange for the ottoman, which he deposited before them. This he sat on.

He apologized for not having introduced himself properly before; he’d only just come in and had some correspondence that needed attending to. But of course he already knew Ron and George, who looked so much like his Prewett cousin; oh that must come from you, Madam. And he knew Harry because Harry was so graciously exerting himself on Regulus’s behalf, wasn’t that sweet. And he knew Ginny, who was very charming, and also Hermione, my wasn’t that a pretty name. But he hadn’t met the rest of them. (More) introductions were clearly in order.

Something about his manner was off. He patted his sleeve anxiously, almost self-consciously. This was at odds with his very confident and elegant voice, which had Harry near-convinced he was imagining Regulus’s hesitation. He wasn’t. Regulus said, “I’m sure your children have told you all about me, and it’s of course absolutely true. I really wasn’t human for a very long time; I suppose that makes me a Dark Creature.”

He laughed nervously, and added that he had a tiny cousin who was much the same, wasn’t that funny? That seemed to be the Black family all over these days.

“You look human to me,” Mr. Weasley said.

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, “I do think the whole point of resurrection is that you’re now restored to your normal self again. But we can call you a Dark Creature if you prefer that.”

Charlie wouldn’t because Regulus hadn’t earned it; he didn’t seem to have any of the interesting physiological features that actual Dark Creatures had; he wasn’t even leaving his limbs lying about. George agreed. How stupid. Regulus wasn’t cool enough to be a Dark Creature. Percy thought they should all know that there was no actual legal classification for resurrected Inferi, so probably Regulus was just a plain old wizard. Ron laughed because anyway actual Dark Creatures didn’t waste their time polishing candlesticks. Ginny agreed and added that a rubbish job he did of it, too. Hermione reminded them that Dark Creatures can be just as human as anyone. Remember Professor Lupin? Bill brought up Fleur’s relations, who were all lovely people. Fleur confirmed this. My granmuzzer, she was a Veela, eet ees silly when people say Dark Creatures are so different from you or me.

Regulus had gone peculiarly pink by this point. He smiled. He had a very, very attractive smile. Even Fleur commented on how handsome it made him. Regulus thanked her. Then he invited them all to stay for lunch.

12 Grimmauld Place, London

13 May 1998

Dear Dropsbody,

Sorry, no defecating owls. I am rubbish with birds. Crups & elves rather better.

I’ve been to see Blonty’s son who she calls the ADORED, how ick. Do not suppose you know him what with being off speakers, he’s nothing like Blonty though & an utter Malfoy, what is one to do. I only went over to give Blonty some cheer because she is in a state, but really I should have stayed & helped from afar, her son is just another Manticore Malfoy & you know I never was big on M so two of him is two too many.

Draco greets one by turning up his nose and saying, Were you really INHUMAN for twenty years? & also Isn’t that AWFULLY bad for the family NAME? Very funny considering he hardly lives up to the name Blonty gave him. Strikes me as cowardly & pompous & cruel. Just like M & just like M I expect he will go to Azkaban & Blonty will be ruined by it because I did get the impression that she likes her issue. I suppose someone must.

If I help it will be only for her. Now I must go handle Weasleys, of which there are something like seven hundred & twelve, all spread out across the drawing room. Kreacher has fixed it according to his taste by which I mean Mum’s, do come & have a laugh at it sometime. & you must know of the Weasleys, at least the older ones, through Nymphadora & the Order, etc. I expect you weren’t caught up with that crowd directly, though, Slytherins generally are not. Do write. 2

12 Grimmauld Place, London

13 May 1998

Dearest Blonty,

I went to see Draco this morning. He seems no worse for the wear, although I expect he finds Alconleigh something of a bore after having grown up in thrilling M Manor. I hope he was cheered by my visit, I did try to be a help.

I’ve by now met all of the Weasleys & actually I like them. Perhaps if you knew them better you would as well. They had something of a row in the drawing-room (no harm, much like we used to do), so I sent Kreacher in to calm them down & went in myself to distract them a bit. I had to come up with topics that might interest them, quizzed Kreacher on it beforehand. He said, Blood traitors is mad for doxies and Quidditch. Hilarious. He is somewhat in accords with you, but agrees by now that they’re not as bad as they’re painted.

Regarding HP, I have a snitch of my own & besides I am not worried because Kreacher has kept me updated on the trials & you know anyone who defected in or just after the first war seems to escape the worst of it. Just look at old Praecipulus: went off to France for ten years & returns with enough galleons to pay them off & so they let him have some light community service, no mention of Azkaban. Hound would be shaking with rage, small thanks to our stars that he isn’t here to see it.

I could still drop a word with HP for you, though probably any more visits are out of the question because I am so so busy with the renovations. Oh & I wanted to know, have you any news on my friend yet? Please tell. I only want to know how he was during all those years & if he was happy & why the stupid fool couldn’t stay alive for a week more, etc.

Love, the Ally Bea (who is also now a bit miffed what do you know it isn’t only you)

Lunch, Regulus told them somewhat apologetically, had been very hastily prepared. Really it was his fault. Unfair to lay it at Kreacher’s feet. Regulus had assumed he’d be tied up with family business all day and so he hadn’t told poor Kreacher to prepare a meal for one person, let alone twelve.

This was why they only had potatoes, bowtruckle soup, roasted fire crab, some kind of fricassee of jobberknoll, salad with what looked like gillyweed in it, a side dish of sneezewort leaves and beets, stewed flobberworms, pumpkin ice, rolls with some kind of sweet cream that smelled distressingly of wormwood, several kinds of jellied herbal-scented lumps on fancy porcelain plates, and sticky pumpkin cake with preserved pumpkins on the side. Also pumpkin tea, hot pumpkin punch, and pumpkin juice to drink.

They were not to mention the lackluster spread to Kreacher. The old dear had tried his best, and really they only had to eat it to see that he was just the most terrific cook. Worth a million, in Regulus’s opinion, because all house-elves are.

“Also something of a traditionalist, I see,” said Mrs. Weasley, helping herself to some fire-crab. All of the Weasleys were tearing into the meal with gusto, traditional or not. Only Harry and Hermione were taken aback. Hermione mouthed something to Harry about converting to vegetarianism, and he made frantic motions at the sneezewort leaves, as though to say, “But what about this?”

She shrugged and, because she was a very courageous Gryffindor indeed, speared some jobberknoll with her fork. Harry followed suit. It tasted like chicken sautéed with peppermint bark and garnished with lots of pumpkin. In fact, everything seemed to have some pumpkin in it. Strange.

Regulus laughed. Their shared relation, Ignatius Prewett, was a great gastronomist and a frightfully courageous fellow when it came to defending his opinions on food. He’d made sure that all of the Black house-elves kept to the old ways. A pumpkin-based diet, as everyone knew, made for strong magic and kept children from degenerating into Squibs. Mrs. Weasley went pink at this. She wasn’t sure that hadn’t been debunked in the last twenty years. And that was one way of thinking about old Uncle Ignatius.

“Most people would just say he’s awful,” said Mr. Weasley, earning a glare from his wife.

Regulus rapidly changed the subject to Quidditch. This was very sound of him; nearly everyone present adored Quidditch and was passionately devoted to a favorite team. Ron and Charlie were Cannons fans to the end. George liked the Tornadoes and was loudly accused of being contrary. Bill felt the Falcons were the best in England and was even more loudly accused of being a sell-out. Ginny hoped the Harpies wiped the pitch with all of them and was very, very loudly accused of being a girl.

“Did you know that there were doxies in the curtains?” Regulus said, cutting the argument off entirely.

Everyone stared at him. He looked embarrassed. Keacher came by with some pumpkin gravy and muttered something about venom. Regulus brightened and began to tell them how his brother used to lace Evan Rosier’s tea with doxy venom because he’d found it was very good for inducing vomit in stupid buggers. George confirmed this. He explained about the skiving snackboxes.

Regulus said, “My goodness, how clever. I’ve jars and jars of doxies that Kreacher pickled after we found them nesting all over the house. We’d planned to sell them on the Knockturn Alley market but now we can’t, because someone’s gone and made that illegal. Would you like them?”

George accepted with his thanks. Then Percy spoke up about how he’d gone and made selling pickled doxies illegal, or at least how he’d made some grammatical edits to certain sections of the regulation. Regulus tried his best to look terribly interested. This was kind of him, and far beyond the talents or the patience of anyone else at the table. He invited Percy to please tell them all about it. Percy did. At length.

Harry tuned much of this out, but found himself riveted to the conversation again when Percy mentioned how this had been a stepping-stone to a far grander position that involved cataloguing MLE dossiers. Regulus said, “MLE whats?”

Percy said, “Dossiers. Barty Crouch Sr. set them up during the first Wizarding War. Practically everyone has one by now. Certainly you and Harry do.”

“I do?” Harry said.

Harry’s had been initiated by Amelia Bones when he was a baby, as soon as the MLE had reason to believe he might grow to become a Dark Lord. Regulus, whose Dark Mark had never been seen publicly, was still classified as merely ‘Severely Suspicious.’ But Harry had never been listed as anything less than ‘Deeply Disturbing & Doomed to Darkness.’

“What an appropriate and not-at-all inflammatory dinner topic, Percy,” said Mr. Weasley, “Rather what we’ve come to expect from you.”

Percy had the grace to look ashamed.

“The Ministry’s always been like that,” Regulus said quickly, “Maybe we should talk about Quidditch again.”

Only maybe not about the teams because it had been so long. He really had no idea who any of the players were anymore. But of course he was mad about Quidditch. He’d been seeker for Slytherin at Hogwarts and there really was no comfort in the world like flying.

Much agreement from nearly everyone present at the table.

Regulus looked relieved at this. Discussion became much more amicable, with Ron offering the tale of his thrilling exploits as Gryffindor keeper, everyone pointing out that Harry had been the youngest seeker in a generation, Charlie fondly recalling his time as team captain, and Ginny regaling everyone with stories of her time as chaser. This last bit caused some consternation as Molly pointed out that Ginny had only obtained the position because she’d disregarded her family’s express wishes and snuck into the broom shed without permission.

Ginny asked if she was supposed to feel sorry about that. Mr. Weasley told her not to use that tone with her mother. Regulus said, “Oh, did they tell you that you were too young as well?”

He supposed it was like that in every family. He and Hound were both banned from playing with their cousins, all very rough-and-tumble girls, until they’d turned at least eight or so. Hound had rebelled just as Ginny had, stealing the girls’ things to use as makeshift Quaffles in an indoor game that always ended with those things tossed into the fireplace. Hound always did the tossing; Regulus preferred to be keeper.

“Keeper,” Ron said, “Is a highly underappreciated position.”

Another period of harmonious conversation followed. Regulus looked as pleased as Harry felt by this, and Harry began to suspect that Regulus liked the Weasleys, in his own way, and did not want to see them argue. This was good of him. Certainly he had his moments where the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black shone through, like when he’d been awful about Harry’s mum and how he couldn’t conceive of life without a house-elf doing everything for him. But Harry didn’t think that was all there was to him; he was also oddly perceptive and kind in his own way, and it turned out that he had a remarkable ability for damage control.

Regulus invited them to take dessert in the garden. Everyone was surprised to learn that Grimmauld Place had a garden. Kreacher explained that he’d lost the key and forgotten to Disillusion the door while Regulus had been away and the house had fallen into Sirius’s possession. Then he’d found the key and suddenly remembered when Regulus returned.

“Well,” Charlie said, “That’s certainly neat and tidy.”

“Kreacher is thinking that the nasty dog would wee all over Mistress’s borage,” Kreacher admitted.

Regulus said that, while he had a higher opinion of Snuffles than that, Kreacher was really a very good elf and such foresight was indispensible to the proper administration of his duties.

Kreacher beamed in response. He brought the cake and punch out into the garden for them. It was a very large garden. Aside from the borage, there were also two spreading elms, several rickety wooden fan-back chairs, an ornate metal table charmed to be lightweight, a darkened greenhouse, and a broom shed emblazoned with the Black coat of arms. Regulus apologized for the state of it (which was immaculate, as far as Harry could tell), and levitated the fan-back chairs into one cosy circle around the table.

“Why can’t you see it from the house?” asked Ginny.

“That’s Blonty’s work,” Regulus said, “That is, my cousin Narcissa’s—“

“Seriously?” Ron said. “Are you telling us that for years we were all terrorized by the crack team of Blonty and Bibby?”

“Droll,” Regulus said, “No, truthfully, she was an excellent cousin.” He went on to say that it was Narcissa who always stood up for the boys against their parents and other cousins. She’d known that he and Sirius liked to get up to mischief in the garden and that Walburga was likely to spy on them and punish them for it when it got out of hand. So one day she’d come over and complained mercilessly that the noise from their garden exploits gave her such a headache that she couldn’t possibly be expected to visit anymore. Burgie offered to ban playing in the garden permanently, but Narcissa had insisted that this wasn’t fair and talked her aunt into charming the garden to be undetectable from the house. Regulus supposed no one had ever bothered to undo the charm.

This was an unexpected side to Narcissa Malfoy, although Harry knew firsthand that there was some good in the woman. Probably it was only enough to make her kind to her own sort. She always treated everyone else terribly, and certainly Hermione and the Weasleys didn’t have much to say that could corroborate Regulus’s affectionate picture of her. But she, like her cousins, had turned against the Dark Lord in her own way. In fact, she’d saved Harry’s life.

Harry wondered if there was a life debt there, and if Narcissa ever planned to collect. He’d have to bring this up with Hermione. He wasn’t sure if he understood life debts or how they worked, but she’d be able to research the particulars.

While Harry was considering this, Regulus had apparently discovered that Fleur was a natural hostess. He’d enlisted her in his attempts to entertain the Weasleys. She was speaking very animatedly about her younger sister’s career in the Beauxbatons Quidditch League, which Harry hadn’t even known existed, with an occasional prompting by Regulus, who apparently spoke some French and knew the ins and outs of the league. Fleur was impressed; she asked if Regulus had ever been to France. Regulus hadn’t, of course, because his mother always used to say that the half-breed infestation began at Calais.

In Regulus’s defense, he seemed to notice right away that mentioning his mother’s opinions on half-breeds was a misstep. He apologized immediately after bringing it up. Fleur was too gracious to let on if it really bothered her. Hermione raised her eyebrows in a very pointed manner, but otherwise let it go; and Ginny, George, Bill, Charlie, and Ron only took turns imitating Regulus’s haughty speech in a manner calculated bring him down a few notches. Really for the Weasleys that was very tame.

Regulus came across hot-and-cold. Occasionally very understanding. At other times a true-born bigot. Harry didn’t know what to make of it; he thought he’d be uncomfortable unless he could determine where Regulus stood, exactly. Maybe it was time to talk to Regulus separately. Harry asked if he might show him the greenhouse. Regulus agreed. Only it had been a very long time since anyone had been inside, so they might have to duck when the door was opened. The poisonous purple murtlap might attack.

It did not, because it was dead. All the plants were. Their sickly dried stems and leaves crackled underfoot. Regulus sighed sadly and poked at the murtlap, but only managed to dislodge enough dead leaves to reveal the wall behind it. Someone had carved the words somebody stole my hound into the stone.

Suddenly, the brittle plants seemed roughly four hundred times more depressing. Regulus said, “Oh dear.”

Harry said, “Was that—”

Regulus said, “He called me that, too. And Bibby made it up. We all used it sometimes. Anyone could be a hound, really. I mean, if they had the right qualities.”

Harry let it drop. “Never mind it,” he said, “I just wanted to talk to you separately.”

He contemplated what to say next. “What you said to Fleur—you deserved a take-down for it, really. Don’t hold it against the Weasleys. They never meant any harm with that sort of thing, but you’re going to be shown a lesson if you’re acting like an ignorant prat around them.”

“Oh, yes, we were much the same,” Regulus said, “No one ever means any harm with that sort of thing.”

Harry blinked at him. “The Weasley’s are nothing like your fam—“

“Well, how would you know?” Regulus asked evenly.

Harry stared at him.

Regulus’s occasional lapses into haughty condescension and outright bigotry were starting to make more sense now. He honestly thought that his family was like any other and that their outlook had been normal. Sirius had at least recognized them for the wound-makers they were, and had sliced them out of his life. But Regulus never had.

“Bellatrix meant harm,” Harry told him, “A lot of it. To innocent people who didn’t deserve it, people like Hermione and my mum. I’m sorry to have to tell it to you, but there it is!”

Regulus blinked at him. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose she did. The movement was nothing but harmful by the end.”

Harry said, “So you do understand. Good!”

“Good?”

“I needed to know whether you still went in for their ideas,” Harry said, “What might have made you decide to switch sides, what made you—”

“I’m not as tremendously good as your Weasleys,” Regulus said, “I didn’t turn against the old ways to support total strangers; I’m fond of some of the old ways even now. I turned because I think my loved ones are a bit more important than an ideology. That’s all.”

Harry had a sudden notion that here was the person Sirius had been talking about a few years ago. Here was individual who couldn’t really be divided into a good person or a Death Eater.

Turning to a better ideology would have been the right thing to do, right? Because it was important that you believed in the right things, and Harry didn’t mean rubbishy right things like which House banners you sat under or whether you spoke to certain kinds of people or snubbed them. He meant whether you understood that you didn’t have the right to wound people over something as stupid as names or Houses or blood, or in fact for any reason, really.

Wasn’t Regulus admitting that he didn’t quite understand that?

And yet he did understand that the people you loved had to come before even your most cherished and comforting notions of how the world worked. That was something. Narcissa had understood that. So had Snape. Maybe this was the only way Slytherins would agree to approach goodness: through the back-door.

“People like Hermione and your mum didn’t deserve it,” Regulus said after a moment, “And still don’t. They’re not mud, if that’s what you want to hear. But people like Bibby are more than the wrongs they commit. Once she was a perfectly normal girl given to arguing passionately with her boyfriend in the drawing-room, just as you and Ginny were arguing today.”

“Ginny and I are nothing like her!” Harry said, “And that wasn’t an argument. It was—“

Well. It had been a terrific argument, actually. But there were so many things wrong with comparing him and Ginny to Bellatrix Lestrange that Harry really thought he had to contest just about everything that had come out of Regulus’s mouth, just for the principle of it.

“I like Ginny,” Regulus said, “And you, and the Weasleys, and even Hermione with the pretty first name. I like all your people so far. I’m awfully sorry if that doesn’t come across as well as it should. The fact is, Harry, that I like my people too.”

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

14 May 1998

Dearest Ally,

I think if you had to do something it could be to get Potter up to the Ministry so that he & I could have a bit of a chat with the Minister. Only Shacklebolt is in office, so one does not know how to accomplish it. I could get myself out, of course, & Draco as well, but there is the matter of the other two. & anyway your exerting influence might not work twice in a row. When is your trial? Make sure Potter speaks in your defense, & if I can find a way to get Draco there at the same time perhaps something might be done.

As for your friend, well darling I will keep asking but I’m sure Potter has already told you the latest. The fact is spies are not forthright with anyone. MP probably knows more than me, he always did take an interest.

12 Grimmauld Place, London

14 May 1998

Oh yes Mister M was always too kind. Please ask him, I would like to know.

I do not have a trial yet, only because I think most people do not yet know I exist. I suppose I can ask HP to move me to the front of the queue, he is excited to take on the world in my defense. I think that is just his personality. Already he worries about how I come across & everything, isn’t he a treat.

If I tell you when, are you sure you can be there with Draco? He does seem locked up tight.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

14 May 1998

Of course. One has friends who can get in & out of anywhere, & will even cause a stir on one’s behalf if need be. Such a comfort.

Only have Kreacher tell me when, darling. Oh & it is nice that Potter likes you but he might not be so charitable to us. Schoolboy grudges. Be careful what you say. Please.

Unblinking adoration for his family notwithstanding, Regulus was actually very pleasant to be with. He did things like instruct Kreacher to unlock the broom shed so his guests could fly around the garden; instruct Kreacher to warn them which brooms had been cursed by irate cousins of his; instruct Kreacher to concentrate his cleaning efforts next on the guest rooms and the library, which of course only Harry and his friends really used; and instruct Kreacher to locate and remove those many-legged tweezers that had been driving Harry mad all week.

“Oh thank god,” Harry said, “I can never seem to catch those. Anyway, I don’t think they were Sirius’s.”

Regulus commented on the ‘oh thank god,’ but not unkindly. Even Slytherins sometimes slipped into that, because sometimes you had half-bloods and things.

Harry stared at him until he began to look uncomfortable. It was no use arguing with Regulus, because he always found a way to turn the conversation on its head and make it cosy again. Better to remain silent. Regulus couldn’t make silence comfortable.

Regulus sighed. Actually, a lot of this junk wasn’t his brother’s, only he’d hoped Harry might want it because otherwise they would have to put it in the attic and Kreacher hated locking perfectly-usable furniture away, also he was planning on giving Kreacher the attic for personal use as a surprise and thank you when the renovations were complete. Well, how could he do that if the attic was full of junk? Anyway Harry had his full permission to Banish anything he didn’t like, as long as he didn’t tell Kreacher about it.

Harry remarked that he’d never known anyone to be so solicitous and simultaneously high-handed with their house-elf.

Regulus said, “Yes. People stopped being really kind to the keepers of their houses some time ago, and this is of course a sign of the mounting degradation of our society.”

“Er,” Harry said.

“I don’t even know why Kreacher tossed those in here,” Regulus said, presumably referring to the tweezers, “We’ve two missing from the set. That’s Bibby’s. I’m sure mine is around here somewhere.”

Harry explained about Sirius smashing it. Regulus looked terrifically affronted at this news. Harry hastened to find something good he could tell him about Sirius, because Your Brother: The Azkaban-Dissipated Smashing-Things Years was probably not a very nice topic of conversation.

But what to say?

Regulus was a bigot. He had an awful family. He was always trying to avoid unpleasantness, always smoothing over every hurtful topic, every wound. There was no reason for Harry to like him. But somehow Harry did. Somehow he’d come to like Regulus enough to slot him into the same cosy category in which he kept people like the Headmistress and the Weasleys. He didn’t really want to terrify or shock or discomfit them; here were people who were in many ways very normal and comfortable, and who tried to spread this about, in fact who never minded sharing this with a very odd green-eyed person who didn’t quite understand how to obtain normal and comfortable for himself.

Sirius had been in the cosy category, too. Harry had only ever wanted to see the best of him. Not the wounding side of him, but the heroic side. And that side had existed, right?

Harry explained that Sirius’d been a hero in some ways. He didn’t know if Regulus knew it. But it was true. Sirius had always maintained that ability to be kind to almost anyone even if they weren’t a pure-blood of high standing. Sirius had been the first person to tell Harry how important it was to look out for your inferiors, actually. In practice, Sirius hadn’t even really given a fig about classifications like who was superior and who was inferior. He’d been kind to Harry, and to Hermione, and to the Weasleys.

Regulus said, “Oh dear. I am glad you think so highly of my Hound. But that’s just not true: you see, he had to be incontestably severed from us.”

If there were classifications, then they’d been battle lines Sirius himself had constructed: the family and the old ways there, me with my bold new ideas here. He had received no greater pleasure than to fancy himself personally severed from the clan. He was a bold new thinker, with a glorious and singular rebellion: this was the whole of how he wanted to define himself, and there was no changing his mind on it. So of course he became anti-pure-blood, anti-house-elf, anti-Slytherin, and so on. And someone with so many antis in his thoughts could hardly be expected to worry about how he treated people, let alone people he thought were beneath him.

Regulus did not seem very happy to consider his own words.

Even though he didn’t seem to be saying anything untrue – in fact, this squared neatly with something Dumbledore had told Harry long ago – Harry wanted to both defend Sirius’s memory and comfort his brother.

So he said, “No, no. Sirius wasn’t like that!”

Sirius hadn’t seen people as beneath him.

“Really,” Regulus said. What about Kreacher, then? His Hound had never been nice to an elf for as long as Regulus had known him. What about anyone with a green-and-silver striped tie? Sirius had taken to baiting Slytherins with an almost unholy amount of glee, once he’d Sorted Gryffindor. Then again perhaps that was just schoolboy grudges. Maybe Regulus ought to leave well-enough alone about that. He expected Harry had his own schoolboy grudges; Regulus had certainly been like that during his Hogwarts days.

“I’m out of Hogwarts,” Harry said, “And, anyway, I saved the life of the biggest Slytherin bully in my year. Although I suppose his mother paid that back. I really don’t know.”

Regulus wanted to know who the biggest Slytherin bully had been. Harry debated whether to tell him. On the one hand, it might cool his adoration for his family were he to discover that his cousin, Draco Malfoy, liked to strut around intimidating people. On the other hand, it seemed cruel to end a conversation about whether Sirius had been a prat with some light-handed observations about the various shortcomings of Regulus’s other family members.

“Never mind,” Regulus said. He added that he could probably guess, because it was always the same people from the same families. Usually families with very adoring and attentive mothers, strangely enough.

“I think that’s a life debt,” Harry said, “I mean, that I owe to her.”

Regulus wouldn’t to worry about it; life-debts were hazy things and sorted themselves out. Really only handy magical short-hand for “remember that this person could have let you die, and didn’t.” Harry said that no, they must be real because Dumbledore said so. Regulus said that in that case he owed one to Harry and Ginny, poor girl, owed one to her own mother. Can you imagine. No wonder she doesn’t want to go home. If I owed one to Burgie I would have run away like Snuffles, I think.

Harry very pointedly didn’t ask about Burgie.

“Can you get me a trial?” Regulus said suddenly, “I don’t have one.”

Harry deduced that Regulus was asking about clearing his name. This was the Black manner of asking after very important topics. When one needed to know if the cellar floor had caved in, it was necessary to say, ‘Kreacher, can you find any unspoiled wine down there?’ When assessing the state of the family finances it was, ‘Kreacher, can you get me a goblin on floo-call?’ When the issue of proving to the wizarding world that he was more than a Death Eater arose, it was, ‘Harry Potter, can you get me a trial?’

“I can get you an audience with Kingsley Shacklebolt,” Harry said wryly, “I don’t think I can control the Wizengamot.”

This would have to suffice. Anyway, a pardon from the Minister of course circumvented the trial business entirely, how nice of Harry to think of that. Harry pointed out that with his Dark Mark Regulus would probably still be called on to pay heavy fines and perform Ministry-approved services to those less fortunate. Regulus was unfazed by this; he’d been thinking about the plight of Dark Creatures a lot lately.

So Harry went to owl Kingsley’s office and obtained a very rapid reply with a meeting set for the next day. When he returned, Ginny was there.

“Yes,” Regulus was saying, “Harry already knows. See, he’s gone to inform the Minister just now.”

Harry confirmed this. Ginny said that this was alright then, and informed Regulus that he really needed to do something about those newspaper clippings on her bedroom wall. Regulus assured her that Kreacher would see to it immediately. On her way out she told Harry that she supposed this ended the terribly mysterious business of clearing Regulus’s name. Harry pointed out that he hadn’t accompanied Regulus to see the Minister yet, so no. She looked at them coolly and walked away.

“Still angry. I guess she has her reasons,” he told Regulus.

“It’s nothing but poor taste nowadays. I only put that up to annoy Snuffles and please Burgie,” Regulus said, adding somewhat shamefacedly that the Dark Lord had been charming and charismatic, a terrific dinner guest, tremendously nice to one of his cousins, the steadfast ally of another, and that before he’d destroyed his soul his group had been as tightly organized and focused as the Falmouth Falcons.

Harry explained that he’d been referring to the state of his and Ginny’s relationship, not to Regulus’s old bedroom walls and poor choice of childhood idol.

“Oh,” Regulus said. There was silence for a bit. Regulus added that he hadn’t been trying to justify anything.

“Oh, no,” Harry said, “Of course not.”

More silence. It really was the only way to take Regulus down a notch.

Regulus sighed.

“You and Ginny look so nice together,” he said politely, “You really do. Very much meant to be and all that.”

Harry relented. His and Ginny’s relationship was becoming a sore spot. It was nice to hear what he already knew: Ginny was the one for him. Only of course that hardly mattered when he kept trying to do what was best for her and then it turned out that whatever he did was the exact opposite of what she really wanted.

“What gives you the right to decide what’s best for her?” Regulus said.

Nothing did, but that Harry still thought she deserved someone more comfortable and safe, and he couldn’t really figure out how to make himself that person. Also, her parents wanted her home and away from danger, and really they had every right to demand this; he couldn’t deny them his help, really they were sort of the closest thing he had to proper family.

“You’re going to disappoint your family, proper or not, every once in a while,” Regulus said, “You may as well do it for someone you love.”

12 Grimmauld Place, London

15 May 1998

Blonty,

Tomorrow morning. I’m sending my Hound’s old watch, charmed to correspond with mine so that you might know the exact moment.

I think I know what your snitch is. Let me see: perhaps HP might have done something awfully kind for someone you adore? You respond so well to that sort of thing. We Blacks always feel debts very strongly, for your sake I hope he does as well.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

15 May 1998

Draco, darling,

Pass the enclosed letter & my love on to old Risky IMMEDIATELY. Risks always has been such a friend to us. Feel free to peek; it concerns you. Be ready tomorrow morning.

Love, Mother

Alconleigh, Oxfordshire

15 May 1998

Perfect. Knew you would. He’s awfully stupid, though. Are you tricking him into it?

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

15 May 1998

None of that, please! One’s cousin, do be respectful.

He is helping you rather a lot.

& remember to wear your light robes. Flooing gives such a temperature.

1313 Knockturn Alley, London

15 May 1998

Darling Ally,

I can see you understand exactly. Can I trust that you weren’t too obvious, half-bloods being less inclined to respect the old ways & honor a debt, etc.? This is nerve-wracking enough, but I feel that for MP & the adored I must be very circumspect. Remember when Snuffles lost his crup in Diagon & we tricked Bella & Burgie into thinking he was at Eeylops while he went to look for it? It would have been hell to let them catch him, even though we loved Burgie & Bella so much that it was difficult to lie like that. Darling, consider this just the same. I am awfully sorry to put you in this position, but it will be hell for Draco otherwise.

I remember Meddles found the crup & she didn’t even tell. She WAS a loverly sort in those days. I’d forgotten. Odd how these things sneak up on you. Your Blonty.

12 Grimmauld Place, London

16 May 1998

Drops who will not write,

Today is a rather exciting day. In the first place because I am to pass it with HP, who wakes up and reads the Prophet and shouts because the world is moving on. Everything frustrates him. No one is courageous enough. He is like Snuff, a perfect hound, very alarming because he has strong views & such skill & wit & will not suffer fools. You do remember my Hound’s recurring complaint: It is the age of COMFORT, a time for COWARDS, you lot haven’t got any RIGHTEOUSNESS or HEROISM, etc. etc. etc.

HP sounds much the same at times. I try to be sympathetic but I have always been preferential to comfort.

Speaking of my Hound, he went by Snuffles. When he came out of prison. Kreacher says only as a kind of joke on us, but even if it was a kind of joke it shows he didn’t forget us even after the Dementors. I do not think of the Dementors otherwise because it’s very unpleasant. All of Snuff’s later life was, I think, which does make one sad & angry. Most of all, I can’t abide those stupid friends of his. Though I know they did not land him in the whole mess it was really more his own doing & anyway I’m dreadful with grudges & they’re dead so it’s not like it matters, Lupin, Pettigrew, etc. really were the worst of cowardly sorts, so it’s funny he of all people befriended them. & James Potter with that single-minded focus on only ever making himself look good.

Well Snuff chose them so there is nothing more to be said I guess.

The Weasleys are still here & gud as Creechr all of them. Ginny in particular is a wonder because one thinks she is on to one even when one is doing nothing wrong, a perfect Auror of a girl, rather like you & Bibby, little wonder HP is so gone on her. They will marry, probably, HP is convinced she is the only one for him & the whole thing is a terrific romance.

Blonty does not like the Weasleys & I think it is mostly political but to let that get in the way seems so small & not like her. Politically I will always vote by Nott’s rules myself, but naturally don’t give a shrivelfig what anyone else does, it seems so silly & rude to care & this was really what led to the war anyway. I am seeing her today & perhaps we will talk on it, in person she is just her old self again it is only sometimes in the letters that the voice of her peacock slips through.

A crowd blocked the way from the floo to the Minister’s inner office. Harry could not figure out why. It wasn’t like today was special. So a wizard to his right helpfully explained that it wasn’t the day; it was the family. He was only here to call the Minister’s attention to pressing family business. A nearby witch concurred. It was time someone did something. Her family had suffered tremendously as well.

Regulus stared at these persons in wonder. Perhaps the Ministry had become a useful engine of government in his absence and the people now danced attendance upon a leader who could be trusted to solve their problems?

“Um. I don’t think so,” Harry said, cruelly shooting down that antiquated Death Eater fantasy. It was just that something was going on. He pointed out that almost everyone carried with them a copy of the Prophet, which was not unusual. These were all designated the MID-MORNING EXCLUSIVE! which rather was. The Prophet rarely, if ever, did a mid-morning exclusive, because in fact it only came in morning and evening editions. Harry asked the witch if he could borrow her copy. The headline read: FWOOPERS COME TO ROOST FOR YOUNGER MALFOY! MINISTER DECLARES NO CLEMENCY UNTIL HE REPAYS THOSE HARMED.

He and Regulus both blinked at this. Here was someone causing a stir, probably some stupid bugger on the Prophet’s payroll. Or a disgruntled former Ministry employee. It certainly didn’t sound like Kingsley. Harry scanned the first few lines of the article and said, “Malfoy should repay the world somehow, but this?”

Regulus, not bothering to read for himself (he’d not been kidding when he’d declared himself entirely opposed to the printed word), said, “What does he have to do, exactly?”

Much commotion from the crowd. Everyone knew about young Malfoy and his family. His was a terrible family and now they would have to pay for all the discomfort they had caused. A man who introduced himself as Leonidas Lufkin explained about his third-cousin’s viola, which Malfoy’s grandfather had cursed to sound like the croaking of frogs. Leonidas Lufkin would accept no less than three hundred galleons for this.

Alas, this was nothing compared to the offenses committed against the family of the witch who’d lent them the paper. Malfoy’s aunt had once told Her Nasturtia that she would never get a husband. With the aunt and Her Nasturtia both being only twelve at the time, you had to imagine it made something of an impression. Her Nasturtia never did get up the courage to speak to boys and subsequently became an old maid. The witch could not think how much it would take to get over that heartache, but she imagined it must be quite a lot.

A wizard in orange robes said he had definitive proof that all the trials and tribulations of the Chudley Cannons could be laid at the feet of the Malfoys. The Malfoys therefore owed all devoted Cannons fans that new stadium they had always wanted. Regulus remarked that this was awfully far-fetched. Harry agreed, and added that the Malfoys were probably wealthy enough that this would be no punishment at all to them.

Also there were certain things people shouldn’t be able to buy their way out of.

“What terribly silly and mean people,” Regulus said in an undertone, adding that it was very stupid of them to be taken in by such an article. He could see that the wizarding world hadn’t changed much.

Harry pointed out that people like cousin Blonty and her husband fed them lies on the one hand, and that people like cousin Bibby and her husband fed them terror on the other; did Regulus really think this was conducive to building a decent society?

Regulus snorted. It was by far the most impolite thing Harry had ever seen him do.

“You can’t lay all that at our feet,” Regulus said evenly. Most of the really pure pure-bloods tried to lead people in the best and only way they knew how and it wasn’t their fault if other persons were selfish and grabby and degraded. Really this was the bulk of the wizarding world, all these people who weren’t the least bit interested in the politics that had led to Death Eaters or to their defeat, but who lined up to demand anything they could get no matter who was in power. They led lives without a trace of any real warmth or passion or humor; they mindlessly pursued small comforts, that was all. Was Regulus supposed to feel sorry for them?

His tone was superior, rather like it had been when he’d spoken of Harry’s mum. Harry said, very sharply and loudly, “Is that you speaking, or the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black?”

Gasps from the crowd. Leonidas Lufkin declared that he’d known it as soon as he’d laid eyes on this fellow. This fellow looked very familiar. Clearly it was the long-lost illegitimate son of Sirius Black, conceived with Celestina Warbeck. The Quibbler had run a series of articles on him just five years ago. Regulus blinked. This must be some kind of prank because his house-elf would have told him if he had a nephew.

“Snuffles reproducing would have been a cruel prank indeed,” said a clear feminine voice, “On the child. Imagine him as a father.”

Narcissa Malfoy, tall, blonde, attractive, and quite unconcerned by all the witches and wizards who were rudely shoved aside as her son tripped gracelessly out of the floo behind her, brushed some nonexistent soot from her perfectly-tailored mauve robes. Then she gave her cousin a little wave.

Darling, he really did look so much better than she had been led to believe. Draco, can’t you see that your cousin doesn’t look the least bit cursed? Really, Regulus had recovered terrifically from the punishment he’d received for turning against the Dark Lord.

More shock from the crowd.

“Why are you here?” Harry asked. “The Prophet reports that you’re both under house-arrest. In separate houses.”

Narcissa brandished her own copy of the mid-morning exclusive. She’d assumed it operated like summons. Was she supposed to stay at home when the Minister made demands like these?

“It’s illegal to break the terms of your house arrest,” Harry said.

Narcissa did think it rude of the Ministry to insist Draco stay home and yet manage to appear before the Minister on the very same day. It was almost like Shacklebolt wanted a reason to throw her son in chains. Illegal? Well, a mother would do whatever it took to protect her son.

Murmurs from the crowd.

“Kingsley hardly needs another reason to put your son in chains,” Harry said, “The Dark Mark is enough, I think.”

Draco Malfoy shrieked in anger. Then, with a disdainful look on his ferrety face, he accused Harry of putting an unspecified ‘them’ up to everything. Whether this included Malfoy signing up for the Death Eaters Harry did not know, but some of the wizards and witches present nodded like they agreed that the mid-morning Prophet, the Ministry, the Malfoys, and in fact the entire universe had to be Harry’s fault, nothing else made any sense.

Regulus loudly told everyone not to listen to Malfoy. Harry Potter had done nothing of the sort. He’d been Regulus’s own house guest for an entire week, was a terribly pleasant fellow, and had committed no sin that Regulus could detect beyond an occasional spat with his girlfriend.

Narcissa said, “She must be a regular Chinese Fireball to occupy him like that. Everyone’s been wondering where he made off to. Why, just the other day someone asked me if he were dead.”

She said this with great comfort and self-satisfaction and she had reason to feel comforted, as Harry probably owed her his life.

No matter what Regulus said, the debt had to exist. Harry could feel it pulling at the edges of his mind, a persistent anxiety that wouldn’t go away until he repaid what Narcissa Malfoy had done for him.

But how could he? This was what he knew of her: she was a wound-maker in the extreme. If the Weasleys could be summed up by sockets and beloved red-haired children in homemade jumpers and one large, gaping wound named Fred; and Harry by a photo album and a cloak and many wounds that had scabbed over and a few lurching skeletons in the back of the mind; well, then the Malfoys could be understood by what they had, which was a large house with cavernous dungeons, abused house-elves, one wholly-adored rotten little son, and the mechanism (composed largely of money and malice) by which they set skeletons free and watched, gleefully, as those skeletons wounded others left and right. Here is a cursed journal, and there a little girl. Well, for Salazar’s sake, darling, let’s see what happens next. Here is your sister the Death Eater and there a sniveling little Mudblood. Well, I certainly won’t stop Bellatrix, dear, so let’s drag the little thing up from the dungeons and let nature take its course.

Harry did not want to give in to the life debt. He realized, in that instant, that actually he didn’t have to. The pull wasn’t that powerful. Oh, probably he would always feel it, but it wasn’t painful or anything. It was just uncomfortable, knowing that he was bound to Narcissa Malfoy by the one good deed she’d done him. Probably the one good deed she’d ever done for the world.

Well. She hadn’t done it for world. She’d only done it for her rotten son, but she’d done it all the same. Probably not because she was secretly good, or because her family was secretly good, or because you could measure people by what you thought their families were like, but because there was good in her somewhere, tucked in amongst all that malice. Harry knew it. And she knew he knew it. And now, with something of a smirk playing around her familiar, haughty mouth, she was calling on him to admit it.

“I’m glad you said I wasn’t,” he said.

“Whatever gives you the idea that my mother said anything, Potter?” Draco Malfoy snapped.

“Because I was there when she lied to Voldemort for me,” Harry said, “And if she didn’t save my life by doing it then at least she bought us some time, and it was awfully brave of her to do it. I think she did it for you, so try to be grateful. You don’t deserve it.”

Roars from the crowd. Narcissa smiled. Like Regulus, she had a fantastically beautiful smile. Flash bulbs went off somewhere: apparently the Prophet was present.

Narcissa was terribly sorry, excuse me, honestly though, did you hear what Potter just said? Of course this made it very important that she, Draco, Regulus, and Potter should get in to see the Minister at once. She had a number of additional charming apologies to offer to the crowd, but this hardly mattered considering how willing her son was to shove them aside rather brutally in his haste to reach the inner office.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” Regulus said, as they followed in the Malfoys’ wake.

Harry had a momentary notion that he was apologizing for his cousins’ behavior. Perhaps he was finally seeing dear cousin Blonty and her son for who they truly were.

But then Regulus ruined this by adding, “Well, I would have told you beforehand, but Blonty told me not to.”

“You planned this?” Harry said, taken aback.

Well, she was his cousin. And she was delightful when you got to know her.

Harry said he really doubted that.

Regulus insisted: people think they have her measure but honestly she’s so much more than what they assume; you have to know that she’s not a monster, she’s not just wicked Mrs. Malfoy; actually Blonty has the most terrific ability to make people melt; everyone likes her, really.

Harry, who had seen the inside of her dungeons, did not melt. Kingsley, who Harry had always supposed had more sense than this, did.

Possibly this was because he and Mrs. Malfoy knew each other.

She said, “Who in wizardry could have guessed that you’d make it this far when you were just a Hufflepuff prefect?”

And he said: “I didn’t think you’d remember that, Mrs. Malfoy.”

And she said: “Narcissa. And good Grunnion, how could I ever forget the time you docked me fifty points?”

She was not the slightest bit upset about the fifty points. In hindsight, she thought he ought to have taken more. But she’d been furious at the time; she’d only been going to visit her sister in the Hospital Wing, you know. But perhaps she ought not to have done it after hours. Or hexed a whole squadron of Gryffindors in the process. Did he remember Regulus?

Here she dragged Regulus forward with surprising strength and deposited him where the light was best, next to Kingsley’s slowly wilting potted flitterbloom. Kingsley did not need the light. He did remember Regulus. Unique as a Slytherin first-year: Kingsley had never taken any points from him. Narcissa put in, with a pointed look at her son, that Regulus had always been thrillingly well-behaved, and Malfoy scowled.

Regulus said, “No, it was really more like thrill-less-ly boring.”

Kingsley said, “Ran off to the continent after the first war, did you?”

“Oh, no,” Regulus said, “I was—“

“Indisposed,” Malfoy said quickly.

“Yes, as an Inferius,” Regulus said, and didn’t bother to say anything else.

Kingsley blinked at him. Narcissa sighed. And how did you get there, darling? Why did the Dark Lord curse you to be an Inferius?

Regulus said, “Oh, he was cruel to my house-elf.”

At Kingsley’s look of befuddlement, Regulus added that he did think people absolutely had to be nicer to them or really the whole system would continue sinking to new depths of degradation.

Narcissa laughed at this, as though Regulus had told a very novel joke. Kingsley joined in, and asked her and Malfoy and Regulus if they wanted something to drink. Narcissa smiled her beautiful smile again. There was that Hufflepuff hospitality, honestly Minister, what a treat.

Kingsley appeared to take this as affirmation. He grasped around for his bell-pull to summon an undersecretary and in the process discovered Harry. Immediately he looked contrite.

“I completely forgot,” he said, “We were supposed to meet today.”

Harry stared at him.

“This is our meeting,” he said slowly, “I Owled you to clear Regulus’s name.”

“Well, rather kind of him,” Narcissa said to her son and cousin, in the sort of undertone meant to be heard across the room. Though this wasn’t the only thing Harry Potter needed to discuss with the Minister; he also ought to repeat what he’d shouted just a few minutes ago.

“Because you know, Potter,” said Draco Malfoy, “Even if you wanted to take back what you said about my mother saving your life you can’t, can you? Even you can’t Obliviate all those people.”

“Darling,” Narcissa said calmly, “All I did was lie to the Dark Lord for Harry Potter because by then anyone could see that that awful lord V was a monster.”

And Harry Potter had been so delightfully kind to you in the room of requirement that it was the least she could do. Also their whole family was just so grateful that this war was over; it had really torn the wizarding world apart. Didn’t Father always say it would have been better to do work within established Ministry channels? Didn’t he?

At this point she paused and began to look very attractively shamefaced. She patted her son’s hand apologetically. Well, she didn’t know why she was lecturing him. He hadn’t even been able to complete any of the tasks Moldy V had set him because he was of course in complete accord with Father. But, darling, Mum did get upset sometimes.

Harry put in that her darling hadn’t been able to complete any of the tasks Voldemort set him largely because he’d been cowardly and had therefore made a spectacularly crap Death Eater. Malfoy gave an offended shriek. Regulus muttered something about schoolboy grudges.

“No, actually,” Harry said, “It isn’t a schoolboy grudge when someone watches your best friend being tortured and tries to kill your headmaster. That makes it bigger than a schoolboy grudge.”

“Tried to kill Dumbledore?” Regulus said. “I can’t believe it. You’d have to be mad to try it. The man was too powerful; he even left some kind of remnant in my house after passing.”

Kingsley explained about Moody’s trap for Snape, Snape having been their double-agent who had killed Dumbledore on his own orders. Regulus remembered Snape, didn’t he?

“Yes, he was a friend of mine,” Regulus said. Then he looked at Narcissa. “Blonty, did you know anything about this?”

Harry imagined she had; Voldemort had ordered Draco to do it and Dumbledore had known it wasn’t possible, had assumed that Draco didn’t have it in him. So Snape had to do it instead. Really, Draco ought to be grateful to a lot of people.

Regulus went white. The circumstances of Dumbledore’s death probably impressed upon him what Sirius had known all along: that their family was twisted. It had to be distressing to discover that you had relations like Draco Malfoy, who’d been at the center of so much tragedy and who could still sprawl there looking so completely, carelessly unaffected by all of it, as though nothing could wound him, certainly not the harms he inflicted on other people.

It was a rude wake-up call, but who cared? Regulus deserved it for conspiring with Narcissa. Though what they’d been conspiring for Harry had no idea.

After a few minutes, it became horribly clear.

Narcissa said, “Draco could never commit murder! He’s only a child.”

Malfoy scowled at this, and rolled his eyes, and adjusted his sprawl so that it looked even more careless than usual: he rather proved her point. Regulus came out of the light near the flitterbloom and leaned on the back of Narcissa’s chair, so that he was very close to Malfoy. He gave his young cousin a very peculiar grin, menacing and taunting and furious. On Sirius, that would have meant that Malfoy would soon have a wand in his face. But Regulus only said, “It was awfully good of Severus to take your place. I hope you’re grateful. One ought to be, when someone else steps in to do what they don’t want to.”

Malfoy’s only answer was a glance of sullen contempt. Kingsley perhaps did not notice this because the full force of Narcissa Malfoy, done up in mauve and all her best charm, blocked his view. Kingsley was now realizing that people had sacrificed a lot for young Malfoy, even Albus Dumbledore had. It would be a shame to let those sacrifices go to waste. Perhaps they ought to follow Dumbledore’s example and encourage the good in him.

“Oh, could you?” Narcissa said charmingly, as though Kingsley had just offered to babysit her very troublesome toddler.

“It would be no trouble,” said Kingsley, “We need volunteers at the werewolf orphanage, you see.”

Almost everyone protested this. Narcissa and Draco Malfoy were horrified because he could be infected, darling. Harry was horrified because Draco Malfoy was a bully and a Death Eater and deserved to feel the consequences of his actions. Only Regulus was pleased.

“I think spending some time with Dark Creatures will be a learning experience for him, Blonty,” he said. “Kreacher tells me they have potions and things to limit the contagion nowadays. I expect your adored could work in the laboratories making those. Though I hear it’s all very smelly, it’s just a bit of potions work.”

“Draco’s MLE dossier says he did get top marks in potions,” Kingsley said.

“Does it?” Narcissa said, “Oh, how nice of the MLE to note that.”

Kingsley chuckled. Oh, what was this about the Prophet? What a scandal, probably some disgruntled former employee of his. He was so, so sorry about that.

Somehow, Narcissa Malfoy had directed the conversation back to charming, cosy banter. This was a family talent; Regulus did it all the time as well. Only now it seemed less pleasant, because Harry knew for a fact that people like Narcissa Malfoy (and Regulus Black) also engineered things like Death Eater attacks and torture and war. They freely inflicted wounds left and right, they robbed you of your brothers and parents, they left you unable to understand what life without all that pain even looked like, and now they retreated into comfortable small talk and got away with everything.

Harry put in that probably Narcissa herself had planted that item in the Prophet, to create a plausible reason for breaking house arrest (“Really not,” Narcissa said to Kingsley, “My family hasn’t had a share in the Prophet since the late sixties”), and that anyway he hadn’t come here for Draco or Narcissa. He’d come to help Regulus.

“I’m regretting that now,” he added.

Regulus, the coward, didn’t even look him in the eye. He only absentmindedly patted the potted flitterbloom and insisted that actually he didn’t even need help. Harry said that perhaps he would say differently when drawn up before the Wizengamot and questioned about his Dark Mark.

“I don’t have one,” Regulus said quietly.

“Yes, you do!” Harry said. “Sirius told us himself you took it!”

“If I did it didn’t take,” Regulus said, and rolled up the left sleeve of his robe. His forearm was perfect and unblemished. There was no Dark Mark. Rather than acknowledge the gasps that issued from every other occupant of the room, he only said, perplexingly, “See, Blonty, there’s my snitch.”

Malfoy sat up and demanded to know how he’d done it. Kingsley reasoned that he hadn’t done it. Voldemort had with the Inferius curse: Regulus’s skin had fallen off. Regulus said that, assuming he had taken the Mark, this would still be only mostly correct. Inferi skin only flaked off partially, and the rest the Inferius chewed off. Anyway something like the resurrection stone would have refused to acknowledge the perverse power of the Dark Lord in any case. Even after growing back nails and restoring eyeballs to their gaping sockets, the Mark would have failed to reappear.

“That’s disgusting,” Malfoy said, slumping back down again, “You only got rid of it because you were transformed into some kind of monster.”

“Quiet,” Narcissa said sharply. “Your cousin didn’t need to come here at all today. Without the Mark, any accusations of misconduct would have been easily disproven. He was never in any danger of anything; you were. He’s here for you.”

“Or for you,” Harry said, and added, because he was by now furious, “He has nothing but nice things to say about you, and I’ll bet you’ve got nothing but nice things to say about him. But it’s just a cover-up for how awful you both are.”

“Harry,” Kingsley said, a bit shocked, “That’s very rude.” And although Harry had never considered that Kingsley might side with Narcissa Malfoy, of all people, against him, he was not shocked.

They were in the age of politeness now. The age of cosiness and cowardice.

And also Kingsley pointed out that this was no way to speak to a woman who’d saved his life.

Narcissa’s house arrest was lifted. Regulus and Malfoy both got probation. The crowd outside was soon placated when Narcissa strode out of the inner office, greeted the flash-bulbs with another beautiful smile, and said that of course it was awful what happened to Your Nasturtia. Let’s send her some robes from Twilfit and Tattings, shall we? And we have a mandolin lying around that will make a brilliant substitute for cousin Lufkin’s viola, don’t we, Ally dear?

Really, she was just too charming.

“Look,” Regulus said, as he and Harry reached the floo, “I said I was awfully sorry. But probably there wasn’t any other way—“

“Save it,” Harry said.

“We’ll talk about it at home,” Regulus said.

But Harry was actually done with Regulus’s home, and with Regulus’s family. Just because they fooled most people with their falsely cosy chitchat and that comfortable, confident way they had didn’t mean that Harry was fooled. Cousin Blonty had been a monster long before she’d waltzed out of the Ministry floo wearing her nicest mauve robes.

You didn’t have to be a lurching skeleton to be a monster. You didn’t have to be a lost boy with no family and only an album. You didn’t have to be strange, Dark, peculiar, unwanted, or alone.

You could have a family or a rotten little son or tremendous loyalty. You could have cosiness and charm. In fact, all these things seemed to make the hidden monstrosity rather easier to bear.

So probably Regulus had been a monster, too, long before he became a Dark Creature.

To the epilogue