Content Harry Potter Miscellaneous
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Author Notes:

The Raven you've already seen. Now it's time for the Writing Desk…

1 September
Hesperus Manor

Meghan lay on her stomach behind one of the chairs in the tan and blue receiving room, heels in the air, reading aloud to herself for a last few precious minutes before bedtime should be decreed. "Did you say pig, or fig?" she asked in a purring tone, then dropped into her own ordinary voice for the answer. "I said pig, and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy…"

About to go on, she looked up at a knock on the front door. "I'll get it!" she called out, and leapt to her feet, brushing herself off and checking her appearance in the breastplate of one of the suits of armor as she trotted into the hallway.

"Welcome to Hesperus Manor," she began as she opened the door, then truly looked at the wizard standing on its other side. "Professor Dumbledore!"

"Hello, Meghan—nothing is wrong," the Headmaster forestalled her imminent question, smiling at her in a way she'd noticed few adults could manage, a way that said she and her opinions mattered. "In fact, something may be very right. But I should tell it to your whole family, if I may come in?"

"Oh, yes, of course! I'm so sorry." Meghan stepped quickly back to let Dumbledore enter the house. "Mama and Dadfoot were upstairs together, Uncle John was in the library, Auntie Danger's in the kitchen—I don't know where Aunt Cissy is, but I'm sure Dobby can find her—"

A very few minutes later, the adults of Hesperus Manor had gathered in the same room where Meghan had been reading earlier, a few bits of dirt still under Narcissa's fingernails and a streak of some dark, fruity-smelling liquid across Danger's sleeve. Meghan sat on the floor beside her parents, listening with all her might.

"Your daughter Jean contrived to get a message to me tonight, by way of telling Hagrid that she needed to speak with Minerva," Dumbledore began, smiling at John and Danger. "I should, incidentally, add that your children have all been Sorted into Gryffindor. Not without some hesitation on the part of the Hat, and I have no doubt lively discussions were going on—but that is neither here nor there. The message, as delivered by those third parties, was that your children's newest friend, Arthur Weasley's youngest son Ronald, has as his pet a gray rat with a missing front toe."

Meghan felt her father go very still, heard her mother's soft inhalation.

"The only actions I have yet taken," Dumbledore went on, "were to strengthen the Anti-Apparition wards around the castle, and lay further wards to prevent anything leaving our grounds without permission, whether by Floo, broomstick, or simply walking past the boundaries. And I did this because—" He raised his voice only a little, but it was enough to stop Meghan's Dadfoot, who had started to lunge up out of his seat. "Because we are no longer in a state of open war, and evidence will be demanded before any charges can be laid. And at the moment, the only crime for which we would have evidence is the falsifying of a death."

"And even that could be explained away." John's tone was seemingly calm, but Meghan knew her godfather. His breathing was a little rapid, his knuckles white where his fingers were curled around the armrest. "He was, after all, facing the fearsome Sirius Black. It's cowardly, but not criminal, to have changed forms and run away to hide before that terrible curse could hit him."

"How, then, can he be brought to justice?" asked Narcissa from her wingback chair, plying an orange stick on her fingernails. "Since I doubt you would have come here only to tell us the situation is hopeless. What can we do?"

Glancing around the room, Meghan saw this same question reflected on the other adult faces around her. All but one. Danger was sitting stiffly upright, her eyes fixed on Dumbledore. "We've already done it, haven't we?" she asked softly. "We've sent the children away. Sent them to Hogwarts. We can't protect them there, especially not with him living practically on top of them—sleeping in the same dormitory, for heaven's sake! It won't last. It can't last. As soon as our scent on them fades, as soon as he gets enough of his human mind back to think past the fear, he's going to try for one of them, isn't he? One or all of them, to buy his life from his Master, remit himself the pains he won when he ran away…"

"You're mad," Meghan's mother objected, but Meghan could sense the tension running through her, the fear that her own words might be the lies and Danger's the truth. "How would he ever get them out of the school, let alone all the way to wherever his Master's holed up these past ten years? How would he even know that?"

"Unless he doesn't have to." Her Dadfoot's voice was hoarse, the rage and disgust in it clearly audible. "The Dark Snarker knows this is the year Harry Potter ought to be starting at Hogwarts. Pretty fair bet he'd try and get into the castle somehow, if only to see if Harry showed up, wouldn't you think? And if any of the rumors are true? Because His Evil Lordliness may know I never worked for him, but what if somebody who did work for him and didn't know that ran across us? They'd probably decide, screw it, Black's turned his coat again, kill me, snatch The Boy Who Lived, and raise him Dark anyway!"

"A certain Death Eater tried a variant on that very ploy, some seven years ago," Narcissa pointed out coolly. "And your children proved most effective at defending themselves."

A wave of snickers ran around the room.

"To add to that," said Dumbledore when everyone had calmed down some, "a most important item is currently being safeguarded at Hogwarts. Nothing less than Nicolas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone."

Six breaths sucked in simultaneously.

"Now I know you're mad," said Meghan's mother sharply. "What are you thinking, putting everything he could ever want into a single place like that? With the Elixir of Life and unlimited gold at his fingertips, and the one the prophecy named as his equal no more than a student—a very young student, barely beginning in magic, and occasionally stupidly brave despite all we could do, especially if his friends or family are threatened—you are crazy!"

"Crazy like a fox, maybe." Danger, though still stiff, had begun to smile. "Think about it, Carrie. No, I mean that—" This a bit more sternly, as Meghan's mother tried to speak again. "Think about it. This is Hogwarts we're talking about. A place of ancient and very strong magic, and all of it dedicated to goodness. To growth and life. To the education of children, leading them out of ignorance and into wisdom. Factor all of that into the equation—and don't let's forget, this is Albus Dumbledore we're speaking to, who has known these particular children since they were babies and would far prefer taking a spell on his own body to allowing them to get hurt—and now what do you see?"

"A trap." Narcissa grinned briefly, and licked her lips as though she were a hunting cat in anticipation of a fine chase. "All of this is designed to trap him. To bring him to a lure he cannot resist, and there capture and finally, fully destroy him. Yes?"

"Yes." Dumbledore smiled at Meghan. "Though it would not have been possible if your Pearl had not been willing to help me in my little quests throughout the years."

Meghan smiled back, leaning comfortably against her mother's legs. "Because when I was just a baby and could barely walk, I pointed and screamed when Dadfoot picked up a book he found in the secret compartment under the drawing room floor," she said, knowing this story well from the family's tradition of turning their most exciting or harrowing moments into tales to be retold. "And he put it down and firecalled you right away, and you came and took the book, and asked if I could sometimes go with you to see if other things frightened me that way. Once I was old enough to understand what was going on, of course."

"And so you have, now that you are." John frowned. "I've always meant to ask. What was that mysterious book, anyway?"

"A diary." Dumbledore chose his words with care. "One into which had been magically bound a…memory of sorts. A bit of the personality, let us say, of the young man who originally owned the diary. If the diary were again used for its proper purpose, to record the secret wishes of the heart, that young man could and would use those wishes against the one who now held his diary, to make the diary into an obsession never to be set aside, to twist that person's thoughts into evil paths, and eventually to gain entry to that person's mind and take their body as his own."

"I've heard of books you can't put down, but this is ridiculous," quipped Dadfoot, sending another wave of chuckles around the room. "What else have you seen that looks like that, Pearl? If she's allowed to tell us, of course," he added hastily in Dumbledore's direction.

"A ring with a big, flat stone that we had to dig up out of the ground," Meghan said when Dumbledore had nodded his assent. "A great huge golden locket from a dusty cabinet…" Carefully, she censored the bits about the elderly, foul-mouthed house-elf who had nonetheless obeyed her snapped order to shut up already! "This manky old tiara I had to find inside the room at Hogwarts where the house-elves put everything that gets broken, and a golden cup with two handles that was…somewhere else." Even to her own parents, she didn't think she should admit that she and the Hogwarts Headmaster had pulled off a successful burglary of a Gringotts vault.

"So my fictional choices had a certain validity, after all," said Narcissa thoughtfully. "How amusing…"


25 October
Hesperus Manor

"I know that you sometimes read for pleasure," Narcissa began, crumbling a bit of the bread she had been throwing to the fish ever more finely between her slender fingers. "Has a series called the Books of Broken Faith appealed to you at all? It is related," she added with a sidelong glance, quelling Severus's protest before it could begin. "If you have read any of them, most especially the first, you may already understand more than you know."

"I have read them," Severus admitted after a moment of internal war. "Read and enjoyed. The tales are well-told, the themes universal. Love and bitterness, justice and vengeance, betrayal and forgiveness. But the author's name is not one I know—Rosilla Brightstar—not unless you wish to tell me that your cousin writes also under a female pen name…"

"Would that not be funny?" Narcissa laughed lightly. "But no, spare Ryan's blushes. Broken Faith is not his work." She dusted breadcrumbs from her hands and turned to face Severus. "It is mine."

"Yours?" Severus allowed a bit of his surprise and awe to show. The series featuring the determined princess Cecily del Pianto, with her quest to cleanse her name from unfounded charges of murder, regain her rank and free her rightful principality from its tyrannical usurper, and find the missing daughter for whom her heart longed, had captivated him from its first few pages. "Broken Faith—from the name of Malfoy, perhaps? Given that Cecily is betrayed originally by her husband…"

"Yes. Precisely." Narcissa's eyes never left his face. "Tell me what you remember of that."

"Only that it was one of the more diabolical plans I have seen in fiction. Or in reality, come to that." Severus allowed himself to sink into the memory of a book so engrossing that he could lose himself in the fictional world it brought to life, forgetting his own troubles in favor of lovely Cecily's. "He was tired of the rule of law on which she insisted, and wanted to rule the land himself, by whim. Not to mention that he felt she had betrayed him by bearing him only a daughter. So he hinted that he would like a surprise party for his birthday, and used her wand, which he stole, to lay traps within the house where he knew she would hold that party. And as their friends arrived, he goaded her into an argument, until at last he triggered what he had laid."

"Laying waste to the house, and killing a round dozen of their friends. Thirteen, counting her husband himself, for no one doubted he had also been killed in the explosions, given the bloodied robes they found near Cecily." Narcissa nodded. "When in fact he had cut his hand to provide the blood, dropped his robes to the floor, and swiftly Apparated away from there."

"Leaving his wife to take the blame for his crimes, and vanishing into the new life he had prepared for himself, that of her cousin and heir who would put up a pretense of reluctance to take her throne and rule her land." Severus scowled, his fury and horror at the fate of the fictional heroine redoubled now that he sat beside her living counterpart. "If Lucius were not already dead…"

Narcissa raised a hand. "Not so fast, my friend," she chided. "Look at the circumstances again. Two who ought to trust one another, instead exchanging words of anger and hatred. Twelve innocent bystanders caught in the eruption of that anger and hatred. A thirteenth, one of the pair who had so fought, apparently also immolated by that blast, and the other of the pair the only living soul remaining there." She smiled slowly. "Does it remind you of anything else?"

Severus almost opened his mouth to say no. Then the topic they had seemingly abandoned some moments before blazed up within his mind, casting a fierce new light upon the numbers Narcissa had named. Two and twelve, become thirteen and one—but one of the thirteen was not dead, was indeed the instigator of all, and the one left standing was innocent of any crime—

"No," he said, as he had intended, but the word was a denial of something else entirely. "No—how can it be—"

"Peter Pettigrew was an Animagus," Narcissa interjected lightly, picking up another bit of bread and tossing it into the pond. A fish rose to snap it out of the water almost before it had landed. "His form that of a gray rat. Easy to overlook, especially in such chaos as a spell of mass destruction would cause. And it was Peter Pettigrew, not Sirius Black, who Kept the Secret of the Potters' home in Godric's Hollow. Or rather, who did not Keep it. He convinced them that no one would ever suspect the change, and that it would make them safer." A soft, sad laugh. "On one point he was right—even the fourth of their merry band found it hard to credit that such a change had been made—but on the other he was foully and deliberately wrong."

"Deliberately." Severus passed a hand across his left forearm, feeling as always the slight pull of the quiescent Dark Mark where it lay beneath his skin. "So, then, Pettigrew was my counterpart. The Dark Lord's spy within the Order's ranks. The one Dumbledore could never find. And Black faced him on that street, not as an unmasked traitor in a final spree of killing before his punishment…" The words left bitter traces on his tongue, but he could sense their truth for all of that. "But as a faithful friend seeking what justice he could for a cruel betrayal."

"Correct on all counts." Narcissa scattered a handful of crumbs, keeping her eyes fixed on the patterns the fish made as they darted about. "Hardly anything you wanted to hear, I imagine."

"Your mastery of understatement astounds me," said Severus dryly, and heard Narcissa's soft laugh in answer. "Not what I wanted on my own account, no…but for what else it means, I cannot hate it."

"Because it means the safety of a child for whom you have feared for far too long." Narcissa turned once more to face him, humor sparking momentarily in her eyes and the curve of her lips before it was replaced by a quiet purpose. "Are your questions answered to your satisfaction, then? The identity of Henry Black, and of his father Ryan, and how it can all be true?"

"They are, in the main." Firmly, Severus shoved aside the simmering hatred of his school days, reminding himself that the most important things had now been established. The son for whom Lily Evans had died still lived, and had not been raised to call his mother's murderer by the title of Master. He could not allow that feat to be overshadowed by his loathing, however justified, for the man who had accomplished it.

"A clever way to set it up, taking a wife and adding another child to the family," he mused aloud. "Anyone who knew only the common story of Harry Potter and Sirius Black would look for a man alone, with a single child, a son or nephew, of eleven years' age. A man happily married, with both a son and a daughter, would be eliminated almost automatically…" He paused, other faces making their way into his mental eye. "But who is Jean Gray, then? And her parents, her father and mother? How does Danger enter into all of this?"

"Danger began 'all of this', long before I was ever involved." Narcissa shaped a sphere between them with her hands, as though she were outlining a crystal ball. "Do you recall Cecily's guide from the second book, the young woman who visits her in dreams?"

"I do." Severus allowed his thoughts to wander back in time, to the words on another set of pages. "Kyla, I believe you called her, and posited that she had been born with latent magic, which did not manifest in the usual fashion but lay dormant within her until it was awakened by a shock. The death of a lover, in fiction…"

"In reality, the deaths of her parents, at the hands of my husband and his usual cohorts," Narcissa interjected. "Leaving her not only burdened by magic-born true dreams, but the sole guardian of her young sister, a Muggleborn witch of uncommon power. But I beg your pardon, please continue."

"True dreams." Severus contemplated this. "So I would wager that in reality, as in the story, Kyla was the bearer of the truth to those who most needed to hear it? Though obviously Danger does not lie in a magical sleep, able to exist only within her dreams, if she answers your door on a regular basis."

"Obviously not." Narcissa laughed. "But you are quite right. Kyla explained to Cecily what had truly happened—not that Cecily was unaware beforehand that she had been tricked and shabbily used, but Kyla was able to give her the mechanisms and timeline she had been lacking, as well as the knowledge of those magical items she would need to unmask her husband's treachery and regain her proper place in the world."

"The great golden cup to carry water to the thirsty dog which guards the way." Severus held up fingers as he named them. "The serpent-marked coin, held in a locket to keep her hands free, to pay the ferryman who will take her across the moat. The silver sword set with rubies, to cut through the thicket of brambles, and the wand made of elder wood, along with the magical spellbook into which is bound the memory of its creator, to dispel the enchantment which locks the door behind which await her crown and the ring of her rank. And, of course, first and foremost, the magical child who can find these items among a thousand like them, the little girl with the golden eyes named Topaz." He paused, struck by a new thought. "Is Topaz perhaps—"

"Her lost daughter?" Narcissa applauded lightly. "Well spotted. And she can see such things because she is kin to both the one who hid them and the one who seeks them. But that is fiction, and I believe you still have questions to be answered about the world around us."

"Yes. Of course." Severus shook his head, trying to bring himself out of the moment of glee he had experienced on finding that his most cherished guess about his favorite book series was the correct one. "What did Kyla's counterpart do with her news? What could she have done, if she was, as she thought, a Muggle, without even the knowledge that magic was real?"

"A difficult proposition, to be sure." Narcissa nodded thoughtfully. "But one need not necessarily know that magic is real to locate a witch or a wizard. And Danger knew of one such wizard, from her dreams of the group called the Marauders, who remained both living and free to act, and who would have the strongest of reasons to help her."

"Ah." Severus exhaled in satisfaction as the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place. "Lupin. Or as it seems he now styles himself, Gray. Was that simply a pun on 'Black', or is there some deeper meaning?"

"'Granger' was the original surname of the sisters." Narcissa smiled sweetly at Severus's muffled groan. "Yes, it explains the nickname rather neatly, does it not? So they simply clipped that short, and altered those first names which might be remarked or remembered. Unfortunately, they could not so easily change what the children called them. And on an outing to Diagon Alley, approximately a year after Harry Potter vanished, Lucius passed near enough to a man carrying a little boy on his shoulders to hear the child address his seeming father as 'Padfoot'."

"A year?" Severus frowned. "I had thought it was longer. Or did Lucius manage to hold them captive here for some time before his death?"

"He lost sight of them, rather, and only picked up their traces a year later." Narcissa settled her hands in her lap. "When my Draco was four, Harry coming near to it, and Hermione—as her name was then—not quite five. But how interesting that you should bring up Lucius's death." Her eyes lost focus, seeming to gaze into the past. "No official question has ever been raised, but I have often had the feeling that a great many people wonder about that death. And yet, though it was not truly an accident, it was surely not a murder."

Trying to make sense of this, Severus tracked back through the conversation, and stopped at a rather unlikely trio of names. "The children?" he hazarded, ready to be told he was wrong.

Narcissa only nodded. "The children," she confirmed. "Lucius threatened to strike Draco, at which the others took offense." Her smile turned predatory. "Children of three or four may not weigh very much, but they can generate a great deal of speed over a short distance. And force, or so I am informed, depends far more on velocity than it does on mass."

"This is true." Severus summoned the image of Lucius Malfoy on a collision course with a mantelpiece, courtesy of the impact of two small children against his legs, and found it very good. "But how did it happen that you invited them to stay?"

"I had not intended to." Narcissa's eyes grew misty. "I had meant only to ask them—beg them, if necessary—to take my child away from here, to raise him in the same strength their own children had found. When they learned that Lucius was dead…" She sighed deeply. "Danger and Carrie made the offer first. 'Let us stay with you,' they said to me. 'You deserve to find happiness too.' And they were right."

"They hardly lost by the bargain." Severus glanced around the pleasant little grove. "Who would expect to find The Boy Who Lived here?"

"No one." With a brief headshake, Narcissa brought herself visibly back to the present. "And if our hopes for the immediate future are fulfilled, no one ever will. You know the truth now, Severus, and you are already in place at Hogwarts. Will you help us defend our children?"

"Gladly—but against what?"

"Not what." Narcissa reached across and laid two fingers on his left arm. "Whom."

Severus allowed himself one brief, vicious oath. "When?"

"As far as we can tell, within the week." Narcissa smiled briefly. "Or do you not think he would find delicious irony in restoring himself to a body, and destroying the child who so nearly destroyed him, ten years to the night after such things first occurred?"

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Author Notes:

Dun dun dun. Next time—Halloween!