For the Lack of Grace
Summary: When Harry Potter runs away from the Dursley's the summer before his third year at Hogwarts, he doesn't stop at the Leaky Cauldron. Instead, in his panic, he finds himself at one of the few places where the Ministry's Trace doesn't work. Knockturn Alley.
(WARNING! Slash, AU, Sporadic Updates, OOC-Characters, Manipulative Dumbledore, Grey Harry)
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
You can also find this story on my account on archiveofourown (AO3). It's the same username.
Chapter 1
His chest heaved with panicked breaths as he desperately tried to get air into his lungs.
The ride on the Knight Bus had been just another nightmare after the Dursley's, one that hadn't managed to calm him down in the least. When he'd left Privet Drive, he'd had enough mind to get a cap to hide his scar and grab his things, but he hadn't thought further ahead then to get as far away as possible. Most of the little pocket money he had left from his first and only visit to Gringotts had been spent paying for the bus ride and now he was exhausted, terrified and hopelessly lost.
It was a miracle he managed to get through the Leaky Cauldron without getting caught.
Harry glanced around him, trying to keep his head down at the same time as he looked to make sure he wasn't spotted. Behind him, the trunk he was dragging was heavy and it took all his self-control not to drop it. The area he had ended up in after walking frantically from the Leaky Cauldron was dark and dreary, the atmosphere depressing and dank. The whole place screamed of danger and usually, this would be enough to get Harry to turn head and walk the other way, but he really didn't know where else to go. He needed to find a place to stay for the night that would be relatively safe and what better place to hide than one where no-one would ever imagine he would willingly go?
Oh he was sure that once day arrived and he calmed down enough to think with a clear head, he'd curse himself for coming here, but as it was, he didn't have any other choice. He couldn't risk getting caught by anyone from the Ministry, he already had a warning for Dobby's trick last year, who knew what would happen now. What if he got expelled from Hogwarts? No, he simply couldn't take the risk.
This meant that the only he thing he could do was continue forwards.
Harry kept a tight grip on his trunk as he trudged further into Knockturn Alley, completely ignoring the part of himself that was screaming in his head for him to turn around and walk the hell away. Surely Dumbledore could fix this right? He wouldn't let him be expelled. But Harry didn't know how much influence Dumbledore had outside of Hogwarts, and he wasn't about to take any chances. Not when it came to his ability to learn magic. If he was expelled from Hogwarts, he had no doubt that while it would please his family, it would also mean that he would be stuck with them. And they wouldn't be happy that they would have to get him an actual education again, not to mention that he hadn't gone to muggle school for two years now, who knew how far behind he was.
No, it was better if he tried to do this his way first and only went to Dumbledore as a last resort.
There were a surprising number of people still out and about in Knockturn, they went in and out of shops with half-lit windows and broken signs. Some shops just plainly didn't have any at all. But it was far more cleaner than he'd expected when he was warned that only dark witches and wizards went there. The streets were even and the buildings weren't right next to each other, but not very far away either. The people that walked the streets were dressed in black robes, most with dark cloaks to hide their identities. People walked right passed each other without a single sign that they had noticed the other person, which he thought was probably a way to avoid causing unnecessary trouble. If the shops here really sold dark items, then the less trouble was probably better. Regardless, Harry pretended that he couldn't see anyone he passed as well, and didn't comment even when he walked right past an old woman (he thought it was a woman, it was hard to tell) and had a hard time believing she was human.
He followed the main street and was careful to avoid any dark corners or alleys, staying far away from anyone that looked like bad news—which to be fair, was pretty much everyone he saw—and in general just tried to remain unnoticed. He pulled his cap down as far as it could logically go and paid careful attention to the signs he saw. He needed to find an inn or something similar to stay at, as he very much doubted he would still be in possession of his things if he tried to get away with sleeping in some dark corner outside. That would only be a recipe for disaster.
Not that Harry hadn't done so before, but this was the Wizarding World, he didn't know how they reacted to kids sleeping outside alone. Not to mention that he was in an Alley notorious for all the bad people that hung out there.
And he was getting more and more exhausted with every minute that passed by as the adrenaline left him now that he was far away from Privet Drive and the Dursley's and he was getting more and more embarrassed every second at the way he had reacted to Marge's words. Before he went to Hogwarts, taunts like that wouldn't have gained any reaction from him at all. Evidently, he'd been getting soft while away from the muggle world.
Finally, after his feet had started hurting and his mind was exhausted to the point that all he wanted to do was sleep, he found an inn far away from the hustle and bustle of Diagon Alley.
It was shabby and the sign that proclaimed it be Belladonna's Inn was hung precariously on only one side, the color faded and vague. There was a single window that pointed out onto the street, but it was so dirty that Harry couldn't see anything through it. The door was made of wood, dark like the bricks that made up the rest of the two story building. If Harry hadn't been on the edge of passing out due to the shock and adrenaline fall he would have passed it by and tried to find a better looking place. A more respectable place. But as it was, he was tired, scared and utterly on his own and when it came down to it, it wasn't like the Leaky Cauldron looked all that respectable either.
So he opened the door to the inn, dragged his trunk behind him through the doorway and tried to look like he belonged.
The inside was just as shabby as the outside, the pack of tables in the right corner occupied by several scary and unusual looking people, with candles that barely provided enough visible light. To the left was the reception desk and bar, which he guessed was the same thing like at the Cauldron, and behind it stood a truly nasty looking woman. She was old, her hair a light grey that could almost be confused with white and eyes that were so pale he wondered if she was blind. She hunched her back and had a vast amount of wrinkles on her face. Her fingers were crocked and long, with nails painted a dark black. When she grinned at him, he could see sharp looking yellow teeth. All together, she looked like the stereotypical witch.
Harry swallowed his nerves, determined that he wasn't going to get driven away or be scared now and said, in as strong a voice as he could muster, "I need a room for the foreseeable future." he made sure he didn't butcher his words and tried to sound mature while looking her in the eyes to show he was serious, a task which was made harder by the fact that he still had to hide his scar. Thankfully, the poor light kept anyone from noticing the color of his eyes and he didn't think she knew who he was.
The witch only grinned harder in response, her glazed eyes giving her an edge of insanity. "Absolutely, we always welcome new guests! Be advised that we don't take refunds and if you can't pay... well let's just say that things can get ugly."
Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and made a mental note to visit Gringotts as soon as possible.
Her eyes practically sparkled when she saw his reaction. "Breakfast is included in the price, but any other meal will have to be paid for separately. For an extra fee, we can provide food for any potential pets. Be warned that any fights will get you thrown out and that we don't tolerate any snitching. What you see, you keep to yourself. The starting price for a single room is two Galleons per night."
Her voice was practically none-existent when she stopped speaking, that was how raspy it was and while he had the sneaking suspicion that he was getting ripped off, he was in no state to argue with her. Instead, he nodded his head at her price and grabbed the bronze key when she gave it to him together with a gleeful sounding, "That's room 6, on the second floor."
He gave her an absent-minded thank you and stumbled his way to the stairs that were hidden behind the counter in the corner. The steps echoed and groaned when he walked on them and it was all he could do to pull his trunk after him without letting go of it. When he was at the top of them, he hurried down the dark corridor to find his room, desperate to just get some sleep. Somehow, the corridor seemed longer than it should have reasonably been able to be based on the size of the building he'd seen from the outside, but he wasn't in the right mind to ponder on it.
When he finally found the door with the bronze number six on it, he dropped his trunk next to him and used both hands to wrestle the half-rusted key into the matching lock, turning the handle (just as bronze and rusted) with the kind of single mindedness that came from being so close to ones goals. He let out a breath of relief when the door opened inwards and Harry dragged the trunk in behind him with a grateful and exhausted smile on his face. He locked the door behind him and just left the trunk on the floor in the middle of the room, to tired to do anything else. He pulled off his shoes and the cap and fell onto the small bed with a groan, sinking into the warmth of the mattress gratefully.
He was asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.
— —
Morning arrived far too early.
Harry groaned and rolled away from the annoying light that had hit his eyes. When it didn't seem to do much good, he dragged the covers up above his head and burrowed deeper into the mattress. It was with this that he realized he wasn't at the Dursley's any longer—he wasn't allowed covers there, only thin blankets—and with an even deeper groan, he remembered what had happened the previous night.
He'd blown up Aunt Marge.
Well, maybe he hadn't literally blown her up, but he'd blown her up in the sense that she had looked closer to a balloon than a human being and then she had just sort of floated away. There was no way that the Dursley's would ever accept him back now. Not that he wanted to go back, but he knew that if he ever got the stupid idea to try, he'd only get left outside and possibly driven over by their car and subsequently die. There was no way he could ever go back.
A knock at the door brought his attention back to the present and he shivered at the raspy voice that joined it. "Oi, boy, breakfast is only open for another half-hour. If you want any,you better get up now!"
He called back a half-hearted reply that he'd get up and slowly pulled the covers down as he sat up. Now, in the light of day, he could see the room much better.
It was a relatively small room, though it was significantly bigger than the one he'd had at the Dursley's. The walls were a dark blue color, the paint faded but still good enough that there was no real need to get it redone just yet. There was a closet at the foot of the bed made of wood and in another corner of the room was a desk with a chair, bot made of wood as well but completely different shades of brown. Somehow, it still worked though. There was a bedside table next to the bed with an old stick of a thick candle on it and a small thin window opposite of where his head would be on the bed, which was where the annoyingly bright sunlight was coming from.
When he stepped off the bed to the floor, he was shocked by how cold it was, but it only took him a few seconds to get used to it. He nudged his trunk to the point where it stood in front of the closet so it was no longer in the way and pulled the lid open. Now that he was in Knockturn Alley, he really should invest in a trunk with better security, like an actual lock.
He tore through it until he came up with another pair of clothes. They were ones he had bought at Madam Malkin's before his first year at Hogwarts to wear under his robes, but they still fit well enough that he didn't see what the problem was and he had a feeling that if he tried to go about Knockturn in his cousin's hand-me-downs, he'd be a prime target to get robbed and killed which would be a Very Bad Thing. The clothes were simple, a pair of black trousers and a dark blue shirt. He really hadn't grown a lot since his first year, which was just unfair. He dressed in the clothes with nary a thought and dumped the old ones he had been wearing in his trunk as he closed it. He tried to tame his hair as well as he could with his fingers, at the very least drag it above his scar and then very firmly pushed the cap onto his head as an extra precaution. It was a worn grey thing, but it fit him and that was all that mattered.
Before he left, he grabbed the pouch with what little money he had left, just enough to pay for his room for the night and stuffed it in the pocket of his pants. He locked the door behind him when he left it, careful to stuff the key into the bottom of his shoe so he wouldn't loose it.
Harry made his way down the corridor—now absolutely certain magic was used to make it bigger than it was, because otherwise there was no way all those rooms would fit—and down the stairs that creaked just as much in the daylight. When he stepped out into the room it was to the pleasant smell of breakfast and he felt his stomach growl in response to it. He ducked his head low as he twisted past the few people that were milling about the large room. Interestingly enough, he didn't think any of them were the same ones that he had seen last night.
Eventually, he decided to just sit at the counter rather than trying to keep a table all to himself.
The owner (he assumed she was the owner) was still behind the counter and gave him a grin that was somehow even nastier in the light as she put a plate of breakfast in front of him together with a glass of water. He nodded his thanks and ate it without a word, careful to keep his head down the entire time. He hadn't come this far only to be caught now.
Once finished, he sat the glass back down on the counter and said to the owner, "I'll be leaving for a while to get a few errands done. Do you want me to pay for the night now?"
"Nah," she shook her head and gave him a sly glance, "we can do that when you check out, I keep a very careful tally of how much each of my customers owe me. You can get your errands done without worrying about lil' old me."
"Thank you." he said and grabbed onto his cap tightly as he twisted around the room on his way to the door. He pushed it open with one hand on his money and hurried outside without looking back.
— —
In the light of day, Knockturn Alley wasn't that different. It was still dark and just as dreary as during the night. The people that walked the streets were still as shady as before and still dressed in dark colors and he found that he fit in better now with his more respectable clothes on, but it was still nerve-wracking to walk among these people. Who knew what they were here for or what they'd done.
According to a watch hanging from a low tower, it was nearly nine in the morning, and he was making his way to Gringotts to get the money he needed to stay at the Inn for the rest of the summer. Even if it turned out that he'd gotten duped on the price, he wasn't about to start a fight over it, he couldn't afford that kind of attention.
It took him a while to find his way out of the Alley and into Diagon Alley, but eventually he managed it.
Diagon Alley was just as he remembered it, if slightly less busy due to the early hour but he had no doubt that the streets would soon fill out once a few hours passed. He passed the various stores and shops without paying them too much attention knowing full well that that was just an unnecessary temptation before he got more money from the wizarding bank. Instead he tried to make himself as uninteresting as possible as he passed by people wearing robes in all ages going about doing their businesses. He made sure not to bump into anyone and to keep a good grip on both his cap and his money, paranoid of the fact that as soon as he lost it he would get recognized and what if he was only seen as more guilty by running away?
Gringotts was a large marble building, so twisted and with so many turns he had no idea how it stayed standing beyond knowing it had something to do with magic. He made sure that he nodded to every goblin he passed on his way into the large building and ignored every other witch or wizard that was there as he went up to a desk empty of a line. The goblin behind the high desk was just as strange and frightening looking as his last visit, with long pointy ears, fingers that twitched where they laid on the desk and a terrifying set of teeth that he swore could be used to tear out someones throat.
He made very sure that he looked the goblin in the eyes the entire time he spoke to it. Who knew what would happen if he was rude.
"I need to get money from my vault."
The goblin said, in a distinctly bored voice, "Name."
He kept his voice even and low as he answered, "Harry Potter."
The goblin looked up sharply from the paper it had been staring at before and Harry glanced around him. He was relieved when he didn't find any proof that anyone else had heard him, there was no excessive staring or ogling, and looked back at the goblin who'd seemed to have gathered themselves. "Key."
Harry ducked his head and clenched his eyes shut as he uttered a sentence that made him feel something close to pathetic. "I don't have it."
The goblin snorted and stated. "We can issue you a new one, if given sufficient proof you are whom you claim to be."
Harry stared up at the goblin with wide hopeful eyes. "Absolutely, what do I need to do?"
The goblin grinned, a wide array of sharp teeth becoming visible as he waved a fellow goblin over. "Follow Sharpshoot to the Inheritance Office."
Harry looked over the new goblin but he really did need the money and as he didn't have his key (and why had he never asked for it before, it was kind of important?) he shrugged his shoulders, nodded to the goblin behind the desk and to the new goblin and followed Sharpshoot as they started walking.
They walked passed several more desks before they entered a door between two large marble columns and continued down the corridor that opened up. Sharpshoot didn't say a word as he led him down several twisting turns and split paths and within the first few minutes, Harry was utterly lost. He hurried after the goblin as it walked, slightly scared that if he got too far behind, he'd just get left behind. Somehow, he got the feeling it was very much something a goblin would delight in doing, leaving a lost wizard to die in this massive mess of hallways and turns. At one point, he was dead sure they'd walked in a circle, but he didn't dare bring it up with the goblin.
Eventually, after a long and confusing walk, they stopped in front of a big iron door. The door was inscribed with several runes, though Harry didn't recognize them. Sharpshoot knocked firmly three short times on the door before he took four large steps back, Harry following behind quietly. When a mountain of dust left the double doors—showing them to be silver rather than grey—as they creaked open with a loud groan, Harry was glad he had.
A headache inducing sound left them as they dragged on the stone floor.
As soon as they stopped moving, Sharpshoot waved his hands to indicate he should enter, but made no move to do so themselves. It made Harry slightly curious, but he knew better then to push it and after saying a brief thank you to the goblin, he entered the room.
His first impression was the size. It was big, with a large wooden desk in the middle of the room and a high ceiling. The walls were covered with runes like the doors and he could hear a thunk behind him as they closed. The entire rom was made of dark stone, in contrast to what he'd already seen of Gringotts which was almost blindingly white. Behind the desk sat the oldest looking goblin he'd ever seen.
The goblin stared at his eyes through both of their glasses. "Here for the inheritance test?" before he had a chance to answer, the goblin continued on, muttering, "Of course you are, this is the Inheritance Office. Well come on them, have a seat and let's see what you're worth."
Harry stepped further into the room hesitantly, the way the goblin projected a slight air of madness making him uneasy. Nevertheless, there was no reason to back out now, so he did as the goblin had said and sat down on the uncomfortable chair opposite the desk in front of the goblin.
"How will this work?" he asked, worried that he would have to do some strange ritual or something.
The goblin looked up from the desk they had been frantically moving paper around on with a knife in one hand and a quill in another. "Oh, it's nothing dangerous, you just drop some blood in a potion and we'll pour it onto an enchanted parchment and it'll tell us everything we need to know. Of course, the test costs 33 galleons, but you can pay that, right?" the goblin gave him a hard look and Harry gulped where he sat, fervently hoping that the test would say what he wanted it too—that he was Harry Potter and therefore had money—because otherwise there was no way he could pay for the test and who knew what would happen then. What if he got killed? Or abducted and imprisoned in a goblin prison? He wasn't sure he would be able to survive in a goblin prison.
"Of course." he nodded decisively at the goblin and tried to looked confident as he could.
"Great," the goblin said and continued, "now cut your hand and spill oh... ten drops of blood should be enough into the potion."
Harry accepted the knife (a very ceremonial looking thing made of silver and with a great many runes inscribed on it) from the goblin and carefully slashed the flat of his hand. He hissed in pain but didn't stop and once done he held his hand over the boiling cauldron the goblin had somehow produced while he wasn't looking. He counted every drop of blood as if fell in until he came to ten, then he pulled his hand back to himself and used his other hand to put pressure on the wound.
The goblin looked disturbingly gleeful as they stirred the potion and gave him a black towel as an clear afterthought.
Harry gratefully accepted the towel and used it to wrap around his hand as he hoped his magic would kick in enough to start healing him. That was something he'd noticed a long time ago, his magic always healed him fast. He'd never had an injury, no matter how bad, that lasted more than a week despite having never visited a doctor of any kind before going to Hogwarts. It seemed to work subconsciously, as he never had to think about it.
He watched as the goblin unrolled a long piece of parchment and basically bounced in their seat as they poured out the entire content of the potion on the paper.
For a few moments, nothing happened.
Then, with a slight hiss, black ink started spreading out on the parchment, spelling out words that he couldn't read upside down. It was as if someone was writing it down with a quill, the way the writing would sometimes stop and waver after certain words and the handwriting that was very clearly cursive. Harry was just glad he'd learned to read it during his time at Hogwarts or he wouldn't have had a clue what it was saying.
The goblin oohh'd and aahh'd as they read it.
Eventually, they put the parchment down and focused on Harry again in a slightly creepy way. "Well, Heir Potter, we'll send this on to your account manager and that will be that."
Harry deflated from the huge amount of tension he'd built up waiting. "But what does it say?"
"It says what it says." the goblin said in a flat voice.
Harry shrunk back in the chair the tone. "But could you be more specific, please?"
The goblin gave a large theatrical sigh and pushed up their glasses on their nose. "It says you are the heir to the Potter family, the Black family, the Slytherin family, the Gryffindor family, the Ravenclaw family and the Peverell family. Now would you please get out, I have more business to get done."
In shock at the numerous famous names the goblin had sprouted as if they weren't the founders of Hogwarts, Harry stood from the chair and gave a quick thank you to the goblin before he turned around, not really noticing anything around him.
He wasn't sure how he managed to get out of the office.
When he left it, Sharpshoot was still outside the door. Harry nodded to them and when they started walking, he followed along behind them as he'd done on the way in. After a few minutes of silence, Sharpshoot said, "I'll be taking you to your account manager, Dread, now."
Harry only nodded in response.
The way to the office of his account manager was just as confusing as the path before and Harry assumed it was some sort of security measure. After all, you could hardly rob a bank if you couldn't find the valuables. It still took a worryingly long time to find get to the office though.
The door to the office of his account manager was significantly less fancy. It was made of iron but no inscribes of any kind, although he was pretty sure there was some kind of chain of runes around the door. But Harry was still to confused to properly wonder about it, so instead he stepped through the door when Sharpshoot opened it and walked through it without hesitating. There was no reason to doubt now.
He glanced around the office, impressive looking but not nearly as much as the Inheritance Office. It was, simply put, just an office if one used by a goblin. Harry sat himself down in one of the chairs facing the desk without being told to and watched as the goblin simply stared at him for a moment before he snapped his fingers and the door closed, just like that. The goblin cleared their throat before saying, "Any questions before we start?"
"There was a list of which families I'm... the heir for?" the goblin nodded and Harry continued. "Do you know how that happened? That's some pretty famous names."
"Gryffindor and Peverell are the families from which the Potter's are descended from. You won the Slytherin lordship through the Right of Conquest at age one and your godfather, a Lord Sirius Black, named you his heir approximately one month after you were born. The Evans family which your mother comes from are just another offshoot of the Ravenclaw's, but as the last direct branch left and as your mother was the first to regain her magic in the line, you are the heir to it as well."
"Okay." Harry leaned back in the chair and let his thoughts drift.
If he understood the goblin right, the Gryffindor, Peverell and Potter families were basically the same thing, a package-deal so to speak, his godfather (and when was anyone going to mention that he apparently had a godfather?) had named him his heir to the Black family—which he'd never heard of before—and his mother had been a descendant of Ravenclaw. Slytherin came from defeating Voldemort when he was a baby, though he had a hard time he'd actually been the one to defeat him. No, he was sure it must have been something his mother had done, a ritual or special warding or something. It couldn't have possibly been him.
That was a fools dream.
He took a deep, calming breath and said, in a no-nonsene tone, "I came here to get money from my vault, could we talk about all this lordship business some other time? I have things I need to do."
Dread nodded. "Of course, you will not be eligible for your lordships until you're at least fifteen years old unless you get declared legally an adult by the Ministry of Magic. How much money would you like to get today?"
"One thousand Galleons, please."
"Certainly. Would you like an enchanted pouch with that?" Dread pressed on.
Harry titled his head to the side in thought. "What does it do?"
"It has an Anti-Theft Charm, an optional Disillusionment Charm that will conceal the pouch from anyone's eyes but yours, an Anti-Summoning Charm and a Weightless Charm. It can hold up to two thousand Galleons. To buy the pouch will cost you four Galleons. For a larger pouch that can hold five thousand Galleons you will have to pay nine Galleons."
"I think I'd like that, yes. The nine Galleons one please." Harry nodded his agreement to the goblin as he stood to go.
"Oh, before I leave, there was one more thing. I need a new key to my vault." Harry stated.
"Of course, and we'll release the ones currently being in use." Dread answered, smiling viciously in so much glee that Harry very carefully started to edge his way out of the office.
He did not want to be around a very obviously trigger-happy goblin for longer than he had to.