Elsewhere.

Harry was walking in a marketplace. The stalls were made up of wood, metal and cloth and behind them were strange dark figures hawking their gear.

A tentacle catches on his arm, 'I have a special for you,' the thing said, and Harry smiled but said he wasn't interested. 'You will be. Everyone is, in the end,' it promises and leaves.

Most of the things around him are curious, but not something Harry feels he needs to buy straight away. What would he do with a decapitated head? The colour in someone's eyes? His own were already colourful.

Harry was about to leave when he saw a glimpse of something white in the middle of the next stall. It was a flask with clear glass walls, and a silver-white liquid swirled inside, like mercury.

"What's that?" he asked the stall owner.

The person behind the stall had red eyes and a smile with far too many teeth. His hand was scaly and white, and his fingers were thin.

"This flask?" he said, picking it up. "It isn't for sale."

"Why would you leave it out if it's not for sale?" Harry asked again.

"Push it away, Harry Potter," the snake-man laughed. "It's not something that you want."

:::

Harry's bedroom, Grimmauld Place.

Two days after the attack.

4:57 p.m.

Harry woke up in stages.

There was a moment of double vision – he's seen this room before, with its cracked walls and water-stained floors. It had been covered in cobwebs. It flashes and fades. All the cracks smooth out, the water-stains change colour, and the cobwebs disappear until the wallpaper turns a uniform grey-blue.

He put one hand on his forehead. Slid it down his face. Then he realised he wasn't wearing glasses; it should be impossible to see every detail of the room. He looked up – everything was blurred. Situation normal.

The next moment, the room was darker and there were people around somewhere, talking in low hushed voices. The covers were warm and someone's hand was playing with his hair and for a second, Harry thought about dropping right back into sleep.

Red hair caught at the edge of his field of view.

"Mom?" Harry yawned. "What time is it?" All the voices stopped at once for a moment.

"Hey baby," and that was his mom's voice, he could recognise it now. "It's nearly five. It's okay, you're safe, go back to sleep," she was saying, and Harry turned to look at her. Her eyes were worried and a Viridian green – they always turned that colour when –

Someone was laughing. 'Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!' his mom was screaming, pleading and then HE SPOKE, the murderer, HE said 'stand aside', but his mom wouldn't do that – the blinding green light –

YOU SHOULD HEAR HOW SHE DIED, BEGGING FOR MERCY.

"Harry!" his father was yelling and the sound jolted Harry out of his – daydream? Conscious waking nightmare? "Everything's alright," James was saying, but how could that be, when Harry remembered –

"I got hit with the Killing curse," Harry whispered. There were things around him but he couldn't see them anymore. "I should be dead."

"No baby, you're fine, look you're here, you're okay now," Lily was saying, repeating over and over again, running her fingers over his shoulders like she could convince him through contact alone.

"You don't get it, mom, I should be dead!" Harry shrieked. "I saw the Avada Kedavra coming, I felt my heart stop beating, I should be dead!"

But that wasn't right. That wasn't how the story went.

"You both should be dead too, James and Lily," Harry said, without realising it, and the instant he said it, he wanted to take it back, but it was true, wasn't it?

The room fell silent. Harry couldn't stop shaking. He couldn't bring himself to raise his head and look at his parents. Something that Ron said stuck with him – they were killed.

Who was the woman sitting next to him then, whispering into his ears?

"Who are they, Sirius, where's my mom and dad?" Harry was saying. The shaking turned into something else, Harry was breathing faster and faster now, almost hyperventilating and he just wanted everyone to go away and disappear –

"What on Earth," his dad was saying, and his mom was holding onto his shoulders even more tightly than before. 'He's in shock' – that was Uncle Remus, his voice was always soothing and gentle, it had something to do with him being a werewolf and always trying to come across as non-threatening, Remus saying other things to his dad as well.

'Let me talk to him,' Sirius was saying in the background, "He'll probably want some water, can you go and get him some water Lily?"

Remus said something again and finally, his mom and dad left the room. When they left, something in Harry broke and he was scrabbling, trying to get out of the bed, and Sirius stopped him, by moving into the way. Since Sirius was right there, Harry just fell into him, and before he could move, Sirius had wrapped his arms around him.

Harry's head was against Sirius' chest. He could feel the other man's heartbeat, and the solid line of his arms and shoulders as his Godfather shifted to get a better hold. Remus was behind him, murmuring soft things, and slowly, Harry began to calm down.

"You weren't hit by the Killing Curse," Sirius started. "You just got the afterwash of it. Enough to knock you out but not enough to kill you."

"It was also enough to leave you with nightmares, I see," Remus said.

Harry didn't say anything.

"The guy who did it – he wasn't your friend. Ron was at the Burrow the whole time this was happening. His mother didn't want him leaving the house after what happened to his brothers. Do you understand?"

Harry still didn't say anything.

Sirius let out a breath. "You might not feel particularly safe right now, and that's okay. But we got the SOB who did it, he's dead and he's not going to be going after you again."

"Everyone in this house loves you," Remus added. "We've all been worried about you and we're all glad you're alright."

"I didn't mean to worry anyone," Harry finally replied.

"Worrying about you is a privilege, not an obligation," Remus said, and Sirius laughed. "Yeah, you know Moony's right. Everyone loves you and you know it, Prongslet. Even old Snivellus."

Sirius broke away from the hug, set Harry out at arm's length. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "I don't know, I just had a really bad nightmare. I haven't been sleeping well. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – freak out on everyone like that."

"You tell your mom and dad 'sorry' and I'm good," his Godfather continued, and with that, both of his Uncles left the room to talk to his parents.

Harry watched them leave and didn't know what to think. He knew he had been hit with the Killing Curse. He knew. But now that everyone was telling him he hadn't been – Harry wasn't so sure anymore.

The ceiling was off-white. It was uniform the whole way across, with little tiny details hand-carved into the stone. Harry didn't know why he thought there should've been cracks in the stonework.

"I'm thinking too much about this," Harry told himself. "Nightmares can be terrifying but the best thing about them is – they aren't real."

:::

Time passed in a haze. Since there wasn't anything wrong with him physically, Harry was free to come and go from his room. He thought about getting his broomstick out and flying around the block, but when he got to the front door, a sudden attack of nerves got to him and he went back. Harry went to his parent's room instead, sat in his dad's chair and flipped on his mom's gramophone. Went through her records.

They were mostly old love songs. Harry put a random one on and let himself drift.

He was vaguely aware of the front door opening and closing and opening and closing again, Azalea laughing somewhere in the house.

The song was coming to a close, when Bellatrix started screaming upstairs. Harry's whole body jerked – he was so surprised – but because he was also a Gryffindor, his first instinct was to run to the source of the trouble. He met Sirius at the bottom of the stairs and they ran up together, bolting to the hallway with Bellatrix's room.

Sirius got there first. He had longer legs. Harry almost ran into his back when Sirius stopped.

"That's new," he said.

It was Riddle. He was holding onto a duffel bag. And he had a large – no, absolutely gigantic – snake wrapped about his shoulders and waist. Parts of the body, which were as thick as Harry's thigh, hung over both of Riddle's forearms and the tail fell from Riddle's shoulder almost to the ground. Nagini was twelve feet long, with a body that shimmered khaki-green and brown.

"What. Is that?" Bellatrix yelled. "You said you were bringing your things over!"

The snake turned its head to look at Bellatrix.

"Don't mind Nagini," Riddle said, dropping the duffel at the door, and dipping his hand into his pockets for keys. "She's perfectly tame, house-trained and more intelligent than most people, I wager. I'll leave her inside the room and then we may both proceed downstairs."

Bellatrix cocked one hip. Put both hands on her waist. Trouble, Harry read.

"Where were you planning on leaving it?" she said, in a voice as sweet as sugar. "On the bed? I notice you don't have a carrier for it."

"She isn't going to move if I tell her not to," Riddle responded, with just the slightest hint of irritation in his voice.

"When I asked you to move in with me," Bellatrix explained slowly, "I meant toothbrushes. Clothes. I didn't mean, bring your big, bloody venomous snake over."

The snake hissed sharply – 'Insolence!' Harry heard, before Riddle calmed her down. 'Shhh,' he crooned. 'Pay no attention to her words; she simply doesn't understand how beautiful you are,' Riddle hissed softly, almost too soft to be audible. He was stroking her scales, and Harry had the sudden thought that Bellatrix's relationship with Riddle wasn't going to last very long at all.

More people were climbing the stairs now; the domestic was louder than Harry knew. Lily and Narcissa didn't seem too happy at seeing the snake either.

"There are children in the house," Bellatrix continued. "Why did you thing bringing your snake over was in any way a good idea?"

"Harry wanted to meet Nagini," Riddle said. He paused. "I heard about what happened and thought I'd bring Nagini in. Should I not have?"

"Harry!" Lily yelled. She looked like she wanted to give Harry a lecture right there and then, but was much too polite to do so in front of guests.

Sirius though. Sirius had always been on Harry's side. "Hey, hey, calm down Lils. It's my house. I'm saying it's fine. I'm sure she's tame. Does she bite?"

"No," was Riddle's answer. "Nagini is a Burmese Python. They're very easy-going. She's a big baby, she gets scared of everything. You won't see her slithering around the house."

'I'll show them scared,' Nagini hissed again, 'I'll eat one of their little ones and we'll see who's scared,' she said and Tom quickly hushed her again. Harry might've raised an eyebrow.

Lily backed off, but only a little. "If Sirius says it's fine—"

"—I do—"

"—then I won't argue. But you, young man," Harry cringed, "we're going to have a long talk about appropriate and inappropriate things to ask someone you've only just met."

"Mom! He was offering!"

:::

Bellatrix had to leave shortly before dinner. Harry wondered if that wasn't because of him – the snake was only there because he asked – and he went to tell her 'sorry.'

Out of all the Black sisters, she was the one Harry was the least closest with, and some of it had to do with her leaving the house after her divorce. He figured they'd need time to get used to each other.

"Don't worry your little head about it," Bellatrix told him when he expressed his regrets. "He does whatever he wants."

She patted him on the shoulder before she walked off; Harry noticed that she walked like a catwalk model, all straight backs and swinging hips. He grinned a bit, partly because the acknowledgement was always nice, and partly because Bellatrix favoured very close-fitting dresses.

Dinner was a normal affair this time, with all the Black house elves back and working. What was unusual was the way his dad stopped everyone before dessert and banged his spoon against his glass.

"There's going to be a public announcement tomorrow, but it won't hurt anyone to hear it a day early," James began. "It's related to what happened to my son today."

This got everyone's attention.

"This is before your time, Harry, Draco, Azalea, but back when I was at Hogwarts, there was a strange series of disappearances."

Murmuring started around the table. Harry caught Draco's eyes across the table; he looked equally baffled. It seemed like everyone knew what his dad was talking about except for the kids.

"I remember these," Andromeda was saying. "There was a very secret and exclusive group. They called themselves 'the Order of the Phoenix.' Supposedly it was a self-help society, a way to discard your old life and be reborn, like a phoenix."

Sirius shook his head. "It's not a self-help society. It's a suicide cult."

Harry had been thinking about dessert. He hadn't been thinking about what happened to him in Diagon Alley at all.

"Why would anyone form a suicide cult?" Dora Tonks asked.

"You get all sorts of people," James replied. "Some of them were very depressed and needed help, and others were just fanatical. Nostradamus made a prophecy about how everyone would die in the year 2000, and some people got together and decided they would make it happen."

"It was a huge conspiracy. People were disappearing off the streets left and right, and no one knew who to trust. Members of the Order would actively pressure try and pressure people into suicide, and then upon their death, resume the dead person's identity with polyjuice. It was very hard to leave."

"They stopped, all of a sudden," Sirius ended. "Sometime after you were born."

"Ron's alive," Harry said. "How is this related to Diagon Alley?"

The adults looked at each other. Finally his dad replied.

"The name came up again during a few incidents in Diagon," he said, with some hesitance. "I want you all to be aware – don't leave with anyone who claims to be from this radical existentialist fringe group, and if they try and make you leave – call out for an Auror straight away."

"Stranger-danger!" Sirius grinned. "Don't do what Draco did and ditch your friends at the floo. Everyone okay?"

"I didn't think it would be a problem!" Draco whined.

In the next few moments, Draco had been guilt-tripped enough (or peer-pressured enough) into giving Harry an apology. Harry left feeling satisfied.

Riddle left to talk to his dad, and Harry ended up playing Wizarding Snap with his sister. She told him about her spelling lists and he thought about what his dad and Sirius had said, imagined coming home and finding his sister, dead in her room.

Don't talk to anyone from the Order of the Phoenix. Okay dad, got it.

You don't have to worry about me.

:::