Harry, the hesitant assassin, found his strange new friendship with his future enemy to be rather satisfying. He was surprised to find that Tom was the Seeker for the Slytherin Quidditch team. Since one could not, he reflected, possibly imagine The Dark Lord as a Quidditch player, Tom's brilliance on the Quidditch field only seemed to deepen the chasm between the boy he was and the man he was to become. The more time he spent with Tom, the further Voldemort seemed to slip away, to disappear into some distant and uncomfortable place in Harry's brain.

Harry had been made Gryffindor seeker almost the moment O'Hare had seen him chase a snitch. "Merlin's Beard!" he had yelled, "I have never seen anyone fly like that on a Comet. Where the hell did you learn to play?"

Harry shrugged. "Oh, at home, with a couple of friends."

The moment he had said it, he knew how absurd this must sound. Which friends, exactly, would the home-schooled Harry Black have been playing Quidditch with? Minerva gave him an odd look, and he hastened to add: "Er… We used to have some boys from Durmstrang visit us in the summers…" It sounded like the kinds of visitors the Black family would have.

"Ah." Judging from the expression on his face, O'Hare did not care much for Durmstrang or its students, but he accepted Harry's explanation without any further comment.

Minerva played chaser, and Harry was pleased to find that she was quite good. I always knew you had it in you, Professor McGonagall! She was the only girl on the Gryffindor team – in fact, as Harry soon discovered, the only girl on any of the house teams.

Their team captain, O'Hare, a tall black-haired and blue-eyed Irishman, was the Gryffindor keeper. O'Hare, the keeper… The name seemed to ring a bell… Not Darren O'Hare! Harry almost fell off his broomstick in a most inelegant fashion the moment he realized that the Gryffindor captain had to be the legendary future keeper of the Kenmare Kestrels. He was almost tempted to ask for his autograph. But O'Hare is not the Keeper of Kenmare yet, any more than Tom is The Dark Lord…

They won their first house match against Slytherin with a good margin, even though Tom played extremely well. But Harry was faster, no doubt because he was used to a much speedier broom and a more rapid pace in the game overall. O'Hare yelled himself hoarse with delight when Harry caught the fluttering snitch in his hand twenty minutes into the game, and every misgiving he may have had about Harry's Durmstrang acquaintances seemed to vanish from his mind from that moment onwards.

But Minerva kept watching him. Almost everywhere Harry went, he could feel a pair of earnest brown eyes following him, and it made him uneasy.

And apparently, Minerva was not the only one keeping an eye on him. As Harry was heading to the Great Hall for tea after a particularly good practice session with Tom, who was by far the most challenging person he had ever played one-on-one with, a tall, dark-haired girl stopped him in the hallway.

"Harry Black. I want to speak to you."

She was very pretty, but her beauty was of a dark, brooding kind, and her expression rather haughty. Something about her was very familiar, but Harry couldn't quite place her.

She scrutinized him intently, and he felt himself beginning to grow very uncomfortable under her gaze.

"Who are you, and why have you assumed the name of Black?" Her voice was icy.

Harry felt a momentary panic, but forced himself to return her glance steadily.

"I'm Harry Black. Who are you, and what in Merlin's name are you talking about?"

She snorted. "You are no Black, you filthy impostor. I should know. I am Walburga Black, daughter of the ancient and most noble house of Black. My idiot brother Alphard raves about you, assuming you to be some long-lost distant relative. But I know better. I know our precious family tree better than anyone alive, and I know you are a pretender to our noble ancestral name."

Walburga? Oh, God, not Sirius' mother, the one in the portrait?

"I will destroy you, you filthy, presumptuous – " She pulled her wand and pointed it at Harry's chest.

Oh, hell. What do I do? It wouldn't break my heart to curse her, but she is, after all, Sirius' future mother…

But before Harry could react, an odd change came over Walburga. Her expression softened, and her eyes grew distant and strangely unfocused.

"Oh," she said, a sudden note of surprise in her voice. "I forgot. Of course, you are Procris' son. Aunt Cassiopeia mentioned that he had a son that he considered sending to Durmstrang. How silly of me to forget."

She smiled at Harry, a lovely and seductive smile that chilled him to the bone. "We should get to know each other better, Harry. We are after all both members of the same noble house, although not too closely related for comfort."

"I'm late for tea," Harry muttered rapidly. He headed towards the Great Hall, flustered, but not too much so to notice Tom leaning idly against the wall of the corridor a little way down, wand still sticking halfway out of his pocket.

"Thanks, Tom," Harry whispered as Tom caught up with him. "Confundus charm, was it?"

Tom chuckled. "Yes, and just in time, I would say. Of course, she will expect you to marry her now that you have been found to be of worthy blood."

Harry was appalled. "She wouldn't want to marry another Black, surely? Isn't that a little incestuous?"

Tom shrugged. "Perhaps, but she's got to ensure the continued purity of that Black blood you know."

Walburga Black? If Sirius' mother's maiden name was also Black, she must have succeeded in finding another worthy Black for her mate…

Harry recalled the screaming future portrait of Walburga in her beloved ancestral home, and he suddenly remembered that Sirius had once furiously slashed another portrait of a condescending lady to pieces when trying to break into Gryffindor tower. The Fat Lady. I always wondered what made Sirius attack her so savagely, but now I finally understand: That was not the portrait that he really hated, just a substitute… Poor Sirius.

"By the way," Tom said conversationally as they entered the Great Hall, "I wouldn't mind knowing what your real name is, you know. Just between you and me. I promise I won't tell Walburga."

Harry could feel his heart thumping in his chest. "I dare say I will tell you, one of these days," he muttered as they parted and headed off to their different tables.

Walburga may have believed him to be among the blackest of the Blacks, but Harry found that the brown-eyed detective trailing him so earnestly these days was not so easily convinced. He had escaped to the library one afternoon to get away from Walburga's sudden constant desire for his company, only to run into Minerva. She was holding an impossibly large ancient vellum-covered book in her arms, and she faced him with a flush of indignation.

"You've been lying, Harry!"

Harry glanced around in horror, but no one else was within earshot.

"What do you mean, Minerva?"

Her otherwise kind brown eyes flashed at him. "Oh, you know perfectly well what I mean! I saw your little interchange with Walburga in the hallway the other day. Well, you may have confounded her into believing that you are who you say you are, but you are not, are you? I have studied the entire Black family history – it's quite well documented, you know, and you are no Black. Who the hell are you? And what are you playing at?"

Oh, God. What do I say? I can't lie to her, but I can't tell her the whole truth either.

"Minerva," he said slowly. "You are right. I'm not a Black. But I'm here because I've got an important mission to fulfill, and I need you not to blow my cover. A lot is at stake here, more than you could possibly imagine."

She looked at him, her brown eyes filled with both wonder and hesitation. "Tell me who you really are, then, Harry, and tell me what this mission is."

Harry swallowed. "The thing is, Minerva, I can't really tell anyone. You are going to have to trust me."

He saw that she was about to protest. "Look, Minerva, I did not confound the school records myself to enter my name as Harry Black. Only Dumbledore could have done that. Go – go talk to Dumbledore. I don't think he can tell you much, but he can tell you whether I can be trusted."

"Dumbledore?" He could see that she was thinking hard. "Dumbledore himself confounded the records? Yes, he must have; they are protected by spells that would only allow a Hogwarts teacher to alter them. Odd, though, that a regular teacher could have done it, I would have thought that only the headmaster…"

Or the future headmaster, perhaps?

She sighed, but nodded. "Yes, I will speak to Dumbledore. If he vouches for you, I will trust you. I trust Dumbledore's judgment."

You always have, and always will. Even about Snape…

"But Harry – " Minerva's big brown eyes looked at him with worry.

"Yes?"

"Whatever it is that you have to do, whatever your task is, just be careful of the Slytherins. You are spending way too much time with Tom Riddle."

"Oh." Harry could feel himself flush. "He's – he's not a bad sort, really, once you get to know him."

"He's a Slytherin, Harry. Never forget that."

"And Gryffindors and Slytherins are never friends, are they?"

Minerva shook her head. "No, they are not, and they should not be. The Slytherins have a cruel ambition that you and I are better off not being tainted by."

"But – but surely there can be good in a Slytherin as well?" Harry wondered to himself why he felt it necessary to argue with her about this. "Doesn't history tell us that even Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin were friends?"

"Gryffindor and Slytherin!" Minerva sank into a chair, a strange expression on her face. "Gryffindor and Slytherin! What do you know of them and their friendship, Harry?"

"Well…" Harry was puzzled. "Only what everyone knows, I suppose. They used to be friends, and then they had a falling out over whether only pure-blood wizards should be admitted to Hogwarts."

"Yes, that's what the history books tell us, but history also hints at something more."

"What?"

Minerva sighed. "It's all in Hogwarts, a History. Honestly, doesn't anyone ever read that book? There are suggestions that the friendship between Gryffindor and Slytherin was more than mere friendship, that there was…" she swallowed "a – a sort of unnatural and perverted love between them."

Oh. Harry didn't know what to say.

"Just be careful, Harry, that's all. Don't be taken in by the Slytherins."

Harry stared after her as she went off in search of Dumbledore. He knew that Minerva would receive the assurance that she needed – so why did he feel so uneasy? He tried to shake the feeling off and attempted to complete a twelve inch essay on the strained relationship between the Wizengamot and the Great Council of Bagdad in the Middle Ages. He had a suspicion that most of it turned out complete nonsense.

That night Harry dreamed of Gryffindor and Slytherin and their unnatural love. His dreams were sweet and strange and filled with images of wild forbidden things that lingered in his mind long after waking. And in the morning he found, to his horror, that his bed was wet and sticky. He hastily whispered a spell that removed the shameful substance from his sheets.

He dressed himself rapidly, glad that no one else was awake yet to see the flush on his cheeks. He pulled out his Defense Against the Dark Arts book and began to re-read his assigned homework, but somehow, there seemed to be no defense against the image of Slytherin and his grey eyes…