6th of January, 1994

He wished for the death of the whole world, an everlasting age of winter and ice to freeze the land and his own grief.

Barring that, he wished he could turn back time, go into the Forest upon Samhain eve and steal him away.

What were those things he'd only barely begun to treasure, the snippets of life before him that he had tried to turn into a hoard? Was it the embraces of an emaciated man, who seemed never content to let him go? A sparkle in the grey when a half-told joke was brought up, when mischief was their main doing during their Hogwarts days?

So simple; to compartmentalize, to divide and split apart forever, shove it into neat boxes, forget the emotions they all evoked.

So simple and beyond his reach.

He struggled and he prevailed over the rage that threatened to flood his conscious mind.

What use would rage be, when bereft his wand he was made incomplete and near powerless?

It was a lump of coal that traveled down his throat as he pushed against it. It was a distraction he could not afford. Not now.

Rage - stalwart and faithful as a hound - would have to wait.

Such was the situation that he had not even thought to question anyone about Eagala's absence and his wand's whereabouts. Not when the world had moved on without him and brought with it a number of problems upon his awakening.

The predominant one was the elderly witch that was currently in front of him. She was, in fact, the very first person he saw upon waking, standing over him in silence and observing him with an unblinking and unyielding gaze. It reminded him of a buzzard he once saw in a zoo, that watched the meat they were to serve to him, as though it was something he might refuse.

"You're her boy," said the witch, never bothering with introductions or common courtesies, her face set in a stern, but also pleased, expression. Grey eyes observed him most keenly, barely blinking, while he still fought, in vain, to hold onto some remnants of a dream that distressed him greatly. Grey eyes and a bun of hair, black as coal, black as... "Yes, her boy indeed."

He flinched, and would have burrowed through the bed if he could, when she took him by the chin, unkindly, and twisted his head this and that-a way. Vaguely, he was aware that they were not alone, that some small distance behind the witch stood Madam Pomfrey and McGonagall and that their mouths were moving, though sound failed to reach him. Magic kept them at bay, he guessed as much, and they were none too pleased about it, yet the witch before him paid them no heed.

She withdrew her fingers from his chin, but did not give him any reprieve. "Speak, boy, or has the close encounter with the dozen of Dementors taken your voice, along with your sanity," she taunted, "and Sirius?"

"Who are you?" he bluntly asked. The mere mention, her casual tone, of his name prodded the wound in his heart.

The obvious spite and scorn in his voice seemed to amuse her. "Why, don't you know? I'm your Aunt, of course."

Aunt. The only one he ever knew was a pitiful excuse for a human being, one for which he had plans. Aunt. That implied family. That implied — in the back of his mind, the hound of rage howled and bit at its leash — neglect.

The word, "Aunt?" came in a half-choked, half-formed laughter that he strangled in its infancy.

She nodded. "Aunt. A great here or there, but an Aunt all the same."

He shook his head, as though that would move reality itself and mold it into something more to his liking. He might have gone further with this thought had it not been for the arrival of the Headmaster, who with barely any movement from his wand dispelled whatever barrier kept the others away from his bed and this strange witch. She turned sharply on the spot, and he fully expected to see a wand in her hand, to curse her way out of the room; such was the swift change in her demeanor.

The surprise was substantial when she addressed the Headmaster with civility. "Dumbledore, good of you to come."

If the old wizard was at all surprised by the witch, he showed no sign of it. Yet Hadrian was startled to see past the surface, beneath the shallow calmness, where fierce determination lurked. However, any thought on why these people gathered in the room, in such a display, had vanished when Dumbledore addressed the unknown witch that still stood very near his bed.

"Miss Black, I had given you leave to enter Hogwarts, to come and collect your nephew's body. What I did not give permission for was to erect boundaries within the school and prevent the staff from approaching you, especially so when the patient," he inclined his head towards Hadrian, "has very little business to do with you."

Barely had Hadrian begun processing what he heard, he refocused on the conversation as the witch responded.

"For the barrier, my apologies. For the rest, I have right."

Dumbledore shook his head in a placating manner. "This is Hogwarts, Miss Black. You are not an attendant of the school, you aren't part of its staff, nor do you hold a position on the Board of Governors. You are allowed here as courtesy from me, despite all that your nephew and you yourself had done in the past. Other than what I allow, you have no rights here whatsoever."

She swiftly replied with, "Right of blood. Right of kin," fervor in her voice.

He couldn't see the look on her face, but he imagined it to be akin to triumph, if the perplexed expression on the Headmaster's face was anything to go by. Unfortunately, he still had very little knowledge of what they talked about. All that he gathered from the events of the hour so far was that in front him stood Sirius' Aunt, whom he couldn't ever recall hearing about.

"The boy is not yours."

There, that fierceness, one just barely glimpsed at, bared in open display. Gone, the gentle grandfather.

"He is my sister's blood. My blood. That makes him mine."

"And in him, he has the lineage of several others, yet they did not seek to claim him, nor could they."

"It does not matter. The boy is all but ours in name." When it seemed the arguing would continue to go back and forth without conclusion, she resolved the matter by simply asking, "Have you not wondered why he would not wake? Your Healer here," she inclined her head towards Madam Pomfrey, "told me the boy had slept for more than a full week now, without ever showing a sign of consciousness or any response to spells and potions."

The silence was ominous, and the tension kept growing. Who knew when it might have ended, were it not for Hadrian.

"Would someone explain to me what is happening," he asked, before looking at the Headmaster and adding a, "sir?"

For all his usual vague approach in providing answers, the Headmaster was fairly straightforward this time. "Ever since the night the Hogwarts contingent of Aurors and Dementors had found you and Sirius Black on Hogwarts grounds, you had been unconscious, Mr. Potter. Today is the ninth day since then. None here could find a way to wake you and trust me when I say that several parties, one of them being the Ministry, had a keen interest in hearing your account of the night in question."

Of course they wanted that, of course they'd seek to condemn him before he could even properly asses his surroundings.

As eager, and still so very much full of rage, as he was to try and weave webs of deceit and half-truths, he was prevented from doing so. No, not by the Headmaster, nor by his Deputy or the Medi-Witch, but by her, this would-be Aunt of his.

She turned to the side, allowing him to look upon her face once more, and said, "Say nothing. You owe them nothing."

While that was a sentiment he would heartily agree with in an instant, he still wasn't keen on taking advice from a stranger.

"Who are you?" he repeated his earlier question.

"Cassiopeia," she answered, her bearing regal, a proclamation and a challenge to the world, "of the house of Black. Born to Cygnus Black and Violetta Bulstrode. Pollux and Dorea were my siblings." The last name rang familiar in his mind and she saw it on his face. "The name is known to you because her husband was Charlus Potter, and the two of them had a child together: James Potter."

Dorea Potter. Dorea Black. No wonder the name sounded familiar. Back in his first year, when he'd been zealous in finding a way to completely avoid going back to the Dursleys, he had pursued a myriad of avenues for doing so. One of them had included perusing a few archives which were available in the Hogwarts library, and even one book titled "Nature's Nobility"; originally written by one of the Notts, it had been updated several times, both to add and to redact certain passages from it.

It had all been done in search of a family. Distant family, far more distant than Petunia and her lot, but family all the same.

And it was all for nothing.

What little he could find of familial connections with other families still living in recent times were at least four or five generations back, which to a muggle might not sound all that much, but to wizards and witches, who could live anywhere up from one to three centuries, full with vitality, it was meaningless. Too much time had passed. And the Blacks... well, he'd only skimmed through their sordid history, which he had to specifically search for in older editions of the Daily Prophet and the like which predated them, but had gone out of business in the meantime.

The papers, provided they had been true, had not painted a pretty picture.

Hadrian hadn't even known of Sirius at the time, let alone that he was his godfather, that his father had been like a brother to him, and his mother a sister, so when he came across mention that the two remaining Blacks in Britain were sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban, he simply shelved that information and moved onto other matters. Going further back in the past, he learned that the rest of them were dead.

Even Cassiopeia Black was rumored to have died, but that was clearly not the case.

Back then, it had been a dead end. Now? He didn't know. Cassiopeia seemed insistent on claiming him... how and why and what it actually meant, the answers to those three questions eluded him, but he suspected he was about to be enlightened.

As though she had been reading his mind - something he felt was unlikely as he felt no intrusion whatsoever - Cassiopeia said, "All these past days have been spent in slumber, but it was not a dreamless one, was it? Tell me, what have you dreamed of?"

It came more easily this time, as if brought to the fore by her question. The people behind the witch looked at the two of them with great interest, and he wasn't quite that eager to reveal the contents of his dream, but felt like he had to chance it.

To be free from the Dursleys, their disgusting muggle existence, to be free and... a gamble, but where would the die fall?

He turned away from his thoughts and looked up into the faces of those surrounding his bed, with Cassiopeia to the side, and Dumbledore, McGonagall and Pomfrey at the foot of it. There was no time to be spared for deliberation. He was uncomfortable with the calmness in the Headmaster's blue eyes and... something else that he never wished to see in another's gaze when it fell upon him: pity.

That, more than anything else that might have shown itself in those serene eyes, made up his mind. The die was cast.

He wet his lips. "I dreamt of a tree. A vast and ancient tree. Its branches were great in number and they were all intertwined. Every branch bore unnatural fruit upon it." The dream, though he would be more likely to call it a nightmare, hadn't seemed to have lasted for long, from his perspective, and yet they had told him he had been asleep for more than a week. Nine days. Nine days in a void as black as the night, with a tree whose bark was even darker, whose fruit were the heads and faces of strangers, monsters and demigods, and the cacophony of distant voices; all fell silent near the end, before he awoke.

It made little sense to him perhaps, but to Cassiopeia Black?

One only needed to take a single glance in her direction and see the satisfaction of being proven right.

Answers were not forthcoming and the boy said very little once he'd ascertained his situation. He didn't understand the position he was in, didn't realize that keeping quiet was not an option for him. If he did not elaborate on how he had come to be by Sirius Black's side to the Headmaster, then he would have to do so when the Ministry sent someone.

And they would not be as nearly as accommodating as Dumbledore.

So they had moved the child to a different room, one where he could have some privacy and where they could keep hidden the presence of a Black from the rest of the school, thus preventing countless rumors from springing forth. But they'd not left him on his own entirely, and though Snape had expressed his disapproval of being used as a guard for anyone, he still did what Dumbledore asked of him, which left the Headmaster and McGonagall free to retire to his office for a private talk.

Before engaging in any sort of conversation, Dumbledore had begged for a little time as he took one of the many pieces of parchment sitting on his desk, albeit this one was blank, and started writing a concise and brief letter. When he was done, he sealed it in a plain white envelope, wrote the intended recipient's name and went to one of the windows. Barely had the window been opened and in came one of the school's owls, summoned by some odd, unspoken connection from Dumbledore.

The Headmaster proffered the envelope to one of its claws and then imparted a few words to the avian.

"To Amelia Bones, if you please, with great haste."

The owl puffed out its chest, hooted but once and took flight back through the opened window, after which it was closed.

But Dumbledore had yet one more thing to do. He called upon one of the House Elves and asked him to prepare some light meal and tea for two. The House Elf nodded and promised it would be done swiftly, popped away and left them alone.

Minerva McGonagall was by no means an impatient person (many years with countless students proved that at least) but even so, she was not fond of these little delays, so she jumped straight into the heart of things when she saw her chance to do so.

"Why a letter, Albus, and not a simple Floo call?" inquired McGonagall. "She'd arrive here more quickly."

Dumbledore, sitting behind his desk, nodded sagely. "No doubt she would, but what would that accomplish? No, better to give Mr. Potter a chance, minute as it may be, to understand his position, rather than swarm him with questions. And, I think, better to give him some time to hear what Miss Black seeks to offer him, lest he grasp at it blindly, from desperation."

"Albus, you cannot be seriously considering this... this insanity! Surely, it would be nothing less, to hand the boy over to any Black, let alone Cassiopeia Black! Does your memory need refreshing? Do you not recall the circumstances of her departure?"

Minerva McGonagall did not like Harry Potter. She was fair (at first) as she was with everyone, but the boy kept butting heads with Neville and others so much, and so often with brutality and viciousness unbecoming of children, she could not help but want to keep the students of her House away from him. She had a number of reasons to dislike him, and they had not been all whisked away once Albus had confided in her what had gone on in the Dursley household. It had been just a single day after finding out all that, and like poorly digested food, it had yet to fully settle down. She doubted it ever would.

And there was something more, something that Albus held back on about the boy. Something not as troubling, but important.

He would tell her, in time, she didn't doubt it. But that didn't mean she had to like his penchant for keeping secrets.

What he told her so far was more than enough. To think, that James' and Lily's son, or anyone's child for that matter, would be treated in such a way, was completely appalling. No one deserved it. And while much of the blame for the boy's closed off behavior, his acting and lashing outs could be laid at the feet of the Dursleys, Minerva had consciously acknowledged that him being sorted into Slytherin had not helped matters either. Oh she was not one of those fools who thought all Slytherins would grow up to be dark witches and wizards, but the lure of it was always stronger there than it might be in any other House.

And for someone like Harry Potter, who had lived through a harsh childhood, putting him in an environment which would help him close himself off even more, nurture resentment for muggles, become further self-reliant and isolated... hardly helpful.

To think, she could have hardly thought it could get worse than finding out about his life back at Privet Drive. And then that damnable witch came to Hogwarts. As if her original reason for coming here was not audacious enough, now she sought to take Lily's boy, take James' name from him, and have him proclaim himself a Black. What foolishness. What insanity.

"Insanity it may be," said Dumbledore, "but it is one of the options."

His calmness, not for the first time, infuriated her.

"Not one you would approve of, I hope."

At that, he smiled. "No, I most certainly would not. While there are possible benefits in placing Harry Potter with some surviving kin of his, we both know how he has fared in that regard before when I thought my judgment well and sound —"

"Albus, enough!" she snapped at him. "I will not sit here and listen to you wallowing in grief. I sincerely doubt you'd have placed the boy with the Dursleys while knowing how they would come treat him in the future. No one could have known that, not even you. None of us are infallible. But you seem to forget that at times and take too much as your own burden to bear."

"Minerva, the boy all but took to begging to stay at Hogwarts for the summer. He is far from the first, or the last, who had done so. Most had trivial reasons, a few did not. I had originally thought his reason was no more than what most muggleborns, or muggle-raised in his case, had: a chance to learn more about magic, to slip away from the mundane and the troubles they might have back home. For most muggleborns I have known, there had been no real abuse in their pasts, mostly a childish desire to explore a new world. For the few that had, that abuse had been evident in their physical or mental health, and they were taken care of. With him? There was sign of neither. The former healed, the latter a closely guarded secret in a House full of other children that also valued secrets, for reasons of their own. Despite the childhood he had, Harry Potter had not begged. To do so would mean to demean himself, to uncover what had happened and he was so very careful in obscuring the matter."

"It was not Severus who helped him in hiding this, I hope?"

Old doubts. One could not fault her for suspecting him.

Albus shook his head. "I doubt he would have kept silent if that were the case. For all his bias and contempt that lingers on, it is unlikely." The Unbreakable Vow made sure of that. "No, this was someone outside of Hogwarts who took Harry in when he separated on purpose from Hagrid that first day in Gringotts. Someone looked to his health, found it lacking and took steps to mending it. In less than two months, they had healed most of the physical damage, and those nutritional potions that Mr. Potter obtained from Severus finished their work. Had they not done so, I have no doubt that the markings on his front and back would be more than silvery lines across his skin."

"And I suppose that if one were to ask, the boy would never reveal the identity of his benefactor?" she asked and, after the odd moment or two of silence, in turn received reply in form of a single nod. "What a mess."

The elderly wizard sighed and would have continued speaking if the House Elf hadn't arrived with a pop, carrying a large tray, perfectly balanced, with two plates full of steaming soup, some bread on the side, and a serving of tea for two with a kettle.

"Headmaster sirs, Deputy Headmistress sirs," the House Elf's head bobbed in recognition, before setting it all up on the desk.

"Thank you, Tifty," said Dumbledore, giving the Elf a small inclination of his head in return, whose face sported a smile that spread from ear to ear, before it vanished from the room with yet another pop. While McGonagall had taken upon ignoring the meal before her and instead settled for the hot brew of tea, Dumbledore ignored both altogether.

McGonagall took a deep sip, before voicing one of her thoughts. "Would he have confided in us had we not sent Hagrid to collect him for his first trip to Diagon? What if we had sent Pomona or Filius? What if I had went in his place?"

Dumbledore steepled his fingers together and leaned forward on the desk. "What if, Minerva? It is quite the proverbial sand-trap for any who venture into the realm of 'what ifs', for all the innumerable possibilities that might have occurred if only but one choice had been different. What if I had found someone else to take Harry Potter in? What if I had occasionally visited the Dursley household or arranged for someone to keep an eye on them? What if, what if, what if... on and on, dear Minerva."

He raised one of his hands to forestall her reply.

"I chose Hagrid for his friendship with James and Lily, both of whom had found it in their hearts, amidst those troubled times, to befriend and keep company with such an odd man that even most of the other students ignored, at best, or considered him beneath them and harassed him, at worst. I chose him because I wished for Harry to hear of their school-days from someone who knew them for more than their grades and classwork. There were times, before they ever became a couple, when each of them had visited our benevolent, if at times misguided, groundskeeper, and provided him with comfort. I chose Hagrid so that Harry would come to see and hear all that was best about them. Hagrid is not to blame, Minerva."

"Nor are you," she butted in.

"Perhaps, perhaps not. But you cannot deny that the boy has little reason to care for me." Albus Dumbledore's smile was a rueful one. "Odds are, the boy might even hate me, yet conceals it deep beneath. One way to change that would be to finally assume the role I was given by the last will of James and Lily: his guardian. But I cannot force it on him, that much is clear."

"And what if he's undecided, and does not budge towards either choice? What then, Albus? Do you think Cassiopeia Black will be content to idly sit by and wait for him to make up his mind, at his own pace? She's already quite intent on taking the boy, and it certainly doesn't help that she claims that the boy slept for so long only because he was waiting for a Black to wake him."

"Ah, but that part is true, Minerva. Say what you wish of her, but she did not lie in that regard. The magic with which she seeks to press her claim is not a force which can move mountains, for all her bluster - had I suspected what was going on, I might have ended the dream-state myself - but it is a substantial one nonetheless. Were we to be summoned before the Department of Inheritance and Wills, ultimately, yes, my custody would be reaffirmed, as the Potters' will left no wiggle room on the matter. But the so-called family magic would present a fine argument in favor of Miss Black, for she would undoubtedly tell that the boy had suffered under my care, which had given said magic a point of entry."

"So-called family magic?" asked McGongall with pursed lips.

"Had we more time at our disposal, I would indulge your curiosity to the fullest extent, my dear friend. Alas, we do not, so I shall attempt to be brief." The elderly wizard rose from behind his desk and started pacing across his office, wandering from one bookshelf to another, fingers brushing against the mahogany wood and the spines of many books.

Yet despite the Headmaster's wandering, Minerva's eyes couldn't help but be drawn to one particular corner of the room, occupied by a very large, angled table, upon which laid a glass cage. Sunlight, weak with winter's cold embrace though it may have been, fell upon the black soil contained within and the tree branch, in full bloom, slightly above it.

For a moment, she thought it an odd decoration — odder still for Albus whose trinkets tended to be more exotic looking — and nothing more.

But then in the shade of the branch's dark green leaves, she saw something move. Once focused, her gaze easily perceived the coiled body of a snake, lying in wait, patiently. The serpent's head followed the movement of the Headmaster through the office, and just on the very edge of hearing, Minerva thought she heard it hissing angrily as its forked tongue flickered out.

"Magic is a temperamental force," Dumbledore began, "and one needs to be in full control of his faculties to use it appropriately. Magic is shaped by our wills," a wand was suddenly there, held tightly between his fingers, "we alter the very fabric of reality at our whim, and too often we forget how astounding that truly is." Colours burst forth from the tip of the wand and in the air, suddenly, dozens of creatures were conjured: winged and wingless, improbable in shape and yet there were others, quite mundane. "But magic did not spring forth into existence alongside us, it was here far, far long before the first spell was woven together and bound with words. Words of power, Minerva. Words of power. With those words many a wizard and witch crafted wonders, and in equal measure wrought horrors, in this world of ours."

All that he'd conjured, the unseen and seen, the sylphs, he vanished with but one tap of his wand.

She looked into his eyes, past those half-moon spectacles, and saw passion, saw life, saw the joy he gained from teaching.

They were twinkling for the very first time since they'd entered this office.

It was reminiscent of bygone times, back when he was but a Professor, she a student, and Minerva smiled in fondness of it.

"But these words of ours are not all there is to magic. Some would say all else, all outside of our purview, is to be deemed unimportant — wild magic at best, chaotic energies at worst — but that would be a lie. That would be ignorance, and I can think of only a few more deplorable sins than willful ignorance. Magic is everywhere," Dumbledore spread his wide to the side, his beard cracking open where his mouth laid beneath as he smiled, "even here, in this room. In Hogwarts itself! I need not act, I need not impose my will on the world to make magic appear, it is already there. Sometimes, it may wait for us to act, to give it form, to give praise to its magnificence with the movement of our wand. Other times, it is beyond the ken of any human mind and acts on its own for whatever reason or purpose. Sometimes, we are the conductors, and other times we are the orchestra."

These theories were not new to her. From time to time, throughout the ages, a witch or wizard would appear and repeat them, some unknowingly echoing those who came before them, others trying to use those echoes as proof for their claims.

Her smile had turned slightly sharp at her mentor's words. "My, I was not aware you were one of the believers, Albus."

He lowered his arms, wand absent from his hands as he clapped them together. "I must confess that I am not. But they do have some interesting things to say on matters of magic itself, and to ignore them simply because they might be wrong would have been unpardonable on my part." Dumbledore chuckled a hearty laugh. "I digress and I apologize. Allow me to continue, I promise I will not lecture you for much longer, my dear former apprentice. Now, where was I — ah, the conductors, yes. There are some forms of magic which leave their imprints on the caster, a brand some would say. Wouldn't you agree?"

McGonagall nodded. "Dark magic, certainly, though I cannot say so for any others."

"The Dark Arts, yes." Dumbledore sighed. "A most terrible branch of magic for any witch or wizard who are desperate just enough and think themselves above the dangers of temptation and corruption, both of which are inevitable to those drawn to them. But those are not the only Arts that we know of, are they? No, there are the Healing Arts, commonly accepted and welcomed everywhere, for none would deny their benefits and benevolence; so starkly different from the aforementioned."

"And there are many other Arts as well, some forgotten, some of no use any more. From what little knowledge I have managed to acquire on the matter of family magic, I can only say that it is similar, yet not the same, as any of the Arts. We know that they have a pull of their own, always enticing its practitioners deeper into their embrace. But whereas you need experience beforehand with them, family magic has no such perceived conditions. The only requirement is the right blood. How it came to be? The few who know the truth say very little." He cast his gaze at the portraits hanging on the walls. "They are a private lot."

"Our allegiance to Hogwarts does not negate our family's," sniped a high-pitched witch's voice from one of the paintings.

Other paintings echoed her sentiments. Minerva felt irritation at their show of defiance, but said nothing as the other portraits started arguing with the first lot, an incoherent chorus of voices from throats long since dead and dry.

Albus' eyes turned towards one of the portraits that remained quiet throughout it all: a wizard dressed in green and silver robes, the former flowing over the latter, with semi-long dark hair and neatly trimmed beard, that sat in a throne-like chair.

"And what of you, Phineas? No words of wisdom? No desire to enlighten the misguided?"

All the other portraits fell silent at Dumbledore's words, and waited to see if a response would be given.

"Any words I have would be lost on a muggle-lover like you," the man's deep voice boomed, "you've proven as much many times by now. Children break the rules that endanger lives and you reward them with points! You give them merits and awards! Bah," he spat out, "they deserve a good flogging. Spare the rod and spoil the child, Dumbledore."

"We shall have to agree to disagree, and for as long as I am Headmaster here, no child shall suffer corporal punishment."

Phinneas' face bore a cruel smile when he said, "Perhaps so, but what of this boy you're now discussing? Not so apt at handling him, were you? Is that a loophole you came up by yourself, hmm? No child harmed here, no, but what happens in the muggle world, stays in the muggle world, eh?" His laughter was as cold and cruel as his grey eyes.

Dumbledore ignored the jibe. "How strange that you would find amusement in the suffering of one of your descendants."

If possible, the man's already scornful features turned harsher. "Don't you dare, Dumbledore! No offspring of a mudblood would be counted among the Black, not even if he were to carry the last drop of our noble blood in this world."

"And yet, here we have a Black," said Dumbledore, "who says that he ought to be numbered amongst your most noble and ancient family."

The once-Headmaster of Hogwarts rebutted it quickly. "Deranged, no doubt, from old age or womanly depression. In the end, what she wants matters not. You won't let the little half-blood slip from your grasp again, and that settles the matter."

"Still blind to the world and its ways as ever, Phineas, save when it's convenient for you. Yes, the boy will remain with me, but not because I seek to deny anyone. However, I wonder, will this satisfaction of yours — in the purity of your family's bloodline — persevere once Cassiopeia Black has passed away and no more of your blood remains in this world?"

"We will survive. The Blacks always survive," he stubbornly persisted, even in the face of an undeniable truth.

What else Dumbledore might have said to him was not uttered, for the former Headmaster had risen from his chair and walked out of his portrait, his robes billowing behind him. The rest of the portraits descended into chatter upon his departure.

"Not even death had changed him much. Pity. Were he otherwise inclined, he could teach us much."

McGonagall disagreed. "His lessons would be tainted by his bigotry, Albus, and thus they'd be ever held suspect to any true value."

"One must never give up hope, Minerva. For all that he is but an echo of his past self, he is not a slave to anyone's will. But I sense that our discussion regarding this has reached a timely end. I've digressed much and in the end told very little of the pertinent matter, as there is so little known. Speculation and guesswork, baseless theories - that is all that can be produced on the issue of family magic."

Then there was silence; a short time for introspection in which the two of them partook in some of the soup the House Elf had graciously kept pleasantly hot with a simple charm. But as before, the silence could not last and it was broken by a question.

"Has the mood in Hogsmeade improved?" asked Dumbledore.

"Much," said Minerva. "The Dementors' recall to Azkaban has made many a witch and wizard merry. Rosmerta is grateful, naturally, for the return of the crowds to her establishment. And..."

"And?"

"With all the Firewhisky and the like flowing so freely, some tongues have been loosed." Minerva was not fond of gossiping and rumour-spreading, but it might prove yet important, so she pressed on. "There's talk from a few employees of the Ministry, about the workload that the Minister has started to push on several departments — despite the manhunt for Sirius Black being over — one of which includes education of Hogwarts' students."

"The Minister is becoming rather erratic," said Dumbledore. "I think that in the long run, Sirius Black's death will not be of true benefit for anyone, but right now Cornelius is basking in the burst of public approval — temporary though it may be — that Black's demise has brought him. I have heard he intends to use it as political capital for enacting some change within the Ministry. What's troublesome about it is that Lucius Malfoy had been seen visiting the Minister's office at the most peculiar hours of the day, without either of them leaving the room for extended periods of time. I can only hope that Fudge hasn't committed himself to anything foolish, else I shall be forced to act and oust the man from his position, and he would not go quietly."

Albus sank deeper into his chair; his many duties, his burdens, clearly weighed heavily on him.

"And that is merely the snout of the dragon, as they say. You are, of course, aware of the event planned for our next school year, but I fear that the dialogue with our esteemed foreign colleagues has reached a dead-end. Neither Olympe nor Igor were in favor to begin with for Hogwarts to be chosen as the host. News of Black's escape from Azkaban and his breach of Hogwarts had done us no good, I fear. They have banded together and are using that as their main point of contention. For if one wizard could pass the wards so easily, what guarantees can we offer to their students, what safety can we provide?"

Minerva shook her head. "And you think to take care of a child, in the midst of it all? Granted, I believe you might have the stamina for it, but don't you think that there will be times when your duty to your ward and your other duties would conflict with each other? What then, Albus? When you have to choose between one or the other? Where will you find the time?"

"I will make the time."

Somehow, she didn't doubt him.

Madam Pomfrey made sure he remained in the hospital wing, even if he was not in the public part of it. His return to consciousness had technically set him free from Pomfrey's care, but she had not relented, and before Dumbledore and McGonagall had left, the Medi-Witch made sure Hadrian Potter would remain in her care for the time being.

Snape, like a watch-dog, stood guard nearby, to assure he would remain there. Oh, it was not worded in such a manner, they told him that the potions he'd taken shortly after waking might react in an unpredictable way and to have a Potions Master so close at hand would help him surely, should a need for him present itself. Pitiful excuse, but there it was.

As he was moved to a separate room of the hospital wing, one previously unknown to him, with only a single bed in it, so had Cassiopeia Black followed, citing this or that reason as her right to interfere. Quite honestly, the witch's intrusion into his life, let alone her attempt to claim him in that very odd manner, started to grate on him.

Despite what she hinted at, he felt little desire to speak with her. That, and there was the small matter of rage building up inside him. He very much felt like lashing out, accusing her of neglect to Sirius and his cousin, and would have gladly given into that urge if only... if only he didn't have that annoyance in the back of his mind, calming him when he wanted no calm.

It was that which had nudged him towards spilling the contents of his dream.

"Family magic," she had said. It almost drew out maniacal laughter from him. These past few months, he sought to understand as much of the matter as he could through purely theoretical and speculative texts he'd found in the library, failing miserably in the process, and now... now one had supposedly found him. The Black family magic. Or what passed as such, for all he knew.

In his mind, the very ends of it as it were, dwelt a presence of sorts. No, nothing at all alike Legilimency. He could not point a finger at it and define it with clarity. It evaded such things. All he knew... all he could feel was a deep, alien, sense of content. It had found what it was looking for, it had slept (he knew with certainty) for so long and now it wanted him.

Wanted him like nothing else in the world could ever want him, wanted all of him.

Unbidden, his thoughts turned towards three witches.

They wanted him as well, each in their own unique way, even though to only two of those he would give without question.

But now another sought all that he was, all he had, and thought to claim it, albeit in a marginally different way than the three.

"Why do you hesitate?" she'd asked him. "What possible benefit is there for you to remain in Dumbledore's care?"

He didn't answer her question, but instead asked one in return. "And what benefit would there be for me with you?"

Had it been Sirius asking the question, there'd have been no hesitation on Hadrian's part. There was little subterfuge about the man when it came to his godson. But Cassiopeia Black was not Sirius and their shared last name meant nothing to him.

"What benefit?" She scoffed, shaking her head. "Foolish child. Do you think you'll remain out of his reach for good, that he won't prohibit any further studies? That he'll not sense it on you, the way I do now?"

No, she couldn't have. It was a lie, a trick of some sorts. She thought to frighten him into embracing her proposal.

"Sense what? What are you talking about?"

The old witch brought forth her wand and flung spells all around the room; a few he recognized, many more he did not.

"Do not feign ignorance with me, child," she spoke once her wand had been stored away. "Deluding yourself will avail you little. You think you are the only student to dabble in dark magic? No, you know better than that. There are others. Yet they're not quite the same, are they? For they only dabble while you have delved deep. You've practiced the Arts, truly."

It was praise, he knew. But he had never sought anyone's praise for it (not even Yvanna's). Only peace. Only power.

"What's it to you?" he asked, the pretense of a dullard cast aside, useless. "What does any of this matter to you?"

"Because my family is all but gone. Because I am all that remains. I will not allow us to go gently into the night. I will not allow, by any means, the name of Black to go extinct." Passion, pure and potent, and then... "Because you are all that remains."

An honest admission he did not expect. Grief and regret, clear in her storm-cloud eyes, were familiar to him too.

She wanted to do right by her sister's blood, he realized, in her own odd way. But... "And then what? What if I say 'yes'?"

"Accept the offer and find out. Accept it and grow into your full potential. Accept it and be reborn as one of the Black."

It was enough to give him a headache, that tightening of skin across his skull, the pulsating echoes warning of trouble ahead.

'Why now? Why not when he lived? Where were you, you and your arrogance, and your presumptuousness, your willingness to curse and cleave apart whomever stood in your way? Where were you when you were needed?'

He did not voice any of these thoughts, but she seemed to have gleaned the brief of it, if not the exact wording, from his look alone. It was so very easy to fall into the temptation of rage, to flung the tendrils around her and squeeze... if it only weren't for that damnable thing in the back of his skull! Invading space to which it had no rights, keeping him from doing harm to her!

There were no words, no flash of vision in his mind, merely the vagueness of a hint of a suggestion that he not act.

It was the wind in the branches, creaking and cradling the madness.

It was the ebb and flow, streams of blood, lulling his rage.

It was the echo of Sirius' laughter.

Was there ever really a choice?

'Yes, and it's mine to make, though it may be the ruin of me.'