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Chapter Six—The Houses of Black and Potter

"You ought to get out, Harry. Date something."

"You mean someone?" Harry asked, a bit amused, as he watched Laocoon critically study the new gloves he had been constructing. He had asked Harry to conjure acid that the gloves could stand up to. So far, Harry's spells were still more powerful than any material Laocoon had tried to make the gloves out of, but he had great hope of the adamantine-infused dragonhide, apparently. Now he had just had to deal with the gloves being too heavy to comfortably wear.

"What?" Laocoon glanced up, blinking. "I mean, yeah. If you want to."

"Just that you said something, first. I wanted to know what you meant."

That got him another befuddled glance. "Well, I thought you must be pretty choosy, because you've never dated anyone so far. So I thought maybe you were looking for a half-Veela or a goblin or something like that."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I could just not want to date someone, you know. And half-Veela and goblins and so on are not things."

"Not wizards, either." Laocoon stuck his tongue out between his lips as he began to work another lacing of adamantine into the dragonhide. He had a process of making the metal like silk and sewing with it which Harry thought was worth more than all the defensive gadgets he was trying to make, but Laocoon had just gaped at him, looking a little offended, when Harry had tried to say that he should concentrate on developing that. "So I included them just in case you're looking to date a horse or something."

"A horse," Harry said flatly.

"I mean, centaurs had to happen somehow, Harry."

Harry shook his head. Sometimes Laocoon was too close-minded and too open-minded at the same time. "I'm going out for a while."

"Good! Go have fun. Just take them back to their flat, please. I'm trying to get some work done here."

Harry rolled his eyes and left the shop, making sure to lock his own little flat behind him. Laocoon wouldn't intrude unless he had a good reason, but sometimes someone sauntering around Diagon Alley after darkness tried to get in, apparently just to see if he had something worth stealing.

Harry wandered towards Gringotts, glancing into the windows around him. He almost never bought anything here, except clothes now and then. Laocoon shared his food and his books with Harry, and Harry worked in the shop and tutored Severus and kept his head down. There wasn't a lot of other things he should be doing, he thought. He'd probably mess up the world if he paid too much attention to other aspects of it.

But now his arm was itching. In fact, his whole body was itching, which was annoying. Harry frowned and started to take out the Elder Wand, only to feel it tug insistently towards the left. Harry turned as if to inspect an old necklace that was lying on a cushion in the shop window in front of him, and watched sharply out of the corner of his eye.

His first thought was that Dumbledore was here, but the Minister rarely went anywhere without a retinue. Instead, two families came around the corner. The first was a tall, dark-haired man who looked vaguely familiar, holding a toddler boy on his hip and leading another by the hand. The second—

Harry nearly swallowed his tongue.

They were Potters. They had to be. Harry could have been looking into a mirror if he'd just looked at the top part of the man's face. He was old, with iron-grey hair, but he still looked confident and strong, as did the thin, blue-eyed witch next to him. And he wore glasses. And he had a messy-haired, hazel-eyed boy with him.

James.

Harry immediately turned around and walked in the opposite direction, ignoring the painful tugging of the Elder Wand that probably meant his grandfather—except not here, Harry reminded himself sharply—had the Invisibility Cloak with him. He was absolutely unequal to meeting them right now, and he had no right to stare at them, anyway. They weren't his family in this world. He couldn't drag them into his problems.

He heard them talking behind him, but he didn't make out the words because of the indignant shriek that rang out over the Alley in the next moment.

"Orion! How dare you remove the boys from the house without telling me?"

Harry dropped into a defensive crouch without even thinking about it. He was familiar with that voice, though admittedly only when it had screamed at him from a portrait on the walls of Grimmauld Place. He glared at Walburga Black, her hair hanging wild around her face as she advanced on her husband and sons.

"Walburga," the man who must be Orion Black began in a calming voice. Harry stared despite himself at the boys who had to be Sirius and Regulus. "We discussed this. I told you that I was coming to the Alley to look at toys for Regulus and get Sirius's eyes checked by that Healer—"

"And you met up with the Potters! Light wizards! It's as if you're trying to raise our sons as disgraces to the House of Black!" Walburga wasn't moving fast yet, but her slow stalk towards Orion was menacing enough all on its own. She had her wand brandished over her head. "This is an alliance meeting, not a shopping trip!"

James's mother—Euphemia Potter, Harry knew her name—spoke next, her voice calm and bright with scorn. "As if you would ever raise your sons the right way either, Walburga. You haven't changed since Hogwarts. Screaming and pouting when you don't get your way, and hurting others' eardrums. We were only going to discuss the boys playing together and perhaps becoming friends in the future. Merlin knows your sons need more education than immuring them in your old house can give them."

Walburga stared at Euphemia in a way that made Harry hope she hadn't fully understood what the other woman had said. And then she unleashed a ripping scream and spun her wand in a circle Harry was intimately familiar with.

"Avada K—"

That was as far as she got before Harry cast the Lasso Curse, coiling an invisible magical rope around Walburga's ankle and yanking as hard as he could. The spell cut off as Walburga catapulted to the ground, and her wand rolled away from her. Orion Black immediately Summoned it to him and tucked it in a robe pocket.

Harry sighed and leaned back against the side of Flourish and Blotts. He didn't think anyone had seen him cast the spell, since it had been wordless, too. And really, it could have been anyone in the crowd that had gathered to stare.

He couldn't let Sirius or Regulus or James or his pseudo-grandparents be hurt, but honestly, he couldn't get involved any further than this.

"I'm ashamed of you, wife," Orion said, his voice even more contemptuous than Euphemia's had been. "We are going home, and we are going to discuss this with Father. I doubt that he'll see your side."

Harry breathed out slowly. He didn't know what had happened to let matters with Walburga reach this point, but at least if Orion was going to divorce her or get his father involved, then she probably wouldn't be able to do whatever she liked whenever she liked. Sirius and Regulus ought to be safe.

"I'm so sorry about this, Fleamont, Euphemia," Orion was saying when Harry paid attention again. Walburga was standing in front of him, arms clasped stiffly at her sides and eyes full of a hatred that Harry knew meant she must be under Binding and Silencing Charms. "I hope that you don't think too badly of my family for what happened today."

"Never, Orion." Fleamont Potter had a game smile that Harry thought he remembered seeing in the Mirror of Erised. "We'll discuss this again soon, and toast to a more prosperous future this time around. Come, James." He picked up his son, who had been standing wide-eyed beside him, and carried him in the direction of what Harry knew was an Apparition point. Orion, meanwhile, was cradling Regulus close and stroking Sirius's hair. At least Sirius didn't actually seem to be crying, the way Harry had thought he was at first.

Harry sighed. Well, he had done his good deed for the day, and he should be getting back to Diabolic Defenses. Laocoon was prone to getting orders around lunch from the kind of young Ministry flunkies who wanted to buy either items to defend themselves from pranks or to play pranks on their friends.

"Wait."

Harry froze at the words that seemed aimed at him, in Orion Black's voice, but then shook his head and continued walking. There were still plenty of people left around the area, craning their necks while pretending to be window-shopping intently. Orion hadn't noticed Harry and couldn't mean him.

"I saw what you did," the same voice said, and a hand clasped Harry's arm, gently but inexorably drawing him to a halt. "I want to speak with you."

Harry stood still for a second, and then let his mouth droop open a little and his eyes widen with surprise. He turned around and made a flustered bowing motion that stopped because of Black's hold on his arm. "You're that Black bloke, right?" he blurted. "It's an honor, sir, an honor!"

Orion felt his own eyes narrow a little. The expression of awed stupidity on the stranger's face didn't match, at all, the expression he had seen the night that the Divination bowl called him to the hidden room in Grimmauld Place. Which meant it was most likely a pretense.

"Yes, my name is Orion Black," he said. "These are my sons, Sirius and Regulus. And I know your name."

He didn't miss the stiffening of the stranger's arm under his hold, or the wary flash in his eyes. But Evanson continued to maintain a slightly hanging jaw and wide eyes that might have fooled someone who didn't know him well. "How could you, sir? I'm honored to meet your sons, honored to meet you, but I'm sure that you couldn't have met me before. I'm just a humble shopkeeper's assistant."

"Your name is Harry Evanson," said Orion. "And you were the one who saved Euphemia Potter's life, and perhaps more lives than that, if my dear wife had been permitted to cast that spell."

Evanson abruptly turned to the side, pulling hard, and forcing Orion to let go of his arm. It was hard not to gape at him. He was an incredibly different person in seconds. Now he looked like someone who had fought for his life before, and expected curses more than insults. His hand rested on the wand that projected from the holster at his waist, and his body was coiled, tense, poised.

"How do you know who I am? No one knows that." Evanson's magic sparked for a moment on the edge of his wand and then dimmed, but Orion knew better than to think that he was weak. That spell he'd performed on Walburga hadn't been the most powerful Orion had ever seen, but it had been strong, quick, and quiet.

Orion swallowed and held Evanson's eyes. They were remarkable eyes, a much deeper green than he'd seen from the vision. Unfortunately, they also glistened with distrust right now. "My family has some Divination gifts. I never expected mine to show me someone like you, but they did, recently."

"In what context?"

"Trying to figure that out has given me some problems," Orion admitted, and watched Evanson drew himself further away. "I mean no harm. But you're going to be important to the future of my family, and I want to figure out how."

Evanson sighed and put his wand away, which relieved Orion, since Sirius had started to fuss in the way he did when he was frightened. "I can't be important to the future of your family."

"I trust the Divination more than I trust your denial," Orion began.

"I don't mean it that way, although I do happen to know people who put too much trust in prophecies. I mean that I have other commitments, and I—I have already harmed your family, and you don't know it."

Orion overcame his instinctive response to that assertion, which would have been to draw his wand, and shifted his hold on Regulus. Sirius leaned against his leg and stared up at Evanson. He didn't know the full context, Orion thought, but he would demand an explanation as soon as they were home.

Much the way that Orion wanted to demand an explanation now. "What do you mean by that?"

"I can't tell you."

"You will," Orion said, and concentrated to infuse his voice with the magical version of compulsion that he had been born with. No one had ever realized what he was using, partially because he'd been wise enough to never use it on a Legilimens or anyone else capable of detecting it, and partially because most people feared him anyway and thought they were just obeying their natural desire to tell the truth to someone as important as a Black.

The compulsion flowed like steam over Evanson, whose eyes shifted darker still. "I'll thank you not to try and compel me like that again."

Orion stared at him in silence, then asked, "Are you a Legilimens?"

"No. But I can resist the Imperius, and this was weaker than that. And I think I've made up for the harm to your family by saving your ally's life and possibly the lives of you and your sons if your wife would have been mad enough to attack you. Now, pardon me."

Orion swayed. What had struck at him when Evanson spoke wasn't exactly like compulsion, since it was focused on the body and not the mind, but the urge to obey was overpowering. And the air around Evanson had begun to glint with the storm-like force of his magic again.

But Orion wasn't a weak wizard himself, and Evanson hadn't put the strength behind the order that he could have. Probably doesn't like affecting other people that way, Orion thought, and frowned at the man. "I will come with you."

"You can't possibly want to," Evanson said, voice sharp with contempt. Only the thought that some of his contempt was focused on himself kept Orion from reacting. "And you should realize that, as someone who harmed your family and someone you have to know isn't a pure-blood, associating with me will do you no favors."

"Is that a threat?" Orion asked quietly, and smiled a little when Evanson hesitated. "Right. I'll come with you, if you have obligations."

"I don't want you to."

"But I owe you a life-debt."

"Not when I had harmed your family in the first place."

"An interesting thing magically about life-debts," Orion told the air. "They're active when the person who owes them recognizes them, not the person they're owed to."

"I've never heard that."

If you're a Muggleborn, I wouldn't have expected you to, Orion thought, but bit the snide thought back. He was going to have to get used to thinking about Muggleborns and people who hadn't grown up in the wizarding world differently, or it was sure to cost his family. "I need to talk to you and figure out what you'll do to claim the debt and what you would never do."

Evanson continued staring intently at him for a moment, and then sighed. "You aren't going to let this go, are you?"

"No, of course not. I wouldn't be a man of honor if I did."

Evanson hesitated and looked towards Orion's bound and glaring wife for the first time, then down at his boys. "Shouldn't I give you the chance to go home and—do something about this? Turn your wife over to the Aurors, if you're going to do that?"

"Of course," Orion said smoothly. "Thank you for thinking of it. Tell me where you work, and I can come and find you when Walburga has been secured and Sirius and Regulus are in the safe hands of house-elves." He smoothed his hand down Sirius's wild black curls, and his son stared up at him uncertainly.

"You won't like the name of the shop where I work."

"Mr. Evanson, shall we stop playing games with each other?" Orion tilted a crooked smile at him, and watched Evanson blink as he examined it. Perhaps charming him and convincing him to accept his duty as an ally of the family would be less difficult than Orion had assumed. "I know that you want me to ignore you and walk away, and not claim the life-debt. That's not going to happen. The sooner you accept and absorb that, the sooner we can be good friends."

Evanson sighed. "There are so many things that I can never tell you, including the original way that I harmed your family. I don't see the point in trying to become allies with secrets hanging between us."

Orion shrugged and then readjusted the snoozing Regulus to a more comfortable position. "I hope you don't imagine that I tell all of my allies the secrets of the House of Black. It's a sensible precaution that you've taken, but one might not take it too far. Tell me where you work and what you do."

"I work at Diabolic Defenses. I help cast the offensive spells that the shopkeeper, Laocoon Palmer, uses to test whether his defensive clothing and other items can stand up to actual curses."

Orion kept his face neutral as he nodded. "I see. Well, I will join you there within the next half-hour."

Evanson narrowed his eyes. "You ought to know that my mother was Muggleborn."

Orion felt something in himself relax. He was more at ease with half-bloods than Muggleborns. "That is acceptable. Tell me where the shop is, Mr. Evanson, and I repeat, I will join you there within the next half-hour."

Evanson spent a long moment studying his face. Orion wasn't sure why, but he remained obediently still, letting Evanson perhaps search out the details he needed to have confidence in him.

Evanson finally blasted out his breath and nodded. "All right, sir. I'll see you there." And he turned and walked sharply down Diagon Alley.

Orion raised his eyebrow at Evanson's back, more amused than anything at his abrupt departure, and turned back to his wife. She was still glaring at him, but her expression changed as she got a glimpse of his face. She would have stared at her feet or cowered, Orion thought, if she could have, under the binding spell.

"You endangered the future of our House," Orion Black said softly. "I am…most displeased, Walburga."

And that was all he would say in public, or in front of their sons. But the look in his wife's eyes said clearly that she understood what he wasn't saying. Orion smiled as he watched the ripples of her shivering disturbing the outline of the Body-Bind.

He was most going to enjoy what came next.