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Chapter Sixteen—A Lightning Bolt

Harry sighed as he came out of his Apparition near Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, in a back corner of a street where Muggles were extremely unlikely to see anything. He hadn't really wanted to come, but Mariana had written to him about what had happened to Seneca, and where she was seeking help.

And if Harry's presence meant Severus could get his grandfather back…

Well. No one should lose a grandparent to that kind of mental rape, even if they didn't like their grandparent very much.

Harry strode up to the door and knocked. It opened at once, and Black smiled at him, his eyes raking and up down Harry's body. "I see your position at Hogwarts has already begun to pay you more than your position at the shop did."

"Actually, these are a pair of Professor Greyhand's robes that I've Transfigured," Harry said, and ignored the thing near a pout that Black gave him. "Are Mariana and her family here already?" He stepped into the entrance hall and tried to ignore the memories crowding at him from another world.

Black started to answer, but there was a loud squeal and a sound of feet skidding on wood and tile, and Sirius's voice shouted, "Mr. Harry! You're here!" A second later, a bullet of flesh launched himself straight at Harry's stomach. It was a good thing that Harry had his back against the wall, or he might easily have fallen.

"Sirius and Regulus have missed you," Black said in a bland voice that did nothing about the amusement in his eyes.

"We missed you, Mr. Harry," Sirius declared, tilting his head back so that Harry had to meet his eyes directly. "Don't go away again, all right?'

"I'll try," Harry said, and took Sirius's hand to get him to let go of the embrace. "You didn't answer me about where the Princes were, Black."

"In the kitchen," Black said, and turned to lead the way down the stairs. Harry followed with Sirius chattering away to him so fast that Harry didn't understand most of what he was talking about. Harry tried to nod and smile and answer as best he could, but he suspected it might be hopeless.

"What's wrong with Seneca?" Harry asked Black's back when Sirius paused for breath. "And why did she come to you?"

"I was under the impression that Mrs. Prince had described it well in her letter to you." Black, infuriatingly, didn't even turn around to face Harry, just walking forwards with grave, heron-like steps.

"'Splained what?" Sirius asked, hoping up and down. "Father, can I have a biscuit? Harry, can you pick me up? Can I have a biscuit and a norange?"

"Assume that she hasn't. You like to assume the worst of other people anyway, so that should be natural to you," Harry shot at Black, while he scooped Sirius off the stairs. Sirius sighed in ecstasy and buried his head in Harry's robes.

"So prejudiced, Harry." Black stopped at the bottom of the steps, but only moved out of the way of Harry and Sirius and watched as if he wanted to be sure that they got down safely. "I know that she explained that there was manipulation of Mr. Prince's mind involved." For a moment, his eyes traveled over Sirius, but then he must have decided that he had the right to talk about such things in front of his son. He looked back at Harry.

Harry sighed. The desire in those eyes was the same as it had always been: the desire for power, to control other people. He turned away and set Sirius on the floor, taking his hand when he protested. "Come on, it's just a short walk to the kitchen."

"Are you listening to me, Harry?"

"Enough to know that you're continuing to call me by my first name, when I've never given you that permission." Harry opened the kitchen door and stepped inside, smiling at Severus and nodding to Mariana. Seneca was sprawled in a chair next to her, Stunned by the look of his slack face.

"Thank you for coming, Harry. I would be happier with someone nearby that I can trust to take care of Severus while we take care of Seneca." Mariana was smiling as she leaned across the table to shake his hand, but her body was tense. Harry smiled back and wondered what was the main source of the tension. Did she love Seneca, even if a small amount? Or was she worried that she would get blamed if he died or had to be put in St. Mungo's?

Or maybe worried that if someone was willing to do this to get to Severus, they might do it to her next. From the worried look she gave Severus when he climbed on a chair to be closer to Harry, he thought it was probably the last.

"Sit down so I can sit on you," Severus told Harry.

"I want to sit on him!" Sirius said, scowling up at Severus from his position near Harry.

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes, but it was difficult. At least Regulus wasn't here to add to the confusion. "No one is going to be sitting on me because I'm going to stand," he said, and ignored two pouts that affected him a lot more than Black's. He turned to look at their host, reluctantly. "I had no idea you were such a talented Legilimens, Black."

Black shrugged a little and drew out the chair across from Seneca so he could sit down. His wand was in his hand, but pointed away from all of them, just rolling in small flourishes as Black turned it. "Each member of my family tends to specialize in a certain form of magic. I had to try a few before I found the Mind Arts. I haven't practiced much in the last few years as I've been raising Sirius and Regulus, but—"

"Then can you be sure this is going to work?" Mariana interrupted, her face taut.

Black gave her an indulgent smile. "I was a private specialist at one point, Mrs. Prince. St. Mungo's would have hired me if I could have stood some of their rules." He turned back to Seneca, seeming to study the slack lines of his face as if they were writing in a special language. "Of course, you haven't told me what you want."

"Want?"

Mariana's face was so strained that Severus started to frown. Harry reached out and gathered him up. He intended to take him out of the kitchen anyway for the healing, and Sirius if he would come.

"Do you want his mind rebuilt to what it was before, with memories of the last few weeks gone?" Black asked. "Do you want a less impressive restructuring than that, which will leave him some of the memories but also means some of the pure-blood obsession will linger? Do you want him to be a completely different person with a completely different personality? I can do any of those."

Harry jerked his head back. "I think I understand why you couldn't work at St. Mungo's."

Black smiled at him as if he had given him a compliment. Harry shook his head. "I'll take Severus and Sirius out."

Sirius decided to be stubborn just then, and folded his arms. "No! I wanna see what happens!"

"You're too young," Harry said, and he didn't care if his voice was harsh, or that Sirius flinched a little and then looked up at him with his lip sticking out. He didn't want the children to have to listen to talk about rebuilding Seneca's mind and maybe making him into an entirely different person.

If he was honest, he didn't want to listen to it much himself, either.

"If my son wants to stay, he should be able to stay," Black said, a moment after Mariana's, "I wish Severus removed."

Severus squirmed to be put down, then walked around the table and clutched Harry's hand. Harry sighed and started to release his hold on Sirius, but just then, Severus said, "That's fine with me, Grandmama. I'll get to spend more time with Mr. Harry." And then he stuck his tongue out at Sirius, probably thinking he was behind Harry's leg and away from the notice of an adult. Harry caught his eye, though, and frowned mightily.

Severus looked a little chastened, but Sirius immediately said, "I wanna come with you!"

"But we're leaving the room," Harry said. "You wanted to stay."

Sirius paused. Then he said, "Now I wanna come with you."

"Please do not use such undignified language, Sirius," Black said in a distracted voice. His eyes were locked on Seneca's, and Harry didn't want to imagine what he was seeing. He gripped both children's hands and nodded to the other adults.

"If you'll excuse us, I'll take them to the nursery. We can find your little brother, Sirius. Is Regulus there?"

"Yeah," Sirius said, puffing his chest out and looking proud that he knew something Severus didn't. "Come on, Mr. Harry. And you can come, too."

Severus gave Harry a long-suffering glance that was so familiar, Harry had to cough to make sure he didn't start laughing. He clasped both of them by the hand and went upstairs.

Regulus was in the nursery, and he wanted to watch Harry do spells. So did Severus and Sirius, although from the longing way Severus watched Harry's wand, he would have liked to take it and do the spells himself.

They would hide his skills in front of the "normal" children for now, though. Harry kept Severus's eye and managed to wink, making it a secret between them, and after that, Severus held his head up a little more and smiled.

What was going to happen in the kitchen, happened. It wasn't as though Harry was afraid someone wouldn't be by to tell him about it later. He suspected everyone would get more than their fill of Seneca's mind.

"A reasonable compromise, I think," Black murmured, spinning his wand between his fingers. He hadn't looked away from Seneca once since Harry had left the room. "To rebuild his mind but remove his memories and plant some false ones connected to being ill. Do you think you can make him believe that he was ill for three weeks, Mrs. Prince?"

Mariana nodded, realized he still wasn't looking at her, and cleared her throat. "Yes. He was subject to a condition in his childhood that sometimes caused him long bouts of weakness. He hasn't had an attack in years, but I can represent to him that the stress at the Ministry triggered another one." She hesitated. "And you can really remove the pure-blood obsession that our enemy instituted?"

"Do you want him to be rid of it? The enemy might try to add something else to his mind."

"That's true. And I don't know who the enemy is." Mariana stared at her clasped hands for a moment, thoughts dancing furiously. "Could you try to focus on the memory of when it was instilled in him, to locate more about the enemy's identity than I was able to?"

"I can try. Although a hooded figure somewhere in Knockturn Alley, as the first glimpse hinted at, may be impossible to identify more closely."

"I know. I simply ask you to try."

"Very well." Black shifted his position a little and stretched his arms as if he suspected he wouldn't be able to do it once he was in the middle of Seneca's mind. Then he glanced at her. "And you didn't give me a clear answer about the pure-blood obsession."

"Can you leave an echo and make our enemy think the implantation of the idea partially failed? I am unwilling to leave more than that. The idea that Severus would have to marry his own aunt is…disgusting."

"I agree." There was a spasm crossing Black's face that surprised Mariana, considering he had married his second cousin. Then again, that marriage had been by no account a happy one; he certainly hadn't tried to take revenge on Harry for apparently exposing his wife as a potential murderer. "I will do that."

"And the payment?"

"We'll call Harry back into the room when it's time to discuss that."

Mariana lifted an eyebrow. "I will tell you one thing for free." She waited, and Black gestured for her to go on, eyes alight with curiosity. "You would have more luck with Harry if you thought of him as a person instead of a resource."

"I respect your advice," Black said, his voice a little more brisk. He faced Seneca and lifted his wand, moving it carefully in a few shapes that resembled the outlines of mountains and waterfalls Mariana had seen once on a scroll in a museum. Then he whispered, "Legilimens," and slumped a little in his own chair, nearly imitating Seneca as he vanished into her husband's mind.

Mariana wrapped her hands in each other, and waited.

He had to admire the work of the other Legilimens who had been in Prince's mind before him. In an extremely limited way.

That Legilimens had bent and warped Prince's thoughts to follow the goal of blood purity above all else, and to concentrate on his own family, so that he wouldn't become a potentially out-of-control Abraxan in the Wizengamot or Ministry. However, he hadn't stitched the mind back together after he warped it. It was no wonder bits and pieces of it were blowing off and away, or that Seneca had revealed the fellow's work by abruptly ordering his wife to produce another child as a bride for the Boy-Who-Lived.

As he slowly navigated the maelstrom, seeking the foundational structures that he would need to renew, Orion also sought evidence that the hurried warping had been purposeful. Perhaps he had wanted Prince to collapse and distract his wife from other matters, or draw unwanted attention to the Boy-Who-Lived's grandparents. Perhaps he had even meant to try for custody if Severus Prince's grandfather was revealed to be unfit.

However, the more Orion found the source of the warping—thoughts shaved like stone from the structures of Prince's mind—the more he doubted it. No, this had been more like an attack of opportunity, which suggested the target was Prince himself, and the plan short-term, not long-term.

Orion pulled himself back to the memory of the Legilimens in the alley, and stared long and hard at the drape of the hood and the cloak. It was possible that he might know this man, after all, given that he knew a number of practitioners of the Mind Arts in Britain.

But although the slight tilt of the head and one flourish of the wand was somewhat familiar, they told him no name. For all Orion knew, they might have meant only that they were trained by the same master.

Orion ended up shaking his head and turning back to the center of Prince's mind and the maelstrom whirling around it. He would need to build up a solid core again, something to replace the blood purity idea. He carefully and delicately created his own shavings from Prince's thoughts: beliefs about blood purity, satisfaction in his own importance, ambitions to influence the future of the wizarding world. He molded them together and established them in the center of Prince's mindscape.

Once he did, some of the memories from the last three weeks came blowing over and attached themselves. Orion nodded. He had learned from the wizard who tutored him in Legilimency that this kind of rebuilding worked best when it acted with or could at least imitate the natural processes of the injured patient's mind.

He did, however, add a few kernels of his own to the stone at the center of Prince's thoughts now. One of them was about treating his wife and grandson better. The state of the Prince marriage was common gossip among pure-bloods. There was no reason for it to go back to being that way; let others think Prince had suffered so severely from his attack of "illness" that he had changed his mind on his own.

And he also wove in a thread of consideration for a man who was powerful and skilled at dueling and connected to his grandson. That thread would remain quiet in Prince's mind until it had a chance to attach to either Harry or Orion himself. It would depend on which of them triggered it first.

Orion didn't think it mattered which of them it was. But maybe Harry would thank him for this.

Finally, he opened his eyes and stretched the muscles he had known would be sore. Part of it was the effort of not moving for close to two hours, as he saw with a glance at the clock, but even more of it was just the effort of concentrating so intensely and channeling his magic in ways he hadn't done in years.

"He'll be all right?" Mrs. Prince whispered.

Orion nodded. "I was able to attach some of his memories. You might want to tell him that someone cursed him, and that was what triggered the attack of illness."

Mrs. Prince sighed. "Thank you. I won't pretend that I love my husband greatly, but it would cause inconvenient questions if Severus's grandfather died right now.

Orion smiled. Yes, he could understand that mindset, and it might even have attracted him to Mariana Prince if he hadn't already chosen his own.

"It's done?" Harry asked, coming back into the kitchen with Regulus asleep in his arms. Sirius and young Prince trailed after him, arguing in low voices over something that looked like a toy mirror sparking with small bolts of lightning.

"Yes." Orion spoke the simple word and waited, curious as to what Harry's reaction would be.

Harry let out a deep sigh and turned to look back at the Prince boy first, which said where most of his concern was, whether Mariana Prince was his friend or not. He faced forwards again after a moment, and said, "Thank you."

His smile was sincere and made Orion feel as if one of the lightning bolts around the toy mirror had struck him.

Shit. He might be in less control of this situation than he'd thought.