"Why," said Raleigh, poking his head into Severus' bedroom, "is there a Gryffindor on my doorstep?"

"What?" Severus said, looking up from the most useless letter Black had ever sent him.

On one hand, its complete worthlessness had been a relief. There had been nothing confidential, or anything that, taken out of context, would make Black sound like a lunatic to Severus' mail-opening grandfather. (It had been hard enough to explain his friendship with Lucius, and Lucius, despite his many foibles, was from a house that didn't have a well-recorded history of insanity.)

On the other hand, there had been nothing of substance, only fluff and nonsense. Convinced that Black had meant for him to read between the lines somehow, Severus had spent almost two days agonizing over it, analyzing it sentence by sentence, then word by word. He had always been good at breaking codes, but all he had managed was to frustrate himself beyond measure. Any previous lucidity from Black, he was sure, had had to have been either a fever dream or a fluke.

"A Gryffindor," Raleigh repeated. "On my doorstep, where there has not been a Gryffindor for more than fifty years. Please remove him."

Severus thrust the letter onto his desk and trotted after Raleigh's unfairly long strides in the direction of the front door. "How long has he been there?" he asked, wishing that his growth would spurt already. "You didn't let him in?"

"Why invite trouble?" his grandfather said. "And perhaps 'doorstep' is a misnomer. What I mean is that he's been lingering outside the wards of the property, dressed in the most eye-watering shades of red and yellow that anyone, Muggle or magical, has been able to conceive. I thought he would go away if I ignored him, but it has been nearly an hour and he has sadly proven me wrong. Although I was prepared to ignore him longer, he procured that…instrument…from somewhere on his person when knocking proved futile, and now he is making a spectacle of himself on the road." Raleigh reached the front door, flung it open, and pointed to the front edge of the estate with an imperious look in his eye. "Kindly fix it; our reputation is damaged enough as it is. I cannot imagine that he is anyone other than your Gryffindor."

"He's not my Gryffindor," Severus muttered, pushing past his grandfather. "What instrument?"

As though to answer his question, there was the sudden ear-piercing blart of an air horn.

Severus felt his eye twitch. "I'll just be a minute," he said, stalking in the direction of the noise. He rolled his sleeves up past his elbows and embraced his sense of righteous anger that Black had made him waste his time on such a stupid letter. (Both these things were to disguise the guilt he felt for not having written first himself, or having written back.)

His grandfather's property was ringed with a tall iron fence, one of the ones with long vertical bars capped with decorative flourishes that looked like spearheads. It looked like an odd choice for a Pureblood estate, since Purebloods valued privacy above all. But there was more to the barrier than just the visible. Layers and layers of wards tens and hundreds of years old were scratched, melted, and carved into the physical body of the fence. They could hide the grounds from view, make it impossible to Apparate in or out, become as solid as stone, or melt anyone who tried to come through. Black was standing beyond the gates, dancing from foot to foot. He was holding the air horn above his head and he had his other hand cupped around his ear, bobbing his head up and down like he was DJing at a rave.

"What are you doing?" Severus said as soon as he was within earshot, though true to form Black had been so preoccupied with blaring that stupid thing in his hand—and where had he gotten an air horn, for Merlin's sake?—that he hadn't noticed Severus' approach.

Black startled and dropped the air horn, then recovered and beamed. "Ha! I knew it would work!" he crowed, and his whole body spasmed in some sort of victory dance. He grabbed the air horn off the ground and shook it with vigor, coming as close to the fence as he could. Thanks to the span of the wards, that meant he was still about four feet away. "I've finally flushed you out!"

"Right, sure," Severus said, unimpressed. He wrapped his fingers around the bars in the fence. "Can you go anywhere without making a nuisance of yourself?"

"Of course not, you should know that by now," Black said, as cheerfully as anything, but his gaze had a sharpness that didn't match his tone. "Are you all right?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Severus asked, proportionately dour, acutely aware that he was deflecting.

The knives rattled in their block.

He wrapped them down with the psychic equivalent of duct tape and hid them in a cupboard.

Black ticked off the reasons on his fingers, and for once he didn't sound smug about it. "You disappear from school the same day that we do a very illegal transformation in broad daylight. You never contact any of us, and then I hear from some no-name Pureblood wannabe that Raleigh Prince has adopted the son of his disgraced daughter. And then you didn't respond to my letter. I feel like there are some steps missing in there, but I can't tell what they would be. But just tell me," he said, and when he caught Severus' eyes his own were dark with worry. "Did your grandfather kill your parents?"

Severus' fingers tightened around the bars of the gate. "No," he said, and then he swallowed. "Not my mother."

"Merlin," Black said, and slumped against what appeared to be thin air. Severus wondered how he could do that—in his own experiences, touching the wards was like putting his body weight on the spiky side of a hairbrush. Not exactly painful, but not a position that anyone would like to maintain for long.

"Anyway," Severus started, trying to change the subject, but Black slammed his open hands against the hardened wards. The boom reverberated through Severus' teeth and he reeled back instinctively.

"Don't 'anyway' me," Black said, and though he was not precisely shouting he wasn't far from it either. "Your grandfather killed your father?! Sweet ash and hawthorn, how is that something you can drop and then just— Has he been restricting your mail, too? Did you even get my letter?"

Here was the part Severus had dreaded explaining. "I got your letter," he said, more calmly than he felt. "Raleigh hasn't been restricting my mail—he even got me an owl. He's been very accommodating." He squeezed the bars a little harder.

"He killed your father!"

"Well," Severus said, and all at once his face felt numb. "I did say he's been very accommodating."

The knives rattled harder, even in the cabinet where Severus had shoved them.

Black's mouth dropped open. "What? But—"

Severus talked over him. Incredibly, his voice was as steady as his hands, still gripping the vertical bars of the gate. That his fingers were bloodless was meaningless. "Don't you hate your parents? You should understand," he said. "My father killed my mother. He was a drunk, and then he was a murderer, and now he's dead. And that's the best thing for him to be. And no," he said, cutting Black off before he could speak. "I'm not particularly worried that my grandfather will off me for being a half-blood either. If he had wanted to, he would have already. And he wouldn't have bothered to go about the business of reinstating me."

"But—your father. I saw him with your mother at the train station. At Christmas," Black said, voice hesitant. He eased himself off the wards.

Severus remembered how loving his parents must have looked on the train station to those who didn't know. His mouth tasted coppery.

"He was in a lull," Severus said. The blood still hadn't come back into his knuckles. He tried to loosen them, to get some feeling back. "He would drink and drink and drink and drink and—he would clean up his act and get sober, and my mother would fall in love with him again, and then he would trip up and drink and drink and drink. Every time."

Black opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish.

"And there you have it," Severus said, shrugging with more nonchalance than he felt. He shoved the knives down hard into their block again, slammed the cupboard door, and padlocked it for good measure. He laughed a little hollowly and wished Black would say something, not just stand there staring. "It's a great excuse, isn't it? For how I was last life. And now I get an even better one. Lucky me."

The silence stretched. Somehow it seemed louder than the previous air horn cacophony.

"I didn't know," Black said, finally.

"You weren't supposed to," Severus said. He sighed. "And now you do. That's it, that's my sordid past. Is there anything else?"

"I was just checking on you," Black said. He seemed to have deflated to a third of his previous size. "If you got my letter, I don't have much else to tell you."

Severus debated whether to confess that he hadn't been able to read the letter in question. Finally, he sighed again and pressed a finger against the wards, opening enough of a space for Black to come through. "Then you'd better come in," he said, a little grumpily, and swung open the gate with the hand that wasn't tingling. "I don't know what code you used, but I wasn't able to break it."

Black goggled at the open gate, then at him. "If I go in there," he said slowly, "can you promise me I'll come out?"

Severus scoffed. "Stop being so dramatic. You aren't a Malfoy."

"We Blacks have our own reputation of melodrama to keep up," Black said. He eyed Severus. "And you're not acting like yourself, so who could blame me?" He brushed past Severus and came onto the estate.

Severus watched him with a raised eyebrow. "All that arguing, and you just came in anyway?"

Black shrugged. "I'm remarkably easy to convince. But if your grandfather skins me to bind a book on dark magic, that's on you."

"He wouldn't, I think," Severus said, leading the way back to the house. "

"He wouldn't, I think," Black mimicked, nasally. "I'm so reassured."

"I know how it looks," Severus said. "But everything he's done has led me to believe that he sincerely loved my mother. I think he regretted their estrangement."

Black cocked an eyebrow and put his hands in his pockets. "Sure," he said, "that makes a nice story. But from my own experience, no one just stops being a blood purist. How's he feel about you being friends with Evans? Try inviting her over and see how he reacts, then you'll know where he really stands."

"He reinstated me," Severus said, defensive. "Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Listen, I'm not saying it doesn't," Black said. "But that's the way that Purebloods operate. As long as you're on their agenda, they're oh-so accommodating and oh-so generous. But as soon as you step out of line…" He shrugged. "I'm sure you know just as well as I do. Maybe your grandfather really is a kindly old man who only wants what's best for you. I'm just reminding you to be careful."

Severus remembered the look in his grandfather's eyes and repressed a shiver. "I'm always careful," he shot back instead, and led Black up to the front of the house.

Raleigh was clipping the box hedges by the door, and at the noise of their footsteps against the gravel path he looked up sharply. "Why did you let him onto the property?" he grumbled at Severus.

Severus forced himself not to think about what Black had just said. Raleigh was a grumpy old man, not some manipulative Pureblood mastermind with a to-do list.

Severus so wanted it to be true.

He sniped back. "Would you have rather I left him on the road?"

Raleigh scowled. "Don't bring him inside." He kept up his clipping, but now it was rather more vigorous, and he looked at Black with a baleful eye from over the top of the hedge.

"I'll make sure he doesn't break anything," Severus said, and opened the front door.

Raleigh narrowed his eyes but said nothing, although now the branches from the poor ornamental shrubbery were being snipped with extreme prejudice.

"He seems nice," Black said once Severus shut the door behind him.

"Stop being sarcastic. That's my job," Severus said. He led Black through the house up toward his bedroom to get the letter.

"You know, I can just tell you what it said," Black offered in an undertone, staring around at the paintings on the walls and the other decorations in glass-fronted display cases and atop polished stone tables.

"I want to know how you did it," Severus muttered, ignoring the flush of embarrassment that filled his chest. "I couldn't break the code." It was a jab to his pride to acknowledge that Black could do something he couldn't, although in fairness it was a smaller blow than it had used to be. At least this association had been good for something.

As long as Black wasn't smug about it.

"What code?" Black took the letter from off the desk and flashed a grin that, to his credit, was only a little taunting. "This is actually almost the same spell we used on the Marauders' Map," he said. "Why would I use a code when I could use magic?"

Severus felt his teeth grind and hoped the sound wasn't obvious. Of course Black had used magic. That meant Severus had wasted two whole days on trying to decipher something that didn't exist.

Black pulled out his wand. "It's pretty simple—"

Severus grabbed his wrist in instinctive alarm. "Put that down!"

Black looked at him like he was stupid. "We're on an estate. It shouldn't matter. I mean, it's still illegal, but as long as we stay inside the wards and don't do anything insane, we have plausible deniability. Haven't you been doing magic?" Severus' flush must have been enough to clue him in. "Really? Not at all? Wow. Anyway, this is a super simple spell. All you need is the password. I put it in the postscript."

Severus looked where Black was pointing and saw P.S. What was the name of that Muggle candy that Malice likes so much?

He pulled out his own wand and touched it to the letter, grumbling under his breath. "Peppermint humbug."

What had been an almost illegible bramble of scribbled handwriting, blots, splatters, blotches, splats, drips, smears, and fingerprints melted into the page and reformed as a completely different block of text. To you, whom it may concern (because apparently I can't call you Snape anymore): it started, in handwriting that was perfectly clear, if a bit informal, but Black pushed the letter down before Severus could read any more.

"Since I'm here, I might as well just tell you," Black said. "But let's take it outside."

Severus remembered the warren of corridors for spying within the walls of Grimmauld House and understood his paranoia, although a part of him couldn't help but hope it was unnecessary.

"So that's why we came back so soon," Black finished, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "My mother almost blew a gasket when she heard the news, and she just has to be in the thick of things. She'd lose her mind if she knew I was here, but Andy won't give me away." He squinted against the mid-morning light. "Can't we go somewhere else? This smell is giving me a headache." They were sitting near the compost pile near the estate's lonely vegetable garden, well away from the house and hidden by a gardening shed.

"No," Severus said ruthlessly. "You're the one who's put the idea in my head that someone might be listening. You get to reap the consequences."

"You should have thought about it without me putting it into your head," Black argued. "What happened to the cynical bastard I've grown to tolerate?"

"I've been a little busy with other things," Severus said, and had the dubious pleasure of watching the smirk on Black's face get chased away by what might have been shame.

Severus pushed himself to his feet before he could start to feel guilty himself. "We can probably go to the pond," he said. "I need to tell you about Lucius, and it won't matter much if anyone overhears that."

"Lucius Malfoy?" Black demanded, scrambling up himself. "What about him?"

"You don't know? I guess his father is trying to keep it quiet," Severus said. "When Raleigh and I were at Diagon Alley to get me an owl, we ran into him and Abraxas. It sounds like they had a fantastic row when they got home, and now Lucius is staying here because he thinks his father might disown him."

Black was silent, to Severus' surprise, and when Severus looked at him, his face was pale despite the summer heat that was starting to beat down on them.

"You know," Black said, and his voice was so low that Severus almost had to strain to hear it, "you ever think this is getting out of control? That we're making too many changes?" He stopped suddenly in the middle of the garden path. "Lucius was one of the most important players," he said. "And now he's just—gone."

"Not gone," Severus said. He turned back so they were face to face. "Now he's going to be on our side."

Black let out a heavy breath and ran his hand through his hair. "Please tell me you had a contingency plan for this."

"Not at all," Severus said. "It completely blindsided me. You're right—Lucius was one of the key supporters. Take him away, and what happens?"

"I don't know."

"Exactly," Severus said, and started toward the pond. "We'll just have to find out."

Black kept pace with him. "I don't like this." He did indeed look anxious. "The more we change, the less we know what's going to happen."

Severus scoffed. "Oh yes, can you imagine living without any knowledge of the future? How does literally everyone except us manage?"

"Literally everyone except us isn't trying to stop a dictator's rise to power."

Severus had to concede the point but rolled his eyes anyway. "We'll just have to play it by ear," he said. "Personally, I find it reassuring. The more we change here, the more likely it is that the outcome changes. Whether it changes in a way that's good is still up to us, but not sticking to the way that things were supposed to be gives us a lot more room to work overall."

"I hope you're right," Black muttered, but he brightened when he saw that they had come to the pond. He ran down to its edge, stooping and dabbling his fingers in the water like a child.

"I'm usually right," Severus said, coming to stand near him, and Black flicked pond water at his face.

"You know," he said, while Severus was sputtering and trying to wipe it out of his eyes, "I don't think Abraxas will actually disown Lucius. It would be too much of a blow to his reputation, put him too close to the blood traitors. More likely, Lucius meets with some tragic accident, and then Abraxas has the excuse to pull in one of his bastards as his heir. And he'll want to do it before Lucius hits his majority. You should keep an eye out for that."

"I was actually thinking about that," Severus said, crouching next to Black. When Black turned to look at him, he slapped the surface of the pond at him and kept talking, ignoring the way that Black choked and sputtered. "We've just removed Lucius as a player for now. I think the next logical step is to take out Abraxas."

Black grinned through the pond water dripping down his face and poised himself to make another splash attack. "How are you going to do that?"

"Not to put too fine a point on it," Severus said, dodging the water that came at his face, "but I'm going to reach through his bank account and grab him by the testicles. You'll see."