The forest was shadowed and dense, uncomfortably cold with an edge of headache-inducing magic saturating everything, down to the smallest fern. Unaccountably exotic magical creatures used it as a hunting ground, and Dementors would be stalking come dusk, seeking the soul of a specific man but likely willing to suck out any they happened across in his stead. Up in a tree and well out of sight of the children, a fugitive watched, looking for proof that she was who she claimed to be. That he had another, currently unconscious fugitive in his pocket as a rat was inconsequential, another crumb of danger and inconvenience on top of the pile.
There were better places for teary reunions, for sure. Less dangerous places.
Taylor was here, though, and her son was here too. All else was secondary, so long as it didn't interfere in her listening as her son told of his first two years at Hogwarts, occasionally interrupted or corrected by one of his three friends.
Harry spoke of classes and friends and dangers, and of a Headmaster who lied to him in the cruelest of ways. He spoke of working to be accepted as Harry Hebert, though everyone seemed to think otherwise at first glance, and of the many magical things he had learned and done.
It seemed to her that there were two of Harry; one who was enraptured with magic and his school, and another who dealt with the pressure of his peers and teachers, fought off spirits intent on murdering him, and defied the Headmaster while worrying all the while that his mother had abandoned him. His school experience so far was at least better than hers, but he did not clear her low bar by the lofty heights she would have hoped for.
He made her so proud, and so sad. Proud that he had soldiered on, made friends, learned and plotted and fought for what he thought was right. Sad, that he had done all of that without her help, advice, or even just knowing that he had her support every step of the way.
Some of that was attributable to him growing up and her having to let go as he became more independent, but he was only thirteen. The larger part of her sadness was a certain white-bearded meddler's fault.
The way Harry recounted Dumbledore's repeated lies, and how he carefully did not say how they made him feel, put Taylor in mind of a certain inviolable figure and body bags filled with fake corpses, the buzz of her implacable hate–
But that was long ago, and Dumbledore was not within reach. Lucky for him. She could put her anger aside. He had stolen two years of her watching her son grow up and tried to make her son think she had rejected him, and for that there would be a reckoning some day. Just not today.
Today, she sat and took in every little detail during the limited time they had available, perched on a gnarled upturned root. Harry sat next to her, tucked up against her bad side like he used to do when he was smaller. His head came up to just under her stump now.
His friends stood nearby, more standoffish though by no means as hostile as they probably should have been. They took Harry's word that this was her. She looked at them, too, taking in the little things.
Neville, the only boy of the three, was a forgettable lad, though he looked to be getting a set of broad shoulders as he aged and had noticeably calloused hands. Hermione, bushy-haired and confident, was fiddling with her wand, visibly uneasy. Maybe with the forest, maybe with Taylor herself. But she smiled as Harry recounted their adventures, and Taylor didn't think Hermione was worried about her being a danger so much as her disappointing Harry in some way.
Ginny, on the other hand, was very much a threat still. She was a half-visible figure, stood behind Hermione and Neville, and she had only partially removed her invisibility cloak at Harry's insistence. She was one of the red-headed brood Taylor had run into at the platform, that was obvious, but she had a hard look about her. She alone of the four looked like she knew the risks of this meeting, knew and not just understood in abstract.
Taylor had thought as much before Harry's stories revealed that Ginny had been the 'heir of Slytherin' and possessed for much of a school year, so she knew it was not just her perception being primed to think of Ginny as more worldly and cynical. That did explain it, though.
Of them, Taylor thought she would get along easiest with Ginny, but they were all loyal, deserving friends from everything Harry said.
Harry ran out of things to say soon after recounting his journey to their home – unluckily occurring soon after she had taken her vacation to stay in Hogsmeade, ironically enough – and their aborted plans for a second rule-breaking expedition to find her. He looked up at her, his story done, and asked the obvious question. "How did you end up here, anyway?"
"And with Luna Lovegood in on it?" Ginny added suspiciously.
Taylor smiled grimly and decided to give them as much of the truth as was wise to tell, namely everything but the origin of 'her' magic and her personal origins. She didn't want to tell Harry of the latter until he was old enough that she wouldn't have to censor her story to the point where it was unrecognizable… So, ideally when he was in his mid-thirties.
"It began with meeting Dumbledore on the day Harry was going to go to Hogwarts," she explained. "I said hello. He said 'obliviate' and removed every memory I had relating to Harry."
It shouldn't have been so gratifying to see their appalled shock, but it was. From there she succinctly told of what she had done and experienced, quickly glossing over her time obliviated, and portraying the return of her power as magic she had never known she had finally breaking free of what she later learned from Ollivander was an inherited blood curse of some kind. She spoke of the Aurors drowning her case in apathy – an unpleasant parallel to her time in high school, now that she thought about it – and being obliviated a second time, though it barely stuck long enough for them to leave her alone afterward.
Then she explained that she had placed trackers on students in an attempt to find Hogwarts on foot, and how she had noticed Sirius Black hiding in plain sight. Jaws actually dropped when she explained how she had approached the dangerous Death Eater, and that they had teamed up to get Harry from Hogwarts. Even Harry was staring at her like she was absolutely insane.
Ginny began palming her wand and twitching her cloak at the mention of Sirius Black, so Taylor skipped over most of the stakeout and the arguments Sirius had used to get her to infiltrate Hogwarts, rushing to the part where they caught the animagus rat hiding with Ron Weasley.
Ginny's nervous tics intensified, her lips flattening to a grim line. None of the other children seemed to grasp exactly how disgusting and potentially horrible the implications of that were, but her… She got it. Taylor resolved to threaten the rat into answering a few pointed questions about his time with the Weasleys soon, to hopefully deliver some peace of mind to Ginny. She still had Pettigrew, currently held by Sirius. He wouldn't get away.
"So, the Death Eater was no Death Eater at all, and was only working with me because he wanted help getting the real traitor," she concluded. "Once we knew we were still working for the same things, albeit not the things we had told each other to begin with, we stopped trying to fight. Luna volunteered to take a message, and it seemed like a low-risk opportunity, so we let her."
"He's not around now, is he?" Harry asked, nervously glancing at the many places a person could hide from sight. The forest was dense and foliage broke line of sight almost immediately. He never even thought to look up.
"He's guarding Pettigrew," she told him. It was true, and this way she didn't have to deal with introducing Black. One thing at a time.
"Good." Harry grimaced. "So far, people who knew Harry Potter's parents don't tend to like me very much."
"Sirius Black can wait," Hermione suggested. "At least until he gets his name cleared."
"We have been here for a while," Neville chimed in. "Do we know how much longer we have before the Dementors come back?"
As much as Taylor hated it, their time was all but up… And she couldn't see a way to remove Harry from the school without immediately precipitating his subsequent return. If he disappeared, there would be a manhunt. If she took him and let Dumbledore know, there would probably still be a manhunt. Sirius Black was on the loose, after all, and public speculation had him possibly coming after Harry. Then there was the matter of whether Harry would want to go, in such a scenario.
She had been hasty with ambushing Luna and it worked out in the end, but that did not mean leaping on the first opportunity without thinking through the consequences was a good habit to fall into. "I will come see you again, and soon," she vowed. "Do you know of any way we can communicate without it being intercepted?"
"You didn't get any of my letters, I expect?" Harry asked.
"None." She wondered where they had gone. She wanted them, if they still existed somewhere. Maybe they were simply stuck in some pile of undeliverable mail at the magical post office.
"I left a note under your pillow, when I visited the house," Harry reminded her. "Go through the Grangers, they can get a message to me."
"I'll do that." She stood, her knees creaking at the unexpected weight, and turned to wrap her good arm around her son's shoulders. "I'm not going to disappear again. Obliviations don't work on me anymore."
"And that's worth looking into," she heard Hermione mutter to Neville. "The books I've read all say obliviation isn't easy to undo on purpose, let alone accidentally."
"It would be good to know how to not be obliviated," Neville agreed.
Harry's friends began the walk back out of the Forbidden Forest, Harry trailing along behind them. He looked back several times before passing out of sight.
She had seen him. He knew she was there for him, and she knew he was mostly okay. Now she just had to figure out the rest. The hard part was done.
Sirius had a camp, deep in the Forbidden Forest. It was little more than a ring of rocks, an old fire he relit with magic, and a hole for his dog form to curl up in, but it was enough for him to survive. Taylor had a hotel room, but she wasn't willing to keep a prisoner there, so Pettigrew was the newest addition to Sirius' sad little setup.
The obese, haggard rat of a man hanging upside-down from a tree definitely didn't improve the atmosphere. Neither did Sirius flicking rocks at him from where he sat by the fire.
"Harry is safe, and aside from Dumbledore lying to his face, is happy," she summarized, getting straight to the point. "According to Dumbledore as told to Harry, I decided I hate magic, and by extension him, and never wanted to see him again. Believe me now?"
"Do you think the old man's gone senile?" Sirius asked. It seemed he did believe her.
"I wouldn't bet on it." It wasn't a badly-executed plan. Most children would not have the resources or the will to sneak halfway across a country to search a house they had been told was empty, and none would do so after taking no action for two whole years. Bereft of actual evidence, there was nothing to stop the man from telling Harry whatever he wanted, so long as it was realistic, and Dumbledore had chosen a lie that was probably rooted in truth. Other Muggle parents likely had done what he pretended Taylor had done.
"Can't see why he would shove you aside like that, then," Sirius admitted. "Maybe he decided you're a bad influence?"
"I am not." If only because she knew to be mindful of what she taught Harry growing up, directly and by example. She could have been a very bad mother, turning him into a little soldier suspicious of absolutely everyone and willing to resort to lethal force whenever he deemed necessary. If she led by example without moderating herself, that was likely what he would have turned out to be. It probably wouldn't have helped her cope in her daily life, either.
Instead, she had made every effort to be the kind of person she wanted a child of hers to copy. Dragon was the closest real-life inspiration, unerringly kind without being naive or unintelligent Taylor was not Dragon, and neither did she think Dragon was perfect, but she knew she had succeeded in raising her son well.
"You haven't told me to take Pettigrew down yet," Sirius remarked, oblivious to her continued musing on motherhood.
She looked over at the murderer dangling from his ankles. "I'm not certain he didn't molest the Weasleys while hiding as their rat, so you can practice stoning him until he faints," she said seriously. "Is he silenced?" She noticed that his eyes were open… and rolling madly in his flushed red face.
"He won't faint, I hit him with a bloodflow charm first," Sirius said darkly. "What's this about the Weasleys?"
"Rat sleeping on a thirteen-year-old boy's chest," she reminded him. "Presumably alone with young children all the time. With access to a wand, the obliviation charm, and who knows what else." Access to two wands, even. She'd found his holdout wand quickly enough. Even little girls like Luna Lovegood merited a thorough patdown upon being captured; Pettigrew was lucky she hadn't deemed a cavity search necessary. Sirius was also lucky she had decided against that, because if it needed to be done she would have made him do it.
"Hmm…" Sirius flicked his wand at a pebble, roughly levitating it at Pettigrew with a muttered incantation. "Do you think I stand a chance of being acquitted if I only show his dead body with the Dark Mark? I don't have one and he shouldn't have one, so that should be enough evidence." He might not have been guilty of the treachery and murders that saw him in Azkaban, but Taylor didn't doubt for a second that he was capable of such things when it came to Pettigrew.
Pettigrew began to struggle, though it got him nowhere. Neither of them paid him any mind… Save for the thousands of insects Taylor was keeping at the ready specifically to stop any budding escape attempts, should they occur. She could afford to ignore him with her physical human body; nothing within her range was truly ignored.
"Let's talk about that." She sat by the fire, warming her hand. It had begun to drizzle on her way back from the forest's edge, and she was cold to her bones. "What do you want with Harry?"
"To protect him, he's my godson," was Sirius' answer.
"Yes, but what do you want after that?" she pressed. "Keeping him in protective custody until he dies of old age can't be your entire plan."
"I want…" Sirius shrugged. "If he was in a bad home I'd want custody, but you seem alright for a terrifying dark witch. Got a house?"
"Yes." She turned to get her stump closer to the heat of the fire.
"Muggle or magical?" he asked.
"Muggle, but it's just us so we can integrate some magic." She would like a few magical defense systems, at a bare minimum. Once she knew enough to set them up herself.
"Money?" Sirius continued.
"Enough." Her vacation time was going to run out soon, though. She needed to master a form of magical transportation, but she had yet to hear of one that wasn't conspicuous or possibly life threatening to learn by extended trial and error.
"Perfect role model?" he asked.
"I've never once encouraged him to suffocate someone with live spiders," she said.
Sirius opened his mouth, paused, and then paled drastically. "Let's put that at 'no, but neither am I' and leave it there," he concluded. "He likes you, that's bloody obvious, so I don't need custody. Assuming you can get it, that is."
"That's why I'm asking what you're going for," she said, her voice heavy. "We, together, have two problems. You are a fugitive, and I am a persona non grata with the Headmaster, and by extension the Aurors and probably just the magical government overall. You show your face, you get a Dementor set on it. I show my face, I get another thorough obliviation."
"Can't believe I'm saying this, but it'll probably be easier to get me cleared," Sirius admitted. "We have the evidence." He flicked another pebble at Pettigrew. "And I know what I'm framed for. You've got no clue what Dumbledore is thinking, and no way to ask him while being sure he'll tell the truth and let you keep the memory. I'd say have Harry ask, but he already has and got an earful of lies for his trouble."
"If I confront Dumbledore," Taylor began.
"You get an obliviation, or he pulls out some excuse," Sirius finished for her. "It's difficult to say. I'm used to the old man being on my side. Sure it wasn't Malfoy or somebody else impersonating him?"
"In the Headmaster's office, multiple years in a row, without anyone catching on?" she asked. If it was just her experiences she might buy that it was an imposter, but Harry corroborated her story at every turn.
"There is that." He flicked another stone, this one bouncing off Pettigrew's forehead. "If we get me cleared, I could pretend I don't know you exist and try to get guardianship of him. I'd have some pull, as his godfather, and Dumbledore has to have something in place to stop people from investigating where Harry's been, so it's not likely they'll contact you for a custody hearing or the like. Dumbledore would also think I'm on his side, because I was before and I'm certainly not going to throw in with the Pureblood wankers, so he probably won't object."
"Which gets you Harry, but not me," Taylor pointed out.
"Harry's a kid, but he's not going to be one for that long," Sirius pointed out. "Only a few summers until he's legally an adult. Throw on a magical disguise in case someone comes over, take a new name, stay with him wherever I'm staying, and you can have custody in all but the legal documents. I'm probably better as the fun Uncle, anyway. I wasn't cut out for parenting before Azkaban."
It was informal enough to make her itch – what if Sirius decided to change the deal? – but she didn't see a better plan that got around Dumbledore without him having a chance to screw her over. Either way, they were assuming Harry would be in Hogwarts nine months of the year, where she couldn't even openly write to him.
She wasn't happy with that. "What alternatives are there to Hogwarts?" she asked.
"Don't be magic," Sirius scoffed. "Magical schooling isn't compulsive, but if he drops out now they'll snap his wand and he'll either need to get one illegally, move out of the country, or live a magicless life."
Leaving the country might work as a last resort, but she didn't like the idea of trying to move to an entirely different magical society. That could come with its own set of problems. Living without magic, on the other hand… "Is that even possible?" Powers needed to be used, but magic didn't follow the same rules and compulsions. Maybe a wizard or witch really could give up using their magic and live out their lives like that.
"Sure, but it sucks arse and nobody does it," Sirius said. "Even Muggleborn who don't plan to stay in the Wizarding world stay long enough get their OWLS so their wands aren't snapped, then just use magic when they can get away with it among the Muggles. Which Harry can't do for a few more years, at which point there's no reason to do it, because he'll only be a year or two away from it not mattering."
"Is it possible for me to enter the castle on a regular basis, using some sort of excuse?" she asked. "I can't stand the thought of leaving him there. If I could even just visit him on weekends, that would be enough. I never wanted to send him to a boarding school, schools are bad enough when you can come home at the end of the day." If it really was the only school around, maybe it had options for those who needed to learn later in life, but she didn't think she could enroll under a secret identity and have it last longer than a few days.
"Bad school experience?" Sirius asked.
"I dropped out of high school when I figured out that career criminals were nicer than my classmates," she said seriously. "Not before they put me in the hospital, though."
"Okay…" Sirius held up a finger. "I do have that. At least I graduated."
She was thankful he wasn't the sort to dig into what she had said; she probably should have been more circumspect. Then again, he probably didn't think her example of career criminals was a literal one.
"But to answer your question, assuming things haven't changed since I was there, no." He shook his head. "Not happening. You'd need to replace Filch, or…"
He lifted a pebble to flick at Pettigrew, then stopped.
Taylor turned to look at Pettigrew. His eyes were closed, and he flinched at the sudden silence. She needed to remember to keep her cards close to her chest around him, too, though any plan they concocted would involve obliviating him of this discussion. There was always the chance he would play to his animal form and rat her out for something…
An idea occurred to her. "Sirius," she asked, "how hard is it–"
"To turn into an animal and pretend to be a pet?" He frowned. "I was thinking about that. But your bloodline curse…"
"I can learn some things." What her power could and could not do seemed to follow a pattern, but not one she fully understood. Turning into an animal didn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility.
"Being an animagus is difficult and time-consuming, most people can't do it or don't want to put in the effort." He shrugged his shoulders. "If you can do it, you might not be an animal that could pose as a pet. If you could and you were a cat or something, then apparently all you have to do is get a student to claim you and nobody will suspect a thing." He threw the pebble at Pettigrew.
"Can't hurt to look into." She didn't think they had any better options, assuming she wasn't willing to assassinate Dumbledore and cut the Gordian knot that way. He was a bastard and responsible for a lot of grief, but he was the sort of bastard whose death would have consequences. Turning into an animal might work as a less messy long-term plan. "In the meantime, do you have anywhere to go that isn't this forest? Somewhere you can keep a prisoner." They didn't need to lurk in the Forbidden Forest anymore.
"I was going to say no, but then you said prisoner and I was reminded that my family has a townhouse," Sirius said thoughtfully. "And believe it or not, it has actual prison cells."
Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was grim, ugly, and gave Taylor a headache the moment she stepped inside. The magic protecting it from being seen had her power radiating surprise and consternation, though as far as she could tell it was just another password-protected Stranger effect. The magic inside…
It did not make her confident when her power suggested she be cautious. Even the man-eating, uncontrollable magic spiders in the forest didn't provoke that kind of response.
"Off to the cells, traitor rat," Sirius said dully. "Merlin, I hate this place… Don't touch anything if you want to live!" he added as he disappeared through one of the cobweb-laden doorways.
Taylor cautiously walked down the hall, spreading her personal supply of flies and other insects through the building. If there were any magical bugs in residence her power had yet to add them to her control. There were no mundane bugs to be found beyond those she brought with her, which was troubling. A place as decrepit as this ought to be crawling with them.
The townhouse, which was what it was, magical or not, was big. It had dozens of rooms, hallways, a truly disgusting line of hunting trophies of some sort of humanoid with big ears–
And a living humanoid with big ears, shuffling about in a little cubby behind the ancient kitchen. Taylor already had her wand out, but she clutched it tightly as her insects gave her a gradually improving impression of the potential squatter. It was small, perhaps tall enough to reach her waist if it stood up straight. Long, droopy ears dangled to either side of a peculiarly ugly face with big eyes. It muttered in a deep monotone, and wore nothing but a scraggly piece of fabric that barely concealed the fact that it was male. As she watched through her insects it shuffled around with a stooped back, muttering semi-coherently about a 'Mistress' and 'someone at the door'. That it – he – could talk made her think he wasn't just some ugly humanoid animal, despite the hunting trophies.
Sirius returned, brushing silvery powder from his hands, and spread his arms wide. "Behold the glory of my barmy family," he proclaimed, gesturing to the dark wallpaper, ugly candle sconces, and general decrepitude of the hallway.
"Sirius, does your family have a small, possibly insane servant?" Taylor asked. "Or should we be ready to fight off a squatter?" The little person was straightening up, grumbling to himself in a continuous monotone.
"Oh, bugger, Kreacher." He dragged his palm down his face.
The little person popped out of existence behind the kitchen and into existence in the hallway. "Kreacher does not want to be here," he croaked.
"Neither do I," Sirius muttered. "Kreacher, you obey me now, right?"
"Kreacher obeys Mistress…" he huffed a low sigh. "And Master blood traitor."
"Okay, no, I'm not doing this right now." Sirius scowled at the little thing. "You… Don't leave this building, don't speak to anyone except me, don't let anyone know I'm here or allow them to find out if you can stop them… Just don't do anything except cleaning this miserable house."
"Master blood traitor has seen better days," Kreacher croaked. "Kreacher hopes he does not see many more." He popped back out of existence.
"I hate this place," Sirius complained.
Down the hall, a pair of curtains swept open of their own accord. A painting of a truly ugly old woman exploded into motion and noise, screaming madly, endless epithets spewing out of her flat face.
Taylor was beginning to hate this place, too.
Taylor's vacation from her job at the library ended well before Sirius managed to make Grimmauld Place fit for human habitation, and it was with very little regret that she left him to handle it on his own, in favor of the clean, well-lit and headache free library.
Her fellow librarians welcomed her back with open arms, and for once she was able to consciously answer their questions about Harry. He was well, she had gone up to visit him at his school, something they were only now allowing. He had interesting friends, and he was doing well in his classes – though that was purely conjecture as Harry hadn't mentioned his academic performance at all.
Her coworkers aside, her job was… tolerable. She had thought fondly of it while she was mapping out Dementor routes and dealing with Black, but even though she could go through a day without gritting her teeth through a headache, she found that part of her now missed the magical world while she wasn't in it. For all the hardship she had endured at the business end of Dumbledore's wand, the majority of the magical world was a fascinating mystery with many potential advantages for the taking if she only spent the time exploring and finding the things most worth learning. Time spent at the library, reshelving books and upgrading the technical infrastructure, felt like time wasted just to earn enough money to continue paying rent.
It might, she reflected, soon be time for a change in occupation. Once she had the Harry situation fully sorted out, or once something made her current job untenable instead of merely unsatisfying. She didn't have time right now to figure out what else she might like to do on top of everything else going on in her life.
Thankfully, while she spent her weekdays fiddling with old-fashioned computer systems and negotiating new book purchases, magic was never very far away. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place was within driving distance, and the evenings and weekends were hers to do with as she pleased.
At first she just helped Sirius make it habitable; it would be their secure base of operations, now that they didn't need to stake out Hogwarts, and if their plans for him taking custody of Harry panned out he might have to live there for a time. Then, of course, there was planning for clearing his name. Taylor was not content to just toss Pettigrew to the nearest Auror and trust that justice would take its course. She had been burned far too often, on multiple worlds no less, to leave it to chance. The same applied to her backup plan of becoming an animagus, which was also developed in the weeks that followed.
"This," Sirius had said one weekend, presenting her with a glass of yellow snot-like liquid, "is a spirit journey potion."
"What does it do?" she asked, setting the glass down on the kitchen table. Said table squeaked, and not in the 'wood rubbing on wood' way, so she hit it with a stupefy just to be safe.
"Some people get visions, some just lose their balance," Sirius explained, ignoring the byplay of the anomalously noisy piece of furniture, which continued to squeak despite her stunning spell leaving a scuff mark on one of its legs. "The main purpose is to get high and have visions, but a little-known side effect is that if you throw it up while thinking about being an animagus, it'll show you what you're most likely to be."
"That sounds arcane and unreliable even by the standards of magic," she said.
"It's bordering on Divination, so yes." He crossed his arms. "Four of us tried it. The only one who got a different animal was me, and it was only off in predicting the breed of dog. There are better potions, but this one gets Muggles high just like wizards, so I figure it's most likely to work on you."
"When you put it like that…" They'd long since passed the point of mutual distrust, and he would die a painful death no matter how fast-acting a poison he used if he did betray her, so she wasn't too worried about this being some sort of ploy. She took the cup and downed the contents before she could second-guess herself.
"Please have crazy visions, please have crazy visions," Sirius said as they waited.
Taylor felt the sudden urge to sit down before she faceplanted on the kitchen counter. She put both hands on the tabletop and took a deep breath. "Dizziness."
"Darn." He pointed his wand at her. "Now don't hex me for this, you know you need to throw up."
"Do it." He cast, and she choked out the potion, along with her breakfast and the remnants of her last dinner. The potion was clearly discernible from the more mundane stomach contents, and the yellow puddle formed out of it was a recognizable silhouette, that of a…
"Praying mantis?" Sirius said. "That's rare. Really small things are. Not bad, though!"
"No." A thousand times no. She wiped her lips on the sleeve of her robe. "Easily killed, even by accident. Prey to all sorts of common animals. Slow. Bad senses. Highly visible."
Most importantly, it was an insect. She had no idea what the ramifications of turning into a bug while having a power that totally and utterly controlled all bugs might be. Possibly nothing, but it was also possible if she did that she would be handing her power complete control of her body until it chose to turn her back. If it ever did turn her back. They were on relatively good terms now, and her power was being cooperative, but she would never take that chance. She didn't trust it, she just knew that their interests currently aligned. There was a big difference.
"Glad we ruled this out right away, then," Sirius said. "The actual process takes months."
"I can't be an animagus." It was a shame, she liked the idea of being able to turn into an animal and roam unnoticed… It had certainly served Sirius and Pettigrew quite well.
"No, not if you don't want to be a praying mantis." He waggled his eyebrows. "Afraid of being an ugly bug, are we? Would you do it if you were a butterfly?"
"I can terrorize you solely with butterflies, if you want," she offered. "I've done it before."
"The scary part is I believe you," he said with a shudder. "If you can't be an animagus, your options for being an animal are very limited. Human transfiguration reverts quickly, and you can't do it to yourself. You'd need a curse, and a reversible one at that. It would have to be dark, too, else it would be well-known."
"You have a library of dark books." One infested with book-spirits, but that was apparently a minor matter. She really needed to get a sense of what constituted a real threat in the magical world; she would have thought spirits would rank highly, but apparently the books themselves were more dangerous by far.
"I'll look for something without horrible side-effects." He pointed an accusatory finger at her. "Don't go pawing through them on your own! You might count as a Muggle to some of the enchantments."
"I'll use bugs, don't worry."
"Bugs might count as Muggles too," Sirius said thoughtfully. "You know what, go ahead with the bugs. I've always wanted to see what some of those traps do."
Harry always liked watching the mail owls, but he watched them so hard the week after reuniting with Taylor that on three separate occasions fellow Hufflepuffs asked him if he was waiting for mail, or looking to get one as a familiar.
Hermione, sitting at the Ravenclaw table on the other side of the hall, had set up a signal she could flash him if she got mail. Thumbs up for normal mail, thumbs down if his mum had included something. He may have precipitated that development by finding excuses to go see her every morning to check.
Nine days after meeting with Taylor, he got the long-awaited thumbs down. That afternoon, she passed over a simple folded sheet of notebook paper. "My parents and I are pretty sure nobody is looking in our mail at all, so they just sent her letter without converting it to a code or anything," Hermione explained. "They wrote me about her, too. She left the letter in their mailbox with a cover letter introducing herself."
"That sounds like mum…" No lingering where she might be spotted. She could do a good impression of a spy from the movies when she felt like it.
"They wanted to meet her, not get mail from her," Hermione laughed. "Tell her that when you write her back."
Harry took his letter down to his room to read.
'Harry,' it read. 'I hope this reaches you safely. I am working on ways to see you. Until then (and it will be soon, I promise), I have some questions. How are you doing for money? I know I gave you some when you left for your first year, but I can't imagine you have any left now. I can send some with the next letter. What do you think of your house? Are the houses in Hogwarts like they were described in the book? Do you know any Slytherins personally, like you do Ravenclaws and Gryffindors? Do you have any friends in Hufflepuff? Do you have a favorite subject? Favorite teacher? Least favorite of either? Rivals? Enemies?'
His mum really wrote differently than she talked. He could only imagine that list of questions delivered in a breathless rush, like Hermione might ask if she was in a hurry, but his mum never talked like that.
'I want to wait until I see you to ask,' the letter continued, 'but I know that might not be as soon as either of us hopes. Until then, have fun at school! I might not like Dumbledore because of what he did (I was perfectly willing to like him prior to that), but I can tell you love it there. It's magic, I understand why. Maybe you can show me what you know sometime soon. Love, mum.'
He pulled out his pen and paper to write a reply immediately. For once, he knew she would be getting his letter.
'Mum,' he wrote, 'Hermione says her parents want to meet you. They're probably not being watched. If you want to be sneaky, maybe arrange to meet them at the store or something.'
'I still have a little money. There isn't anything to buy at Hogwarts, and Neville's gran paid for my school supplies over the summers. I only really spend it on birthday and Christmas presents for my friends. I wouldn't say no to some more, though.'
'The houses here are like they were described in the book, but more… important? There are rivalries and a lot of the time I think it's all a bit stupid. Slytherin has a lot of bigots. Gryffindor has a lot of shouty jerks who always pull out their wands whenever someone looks at them funny. Ravenclaw has snooty condescending arses. Hufflepuff spreads gossip like wildfire. Sometimes those things matter more than who is supposed to be smart or brave or cunning, and sometimes it really doesn't matter at all what house someone is in. I don't have any real friends in Slytherin or Hufflepuff, but that's not because they're worse. I just don't see many Slytherins, and everyone in Hufflepuff is friendly, but I wouldn't say any of them are my friends, specifically. I didn't really seek out my friends. It just happened. It hasn't happened for anyone in those two houses yet.'
He tapped his pen on the paper. Really, he didn't have any close friends in Hufflepuff because everyone was already vaguely friendly. Nobody stood out to him, and nobody had approached him, or vice versa. Hermione, Neville, Ginny… Hermione had come to him and they had a common interest. Neville had hosted him over the summer. Ginny had unwillingly threatened his life, and then been saved by him. Those things set them apart from everyone else.
That seemed like something he could explain better in person. His mum would understand. She didn't have… any close friends, as far as he knew, but she had told him about several childhood friends back in America.
'My favorite subject… Can I say none, but I love learning things they don't teach in class? Flying was fun, but that only lasted a few weeks in my first year. History of Magic, but only because Hermione and I come up with our own study plans and ignore Binns. He teaches the same thing every year. I learned an exorcism spell looking up Japanese ghosts and it saved Ginny's life…'
He went on about some of his favorite spells and interesting things he had read for a while, going over things he had put in previous letters which she never got to read.
'As for enemies or rivals? I'm in Hufflepuff, nobody considers us enemies. Sheep to be ignored or led, maybe. That's mostly the Slytherins and a few Gryffindors, though. Draco Malfoy is a foul-mouthed bigot who slings insults around, but he's Ronald Weasley's mortal enemy, not mine. I think he would be a lot worse if he wasn't so preoccupied with putting Ron down. They both go at it on a daily basis. Professor Snape might be my enemy. He hates me. I think it's a Potter thing. He's had it out for me since my first day, Hermione can attest to that. But he just insults me and my work, and I'm not bad at potions, so I can ignore him. Mostly.'
He scowled at the paper. Snape was an arse, but after three years his attitude was old hat. Harry just sat through Potions and then did his best to forget the experience immediately after. His extracurricular studying on the subject was enough to keep his grades up regardless of Snape's attitude or critical grading.
'My grades (I know you were wondering) have been very good so far. I would include my report card from the end of last term, but I don't know where I put my copy. Duplicates are supposed to be mailed to you, as my parent, but I don't think you got any of them. I have been getting high grades in every class. Really. Hermione, Ginny, and I are ahead in everything. Neville isn't quite so far ahead, but he is a Herbology genius.'
He could probably go on at length about his friends, but he was running out of space on the page and he wanted to keep his first letter short so it would be easy to hide among Hermione's voluminous return letter.
'I have questions for you too, but I want to wait and ask them. Will you be able to see me before winter break? If Dumbledore holds to his pattern, he will force me to stay here. I don't know if the Dementors will be gone by then. Probably not if Black remains at large. What's the plan for that? Love, Harry.'
"Got it." Sirius let a thick-cover book thump down on the table. It squeaked again.
Taylor leaned down to look at the table from underneath, despite having already gone over it with the fine-tooth comb known as termites. She would have bet money that freezing the damn thing would kill whatever kept squeaking, but apparently not. "A better mousetrap?" she asked.
"No, the curse you need." Sirius flipped the book open as she straightened up. "Here." He poked a looping illustration of a bound man shifting into a donkey. "Minus Quam Humano."
The illustration certainly made it look like a dark curse; the man's face was frozen in a rictus of agony, and his donkey form shuddered, cruelly constricted by the already tight ropes tying him down.
"What's it do?" she asked, seeing that the writing wasn't in English.
"Cast it, turns the target into an animal of your choice," he explained, pulling out the other chair to sit down across from her. "It's a nasty one, and the transformation hurts. Less if you're not tied up, as I understand it, but still painful. You'll be saddled with some of the animal's instincts, but less than an animagus would develop, and nothing permanent. The curse lasts indefinitely."
"So I'd be stuck as an animal until… when?" It might last indefinitely, but Sirius knew she didn't want to be a cat or the like for the rest of her life. "Is there some arcane bullshit requirement to turn back?"
"Nah, you just have to get the countercurse cast on you… By the same person who cast the curse." He grimaced at the book, began to turn the page, then apparently thought better of it. "There's another method to turn back without the original caster, but it's not tenable unless you find a few virgins you'd like to sacrifice. This one's got a history of being used to fuck with rival dark families, and they developed the most sadistic possible way to undo it, to the point where the curse fell out of favor because it racked up too high a bodycount for a curse meant to not kill the victim."
"Any side effects? Reasons I can't cast it and then cast the countercurse whenever I want?" It was dark because it hurt and because it was meant to imprison someone in an animal form. Those were relatively benign as far as reasons to be qualified as dark went. The only one suffering would be herself.
"That's the thing, you can't cast it on yourself." He met her gaze with a downright serious stare. "Think about it. Say you managed to cast it on yourself. You're an animal. What next?"
"I cast the countercurse. Without a wand, probably without vocal chords, and maybe without magic." She could see how that would theoretically be a problem.
"Definitely without magic, so that wouldn't work." He shook his head. "This isn't internal magic like being an Animagus, so you can't cast it when you're not yourself. Since the curse needs the same caster to undo it… If you did turn yourself, you'd need to take the bodycount method to turn back, or never turn back at all. I can cast it on you."
She felt a pulse of determination from her power. Her power, which was actually the 'individual' casting her spells, if one spoke of where the magic originated. She had retained her power even when turned into a monster by Lab Rat during the final battle. She wasn't convinced she would lose her magic as an animal, so long as she kept her mind. If she kept her magic and mastered wandlessly casting the countercurse…
"I think that might not apply to me," she mused. "We'll test it in stages, so I don't get stuck and require virgins."
"Good, because I certainly don't qualify," Sirius said with a grin. "Could you sacrifice yourself?"
"Thirteen-year-old son," she reminded him.
"I was outside the room when Lily gave birth," he countered. "Unless the Muggles have some mind-bogglingly weird adoption rituals, I know he didn't come out of you, and James certainly didn't put him in you."
"Still not a virgin." She flicked her wand and mouthed 'aguamenti', spraying him with a jet of cold water. "Get your mind out of the gutter."
"I am so tempted to keep you in my pocket and introduce you as my trouser snake," Sirius mused.
Taylor wanted to tell him exactly what would happen if he did that, but it would have to wait. She was currently busy slithering around the dusty floor of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, in the form of a black two-foot-long common Adder.
The choice of a snake was a simple one; a quirk of the curse ensured that she kept the same number of limbs, meaning she was an easily recognizable oddity as a cat, completely useless as an owl, and mostly useless as a toad. All three of the common Hogwarts pets ruled out, Sirius suggested an unofficial pet often kept by Slytherins, with no limbs to be conspicuously missing.
The snake form was alien, but it had just enough in the way of instincts that it wasn't unbearably so. She could slither quickly enough to startle Sirius, her bite was venomous, and she could smell with her tongue.
"How's the magic doing?" he asked, clearly skeptical. "I think I should be worried about all the spiders you keep in here now that you're not able to control them."
Taylor hissed at him. Her power radiated smug, and once again it and she were in complete agreement. Sirius made it so satisfying to prove him wrong; she was pretty sure he did it on purpose to spur her on.
A quartet of flies airbombed him, each one carrying a small spider to prove it wasn't a coincidence. "Ew! Okay!" He swatted them off. "That's one Merlin-forsaken weird blood curse you've got going on. Don't know how you knew it would work like this…"
It worked because her magic was not hers, and thus no matter what form she took, so long as her power could connect to her, magic was available by proxy. By the same reasoning, she didn't think she needed to worry about whether she would be able to master the countercurse wordlessly and wandlessly. Her power already did spells without either. They were just more stressful for her without her special wand.
That said, 'as easy as normal' implied a few weeks of concentrated agony to practice the spell to exhaustion, and probably more to do it wordlessly and wandlessly, so she wasn't ready to infiltrate Hogwarts just yet.
Soon, though. She had a goal to work towards.
She also, at the current moment, had a Sirius to toy with, and a need to get accustomed to a snake body.
"Hey," he said, raising his wand defensively… "Don't get any funny ideas." Either he was more perceptive than he let on, or he knew he'd been asking for retaliation.
She arranged her insects in the air in front of him, forming an easily recognizable pair of words.
'Trouser Snake?'
He ran.
Winter break was fast approaching, and the letters from Taylor forwarded through the Grangers had slowed. Not stopped; Taylor knew better than to do that. But Harry got the impression she was keeping something from him, and choosing to write less often rather than outright lying about whatever it was.
He hoped the secret she was keeping was a pleasant surprise of some sort. He suspected it was some kind of bad news. After two and a half years worrying about her, it was harder than he had expected to stop worrying.
The Dementors around the castle weren't helping matters. There was some ruckus about a Quidditch game getting interrupted by a veritable flood of the things. Hufflepuff gossip had their numbers somewhere between three and a thousand. Neville, the only one of Harry's friends who had bothered attending, said there were at least a hundred. Nobody was hurt, but the Dementor patrol routes had changed, and they were closer to the castle, now. Because that made sense.
Dumbledore made an announcement in the Great Hall about not going out and holding fast until the Ministry deemed fit to remove the Dementors. There was talk of Sirius Black being sighted in France, though his mum's next letter had said there was no truth to such rumors.
Most of the other students were hunkering down, riding out the last few damp, gloomy weeks between them and a cheerful vacation. Harry would be among them…
But he didn't know whether he would be leaving the castle over the break. If his mum came through and tricked Dumbledore somehow he might be able to go, but she had yet to mention any solid plans.
He knew he was getting his hopes up. He also didn't care. At worst, he would have exactly as melancholy a Christmas as he had in the previous two years, with the added comfort that at least he knew his mum was alive and well. There was no harm in hoping.
"It would be no bother," Hermione insisted one evening as they walked the halls of Hogwarts, not going anywhere in particular. Nobody was allowed outside without adult supervision, so a lot of the students had taken to roaming the castle when the need to go somewhere struck. "My parents would love to have you, and you know who else could be there."
"Dumbledore never gives me a choice," Harry objected, once again. "I'll ask him, but he'll say no. Especially with Black still a fugitive."
"I really do think that's unfair, you know," Hermione remarked. "A double standard. You're not Harry Potter, why would Black care? I'm not Harry Potter either, but I get to go home."
"If the resemblance is enough to get every other adult who meets me to make the mistake, Black will probably mistake me for him too." Theoretically. If Black really was the crazy murderer people thought he was. Harry was still on the fence about that, but he thought his mum could take care of herself either way. Especially with magic.
"There are charms to make you look different," Hermione insisted. They passed two Slytherins headed for the library. "We could give you brown hair, make it curly, and claim you were my cousin. Black wouldn't look twice, and you could come stay with us."
"I'll tell Dumbledore you offered." And he would get shut down, but he appreciated the thought.
A student in Ravenclaw robes approached them. Luna Lovegood, the girl Hermione said was always flustering the other Ravenclaws with nonsensical comments. She had that airy, unconcerned look on her face that Harry remembered from the last time he had spoken to her. He supposed it might be her default expression, but he stopped to speak with her anyway.
"Bert," Luna greeted him. "I thought I might find you here. I am staying for break, don't you know? My father is in the middle of remodeling our home and he wrote saying the heating charms are all infested with Nargles."
"I'm sorry, that sounds… annoying?" Harry guessed, not knowing what Nargles were or how they infested charms in the first place.
"He says they almost cooked him alive last week," Luna remarked. "I thought, since I would be staying here, that we should be friends."
Hermione let out a little snort, which Harry chose to interpret as amusement rather than annoyance.
"Okay?" he said.
"So I want to give you a Christmas present," Luna continued. "I will give it now." She held her left arm out.
Harry jerked back as a black snake head the size of his fist poked out from Luna's sleeve. Piercingly dark eyes stood out on a shiny scaled face, and a red tongue flicked in his direction.
"I hope you don't take this the wrong way," the snake said in perfect english, her voice instantly recognizable. "Luna, any time now would be good…"
Harry's jaw dropped.
"Her name is Hissy," Luna said blithely. "A friend mailed her to me. You do not have a familiar yet, do you?"
"Luna, that's a snake," Hermione spluttered. "You– those aren't even allowed!"
Harry's head whipped around so fast he cricked his neck. "Hermione, is that the thing you care about right now?" he demanded. He wanted to know why the snake was talking with his mum's voice!
"I don't care about the rules when they're stupid, but you'll just have her confiscated if anyone sees her," Hermione objected. "Besides, do you even like snakes?"
"I think he will like me," the snake hiss-laughed.
"I like this one!" Harry said incredulously. "Luna, thank you so much!" He reached out to the snake, and it – was it his mum, or was she just speaking through it somehow? – slithered out of Luna's sleeve to coil around his arm.
"That worked out better than I thought it would," the snake hissed. "Now, how do I let you know I am not just a snake?"
Harry peered down at his mother. "You just did," he told her.
"Oh!" Luna smiled brightly. "You can talk to her! I didn't know that."
"Interesting…" his mother – the snake version of her – said thoughtfully.
Hermione's mouth worked soundlessly.
Harry was beginning to think he was missing something rather important.
Taylor had decided that Luna Lovegood was not a secret mastermind hiding behind feigned oddities. Her mystery creatures and unusual remarks were not code for anything. She was not a seer, or if she was one it was completely unconnected to the mannerisms that set her apart from her peers.
No, Luna was none of those things. She was just a flighty, scatterbrained twelve-year-old girl with a penchant for whimsy, and an innocent desire to be helpful. Taylor had taken advantage of that several times in the last few months, to great success each time. Luna had provided her with robes and advice, and played the messenger twice, the second time obligingly gifting Harry with a 'pet snake' to provide Taylor with a solid alibi. Not once had Luna asked for anything in return.
Taylor didn't know yet how she was going to pay the odd little girl back, but she fully intended to do her a few good turns in recompense for her help. Giving her an excuse to hang around with Harry and his friends, which any child would be lucky to have in Taylor's entirely unbiased opinion, was not nearly enough to balance the scales. She would have to come up with something else.
In the meantime, she was a snake in Hogwarts. An unsanctioned 'pet', which was a cover story that provided her with exactly as much leeway as Pettigrew had enjoyed, being a rat. Not a single professor knew what she was, and of the students only Harry's friends and Luna knew who she really was. Given Dumbledore was in the castle, it was vital they keep it that way.
"What about Ron?" had been Harry's question to Ginny, after he had gathered his friends and Luna at what was apparently their usual minorly warded table in the library. An extra chair had been pulled up for Luna, and Taylor was on the table itself, the subject of many surprised looks. "I know you can hear her, Ginny, and apparently I can too. We should make sure we know who else could overhear."
"Why's that involve Ron?" Neville asked. "He's not the heir of Slytherin after all."
"I heard through the Hufflepuff grapevine that he claimed he spoke to the snake during the dueling club fiasco," Harry explained.
"He was trying to protect me," Ginny sighed. "He can't actually speak to snakes, but he saw me do it and jumped on the chance to say it was him so nobody suspected me. That's why he stayed away from me and caused so much ruckus after the dueling club, he told me he was doing his best to make sure everybody thought it was him or no Weasley at all. I can only speak it now because of… you know. Ron can't. Weasleys aren't parseltongues."
"Harry must have inherited the talent," Neville offered. "Didn't you say your mum was…" He trailed off, looking down at Taylor. She was used to seeing things from a very low vantage point, thanks to her bugs, but it still unnerved her slightly to know her actual body was so small and low to the ground. "Sorry, miss Hebert."
"Hissy," Luna interjected.
"Hissy when I am a snake," Taylor agreed, though only Harry and Ginny understood her. The Map was still in play in the castle, in the hands of yet more Weasleys if Pettigrew's terrified confessions were to be believed, and Sirius had told her that the only way to avoid her real name showing up was to adopt the name of an alter-ego so thoroughly that the identification magic made a distinction between her snake and human selves, due to how it had been created. Thus, the 'Animagus name' tradition Sirius and his friends had come up with, that she was now continuing with the uninspired name of 'Hissy'.
"If there is a bloodline curse, then there is a bloodline to be cursed," Hermione interjected, apparently following Neville's aborted line of reasoning. "A bloodline that can speak Parseltongue. That would explain you, Harry."
It would, if Harry was actually descended from her, and if she was actually magical or stood any chance of having magical ancestors, neither of which was the case. But it was good enough to satisfy the curiosity of a child who was certain she had figured something out, so Taylor wasn't worried for her secrets.
Harry might have been worried for his secrets, if he had any he was keeping from her, but she wasn't inclined to hover over him every second of every day. That was a quick way to get him to resent her, and impractical besides. She couldn't handle being a snake for more than a few days at a time. Also, she still had a job to do on the weekdays.
Instead of being a full-time pet like Pettigrew, she instead chose to be a weekend visitor that Harry would claim, if asked, spent most of her time slithering around the castle doing the things snakes liked to do and only occasionally returned to him for attention. In reality she snuck into the castle by the tunnels every Friday night and left every Sunday night by the same method. It was a good compromise, giving her enough time to reconnect with him while not turning her into a creepy stalker or voyeur of teenage drama out of pure boredom.
Following the same line of reasoning that kept her from crossing lines best left untouched, she didn't sleep in his bed. Or his dorm, at that. Her first action upon parting with Harry that first night had been to slither around to get her bearings and look for a suitable snake-sized hideout to spend the nights in. She quickly settled on a narrow ledge up near the ceiling of the Hogwarts' kitchens.
As it turned out, the warm, good-smelling space also doubled as an observation post from which she could watch her newest enemies.
The house elves.
They were a slave race – oh, the wizards might protest otherwise, but anyone who uttered the phrase 'they like to serve' or similar was only further incriminating whatever biotinker equivelent had devised the elves in the first place – focused to the point of fixation on being useful, staying out of sight, and keeping things clean. This did not coexist well with Taylor's need to keep a steady supply of insects within Hogwarts' walls. Her bugs were only safe hidden in cracks in the walls and the occasional unused classroom. If they came out into the open, which they had to in order to be useful, elves would vanish them with a single snap of the fingers. This was only limited by the elvish need to not be seen by the students they served, and the constant interruption of more important tasks. Unless, of course, the students commented on the bugs, in which case the elves became bug-seeking missiles the instant nobody was looking.
Taylor ended up doing most of her exploring and investigating the old-fashioned way, and bringing in new supplies of bugs every weekend to refresh the castle after the week without her guidance saw almost every single insect in the castle eliminated. Bugs were a last resort and a luxury in Hogwarts.
Bug-based gripes aside, she did very much like the castle. She had worried about bad feelings arising from essentially being back in a school after more than a decade well shot of educational institutions, but Hogwarts was as much like Winslow as a mythical Cerberus was a ratty street mongrel. All the asshole students and teachers in the world couldn't make the castle itself any less mystical and enjoyable to explore, she was only ever there when classes weren't in session, and she as a snake enjoyed the instinctive disinterest and deference of everyone immediately assuming she was an illicit pet if they saw her at all. Even better, snakes were the thematic property of Slytherin house, the group of students most likely to otherwise contemplate doing nasty things to the pets of others.
She had thought such stereotyping was just that, stereotyping, but the Malfoy boy really did his best to live up to the hype, and the other students in his house contributed to the image in their own ways. They venerated bigotry and backstabbing, and while she could imagine Lisa enjoying ripping through their juvenile machinations, it was not what she would consider a healthy environment for a child. Not when it was a sanctioned part of the school!
Overall she approved of Hogwarts, but the house system and the rampantly biased Professors – not just Snape – did push a few of her buttons. They could do away with the houses and the school would be better for it. Slytherin wasn't the only cancerous growth; her son's explanation of the houses' bad qualities was, in her opinion, right on the mark.
Such suggestions for improving the state of British magical education were little more than dissatisfied thoughts circling around in her head, though. She was here for her son, and changing the country's education system was second to making sure Harry, personally, was safe and happy. It could wait until he graduated. She would need a project or two to keep herself busy once he grew up, and the magical world was rife with the kind of corruption she despised, without any of the external stressors that would make truly changing things a Sisyphean task. In the meantime, she had her nonexistent hand full reconnecting with her son.
She watched as he studied with his friends, wondering when he had become so studious. She listened as he tossed increasingly bawdy jokes back and forth with Ginny, hissing with amusement when they both remembered she was in the room with them after a particularly off-color exchange. She coiled up in a spiral comfortably close to the fire as Harry and a few other Hufflepuffs sprawled out on the floor of their common room, playing Wizarding games with entirely too many explosions. She slithered among magical plants in the greenhouses with Harry and Neville's guidance, quickly learning what not to go near. She listened thoughtfully, wishing she could take notes, as Hermione and Ginny bounced magical theories back and forth with startling eloquence, to Harry and Neville's amazed confusion. She listened to Luna telling the group about magical creatures that might or might not exist, and approved wholeheartedly as the odd little girl was gradually integrated into their friendship.
She was there, and it was good, exactly what the both of them needed after being forcefully separated for so long. For her to be present, not rushing to get things done, not working towards something bigger. Just… there. In his life.
She satisfied her need for plotting and working towards bigger goals with Sirius, whenever she could find the time. The last few pieces of their plan for Pettigrew fell into place a few weeks into the spring term of the school year.
Sirius knew he wasn't right in the head. Azkaban did that to people, and he was no exception. But he was getting better. He didn't talk to himself without meaning too anymore, and his nightmares were of the normal 'wake up screaming' variety, not the kind that shredded the wallpaper with outbursts of accidental magic. He could pass for normal around other people. The tremors in his hands didn't make him drop his wand anymore.
That last improvement, funnily enough, had been Taylor's final prerequisite for their plan to get him exonerated. 'You shouldn't risk your only chance at exoneration if it's likely you'll drop your wand at the worst possible moment,' she had argued every time he said there was no need to wait. 'If it can go wrong, assume it will. You aren't walking out into the line of fire with an obvious disability that is going away on its own. Wait.'
He had waited. Taylor didn't scare him – however much she might think otherwise, he had grown up around a whole family dripping in the dark arts and she rated as a five out of ten on that scale – but he did want to stay on her good side. She was Harry's mum, after all.
Sirius was a big believer in being able to pick one's family, whatever stuck-up Pureblood breeding tapestries might claim. She'd picked Harry, done the work to properly stake her claim by single-handedly – ha – raising him, and he loved her. Matter closed. There was room for a godfather Padfoot in there, and perhaps in time some respect for Harry's other two deceased parents, but only if Sirius kept his foot out of his mouth and the literal snake out of his proverbial trousers.
That joke bordered on masochistic; so tempting, and yet certain to end in well-deserved pain, specifically his. He would need to stock some antivenom before he brought it back. In the meantime, best to let Taylor think she had scared it out of him. The look on her face when he whipped it out at the perfect moment would be glorious for the second or two it took her to move from shock to revenge.
He grinned as he straightened his robes, looked at himself in the mirror one last time, and confirmed that the glamor was up. It wasn't his finest work, but it was adequate; a bland, dark-skinned face with a pencil mustache and way too many wrinkles, perched atop a neck that was far too long, giving him the appearance of a constipated foreign nobleman. The acting to go with it was snobbish and not something a prison escapee should be able to pull off after roughing it and eating bugs for six months. Nobody would suspect a thing, so long as he resisted scratching at the abominable itch the glamor induced in his nose hairs.
He turned, gave an empty Grimmauld Place the finger on general principle, and pinched some Floo powder out of the vase by the fireplace. "Leaky Cauldron," he called out.
Step one of Taylor's master plan to exonerate him with so much flair that he couldn't possibly be given the 'Old Yeller' treatment, whatever that meant: Go to Diagon Alley.
He made his way out to the open street, walking stiffly. The Alley was busy, but not so busy that there were too many people for their plan. He kept his eyes open, though, looking for potential complications. There was an Auror nearby, speaking to an older man with a cane about something, so he couldn't do anything quite yet.
Sirius pretended to stop and consider a window display of talking bowler hats. Then he actually did consider the hats. They looked to be enchanted to hold a 'conversation' about the owner's dapper looks, amateur work really, he'd figured that out in fifth year so he could charm a certain witch's knickers with some choice comments… The charms were easily alterable, even considering there were probably a few token anti-tampering spells placed over the rest.
His persona wouldn't look very good in a hat, but his persona didn't look very good anyway, and a bit of de-snobbing would be nice. Sirius ducked into the store and dropped two Galleons on an overpriced talking hat.
He was in the middle of re-enchanting it out in the street when something exploded nearby. The Auror talking to the old man reacted quickly, twisting to apparate away and investigate the disturbance.
Step two: Taylor set off some preplanned distractions throughout the Alley. Nobody would be hurt, but a few cauldrons might need to be replaced before the day was done.
Sirius hurriedly finished enchanting his hat, slinging the modified spells back into place with haphazard abandon, and set it at a jaunty angle on his head. "Trigger word is 'Black' and only I can say it," he muttered.
"You got it," the hat confirmed, its voice different and now oddly familiar, though he couldn't place it. Probably an effect of him personally redoing the speech charms.
That bit of business attended to, he continued to watch the crowd. His cue should be coming along any moment now…
A portly wizard stumbled out of Knockturn Alley, shoving people aside as he ran away. Some of the passersby who got a good look at his face squinted and turned to watch him go. His robes were covered in soot, and he looked confused, like he had no idea how he had come to be in Diagon Alley.
That was probably because his last coherent memory was fleeing Sirius outside platform nine and three-quarters. It was the easiest way to remove all of the mildly incriminating things Pettigrew had witnessed since then; subject-oriented obliviation took a fine touch, but time-oriented obliviation just required the mental sledgehammer.
Step three: Reintroduce Pettigrew to the Wizarding world.
"You!" Sirius yelled, pitching his voice to be older and much frailer than it should be. He set off at a brisk walk. "Oy! Peter!"
Pettigrew looked up. "Do I know you?" he asked. He even stopped running, like he actually thought this might be something good! Sirius had to hold back a vicious grin.
"Pettigrew, old chap, everyone knows you!" Sirius proclaimed. He was ten long steps away. Eight. Six. And closing.
Pettigrew had stopped entirely, and his face was gradually draining of color as the murmurs of the crowd grew louder, many repeating his name. "No, you're mistaken," he got out, squeaking like the rat he really was.
"Order of Merlin recipient Peter Pettigrew, I know your face," Sirius proclaimed grandly, sweeping up to clap the shell-shocked wizard on the shoulder. "Saw you in the papers back then. Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"I got better," Pettigrew choked out.
"Oh, Peter," Sirius let his voice drop and let go of the posh upper-class accent for a moment. He grasped Pettigrew's other shoulder in a seemingly friendly embrace. "Do you realize that you're absolutely buggered now?" he whispered.
Peter jerked away from him, instantly recognizing Sirius' real voice, and did the stupidest thing he possibly could; he tried to apparate away.
Step five, or step zero or negative ten depending on how one counted them: stick a nifty little anti-apparition doohickey in Peter's robes before releasing him in Diagon Alley. It wasn't all that complicated a magical item; just a little glass ball with a potion inside that really didn't like being spun around just as a magical charge attempted to encompass it, like what might happen when a wizard or witch intended to apparate. Not sold for that purpose, most people didn't think creatively, but he'd used them to great effect pranking the older Slytherins trying to sneak away during Hogsmeade weekends… Good times. Almost as good as this.
Instead of the portly wizard twisting on his heel and disappearing, he twisted and his backside promptly exploded, scorching his robes and ruining his concentration just before he could get to the part of apparition that made splinching oneself possible. He sprawled forward, his robes a smoldering wreck from the waist down, but his skin and flesh mostly unharmed. It wouldn't do to have him seriously injured and pitiable.
"You've got a lot of nerve, showing your face!" Sirius boomed, drawing his wand.
"You're Sirius Black!" Pettigrew screamed, finally latching onto the obvious method of turning the crowd against his assailant.
"Black?" Sirius asked, advancing on Pettigrew as he scrambled to his feet and frantically checked his robe pockets for his wand, which he would find was sadly not present. He probably wouldn't have managed to apparate without it, as he was a mediocre wizard at best, but luckily even a failed attempt could set off the potion, so it didn't matter whether he was already doomed to fail.
"His heart's black," Sirius' hat chimed in. "Does that count?"
"Not now, hat," Sirius chided it. "Pettigrew. What are you doing alive?"
"Looks to me like he faked his death," Sirius' hat suggested, quite loudly.
Sirius tilted his head, feigning thoughtfulness. "You know, you may be right," he agreed. The hat had been a perfect addition to this plan; so much better than monologuing it all himself! "But why?"
"Heroes don't hide," his hat answered. "And what was all that about Muggles dying in the escape? And them finding a finger?"
"You're Sirius Black!" Pettigrew again claimed, attempting to back away, into the crowd. Without a wand and with buttocks too scorched to properly run, he didn't really have any other way out.
"Could someone kindly hold the bugger still?" Sirius requested. "We're deducing things here."
It was at this point that Taylor had predicted Sirius' little play would fall apart if he even got this far; she said that nobody in the crowd would step up, and that the accusations wouldn't seem plausible enough. She expected it, and had crafted several alternative approaches based on exactly how badly it fell apart.
Sirius had argued that she was overestimating the average wizard's willingness to think for himself, and underestimating how much appearances affected credibility. Here he was, a posh foreigner who was just flawed enough to not seem disingenuously perfect, and now with a talking hat playing the foil in a delightfully interesting but ultimately respectable persona. Then there was Pettigrew; disheveled, having burst a burning ball of fire off his buttocks when he tried to apparate, and accusing said posh man of being a dangerous lunatic he obviously was not.
A burly witch who happened to be standing nearby socked Pettigrew in the back of the head and grabbed him in a headlock. "Got him, sir. Go on."
Sirius could have kissed her; the plan would work whether or not he was revealed as Sirius Black or the crowd seemed to be on Pettigrew's side, but this version of the plan was so much more fun! "Yes, thank you. Hat?"
"I reckon something is fishy," his hat declared. "Pull up that sleeve of his."
Pettigrew tried to knock his head back into the witch's face, but she just tilted her head back and popped him in the jaw with her free arm. Someone else reached forward and yanked up Pettigrew's sleeve.
The Dark Mark stared balefully out at the crowd, and Pettigrew's chances of getting out of this disappeared like a little puff of smoke from the back of his robes.
"Take a gander at that," Sirius said loudly, wishing he had a pipe to dramatically suck on. "Faked his death, got a Dark Mark… Looks like this was an old-fashioned frame-up to me."
"Or maybe a dispute among criminals," his hat countered. "Does Black have a Dark Mark?"
"Don't know, old chap," Sirius admitted. "But it certainly doesn't seem right that Pettigrew does."
Pettigrew opened his mouth to object, but unfortunately for him the witch who had him in a headlock took that as another sign of resistance and thumped him in the back of the head, knocking the last vestiges of consciousness from him. Real salt of the earth, she was. He ought to get her Floo address.
"I say someone ought to drag this blighter to the nearest authority and pump him full of Veritaserum," Sirius suggested. "Ask him about Black. What was it Black was convicted for?"
"Being You-Know-Who's right hand man," his hat reminded him.
Sirius hid his flinch flawlessly. He hadn't enchanted the hat to say that! Someone in the crowd was supposed to speak up! But the show had to go on, and it was as good a setup as any. "Rings a bell, but I thought he also betrayed the Potters… Better ask Pettigrew about that, something is fishy here."
The seeds of doubt thoroughly sown and his luck almost certainly spent, Sirius doffed his hat at the witch holding Pettigrew. "I think my work is done here, you fine folks can handle the rest," he suggested.
"We wouldn't say no to a tip, though," his hat commented.
"Certainly we would, I am a gentleman of fine stature!" Sirius retorted, his ad-libbing skills rusty but thankfully still up to the task.
"I need a new case of hat polish," the hat whined as he put it back on.
"Someone go get the Aurors," the burly woman commanded.
Sirius smiled rakishly and sauntered away, thinking furiously.
The plan had gone perfectly… But what the hell had happened with the hat?
As it turned out, anti-eavesdropping wards were only effective against ears outside the ward. Taylor could hear the discussion going on between Senior Auror Dawlish and Director Amelia Bones despite several layered privacy wards and two floors of Ministry separating them, all thanks to the insects she had secreted in a corner of Bones' office, brought in on Dawlish's robes.
"Please fill out form thirty next," a clerk told Taylor, handing her a form titled 'Animagus Registration: Transformation Method'. She took it and began inking in the many boxes, writing out her name for the thirtieth time since starting the paperwork. Animagus registration was a brilliant excuse to keep her in the Ministry for hours on end. If she needed more time, she just had to mess up a single letter, and the entire form would need to be redone.
In the meantime, Amelia Bones was smiling tightly at her subordinate. "No," she said calmly, "we will not be providing Pettigrew with anything beyond what the letter of the law requires. Most certainly not visitors, not even the Minister. He must be questioned first, and the flight risk he poses properly assessed. Even then, I expect his Animagus form will have him locked away in solitary to prevent escape attempts." She'd found the 'Animagi for Beginners' pamphlet in the rat's robe pocket and thought to ask the obvious question, then. Good.
"The Minister was very insistent, and I have had several Wizengamot members requesting to see Pettigrew too," Dawlish said nervously. "As well as the Chief Warlock." Taylor could almost smell the toadying through her bugs. And was that Dumbledore on the list of people trying to get to Pettigrew? Curious.
"No to all of them," Amelia said serenely. "We will do this by the books. The public demands no less. And tell the Minister when you see him that the Kiss On Sight order for Black had better be repealed before a Dementor catches Black and Kisses away the Minister's chances of reelection. By tomorrow the entire country will be anticipating this trial."
"He won't like that," Dawlish objected.
"He'll like a lynch mob even less," Amelia retorted. "It's the right thing to do, besides."
Dawlish nodded and left her office, presumably off to deliver the news to the Minister.
"It's lucky that what's right and what's politically expedient happen to be aligned just this once," Amelia mused. "Almost too lucky…"
Taylor filled out the last line of form thirty, signing with a tired flourish, and handed the paper back to the Ministry worker. "Next form?"
"That was the last form," the clerk said. "You are registering as a…" He paged through her submitted paperwork. His eyebrows rose. "Moose?"
"Yes." She got the benefits of registering as an animagus that way, chief among them the beginning of a paper trail establishing her as a law-abiding witch, but with none of the drawbacks of doing so with what she considered her 'real' form. Nothing was more dangerous than intentionally misleading tactical information.
"Please prepare to demonstrate your form and pose for a picture," the clerk said as he stood. He had a little old-fashioned camera. "Back up."
Taylor pushed her seat aside and stepped back, mentally preparing to grit her teeth. Animagus transformations were not painful… But she wasn't really an animagus, and the curse she used did hurt. She couldn't let it show.
She chanted the incantation in her head, brandished her wand, and imagined a moose. Her power and the curse did the rest, forcefully crushing and stretching her to a new form, with all of the pain those descriptions implied. Thankfully, turning into an animal looked the same from the outside no matter what method one used.
The clerk's tired eyes widened slightly, but by the time he put the camera to his face he looked dead inside again. "Hold still."
Taylor posed for the picture, balancing awkwardly on three legs. Not only was she a big, ungainly moose with a huge rack of ugly horns on her head, she was missing a leg. It was impossible to have a more conspicuous animagus form. Thankfully, she could be any animal, not just this Moose. Her unique condition wasn't always a severe disadvantage; it let her use this spell like nobody else could.
"Change back," the clerk ordered.
She silently evoked the countercurse, and her power dutifully restored her. It was harder to hide her pain going the other way, but she covered it by grimacing and holding her neck. "Going from having a rack to not having one is really uncomfortable," she explained.
For some reason that made the clerk blush. She didn't figure it out until after she had left his office.
"They're not that small!" she growled to herself once she realized what, exactly, she had said.
She wasn't going to say a word to Sirius about this. He had enough material without her feeding the flames. All he needed to know was what she'd spied on upstairs. He'd get his fair trial.
When Taylor visited Harry that weekend, she noticed a framed copy of the Daily Prophet sitting by his bedside. On the front page, a spindly dark-skinned man tipped his bowler hat at a woman holding Pettigrew in a headlock. The hat's brim moved, and the man laughed and said something before putting it back on.
'Peter Pettigrew Alive, Bearing Dark Mark!' the headline screamed.
Sirius looked patently ridiculous with the hat, and he was insufferable about having pulled off the whole ruse without a hitch, but he had good reason to be smug about it. Things had gone perfectly. He wasn't going to turn himself in for the trial until public pressure gave the Minister a few sleepless nights and a date was scheduled, but it seemed inevitable that the truth would come out. If Pettigrew disappeared or died mysteriously before then, there would be a riot, and Sirius would probably get his retrial anyway.
For some reason Sirius had been muttering and sticking his hand up the hat's brim when she left to go to Hogwarts that afternoon, and the hat had been snarking back at him, but that was just Sirius. She presumed the hat was the magical equivalent of a sock puppet.
"Hey, Hissy," Harry said fondly. He held his arm out, and she took the offer to ride along, coiling herself up around his forearm and bicep, hidden beneath the sleeve of his robe. "Good week?"
"Very good," she replied as they ventured out into the castle proper, passing through the Hufflepuff common room on the way. "You?"
"Some Potter trouble, with people coming out of the woodwork to ask me about Black and Pettigrew," Harry said, "but that's nothing."
Ah, Potter trouble. The catch-all term Harry used for the problems that last name, and him being associated with it, caused. Taylor understood his desire not to associate himself with the name a lot better now that she had heard, at length, his list of complaints about all the annoyances and outright dangers the name managed to convey to him even with him refusing it at every opportunity.
"Here comes some more Potter trouble now," Harry muttered. Taylor poked her head out his sleeve to see a scruffy-looking man coming toward them.
"Harry, I've been looking for you," Lupin said. "Do you have a moment?"
"Not really, my friends are waiting for me," Harry said blandly.
"You do have a moment," Lupin said more firmly. "You've seen the newspapers?"
"Yeah?" Harry shrugged. "So?" Taylor had never seen passive-aggressive Harry before. She was fascinated.
"Black was–" Lupin began.
"The bastard time-traveling child of James and Lily Potter, probably," Harry interrupted. "If it has to do with them I don't care. Does it?"
"Five points from Hufflepuff for interrupting and disrespecting a professor," Lupin snapped. "It does, in fact, have to do with them."
"Okay. Good to know he is their child, or their best friend, or whatever. I'll be sure to let him know I'm not Harry Potter if I see him." Harry's shoulders tensed. "I do actually have somewhere to be, Professor."
"Just… No. Nevermind. Go." Lupin growled.
Harry walked away, his back stiff and his arm tense. He quickly relaxed once he found his friends and they started up a game of wizard trivia, but the encounter stayed with Taylor all day, and when she found herself at loose ends she decided to pay some attention to the staff. Specifically, she knew that they had a staff meeting every Saturday afternoon…
She slithered her way into the old classroom they used for their meetings just as the boring administrative talk was wrapping up. McGonagall, as deputy Headmistress, headed up all of that, and even her light Scottish brogue couldn't make it any more interesting to listen to.
Dumbledore wasn't there, more's the pity. Taylor didn't dare slither her way up to his office alone, so she saw very little of the man who had kidnapped her son. It was hard to know her enemy when she hardly ever saw him.
"That's all we need to discuss about the budget today," McGonagall concluded as Taylor slithered into a good listening spot well out of sight of the assembled professors. "Remember to alert Sinastra of any more Punching Telescope incidents before you destroy the telescope, and we won't have to replace any more before the Weasleys graduate. Are there any students who need discussing?"
"I'd like to bring up Harry Potter," Lupin said, and Taylor knew she had made the right decision to come and eavesdrop on this particular day. Then again, Lupin had the air of a man at the end of his patience earlier in the day, so it made sense he would want to vent now.
"Let's not discuss the brat," Snape drawled.
"Severus, hold your tongue," Sprout huffed. "Harry has done nothing to deserve your disdain. He's the best student in his year, academically, and he never causes any trouble."
"Miss Granger has him beat when you consider the other houses, but I think neither of them would be doing quite so well alone," Flitwick chimed in.
"I want to discuss why you all just call him Harry, except for Snape," Lupin clarified. "I've tried to get through to him, but he has his back up over his own last name."
"Didn't you get a well-deserved scolding from Harry on that very topic?" Sprout asked, her voice deceptively mild. "I remember saying that you should consider yourself told and leave it alone."
"Yes, but I still don't understand." Lupin's breathing was heavy, and he sounded angry. "Why do you let him do this? It's disrespectful."
"On this one thing we agree," Snape said coldly.
"It's not a matter of letting him, Remus," Professor Babbling, Harry's teacher in Runes if Taylor remembered correctly, answered. "It's simply the right thing to do. He asked that I call him by the name he chose. I thought about it, decided that there was no harm in it and that I would rather have his respect than his resentment, and chose to do so. How is the opposite approach working out for you and Snape?"
"The fact is," Flitwick added before Snape or Lupin could respond, "that there is nothing wrong with a boy wanting to use the last name of his adoptive mother. I've never met Mrs. Hebert, which is understandable given she is a Muggle, but if Harry cares that much about her I think it's rather touching."
"Not to mention it gets him out of the spotlight he doesn't seem to care for," Sprout added.
"We, as Professors, chose to not make a scene out of a name," McGonagall concluded. "It's up to you how you interact with Harry, Remus, but you assured me at the start of the year that it wouldn't be a problem."
"I did not expect him to hate his actual parents," Remus said bluntly. "That is a problem. His Boggart is a problem. He–"
"I hope you are not about to tell us about his Boggart," Sprout cut in. "You held Harry back to let him face his alone for a reason."
"It was not what I expected," Remus said stiffly.
"Let the brat have his little fears," Severus said. "I know I don't want to hear about them." Robes rustled, and though Taylor couldn't properly see them from her hiding place she suspected he had leaned forward. "If you speak about the Boggarts of the students you hold back to grant privacy, you will not be teaching here next week. My Slytherins take that privacy very seriously. Please give me an excuse to sic their parents on you."
"Professor Lupin was not about to violate that trust," McGonagall declared. "Let's move on. Remus, you need to stop pushing Harry about James and Lily. Let him have his space. All you are doing is making him resent you."
Lupin muttered something too quiet for Taylor to hear, and then Flitwick asked McGonagall if the Professors needed to be on the lookout for Ronald Weasley's missing rat or not, and the conversation drifted away from interesting topics, leaving Taylor with a much more comprehensive of exactly how the staff saw her son.
She would have to ask Sirius why Snape, of all people, cared so much about Harry 'disrespecting' the Potters. From what she'd gathered, Snape ought to be celebrating someone else joining him in dancing on James Potter's grave. And perhaps while she was at it, she would bring up the werewolf's obsession with the same topic.
Harry was her son. She wouldn't have minded overmuch if he showed an interest in his birth parents, only the unique circumstances of her receiving him had stopped her from telling him he was adopted long before magic came into their lives. But he had chosen to deny them so long as people denied her presence in his life, and as such, she was going to make sure that didn't come with any backlash.
Pettigrew's trial was set for the fifth of July, and an amnesty was offered for Sirius Black if he turned himself in to stand trial. The Dementor's Kiss was officially off the table, and a return to Azkaban was unofficially very unlikely. It seemed the preliminary interrogation of Pettigrew had him singing loudly enough that the Ministry could read the writing on the wall.
One consequence of that date being set, besides the obvious one of it also being the date of Sirius' upcoming exoneration, was that Taylor knew for certain nothing about Harry's custody situation could change until after that day. As such, Harry would be at Dumbledore's mercy for one more summer. For the last summer, if anything went vaguely to plan during and after the trial.
Taylor was very curious to see Dumbledore's responses to Harry's apparently annual interrogation, so she tagged along with Harry when he went up to the Headmaster's office after the end of term exams.
"Good morning, Headmaster," Harry said respectfully. "Have you met my familiar? I brought her with me today."
"I was unaware you had found a familiar," Dumbledore said, his voice as grandfatherly and gentle as Taylor remembered. Knowing what he had done, it made her itch to bite him, which she attributed to background snake instincts. "Where is she?"
Taylor took that as her cue to poke her head out from Harry's sleeve. Sirius had sworn up and down that there was no immediately obvious way of recognizing an animagus or human transfigured into an animal, and this was the trial by fire. If Dumbledore immediately knew something was off about her, then it was better to know now than to be surprised wandering the castle at night, alone.
"Ah, a snake…" Dumbledore smiled. "An unusual choice for a Hufflepuff, perhaps, but one should make efforts to avoid fitting too neatly to any one label. Does she have a name?"
"Hissy," Harry said. "Because she hisses a lot. Luna gave her to me for Christmas this year."
"Quite the gift," Dumbledore said. "Do be careful with her. Her behavior may not match what you expect, and paying close attention to what she does will make your time together easier on the both of you."
"Sir…" Harry paused. "Are we talking about Hissy or Luna?"
Dumbledore chuckled and stroked his beard. "Perhaps both," he said. "For your familiar, so long as you keep her fed and ensure she does not dine on pet toads, you may keep her with you in the castle. I would suggest getting a suitable terrarium for her over the summer. Miss Lovegood need not be discouraged from eating toads. Probably."
"About the summer," Harry said. "Has there been no change with my mother?"
"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore frowned. "I would have told you if there had been. There has been no significant change."
Taylor supposed that was technically true, if one only observed her at home. She wondered if she was being watched when she was in her house. Not by anyone within a few square blocks of her, if her constant bug presence in the area was to be believed. Compared to magical environments her Muggle neighborhood was an insect stronghold. In the absence of magical defenses, such a clear and thorough awareness of the surrounding area let her sleep at night.
"But what if–" Harry began.
"I would suggest that you not dwell on that which cannot be changed," Dumbledore interjected. "I find that when I am thinking too much about something I ought not to, learning something new helps me. Is there anything I can answer for you? Questions that you have not found answers to in the library?"
Taylor had not heard many more blatant changes of subject. She felt insulted on Harry's behalf. He wasn't that easily distracted!
"The use of one of my many mysterious devices here in this office, perhaps?" Dumbledore offered. "I do not often explain them, simply because nobody bothers to ask."
"Uh… Give me a second…" Harry said, to all outward appearances completely distracted as he looked around the room. Taylor lacked a face to palm or a hand to palm it with, so she settled for knocking a few flies together and hissing in exasperated amusement. "I saw it last time I was here, and the time before that, but I haven't found any reference to it anywhere else, and even Luna doesn't know."
"Yes, my boy?" Dumbledore asked.
"What's a black unicorn?" Harry asked.
Taylor slithered back out onto his hand in the ensuing silence. She couldn't see any black unicorns, but she could see the stricken expression on Dumbledore's face.
"Of all things…" he murmured. His wizened old hands clenched, and he moved them out of sight. "Harry… Have you seen a black unicorn?" he asked. Quietly. Carefully.
Somehow, an innocent question had turned this little dance of denial and ignorance into something imminently dangerous. Taylor could feel it in the air. A gathering charge. The way Dumbledore's hands were hidden, the way Harry shifted his ams closer to himself, covering her up as he crossed them… She scented the air, marshaled the few bugs she had in the walls, and prepared for sudden violence, though she knew not why it might come.
"On your book's cover, sir," Harry said cautiously. He could feel the looming danger, too. "Nowhere else. Should I have?"
"No." Dumbledore sat back, his eyes fixed on Harry. There was no mirth or levity in those deceptive old eyes, not now. "No, you should not have," he repeated.
"I just wondered, since it seemed like something that would be in the books right next to unicorns," Harry continued. "There's nothing, though, not in the library."
"There would not be," Dumbledore said gravely. "Not even in the restricted section, though you should not be looking there in any case."
Harry schooled his features into an expression of innocence, but Taylor knew better. Not three weeks ago she bore witness to the successful conclusion of a scheme hatched between Hermione and Ginny on that very subject. Ginny knew how the books were protected and what to do to get around the protections, and Hermione wanted a way in prepared and tested in case of urgent future need. They'd broken through with hardly any trouble at all, and all of Harry's friends had spent a few evenings sneaking interesting books out. Even Luna took a few to squirrel away in her dorm room. Nothing that looked overly sinister, Taylor had checked, but things she fully understood keeping from the less mature and responsible majority of the student body.
"I have the only mention of them here, in my office," Dumbledore continued, apparently unaware of the rule-breaking Harry's friends had committed. "It is, I believe, the only existing copy of that particular book. Do not worry about black unicorns, Harry. They are not something that has ever naturally walked this earth."
Those were some loaded qualifiers Dumbledore probably thought he was sneaking past Harry. Taylor wanted that book, though she doubted she could get it.
"I wasn't worried, I was curious." Harry tensed. "Should I have been worried?"
"You?" Dumbledore slumped back in his chair, an odd expression coming across his features too fast to really be seen. In its place was something akin to regret. "No. Not you, Harry. My apologies. I do not believe you would knowingly have anything to do with such things. Anyone willingly involved with them… No. Let us speak no more of this."
The remnants of the dangerous mood lifted, tension palpably fleeing the cramped office. Dumbledore placed his gnarled old wand on the desk, within reach but not in his hand, and rubbed at his forehead. "We were speaking of your mother. And on that matter…"
"I just want to see her," Harry insisted.
"I know, Harry," Dumbledore sighed. "Truly, I do. This situation does not please me. But for the time being, you must accept that you cannot see her. If ever that changes, I will know and I will take you to her immediately, but we must respect her wishes like we would those of any other person. Her more so, as she is a Muggle and we are wizards, so the balance of power falls in our favor by default."
The hypocrisy, to Taylor, all but leaked out of Dumbledore's every pore. If she were to take him at his word, he would seem to be the polar opposite of the man who had obliviated her and stolen her child, then lied to him for years on end. Where was his respect for her choices when he did those things?
This man was inscrutable. And infuriating. She had learned nothing, less than nothing, about his intentions throughout the course of this visit. Worse, something had almost caused him to attack Harry… or to fear being attacked himself?
The only thing she was sure of that she wasn't before was that she did not want to take Dumbledore on in a straight fight, or find herself at his mercy. He was dangerous.
"I cannot permit you to see your mother, not at present," Dumbledore said. "I can, however, offer you a little more of a choice as to how you spend your summer. I understand you are on very good terms with Ginevra Weasley, and as such I made inquiries. The Weasleys would be happy to have you this summer. Alternatively, Madam Longbottom says her home remains open to you."
This wasn't something Taylor had expected, and truthfully she didn't know if she had a preference. It was probably best to leave this choice up to Harry. So long as he was away from Dumbledore, either was fine with her.
"Neville and his Gran are nice," Harry mused, "and I like the greenhouses… But I've never been to see the Weasleys' home before, and Ginny told me about the village they live near. I think I'd like to go stay with the Weasleys this summer."
"I'll let them know," Dumbledore assured him. "We will keep to your using the Floo, to ensure you have a safe trip. I hope you can enjoy your summer and put this unpleasant business behind you."
"I hope I can too," Harry agreed.
Taylor knew Harry would be able to put it behind him. By this time next year, Harry's location over the summer wouldn't be up to Dumbledore at all. She and Sirius were going to make sure of that.
Now, more than ever, it was important that Dumbledore be avoided. She couldn't effectively counter someone whose motives and goals were so completely opaque to her. She might have found Harry, and found a way to be with him, but the struggle to bring him home was far from over.
Author's Note: Several readers were surprised by how fast Taylor reunited with Harry. The pacing and length of this story aside (it's only twelve chapters!), her physically reaching Harry was only the start of her getting him back. That plotline is going to carry us through the rest of the story, as I think this chapter begins to show.