When Gilderoy Lockhart's death had been announced, a man at The Page Sage Publisher rushed for a heavy, magically locked safe to find a small envelope Gilderoy had given him that was now laying open. Lockhart had given him this envelope right after publishing his autobiography that would only be able to be opened at the time of his death with instructions to be used at that time. The publisher had always wondered what was inside and anxiously picked it up to have a small silver key fall out.
It was strange, the key was of muggle make, not a Gringotts vault key. Looking in the envelope, there was a note with the name and address of a muggle bank in London. Not being sure what to do with this, he contacted a friend of his who had a muggle wife and was informed the key was for a safety deposit box and how to access it.
It took some time, as well as a solicitor, to bring Lockhart's death certificate along with proper identification for the publisher to the muggle bank so he could access the box. Finally, he was left alone with the brass box and when he opened it, he found a copy of Lockhart's book, Magical Me!
A bit confused, he picked up the book and examined it. As he shifted it back and forth in his hands, the smiling face on the cover turned dark and sinister with the title of the book changed to, Malevolent Me!
Andromeda Tonks sat in her home office after sending her two new interns home. This whole Azkaban audit had so many problems just continued to get in her way. The primary issue she discovered about the prison was the amount of corruption that flowed through it. The corruption that she couldn't do anything about.
Every guard, every ministry worker, every single one of them was accepting bribes from prisoners. It didn't matter what you brought into a prison that no one could break out of or even leave their cell. Most of the guards drew the line at weapons, but she encountered one prisoner early on, near the top of minimum security, who was eating filet mignon with a steak knife for the low low cost of three hundred galleons. Except for magical devices, nothing was officially off-limits for what would be allowed in and the guards were making a killing with those that ran the shifts and delivered the meals taking a cut of everything that came through.
It was still Azkaban though and they were being subjected to dementors nearly all day and night without a Patronus to guard them. Prisoners were always happy to see a guard or a lawyer as that would mean time under the white light of the guardian spell to give them a little of real-world sanity back.
As a result of her efforts, she had gotten fifteen prisoners released that had overstayed their time at the prison. Most of them had been on higher levels where it was easier to lose or alter the paperwork so that their sentences got extended and there was nothing the prisoner could do about it. A lot of them were bad people for sure and a former spouse or victim had bribed a ministry worker to adjust their time in Azkaban by a few months or a year.
Though this is what she was here to do, make sure that the prison was being run properly, and that correct times were being served. She also sent a list of prisoners to the Minister, along with her reasons, of who she recommended for an early release if he wanted to repeat what he had done with Malfoy for more deserving prisoners.
All of the paperwork was completed for minimum and medium-security prisoners. Her daughter, Nymphadora, was now off to the last phase of her training with Alastor Moody in places unknown guarding Harry Potter and her niece she had never met, Lyra Black. It would be good to have her away while she focused on the last part of this horrible job. Taking a deep breath, she hoisted a large box up onto her desk that had the stamp of Azkaban on it and was labeled "Life Sentences."
Dumbledore sat in his office the day after all the students had gone home.
It had been a year. This summer would be excruciatingly busy as he needed to find another teacher at the last minute. All previous years, he looked for a new defense teacher as soon as the year began, knowing something would happen to make him short of the current one. So he had a good man lined up already. Now, with Cuthbert Binns floating around the school in his incurable state, he needed to find a new History professor as well.
"Flannigan!" he called and an elf wearing a bow tie on top of a white toga popped into the room. He liked the elves to dress for their jobs around Hogwarts, but there was always that stupid rule about clothes. So the bow tie was just a strip of black cloth with hourglass-shaped ends that was tied properly. In the end, that's all a bow tie was… this one was just not made by human hands.
"Please bring me a lemon drop," he instructed the elf, who rushed off to make him the drink.
It had been some kind of year for Harry Potter, as well. After being forced by Minerva not to take direct actions in Harry's life, he had to be more creative. After seeing the boy's reaction to him looking like Gandalf, he had thrown himself into that role, being the mysterious wizard and hoping the boy would come to him like a good little hobbit. For reasons unknown, that had failed.
He had assumed the boy would have been in Gryffindor like his parents, so he removed the prohibition for first-years on the Quidditch teams, hoping he could be placed there. It worked out fine in the end, but for a whole new house.
He and his 'sister' were both contradictions. Harry no longer appeared to be the counterbalance to Voldemort he thought the boy would be. He still carried his mother's protection, which was clearly evidenced in the attacks by both Lucius Malfoy and Walden MacNair, burning into the Dark Marks on their arms when they attempted violence against him. However, what was strange was that he had detected faint traces of that same protection in both Lyra Black and their demiguise, Whispers. This would require a lot more observation.
He needed to catch Harry up on his skipped year and push him forward to other, greater things, but his fingers needed to be kept clear of noticeable involvement. He had taken a big risk in one such push when the basilisk was let loose into the school. After the events of the previous year, he assumed that Tom had his hand in it in some way, and he needed Harry to confront his parents' killer. Had Harry not been there, he would have shut down the school immediately after the first petrification to avoid another death like Myrtle Warren. When Harry discovered that it was Tom manipulating things, he gambled on Harry being able to defeat the basilisk by allowing himself to be petrified. By removing his hands from the situation, no one would suspect him of pushing Harry along the path to his destiny. As he wiggled those fingers of those hands in the air, a martini glass appeared in them with the drink he had requested from the elf, then took a sip.
He might be able to do something more with the unicorns and encourage Harry's attachment to them. He had asked Silvanus to put Harry's visit with them after the winter break to make sure he had an incentive to return and observed their interaction. As the innate magics possessed by him and Miss Black seemed to be opposites, he had expected that the unicorns would react to Lyra the same way that the thestrals reacted to Harry even if he wasn't sure why the dark horses feared him, in the first place. With both of them seemingly pure of heart to be accepted by the light creatures, he would need to pay more attention to Lyra and her connection to Harry's destiny.
He had considered giving Scamander enough points to win the house cup, but coming from last place was far too much to do. As a compromise to himself, he stacked the deck heavily in their favor for the next year with the points from the special services awards.
He looked over to Fawkes who had started to regrow his first tail feather after his burning day. Even the phoenix was hesitant around Miss Black. He was very interested in her but cautious. However, his familiar did go to the girl, who now brandished his other tail feather in her wand, during her moment of peril and protected her… not Harry, and not out of some kind of loyalty to the headmaster. Fawkes did it for her. It was all very curious.
As he took another sip from his drink, the bell by the stock ticker near his desk rang to notify him of someone coming up to his office. He was having the final staff meeting later in the day and was expecting to see everyone then. The ticker printed off two names and he announced them just as they got outside his door.
"Please come in, Silvanus and Mr. Scamander."
This marks the end of Harry Potter and the Guise of Family.
Author's Note: I've got another fic (that will have an M rating) I've been working on and have been saving so I can spend some time to start working on the next year in what I hope will be an anthology of writing. Subscribe to my author's page and you'll see it come out soon.
It might be a while until the sequel, The Guise of Loyalty, comes out as my first child, my daughter, is due to be born at the end of July.
Yes, this Potter-head is going to have a child born as the seventh month dies. I'm super excited.
Dumbledore always said that "Death is but the next great adventure." However, that's only because he never had any children of his own. Having children is the next great adventure in life.
It's going to be magical.
Non-canon spells from this fic
Pungo - Stinging jinx
Eksos Lyn - Lightning spell Lucius used against Stevens, taught to him by Karkaroff
Coelios - Stone cutting, engraving spell
Invenire Venari Ccciditis - Trial spell used to send feathers to a target, made them catch fire and explode on impact
Semita Meridiem - glowing white tracer spell, used by Oliver on the feathers in the library.
Inmobilis Aeternum - figure 8 wand movement - Preservation spell for potions and ingredients.
Densevello - Overhand scooping motion - Tooth extracting spell
Sciurusortia - Squirrel conjuring spell
Accipere - Start of basic enchanting spell
Obsepio - End of a basic enchanting spell
Splendino - Sparkle charm
Coronus Lux - Halo spell
Ungisaugeo - Nail growing hex.
Memento excerptae - Extracting a memory for a pensieve
Atramesco - Ink vanishing spell
Sanguinesco - Blood vanishing spell
Revalio maledictum - Reveal curses spell
Colloportus Suuso - Locking spell linked to a fingerprint
Repertum Sonus - Sound detection
Culcitus - Pillow conjuring spell
Rubio - Red paint spell
Ibon Ibunyag - Bird revealing spell in Tagalog
šelggon glássa - Mirror conjuring spell, from the Scandinavian Sami language
Futakili - Memory erasing spell based on Swahili
No incantations:
Soul Lash - for capturing and causing pain to non-corporeal entities
Electrocution spell
Broken Marionette Curse
Fake incantations:
Chaos Sphere - Tonks's spell that created the weird bouncing balls
Telum - Harry's magic punch
Dubtia - Lyra's blurring
Fortus-Corpus - Greg's magic resistance
Dream Castings mentioned so far:
Albus Dumbledore - Michael Caine
Minerva McGonagall - Melissa Leo
Severus Snape - Adam Driver
Arcturus Black - Jim Caviezel
Brandt - Nicholas Hoult
Alastor Moody - Liam Neeson
Tristan Nevitt - Asa Butterfield
Nestor Balindong - Henry Golding
Rubeus Hagrid - Hafþór Björnsson
Newt Scamander - Bill Nighy
Tina Scamander - Kristin Scott Thomas
Nymphadora Tonks - Zazie Beetz
Theodore Tonks - Richard Ayoade
Andromeda Tonks - Keeley Hawes
Gilderoy Lockhart - Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
Rolanda Hooch - Meryl Streep
Aurora Balindong - Wai Ching Ho
Tamara Balindong - Alice Dixson
Nenita Estrada - Kim Chiu
Amelia Bones - Carrie-Anne Moss
Ricardo (Ricki) Aguilar - Rami Malek
Daniel Granger - Andrew Lincoln
Emma Granger - Kate Winslet
Alessandra Zabini - Meagan Good
Charlie Weasley - William Moseley
Arthur Weasley - Matthew Goode
Bill Weasley - Ed Westwick
Molly Weasley - Geena Davis, this one was a bit difficult, and I'm still not sure about it.
Ludo Bagman - William Shatner
Nicholas Flamel - Alain Delon
Perenelle Flamel - Laetitia Casta
Narcissa Black - Ellen Hollman
Saul Croaker - John Cleese
Dolores Umbridge - Lorna Scott
Guryon Scamander - Alan Ritchson
Janaína Silva Scamander - Misty Copeland
Voices
Dobby - Michael Cera
Usurper - Jean Reno
The Giver - Michael Dorn
The Gargoyle - Isaac Hayes
Eagle Knocker - Tress MacNeille
Gargoyle with Claws - Eddie Pepitone
Kids are too hard to cast since they change appearance too often.