Magic Intervenes

by ForeverTheValentine

Magic flows differently on Samhain night, and when the Potters are murdered, the Potter Family Magic steps in to protect its heir. Helen Skerritt, a muggleborn witch pursuing a mastery in Runes, is unwittingly swept up in the chaos. If she'd known all the trouble a simple magical communion would have wrought, she wouldn't have done it. (Okay, maybe if she'd researched a bit first)

2. Chapter 2: Playing Catch-Up

Summary: Helen tries to bring Black up to speed, and mainly ends up increasing her mental list of Things to Look Up Later.

Magic continues to surprise her, and she's probably in *just a bit* over her head.

A/n: This chapter took forever because I kept coming up with more world-building about stuff as I wrote it, and then I'd had to redo it because it didn't flow the way I wanted it to. This fic isn't really planned, so much as I have ideas I want to include. But it's evolving as I go, so who knows where it'll end up?

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Helen woke the next morning and immediately wished she could fall right back into unconsciousness because what on earth had she been doing last night? There was a full-body ache that was somehow both bone-deep and not at all physical. She could move her arms and legs and roll over (which she'd done in a half-hearted attempt to smother herself to escape the sunlight) and the muscles didn't actually hurt at all, but her entire being still felt like she was recovering from the worst flu in the history of flus.

What I wouldn't do for a nice, warm bubble bath right now, she groaned to herself. But just the thought of getting up to fill the tub in her en-suite made some really small part of her shrivel up in despair.

Magical exhaustion was probably even more unpleasant than physical exhaustion, because at least with physical exhaustion, you could still use warm baths and massages to help. With magical exhaustion, you just had to suffer for a day or two - up to a week, depending on your own magical strength and just how badly you'd over-extended yourself - of being completely useless until your core had had a chance to recover.

The only other time she could remember feeling remotely like this was that time, fairly early on in her apprenticeship, when she'd misdrawn an array she'd been working on. When she'd gone to feed a little magic to charge it, it had just kept pulling and pulling from her until Mistress Eigyr had been able to disrupt and deactivate it. She'd been trying to create some rudimentary wards to put down around her family's house, what with the war going on. But she hadn't used the right runes for what she'd wanted, and hadn't ordered the steps in the activating section correctly besides. She'd been lucky that Eigyr had stopped it as quickly as she had. It hadn't been active for more than two minutes, but it had been such an enormous drain on her magic anyway that she'd been bedridden for the next day until the half-Kableyin was sure that Helen was fine. Since then, she'd been very careful to get her work double-checked, even when she was sure of it, to prevent something like it happening again. She still sometimes over-extended herself when got too absorbed in a project, but it was rarely ever as bad as that first time.

All that was to say, the last time she'd felt like this, she'd been tampering with things more advanced than she'd realised. But she couldn't remember even working on any of her pet-projects yesterday.

No wait! It was Samhain and she was planning to do a magical communion on her own, and she'd been too wound up over the possible outcomes to focus on anything. She'd done the communion and then-

With a jolt, it all rushed back to her. The visions, the murders, the kidnapping, the adoptions - Merlin's scraggly beard! What the hell had she been thinking letting herself get adopted by somebody's noble family magic?! Sure, she could use some guidance for her Sight, and Harry-

A memory of the baby with his own blood on his face pushed her up and out of her bed. She nearly faceplanted when the vertigo hit her, and her vision momentarily blacked out from the sudden change of position - magical exhaustion, some part of her brain reminded her. Rather than paying it any heed, she braced her hands on her knees until she had control of herself again, and then straightened up. Harry wasn't in her room like she vaguely thought Pepper was setting up for when she'd passed out, and the panic that raced through her was almost a separate entity in her body. Where was he? There'd been trackers or something of the like on him last night, hadn't there? Had she missed one and Dumbledore had still managed to find him and take him away?

Some distant part of her mind acknowledged that she was probably over-reacting, and noted that she quite likely wasn't firing on all cylinders due to the exhaustion, but she ignored it because where was Harry?

She forced herself out of her room, stumbling through the cottage on limbs that still felt too tired to cooperate.

"Taana!" she called, trying to figure out where Eigyr was. "Taa-"

She stumbled to a halt when she happened upon the living room, and found Mistress Eigyr, Professor Flitwick, Pepper, Sirius Black, and -

"Harry," she breathed, sagging with relief. All at once, the adrenaline faded and the ache was back in full force. It was not at all pleased with her almost-a-dash through the cottage when she really should have been resting.

She was tipping over before she really noticed it, and would have probably caught herself with her face if someone - probably Pepper - hadn't frozen her mid-fall.

"Well," Eigyr said wryly, settling back into one of the overstuffed armchairs. "You're finally awake."

Pepper picked her up and deposited her gently on the couch, a severe frown on her face. "Missy be knowing better!" she scolded, completely at odds with the way she summoned a blanket and fussed over tucking Helen into it.

Helen let herself be settled and then looked at Pepper with some exasperation. Sure, she felt like she'd been run over by a lorry (a few times in succession), but she wasn't about to drop dead.

"Thank you, Pepper, but I promise I'm okay," she said, getting comfortable.

Pepper gave a haughty sniff and propped her hands on her little hips in a way that reminded Helen of her mother and grandmothers. Helen was sure it was supposed to be intimidating, but all it really was was cute. "So that be why Missy Helen be waking up after lunch and running about in sleep suit in front of company?" the little Elf asked accusingly.

...Helen might have forgotten that particular detail in her rush to check on Harry. A glance showed her that he was scooting around adorably, climbing over Black's outstretched legs in some game only he knew the rules to. She didn't let herself feel too upset about being in her sleepwear. It was a nice matching set her mother had made her for Christmastime last year, with long, loose trousers and a matching blouse. There was nothing indecent about it, and while her mother and grandmothers would be scandalised if they ever heard about it, she didn't actually plan for them to ever find out. And it was too much hassle to go back to her bedroom to change at the moment.

Black himself was looking at her, his rather striking silver eyes almost seeming to shine against the backdrop of his dark hair. She'd never seen eyes that colour anywhere before - of course she'd heard of people with grey eyes - but his were actually much more like the precious metal with the way they were almost luminescent, like polished jewelry on display. It was the strangest thing, and she abruptly wondered why his eyes were that colour and if it affected his vision at all (which was really not important right now, so she tucked it away, but the curiosity was still there).

She noticed the way he wouldn't let Harry get too far out of arm's reach (which could have been a problem if the child didn't seem content to use him as a personal climbing frame), and his eyes were constantly flicking back down, as if to check that Harry hadn't disappeared in the last few seconds. He was tense as he eyed her, probably from the way she'd barged into the room in a panic looking for his dead friends' baby. She didn't hold it against him - they hadn't really known each other in school besides sharing a few classes and the odd group study session, but she had somehow gotten hold of Harry and sent his old professor to help him last night. Honestly, she wasn't even sure if her explanation would help the situation. Magic made a lot of weird things normal, but 'Lady Magic sent me to kidnap your newly orphaned godson and then your dead friends and their Family Magic asked me to adopt him' was stretching the limits of plausibility. That would ... probably not be a fun discussion.

"Wait. Did you say 'after lunch'?" Helen asked incredulously, gaze snapping back to Pepper. "Today's Sunday, isn't it? I missed Family Lunch!" Black was giving her an odd look, but that wasn't important. Although she sometimes visited home during the week, Sunday Lunch was a weekly staple. Beyond the family just meeting up to eat together, she used it as an opportunity to check in and give them any updates on anything new that had happened with the war. Even if she wasn't actively fighting in it, and was really just trying to stay alive and under the radar, she was still a muggleborn, and therefore a target in a war that was often as brutal and terrible as it was pointless (in her opinion). Whenever she couldn't make it, she usually let her family know ahead of time so they wouldn't worry. The few times she hadn't, they'd been out of their minds wondering if she'd been a casualty of some skirmish and Eigyr hadn't told them yet.

"I already let them know you'd gone and exhausted yourself last night and wouldn't be much use to anyone until at least tomorrow," Eigyr told her, amusement in her voice.

"Thank you," Helen told her, relief rushing through her. They'd still want to see her themselves, but at least they had something.

She turned back to her food, huffing at the sound of Eigyr's chuckling. She wasn't usually this scatterbrained. Last night had been a major upheaval, and her magic felt wonky, now that she thought about it, and she still had to find a way to tell her family she'd gone and adopted a baby because 'Magic made me do it'. Helen bit her lip to hold in a groan. How on earth was she supposed to tell her family - who she loved and was very happy to be related to, by the way - that she'd gone and let somebody's Family Magic adopt her so she could raise their orphaned child?! And Taana had let her, the traitor. It sounded like a hangover story. Helen didn't drink or even smoke tobacco, but obviously she was either high as a kite or drunk as a skunk last night, because what on earth possessed her to adopt a baby she had literally no ability to provide for? She still had a year left before she'd complete her mastery, and although she had been building a little nest egg with earnings from the minor jobs Mistress Eigyr approved for her to take with Gringotts to start building her clientele, her plan had been to move back home with her parents until she'd earned enough to be properly independent. She couldn't, in good conscience, just suddenly drop a baby on her family.

That would also be a fun conversation. It was like all the horrible teenage decisions and rebellion she hadn't gone through as an actual teen had finally decided to show up all at once.

The little Elf took in Helen's expression and shot her a look that was dryer than the Sahara. If Helen looked up 'unimpressed' in the Oxford dictionary, there'd be a full-colour rendering of Pepper's face next to it. She turned around marched away in the direction of the kitchen, grumbling to herself the whole way there. "All the somebodies be telling Pepper that Missy Helen be adult. Pepper doesn't needs to be worrying so plenty. Ha! If she not be blowing up, she be falling apart."

Helen mentally filed away Pepper's odd word-choice on her 'List of Questions About House Elves'. She'd long ago noticed that Pepper's speech was even more mixed up than that of the other Elves she'd met at Hogwarts - and that was saying something. There were times when it wasn't just the incorrect grammar, but also a slightly odd word choice as well. It often made her wonder who had taught Pepper to speak - where the Elves learned to speak in general, and why it seemed that they never managed to improve their English over time and with exposure the way she'd seen foreign-language immigrants do. It was particularly curious since her only other experience with House Elves were the Hogwarts Elves, who lived in an actual school. But that wasn't the current issue.

She watched her friend stomp off with an odd mixture of amusement and chagrin. They both knew full well that Pepper could have popped herself over to the kitchen - it would have been faster - but then Helen wouldn't have gotten to 'overhear' all her not-so-quietly muttered grievances. And she was too an adult who could take care of herself! It was nowhere near as bad as Pepper seemed to think it was, current adoption crisis notwithstanding. She hardly ever blew herself up, after all. The little House Elf soon popped herself back into the living room with a plate of heavy, energy-rich food and a glass of the sweet, but still unidentified, energy drink she only ever brought out when Helen had used too much magic (which was not nearly so often as her minor explosions). Helen pretended that her stomach didn't growl and her mouth didn't start watering.

Pepper fixed her with a gimlet eye, even as she set the plate on Helen's lap. "You be eating all of it," she commanded, wagging a little finger in Helen's face.

Helen held back her smile, knowing that her friend really was just worried at how much last evening had drained her and this was her way of dealing with it. She'd cross the bridge with her family when she got to it. For now, she nodded obediently and picked up her fork. Pepper climbed onto the next end of the couch and summoned up one of her knitting projects, expression still mildly put out over her ridiculous disaster of a witch. It was rather obvious she was planning to keep an eye on Helen, like she expected something to happen if she wasn't physically there to stop it.

As Helen dug into her meal, she patently ignored the amusement she could almost feel rolling off of the Flitwick siblings. They'd always found her dynamic with Pepper to be something of an anomaly, which Helen just chalked up to the fact that muggleborns didn't usually 'have' House Elves and the wix who tended to 'own' them usually treated them awfully. Helen had no need for a servant, but she was quite happy to have a friend, which is what she'd gone to pains to clarify with Pepper when they'd made an arrangement for Helen to 'share' some of her magic with Pepper.

What Helen had understood from Pepper's explanation when she was a student was that House Elves living among wix needed some the wix's magic to be healthy (for some reason that Helen was still trying to piece together). At some point, she'd discovered that Pepper wasn't actually a Hogwarts Elf - she'd just been visiting somehow from somewhere else that Helen still wasn't entirely sure of and which Pepper frequently went back to - and didn't have any such connection to a wix for their magic. She'd been so worried that something would happen to her new friend that she'd offered to share some of her magic with Pepper. Knowing now how most wix tended to mistreat House Elves, Helen better understood Pepper's skepticism to accept the offer. When Pepper remained hesitant about it, Helen had inquired whether they actually had to share their magic, and if it would help if Helen (then a third-year student) merely gave Pepper just enough magic to keep healthy. Helen herself hadn't cared to get any of Pepper's magic, and as long as it wasn't too draining, she hadn't seen a problem with donating some of her magic the same way some people donated blood. It had been a while of Helen earnestly trying to convince Pepper, thinking the Elf would waste away before her eyes, before Pepper accepted, and it had been working ever since as far as Helen could tell.

It had therefore only made sense that she'd asked Mistress Eigyr about having Pepper visit occasionally for a 'donation', as it were, when she'd accepted an apprenticeship. On hearing about Helen and Pepper's unconventional arrangement, Eigyr had given Helen a strange look, and then rearranged another of the currently unused bedrooms in the cottage for Pepper. Helen had tried to protest when Eigyr said something about 'her Elf', but the Runes Mistress hadn't paid her any heed. Pepper hadn't seemed bothered, but Helen hadn't liked the idea of someone thinking that she owned Pepper, because that really wasn't the case at all. Eigyr had eventually conceded, with another strange look tinged with amusement, to not refer to Pepper as 'Helen's Elf'. Somehow, Helen was pretty sure the older woman had just been humouring her, but she seemed to at least appreciate Helen's discomfort with the situation and let it be.

Back in the present, Helen glanced up to find that Black was still staring at her, but a bit of bewilderment had edged out some of the wariness. She wasn't bothered by it. There was a war going on, and he'd just been betrayed by one of his closest friends. And he should be wary of anyone who had any interest in Harry - war or not. She took comfort in the fact that she genuinely had nothing against him and, weakened as she currently was, the Flitwicks wouldn't let him hurt her before she could prove it. Also, there was a House Elf currently set on motherhenning her sitting at the other end of the couch. Pepper was nothing to trifle with when she got going (Helen still rued the day her younger sister had introduced Pepper to 'April Fools' Day'. House Elf magic and pranks were an unholy combination she'd done absolutely nothing to deserve).

When she'd gotten through her meal under Pepper's very judgemental supervision (and she was sure that she would be appalled at how quickly she'd inhaled it all later), she focussed on Black, who'd long since turned back to amusing Harry while Professor Flitwick watched on with a bittersweet expression and Mistress Eigyr frowned at something she was furiously scribbling into the notebook on her lap. Helen watched Black for a moment, and the way that he answered Harry's excited babbles and let the child pull at his hair and climb all over him. It reminded her a bit of her grandfather. At least James and Lily could rest easy knowing that they'd entrusted their child to the right friend.

Helen cleared her throat to get his attention and his head whipped around to focus on her, expression guarded. She didn't miss the way he pulled Harry into his lap and held him there, conjuring a little plush toy to amuse him with a whispered phrase and a gesture of his wand. "Right," she said with a bit more calm than she felt. "Where would you like to start?"

When his only response was to let some confusion slip onto his features, she clarified, flicking a hand towards the Flitwicks as she spoke. "I don't know how much Professor and Taana told you about last night, so ask whatever you need to be able trust that I have no untoward intentions."

He thought for a long moment, his piercing silver gaze attempting to rifle through the heart of her the way Magic had last night. Finally, "How did you know where Harry was last night? And how did you know where to send Flitwick to find me?"

She blinked in surprise. One part of her wondered how he'd lasted all night without this information, and why the Flitwicks hadn't told him yet. The other part was very much Not Pleased about having to reveal her Sight, her most closely guarded secret, for a second time in the same twenty-four hour period. Objectively, she knew it was necessary - she really didn't expect him to be able to believe anything she'd have to say without that crucial detail. But more realistically, before last night, the sum total of people who had ever known about her ability was ten, and of them, Eigyr and Pepper had been the only ones not related to her by blood. It was nerve-wracking to be voluntarily sharing something she'd spent so long keeping secret.

But she could do this. James and Lily - and Iolanthe, her mind whispered - had entrusted Harry's care to her. Obviously, she was going to have to work with Black for that, which she really wasn't opposed to. She had no idea how to parent the Heir of an Ancient and Noble House (or even what that really meant, since she'd always found that the phrase sounded ridiculously pretentious and hadn't bothered to do more than equate it to British muggle nobility). She hoped at least that Black could remember enough from before he was disowned and his time with the Potters to make sure Harry was at least somewhat prepared for whatever his station meant. There was also the minor detail that she was rather concerningly not employed, seeing as she was still working on her mastery. There was only a year left, true, but that was a lot of time for someone who suddenly had to start supporting a child.

This is for Harry, she thought. Even as it crossed her mind, there was some quiet sense of ... reassurance, almost. She figured she'd act on it before it faded and she remembered to be nervous again.

"Straight for the big one, eh?" she muttered to herself. Helen locked her gaze with his, despite the urge to squeeze her eyes shut, like it could hide her from what she was about to do, as she didn't want him to take it as a sign that she was lying. "How's your occlumency?" she asked him first.

Shooting her a suspicious look, he answered, "Good enough. Walburga made sure of it."

She wasn't sure who that was, but she'd have to take it. Trust was a two-way street and all that. She took a deep breath and pushed the words out in a rush. "IhavesomeformofSight."

Dark brows furrowed over silver eyes and his face scrunched as he parsed the words. "You're...a seer?" he eventually asked.

Helen waved her hands frantically in denial. "I don't think I'm a proper seer - no prophecies or anything like that," she told him quickly. "It's more like precognition? I sometimes get glimpses of my friends or family just before something important happens? If I know the person's magic well enough, I can actively see them at any given moment if I try to. I'm truly not properly sure what it is exactly..."

Black's lips pursed at that for some reason. She really hoped he didn't think she was pulling that out of thin air. She had her dream journal as the most tangible form of proof, but that was also not a strong source, since it would only seem plausible to someone who knew about her gift already. With the war going on, most of her friends from Hogwarts (mainly muggleborns) had moved out of the country for their own safety, and she'd lost contact with most of those who'd remained as the war got worse. There really wasn't anyone she could think of among her remaining close loved ones who'd have any reasonable to relation to Black so that he'd trust them as a source.

Helen smothered the rising nerves over this new obstacle and mentally shoved the issue to the side. She'd figure something out.

(She also resolved to do a bit of meditation because she knew she'd made way too many mental notes with everything that was happening, and she needed to actually organise her thoughts so she wouldn't miss anything important. There was something she was forgetting that was nagging at her, but she couldn't figure out what in the whole jumble it was.)

He didn't say anything, despite his still very wary look, so she continued on. It didn't escape her notice that Professor Flitwick was also paying keen attention, or that Pepper had put down her knitting, or that Mistress Eigyr was still frowning and muttering down at the notebook in her lap and scribbling furiously. "The point is that it's rather a raw and untrained skill, and I couldn't find any books to help me, so Mistress Eigyr suggested doing a communion on Samhain to ask Lady Magic for some guidance for it. So I did the communion, but then it all went pear-shaped because I Saw the moments when the Potters were cut down and You-Know-Who was blown up when he tried to fire at Harry-" She didn't acknowledge Black's sharp inhale, or the way he held Harry a little tighter. Helen figured they were pretty lucky that the toddler had been so easygoing so far (unless he'd finally pitched a fit before she woke up, which she wouldn't be upset to have missed). "And I Saw you chasing Pettigrew somewhere in muggle London, but I also Saw Dumbledore and McGonagall just dropping Harry off in a bassinet on someone's doorstep and leaving. He was still bleeding from that cut that he'd had - and that's been healed, by the way, right?"

She hadn't meant to break off mid-sentence, but she suddenly desperately needed to know something had been done about it after she'd passed out. The image of him distractedly swiping at his own blood on his face from that wound would haunt her. As it had been, it would have left a truly terrible scar, especially if he'd been left with a muggle who'd have had to take him for stitches (and not even enchanted ones) to close it up. There was no reason for him to go about the rest of his life with a reminder of his parents' murder etched on his face if anything could be done about it. She had a vague memory of it healing up after the adoptions, but she wanted to be sure.

In response, Black lifted a portion of Harry's wild little fringe so that she could see the network of very thin, faint silvery lines that remained on the right side of Harry's forehead and into his hair. The whole thing looked rather like flashes of lightning in the clouds during a storm. She shuddered to think what it might have looked like without magical healing, but now, although it may still draw some looks, it wouldn't be disfiguring. Interestingly enough, it was the exact shade she remembered Lily's magic appearing as last evening during the purification of Harry's magic. With any luck, it would fade even more with time. Otherwise, there were glamours or good, old-fashioned muggle make-up to do the same job. Harry himself had no interest in what was going on, still very well occupied with the toy his godfather had conjured for him.

Something in her wanted desperately to reach out and touch him for herself, despite the fact that her eyes were clearly telling her the child was alright. She refused because firstly, Harry didn't actually know her and she wasn't sure how he'd respond to a stranger, and secondly, Black was still very wary of her, so it wouldn't be wise anyway. The feeling itself was baffling to her, and reminded her of a very, very mild version of the intense drive she'd had last night to go out and collect Harry in the first place. She pushed that down with prejudice because she didn't really think she could handle being dragged around by her magic again like she had last night.

"Okay, wonderful," she said with some relief. "I Saw quite a lot of things actually, but it was all a jumble and rather overwhelming besides. So I closed the communion and put the gist of everything down in a journal so I could sort it all later, and I guess I'll do that this evening since I can't do much active magic for the next day or two. I was almost out the door in my nightclothes before I realised it-"

"Magic be using Missy Helen last night," Pepper cut in from where she was sitting. She looked like she had more to say, so Helen gestured for her to continue. "You not be seeing it, but Pepper be seeing everything. I be watching because it be Life-Death-Balance Night and I be worried something go bad with Missy's magic circle. All the somethings be normal when Missy Helen started, but then Missy suddenly be floating and her eyes be shining like Missy's muggle no-fire torches."

Well. That was news to Helen. She'd been sort of trapped in the visions as they flashed through her mind, trying to keep up with the rapid flow of information. It had felt like having a number of books suddenly stuffed into her head all at once.

Pepper was wringing her hands in her lap now, eyes distant as she recounted. "It be five whole minutes that Missy be floating and glowing and I not be touching because it be like at-" and here Pepper said something, but the whatever it was came out muffled or garbled or otherwise unintelligible. Her lips had moved, but Helen just somehow did not hear it at all. "-and that only be happening when Magic be visiting, so Pepper be knowing not to interrupt."

"It was like what?" Helen cut in.

Pepper blinked back to the present and furrowed her slim brown brows. "It be like-" she repeated, and the sound seemed to just jumble itself again. At the confused looks on Helen's and Black's faces, she tried once more and then huffed with a look of irritation when it still went wrong. "It not be having words in wix language," she said, looking rather put out. "I not know how to say it other ways. I be asking when I go back for visit." The last part was mumbled to herself more than it was actually spoken to them, but she waved it away and continued with her account.

"Then Missy stopped floating and glowing, but she be trying to run outside in sleep suit and still be having Magic on her and not be closing magic circle," the Elf said pointedly, shooting Helen a judgemental look.

Black raised a rather judging eyebrow at her as well, and honestly, Helen didn't think she deserved this treatment. It was a difficult night and she'd never actually interacted with Magic like that before (wasn't very sure she ever wanted to again). Sue her for becoming disoriented!

"Moving along!" Helen announced, clapping her hands and startling Harry into looking up.

Professor Flitwick snorted from is seat. "Subtle," he said with humour in his eyes.

She shot him a look and continued her story. "So," she said pointedly. "The only thing that I could focus on was collecting Harry from wherever Dumbledore and McGonagall had put him. For some reason, my magic - or it could have been just Magic - didn't think he was safe there. I sent Taana a message and she brought Professor Flitwick to come with us so we couldn't be charged for kidnapping, even though what they did was technically abandonment - they didn't even ring the doorbell-" she cut herself off as she felt her magic stir. It wouldn't kill her to use it while she was recovering from magical exhaustion, but it would be unpleasant - like using an already overused muscle - and lengthen the recovery. And it wasn't usually this restless either. She was beginning to suspect that something had happened to it last night in the ritual circle, but she'd need some time to think it over and discuss it with Taana.

"We got Harry-"

It was Professor Flitwick who cut her off this time, looking meaningfully at Black. "From Petunia's doorstep."

Helen assumed that this Petunia was the 'wretched woman' that Iolanthe hadn't wanted Harry to remain with, but the name rang a bell for some other reason she couldn't put her finger on.

Black's expression morphed from confusion to outrage in the blink of an eye. "Lily's sister? That Petunia?!" he demanded, tugging Harry into a hug as though to protect him from the mere mention of the woman, and just barely refraining from yelling so he didn't frighten the baby. Harry himself only seemed fussed at the fact that it meant the wizard had interrupted whatever he'd been doing with the toy. "Dumbledore left Harry with that-that shrew?"

And oh. Helen remembered now. Lily's parents had died suddenly in a motor vehicle accident in the summer after their fifth year, and she and her sister had had a falling out over it. She'd only known any of this because Lily had broken down in one of their first study groups of the term when another muggleborn had suggested a spell he'd found that he'd thought she might like to learn to show her parents when they all went home for break (Christmas to muggles, but Yule to wix). The poor Hufflepuff had felt terrible about it, even though Lily had tried to tell him it wasn't his fault. All Helen knew was that she and her sister had had a spectacular row about it and Lily had ended her very brief explanation by saying she no longer had any family.

Helen hadn't been able to imagine it. Sure, she and her own sister quarrelled sometimes - it was a given in any sibling relationship - but to go so far as to actually disown each other? It just wasn't in the realm of possibility.

The diminutive professor reached into a pocket and withdrew a crinkled piece of parchment that he floated over to Black with a gesture. Having spent so much time with Mistress Eigyr and Pepper, who both often did wandless and wordless magic, Helen didn't even register what he'd done until she caught the way Black's eyes widened. To be fair, Helen herself had decent wandless and wordless abilities, mainly because Mistress Eigyr had quickly disabused her of the notion that she needed a focus to do magic. After all, she'd done little things without a wand before she'd been told she had magic, hadn't she? Granted, they were usually done in fits of temper when she was really young, or some form of wishing or wanting really hard for something (like that book from the top shelf in the library). Most muggleborns had, which was why they were often so relieved to get their letters and visits when they turned eleven - to have a proper explanation for the unexplained. It had taken some readjusting in how she used her magic when she cast, but it became easier as she went on.

Black smoothed the paper out, keeping it away from Harry's little reaching hands, and scanned through it quickly.

"It was tucked into the bassinet with Harry, and Eigyr removed a mild compulsion from it before she gave it to me," the half-Kobelyn supplied, watching as Black's expression grew thunderous.

"I trusted him - he sent Hagrid to collect Harry, and I couldn't get him to leave off without hurting Harry," Black said quietly, bright eyes still burning into the piece of parchment. "His head was still bleeding and he was crying and Hagrid had already had Harry by the time I'd gotten there. He wouldn't hand him over because 'Dumbledore said' Harry needed to be taken to safety. Hagrid can't use magic, and he had a portkey back to Hogwarts, but I didn't know if it would hurt Harry, what with the big, open gash on his face. So, I gave him my motorcycle because it had a sidecar we used to mess around with before everything that had enough protection charms and safety enchantments on it that Harry would be protected for the trip. It would get him there in decent time because James and I-" his voice hitched when he realised what he'd said, but he soldiered on. "We'd worked on it together. Lily thought it was a lark that I spent so much effort on the bike, but it was fun trying to see if we could make it better than a broom."

He took a deep breath, pressing a kiss to Harry's hair when the toddler fussed at not being given the sheet.

"I thought he'd keep Harry at Hogwarts and let the mediwitch at least look him over to make sure he was okay," Black continued, eyes distant. "It was the only reason I didn't immediately apparate there myself to wait for Hagrid. Since it would still take a bit for Hagrid to get there, I went to find Peter. He hadn't been in his safe house when I went to check on him. The only way they'd have been able to get to James and Lily was by getting it out of Peter. If he'd been caught, he might still need rescuing if it wasn't too late. Even then, I still never even thought of him willingly betraying us." His voice tightened with anger, and Helen was sure she'd seen a spark in his eyes. "And when I finally caught up to him, scurrying around with not a scratch on, he told me - that-that filthy rat - I'd trusted him with the last of my family and he -"

Helen reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. His anger was justified, but his magic was roiling - not visibly just yet, but it was palpable in the room - and she got the feeling that he'd never forgive himself if he accidentally hurt Harry.

Black jolted and actually gave himself a little shake, blinking down at Harry's confused eyes where the toddler had turned around to stand on his lap when his magic has started acting up.

"Pa'-pad," he said, reaching up to touch at Black's face. She figured he'd been aiming for a cheek, but his lack of coordination meant he'd smacked Black on the mouth. "Otay?" he asked sweetly, and Helen may have melted a little.

Black cleared his throat and moved Harry's little hand from his mouth. "Yeah, pup. I'm okay."

Harry babbled something else at him with more "Pafoo"s and "pa'-pad"s mixed in, and Black smiled as he settled the child on his lap and conjured up another toy, since it seemed the first one had faded.

"'Papa'?" Helen asked him curiously, because that's what she'd heard.

Black looked back up at her, seeming slightly startled, like he'd forgotten they were there.

"It's meant to be 'Pad-Pad'," Black told her with a rueful little smile. "James, Lily, Remus, and Pet-" he cut himself off at the name. "They all called me 'Padfoot' or 'Pads', but Harry couldn't really get it right. Lily thought it was hilarious the first time it happened because James acted all upset and said I was trying to steal his son, especially since-" He cut himself off, almost visibly biting his tongue. Honestly, she was sure he'd had a better poker face in school, but she'd cut him some slack, considering how overwhelming the night must have been. She was pretty sure Harry was the only thing forcing him to keep it together at the moment (unless he'd had a well-deserved breakdown when she'd still been sleeping off her exhaustion and missing Family Lunch).

When it didn't look like he'd continue, Helen supplied carefully, "Since you'd adopted him in ritual, right?"

Wide eyes flew up to meet her gaze. "How-?"

"Well, James and Lily told me, but we'll get there."

The wary suspicion was back in gaze, which was fair enough. If she hadn't somehow miraculously met the magic of the dead Potters last night, she'd have never known about it, since she hadn't spoken to them since graduation.

"What did Pettigrew say when you caught him?"

"That his 'Dark Lord' had already made himself invincible and defeated death, so there was no way for us to stop him, that blood traitors would be the first to go after the muggleborns, that the James and Lily wouldn't have survived anyway once the Dark Lord had properly achieved power. That he was only doing what he'd done all his life - trying to survive." Black scoffed in derision. "Like Voldemort would let him survive after how many of his own supporters he's killed."

Mistress Eigyr's head snapped up for the first time during the entire recounting, brown eyes ablaze and purple hair swishing behind her at the sharp motion. "Do not utter that insipid name in my cottage!" she demanded.

"You shouldn't fear a name," Black snapped back.

"I'll just wager that Dumbledore told you that, didn't he?" she sneered. It was admittedly a rather intimidating expression on someone who had so many sharp teeth. She didn't give him a chance to continue. "I don't fear a name, you little twit! Your stupid little dark lord put a taboo on it at some point. It won't get past the wards, but I'll not have you bringing his boot-lickers to a place that my children come to because you're blindly following Albus bleeding Dumbledore!"

It was news to Helen, and by the look of his face, Black hadn't known either. Taboos weren't common. For one thing, it took a ridiculous amount of magical power to designate one, and even then, it had to be done in ritual with a number of participants that was divisible by seven. The best known taboos in the current day were in relation to the Statute of Secrecy. No one just created a taboo. The amount of magic necessary made it dangerous, which is why it was made illegal in all member countries of the ICW, except with very special dispensation from governments. Even the process to do it had been supremely well-hidden and suppressed, even in those few countries that hadn't joined the ICW. It was such a rare thing, it really wasn't surprising that they hadn't considered that that was what he'd done. They just weren't common or feasible enough to have been an immediate option to anyone.

"Dumbledore spends all his time hiding behind some of the strongest, oldest wards in the country - it wouldn't bother him too much, would it?"

The gobsmacked look on Black's face wasn't too far off from what Helen felt. She'd never trusted Dumbledore. Ironically, it was the fact he apparently could do no wrong that had initially tweaked her senses - nobody was perfect. But to hear his proponents tell it, Dumbledore hung the moon every night and lit the sun every morning. It may not have been such an issue, if she could actually find anything he'd done since his great defeat of Wizard Hitler in 1945. There'd been nothing to explain why this man was lauded as a great philanthropist when he'd done absolutely nothing for any of the minority groups that made up most of his fanbase - particularly muggleborns and people with mixed magical heritage. No laws, no foundations, no charities. For crying out loud, the muggle studies course was mostly stuck in the nineteenth century, despite the fact that muggleborns have complained in the past that the course is out of date in some places, and just generally grossly incorrect most everywhere else. Most of what she'd learned about other sapient magical races came from her time spent with Mistress Eigyr, when the half-Kableyin had declared that no apprentice of hers would leave her tutelage as ignorant as Hogwarts had left them.

So she'd been leery of him, but she'd had no real, tangible reason to be besides a gut feeling. But this - the implications of this were horrifying. She couldn't look at them too deeply just now. She'd just eaten and her lunch was already threatening to come back up. She'd rather it didn't because that wouldn't help Pepper's worrying at all.

Apparently satisfied that she'd made her point, Mistress Eigyr returned to frowning and scribbling, scratching furiously at something before using a gesture to erase whatever it had been.

Helen closed her mouth from where she'd just realised it had fallen open, and mentally shook herself.

"That's," she began, and cleared her throat when her voice croaked. Pepper popped away and returned with a glass of cool water, and Helen accepted it gratefully. "That's sufficiently appalling."

Black looked...devastated. And really, Helen thought it was a bit much to have this dumped on him as well, but she'd never known Mistress Eigyr to coddle anyone. Maybe, in some aspects, it was better he get all of this terrible news out of the way instead of having terrible news coming in waves one after the other in the near future. Helen wasn't sure, but she didn't know him well enough to know if that would be the better option for him, and certainly not well enough to make the decision for him when he was understandably distraught.

Instead, she'd distract him by continuing to catch him up on everything that had happened the previous night. Not only would it give him the information he'd need so he'd allow her to uphold the oath she'd made in the adoption, but it was also helping her to reorganise the jumbled memories of the previous night with her occlumency. So much had happened so quickly, that she hadn't really had a chance to process it all before she fell asleep. It helped that although retrieving and organising her memories through occlumency required some magic, it was such a miniscule amount that it wouldn't really impact her recovery. She definitely couldn't work on her defenses, but memory retrieval was a natural process that even muggles did with no magic, so the magic needed to organise them the way she'd like without actually manipulating them was negligible.

"Pettigrew escaped and you spent the night chasing him until Professor Flitwick found you then?" Helen prompted.

The wizard visibly pulled himself back together, and she could almost actually see him tucking his feelings and thoughts away with occlumency. That suggested he had at least some of the proficiency he'd claimed. He gave her a nod and she hummed thoughtfully.

"And now we're all here then," she commented.

"You said James and Lily told you I'd adopted Harry," Black said, just shy of accusing. "When and how?" he demanded.

Helen snapped her fingers and made a little sound with her teeth. "That's right!" she exclaimed. "We didn't get to that part, did we?"

Black shot her a look, as though to tell her to stop stalling. She let it roll off because she hadn't actually meant to leave it out, having gotten sidetracked by his account.

"So where did I leave off then?" she muttered. "The visions, leaving, the kidnapping..." she mumbled to herself as she did a quick little recap.

"Collecting the child," came Eigyr's voice. She hadn't looked up, still scratching and sketching, but the Runes Mistress had always been a fantastic multi-tasker.

(Helen really wanted to know what she was working on now. Eigyr was sometimes gruff in her manner, but she would never be so callous as to not give her full attention to such an important discussion if it weren't for something even more important.)

Squinting in her Taana's direction, Helen resumed her story. "Mistress Eigyr removed a number of what I assume were charms and trackers from him and we brought him back here. But she pushed us straight out to the back garden to the ritual circle because she said Dumbledore had put something dangerous on him that she hadn't been able to remove on her own. She put Harry with me in the centre and had me start a cleansing ritual that would have hopefully been strong enough to remove whatever it was since it was Samhain."

Helen had intended to give an overview of what had happened in the cleansing ritual for Black's sake, but ended up going into much more detail when she realised that no one else had seen the cords or Lily's net or the evil inkblot. They especially hadn't seen Harry's shining sun of magic, which she thought was a crying shame. It had been beautiful.

Her first real interruption came when she mentioned the pale red rope being anchored to the silvery net that was restraining the inky black mass of magic.

"You actually saw the invading magic?" Eigyr asked, staring at her intently, the notepad apparently temporarily discarded. She blinked and looked around, and then lit the room with a gesture, the illumination runes set along the walls and ceiling coming to life.

Helen nodded even as she answered. "Yeah, it was like looking at living, wriggling ink - except it was utterly malevolent. The net was somehow containing it, but it was still pushing hard enough that the net was half-buried in Harry's magic. The big, red rope was attached to a visible part of the net."

"You're sure the rope wasn't connected to Harry in any way?" Professor Flitwick pressed.

"Positive," Helen affirmed. "It wasn't even close to touching him."

The half-Kobelyn's lips pressed into a thin line below his moustache. "Well I won't be gutting him for that at least," he eventually muttered, leaning back into his seat and pulling a pipe from his pocket. He moved to light it, but Eigyr summoned it from his hands and glared at him.

"Skeighlor Filius Flitwick!" she snapped, in a tone that sounded eerily like Helen's mother when she'd been younger and done something naughty. "I've told you a thousand times not to puff on this stupid thing in my presence - especially not in my house! The smell gives me a bloody headache and I'll blast it to smithereens if you even think about lighting it!"

Helen blinked in surprise. All this time with Mistress Eigyr and she hadn't realised that 'Filius' wasn't his first name. Beyond that, she didn't think she could actually pronounce the first name Mistress Eigyr had called. She'd somehow managed to include an actual click after the 'S' at the beginning and then packed an honest-to-goodness undertone (or maybe it was an overtone? She still wasn't too great at telling the differences between them yet) into the second syllable. As far as Helen knew, the human voice couldn't produce two different pitches at the same time. Not for the first time since starting her apprenticeship, Helen wished she had more time to learn about the Kobelyni and instead, mentally shelved the topic of how to pronounce his name as a 'Later' discussion.

She'd asked before, sometime after she'd first begun her apprenticeship, whether she'd be allowed to learn the Kobelyn language. All she'd known at that point was that they had one, but she'd never really been exposed to it - didn't even know what it was rightly called because wix insisted on calling it 'Gobbledygook', which was actually what was written in any books she'd found in the libraries and bookstores. Eigyr had told her, frankly but not unkindly, that she actually couldn't learn to speak it because her vocal cords and throat weren't configured to allow for all the sounds and tones inherent in the language. A prime example was the fact that no matter how hard she tried, she wasn't even able to pronounce the official name of the language when Eigyr had told it to her. Helen had contented herself with learning to at least understand some of the common words she tended to hear pass between the Flitwick siblings. The language itself wasn't secret or restricted per se, but since wix couldn't actually use it, they tended not to care about it. Whatever other wix thought of it, Helen liked the sound of it - it was oddly musical, with its clicks and layered tones and other unique quirks.

"What was so important about that rope?" she asked, hoping to head off a sibling quarrel. Grown adults they may be, but once or twice, Helen had seen them devolve into squabbling children when they got going. Most of the time, she found it extremely amusing to watch two of her teachers, who she respected so highly, bicker the same way she and her siblings still did over pointless things, but they had more important things to attend to at the moment.

Professor Flitwick shot one last remark at Eigyr and she responded by tossing his pipe back at his head (he caught it with magic and sent her a smug look as he started chewing on the end of it).

Eigyr turned back to Helen, annoyance still on her face, and Helen figured Professor Flitwick should expect salt in his tea or something at some point. "That 'rope' was a blood ward, and when I'd first found it with my diagnostics, I'd thought it was grounded to the boy's magic."

Helen's eyes widened as she connected the dots. She may not have understood anything about magical bonds, or Family Magic, or magical nobility and all its idiosyncrasies - really, most of anything that had happened the previous evening - but Eigyr had given her a very thorough education on warding, since it was a specialty that was largely dependent on rune-work. Truthfully, it was the potential for warding that had first inspired Helen's zeal for runes, as she'd been looking for a way to protect her family from the attacks that had been growing more and more common in the Daily Prophet while she was a student.

"I hadn't picked up anything about the 'net' in my diagnostics, which is interesting, but it's also why I'd wanted to do the ritual right then. The ward wasn't active just yet, and it shouldn't have been activated since we'd already taken him away from whoever the letter was intended for, but it was still unconscionable to leave it stuck to his magic the way I'd thought it was." A thoughtful look crossed the half-Kableyin's face. "I'm curious about what the net was and how it avoided being picked up by the spells I used. They weren't your average assessment charms."

"It was Lily's magic," Helen told her absently, even before her brain could process that she was talking. She turned when Professor Flitwick fumbled with his pipe, barely catching the way Eigyr's jaw dropped. Even Pepper went wide-eyed.

(Well, more wide-eyed. House Elves were vaguely humanoid, but their proportions were decidedly not.)

"Lily's magic?" Black asked, looking like he'd been punched in the gut.

Carefully, Helen nodded. "When I touched it, it felt alive," she explained. "She was terrified, but she was also viciously intent on keeping the evil inkblot out of Harry's magic. She'd lashed out at me before she realised I was there to help. I still don't understand how her magic was there even though she was - well, you know."

She looked up, hoping for some explanation from the Flitwick siblings, who honestly seemed to know everything in the world between the two of them. Neither of them were any help - Eigyr's brow was furrowed in that way it did when she'd just read something that didn't make sense, and Filius' expression was some sad amalgamation of heartbreak and bafflement, like he couldn't decide on which one to go with. Even Pepper shook her head in denial when Helen glanced at her - she didn't know how it was possible either.

"She'd been working on something," Black said into the silence. "Ever since she'd found out she was pregnant and Dumbledore told them they'd need to go into hiding, she'd been working on something. I offered to help, but she refused to tell me anything about it - kept saying I needed plausible deniability and she didn't want to risk V- You-Know-Who using legilimency to rip it out of me and figuring out a way to counter it if one existed." He gave a helpless, bitter chuckle, completely devoid of any actual mirth. "It made sense, since I was meant to be the decoy, so if anyone would have been caught, it'd have been me." He didn't bother to hide the bitterness in his voice for that last part, and she hoped that having Harry to look after would help him to move on from the pain of the loss sooner rather than later. She wouldn't worry just yet because the grief was fresh, but she'd keep an eye on it to see if he needed to be pulled out of it the way they'd had to pull her maternal grandmother out of a spiral when her grandfather had died. The circumstances were different, but the result may still be the same.

"She and James ran themselves ragged working on it, but they'd argued over it at some point, and I got the feeling James hadn't liked whatever solution they'd come up with. But then it was getting close to the time for Harry to be born and Lily eventually told him that it was the best shot they had and not to insult her by trying to argue her decision. James never brought it up again that I know of, but I still don't think he was ever happy about it."

Black looked down at Harry, who had crawled out of his lap and was playing with his conjured toy on the coffee table. "But to have managed to give him her magic... They must have created an entirely new ritual for it because everything I know about transferring magic like that involves dark rituals meant to either sacrifice someone else to steal their magic, or to cause some sort of possession. She managed to switch it around to protect him even after she was killed," he said, awe infusing his voice.

Professor Flitwick's movement as he raised a hand to his face caused her to look up at him.

"My brilliant, brave, foolish little Gryffindor," he said heavily dragging the hand down his face. Helen got the impression it was an endearment he had for Lily, the same way her family and friends in her neighbourhood still called her by the childhood nickname 'Janey'. "She would have done such amazing things," he sighed.

"But she already did something amazing," Helen told him gently. "You only need to look at Harry's scar to see it. It's the exact colour her magic was in the ritual." When both males snapped their gazes to a happily oblivious Harry, she continued. "I'd thought it was some sort of backlash from whatever You-Know-Who had tried to send at him, but maybe it's actually connected to whatever James and Lily had done."

It was a theory that was looking more and more likely. She continued on, explaining the burgeoning connection she was seeing between the colour of the scar and the colour of Lily's magic during the ritual. They didn't know exactly what she'd done, and if she and James had created an entirely new ritual to do it, none of them had any way of knowing the effects it would have. It was obviously protective, but there were probably other hidden things that would come up as time went on that not even James and Lily would have intended. Rituals as complex as this one must have been always had multiple effects, and it generally took years of study before most of the effects and marks of the more intricate rituals were discerned. Considering this was quite likely to be a completely new ritual, it would be hard to determine what was an effect of the ritual, what was unique to Harry, what was a quirk of the ritual on Harry, and what might be a quirk because Lily specifically was the one who performed it.

Pulling herself back on track, she refocused on Black, who looked like he wasn't quite sure how to feel about this new information. On the one hand, his friends had died protecting their son. On the other, the sheer brilliance of what they'd to protect him was absolutely breathtaking. It was a hard place to be.

"The important thing is that Lily's magic did what she'd intended it to do, and it kept You-Know-Who's magic out of Harry's long enough that I could use our magic, plus a whole lot of Wild Magic, to remove it completely," she told him firmly. If the only thing she could do for now was to keep him focussed on the fact that Harry had survived, she'd do it. She figured that both he and Harry deserved better than to have Black completely crumble under the loss. He needed to grieve, but more than that, he needed to grieve healthily so that he and Harry could recover the way James and Lily would have wanted them to.

"It screamed," Pepper's voice interrupted.

"What?" Black asked, shifting to look at her. He looked a bit startled, like he'd forgotten she was there.

"You heard it too?" Helen asked curiously. Since they hadn't seen Lily's net, she'd sort of assumed that they hadn't experienced anything else she'd gone through while in the odd metaphysical place where she'd seen Harry's magic.

Pepper however, didn't notice. Her hands had come up to rub at her arms as she relived the horrifying moment. "Bad magic screamed when Missy Helen pushed it out of little mister," she repeated. "It be big, ugly, dark, dark, dark magic. It be hurting too. My magic be feeling like it be trying to shrink down and break out at same time. My ears be hurting so bad," she shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut and gingerly touching the appendages in question, as though the memory brought the pain back with it. "But Missy Helen still be using Wild Magic, and when bad magic be gone, Wild Magic be fixing everything even better." She looked at Helen, still holding herself, but also with a spark coming back to her eyes. "If Missy Helen be always doing that with magic circles, she better be calling Pepper every time."

"What?" Helen asked, brows furrowed. She half-remembered Pepper saying something similar last night, but she had no idea why the Elf would want it. She'd been absolutely exhausted after channeling all that magic. "Why would I do that?" she demanded. "I don't want to watch you keel over because you used too much magic!"

Pepper had the audacity to look affronted, like Helen was being unreasonable. After all the fussing she was doing, telling Helen that she had to take better care of herself, the witch had no idea why she would ever ask for something like this.

Professor Flitwick's voice chimed in from across the room, and it reminded her of lectures on some interesting tidbit that had come up in class. "House Elves interact with Wild Magic differently, Miss Skerritt," he told her calmly. Eigyr shot him a look because he was He was still chewing on his pipe, but he made no move to light it, so she didn't say anything. "And that aside, while you may have used and directed a lot of our magic and Wild Magic, we really only acted as conduits to draw more Wild Magic into the circle. It was, admittedly, a rather large amount of Wild Magic, which I hadn't expected, but it meant that although you had pulled on our personal magic quite a bit, the Wild Magic that came in intending to heal made sure that we weren't really harmed. Full-blooded Kobelyni may possibly not have felt as tired as we did because they have a stronger connection to Wild Magic. But House Elves, being a different type of magical being, have just as strong a connection to Wild Magic, even if I'm not exactly sure how their connection is different."

"...oh," she said eventually, taken aback. She glanced over to Pepper to find her friend nodding wildly enough that her ears flapped.

"So you be calling Pepper for Wild Magic magic circles!"

Helen nodded slowly. If it wouldn't actually harm Pepper like she'd thought - it actually seemed that it would do some good - she wouldn't mind. And if Pepper used Wild Magic differently to a human, that might impact how the rituals worked. Would it make them more powerful, or less? Or would it change the outcome completely? Or maybe it would add a side-effect or two. The possibilities were endless and she had to actually mentally stick a pin in the thought so that she wouldn't veer off down a research tangent.

(The good thing about being a Ravenclaw was that academic curiosity was encouraged. The bad thing was that they weren't necessarily taught to balance that curiosity well. That was something she'd had to work on on her own after maybe the fourth burnt meal when she was home for vacation. Her mother hadn't been anywhere near as interested in her mental tangents when Helen had just managed to turn an entire pot of pelau into charcoal.

Again.)

Black was the one to pull them back on target this time, breaking in impatiently. "So you found the protection spell and cleaned up his magic. None of that explains how you knew where to find me, or when you got some of our most closely guarded secrets out of James and Lily."

"Well," Helen said with a mildly exasperated huff, crossing her arms. "That's because I thought the purification would be the end of it, but then their spectres showed up with their Family Magic and asked me to adopt Harry since apparently I started making a parental bond with him during the cleansing, and in thanks for cleansing and adopting Harry, and because I was originally looking for help with my Sight, they'd adopt me back so I could access the Potter Seer grimoires. So we finished the bond and the adoptions, and then James said he didn't want you to do anything stupid, so could Professor Flitwick please go help you catch Pettigrew before you did?" At his silence, she pressed on, feeling petty. "Sounds absolutely ridiculous now, doesn't it?"

The look Black sent her was somewhere between gobsmacked, disbelieving, and irritated. "You mean to tell me that you met the Potter Family Magic and had an entire conversation with both it and James and Lily's ghosts?" She didn't miss that he'd pulled Harry properly into his lap at this point, squirming and all.

...which...made sense. She knew how ludicrous it sounded. Talking to ghosts (even though she was positive they weren't ghosts, because the colours were all off, and they weren't transparent)? She took some comfort in the fact that he absolutely refused to believe she'd actually been able to talk with someone else's Family Magic, because she wasn't entirely sure it should have been possible either. Family Magic was, by definition, only meant for people in the family. Getting adopted by the Family Magic itself rather than an actual person? Apparently impossible. Never mind that technically, she figured they'd used Harry as a representative (or maybe a conduit?) to adopt her into the Family, and then had her, as a new family member, now adopt him as a son. There was probably some significance to the order of that, but heck if she knew what it was at this point.

It all came to a head when Harry started fussing at the loud voices and the argument, and Helen unthinkingly thrummed some of her magic to soothe the disturbance she was feeling. Black froze mid-word when Harry suddenly stopped fussing and slipped out of his arms, scooting himself towards Helen.

He watched in shock as the toddler climbed onto Helen's lap and proceeded to pat at her chest and face like he was searching for something, babbling all the while.

What snapped Helen out her own surprise, as she'd frozen when he did it, was him staring at her in confusion and asking, "Mama?"

Everyone had gone quiet when the baby had moved, but that single word had shocked them all to stillness.

"What did you do to him?" Black demanded lowly, voice dangerous. The hairs on her arms all stood on end at the unspoken threat, and there was a siren blaring DANGER-RUN-DO-NOT-ENGAGE to all corners of her mind. She was abruptly reminded that she'd Seen him turn into an enormous black dog the night before. Animagus forms said a lot about the person, and while dogs were known for their loyalty, it didn't in any way negate the fact that a dog as big as Black's form was almost definitely meant to be a guard or attack hound of some sort.

"I swear to you I didn't do anything!" she exclaimed, eyes darting back and forth between Harry, who was still investigating her, and Black, who looked ready to eviscerate her, claws or not.

And because she wasn't an idiot thankyouverymuch, Helen finally made the connection that the disturbance in her magic was apparently Harry, like the night before when she'd tried to soothe him through the pain during the purification ritual.

"I just gave him some of my magic, but I didn't realise that's what I was doing," she tried to explain, even as she thrummed a bit more magic down to him. She glanced down in surprise when she actually felt the curiosity echoing off him. There was a strange sensation of his magic trying to touch hers, and it did in fact seem very much like the magical equivalent of pulling and tugging and patting and sticking things in his mouth. He was curious, but he didn't actually know how to investigate whatever it is he was looking for.

Pepper gave a huff of exasperation.

"We be telling you Master Black," she said impatiently. "Missy be having magical bond with little Mister!" She shot an annoyed look at Helen. "And Missy Helen who-be-knowing-better not supposed to be using magic at all until she be all better!"

Helen didn't bother to get upset at the jab, knowing Pepper was at least right on that count. Properly chastised, she withdrew most of her magic back to herself because she just couldn't bring herself to take all of it when he was so focussed on it. That would probably lead to a tantrum anyway.

"I told you I accidentally started making a bond when we were purging his magic," Helen told Black, earnestness and exasperation mixing in her voice. Earnestness because she was still very much aware that he could be dangerous if he decided she was a threat to Harry. Exasperation because it was the truth and she didn't have any any other answers to give him.

"Iolanthe told me he'd used some of the Family Magic to latch onto me, and Lily personally asked me not to break the bond."

"It's true, Mister Black," Professor Flitwick said quietly, a bittersweet look on his face. "The Potters thought, and I agreed, that it would be cruel for him to lose a third parental bond in one night. They made a parental bond, and it probably is rather reminiscent of his bond with Lily. You see how he responded to her, and you know that his Family Magic wouldn't have allowed a magical adoption it didn't approve of."

And that part was true. Most magical adoptions involved bringing a magical orphan - that is, an magical child who had no Family Magic of their own - into an already established Family Magic, unless the adopter also had no Family Magic (like a muggleborn), in which case, it was only the forging of a magical parental bond between the two. If the child was already a member of a Family Magic, especially if they were too young to speak for themselves like Harry was, the Family Magic almost always stepped in to act as an intermediate, last-ditch guardian to protect the child if the wix trying to adopt would cause harm. It wouldn't stop someone from being able to take physical custody of a child, but it wouldn't allow them to bond and connect with the child's magic. And at that point, magical governments would hesitate anyway to grant physical custody if Magic or a Family Magic didn't approve of the adoption.

All that meant was that if Helen had had less than honourable intentions in adopting Harry, the Potter Magic would have blocked it from ever happening.

But it wasn't like she had a tangible way to prove what she was saying, and there were a good few charms and potions that could bewitch Harry into trusting her. They were all hideously immoral to use, especially on a child, but surviving a war - even one she wasn't actively a part of - changes people, and he had no way of knowing what sort of changes it had made in her.

It seemed they'd reached an impasse, Helen not knowing how to convince him, when Eigyr made an impatient sound. "You have your own bond to him, don't you? The spectre of Filius' little witch said as much. I'd assume it was his distress that prompted you to go looking for them anyway, so check his magic yourself."

Black's mouth opened as though to retort - probably more a reflex than anything else, since Helen had no idea what exactly he could have to say to that - but he never made a sound. He paused for a second and then a look of chagrin stole over his face as he probably remembered that it was an option available to him. She wouldn't hold it against him if he'd forgotten it in the midst of everything else.

He closed his eyes, and seemed to focus for a moment before he reopened them to look at her with a mixture of disbelief and surprise.

"It's actually there," he mumbled, odd silver eyes searching her face. "But how..." he trailed off in confusion.

"Well yes, of course it's there," Helen huffed, leaning back against the couch behind her. Harry followed her, still patting at her and looking confused. "As cute as he is, why on earth would I want to claim guardianship over an orphaned heir I'd never met? Especially one that Dumbledore already has an interest in? I'm a muggleborn with at least as much common sense as magical ability, and I've spent all my time in the magical world to this point trying to avoid the drama you all seem so fond of. You-Know-Who has already actively tried to kill Harry - there is no earthly way that his little sycophants will leave him be when they discover he survived and their little wanna-be Hitler blew up."

Eigyr barked a laugh at that, and her brother looked just as amused.

"Honestly, magic-raised wix in general and the pureblood nobility in particular are so drunk on their own superiority and self-importance that it would never occur to them that there are people who just don't care about their stupid elitist propaganda," she told him with some annoyance. It was a longstanding grievance. Since her entry into the magical world, she'd been met with people who were completely ignorant of non-magical life, despite the fact that non-magical people outnumbered wix a hundred to one and made up the majority of the world's population, let alone England's. And to compound it, they'd all been condescending and patronising, like she was some backwards hick, simply because she hadn't grown up expecting to be able to solve all her problems by waving a stick. The joke was on them, because she now knew how to move between both the magical and muggle worlds, and with her Gringotts-approved Mastery in rune-crafting, she'd be able to live and work virtually anywhere she wanted, and she knew how not to sound like an idiot in either one. And Dumbledore, who she'd been shocked to discover was a half-blood, had done nothing to bridge those gaps despite all of his social capital and over half a century as an acclaimed educator in the country's foremost school of magic.

In short, she had a few bones to pick, and heaven help the hapless idiot who set her off.

"I'm here now because, first of all, Magic made me do it," because that was apparently a possible Thing in her life now, "and then because all the Potters asked, and they lured me in with the promise of knowledge." She looked up at him, staring him straight in those oddly-coloured eyes as she wiggled her fingers to distract Harry. "Make no mistake - I made an oath to do my utmost best to take care of him, and I will absolutely do it. I understand that it's a lot for you take in at the moment, but I'd appreciate it if, until you can bring yourself to trust me, you could focus on the good I have done instead of the evil I could do. If I really wanted you both to suffer, all I'd had to do was literally not do anything at all. I've no idea how it would have turned out, but judging by the Evil Inkblot, it wouldn't have been pretty. Maybe we'll be able to dredge up a pensieve or something at some point in the future so you can see what happened last night. I'd even give you a magical oath when I'm back to normal if it would help."

Something in Sirius loosened at the offer of an oath. They were not infallible, but they offered some serious insurance that the person who made the oath would honour it, especially when someone offered to make one. Depending on how they were worded, they could be used to manipulate the one who actually made the oath. No one wanted to be at another person's mercy in such a way, so Skerritt's offer to make an oath and make herself vulnerable that way was a major thing. They hadn't asked one of Peter, their trust in him so implicit, and he hadn't offered to make one - which Sirius now thought should have told them something but hindsight is 20/20 and it wouldn't fix anything. Even if he'd thought to do it himself, Sirius hadn't needed to make one, having given an oath to become Harry's godfather and having adopted him magically, though the knowledge of the adoption hadn't been publicised so that no one would begin targeting Harry for his potential connection to the Black Family fortune. Walburga had disowned Sirius, and most people took it at face value that he'd been kicked out of the Family, and he'd never said otherwise. But the more shrewd would have cottoned onto the fact that his grandfather, the actual Head of the Family, had also never said anything one way or the other. That uncertainty had protected him in his teen years, but it wouldn't do the same for Harry.

"I would appreciate it," he said quietly. Maybe it was crass, but she had offered, and he needed the security the oath would provide. He couldn't be wrong about Harry's safety again. He couldn't. He wouldn't survive it.

"And I'll oversee it," Filius announced. "You both have the best of intentions, but even good intentions can be twisted into something ugly without a moderating influence. Harry will need two functional parents who won't self-destruct because they started out on the wrong foot."

They both jolted at that, as it hadn't yet really sunk in that not only were they now to take care of Harry, but they would actually be his parents. That was a daunting prospect for persons who had actively made the decision to have a child. For these two, one of whom hadn't even known the child before suddenly becoming a parent, and the other who had probably hoped to never have to step into the role because of what it would mean, it was going to be a trial by fire.

Filius resolved to ensure they didn't crash and burn. He owed Lily that much. Little Harry was all he had left of the student who had become his daughter in every way that mattered, and it would wear on him to his dying day that he'd lost her this way. Later, when he had time to himself, he'd sift through his memories and their interactions to wonder why she hadn't mentioned any of this to him. Even before he'd become her guardian after her parents' deaths, she'd never been afraid to speak up to him about any issue she'd had. Lily hadn't sorted into Ravenclaw, but he'd found a kindred spirit in the young spitfire who had loved Charms and the theory behind it, who could break them all down and reassemble them into something different, who'd found inventive ways to put them to good use.

Lily was one of those students who did well in all of her classes, but she'd taken a special liking to Charms. By her fourth year, she'd been asking questions most wix only began to consider during an apprenticeship. She'd spent so much time in his office picking his brain, that she'd picked a favourite teacup out of one of the sets he kept there. It had fallen and chipped during one of their more animated discussions on unconventional uses of common charms, particularly the colour-changing charm. He'd always remember that evening because while students could surprise him still, after all his years teaching, he figured he'd already heard just about all of the things they could dream up.

Lily had been mortified at the blunder, but he'd waved it off and made to fix it himself. Instead, she'd pushed him to let her repair it. Instead of just fixing the cup, he'd watched in amusement as she'd switched out the colour from its original off-white to her favourite shade of turquoise with the colour-changing charm, and then, with a look of stubborn determination etched on her face, she'd gone on to attempt to inscribe 'Lily's' on it in wonky purple letters using a targeted colour-changing charm. He'd been shocked speechless when she actually accomplished it because the charm shouldn't have worked that way. The basic colour-changing charm - which was what Lily had used, having been taught it recently in class - was among the type of charms that targeted an object in its entirety. There were other colour-altering charms that could affect just the area of application, but they were a bit more complicated and he hadn't delved into them yet with the class. He later learned that Lily had been hell-bent on making some doodad or other for her family, and she'd wanted to be able to decorate it with the charms she'd been learning. She hadn't been able to do what she'd wanted just yet, and had actually shown up to his office to ask him for some help. He'd mentioned the other charms after telling her that the basic charm couldn't do the job and instead of just accepting it, she'd dug her heels into the argument because why shouldn't it be able to do it?

She'd shot him a smug look of triumph because that was apparently the first time it had worked, despite all her attempts in the previous fortnight. After examining her handiwork, he'd shot a spell to make the alteration permanent, despite how it interfered with the previous enchantments on the cup for refilling and remaining warm. It had been tucked away in his office ever since, only used by Lily when she visited. When she'd become better at it, after having finished her project for her family, she'd wanted to at least replace it because the writing was so terrible, but he'd refused and told her that he was happy with the original, much to her exasperation. She used to roll her eyes whenever she visited his office after that and he gave her tea in her mug - hers because, well, it had her name on it, didn't it?

And now she was gone, never to reinvent another charm or shock him stupid again.

She'd entrusted her son to Black, who he remembered as one of the cleverest Gryffindors to ever come out of the House. Filius privately thought that the main reason he hadn't been sorted into Slytherin was not that he wasn't cunning or ambitious enough, because he had those in spades (the Heir of the House of Black could be nothing less), but because his disposition and implementation were more Gryffindor than they could ever be Slytherin. Black hadn't been at all upset to have been disowned when it had happened. One would have expected at least some hurt or longing or anger or something of the sort. But instead, he'd returned to school sans a weariness Filius hadn't even realise he'd noticed before. Privately, Filius suspected that the boy had actually wanted and worked towards being kicked out of one of wealthiest and most influential pureblood families in magical Britain. Considering how tightly he'd attached himself to the Potter heir, a werewolf (though only the staff were supposed to have known that), and a 'commoner', as the uppercrust would have considered Pettigrew, Filius was rather firmly convinced that Black had taken Hogwarts as an opportunity to escape from the bigotry his family rather publicly espoused. How on earth a boy like Sirius Black, who had been so staunch in stance against the escalating pureblood mania, had come out of a family of the most die-hard proponents of that mania, he would never know.

Black had been ready to rip Pettigrew limb from limb - laws and need for proof of his own innocence be damned - when Filius had stepped into their scuffle. As it was, he'd cursed the traitor's wand arm off with a vicious shout of Perimo when Filius had refused to let him disembowel the little cretin before they could properly interrogate him on how and why he'd betrayed Lily. There was a horrible, bloodthirsty part of Filius that was darkly appeased as he'd watched the limb fall off and wither instantly to dust, not even bones left behind. It was a curse that had, in the past, been used as an extreme punishment for truly criminal wix. Considering how few of them learned to stretch and flex their magic to be able to use it wandlessly, and their dependence on wands, it had been the next-worst thing to being sent to Azkaban before someone had discovered how to petition Lady Magic to rescind her gift in someone who had abused it terribly and dump them in the muggle world after they were obliviated. Having the limb wither away meant it couldn't possibly be reattached, and the stump was cursed so that artificial magical limbs would just not work. The curse had fallen out of use and into relative obscurity after the development of the 'more humane' option of binding and obliviating someone, and then dropping them completely clueless into the muggle world, which they knew nothing about. But obviously, Black had received more tutelage outside of the standard Hogwarts curriculum before he'd left home.

Oh, Filius still wanted Pettigrew dead, but his level of suffering beforehand would be heavily dependent on just how deeply his betrayal of Filius' only child went. Honestly, of all the wix in their circle of friends, Black was probably the best option to take care of Harry - the ministry would never grant custody to Lupin because of his illness, and although Filius had a claim through his adoption of Lily, they'd put up so many hurdles for his half-creature status, he'd probably never see the boy until he got to Hogwarts anyway. The Longbottoms were the only other viable option and they already had their own infant. Black had the knowledge of how to navigate magical high society - Filius had seen him use it to get into and out of a multitude of scrapes as a student at odds with his elitist peers - he was obviously rabidly devoted to Harry's protection, and he had the knowledge and ability to follow through.

What was just as important was that Black genuinely cared about Harry. Filius had watched as the young man had completely shattered when they'd returned to the cottage the previous evening. Harry had still been asleep in configured crib, but Pepper, still practically bouncing off the walls from the Wild Magic of the rituals, had brought it out of Helen's room so that the distraught wizard could see for himself that Filius hadn't been lying when he'd said that Harry was safe. Filius had allowed himself to crack, just a little bit - it would do no good if they both went to pieces, especially if they were risking waking Harry. Eigyr had stayed with them in silent vigil.

It seemed the only thing Black could say to the slumbering child was a litany of apologies for his failure interspersed with laments for their loss and promises to step up the way he'd promised James and Lily he would. Filius would be there every step of the way.

He also firmly approved of the young Ms. Skerritt. She was just as brilliant, and just as capable, even if she wasn't prone to the same dramatic flair that Lily and the Marauders were. He would never have suggested her to Eigyr if he didn't think she was her own brand of genius - Eigyr didn't suffer fools.

(Again, he figured that magical Britain had dodged a killing curse when their parents had agreed to send him to Hogwarts and educate Eigyr with the Horde. She'd have razed the place to the ground and spit on the ashes in her first term.)

He clearly remembered Helen's verbal evisceration of another Ravenclaw who'd been harassing her for being ignorant of the magical world when she was in her second year. She hadn't raised her voice, or even physically retaliated. It had been a shockingly pointed and target dressing down, including Helen's own assessment of the other girl's insecurities and faults, and she'd ended it with essentially telling the other girl to keep her issues to herself and to leave Helen out of it. At twelve. Luckily, it had occurred in the Ravenclaw common room, so there were limited witnesses to fuel the school gossip and make Helen a target for someone else. He'd still had to speak to them both over the incident, and Helen's response when he'd questioned her was, word for word, "I can only take so much stupidity in one go, and she's already hit the quota for the next three months. I might be brown like dirt, but my parents raised me to never let anybody walk all over me."

He probably should have reprimanded her more thoroughly, but she'd been the wronged party in the whole thing, and his immediate thought, though he hadn't said it, had been "Eigyr would love this one". It was a perfect opportunity for the other child to learn that decisions have consequences, and that she should learn to pick her battles much more carefully in the future. She'd been a pureblood, but not a noble, and Helen had (rightly) assessed in her verbal dressing down that girl had chosen to pick on the muggleborns because they were considered even lower than she was in the pecking order and to somehow earn herself some status.

The Hogwarts gossip mill being what it was, the tale had still gotten out, but because Helen was so thoroughly committed to keeping her head down and getting her education, it had faded fairly quickly. There'd been other, little incidents throughout the years when someone had pushed Helen too far and she'd finally retaliated, but he still believed that the knowledge of that first confrontation, that even as a second year, she could and would dish back out what she was given, had subconsciously dissuaded anyone else from trying to make her a target.

There was no way her time with Eigyr hadn't reinforced that spine of steel. Better yet, Eigyr had told him of some of the ideas she'd implemented in the ward-scheme for her family's homes since they were a mix of muggles and squibs and had no active magic of their own. Young Helen was creative with her ward schemes and defenses. If that was what she came up with even within the limitations of the types of wards that could be placed in a 'muggle' dwelling in a muggle area, how much more could she do when she'd be raising Harry in a magical household, most likely in a magical area?

Between Sirius' obvious skill and Helen's underestimated genius, Filius was positive that when - not if - these two figured out how to work together to protect Harry, he'd be the best-guarded thing since Merlin and King Arthur hid Excalibur. That was to say nothing of how Filius himself would contribute to safeguarding the toddler, but the point remained.

Filius was jolted back to the present by Helen's panicked exclamation of "Alice!"

"What?" he asked, his eyebrows struggling between surprised and confused.

"Of course we're going to have to involve Alice - she's his god-mother," Black said with some annoyance.

Apparently, the conversation had moved on while Filius was lost in thought, and they'd somehow come to the topic of Lily's best friend.

"No - well yes, but that's not what I meant," Helen said impatiently, working herself up and waving one hand wildly. The other was occupied making sure Harry didn't tilt off her lap. "I knew I was forgetting something, but it just wouldn't come back to me - Alice and her husband are in trouble!"

"They're still in hiding behind the Longbottom wards in one of the family's properties. I don't even know which one it is," Black told her in an attempt to calm her down.

"I know what I Saw," Helen snapped at him, fire in her eyes. "It was the two of them and their baby against Bellatrix Black, the Crouch kid, and another pair of wizards - I don't know who they are - but the point is Bellatrix was in their house in my vision."

Despite the contrast of his pitch black hair and fair skin, Filius had never seen Black look so pale before. It was an appropriate response because Bellatrix had distinguished herself as one the cruelest and most vicious of the 'dark' faction in this war so far. You-Know-Who seemed to enjoy the power of being able to take a life whenever he deigned to show up in person and sully his own hands. But Bellatrix lived for the torture and suffering of other people. Even when she'd been a student, a full decade before Sirius Black, and without the same level of social and political tension, Bellatrix had been particularly - worryingly - mean. Combined with the brilliance and magical ability that the Black family was known for, as well as a banner in the form of a master who actively encourages her crueler urges, it was not an understatement to say that Bellatrix had honed herself into a terrifyingly perfect actual menace to society.

Eigyr's head shot up. "Do you know when it was?"

Helen was visibly growing more and more agitated, eyes darting around as though she was looking for something. Black reached out and took Harry from her lap, lest the toddler fall off in her jittering.

"No," she answered distractedly, trying to pull herself up on limbs that didn't want to cooperate, using the couch as a prop. "I Saw it last night, and I usually only see something occurring within a few hours," she caught sight of the window and did a double-take at the fact that it was already dark. They'd spent the whole afternoon trying to catch Black up on what had transpired the previous night. "But last night, I saw the murders, your chase with Pettigrew, the - Longbottoms, you said is who Alice married into? - and Dumbledore and McGonagall dropping Harry off all at the same time, but I knew they weren't concurrent - don't ask me how; I don't know. Their baby at least was fine at the moments I Saw, but that's no guarantee that things will stay that way. I don't know how to get to them - I haven't even seen Alice since graduation either."

She finally gave up on standing, letting herself collapse to the ground and lean back against the couch. Helen turned her frantic gaze to Black, wringing her hands in her lap. "Don't you have some way to get hold of them?" she pleaded. "I had to have Seen them for a reason, but I forgot about them with everything that happened last night, and I haven't had a chance to meditate to set everything straight in my mind. I don't think I could live with it if they suffer because I didn't do what I was supposed to."

The young witch looked a hair away from being sick on her own lap. They could all understand - it was only the fact that she'd taken action last evening that had gotten Harry cleansed of some supremely bad magic and safely away from Lily's bigoted sister, who would have very likely mistreated her dead sister's son. If she'd been meant to somehow intervene for the Longbottoms last evening as well when they were facing off against Bellatrix of all people and she hadn't...

Black looked conflicted for half a second, but he whipped out his wand from somewhere - probably a wand holster charmed to be invisible - and cast Expecto Nuntius. Helen startled at the sight of the translucent, positively enormous mound of fluff masquerading as a dog that appeared, but her attention shifted from trying to observe it because Black spoke to it.

"Frank, Alice," he said briskly. "You need to get out of wherever you are. I've got information saying Bellatrix has a way around your wards. I'm on standby to support."

Helen blinked when the apparition nodded and took off through the wall and off into the night.

"What was...?" she mumbled, squinting at the wall it had disappeared through.

Black looked at her, an odd, searching expression on his face. "It's a modified version of the Patronus. Dumbledore developed it specifically to be able to send messages that couldn't be intercepted. We've used them a lot during the war, and they're easier to cast than the original Patronus charm."

The Patronus charm was notoriously difficult to cast - Helen had read about it as a student on one of her extended weekend binges in the Hogwarts library, and just as the books she'd been reading had warned happened to most people learning to cast, she hadn't been able to produce more than a thin stream of pearlescent mist. But Black's had been fully formed - it wasn't yet corporeal or solid, but considering how far along it was, he'd probably be able to accomplish that given some more time and practice. They'd originally been developed by wix in tropical climes as a means to combat the lethifolds endemic in those areas. Then, when the abominations that are the dementors first began appearing during the height of the witch hunts, a Thai witch had used it reflexively in self-defense when she'd been confronted by a dementor and everyone was surprised to realise there was something that could drive them off. Unfortunately, while it could kill a lethifold, no one had managed to kill a dementor with it as of yet, but it still remained the best defense Brits had against their home-grown living (or maybe it was more accurate to call them 'undead') nightmares.

All that aside, she'd never read anything anywhere regarding them being able to convey messages. For all intents and purposes, most sources she'd found had agreed that the Patronus was meant to be the embodiment of one's guardian spirit. She'd read quite a lot of theories that a person's Patronus was actually a spectral projection of their animagus form, but Black had quite plainly disproved that. While his animagus form was some type of dog, she quite clearly remembered the shaggy fur, slim build, and very sharp teeth he'd had from her visions. Honestly, it was the stuff of nightmares. She was no expert on dogs, but it didn't look like any breed she could imagine off the top of her head (though that was an admittedly very small list). She had no idea how the closest approximation of his inner character was that particular terror, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know why exactly that was. His Patronus, however, was an even lager mountain of poofy fur that, while still intimidating - even if only for the sheer size of the thing - looked like something people might like to sink their fingers into. Not her, but some people. Helen tended to stay far away from things that could potentially accidentally kill her by sneezing too hard.

That aside, most theories said it was a guardian spirit, which she thought was more plausible, especially considering the incantation literally translated to 'I expect a patron'. Helen figured it was possible that some people's animagus forms just happened to be the same as or similar to their guardian spirit's form, which would explain those cases. Either way, she wasn't sure she wanted to know why he would need such a behemoth as a guardian spirit either. Some questions shouldn't be asked, and some answers should never be found out. As curious as she was about things, and considering how quickly gossip flew both at Hogwarts and in the muggle world, Helen didn't much care for other people's business. She'd never developed much of a stomach for hearsay, having had it against her and her family and her fellow immigrants as long as she could remember. It was usually all wildly inaccurate and sensationalist rubbish anyway.

Trying to figure how things worked, however. That she could get absorbed into.

Helen blinked, her mind already racing with ways the charm could be useful to her for sending quick updates to her family. Could muggles and squibs see it? Or hear it? How did it know where to go?

She physically shook her head to dislodge the thoughts. Later, she told herself.

"Is that it?" she asked instead of inquiring about learning this apparently still secret, new, possibly very useful spell.

When he looked at her, she saw some of her own helplessness reflected in his eyes amidst another tangle of emotions she didn't know him well enough to decipher. His chest rose and fell rapidly, not quite hyperventilating, but probably only by sheer force of will. If Helen felt responsible for Alice and her family just because she'd Seen them in a vision, how much worse would it be for Black, who obviously had a closer relationship with them, after everything he'd been through in the last day? She hoped for both their sakes, but more for his than her own, that they weren't too late.

He made an aborted gesture, like he'd meant to shrug or shake his head gesture with his hand, but he remembered at the last moment that he was still holding Harry and his brain got all the instructions crossed. "I can't do anything unless they give me a way to get to them. They've been in hiding just as much as James and Lily because You-Know-Who was specifically after them."

He'd said something like that before she'd remembered that they were in danger, but she genuinely couldn't figure out why Wanna-be Wizard Hitler would be targeting either the Potters or the Longbottoms specifically. Sure they were both considered 'blood traitors', but beyond Lily being a muggleborn, she couldn't see what set them apart from any of the other families that had chosen to take a stand against him.

When they'd all had some time to process, she'd try to get it out of Black, because she was positive it had something to do with why Dumbledore, a school headmaster, had decided to abscond with the last living infant member of a Noble House. Even his position as Chief Warlock didn't give him any authority to place Harry, especially as the rightful guardian had shown up to the scene to claim Harry. Technically, Dumbledore had, through Hagrid as an intermediate, kidnapped Harry. She didn't, as a general rule, trust Dumbledore any further than she could hex him, so his attention on Harry, who was now her son dearglorywhatwasshedoing?! was very troubling.

The silence that descended was tense and broken only by the little sounds Harry made as he fiddled with Black's face and hair. There was nothing else they could do at the moment - it was up to Alice and her husband (and she should really learn his name at some point) whether they'd believe the message was real, do anything about it, and provide Black a way to go help them.

Professor Flitwick was chewing rather fiercely on his pipe, the only outward sign of agitation besides the thunderous frown on his face. He was otherwise perfectly - eerily - still as she and Black both avoided each other's worried gazes.

Which was why she nearly jumped clean out of her skin when Eigyr slammed her notebook shut and announced, "I've finished it."

Helen, Pepper, Black, and poor little Harry all turned to her with wide eyes and racing pulses. Her heart was pounding from the shock, but she still noticed the way Black had reflexively curled himself around Harry, the baby hiding his face in his godfather's neck. Professor Flitwick was the only one who didn't seem to be in any way affected by the outburst, but maybe he just had a terrific poker face.

He raised one thick brow at her and she elaborated.

"I've finished the rune arrays to use to interrogate the little rat," she said, which threw Helen for a loop, but Black and Professor Flitwick's gazes sharpened, becoming something altogether rather more sinister and dangerous than she'd ever seen on either of them before. Even Pepper's furious expression had something vicious in it.

Why would Eigyr have made an array? Helen seriously doubted the aurors were going to let them anywhere Pettigrew. A mess though magical Britain may be, it still had laws and procedures. She couldn't picture any justice system allowing people in to see accused traitors and murderers. But everyone else seemed to expect to be able to-

"So I suggest we move to basement workshop and get started, but I'll remind you that we still have to turn him over to the aurors alive to secure Black's testimony."

...

What.

Helen's brain went completely blank for a moment. It didn't happen often, but she distantly recognised that that was what the absolute lack of any thoughts meant.

She blinked once - hard - and swallowed around a suddenly dry throat.

"What does the workshop have to do with anything?" she asked, the words sounding distant through the sudden ringing in her ears. If she had the mental space for it, she'd have been surprised at just how flat her voice came out.

"Because that's where the cretin's been unconscious and trussed up like a feast day ham since Filius and Black brought him in at some strange hour last night after you'd fallen asleep," her mentor told her matter-of-factly.

Helen understood all those words separately, but it took a moment for the significance of the entire sentence to sink in.

When it did, the absolute fury that tore through her was definitely not her own, but that didn't stop it from leaving her feeling like a live wire. She was half-convinced that, even as dark-skinned as she was, her complexion should have flushed a bright red with anger. Harry, with his brown-but-still-fair complexion might have done, but someone with Helen's colouring wouldn't.

"He's here?" she demanded, and by the looks on the others' faces, she wasn't the only one who'd heard someone else's voice mixed in with her own.

She would have been very afraid, but something about the experience - the feeling? what was she supposed to call this pseudo-possession - was vaguely familiar and quelled any alarm before it could properly arise.

She took a moment to wrestle with this foreign anger - and it had to be foreign because it was completely disproportionate to anything she'd have felt at the realisation that Pettigrew was in their house. At best, she'd have probably been alarmed or shocked, but not this all-encompassing wrath. Everyone's wide eyes were riveted on her, even the Flitwicks looked a bit dumbstruck.

Professor Flitwick however, shook himself enough to respond. "The aurors are as big a mess as the ministry is at this point. Dumbledore got hold of both Frank Longbottom and Mr Black here, who are both aurors, to help with his little underground resistance group. It's no stretch to assume You-Know-Who has his own sycophants - and many more at that - scattered throughout the aurors and the judiciary."

When Black shot him a surprise look, he scoffed. "Minerva did try to subtly invite me into it, you know, even before your lot had graduated." He rolled his eyes, an action that was surprisingly derisive on a man who was known for his welcoming disposition. "And apart from that, it's meant to be a secret resistance, but he's recruited very heavily from among the 'Light' families and the people adjacent to them, and Hagrid. Rubeus is a dear man, but he hasn't got a single subtle bone in his body." His expression became wry and he raised a brow at his former student. "Everyone either knows or rightly assumes that he's doing something, so even if the group hadn't been his doing, people would have assumed it was him anyway. But either way, he still gets credit without having really done anything to halt this blasted war."

Black looked a bit insulted, which was understandable if he'd been a member of this underground rebel group. But Helen had heard and had this discussion countless times with Eigyr and Pepper, as well as with her family at home. Now wasn't the time for their conspiracy theories, and she couldn't let Black get sidetracked, especially when her magic - it was her magic, right? It mostly felt like hers, but it was somehow different in a way she couldn't put her finger on, which should be concerning because what if something had used the chaos of the previous night to try to possess her? Was that even possible without a proper ritual? - was still so agitated.

There was a ... sensation almost, of (her?) magic asking permission for something, and since her life was now obviously a fantasy novel, she acquiesced (though she couldn't articulate how exactly any of that worked at all). When next she spoke to head Black off and refocus them, it was with the sense that she was being fed things to say by someone whispering in her ear.

"The House of Potter demands our due from the traitor Peter Oliver Pettigrew," she said, that strange reverberation of other voices speaking with her.

And she suddenly realised what might be happening. There was no mistaking that choir of voices as anything other than Iolanthe - or, more accurately, the Potter Family Magic.

The realisation both relieved her - because at least it wasn't a jumbie or a duppy that had overtaken her without her knowledge (well, technically...) - and bothered her - because she didn't remember agreeing to share her body with anybody else's magic. That at least would have stood out from last night.

Helen would have been more disturbed about the whole thing, but she didn't actually feel like she'd lost control of her body. It was more akin to being someone else's spokesperson. This was still her speaking and acting, but it was to relay something for someone else.

Black's expression was an odd cross between awed and slapped-with-a-dead-fish.

"You," he began, but his voice was faint and it faltered, so he licked his lips and tried again when Helen turned to look at him. "You're the Holder of the Family Magic." Those odd eyes of his were wide in his face, and from his expression, Helen was sure that if he'd been standing, he'd have taken a spectacular tumble to the floor.

Again, she got a sort of mental push to speak, and again, it wasn't just her voice. "Be at peace, Sirius, Son of the House of Black, Son of Our heart." He made a choked little sound and his hold on Harry looked like it was all that was grounding him. "The House of Potter stands with you as you have stood by Us."

He released a shaking breath and buried his face in Harry's mop of hair.

"Now," Pepper said, drawing their attention as she brushed imaginary dust off her clothes. Helen felt a little guilty for having almost forgotten her friend was here. She looked like a woman ready for war, even as she banished her crochet project to her room with an imperious gesture. "It be time we be punishing nasty little rat man."

The glint in her eyes promised nothing good for Pettigrew, but considering it was reflected both in Professor Flitwick's face and in the vicious anticipation thrumming through Helen's magic - the Family Magic - she didn't comment on it.

---

Language/Culture Corner:

It occurs to me that I didn't put pronunciations for some of the weirder/made up/definitely-not-English words I've been using so:

Kobelyn (Koh-bell-in); pl. Kobelyni (Koh-bell-ee-knee) - The correct name of the magical species that wix call by the derogatory slur 'goblin'. I used the Greek word 'kobalos' as a root form and bastardised the endings. I went on a bit of a wild language-making tangent (you can thank the Tolkien binge I'd been on for that). Males are also called Kobelyn, but multiple males are kobelynot (koh-bell-ee-note). Females are Kableyin (kah-blay-een) and the plural is kableyinot (kah-blay-ee-not). Is this super important? Possibly not, but I had a lot of fun making it up, so I'm putting it here for anyone who's interested.

Eigyr Unna Flitwick - eye-gear - Professor Flitwick's older sister, a half-Kableyin Runes Mistress under whom Helen is apprenticing to earn her mastery. While Filius was educated at Hogwarts (and so, can use a wand), she chose to be educated in the Kobelyn Horde (and thus, by British wizarding law, cannot use a wand). The 'g' in her name does also have a click, but it's different to the click found in Filius' name and she doesn't too much mind Helen not being able to pronounce it. The girl usually tries, but she can never get it to flow quite right, much like Eigyr's own father hadn't been able to either. Helen is more bothered by it than Eigyr herself is. Oddly enough, hearing Helen mispronounce her name reminds Eigyr of her father (who, being a human died some time ago).

Skeighlor Filius Flitwick - Skeilor (Skay-lore), related to the Danish Skyler, means both fugitive, scholar, and one who gives shelter. Which honestly all sum him up rather well: a fugitive of sorts among wizards because of his ancestry, a scholar (Head of Ravenclaw and hailed as brilliant!), and giving shelter because he took Lily in when she needed it.

I wanted each of them to have an "ethnic" name that is used in Kobelyn circles, but since no human has a hope of getting his first name correct, he goes by his middle name among wix. For our purposes, you can mentally pronounce it as Skay-lore, but it won't come up much unless he's among other Kobelyni (or he manages to piss off Eigyr).

From last chapter:

Maji (ma-gee) - Mother; ama - Mum/Mom/Mama (wasn't used, but meh)

Paju (pa-jew) - Father; apa - Dad/Papa

Taana (tah-nah) - Mistress (as in Mistress Eigyr; her rank as a master of her craft as well as Helen's instructor)

Taniu (tan-you) - Master (as in Master Filius; his rank as a master of his craft as well as Lily's instructor)

The clicks in the Kobelyn language were inspired by the real-world language Xhosa (also known as isiXhosa) from the region of southern Africa (not just the specific country of South Africa). I am not Xhosa and have no ties to it that I can trace, but I think their language is super interesting. It's not the only language with clicks, but it is the first one I encountered that had them. (Additionally, please note that click languages do not require special throats or magic - its speakers grow up learning to incorporate clicks, so it's much easier for them than the rest of us who never learned. But it is NOT because they've got special vocal cords or what have you. That part is purely fictional and unique to the Kobelyni.)

I've also taken Eigyr's attitude to Helen not being able to properly pronounce her name from my own real-world experience of finding that most of the Americans I've met genuinely can't pronounce my name the way I do. It's a rather simple name, but I realised soon enough that the folks I'd met just didn't have the 'a' in their phonology the way I was used to. I've long since concluded it's the same reason that everyone thinks Caribbean people say 'mon' when we actually are saying 'man' (at least in the island I'm from - each island is different). It was an interesting observation to me in undergrad.

The words 'jumbie" (joom-bee or jum-bee depending on where you are and who you ask) and 'duppy' (dup-pee) are both used throughout the Caribbean, though in different island-countries, to mean the same thing: essentially ghosts or malevolent spirits. 'Duppy' is most well-known to be used in Jamaica, but 'jumbie' (from 'moko jumbie') is more common in other islands.

Also, I'm probably gonna end up tossing out tidbits about Caribbean people and culture throughout my writing of this fic for those who are interested in learning those things from an actual Caribbean person born and raised here. I won't apologise for that, but you don't have to read through it all if it's not your cup of tea. Happy reading!