April 1984
The toddlers chased each other around the garden, one with hair as straight and fair as could be, the other with bouncing black curls. They shrieked and laughed, playing their game with wild abandon, completely oblivious to the adults speaking in hushed voices at the doorway.
"-suspicion is falling on us again! If anyone knows that we harbor-"
"-she is blood, Lucius, what choice do we have-"
"-familial ties matter little to the Azkaban guards-"
"-you would throw out his heir?"
It was the most fire the woman had spoken with to her husband in many years, and it seemed to serve its intended effect. She continued.
"You are the one who has said that it's only a matter of time before he returns to power. That he took many steps to ensure his legacy continues," she pressed. "She is one of those steps he took. And she has been entrusted to us."
"She is a little girl," he said the last word as though it left a foul-taste on his tongue.
"She is the heir to two powerful lines of magic," the woman stood her ground. "She is family."
The man stood silent, frown etched deeply into his face. "She looks too much like Bella. She doesn't look at all like a Malfoy. People will be suspicious."
"That can be explained away," the woman said. "It is not out of the realm of possibility for a child to look like her aunt."
"Still…. We cannot allow our connection to her to be emphasized at this time. The Longbottoms' fates have the public looking for someone to hang," the man said. "It was foolish-it wasn't as if it were a couple of mudbloods-no, it was members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight!"
The woman seemed troubled, biting her lip. The little girl gave a particularly shrill shriek as her brother just barely dodged her attempt to tag him. The little boy giggled with glee.
"We'll keep her close to the manor," the woman said. "Draco adores her. It is too late to separate them, you have to realize that, Lucius."
Lucius frowned as he watched the children play a convoluted game of hide-and-seek.
"When the Dark Lord returns, he will make her his second in command," she pressed. "And if we are the one to have raised her…. Will we not also have that power?"
A sudden shout, then a child crying. The woman forsook all notions of propriety and raced to where the children were, both on the ground. The little girl was sobbing loudly, holding a bleeding knee, while the boy's grey eyes were blown wide in fear.
"I'm sorry, Mama-Evvy was running-"
"Dray pushed me!" the little girl butted in, lips fixed in a pout. Lucius had followed at a much slower pace, taking in the scene before him with all the focus of a man studying a new business venture.
"Draco, you should not be so mean to your sister. She is smaller than you," the woman scolded. "Darling, come here, let Mummy see-"
"Leave it, Narcissa," Lucius ordered. The little girl looked up at him, large tears spilling from her violet eyes. He crouched in front of her.
"But Lucius-"
"You may fix the cut when she stops crying," he said levelly, eyes trained on the little girl. "Consider this day one of your training."
"She is a baby, Lucius-"
"She is the heir of two great lines, as you said," he sneered. "This… sniveling is unbecoming of those lines."
It took several moments, but the little girl stopped crying, though her lip still wobbled and she still clutched at her knee. Lucius then did a complicated motion with his wand and then the torn skin knit itself together. The little girl winced as it did so but did not cry, Draco still wide-eyed in fear as the skin put itself back together.
"We'll begin with Tuesdays," Lucius said. "If we are to do this, Narcissa, we must be sure that Evanna grows into a force to be reckoned with… And that she always remembers who made her into that force."
Evanna reluctantly took Lucius' hand as he pulled her away from the game with her brother, and her childhood as a whole.
July, 1996
"I am glad to see you doing well Sirius. And that you've finally agreed to meet with me," the Headmaster said benignly. Any other time, Sirius might have been tempted to think on times when he and James had ended up in front of this desk after some escapade or another. But, he had put off this meeting for weeks in order to receive a full account of Harry's childhood and schooling thus far.
James would have killed the man standing in front of him.
"I considered leaving the country, but Harry convinced me not to," Sirius glowered. "Even after he realized that you had deliberately stomped all over every one of James and Lily's plans for him."
"Sirius, everyone believed you to be-"
"I don't want to hear your excuses! You left James' son to be starved and locked in a bloody cupboard! And don't tell me you didn't know, not when you had Arabella Figg spying for you all those years!"
It had taken a while for Sirius to coax that admission from Harry, but when he had, he had been apoplectic. It had taken a well placed petrificus totalus from Remus to head off Sirius' baser instincts in confronting the worthless muggles who had 'raised' Harry. He was still tempted to pay Petunia and Vernon Dursley a visit, but had not yet because of the more pressing matters at hand. Namely, how to completely remove Harry from Dumbledore's machinations.
"I had to do what was best," Dumbledore said softly, refusing to meet Sirius' eyes.
"Best for who?" Sirius challenged. "Certainly not for Harry. And now you're claiming that this fifteen year old boy is supposed to kill Voldemort when you haven't in all your infinite power and wisdom?"
The Headmaster was silent. Sirius was reminded of when he and James had first talked of joining the Order, how upset Mrs. Potter had been.
"Dumbledore may be a great wizard, but he never learns from his mistakes! He's sending out younger and more inexperienced students to fight You-Know-Who instead of going himself, just like he did with Grindelwald!"
"The prophecy clearly states-"
"And how often do prophecies go unfulfilled when they aren't paid attention to, huh?" Sirius demanded. "James and Lily only agreed to go into hiding because Voldemort believed the prophecy. They never intended for their son to be anywhere near this war."
"What do you expect me to do, Sirius?" Dumbledore said, his voice harder than the day Sirius was nearly expelled. "We are trying to save our entire world!"
"I don't know-something to keep Harry safe and to end this!"
Dumbledore took off his glasses and pinched his nose as though Sirius had brought about the sudden onset of a headache. It wasn't implausible; Lily had once called him a walking migraine. That motion caused Sirius to notice something that he had not before. Dumbledore's entire hand was black, shrunken, like that bit of flesh had died but remained attached to the whole body.
"I am trying, Sirius, but I am only an old man. This war will be decided by the new generation."
By Harry, was the implication. But, any sympathy Sirius made have once had for the old man had dried up when Harry had informed him of the Hogwarts letters addressed to the Cupboard Under the Stairs.
"There are a helluva lot of generations between you and Harry," Sirius replied. "I don't want Harry coming back here this year. Hogwarts is not safe for him-I don't think it ever has been."
Dumbledore seemed momentarily dumbfounded. "Sirius-surely you see this is bigger than you or even Harry. We all have to make sacrifices-"
Sirius glowered. "I think between the two of us, Harry and I have made more than enough sacrifices for the cause."
"I cannot allow you to take Harry. He is our only-"
"Luckily, you are not Harry's guardian," Sirius said, standing. His teenage self would have marveled to see him acting so disrespectfully towards the Headmaster; his present self found it long overdue. "Not to mention, I have papers just waiting to be sent to the Ministry detailing your extreme negligence of your duties as a Headmaster, allowing a student in your charge to be mistreated the way Harry was."
"You will take Harry away from his home-his friends who have been his family-while they are in the fight of their lives?"
And that was the crux of the matter. As angry as Sirius was with Dumbledore, as much as he wanted-no, needed-to protect his friend's son, his godson would not leave England quietly, not while his friends were in danger. That desire to keep others safe had only intensified this summer as Harry realized how close he had come to leading his friends to their deaths at the Ministry at the end of term. Harry Potter would stand between his friends and family and any danger that might come their way. Sirius was proud of Harry for that bravery, much as he wished he could just spirit the boy away to keep him safe.
"I can't trust you to keep him safe," Sirius finally said, side-stepping the question. "You've more than failed at that. As far as I'm concerned, he's not leaving my side until he is at least seventeen and mastered dueling."
Dumbledore actually had the decency to look shamed at that. "Harry's five years at Hogwarts have been more eventful than anticipated, certainly."
Sirius harrumphed at that. To hear Harry's account, it was amazing the boy had learned anything at all in the past five years for constantly having to worry about his and his friends' lives. That, and the curse on the Defense Against the Dark Arts position seemed to have only gotten worse from Sirius' school days to the point it was amazing the boy could point a wand and say a spell at the same time during a duel.
"What if…." Dumbledore trailed off looking contemplative. Sirius was not sure how much he trusted that look.
"What if what?" Sirius demanded.
"What if you were to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?" Dumbledore said.
Sirius frowned. Of all the things he expected Dumbledore to say, this was not one of them.
"You want me…. To teach," he said slowly.
"I find myself needing to fill several posts this year," Dumbledore continued. "And, once again, that includes the post of Defense. I believe you completed Auror training when you were young?"
"I-yes-but-"
"And of course, I know all of your exploits with the Order in both wars, and you know better than anyone how to combat dementors," Dumbledore continued. "You would take an active role in training Harry-no matter what you believe his role in this war ought to be, there is no denying that Voldemort will continue to target him."
Sirius' mind was reeling. He wasn't sure which of his old friends would find this the most hilarious-James, Remus, or Lily. Sirius Black, with a detention record thicker than a Norwegian Ridgeback's tail, being offered a teaching position at Hogwarts.
"Harry isn't the only one who needs to be trained," Dumbledore said. "You could do a lot of good in such a position, Sirius. Hogwarts students in recent years have not had the best of Defense education."
"I won't sign a year contract," Sirius said. "If I get a whiff of danger for Harry, we are leaving England, I don't care what anyone says about it."
The old Headmaster's eyes were twinkling in a way that Sirius hated. He hated that after everything the man had done to fail Harry, that he was still somehow getting his way. It was the same reason Sirius had hated to play chess with his little brother; any time he felt as though he might have pulled ahead, he quickly learned that he had been lured into a trap.
"I shall tell the house-elves to begin preparing your rooms," Dumbledore said. "Gryffindor colors, I presume?"
This was more important than any chess game. Sirius would protect his godson, at any cost.
"Fine, Dumbledore," he all but spat. "But I will do it my way."