Chapter 14

Nymphadora Tonks really hated drunk wizards. She had already had to break up three fights and nearly hexed five wizards for flirting with her. The only reason she hadn't was because Dawlish was here, and he was both a brownnoser and a stickler for rules and regulations.

When Harry had died she had collapsed in on herself and spent weeks locked away in her room, and there was absolutely nothing her parents could do about it. They put on a brave face, but she knew they were hurting too. They had never even found his body, despite trying every locating charm they could for Harry Potter. She had held onto a desperate hope that they were wrong and that he was okay, but after weeks and months that hope died too.

She had been subjected to another year of waiting before she went to Hogwarts, during which time the Potters went from wizarding Britain's favourite family to one of the most hated almost overnight. Technically Harry had still been the heir even if he was a squib, so the Potters had been required to notify the Wizengamot of his death before they could appoint Jack as the heir. The wizarding world had ripped them apart, and the dark families who really didn't care about the death of a squib joined in just because it was the Potters. She had enjoyed every scathing or outright hostile article that had been printed in the Prophet, and still had several cut out in a box at home.

Sirius had given several interviews about the Potters, saying everything from truthful facts to outright lies in an attempt to keep them down. He knew they would never actually come out and refute him unless he really crossed a line, and even then the wizarding public were more likely to believe him than the family who had sent their son away for 'safety' only for him to die. It had made things more difficult for them, but ultimately the Potters had the Boy-Who-Lived so they were more or less forgiven by the time she got to Hogwarts. Dumbledore's name had never even been mentioned, despite it being obvious to all who knew the family that it was the headmaster's idea.

She and her parents saw Sirius often now, though still not as much as she would have liked. When they did see him it was always at his house in Italy and hardly ever in Britain; Sirius avoided the country as if it were contagious. At first he would drop in on her and her parents whenever he was in Britain for the Wizengamot, but as soon as his daughter was born he had appointed her mother as his proxy and only rarely stepped foot in Britain. She didn't even know what it was he did now except that he wasn't allowed to tell them what it was. She had considered him being one of the Italian versions of the Unspeakables, but the day Sirius voluntarily locked himself away to do research was the day Dumbledore shaved his beard.

He had taken Harry's death even worse than she had; according to his wife he had spent the weeks after finding out in a drunken stupor, and even after that had often been found staring vacantly into nothingness. It was only when his daughter was born that he started brightening up again and went back to the man child he had often been before, though he was still not childish to anywhere near the same extent. They had named her Harriet after Harry, though she was the opposite of what Harry had been; she was energetic and loud, much like Tonks had been as a child. She would be 8 by now, and the Tonks family had gone to see her on her birthday back in March. Tonks was surprised Sirius hadn't come to the world cup, but both his wife and his daughter hated it. Another difference between Harry and Harriet.

The wait to finally go to Hogwarts had been agonisingly boring as she refused to go to Muggle School again, much to her parents' disapproval. The sorting hat had put her in Hufflepuff, surprisingly. Yes her father was in Hufflepuff and she was hardworking, but her mother had always said she was reckless enough to go to Gryffindor. The hat had said that she would have been put in Gryffindor if it were not for her loyalty to Harry even when he was dead, as evidenced by her undying hatred for anything Potter.

She had made tentative friendships with the girls in her dorm, but nothing beyond that. She would sit next to them in class and talk to them at dinner, but that was it. It didn't help that two of them would spend hours talking about makeup and glamour charms, all while shooting her the occasional jealous look because if she wanted to look different all she had to do was think about it.

She spent much of her time at first in the library reading whatever book took her fancy or just sitting there doing nothing; none of the games they played in the common room much appealed to her, and neither did the near constant chattering. Everyone was far too caring and concerned to just leave her alone when she was in the common room, constantly trying to persuade her to join in. At first she refused their invitations outright, and then agreed occasionally just so they would stop asking and found that it wasn't so bad. Eventually she started going back to how she was when she was younger; outgoing and cheerful, though not quite to the extreme she had once been.

Classes had generally been quite boring just because she found most magic fairly easy, with the exceptions of potions, arithmancy and runes. They just confused her, but in all the wand subjects she was far ahead of the rest of her class. McGonagall and Flitwick had had to give her extra books and special assignments, a fact that had made several Ravenclaws send her dark glares. Some people were so petty.

She had only taken Divination for a single eventful lesson before she dropped it and changed to Arithmancy; she didn't much like being told she was going to die. They had been doing a strange method of divination with the most disgusting tea she had ever been made to drink, and when Trelawney had seen the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup she looked like she was about to have a heart attack, and had actually stumbled backwards while she cried mournfully. The bit that looked vaguely like a boat was apparently the boat of Charon, which meant she was going to die, but there was also a sun which meant great happiness. So she was going to die, but be immensely happy about it. The boat wasn't even in their book! She had gone to Professor Sprout and asked to change subjects straight after that lesson – divination was a waste of time anyway even if the professor wasn't a fraud.

Around fourth year was when boys started coming up to her and asking her to change into the girl they liked but wouldn't give them the time of day or the girl who had just broken up with them but they still liked, but that had stopped quickly after she had hexed a few of them into the hospital wing. She had had to serve a few detentions, but it was worth it in the long run. Somehow Mad-Eye Moody had heard about that and that she wanted to be an auror, and one day he had turned up offering to be her mentor for the aurors, after putting her through the most gruelling training session she had ever imagined to see if she was good enough. Obviously she had accepted, the man was paranoid and a fierce taskmaster but he had filled up half the cells in Azkaban by himself, known as one of the all-time great aurors. He had even somehow convinced Dumbledore to let her take her NEWTs early so that she could start auror training early. It was probably because they were old friends from the war, but she liked to think that it was because the old man had finally gotten tired of the poorly hidden glares she sent him at dinner.

Auror training for her was split between the standard training that all aurors got and whatever hellish exercise Mad-Eye could think of. By the end of it she was top of her class with full marks on concealment and top marks on everything else, from combat to surveillance to undercover work. She had nearly been assigned to Potter's squad, but she had said she would rather do desk work. They had actually made her do so for three months before they moved her onto active duty as some sort of punishment for disobeying orders, but she would take a year of desk work before she worked with him. And now here she was, finally a fully qualified auror, and she was babysitting drunken wizards who could barely stand up. It was not what she imagined when she signed up; she had envisaged explosions and dark wizards, not this.

Her thoughts turned prophetic as screams cleaved the merry songs and drunken chanting, fires erupting to her right where she could see a mass of black cloaks and white masks torturing muggles as they levitated them over their heads, the distinctive sickly green light of the Killing Curse flashing indiscriminately across her vision as men, women and children fell limply to the floor.

She ran after the other aurors as she tried to ignore the fear in her chest as they had to dive to avoid the curses that hissed past, several of the death eaters switching to target them.

~Scene Change~

Harry awoke to the sound of screaming, and his sleep fogged brain momentarily attributed them to the still celebrating Irish. Once his mind started working properly he was out of bed and slipping on his clothes instantly; he had heard fearful screams enough times for him to identify them easily. He ran across the tent and into Anaïs' and shook her awake, the annoyed look on her face disappearing when she heard the explosions.

"Grab your jacket, we've got to go. You have your portkey?" he said quickly, her answer a frightened nod as she pushed her shoes on and wrapped her jacket around her shoulders.

Her portkey was a silver bracelet he had bought her when they were shopping in Paris, and he had spent hours turning it into one. He had pushed magic into it until his vision began to blur so that it should be able to rip through anti-portkey wards with ease, should being the key word; he hadn't tested it and while he was sure it would tear through the wards around the campsite provided it was only carrying her, he was hesitant to try it for anything other than an emergency when he wasn't absolutely sure it couldn't go wrong.

He grabbed a hold of her hand as they exited the tent and he saw the full scale of what was happening; tents were on fire and spellfire flashed brightly as the attackers advanced across the campsite, but it wasn't quite close enough to them for him to worry too much. Most of their district had already cleared out, the river of people fleeing now a trickling stream which they joined and ran towards the forest.

From the corner of his eye he saw a stray spell flashing towards them, and it was only his wandless shield that stopped it hitting Anaïs in the back. He knew that spell, a blood acidifying curse, and had he not been capable of what many wizards considered impossible it would have hit her. He had been prepared to simply take Anaïs outside the wards and portkey them both back home. That option just didn't satisfy him now that protective rage was scalding his veins. They could have killed her.

"Anaïs, use your portkey. Go, I'll see you soon."

She looked like she wanted to argue with him but something in his expression stopped her and she disappeared. He felt the wards strain and then tear as she was let through on what was likely to be the most unpleasant portkey she would ever take, but she was safe.

As soon as he knew she was gone he disillusioned himself and started stalking through the chaos, his features rearranging invisibly into his 'work' form as he did so. There were five aurors hiding behind conjured barriers as several of the attackers cast curses at them, keeping them pinned down and allowing the other ten or so to curse people indiscriminately. What surprised him was that the attackers were Death Eaters, but it was a pleasant surprise; he could take out some of Riddle's support base and financing if he was lucky before he even came back. Two birds, one stone.

He crept around the side before he let fly with a particularly dark cutting curse at one of the Death Eaters firing at the aurors, separating his legs from his knees, and fired an overpowered blasting curse into the midst of the larger group. It was unlikely to cause much damage, but it did send them all flying outwards. That gave him a chance to curse a few as they were sprawled across the floor, and it spread them out so they couldn't shield each other.

He managed to curse three before he was the subject of eight furious wands, and he ducked below Killing Curses and weaved between blood boiling curses all while casting curses of his own with a dark smile on his face. He hadn't truly fought for months, and he had missed it.

A man to his left dropped to a stunner from one of the aurors, and he had to restrain an annoyed eye roll even as he summoned a tent pole through a Death Eater's abdomen. When would they abandon their moral high ground and realise that to fight killers you need to be one? To fight with stunners against men who cast the Killing Curse as if it were a tickling charm was both incredibly stupid and hopelessly naïve.

Incoming curses were blocked by conjured marble, the pieces banished back towards the Death Eaters at a blur. One was blasted into scattered pieces that flew in all different directions by a high powered Reducto while another tried to run, but with a wave of his wand the flaming tents grabbed for him desperately, encasing him in burning canvas. Finally there was only one left, collapsing as both knees were shattered by twin bone breakers and put out of his misery by a piercing hex through his forehead.

Almost as soon as the last Death Eater fell he had to shield from the barrage of stunning spells sent his way by the aurors and he had to fight the instinct to retaliate with something more lethal. After a few seconds the barrage stopped, the five aurors stood in an arch with their wands pointed shakily at his heart. They all looked sickly and pale as their eyes drifted to the bodies that lay lifelessly around him while he stood quite calmly in their midst. They were staring at him as if he were the monster, and not the men who had just killed innocent people.

A barely noticeable flick of his wand created a blinding flash of light and the aurors let fly with countless stunning spells, but when they blinked the stars from their eyes the clearing was empty but for corpses.

As Harry walked through the woods towards the edge of the wards he again marvelled at the naivety of wizards. When an enemy attacks you should always retaliate with greater or equal force, and yet now aurors limited themselves to fourth year spells when their opponents were using the most lethal of magics. Did they really expect to win when anyone they hit could be revived within a few seconds? And it wasn't them that paid the price for their stubborn morals; it was the men, women and children who were now dead because they refused to do what was necessary.

Anaïs could have been among the casualties of their rigid moral superiority.

As soon as he felt the wards wash over his skin he vanished the blood from his clothes and portkeyed back home and immediately stumbled backwards as Anaïs leapt at him, her fists hitting every inch of his torso that she could reach. She must have been waiting outside for him to arrive, and when he hadn't she had gotten worried. He suddenly felt awful, the adrenaline that still lingered in his veins evaporated instantly as he realised that she must have really thought he could be badly hurt or even dead. He had told her a childproofed version of what he did, but she didn't know exactly what it was or how good he was at it. She didn't need to know that he was a killer, and her finding out and thinking him a monster was what scared him the most in the world.

That was why she was never concerned when he left to go on contracts or go after more personal targets; as far as she knew he wasn't doing anything particularly dangerous. This was the first time she had actually been faced with the possibility of him getting hurt.

"I'm sorry, I'm okay. Look, I'm fine."

After a few minutes she calmed down and glared angrily at him before stomping off into the house, leaving wet patches on his shirt. He had yet to be the focus of the veela temper, but it appeared he was in for his first bout. He grimaced slightly at the thought.

For the couple of days following the world cup Anaïs refused to speak to him for any length of time and glared at him every time she saw him, spending all her time in her room regardless of how many times he tried to apologize. He would have preferred if she just shouted to get it out of her system so they could go back to normal, but clearly that wasn't going to happen. He wondered if all children were this difficult; he wasn't, but then he had hardly been a normal child.

Eventually she started going back to normal, but it was gradual and far from instant; it took over a week for her to show even close to as much affection as usual, and another few days after that for everything to go back to how it had been. Harry just hoped he wasn't the target of her ire again; he had hated her being angry with him. Things had been so much simpler when he didn't have anyone, but he wouldn't change what his life was like now for anything.

By then there were only two weeks left until Anaïs would be going to Beauxbatons and she was excited to start learning more magic. Harry had stopped teaching her a couple of months before the World Cup to much protest, but he didn't want her to spend her first years at Beauxbatons bored out of her mind. He had wavered over that decision for a long while before he made it, having to choose between making sure no one could hurt her and giving her the somewhat normal childhood he had been denied. In the end he had compromised and stopped, but only after teaching her several nasty little curses so she could defend herself from anyone who thought veela automatically equated to sex, even if she was eleven and yet to even come into her heritage.

It was halfway through dinner that she asked the same question she had been asking since she forgave him after the World Cup, a question he had refused to give a definitive answer to.

"Are you going to talk to her?"

He withheld an annoyed sigh at being asked again. She had asked that morning as well, and three times the day before and twice the day before that. He knew it would be healthy to at least get closure instead of carrying on not knowing, but that didn't make him any less hesitant. The portraits had been quite insistent that he at least found out what happened if not reconnected, something which he was strongly against. They had tried to convince him by saying she was a child and there was nothing she could have done, but after that produced little response had moved on to saying how useful it would be to have a contact in the aurors. He knew they just wanted him to have more living, breathing people in his life – at the moment Anaïs was the only one.

And he wanted to, even if it worried him more than anything, and Anaïs knew it. She knew he wanted to, but she also knew that he wouldn't unless she made him. He had no idea when all his skill at masking his thoughts and controlling his reactions had become useless against her, but she could see straight through him unless he really tried to hide. It was incredibly frustrating.

"You're going to keep asking me until I say yes aren't you."

The impish smile she gave in response was answer enough. How was it that no threat had ever forced him to do something yet she could just ask and he would crumble?

"Fine. I'll talk to her."

It took him nearly a week just to build up the resolve to actually go through with it, and in the end it was his anger at being so anxious that gave him the push he needed. He had broken into manors that were thought impenetrable and done things that were thought impossible, yet he was acting like a small child scared of the healer. It was pathetic. He was better than that.

Finding her address was pitifully easy, an apartment in a muggle neighbourhood of London. To give credit where credit was due she had done quite well with the wards: anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards which she was assumedly keyed into, a mild notice-me-not so no one noticed the pops of apparition and a standard anti-trespasser ward with a few alert charms. She couldn't add any more without affecting the electronics of the apartments around her, even what she had would make them more temperamental.

Wards had become something of a specialty of his so her defences were of no consequence to him and he was able to carve a hole through them without even using his wand. The apartment itself was organised chaos with empty pizza boxes piled on the table, loose clothes hanging on the backs of chairs or on the floor and several copies of the Daily Prophet strewn across the coffee table. It was similar to how he imagined Dudley's would be had he not recently been sent to prison on drug offences thanks to an anonymous tip. Harry had been rather pleased with his work on that day.

After a few minutes of looking around he settled on one of the sofa cushions, a few flicks of his wand turning it into a portkey. He couldn't just send a letter charmed to be a portkey because she would realise what it was, so he had to use something that he knew she would touch at some point. Of course she might go straight to bed and not even use the sofa for days, but he wasn't going to turn her duvet into a portkey – that could be extremely awkward.

It took two days for the portkey to finally activate, and he spent those two days feeling nervous and then feeling angry for being nervous. The only thing that kept him sane was Anaïs, who did her best to spend every moment she could with him as the time for her to go to Beauxbatons approached. She could already do much of what was taught in the first year so she wasn't nervous about that, but she was worried about being away from home. He still got a warm feeling in his chest whenever she referred to the manor as 'home'.

When the alert sounded she insisted that she was coming too, and he had to spend several minutes telling her she couldn't until she finally relented with an annoyed glare. He had a feeling she would be likely to use one of the curses he had taught her if she came.

With a sigh he disapparated and appeared soundlessly in the French Pyrenees and walked towards the house that was nestled into the side of a mountain, looking as if a strong breeze would force it from its perch and down the sheer rock face. The house was small and made mainly out of wood and glass, and it gave off a sense of tranquillity as he looked down into the valley that was carpeted with trees with the setting sun at their back. There had been a time when he had planned to move with Anaïs here so their home didn't seem so empty, but she liked the manor just fine.

At first he had planned to use the cells he had used with the Dursleys, but even now he couldn't bring himself to treat her like a prisoner. The affection he had held for her as a child was still alive, a fire that had burned out but whose embers still glowed. It was a weakness he had yet to rid himself of, but for now he was managing to drown it out with anger. He had set up a containment field and told the house elves to disarm her as soon as she appeared so there should be no chance of her fighting back, but he still readied himself for spells even as every one of his barriers rose into place to leave his face blank.

As soon as the door swung open she whipped around and glared at him, though she was doing a poor job at hiding her fear. He felt a momentary flash of guilt at that before he pushed it away; if anyone should feel guilty it was her. When he sat down in a chair silently her fear seemed to take a backseat as her anger came to the forefront, emboldened by the lack of curses or threats.

"Who the hell are you and why the fuck am I here? I'm an auror and not even a high ranking one, certainly not enough for me to know anything you would want to know. We've never even met!"

"But we have, more times than you could count and a few more since. Of course I didn't look like this then and I had a different name, but it was still me." Harry said before his cheekbones sank and his face rounded slightly, his hair darkened to black and his eyes became the emerald green he was born with.

She gasped and her skin paled, and he smiled darkly in response.

"No, no no no you're not Harry. Harry died, you can't be him," she muttered, clearly trying to convince herself.

"If I wasn't I wouldn't know that you took my broom and crashed into a tree when I was four and ended up in St Mungos. And I wouldn't know that Harry Potter was the only one you let call you anything other than Tonks, even if your mother did anyway. And I wouldn't know that you morphed to look like I did at parties to mess with people."

She looked near catatonic by the time he had finished, her eyes wide and staring at him. He shifted back to his base form while she attempted to make her mouth form words, unwilling to look like them for longer than he had to.

"You're alive. But the tapestry said you were dead, how did-"

"Tapestries are blood magic, and blood can be changed. The goblins were most helpful."

"So you, you knew we would think you were dead? And you let us think you were? It's been NINE YEARS HARRY! I WENT TO YOUR DAMN FUNERAL! WE HAD TO BURY AN EMPTY BOX BECAUSE NO ONE COULD FIND YOUR BODY, AND YOU'VE BEEN ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME?" she shouted tearfully, her tone going from awed to hurt to angry.

His own anger roared in his chest. She dared be angry at him when she was the one who had thrown him away as if he were nothing?

"You don't get to be angry, not when it was you that dumped me with animals and then left me there to rot! But then, I was just a worthless squib." He sneered, "The only reason you are here is that the most important person in my life wanted me to talk to you, and that is it. I would have been quite happy to carry on how I have been, but here we are."

Her anger evaporated as quick as it had come as tears fell faster and faster, her breaths nothing but shallow sobs.

"Harry, I'm so sorry…"

"I don't care if you're sorry, that means very little to me. I want to know why you left me there." He said, keeping his voice cold with some difficulty as the embers glowed a little brighter with every second she spent looking at him.

"We didn't! We looked, Sirius spent months searching-"

"He spent months searching? I WAS AT MY FUCKING AUNTS HOUSE!" he shouted as his anger surged to heights unseen since before he found Anaïs, "If you lie to me one more time I swear I will wipe this memory from your mind and you can carry on thinking I'm dead."

"There was a spell, Dumbledore put it on you. It hid you from every magical person like a Fidelius, Sirius could have looked right at you and not seen you. I'm not lying, I promise. Please, I'm not lying," She pleaded.

He knew she was lying. He was sure she was. He had read every book on concealing charms in the Nightshade library and not a single one had even a passing reference to a spell that would hide someone completely from magical eyes. But he was going to check anyway, just in case he had missed it. He was sure he hadn't, so why wasn't he just removing the memory and moving on?

"The name of the spell, what is it."

"Animam Celaret." She answered quickly, hope blooming in her chest. Maybe he would believe her now. She had harassed Dumbledore for weeks in her first year until he told her the spell. She had looked and looked through books searching for it, even if she didn't really know why she was bothering; Harry was already dead, or at least she thought he was. The most she had found was a vague mention in an incredibly valuable book in the Black library, but even that didn't really say what it did. She was just having to trust that Dumbledore was telling the truth.

Without a word he portkeyed back to the manor and walked quickly towards the library, unable to ignore the sliver of hope he felt. Maybe they had wanted him. Had he been asked a year before he would have said hope was for the weak, the foolish and the naïve. That to hope was to invite the universe to snatch everything away from you and to embrace disappointment. But now life wasn't as dark as it was, and maybe sometimes it was okay to expect happiness instead of pain.

As soon as he reached the library he walked towards the thick ledger at the side and scribbled the words Animam Celaret into the first line, the ink sinking into the parchment even as everything else on the page faded into nothingness to leave a single entry. The spell was real and was in a book; that was all it proved, he told himself. It could be an obscure cleaning charm for all he knew. The hope burned brighter regardless.

A summoning charm later the book was flying across the room into his outstretched hand. It was relatively thin and looked positively ancient, the parchment brown and wrinkled enough that the words would be illegible if not for the countless charms layered onto it and every other book in the library. It was bound in hard black leather, not dragonhide but reptilian nonetheless, and the cover was bare of any title. The only lettering on it was a pair of initials in faded silver on the spine: FN. A journal?

He cast another searching spell, careful not to put much power into it so the pages weren't torn from their spine, and the pages began to slowly turn of their own volition until eventually they came to a stop, a single passage glowing.

27 August 567

It has taken years but now, finally, we have succeeded in our attempts. A spell to hide a person from all magical eyes by concealing their location within a single soul. It is without a doubt my greatest achievement. Our victory in this conflict is assured, He shall be killed and his armies will crumble shortly thereafter. Our work is still not done, however, as there were several places in which our creation failed: the spell cannot be placed upon multiple wizards in close proximity, else the matrix ruptures and the spell breaks. Consequences of this have varied, from the wizard in question suffering no ill effects to his very magic being ripped from his chest. The spell also cannot be cast on oneself, another powerful witch or wizard is needed. Few have the power to cast such a spell, it is the most draining spell I have ever come across. One of my colleagues attempted to cast the spell and it drained him so completely as to drain his very life. If you are reading this, dear descendant, then I urge you to be careful about casting this spell else you follow in his footsteps.

Curiously the spell does not affect goblins as intended, instead acting as nothing more than an anti-perception charm. This is a weakness that we must address quickly in preparation for our next conflict with the Goblin Nation, for there will surely be one.

We were subjected to stringent oaths to never tell anyone of what we have created, but I have with great effort circumvented it. I am sure others will have tried to do the same, but I believe few will find the personal cost acceptable. But this spell can aid the family, and I am a Nightshade. Family above all.

We named the spell Animam Celaret, and the incantations are…

Harry stopped reading at that and set the book down heavily on the desk as his knees began to tremble. She was telling the truth. His entire belief system that had guided him for the past decade had been shattered with a single blow and with it the anger that had been his armour and his fuel faded like smoke to leave him feeling bare and exposed. He didn't like the feeling, and he almost wished she had never told him so he would never again have to feel the same vulnerability he had as a child.

He didn't know how long he sat there staring vacantly into the bookshelf, but when he withdrew from his thoughts the sun was starting to climb above the horizon. What the hell was he supposed to do? This was a ridiculously complex scenario even for someone who had a healthy level of social interaction, something that Harry had severely lacked for the vast majority of his life.

There was no way he could just portkey back there and everything would be how it would have been if he had never 'died'. He knew next to nothing about her now and he was uncomfortable at the thought of having to talk about themselves. It would be like meeting a stranger for the first time, except complicated by the fact that they were identical to your ex best friend who you had spent a decade thinking had abandoned you.

His feelings towards her, her parents and Sirius would gradually be pushed back and he would slowly be able to deal with them, but his feelings towards the Potters and Dumbledore had only strengthened. He had hated them before, now he despised them with every fibre of his being. They had put a spell on him specifically so that no one could find him and trapped him with animals for years. He had to resist the urge just to apparate to Potter manor and burn the place to the ground. He knew he could do it if he wanted to, and he wasn't even sure why he was fighting the urge.

In the end he decided to do what he always had when he didn't know how to deal with something: avoid it. He needed time to think – he had spent a decade resenting her for abandoning him and now even though he now knew she hadn't those feelings still lingered. He had to deal with himself before he let her back in. It was a strange thought, letting someone back in; sure he had let Anaïs in, but she was a child. It was different to letting someone his own age in, but it felt like a positive thing nonetheless. He hadn't had a friend since he was dumped with the Dursleys over twelve years ago and he was curious as to what it would feel like now.

Decision made, he left the manor as quickly and quietly as he could so he was gone before Anaïs woke up; she wouldn't leave him alone until he told her and his brain was still whirring too much for him to deal with questions. When he portkeyed back to the house in the Pyrenees Tonks' hopeful gaze snapped towards him as soon as he appeared but he kept his expression blank – he didn't know what would show on his face if he let the mask slide off. She clearly hadn't slept a wink all night and he was sure that she would have paced a hole in the carpet had there been one.

"You were telling the truth. Now I need you to go back to your life and tell nobody that I'm still alive, and I mean nobody. Not your parents, not Sirius and certainly not the Potters. I'll send you a letter or a portkey when I'm ready."

"But-" she protested before he cut her off.

"I have resented you for ten years; I can't just flip a switch for all that to go away. Now go." He said as he flicked his wand towards the same cushion she had arrived with while he kept his voice as level as he could, but even he knew that something must have slipped through.

Reluctantly she grabbed onto the cushion and disappeared in a swirl of colour after a last lingering look at him, her face a strange mix of happiness, sadness and understanding. Once she had gone he let out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding as the tension drained from his shoulders and he portkeyed back home; now he just had to explain the whole thing to Anaïs.

~Scene Change~

Anaïs's reaction had been… strange. She had been happy for him, yes, but there was always an undercurrent of something else that he couldn't identify for several days afterwards. When he did he felt the simultaneous urge to laugh and to cry; she was scared that she wouldn't be as important to him anymore, that Tonks would suddenly take her position as the most important person in his life.

They only had a few days until she would be going to Beauxbatons by the time he realised, but he had spent every minute of those days making sure she knew that no one would ever come above her. Whatever she wanted to do they did and he was barely away from her during those days, whether it was late night quidditch or going to a muggle sushi restaurant because she begged him to go to only for her to hate it. He had enchanted several hand mirrors to act much like muggle video calling so they were always able to talk to each other when she was at school, similar to what he remembered Sirius and Potter using a few times. Obviously he had made a few alterations and improvements to what theirs had been: a ward so that no one could listen in and a blood lock so that no one but her could use it. Anything Potter could do he could do better.

He had also bought her a necklace with a purple gem set in the pendant that he had seen her looking at in a window as they walked past, but his reasons for that were more than just making her happy. That was an important factor of course, but was not the main reason; he had charmed the necklace to send a distress signal if she held it with two hands and to monitor her heart rate and adrenaline levels so he would know if ever she was in trouble. It had been quite tricky to do and had required a complex piece of blood magic to link it to what flowed in her veins, but knowing she was safe was more than worth the sleepless nights he had spent making sure it was done in time. Rejuvenation potions had kept him awake for the day after well enough, even if he crashed near the end of it.

When the day came for her to finally go to Beauxbatons she had spent the morning alternating between excitement at going and telling him that she didn't want to go and that he could teach her instead, until eventually she settled on nervous anticipation until he finally apparated her to Beauxbatons. Unlike Hogwarts Beauxbatons had no fixed method of getting there at the start of term – just a time they were supposed to be there and the coordinates if they were apparating and had never been there before, while Muggleborn students were given portkeys that activated with a few minutes between each of them.

Beauxbatons was far from the dreary old castle of Hogwarts and lacked the foreboding air that Durmstrang possessed; it was more reminiscent of Versailles, with wide sweeping lawns and elegant fountains with a stunning palace as a backdrop. He had already seen it when he had visited a few weeks before to examine the wards for anywhere he could get in – if the situation called for him to be there he likely wouldn't have time to wait for Madame Maxine to allow him entry. Luckily for him there were a few gaps around them, nowhere near as many as Hogwarts but he would still be able to enter quickly.

When they arrived most of the first years were already there and they got a few looks, but nothing beyond what would be expected and certainly far less than they would have gotten in Britain. At the head of the crowd stood a group of prefects along with the towering figure of Madame Maxine who began calling for the first years to gather in front of them.

"Remember, if you're ever in trouble you hold your necklace with two hands and-"

"You'll be here as quick as you can, I know." She said with a hint of exasperation, having been told the same thing several times already.

"And try to stay out of trouble but have fun, I don't want to get a letter that you got caught or worse got yourself hurt, okay?" he said and got a sincere nod in return, and he knew she meant it. He wasn't asking her to always follow the rules, that would be boring, he was just asking her to be careful.

"Good girl. Call me on the mirror later if you want to, but if you're too tired then that's okay. I love you."

It was the first time in nearly a decade that he had said those words, the last time being to Olivia before she died. Even though he had made it clear with the way he acted and the way he spoke that he loved Anaïs, he had never actually said the words to her before. Every time he did he just remembered being alone again, and he didn't want to try and replace her own family. The smile she gave him in response was blinding as she hugged him tightly, both of them oblivious to the people watching fondly who they assumed were brother and sister.

"Love you too." She mumbled in his ear before she kissed his cheek and scurried off to the group of other first years and followed the prefects across the grounds, turning to look back at him a few times before she disappeared into the school.

That had been three days ago, and since then Harry had been more restless than he had been in years. Everything seemed so empty and so quiet; it was starting to drive him mad. He had considered talking to Tonks again in an attempt to alleviate his unease but knew he wasn't quite ready for it yet, even if he was getting close. He had looked for jobs but there were none currently open and he was about to go searching for one before an elf popped in with a letter.

No one but Gringotts actually had his address, so all post from anyone but them was delivered to a dummy address at a house he had specifically bought for that purpose before being brought to him by house elves. But still, he got very little post at all. When he ripped the envelope open after checking for any charms on it a shark like grin wormed onto his face; this was exactly what he needed.

Dear Mr Jones,

The work you gave me to search through records for any mention of one Tom Marvolo Riddle has been one of the most tedious jobs of my career, but the payment was more than satisfactory. Finally I have found something that may be of interest and I have enclosed a copy of the report.

Please write back if you wish for me to keep looking. If you do not, I will assume the work is done.

Regards,
James B Paulson
Private Investigator

The report he found was a police report dated 26 July 1935, stating that they responded to a call about three children stranded in a cave near a small seaside town. The cave was near inaccessible at anything other than low tide, which it wasn't at the time, and by anyone who was not an uncommonly good mountaineer. A lifeguard boat was needed to get the three children out, their names Dennis Johnathon Bishop, Amy Margaret Benson and Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Dennis Bishop and Amy Benson had been near catatonic and utterly unresponsive when they came out and had needed to be treated for shock afterwards, but Tom Riddle had seemingly been completely fine. No one had had any idea what could have caused it and even Harry wasn't sure what exactly happened in there, but he was sure of one thing: there was a horcrux hidden in that cave.