Albus Dumbledore was tired. Oh he had been tired for many years as his age finally caught up to him, but the past months had been especially trying. He wondered sadly where it had all gone wrong, but truth be told he already knew when it had; the day young Harry Potter had died.
From that moment onwards his life had become far more difficult and the old headmaster knew that he only had himself to blame. The Potters knew he had suggested sending Harry to Lily's sister with good intentions and had wanted to spare the boy as much pain as possible, but in the end all he had done was cause him agony and despair. He had copies of all the memories he had extracted from both the Dursleys and the homeless muggles that Harry had later lived with and watched them often so he never forgot what he had condemned an innocent child to, and that he was not as infallible as he had once believed.
Lily had been inconsolable for weeks from what he had heard, not that he had seen much of the Potters for the weeks and months following young Harry's death. While they knew he had had good intentions, it had still been his idea and they rightly blamed him, though they blamed themselves far more. His relationship with the family had been forced at first but had gradually warmed over the years but he knew it would never be what it had once been. At least they still allowed him to train young Jack in preparation for his destiny, something which the boy took to quite well but not as well as Dumbledore had hoped. The prophecy had said he would be Voldemort's equal, and while Jack was good Tom Riddle had always been exceptional. Jack was now in fourth year, but Tom had been better than he was now in his second. Dumbledore was equally sure that Tom had had a far more extensive spell repertoire as well.
Things at Hogwarts had only got more strained as time went on; when Minerva had found out that Harry had died she had subjected him to one of the angriest and most foul mouthed rants he had ever heard, and not once since then had she called him anything but "Headmaster Dumbledore". The formality still felt like a slap in the face each time he heard it. Many of the other professors such as Filius, Pomona and even Rolanda had done something similar, and now Hogwarts, which had always felt like his home, felt like nothing more than a castle.
Lily had joined the staff as the muggle studies professor the year Jack came to Hogwarts, unwilling to let her son out of her sight more than she had to now that she had lost her first. That had not made the staff meetings any more comfortable as several professors acted cold towards her and Minerva simply refused to interact with her at all. Lily never once complained, as if she thought it was deserved.
She had almost withdrawn Jack from Hogwarts after first year and was only persuaded not to by James' intervention. Dumbledore could hardly blame her; a professor had tried to kill her son! He would never have suspected Quirinus to turn to dark, but he should have suspected from the near unnoticeable differences after he returned from his sabbatical. None of the other professors had had even an inkling either, but he should have. He knew Tom Riddle and it was ultimately his job to protect his students, and he had failed to do so. He had failed in his duty again the year after when the Chamber of Secrets was opened and he still had no idea who had done it, but it had nonetheless been resolved by a stranger.
Dumbledore had no idea who the man who had killed the basilisk was, and quite ingeniously at that he had to admit. He had looked so plain that Dumbledore almost suspected he was under a glamour until he remembered that the wards around the ICW chambers would not allow it. He spoke English well enough for it to be highly likely that it was his first language, yet had no hint of an accent as would be expected from an American; Dumbledore was almost certain that he was from Britain, and yet Dumbledore had not recognised him. He had not gone to Hogwarts but he had still entered the grounds and found the Chamber of Secrets with apparent ease. The old headmaster had tried to use the account number that the reward was paid to to identify him but the name on the vault was John Doe and no goblin was willing to breathe even a word about whoever it was that held it. The only thing he had been able to get out of any of them was that Ragnok himself had explicitly ordered that no information about that particular client was to be spoken to anybody under any circumstances. Ragnok feared no one, so either the order was about gold or it was about respect. Either way the goblins were a dead end and Dumbledore was even more intrigued.
The fact that he had gotten into Hogwarts without alerting anyone was what scared the headmaster most. He had tried once more to improve the wards but had again failed to do more than improve them minutely. He was a transfiguration master, not a ward master, and such complex wards were beyond his comprehension. It was not like he could hire a ward master to improve them either; there was no one he was willing to trust with such information about the wards of Hogwarts, and only the headmaster or an heir of the founders could even access the ward room.
And then there was the fiasco at the World Cup. 'Fiasco was hardly the right word', Dumbledore thought to himself, 'it was more like a slaughter'. The death eaters had killed indiscriminately at first with little opposition, and even when the aurors arrived they had been kept pinned down by several of the attackers while the others continued to massacre innocents. And then the slaughter had truly started.
He had watched the memories of the aurors countless times, and he was still in awe of the sheer skill and speed the boy possessed. He was equally unnerved by the smile on his face as he scythed through them, an expression that almost sent a shiver down his spine. Dumbledore outright opposed unnecessary killing and while even he thought it justified in this case, the boy seemed to enjoy it. The death eaters he had killed were not the best the death eaters had had to offer, but they were far from the lowly grunts Voldemort used as cannon fodder. Two of the men killed were even Inner Circle members, though neither Nott nor Avery were as skilled a wizard as many of those that made up Voldemort's most trusted, mainly there for their gold. Voldemort was sure to be furious when he rose again.
It also had the added benefit of getting Fudge impeached as both Nott and Avery had made significant 'donations' to his campaign fund over the years, but the slippery little man he had managed to talk and bribe his way into keeping his post for the year. He had argued that impeaching him immediately would only bring widespread changes in the Ministry, something which could not be afforded when Britain was hosting the Triwizard Tournament with all the arrangements and foreign relations that were going on. He was clearly grasping at straws, but the gold Fudge himself had taken in bribes was put to use bribing others, and the motion to dismiss the man from his post ultimately failed, but only barely. Dumbledore still counted it as a win even if it was a delayed one; Fudge was a spineless and weak excuse for a wizard, certainly not fit to lead the country.
Dumbledore had feverishly searched for the boy's identity and the best he had found were ghost stories, but he knew all stories held a nugget of truth. He had heard the stories before as chief warlock but had dismissed them as just that, stories. The boy was clearly skilled and didn't even look remotely challenged at the world cup, but the headmaster still thought that they were wildly exaggerated at best. He didn't look any older than twenty; even he had not been anywhere near as skilled as the whispers suggested at such an age.
He had been unable to look into things himself, being Albus Dumbledore made going to the dark corners of the wizarding world somewhat problematic, but he had had Mundungus do the work for him. Mundungus was a liar and a thief but Dumbledore felt him a petty nuisance at best so thought it was a necessary evil to have the man close; the information he provided was worth his irritation at keeping him out of trouble when the aurors inevitably caught him. Even as a criminal Mundungus was largely inept.
Mundungus had paled when he had described the boy to him and told him what he knew, much of which Dumbledore knew already, but had refused to do anything more. He had said that this "Ferryman" would know if he was looking into him and that few would dare say if they knew anything of importance anyway. The boy had an even fiercer reputation than he had thought.
He knew that the Ministry had conducted a similar investigation but had come up with even less than he had, their enquiries somewhat hampered by the staunch refusal of many magical governments to speak of this Ferryman character. Dumbledore could read between the lines and see that they had once hired him for something and that they knew what he was truly capable of, something which made him only more anxious to identify him. This boy killed for money and such people could be easily swayed. What if Voldemort hired him?
As soon as Jack's name had come out of the goblet, he had put the boy from the world cup out of his mind. There was now a much more immediate problem to occupy his time. He was sure that Voldemort was moving to regain his body and that Jack's entrance into the tournament was somehow part of his plans, so he focussed instead on preparing the prophesied child for his inevitable encounter with the Dark Lord.
~Scene Change~
It had been several weeks since he had found out his godson was alive, and Sirius had often joined Nymphadora when they visited the cabin in another fruitless attempt to make Harry open up. As soon as he got home he had done just what Harry thought he would and sifted through every genealogy book the Black family had in an attempt to figure out what family he had blood adopted into. The problem was that the Slytherin family had always been incredibly secretive and it was so old and had intermarried into so many other families that there were dozens of possibilities, and those were just the ones he had found. There could be countless more, especially as he didn't even know how much Slytherin blood would be needed for it to appear on a blood inheritance ritual. In the end he gave up, knowing that he would find out eventually anyway.
Almost every waking moment had been spent thinking about Harry – what he had done for ten years, where he lived, who had taken care of him. Sofia and Harriet were both starting to notice but he knew he couldn't tell them; the vow he had sworn was a strict one. It was lucky he was good at keeping secrets. He had started hating the Potters more than ever after managing to get his head around the fact that Harry was alive. They had said Harry was a squib, but he clearly he wasn't. He had disarmed him and later petrified both him and Tonks without even using his wand! Only the most powerful wizards were capable of wandless magic, and they had said he was a squib? He had never seen Harry perform accidental magic, true, but he did not live with him. There must have been some instance where he had and surely the Potters would have known about it, and yet they had lied and said he was a squib to try and justify throwing away their son, and he had believed it.
The parting comment Harry had given him on that first meeting still weighed heavily on his mind and he really wanted to know how Harry even knew what his job was – it was hidden behind secrecy oaths that bordered close to those that Unspeakables were under – but he dared not ask Harry. He had a feeling he wouldn't like whatever answer he received.
It had brought Sirius and Tonks even closer than they already were; they were the only two people who knew he was alive, and they had spent long hours talking about him. Sirius had been hurt at first that Harry had been alive for so long and not told him, but once he had been shown the memory of Harry first meeting Tonks and seen that Harry genuinely thought they had abandoned him with those deplorable muggles he realised that had he been in Harry's position he would have never told them at all.
The smile on his face when she had mentioned the Dursleys going insane had sent a shiver down even his spine, but even if he had somehow caused their condition he could hardly blame him for doing so. What concerned him more was the 'something' that Tonks couldn't quite figure out. He knew what it was, even if he was telling himself he must be wrong. Harry's general feel was of someone who had seen violence and encountered death enough times that they had become the closest of friends, a feeling he had encountered in several people throughout his life but never seemingly without any negative consequences. Moody had that same air, but he also had the insane paranoia that all that violence had brought. Harry had nothing like that and Sirius didn't think he was hiding it either, but that only helped him to convince himself that he had to be wrong; Harry was barely eighteen years old, he couldn't be a hardened killer already.
A big topic of discussion between the two of them was Harry's mystery girl. They both assumed it was a girlfriend, the likelihood of anything else was slim, and Sirius thought he heard a hint of jealousy in Tonks' voice when she came up. When he had pressed her on it, intent on teasing her about having a schoolgirl crush, her response was not the one he had expected. She said she was jealous that she could clearly make him so happy, yet the two of them had hardly managed to make him smile for longer than a few seconds at a time. She had at first put it off to him keeping his guard up, but it had been months now since she met him again and little had changed. She could make him smile more often than before, but they still paled in comparison to the ones he wore every time the mystery girl was mentioned.
It was a sentiment Sirius could agree with. Harry's unwillingness to allow himself to emerge from his barriers made him feel like Harry didn't really want him there and didn't need him there either. Every time that thought crossed his mind felt like he was being stabbed in the gut, but he didn't allow himself to truly believe it. Harry had most likely been more or less alone ever since he was eight years old – he likely just didn't know how to interact with other people. He did still wonder if Tonks was actually jealous at the prospect of Harry having a girlfriend though.
But now they would finally meet her. Harry was going to pick her up from Beauxbatons because she couldn't apparate yet, something that threw a spanner in the works of their girlfriend theory because most of the final year students were at Hogwarts and they doubted any witch that attracted Harry's interest would be anything but exceptional. Still, they thought that she must have just decided she didn't want to participate in a tournament that had a record for killing people. It was an understandable decision.
He had agreed to let them be there to watch the reunion, but only under the conditions that they morphed, or in Sirius' case use glamours, to make themselves unrecognisable and that they stay away from him when they were there. That was fair enough; neither of them would want anyone interrupting their romantic reunion with their significant other either.
So that was how they found themselves standing way off to the side of Harry in a crowd of parents outside the gates of Beauxbatons. It was the first time either of them had ever seen it and they were both mentally comparing it to Hogwarts when the doors of the palace swung open and students began to stream out, indistinguishable conversations floating across the grounds. Both Sirius and Tonks intently scanned the group for anyone they thought might be her, their eyes flickering often to Harry, looking for any reaction.
They could see his eyes raking across the approaching crowd of blue robed students, and after a few seconds his face lit up. Both Tonks and Sirius tried to follow his eyes but when they did they saw no one that fit their profile, only a gaggle of younger students. They assumed they had just looked in the wrong place and were about to go back to scanning the crowd, but before they could they saw a little blonde blur smash into Harry's midsection and he hugged her tightly with a big smile on his face. And he laughed. Neither of them had heard him laugh since he was five years old.
Many of the other parents around him were watching happily as their own children arrived, most of them far more calmly than Harry's little girl had. She couldn't be older than second year and was chatting away happily in French while Harry listened and replied every now and then, all the while with that smile on his face. The girl was clearly quite excited to be going home for the holidays until her face dropped slightly and Harry pointed right at them – neither of them needed to hear her reply to tell that she didn't like them.
Harry made a near unnoticeable gesture with his head in their direction before he apparated away with the little girl in tow and they took a few moments before they followed. They had assumed it was a girlfriend, when Harry actually had a daughter? No, not a daughter, they both thought, he was far too young for that. A sister maybe? But then where were the parents? Surely they wouldn't miss picking up their child for the holidays. Harry had never even mentioned an adult.
They both knew they wouldn't get any answers standing around, so they both used their portkeys to Harry's sitting room and found both him and the little girl sat on the sofa, their conversation halting as soon as they arrived. The girl's look turned colder and both Sirius and Tonks felt like they were being assessed only to come up lacking. Harry looked more amused than anything by her hostility.
"Sirius, Nymphadora, this is Anaïs. She's my… adopted daughter." He said slowly, as if testing out how it sounded. The girl smiled brilliantly before her face returned to its guarded expression, though the corners of her lips kept twitching upwards.
"How can youadopt a child when you're barely an adult yourself? Where are her parents?" Sirius asked with both genuine curiosity and frustration at Harry keeping such a big part of his life secret for so long, but as soon as he said it he knew he shouldn't have. Harry's face had gone blank almost instantly, but as soon as he saw the shadow pass over Anaïs's face the nothingness was replaced with frigid anger.
"I have not been a child for a very long time. As for Anaïs, I did not kidnap her from her family if that is what you are asking, and I suggest you not bring up the topic again."
The atmosphere was tense and for a few seconds afterwards the air seemed to crackle and still until finally Tonks spoke, still slightly dazed that Harry had a daughter. He had been closed off and distant with the two of them, but Anaïs certainly wouldn't have been so clearly excited to see him if he acted even close to that way with her.
"Hi Anaïs, I'm Tonks."
She remained silent until Harry nudged her slightly with his elbow.
"I know you speak English now, the quicker we get this over with the quicker we can go home." He whispered quietly enough that Tonks and Sirius couldn't hear, and Anaïs huffed slightly before she replied. Harry found it adorably childish.
"I know, you were Harry's best friend." She answered. Tonks thought she heard a slight emphasis on 'were' as well.
"I showed her almost everything that happened to me up until I 'died'. She knows all about the two of you, the spell, everything."
That confused the two of them slightly. Harry was refusing to even tell them where he lived yet there had been a time when he had showed Anaïs his entire abusive childhood, and presumably not long after he got her? If she knew that they hadn't abandoned him on purpose why did she clearly not like them?
Harry had clearly made Anaïs's past a no-go topic and neither of them could really think of anything else to say so the awkward silence dragged on and they both shifted uncomfortably. Harry seemed unconcerned by the awkwardness and Anaïs just looked like she wanted nothing more than to leave.
Sirius made several attempts to start conversations about her time at Beauxbatons, but her answers were usually either short or utterly uninformative. She responded far from how Harriet would if asked to talk about her day and he was at a loss for how to break the heavy silence for more than a few seconds. Both he and Tonks got the impression that she didn't like them, yes, but that she was also taking cues from Harry's distant behaviour. Getting Anaïs to become friendlier would force Harry to do the same, but that wouldn't happen before Harry opened up anyway. It was an infuriating cycle.
After a few minutes, Anaïs finally had enough and said something in French to which Harry nodded and the two of them disappeared with barely a nod in goodbye. Sirius and Tonks stayed sitting silently for a few seconds before turning to each other with identical confused expressions. Several times one of them opened their mouth to speak before snapping it shut again.
"Harry has a daughter, and she was excited to see him! It's like we're seeing a completely different person for Merlin's sake! Are things just going to stay how they are now forever, where we know nothing about him but are desperate to find out and he just stays behind his walls?"
"I hope not, but it might. Remember he was abandoned by his family, abused for three years and then alone for the next ten from how it sounds. He had never mentioned any parents or even anyone else at all. That would break a lot of people and it might have broken him, he might just hide it better. He clearly loves her to pieces, so this might just be how he is with anyone but her." Sirius replied dejectedly.
~Scene Change~
When they got home Harry happily spent the next few hours listening to Anaïs chatter away about her time at Beauxbatons until he was sure he could recite what she had done day by day. He had heard much of it before in their nightly mirror calls but he didn't care, he just wanted to relish in his daughter finally being home.
It had felt strangely right calling her that for the first time earlier and she had barely been further than three feet from him since she got back. He had missed her more than he thought possible and it had clearly been mutual, something which made it impossible for him to keep the smile off his face.
Her teachers apparently loved her - she was already ahead when they started, and she found the rest of the material easy to the point that she was sometimes assigned extra work so that she wouldn't get bored. The professors seemed to be under the impression that she was a little angel, something he knew she wasn't. He knew for a fact that she had already put hair colouring potions in their drinks because he was the one who had sent it to her, and he was sure that she had caused plenty more mischief that she hadn't been caught for judging by the look on her face.
She was apparently friendly with most of the first years and had her own little tight knit group of friends, but she didn't like everyone and had spent several minutes ranting about one girl in particular who she described as a bossy know it all who hated her because she was better at magic. Smugness had mixed with annoyance on her face when she had said that. No one had even batted an eye at her veela heritage thankfully, something which certainly would have been different had she gone to Hogwarts. He hoped it stayed that way, but as she got older and came into her heritage more her allure would start to show and she would attract the attention of almost every boy at Beauxbatons until she learnt to control it better. That and the fact that many of the older years were at Hogwarts and he was sure that at least some of them would be lecherous perverts. He would have to teach her some even nastier spells soon.
For the next few days as Christmas approached they easily settled back into how things had been months ago before she had left for Beauxbatons. Some days they spent lounging around doing absolutely nothing and others Harry would take her to Iceland to ice skate, to Canada to ski, or to Paris to simply wander through the streets window shopping. It was one of the wonders of magic that he could take her across the world for a daytrip. The more time he spent with her, however, the more he realised exactly how differently he acted with Sirius and Nymphadora.
They would never come close to how he felt when he was with Anaïs but by all accounts he should still be happy, ecstatic even, that he was back and slowly reconnecting with those he had considered family. And he was happy about it, so why then was he still acting as if interacting with them was a chore and like they were unimportant to him? Was he really that emotionally stunted? Had he slipped into his Charon persona when he was with them because he was scared? Even admitting to feeling such a thing left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he couldn't deny that he felt it. They were two of the three people in the world who could truly hurt him and they had done so before, even if it wasn't their fault, and he knew he would have to consciously attempt to open himself up around them. He had fought his way into some of the most heavily guarded manors in the magical world and felt nothing but firm resolve as he did so, but the prospect of opening up terrified him.
'I really am stunted', he thought to himself.
And that would start with showing them who he was, both as a Nightshade and as the Ferryman. He had already known he would have to do it eventually and had planned to do so after Anaïs had returned to school – that way if they reacted badly his time with his daughter wouldn't be ruined because he was upset. He would still show them the Ferryman then, but he would tell them about being a Nightshade first. He had initially planned to spend the entire holiday with Anaïs but maybe he would invite them around at some point, maybe on Boxing Day. Families spent time together in the holidays, right?
~Scene Change~
On Boxing Day both Sirius and Tonks portkeyed into Harry's little house in the mountains after both receiving a… strange letter from him. They knew it was from him because he was the only one who blood locked his letters to their intended recipient, but letter's contents seemed to be distinctly un-Harry. It sounded much more open and much softer than any other letter he had sent them or any time they had seen him in person and it had both of them in a mixture of anticipation and unease.
They had been there a few minutes before Harry arrived silently, something that made both of them feel slightly on edge; normally he was there within about ten seconds due to his connection to the wards. The guarded, closed off expression he had worn for much of the time they had spent with him was absent, though there was a slight grimace on his lips that quickly disappeared, as if dropping the mask caused him physical pain.
An uneasy, almost timid smile formed on his face, but they could tell it was forced. It was another unusual happening – Harry was always in control and never showed anything he didn't want them to see. If he wanted them to think his smile was real they would.
"Do you want to come see my home?" he asked, and he looked like he may have even cringed slightly once he said it. Both Sirius and Tonks assumed they had imagined it; Harry didn't cringe.
They both nodded as they tried to keep a lid on their enthusiasm at Harry finally letting them in even a little before he grabbed both their hands and apparated them to a vast clearing surrounded by towering trees that swayed in the brisk winter wind. Harry let go of them as soon as their feet touched the ground but they both barely noticed. In front of them was a large grey stone manor, edged in bright flowers despite the fact that they shouldn't be flowering in late December. Fountains and a wide gravel path lead towards the house all behind a tall iron gate with a family crest shown proudly at its centre.
They both gasped, Tonks at the splendour that Harry called home and Sirius at the crest. When he was a child his father had said that the Nightshades were the only family older than the Blacks but that they had long since been extinct, and that made the Black family the royalty of the British Wizarding World. Clearly they were not extinct anymore.
He didn't even have a chance to speak before Harry was striding towards the gate that became thick smoke as he approached and they both hurried through after him towards the house.
"You're a bloody Nightshade?" Sirius exclaimed loudly. Harry opened his mouth somewhat reluctantly to answer but Tonks butt in before he could speak.
"Don't be daft, Sirius. Everyone knows they've been extinct for centuries. How would Harry blood adopt into a family with no living members?"
"You clearly do not know much about pureblood customs, Nymphadora," he said with some annoyance in his voice before he forced it out, "When an old family is about to become extinct the last remaining member leaves a vial of blood in the family vault, in case there is ever a distant relative that is eligible for the Headship. Normally they have to show a specific trait as well as have the minimum required family blood."
"And what is this trait in the case of the Nightshade family?"
"That is something which no head of an old family will ever reveal to anyone under almost any circumstances. I say almost because I know what is required for the Black family, unless of course the requirements have been changed in the past thousand years. My family was always relentless in the pursuit of any advantage over their enemies, and that is to say over everyone. You'll probably work it out eventually."
Neither Sirius nor Tonks spoke as the great wooden doors swung open as they approached and Harry led them towards a wide stone staircase lit dimly with torches that descended downwards. Sirius was trying to remember the occasional fragments of information he had heard about the Nightshades in his childhood in an attempt to work out what their trait would be. When his grandfather had died and he had been named Lord Black he had had to find out what the Black family trait was and even that had been far more difficult than he had expected. He had no idea how an outsider would find out.
When Harry pushed open one of the doors in the basement they were met with the painted stares of six portraits, their faces as blank as Harry's had always been before today. Five of them looked similar to Harry did, the sixth, however, didn't, but he was instantly recognisable.
"Where did you-"
"The Chamber of Secrets when I killed the basilisk."
"That was you?"
Harry didn't even bother responding to Sirius's shocked exclamation. Instead, he flicked his wand into his hand and instantly conjured three comfortable looking armchairs before flicking it back into his holster just as quickly.
"Where's Anaïs?"
"In her room. The holidays are pretty hard for her at times."
Both Tonks and Sirius nodded understandingly at that, something which Harry had expected; there weren't many veela of Anaïs's age so it wouldn't have been hard for Sirius to find out that her family was all dead and she herself had been thought missing until she turned up at Beauxbatons. Harry had had to call in a few 'favours' to make sure that her guardianship was registered with one of his many aliases and to stop the auror investigation that would have caused them a great deal of trouble.
"Who took care of you when you got here? You were eight years old – there must have been someone. Where are your parents?" Tonks asked.
"My mother died the day before I did." He answered as his face momentarily returned back to its guarded expression before he wrestled it back.
Tonks was confused, but Sirius knew exactly what he meant. The Potters had given him a copy of the memories the old goat had extracted in what he had always considered a pathetic attempt at a peace offering. Harry had loved her more than anything, though Sirius thought that he might love Anaïs even more.
For the next few hours they quizzed the various portraits with Harry adding a few things here and there, though they had clearly been briefed on what they could and couldn't say. In the end all they could really get out of them was that Harry was exceptionally skilled at almost everything magical and that they had tutored him since he got his wand a few days after he arrived. They revealed little about what Harry had actually done for the past decade apart from kill a basilisk which both annoyed and intrigued the two visitors.
They had learnt the true story of the founders, which was far from what the common wizarding populace thought, and Harry said that he was going to publish it one day so that his ancestor's and ultimately his family's name would be at least somewhat restored, obviously with the Nightshade name taken out. Harry had awkwardly offered to show them around the rest of the house even if there wasn't a whole lot to see, especially as he said that any attempt to enter the library would bring them "a great deal of pain and, much later, death".
It was strange, seeing Harry like this. His entire mind and body seemed to gravitate back towards the countless barriers he had set up around himself but he resolutely ignored the urge, except for a few brief instances where his face returned to its cold look before he forced the mask back off. When they both finally left with new blood locked portkeys that would bring them back to his home, they both felt a tangible sense of hope. He was really and truly trying, and that really was the best that they could ask for after what he had been through.
~Scene Change~
Today was the day. He was finally going to tell them who, or what, he was. Was the Ferryman really a person, or was it simply a thing to be feared? A monster under the wizarding world's collective bed?
He thought their meeting on Boxing day had gone quite well, even if the strain of keeping the masks off gradually wore on him to the point he nearly gave in. He hadn't though, he was far too stubborn to do such a thing. They had seemingly been pleased and clearly understood that he was trying, and they had left with no more information about him than he had been at least relatively comfortable with so yes, he thought it had gone okay. At the same time, though, he had hated every minute of it. It had been years since he had felt that exposed and that vulnerable; even when he had brought Anaïs home it had been different. She had been a child – there was very little for him to fear.
He hadn't seen them since, instead electing to spend as much time with Anaïs before she went back to school. She had been gone for two days now and he had finally decided to get it over with. It was better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later – that way he didn't have to keep hiding such a massive part of his life, and if they reacted particularly badly their leaving wouldn't hurt as much as it would if he waited until he had let them in more.
He had sent them both letters telling them to portkey in at midday and that time was rapidly approaching as he tried his best to calm his nerves. He was not as nervous as he had expected if he was honest with himself; this was as much a part of him as his name, and if they didn't like it they could simply not come back. It would hurt if that were to happen but he knew he would cope with it eventually. He may want them in his life, but he did not need them there.
He felt the wards allow their portkeys through almost simultaneously and a few minutes later they were led into his office by one of the house elves. Harry sat behind his desk on which a silver pensieve stood, and there were two smaller versions of his high backed leather chair opposite him that both Tonks and Sirius dropped into without a word, as they waited for him to speak. Clearly they had picked up on the more serious atmosphere in the room as they entered.
"I am going to show you how I got Anaïs, and that will also cover what I have spent much of the years doing as well. But before I do, I need your wands."
The excitement at finding out more about Harry faded slightly at that. Why would he need their wands? After a few seconds Tonks handed over hers but Sirius made no move to follow. There was a sense of foreboding shifting in his gut, screaming at him louder than it had in a long time not to give up his only weapon and his only defence. The war and his training since then had taught him to never be without it and he felt like once he emerged from that pensieve he would want his wand more than ever, but he knew Harry would not show them anything until he did so. Refusing would be pointless and would do nothing but make things harder - Harry had disarmed him before, he would surely do so again. With great reluctance he flicked his wand out of his holster and handed it to Harry who secured them to the wall with a sticking charm cast in Parseltongue so there was no chance of them getting them back until he decided they could.
With that Harry flicked out his wand and pressed its tip to his temple and drew out a silvery memory that he dropped into the basin as it began to swirl, but Sirius's eyes had been fixed to the wand for the brief seconds before it was returned to its holster. He knew that wand, that unique blend of woods, but the angle of Harry's wrist hid the butt that would confirm his fears from view.
"Are you going to come in with us?" Tonks asked.
"Of course, it's one of my favourite memories."
Slightly dazedly Sirius followed Tonks into the pensieve and Harry appeared next to him a few seconds later, though he barely noticed. His eyes were too focussed on the figure that was crouched in the undergrowth, the familiar wand twirling through the air as the wards were carved open.
Of all the people in the world, Harry had to be him.
They both watched as Harry cut his way into the compound and left only death in his wake, all the while his face either held fiery anger or chilling enjoyment. They both watched him pilfer the man's mind and steal files. They watched him kill the man without the slightest change on his face. They watched him free the girls and awkwardly comfort the distraught Anaïs. He seemed to change from the avatar of death to a confused child as soon as she leapt at him.
When the memory ended and they were all ejected from the pensieve Tonks was pale faced and wide eyed at seeing Harry slaughter dozens of people. Sirius's expression was much the same, only for quite different reasons.
"You're him. You're the Ferryman?"
"Don't be stupid Sirius, he's just a myth. If he was real then he would be on the ICW most wanted list." Tonks cut in with a nervous laugh, as if in an attempt to distract herself from the knowledge that Harry was a killer.
"Why would I be on the most wanted list if half the countries in the ICW have hired me at one point or another? Besides, attempting to kill me rarely goes well for those that attempt it." He said with a half hidden glance at Sirius, who seemed to have become unresponsive but for his slightly vacant stare that had yet to leave Harry's face.
"So you kill people… for money?" she whispered.
She had seen killers and met murderers in her time at the aurors, sometimes having to babysit them in the holding cells before trial. Moody had been insistent that she saw the worst of the worst until she became almost accustomed to that level of depravity, that way she would never be caught off guard by one of them. All of those men and women had discarded the little humanity they may once have had to become savages, but Harry was the bogeyman that even they feared. How far gone must he be for people like that to be terrified of him?
"Yes, among other things." He answered. He saw no reason to lie about it, he was not in any way ashamed of what he did.
"But… but why? Why would you become a monster by choice?"
"Because I like it. I like the fight, the planning, the test of skill. The killing doesn't bother me, I feel neither pleasure nor horror from it, but I am very good at it. Men do not fear men, Nymphadora; they fear devils, demons and death. I have become all three. Men fear monsters, and sometimes that is exactly what the world needs. And if killing for money makes me a monster, well, then you are the only human in the room."
Her fearful stare turned from him to Sirius who seemed to be yanked out of his mind by the sudden attention, though his eyes never left Harry's face.
"Sirius too kills for money, though it is in a more roundabout way than I do. He is bound by secrecy oaths so tight that even his family probably don't know what it is he does, but I do and I am not bound by those oaths."
Sirius made to interrupt before he was silenced with a twitch of Harry's fingers and met with the somewhat familiar sensation of being petrified when he tried to move. He hadn't even noticed how long ago the spell had been cast.
"Sirius is a hit wizard for the ICW," Harry continued, "but not one of those fools who learn a few lethal curses and call themselves killers. No, I would bet that you have heard of him, or at least his squad. They have some governmental allocation that I don't know about, and even if I did it would likely mean nothing to me. They are commonly known as the Angels of Death, or at least they are in this part of the world. They have countless names around the world and are often seen as much as myth as I am. I see that you've heard of them." He said as her expression sank even further into shock.
"They go after the worst of the worst, the people who make Voldemort and his death eaters look kind. They actually came after me once, though I was surprised they did."
"You were surprised that they came after one of the most well-known murderers in the wizarding world?" Tonks asked in disbelief only for Harry to look at her with a hint of a disappointed sneer on his face.
"Were you not listening earlier? I have worked for half the ICW before and I am far from the sick, twisted individuals that make up much of the other men in my line of work. I am far too skilled and therefore far too useful for the ICW to want me dead or captured, and they are the people who give Sirius his targets."
With a flick of his finger the silencing charm on Sirius was lifted and stupidly opened and closed his mouth for a few seconds in an attempt to speak before Harry did so before he could.
"Who sent you after me? I just want to make sure I killed the right man."
"You killed Slaven." He finally rasped.
"Yes, I killed your friend and you tried to kill your own godson. It really wasn't a great day for either of us. Now who? Things will get clearer once you confirm it."
"Lukas Fischer, Austrian Minister for Magic. Or at least he was until you killed him."
"You're right, I did kill him. But do you even know why I did, or why he used you as his personal death squad in the first place? I thought not. Quite frankly I am disappointed you never figured it out when he came to you off the books and told you to kill me. Why was he elected as Minister in the first place?"
"He commanded the Aurors who captured Dirlewanger and personally beat him in a duel." Sirius replied mechanically as his brain tried in vain to comprehend what he had found out in the past few minutes.
"False, well, you're half right. That was why he got elected, but he had no hand in actually capturing Dirlewanger. He hired me to do it, and then paid me double on the condition that he got to take credit."
Felix Dirlewanger had been Grindelwald's lieutenant and protégé during the war, despite being barely above twenty when Grindelwald was defeated. He was powerful, intelligent and skilled, but there were more powerful, more intelligent and more highly skilled witches and wizards in Grindelwald's army, but then he had not chosen him for any of that. He had chosen him because he truly was a monster – cruel, sadistic and utterly without empathy. He had been known as the Demon of Leipzig, the town where he had conducted many of his 'experiments' on the prisoners captured from Grindelwald's opposition or even ordinary witches and wizards that he kidnapped off the streets or from their homes. If Grindelwald wanted information out of someone who could resist veritaserum he gave them to Dirlewanger, and he either broke them or he killed them as he tried to do so. Normally it was both, and often Grindelwald got the information with veritaserum or legilimency and then gave them to the Demon anyway. He was well known for taking 'trophies' – heads, fingers, hands, feet or eyeballs – from high profile victims, or even if they were in some way special to him. If he killed someone in a new and particularly torturous way and he enjoyed doing so, he took a 'trophy'. The man, a term Harry applied very loosely, was the very incarnate of cruelty.
When Grindelwald was defeated he ran and hid in the depths of the muck that clung to the bottom of the wizarding world's shoes, biding his time and gathering followers before he finally began to attack a few years ago. He had had no fixed ideology like most Dark Lords had and seemingly no fixed goal either. He just wanted control, and to cause as much pain and as much death on his way to obtaining it.
Harry had caught him with great difficulty, and in the end there was more luck than he cared to admit. Dirlewanger had no modus operandi, little in the way of patterns and didn't care whether he slaughtered muggles or magicals. As long as death was in the air he cared little, and there were many places where he could wreak havoc. Harry had stumbled across a member of his band of savages completely by accident in a bar in the backstreets of magical Sofia, and from that he had gotten the location of their hideout.
He had set wards around their little safe house to make escape impossible and cut his way through dozens that day, every one of them a sadist, a rapist, a murderer or a mix of all three. Dirlewanger had fought back, obviously, but Harry had quite easily shattered every bone in his legs and stunned him before taking him back to Fischer. He had been wanted alive so that they could get the names of higher ups who had aided him, the locations of the rest of his men and of any others of Grindelwald's followers who had escaped all those years ago. And Harry understood that, he understood the need for information, but why was that cold blooded savage still breathing, be it in the depths of magical Austria's prison?
More than once Harry had considered breaking into that hellhole just so he could give him the end he deserved, but he hadn't. It was too risky; he was still a wanted criminal even if the ICW didn't particularly want him out of the game, and he had killed their Minister for Magic. The fool deserved it for trying to cross him.
"If it got out that he had lied about capturing that sadistic bastard then he would be removed from office," Harry carried on, "so he sent you after me in an attempt to make sure that didn't happen."
Sirius's mind was spinning. His godson, who he had thought dead for a decade, was actually among the most prolific and most unforgiving killers in recent history, a killer he himself had tried to kill. And Harry had killed Slaven, his friend. Were it one of the others in his squad he would not have cared so much, they were all uptight, arrogant and all about following orders to the letter. But it wasn't any of them. Slaven had been much more of a kindred spirit, and it was only after he had died that Sirius realised he had stepped into the role James Potter had left. And all that just so a Minister of Magic could make sure he stayed in power?
He couldn't even be sure what it was he was feeling. There was anger, horror, disbelief and even fear. He couldn't believe he felt fear when he looked at his own godson, but he did. He was absolutely terrified. That day when they had gone after him was seared into his memory, and not just because his friend had died. That was the only day since the war that he had truly thought he was going to die.
"How do we know he'll be here?" Sirius asked.
"A member of the Minister's staff set up a fake job for him to steal from this manor, her step-fathers. We know he researches his jobs so it had to be believable, but her step-father is a real piece of work so he'll be here, and then we take him down. Were you not listening to the fucking brief, Black?" was the furiously whispered reply.
"Merlin Davidson, are you sure you're going to be able to cast spells with your wand so far up your arse?" Slaven quipped to several glares and Sirius's restrained laughter.
"Shut up, he's here."
All five of them fell silent and pulled their masks over their faces as a lone figure appeared at the edge of the wards a few hundred metres away. Their masks were similar in design to those the death eaters wore, a comparison that never failed to send anger and disgust coursing through Sirius's veins, only theirs were pure black instead of bone white and covered with various extrasensory charms. They could not have anyone discovering their identity; not even the ICW knew who they were.
They were safely ensconced in the undergrowth just inside the wards, waiting for him to use up his energy to break in while they had placed dormant ward stones that they could activate as soon as he entered that would trap him. They had expected a long, drawn out wait before he entered. The wards were not the strongest around but even most ward masters would have taken almost an hour to break through the wards, but he didn't. He carved a hole straight through them in under ten minutes.
All five of them felt the urge to simply attack while he was distracted but he would simply apparate away, and if he even half lived up to his reputation he would know before they got close enough to cast any wards around him. As it was they were unsure if those they had already set would be able to hold him for longer than a few minutes at best, but they were confident that they could get it done. There was no way he was as good as they said he was, and even if he was there was five of them and only one of him.
As soon as he walked through the hole he had carved they raised their own wards around them and there was a sudden near unnoticeable tick of panicked surprise before they rained their most deadly of curses towards him, confident that that would be that.
It wasn't.
Sirius's eyes widened behind his onyx mask as every single one of their curses was dodged or flicked back towards them and he was having to shield from his own curse, and then the Ferryman started fighting back.
He had thought they were trapping him in there with them. It seemed like the opposite was happening.
Curses flew towards them at a blur, some of which even he couldn't identify, all the while the lone figure danced through their attacks before he forced them back on the defensive. He cast wide area curses quickly followed by overpowered blasting curses at the ground around them that set dirt flying into their faces, and then devastating streams of magic that's sole purpose was to kill.
His shield had taken curses from some of the worst and most powerful magicals in recent history, he had shielded from Bellatrix's organ liquefiers and Malfoy's blood boilers and his shield had hardly cracked. But now, every time a spell hit his shield he thought it would shatter like brittle glass. It was not so much the power behind the spell, it was the speed – as soon as one spell was shielded another hit, leaving him no time to dodge and not even a split seconds respite. He could literally feel it splintering like rotted wood.
In the seconds when the Ferryman's attention was focussed elsewhere and he had time to observe he was in awe – he couldn't be older than twenty one and he moved with the elegance of a ballet dancer yet with the speed of a firebolt. Everything about him was about speed; they could not hit him because he was too quick, yet they could not truly attack because his spells came at them too rapid for them to mount any meaningful assault. The boy truly was as good as the rumours said.
There was nothing inhuman about him though, no evidence of any ritual to make him better than a human should be. Not like Voldemort who had once been able to cast just as fast with far more power, but there had been nothing natural about that abomination. His speed, his precision and his skill were solely a result of training and experience, honed to the point where Sirius knew his current enemy could probably beat him one on one on autopilot.
They had all suffered a few injuries, scrapes and cuts from where they had to choose which curse to take when they could neither dodge nor shield from both while their opponent was seemingly unharmed but for the slight favouring of his left leg. They were tied into the wards, could have apparated away whenever they wanted to, but they were too stubborn to admit that they were being bested by a single man.
It was bound to happen eventually, that one of them would finally make the slightest of mistakes and be punished for it. Sirius only hoped it hadn't been Slaven that sacrificed his footing to dodge a spell only to be unable to do anything but watch as the next one slammed into his chest and sent him sprawling like a ragdoll across the dirt until he stopped in a lifeless heap. Sirius growled low in his throat at seeing his friend die and began to throw even more power behind his curses as he hardly bothered to dodge the incoming spells that came his way.
It was a mistake to blindly obey the whims of his anger and his grief, he knew that, but he still allowed it to control him and the only thing that stopped him from paying for that mistake with his life was a weak shield that he raised just before the severing curse cut through it like a knife through butter. It opened him up from shoulder to hip and he collapsed to the floor in shocked agony as pain flooded his mind. Almost absently he watched as the three remaining members of his squad were hammered without mercy until three became two as another was overwhelmed by the relentless assault, and those that remained finally cut their losses and grabbed their injured comrades and apparated away, and the last thing Sirius saw before the white of the hospital bay was the lifeless body of his friend being left behind.
As soon they arrived back in the hospital bay another unit had been dispatched only to find it empty but for Slaven's body. In those few seconds he had escaped from their wards and disappeared like breath on a winter's night, and had Sirius not seen the man fight and not seen him cut through wards with ease he would have thought it impossible.
It had been the first time that he had first time that Sirius had truly been hit by the possibility of dying and he had contemplated quitting for a while. He had a wife now, a daughter; he was not fighting in a war that he would be dragged into either way. He was choosing this. Sure, he had been in dangerous situations before in this job and had fought even more dangerous opponents, but never had he come close to dying. It had always been an abstract concept, something that could happen to other people but not him. In the end he had taken a few weeks off and then gone back, knowing that if he was not fighting he would not feel complete. He loved his family more than anything in the world, but fighting was where he felt at home.
Another of their squad had died of their injuries a few days later as the curse was seemingly impossible to reverse and completely unresponsive to healing potions. That had been nothing more than an extra reason to catch the bastard that did it to Sirius and he had spent several months trying, but not once had he fallen for any bait and no one was willing to talk.
And now he was face to face with the man he had dreamed of killing, and it was his own godson? The child he had read bedtime stories to and taken flying only to get chewed out by Lily afterwards? The boy he had once thought of as his own?
"How do you know?" he asked shakily, hating how weak he sounded.
"Because I took some of your friend's blood. It wasn't hard to get a name from that, and then I scoured every inch of Slaven Horvat's life to try and work out who the rest of you were. I failed. Every payment was wired through so many vaults and companies fictitious and real alike that I couldn't trace it back to anyone. I knew that it must have come from the ICW but I couldn't even trace it back to them, not even the goblins could.
"It was lucky coincidence that I found out that you were one of them, actually. When I looked into you before I told you I was alive I looked at your financials, not an easy thing to do considering you're Lord Black, and once I had cut through all your businesses and investments I saw similarities between your financials and your friend's. Untraceable payments so small in comparison to everything else that I almost ignored them from the same companies and the same vaults, albeit in a different order and with several others added in and several taken out."
Both of them were staring stupidly at him, their skin still as pale as it had been when they were ejected from the pensieve. The strain of having to maintain his mask of indifference was starting to wear on him and he wanted to be alone. They probably did too.
"I know that you are going to need time to process all this so please follow Tipsy, she will show you out." He said with a gesture to the door where the little elf had appeared.
Both Sirius and Tonks rose mechanically and moved towards the door but Harry had one last thing to say before they left.
"Nymphadora, get a pensieve and watch your memory of the world cup attack again, and then you ask yourself who the murderer truly was. Was it me, who killed the animals that were slaughtering men, women and children? Or was it you, who clings to your moral superiority with such ardent desperation that you allow innocent people to die?"
With that they were ushered out of the room by the house elf and the door swung shut behind them, and only once he felt them leave the wards did he allow himself to shed his mask. He believed every word he said, he was not ashamed of anything he had done. He didn't consider himself in any way evil, cruel or barbaric as many men who killed were, and yet the first word that had come into her head to describe him was monster.
This was not a naïve witch like those that made up much of wizarding society either; she had seen the depths of the depravity that human beings were capable of inflicting on one another and yet she still considered him a monster? He knew he was not one of them and surely she must be able to see that too. If she could not see then that meant that she still thought the world was divided into good men and bad men with nothing in between, still saw the world in black and white instead of the endless shades of grey that it truly was. If that was true then he was baffled as to how she could possibly think that when she had been mentored by Mad Eye Moody, the auror well known for using the killing curse against the death eaters, and seen the people considered avatars of the light throw their child away like he was nothing.
She would come around eventually, of that he was sure. It would take a while and it may take someone else opening her eyes to do so, but she would see. Even his parting question alone could do it, but he would never forget that the first thing she had called him once she knew was a monster. Even if she did come around her initial thoughts would always be the same as they were now; that was the way she had been raised, the way her mind had been moulded into thinking.
It had had another effect on him though: it made him even more convinced that Anaïs could not find out what he did for as long as possible. He couldn't even bear to consider that she may consider him a monster too, that she may one day think him no better than the men he had saved her from.
Sirius was going to be more complex. He was no stranger to death – he had caused it enough times for it to be familiar to him – and he had lost friends and loved ones during the war. Chances were that he had already accepted and moved past the death of his friend in the year or so since it happened, but all of that was going to get dragged back up to the surface. And that was not even considering the fact that it was his godson who had done it.
Harry wondered how long it would take for him to deal with it; the concept of losing a friend was somewhat abstract to him and he knew that he didn't deal with things well either. The closest thing he could really compare it to was Nymphadora being killed, but that was not really the same. He hadn't connected with her yet like he assumed friends were supposed to.
He had absolutely no idea what would be going through their heads at that moment, and he doubted they did either.
AN: From now on updates will probably be a bit slower - when I started uploading I already had like 5 chapters pretty much written and I've finally caught up with myself so that buffer is gone. Big thanks to Tal Strauss for editing/betaing this!