Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything you can recognise from any books or TV series or movies. I do however take liberties with the plots or mentions provided by JKR or other writers. The only profit I'm getting out of it is improving my English.
Title: Secrets & Keepers – Entropy
Rating/Warnings: R/M [AU; Manipulative Dumbledore (therefore not Dumbledore friendly); profanity; canon typical violence; frank discussion of past child abuse (Harry but not only) and of past child abuse of sexual nature (not Harry); not very detailed descriptions of torture (not Harry); Black family feels; identity crisis; pureblood politics; good Slytherins]
Characters and pairings: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Regulus Black, Severus Snape, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Bathsheda Babbling. As well as Hermione Granger, Arcturus Black, Larry Lawrence (OC) and Josephine Turner (OC). The rest of characters will appear as the story progresses.
All adults are more or less paternal towards Harry or grandfatherly towards Hermione as well as generally friendly or at the very least civil towards each other once they sort out their differences.
References to past and present relationship of sexual nature between Snape and Babbling. Occasional mentions of one sided Sirius/James, not one sided Sirius/OFC (the woman of many names). Contains mentions of Remus/Tonks, eventual allusions to Larry/Josephine and background Arcturus/Melania. No Harry or Hermione pairings because they have a lot on their plates and won't have time for teenage nonsenses for a longer while (at the very least through PoA timeline).
Spoilers: All seven books with occasional, brief references to ground work for HP & CC main plot as well as Secrets & Keepers – Collision Course and Secrets & Keepers – Supernova.
Summary: Harry & Hermione learn that as weird as everything become in the aftermath of learning devastating news is that the life actually goes on. There's a Dark Lord to destroy, a manipulative Headmaster to overthrow, family bonds and new friendships to establish and old ones to maintain. Direct sequel to S&K - Collision Course and S&K - Supernova.
Chapter summary: Lazarus raises from the grave.
Word count: About 3600.
Author's note: Yes, I shamelessly borrowed that scene from another favourite fandom of mine. I liked the premise of that scene but I went the completely different route that its original author(s).
Next chapter will be posted on Tuesday 9th March 2021.
Beta read by Regnbuen (Nitraz).
I hope that You will find this story enjoyable. I would be the most grateful for constructive criticism.
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.
~Frederick Buechner
Secrets & Keepers – Entropy
Chapter nine: Old Friends.
Hermione Granger, 10th August 1993, Bath.
The two days that she spent at Black Manor had sufficiently calmed her down. The park that surrounded the manor was beautiful, the weather was holding up with just the right amount of warmth, and the gentle breeze coming from the giant lake by which the manor was located, provided an occasional relief.
The Black elves, especially Arcturus's manservant, Tommy, proved to be fascinating, as did everything that she learned about their culture and habits. Granted, not all the history of the elves that she learned was nice, but she could see for herself that the elves were treated well, with respect and given an unlimited freedom with how the manor was ran. Tommy ran the manor with a mixture of iron fist and understanding, the schedule which they followed contained more days off than days of actual work, every elf worked on something they liked to do or were good at.
She also learned that Hogwarts had elves, which shouldn't have taken her by surprise as much as it did. Weirdly their presence there made sense, far more than plates filled with food that just appeared at the meal times out of nowhere. Tommy informed her that Hogwarts' elves consisted of one elven tribe called Piglets that came to work for Hogwarts when it was first founded, and that they were descendants of free elves of old as much as the new ones. There were also elves from wizarding families that didn't wish to part with their young masters.
She had wasted no time in questioning Tommy about Dobby and how his situation related to other elves, which was how she learned about the Great Elven Purge on the Mourning Grounds, an event during which thousands of elves had lost their lives thanks to the wizards that tried to tie them even closer to their families than before. But the most important thing that she had taken away from Tommy's story was that elves could walk away from their masters at any time the very moment they no longer wished to serve them. Receiving clothes was just an excuse that the elves from families like the Malfoys needed. Then Tommy pointed out that if he treated every instance in which he had been handed or at times had literally thrown clothes at his head as an excuse to be freed he would have walked away from serving Arcturus within the first week.
She also learned that the majority of elves that did the work around the manor were adults, the elders were responsible for proper upbringing of older elflings, the babies stayed with their mothers until they could run freely on their own and control their magic. There were no elfling servants, the only time an elfling was appointed as a servant was when an old elven steward and Master Black agreed that his heir, and also the elfling chosen by the steward, were old enough to learn how to give and carry out orders. Even then, the limit of orders was pretty limited by both. Until it was decided that the young master and elf were responsible, and trusted each other and their own limits, that's it. That said, Tommy became Arcturus's manservant at the age of four, when according to Tommy, Arcturus was first fitted for breeches. The bond the two shared fascinated Hermione. Tommy was a devoted servant but had no problems telling Arcturus off if any suggestion the older man made interfered with the way Tommy ran the house.
"It's servitude, not slavery," said Tommy to Hermione in the past two days, enough times for it to become a mantra.
And historically, as she learned, it had been. At the very least before the purge and in certain families afterwards, with those tribes that survived the purge. Arcturus' elves were lucky to do so, not that Tommy had a high opinion about the Master Black that saved majority of the elves from the purge by ordering them to choose amongst themselves those that would be sacrificed. Purely economic move on his side, Tommy called it, sacrificing all of the adults in the purge would be a financial murder to the family.
When she wasn't listening to Tommy or taking long walks, she was trying to prod Arcturus into revealing more about Sirius' visit to the manor. She learned that such a thing took place from Tommy when she questioned him about the weird shudder that passed through the grounds about a couple of hours after she and Arcturus returned from Paris.
She didn't get to see the man herself, but the visit had left Arcturus in a peculiar mood that lasted through the rest of the day and all the way until lunch the next day. When prompted he confirmed that Sirius had been there and that he was the new head of the Black family, but he didn't clarify what it meant and what he wanted from Arcturus.
Finally, after the empty plates had been cleared, Arcturus appeared to shake himself off from his mumbling stupor and proclaimed that it was the highest time to raise from the grave. He hadn't however clarified what it mean to Hermione until after dinner when he requested her presence during a reveal of his not exactly dead state to his old time friend.
Which was how she found herself seated in a quite nice, and very luxurious Muggle restaurant in Bath, eyeing the man at the neighbouring table and wondering where the hell Arcturus had disappeared.
The man in question was Damocles Greengrass, Arcturus' old friend from Hogwarts, a fellow Slytherin and either a head of the Greengrass house or the father of thereof. From what she could see of the man, Greengrass shared a similar physique with Arcturus, he was tall, lean and impeccably dressed. Like Arcturus he was clean shaven and wore his hair long, unlike Arcturus' though, his hair was completely white.
At the moment, Greengrass was busy with fiddling with his water glass as he was reading the menu. He did so without hurry and didn't try to attract the waitress' attention. Occasionally he raised his eyes from above the menu and allowed his gaze to lazily trail over the other guests. A time or two his gaze had settled on Hermione, who tried her best to either mind her own starter, or keep her gaze averted to the table behind Greengrass or at the kitchen door.
When she finally spotted Arcturus she nearly groaned, allowing only a soft sigh to emerge from her mouth and she felt very tempted to slam her head against the table. This was going to be a disaster.
Arcturus upon the entrance to the restaurant had been dressed in a pinstriped Muggle suit, had changed into a tuxedo, much alike the ones which the restaurant's waitresses were wearing. In his hand he held a bottle of wine and he immediately started walking towards Greengrass's table.
What procced afterwards was the most pitiful attempt at trying to convince Greengrass to try out the wine that Arcturus was holding, in very bad French. The only remotely funny thing about it was Greengrass' bored comment to Arcturus' mumbles with a request to 'Surprise me' and Arcturus' reply, 'Certainly endeavouring to, sir.'
It was a mess and one in which she wasn't sure she wanted to participate. She had no experience in similar reveals, but what she knew about receiving and passing shocking news was that it was something that shouldn't be done in public. This was going to end badly, she could feel that.
About a moment later, when Arcturus was about to get back to the table with the same bottle of wine, something happened in the kitchen and Arcturus had been pulled back by another waiter.
The kitchen door didn't allow much of the noise to pass, but slightly anxious over what could have happened, she completely forgot to keep her eye on Greengrass. That's why she nearly jumped out of her chair when someone placed their hand on hers and said softly, "Walk with me."
She looked up and saw Greengrass standing by her table. He didn't appear to be angry or annoyed, in fact it looked like he was trying hard to keep himself from smirking.
"Sir?" she asked, trying her best to keep the anxiety out of her voice.
"Preferably before the undead penguin comes back," offered Greengrass.
"You knew," whispered Hermione.
"Outside," said Greengrass with a small twitch of his lips.
"I have to pay," protested Hermione.
"It's been covered, come on. We're not getting very far away from here," she received in reply.
And they hadn't gone very far. Greengrass led them out of the restaurant with the maître's bowing when they had been passing by. They barely made it to the end of the block and crossed the street before Greengrass directed her towards a small outdoor café. He ordered them a cup of tea and a piece of the apple pie each, before he steered Hermione towards the furthest table from the entrance.
"Well, Ms…" started Greengrass expectantly once they sat down.
"Granger," replied Hermione. "Hermione Granger, Mr Greengrass."
At the mention of her name, Greengrass' lips twitched slightly. She didn't expect him to recognise her surname, but then she remembered Daphne Greengrass from her class, and while she wasn't certain who Daphne was to him, granddaughter or great-granddaughter probably, she had to bring up Hermione's name in a conversation with him at some point during last couple of years.
"Damocles please," said Greengrass. "My father had been Mr Greengrass, and he has been dead for a couple of decades by now," he added and this time allowed himself to smile. "And yes, I do know your name. My granddaughter talks, quite a lot, and considering the company she's forced to keep, not always favourably about those who deserve it. I believe that she described you as an overcompensating beaver," he added briskly. "Try not to hold it against her, that poor girl has to deal with the Pinks descendants, both at home and at school."
"Never heard of them," admitted Hermione.
"I would be surprised if you had. The male line has been thoroughly extinct for a couple of decades by now, but their female line…" he said and shook his head. "They've been the pain in many pureblood backsides. I have to give them justice, they're beautiful women and they age well, but they are small-minded, extremely prejudiced and many of them suffer a delusion of grandeur like my unfortunate daughter-in-law. Blessedly Hector's girls are the daughters of his first wife. Poor thing passed a couple of years ago. But enough about me and my family," he said swiftly. "Why don't you tell me how you found yourself in the company of my old friend."
"He has been helping me with discovering my roots," Hermione calmly replied. "I learned at the beginning of the summer that I've been given up for adoption."
"Curious," hummed Greengrass as he leaned back in his chair just as the waitresses arrived with their tea and apple pie. "Thank you," he said to her. "And how has that quest been going?" he asked as he turned back to Hermione.
"Not without difficulties," answered Hermione. "My biological mother was determined to keep her identity hidden."
"If she was a pureblood, and I'm guessing that she was, and most likely still is, I would be very surprised if she wasn't," commented Greengrass pensively.
"Why do you think so?" asked Hermione curiously.
"Pureblood culture," replied Greengrass with a small shrug. "Marriage is a sanctity that's supposed to produce future generations. That's why it's reserved to heterosexual couples and divorces are scarce. They still happen though, both divorces and known same sex unions, but first are very frowned upon and the latter are treated as a passing fancy of the parties involved. No idea why, there's more sanctity, love and mutual respect in my daughter's union with her beloved than in her brother's marriage to that Pink harlot. But that's what you get for marrying out of convenience rather than love."
"I thought that the majority of marriages between purebloods were marriages of convenience," admitted Hermione.
"I'm not negating that they aren't quite popular, especially between very conservative purebloods, or families on the verge of extinction. But ultimately more people marry out of love rather than convenience, and even then, the majority of the marriages of convenience are founded on the basis of mutual respect and matching opinions on life, or at the very least temperaments. Unless you have been touched in the head when you decided to marry someone, like my poor son had been when he married that Pink harlot. Ultimately that's his problem," he explained.
"But it bothers you," Hermione pointed out.
"It does and I shouldn't be telling you that because one shouldn't air their dirty laundry in public, and especially in the presence of youngsters," said Greengrass with a grimace. He shook his head slightly and huffed before he continued, "But since your quest most likely will involve shifting through a lot of dirty laundry, and I already decided that for everyone's sake I should get myself involved, I can tell you what's been bothering me."
"You called her a harlot," said Hermione.
"And what do you call a woman who marries one man but keeps a carnal relationship with another?" asked Greengrass pointedly. "On top of that, she's careless enough to not care about carrying her lover's bastards. She's been trying her best to convince everyone that the boys she recently gave birth to are my son's. Thing is, that a healer whose opinion I can trust assured me and my other son that the twins had been carried to the whole term. The problem is that my poor idiot son hadn't been in the country at the time they were conceived, not for two months prior to the most likely date of the conception and two months after."
"That's definitely a problem," nodded Hermione.
"Then there's her behaviour which reflects rather poorly on my son and the upbringing of his daughters. Astoria is terrified of her, which doesn't do anything good to her already fragile health. And don't even start me on Daphne, she's a smart girl, just like her mother had been, but too much of a conformist like her father. And not even for her own sake, rather that of her sister, because if she had been on her own…" said Greengrass with a small huff. "Well, if she had been on her own my poor son wouldn't have to remarry as fast as he did and Daphne would make sure that no harlot would have dug her claws into him."
"So what you're planning to do?" asked Hermione curiously. "Unless it's a secret."
"It's not a secret but I would beg you to not advertise it," replied Greengrass. "First, I need to remove my granddaughters from the care of their step-mother. Second, I need to get to my son before she will. Third, if I fail to do so, I will have to threaten with disinheriting him if he stays with her. Luckily for me, he loves his daughters more than he loves or cares for his wife, so that shouldn't be a problem. The problem starts with what to do with that harlot after. Divorce would reflect poorly on our family, but ultimately would be better than bringing up the pair of bastards."
"Because they would be a shame to the family," said Hermione with a grimace. "Like me."
"The thing about bastard children is that there are a bastard children which one shouldn't be ashamed of. A category to which someone like you belong. And then there are bastards like my supposed grandsons. If I hadn't been aware of the identity of the man who most likely fathered them, I would not have allowed that farce of marriage to continue. But the boys aren't just bastards, they're the effect of the vilest of carnal unions one can possibly imagine," retorted Greengrass.
"Incest?" asked Hermione with a grimace.
"Her brother," spat Greengrass. "Or her cousin. Either of these two. Either way I won't have the family name besmirched by their presence in it. Her father can sort his children out if he wishes so."
"Does it happen often?" asked Hermione, still grimacing.
"More often than not amongst very conservative purebloods but usually not at that level of family relations. Second or third cousins, more often fourth. But that's what you get for trying to maintain a pureblood lineage. My forefathers had been quite adamant of ensuring that no marriage should happen between closer relations than fifth cousins. Which made looking for a wife rather difficult for a lot of us, but with a lot of travelling and marrying second generation half-bloods we managed to get by."
Just as he finished saying that, a rather furious looking Arcturus appeared.
"Damocles," he said tetchily.
"Lazarus," said Greengrass in mock surprise. "My dear old friend, how have you been?"
"You know perfectly well how I have been for the last couple of minutes you old fox," replied Arcturus as he pulled away the chair between Greengrass and Hermione and sat down. "And you knew," he added with a huff.
"Of course I knew," replied Greengrass simply. "Russ, before you decided to fade into obscurity I knew you for seventy years. I shared school desks with you as well as mischiefs and tedious daily tasks. We shared classes and notes at the institute. I helped you with that ponce of an almost husband of your dear wife. I was your best man, you were mine and a couple of times at that. You godfathered my eldest just as I did with yours," he added in a tone that sounded very much as if he was chiding a temperamental child. "I know better than anyone that you're a drama queen and if you really had been dead your funeral would have been the greatest fuck you to the majority of your relatives in the history of fuck yous instead of the farce it was."
"I should have known," snorted Arcturus.
"Yes, you should have," agreed Greengrass. "Now be a good boy and tell Uncle Mock why you decided to stop playing dead."
"You know perfectly well why," replied Arcturus.
"Sirius?" asked Greengrass pensively.
Arcturus nodded quickly.
"What about him?" asked Greengrass curiously.
And so Arcturus finally answered. He talked for a long time, about Dumbledore's conspiracy to keep Sirius away from Harry. About Mad-Eye Moody who threatened him with an abrupt end of Sirius' life if Arcturus continued to try and free Sirius on his own. Here and there Greengrass asked for pointers and clarification but for most of the time he stayed quiet and listened intently.
"I won't lie to you," he said finally. "The boy is in big trouble, and so will anyone who dare to go against Dumbledore. Especially with that moron, Fudge staying in Malfoy's pocket. Malfoy has convinced everyone and their uncle that his progeny stands to inherit the Black family fortune."
"Even if Sirius died without completing the accession, Malfoy would have never seen a knut from the Black family fortune," replied Arcturus and he snorted. "Ultimately the choice was mine to make, and I elected a different heir in his stead, or if anything happened to him."
"Let me guess…" started Greengrass pensively. "That godson of his? Because that's the biggest fuck you Malfoy that comes to my mind."
"How did you know?" asked Arcturus innocently.
"I know you and your feelings towards the Headmaster," replied Greengrass simply.
"Speaking of which," muttered Arcturus. "I know where I stand and I know that I have nothing to lose…"
"… but everything to gain," finished Greengrass. "I'm not going to sugar coat it. I'm no longer the head of the Greengrass family, Hyperion is, and if he chooses to not play a part in it…"
"Then neither will you," Arcturus interrupted him with a heavy sigh.
"That's not what I was going to say, you old fart," Greengrass chided him. "What I wanted to say is that if Hyperion decides that the Greengrasses will play no part in it, I will still support you, old friend. It just will be harder than with Perry on board."
"Thank you," Arcturus whispered.
"Do not thank me yet, it's unwise to count one's basilisks before they hatch," commented Greengrass. "Now tell me more about how you acquainted yourself with Ms Granger. I'm sure that it's a fascinating story and one that would brighten my spirit."
Ultimately, Arcturus didn't reveal much about Hermione. He completely failed to mention her relation to Snape, but he did admit that she was the niece of Sirius' fiancée. He said nothing on the subject of Horcruxes. And because, as Hermione learned, they were very old friends, at some point their discussion morphed into reminiscence of old times. She also learned that Greengrass was the one who convinced Arcturus to drink a bucket of the horse piss that was supposedly French wine.
All in all the morning had ended with both Arcturus and Hermione in high spirits, and then after lunch a letter from Harry arrived.
TBC
Next: The Greengrass family moot.
