Author's Note: Well, I'm not dead. It's just been a really rough year. In addition to health issues, I lost someone really close to me. One of my best friends was killed in an encounter with police on Easter this year (2016). In addition to being my best friend, Lore was also one of betas. I have several projects which we were working jointly on-some where he was the lead writer and some where I was. I plan on finishing these projects and publishing them on specific dates as memorials to him. The first one will be published on March 27, 2017. It will be marked by a special cover just for this series.

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The Schrodinger Effect

Part 4: Tainted

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"There are no unwanted children. Just unfound families." – National Adoption Center

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Luna was a different person after their conversation in the kitchen. She took on the challenge of inventing a method of time travel like a possessed person. She would study rune texts from the time that the trio returned from Hogwarts until Harry or Neville dragged her to bed in the wee hours of the morning. When she wasn't reading, she was scribbling away in a small leather-bound books or folded pages of parchment that she stuck into said book. Sometimes, she would arrange the pages upon a convenient surface and stare at them with a faraway look upon her face. Then she would switch a few of the pages.

The stress of it took its toll. The already pale girl grew even more so with dark smudges under her gray eyes. Her blond hair became the same dingy shade as dishwater. It was so dry that it had developed split ends, giving her mane a fuzzy halo of frizz.

Harry and Neville had taken to tucking her into bed between them, a precaution against the nights when the darkness of even a familiar bedroom was too heavy to be stood. The two Gryffindors had found earlier in the summer that having a comforting friend in the room helped relieve that oppressive weight. It only made sense to include the little Ravenclaw. Too many nights had Luna crying into one of their chests while the other rubbed her back. It broke Harry's heart how much grief Luna held within herself even as the fact that she was willing to turn to him and Neville for comfort warmed him. Being there for Luna gave him something to do in the evenings just like rebuilding Hogwarts gave him something during the day. It made him feel useful and needed, which he had not even noticed being a need before he started growing apart from Ron and Hermione—and Ginny as well, even if that thought felt like a betrayal.

When Luna had first suggested her research project, Harry had not imagined that anything would come from it, no matter how much he wanted to be able to save those who had been lost in the War. Going back in time any significant amount of time, let alone as far back as it would take to save Luna's mother, had seemed so impossible. He allowed Luna to throw herself into the topic mostly as a way for her to occupy herself in the hours which weren't already consumed by the rebuilding of Hogwarts, and with the complete understanding that there was no real way to stop her. Harry didn't share with anyone, not even Ginny, how much he loved watching her work. It relaxed something in him to know that she was safely tucked away in the library at Thistlewood Manor while he couldn't be with her. She was safe and not in some dungeon being tortured.

It was a request for a specific book that led to the pair of them heading to Grimmauld Place one evening, a week before the large bash that Augusta Longbottom was planning for her only grandson. Neville had been suckered into being fitted for a new set of dress robes for the occasion. It was truly a time to celebrate as the heavy work to repair Hogwarts Castle had been completed and in a unanimous decision, the Board of Governors had decided to keep Minerva McGonagall on as Headmistress in the new school year, slated to start at the normal time. Life was beginning to look hopeful. The freedom allowed Luna to throw herself more fully into her research, hence the request which led them to Grimmauld Place.

Harry almost didn't recognize the home that he had inherited from his godfather. Any trace of dirt and dust was gone. While the wallpaper was still faded, it was no longer peeling or loose from the wall. Even knowing that most of the surviving members of the Order had been using the place as a base for the repair efforts—something that Harry had no problem with, even if he wasn't staying there, as he had a new understanding of how familial wards worked since becoming friends with Neville (though the idea that they had abandoned the place when that Death Eater had been brought within the Fidelius when there had been no way that anyone not already approved by the master of the house could have entered still annoyed Harry when he spent too long thinking about it)—Harry had not been expecting such a drastic change to the house. The clean state extended to the feel that the house had. It no longer felt as full of nightmares as it had the last time he had been here despite it having only been six weeks.

"Wha…" Harry questioned as he moved down the entry hall and turning in circles to look around him. There was the distinctive sound of a house elf popping into existence on the stairs above his head. Harry snapped his attention to the little guy. Kreacher stood proudly on the seventh step from the bottom, making him even with Harry's head. The house elf wore a stark white pillowcase and Regulus' locket, but otherwise seemed unchanged. His brown skin had just as many folds as his pillowcase. His back was slightly stooped, even while he stood as straight as he could, but for the first time, Harry recognized that this was probably more due to age than attitude. Living at Thistlewood had broadened his exposure to house elves and now Harry could tell that Kreacher was much older than most of the elves that were still actively serving. A nagging seed began to take root. How long did house elves live? "Hello, Kreacher," he said instead. "How have you been?"

"Master Harry Potter has finally come home," Kreacher replied, ignoring the question. "Kreacher was beginning to think he had forgotten where he lived again. Kreacher was worried that he would find his Master fighting bad wizards again instead of being home safe with Kreacher."

"I'm sorry, Kreacher," Harry said. He felt about a foot tall at the magical servant's evenly spoken complaint. Perhaps he should have mentioned that he was going to be staying with Neville to the elf instead of lumping him in with the other people who came and went from the house. Still, Harry had grown up without anyone caring about his whereabouts unless they were attempting to control said whereabouts. "I didn't think that you'd be worried. How have you been otherwise? I know that you've must have been working hard. The house looks much better."

"Kreacher has something that he must tell his Master," Kreacher replied, once again ignoring the personal inquiry. "Master Harry Potter must listen to Kreacher and mustn't tell his mudblood."

"Kreacher, I thought we talked about this," Harry said with disappointment. "You shouldn't call her that. It's not nice." He was careful to keep his rebuke from being an order. Harry understood having his words and actions being dictated to him and didn't want to do the same to anyone, not anymore. It was only his seeker reflexes which allowed him to stop Kreacher's hand from reaching his ear to twist it. "And have I been gone so long that you have forgotten that I had ordered you not to punish yourself? If you need it, I promised you that I will take care of it." Kreacher's eyes were getting suspiciously moist-looking but where Dobby would have wept, Kreacher merely sniffed. He didn't fight Harry's hold on his hand though. Knowing that he wasn't going to get any answer to his question, Harry decided to move the conversation along. "What is it that I need to know that I can't tell Hermione?"

"Kreacher has been a bad elf," Kreacher answered. Even with the words, Kreacher didn't look repentant. He looked decidedly smug as he uttered the words. "Kreacher has stolen something from Hogwarts. Kreacher knows that stealing is wrong but Kreacher is such a bad elf that even if he was given clothes, he would not return what he stole! The mudblood would have Kreacher returning what he stole and Master Harry Potter must never let that happen!"

Kreacher's eyes went wide at his last words. Harry knew what the issue was immediately. That last bit sounded very close to an order. Even as surly and disgruntled as Kreacher had been with Sirius, he never would have dared to give a master an order. When Harry had returned to Grimmauld Place after the final battle, and to the company of his inherited slave, Harry had decided to continue fixing the problems that had been dumped on him. Namely, this meant changing how he and Kreacher interacted. The long hours spent alone on sentry duty over the months of camping had given Harry a chance to, well, brood on his lot in life and what had happened to lead to sitting out in the cold in the middle of nowhere to avoid being captured by Death Eaters. Inevitably, Hermione's blunt words about Sirius paying for how he treated Kreacher would pop up like an unwanted daisy. Thus the decision to begin to treat Kreacher as a person. When Kreacher had reacted…badly…to being ordered to not punish himself, Harry had offered the compromised that if Kreacher felt that he needed to be punished, he was to ask Harry to administer it. It was unorthodox and Kreacher always seem to be expecting Harry to be especially brutal at every flub. Hence the house elf's current state of growing panic.

"Kreacher, I need you to take a deep breath," Harry said in the same tone that he used to comfort Luna when she woke Neville and him up with nightmares. Kreacher obeyed even as his free hand bunched his pillowcase. As gently as possible, Harry captured that hand as well, working hard to ignore how the elf stiffened now that Harry held both his hands.

Harry spared a glance for his silent companion. Luna looked surprisingly present, which added to Harry's feeling of foreboding about Kreacher's declaration. Her expression was scarily similar to one that she had worn when suggesting that time could be rewritten. Neville called it her battle face, and after listening to the other Gryffindor tell selected stories of the last school year, Harry was more than willing to accept the name. Harry shook his head and refocused on his supposedly bad house elf.

"Okay, now," Harry rambled as he shifted Kreacher's hands so that he held both in his left hand, "I am not upset with you for expressing yourself. Remember what we talked about? The only orders about speaking that you have to obey is to tell me the truth and to not tell personal information about me to anyone without my permission. Do you remember that? Nod if you do." Kreacher gave a jerky nod, but didn't relax any. Harry sighed when he realized that the small elf was beginning to tremble and a prickly feeling was moving over the area where their skin touched. He steeled himself for what he would have to do even as he asked the question to which he already knew the answer. "Kreacher, do you feel that you need to be punished?"

Kreacher jerked his hands, but Harry didn't release him. He knew from experience that if he had let go of the elf, Kreacher would have proceeded to try to punish himself, which would start a meltdown worse than the one that followed Kreacher's story about his failure to destroy the locket. When Harry described Kreacher's reaction to being ordered not to punish himself as being bad, he was aware that this was perhaps the understatement of the century. It had quickly become apparent that Hermione was not entirely aware of why elves punished themselves. From Harry's observation, the punishments for misbehavior seemed to be magically enforced. If a house elf misbehaved and failed to punish himself, magic would build up before lashing out against said elf. The result was always worse than letting them punish themself would have been. It had taken only one instance of the magical enforcement for Harry to sit down Kreacher and demand answers. This had led to the compromise of Harry punishing Kreacher when he needed it so long as Kreacher told him when it was needed. Aside from orders from their masters, house elves had a specific restrictions that were somehow imprinted upon them. Kreacher had been rather vague about it, though not on purpose. Just as he had simply stated that Regulus had ordered him to come home, so he did, as how he had survived the cave, Kreacher had simply said that there was things which a house elf must always do. Any attempts at getting a list out of Kreacher (or any other elf that Harry managed to get alone with a few minutes to spare for conversation) had proven beyond frustrating as the answer was always the same: "An elf knows."

"Kreacher is a bad elf," he replied in a defeated tone. As he raised his eyes to Harry's, the realization that knowing how long a house elf lived would be useful stuck again. Kreacher's lime green eyes had a rheumy haze over the irises. "Kreacher gave Master Harry Potter orders and is a nasty thief! Kreacher needs to be punished—Kreacher deserves to be punished."

"Okay," Harry agreed easily. Kreacher began to tremble in his grasp. "I am in charge, right?" Kreacher gave a jerky nod. Harry forced down a smile to keep from scaring Kreacher even more. "So, I get to decide how you're punished, right?" Again, Kreacher nodded. Harry shuffled both of Kreacher's hands into one of his. Then Harry gave a single flick to Kreacher's sharply-hooked nose. The elf stared cross-eyed at his nose for a moment before glaring at Harry. Harry gave into the urge to grin at the disgruntled servant. "Now that you are duly punished for your heinous actions, exactly what did you steal from Hogwarts?"

"Master—" Kreacher started only to bite off his own words to shake his head. Instead, the aged elf drew himself back into his defiant stance. When he spoke, it was with all the confidence he used when declaring Sirius a shame to the House of Black. "Kreacher stole an elfling. Kreacher will not be giving her back!"

"An elfling? As in a baby house elf?" Kreacher nodded before pulling Harry along with him up the stairs. The two ascended easily, followed by Luna's almost silent presence. There was a closet on the third floor that Harry had modified in the days immediately following the Final Battle so that it could be used as a bedroom for a small-sized person. Harry couldn't stand the thought of allowing Kreacher to stay in any kind of cupboard and Kreacher refused to take an entire room. The modified closet was their compromised.

Even with the knowledge that Kreacher had stolen a baby, Harry was still surprised to see the swaddled bundle at the center of Kreacher's nest-box. At the sound of the door opening, the bundle squirmed and blinked open tiny eyes to stare at them. The tiny face poking out of the pale green blanket was heartbreakingly familiar. Though the elf had tea-colored eyes, everything else was very much a tiny version of Dobby's face. It barely took a few seconds longer to realize where he had seen eyes that shade of brown before on a house elf. Harry raised disbelieving eyes to Kreacher's position near his nest-box.

"How…?"

"Winky had the baby while the rest of us was fighting with the bad wizards," Kreacher said. He seemed confident enough to climb gingerly into his nest. With gentle hands, he picked up the elfling, soothing away the fussing which were working towards a full cry. "A bad wizard found the Nest at Hogwarts. It was just the nestlings and Winky. Winky did her best but her magic—She protected the nestlings, even if it costs her life. Winky would have been a good dam. The others—They did not want the babe. They—Winky was a bad elf just like Dobby."

"Oh," Luna said, "of course." Harry turned towards her. If anyone could understand what was going on, it would be Luna. Luna probably knew more about magical beings and creatures than anyone else Harry knew, even Hagrid. Luna didn't disappoint. "Winky and Dobby had been given clothes. Neither one of them managed to bond with another family before their deaths. In house elf society, they were seditious. Any elfling born to them would be considered similarly tainted."

"No," Harry whispered, horrified. His gaze drifted back to the tiny infant snuggling into Kreacher's bony chest. His aunt and uncle didn't often talk about his inheritance from his parents, except to say how Harry was just like them. Marge had no such qualms and spoke about how tainted Harry's blood was. 'Bad blood in the bitch, and bad blood in the whelp.' Any kind of continued response to Luna's revelation that even house elves, a magical creature whose plight Hermione championed to this day, was cut off by the flood of memory. In an effort to reassure the still-worried Kreacher, Harry reached out to grasp the thin shoulder. The house elf flinched before appearing to steel himself for whatever command Harry gave. "Kreacher, what—what do I need to do to keep her?"

"Master," Kreacher breathed. The single word held so much emotion that it was difficult to decipher it all. His eyes shone with unshed tears, and his voice thick with the same. It was clear that he had not hoped to still keep his stolen child. "Kreacher will give Master the words to claim the elfling. Master Harry Potter can choose a name for her, as he wishes, but Kreacher has been calling her something these past weeks. It is not a proper house elf name, but Kreacher...Kreacher thought it would honor her parents and Master Harry Potter."

"What have you named her?" Luna asked gently when it looked like Harry couldn't get the words out any easier than Kreacher had. When the house elf answered, Harry choked and gathered the two house elves into a fierce embrace. Even Luna was a bit shocked at the choice, understanding more of the nuances than Harry would have. The power of names had been something she had been raised with while Harry wouldn't have, being raised in the muggle world. She couldn't wait to tell Neville. The tight embrace lasted until the baby started to cry from being squished. Harry took her reverently from her guardian, peering down at her face with an adoration that made Luna long to see him with a child of his own.

"You will be loved," Harry vowed to the elf-babe. He brushed a finger over her brow and down her long nose. "My precious Lily, you will be loved."