Chapter 9
This is here:
"We should go to Diagon Alley tomorrow," Hermione said carefully, "See if they have anything in the library about the bowl. Perhaps I could contact Headmistress McGonagall and ask her about access to the Hogwarts library. Their collection is so much better than any public one I've ever seen..."
"I thought I'm dead?" Harry asked spitefully.
"But we aren't, mate," Ron answered calmly, "You could come along under the invisibility cloak, I suppose."
"Have you thought about what I've told you?" Harry's voice shook.
"Listen, I do think it very surprising that Snape let you go - "
"He killed Peter Pettigrew!" Harry said heatedly, "He wrecked his own house to make it appear like I'd done it! He made me cast those curses on him - "
"And I'm sure he had very good reasons for that," interrupted Hermione, "Still, fact is that he killed Professor Dumbledore. I looked it up, Harry – you must really want to see somebody dead, otherwise the Killing Curse won't work."
"And you – well, the other you – said that old Snape looked really hateful on that tower," Ron added.
"But my location spell - "
"I know you want to believe that Snape's not really on Voldemort's side." Hermione patted Harry's arm; he jerked it away roughly and the young woman flinched.
"However," she resumed briskly, "there's ample evidence that - "
In that moment Fawkes appeared in the room in a spectacular burst of flames. The phoenix trilled as he saw them, dropping one of his feathers as well as a folded piece of parchment before making a fiery exit.
"What the hell," Ron muttered. He picked up the parchment and unfolded it. Scanning it quickly he swore under his breath.
"Ron?" Hermione prompted.
"You should read this," he said. His fingers trembled as he held it out to them. Harry immediately recognised his lover's untidy scrawl. The message was short and rather cryptic: To retrieve an object of great value, come to Borgin & Burkes tomorrow at 10 am. Be punctual. SS.
This isn't:
Severus was already gone when Harry woke up in the morning. Besides a pot of some infusiion tasting of strawberry – charmed to stay warm for a couple of hours – he'd left him a note with specific instructions of how to floo to the training pitch of Puddlemere United and warning him not ot do anything foolish.
It was with a feeling of dread that Harry stepped out of the fireplace into a rectangular room. Opposite the fireplace was a front desk currently occupied by a welcomewitch who fiddled with a quill while chatting amiably to Oliver Wood.
Harry cleared his throat.
"There you are!" Oliver said, turning around. "Wait a sec.
Anyway, Miranda, I'll simply have to check out your new boyfriend, see if he's any good – not that I'd steal him from you, that would be bad form, wouldn't it?"
He gave the giggling witch a kiss on both cheeks, drawled a "See you later, then," and Harry wondered if Oliver had always been this camp. Surely he'd have noticed if his team captain had been flamboyantly gay? Then again, he'd been fourteen years old when he'd last seen Oliver – and he might be straight in his world, just like Harry himself was.
"Now, Harry, where have you been? Severus being sick, what an utterly ridiculous excuse, it's never kept you off your broom before!"
Oliver drew him into a swift hug which Harry returned uncertainly, not knowing what the etiquette concerning two blokes who'd at some point in the past slept together was.
"Er, you know..." he hedged and Oliver smiled knowingly while dragging him into the lift.
"Do I ever. You don't have to tell me, you'll have to explain it soon enough to coach Villandry."
Oliver's wicked grin caused Harry's heart to plummet – what had he got himself into?
Luckily for him he could just follow Oliver into the changing room, copying the other man's routine in getting changed and fetching their brooms. Harry's broom, it turned out, had his name engraved on it in large sliver letters and was to all appearances the latest Nimbus model. He caressed it reverently: Nimbus Racing Broom Company had stopped producing shortly after the outbreak of the war. There was no point trying to sell racing brooms with the Quiddithc League being cancelled and most parents too frightened to let their offspring out to fly.
Having put on the blue training robes, Harry grunted a sruly greeting to his fellow team members; at least he hoped that they were indeed his fellow team members. Some of them he knew from newspaper articles in the sports section or he'd heard Ron mentioning them. Ron was the only one still reading the sports section in the Daily Prophet; it was his shot at gving normal life a sporting chance, he said.
The coach – Villywhisp Villandry – was a very small, very slim wizard in his late forties and Harry guessed that he must have played seeker in his days, too. After quizzing Harry on his whereabouts and the flimsy excuse he'd presented yesterday - "I don't care if You-Know-Who is standing in your lounge dancing the dying swan in a pink tutu, Potter, that's still no excuse to skip training!" - with Harry doing lots of eloquent shrugging, he sent them off to run ten laps around the Quidditch pitch.
While Harry panted and gasped for breath at the very end of th queue, a dark-skinned witch fell into step besides him. Anastasia Jones, Harry's memory supplied, Gwenog Jones' cousin and her fiercest rival.
"How're you doing?" she asked cheerfully, not bothered by the murderous pace at all.
"Not... so... bad," Harry panted, wishing he'd stayed in bed after all, cover of normality be damned. They'd never run laps while he was playing Quidditch for Gryffindor and they'd done fine, so why start now?
"He doesn't mean it, you know," Anastasia was saying now. Harry threw her a puzzled look and tripped, nearly bumping into the wizard before him.
"Coach Villandry," she clarified, "Gives him a sense of normality, yelling at people for not showing up. 'S not like you particularly want to swoop around on a broom when people are too scared of You-Know-Who to come to the matches."
"No talking!" the coach bellowed in just that moment and the witch winked at Harry before joining other team mates in front of them.
Harry didn't like the running; however, he'd always thought himself physically fit but apart from escaping from Dudley and his bullying he'd never done anything related to fitness apart from flying. He fully expected to drop dead from exhaustion after the ten laps were over, but his body was seemingly used to this sort of thing: Once he found out how to breathe properly the run became almost enjoyable.
After stretching exercises and another ten laps aruond the pitch, this time on broom, the real training began. Coach Vilandry released not one, but three snitches and it was Harry's taks to catch them all in under fifteen minutes.
"And mind you don't break their wings like you did last time!" the coach shouted from the stands.
This was the least of his worries, however. Harry didn't manage to catch a single snitch: instead he almost broke his neck while diving for one. He hadn't sat on a broom for ages and this one – faster but also more capricious than his old Firebolt – was a model he wasn't used to at all.
Harry coughed and sat up from where he'd landed in the thankfully soft grass which was probably spelled by a permanent cushioning charm. His team mates were pretending not to notice that anything was amiss but he thought he could hear them sniggering quietly amongst themselves.
"Fuck," he hissed, "Bloody fucking hell!"
"You all right, Potter?" Coach Villandry turned up next to him, kneeling down. "That was quite spectacular. I've never seen you fall off your broom before."
"You don't say," Harry snapped, more furious at himself than anything else. Falling off his broom like a green second year player on a Hogwarts house team! He'd known beforehand that he couldn't ever be as good as the other Harry – he'd never seriously considered a career as a professional Quidditch player whereas the other man had dedicated the last several years to being the best seeker England had ever had – but still... this was beyond humiliating.
"Well then," the other wizard said briskly, helping him to stand up, "Nothing appears to be broken, so off you go."
At least I didn't all of again, Harry thought glumly as he stood under the shower later.
That was the best thing to be said about training though. He'd caught two snitches in the time the coach had set him and got shouted at for his most disappointing work and lack of dedication. He'd had to take barbs and snide grins from his team mates during lunch and he'd fallen asleep in the strategy session that followed. Which meant that he couldn't even try and pretend to know what was going on in the ensuing practical session, earning him another earful from Coach Villandry and more than one friendly cuff in the changing rooms afterwards.
"Harry!" Sirius greeted him joyfully when Harry finally made his way to the front lobby to floo home.
Harry stopped dead in his tracks and gaped at his godfather: If he'd always looked healthy and handsome in this world, he looked absolutely stunning now. Dressed in dark blue wizard robes that reached his knees, revealing blue jeans and dragonhide boots underneath he was the poster boy for pureblood wizards comfortable with the Muggle world. The long hair tied in a ponytail reminded Harry of Bill Weasley, just as the rakish grin did – no trace of the Dementor attack two days before was visible.
His godfather was accompanied by a man slightly younger than him, but even taller than Sirius himself was. He was every inch the respecable wizard: dressed in dark green robes and keeping his brown hair long and untied he exuded a sombre, less exuberant air than Sirius. His face, however, was very handsome with just the hint of a beard. Harry looked at both of them and realised that this had to be Regulus Black – Sirius' brother.
"Hello," he greeted both of them cautiously. Sirius clapped him on the shoulder whereas Regulus clasped both of his hands in a firm grip and inclined his head.
"I'm pleased to meet you again, Harry," he said softly and smiled.
"I was just visiting my little brother today and he mentioned that he hadn't seen you in ages," Sirius said loudly, "So I thought I'd organise a little get-together, eh? Maybe we could go to the Leaky Cauldron – or Hogsmeade, whatever you prefer – to catch up. What d'you say, Harry?"
"Sure," Harry said helplessly, quite at a loss of how to deal with his suddenly amiable godfather, "I don't mind where we're going really."
Dragging both Harry and his brother into the fireplace, Sirius winked at the blushing welcomewitch before disappearing into the flames.
The place the floo network spit them out was Grimmauld Place.
Harry looked around him in amazement. All the changes that Molly Weasley and Hermione had wrought had made him forget that this had been the home of dark wizards. While the hosue had never become a cheery place in his world it had been transformed into something neutral, at least. Ron, Hermione, Remus and him had used Grimmauld Place as their hiding place of choice after Dumbledore's death. They'd done their first research on horcruxes there, destroyed the first one they'd found in the huge kitchen: a chess piece of Ravenclaw's original set, wrought in delicate silver and found by them in the woods of Albania. The king, of course.
Still, this house had become unsafe after they were discovered and Harry – to all eyes of the wizarding world – disappeared, seemingly killed in a skirmish with Death Eater in this very sitting room. The four of them had been sharing a very ordinary, very inconspicuous Muggle flat in London for the last few months.
Nevertheless, this version of Grimmauld Place was still clearly inhabited, most probably by Regulus who crossed the room in long strides, poured himself a drink from the cabinet and downed it in one gulp.
"I'm sorry we had to jump you like that, Harry," he said, vanishing the glass with a flick of his wand, "But our actions were dictated by necessity."
"What Reg is trying to say," Sirius interrupted, "is that Voldemort wants - "
"Don't say his name!" Regulus hissed furiously, "I've told you a dozen times - !"
Harry was vividly reminded of Snape and himself in quite a similar situation several years ago.
Sirius shrugged.
"The Dark Lord," Regulus began without any sign of irony, "more or less ordered me to try and recruit you, Harry, to his most noble cause."
"What? Why?" Harry blurted, slightly panicked. So Regulus was indeed a Death Eater; one who had apparently not got cold feet like his dead counterpart.
"You are... interesting to him. You're a popular Quidditch player and quite a competent wizard if you want to be, you're living together with one of the most renowed experts on magical objects in Great Britain, especially dark objects. Severus has resisted the lure of the Dark Lord for years now, going so far as to disappear into the Muggle World during the first war. He thinks you could be an asset to our – to his – cause."
"And you're telling me this why?"
"I know you'd never consent to become a Death Eater, not after what happened to your father. Telling my lord this however would entail some painful consequences so at least I'll have to be seen making some effort."
"Which means," Sirius took over, "that getting pissed together at the Leaky Cauldron would be a very good idea. Everybody will see you there, including some of Reg's acquaintances. And I'll buy you a couple of drinks because of that thing on Sunday. What d'you say?"
"I don't know..." Harry said slowly, "Won't he be angry if you fail?"
"Not as angry as he'd be if I didn't try at all," Regulus replied, "I know that we haven't always got along very well -," Sirius snorted and Regulus glared at him, "and that Sirius has been a complete prat to you for the last two years - "
"Hey!" the other man objected.
" - but I'd really be quite grateful, Harry. You could regard it as a bit of extracurricular work for the Order, helping me keep my cover."
"All right, all right," Harry said, "Shall we go then?"
Despite Harry's exhaustion from training, his frustration at having messed up in general and his complete ignorance regarding Regulus Black it proved to be a rather enjoyable evening. Sirius bought all the rounds and the world didn't look so gloomy after his second pint. The older man was apparently attempting reconciliation with his estranged godson, triggered by necessity and Hary having saved his life. Whatever the reason, Harry welcomed this development, tired of hearing slurs against Severus and himself.
It was Regulus who did most of the talking: speaking about everything and nothing in particular, conversation flowed easily. The older wizard didn't resemble his brother so much as a richer, more arrogant version of Remus Lupin. He didn't smile very often and when he did it did not reach his eyes, but he was not the bitter, twisted man that Snape in his role as a spy had been.
Harry himself tried to avoid personal topics, fearful of making mistakes or revealing something. His efforts were mostly successful, except that Regulus frowned at him from time to time.
As Sirius got up to get another round of drinks the older wizard clasped one of Harry's hands: the touch was much too intimate for Harry, implying too many things at once and he prevented himself from snatching it back with difficulty.
"Harry," Regulus said softly, "I'm really sorry for all of this. I know you've done your best to avoid me and now this... You have to know, if there'd been any other way -"
"It's fine," Harry interrupted hastily, hoping desperately that Sirius would hurry up and come back. He wasn't drunk enough by half to contemplate the ramifications this new tidbit of conversation revealed. Regulus' hand felt very warm, almost hot, his light blue eyes staring unflinchingly at him. He seemed to be waiting for an answer – or a kind of absolution – that Harry couldn't give.
"Really, it's for the greater good, isn't it?" Harry ground out lamely, seeing Sirius coming back towards their table.
Quickly draining his new pint, pleading tiredness and wanting to see Severus, Harry said his goodbyes and stumbled into the nearest floo home.