"Sorted Too Young"

Dumbledore tells Snape, "Sometimes, Snape, I think we sort them too young."

CHAPTER 24 – LINEAGE

The late hour they arrived home at meant nothing this evening. They would feel it in the morning though when none would want to wake up.

As expected, Ron snored through the morning with determination. He would not likely wake till lunch. Harry, too, slept long and late. However, Hermione was up checking on each of the young men in the house. She shook her head and rolled her eyes, closing Ron's door quietly. She tucked the blanket better around Harry and he mumbled as he rolled over. She was just as careful closing his door. She hesitated at Draco's. Don't you ever knock? She smiled and creaked the door open a crack to peek inside.

The room was meticulously cleaned and organized as Draco liked it. Even the bed was made. There was no sound from the little private bathroom. Where was he? Obviously, Hermione was not the only one awake this morning. She searched the house and found Draco in the sitting room downstairs with some tea. He was pouring over files, documents, forms, law scrolls and more at the small desk. She helped herself to some tea. When Draco spoke into the silence, she almost jumped.

"Hermione, can you bring down any books from the library about blood binding, house laws, and Black family history?"

She would have protested being ordered about like a servant, but it was a question, not a demand, even if it held the tone of command. He expected her to comply. She scowled at him briefly before she did. It was books, she would be helping him research. This was something she wanted.

They sat together looking through the books for any clues to the Black Family house spells and the disownment criteria and how to undo those situations. "Are you going to help Harry re-instate Sirius?"

"Yes, to better secure the inheritance he holds at Gringotts. Some of his letters were informing him he had no access or legal right to some of the Black estates or vaults because Sirius was disowned. I also want to reinstate my Aunt Andromeda so that one day Teddy might be able hold claim if Harry ever wants to pass this down to him."

"Here!" cheered Hermione. She quoted from the history chronicle. "Sirius Black, elder brother to Regulus Black, has been stricken from the family right of inheritance for disobedience to the family and for running away from his duties." She rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Geez. Disowned because he ran away as a boy? Why not just try to figure out why he was so upset and make amends instead of blacking his name out as a member of the family?"

"Pure blood families are like that. The Black have stricken a great deal from their family line. They are one of the most staunch supporters of pure bloodlines. Look, they even encouraged inbreeding. My mother's mother is also Andromeda's but nor Bellatrix's. Bella's was her father's … sister." Draco shuddered.

"Well that totally explains why she was so mental!"

Draco nodded. "The good news is that Sirius can be easily reinstated. Unless, unless his reasons for running away were intended to ruin the family, which they weren't." That at least allowed Draco some leeway to help Harry gain leverage in Sirius's name.

Hermione's voice sank as she found the chronicle for Andromeda, "Oh no… Andromeda was disowned because she abandoned her betrothal vows to secretly marry a muggle farmer, Theodore Tonks." They both sighed heavily. Then she perked up. "Hey, the chronicle is wrong!"

"What do you mean?

"It says she married a muggle farmer. But he wasn't. He was wizard!" Then her voice sank again, "But I guess the error means little since he was muggle born."

"No… it means a lot! It means they disowned her because they were afraid she would produce squibs, because they thought she married someone with no magic. But she married someone with magic and produced a fine witch!" He grinned with this new information. It was thin, but it might just be enough. "I'll need to get into that hidden room and see the Black Family records and old laws. But I think it can be done. This gives both Harry and Teddy a chance."

She gave Draco a wary look. "Aren't you Black family blood, too? More than Harry, anyways." The challenge was there in her eyes.

"You want to know if I really do plan to take this from Harry, don't you?" The stoic mask fell back into place defensively. "I could as the only blood relation without any smears in the actual line. But, I have enough to worry about. You saw it all. And besides, if Andromeda is reinstated, her bloodline takes precedence to mine since she was the elder and my mother the younger. The question you have to ask is does Harry want to deny Teddy his birthright just to have something of Sirius?"

It was a low blow, he knew it. But he needed Hermione to see that option. Harry had no family. This was all he had. Was it fair to ask Harry to give it up? Was it fair for Harry to leave Teddy with nothing? Either answer to those questions were at the same time right and wrong.

Kreacher entered and asked if he should start lunch. Draco saw the skeptical trust in Hermione's eyes again and replied to the old house elf, "You should ask the Master of the house, Harry." The elf grumbled about Potter and shuffled off to do as was expected of him.

Hermione crossed her arms at Draco. "Harry has blood claim. He has to in his line somewhere or the elf would not listen to him at all. That claim might actually be more powerful than we think if we go up the family tree."

He limped from the room with Hermione close behind. They made their slow way up to the room with the family tree on the wall. They stared at it a long time before Hermione stated, "Bellarirx was not the daughter of a brother and sister. But Siriuc and Regulus are the sons of kissing cousins."

Draco huffed. "The family tree is wrong. Magicked to avoid the true sin of sibling parenting. In old families, you can marry cousins, niece to uncle or nephew to aunt, but never parent to child or siblings. Bella is an accident of birth that the family covered up. She is technically elder sister to Sirius and Regulus. My mother told me. It must be in the locked room or vaults."

He reviewed the tree more carefully while leaning on his cane. "I thought this family was older than my own. I am surprised it is not." He tapped the first names in the tree. "Late 1800's… My family goes back into the 1500's." He wondered then how come the family was considered old and noble. A glance at Hermione showed her with a small secret smirk. "What?"

"Well," here came the teacher tone she took on when she had read something she thought everyone should have known and was now about to teach people what they missed. "The Black family is old Syrian nobility, landed in England in the Dark Ages. They earned the title of nobility from the King at the time, Arthur Pendragon. They were no magical people at all! Not till one day a boy died by dark magic and awakened the ability within the family blood. It was in one of the Hogwarts Histories. Or, maybe it was in the restricted histories." Now she wasn't entirely sure where she read it and vowed to herself to confirm exactly which book. "Sirius Black, died at the age of eight and by doing so bound his family to the life of magic and rules of some kind."

"Ah! He was the blood sacrifice for power. I wonder who offered him up?"

Hermione tapped the next heir, "Phineas Nigellus Black became heir in his brother's place, thus securing the family line in both nobility and wizardry. He completed that binding by marrying the witch, Ursula Flint."

Harry leaned in the door, having quietly listened to the theories, and added from a book he held in his hand, "However, his two younger sisters did not agree with his methods. Elladora became a recluse and Isla defied her brother by abandoning the family to marry a muggle. She was then stricken from the family line by the patriarch wizard, Phineas Nigellus Black, never to be heard from again. It was Phineas Nigellus who adopted and modified some old wizarding family laws to his own ends and to promote wizards over muggles, having helped establish the separating of the two worlds in shrouds of secrecy and mists."

Hermione interjected, "That was the laws of world separation designed to protect the wizards and witches from a terrible thing that happened in the earlier Middle Ages, something called the Burning Times when muggle mass executed witches and wizards."

"Only because some witches and wizards were too daft to mind themselves and some wanted freedom to do as they pleased without care, so they do it hidden behind illusions." Ron yawned widely. "My dad told me this. That why someone named Phineas Black was executed in the wizarding world for supporting muggle rights and the unity with the wizarding world. It makes a kinda sense. If the muggles were killing wizards and a wizard suddenly supported muggles, he would be going against the laws."

Hermione gaped in shock that Ron actually recalled anything of import.

Before an argument could break out, Draco added, "We don't know enough about those first laws to know the right or wrong on either side. It was like a war with politics. Both were probably right and both probably wrong. Bottom line, the magical world and the muggle world were forced apart and laws put into place to try to protect both sides. Just some took those laws and twisted them some to make out that wizards were better than muggles and thus better than anything born of muggles… ignoring the fact that they too were once born of muggles."

"They probably thought they were some evolutionary jump, superior to other people." Hermione had enough and stormed out.

Harry shrugged. "I don't think we're gonna get tutoring today." When Ron grinned broadly, Harry cuffed him. "We both suck and we both need help. Defeated Ron excused himself to find Hermione and try to talk her down and maybe dig up some lunch.

Harry brought over a chair for both himself and Draco. "Let's pool our knowledge a little more and look over this tree. Do I have any right to be here? Other than what is in Sirius's will?"

Draco scanned the tree, "You do, but distantly. Teddy technically has more right than both you or I, if Andromeda can be reinstated, un-disowned. But he is way too young for that responsibility."

"Soooo… if I un-disown Andromeda, I lose my only connection to family that I know to Teddy. But if I don't, then a damn him from every having anything of his own family." Harry hung his head, trying to look like he was studying the text in his lap.

Draco was amazed at how swiftly Harry understood the circumstances. He tried to soften the blow, wondering why he was bothering to soften anything for his adversary. Right, he owed a life debt and well, they were not really adversaries anymore. "Teddy is too young. The Black Family inheritance would be yours in trust till Teddy was old enough. Fifteen would grant him right to some things, eighteen would grant him right to be Master of the House and Family if no regent were present, twenty-one if you remained regent for him. You are his God-father. That makes you his regent, even if you have not accepted to take him on as a son."

Harry winced. As god-father, he should be adopting teddy and caring for him, but he really didn't know how and Teddy was such a handful. He felt so guilty about it.

"Harry, Teddy is only four years old. You have eleven to sixteen years to work with. Also, you have a family and estates under the name of Potter. You should be finding out exactly who your actual family is."

They both looked up at the family tree again, both wondering is somewhere there was such a tree for the Potter family. Draco knew the Malfoy family had one, but not as a mural like this.

To break the tension, Draco continued on with looking at the family history from the book Hermione left with him before she stormed out. "Rules of nobility and old pure blood families is to have an heir and a spare. I wonder why my mother never gave my father another child?"

"Maybe she knew what kind of git your father was and figured that either you would save the family or it would be best to let it die out completely."

Draco licked his lips pondering that possibility. It was the most likely one. "Ok, so heir and a spare. Phineas Nigellus named his heir after the brother her died as a child for their magic, Sirius. Then names his spare after himself. When his spare defied the family on favour of muggle rights, he was disowned and another spare became necessary. Thus born was Cygnus and he must have had fun for every two years birthed more children, Belvina and Arcturus. Arcturus being the youngest is almost inconsequential. His daughters are married into other families, Longbottom's doddy grandmother and Cidrella who married Weasley. The Weasley name must have been a disgraced name by then for her to be disowned. And Charis, who is part of the Crabbe family."

Harry took a note. "I want to un-disown Cidrella."

"None of them can claim lineage to the Black Family estates," mused Draco. "So Belvina was married off to Burke making her line no longer worth keeping track of. Since Phineas had no children before or after his disownment, there is no point to do anything there."

"What if he was disowned unjustly?"

"You really are going to be a righteous bastard about this, aren't you?"

Harry glared back at Draco. "If I want to restore honor to a family line, I think I have every right to be that righteous. Don't you?"

Draco accepted the verbal slap. Yes, he wanted to restore his family's honor, he just didn't know what honor it was. "You might want to find out the original Black family laws before you think about restoring honor. They might have defined honor very differently from how you perceive honor. I know my father had his own idea of honor."

Harry nodded and looked back at the tree.

Draco went on, "So the sons of note here are the strong lines of Sirius and Cygnus. Your claim in this family stems from Cygnus's line. He had four children. The eldest son carried on the line and the younger son was a squib and thus disowned. The two daughters… well Casseopeia died recently as a spinster and Dorea married a Potter. She was not marked as disowned, so your family must have been pure blood and in good standing at the time, the marks against your family seem to lie with your father. And no, I am not being insulting, so relax. Your father married half-blood witch who turned out to be very powerful. It was a good move for the potter family. Shame you suck. Better hope Hermione tutors you later." He grinned teasingly at Harry who at first didn't seem to be taking this as a joke, but then grinned and chuckled back.

Draco breathed in relief and went on, "So the eldest son, Pollux, had a daughter and two sons. Let's come back to that generational mess in a minute. Sirius Black Senior, the heir to the Black Family, had three sons. Only the eldest married and carried on the line."

"I wonder why the other two didn't marry or have children."

"It might be better to ask how they died." Draco suspected something dark there. "The tree might be incomplete there for a reason. I wonder what the Blacks were hiding." They both flipped through the books and stared at the tree to no avail. "Fine, later. It must be in that room. So, Sirius Senior's eldest son married a Scotch woman and had two children. A daughter that got married off and a son."

"There's like fifteen years between them."

Draco nodded. "Maybe she couldn't have other children and Orion is from a mistress. Or they had many miscarriages till they finally had a son. Or, they birthed a bunch of daughters and each were executed at birth till a son could be born. Yes, Potter, these things happen. Imagine that pure blood families are like dogs with the head of the family setting up a particular breeding program for his offspring. It would account for those disownments that fell outside the breeding program."

"That is disgusting."

"It gets better… just wait. Here is where it gets good and messy. Pollux's daughter has two boys of the same age about her all the time. Her younger brother, Cygnus, and her cousin, Orion. The cover-up is that she got pregnant with her brother's child while Cygnus is courting the foreigner, Druella Rosier. Leaning on her ignorance of our ways, the girl child is declared hers to save its life and secure the marriage. Rosier is a very poor but pure blood family. They would have needed this marriage and she would have likely accepted the situation for her family's sake."

"How do you know this?"

"She told my mother who told me." Draco raised his wand and spat a small mark onto the tree to black out Bellatrix's name. "For her cruelties and her attempts to ruin the family line with her insanity. She should have been disowned long ago for instability. She should never have been married off. When you have a crazy bitch, you end it so it doesn't breed. You don't go breeding it to an equally crazy hound. Thank the gods they didn't have offspring!" Harry nodded to Draco's statement. "To keep the sins quiet in the family, Pollux's daughter, Walpurga was married to her first cousin, Orion. They produced two sons, an heir and a spare, who themselves had no children."

There was a long pause. Draco had to think. Kinship papers were something he at least was very good at understanding. He had written up many of the dog pedigrees and had studied his own family line in depth, save for the older lines whose secrets remained locked away. "Since Sirius and Regulus had no children, the Black family line retraces to the next eligible son, Cygnus, who only had daughters. So technically, then, it would retrace to the next official Black." Draco used his wand to light a little path along the family tree to the next Black male child. "That leaves the Black Family technically considered to have died out. Sirius saved it by writing you into his will."

"And that means what?"

"It means that if you were not written into the will then all daughter's families can fight over the carcass of the Black family holdings. There are three male children left in the line, though none with the Black name. You as a Potter, me as a Malfoy, and Teddy as… as a Tonks. Potter has its own line, lineage and holdings. So does Malfoy. Tonks is a muggle family that by fluke produced a wizard. Teddy… has nothing. This is what I wanted to discuss with you. I don't want to take the Black family anything from you, but I don't want teddy left with nothing either. If one of us officially adopts him, then he becomes a Malfoy or a Potter and the Black family still dies out. Since you are not a Black and neither am I, neither of our children can claim rights. We can only hold this place till a Black male child lays claim."

"But you just said there are none."

Draco licked his lips. "If I give up the Malfoy name and take on Black, I become the head of the black family." He raised a hand to stop Harry's near protest. "That would be the stupidest thing to ever do. Malfoy is an older family and I think wealthier. I am not going to throw that away. I intend to fight for every scrap of it. If you give up the Potter name and become a Black…"

"Then I give up claim to my family and anything that was theirs."

"Exactly. And I doubt you will do that." Draco saw Harry frown and shake his head. "I thought so. That leaves Teddy. You don't feel up to raising him, even though you are his godfather. But you should have a say in his life. I am offering to raise him, foster him. I had originally planned that if I woman would have me, then I could at least give Teddy the Malfoy name and he could be my heir. It's still a little questionable whether I'll be able to have kids after my… injuries." It was a hard confession; the harder one was accepting that there might not be any woman who would want him. And he did not want to marry out of some contract. He wanted to marry because he and whoever wanted to.

"What about Remus Lupin's line?"

"He was an only child of a family with very little and they declared him dead when they realized he was a werewolf. Teddy, as part wolf like he is, will get nothing from that side of his family." It was a sad fact that Draco needed Harry to know. Harry had something. Draco had something. Teddy really and truly had nothing.

Harry suggested, "Why don't we leave the option open for now? If you don't have a son by the time Teddy is of age, then you claim him as heir to the Malfoy's. If you do have a son before Teddy is of age, then I will give the Black family over to Teddy."

Hermione set down lunch, surprising them both and they wondered how long she had been listening. Since lunch seemed somewhat cold, she must have been listening to a great deal. "Why don't you make that an unbreakable vow, for Teddy's sake?" It was her way of making sure neither forgot this promise, making sure teddy would have something when he grew up. She already knew what it was like to have absolutely nothing and never wished this sense of loss and loneliness on anyone.

Harry and Draco agreed. They locked arms and Hermione drew her wand. They repeated their promises for Teddy as Hermione sealed it. She had studied the spell from the book on binding that she was reading to understand blood binding.

Today's tutoring lesson had been given by Draco on family history. But that did not mean Hermione was letting any of them out of the actual tutoring for their Hogwarts exams and NEWTs.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews! It has encouraged me to come back to this story and write more.

A/N: Here is a link to the family tree: http:/ www. Hplex .info