No excuses. My muse was in a coma, and life is not kind to fanfiction writers, but still.
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Harry loved the Den. It was the perfect home and safe house, containing almost everything he could need and absolute safety. Buried so far underground in the middle of absolute nowhere lent it a cosiness he had not found anywhere else. Over the years it had been expanded both physically and magically to accommodate their new guests and his personal growth, but it remained a cosy little hideaway.
Bella loved his name for it, but Cissy thought it should have a more grand, or less barbaric name. To Harry though, the Den summed it up perfect. Home and shelter.
Dragons had dens, after all.
He had lived in several places now, Malfoy manor, Lestrange manor, Grimmauld Place and a flat above Diagon Alley, and all had their merits. Still nothing compared to the secret hideaway, so he still spent most of his nights there. Cissy was mildly put out by this, claiming he should at least pretend to be more civilised. Bella had shrugged and agreed with him, the Den was Home.
After a few weeks of intense Ministry manipulations, Cissy had come to that conclusion too. Too bad her politicking made it difficult for her to stay for any great length of time.
Narcissa's work was important, though. Already she had schemed her way into passing several laws that allowed widowed wives to claim the full authority, power, and wealth of the Family they had married into if there was no heir within three degrees. No one had missed what she was doing and how she gained by it, but several subtle yet very useful phrasings allowed much more latitude than what would normally have been passed.
Rodolphus and Rabastan had died not a year afterwards. They had slipped into insanity and then comas by then so they weren't much fun to play with any longer. Their bodies were planted and Aurors were credited with their demise.
A terrified woman dressed in rags calling herself Bellatrix Lestrange had arrived at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies several days later and was quickly thrown before the Wizengamot for her trial. Veritaserum was administered from the start with shocking results.
The poor woman had been placed under the Imperius Curse on the few occasions she was out of the house. Inside she was tortured for any escape attempts and merely kept alive to provide an eventual heir.
Scans revealed lingering traces of several dark curses, and a check of her wrist revealed untainted skin, free of the Dark Mark. When asked how this could be, she responded with confusion, having never been part of any Death Eater activities nor knowing how others could claim to have seen her with the Mark.
When asked, she told of the Lestrange brothers leaving often with her locked in the manor, and not seeing anyone else. They had left several days ago and not come back, letting her finally work her way free past the compulsions placed on her and managed to apparate to St Mugo's for help.
After several more questions and more Veritaserum, Bellatrix Lestrange, now Black, was found not guilty of any and all crimes she was accused of. And given all possessions, and now titles, of the Lestrange Family, naturally.
A little more power in the Wizengamot, gained in such a way that it could not be taken from them easily.
That night, after a few interviews with the press, Bellatrix keyed in Harry and her sister into the Lestrange wards. Blood from their hands was added to hers, the only person left alive bound to the manor, and poured onto the ancient wooden artefact. It was the trunk of what had been the oldest tree in the forest, cut down with runes engraved into the stump. It's roots marked the boundaries of the manor and channeled new blood through it.
No one without their blood flowing through the roots would be able to call the manor into existence, which was both very useful and sometimes inconvenient. Without someone keyed in present and calling, the manor would evaporate into mist, perfectly preserved until it was called for once more, along with everything and everyone inside it.
The ancient stump had long since become a burnt crimson from the blood powering the wards. Glowing runes drank in their blood and danced around its surface without moving, growing closer together until they joined at its pointed peak.
Once the glow started to fade, a woman looking exactly like Bellatrix stepped forward and threw herself onto it, impaling herself with a sickening sound. Bella, Cissy and Harry watched as her blood and life was pulled from her to power the newest additions to the wards.
Once drained, her shrunken form seemed to fold into the wood itself to vanish without leaving a single trace that she had existed.
She had been such a useful little thing. Bella had used the same blood ritual that she had used between Harry and his fat cousin, creating a link between their blood. The witch had been one of their prisoners Obliviated of almost all her memories and then her memory was carefully charmed to be somewhat like Bella's past, but with the necessary alterations. Thus she was used to pass the rigorous and lengthy questioning under Veritaserum, and 'prove' Bella innocent.
It was such a useful little ritual, some nasty side-effects aside, like a constant drain on the recipient's life force. And a few blood-based problems as the different magics fought, like possible death.
After all that, she was also able to power the ritual needed to tie them into the Lestrange wards! If only all their prisoners could be so useful in their deaths. Lestrange manor served as their less private base of operations and holiday home; Harry had much fun exploring the surrounding forest and the twisting corridors and secret places of the manor itself.
The wards and grounds at Malfoy manor had seemed so simple by comparison. Barriers against assault, intrusion, detection and a handful of intent-based wards were all it had to its name. That, and extravagant wealth. Too bad Lucius had killed the peacocks when he had ransacked it. They did not visit there often; it was too empty and dull, and held many bad memories for Cissy. It served as a place for social parties and meetings with slightly more light-inclined persons.
Grimmauld Place though, now that house had wards. Every single type of ward possibly cast by a brilliant wizard be they light, dark, defensive, offensive, intent-based, blood-based, or anything at all, so long as it did not inhibit or hamper those meant to use the building, was firmly and masterfully in place. The Black's certainly knew their stuff.
The portrait of Aunt Walburga had been absolutely ecstatic to learn that the name Black was on the rise, even if her last living son needed to be cursed into following them. Kreacher, the last surviving house-elf belonging to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, was even more so. Between him, Dobby, and now former Lestrange house-elf Tinker, the disused house was in perfect condition in barely a day.
Bella and Cissy had pulled Kreacher off and asked about their cousin and Sirius' brother, Regulus, and had been even more excited about a locket he had produced than they had about the old chalice. Once again they had kept their secret project just that, but had, once again, sworn to tell him everything on his tenth birthday.
Gah.
But it was the one thing they kept from him, the one and only secret. They told him it would be a surprise for him, that he would appreciate the effort they went to for this, that it would be a present for him and for them. Another bond tying them together. So he could live with not knowing what it was. For now.
In the meantime he amused himself in many, many ways. For adventures into the muggle world that the sisters wouldn't exactly sanction, he had Sirius and Dobby to help him. The overly excitable house-elf was so eager to please it was rather beyond ridiculous, apparently he had been severely mistreated by Lucius and anyone who could get rid of his master's master, that is Voldemort, was a hero.
For all his pureblood end and anti-muggle needs, there was Kreacher. Between the two, and with a little extra help from Sirius, Harry had every advantage of both worlds. The third elf, Tinker, was very rarely noticed. He had long since given himself completely to the notion that a good house-elf was an unnoticed one.
Harry enjoyed learning more about elves in general and their impressive capabilities. Their magic was more physical in nature, moving things around with a snap of their fingers, but they also possessed some rather astoundingly subtle magicks.
The could hear their master, and all they bound themselves too, call for them by name no matter where they were, even with the world between them. And so long as either they or their master knew where a place was, they could use their odd form of apparition to 'pop' there. Regardless of any anti-wizard wards.
Needless to say, Harry and the sisters quickly researched elf and creature magic and added wards of their own to all their properties. Goblin styled wards worked particularly well, for they were not ones to overlook such things.
Naturally, Harry tried many many times to learn such a powerful method of transportation, but no matter how they tried, the elves simply couldn't teach him, and he could not learn. The difference in magic was simply too great.
That was not to say that Harry didn't learn something like their version of wandless magic. A snap of his fingers had him moving objects around him with far greater ease than before. Something about it's simpler, wilder nature lent it to ease of use and required much less power to use. It did not make the objects move, nor make them move themselves, nor animate them. Instead it simply had effect. They just moved.
A handy little trick to have.
It even helped him master a new way to move around. During one particularly ill-fated exploration into werewolf territory during the full moon, when else, Harry had been separated from Sirius. They had been looking for Remus Lupin, the other surviving non-traitorous Marauder, every full moon for a while now.
To Harry it was simply an excuse to go roaming the more dangerous parts of the world. To Sirius, it was looking for his last true friend in the world.
For some reason these werewolves were especially clever and had managed to surround them. Sirius had gone left, racing along on all fours as Padfoot while Harry raced right, powering forward with a few clever charms. Sirius had eventually had a few too many close calls and activated his emergency portkey, but his godson was having far too much fun running for his life to do that.
Having lost one prey, the remaining werewolves turned to hunt him down. It didn't take long for min to be herded to a dead end. Instead of panicking Harry had tried to jump with all his magic up to grab one thick branch, meaning to climb the all tree, but something strange happened.
As soon as his feet left the forest floor, Harry found himself somehow standing on a branch up in the treetops.
Which was amazing for two reasons. One, he had not travelled the distance between where he had been and where he was. And two, the forest was absolutely layered with anti-apparition wards, laid by the numerous wizard-turned-werewolves to protect them from the various ministries that sought their destruction or imprisonment.
It took Harry nearly twenty minutes to examine and reproduce the strange phenomenon. By then the werewolves had long since given up, being no strangers to their prey suddenly vanishing, though usually not inside the forest itself. After another few minutes of practicing, Harry took his portkey home.
By concentrating on the desire to move somewhere, not the place itself like apparition, but the need to move away from where he was to the desired spot, Harry learned to vanish from one spot and appear in another without sound or delay. It was a completely new means of travel, and not unlike elf-magic though it was definitely not their 'popping around'.
Unlike apparition, it did not involve a strange sensation of spinning through a tube, nor did it involve turning on the spot or the sound of a cracking whip.
Unlike travel by portkey, it did not create a blue light, nor did it cause the traveller to become disorientated.
Unfortunately, it could not take him beyond his immediate surroundings. Even worse, he had to have a clear path towards his destination. Thankfully not a straight path, he could go around a corner, but it was incredibly limited compared with apparition.
Narcissa had been mildly interested in it as a means to bypass wards, but her interest fell as its limits became more and more obvious. It did not so much bypass wards as simply move through them very, very quickly, and it could not transport him more than several dozen metres in any direction. In other words, nothing a broom or a few self-movement charms couldn't do, albeit less quickly,
Bellatrix and Sirius, though, thought it was the best thing since stupefy. Duels out in the world often involved apparating around the opponent, trying to catch them off guard, but most fighting was now inside or nearby anti-apparition wards. The ability to be suddenly behind one's opponent was priceless, even more so without the disorientation of apparition, and they begged Harry to teach them.
Surprisingly enough, Narcissa proved to be the best student at this. At first it had required absolute concentration on the need to move, a jump towards the destination, and a burst of magic. Bella and Sirius were soon leaping across the training room and landing in undignified sprawls when it only sometimes worked. Cissy had taken one look and declared herself above such things, then walked and taken a dainty skip in her step, to reappear on the other side of the room.
They called it 'jumping'. Except when Cissy did it, then it was 'skipping'. They worked on it almost exclusively for a week straight, and then whenever they had the chance until they could all 'jump' at will at a moments notice, with much less concentration and physical movement.
Cissy stepped. Bella pounced. Sirius lunged.
Harry just moved.
It was beautiful, actually. They had charmed a mirror to capture the exact moments of his 'jumping', down to the smallest possible fraction of a second. A small flicker of a frown of concentration, a slight shift of his posture and he was gone. Intense scrutiny revealed a barely perceptible after-image that seemed smudged across the exact same path he would have taken to reach his destination. Theirs showed the same.
It was an interesting discovery.
Needless to say, their experimentation with different styles of magic increased dramatically.
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I will not abandon this story, but it will take a while to finish. Sorry for the filler-y-ness, it's taking a while to get back into writing.
In case you haven't noticed, I am somewhat floundering about now. My idea for the transition to Hogwarts died a lingering death and left me just about clueless. I have decided to just write and post as I go instead of trying, and failing, to make it flow nicely. Even if it means awful writing. This should mean less delays, and allow the plot to advance. The aim is to then come back and go about things with more finesse, instead of just throwing things at you. Hopefully.
Oh, and I am not including everything that happens as it happens, some is saved for later.
Wish me luck!