Hydrus swallowed down another piled-together fork-load of pancakes, bacon, and eggs and hummed with delight. Kreacher was standing and beaming beside him out of the corner of his eye but he ignored the elf in favour of building up another bite of his breakfast. This time he went for some beans, spooning it onto his slice of toast, and then with the precision of an architect he carefully sat a slice of sausage atop the small legumes. He bit into the combination and gave another approving sound.
"It's good to be home," he said. "You really do put the Hogwarts elves to shame."
"Thank yous, Lord Master Hydrus." Kreacher bowed down low. "Kreacher lives to serve."
"I know," Hydrus said. "But if you ever want to live for something more like Dobby does, don't you hesitate to let me know, got it?"
Kreacher frowned. "Dobby?"
"Mm." Hydrus was already preparing his next portion of the breakfast. "He's decided to take up wood carving with Giannis."
"Hmph. He is bad elf." The Black family's servant scowled and began picking crumbs off of a plate Hydrus had set aside, piling them up as though that would make it easier to clean. "Bad, bad, elf."
"He is living his life the way he chooses," Hydrus said. "Just as you should."
"Kreacher chooses to serve Lord Master Hydrus."
"So be it then."
As Hydrus took a long and gullet-clearing sip of milk, a woman he didn't recognize stepped past him towards the opposite side of the breakfast table. She was wearing what he could only assume was a fashionable combination of black and pink clothing, and her wrists, neck, fingers, and ears were all covered in expensive-looking jewellery. It was closing in on six in the morning, no one besides him and his lack of need for sleep were up yet, and he buried away his surprise at the sight of the pale-skinned stranger even as Kreacher bared his filed teeth.
"Who is you?"
"So much sustenance…" the woman drolled, staring out at the dozen or so plates spread around the table. "You couldn't possibly eat all this on your own, could you?"
"If you're asking for an invitation to join in, then fuck off." Hydrus napkined away the small amount of milk he'd left behind on the fuzz above his lips. "If you were looking to make some 'cool' introduction, then get on with it. I don't have all day."
The woman glared at him, and when she opened her mouth he finally noticed the extended canines. "The only reason I'm here is because I owed your uncle Regulus a favour. Don't annoy me, human."
Hydrus set his napkin down and smiled back at her. "I'll do whatever I damn well please. Now tell me, what are you doing here?"
"Ugh, whatever." She took the seat opposite of him and sneered at him. "My father, Lord Arnulf Raalbs, is quite displeased with my little prince, Regulus." Her eyes were cold and cat-like as she stared at Hydrus. "He's been put into an uncomfortable position thanks to his failure, and as such he's been 'invited to dinner'."
"Seriously, 'invited to dinner'?" Hydrus rolled his eyes. "Be more of a walking cliche, why don't you."
"Shut up!" She snapped at him, stomping her foot underneath the table. "You just don't get it, it means—"
"It means he wants my uncle dead." Hydrus tore off another bite of bacon. "Fair enough, but I can't allow that."
"Right, like you could stop it."
Already tired of this brat who could've been well over three times his actual age, Hydrus flared his magic, and stood. He began to make his way around the table. The stranger was paralysed, and every time she seemed to be working up an effort to break free of her frozen nature he redoubled the strength he was putting out. When he finally got to her, he grabbed her by the nape of her hair, and jerked her head back. He leaned in close with his head ninety degrees to hers.
"How about this," Hydrus started. "How about you tell me exactly where your old-as-dirt father is, and I'll go see for myself what it would cost to clear accounts." He pulled back tighter on her hair, drawing a wince. "Who knows, maybe he'll throw in a discount for ridding him of an annoying offspring such as yourself."
Despite her trembling and obvious fear, the woman smiled.
"Well aren't you a tasty little treat," she said. "I'm starting to see why the little prince told me to come see you."
Hydrus threw her head to the side as she laughed. "Where is your father?"
"Where's yours?" The vampire licked her lips. "I heard he's recently single—"
He grabbed the back of her head once more and slammed it into the table. She popped back up and groped for him but he threw her back and into the wall, denting the plastered bricks and sending a cloud of dust up around the cavity she'd left behind. He strode towards her stunned body, and with his magic lifted her into the air and constricted her limbs around her like a straight jacket.
"Don't fuck with me, whelp." He held his hand out to the side, tossed away the cleaver Kreacher initially put into it, then took hold of the more pointed kitchen knife he received. With more pressure than he would've needed with a human he pressed the tip of the knife against, then through, the stranger's shoulder. "You wouldn't be the first vampire I've killed, nor do you have to be the umpteenth."
"Knock it off!" She began to writhe back and forth, tearing her own flesh apart as she moved. "Lemme go!"
"For fuck's sake…"
He sighed then pounded the knife into the wall behind her, leaving her pinned to the wall. Blood slowly dripped from the wound and Hydrus shook his head as he made his way back to his seat. He undid the spells holding her bound aside from the ones pinning her limbs to her sides, and despite the near-staking she straightened up and glared at him with pursed lips.
"You're so rude!" she declared. "Don't you know who I am?"
"Not the faintest." Hydrus scooped up another spoonful of beans and swallowed them down. "If you expect me to be impressed by your last name, you're going to be sorely disappointed."
'I am Zara Raalbs!" She made to stomp the floor but her foot didn't quite reach. "So you better let me down or else."
"Don't wanna."
Zara began screaming obscenities at him, but that was fine by Hydrus. He'd gone through far nosier breakfasts during the war, and it wasn't long before his fiancee and then his father joined him. Bellatrix was far more composed with her arrival, taking the seat to his left and fixing herself a plate, ignoring the bratty vampire the same way he was doing. Sirius was apparently in much less of a go-with-the-flow mood.
"What the fuck is going on?" he demanded. "Why is there someone stabbed against the wall?"
"Not someone, something." Zara batted her eyelashes at Sirius during the 'introduction'. "She's a vampire, and was being rude, so she's in timeout."
If he had to guess she was probably older than all three of them combined, but that wasn't much in vampire years. The width of her fangs at their base were slightly larger than average, a maturing step that in a few centuries would lead to them being closer to the double-pointed molars at the back of the dog's jaw. Whoever her 'daddy' was had obviously spoiled her.
"Let me go!" she huffed. "This is no fair!"
"Be quiet till I finish my breakfast, and I might." Hydrus tore off another bite of bacon. "Sirius, Bella, this is 'Zara Raalbs'. Apparently Regulus sent her so we could stop her father from killing him."
"Never heard of her," Bella said without looking up from where she was primly slicing her sausage into bite-sized pieces. "Though I'm not surprised at the sort of company my cousin keeps."
"Hmph, like an old hag like you would recognize a—"
Hydrus put up a small shield to stop the vampire's entrails from hitting his breakfast as Bellatrix split the woman in half with a slash of her wand. He sighed as Sirius gasped and turned to Bella, shouting, "What the fuck?!"
"She'll be fine," his love said after slowly and methodically chewing through her first bite of breakfast. "And if she isn't, then we definitely don't need to worry about her or her father killing Regulus."
The former possibility was proven true as the vampire's lower half slowly began to inch closer to the rest of her. Hydrus watched with morbid curiosity as her waist 'reared up' to reach her lower ribs, and bits of viscera and bone levitated back into place. He'd only ever destroyed such beings wholesale; never pieced them apart like this and seen what happened after. It was an anatomical miracle and would have been enough for him to lose his lunch had he not seen far, far worse over the years.
Bellatrix sat her silverware down and snapped her fingers, catching Kreacher's attention. "Go get some ink and parchment for Hydrus. We're going to use traditional methods of dealing with this brat."
"Traditional methods?" The time traveller asked, cocking an eyebrow as the elf left. "Wouldn't that involve a wooden stake and some garlic?"
"If this father of hers is important enough for Regulus to have business with him, then it could be a waste to simply kill them both." Hydrus levitated the writing supplies Kreacher brought away and into a pile beside his plate. "Rebellious and misguided my cousin may be, but even his boyfriend is technically royalty, even if he's destitute."
"There!" Hydrus glanced back over to see Zara had mostly recovered. "Don't do that, it's very rude!"
He ignored her. "So what's this traditional method of yours?"
"As you saw, her body can regenerate lost pieces via their slow approach to one another," Bella said. "In the old vampire families, they'll keep small pieces of their scions in lockets or other baubles in order to track them if they lose them. All we need to do is lob off her hand, drop it somewhere far away, and it'll make its way to whatever the nearest piece is."
"I just said to qui—!"
Hydrus waved his hand, silencing the vampire heiress. "Alright, works for me." He picked up the quill and began tapping it into the ink pot. "Shit what did she say her dad's name was…? Arnold or something?"
As the vampire continued to thrash about against the wall, Sirius cleared his throat. "You're not seriously planning to just leave her up there while we wait, are you?"
"Of course not," Hydrus answered, suddenly trying to come up with an alternative. A large smile split his face as he came up with the perfect one. "In fact, I think I can kill two birds with one stone."
Draco launched another pustulating curse at the training dummy Hydrus had given him. Splotchy black and blue marks began to spread across the wooden target's surface, an approximation of the curse's effect on a human body. He'd been trying to learn how to get a faster-spreading effect with the spell, something that could cause it to immediately consume someone with the annoying boils and blisters, but so far all he'd done was make the effects more intense. He sighed and took another deep breath of the warm outside air.
It had cost some annoyance and grumbling from his mother, but eventually she had partitioned aside a 'lane' of space on the far edge of the grounds she maintained for him to practise in. The servants, they'd had to hire those thanks to Hydrus's punishment, had cleared out the roses and whatever else had been planted here and he'd set up the practice dummy himself. It was an exact replica of the ones Hydrus and the Weasley twins had made for the training hall, and although Draco wasn't sure how much the things could be worth, even his father had appreciated the craftsmanship.
Or at least, he had until he found out where it came from.
'I need to change the visualisation, but how?' Draco thought, casting the counter curse to 'reset' the dummy. 'I've tried picturing the whole thing covered in those little spots, tried imaging real pustules spreading across it; nothing's working.'
With more frustration than technique he flung out the curse once more, and the whole dummy wobbled backwards as deep black and dark blue splotches exploded from its chest. Just its chest. He sighed again.
"Draco." The Malfoy heir turned to see his father had joined him. "I'm glad to see you still working hard in your free time."
He grunted. "I might've beaten Potter this time, but like he said. He's never lost twice in a row."
"Hm." Draco looked away from his father, almost embarrassed to see annoyance on the man's face for the half-a-compliment he'd paid to the Potter heir. "There's something I need to speak with you about. I've been hearing some… Disconcerting rumours, as of late."
"Yeah?" The younger blonde's eye twitched, and without bothering to clean up the pustulating curse's effects on the training dummy he destroyed the whole thing with a cast of, "Diffindo!"
The chunks of wood and splinters went flying everywhere. "Peregrine Parkinson told me you were apparently caught in a… Romantic encounter, with some mad half-blood."
"Yeah?" Draco repeated, his grip on his wand tightening. "What about it?"
"Are you telling me that's true?" His father demanded. "Draco I raised you—"
His next cast of the Diffindo spell would've struck his father if the man weren't missing his arm and a more than unhealthy chunk of his shoulder. His father's already porcelain-esque skin paled further, he stumbled to the side nearly falling to the ground, and Draco sneered down at him. This was whom he'd let rule over every aspect of his life for so long? This was the man he'd respected with every fibre of his being? Hydrus's words came to him.
'He fears that he isn't strong enough to hold onto his spot at the top of society, that he'll be cast to the wayside…'
"Tell me, Father, if you and I were to duel right now, who do you think would win?" he asked. "Because I'll tell you this much: I'm very confident in my own answer."
"Draco…"
"And even if Hydrus hadn't lobbed your arm off, even if you could beat me then, how long could you continue to hold me back? Push me down?" He stepped forward, and Lucius Malfoy, Lord of the Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy, stepped back. "Hydrus was right about you. You're nothing more than a coward who was too scared to ever fight for anything he wasn't certain he could win."
Honestly, Draco didn't know where all this anger was coming from. Sure, he'd been willing to draw wands for what his father had said about his… Well, technically he wasn't even sure what he and Luna were yet, if he could call her his girlfriend or not. But this was more than that. The anger wasn't fading even now that he'd completely 'won', if anything it was just getting worse.
"You… You were trying to make me weak, just like you. You never once tried to pick me up when I was down, you just expected me to do it on my own without ever teaching me how." He turned and threw another spell at where his training target should've been, but he still hadn't repaired it so instead he wound up blowing a massive hole in the hedge wall behind it, toppling what had been a beautiful cherry tree before his spell blew it apart. "You were a terrible father. You made the wrong choice at every turn. So don't you dare try and come to lecture me now that I'm finally surpassing you."
He waited for his father to say something, but the man didn't. Instead his head fell downwards, his shoulder slumped, and he turned to walk away.
Something about that infuriated Draco even more. Without any verbalisation and with way more visualisation than he'd ever had before, he stabbed his wand forward like he was hurling a spear and the ground just a few metres in front of his father exploded. The older blonde was sent flying back and he landed hard, grabbing where his missing extremity used to be as he rolled over to that side to protect it.
"What is wrong with you?" Draco demanded, finally realising what his issue with this whole situation was. "Why aren't you doing anything? Hydrus cut off your arm, destroyed half the manor, used the Cruciatus Curse on my mother, and you're just.. Just rolling over and taking it?!" He scoffed and grit his teeth. "I'm not saying to keep trying to fight him, but you could be doing something! Anything! Anything to prove that I wasn't an idiot for treating you like a goddamn hero for all my life.
"You could have been meeting with Arcturus every day to try and prove your worth. You have the opportunity now to advise the new lord of their house." He threw his hands up into the air. "Hell! You could at least be out here offering me actual advice. Instead you came to try and chastise me about my dating life, because you thought I was the one person you still had power over."
As his father continued to just cradle himself on the ground, Draco knew he'd been wrong. He hadn't actually realised why he was mad, and there was just one line of truth in that whole rant. His father had tried duelling above his year with the way he'd gone behind the Black family's backs to meet with the Macnair lord. He had tried teaching and training Draco, albeit in a harsh and less than helpful way. Even in his misguided attempt to offer advice on his courtship with Luna, he was trying to prepare Draco to take over the house in just a few short years.
No, the one truth that had come out was that Draco didn't want to feel like an idiot for having looked up to him.
He wanted his father to deserve that respect.
Because otherwise, what sort of idiot was he for having given it?
And that's what it all came back to. Just like with seemingly everything in his life lately, it came back to a place of self-loathing and wanting to improve himself. He would never want things to go back to how they were before he met Hydrus at the gala last year, but he did want his family to go back to how it was. These days he couldn't even look at his father without a rotten feeling in his stomach, his mother no longer made excuses to 'fix' his hair and she constantly looked away when their eyes met. Their whole house was filled with strangers to make up for the fact that they could no longer own a house elf. Every day he got further and further away from them. Why couldn't things just…
'...he was never good enough for his father, nor his father to his father, so on and so on…'
Again Hydrus's words came to him, and as Draco stared down at the man he'd once respected above all others, he finally understood what his cousin meant. It wasn't just that his father didn't do better, it was that he didn't know how. Unlike Draco, he'd never had someone around to break the cycle their family had been caught up in. He… He was exactly what his son would've become had he not met Hydrus Black.
"Father—"
But the man interrupted him with words he'd never thought he'd hear him say. "I'm sorry. You're right."
"I, no, Father, I—"
"I should've been a better example for you. I shouldn't have used my own insecurities as an excuse to belittle you." Draco was stunned, and even when he finally realised that his father was trying to stand he was too slow to help him up. "Tomorrow I'll go and meet with the Black Sheep to discuss our families' futures, and try to secure an opportunity to earn his confidence."
"I… Okay," Draco said. That was what he had wanted. "And… And I'm sorry as well. I should've found a much less violent way to have this discussion."
His father laughed, then winced and grabbed his rib, shaking his head. "You get it from your mother."
"Probably," he said with a smile. "Are you alright?"
"I will be, just still getting used to…" His father trailed off and shook his head. "And the boils were a particularly cruel touch. I'm covered in them now."
"Really?" His father looked at him with furrowed brows and Draco blushed, somehow embarrassed of his pride. "Sorry, I'd been trying to figure out how to do that for a while and I guess now I have."
"At least now you can't say I was useless at training you anymore." He winced at the sardonic reminder of his rant. "I hate to bring this up, especially after all that, but please do listen to this one piece of advice regarding your… 'relationship', with the half-blood girl." Draco tensed back up. "And I'll tell your mother the same thing: let's just not talk about it." He released some of that tension. "At least not until we have to. Try not to cause any unexpected pregnancies like your aunt Andromeda went through."
Draco's face turned to fire as his father turned away. "I will blow you up again!"
Narcissa Malfoy waited 'patiently' in the rear foyer, foot tapping against the ground, nails drumming against her forearm, teeth grinding. Lucius had made her swear to let him handle things, but between her poor love's weakened state and the sounds she'd heard, it had left her a touch nervous. She wasn't usually one to struggle with keeping her family's madness in check, and usually when it came out it did so more subtly than with either of her sisters, but it wouldn't be much longer before she had to just go out and…
Lucius pushed open the door, shut it behind him, and stumbled into her awaiting arms.
"Are you alright?" she asked, her worries redoubled. "What happened?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," he said, nestling his face deeper into the nape of her neck. "Just tough raising a teenager."
Narcissa chuckled and now properly embraced him. "I know. He's getting so rebellious lately."
"Yeah…" Her husband took a deep breath, and finally truly relaxed. "I hate that little shit Hydrus so much." And like that, her own relaxation was gone. "But I don't think I could ever possibly repay him for all he's done for our son."
'Oh thank Morgana.' She placed a gentle kiss on her husband's head. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up and then you can tell me what happened."
Stefanos Stellavigil stared out at the coastal view from his new office, and smiled. The sun was setting, the seagulls were like falling leaves swaying on the wind, and standing so far above the people below made them look like nothing more than ants. He had finally, finally taken his first step into the upper echelons of society, and to be able to look down on them all was as delicious a sensation as he could've possibly imagined. The only thing that could've made it better was if he could've brought his wife and daughters up here to see it. It was his first day though, so that could wait.
Besides, with any luck, his next office would be much higher than just 'Vice-Lector of the South-South-Eastern District'.
He'd used his obvious connections to the Black household to meet and befriend everyone from the minister himself to any clerk to an important person he could find. He didn't even have to reach out to half of them, eventually they started coming to him to make connections. All his life Stefanos had thought the greatest thing he could hope to achieve was becoming the best head of his house that he could, but now his future was brighter than ever. Now he could touch the world itself.
And he had Hydrus Black, a powerful and foolhardy teenager, to thank for it.
He'd already received a response from the Black Sheep, thanking him for his sympathies and congratulations, and it was obvious that the fool hadn't written it himself. The two of them had only shared a few words together in person, and it was obvious that unlike his son the man had only brawn without a brain to guide it. Now that the ancient Lord Arcturus was dead, it would be easy for Stefanos to manoeuvre himself into a position of trust within the Black family.
Despite Hydrus having initially accepted his offer of taking in his man as an English tutor for that Giannis runt, the family had gone on to rescind the opportunity. It seemed the child was becoming some sort of runes prodigy that wanted to make his own translation artefacts, increasing his value even further from just serving as a potential magizoologist.
Stefanos licked his lips as he finally looked away from the window and moved back to his desk. That was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. Hydrus might've been cocksure and filled with more bravado than one man ever should, but he had been right to chastise the Greek lord for his dismissal of the brat.
That was fine though.
There were other diamonds out there for him to find, other gems just waiting to be polished into something that was actually worth a damn. Between his ever-growing status in the Greek government and his heritage, he'd easily be able to rope in any other such valuable pawns. He didn't know… No, in fact, he doubted he'd ever be able to collect as many as the Black Saint could, what with the boy's position as a student himself in the greatest school in the whole wizarding world.
But that too, was fine.
After all, he had the far more advantageous position. While Hydrus swam through the depths of the oceans like a prehistoric shark, Stefanos could simply latch on like a remora. The teen would unintentionally carry him further and further until… Until he was as great as him. Until he was a shark himself.
Stefanos laughed to himself, and ran his hands over the top of his desk. There wasn't much work to do since he was just starting this job, but that didn't mean there was nothing he could accomplish. Whistling a pleasant tune, one of the numbers he and his wife liked to dance to, he began draw up a schedule for himself to follow tomorrow when his first real day as a politician began.
Bellatrix sat with a magical shield hovering over head to protect her from the rain. Hydrus had shown her this little trick. Apparently it had originally come from that mudblood Granger, but that was fine. It wasn't like it was the girl herself who'd taught it to her. She took another sip of her tea as she waited for what she came for.
The forest whose clearing she'd taken up a spot in was filled with yew trees. She breathed in another delectable taste of the arboreal air, and sighed it out with a smile. The sound of drops on her shield, the rolling thunder far above her, the wind whirling past… It was all so lovely. It was rare for raging storms on par with typhoons or hurricanes to hit this region of the world, so there was no way she could miss her chance.
Hydrus had told her that now that he had a proper visualisation for his magic, he would go back to overpowering his spells rather than being hurt by them, and this time she'd be ready. As soon as her little water snake asked for a solution to his problem, she'd fix it.
Well, she'd have a solution, anyways.
It might take a while to magically impregnate a virgin to impale upon the yew branch.
Still, either which way, she was going to be much more prepared this go around. Just like she was going to whip that whelp Sirius into shape, she was going to be of use to her Hydrus with his new problem. She was going to make him reliant on her. She was going to make sure he couldn't help but think about how his Bella could help him with whatever he tried to do. She was going to make it so that he was completely reliant on his one and only love.
His one.
His only.
His love.
Bellatrix giggled as a bolt of lightning tried to break through the shield that was serving as her umbrella, and turned her gaze upwards.
'Try it again, you shitty gods,' she thought. 'Just try and stop me from stealing his worship of you.'
As the next ribbon of lightning fell on some other far distant tree, she giggled again. Good. They knew better than to try and defeat the last true daughter of House Black. They knew better than to try and stop Bellatrix Black from getting what she wanted. They knew better than to deny the love between her and the strongest man in the entire world.
'If he had his old body back,' Bellatrix repeated in her head, thinking back on that old coot Dumbledore's words. 'He'd be a force of nature.'
Before her hands could fall to her waist, another lightning strike hit a tree not too far to her left. Bellatrix leapt to her feet and drew her wand. There. There was her ticket to solving Hydrus's next big problem.
Just as Sirius was about to drift off to sleep, there came a knock at his door. It came from a low angle, quiet enough that he barely heard it, so there was only one person it could be. "Yeah?"
The door slowly creaked open, and he peered over his shoulder to see what was very obviously the silhouette of Giannis. "Sirius? Are you awake?"
He grunted an affirmative as he turned back around. To his annoyance the boy didn't bother closing the door behind him as he wandered in, and before too long he'd climbed up into the bed beside him. It took a few painful knees to the back before the boy settled, and when he did, Sirius prepared himself for the inevitable questions.
"Hey Sirius?"
"Yeah, kiddo?"
"Have you ever ridden a dragon?" Sirius glared over at what had once been a dark wall, but was now illuminated by the light pouring in from the open door. "Hydrus said he has, but I don't read too much about that happening, so I was wondering if you had."
"No, I haven't," he mumbled. "You couldn't pay me enough to do something as crazy as that. Dragons aren't meant to be ridden."
"Oh." Giannis shifted a bit. "How come Hydrus did then?"
"You'd have to ask him."
"I did," the boy said. "He just told me he did it cus it was cool."
Sirius snorted, then laughed out right. "Yeah, that sounds like something that idiot would do."
"He's not an idiot!" He winced as one of child's bony little fists punched him in the shoulder. "Hydrus is the best."
"Yeah, yeah…" Sirius grumbled. "Just trust me on this one, kiddo. Don't go riding any dragons. I don't know how Hydrus survived it other than the fact that he's Hydrus, and I don't want you getting yourself killed."
"Maybe I could make some sort of saddle…" The Black Sheep's head sunk deeper into his pillow as the warning went flying right over the boy's head like… Well, like a dragon. "Once I know more about runes."
"Maybe."
He just wanted the conversation to end so he could get some sleep. Between their unexpected visitor this morning and the pile of things he had to sign for Hydrus and Bellatrix, today had been about as long a day as he could remember having. Back when he was an auror he'd done everything possible to avoid paperwork, including but not limited to letting many of his busts get credited to others. Now his life was practically consumed by the stuff.
"Hey Sirius?"
"Yeah, kiddo?"
He really should've known better than to expect to get away from this with just one question.
"How come grownups lie so much?" Sirius winced. "Hydrus never lies to me."
Sirius regretted it, but he snorted at that line. He couldn't even hold the naivety against the kid since he'd been stunned to hear that his son had lied about who killed that muggle priest. It just meant that the teen, like any good politician, was a master at the task.
"I'm sure he has at some point," he said. "Because it's not just grownups. You lied all the time talking about how you'd start getting ready in time to go to the Burrow."
"That's different!" Once again the boy hit him in the back, and Sirius began to wonder where the hell he'd picked up the habit. "I mean like when I asked Miss Bones where you were and she tried saying you were in time out. Or when I asked you if Hydrus was alright and you said he was when he really wasn't."
Sirius winced. "We don't lie that much."
"Then how come I can't ask why you broke up with Miss Bones?"
Sirius's stomach clenched. If Giannis's little rabbit punches had hurt, then that felt like a straight up block of salt to a wound. The child had been pestering him about the subject ever since he came to live in the Black summer home, and although Sirius had thought he'd done a fine enough job of dodging the subject, it seemed like that wasn't the case.
"Sometimes… Sometimes grownups just don't want to talk about stuff," Sirius said. "I'm still really, really, really sad about what happened between me and my Bo—, I mean, me and Amelia. It hurts to talk about. Can you please not ask me about it again?"
He was an idiot. He'd always known that, always celebrated it, but having Hydrus so callously point out how badly he'd fucked up the situation with Regulus had truly driven that home. If he'd just… Just done anything besides one-sidedly deciding to let his little brother go, maybe he'd still have 'his Bonesy'. There was no way she would've let him let the Shadow go, but she could've probably talked some sense into him. Told him he was an idiot for thinking that any of the charges would really stick against him.
If anything, he might've been the one comforting her since her bust would go up in smoke more or less.
"Is that why you lied about Hydrus?" Giannis asked. "You didn't want to talk about it?"
"No, I really was certain he'd be fine." He was far, far too tired for a conversation like this. Did James have to put up with this shit? "Sometimes grownups just don't want kids to have to worry about things."
"Why?"
He took a long, sharp breath through his teeth. "Because worrying about shit fucking sucks, and we love you too much want to put you through that. We want to protect you."
God, he was a shitty 'dad'. Even if Hydrus was probably closer to being the Greek rugrat's father than he was given the circumstances, he'd still trusted Sirius to play the part. 'Grownups' weren't supposed to just—
"Like what Hydrus did with Father Cornwell…" The Black Sheep stiffened, and his eyes snapped fully open. "I know you said he took the veritaserum but… But I read about it. There's books about it in the library here. Kreacher showed them to me. You can take something beforehand that makes the potion not work. That's what Hydrus did, isn't it?"
"No, kiddo, no—"
Sirius tried turning around but the boy had his arms wrapped tightly around him now. It wasn't enough to actually be able to stop him, but between that and the way Giannis was burying his face hard enough between his shoulder blades he wasn't sure he should.
"I killed him. I know I did. I knew I did. It's why… It's why Hydrus warned me not to kill anyone. That he'd have to stop me if I tried."
Sirius's mind was going a mile a minute as he tried processing the child's words. Hydrus had… But why would he… What would…
"But he just wanted to protect me…" It was hard to hear the boy with how tightly he was pressed against him, speaking directly into his back. "I think I get it now."
'I wish you didn't.' Sirius thought. "You okay, kiddo?"
He waited for a few seconds, but there was no response. Closing his eyes to concentrate, he felt for the way the boy was breathing, and eventually he realised what had happened.
'He fell asleep.' Sirius snorted. The boy hadn't been on the verge of having a breakdown over the discussion, he was just… Just sleepy. 'Little shit.'
But what the hell could've driven Hydrus to 'warn' Giannis not to kill anyone? Sure, it was a dark thing that happened, but it wasn't like the kid could be blamed for it. It wasn't like Sirius wouldn't have done far, far worse if he'd witnessed it happening to his boy. He might've been a rebellious little thing, but he was as sweet as they came, he wouldn't hurt a…
It felt silly to think about the little bruises probably lined up all on his back, but now he was worrying. Was there something that the… The time traveller knew that Sirius didn't? Was he being filially cuddled by some sort of mass murdering sociopath? The kid was always terrible at understanding people, but that didn't mean… Mean…
"Hmmm…" Giannis muttered in his sleep. "Giraffes."
It took all of Sirius's willpower to not burst out laughing, even as his frame shook violently at the kids dreams.
He was just over thinking things. Hydrus had obviously gone through something bad the first go around, but that didn't mean it was Giannis. It just meant that he was extra cautious. Giannis had killed the priest, sure, but so would anyone else who could've.
As he resettled his pillow and got as comfy as he could with an iron-gripped child wrapped around him, he reiterated an opinion that he'd held ever since before he'd dated Amelia Bones, and then returned to after they'd broken up. He would and could never have a child of his own.
They were just too much damn work.
Gellert Grindelwald, the most powerful wizard in the world, shot out of his lice-infested bed and groggily, blearily stared at the source of the banging that had woken him up. Briefly he considered whether or not he was still dreaming as he saw that awful brat of Albus's standing with his back turned to him, and he second guessed his certainty that he wasn't when he realised the boy was crucifying a woman to the wall opposite of him. The woman didn't even seem to be noticing the way her palms were being nailed to the stone wall, she was just pouting and glaring away from the Black scion.
"What the…"
Hydrus turned around to stare at him, a look of infuriating mock-surprise on his face. "Oh! Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."
"What is the meaning of this?" Gellert demanded as he slid his legs off his bed and stood. "What are you doing?"
"Well, I realised that I hadn't given you any sort of payment for your contributions towards trying to help me with my issues," Hydrus said. "But now I've finally come up with the perfect repayment for your help."
The petulant looking woman stuck her tongue out at the whelp, but Albus's 'grandson' didn't pay it any mind. Gellert was slowly regaining his sleep-dulled faculties, and the full breadth of what was happening finally settled on his shoulders.
"Who is this woman?" he asked. "What sin has she committed to be interred beside me in hell?"
"She interrupted my breakfast and annoyed the shit out of me." The former dark lord blinked. "I'm putting her in time out until her father comes and picks her up."
"You…"
"My daddy is gonna kill you!" the girl shrieked in a voice that made Gellert want to drill his own eardrums out. "Just wait, you'll see."
"Yeah, yeah," Hydrus said, then he turned to look back at Gellert. "Her 'daddy' is some thousand-year old vampire I guess. He's got a problem with my uncle, so we need to keep her locked up tight until he comes to set things straight."
Ever since Albus had invited him to join the little research collaboration project, Gellert had known what to expect afterwards. It had taken decades to get used to the solitude he was faced with between his former love's visits, and getting that taste of freedom would make returning to the silence and darkness all the harder. What he hadn't known, what he couldn't have expected, was that rather than returning him to the same layer of hell he'd already inhabited, they would somehow someway sink him down even further into the depths of damnation.
"He's gonna eat you!" the stranger screamed. "Gobble you up! Serve you with a side of—"
Hydrus waved his hand and the vampire's screams were deafened. Gellert watched with horror as the teen continued to pound an iron stake through her other palm, intending to leave her here, intending to allow the silencing spell to eventually fade and force the one time war leader to bear the full brunt of her caterwauling wroth.
What on earth had he done to deserve this? Sure he might've stoked some egos and fanned some flames between that little goat Quinn and the living fossil Flamel, but that wasn't enough to have earned such cruelty. Sure he might've gotten away with extending his time out of this prison when he should've gone straight home, but… But…
"There," Hydrus said, snapping Gellert out of his stupor. "Welp, I'll leave you two to it."
"No!" The former dark lord near-shouted. "Don't you dare leave her here!"
"Sorry, Gellert!" Hydrus called over his shoulder as he began strolling away. "She's your problem now!"
BBaRtS
Fourty-Six, ... Pick up sticks? Idk, might've already used that one before, oh well. This chapter we've taken a begrudging step forward with the Regulus plot, gotten some father/son then adopted-technically-his-grand-father/adopted-technically-his-grand-son bonding between Draco & Lucius then Sirius & Giannis. Bella's getting up to something, a quick check in with the Greek side of things, and whatever else.
I really liked getting to delve a bit deeper into the Malfoy side of things this chapter. People commented that the Malfoy couple's affection for one another was greater than usual/what they expected, and that was intentional. Lucius and Narcissa aren't the death eaters that they were in Harry/Hydrus's world, there just a pair of pompous snobs who didn't do a perfect job of raising their son, but otherwise were a perfectly happy and loving couple. HYDRUS was the one who messed all that up. They might've gotten a bit villainous with their actions and reactions, but that doesn't mean their rotten to their core.
I've always known how I want this story to end, what the last 'real' chapter would be, and then how the epilogue would flip the script a bit on how that last chapter is perceived. I don't know the specific notes or lyrics to the epilogue, but I could one hundred percent imagine the rhythm and scene structure. This week I came up with exactly how I'm going to capstone it, the actual last line (or a rough draft equivalent to it, at any rate), and that's pretty neat. The way I'd imagined it was going to end was good, worked, fit the purposes perfectly, but the 'extra' bit I've come up with to add on to the end now serves as the fancy little flourish one gives when finishing up giving their autograph.
Anyways, that's enough rambling, let's get to reviews.
"So, Bellatrix has no room to talk about names. " - I don't really take all the talk about how bad a name Hydrus is seriously, but I HAVE gotten a lot of flack for it, so I figured I'd throw in a bone for those readers with that. I don't hate the name personally, but some people do, enough people that it's left an impression, so that was a fun way to bring it up lololol
"Just hinged Delenda Est on your recommendation. It's good but I do find your fic better," - I disagree, but doesn't matter, got someone to read my favorite fic muhaha.
"Your version of Albus is quite possibly my favorite out of the many hundreds of stories I have read in this fandom." - It's funny how comments like these make me so happy, but also so paranoid that I'll fuck it up later on lololol
"I can't remember - what happened to Grindelwald?" - Funny you ask that... LOlololol at least with this chapter I got to show that readers weren't the only one going 'well what was the point of that?'. Soon we'll get Tonks's share of that, even if she doesn't want it.
"Draco has improved so much and it's honestly heartwarming!" - His journey ain't done yet, and as we're seeing there's more consequences to Hydrus's influence than he intended lolol
"Oof, poor Neville." - I'm really looking forward to how his progress goes. I hope I can catch a few people off guard, in a good way, with it.
"Sirius is beginning to think" - Thinking is for nerds.
And that's all! Fuck I'm drunk, sorry for any mistakes as I get around to posting this, lemme know about em. Thank you all so much for the reviews, kind words, stats, and all the rest. Love you all, see you all next weekend, lessthanthree!
