ex

by Lazydaily

h not boywl slth

14. Chapter 14

Ulrich sat Harry down for a talk soon after he arrived home for the holidays. Blaise flooed to Diagon Alley with his bodyguard, having apparently been forewarned that this would be a fraught conversation. He planned to meet up with Daphne and Tracey there. The agreement was that Harry would join them in Daphne's home if he felt up to it in the afternoon.

"I received a letter from your father's friend a week ago." Harry tilted his head. It was the first time Remus contacted his guardian instead of him. The last time they had spoken was three days ago and the man hadn't mentioned it. "He asked me about something I was not aware I should make plans for. He wasn't sure how to talk about it with you. As you know, I only came back to Britain six years ago. I lived in France for forty years and saw very little of the aftermath of the war. As such, I was not aware of what happened to your godfather. I was only told that he was unable to care for you. I didn't think to ask about it, I'm sorry for that."

"My godfather?"

His guardian nodded gravely. "His name is Sirius Black. He was the one who should have had custody of you after your parents were attacked."

"He's not—"

"Dead? No. I was as surprised as you are. I'd been told both of your godparents were unable to take you in and made hasty assumptions. He is still alive, but in Azkaban, I regret to say. Has been since the end of the war."

Harry sucked in a sharp breath. "Why?"

"That is a complicated story, which starts and ends with a betrayal. I volunteered to tell you so Mr Lupin wouldn't have to. It would be… painful for him to talk about it to you, I'm afraid. Have you ever wondered why your parents were attacked by the Lestranges?"

The Potter heir shook his head, looking down. Beyond the fact that they had been fervent opponents of Death Eaters, he wasn't too sure why his family had been targeted. James and Lily Potter might have been fighting against Voldemort but they were recent graduates and his father had only recently taken the Lordship. They weren't of the same calibre as the other Houses and clans who had been relentlessly pursued. Come to think of it, he should have questioned it. The attack had happened right after Voldemort's strike on Neville's manor, hadn't it? And the Dark Lord had first targeted Potter Manor, destroying his House's ancestral seat in his rage when he found out his parents weren't living there.

"My family was in hiding," he recalled, repeating what he had been told about the tragedy which had befallen the Potter. "I never thought to ask what they were hiding from. It seemed obvious. The Bones, the McKinnons... the most prominent leading Houses of the Alliance were targeted." He looked up. "But they had more members and were bigger names than the Potters. That's not all there is to it, right?"

Ulrich nodded gravely.

"Mr Lupin had reason to believe Houses Potter and Longbottom were both targeted for a specific purpose, though he didn't know what it could be. More than that, they were aware of it in advance and sought the means to protect themselves. It was in vain, unfortunately. You-Know-Who went after them with a single-mindedness that shocked everyone." He paused. "According to your father's friend, they were members of a secret organisation dedicated to the fight against You-Know-Who. It was called the Order of the Phoenix. He speculates that the leader of it, Albus Dumbledore was the one who tipped them off. He had been monitoring You-Know-Who's movements closely. Mr Lupin is speculating, I'm afraid. He told me he was on a mission in Ireland on behalf of this Order at the time. But he said that the organisation suspected a traitor, one who was looking to find your and Neville's parents' location and relay them to the enemy."

Who would have dared betray them both, Harry wondered. He felt sick at the thought. But as far as he was aware, only his mother and Neville's knew each other long enough to establish that kind of trust. Alice Longbottom was older than her and Lily was a bit of a loner for most of her school years, they didn't share many friends. He didn't think his parents would have chosen someone they had just met at the Order. There had been two traitors, he realised. One for each location. Two close friends or family members turned their backs on their own. Ulrich was trying to ease him into the revelation. Harry trembled in rage at the thought.

"Who was it? And how?"

His guardian raised a placating hand, indicating he was getting to it. "Your parents and Neville's opted for the same method to conceal themselves, a charm called the Fidelius." His expression twisted. "I understand their choice, You-Know-Who was a talented ward breaker and the spell offered more protection than defending their home could afford them."

At Harry's uncomprehending look, he clarified. "The Fidelius charm is not a ward, it does not stop people from entering a house or alert its inhabitants. Instead, it keeps a location, thing or person secret, erases every memory of it from everyone's mind and makes it impossible to attain by anyone who isn't authorised by the Secret Keeper. You must understand, lad, this charm is as powerful as the trust you have in your chosen person."

"And since the condition of loyalty is inherent to the charm's functionment, it has to be an outsider," guessed Harry, feeling cold.

"That is so."

"And what happens if the Secret Keeper dies?"

"The charm holds, but only for a time. It must be recast and another Secret Keeper must be chosen before the moon finishes waning. You studied cosmic events in Astronomy, didn't you?"

He nodded. "A waning moon can symbolise a vacillating resolve. Is that why? It destabilises the charm."

"Very good," he praised. "There is more to it than that, of course. Nothing protects a Secret better than the death of its Keeper, but that means the location kept under Fidelius risks disappearing along with the dead. Mr Lupin said it was what happened to the Longbottoms and the cause of their downfall. Their first Secret Keeper, Caradoc Dearborn, was tortured and killed by You-Know-Who without betraying the secret. The Longbottom ancestral seat was almost lost because of it. The manor ran the risk of being abandoned to oblivion. It could have been worth it if they kept themselves inside, but doing that would have meant slowly starving to death. Any land elf leaving the manor to buy food would have promptly forgotten its location. So they recast the spell and chose Bartemius Crouch."

"Who was he?"

"Frank Longbottom's godfather and the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at the time."

"Was he a Death Eater?"

Ulrich shook his head. "No, but his son, Barty Crouch Jr was. He stole the paper his father had written the Longbottoms' address on from his study and gave it to the Dark Lord."

Harry tightened his hands into fists. "What about my parents?"

"Your parents chose Peter Pettigrew, their schoolmate."

The Potter heir breathed out. For a moment he had thought… but why was Sirius Black in Azkaban then?

Ulrich rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I requested the trial transcripts so I could better explain to you what happened. It's a complicated story. As far as I understand, your parents almost got out unscathed. Pettigrew was planning to pretend he had never been a Death Eater, let alone a traitor. But the Lestranges caught him at the place he was meant to meet the Dark Lord and interrogated him. They wanted to find out how You-Know-Who had been defeated and believed the key to that answer lay with the Potters. When they realised he knew nothing, they let him go. But not before he revealed the location of your family's hideout."

Harry's magic crackled along his arms and he gritted his teeth to control it. Seeing his turmoil, his guardian got up from the armchair he was sitting in to face him and sat down next to him on the sofa. He murmured a light pain-numbing spell and wrapped an arm around Harry's shoulders. The boy blinked rapidly to keep away his tears.

"Your godfather arrived at your house too late to stop them, but early enough to kill Bellatrix Lestrange. The Aurors got there while he was duelling her and convinced him to let them arrest Rodolphus and Rabastan. He was prepared to kill them too, I hear. He went after Pettigrew next. It turns out the man was a rat animagus. They confronted each other on a crowded street. Pettigrew attacked muggles to try to cover his escape and shifted to disappear into the sewers, but Black used a summoning charm and killed him in his rat form before he could."

Ulrich sounded grimly satisfied. He pressed a kiss on Harry's brow as he saw the same pleasure reflected on the boy's face. The two weren't violent people; Ulrich had chosen to study wards to defend people's homes and Harry picked the healer's path. It didn't keep them from seeing beauty in the justice meted out by someone who had loved Harry's parents as much as their son loved them.

"People originally thought Sirius was your parents' Secret Keeper but Auror Moody, who was responsible for the arrest of the Lestrange brothers, vouched for him. They couldn't argue against that and the fact that he killed Bellatrix himself." He paused. "She was his own cousin, you know."

Harry didn't know what to say. His chest felt warm. Sirius Black must have cared for his father a lot to go against his own family like that. "How did he end up in Azkaban then?"

Ulrich made a noise of disgust, tightening his arm against Harry.

"Bartemius Crouch. According to Mr Lupin, Sirius accused him of child abuse and said he wasn't simply responsible for failing to protect the Longbottoms but also for turning his son into what he was. How your godfather knew, I don't know and neither does Mr Lupin. The problem was that the comments were made in public while Sirius was still held for questioning. Before Crouch resigned from his job, he made it his mission to take Sirius down with him. Mister Black was an Auror trainee at the time, having joined to support the war efforts. Crouch had him investigated for a charge of excessive force, then an additional conviction for being an illegal Animagus."

He scoffed at that. "Coming from the very same man who authorised the use of the Unforgivables during the war, it was the height of hypocrisy. Crouch burnt a lot of favours to have your godfather incarcerated. He thought it would protect his reputation. It would have worked if Arcturus Black hadn't interfered and if Augusta Longbottom hadn't sworn Enmity with his House for his mistake. As it is, he's barely holding on to his post in the Ministry —he's been named Head of the Department of International Cooperation for lack of a better replacement but the Ministry is looking for any reason to fire him."

Ulrich sighed. "Sirius is being held in the lower levels of the prison. His contact with the Dementors should be minimal. Still, Azkaban is the worst place on Earth. I hope the lad is doing okay."

Harry nodded, his eyes stinging at the thought of having lost the chance to grow up with this man who had been so loyal to James Potter he had killed for him with no hesitation. He wondered what it would have been like.

"Sirius gave your custody to Mr Lupin while the trial went on," continued his guardian with another sigh. "The two of them were engaged to be married. He likely didn't expect it to go so badly."

The Potter heir blinked at that. He had read in the man's letter that he had met him when he was barely a toddler but he hadn't realised it was in such circumstances.

"He must have gotten really sick for the Orphan Relocation Bureau to take you," mused Ulrich. "I wonder what he's suffering from."

Harry listed the illnesses he had crossed out since the mystery had drawn his attention and other possible ailments. "I asked Poppy and she gave me a lecture on patient confidentiality. She's right though, I'm better off asking him myself. Blaise thinks he's a Dark creature," he confided. "Some kind who isn't allowed to get custody of children. I'll find out this summer anyway. Since I told Remus I'll be in Mezzogiorno in June and July, he said he'd meet me there and come back with us to Britain. He sounded really excited."

His eyes widened.

"Do you think…"

Ulrich smiled, his eyes crinkling. "Yes, lad. Sirius will be released in December this year."

"How is Achilles?" asked Adrian before scooping out a bit of ice cream from his bowl, frowning down at his notes for Transfiguration. They weren't looking forward to the end-of-year exam. "I haven't seen him at all since I got there."

Terence and Aspen went out to meet the former's Auror cousin for a conference about curses that Gemma had bowed out of, her muscles still weak from her time spent petrified. She and Adrian were studying instead, though they had taken an ice cream break about two hours in.

"He's settling in. He's really polite but you can tell he's terrified, he doesn't talk to us much. Even less than Harry did, and that's saying something. He talked to Terence's father when he visited, though. It seemed to have settled him."

Gemma tried to find the chapter about laws of substitution in her book about the transfiguration of objects of disproportionate weights, huffing in frustration when she couldn't.

"He's moving with them in August, right?"

She nodded. "It will give us time to set him up with a false identity in the muggle world and to ward him away from his parents. The amulet he's wearing now works well but Terence said it's not inconspicuous enough. A muggle kid might take it off without knowing what it does."

"Makes sense. I'd say stitch the warding array to his underwear but even that he'd need to take off from time to time. A tattoo?"

Adrian discarded his empty bowl and left it on the tray away from their study materials.

"Same problem. If someone sees it they'd ask questions and a glamour placed on top of it would weaken its effect. I'll figure it out, don't worry."

"I'm not worrying. I know you can do it," he grinned.

She smiled and returned to her studying. They worked for another hour, exchanging books and parchments and quizzing each other on the material before they gave up, unwilling to give themselves a headache by forcing more information into their brains.

In the middle of their game of exploding snap, Safaa's owl flew into their room. Gemma stood up and gave the animal a scratch before taking the letter it presented to her.

"Thank you, Daeva," she said to the fierce-looking bird before it flew away.

"That thing is evil," muttered Adrian. "Every time I try to touch him he tries to peck my eyes out."

Gemma laughed. "He's just a bit prickly. You need to learn how to handle him."

"Hedwig's better."

Adrian was enamoured with Harry's owl and the Fawley heiress understood why; the bird was a beauty and very affectionate.

"You share that opinion with Daeva, he loves her. I'm not too sure how owls court but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried it."

Her friend scoffed. "Him and the entire owlery. That demon has competition."

"Safaa hasn't tried killing Spencer yet," she said after having skimmed the letter. She moved back to her seat and took up her cards again, discarding the letter. "They're planning the end-of-year social events. He seems to be focusing on distracting everyone with entertainment to keep us all from fighting." She snorted. "I don't see how keeping the different factions in the same room would help but oh well."

"To be fair, the other seventh years would probably mutiny if he didn't plan an end-of-year party."

"Would they? Langley had them so beaten down it's a miracle they have a shred of self-esteem left and Spencer hasn't done much to fix that."

Adrian looked at her curiously. "You call him by his first name."

She made a dismissive gesture with her cards. "He won't have a last name before the year is out. Better get used to it now." She smirked. "What? Did you think I was giving him my blessing?"

He shrugged. She shook her head.

"No. I want to skin him for what he did to Terence. His gesture was cute but it's not enough to make up for almost killing my boyfriend. If he keeps going down this line and becomes someone worthy of our Safaa and she wants to take him back, maybe I'd accept it. But that would be years down the line. I doubt he has the fortitude to fight for her that long."

"Fair enough. Speaking of fighting, did Safaa say she was going to keep the Regina position next year?"

"Not sure. She doesn't care for it. She asked me if I'd be willing to duel her for it and make Terence the Spinea Rex to my Argentum Regina but we looked it up to see if there was a precedent for using that loophole. It's been done thrice in the history of Slytherin House but has only been accepted once by the Head of House. I doubt Snape would let us considering how friendly he is with the purists. I'd like to leave it alone — we'll have enough on our plates with passing our NEWTs— but I don't want to leave Harry with a shitty court."

Adrian hummed.

"Let's groom a successor then. That's how it's usually done. Cassius Warrington is decent at Defence and a half-blood whose family supports the Greengrass Alliance. He might not be up to Flint's level now but if Terence trains him until the end of the year…"

"He has no care for politics though," countered Gemma. "There's a reason Spencer didn't pick him as a lieutenant while he was choosing among the most neutral students. Warrington didn't stand up for Shane during the House split and the only reason he's the fourth-years' leader is because they're the most unambitious students we have right now. They just go with the flow and none of them come from significant families."

"It doesn't matter though," he said sharply. "He'll have our backing and the support of those who can't be bothered with having an overly political rex. We just need to give him the right motivation." She cursed as her cards exploded. Adrian smirked. "I heard the guy wants to be a professional duellist but he needs funds and more practice to enter tournaments. He was very disappointed when Lockhart turned out to be a fraud. He was hoping to get some pointers."

Gemma raised an eyebrow. "He couldn't have asked Flitwick?"

Adrian shook his head, his nose wrinkling.

"He has something against goblins. I normally wouldn't want a guy like that as Argentum rex but backing him and allowing him to be a disappointing leader might be the only way we can keep the seat warm for Harry without having to sit in it ourselves."

"I don't like it. But it's an option. We'll have to talk about it with—"

They were interrupted by a scream.

Achilles felt nothing but pain. He tried to crawl off his bedroom and call for help but the very act of shifting his arm had his nerves shrieking and his blood felt like it was going to burn him from the inside out. He gripped his own wrist, hoping to stave off the feeling spreading from his artery to the rest of his body.

He knew who was doing this. Rather than looking for him themselves, his parents must have called his great-aunt. Flora and Hestia had talked about how Aunt Scylla had been one of the Dark Lord's favourites. He hadn't known what that meant then but he was sure of it, his parents didn't have the magical power to do this to him.

He would know, he had read any book pertaining to magical cores in their library obsessively. Trying to find any proof he might not be a squib, any way he could gain magic himself and not be doomed either to death or exile.

Achilles whimpered pitifully.

He was going to die like this. Writhing on the floor like a worm, his veins charred by blood magic. Away from the only people he loved and who loved him.

His sisters had risked so much for nothing.

"I don't— please—"

Please. He didn't want to die.

"Frigus arteria," Harry intoned, pouring more magic into his wand than he'd ever had to before.

He repeated the incantation three times at each of the boy's extremities before casting a soothing spell. He gestured at Gemma who was levitating the tray of potions he had asked her to prepare.

He silently thanked professor Snape for preparing him to heal these types of curses, so much more extreme compared to the benign injuries and ailments Poppy was teaching him to handle.

He didn't know this spell; it looked like a family variant of the blood-boiling curse, but to work at such a distance it had to be linked to a House's bloodline. The Carrow sisters had likely been unaware of its existence: their family was from a branch of their House, only temporarily put in charge while the main line was doing who knew what on the continent.

They wouldn't have believed their family capable of such cruelty to keep them in line.

Harry restrained a trembling sigh and poured the first vial into the boy's slack mouth, massaging his throat so he could swallow. He repeated the action with five different potions. One for numbing his patient's arm. Another for pain relief. One for regulating his temperature, one to repair the damage and another to prevent the potions ingredients from interfering with each other.

The latter was an invention of his grandfather, whose recipe he had to allow Blaise to copy out of his grimoire while he stabilised Achilles and stopped the curse from spreading further.

His best friend was still looking shell-shocked at the show of trust like he hadn't understood yet that Harry would give him way more than that if he asked. When all of this was over, they would talk about it. They still had a week of vacation. They had spent the first week in careless relaxation, their sole matter of preoccupation being Harry's mind-healing sessions following the revelation of his godfather's fate and the upcoming end-of-year exams.

Then Gemma had fire-called him in a panic.

"Spread the salve into his palm," he instructed."We're lucky it didn't reach his heart," he added for himself.

He muttered a cleansing spell, pointing his wand at his cousin's hands. The residue from the salve vanished from her hand, leaving behind a pleasantly smelling sheen.

He glanced at the boy, whose clammy temples were steaming in swirls of cerulean blue due to the potion he had just made him ingest.

"This will happen again," he said with certainty. "Whoever did this must have felt my interference, they'll try again."

"And they know someone is helping Achilles hide," murmured Blaise grimly.

Harry hummed in agreement. "They'll probably focus on finding him for now, but they'll soon realise they can just cast the curse again during a moment of inattention. That, and we'll be gone in a week."

It took him two hours to make the curse recede rather than stopper it. Achilles passed out after fifteen minutes, his body giving up on him despite the anaesthetic draught Harry had him drink, meant to numb his pain receptors.

"How can we stop it?" asked Adrian.

"I don't know. Ser Peregrine?"

He glanced at the portrait Blaise had brought along with his grimoire. It was propped up against the wall in front of Achilles' bed and had been instrumental in finding the right combination of spells to start with.

The man in the painting shook his head regretfully.

"I haven't seen anything like it while I was still alive, son. I studied diseases, not curses. My apologies."

Harry sighed. "It's alright."

He should have known. the healer would have told him beforehand if he knew what ought to be done.

"I'd write professor Snape but—"

"He can't be trusted," finished Blaise with a resigned frown. "What about Madam Pomphrey?"

"She's a mediwitch, not a specialised healer," said Harry wryly. "She's not trained to heal something like this. She'd be obligated to follow the Oath of Asclepius: she would have to take Achilles to St Mungo's."

"Which would be as good as killing him since they would in turn be forced to call his family. Even if they didn't, it's the first place the Carrow would look for him. It would compromise us all," concluded Gemma. "We can't trust other healers."

"I could maybe find a solution if I had time to research bloodline curses and to learn how to cast the appropriate counter. But there's no time for it."

There would be no time to test the results either and Harry was only a second year. He might be good at healing but professor Snape had cautioned him against being too confident. It only took one mistake to end up with a dead patient.

"No time to research, no one to trust," lamented Adrian. "We're fucked."

Harry tucked at his caduceus earring before sliding down to sit on the floor. He put his wand back in its holster and buried his face in his hands.

He stayed like this for a moment, thinking over their options.

Blood adoption would work but it would mean draining Achilles so completely of his blood he had every risk of dying before completing the ritual. Besides, he wasn't sure if it even was possible for someone without a magical core.

He mentally reviewed and discarded potions and charms.

He recalled the basic theory of healing arrays he had only started learning before dismissing it for that exact reason.

"This is going to sound stupid but a bloodline curse relies on the caster's blood, right, Harry?" asked Blaise suddenly.

He looked up. "Er, yes. It targets specific characteristics in the caster's genetic makeup to identify the curse's recipient and heighten its effects. That's why the amulet didn't help, it's essentially a curse the caster puts on themselves, linking them to their target. I'm guessing they must have a failsafe to stop them from feeling the curse's effect themselves."

"So, if we got rid of this failsafe…"

Harry took a sharp breath. "Then the spell would backlash and turn on everyone who shares their blood as soon as they tried to use it."

"If we can't keep Achilles safe from the curse, we can make it so the risk of using it isn't worth the effort," said Blaise with a smirk.

"Is there a spell for that?" asked Adrian.

"I don't know, but there's a Zabini ritual. I'll owl my mother." He turned to Harry. "You might end up meeting more of my family sooner than planned."

"You have been quiet, dragon."

Draco stopped juggling with his practice snitch and looked up at his mother from where she was standing, her concerned eyes gazing down at him.

"Hogwarts has been disappointing," he admitted, picking at the wings of his toy while he shuffled on his bench.

His dreams of presiding over a court steadily ascending in Slytherin had been shattered soon after he was Sorted. Instead of rectifying the situation by successfully asserting his dominance over the rival court he had found opposing him, he had only made it worse.

Now he had lost his hard-won grip over the Argentum throne and was sworn to silence over his failure in a way that made it impossible for him to ask his parents how he could redress the situation.

His mother sat down next to him, folding her robes so as to not create wrinkles.

"Is it because of Felix?" asked Narcissa with an air of gentle sympathy she rarely allowed herself to show on her face.

"You told me House Rosier functioned differently. I didn't understand what you meant then. I didn't think they would have let him fall this low."

His mouth twisted into a sneer but his heart wasn't in it.

"House Black's family motto is Semper pura," said his mother with a thoughtful tone. "It has been written in French on our tapestries since Antares Black married Mirabelle Delacour. Toujours pur," she repeated, sounding reverent. "Always pure, because our House strived to remain untainted. House Malfoy's is Fierté en notre Lignée."

Pride in our Line, translated Draco. He remembered his father showing him the golden carvings on the wall depicting all of their ancestors, much brighter than the austere Black tapestry he had glimpsed at Grimmauld Place before Aunt Walburga's death.

He recalled the way he had felt bigger than himself at the momentous realisation that he was the proof House Malfoy had prospered and would continue to strive.

"House Rosier, however, chose la Liberté ou la Mort. Freedom or Death. When you're older, I will tell you why." She paused. "The heir has the privilege to choose where to guide House Rosier and his elders may not interfere. He weighed the future of his House in the balance and decided the path he had chosen was the better one. Respect it even if you cannot accept it."

Draco bit his lip and nodded.

"Maybe one day he will find that he was wrong," mused Narcissa. Then, sounding more doubtful, she added. "Or maybe you will find we are the ones who have strayed. Hopefully, neither of you will be too far off the path that you cannot find each other again."

He hummed noncommittally. He couldn't imagine it.

"Mother?"

"Yes, dragon?"

"What's the motto of House Longbottom?"

She hummed. "I believe it was Grow Together, Never Yield."

"And House Potter?"

His mother chuckled, though her gaze was sharp. "That one I never understood." She pursed her lips. "House Potter teaches its scions to Embrace the End. Whatever that means."