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Chapter Sixteen—A Miracle of a Summer

"See you in a few weeks, Grayson."

Harry raised his eyebrows, but then followed Theo's gaze to a tall man with dark hair and a cloak spreading around him like a thundercloud who stood on the train platform. He honestly didn't look much like Theo, except for the stony color of his eyes. But the way he watched Harry and Theo made it clear who he was.

"See you, Nott."

Harry made sure to dip his head in what would look like a bow to someone less familiar with him than Theo. For a moment, Theo's eyes widened, but he was facing Harry, looking away from his father, and so Harry's gesture wasn't wasted.

Theo turned before he could alert his father by lingering and walked towards the thundercloud in human form that was Gregorian Nott. Harry shook his head and turned towards the Malfoys.

"Mr. Grayson. Welcome back."

There was no smile in Narcissa Malfoy's eyes to match the one on her face, but Harry didn't need there to be. He inclined his head to her with more real respect than he felt for just about anyone in Hogwarts. "Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy. I look forward to another quiet summer where I hope I can add value to your family."

Mrs. Malfoy examined him again, and then nodded. "Indeed. We understand each other well, Mr. Grayson."

"We do, Mrs. Malfoy."

When she held out her arm to Apparate him and Draco to Malfoy Manor, Harry couldn't feel her flinching away from the touch of a Muggleborn. That was as much as he would demand of her.

"Mr. Grayson."

"Sir."

Grayson had lowered his eyes to the floor the moment Lord Voldemort stepped through the door of the Potions lab buried in the Malfoy cellars. His body was still in a fashion that Lord Voldemort had rarely seen from a child that young. Well, perhaps some of the orphans he had lived with had possessed it.

That was not a memory he caried to dwell on, and so he came straight to the point. "I am responsible for the Malfoys practically demanding your company this summer."

"Yes, sir. I am grateful."

"You may stop staring at the floor as if I am going to pounce on you and eat you, Harry."

Grayson blinked and looked up. There was that sense of a shimmer around him, the powerful glamours that shielded him. Lord Voldemort thought idly that his pureblood parent must indeed have been embarrassed to have a child with a Muggleborn, or a Muggle. "I'm sorry, sir. I just don't want to show disrespect to you."

"You think expressing your opinion would constitute disrespect?"

"It would if you decided that it did, sir."

Lord Voldemort waved a hand. "I wanted to talk to you about some experiments in brewing I wanted you to undertake."

"Yes, sir. Dangerous ones?"

"Yes. I would provide a shield charm and other precautions so that you would not die from the fumes or flying slivers of the cauldron, of course."

Grayson had no sense of humor, or he simply accepted Lord Voldemort's words at face value, which was something Lord Voldemort wished his other servants would do. He nodded. "Yes, sir. What are the potions?"

Lord Voldemort took the parchment out of his robe pocket to show it to the boy. Grayson took it cautiously from him only when Lord Voldemort nodded permission, and read it over carefully. His glasses were familiar, in a way. Perhaps the pureblood who had sired him (or borne him, although a more remote possibility, that) had been among Lord Voldemort's servants.

"What do you know of your parents, boy?"

"That I was the child of my Muggle aunt's sister and an unknown father, sir. No more than that."

Grayson's voice was a little tight as he spoke, but he gave perfect truth, from what Lord Voldemort could tell. The statements were too blunt to hide the kinds of lies in that would fool Legilimency. Lord Voldemort gave a lazy nod. "Very well. Do you believe that you will be able to brew these potions?"

"Yes, sir. Although I haven't worked with Veela feathers before."

"It is only a myth that one must have prior experience to work with Veela feathers, or how would anyone ever begin to brew with them? Let me tell you how…"

Harry Grayson listened intently as Lord Voldemort explained what he wanted done with the feathers, and left Lord Voldemort with a hint of nostalgia as he departed the Malfoys' lab. There had been a time he had wanted to teach—sincerely, for the joy of watching others' eyes light as they came to understand what he understood, not because it would have been purely a way to bring recruits to his side.

But he had larger plans now, and one pupil, no matter how interesting or intelligent, would not be enough to reconcile himself to the professor's life. Lord Voldemort turned his attention elsewhere.

"Hello, Theo."

Theo stared around the Malfoys' potions lab in silence. Somehow, he had thought Harry was kidding, and that he wouldn't spend most of his time here brewing, as he evidently did.

But the cauldrons that bubbled on the table all showed heavy signs of use, and there was a shimmering shield charm in the air that Harry must have got an adult to set up for him. He was tapping a lead stirring rod against the lip of a cauldron to get the drops off it, and looking at Theo with mild surprise.

"Did you think I wouldn't visit you?"

"Not during the summer, no. I thought your father would know I was staying with Draco and not want you to visit."

"I might not have told him everything about you," Theo admitted, stepping further into the lab and walking towards the nearest cauldron. It wasn't the one with a shield or ward in front of it, so he thought it fine to investigate. He stared at the murky green liquid in it, not having any idea what it was or what it did.

"Ah."

Harry went back to his brewing. Theo watched his fluid movements and thought he was already better than most of the upper-year Slytherins Theo had occasionally spied on who would brew outside of class. Theo would have been envious if he had cared about excellence in Potions.

In truth, he still was a little envious, only because he didn't have something he did as well at and cared as much about as Harry did Potions.

And Quidditch, too, for that matter.

"Get down!"

Harry whirled on Theo and tugged him to the floor. Theo went down with a surprised whumph of sound, and heard the cauldron above him make more or less the same sound as it exploded. The flying slivers of metal and heavy liquid alike crashed against the shield and slid down the far side of it.

Harry lifted his head and observed the mess intently for a moment. Then he stood, shaking his head. "I'll have to begin that one again."

"What are you brewing?"

"Experimental potions."

"But why would you experiment like that?"

Harry waved his hand at Theo without turning to look at him, his attention on the liquid spreading across the floor. "It was fine. The shield prevented us from getting hurt." He turned his attention back to Theo abruptly. "Unless you're going to say that some of it splattered on you or something."

"No, of course not. But who wanted you to do this? And who set up that shield for you?"

"A contact Slughorn introduced me to."

Theo waited for more. Harry didn't give him any. He was frowning at the potion on the floor, and then he cast a spell that almost made Theo jump. Of course, the wards on Malfoy Manor would prevent the Ministry from using the Trace to see what Harry was doing, but it was still a bit startling to see a Muggleborn doing magic during the summer.

"What are you doing?" Theo hissed, when he'd recovered and the goo on the floor hadn't changed in any discernible way.

"Seeing if there are any usable ingredients left in that slop, or if they all liquefied."

There wasn't a wall nearby that Theo could sag against, more was the pity. He took a deep breath. "Liquefied."

"Yes?"

"We could have been liquefied if it had touched us."

"Yeah, but it didn't."

Theo had once read that being an Auror was the most dangerous career in the magical world, but he was starting to think that it must be Potions. Harry just went on frowning at his brew, and waving his wand in patterns that—

Theo abruptly stood up and staggered towards him. Harry glanced over his shoulder. "You wanted to say something else?"

"You're not saying something else."

"Yes, well, the brewer who asked me to work on these indicated that he wanted privacy, and it wouldn't do to give away the names of all the people who hire me to brew—"

"You're casting silently!"

Harry turned and stared at him. "Is that unusual?" he asked slowly. "It's just that I've cast these charms so many times that it seemed a little silly to keep saying them aloud when I knew them and they worked just as well silently."

Theo swallowed. His throat hurt a little, and he wondered if this was what his own pride tasted like. "Silent casting doesn't usually start until sixth year, Harry. And people can still struggle with spells they've known for years when they start doing it."

"…Oh."

But, infuriatingly, Harry said nothing after that, but just went back to his silent charms. Theo stared helplessly at his back.

Not only a clever Muggleborn who could survive in Slytherin, and a good brewer, but someone capable of casting silently at thirteen—twelve? Theo realized with a little jolt that he didn't know when Harry's birthday was.

He went home shortly after that, since it was plain that Harry wasn't interested in his company, and lay with his arms folded behind his head, staring blindly up at the ceiling of his bedroom, while he thought about many things.

And the reversal of what he had always believed to be true.

"You're faster than I am."

Draco hated saying it, but Father had given him a lecture a few days ago on the importance of knowing one's limitations, because that was the only way to overcome them. And it was undeniably true that Harry Grayson was faster than Draco on a broom, even when they were using the old Cleansweeps in the Malfoys' Quidditch shed and not the Nimbus 2001's that the Slytherin team used at school.

Harry turned to him with a slight laugh. "Well, only because the Seeker needs to be. You're a good Chaser."

Draco felt as if his throat had closed up at the sight of that smile. He swallowed and tried to think of something to say, but all the words were getting stuck behind the odd lump in his throat.

"Did I say something wrong?"

And Harry had gone guarded and cautious again, the smile vanishing from his face like the candles that Draco used to blow out at night before he could cast Lumos. He cleared his throat, the odd lump going with it, and shook his head. "No, it's all right. Let's play one more game. Use the Quaffle this time."

Harry nodded and turned back to his broom. Soon his wariness vanished again into the depths of the sky, which seemed to be the only place it would go, and he laughed as he tossed the Quaffle from hand to hand and nearly dropped it.

Draco laughed with him, but mostly, he was dealing with the uncomfortable revelation that Harry had handed to him without even meaning to.

Draco wanted a lot more of that smile. And he didn't want to make it go away the way he had imagined doing last year, when he had daydreamed about shutting Harry up and showing his friend how superior Draco was.

Now…

Now Draco would have to deal with the revelation.

"You really think this is going to work?"

"Do you have any better ideas, Sirius?"

Sirius sighed as he peered at the Polyjuice Potion in the cauldron. Then he shook his head. "No. I think that Harry is going to distrust us unless we can somehow prove to him that the Malfoys are just using him, and then it would be too late."

"He thinks that he's smart enough to evade the consequences. I think he knows that they're using him, but—he thinks he can escape."

Lily's voice was heavy with weariness as she leaned against the wall and stared into the cauldron, too. She had been the one to brew it, still the best of them at Potions after all these years. Sirius held out his arm, and she came over to nestle under it, leaning on his shoulder as she looked at the potion.

"You know that there's no one who can really figure this out," Sirius said softly. "Minerva knew Remus, but not that well, and Albus will know. And this is our chance to start fresh with Harry. Having a new Defense professor who hasn't approached him the way we have before will calm his suspicions."

"I can only be grateful that Remus owled the hair to us without protest."

Sirius bit his lip and met James's eyes for a moment. He and James were privy to what Remus had said in his letter, but Lily wasn't, and honestly, it was for the best that it stay that way.

"Yeah." James cleared his throat. "And you're sure that you—that you won't suffer for being the Defense professor for a year, Sirius?"

"I'm going to leave at the end of that year," Sirius said dismissively. "You remember that was Albus's plan for Quirrell, before he turned out to be a traitor."

"We still don't know exactly what happened to him."

Sirius nodded to Lily, not that interested in discussing the fate of the Muggle Studies professor. "But the important thing is that Albus thought Quirrell could leave at the end of that year and go back to teaching Muggle Studies. And I won't even be staying in Hogwarts after this. I'll just leave. The curse won't have a chance to catch me."

"I hope you're right, Sirius."

Sirius grinned at James and then glanced back down at the Polyjuice. "How many hairs did Remus owl to us?"

"Plenty. Enough for the deception to last at least until Christmas before we need more."

"And he'll continue after then, do you think?"

Lily's innocent question made Sirius turn to James again. But James just straightened his shoulders and shook his head a little. "He said that this was for Harry. He was doing it for Harry. He—he yelled so much in the ink that I'm a little surprised the letter didn't spontaneously transform into a Howler. But he'll do it for Harry."

"Yes, of course. For Harry."

Lily's eyes were distant as she looked at the wall. Sirius glanced at the potion again. The thought of drinking it every day for ten months and swallowing one of Remus's hairs every time he did so was disgusting.

But this was for Harry. His little godson, who couldn't understand the danger he was getting into by courting people like the Malfoys.

They would save him. Everything would work out.

Harry smiled down at the potions in the cauldrons, and didn't even twitch when the door of the lab opened behind him, even though he knew who it was.

"Mr. Grayson."

"Hello, sir," Harry said, and turned around and gave a little bow of his head to Mr. Malfoy. It struck him as funny that he had pretended to bow with true respect to Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Nott, who were only Death Eaters, and not the Dark Lord himself. The Dark Lord himself didn't demand deference.

Or false deference, that might be a better way to put it. Harry couldn't help giving true respect to the Dark Lord because his very presence silently demanded it.

Mr. Malfoy's eyes traveled back and forth along the ranks of cauldrons on the table. Harry remained silent with his eyes on the floor. At least now he knew that the Dark Lord was in charge here. He might have forced the Malfoys to take Harry in for the summer, but he would also prevent them from throwing Harry back out on the streets.

Or interfering in his brewing, which right now Harry would find worse.

"You know that when we gave you shelter for the summer, it was conditional on you doing certain things for us."

"Yes, sir."

"Are you willing to begin doing those things?"

"Yes, sir."

Mr. Malfoy was silent for a long moment, his eyes locked on Harry. Harry just waited. He didn't know for certain what Mr. Malfoy wanted, and he wasn't sure that he would like doing it, but he was willing to do it. Unless it endangered his life or his sanity, of course. And in that case, he would simply speak to the Dark Lord.

It was wonderful, what confidence and strength he felt during this summer compared to the last. And that had been a wonderful improvement on his life with the Dursleys.

If these improvements went on accumulating, Harry thought that he would be able to lead a life better than any he'd ever dreamed of.

Mr. Malfoy cleared his throat, and Harry attended to him. "We would like you to create a poison tailored to a particular person."

Harry felt his heartbeat quicken. Such things were only possible with the blood of the brewer and the whole-hearted commitment to doing someone else harm. And some of the blood of the target, of course. "I am honored that you would entrust me with such a task, sir," he said, as quietly and calmly as he could. "Have you already acquired the blood I would need?"

"Of course." Mr. Malfoy reached into a robe pocket and took out a thick crystal vial. Harry studied it without moving. It did appear as though there was plenty of blood there, so he would be able to afford a few mistakes and experimentations as he worked his way through brewing this kind of potion for the first time. "It was taken a bit at a time, and there is no way that the target has noticed it missing."

Personally, Harry thought he would notice if he was bled, even a little bit at a time over months or weeks. But he only nodded. "And the target, sir?"

"James Potter."

Harry smiled.