Chapter Text
As a listed building (Grade II*) open to the (Muggle) public, Tom had to wait for a day that the Hangleton House was technically closed, as sending the archivist and security guard to sleep is a very different thing than contending with docents and visitors and whoever else might be on staff. He has an exhausting, pre-dawn few hours, when he takes a portkey to Crook Peak to undergo the painstaking process of removing the Resurrection Stone from a magical peat bog, then Apparates to the Hangleton House to Charm CCTV and edit the wards, then portkey back to Tuscany, where Sirius and Harry are awake with enough coffee for Tom to have another cup.
Tom slides Sirius a folded piece of parchment. “Two hours,” he says. “We should be back by then, but if we’re not, this is to get in. Trigger world’s ‘rutabaga.’”
“But we’ll be fine,” says Harry crossly. It’s easy for him to be cross, as the sun’s barely risen above the hills. On the stool beside him is his rucksack, which holds the Invisibility Cloak. “You said as much.”
“Yes, yes,” Tom says, glancing over at him, but hardly what could be called down, so he’s inappropriately struck again by how unnatural it is that Harry’s just allowed to grow like that, “and by tomorrow, you’ll be teaching the wee weans how to fly. Sirius?”
“Two hours,” Sirius says, like he’s already counting down the minutes. He scans both their faces, sips his coffee, and adds, “Good luck.”
Harry shoulders his pack as he insists again they’ll be fine. Tom turns another bit of parchment into a portkey and holds it out to his cousin. “Two hours,” he says with a last glance at Sirius, as Harry takes the other end of the portkey. The moment his fingers make contact, they’re gone in a rush of sound and wind, until they find themselves in the disused undercroft-turned-wine-cellar. “Welcome, Harry, to my childhood home.”
Before Tom had taken the portkey back, he’d lit all the dusty old candles in this place, since most are, miraculously, still in their holders. The Muggles haven’t discovered this room, as they placed something to make it fire safe in front of its entrance, which already blended into the wall. Now, he’s just added an additional Muggle-repelling Charm to keep the curious away, and additional wards besides, which he designed after speaking with Dobby about how house elf magic bypasses wards, an idea brought about by the Parkinsons using theirs to contact to Pansy. It’s about to be the hiding place for the Elder Wand, after all.
Well. If Tom survives. If not, it goes back to Dumbledore.
He crouches down over rucksack as Harry drifts around the room to inspect its contents. “I know wine is supposed to get better with age,” he says, pausing by one of the nooks, “but there must be a certain point when it just turns to vinegar, right? Nineteen eighteen? How old is this place?”
“My father was born in seventeen, you know,” Tom says, watching Harry make the circuit around the columns supporting the ribbed vaulted ceiling. “The age of the house is complicated. The oldest part, down here, predates the oldest part of the building, which is from the late fifteenth century. Thirteenth century, I think this is? The newest bit is Edwardian, so the early tens? Bit before? All right, come here and let me draw on you.”
Immediately, Harry shoots over to his side and sits on the floor next to him. Tom removes a Sharpie from his pocket to start writing the runes and equations on his arms, similar to Curse Breaking. Everything he read pointed in this direction, though he needed to adapt it heavily. Though there are no records of a human horcrux, there are records of ghosts and spirits latching on to a young child and remaining with them, either entangled with their soul or stuck to something like a birthmark. There’s just nothing that can be done in the former instance, but in the latter, transferring the ghost or spirit to another living host is the only way to detach it. Between his readings in books on theory and history, and his trawling through St Mungo’s and other archives, he’s managed to gather that permanently riding the possessing entity after that tends to be the issue, as the new host always dies along with it in the attempt.
Personally, Tom just reckons that no one with the right degree of Gryffindor stupidity read all these accounts of poisonings or immolations or other horrible forms of death, and thought, Well, it seems no other fool tried the Killing Curse.
“I’m going to put you to sleep,” he says, once he finishes writing the last rune over Harry’s scar. Understandably, he winced. “I’ll wake you when I’m done.”
Rigid with determination, Harry just nods. Tom casts Bewitched Sleep, catching him before he hits the floor, and lays him down. Writing what he needs for the transfer on his scarred arm is a struggle, as Tom’s using his non-dominant hand, but he manages. With that done, he Summons the Elder Wand from where he’d temporarily tucked it between some frightfully old vintages, removes the stone from his pocket and the cloak from Harry’s bag, and arranges them so he’s sitting and his cousin’s lying on the cloak with the stone between them. Now, if what Tom read is accurate, the immorality bit is tosh, but the three together ought to help guide the fragment of Voldemort’s soul along the pathway Tom’s laid out for it. Or they’ll do nothing. Perhaps that. Either way, it certainly can’t hurt to have them here.
The spell itself takes half an hour. To jostle the soul fragment free, he uses his wand—similar enough cores to the wand that cast the Curse that created the scar that horcrux should recognise it as not a threat—but transfers the silvery broken flicker to the tip of the Elder Wand—an identical match to the wand responsible for his own scar—and before it gains any awareness of what’s happening, he transfers it into the healing cut on his arm. There’s a moment between when it slides from the wand tip into the scar it thinks it’s always occupied and when it settles in for good, a brief window of opportunity that Tom takes when he focuses on the unnatural sheen over the scar, and says, “Avada Kedvra.”
I usually do this in a train station, says an old woman, who sits beside Tom on the lakeside outside Hogwarts, with a baby swaddled in a blanket beside her. Train stations, waystations, stations of any sort. But you have a better grasp of time than that, don’t you, Tom?
Tom looks at her. She’s not just an old woman. This is Mia, the version of her that raised James Potter, and therefore has no business talking to him. By default, then, this isn’t Mia.
You’re Death, he says, as he takes in the missed details, like the freckle in Mia’s left eye. Am I dead?
You knew it could happen, says Death. Calculated risk, I think you’d call it? Such a bright boy, you are, Tom, but you’re also bloody stupid. You never once stopped to consider that perhaps the fairy tale could be real. Well, a bit. Now, Tom, you have three choices.
Three?
Interesting analogy you used, Death says, all those years ago for the boy. Time, death, water—more than one culture would agree with your assessment of the lake, while in others, the words for future and past, upriver and downriver are interchangeable. If you hadn’t created such ripples in the water when you appeared at Albus Dumbledore’s feet, it’s Harry Potter I would be having this conversation with instead, though not just yet. Sweet Harry, he always is. Miserable Harry, as he’d be. Innocent, darling Harry. Can you imagine how easy it would have been for a man like Albus to dance the boy from under the stairs on his puppet strings? He needed someone to tell him no, that Albus. And Harry. He’ll never understand you killed his fate as easily as you killed the bit of soul embedded in his scar.
Tom glances further down the bank at the thing swaddled in the blankets. That’s it, he says, isn’t it?
Oh yes, says Death. Ephemeral things, soul fragments. In just a minute or two, it’ll fade into smoke carried off on the breeze. The man who calls himself Voldemort fought so hard to achieve immortality, but all he did was ensure he could never be—well, we needn’t get into all that philosophising, or we’ll be here all night. Now, Tom, you can choose to die, in which case, I’ll show you the way, though I won’t tell you what you’ll find there. You can dive into this lake, where the floor will become your world, and return to the moment when you left, but you’ll never forget the life you lived here. Or you can return to the boy and finish what you started.
All right, he says. What’s the drawback to option three?
Death smiles. The expression is cold, ill-suited for Mia’s face. That would be telling, Tom, Death says. Are you ready to take the risk?
He should probably ask more questions, but time’s ticking on Sirius’ timer, so he just says, Send me back.
When Tom wakes, his arm is bleeding. This makes sense, but it’s still frustrating. He stems the flow with a basic healing spell, Scours the mess and the writing, then turns his attention to Harry. Another Scouring spell to rid Harry of the writing, then a fourth to wake him.
By the time he opens his eyes, the cloak’s back in his bag and the stone is in Tom’s pocket. “How do you feel?” he asks, helping Harry slowly to his feet.
His cousin blinks slowly. “Lighter,” he says. “Like, after you’ve had a really bad cold and your head clears. That sort of lighter. Is that weird?”
“I would take it as a good sign,” Tom says, as he removes the paper from his pocket. “No pain? Odd aches?” No and no. All right. That’s good too. “This will bring you back to Sirius. I’ll join you when I’m done running errands.”
Naturally, Harry protests that he wants to stay and help. The only reason he agrees to leave, however reluctantly, is the realisation that he’s shaky on his feet, so should see Adrianna. Clearly, it was too much to hope there would be no side effects at all, though Tom had. He initiates the hug, rare as that is, before sending his cousin off, but he’s just so keenly aware of how close they came to losing each other. For a moment, Harry clings, as if he knows it, too.
When they separate, Tom hands Harry the rucksack. A second later, he’s gone.
Additionally warding the undercroft and writing out Harry is nearly two hours’ work. As it’s such a small space, Tom can more intricately defend against Apparition or portkeys than Hogwarts or the Ministry, particularly now that he’s added in adjustments based on what he learned from Dobby. Even non-humans aren’t getting through these. The wand itself he hides in a magically cleaned and emptied bottle of his father’s favourite wine, a reference Voldemort won’t understand, seeing as he murdered the man. Does Voldemort even drink wine? Tom can’t imagine his counterpart partaking in such an ordinary human vice. Or fun, for that matter.
Tom leaves through the door, though it’s a tight squeeze between that and the glass case holding the fire extinguisher, which he adjusts the position of slightly to avoid it being affected by his Notice Me Not Charm. Next: waking the Muggles. After that: Apparating to Crook Peak, where he sends the stone back to the bottom of the bog. The thing is sixteen feet deep, under layers of peat and water so affected by runoff it’s practically poison. Even if, somehow, Voldemort gets to Tom and breaks the Fidelius Charm, the likelihood of him dredging even a magical stone out of this mess without knowing where it is, is slim to none.
When all that is done, he sleeps for an hour or so on one of the sofas on the back patio like a cat in the sun, and has weird, confused dreams that he doesn’t remember upon waking. It’s just about half one; the kids and teenagers will be eating, which means everyone else will be eating, which means he’ll be expected to eat, and though this shouldn’t be a problem, it is.
But he promised himself he’d fix whatever this…thing is over the summer. Just because he probably died for a minute today doesn’t give him an excuse to mess that up any more than a mediwitch injecting him with the Draught permits him to relapse.
He portkeys back to his bedroom, where he’s not going to run into any teenagers or the influx of pre-H students, but doesn’t mind finding Emmeline there flipping through a pamphlet of last season’s Quidditch statistics. Sunlight spills through the open doors leading to the balcony, perfectly illuminating her expression of relief before she’s on her feet, then on her toes, the only way she’s tall enough to wrap her arms around his neck. “Harry’s fine,” she says, predicting his first question as he returns the hug. She smells sweet, like the citrus that always laces the air and her apple blossom soap. “Just sleeping. What about you?”
“In desperate need of coffee,” he answers, pulling back enough to see her face. She’s doing the thing where her eyes seem twice their normal size, which must be magic. “Otherwise, perfectly fine. Doesn’t particularly matter if you know now—Harry was the last horcrux. Couldn’t rightly mention it until now, in case Voldemort decided another kidnapping was in order with a new contingency plan for your excellent Occlumency.”
“Probably named Bellatrix Lestrange,” she says, without pretending it wasn’t a possibility, as they separate and she lowers herself back to the ground. “How did that happen? What did you do? Did it involve all those books on wandlore—all right, we’ll take coffee and food out on the balcony, and then you’ll tell me. You look like you need it.”
Well, he does need the coffee.
Ten minutes later, they do have coffee, as well as an assortment of food scavenged from the lunch leftovers, which mostly consists of fruit and the vegetables that could have gone into the sandwiches. He picks as he explains the situation: Voldemort’s soul being so fragmented a piece just broke off on its own to stick to Harry’s scar, that Dumbledore literally guessed this ages ago and part of the deal was that Tom figured out how to remove it, the roundabout way he came to the conclusion about the Hallows. “Reckon it wouldn’t have worked if I didn’t have a scar to mirror Harry’s,” he says, “but I needed the right wands, or at least the cores. The soul fragments in a horcrux are semi-sentient. Too much risk it would fight back without the right amount of sameness. Then the Hallows were meant to have some sort of control over souls, so I figured, in terms of a pure theoretical spell with no opportunity for me to practise prior, it was better to explore the most likely path to achieve success.”
He thinks this is perfectly reasonable, but she still smacks him with a pillow. “I cannot believe,” she says, “you cast the Killing Curse on yourself, you prat.”
“Abraxas Malfoy once said I couldn’t fire off a Killing Curse worth a damn,” he says, “and I killed the horcrux in the snake, but not the snake. The risk was lower than if I’d used basilisk venom with the anti-venom on standby.”
She looks as if she’d like to smack him again, which is not reasonable. It all makes perfect sense. “But you’d never cast the Curse with the Elder Wand,” she says, “which sent you here. Did you consider that as a risk?”
“No,” he says, suitably chastened. “I didn’t, I suppose.”
“Well, don’t tell Harry,” she says. “He was just beside himself with worry, which really speaks to how exhausted he was that he was able to fall asleep. But that’s all he is. No lasting repercussions for you, then?”
“Er, well,” he says, and adds everything about his not-dream. He should probably tell someone, he figures, and that someone isn’t his fifteen-year-old cousin.
For a moment, she sits in stunned silence. Then she leans across the small table and kisses him. “You’re very stupid,” she says bluntly, “but thank you for choosing here.”
Quite truthfully, he answers, “I’d never have chosen any differently,” so of course, she kisses him again.
A few days into July, the Head of the Aurors and his wife are murdered in their beds. Rufus Scrimgeour takes over.
Quietly, so none of the pre-H students who have an inkling about Wixen politics can hear, Sirius says, “You saw him, Tom, even if you didn’t meet him.”
Tom glances away from where Emmeline’s crouched down beside Demelza, one of the pre-H students, at the breakfast table, inspecting her drawing of yesterday’s Quidditch practice. It’s morning, the most chaotic time of day, and so early the sun’s barely kissing the tops of the citrus trees above the lake. Thankfully, Tom’s managed to wriggle out of breakfast, even if he, inevitably, can’t do the same with lunch and tea. Tired as he is, it takes a moment to draw his attention back to the conversation and ask, “Really? When?”
“He was the fourth person in front of the door,” Sirius says. He doesn’t need to get more specific than that. By now, Tom also knows this means Scrimgeour is the one who killed Yaxley.
“I see,” Tom says.
To make it worse, Sirius adds, “He’s angling to become Minister of Magic one day. Next, I’m guessing.”
“How bad would that be?” says Hermione, who’s watching the going-ons around the long table set up in the centre of the portico with some amusement. She, Harry, and Draco managed to avoid helping this morning, though she minds that the alternative is talking politics far less than the boys do. Surely, though, it must be better than the with-the-sunrise tennis practice her mother and Narcissa favour lately.
With the edge of a frown, the Temp says, “Bad enough. He’s not Fudge, so he wouldn’t deny anything, but if he pretended the conflict was going better than it is? That wouldn’t be a shock. He’s one of those purebloods so desperate to make up for the mistakes of his family’s past that he goes too far in the opposite direction. His father was a British supporter of Grindelwald.”
So that, Tom thinks, is why the name sounded familiar the first time he heard it. That was from his student, Kellah Yaxley, not Sirius. “They’re Scots, aren’t they, the Scrimgeours?” he says, trying to remember. “Not Hogsmeade, but somewhere in the Highlands.”
“Perthshire,” the Temp says. “We went to Hogwarts together, though he was a few years older than me. Our paths didn’t cross much, even when he was made Head Boy. You would’ve missed him by a year, Sirius.”
“Well, Percy’s finishing his Mastery this year,” Hermione says, “and no doubt Shacklebolt will poach him for the Office of the Minister of Magic. If Percy’s not Minister in ten years, the only reason is that Shacklebolt’s died too soon.”
Without pause, Harry says, “And then you’re next, are you?”
“It’s an option worth considering,” she answers, which is nothing less than Tom expected. He’s known she would be Minister of Magic one day for years. So must Harry, because he doesn’t roll his eyes.
“Who’s heading the investigation into your last boss?” Tom asks Sirius, because that’s equally relevant to this conversation.
“Donovan and Pugh,” Sirius answers. “They’re working with a couple others, all ‘senior members.’ Between the deaths and the promotions and the sackings, all it takes is ten years to be a senior member now. Tonks and I are still working to find the Muggle Studies professor, though we all know it’ll go nowhere, which is probably why we’ve not been given any resources. Heard yet if they’re looking for anyone to take over for her?”
Just last week, Charity Burbage left to deliver a letter to a Muggleborn student. Now Burbage is missing, the boy’s parents are exceedingly dead, and to everyone’s bemusement, Niles is student sixteen. Despite how awful the situation is, it’s become something of a joke that Felicia Zabini is now the Ministry’s solution for where to house wartime orphans.
When they first heard of this Draco’s answer was that this is proof that there needs to be a Wixen Cafcass. Tom needed the reference explained as much as the purebloods, because the term didn’t exist in the 50s, but that only makes it weirder that Draco Malfoy knew it.
“Finding willing professors is difficult,” Tom says, “and without confirmation of her death, they’ll probably wait until August to start. Maybe if the situation’s dire enough, they’ll ask Arthur.”
Horrified, Draco says, “But they can’t. He still says ‘felly-phone.’ I learned the word the first time I heard it, and I was a git. But why can’t they hire a Squib or something? Filch is a Squib, so they can see the castle just fine.”
“No idea,” Tom says. “Though, if they’re forced to cut Muggle Studies, perhaps the school will finally exorcise Binns and hire a competent professor. The subject’s functionally useless by this point anyway.”
Everyone seems to think this is a grand idea, but soon peel apart, as they all, in some capacity, need to go to work. As Felicia’s whole plan had to be thrown together in something of a rush and continues evolving, it’s not as if she could hire everyone she needed. Narcissa’s the only one who took her NEWTs with the aim to handle pre-H education, so she’s doing the bulk of the work with little practical experience other than having homeschooled Draco. Then, Hermione, being Hermione, decided to teach the kids Muggle history; Harry, Draco, and Ron teach groups flying, with Emmeline supervising and Ginny typically joining for the fun of it; Felicia and Blaise teach Italian; Remus and Daphne handle magical creatures; when Tom’s around, he does non-magical science and writing, but sporadically (when he isn’t teaching the teenagers nonverbal magic), with Theo taking over writing when he isn’t there. Pansy helps Molly and Gwaine (and Rosie, when she’s feeling up to it) in the kitchen, proving why she’s good at potions when she has someone to help her with the maths. The Temp handles the grounds, which he’s always done, though Astoria tags along. All the adults trade out who follows Shay and Ben to work, or who supervises random “outings,” because the fussy purebloods refuse to use the term field trip. Cleaning’s as easy as ever thanks to magic, but it’s all that special brand of chaos that does nothing good for Tom’s already frayed nerves.
Thank Merlin he’s back at his research.
In the past few years, he’s gotten very good at international portkeys, so has no qualms about travelling to different magical reserves and Muggle zoos to collect data. Some of it is for the conference in August, so he must be careful not to sully that with magic, but mainly, he’s started the first ever comprehensible research on Parseltongue, up to and including whether it can be taught to other people. That’s still tentative and purely theoretical, though Harry, who appears to have lost the skill along with the horcrux, Emmeline, Daphne, and Charlie are his early test subjects. Romania’s nice, because Tom can kip with his friend, and Slovenia is, because he’s always glad to see the basilisk, but the London Zoo—imperative for his Muggle research—is bittersweet. Every time he looks at his coworkers, the guilt he feels is overwhelming, but if Voldemort was ever going to involve Muggles, he’s likely to find them first. Unfortunately, it was just a safety precaution.
With how busy he is, he’s also so tired by the time he reaches home that he’s less likely to dream, which is necessary, as his dreams lately have all been fragmented, tattered, senseless things that seem intent on reminding him that he made the decision to stay without demanding to know what staying meant. Is the bit about immortality not a lie after all? Is it that when he dies, his soul will be like what remained of the horcrux, snuffed out to nothing and blown away like smoke? Rather than immortality, is it a shortened lifespan? Something else altogether?
Whatever it is, he assumes he won’t like the answer.
And he is, if he’s honest with himself, dodging the conversation that lurks between him and Sirius. It hasn’t happened yet, but Tom can feel it lying in wait, ready to spring. There are other conversations he’s dodging too, mostly with Harry, who Tom knows is desperate to ask what will happen now. How long will people keep dying, disappearing, need to be afraid, because Voldemort’s at large? They’d be fair questions, but the answers aren’t any his cousin will like. We don’t know where he is, and I can’t track him again, because using any biological component as the basis will just find myself, and to try his wand, I’ll have to admit I killed the bird the first time. That’s the problem with being the genetic counterpart to a Wix who posits magic based on cruelty and blood-puritism as the ultimate truth: Tom, by contrast, must be a paragon of fucking virtue who’s never seen to do anything dodgy, lest it be construed that he displays the same tendencies.
He successfully avoids Harry. Sirius, however, finds Tom on the cliff above the pond on another early morning, when he’s telling an asp viper to clear off from the grounds and to inform his friends to do the same, because biting two-legged creatures is bad, unless they attack first. “Is it safe for me to come close?” Sirius asks, eyeing the snake on Tom’s shoulders. The snake’s slender, just over two feet long with a zig-zag decorating his scales.
“Yeah,” Tom says, stretching out his arm so the snake can slither into the grass. “I was just explaining why snakes should stay away from and definitely never bite humans, but I’ll have to go out later and find all the traps the neighbour set out to disable them.”
“Daphne’s painfully jealous of you, you know,” Sirius says, coming over to sit once he’s certain the snake’s slithered away, “and I don’t think she even thinks of reptiles as cute.”
“Depends on the reptile,” Tom says. “Ugliest animal I’ve ever seen is a hog badger.”
Though Sirius seems as if he wants to ask further questions, he ultimately decides against it. “You said a lot in June that you wouldn’t have if you weren’t on the Draught,” he says without preamble. “‘Eating disorder’ makes sense, now that I know. When did you go to hospital?”
“Before Emmy and I went to New York,” Tom says. “It’s why we went.”
“How long?” Sirius says. “I went over it in my head, and I know it’s been as long as I’ve known you.”
With a halfhearted shrug, Tom says, “I don’t know. Years?”
“Before you came here?” Sirius says, watching him warily, as if searching for a lie.
Tom fidgets. Shrugs again. “Hard to say,” he answers. “I was on rations as long as I could remember.”
“And how are you doing now?”
“Better,” Tom says. “I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really not a concern.”
“I’d say it was decently important for me to know,” Sirius says, “if this woman said the issue was liable to kill you. Officially, unofficially, we’re both Harry’s guardians. Not to mention I would have told my department to back off from using you as the easy way out. What’s the chance now?”
“I’m better,” Tom says again, without mentioning that if he can survive the Killing Curse twice, a little Blood Magic and physical activity is fine.
Though he hopes that’ll be the end of it, Sirius says, “Just to be clear—you do realise it’s a real issue, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Tom says. “Madam Pomfrey knows too.” Well, sort of. Even if Tom’s finally willing to admit Reiner’s assertion is a bit more than alleged, he doesn’t need the matron of the Hospital Wing and her distrust over his ability to take care of himself involved.
“Good,” Sirius says, a reaction that Tom tries not to resent. “Now, come on. I’m avoiding the real children. Theo’s distracting them for me. They all want to ask what being an Auror’s like, which they’re at liberty to do, since I’ve the day off, but I’m at liberty to ignore it, so wherever you’re going for research, I’m coming with you.”
“Sounds good,” Tom says as he stands. “Want to meet the basilisk?”
Sirius agrees without hesitation. Tom makes the portkey, holds out his arm for his friend to take, and says, “Amber.”
After a debate over issues involving safety vs necessity, everyone except the children, who have no say, agree they need wands. However, twelve eleven-year-olds—as four already have theirs—can’t just enter Ollivander’s without drawing unwanted attention. “We could ask Tonks for help,” Sirius says, when they all start running out of ideas. “Maybe Andy too. Do it over the course of a few days with the help of some Human Transfiguration, and why not?”
“Still,” says Emmeline, who sits on Tom’s other side on the usual sofa the three of them share on the portico, “there’s likely been someone watching since summer began, possibly before. What’s needed is a distraction, like, say, Emmeline Vance entering Quality Quidditch Supplies with her boyfriend?”
“That’s dangerous,” Tom says, before he even thinks about it.
She smiles sunnily. “I know. Won’t it be fun?”
“Dear lord,” says Shay, glancing between them, “the pair of you deserve each other. Well, I say it’s rather stupid, as far as plans go, so—”
“Might have merit,” says Sirius. “Tom will agree in a moment once he thinks it through.”
It’s annoying how right he is.
“Can’t we help?” Harry says from further down the table. “We’re NEWT students now, and if Emmeline goes to Quality, and I head to, I don’t know—”
“Not Flourish and Blotts,” says Draco.
“Gringotts?” says Hermione.
“Floreans?” suggests Theo.
Harry settles with Ron’s suggestion, which is the twins’ joke shop. “Yeah, they’re on opposite ends of Diagon,” he says, like this is the most brilliant idea anyone has ever thought of. “Even if there are Death Eaters everywhere, they’ll have to separate, and they already learned their lesson about trying to enter the shop, the twins said, so it’d be interesting to see if they’d try.”
“Except that they would,” Molly says dryly, “and then you’d all be at risk. And any innocent customers in the store. Royston hid people back in the first war. No doubt he’d help if asked, but Fred and George will treat it as a laugh.”
Anyone who’s ever spent more than a minute with the twins knows that this is true, though the news about Royston is new. “If we’re clever about it,” Arthur says, offering no defence for his children, “I think we may be able to do it in one day, though we’ll need to ask for additional help. A couple people I know from work might be willing. Or from outside of work. I discovered, through rather suspicious means, that Fleur Delacour has moved to London. She could easily enter with Charlotte, just calling her Gabrielle and chattering on about Beauxbatons in French.”
“And why, Arthur,” Narcissa asks, so the rest of them don’t have to, “do you know about the comings and goings of Fleur Delacour?”
“Well,” he says, with a sideways glance at Molly, “I may have heard it from Bill.”
“Bill!” Molly says, turning to her husband. “What does Bill have to do—”
Arthur clears his throat. “Well,” he says again, “she’s working in Interspecies Relations at Gringotts to improve her English, isn’t she, and with him being home—”
“He’s home?”
As the two break into a furious, albeit quiet argument in the corner that Ginny decides she just must involve herself in, Felicia says to the rest of them, “Three can simply go with their parents. I’ll write to them when we settle on a day.”
The teenagers (including Ginny) protest, in their hive mind way, that it’s unfair they aren’t included. When the resulting row (spearheaded by Molly, who’s already angry) quietens, Sirius makes everything worse by saying, “You know, I could talk sense into the twins.”
“You cannot be considering this,” says Rosie, horrified. “They can’t even Apparate yet.”
“Even Voldemort himself wouldn’t attack Gringotts without provocation,” Sirius says. “Goblins would turn from a neutral party to an active enemy in a heartbeat, and he can’t risk that when British Wixen wealth is tied up in their hands. Now, if we use polyjuice—”
“It takes a month to brew!” Pansy says, as Gwaine points out that seeing Harry is a decent way to turn a conflict involving just Death Eaters into one also involving Voldemort, which they shouldn’t bring down upon the good people of Diagon Alley.
“You’re not about to run off and fight Voldemort, young lady,” Ben says, when Hermione tries to enter into the discussion with a counter-argument about a Potioneer’s shop in Rome. “You aren’t an adult until you’re eighteen—”
“Seventeen,” she says, but he just answers, “Eighteen by our standards, so—”
“Oh,” says Molly, suddenly keen. “Eighteen is the age of majority for Muggle society, is it? Maybe we should all be following the Muggle way—”
Which, of course, starts another row.
Tom calms everyone down in the end with the age-old practice of bribery. “Just accept your fate,” he says, “and I promise to teach everyone entering their sixth year how to Apparate.”
Though Ginny isn’t best pleased, she’s just one voice amongst many, and easy to drown out, which allows the rest of them to decide on a date.
Emmeline is careful to inspect the Firebolt in the window. “I wonder when the new model is coming out,” she says, leaning forward a bit to look at the finer details. Her hair, longer than it was when any Death Eater last saw her, is twirled back in a bun and Transfigured to be a few shades lighter than her normal dark brown. Her sunglasses seem to swallow half her face. Her robes are stunningly ordinary.
His purposely bad disguise isn’t any better: fake glasses over Transfigured blue eyes, plain robes, his hair lightened to a drab brown. He pretends to hide without really hiding that he’s checking around him, careful not to linger anywhere too long. Already, he recognised Dalia Crabbe, who’s very deliberately not recognising him.
It does help to be the favourite professor.
They enter. The bell above the shop door jangles. It’s empty except for Royston.
Royston beams and sweeps out from behind the counter. “Miss Vance,” he says, shaking her hand. “Mr—no, Professor Ryder now, isn’t it? All the stock you see is last year’s unsellables, merchandise with dates or names that just can’t carry over to a decent sales rack. No harm done, I thought, if it’s all—”
He never finishes that thought, as the door opens and three Death Eaters swarm in. Tom blocks the first Stunner and flings out one of his own, striking the man in the front, but the one who looks suspiciously like the Pritchard brothers bursts the ceiling open with Reducto, so Emmeline’s Full-Body Locking Curse’s hits debris. Royston gets the tile about to fall on them with the same Curse, turning it to dust that clouds their vision. “What are you doing?” maybe-Pritchard says on the other side of the smoke screen.
Dalia shouts out in alarm—there’s the the sound of broken glass—Tom clears the dust—
Emmeline’s Stupefy catches maybe-Pritchard in the side of the head. He tips forward over the other man, and smacks into the ground face first. His nose audibly breaks.
Slowly and shakily, Dalia rises from her crouch. She must have tried to get maybe-Pritchard from behind, but missed or was seen, and dodged whatever he sent back in return, because his spell hit the door. Broken glass shimmers on the floor around her. There’s more in her hair. Shards have cut deep into her arms and, presumably, her back.
For good measure, Tom puts the others to sleep before addressing any of them.
“Stay still,” he says as Vanishes the glass. Emmeline and Royston handle Episkey. Dalia’s in too much shock to do anything herself, but given she was just hurt trying to help them, it seems cold not to help her in return.
Dalia’s eyes dart between the three of them. “Thank you,” she says, lowering her arms. “They—” She stops, takes a deep breath, and tries again. “They’re all out. Any follower left in Azkaban, though the worst are in foreign prisons. I don’t know how it isn’t in the papers. Only issue is they don’t have wands.”
“How many is that?” Royston asks as Tom tries and fails to accept that the situation was allowed to get so out of hand that, apparently, twelve more followers are out. Followers, she’s very clear on, though. Only a few have the Mark.
“And now he’s trying to recruit from the few students left at home,” she continues in a rush. “Those in their sixth and seventh years—having us, you know, the parents do it—but none of them are interested, and my husband and I, we’re not trying with Vin.”
It doesn’t matter overly much what Dalia believes, Tom thinks. If she was on their side of the conflict, she’d panic just as much about her son joining the Order, because he’s not cut out for combat. The boy’s not stupid. He just has very poor impulse control and doesn’t always think things through, so if anything, the lack of stupidity is more of a hindrance than a help.
“Fix your clothes,” Emmeline says, ignoring the prone figures on the ground. “Just walk out. Say they didn’t come and find you.”
As if only now noticing the state of her robes, Dalia curses, then goes through the motions of clearing the blood and fixing the tears. “I’m rubbish at Occlumency,” Dalia says when she’s done. “He’ll know I’m lying in an instant. I hate to ask, but are any of you good at memory modification?”
Actually requesting to have your own memory modified is mad, but Royston both claims to be exceptional at it, and treats it as if it’s perfectly normal. Tom pretends not to notice what’s going on there as he sends the men to Sardinia. Merlin forbid Voldemort has his eye on expanding beyond Britain’s borders, because Tom doesn’t want to encounter any of these people again, except at trial.
He stands to join Emmeline as Royston shoves Dalia out the broken door. It jingles behind her, a sound at odds with all that broken glass.
“Glad you came?” Tom asks Emmeline, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, as if he can shield her from the Tornadoes merchandise staring her in the face. She hasn’t looked so insulted since she relayed the tale of Caulfield asking her not to play for Ireland.
“I was hoping for more of a fight, if I’m honest, but what else can we expect when these Death Eaters just insist on helping us?” she says, before gesturing at last year’s unsellables. “This cannot be allowed to stand.”
“I promise, Emmy,” he says, not entirely joking, “you’ll be back in the air by this time next year.”
She looks up at him and quirks a brow. “You promise?” she says, also like it’s not entirely a joke. He nods solemnly. “Well, love, I’ll hold you to that.”