Chapter Text
There was really very little reason for Harry to stay in Little Whinging after he officially found out about the magical world, especially since everyone — everyone who mattered, in this case just Harry and Aunt Petunia — agreed that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Yes, the neighbours might talk if he just suddenly disappeared, and if he wasn't there Aunt Petunia would have to take care of the house all by herself, but they put it around that one of Harry's long-lost relatives on his father's side had recently made contact with them, and Harry would be staying with him from now on, and Aunt Petunia was going to have to take care of the house by herself when he went to school, anyway.
The neighbours were more than pleased to see him go, and since every day Harry and his Bag of Magic Shite were in the house was another day Dudley might stick his nose in something both Harry and Aunt Petunia would prefer he didn't (in his ongoing quest to prove that Harry was having him on about magic being very boring, really), losing his help around the house for a month was a small price to pay for his absence (and that of the Bag of Magic Shite). Harry, for his part, still couldn't practise magic at the Dursleys' house, which was definitely a thing he wanted to do now that he had a wand and spell books and stuff, so he was absolutely willing to rent a room in Charing for the rest of August. It took him a few days commuting in on the Knight Bus to figure out how to go about doing that, but by Wednesday he managed to find a boarding house tucked away between Diagon and the nicer end of Knockturn, on a side-street called Periwinkle Way which didn't seem too sketchy, and whose landlady was willing to overlook the fact that he was eleven so long as he paid each week in advance.
Freedom was, Harry found, rather a strange concept. Not having any responsibilities outside of taking care of himself was almost uncomfortable in the amount of free time it afforded him. The kitchenette in the room he was renting was really little more than the magic equivalent of a single ring burner and a sink with a single tap — he had to cast a fire-spell into a bowl beneath the little cooking grate, and a warming charm on the tap if he wanted hot water for washing up. Not that that was a problem. For one thing, simple little spells like that were well within his ability, once he found them in the book Odysseus found for him to go along with the Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1): Spelman's Comprehensive Compendium of Choice Charms — it was much older, but wasn't limited to just the things they'd be learning in lessons this year. And for another, there were enough restaurants in and around Diagon Alley that he could eat dinner at a different one every night the entire three and a half weeks he lived on Periwinkle Way.
He didn't, of course, he found a couple that were so good he just had to keep going back and trying different dishes, but the point was he didn't need to cook for himself. Or clean, really. He was a fairly tidy person when left to his own devices, without Dudders around to mess things up.
So the three weeks and three days before Harry was to take the train to Hogwarts passed in a happy blur of reading textbooks and history books; practising occlumency (though it was kind of hard to tell if he was doing it right without someone to test him) and simple spells; and hanging out around Diagon and Knockturn Alleys. Despite Odysseus's warnings, no one had given him any trouble in Knockturn. He'd remembered that he didn't want people to know he was the Harry Potter before he introduced himself to anyone else (given that everyone seemed to think he was a Black, he figured that was as good a pseudonym as any), and he didn't stand out as being too pretty or striking in the magical world, though he was pretty sure most of the witches and some of the wizards were using magic to make themselves look better. They definitely used magic to charm their hair different colours and make moving tattoos (which were wicked cool, Harry wanted one).
So Harry Black — presumed bastard son of Sirius Black and a muggle woman he'd had a one-night-stand with, who had just found out about magic (but was very obviously one of those Blacks, even if he was illegitimate and therefore didn't actually have access to more gold than Midas and hadn't been raised like a bloody toff) — had quickly become a familiar sight, poking around different shops — Borgin and Burke's was the best, they had some absolutely wicked cursed jewellery, and a hand of glory, and a reanimated budgie (like a zombie bird) — and chatting with proprietors and shop assistants who weren't busy and other shoppers and boarders at Missus Palmer's about the government and the fact that vampires existed and magic tattoos — just...whatever came up, really.
One of those things that just happened to come up, talking to a bloke who worked at a café, was possibly the coolest thing ever — magical duelling, fighting with magic, was a sport! There were other magical sports too, most of them played on brooms, which were also delightfully violent (they had these things called bludgers that flew around trying to knock people off their flying broomsticks), but compared to a sport where the entire point was fighting, quidditch sounded positively tame.
There were two big duelling gyms in Charing (big-ish — nothing in the magical world was really big, they had a couple dozen serious members each), affiliated with the International Duelling League. They held a major tournament in the last week of the summer, with League Standard kids' and adults' divisions, meaning they followed the IDL's rules, and a non-Standard, totally unofficial, no-holds-barred, after-hours tournament at a place in Knockturn called Morgenstern's. (Harry couldn't get in to watch, unfortunately, but he was sure it was even more awesome than just normal duelling.) The official tournament was open to anyone to participate, and people could pay to watch.
Harry wasn't stupid enough to try entering, since he only knew about thirty spells, which he'd learned from books over the week and a half between his first trip to Charing and finding out about the tournament, but he honestly couldn't think of anything that would keep him from going to watch. (Next year, though...) The last week of the summer, therefore, was split between watching the tournament with wide-eyed, childish glee (his favourite was a witch called Nymphadora Tonks who'd entered independently, meaning she wasn't a member of either of the Charing gyms — she lost in the official final to a grizzled old warlock, but Harry overheard her later daring him to meet her at Morgenstern's sometime and she'd kick his arse) and haunting various bookshops looking for the spells he'd seen used.
Not just Odysseus's — Odysseus wasn't actually a wizard, Harry didn't think, and he definitely wasn't a fighter. He couldn't help Harry find information on, say, a curse that caused massive slashing wounds but also cauterised them so the other guy wouldn't bleed out, and felt like rage and destruction and the triumphant screech of a predatory bird when it was cast, just based on Harry's description. He could show Harry books full of illegal curses he wouldn't find anywhere else, but since the tournament was official and followed IDL rules, everything they were throwing around had to be legal. There were a few other bookshops around, though — Flourish and Blott's and Inkheart's were the two big ones (again, big-ish) — that had shopkeepers and assistants with more experience with that sort of thing.
One of the witches at Inkheart's had recognised Harry from the tournament — apparently she'd seen him there, though he hadn't noticed her — and put it together pretty quickly that those were the curses he was looking for. She was the one who pointed out that there were official dictionaries of curses that Duelling League judges used as a reference, and showed him how to look up specific spells by their effects. He still had to find other books with those spells in them, but having names to reference made that much easier. All of them were well beyond the ability of a barely eleven-year-old wizard with no formal training at all, but that didn't stop Harry buying at least a dozen different books full of curses he definitely wanted to learn as soon as he actually could. (He had money now, he might as well spend some of it.)
All in all, those three and a half weeks were easily the most interesting Harry had ever had and, accordingly, they seemed to fly by. It seemed like no time at all before he woke up and it was the First of September, and he had to go catch a train.
The Hogwarts Express left from a magical platform at King's Cross. According to a bloke who didn't go to Hogwarts (he went to a day school somewhere in the Midlands) but returned trollies to the muggle side of the platform for pocket money over the summer and on weekends, the Hogwarts Express wasn't the only magical train. A lot of people who hated the way the Knight Bus lurched around and couldn't apparate, or had a lot of luggage that couldn't be shrunken for one reason or another, used trains. Especially if they were going to Ireland or Brittany, in France — apparently the floo (fire-travel) didn't work across water. Of course, trains traditionally wouldn't either (they actually ran under the water), but magic.
It was the only train running this morning, though, and according to Gary — who Harry had met a few days ago, scoping out the platform so he wouldn't be late today — this was one of the busiest days of the year. He'd warned Harry that he probably wouldn't have time to talk today if Harry managed to find him. Harry came in on foot through the muggle station and actually made it about fifteen minutes early — just enough time to find a seat, after most people had arrived...or so he had expected.
As it turned out, most people seemed to be apparating or using the floo or something called "port-keys" to get onto the platform. The port-key people had been coming in every few minutes for a while, he thought, but it seemed everyone else had also thought that fifteen minutes sounded like plenty of time to board the train. The fireplaces people were flooing to were a constant rush of green flames, one mage practically tripping over the last, and Harry actually saw a wizard apparate on top of a witch who was too slow getting out of the Arrival Box. (There was an area set aside specifically for apparating to, to prevent exactly that sort of accident.) Two more people — a mother and daughter — popped out of nowhere to trip over those two before they could get up, like some sort of slapstick routine.
Harry hung back, enjoying watching the chaos, but also waiting until most of them were already on board. He'd planned to get here after the rush so he would be able to choose who he sat with, rather than taking a compartment and then being stuck with whoever decided to sit with him. He didn't, for example, want to get stuck with that witch Molly's family for the entire trip.
They were one of the few clearly magical families who came in from the muggle station — just a few minutes after Harry, so he noticed them right away. There was an older boy with them this time, who wasted no time disappearing off to the loo to change into his robes, reappearing before the twins escaped their mother's smothering farewells and ran off to find their friends with a shiny prefect's badge pinned to his chest. Ron, the youngest boy, was not so lucky, and only escaped her clutching embrace when the warning whistle sounded.
Harry made sure to board several cars away. He wasn't in the mood for more teasing about Harry (or Harriet) Harrison, or to listen to Ron's whinging. It was, of course, possible that without his mother there the younger boy wouldn't bother complaining about shite none of them could change, but somehow Harry doubted it. He also ducked past a compartment with a bunch of girls who looked about his age when he saw the distinctive bushy hair of the girl who had been so furious with him for delaying the Muggleborn Shopping Trip. Not that he wasn't in the mood to argue with someone about nothing in particular (Harry was always up for a good shouting match), but he doubted it would make a good first impression on anyone else in the compartment.
After that, there were a few older boys and a very uncomfortable-looking firstie who hadn't been smart enough not to take a seat right away; a compartment of mixed age kids, some of whom were clearly siblings, chatting animatedly, Harry was betting they already knew each other; a bunch of girls who were maybe first- or second-years and gave off such an air of snootiness he almost wanted to join them just to ruin their day; and a bunch of older kids sharing photos, probably from their holidays. Finally he came to a compartment that was only half-full, with three other boys who were probably also firsties — from magical families, they were already wearing robes — and seemed to know each other, but weren't really talking. One of them was reading, and one seemed to be drawing the third, who was playing with a little black kitten. Or...something that looked like a kitten, at least. It didn't really feel like one, magically, though not in the same way as the not-cat Harry had disposed of for Mrs. Figg.
Harry found a loo to change into his own school robes, before coming back to knock lightly on the door and slide it open with a friendly little half-smile stuck firmly in place. "Mind if I join you?"
The boy with the sketchbook looked up, startled. "Um, Blaise?"
"It's fine, Danny. He's still on the leash. Otherwise he'd probably look like your mum burning your sketchbook or something." He smirked at the messy-haired artist, oblivious to Harry's confusion.
"Oh, piss off, do you want me to draw you or not?"
"You love drawing me, don't lie."
"You love the attention, don't lie."
"Come on in," the boy with the book said, giving his friends an exasperated glare. "I'm Theo Nott. These rude wankers are Danny Tonks—" He nodded at the artist. ("Hi.") "—and Blaise Zabini."
The not-kitten hopped up to the other boy's shoulder to stare at Harry. "Yeah, come in, have a seat. I could use some company, since these two might as well be on Mars most of the time."
Danny stuck his tongue out at him. Theo just rolled his eyes.
"Harry Black," Harry said, more out of habit than because he didn't want them to know who he was. He didn't imagine the professors would be willing to call him Black, they'd find out soon enough anyway.
When he turned back from heaving his bag up into the storage space and fell onto the bench beside Blaise, the dark-skinned boy was giving him an odd look. Were those orange flecks in his caramel-coloured eyes? (Harry knew he wasn't the only wizard with inhumanly-coloured eyes...) "Who the heck lies about their name?"
Danny laughed. "Didn't Dora tell you she didn't have a first name the first time you met? Besides, he looks like a Black to me. Didn't know I had another cousin, but." He shrugged.
"Yeah, well, you need to work on your legilimency, mate."
"Wait, you read my mind?" Shite. Harry hadn't even noticed. Maybe he wasn't doing the occlumency thing right at all. He'd thought he was getting the hang of it, being aware of his own mind and manipulating his own perception. Right now he was deliberately not paying attention to how every inch of the bloody train was glowing with magic, or he was sure he'd have a headache almost as bad as in Ollivander's shop. "Why don't you know who I am, then?"
"No, I just know what habitual deception feels like." Well, that was clear as mud. "So who are you really, and why are you in the habit of lying about it?"
"I'll tell you if you tell me what's up with the not-cat," he said, nodding at the thing still glaring at him from the boy's shoulder.
"Coco? He's a boggart. Shape-shifting minor demon. They feed on fear, change into whatever scares you the most to get you to emote." Right, that explained his comment earlier about Danny's mum... "They're not really sapient, though they can imitate people based on your memories. He's under a binding curse right now, because it'd be annoying if he kept turning into a giant spider or whatever as people walk through the corridor."
"Also, cats are on the list of approved familiars, fear demons aren't," Danny added drily.
"Yes, that too. Your turn, mystery boy."
"Okay, first, that is so freaking cool! Best pet ever!" Blaise grinned. Danny rolled his eyes. Theo had returned to his book and was apparently ignoring them all. "I've been lying about my name for the past few weeks because I've been staying in Charing — I was raised by muggles, I can't do magic at my aunt's house and she doesn't want my cousin exposed to it too much, so we agreed there was no reason for me not to move out — and every second person I've met just assumed I'm this bloke Sirius's bastard son, and I was warned that people might freak out if they knew I'm really Harry Potter, so I've just been going along with it."
All three of them just sort of blinked at Harry for a long second. Then Danny said, "Well, you might be Sirius's son. Supposedly he and James Potter were really close. It wouldn't be that weird if they and your mum were secretly a triad."
Harry wasn't sure whether the lack of reaction to the Harry Potter thing was because he'd just implied he didn't want people to make a big deal out of it or because Professor Snape had exaggerated the degree of completely absurd hero-worship people felt for him, but he was beginning to think it was the latter. Odysseus and the Ollivanders hadn't freaked out either, after all.
Also, he'd kind of been assuming that Lily had cheated on James. He hadn't missed the fact that Danny just made it sound like James and Sirius had been a thing. Which wasn't weird in the magical world, or not nearly as much as in the muggle world. Harry had met a couple of homos at Missus Palmer's, and they'd been perfectly nice, normal blokes, aside from living together instead of getting married to witches. He really didn't see what Uncle Vernon's problem with them was. (He was aware that he probably didn't get it because he was a sissy freak himself, but still...) But he was pretty sure that James and Sirius and Lily as a couple of three — that was presumably what a triad was — would be weird here, too.
"Weird, no," Blaise said, grining. "Scandalous, yes. Though it makes it even weirder that he supposedly betrayed them. I'll ask Mira next time I write her. Seems like the sort of thing she would know."
"Supposedly?" Harry repeated, because that was the first he'd heard anyone doubt that Sirius Black had betrayed his parents. As far as he'd managed to piece together, asking various people about the end of the war, all the Blacks except Sirius had openly been on the Dark Lord's side.
That Bella Black Odysseus had mentioned, the one who was probably still the most dangerous witch in Britain even after ten years sitting in prison with soul-sucking monsters — Magical Britain didn't screw around on punishments, Harry was being very careful not to get caught any time he did something he knew was illegal, like reading that occlumency book — had actually been the Dark Lady, and opinions on the attempted Dark Revolution were mixed among the common people who hadn't had much to do with it. The poorer people were, the better their opinion of the Death Eaters tended to be, but some of the really poor, non-human people sort of hated them for failing because they'd thought they'd be better off in a world run by the Dark Lord (they just hated the Light, who were currently in power, more), and the more comfortable people were the more it had bothered them that the Death Eaters had upset the status quo.
Plus there was that whole killing muggleborns thing they'd been sort of notorious for. The more sympathetic people basically said it had nothing to do with them — they didn't want all the muggleborns dead, but they had their own problems, so who gives a shite how the Death Eaters go about provoking the Ministry as long as they're not burning down our homes, we don't care. Besides, just because the Dark Lord lost his mind at the end didn't mean the cause was a bad one. The less sympathetic people — especially those who had had friends or family who were muggleborn, or who were muggleborn themselves — generally used the term "genocidal maniacs" to describe them.
As for what people knew about how the war ended, James and Lily had been fighting on the Light side. James was an auror and Lily sort of a notorious front-line, battlefield healer. "Notorious" because she had a habit, apparently, of losing her shite in the middle of battles and calling on bloody gods to slaughter people or raise the dead or all sorts of neat shite that really didn't fit with the way people talked about her in the Harry Potter Myth.
The Harry Potter Myth was sort of weird. Everyone agreed that Harry's parents had been in hiding in a magical enclave called Godric's Hollow, and the Dark Lord had managed to track them down (with intelligence provided by Sirius Black). According to a forensics report that had been leaked early in Nineteen Eighty-Two, he killed James first. Lily tried to run with Harry, and was killed in an upstairs bedroom. Then he had tried to kill Harry, but his spell backfired or was somehow blocked. It had completely destroyed the Dark Lord's body, and tore the roof off half the bloody house. Baby Harry and Lily's body were fine, though, because it wouldn't be nearly as good a story if they'd also been blown up.
According to random, normal, daylighter-type people (average shopkeepers and so on— the respectable Aunt Petunias and Uncle Vernons of the magical world who made up the majority of the Diagon Alley area, whose version of the story Professor Snape had told him, with much sarcasm) who didn't know much about the Potters or magical theory, Lily had supposedly sacrificed herself to save him, her motherly love somehow miraculously allowing him to survive being hit with the darkest of curses: the Unforgivable Killing Curse, avada kedavra. Either that or Harry, being completely pure and innocent and therefore inherently light, somehow managed to survive it all on his own. Obviously that was total bull. Harry was sure loads of babies had been killed with that curse, people would know if you could just, like, walk around with a baby strapped to your chest as a Killing Curse shield. Most of the people who had told him that were not-so-subtle anti-muggleborn racists, so he figured they just didn't want to give Lily credit.
The poorest of poor people — Starlighters, they called themselves — on the outskirts of society, who didn't have much use for newspapers and the official story and leaked reports, generally thought that Lily had done some crazy ritual magic to save Harry and destroy the Dark Lord, possibly killing herself in the process. They were the ones who'd told Harry that back in the war, when it was happening, she'd had sort of a bad reputation for being into high magic. (Magic where you just asked gods nicely to do things for you was apparently super illegal, even if you were one of the 'good' guys. Also, gods were apparently real.) People who read the papers and shite seemed to have forgotten, somehow, that she had once raised the bloody dead in the middle of a battle in Diagon Alley and ordered them to kill for her, but there were Starlighters who'd been there, who hadn't been able to get away before the fighting started, and they knew what they'd seen.
And the Underground — the community of dark mages and criminals who made up about half of the population of the Knockturn area of Charing, and knew a thing or two about using dark magic (Harry was fairly sure that was the group Professor Snape would belong to, if he weren't a professor) — was absolutely certain Lily had done some crazy ritual magic. According to Odysseus — who, as it turned out, was sort of the most respectable of the Underground mages, and their main connection to other "International Dark" enclaves outside of Britain — the Killing Curse was Unforgivable because it couldn't be blocked with magic (though it could be blocked by solid, conjured objects "of sufficient mass") or healed. It wasn't even that dark, according to Odysseus, not like the other two Unforgivable Curses. But it was soul magic, which apparently made it scarier. In any case, the Power of Love absolutely would not counter it. (An old-fashioned, fairy-tale style tynged cast with her last breath, dooming the Dark Lord to have the next spell he cast backfire, on the other hand...) And even the most racist of the dark wizards had to admit that Lily must have done something because, as Mister Burke from the cool little dark curiosities shop said, all that would happen if Harry Potter really was some miraculous embodiment of light magic at the age of one was that getting hit with something as dark and powerful as the Killing Curse would have hurt like hell and killed him.
In any case, rational people who knew anything about dark magic didn't think Harry had really had anything to do with the Dark Lord's disappearance, but there seemed to be a startling lack of awareness of that fact among the general public, who inexplicably thought that Lily was a saint and Harry Potter was like...wizard Jesus, or something. Or like a phoenix or a unicorn, some rare light creature too good and pure to really just be a normal human person. (Which was absolutely hilarious, because while Harry clearly was a freak, even among freaks, one of the things he had discovered over the course of the past few weeks was that he really liked dark magic. Like...a lot.)
Both James and Lily were part of some vigilante group run by Dumbledore (who was also the Headmaster of Hogwarts, the head of Magic Parliament, and their representative to the Magic UN, because there was apparently no hat he didn't wear). That was what Snape had been referring to when he said Lily put herself in the line of fire. Lily went into hiding a few months after she got pregnant, and stayed in hiding for some unknown reason after Harry was born, though James had apparated in to the Auror Office for work. Harry personally thought it was weird Lily hadn't handed him off to a friend or relative who wasn't fighting in the war and gotten back to it, especially since, from everything Aunt Petunia had said about Lily, Harry couldn't imagine she'd really been the maternal type, but most people seemed to think staying in hiding for fifteen months with a newborn, only seeing your spouse and a few very close friends, was perfectly reasonable behaviour.
One of those few very close friends had been Sirius Black.
The general public opinion of Sirius Black was that he was a bloody nut job. Some of them, thinking Harry was his son, had tried to soften that opinion a bit, but it was still bloody obvious. No one Harry had talked to knew him personally, but the papers had crucified him before any of the Death Eater Trials started, first just as having cracked under the pressures of war and killed all his friends for no reason at all and then because he was supposedly a spy for the Dark Lord all along. Harry sincerely doubted anyone as unstable as people seemed to think Sirius was would have been able to trick everyone into believing he'd been on the side of the Light if he really wasn't, but there were eye-witness accounts of him blowing up a street in Edinburgh to kill a bloke called Peter Pettigrew who accused him of betraying the Potters, and he hadn't denied it. (And even if he had, he was sort of caught red-handed killing Pettigrew and about a dozen bystanders, so he'd still be in prison for that anyway.)
Harry, knowing that he was (probably) Sirius's kid, figured maybe that had something to do with it — if this was a true-crimes show on telly, it definitely would. Lady's lover kills her and her husband because she refuses to leave said husband even after it comes out that her kid belongs to the lover, or something like that. Granted, if he were going to murder someone he thought he'd do it himself, not tell someone else who had it out for them where they were staying, but maybe that was just him. He'd also considered that if Lily had actually been trying to bait the Dark Lord into a trap, she might've told Sirius to tell him where they were staying. That seemed like something she would do, based on shite Aunt Petunia had told him about her. (Though Harry admittedly didn't know how Pettigrew would fit into that scenario.)
In any case, nothing Harry had heard up to this point suggested that Sirius hadn't really betrayed (or 'betrayed') the Potters by telling the Dark Lord where they were.
Danny sighed. "My mum and Lady Zabini were...sort of in a unique position in the war. My mum was the Blackheart's younger sister—" The Dark Lady's younger sister, that was — cool nicknames apparently went along with being the most dangerous witch in Britain. "—before she disowned the House of Black and ran away to marry Dad, and Lady Zabini..." His eyes flicked over to Blaise, who grinned.
"Mira and Bellatrix were adorable schoolgirl lesbians back in the day," he said, failing miserably as he tried not to laugh at the shocked expression on Harry's face. Homos (and presumably dykes) might be more accepted in the magical world, but Harry still didn't expect people to just come out and say things like that. Also, he'd been under the impression that Mira was Blaise's mother. If she fancied ladies, how did that work?
And adorable? The Dark Lady. Adorable. Not a word anyone else Harry had spoken to would use to describe her, but okay...
"Mira wasn't really involved in the war, but she was close to the Blacks, especially Bella's sisters and closest cousins. Including Sirius. He's about ten years younger than her, I think, and she didn't see much of him after he became a blood traitor and ran away to live with his godmother when he was...fifteen or sixteen? But anyway, she never believed he betrayed James and Lily. According to Mira, Sirius loved James. He loved James like Bella loved de Mort—" ("The Dark Lord," Theo inserted without looking up from his book.) "—and was about as likely to betray him."
"And if he had, he definitely would have killed them himself," Danny added. "Mum's theory is that Pettigrew bloke betrayed them, so Sirius hunted him down and executed him with a typical House of Black degree of restraint. Er— The whole House is a bit mental. They're kind of notorious for it." Harry snorted. He was aware. "He definitely wasn't a Death Eater, though. Theo's father was, and he's confirmed that."
Theo apparently had no comment on that — though perhaps compared to Blaise claiming that his mother had been schoolgirl lesbians with the Dark Lady, just having a parent in the organisation wasn't really shocking.
"And, if he had a kid with Lily there's absolutely no way he would've pointed Old Snakeface at them," Blaise added. "Family is sort of a big deal with the House of Black. They brainwashed all the kids to put their family before themselves. Sirius was estranged from the Family, sure, but you can tell talking to Missus Tonks the brainwashing sticks, even decades after disowning them. If he'd started a family with Lily and James, there's no way in hell he would have betrayed them. Mira wouldn't have been in a position to know who the father of Lily's kid was, but she probably would know if the three of them were a thing."
"Lady Zabini's sort of scarily good at people," Danny agreed. "And she takes an interest in Bella's kids — Bellatrix practically raised Mum, and Narcissa, Sirius, and Regulus — Sirius's brother, he died in the war — sort of treats them like her own younger siblings." He grinned. "It drives Draco bonkers."
"Draco?"
"Draco Malfoy," Blaise said, putting on an overly-affected posh tone. "Son of Lord Lucius Malfoy and Lady Narcissa Malfoy née Black, Heir to the Noble House of Malfoy...and all around spoilt brat," he added, reverting to his normal voice. "Cissa doesn't particularly like Mira sticking her nose in and offering opinions she doesn't want to hear, and Draco hates me. Can't imagine why... Oh! Call on the Dark!" he added, as a blond boy slid the compartment door open without knocking. "Draco, darling, we were just talking about you!"
He sneered. "Funny, Zabini, I never talk about you. I suppose I am more interesting than you, though, so perhaps your girlish gossiping is only to be expected."
Blaise put on a vapid smile and fluttered his eyelashes at the blond, who went very pink. "Oh, yes, Draco, darling, you know I find you just fascinating."
"Knock it off, Blaise," Danny said, though he was clearly trying not to laugh. Harry didn't really bother trying. "What's up, Draco?"
"I don't recall inviting you to be informal with me, Tonks," Draco said stiffly.
"Dora says no one stands on formality at school. If you do, you're going to come off as a prick. Her words."
"I can't believe mother didn't let me go to Durmstrang," the noble brat muttered. "I hear they don't let in the riff-raff over there."
Blaise nodded very seriously. "Yes, that's true. Though they have a somewhat different definition of 'riff-raff' — I suspect she used the Hogwarts treaty and the fact that Igor Karkaroff is an untrustworthy turncoat to spare you the embarrassment of failing their entrance exam. Besides, you don't speak Danish," he added, as the blond went even redder.
"They hold lessons in French," Theo informed them. "Did you want something, Malfoy?"
"I was coming to ask whether Tonks found someone to smuggle in that pathetic old Thunderbolt of his or whether he'd be riding the even more pathetic school brooms this year, but now I think I'll just advise you to find better friends, Nott. What on earth would your father think, associating with up-jumped common bastards and half-bloods, and— Well, honestly, I've no idea who this girl is," he drawled, turning to Harry, "but I've never seen you before, so you can't be anyone important."
"Nope," Harry said cheerfully, more than willing to let this kid be completely embarrassed when he finally realised who Harry was. "Harry Harrison. Just found out about this whole Magical Britain a few weeks ago, you know. So, your family's nobility? Is there a magical king to grant that sort of title, or...?" He knew there wasn't — it was a self-assumed title that meant their family had a seat in the Magic Parliament, like 'Lord' Potter. They were all hereditary seats, basically like the House of Lords, so it hadn't struck Harry as all that odd they just decided to call themselves lords and ladies.
Danny looked like he might hurt himself trying not to laugh at the horror and disgust on Draco's face. He turned back to Theo. "You're associating with mudbloods?!"
"Hey!" Danny snapped, all humour gone in an instant.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Blaise added lightly.
"What sort of insult is 'mudblood'?" Harry wondered aloud. He'd heard it a few times from the more racist wizards around Charing when they realised he'd been raised by muggles, and after a few days, when he could carry on a conversation without giving that away immediately, directed against some hypothetical mages who were dragging society down, much like Uncle Vernon's "bloody hoodlums". Every time, it just sounded sort of...silly, honestly. Not unlike calling someone a dirty cow. Maybe not nice, but sort of...childish, really. It made sense that Draco would use it, but he knew adult wizards used it too, so he still found it a bit odd.
Danny explained, still glowering at Draco. "It means you're...polluted by your upbringing and being related to muggles. That being a mundane, mud-grubbing peasant is in your blood, you'll never be a real mage."
"Ah. In that case, I'll have you know that the Harrisons are a proud line of hard-working factory labourers and mechanics," he said pleasantly, one-hundred per cent just making shite up now. He honestly had no idea what Aunt Petunia's mother's father had done for a living. "Peasants, yes, but city peasants, not rural peasants. There's a distinction — I wouldn't expect you to get it." He put just the slightest hint of disdain behind you, as though all the Malfoys' wealth and influence and their fancy title meant nothing, because they'd never done a hard day of real work in their lives.
Draco absolutely could not tell if Harry was taking the piss, which was almost funnier than the piss-taking itself, and the fact that Danny started choking, trying to disguise a laugh as a cough. (Theo and Blaise were much better at keeping straight faces.) He just sort of gaped at Harry for almost five whole seconds, then stuttered, "I— You— What?! You're not supposed to—"
Theo cut off whatever protest Draco might have against Harry not being properly insulted. "Danny and Blaise have been familiarising Harry with some of the more important points of recent history, vis-à-vis the end of the War and the subsequent establishment of the Truce, of which I'm sure you're aware." Harry wasn't. He was going to have to ask about that after Draco left. "I have been doing my utmost to ignore all references to Lady Zabini's relationship with your beloved aunt and focus on my book, but the universe appears to be conspiring against me. Feel free to tell your father to tell my father I've committed the grievous crime of being caught in the same compartment as a muggleborn, if you must. Just know that running off to Daddy every time one of your peers acts in a way you don't approve of makes you look like even more of a prick than insisting on being called young Mister Malfoy by other eleven-year-olds."
Draco might have been annoyed to essentially be called out as a tattler, but Harry had the impression he wasn't really paying attention, as Blaise's 'kitten', which had been curled up in an adorable little ball of malevolence in the corner behind Blaise, yawned and stretched, hopping off the bench and padding toward the blond still standing in the doorway (and Harry, whose seat was closer to the door), growing larger and more threatening as it did so, a low growl trickling out of its throat. (That was so freaking cool!) Draco, despite his best efforts, was not able to conceal the way his hands were trembling, or the quaver in his voice when he snapped, "Damn it, Zabini! You brought your bloody boggart with you?! Call it off!"
"Of course I brought him. He gets lonely without me. And why would I do that? You've been very rude to my new friend, fratellino, and Theo is more than capable of deciding for himself whose company he wishes to keep. If Cadmus has a problem with his associating with an up-jumped commoner, I'm sure Mira will be willing to reveal his hypocrisy to everyone else who cares about such things. Her reputation certainly won't suffer."
Draco's eyes narrowed. "Are you saying...?"
"I"m not saying anything," Blaise said, with a very sharp smile. "And neither are you, are you? Run along now, and find some children who can actually be intimidated by your name and your blustering to bother. You've worn out your welcome here."
"Fine, I'm going! But I'm definitely telling Professor Snape you've brought a thrice-cursed boggart to school! You won't get away with it!"
Blaise snorted. "You do that." The boggart, now panther-sized and taking up most of the floor-space, lunged at the intruder, stopping short of actually touching him, but teeth close enough to his face to make him flinch back. "Bye, now."