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Chapter Text

Violet Potter-Black tumbled sideways through a rip in the very fabric of time-space and out onto a backroad in Surrey, without grace and with a sudden certainty that she’d just broken her left ankle.

“ Fuckshi-GOD!”

Her pained swears rolled clearly out in the disinterested suburb street, the neighborhood dull and lazy in the last sweltering hours before dusk, not yet cooled down for the evening. The sun sitting like a fat-burnt-tangerine in the sky, tinting the streets with golden-orange light.

“Fucking christ!”

Once again, she’d like to thank all the Stars and Higher Powers for one Blaise Alketas Alesso Zambini and his motherly instinct to nag her until death. It had served her well in the past and would do so now. She was pretty sure there was a small flask of Skele-gro somewhere in that tricky-little-bag he’d forced on her. It was bigger on the inside and her favorite color, clever boy that one.

She was right. A quick wandless accio then she was gulping down around the right dose for a hairline fracture (approximately ‘three medium swallows’ according to The Healers Magical Compendium for Potent Potions and Other Titillating Tinctures, but that was a bullshite way to measure doses and everybody knew it) and she grimaced at the strong foul flavor. It wouldn’t fully mend for another hour or so, but she could make do hobbling till then.

She’d have to thank him after she’d brought him back to life, but then again, it might be best not too. He tended to be particularly insufferable when proven to be right, especially if she’d previously griped that he was just needlessly overreacting and that she didn't have to listen to him (which in this case she had) so, yeah. Better to not. 

She’d just get him a cadbury egg or something. He liked those, right?

The locket around her neck thrummed, bright happy pulses from its place on her chest like it was nuzzling in against her magic with its own. She scowled and mentally swatted it away when it bumped up against her occlumency shields. Not now. 

She had things to do. Boxes to tick. They were on a schedule. By they , of course she meant the vast majority of the world's population, both magic and muggle, including a disturbing amount of earth's natural resources, but she was actually trying rather hard not to think about that right now, thanks .

 If she got this right, there’d be plenty of time to fix all that later, and it’d be like it never even happened at all! She was fine, everything was great!

Boxes. Mission. Important life-changing errands. On it.

She blinked and actually looked around. She was in a familiar area of Surrey, specifically; the bland-wheat-field-park on the outskirts of Little Whinging. So, the general right area then. Tick.  

If she had to guess she was near the right time as well, the air smelled sweet and floral. Clean outside of some very mild pollution from the nearby motorway, but that was to be expected. No smell of ash lingering in the air nor the singed tingle from the radiation burning in the atmosphere.  No soft mist, heavy unnatural dread drying the sweat cold on her arms and sucking the hope from her soul with each frigid breath, either. The streets were quiet, just the distant murmur of people going about their evenings, no anguished screaming at all! Everything was perfectly ordinary. 

Nice, normal, muggle. 

Definitely early enough in the timeline, then. She must have not missed the mark too badly, if she had at all.

 She suspected she did, at least a little bit, things went wrong for Violet with enough frequency that at this point it was just a reasonable to assume that any and all plans made in or around her vicinity would invariably go pear-shaped, and need to be re-worked partway through.

 At least a little bit.

But so far, so good. Fucking Tick.

If she were being truthful, it was these particular boxes in her mission plan that had given her the most grief over the past few weeks. Landing too far outside a certain range in this timestream could either have catastrophic consequences 

(the-wrong-not-her-plan-kind) or else just be entirely useless. And it was quite a reasonable fear, given the amount of complex arithmancy involved that she had just barely understood enough of to muddle through even with Blaises’ copious help and the Peverell Family Grimoires at her disposal. 

The idea that she could have done this much, gone this far, only to end up stranded somewhere in history too far away from any relevant circle of influence to be of any use, bored and probably forced to toil away on a farm or somewhere equally monotonous was a very real risk she had knowingly undertaken. Oh god, she probably would have had to tend to a flock of sheep or some other uninteresting herd animal. Absolutely revolting.

And so, again, thank the Powers for Blaise. He was definitely getting a case of chocolate-something-or-other once she had a minute.

But first.

///

The house was not hard to find. The area was largely the same and she’d been meandering around it since she was old enough to slip out the back garden without alerting her aunt. Sneaking back in was just as easy, the layout entirely the same, down to the perfectly pruned cherry laurels, neat rows of the vegetable garden, the sweet smelling honeysuckle and morning glory that clung to the trellis round the backside of the house.

It was all together almost too easy to hop the garden gate (it creaked, she was convinced it was Aunt Petunia’s own version of a homemade alarm system) and cross the trimmed greef-turf to shimmy up it the side of the house to her old (this version of her? Violet prime’s?) bedroom window. The windowsill was a short ways away from where the kitchen jutted out farther into the back garden, making it easy, if somewhat awkward, to perch on the slanted roof and dig out her tools. 

They’d started barring and locking her window sometime after first year and never let up. Technically, she could use magic to get in, and if it were any other house she’d have already done so, but even if her magic was likely to fly under the Trace Office’s radar in this universe, she was willing to bet Albus had put monitoring charms that registered magic-use of mages other than his current charge anywhere on the property. She wasn’t risking it. Plus, picking locks the muggle way would always be kinda fun.

She absentmindedly hummed the chorus of highway-to-hell while she studied the padlock in question. It was new, no scuffs from her younger selves clumsy first attempts at escape-artistry. It was a 150D brass master lock, nothing to sniff at but easy enough for someone like her. She squinted down the keyhole, consideringly and therefore was completely caught off guard by a polite cough from below her.

“Erm, s’cuse me, but- sorry, what’re you doing?” 

Violet blinked owlishly down at him. He was an ordinary teen, if a bit on the thinner side, staring up at her mid-break in with a look of sheepish befuddlement, like he felt bad for interrupting but couldn’t help but feel he must.

“Oh, well. I’m trying to get inside.” She gestured, needlessly. “It’s locked, you see.”

“Okay…” He replied cautiously, drawing out the vowel.

“And I’d really rather it not be.”

“Right, I do get that-just... Well, why ?”

“Why?”

“Why this window? What are you doing? ”

“Oh, well it’s-” She stopped, it wasn’t really hers. Not here anyway. And if this boy knew that, which it seemed he did, there was no reason trying to impersonate her other self, was there? This was the right house, if the bars on the window hadn’t given it away, the shivery scarlet protection wards around it certainly did. Anyhow, she should come up with a reasonable lie before cops were called.

“I-... just need to get inside, to help a- friend. Of mine. Who lives here.” Yes, there. That would do it. Not her best but she was fucking exhausted. She inserted the first pick and began to wiggle it, gently.

“A friend.” He deadpanned, crossing his arms, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Are you sure about that?”

“Completely, yeah.”

“Uh-huh.”

She hummed in agreement. She almost had it, just a little to the-

“You should probably come down now.”

“Nah, just one second I’ve almost got-”

“No, seriously. I don’t know what your deal is, but I’m not just gonna let you break into my room.”

“ Your room ?” She paused and looked down her vision swimming with little black dots (she was definitely too tired for this) and reassessed.

He was smirking, arms crossed, brow pinched in an annoying ‘I'm-mocking-your-incomprehensible-stupidity-and-judging-you-harshly-for-it’ kind of way. A mop of unruly dark hair. Familiar shade of green taunting her from behind a pair of crooked glasses . Oh. Well, this I was not expecting.

She buried her bafflement and the many questions beginning to swirl violently behind her too-bright-too-green eyes, and returned his smirk with only a touch more derision.

“Well, well well. Evening, brother . Seems we do have a lot to talk about.”

///

That got her a wand to the throat, and a tedious back and forth that Violet participated in only in a technical sense ( “-eater trick! Who are you?!” “Calm down, you twit. I’m you-” “What?!” “-but we can say sister, it’s just easier.”) instead she was thinking about how he had been out in the garden headed for the backdoor. No apparent need to sneak in through the window. Like he just had a curfew and would be locked in after that.

Then she thought about the unscuffed lock, wondered if maybe he’d just never had to regularly break out and if that's why the locks were so clean. 

What could this alternate version of her have possibly done to get on Aunt Petunia's good side?  

So yeah, she was half-distracted by this very important question, chest weirdly tight. Merlin, what was that about?

///

Her not-Brother’s name was Harry, and he took the news somewhat poorly. Not that she could entirely blame him, having an alternate-girl-version of your-near-futures-self pop up in your back garden for a chat was, even for them, was decidedly unusual and would probably take a second to process. 

She could get that. She could totally be patient and wait until he finished his stuttering protests and got with the program. There was plenty here to hold her attention.

Boy-Violet seemed, in a word, dull. At least his bedroom did. Sparse and plain walled other than a calendar clearly counting down the return date to Hogwarts. There was no smattering of pictures above his untidy bed or unmoving posters of his favorite bands and the books on his bedside were waterlogged and decidedly uninspired, all muggle and none of them were even Poe. It’s not like Petunia ever really let her decorate or anything either, but still.

She wrinkled her nose and opened the closet. It was nearly empty, the few articles of clothes inside left nothing to be desired, Dudley hand-me-downs, definetly. Has this version of her never gone shopping? What did he think their inheritance was for?

She made a soft noise of disgust, brushing past her young-male-self who was  trailing after her blatant snooping with a confused panicky flutter to his hands. Still needed a moment to calm down then.

She ignored him for now and fumbled blindly under the bed, huffing as she located the loosened board and pried it up to have a look ( “-what do you mean -wait hey. Stop that’s private! ”) and- wait, what was this? 

Just the standard-grade spell book, a few bits of spare parchment detailing what looked like his summer transfiguration essay, a squashed package of biscuits from the corner mart and one measly booklet of garden-variety pornography. This was it?   This was the super secret spot, where were her (his) important things? The books pilfered from the Black Family Library, or that cursed tarot deck she got that one christmas or the bloody buggering ring -

She shot up in horror, gaze caught unflinchingly on the red and gold scarf hung innocently on the desk chair across the room. Ignoring his curse and the way he snatched the porno out of her hands to stuff behind his dresser, red-faced and scowling. 

No. Fuck no, please.

There was no way she (he/they/what ever) was a fucking Gryffindor. 

Oh Merlin, Morgana and Christ , this-this was bad. This changed everything . Critical events of her life flashed quick and sharp, like a shuttering camera. Blurring, reshaping to her imagination. How different things must have played out, what had or had not happened, this-this was a horror show.

She couldn’t even-

How much work would she have to do?!

Or un-do, re-do? And with a Gryffindor?! Ugh! Her entire strategy would have to be rethought and- No, no calm down. She could still do this. Gryffindor; honor, bravery, dangerous amounts of loyalty to those they trust. Trust, not logic, would win the day here. 

Trust and Loyalty. She could do-

Oh god, why?! 

Lady Violet Euphemia Potter-Black swore with violent creativity while her Not-Brother watched on, wide-eyed and silent.

This would be so. much. more. annoying than she thought.

///

Harry was relatively sure that the strange girl currently eating the last of his chocolate biscuits and paying  no mind to the crumbs she got all over his sheets, was not, in fact, a Death Eater.

Temporary curse-filled rant about Gryffindor notwithstanding. 

She just seemed too odd. And not in the offputting, dark-magic induced creepy way; like Professor Snape or anyone Voldemort had ever possessed. Though…He squinted at the air around her. 

He guessed her magic was a little dark. 

More deep blue than anything, ribbons of gray and silver if you squinted, spotted with dark purple patches of crackling energy that flickered at him playfully. But he didn’t think that was too concerning. 

Lots of people's magic was relatively dark-ish. Pure white was exceedingly rare, he’d only ever seen it get close with that odd little ravenclaw girl, or on occasion, Dumbledore. But that was more of an eggshell shade of cream, if the eggshells in question had been sitting next to a smokey fire for quite some time, and had also been cracked through with void black and gold.

The girl crunched a biscuit, still watching him pacing the length of his room with a sharp, all-too-similar gaze. Right, back to the point then.

“Sorry-I just… who the hell are you again?”

He glared at her as she continued to chew, unbothered by his continuously climbing anxiety. Her disinterested affect was not dissimilar to how one patiently waited out a toddlers emotional outburst. 

He flexed his palms, wishing he could point his wand at her again, but recognising himself the emptiness of the gesture, she’d already mockingly pointed out to him that if he cast a spell they’d absolutely expel him this time without question. Which of course prompted the question of how she knew about Dobby and the summer before second year, but bigger fish for now.

He may not be in any danger (he thought) but he would still like the free ability to hex her. 

She rolled her eyes and became even more infuriating.

“I’m Violet. Violet Potter.” 

“Yes. You said that, I meant the other thing. It’s really not possible for you to be-” She cut him off.

“Yeah, no. I’m not like your sister in any literal sense. It’d be more accurate to just say I’m you, but you know also not. Other-you. Different-you.” She took another bite, thoughtful, “Possibly Better-you, though that remains to be seen.”

He spluttered, offended, but she continued on as if she hadn’t heard.

“Either way, I'm as You as You could be while also remaining Myself. Which is still a fair bit closer to you than anyone else here ever could be, mind. And it is for that reason that you’ve decided to welcome me here today.”

“I don’- you were breaking in-”   She waved a hand, cutting him off again.

“And then you invited me up. But regardless of how I got through that window, I’m here now. You’ve got a big problem coming your way, Harry Potter and I’m going to help you fix it.” She grinned, opening her arms like she’d just finished an act on stage and was now ready for applause. “You’re welcome.”

He just continued to stare at her, blank faced despite his mounting irritation.

“What.”

“You, or I guess more accurately we,  have the same problem and a common goal. As the old adage goes, the enemy of your enemy can often become your-”

“ Will you just get to it!?” He burst out, temper flaring as the uneasy bubble building in his gut suddenly popped. He’d been very patient so far but this was getting ridiculous.

“Alright then. We’ve got to kill Voldemort.” 

If there were any crickets in the vicinity they would have been chirping in the silence that followed.

“I-” Harry started, shaking his head like a confused dog, “I mean, sure. I’m all for that but it doesn’t really explain what-”

“Ah, good to see you’re already on track. Brilliant. But that's the crux of the whole issue really. Heh. Anyway, you’ve got a Voldemort to kill. I had a Voldemort to kill. At least until he hopscotched his way the hell out of dodge and ended up here in your world.” He’d gone pale at the first mention of her Voldemort but lost all remaining color by the time she’d finished.

“What.” He whispered.

“Yeah, its a real fucking problem I know. Plus mine’s got like, another three years experience fighting me then yours does right now, and also knowledge of likely future events. That combined is not gonna be fun. At all.”

“Combined?” He asked weakly.

“Oh, for sure.” She bobbed her head and took another bite, speaking as she chewed. “His soul and magic were too shredded for him to travel here and also keep his physical body, so once they’ve met up our respective Dark Lords will have to merge, somehow. And it’s very unlikely for either of their magical cores to diminish much at all, so he’ll be packing double the firepower.” 

She shook the empty bag out in case she missed one and flinging crumbs across his carpet. “Double the magic, double the trouble.” She shoved the last into her mouth and swallowed it too quickly, choking a little as she gasped out, “A Double-Scoop-Morty.” He gaped at her as she hit her chest with one fist trying to dislodge the hunk stuck in her windpipe.

“I think I have to sit down.” She patted the open space invitingly (it was his bed), still blinking away the sudden onslaught of tears from her coughing fit and he collapsed in a pile of lanky limbs beside her. “ Fuck.”

She nodded, rubbing her sternum and wincing, “You’re telling me.”

“Are you sure-”

“Oh, yeah. He had to kill, like, over a hundred muggles to power the insane ritual he made to rip apart the universe and send all the bits of his soul here in one go. It was hard to miss, trust me.”  

He studied her, leant back on his elbows. She had dark curly hair pulled up in a messy bun, bangs arranged sloppily to cover the scar he knew existed just under them. Their noses were a bit similar, he guessed though he thought his was a bit wider, her face was softer too, the curve of her cheek similar to his mums as he’d seen in photographs, his chin was sharper but both their ears stuck out just a little, yeah she could be his sister (or the female version or him, he guessed. Fuck) , but really was there any way to be sure? He didn’t know. 

“But I don’t trust you.” It took him a moment to realize that he’d spoken that thought aloud, but once he did he wasn't about to take it back. It was true after all.

“Oh?”

“No.” He shrugged, swinging one leg idly off the bed, shoulders to his ears, “I mean, that all sounds pretty--okay, I won’t say reasonable because, you know…”

“It seems batshit?”

“Right, totally. I just don’t think I can take all you say at face value and run with it. Sorry.” He shrugged, uncomfortable but resolute in his very smart decision to second guess what he’d just been told. See, Hermione? He wasn’t that gullible. Violet didn’t seem too offended either, just humming again and leaning back against the wall, head tilted in thought.

“Sensible. In your position can’t say I’d be much different. In fact there's a high probability that you would have just been blasted through the wall before you could even try to argue your case to me.”

“Wait, really?”

She ignored him. She did that rather a lot he was finding, it was very annoying.

“Either way, I’m here to help you. It’s like my sole purpose for the foreseeable future, actually, and it would be quite a bit more difficult to do so without your cooperation, so.” She turned to him suddenly, piercing him with the intensity of her gaze, “What would help?”

“Help?”

“You. To believe me and hopefully work with me, and maybe help me lie to a bunch of government officials if it's not too much trouble.” 

He blinked, taken a bit a back at her brazenness but she just kept going before he had a second to respond, “And I’m really not sure what could prove my intentions here, I used the last of my Veritaserum over a month ago, unless you’re trained in Occlumency?”

“What’s that?” 

“That’s a no .” She sighed, sounding very put out and Harry scowled at her. “Seriously though, what would help?”

They sat side by side in silence while he thought it over. Oddly, in his heart he did want to trust her, even if he knew he shouldn’t. Something in her magic just sang to him, rolling off her with curious child-like wonder. It flared rainbow and sparkling around the edges that met with his, the shades just barely conflicting, slight shifts in tone or vibrancy. Winding together curiously, almost confused when hers didn’t simply merge into its own. Their magic recognised each other as something similar, as someone safe. As family .

But he wasn’t gonna just take that on blind faith. At least, not without some fact-checking first, and there was really only one reliable place to go when he needed to do that.

“I think I know someone who can help.”

///

Oh,   Violet thought to herself, dread gathering like a heavy cloak of trolls-hide on her shoulders, not fighting the grimace now that Harry’s back was turned collecting his cloak, wand and change of clothes in a backpack just in case they ended up gone overnight (he reassured her the Dursleys would neither notice nor care which what the fuck but that was for another day) this is gonna be... this is gonna be rather unfun.

She probably should have seen this coming (Gryffindor, idiot! He’s a bloody Gryffindor of course he would know her-) but still her stomach sank and fluttered with barely suppressed panic, sending shards of ice up and down her spine which straightened as if by pavlovian response.

Still, she unclenched her jaw as Harry turned back to her with bright eyes and rolled her shoulders, grinning back as if nothing were amiss.

They set off together down a darkening Private Drive in search of a place to discreetly summon the Knight Bus that would, regrettably, transport them to North Hampstead in a little under thirty minutes. 

Why of all people did it have to be Granger?

///

Hermione Jean Granger thought she might just manage to have an aneurysm this time. And she was bloody well sure of it now, if she had not been already; Harry Potter would be the death of her. 

If nothing else she would die from dementor exposure in Azkaban prison after she strangled him to death for daring to show up on her doorstep at nearly midnight with an absolute stranger he’d just found breaking into his house ! And then to ask for her to help vett her supposed integrity?! 

“-so if you could help me decide to trust her story or not, that’d be great,” Her best friend finished lamely, not nearly sheepish enough in her opinion, smiling weakly at her like he did whenever he knew he’d just done something foolish and now wanted her to fix it for him.

This is not the same as forgetting your charms essay, Harry! She thought furiously at her oblivious best friend.

She’d kill him this time. She would. She punched Draco Malfoy last year and she could do this too, just watch.

“Harry,” She fumed, voice low enough not to alert her very awake parents watching Prime Suspect in the next room, so mad she could barely see straight, “by going to a secondary location with her you have already demonstrated a dangerous amount of trust and given her plenty of opportunities to misuse it!”

The girl's eyes sparkled with barely concealed mirth, the tug of her lips just the slightest bit smug and yeah, that definitely had not escaped her notice either then. Hermione bit back a ferocious growl.

Harry blinked, struck a little dumb looking at the very idea and turned to his companion with only slightly more wariness. The girl's responding eye roll was so dramatic Hermione idly wondered if she’d sprained something.

Not that it mattered, since she’d snap both their necks anyway once she figured out what the hell this was.

Whispering furious instructions she directed them to the back yard where a tree stood not too far from her bedroom, one could theoretically shimmy up the trunk and across a certain branch right to her window, if they so desired, and the two idiots slunk off across the grass. 

Harry was more solemn in the wake of her anger but the girl seemed to buzz, almost energized. As they rounded the house, her steps bounced and she said something like doing a fair bit of climbing today, and with a break no less, that ‘he’ would be so very pissed at her later when she told him, that it’d be grand.

Hermione already had a headache.

She shut the door with considerable control and far less force than she’d like, and smiled placatingly past her parents, spinning some yarn about the person at the door needing directions and then booked it to her room before they could ask any more reasonable questions she could not answer.

Since Hermione Jean Granger was no fool, nor did she often miss things, she did notice the look her parents shared as she hurried past them and up the stairs. It was a problem, one that was becoming more prevalent and daunting with each passing day and that Hermione had no idea how to even begin to resolve.

Her parents were no longer sure they trusted her.

And more and more often Hermione suspected they were right not to. 

Soon her carefully crafted web of misdirection, omissions of truth and flat out lies would come crumbling down around her like a thousand meters of crystal thread suddenly slashed into confetti.

But she would like to avoid that confrontation for as long as she possibly could.

Another reason the two idiots upstairs had stoked her ire, because this little show would not help with any of that. The ticking of the clock sped up, the countdown towards the destruction of her parents' faith in her word shortened with each minute she hadn’t solved whatever was happening inside her bedroom.

Her steps hurried at the thought.

///

Granger was doing a much better job of handling the news than her brother had and having what Violet considered to be a much more reasonable reaction. Which was to say she was furious, skeptical, and had immediately drawn her wand to send an incarcerous her way, claiming that Harry was an imbecile.

Violet could have dodged it, hadn’t, allowing the binds for the sake of compromise and cooperation despite how it itched at her pride. She was getting so goddamned good at being diplomatic.

That action had, however, sparked a furious and near silent argument between the other two about the possible ramifications for trusting or not trusting her story, how likely it even was to begin with and how necessary the ropes really were, only to be interrupted by frantic attempts to placate the irate Ministry owl that appeared moments later with a warning for Hermione about the restricted use of underage magic. It proceeded to screech piercingly when it was not immediately tipped.

It squawked and skidded across Granger's desk while the chipper voice of Mafalda Hopkirk rang clear enough to fill all four corners of the room, scattering pens and parchment as it went and the two Gryffindors scrambled after it, shushing it and each other with increased volume and, in Grangers case, poorly concealed desperation.

Violet was content to remain tied up and therefore uninvolved in that charade.

Harry had just got one hand round the bird's legs, it screeched and violently beat  the air with its wings, battering the wincing boy round the head as it did. Hermione approaching cautiously, a tin of owl treats in hand, other palm raised in supplication.

So, obviously, that’s when Granger's parents opened the door to see what all the fuss was about.

The other two both froze, mirroring Mr. and Mrs. Granger's expressions of shock. Violet just grinned, her entire torso still bound in thick rope, propped where Harry had left her against the youngest Grangers bed. The final farewell of the Office for Restriction of Underage Sorcery played over the scene and left a ringing awkward silence in its sudden fiery wake.

“Evening,” Violet greeted cheerfully a few stunned moments later, ignoring the poisonous glare immediately sent her way by Granger.

The owl took this opportunity to lunge forward and snap up an owl treat. It squawked again, this time clearly in victory. Harry abruptly let go and they all watched it soar back through the open window and into the night.

Mr. Granger cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses while his wife blinked dazedly at the scene before her.

“Okay, why don’t you all come downstairs. We’ll have something to drink and then you can explain what all… this is.”

“I’ll put on some coffee,” Mrs Granger agreed tiredly. 

“Great, got any scissors? Wouldn’t want your daughter getting expelled for casting a second spell tonight.”

Tied up as she was, Violet was not able to dodge the tin of owl treats thrown at her by Granger.

She could say a lot of things, but this universe sure wasn’t boring.

Chapter Text

SUMMER I

At the end of a long night of talking and with very little sleep, it was agreed that a meeting with the Goblins of Gringotts the very next morning was the most reasonable course of action. They were independent contractors who held no loyalty to individual witches or wizards, despite sometimes being hired to do just that. They could not be swayed easily, but accepted gold for information. They would validate her story, if only for the pleasure of penalizing her for any possible lies told under oath in their domain.

Violet knew this. It had been her intention to bring him there since before she had even crossed over, but it was nice that they came to that conclusion on their own. 

Or at least with very little input from Violet herself, though by the narrowed eyed look all three Grangers threw at her during different points in that conversation, she wasn’t fooling anyone but Harry.

“You planned this whole thing didn’t you?” Hermione had hissed while they were setting up places to sleep that night. They’d all taken turns napping in the living room while Mr. Granger kept a bleary-eyed watch from his armchair. 

It was like they didn't trust her or something.

Violet had suppressed a smirk, rolling over so her back was to Granger, not-quite-drifting-off to the sounds of her furious huffing in the sleeping bag next to her, Harry snoring with one arm hung limp off the couch.

///

She was rather pleased with how everything was going so far. She could imagine far worse ways to begin this whole thing than seated around the Grangers kitchen table and being reluctantly served a breakfast of fried-eggs and toast. Mr. Granger had even blackened her bacon by request, giving her a strange, wary look that she was happy to ignore in exchange.

Harry seemed equally unconcerned, tucking gratefully into his eggs. Hermione's knuckles were white clenched around her butter knife and her mother hugged a porcelain mug to her chest, rubbing her temples every few seconds as if suffering from a migraine.

It was then Violet noticed that none of the Grangers had moved to eat. How peculiar. She decided she didn’t particularly care and was soon distracted slathering red jam over her toast and stacking strips of bacon over that. Harry regarded her curiously and his fingers twitched like he was considering copying her but stopped at a sharp look from the youngest Granger. 

Cowed, he hesitantly went back to his much less interesting breakfast still eyeing her toast from the side with unmistakable envy. 

Violet did not preen, she just enjoyed her meal immensely.

There was a surge like static in the air, Violet inhaled too quickly and could smell apples, ozone, something salt-y like a surging tide. When she glanced up at the future Gryffindor Prefect, something behind those dark eyes sizzled with barely restrained power and a familiar burning dislike, she felt goosebumps and the hair on her arms stood on end.

Mrs. Granger placed a steadying hand on her daughter's shoulder without looking up from her mug, and the pressure in the atmosphere lifted, all their spines straightening out with the relief of it.

Violet restrained herself from whistling and instead pointedly lifted a brow, impressed. Granger kept glaring at her with the same focused intensity as if she had not even noticed what she’d just done. Well, that’s … huh. Weird.

Mr. Granger finished clearing the stove and slumped down into the chair beside his wife. 

Sighing, he took off his glasses to clean on the soft corner of his shirt, regarding Violet with the same cautious calculation that he had been all night. Nothing about the man's demeanor was harsh, nor was it unwelcoming so far as she had seen, but still Violet got the sense that if she made one move in a direction he did not like, that would change very, very quickly.

The fact that he allowed her to see him pack away his handgun for the journey to London only reinforced that notion. 

As they all piled on the sidewalk next to Mr. Granger's wood-paneled Honda Accord, Violet considered him with a newfound respect.

///

Gringotts, as always, was glorious. 

The goblins, as ever, were prideful.

And the results, as expected, were crystal clear.

“You’re me,” Her brother whispered, awe filled and unable to look away from the parchment containing the results of the un-tamperable goblin’s blood test. There, right below James Fleamont Potter and Lily Josephine Potter nee Evans was a line that twisted shimmering black ink across the page. Harry James Potter and Violet Euphemia Potter-Black   shuttered into and out of existence, fighting for dominance,  squeezing between their counterparts letters only to be jostled back out again. Shuffling forwards and backwards, combining into one illegible scrawl before finally settling side by side to be read clearly for a few short seconds, and then jumbling and starting all over again.

Their godfather bond with Sirius flickered between red and black, without end.

“ We-we’re the same,” He choked out, eyes wet, strangely emotional or so Violet thought. She nodded, faux relaxed in the uncomfortable (designed especially for wizards to hate) chair in Potter Account Manager Sharpclaw’s office, and reached to pat him awkwardly over his unkempt hair.

“Close enough, anyway,” she agreed with a wry sort of grin, hoping to blow past this as quickly as possible. “I am much more handsome.”

His smile was weak but genuine as he pushed her hand away and coughed, clearly ready to move on from that pathetic moment of vulnerability as she was.

Granger was still staring dumbfounded at her copy of their respective blood test results, mouth opening and closing like the deafened-cry of a baby mandrake, both her parents peering at it curiously over her shoulder.

“I can’t-... I-I-I don’t-” Hermione stammered, eyes flickering rapidly over all parts of the document, completely overwhelmed, “ You’re a Lord twice-over?!”

“I’m what?” Harry remarked with such innocent curiosity that now it was Violet's turn to pin him with a disappointed stare. Other-her really was rather stupid at times, wasn’t he? This couldn’t all be Gryffindor influence, could it? From the-other-one-currently-present’s equally incredulous face, she didn’t think so.

“Well, how about that,” Mrs. Granger murmured, dark eyes bright and curious, trailing one finger down the list of inheritance laid out below the family tree.

“Mmhmm,” Violet confirmed, rocking her seat back and forth on the back legs, beginning to grow bored. “We are the Lord/Lady and last living heirs to both the Noble House of Potter and the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.” She continued before Mr. Granger could start to question, “Basically it's a really-rich-old-family and a really-really- old- and - really- rich-and-also-racist-old-family.” She tilted her head onto the back of her chair and turned to look at her brother. “I think between the two of them we own, like, a 7th of Magical Britain and a good portion of Muggle properties and business too.”

“ Really?”

“I mean, I think so.”

The kettle-whistle-esque noise Hermione made was one of inarticulable agony.

///

With the titles and the bank vaults (which Violet was ever so excited to dig through a second time without any informed supervision) there also came the Heir Rings. Glinting rare pieces of undefinable worth forged deep in the hidden capitol city of Gwydr Tràag, (meaning city of eternal glass , did you know the welsh language developed partially from proximity to the goblin nation because Violet certainly hadn’t, Sharpclaw may be annoyed with her today but she was learning so much) and with imbued with the Family Magics, sealed to their bloodlines and enchanted against all manner of poison, curses and bewitchments (including mind magics like legilimency or veela thrall). 

Basically, something Harry should have gotten his grubby little hands on a long time ago. The frustrated slant to his mouth told her he’d very much thought the same and couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t. That talk would not be fun.

But shiny things first.

The Potter Family ring was bright in its splendor, a thick strip of gold and silver  melted one on top of the other into a single band. At the head of the ring was a centerstone of polished obsidian, red flecks glinting in the black from the sapphire accent stones. When Harry put it on, the magic shivered in tangible delight and pulsed once to resize over his finger. The gold of the ring grew brighter with his touch, and a crown of darkened silver antlers bled into being along the band.

He gasped a shocked breath and looked at the changed ring with bright eyes as it accepted him as the Heir-Apparent. Neither of them would officially inherit the title of Lord or Lady until they were of age. 

(Or recognised as such by a powerful magical artifact, because Mage Law could be very silly, but Violet was keeping that under her hat for now. Best not worry him if she could prevent it. He had a lot to process already.)

They’d decided, rather quickly and without fuss (once the goblins pointed out her right inherit would have to be contested in a Full Wizengamot Trial if they could not come to an arrangement in the next 48 hours, but otherwise remarkably disinterested in the bizarre nature of their current affairs) that Harry would continue the Potter line, and Violet would be allowed to fully take ownership of the Black. He hadn’t know about either so didn’t care either way and as Sirius had made him his Heir even before being sentenced to Azkaban. As he was promptly stripped of his title as Lord and Head of Family upon said imprisonment and status as an international fugitive (which she’d probably have to do something about eventually) it was a quick and painless process to have him sign the rights of inheritance and  title of Heir Black over to himself (despite Granger’s loud and vehement protests only just shushed by her parents). 

Or that’s what he joked he was doing, scribbling his untidy signature across the bottom line of a document that would forfeit half of his rightful inheritance to a near stranger. Violet was both in awe of and disgusted by his brazenness, she would have slept on a decision like this for a night at the very least but Harry truly couldn't care less. 

He was adorably caught off guard when Violet still offered him full-access to the Black Family Vaults, and to name him next-in-line after her just in case of the worst and he quickly promised the same (Powers that be, he was just too easy ), and in a little under two hours it was settled, bound by ink, blood, and magic.

Incredible.

(All three Grangers seemed similarly stunned, their tightly wound daughter only barely containing her fury due to the placating hands of her parents on either shoulder reminding her with tight frequent squeezes that this was none of their business)

The Black Family ring was darker in comparison to the Potters, but no less gleaming. Polished black band with a simple emerald center stone. When it reconsitiuted to fit her finger, the wings of a raven appeared, shimmering like they were coated in stardust.

Different from her old ring, but she was quite happy with it.

“ -so Mote it be.”   Sharpclaw and Breakbones, the Black Family account manager, finished together. A final flash of white runic light snapped above Harry and Violet, she shivered from the full body tingles of the Black Family Magic settling  over her like a shroud of lightning and dark space and cold fire, it was bubbly on her skin, crackling with layered laughter and the smell of vetiver. Harry looked similarly affected, a flush to his cheeks and glazed eyes.

And just like that they were legally siblings. God-siblings, but siblings.

Heir-apparents Potter and Black looked at eachother and, unsure what they were meant to do next, shook hands. Neither were much for hugging.

 “Great, now we just need them to undo the dampener put on your core and have them put a crude psychic block up until we can find a safe way to deal with that Horcrux in your head and then we’ll be pretty much set.”

Her hope of blasting by that and getting out of the office early enough to hit the shops before it got too late was probably pretty misguided.

///

“Remarkable.” The Goblin Healer did not sound like it bared remarking, speaking in a slow annoyed voice the belayed his words at every turn to the clear confusion of the entire Granger Family.

“I am amazed.” His tone didn’t even shift and Mrs. Granger blinked back at him, baffled.

“I’ve never seen a bound core on someone from such a young age. You’re lucky we got to this when we did, young wizard ,” this was said with such a mocking sneer that both Gryffindors leaned away from the sharp smile and acerbic tone, Violet continued to stare blankly at the ceiling and twidle a strand of hair, bored.

“-the ramifications of such long term magical repression can be quite extensive .” Sharpclaw actually laughed a little to himself and Violet found her own lips twitching at the way the others flinched at its glass-in-a-blender, nails-on-a-chalkboard quality. 

“As it is, you'll have to be very careful with your magic this coming year. You’ll be used to forcing a lot more of it through your wand than should be necessary, it will be an adjustment to tone it down to a manageable level of power. Be aware, Mr. Potter, that until you do so the result of even a simple expelliarmus could potentially become fatal.” Account Manager Sharpclaw looked positively giddy at the prospect and by now even Mr. Granger was looking a bit ill. Harry just continued to sit there with a dumb, confused puppy-dog look of hurt.

“But who would possibly…?” Violet cleared her throat, twinkling blue eyes filled her mind.

“Ah, well. About that...”

///

“And see here , he placed himself as your magical guardian without unsealing mum and dad’s will, where I promise you, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were nowhere listed. We never should have been there, Harry. There were plenty of people to take us in.”

“Like who?”

“Like the Longbottoms, or the Bones’s, or Andi and Ted, or Remus or Minerva-”

“You two could have been raised by Professor McGonagall?!?!”

“Focus up, Granger.”

“Right, sorry.”

“But see if we never go to any of those people, he regains guardianship and control of our seats on the Wizengamot and our house votes, so he can bolster his own political agendas. He can also control and manipulate our lives so we make choices he wants us to make. We’ll have to get new proxies by the winter solstice but it’d probably be best to keep this under the radar for as long as possible, he can’t do much more harm between then and now than he’s already done.”

“Okay, okay, sure. What's the Wizengamot?”

“Oh, Harry.” Hermione had never sounded more disappointed in him.

///

“Apologies, but would you mind explaining the Horcruxes again, Heir Black.” Account Manager Sharpclaw droned, one brow quirked in mild intrigue, at his back Account Manager Breakbones curled his lip over his pointy black teeth.

“Sure, see I had one too but the ritual Voldemort did to get here ripped the soul pieces out of his other horcruxes to send them all here with him, mine too. It wasn't painless or anything, it totally sucked, my scar bled for days and I was laid out sick and magically depleted for over three months. I almost didn't survive it. We’ll hopefully find a better way to get yours out Harry.”

“But how did this happen?”

“Okay so, the night He came to kill mum and dad--”

///

“Are you sure my Dumbledore knows about all of this?”

“I mean probably Harry. With the prophecy and everything I can’t really imagine he’d-”

“The what?!”

“... oh wow. I am so sorry.”

///

When Violet led the Grangers and Harry from the bank (after bribing the sneering goblins for their silence, they were oathbound to keep their secrets anyway but it was just good form, and also goblins were sneaky little blighters who could absolutely find a way around their own contracts if not tipped well), it was hours later, well into the early evening and they were all exhausted. Violet had invited the Grangers to a late dinner at the Leaky (Where she would be staying for the foreseeable future, she’d go back to the Dursleys again for murder and for no other reason) but they had begged off. Citing a brunch date the next day, but Violet suspected they were about to brew another pot of coffee and grill their daughter over all that had happened over the last day (and possibly years, whoops).

She didn't begrudge them that and besides Harry had decided to depart as well, head back for the Dursleys. He was shaken, clearly, all pale and sallow-eyed, feeble like one good breeze would blow him over. 

She’d let him rest for now, but what she wouldn't do is allow him to remain in such conditions for much longer and after much badgering he agreed to meet her back at the Alley in two days time, where she would make him spend his goddamned money if it killed her.

So Violet let them go without fuss, tolerating the not-so-veiled -finger-in-the-chest-evil-eye-threat from Granger without so much as a twitch in her placid expression. She also gained Mr. Granger's personal cell number. His furrowed brow and reluctant pause before passing it over made her suspect this was a great honor indeed.

She waved them off from the shadow of the hidden magical street, watched them trudge off like a line of slump-shouldered-garden-gnomes, and disappear into a double-decker bus that cracked away in a sudden blur of purple.

Violet stayed standing there for a moment longer, waving at a street full of muggles who passed her by without a second glance, her plastered smirk and sparkling eyes slowly slipping into a much more haggard expression.

She slumped, barely catching her weight against the rough brick of the alley, and tried to steady her breathing into something less panicked and strained.

///

Violet got a cheap room at the Leaky under a false name ( Berta Ivett Pollock , because Voldemort is stupid but anagrams are fun) and took her dinner in her room. 

It was a decent stew of beef and potatoes that she barely tasted as she stared blankly out the window, mashing the vegetables absentmindedly with her spoon. Unable to relax the stiff muscles in her neck and back, her chest constricting with each breath until she could barely draw in air, she felt shadows in the corners of the room and eyes in the walls and no she could not just calm down.

Not while everything still hung so precariously in the balance, hammers and axes ready to come falling down to the earth like meteors meant only for utter wanton destruction. Not while everyone she has ever loved or cared for still stood so vulnerable and naive and weak. Not while the lines are not yet drawn in the sand, each side still sizing each other up, waiting for the moment to draw their metaphorical swords.

She knows He’s out there, both of them are. Likely already piloting the puppet corpse of that one year old boy born to some poor, probably desperate, witch out of wedlock. She never knew his name or where he came from, so she knows she couldn’t have saved him. Not ever. That doesn’t stop her from twitching and scratching at her chest whenever she thinks about it.

And the Other One. Who knew what foul shit he was up to in this brand new playground. He’ll be looking for a way to become corporeal again, maybe by possessing someone but she thinks it far more likely he hunts himself or his other servants down first. She needs to get to the bones, as soon as possible and maybe get the locket while she’s at it? Those protections are nasty though and the last thing she wants to do is come swanning in reeking of black magic. Not until they trust her more, and He knows that she knows so would he even bother with them at all? 

Moves and counter moves. There is so much to do in such a short amount of time, but there are only so many hours in a day and only so long she can go without sleep and between enacting the ritual and keeping herself awake while pretending to sleep under Mr. Granger's watchful eye (and also gun) she’s been awake for about 80 hours straight now. She needs to rest, she knows she does.

Her eyes went to the locket, she’d taken it from her neck and placed it across the table from where she was eating at the beginning of her meal, despite the dangers of doing so, and it would almost be like having a friend sitting there with her if it wasn't incredibly sad and pathetic.

She missed him. She wouldn’t quite say she needed him, she was brilliant and excellent at being alone thank you , but if he were here things would be so much more… It would just be easier to handle.

No. No use in thinking like that, she’d have him back soon. He wasn’t the top priority right now, despite how she longed for his steadfast companionship and unending unsolicited advice. And it was always possible she would not regain it for sometime, if plan A didn’t work out, as they’d predicted it might not, she’d just have to wait awhile longer.

But she’d see him again. She would.

Her heart fluttered and her magic swelled and so she looped the golden locket back over her head and felt something in her soul settle down again. 

She finished her meal in uneasy silence, flinching at each thump from the residents in the adjacent rooms, warded her door within an inch of her life and then collapsed gratefully into dusty sheets and slept like the dead for the next sixteen hours.

///

Harry lay on his bed, and then on the floor, and then finally moved out into the back garden. 

He thought about the last twenty four hours. And about the first fourteen years of his life. About Quirrell, and the diary, and Sirius still on the run. He thought about Voldemort and what hell his not-really-sister promised that awaited them both in the not so distant future.  But mostly, mostly, he thought about Dumbledore. Something hot and hard squirming in his throat, squeezing his heart until the blood ran warm in his cheeks. Tears filled his eyes.

He wasn’t sure Violet was all-the-way-right. And he wasn’t sure he completely trusted her yet. 

But something didn't make sense, and Harry felt the stings of betrayal despite not knowing whose feet to lay the blame at.

He closed his eyes, exhaled shakily, and under the watchful stars twinkling in the inky black sky he made a promise to himself that he would find out.

///

The Granger parents had argued with their young daughter on the bus home. They’d argued all the way up their walk and spent the next several hours arguing all over the corners of their charming two story townhouse, pacing and yelling and, once in the case of Mrs. Granger, throwing some dinnerware at the wall in a fit of overwhelming despair.

It was worse than the Great-Granger-Extended-Family-Christmas-Debacle of ‘89, and that was really saying something.

Hermione had yelled back and misled and finally done her level best to undermine the very real threats to her life and the so far unknown to them dangers of the wizarding world at large and her precarious place in it specifically, but in the end her parents were steadfast in their interrogation of their only daughter. 

They closed ranks, cornered her and demanded answers that Hermione found herself completely unwilling to give.

When the truth was finally squeezed out, tortuously and bit-by-bit, they were only incensed further. All three Grangers were well-known for their explosive tempers and it really showed that night. Screaming and crying and cruel words and finally, slammed teenage bedroom doors and a long week of strained silence between all parties involved.

Hermione cried hot, silent tears into her pillow and wished bitterly that girl   had never come here. She had ruined everything .

Downstairs at their small kitchen table, Mrs. Granger smoked a cigarette for the first time in nine years and whispered furiously to her husband. Mr. Granger scribbled her words frantically down beside his own ideas in a small brown notebook.

They loved their daughter. They had plans to make.

///

The old man spent a content, quiet night in the company of his wife of many years, working in agreeable silence on projects of their own respective interests. Tonight she was experimenting with some obscure transfiguration theory about the brains of mice and he was pursuing an exotic blood magic tome as a refresher. 

It's a peaceful way to spend the later years of one's life, if occasionally a bit dull.

Across the room, an odd device of twisted metal and colored glass started to hiccup and spin. The air filled with the delicate ringing of bells and a whispering distant echo of a song, an ethereal tune that one could almost make out if they strained their ears, continuously gaining speed as it chimed ever louder. Rune-notes flashed in the air around the device, designing melodies of crossways and the Other Space. The divine potential of benevolent destroyers. Eihwaz stood out bright and bold against all others, a blazing slash of golden light amidst a confusing whirl of reds and blacks.

They regarded it curiously as the thing frantically reached its crescendo, a straining, wheezing note that pitched higher and higher until suddenly it stopped. They both squinted as the bright light pulsed blindingly three times in quick succession before finally fading without warning, a flicker of blue flame snuffing itself out. The device crooned tiredly once more and then folded back in on itself to rest. Presumably for another century or so.

The study rang louder in the silence it left behind, a tension in the air now not dissimilar to the kind found in the rope of a guillotine, taught and just begging to be cut, shivering and aching to bring down something sharp and powerful on whatever lies just below with all of it’s force. 

When the quiet storm is finally broken it's to semi interested words and quirked lips, a dangerous spark in the eyes reignited. 

“Oh, how delightful.”

“Truly very intriguing, my dear.”

///

He is not. He is but isn’t but he has been here before. He knows. He always knows. What to do next, he has plans, grand plans, great plans he just needs the Rest. The rest of Him and of Them and of It All. 

He’s still a mess. Still scattered and jumbled in the wind, held together by the sheer force of his incredible power.

The House first. The House and The Rat and The Twitchy Boy. First steps towards something far greater. 

He slithers like a snake made of smoke and bad dreams through grass still wet from last night's rain, the dawn is breaking red and bloody over the hill, graves of dark stone make little shadows on the grass, he slithers and slinks and finds the house. The stairs. Nagini. 

And then finally a twisted little horror with blood red eyes. 

The Wraith would smile if it had a mouth or teeth. Its shadowy visage rises higher above the demonic baby, twisting two smoke tendrils out like the loving arms of a parent and its child blinks back at it with gleaming scarlett eyes.

A small ratty thing whimpers and sniffles in the corner, trying to make himself as unassuming as he possibly can. 

This is bad , he thinks desperately, beady eyes watching the slow terrible grin cracking the little things pale lips, this is so very, very bad.

Chapter Text

Harry spent the two long gray days before he’d agreed to meet back up with Violet in a fog of energized distraction, doing his chores and dodging the Dursleys with practiced ease, almost not noticing the confused suspicious scowls on their faces as he trudged absentmindedly through the hours. 

He tucked in his elbows, jumped over Dudley’s smelting stick and finished everything in record time to the bedrugding acceptance of his extended family. 

His reward meant being shut out of the house for the entire sweltering afternoon but it was nothing he was not thoroughly used to, and besides it gave him plenty of time to fret over this whole Do-I-Should-I-Trust-Her issue without interruption.

(And if he was being entirely honest; for the sick tendrils of hope to worm their way deep into his gut, he felt stirred, buzzy and excited in a way he hadn't really since boarding the train to Hogwarts first year, the anticipation of newness and magic and adventure that he suspected by now lay just before the steep fall into terror and fear and possible death.  

But he was sure this time it would probably be fine.

…

He actually may need to call Hermione again.)

///

Walking up the polished steps of Gringotts he could not stop checking over his shoulder, flattening his hair nervously and picking the dry skin at his lip. Her letter this morning; a tea stained scrap of parchment carried by a nondescript barn owl that blasted into his room at the crack of dawn in an angry burst of feathers, bearing just the words- 9 am. Gringotts. Take care NOT to be seen- had done nothing but stoke his own natural paranoia. 

He also had not been sure what she meant by that, she was him , she had to know how semi-impossible it was for Harry Potter to venture anywhere into the magical world without attracting some kind of notice. Did she want him to be in disguise? He’d fretted over his near empty wardrobe for nearly thirty minutes before deciding that an overly large stained sweatshirt with the hood pulled up was his best (and really, only) option for subterfuge. 

He pulled it on over his tee shirt despite the high temperatures and then used the little remaining pocket money he’d exchanged at the end of the year with Hermione to catch the Knight Bus into Longon, grimacing and sweating all the way but overall feeling rather confident in his disguise.

Though now, lingering in the gleaming entrance hall of Gringotts, a sore thumb dressed in rather conspicuous muggle clothing sticking out sharply amongst the traditionally robed witches and wizards who side-eyed him while the goblins sneered and whispered behind his back, he wondered if his decision had been a foolish one.

Judging by the exaggerated noise of exhaustion at his back, Violet did.

“What the fuck are you wearing?”

He didn't try to hold back the sheepish (but otherwise delighted) grin on his face as he turned to meet his sister. Family, he had actual family now who seemed to care and value him, sort of a bit, at least enough to want his help and care for his living conditions (if she was being honest about that… but she probably was! Harry had a good feeling despite the nearly fourteen pages of furious ranting on parchment he’d received from Hermione yesterday outlining all the reasons why he shouldn’t ) but he still could barely believe it. 

However his look of poorly contained joy quickly shifted to one of shocked uncertainty.

The girl standing before him was not the same as yesterday. 

He squinted, tilting his head this way and that. It was her. Same untamed hair in a lopsided ponytail, same bright green eyes, lips curved up at one side in the same mocking smirk. She was just a bit… softer, maybe? The cut of her cheeks and chin were a little less sharp and she was shorter than before, her eyes now level with his chin rather than his nose.

 All in all, she looked remarkably younger.

“What’d you do?” He blurted out, roving his eyes over her face like it alone would give him the answers. She rolled her eyes in response, crinkling her nose as she did and turning away to lead him further into the bank (and away from the many many curious eyes at their backs), waving one hand to the armed and armored goblin beside the tellers desk. He spit on the ground as they passed by and Violet saluted him mockingly. 

Harry had to duck as a gilded battleax went soaring over their heads and embedded itself into the soft metal of the archway with an affronted clang.

 Violet ignored it and just continued walking so Harry did too, but he sent one last nervous glance over his shoulder in time to see the growling teller still puffing angrily and being held back by two of his scowling brethren before the heavy ornate door swung shut between them.

Hesitant, he turned back around and kept walking.

“You left me a whole day on my own. Had to do something to fill it.” Violet said in a tone of ‘this is very obvious, Harry, please do keep up’ and turned on her heel, walking backwards briefly to grin at him as she continued, “And do you think they would have let me come with you to Hogwarts looking like I did before?”

Harry frowned, he supposed not. He hadn't really thought about it, there had been too much going on at the time for it to register but she had definitely been older than him. Eighteen, maybe nineteen, if he had to guess, but way too old for Hogwarts. Strolling confidently (if shortly) beside him now, she looked much closer to his own age.

“...So how-?”

“Fifteen now. We are going into fourth year, correct?”

“Uh, guess so. Yeah.”

“Excellent.”

“Is it, um-” He looked around the near empty (and surprisingly long) corridor for eavesdroppers, recognising the futility of the gesture now but feeling a need to retroactively make up for his blunder in the lobby, and her smile widened until her teeth caught the light from the torches.

“Polyjuice?” She asked, eyes dancing with glee and he shrugged uncertainly, she giggled a little crazily (taking apparent delight in his familiarity with the illegal brew) knocked her shoulder into his, abruptly unbalancing his stiff hesitant walk, and then shook her head.

“Nah--though gotta say I sense a story there you’re gonna have to tell me later--it’s way too expensive, notoriously unreliable and it tastes like horseshit on the best day-” He grinned at the disgusted expression on her face, laughter bubbling like golden  sunlight in his chest at the familiarity of it and felt himself relaxing, was this how the Weasleys felt seeing their expressions mirrored in each other? Did they love it as much as Harry did? Did they feel like this all the time? “--something slightly more permanent and less likely to attract unwanted attention.” At his questioning look she clarified. “It’s just an aging potion.”

“Those exist?” He asked, a little concerned (and wrinkling his nose the same way she had moments before) thinking of the philosopher's stone. He thought that was the only thing that could grant immortality and didn’t like the idea of other things floating around out there that could prolong a dark lord's life.

“It’s not how you’re thinking. This doesn't actually alter my age, I’ll still die around the same time I would have had I taken this or not. It just makes me appear a bit younger.” 

Then she went on to tell him about the history of the brew. How it had been developed in the early fifteen hundreds by some vain nobles to make their appearances linger in the prime years of their lives far longer than should be possible. It couldn’t make drastic changes, just a few years either way from your current age at ingestion, and you didn’t stop aging once taken either. You could retake it every so often if you wanted, but it would still tack on the years little by little as they slipped by. Getting older a bit at a time until you died looking like a fresh faced forty year old, having lived until one hundred and twenty.

Everyone who’d ever lived died eventually. (Except of course, Mr. Flamel, the smug bastard as Violet called him with far more disdain than Harry would have thought appropriate.

Neither of them mentioned the other hippogriff in the room, though both their gazes smoldered with the same burning hate, Violets bright like hellfire though Harrys was by no means dim.)

The most important thing about the potion , she said with a crooked smile, was that even if someone detected it’s presence and discovered that she had used it, it would not reveal her true age, just give a foggy, ballpark result that could not legally disprove her claimed age as long as it was within the acceptable range of a Hogwarts school-child, and a blurry 14-18 result should do it. “They might have me bumped up a couple years or something, if Dumbledore’s feeling really shady, but I can make that work.” She replied flippantly to his concern of other potential consequences to her discovery.

During this impromptu lecture, they were shuffled through the gilded torch-lit archway onto the platform that held the mine carts by a heavyset goblin who adamantly refused to give his name and actually swore at him when Harry politely inquired for it.

“I am in awe of you.” Violet told him flatly after a few beats of baffled silence, quickly striding ahead like she was embarrassed to be seen next to him, the goblin in question tight on her heels.

Harry hadn’t felt this light in years.

///

Her brother was in a remarkably good mood, which boded well for Violet’s various schemes.

She needed him to be happy. She didn’t have time to just sit around and wait for his trust to build naturally, though in the back of her mind she pondered whether it would really take that long, he had an endearing youthful gullibility to him that made something in the left of her chest twang like a off rift chord on a guitar whenever she thought about working him. She tucked it away with occlumency, uninterested in indulging whatever fleeting emotion that it might develop into. 

The locket hummed a low disapproving note against her sternum and the tattoo currently tucked against her collarbone tittered and whacked a paw uselessly against her skin, she knew without looking that the runes etched into its belly were pulsing softly with pale orange light and she felt it send a tingling swell of magic across her chest as it settled in further, tear jerkingly familiar, sizzling like soft flesh laid bare against a sun-hot stone. 

She swallowed the crawling spidery feeling in her throat, coughed discreetly and kept a tight wrangling grip on her composure, determined not to be swayed from her current approach despite the flickers of hope steadily growing in Harry’s earnest expression. 

She could not indulge this. Sincerity was a luxury Violet had not been able to afford in a very long time. 

And with what was at stake, it was far too important to risk it right now.

Maybe, someday.

So she kept it light, bouncing her tone between playful and dismissive, a strange mixture she’d discovered he responded to best after some trial and error the day before. Casual disinterest mixed with fond assurances, some physical touch and just a smidge of trust shown to him seemed to be the recipe her brother most desired, at least at this period in his life, which was not a great baseline for him long term, probably, but she’d have time to teach him how to be less manipulatable once she’d manipulated him into saving the world with her.

It’d all be fine. Really.

After the familiar but never-not-nauseating cart ride Violet skipped up to the vault door with genuine stars in her eyes. Harry regarded her curiously but without judgment from her side as she all but trembled with anticipation and bit her lip in an attempt not to scream ‘hurry up!’ at the unmoved goblin taking his painstaking time to open their vault.

From the gleeful spark in his eyes, he was enjoying her impatience.

He dragged one yellowed, crooked fingernail down the middle of the dark iron doors, a hundred tiny intricate locks gleaming and clicking open as he passed each one. The sound like a discordant symphony in the echoing cavernous space around them, otherwise silent except for the distant sounds of grinding rails and other bank patrons frightened screams.

For a moment it was like she was eleven again, being shepherded into the unbelievable space with the ghost of Hagrid's sweaty palms on her either shoulder to hold her still, her astonished gawking illuminated by the golden shimmer reflected off the absolute hoard of galleons, sickles and knuts piled haphazardly throughout the spacious chamber. 

She remembered the feeling vividly, crashing into her tiny chest like a trainwreck of relief, of the sudden unbelievable certainty that she was safe. For the rest of her life, she would be safe and provided for, and never stay up hungry or cold in the night needing anything ever again.

She remembers being eleven, scrawnier, and sicklier than she was now, standing bug eyed amidst a towering heaps of treasure, her magical inheritance, and thinking I’m set. I’m set for life.

Though the feeling wasn't nearly as intense after all this time, there was no one holding her back as she slipped through the narrow gap of the doors still creaking open. Harry made an amused but startled sound as she snatched his hand and pulled him through the wards behind her.

///

Over six hundred kilometers away, a tinkling silver charm on an overcrowded desk flips itself over part-way, a little confused.

It was a baby, really. Young in the sense that it’s magic was rather new, less than two decades old, a veritable child , nothing like those older ancient enchantments set by strange gnarled hands (so different from his caster) deep deep into the rock and stone of the twisting, never ending tunnel-y home that they all shared.

He was just a simple monitoring charm with only one real task or understanding of the world. He was responsible for watching the Potter Vaults, and looking for anyone Not Potter to alert his caster of their presence crossing the wardlines.

 He’s a very special boy, lots of the older enchantments ( true real belonging goblin enchantments , they sneer at him night and day out from the long long dark) they don’t like him very much. Usually he wouldn't be allowed, see, but the old-Potters (the Gone Potters) had signed the enchanted parchment with their own Potter-blood and said he was allowed to stay. 

Just for extra safe keeping.

And so he kept safe. He sat and he watched and he waited and he listened and he was good at following his two very clear instructions.

But, he was realizing with frantic uncertainty, he had no instruction for two Potters (so near in magic and spirit tucked together so close physically clasping twin hands pumping with Potter-blood that was just so so similar ) so much the very same that the little wardline was certain that even the more ancient-right- mean -belonging-goblin-enchantments would barely be able to tell two drops apart if put side by side. He sure couldn't.

Two pairs of feet and hands, two Harry Potters crossing at the same time.

He had no instructions and therefore no reason at all to tell anyone about that.

The instrument leaps and bounds and mountains away stopped itself mid turn and flopped back over with a quiet satisfied chirrup. 

The little wardline was proud of himself and a little tired from thinking so hard.

Blue eyes flick curiously up from the teetering stack of letters and missives but eventually drift away when there’s nothing amiss amongst the sea of small, twirling devices set out along the many crowded shelves of his office. 

Several of the portraits of headmasters-past eye it, and then their current charge, with speculative interest. One, a thin-haired man with a rather alarming mustache, opens his mouth as if to alert the three dimensional wizard to the source of his query but a sudden sharp slap to the back of his head delivered by his neighbor stops him, he whirls around to glare at them--still leaning through the frame of their own portrait into his precious space and shaking a finger frustratingly under his nose.

Most of the Headmasters of Hogwarts Past are asleep (they keep shifts and share information in the dead of night while the current headmaster retires to his quarters, as so the charter goes) and so several important figures (loyal to the man himself) do not see the interaction take place, one prominent witch with an unfortunate mole shakes her head vigorously at the impetuous youngster and leans down from her place hanging up and to his right to whisper ‘Let’s see how it all plays out’. 

Somewhat affronted, but undeniably curious as the rest of them, he straightened out his robes in a single huffy movement, shifting his pipe to the other corner of his mouth to take another long drag and then nodded his agreement, not without scowling one last time at his other undignified neighbor to the left who stuck out their tongue and waggled their fingers in taunting wordless response.

The Headmaster noted the interaction with no more than a distracted sort of amusement and it was quickly forgotten in the face of more important matters on his desk. 

After all, it was nothing out of the ordinary.

///

Two hours later Harry was finding her apparent dragon-like love of all things glimmering and gold far less amusing.

He huffed in not-so-mild-irritation, slumping back further into a pile of dusty fabric (mostly his ancestors robes and cloaks that all smelled slightly of mildew despite their otherwise impeccable condition) he’d situated into a lumpy chair across from his sisters pile of plunder.

She was sat cross-legged amidst her spoils, a chin perched on her hand and lip puckered in consideration as she shuffled items from one stack (‘maybe, possibly’)  to another (‘I think so, probably’) and finally graduating them from the final (‘okay, yes I will keep this’) pile and into one of two trunks.

One for herself and one for Harry.

She had spent the last three hours tearing through the mounded treasure and unearthing objects from all different corners of their vault. She had made a beeline for a teetering stack of old vintage furniture and pulled down an antique trunk with golden fastenings, the Potter crest stamped proudly into the rich dark wood. She’d made him prick his finger on the spinning golden clasp, stuffed her fingers in her own ears while he set the passphrase and then explained to him how to work the many expanded compartments. 

He was most impressed by the ‘Study’, an entire room where you could climb down a ladder into it, there was a small circle for dueling practice, a single enchanted dummy to spar with,  a fireplace, two squishy purple couches and several wide tables for working. He had immediate daydreams of dragging a cooler stuffed with charmed-ice, cold cuts and bottled water inside and using it to hide from the Dursleys in the summer. He could live in this thing if he really wanted to. 

He’d been rather excited for their excavation of the chaotic vault after that, but that quickly soured in the face of his sister's unending enthusiasm for stuff .

She was suffering under the delusion that he had far too little of it.

She piled him with outfits and robes of expensive colored silks, cufflinks and watches and earrings studded with precious gemstones and heavy with charms that tingled unpleasantly against his skin. Dress shoes and boots of dragon skin, dueling robes that were enchanted against dark curses, dress shirts and trousers and vests and coats, all things that he just could never see himself wearing. 

He already had his heir ring, which felt warm and soft against his magic and hummed on his pinkie finger. He liked to twist it absentmindedly when he got frustrated or nervous. 

He was doing it now.

Violet made him try on four separate outfits in various degrees of ostentatiousness  before he finally put his foot down, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in them all, like a kid playing dress up in his grandfather's clothes. She pursed her lips and gave in but refused to stop packing them away on the extending racks of the wardrobe section of his trunk. 

After thirty minutes, he had a wardrobe fit for a king. (Or a Lord, he guessed, which he technically would be soon)

And she didn’t stop there.

She found him a beautiful silver telescope and a very old looking crystal ball that he felt bad about touching. She completely overhauled his potions set up, new stirring rods of glass, silver and enchanted oak. Two cauldrons of much higher quality than his own, one had various runes carved painstakingly all around the outer edge and along the bottom, it looked very advanced and Harry was sure he would not know how to use it but she tucked it away into his trunk anyway. Tons of tiny glass bottles and stoppers that she said they would fill with top quality ingredients later. A golden scale that chimed softly when the desired weight had been reached.

She forced him to take an ancient dusty set of practice runes carved into rich cherry wood and a well worn tarot deck that frayed at the edges that tingled happily in his front shirt pocket where he’d stored it immediately after she handed it to him. After several minutes digging through a particularly dusty pile she unearthed a wand holster carved from the bones of a hidebehind that would remain hidden from all eyes, to all enchantments spells and attempts to be summoned that she commanded he strap to his left arm right then and there but then refused to allow him to put his wand in it, to his annoyed confusion.

And then there were the books . Dozens of them. Some faded and torn others gleaming with an unnatural glow to their stark white pages, all thrown into the bottomless cavern of his new library section to be automatically sorted and cataloged for his search and viewing later. 

She also tucked a good number of things into her own dark trunk (she’d produced it from her pocket unlike how she had found his own), she showed him a number of the items she decided to claim but not all of them. He was fairly distracted with his own trunk and so did not think much of it, and didn’t much care either way.

(Somewhere in North Hampstead, in the midst of re-working the seventh iteration of her summer potions essay, Hermione Granger abruptly snapped the pen in her hand and then stared at her ink stained fingers with shock. 

 She would never know why.)

Harry felt uncomfortable with just how many things were going into his own new trunk (he had picked out two pairs of simple dress robes and an antique set of wizards chess he idly considered gifting to Ron for Christmas) but did not dare try and stop her. After another hour or two though the trepidation faded and was quickly replaced with annoyance.

She was taking it all very seriously, and apparently that meant excruciatingly slowly. Comparing each item with the dozen other possible replacements and going over each pro or con outloud to him, much to his dread.

Harry groaned, for what felt like the fifth time in as many minutes and slumped even further into his mound of laundry, dislodging a few loose articles from above and down onto him. A horrendous amaranth tie featuring animated cauldrons that continuously exploded with tiny puffs of lilac smoke flopped over onto his face and he tossed it away somewhere far out of sight.

He rubbed his palms into his eyes, groaning even louder, and so did not see Violet wordlessly summon it back, consider it for a long moment and then pack it away in her trunk.

He'd never particularly liked shopping, never having money for it most of his life, and then having the unfortunate honor of being best mates with someone whose family struggled to afford their supplies and also routinely accompanied him on every occasion he had to spend his own, he’d just never gotten used to it. 

Even now, surrounded by things that he technically owned, he felt like he was rifling through someone else's things, or things meant for someone other than him. It made him uncomfortable and awkward, he wished she’d hurry up.

“But you must be done now, surely?” He asked, for what felt like the hundredth time. Violet made a noncommittal noise, too distracted comparing two sets of crystal phials, one a slightly darker shade of pearl, and Harry felt any earlier affection he had towards his sort-of-sibling was a far forgotten past.

“ Oh, just pick one already.”

She tutted at him, sounding so like Aunt Petunia in that moment that Harry couldn’t help but startle.

“Sheesh, fine. These are for you by the way, I was just trying to be helpful .”

“But I don’t need any of this stuff.”

“Uh, yes you do. Trust me.”

“Fine, whatever. The pale ones.”

She packed away the darker ones and Harry scoffed so hard he then started coughing, much to his embarrassment.

///

Violet tried very hard not to snap, but it was getting increasingly difficult. The almost unassuming dope she’d met earlier in the hall had been replaced by a sullen petulant child almost the moment they had crossed into the depth of the vault, past the dozen or so ceiling-height-mounds-of-gold and deeper into the main portion of the chamber somewhere she was shocked to discover that he had never known existed.

He’d said it so casually too, just a flippant “Oh, cool. I never knew this was here”, so completely unbothered by his utter ignorance of the vast majority of their inheritance and birthright, a virtual treasure trove of enchanted objects and forbidden texts and ancient familial masterpieces of magic just sitting there forgotten and apparently uncared for by her idiot self!

Other self.  Brother. Whatever!!

The point was his casual disregard of what so many others had actually literally historically killed and bled and died for--the complete disinterest in a room so many others would do anything to get their hands on the contents of-- Oh, she just wanted to strangle that little--

It was possible she was getting a bit heated. 

Violet shrugged off her outer layer, a thin green coat, not quite muggle-cut, enchanted to keep their wearer perfectly cool or warm despite the weather but not her own emotion fueled body heat, apparently. She’d probably just get something from the Black Vaults, there were lots of weird fun clothes there and all those enchantments were fucking solid , plus she’d need to have some recognisable Black Family articles in her wardrobe for her future plans anyway.

She considered the current object in hand, it was old but not old enough to hold any particularly valuable enchantments or sentimental value. She didn’t need to keep it. She tossed it away in a vague direction other than her three very well categorized piles and moved onto the last few items she wanted from the Potter Vaults before they moved on.

Harry better be thrilled, she’d cut her usual perusal time in half thanks to his whinging.

“Alright, you absolute baby,--”  

“ I’m just saying that it’s been three hours!”

“--get over here we're almost done.”

“Really!?” 

His face lit up and she sarcastically gestured to the final object waiting for their approval. He moved off his self made robe throne (made of all the things even she was not cruel enough to force him to consider, that tie was a diamond in the rough) and sat cross legged across from her, eyeing the single thin box with an underwhelmed grunt.

  Powers, he was so uncivilized.

“This?” He asked, unable or simply not bothering to mask his incredulity. She scoffed right back, clearly mocking him which made him scowl bitterly in response.

“Oh, this? Just the, so far as we know, bottomless collection of Potter Family wands. Every wand held by every single ancestor of the Potters, Peverells and any other vassalage house eventually absorbed into the family line? This unnamed number of wands claimed from other families, through conquest, marriage and just general switching of allegiance. This infinite potential for power untracked by the ministry.” She picked it up and shook it obnoxiously in his face. “ Just this?”

“Alright, alright! I get it.” He grumbled, swatting her hands away but unable to keep his eyes from bouncing back to the unassuming black box clutched in them. 

There was a gleam there Violet recognised, she knew she’d had the same one the first time she truly understood what this was, what it could do and mean for someone like her (like them) sometime after her fifteenth birthday standing in nearly the exact same spot with the two people she loved and trusted most in this world.

 She probably shouldn't be so hard on him, she’d needed someone to explain it to her too.

She grinned at her brother, less bite this time (as close to an apology as he was going to get) and mimed tossing it to him. He stumbled, unprepared with even the idea of having to catch something and then shot her a disbelieving look at her audacity to handle a thing so precious with such disregard. She snorted.

“Don’t worry. It’s charmed to high heaven, there’s no way anything short of fiendfyre, or I don’t know, maybe a nuclear blast is gonna damage this thing.”

To prove it she tossed it into her other hand theatrically and knocked it twice against the floor. He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms, obviously stopping himself from grabbing it. When he spoke his words were cautious but Violet was watching him very closely and she could see the hungry glint in his eyes.

“Erm--but…Sorry, you said untracked by the ministry? They wouldn’t activate the trace? ”

She nodded eagerly, stoking the flame that grew brighter and brighter despite his clear attempts to snuff it out. Gryffindors, so righteous and upright. It was honestly adorable.

“But we’re-or I-am still underage.  Is that not illegal?”

“Not if you’re rich.”

They sat there and both very much did not turn and stare at the ungodly mountains of silver gold and precious gemstones all around them that together could probably buy and then fund an entire small kingdom for decades.

“I don’t know if I like that.”

Violet hummed in patient understanding, letting the moment rest and being sure to choose her words very carefully.

“Will it stop you?”

The fire flared and Harry bit his lip, his fingers clenching into knuckled fists before finally reaching for the scuffed wand box that would not look so out of place amongst Ollivanders shelves.

“How does it work?”

///

Oh, before he forgot, the little monitoring wardline had a cousin! Or at least that’s what they were calling themselves, or what he was calling them anyway.

They couldn’t really talk, she was so far away in the very back of the big stone room they both lived in, and so could just barely see each other's rainbow flaring auras when they flexed and strained at the edges of their territory.

They did that a lot, much to the never ending fury of their much older and crankier neighbors. He thought of it as their own way of saying ‘Hello!’

But anyway she had a very similar job to him, but it was  a little bit different. It was her responsibility to alert any time someone accessed the Potter-wands at all --but especially the Young-Potter. 

The Gone-Mrs. Potter had been very clear (and loud and yell-y during her casting much to the annoyance of his newborn not-ears) she didn’t want the  Young-Potter to have access to them unsupervised ( “-after what you and your mates got up to? Over my dead-fucking-body, James-” ) unless he really really needed it. But she did not want anyone else to know either. And she wanted someone who would tell her immediately and not ‘brush it off as just harmless fun’ ( “-like I’d let you or one of your bloody friends have final say, are you kidding me?!-”)

So the little not-cousin of Albus’s monitoring charm (who tolerated and accepted his presence at best from her own point of view) was cast by a very different pair of hands and commanded to alert someone else entirely.

///

Far, far away someone (or something, depending on one's perspective) was very very close to crossing back over to the Place-Where-She-Came. She was withering and starving, unable to feed from the magic that had sustained her power, providing her purpose for the last thirty years. 

She was listless, master-less. Waiting to fulfill a final standing order with no other instructions as she had for nearly fourteen years. She had waited so long for the young master to claim the box, to provide her with the step she needed to continue any form or purpose or existence again since her poor lovely mistress had passed over.

She was a patient elf, a loyal elf and such such a good elf (she was) but even the best elf could only wait for so long in a place so decrepit of magic before succumbing to the rules of the original covenant. 

The new Potter-villa had none of the ancient wards, the deep wells of magic that could keep her going for decades and decades. But she had been ordered to wait here and so she had.

(She was a very good elf. She was.)

She felt her breath coming out in rattling gasps now, it was so so close to the end.

And she wasn’t ready, but she was a loyal elf to her last. And she had done all that she could.

So , she supposed, she could be at peace.

The very-good-very-loyal-elf closed her eyes and felt the shallow pool of her remaining magic begin to trickle out, floating out and back up to the shining stars where it could linger and belong once she’d faded away.

///

A ripple in the air. A crack like a distant branch snapping in the woods. 

Or maybe a bomb going off.

///

“--Ow! It stung me!”

“It what?”

///

A very old pair of eyes popped open wide to reveal a startling inhuman blue. 

Shadows bent and were banished as stardust and flames burst forth from their nearly ice cold embers, erupting into supernovas of crashing cosmic power that flared in the dusty darkened room, bathing the small wrinkled figure in golden, ethereal light.

Mixy fell over and gasped as the rush of her magic flooded back in like a tidal wave. Her senses felt sharp and her small body felt strong like it hadn't in ages . 

She cracked the sound barrier without so much as twitching a muscle just to see if she could and then laughed until she cried.

She could hear it suddenly and on a beautiful never ending loop, the most perfect wonderful music, the only song she could ever want to hear, her mistresses' last orders to watch and protect her son. 

She had tried, the bright stars and good powers knew she had tried but the bad tricky no good wizard had done too much to hide and conceal her young master until even poor Mixy’s magic was not enough to break through them. The bad-no-good-fuddy-duddy had even twisted her poor mistresses' final sacrificial protection, the pure lovely wall of red, blood-like-an-evans-red, wrapping the house in powerful soul magic meant to shield her young master from badness had kept poor Mixy out instead.

Mixy would never harm the young master, she had gasped Never, never! She argued with the twisted remnants of her poor mistress' power for days, for weeks! Pushing and scraping at the pulsating wards with her hands until they bled. She loved young master Harry, she wouldn't hurt him. She wouldn’t! She wouldn’t! But they growled and snapped, confused and hurt and oh-so protective and they would not let her through.

She hated the white-bearded-wizard, oh how she hated him.

But she had tried, as hard and in as many ways as she could think to try, and then when she failed she was not despairing. She was a good elf, a loyal elf. She stayed and waited for the last order she could fulfill. The last tie to her young master that would allow her to finally break through the many protections and reach him.

“Under absolutely no circumstances on Earth , Mixy!” Mistress Lily had commanded, her voice lovely and loud, clear and cutting and beautiful like a bell while the foolish-Master James had cringed deeper into his cushion beside his red-faced dog-Brother Sirius. “None! Zero! Zilch! If Harry so much as touches that thing you come tell me immediately! And, god forbid I’m not there, you use your best judgment but my son will not have an illegal immoral wand unless he is in dire fucking need of one ! Do you all understand me?!”

Mixy did understand, of course she did. She sobbed on the floor and clutched her dirty stained sheets in her hands for exactly one trillionth of a second before snapping to attention.

Mixy had purpose again.

The dull gray of her skin lightened to a healthy blue-ish tint. The stains and tears of her once cherished uniform banished and ironed out until they were crisp and clean and perfect. Her proud Evans Family crest bright and shining pinned to her chest.

The young elf grasped it tight in her now smooth hands and beamed. She would do her mistress proud. She could now, she promised. She would protect the boy.

Master Harry had touched the box and now she had to use her best judgment. 

Mistress Lily often gave open-ended orders like these, as kind and fair and wonderful as she was, the girl could sometimes be a bit foolish about the nature of House-Elves. Mixy didn’t mind, she was being a very smart elf. 

“ Not unless he’s in dire fucking need of one!”

Mixy had not seen the young master in a very long time. She did not know if he needed it or not. She would just have to wait and watch for a while to see if he did. 

She was very good at watching and being excellent at waiting. And above all, Mixy was having a deep understanding and love for one of the core tenants of being a good proper elf, despite silly mistress Lily’s attempts to sometimes have her behave otherwise.

A good elf is not being seen.

Mixy cleared her throat, wiped her tears and then snapped her fingers and melted away into nothing. 

To the vault--to Harry.

///

Harry sucked his smarting thumb while Violet almost frantically turned the box over in her hands, muttering little revealing spells under her breath and glaring out at him from underneath her wild bangs. 

“You’re sure it stung you?”

“Yes!” Harry exclaimed loudly, frustrated seeing as this was the tenth time she had asked him. “And you can’t find anything wrong with it and it didn’t do anything else so can I please have it back now? It’s technically mine after all.”

“ It’s technically mine after all .” She mimicked in a high unflattering voice and he snatched the box back from her hands.

She’d explained to him how it worked, the box was an infinitely expanding space, designed to hold exactly however many wands as was needed and to retrieve the best fitting option, if there was one, for a Potter in need of it and send it smacking  into their palm once they reached into the box.

Ten minutes later they were back in the carts on their way to the surface with two trunks and Harry's new hidebehind holster one secret illegal wand heavier.

It hadn’t worked for Violet, but she had not seemed surprised.

“Technically I’m more of a Black than a Potter now.” She said, with a sad little smile she could not quite hide. His own magic, and the very magic heavy in the air around them, had flared angry and defiant (scarlet and gold) at that statement but Violet appeared not to notice and Harry wasn’t quite sure how to tell her and so said nothing at all.

But riding the rickety roller coaster back up to the surface (he had successfully begged off visiting the Black vaults for the day as she still wanted to take him shopping in muggle london) and looking at her pensieve distant expression he wondered if maybe he should have.

Neither of them sensed the hawk-eyed presence tucked into the shadows at their backs, vibrating with powerful intensity.

Nor did they hear the solemn vow that gently rattled the foundations of Gringotts once uttered to Mother Magic herself.

“Mixy will be keeping both her Young Master Harrys safe. She Will. ”