54I had an idea for something where Sirius gets to raise Harry. So I started writing and it sort of spiralled into this behemoth. I hope other people like the idea of it too.
Helen Skerritt straightened with a gasp where she was seated cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom in a simple ritual circle. Her brown eyes were wide and the hairs on her arms all stood on end. As a seer, she had hoped that a magical communion on Samhain night would have given her the boost she needed to get what she was asking for. As a muggleborn whose Sight was pretty atypical compared to what was expected in the field of divination, she also wasn't too sure what to expect. Her goal for the night mostly consisted of appealing to Lady Magic for some direction in how to properly use and cultivate her gifts – and whether she even should. She'd read stories – both fictional and historical, magical and muggle – of people who dug too deep into gifts and treasures that would have been better left undisturbed. Ravenclaw though she was, she was also raised by very pragmatic and practical parents who drilled it into her to always look before she leapt, and sometimes still not leap anyway. The most she'd really hoped to be able to get was maybe an inkling of some library or bookstore, maybe even somebody she could seek out for instruction.
What she actually got was a rainstorm of information – all disjointed droplets coming at her all at once, with blinding lightning flashes of feeling and urgency, and disorienting thunderclaps of desperation-gonow-doit-MOVE! – that was both understandably confusing and perplexingly coherent. There was too much information for it all to be a split-second instant, so she determined that it was multiple scenes happening simultaneously over a short period of time. Intuitively, she knew that whatever she had Seen, much of it was happening tonight, some of it right at that moment. Her magic was pushing her to act, but much more insistently than it had ever done in the past. Usually it was little nudges here, or a hunch to do this instead of that today. This time, it was like a leashed dog pulling her outside – a big dog, like a Great Dane. The intensity of it scared her, especially as she only realised she was heading out into England in October on what amounted to a whim – a magical whim, but a whim nonetheless – completely underdressed, when she was halfway to the door.
It was times like this she was very happy that Professor Flitwick had introduced her to Occlumency. With his own "half-breed" status (and really, they couldn't be more passive-aggressively derogatory if they tried), he had noticed over his many years as a professor that muggleborn students tended to have a better sense of magic. His own ability was a result of his mixed heritage, but he'd eventually decided that the muggleborns were likely more sensitive to magic by virtue of having spent their childhoods in the complete absence of ambient magic. It often distracted them as they perceived it slightly differently than their magic-raised peers, and considering that British purebloods never liked to consider muggleborns superior in any capacity (especially lately), the widely accepted explanation was that it was another deficiency from their heritage that muggleborns didn't sense magic "properly". It still boggled her mind whenever Helen thought of it, but bigotry was a pretty effective set of blinders.
However, Professor Flitwick had noticed her problem and suggested 'meditation' to help her learn to organise, classify, and properly interpret the excessive stimulus. He apparently did the same for other muggleborns who he noticed were particularly sensitive. Most learned to moderate or filter the input well enough that they fit in with their pureblood peers by their second year. But sometimes, there were some who were more sensitive than others who needed some extra help to be able to navigate their new world properly. At first, he usually couched it as a form of meditation to become more acquainted with their own magic. That was usually enough to get them sorted out if they were consistent enough.
He must have seen something different in Helen, for he had pulled her aside in her third year and sworn her to secrecy before beginning to teach her about Occlumency. She had agreed at the time, not really understanding why it could be dangerous if people knew she was learning some fancy meditation, but eager enough to have some more control over her senses that she'd acquiesced to his sole demand. She'd since learned that occlumency was more than just fancy meditation – it was mastery of one's own mind (not necessarily thoughts), and required some very precise control over one's magic in order to be able to essentially ward the mind from external magical stimulus using one's own innate magic from the core, with no assistance from a wand or runes or charms. It required you to face the truths about yourself, even the unpleasant ones – especially the unpleasant ones – because those were just as much a part of who you were as the good truths, and consequently, had just as much input in how your mind worked. In that way, it was rather similar to the animagus transformation process as it was practiced in other places like Asia and Africa. The method most commonly used in Europe forced a revelation without the soul-searching, and as far as she knew, the forms – animal and human – were distinct and there was no carry-over of skill between sides. (She often wondered, when she chose to contemplate it, if therefore the form that it revealed was instead an approximation of some aspect of yourself, maybe your most prominent characteristic at that point in time, as opposed to the soul-searching variant that would take into account all of who you are.)
Even now, years after Professor Flitwick had pronounced her adept at the discipline, she was still constantly trying to improve her mental defences – especially after she'd found out that both You-Know-Who and the headmaster were very accomplished legilimens.
She'd decided early on in her Hogwarts career to keep her Sight to herself. For one thing, true seers were both lauded and feared in the same breath, especially those whose visions tended to overtake them unawares. The persons prone to those sorts of visions usually tended to have news of something great, something terrible, or something great and terrible. So, it wasn't really a surprise that, this being the most common type of Seer, those with the Sight were regarded with a wary eye. Additionally, it was, for some reason, almost never seen in muggleborns. All her time spent in the Hogwarts library to investigate her visions over her seven years as a Ravenclaw, and she still hadn't found anything that exactly matched up to what she experienced. If there was more information, she suspected it was jealously guarded by Seer family lines or the Unspeakables, or some other party.
If she consciously tried to tap into her gift, she could, with some effort, focus it on a particular person or place (if she knew them) and See what was happening right then, or maybe a short while into the future. Otherwise, she tended just get a flash or an inkling of something pertinent just before it happened. She suspected that some of her more vivid dreams were visions, but they were usually of times long past, or of circumstances and people unfamiliar enough that she couldn't tell whether they were future, past, or present. She'd taken to keeping a dream journal of all such dreams in the hopes of determining a pattern or some method to the madness.
The best way that she'd found to describe it was that her Sight gave her visions of possibilities, but not definite prophesies – more like precognition than fortune-telling. It was her theory for why she wasn't one of those who spouted something while in a trance and had no recollection afterwards. Honestly, she wasn't too upset over it because it meant she'd had an easier time keeping away unwanted attention. She'd mainly used it during her time at school as a way to stay ahead of the attacks by up-and-coming bigots and the generally harmless schoolwide pranks of The Marauders. Potter and his three closest friends had claimed the name after Professor McGonagall had torn into them for "marauding about the school" after a prank in second year that was flashy and disruptive, but ultimately not too bad for a bunch of kids now starting out. Helen suspected that by the time they'd graduated, the woman would regret it because their pranks had become rather more elaborate and refined, but were still not malicious (unless they were targeting Snape from Slytherin, but Helen couldn't feel too badly about it since the boy and his own friends gave as good as they got, and were generally unpleasant to rest of the school where the Marauders were actually rather personable). Most people, excluding the uptight little bigots, held a stance of both looking forward to and dreading them because they weren't malicious and usually managed to brighten spirits, especially as the war intensified.
Of course, the other reason that the students didn't tend to view the Marauders' pranks as a menace was that it was generally accepted, but never actually proven that the Marauders were behind the targeted retribution against all the little blood purists who'd attacked muggleborns and half-bloods. Where their pranks were usually signed and owned up to, the reprisals remained anonymous. The theory seemed to hold water as her younger brother, a Hufflepuff, had told her that the retaliatory attacks hadn't resumed in the September after she'd left. The muggleborn and half-blood students were the worse off for it because it meant the blood purists now had no real comeuppance for their crimes as there was no one providing a counterbalance. The teachers didn't do much more than a loss of house points, or sometimes a detention. Professor Flitwick was the most likely to treat the hate crimes like what they were, but Dumbledore somehow often managed to talk the victims around to not calling in the aurors, mainly with the heavy implication that the system didn't favour protection of muggleborns and some tripe about schoolyard squabbles and growing out of bad habits. To be fair, it seemed like the instances when the aurors were called in only served to reinforce that idea, as they were always dismissive and condescending of the muggleborns' concerns.
Looking back on it, she wondered if there wasn't something more to it. Dumbledore, despite his dotty persona, was still hailed as wise and powerful. Many of the muggleborns that Helen knew, especially from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, were disappointed by the Headmaster. For all that he was claimed to be a proponent of muggleborn rights, their muggleborn experience at Hogwarts was not a pleasant one. It was oftentimes not even safe. It was usually chalked up to political opposition and the widespread corruption in the Ministry of Magic. However, Helen, as Black muggleborn, who grew up in a Caribbean immigrant community in muggle Britain, saw it differently. There were many people in the mundane world who tried to set themselves up as some sort of hero to marginalised people to gain their support, but hardly ever actually delivered on the promises they'd made. It may have been a little cynical of her, but she didn't fancy getting her hopes up only to watch them crash and burn. By the end of her second year, she'd already become disillusioned.
As far as she was concerned, Dumbledore was the same. Sure, he'd fought and defeated Wizard Hitler, and he'd come back to Britain to be a "humble" schoolteacher (although teaching at Hogwarts was considered a distinction in and of itself), but he fairly quickly became deputy and then headmaster. That in itself wasn't a problem. But when she considered that his excuse for not joining this committee or that board was always something along the lines of being content with his simple place and lot in life, it was...odd. Hogwarts is lauded and hailed by British wix as being the premier wizarding education institution in the world (her experience going abroad during her mastery disproved that quite neatly, but the point stood). It was where the upper crust of British wix sent their children to be educated. Hogwarts was essentially the place where the adults of tomorrow met, learned to interact with each other, began to develop the foundations for how they would interact with each other in the future, and broadened (or narrowed) their worldview. There was nothing simple about running the school that shaped the minds of wizarding Britain's next generation of leaders. And on top of that, he'd been sworn in as Chief Warlock just two years ago, and was the British representative to the ICW. For someone who claimed to be very happy with a simple life, he was now holding two very not simple positions very high up in British wizarding society and a third very distinguished one in world politics. And all that despite not being a pureblood.
There was something fishy there, but she couldn't put her finger on it, and it bothered her. But she didn't have time to dwell on it at the moment as she fought her own magic to stay seated where she was instead of running out to act on her visions. She was shaking fit to fall apart, and if she was completely honest, panicking quite a bit at her own feeling of powerlessness and the unprecedented loss of control to her magic.
Her first clear thought to break through the panic and the visions that were still flashing through her mind in seemingly random order, was that she needed to write them down. It was too much for her to sort through mentally and something tangible would help. The problem with that was that her dream journal was in her nightstand, and she strongly suspected that if she got up, she was going to start rushing out the door again. Her magic still hadn't calmed, and she was almost surprised that she wasn't physically seeing it swirling about her like a little hurricane.
There was a moment of despair before she remembered that she could call on Pepper. The little elf appeared, dressed in a simple muggle children's dress. It had taken Helen two years after meeting the house elf to convince her to try wearing something other than the tea towels and pillowcases that seemed so customary for her race. As a muggleborn, and a Black woman at that, the house elves' situation was much too close to recent history for her tastes. She was still investigating it, but it was slow going because she didn't want to scare Pepper off before she could draw some definitive conclusions.
Pepper's violet eyes widened at the sight of her, and her little mouth dropped open in shock, even as her ears were perked straight up and quivering.
"Missy Helen be needing to close magic gate," was what she instructed in a squeak so high it was nearly a whisper. "Pepper cannot be helping until magic is being calmer!"
Helen took that to mean officially ending the communion, which she had forgotten to do in all the chaos. She tried to tuck her magic in, despite its roiling, and was eventually able to control enough of it to deactivate her little ritual circle. A slightly hysterical voice in the back of her mind wondered what proper ritual magic would be like if just a simple communion had done this to her. Her Runes Mistress had only started teaching her about ritual magic a few months ago. This wasn't her first magical communion unsupervised, but it was the first time she'd done it on an auspicious magical date. After this, she didn't exactly fancy doing any rituals on magically significant days anytime in the near future.
She tipped over in relief as the ongoing flood of new visions cut off, and Pepper rushed forward to catch her, giving a little gasp at the feel of the leftover magic still refusing to submit to Helen. Her big eyes flashed brighter at the contact, but Helen wasn't in a position to question it at the moment.
The little being tutted even as she fussed over the shaking young woman. "At least Missy Helen not be causing more magical fires this time," she huffed, and Helen let out a little breath that would otherwise have been a chuckle. It was Pepper's long-standing complaint that Helen and Mistress Eigyr, who Helen also called Taana (the Kobelyn title given to a female who'd attained a Mastery in any area) were constantly searching for new ways to blow themselves up. To be fair, explosions were a very common part of a runes apprenticeship because magic directed through an incorrectly made runic array was likely to combust... most of the time. She still marvelled over that one time she'd animated a jewellery box to dance (sort of) instead of causing it to spit out certain jewellery in response to verbal prompts. It was a good lesson to not use things she'd drawn up on a 3-day all-nighter and way too much caffeinated tea.
"My dream journal," Helen told her, not bothering to fight the fussing, as she'd long ago realised it was in part to help Pepper herself calm down by realizing Helen was still in one piece, albeit usually a little singed. "And a dicta-quill." There was no way her hand would be steady enough to write everything down as quickly as she wanted – needed. Her magic was, even with the ritual circle closed, still pushing her to go out and do something.
She started listing things out, in no particular order, for the quill to record. She could reorder it later, but right now, she just needed to have it all put down somewhere where she could see it instead of just Seeing it.
"James and Lily Potter are dead – murdered by You-Know-Who, and one of the Marauders was hiding in the shadows – the short, tubby one – Pettigrew! That was it," she started. "Dumbledore and McGonagall dump a sleeping baby with a fresh wound on his face on a doorstep somewhere and leave without a backwards glance-" she paused before she could continue, face scrunched in absolute disbelief. The quill hovered patiently even as her mouth worked soundlessly. Magic crackled through her hair, worsening the fuzzy mess her communion had made of the braids she'd put it in. "What in the nine circles of hell are they thinking? He'll catch his death!" she demanded. The quill obediently scritched down her words, not able to make the distinction between her dictation and personal interjections. When she noticed it, she huffed and continued on. Looks like her magic knew what it was talking about trying to push her on, and she figured she was going to kidnap the baby first. Obviously those two didn't know anything about infants, and there was no way she could in good conscience leave a baby in a bassinet, on a doorstep, in Britain, in October. She hoped to high heaven that he'd at least cast a warming charm over the child that would keep until she could get to him. Thankfully, her vision of where the baby had been dropped was enough for her to use to apparate, as you generally needed the name, the coordinates, or an accurate mental image of the place. She didn't recognise the area, but her image should be clear enough that she wouldn't splinch herself.
"Sirius Black is arrested by someone who looks like that unpleasant Crouch kid – probably his father or an uncle maybe. Bellatrix Black – no wait. She married someone, didn't she?" Helen shuddered, even as her tangential thoughts were taken down along with her accounting of the vision. "Although why anybody would willingly tie themselves to that particular she-demon in unholy matrimony, I have no idea. The dowry can't have been worth it. Anyway, the daughter of Satan and some friends – oh look, is that the Crouch kid? – are attacking Lily's friend from the Arithmancy study group and some guy that must be the bloke she married. There's another baby petrified in the corner – and what do those bigots have against babies?"
She continued in this vein, giving a sentence or two about each vision so that she'd be able to recall it later. Her proficiency at occlumency meant that the full memories of each vision were all there, as she'd discovered over the years, but she still had to properly sort and organise them so she could make sense of them. It was like a child upsetting a box of toys – everything is still present; it's just all jumbled and useless mixed up as it is. It didn't take her very long to jot down something for each vision and begin to tentatively make a timeline and prioritise what she needed to do first. Because there was no doubt she was going to do something. As careful as she preferred to be about what she did, she knew, deep down, that she had to act as soon as possible. There was some sort of urgency here, and while she didn't know exactly what the danger was, because apparently Britain's most recent terrorist had exploded when his own killing curse reflected off of Lily's now-orphaned baby – and wow it was only now registering that he was actually dead. It was too big a thing to grasp at the moment. He and his savage band of murderers had caused such unending terror and anarchy over the last decade that it was just not making sense. The thought was there, but it was like reading something in a foreign language.
Either way, she didn't have time to break out the champagne. A decent couple were dead, their baby was abandoned, and there was evidently a lot of mess that was going to hit the fan very soon that she was somehow supposed to affect. She'd come to appreciate over the years that magic was at least semi-sentient. There was no explanation for the variability of things like rituals otherwise. Her magic was telling her to act, so she would. She didn't actually want to get involved in whatever the coming storm was, but evidently, her little request to Lady Magic for direction with her gift was telling her that this all was somehow entangled in her getting there.
But to effectively do anything about what she saw, she'd need help...and also Mistress Eigyr would skin her alive if she went off half-cocked without telling her what she'd Seen and came back having kidnapped the abandoned baby Heir of an Ancient and Noble House. She didn't have a death wish, and nobody with any sort of sense would even consider pissing off a kobelyn that badly, not even one who was half-human like Mistress Eigyr was.
Mistress Eigyr, the Rune-Crafter (which was the proper term for someone with a Mastery in runework) she was apprenticing under, who just happened to be Professor Flitwick's older sister, was with the rest of the Horde to celebrate Samhain according to their traditions, but she would understand that Helen wouldn't have called her back to their shared cottage unless it was an emergency. Sure enough, it was only ten minutes after she'd sent her message (dire visions. must act NOW) via their rune-encoded pallets, that the formidable half-kableyin was back in their sitting room, expression as serious as Helen had ever seen it.
Helen was waiting for her on one of the couches, having been able to pull herself back together enough to get dressed for her Magic-appointed mission.
Rune-Crafter Eigyr Unna Flitwick of the Clan Gembringer of the Kobelyn Horde was a tall female by the standards of her race, owing to her human father. At four and a half feet tall, she was six inches taller than most other kableyinot got. Her hair was a rather bright purple colour, as bright as any jewel, which Helen had come to learn was not so odd among the kobelyni, who wix called by the derogatory slur 'goblin'. She privately wondered if it was somehow a result of some interaction of their magic and the precious stones and gems that the kobelyni had originally, long ago, gained acclaim for mining, but she hadn't yet worked out whether it would be offensive to ask, or how to ask about it even if it wasn't.
"This had better be good, Helen," she warned, expression severe. "Filius felt his bond to his apprentice wither in the middle of our rites, and I'd prefer not to leave him alone."
She'd already known it from her visions, which hadn't failed her yet, but her heart still panged at the confirmation. She nodded in acknowledgement and got straight to the point. "James and Lily Potter are dead and Dumbledore has abandoned their son on a Muggle doorstep." The look of the neighbourhood was enough to tell her it wasn't magical.
Eigyr's eyes widened in shock, but to her credit, she didn't waver.
"He's in a bassinet, Taana," she stressed. It wouldn't do to go off in hysterics to get her point across, but this was important and her magic was telling her she needed to be gone yesterday. "And still bleeding from a fresh cut on his forehead. There was more – another couple being attacked, two of the Potters' friends in a chase, somebody constantly checking a Dark Mark on their arm – but the most important thing at the moment is the baby I think. I'm going for him." She picked up her dream journal, intending to hand it off on her way out the door, but Eigyr grabbed her hand and held her back.
Before Helen could protest, she informed her: "We're taking Filius." At Helen's confused look, and the restless fidgeting she couldn't seem to quell, she elaborated. "Filius adopted Lily, so he was her paju as well as her Taniu – he should have some claim to the boy at the least. If you took him now, you could be accused of kidnapping."
Helen blinked, expression tilting towards flabbergasted and bewildered. "I can't just leave him there!" she cried, already prepared to try to tug her arm free to be on her way. What Dumbledore did was abandonment. She had to gonowrightnowgetcollectsave–
"But Dumbledore is the one everybody will listen to! Evidently your magic is pushing you to do something about this," Eigyr argued, looking at her speculatively. Helen was usually rather rational, and it was a bit disconcerting to see her this frazzled. Her scarf was haphazard, her shoes weren't tied, and Eigyr was pretty sure the girl had jammed her sleeping bonnet on her head instead of a proper hat for the weather. "But you need a plan, and apparently a minder. Go get dressed and I'll get Filius. Go," she ordered when Helen hesitated. She called for Pepper and when the little elf appeared before her told her: "Don't let her leave without me."
Pepper nodded and sighed. "Missy Helen be meaning well, but Magic be using her, and she doesn't be knowing how to handle it."
Eigyr's gaze sharpened, but if what Pepper was hinting at was true, she really didn't have time to confirm. She disappeared into the floo and reappeared soon afterwards, dragging her brother out behind her. A broken parental bond was a terrible thing to suffer through, especially one as relatively young as the one Filius had with Lily, but he'd have to hold it together long enough to help her save her own young apprentice and quite possibly the baby who was his adopted grandson.
She didn't get much explaining done before she'd snatched her brother out of their clan's hall, and anything she had said would have been more for their concerned extended family as Filius was rather unresponsive. But if Magic was moving on this night, by Hecate's veil, he'd pull himself together and do his part to safeguard that baby. She didn't trust Dumbledore with the child's safety – why would she? The tales she'd heard about those little bigots running amok in that school told her enough about Dumbledore's approach to child welfare, and Hecate only knew what that old idiot would consider safe for a baby if he'd dumped a wizarding child injured and alone in a bassinet in the Muggle world on Samhain night. The veil between the worlds was thin, and the child had just witnessed at least one murder, if both his parents were dead and he'd apparently been injured in the fray. It was dangerous to have one so young exposed to so much death at a time when Magic was shifting unpredictably and – this was the important part – the veil between the worlds was open.
Not for the first time in her life (and far from the last), Eigyr lamented the stupidity of wix. It seemed her mother had gotten lucky in finding her father, because the rest of them were idiots.
Before Eigyr could try to snap Filius out of his shock, Helen reappeared, looking much more put-together. Obviously, Pepper had bullied her way into the preparation because Helen still looked very uncharacteristically flustered.
"Professor Flitwick," she said once she'd caught sight of him. "We're going to save your grandson from whatever Dumbledore thinks he's doing with him."
He looked up at her, looking broken in a way that was so far from his usual exuberant disposition, that it brought Helen a bit more back to herself.
"James and Lily are gone," she said as gently as she could, considering her own state. "But they did something, and the baby survived a Killing Curse from You-Know-Who himself at point-blank range."
That shocked him enough that his eyes cleared, and he focused on her properly. "He's alive?" Filius whispered as though he didn't dare to believe it – which wasn't unreasonable considering people didn't just survive targeted attacks from the head honcho himself. "Harry is alive? They saved him?". So that was the baby's name. She should probably at least know it if she was planning to kidnap/rescue him. He seemed to shake himself. "How do you even know that? I only know they're – gone," and he choked on the word, "because I felt my bond with Lily break. How would you have known?"
Helen exchanged a hesitant look with her instructor and Eigyr dipped her head in encouragement. At any other time, she'd hesitate more than she currently was, but they needed to leave, as she was being reliably informed by her magic. Constantly. At full volume. "I have...a form of Sight," Helen began. "I think it's more of a sort of precognition rather than reading the future, but I've kept it hidden all this time. I was trying to do a magical communion to ask Lady Magic for some direction in what to do with it, and instead she sort of hijacked it and showed me a number of things that I'm assuming will be happening over the next few hours or days."
He stared at her with an expression that would probably have been astonished if he wasn't currently dealing with the heartbreak of his broken bond with Lily, and Helen fought not to fidget in the stretching silence. He eventually turned to his sister, and she again dipped her head in confirmation. With that, Filius gathered his considerable occlumency skills and shoved all of his grief and heartache into a closet somewhere in his mind to deal with later. Eigyr would never lie about something like this, which meant he still had his grandson – he still had Lily's son – and he would not give him up for anything. Dumbledore had had his chance to protect Lily and failed – and how he wished she'd come to him with whatever it was, but by the time she'd told him anything, they'd already made all their arrangements. The headmaster would not touch Lily's son.
"Right," he said briskly, the promise of little Harry being alive was enough to send his mind whirring on how best to approach this. "Where is he?"
Helen opened her mouth to respond and then shut it. She knew exactly where the baby was in her vision...but she didn't actually know where it was. It was something she'd picked up on about her Sight. She and Mistress Eigyr had made an experiment out of it once to see if she could apparate to somewhere she'd Seen but didn't know intimately. She'd been terribly afraid to splinch herself in the effort, but the worry had proven unfounded when she'd finally tried it and had successfully shown up in the place she'd Seen.
Seeing the mounting frustration on her apprentice's face, Eigyr cut in to head off an unnecessary blow up. "Side-along me and then we'll call Pepper to bring Filius." It was what they usually did whenever Helen Saw a place or item or store or what have you that would be useful for their work. It wasn't a regular occurrence, but it happened often enough to not be strange. That Helen was too wound up to remember it spoke volumes of how much of her focus her magic was pulling.
"Wait," Filius called. He stopped them long enough to cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on all three of them, so they'd still recognise each other, but no one else would. There was a war going on, and it was only prudent to be careful when entering unknown situations. If Dumbledore was dropping off a baby unattended, it shouldn't be an outright dangerous situation, and he trusted himself and Eigyr to be able to handle at least picking up an abandoned baby. He was a world champion duellist and she'd been an accomplished curse-breaker before she paused to have her children. Taking on an apprentice was, more than anything, a safe way to keep herself busy while she was on hiatus from her potentially risky preferred occupation. "You don't know who will be watching." He watched his sister and her apprentice disappear and waited impatiently for the house elf to come back for him.
When they were all once again together, Filius looked around him to find that they were in a muggle neighbourhood as un-magical as it was possible to be. Rows of cookie-cutter houses with no presence that would usually be associated with wards - none of the quirkiness that magical homes usually develop after housing the same family and its wards and magic over time - meticulously kept flower bushes and hedges that had absolutely no practical use besides the aesthetic. It was unsettling. He'd been to many muggle neighbourhoods before to welcome new muggleborn students, but even in the increasingly common standardised housing developments, there was a sense of life and people living. He was hard-pressed to recall anywhere that had ever seemed so...sterile.
By the time he came back to himself, they were already at the doorstep and Helen was reaching for the sleeping baby. Before she could so much as touch him, Eigyr smacked her hand away with a disapproving look on her face.
"What now?" she demanded impatiently, the frustration at the delay and her overeager magic making her short where she usually wouldn't be. Her magic was itching for her to pick him up. If it got any more agitated, it'd be sparking between her fingers and arcing across her clothes. She'd never considered herself particularly motherly – hadn't really thought much one way or the other about having children besides it being something that would happen after she'd gained her mastery. But looking at his little innocent face, tear tracks still on his cheeks, and that blasted cut still angry and red and improperly healed, she couldn't for the life of her figure out why Mistress Eigyr was stopping her.
"First rule of curse-breaking: always check for traps before you go in," Eigyr said, with a pointed look to them both. Filius was about to remind her that they were on a muggle doorstep and not some ancient curse-laden site when she continued. "As much as I personally dislike Dumbledore, it occurs to me that even he couldn't be so stupid as to leave a child like this without at least a monitoring charm."
She looked over both baby and bassinet and found a letter tucked into the side addressed to a 'Ms. Petunia Evans'. She quickly scanned it and removed a very mild compulsion charm intended to encourage the recipient to read it and agree to whatever was in it, and scoffed as she handed it to Filius, whose heart stuttered when he read the name. Dumbledore was planning to leave Lily's son with Petunia? The two young women had fallen out with each other and had never reconciled to his knowledge. Lily had once told him that her sister was every bit a blood purist, though of a different sort. Petunia had become everything wix thought Muggles still were, and even worse, disdained other muggles with darker skin and foreign features just as much as any pureblood bigot hated muggleborns. To be perfectly honest, Lily hadn't been sure who Petunia detested more: wix and their magic, or the Muggles with more 'exotic' features. The relevance of all that was that Harry, whose magical paternal family had a history of foreign intermarriages, was both. Filius didn't want to think that Dumbledore had knowingly put a baby in a household where his only relative was already predisposed to hating him, but his emotions were already very near the surface. If Dumbledore showed up before him anytime soon, Filius would not be held responsible for whatever he did to him.
The mild charm that Eigyr had found may have been nothing more than suggestive to a wix, but to a muggle or squib (as Filius thought Petunia might be) it was more akin to coercion. He tucked it into his coat, not sure what it would say or how he may react to actually reading whatever the headmaster had written about Lily being dead. He couldn't see it in writing. Not yet.
Eigyr motioned over the baby and bassinet, and a short report appeared, glowing mid-air above them. Neither Filius nor Helen understood what it said – it was English, but neither of them knew anything much about curse-breaking jargon, so they waited for Eigyr's assessment. She read it once, twice, thrice, and then frowned down at Harry again. Without speaking, she took out her stylus and started a much more complicated chain of diagnostics, some of which Filius vaguely thought might have included common first-aid charms. As she'd been educated with the Horde and not at Hogwarts like he had, she couldn't have a wand, but the kobelyni didn't particularly need wands for use as magical foci. The British wix thought they'd accomplished something when they'd pushed that clause into one of the treaties, and the Horde didn't see fit to correct them.
It took a minute, but the diagnostic report from this one was longer and the usually unflappable Eigyr actually paled before she stopped to direct it very carefully to some parchment she'd pulled from somewhere. When she'd tucked it back away, she summoned a stone from a nearby flowerbed and her stylus flew as she cast furiously over both Harry, the bassinet, and the stone. Filius knew better than to distract her at the moment – it was the same way she looked when she was trying to overcome some obstacle with her rune-work, and he'd learned long ago it was better all 'round to let her alone when she got like this – but he grew more concerned the longer it went on.
Finally, she ceased her frantic casting and reached out to lightly touch the wound, letting out a shaky exhale in what looked like relief. She'd barely nodded to Helen before her apprentice had snatched the child up and bundled him, blanket and all, into her coat. Helen sighed and it was only as her whole body seemed to sag that either of the Flitwicks realised just how tightly wound she'd been. Eigyr tossed the stone back into the flowerbed she'd taken it from and then called for Pepper to retrieve Helen. Since the elf's method of travel was less stressful, and Harry was still asleep, it would be wiser than having Helen apparate with him back to the cottage. After making sure there was no sign of them having been there, Filius picked up the bassinet, and he and his sister followed.
He didn't even get a chance to do more than glance at Harry before Eigyr had activated the highest level of her security wards on the property and was shoving them out to the back garden.
"Eigyr, what on earth are you doing?" he demanded, even as he went along. Any younger brother could tell when resistance would be futile, and he was too old to waste the effort. "I need to see him and examine that cut!"
His sister bared her teeth in a snarl, though he could tell her ire wasn't for him. "That gash needs more than a proper healing charm, and Dumbledore tied blood wards to him!" She looked livid, and Filius blinked, before gearing up to join her. Blood wards! On a baby! Those were only ever used to protect family dwellings, and while you could add a baby to wards so they were recognised as part of the family to be protected, no one in their right mind would anchor wards to a baby. While it was usually only magically expensive to initiate the wards until they settled into drawing on ambient magic from the residents or a nearby ley line, with Harry's still untrained and undeveloped magic, the drain could fracture his core. "Luckily, they wouldn't fully activate until some condition had been met – probably something with that blasted letter and the compulsion charm," the last bit she grumbled to herself, "so we can break it before anything can happen."
By now they'd reached to Eigyr's ritual circle, which she didn't use much outside of ceremonial ritual magic for different holidays. Helen looked up, looking a bit nervous at being back in a ritual circle so soon, but didn't put up a fuss for whatever her instructor was doing. Eigyr never did anything without reason and the reason was usually very good indeed. She held fast to the baby still under the effects of what she suspected was a sleeping charm. In her experience babysitting for her relatives and neighbours, he should have woken up by now at being out in the cold and moved around by strange people.
"There were some stronger monitoring and tracking charms there as well besides the basic ones tied to his clothes," Eigyr continued as she looked between the circle and the other two with her. "If I had to guess, they're either connected to some sort of device or to Dumbledore himself and he'd have showed up the moment I interfered with them. The cottage is unplottable, so even if he realises they've been removed, he won't be able to find us. He should not even think of that child after what is in that gash!"
Eigyr was properly riled now and Filius was becoming alarmed. He'd suspected it was some sort of curse, because curse wounds usually don't respond to basic healing charms, but as Harry didn't seem to be in any current distress, he'd thought maybe it was a milder one that they could take care of in a bit. But Eigyr – who had done what he now realised were curse-breaking diagnostics on Harry's injury – was much too agitated for a simple curse. And honestly, Dumbledore, for all his acclaim, should have been able to handle removal a mild curse on his own. Eigyr had faced a lot of danger as a curse breaker, and so, very few problems in everyday life fazed her. If she was mad enough to spit nails, Filius dreaded hearing what You-Know-Who had done to Lily's child.
"So you're planning to do a ritual to cleanse the cut?" Filius asked, pushing away the thought and refocusing. "Now?" Usually, a ritual was carefully planned to make sure that everything was as it should be. That Eigyr – his careful, organised sister – was willing to jump into a ritual, even a simple cleansing ritual, was odd. Was whatever was in the curse wound that bad?
"The cut?" Eigyr scoffed. "I can't cleanse that on my own, especially not on such short notice, but Magic flows more readily on Samhain and I'm hoping that will be enough to overcome Dumbledore's blood wards and whatever monitoring charms he put in place." She was still focusing on the circle, trying to determine who should go where for the best impact, now feeling some urgency herself as she really wanted to use the Magic while it was still Samhain, and she didn't want to miss midnight. "You told me he had a mastery in alchemy, and you know alchemical charms and enchantments are more robust than normal ones. Now if I could only figure out the best way to do this to spare that child!" she finally exclaimed the last in frustration, stamping her foot in a habit she only rarely fell to since becoming an adult.
There was a weighty moment in which she suddenly froze, eyes wide. When it broke, she pushed and shoved Filius until he was where she wanted him, muttering all the while that it's odd, but it makes sense and why not anyway? She grumbled at Helen until she finally relinquished the sleeping baby for Eigyr to put him on the centre stone of the ritual circle, and then placed Helen just behind him in the innermost circle. That done, she placed herself a quarter of the way around the circle from Filius, and then directed Pepper, who'd been watching them all from the doorway and wringing her hands, to a position halfway between herself and Filius. Pepper looked as surprised as he felt. He'd never heard of anyone including a house elf to be part of a ritual circle; their magic was even more different from kobelyni and wix than either of the latter two were from each other. Furthermore, it was a rather strange configuration, as instead of properly surrounding the circle (as much as they could with four participants), they'd made a sort of pie slice on the western side. Odd as it was, it was probably better that Helen remained next to Harry. Besides the fact that Filius suspected her current calm was only due to finally having collected Harry and would disappear as soon as she was separated from him, she'd been the one to See the events of the night and he didn't doubt that Lady Magic some specific purpose for pushing her as it did. What that purpose might be, he hoped they discovered it soon because he was just about at the end of his rope waiting to be able to touch and feel for himself that Lily's child still lived breathed, even if Lily herself no longer did.
"Helen!" Eigyr called sharply. The young woman's head snapped around from where she'd been staring down at Harry as though he would disappear if she looked away for a moment. "Dumbledore put a number of charms and monitors on him, one of which could kill him," she explained. The look that crossed Helen's face was somewhere between horrified and murderous. Even with all the chaos of the night, Eigyr had enough presence of mind to hope that this purification was what Lady Magic wanted Helen to make happen and the girl would go back to her usual level-headed self when it was over because otherwise, she'd be upset that Lady Magic had ruined a perfectly good apprentice. "We will be breaking them, but you need to open the circle and direct the flow of our magic."
She had a fleeting moment of apprehension about being the one to lead a ritual, which she'd never done before and was really not supposed to do because of that fact. But Mistress Eigyr wouldn't put her in harm's way if she could help it. She usually said it was because she didn't want to have to break in a new apprentice, but they both knew it was because she cared.
She nodded once, firmly, to herself and focused on her Runes Mistress. "What do I do?"
"As simple as we can since you've never done it before: 'For the purification of this child, may Magic bless our purpose', and push your magic into the circle. With how tonight's been going, I'm hoping Magic will handle the rest for you."
Without further ado, Helen turned around and looked down at the sleeping toddler. There had to be some sort of greater Magic than her own at work here, because the pull she felt to this child she'd never met was frankly a bit disconcerting. At the last moment, a slight addition to Eigyr's instructions popped unbidden into her mind, and she figured this was more of that Magic. "For the purification and unburdening of this child, may Magic bless our purpose!"
She slammed her palm onto the centre circle next to Harry, feeling foreign magic rush into and through her. She moved her hand to let it rest on his little tummy and he woke with a terrified scream as magic, protective and strangely triumphant, began to rush through him. He'd been asleep all night, so she hadn't seen his eyes before. They were even greener than she remembered Lily's being during their time in school, and just about glowed with magic.
His terror was heart-breaking, and she figured it was justified if he'd watched his mother murdered and then been taken by strange people and put to sleep, only to wake up to more strange people and a veritable tidal wave of foreign magic washing through him. Her reflex was to try to gather him up to try to calm him, but she found she physically couldn't move. At another time, that may have scared her, but she was distracted by what she was sensing about him with her magic.
Closing her eyes, she focused, remembering that she was the one who had to direct the magic of the ritual. Harry's magic was a bright thing in her mind, a little golden sun pulsing rapidly with what she thought might be his heartbeat. With a little more effort, she found threads of colour running through it, a handful of bright blue strands, which she figured were the monitoring charms Dumbledore had put on him. Those she attacked first, figuring they might be easiest to remove. The closest thing she could liken it to was yanking on a string. When she found she couldn't pull them out herself, she gathered some of the magic being fed to her, finding it felt like Professor Flitwick and Mistress Eigyr, and set it to helping her pull. Soon enough, they popped free, and she watched them disintegrate into sparks and then nothing. She vaguely registered Harry's magic giving a little jolt in what was apparently its version of being startled. She sent some of her own magic to his, hoping that it would be soothing, and feeling him grab at it like the curious baby he probably was.
But her focus was captured again as she looked around and found a pale red rope, much thicker and denser than the bright blue threads she'd just taken on. This one, she couldn't identify, and made a mental note to discuss it with the Flitwicks later. She tried yanking on it like she had the others, but quickly found it wouldn't be budged in that manner. She took a sort of mental step back to reassess it and realised that it didn't flow directly into Harry's little sunny ball of magic. Mentally moving around to see where it was leading to, she eventually met up with a sight that she didn't really understand, but which sent a fissure of urgency and fear down her spine anyway. There was an inky black mass of something writhing in what looked like a net of silver light, and the whole thing was half-embedded into Harry's little sun. The red rope she'd been following was anchored to that net.
She figured the rope was the easier hurdle to handle first, especially since it didn't make her want to run for the hills. She completely discarded pulling on it until it broke because what if she accidentally broke that silver net? Something told her that the net was her friend and without it, that ball of darkness would become exponentially more dangerous.
It took her a moment, but she finally decided that if she couldn't snap the rope, she might be able to cut it and hope that the remaining end would disappear as well if it was no longer whole. Since it was thicker than those little blue threads, she'd use help rather than waste time trying to cut it on her own. So decided, she reached for some of that extra magic again, pulling on the kobelyn magic to mix with and reinforce her own, and then threaded that through with a ...flexible was the best way she could describe it... source of magic that she somehow knew to be Pepper, until she envisioned it to be a rather enormous and wicked-looking knife. It took a few hacks and swings, and her magic somehow felt a bit winded when she'd finished, but the pale red rope was severed and disappeared like the bright blue threads before it. Harry's magic didn't startle this time, but she still brushed it with some of her own anyway. Again, he tugged on it, in a manner that vaguely reminded Helen of babies getting themselves tangled in blankets.
The silver net, however, seemed to glow a bit brighter, which she thought may be logical if such a dense spell had been mooching off of it. It seemed to tighten around the black mass and Helen realised with some fear that the net was all that was keeping it from burrowing into Harry's magic. If she had been paying attention to Eigyr and Flitwick's conversation as they were arranging the circle, she might have probably suspected that this was what was in the cut that Eigyr had said she'd need help to cleanse and would have then ended the ritual so they could get a second opinion instead of risking it. But she hadn't been paying attention, focused instead on obsessively checking over the baby that Magic had urged her to kidnap and save. And so, spurred by the fear of that mass of evil ink getting into Harry's pure little sun, she got her second wind and started trying to determine what she could do.
Since the net was Harry's only defence at the moment, she didn't even entertain the idea of cutting it open to try to banish the taint. But what to do instead? She paced – as much as she could pace when she was actually just a metaphysical representation of a bunch of magic – becoming increasingly more frantic the longer it went on without a viable idea. Eventually, in desperation, she reached out with her own magic to touch the net, only to jerk back in surprise when it lashed out at her with prejudice. But that brief touch was enough for her to feel the fiercelove-protectiveness-fear-viciousanger-sadness-stubbornness-GETAWAYFROMHIM that tore through it. It was distinctly maternal.
Immediately, she realised that, somehow, this was Lily's magic. But Helen had Seen Lily die. It made absolutely no sense that a dead woman's magic was here now, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. With new determination, she grabbed onto the net with both figurative hands and shoved as many feelings of friend-help-protectHarry-wanttohelp-FRIEND at it as she could.
She could feel Lily's magic hesitate, but between one breath and the next, they'd had an entire exchange about their mutual desire to get rid of this taint and protect Harry. And then Lily's magic was grabbing hold and Helen was part of the net. It was like trying to hold a door against a battering ram. Pushed by elephants. On steroids. It went without saying that they couldn't overpower it on their own.
But they weren't alone. Helen reached blindly for the other magic in the circle, tugging the Flitwicks' magic and Pepper's along into an uncoordinated line of defence. They all joined the fray, magic surging into the net although they probably didn't even realise what exactly their magic was being called up for.
It still wasn't enough. They were able to wiggle it a little more out of Harry's sun, but then it would go no further. Helen feared what would happen if they couldn't overcome the opposition.
When they started flagging – and how had Lily's magic been doing this all on its own all night?! – Helen cast about again, a half-hysterical, half-desperate mental plea to Magic to help.
And suddenly, there was a rush and a roar, not unlike the wind in the midst of a hurricane. Something wild and ancient and new and deep and unfathomable. It felt a little bit like the Magic that had first rushed through her when she'd opened the circle. But calling the two things similar was like saying a lit match was like a forest fire. It was so inadequate as to almost be false. This was pure, unfiltered Wild Magic.
It rose up around and through their combined magic and focused itself on the smudge. It felt like warmth and protection, like security and encouragement, like a perfect summer's day and the smell of the first spring blooms. But there was something at the edges of it – the bite of the coldest winter storm, the flash a wolf's teeth in defence of her cubs, the fury and inevitability of an erupting volcano. To be honest, it reminded her a bit of her mother and grandmothers – gentleness and strength and something fiercely maternal.
Apparently, the evil black ink smudge did not like it at all. It redoubled its efforts and let out a blood-curdling shriek that made Helen want to clap her hands over her metaphorical ears. It was like nails on chalkboard and turned her stomach and heart and guts and –
It was just terrifically awful.
The Magic, in response, only grew fiercer and the ink stain seemed to shrink. It was still shrieking fit to wake the dead, but it was, bit by bit, being pushed out of Harry's magic, which she now realised was wailing in pain and terror. How long had that been going on without her noticing? Her heart plummeted because if it was so terrible just to hear it, what must the poor toddler be feeling? Or worse yet, what if the process of removing the stain damaged Harry? She'd never forgive herself.
At this point, the Wild Magic was basically doing it all on its own. So, she took a chance and withdrew most of her magic to run it against Harry's since it was the only thing she could think of. It seemed Lily's magic was singularly and rabidly focused on getting rid of whatever it was, and she couldn't fault it after seeing how it was hurting Harry. It was just about out now anyway, so she curled her magic around Harry's, sending him as many calming feelings and happy thoughts as she could. The poor child probably just wanted his mother, but all Helen could give him at the moment was herself. She sent him memories of curling up in her parents' bed with her own mother on quiet evenings, listening to her weave stories as she sewed. She wasn't sure if it was helping, but she kept at it for lack of any better ideas. Memories of sitting on her Grandad's lap while he helped her cheat at a game of cards against her father (who was similarly helping her younger brother cheat against them), playing and tumbling with her cousins and younger siblings – anything at all that brought up feelings of happiness and comfort.
She had almost been completely distracted by her self-appointed task when there was a final horrific screech and the evil ink blot just...sort of went up in flames and disintegrated. Just poof! The rest of her magic snapped back into her, and Lily's silver streamed over to Harry eagerly. Helen withdrew so it could inspect him itself (herself? But Lily was dead? This made no sense) and sent everyone else's magic back to them.
After doing a final check, she was sure now that there were no more foreign magics attached to Harry, besides Lily's magic that was now enveloping it. As she looked on, Lily's magic withdrew as well and instead of reforming the net, formed a sort of shimmering gauzy film and sank into Harry's magic. When nothing else looked to be happening, she decided she should probably end the ritual and close the circle before something else happened on this night for the record books. It took her a moment to remember how, but she managed to open her eyes, fully intending to close the circle and then ask the Flitwick siblings what the hell had just happened.
Her plans were derailed almost immediately as she opened her eyes to be faced with three glowing white spectres on the opposite side of the ritual circle from Pepper and the Flitwicks. Two of them were easily identifiable as James and Lily Potter. James' glasses were slightly askew and there were a handful of gashes through his clothes, which Helen realised with shock were probably due to whatever curses had hit him before he died earlier that night. Lily was clad in a simple dress and though she didn't carry battle scars the way James did, she appeared exhausted, which Helen readily attributed to her struggle against the evil ink blot. It made sense, if James died first fighting to give Lily and Harry a chance to escape, and then Lily was struck down with no scuffle at all. But evidently, she'd done something highly magical, else her magic wouldn't have been protecting Harry, and her magical spectral form manifested with all the exhaustion of the struggle. The third figure was completely unknown to Helen, a rather well-endowed woman dressed in what looked like some sort of medieval outfit, with her hair elaborately pinned up.
Helen's mouth dropped all the way open and hung there in her shock. Her wide eyes darted back and forth between the three spectres, not believing what she was seeing. She knew James and Lily were dead – she'd Seen it – which suggested the other woman was also dead and really, she just wanted to be done with the whole night please and thank you.
"What-you-how-" she spluttered, and she didn't even know what she wanted to ask first. She tore her eyes away from them to look back at her companions in the circle, just to make sure she hadn't lost her mind somewhere over the course of the evening. Eigyr looked just as surprised as she did (and it took a lot to make that woman speechless), but Filius had tears in his eyes and running down his cheeks. He looked just as heartbroken as he had when his sister had first dragged him through the floo earlier that evening. Pepper was fairly vibrating in place and almost glowing with magic.
Turning back to face the three very dead people who weren't ghosts because ghosts were grayscale and Helen knew that because she'd spent a lot of time asking the Hogwarts ghosts about any and everything when she got curious and-
She took a deep breath and what finally came out her mouth was: "I haven't seen you since we graduated!"
Tension she hadn't noticed broke as Lily let out a breathless chuckle. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you, Helen," she said. "Thank you for saving my baby."
At the sound of her voice, Harry, who had been so quiet that Helen had forgotten he was still laying beneath her palm, perked up and squirmed with an excited cry of 'Mama!' that broke Helen's heart. He couldn't know and wouldn't understand that she wasn't back. They'd saved him from whatever that black thing was, but everything was not fixed. He was now an orphan, and no matter what they did, they couldn't bring the Potters back. But a toddler wouldn't understand that at all.
And then she registered with some horror the fresh blood on his face that must have come from that cut. Had that thing still managed to hurt him before they'd banished it? But he didn't seem to be in any pain, so maybe it was alright?
It seemed that whatever was holding them immobile before had let up enough for him to manoeuvre himself to sitting up in the centre circle, but he couldn't go beyond it. When she tested it, Helen found that she couldn't really go anywhere either. She could shift on the spot where she was still kneeling, but not much else.
When he finally got a good look at them, Harry paused, blinking. Helen held her breath, preparing for the (truthfully well-earned) tantrum when he realised he couldn't run to them. She was surprised when he instead stared at them intently and then said, with some babble Helen couldn't decipher mixed in, "Mama, Dada f'en?"
Lily gave him a watery smile as she answered, "Yes, sweetie. Mama and Dada's friends."
"But you're going to be with Uncle Padfoot from now on," James spoke up for the first time, voice thick. "Okay Prongslet?"
Harry perked up again and asked "Pa'foo?"
"Yeah buddy. Lots of time with Uncle Padfoot," he answered sadly. He looked up at Helen and told her, with a ghost of a smile, "I knew you were a good sort when you caught us sneaking back from the kitchens in second year and only asked for directions to get there as payment."
Helen chuckled at the memory. It was still sharp to her because they had, all four of them, been trying to smuggle cupcakes and cookies under their shirts and in their pockets, not even wearing their robes for extra cover. They couldn't have looked more suspicious if they'd tried. But she'd found them generally pleasant and fun in their shared classes, which was a far sight better than the up-and-coming little bigots she was forced to interact with. So, she'd promised to keep quiet if they told her how to get in herself. That incident had eventually indirectly led to her meeting Pepper.
They were interrupted by Filius finally finding his voice. "Lily," he breathed, and it sounded like it had been punched out of him.
Lily turned to face him, regret and affection written all over her face. "Paju," she said. "I'm so sorry-"
He scrubbed viciously at the tears on his face and cut her off. "You brilliant, brave, foolish little Gryffindor!" he exclaimed, but there wasn't really any anger.
"Your favourite brilliant, brave, foolish little Gryffindor," she answered with a cheeky wink.
He let out a choked laugh that was half-sob. "You were supposed to take over my job and leave me overrun by grandchildren to babysit."
Lily looked at him wistfully, and her hand moved to her stomach, which Helen now realised had a telling little bump. "We were working on it."
His eyes widened and whatever levity he had almost cobbled together disappeared to be replaced something a lot like horror and devastation. "How far...?" he asked shakily.
"About four months, give or take," she told him sadly. "We were thinking of naming her Felicity."
Filius let out a pained little sound and sank to his knees. Eigyr looked like she wanted to run to him, but the magic of the circle held her in place. Helen looked on helplessly. It was such a waste. A little life snuffed out even before she could take that first breath, all for some maniac's skewed vision of a "perfect world". She wasn't ready to have any children of her own just yet, but it didn't make the senseless loss of life any more bearable. Having just seen and interacted with and fought tooth and nail for Harry's little beautiful ball of golden magic, she mourned the loss of another pure little bubble of sunlight in the world.
"I am sorry to interrupt," the unknown woman said, and actually sounded like she meant it. Her voice was...resonant was the best way Helen would be able to put it. It gave the same impression as the multitude of voices hitting the same note in a choir, but without the inherent variation of many voices working at once. It sounded old and vast and had a depth that was nothing to do with pitch. It was odd, to say the least, but not unsettling. "But there is much still to do and not much time to do it in."
Eigyr regained herself first, though she kept casting worried glances at her brother, who'd gone silent again as he looked between Lily's spectre and little Harry.
"If I may," she started. "Who are you exactly?" It could have been construed as rude, but she wasn't accusatory or aggressive. But she was still wary. It was still Samhain after all, and they'd just essentially exorcised some evil bit of parasitic magic from a baby.
"I am the Potter Family Magic."
Any thoughts that might have been trying to take shape in Helen's mind froze in their tracks and evaporated. Whatever she was expecting – the previous Lady Potter, some other concerned Potter family member. Heck, even Lady Magic Herself! (Though that might be a bit presumptuous. Did they really warrant Hecate herself showing up?) – it was not at all for the unknown third dead person to claim to be the personification of a Family Magic. Because there were limits to her imagination.
There was an alarmingly long string of question marks in Helen's mind, because:
"Isn't Family Magic supposed to be represented by an animal?" she asked in confusion. Because she may be lost and tired and confused, but she had still been a Ravenclaw, which meant that she'd always been curious about everything. "Because I only saw animal totems when I tried to research it myself." A little titbit she'd read and forgotten from a thick tome wriggled out at her. "The Potters were a griffin I think, unless the book lied." The last was said with some frustration because there were enough bogus books by purebloods about things they didn't know anything about (Exhibit A: Muggle Studies – HA!). Were they also so unknowledgeable about things they claimed were part of their 'superior magical legacy'? (Those were actual words said to her by another Ravenclaw, a pureblood who was just as bigoted as the worst of the lot in Slytherin).
The woman smiled kindly. "While a griffin is my usual guise, I find it easier to communicate in a form meant to speak."
...which made sense...
Or as much sense as anything made when she was speaking to dead people and their family magic after leading her first magical ritual to exorcise a baby.
Perfectly logical.
"Ah."
"This is the form of Iolanthe Potter, the woman who created what would eventually become the Potter Family Magic." She smiled brightly. "I think it fitting, don't you?"
Before Helen could process that particular bit of information, Eigyr cut in a bit impatiently, wanting to know what this 'more' was that there still was to do. "Yes, quite. But what other errands were you planning to send my apprentice out on this night?"
The Potter Family Magic – and that was going to become a mouthful. Helen decided to just call it – her – Iolanthe from now on – grew serious again and looked squarely at Helen.
"You petitioned Lady Magic this evening for help with your gifts," she began. "Lord and Lady Potter had previously petitioned Lady Magic to safeguard our last heir at my urging. Together with the rituals they had created and undertaken, they were able to banish that monster when he came and spare our heir. But there are others with their own agendas and Harry is still vulnerable to their machinations. The headmaster found the same evil in the cut on Harry's face and still chose to leave him under the control of that wretched woman with nothing more than a handful of babysitting charms." There was anger and disdain on her face, mirrored by James and Lily next to her.
Everything had been happening so quickly, she hadn't had a chance yet to look at the implications of it all. How had the headmaster even come to have possession of Harry anyway? And why leave him in the Muggle world with no protection instead of safeguarding him at Hogwarts behind the ancient protective wards until a proper guardian could be determined? Helen figured she would be furious too if she'd died to save her child's life and then someone treated his health and safety so callously.
But she still didn't understand how all of this involved her at all. She'd been passing acquaintances with James, and a bit more friendly with Lily due to their shared study groups from their fifth to seventh years.
"It's horrific to be sure, but I'm not sure where I fit into all this," she said carefully, absently glancing down to find Harry amusing himself with her fingers and the sleeves of her coat. He scratched at a trail of blood on his cheek and didn't seem to notice what it was. The cut was bleeding very sluggishly, especially considering it was a headwound, but evidently not enough to alarm the toddler. Suddenly, she wanted to get him inside and cleaned up because she really couldn't stomach watching a child sit calmly while his own blood dried on his face. That was just a bit too far on top of everything else that had happened tonight.
Refocusing, she continued. "Wouldn't one of their closer friends have been a better option than me? Nothing against either of you," she said with a nod to the couple and then refocused on Iolanthe, "but we weren't particularly close in school, and we haven't seen each other since. How would you have even known that I could or would help?"
Iolanthe's expression hardened. With her all-white colour scheme, she actually looked like she'd been carved from marble. "The House of Potter was betrayed by Peter Pettigrew, and he is now declared an Enemy. When Sirius Black, Harry's oath-sworn godfather, tried to leave with him, Dumbledore's faithful little half-giant came to collect him. Sirius left Harry to their care in good faith and went after the traitor, which is still within his responsibilities as chosen Regent of the House of Potter. Remus Lupin is abroad on Dumbledore's orders. Harry's oath-sworn godmother is hidden behind her own Family Magic's wards beyond my reach. Filius was in the realm of the Horde, again behind formidable wards that I could not breach. I am the magic of generations upon generations of Potters, but I am not Magic. Even on a night like tonight, when the veil is thin and rules can be bent, it is not within my power to break them. Many other friends and allies of House Potter have been killed in the war, and those who remain were either too far away or less preferable than Filius and Sirius. I believe that your connection to Filius, though a bit more distant, and your petition to Lady Magic for guidance that we can assist in, may have encouraged Her to direct me to you."
Helen nodded in understanding. The connection was tentative at best, but it was a plausible theory. Sirius as his godfather, and Filius as his adoptive grandfather, would have been the best choices. But if all the other options were unreachable, dead, or not as trusted by the Potters, it made sense to use her open ritual circle to try to use her to get Harry to Filius. Eigyr was actually the one who'd told her that Lily was Filius' apprentice (though Helen hadn't known he'd adopted her); so it stood reason Lily (and therefore her Family Magic?) could have known about Helen's apprenticeship with Eigyr as well. At some point, when she didn't think her brain was on the verge of melting out her ears, she'd have a complete fit over the fact that she was theorising with sentient old magic about Magic, while sitting in the middle of an active ritual circle. She would also decide that this qualified her as the most Ravenclaw raven that ever did claw. Professor Flitwick would concur.
She was happy that she could help to save Harry, but it also just dawned on her that she technically hadn't achieved what she'd set out to do. It was a bit disappointing in that regard, but it was nowhere near the level of importance of trying to save a helpless baby. She could always do another communion at another time.
(Maybe. Possibly. Really, everything had been working just fine this far. With a first ritual magic experience like this one, did she really need to go looking for more?)
"But in ridding Harry of that foul soul piece, you went above and beyond anything I had hoped for when I found you this evening, and the House of Potter owes you a boon."
In her periphery, Helen saw Eigyr pale so rapidly that she worried the woman might actually pass out.
Eigyr did sway a bit, but she managed to keep to her feet. "I'd hoped I'd read the diagnostic wrong in my haste," she managed. "To think that Dumbledore left that in a child...but you said it's been removed? Completely?"
Iolanthe dipped her head. "Harry is completely free of that taint, but his shade still roams free."
"What?!" she demanded. She'd gone from pale to flushed and furious. "You just said we've removed it. He should be gone!" she exclaimed.
"I was present when it happened and I saw as his shade fled screaming vengeance, even as his body disappeared and the traitor retrieved his abandoned wand," the Family Magic responded.
"But... But that – it-" Eigyr spluttered. "He made more?"
There was horror, and then there was whatever was stamped across Eigyr's face. Helen didn't understand much of the exchange besides the fact that You-Know-Who was apparently not as dead and gone as she might prefer. Her stomach sank and nausea welled, and it was sheer willpower alone that kept her from heaving.
"I do not know where they are, or how many they may be, but he yet survives, if incompletely."
That was way too much for Helen to process at the moment. So she just...wouldn't. "You said something about a boon?"
When Iolanthe refocused on her, she continued. "As much as I would love to have such a thing, I don't believe that I actually removed that thing. It was Magic, and not actually under my direction at all. I just got desperate and begged for help."
"Be that as it may, without your intervention, it would not have been removed until a later time when it would be much more complicated and dangerous to do so. Beyond that, you opened your magic to him and forged a bond."
It was Helen's turn to be horrified and she stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed down at the baby now leaning heavily against her legs and still playing with her fingers. It was a bit of a miracle he'd been this quiet so far, and she was deciding to just attribute this to some soothing aspect of the magic of the ritual circle or Magic itself. She wasn't sure it mattered, but she was sure it would not last. More importantly, she hadn't meant to make a bond with him. When had she even done that?!
She hadn't really explored magical bonds – just a very cursory overview that was enough to tell her it was Very Serious Magic and wasn't done lightly. The gravitas of it made it interesting and something she thought would be worthwhile to learn about, but she'd had enough on her plate keeping up with pursuing her mastery. From what she'd understood, forging a magical bond was an intimate thing, and was not done lightly. It was so intimate, that it was not uncommon for couples to forego a magical bond when they married because of the vulnerability and exposure. It went without saying that creating such a bond with a child, especially without the parents' permission was a violation of the highest order.
Now that she thought to look for it, she could still sense the little sun of Harry's magic faintly somewhere in her mind. There was still so much magic swirling around them, though it was much less chaotic than it had been during the actual cleansing, that she hadn't really noticed it.
"I am so sorry," she rushed to get out. Her blood had run cold, and she could feel tremors start in her hands. Her mind flashed back to running her magic against Harry's to try to soothe him and her attempt to distract him during the removal. "I didn't mean to – I would never have-"
Lily cut her off before she could work herself into a proper state. "It's okay," she told her. James' hand around her shoulders tightened and he pulled her closer. "Between my – death – and trying to contain the soul piece, and then removing the soul piece, my bond to him was severed." She looked down at Harry with sad eyes, and Helen was distantly surprised to notice tears. She wouldn't have thought spectres could cry. "He was in so much pain from the break, he latched onto the comfort you were offering and let your magic soothe the place where it hurt most – my broken maternal bond." She lifted her eyes back to lock gazes with Helen when she said with fervour, "and I'm grateful for it. It's the best thing for him under the circumstances and I'm selfish enough to ask you not to break it."
The rush of relief when she realised that bond they'd made was parental in nature would have made her weak in the knees if she were standing. She'd really have to go research the different types of bonds properly now. The idea of their (accidental) parental bond still seemed invasive, but a kind of invasive that didn't make her skin want to crawl off.
Lily's last words registered through her relief and her eyes snapped back to the three spectres. "You don't want me to break it? Not that I know how, but it's not really my place, is it? Shouldn't he have it with his godmother?"
This time, it was James who answered. "Alice Longbottom is his godmother, and while she took a magical oath to that end, it would be...magically tricky for her to adopt harry that way, considering the Longbottoms are also an Ancient and Noble House that he isn't recently related to, and it could cause succession and inheritance issues later on."
Helen just barely refrained from huffing and rolling her eyes when she'd parsed that bit of information. Having magic was a blessing in many ways, but this particular bit of confusion she could gladly do without. Considering she was a muggleborn with no ties whatsoever to any of the magical nobility, she'd have very happily lived her life without any of this ever being a concern. Now, she'd apparently gone and accidentally adopted a noble heir (and something niggled in the back of her mind about it...something from a dusty old history book she'd read when she'd gone off on a tangent. It probably wasn't a good thing though, because why would it be?) and it was looking like this would be her new reality. Joy.
"But if I keep it, doesn't that mean that I'm adopting him?" she asked. It was really more for clarity, like a hypothetical question in class, but as she finished asking it, it hit her like a ton of bricks that they were asking her to adopt their son. A distant part of her attributed her lack of panic to shock. Because, by rights, she should be a complete mess at this point.
"Well, you'd have to complete it first," James told her.
Helen's jaw dropped, completely without her permission. "Hold your horses," she told him, raising the hand Harry wasn't holding captive. "Precisely how bad is the situation if you're asking me, at this point an old acquaintance at most, to adopt your child? I thought Black was his godfather. Why would you still want me in the picture?"
"He's suffered enough for one night," Filius spoke, gaze on Harry where he was apparently falling asleep against Helen's knees. She'd honestly almost forgotten he was present with how quiet he'd been. Her old professor raised a hand to rub at his chest where Helen imagined he was still feeling his severed bond to Lily. "To lose what amounts to three parents all in the space of a few hours, and so young, I wouldn't want to do it if it could be avoided."
Iolanthe dipped her head and picked up the conversation. "I know that we ask much, but Harry has latched on to you rather strongly, even using some of the Family Magic to do it, though it's just instinctive grabbing rather than any sort of proper claiming."
Eigyr took in a shocked breath, and Helen really wished she knew more than random little titbits about any given thing they'd discussed all night. Why couldn't they have been discussing something with runes? Runes she knew. All this Family Magic business had never had anything to do with her in the past since, as a muggleborn, she had no Family Magic to speak of. Her father had always said a jack of all trades was a master of none, but it had never felt truer to her than in that moment. She resolved to harass the older woman about everything later. Thoroughly.
"Precisely," Iolanthe said, in response to Eigyr's stare. "As the House of Potter is in your debt, and this would only make it more so, the highest offer I can make to you is to name you a Trusted Friend and to offer you a place in the House of Potter."
Eigyr made a strangled little sound behind her, and Helen wished for the life of her that she knew the significance of such a thing. She could almost hear the capitalisation of 'Trusted Friend', and she knew it had to be important, but she didn't know why. She'd never really paid much attention to the doings of the magical nobility, just like she didn't really care to dig into the doings of the muggle nobility either. Equality at its finest.
Since Eigyr appeared to be shocked speechless, and Helen didn't even know where to start asking questions, Filius asked sharply, "You would adopt and claim an unaffiliated muggleborn into your Family Magic?"
"They did for me," Lily said, looking at him seriously.
"There have been many muggleborns and half-bloods marrying into cadet branches of the Potter Family over the years. Unlike some others, we know their value," Iolanthe answered him. Then a smile crossed her face that was the textbook definition of 'mischievous'. "Iolanthe's father-in-law was a half-blood, as his mother was a muggle. Charlus Potter's great-grandmother was also a half-blood."
It was odd to hear her speak in the third person, until she remembered that technically, this was the Family Magic using Iolanthe's appearance to communicate. It wasn't Iolanthe herself. But that was overshadowed by the enormity of what she'd just said. Helen choked on air as she spluttered, "But I thought-"
"All 'purebloods', as they call themselves today, had to come from somewhere, my dear," the spectre of old magic told her kindly. "It's just that a large number of us have chosen to conveniently forget where that somewhere was."
Helen was sure that once this was all over and her brain had reassembled itself, she'd break a rib laughing. For now, she could only gape stupidly.
"But, not to be pushy, but we don't have all night," Iolanthe told them, growing serious once more. "This entire exchange has only been possible because it is Samhain and Lady Magic has allowed it. So, what say you? In exchange for completing the parental bond and adopting our heir as your own, and in repayment for saving said heir at the risk of your own life, the House of Potter offers to adopt you fully into our Family Magic with all the rights and privileges thereof, including access to the accounts of the handful of seers our line has had, as that was your initial petition to Magic tonight."
Her eyes widened in surprise. Even if none of those seers Saw the way she did, the insight could prove invaluable to helping her learn about her own abilities. The information she had been able to find publicly was paltry and completely inadequate, and this may be her best bet to glean anything. She glanced back at Mistress Eigyr for her opinion and got a firm nod of encouragement. She still didn't know exactly the gravity of what was happening, but she did know that this was a once-in-a-lifetime offer. It had taken the actual intervention of Lady Magic herself to create an opportunity for Helen to get access to actual personal accounts of other seers. Sure, she had to raise a child in exchange, and she was in no way prepared for that, but she couldn't possibly muck it up worse than leaving him outside in a bassinet on Samhain with a fresh head wound after he'd just watch his parents be murdered. If nothing else, her own parents had already successfully raised three children (in Helen's humble opinion), two of them magical. They'd make sure Helen didn't feed him the wrong thing or spoil him rotten.
The sound of her Runes Mistress clearing her throat brought Helen back to the present and made her realise she'd been silent a bit too long. Not wanting to give them any more time to reconsider, Helen blurted out: "I accept! Just tell me what I need to do."
James and Lily seemed to sag with relief at her agreement, inelegant as it was. She probably looked a little manic in her euphoria if Iolanthe's amused little smile was anything to go by, but she couldn't find it in her to care.
"You'll be added to the Family Magic first, and then Lily will guide you in completing the parental bond." Iolanthe instructed. Helen nodded her understanding before the magical construct continued. "For us to be able to adopt you as fully as I've offered, it would need to be sealed as a blood pact as well as a magical one. And I think it would be best if you sealed your bond to Harry with blood as well," Iolanthe told her. That wasn't surprising, considering how closely Family Magic was guarded, but it just reiterated how serious the Potters were and how desperate they were to keep Harry safe. Pureblood families didn't go around just adding people to their family magic. If they wanted such a complete connection between herself and Harry, even with Black still being his godfather, they were really desperate to do everything to protect him. Dumbledore's foolishness earlier that evening had definitely not helped. If there was someone else responsible for Harry, especially someone who was now family by both blood and magic, it would be less likely that someone else could try to pull the same stunt the headmaster had. It also served the purpose of making her more personally invested into Harry's safety through that magical and familial connection.
"But how will we do that, seeing as none of you can exactly give blood at the moment?" Helen asked, head slightly tilted.
It was James who answered her, his gaze fixed on Harry, who was now completely dead to the world in her lap. "You'll have to use his," he explained. Helen's gut squirmed at the thought of having to cut Harry (and consequently wake the poor child with pain again) to do the ritual. James must have seen the look on her face because he elaborated, "The blood from his cut is fresh enough that you won't have to actually draw any more." That still made her uncomfortable, but at least she wouldn't have to traumatise the baby any further.
"I've never actually learned anything about adoption rituals before. Is there something specific I'm meant to say?" Helen asked, looking between the three Potter spectres.
"As Lily and I are dead, and the Family Magic is already here, it will do the actual adoption. It is a vow that can be worded to suit the circumstances of each adoption, but it must possess three specific components," James explained, his hand absently sliding down to clasp Lily's in a gesture that spoke of familiarity and habit. "An oath to completely accept the adoptee as though they were a natural-born member of the house in question, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities thereof; a commitment to nurture the adoptee to unlock their potential, and to never knowingly or deliberately abuse or neglect the responsibility to the adoptee." At her surprised look, he further clarified that adoptions had initially been mainly for children, and that after a few too many unfortunate outcomes, Magic intervened to dictate the care of Her gifts and Her children. If those three requirements weren't met, Magic would not honour the ritual.
The idea of it – Magic being sentient enough to do such a thing (although this whole evening was a great argument to that effect) – and the curiosity of how exactly Magic had intervened, were intriguing, but this wasn't the time to ask.
"I will make the oath to you, as you are old enough to accept it on your own behalf, and all you will have to say is whether you willingly accept the oath and the House, and then push your magic into your agreement. We seal it in blood. For your bond with Harry, you invite Lady Magic to witness it, make similar commitments to the adoption, reach out to him specifically with your magic. The beginnings of the bond are already there, so you need only find and complete it."
Helen took a deep breath, looked down at the peacefully sleeping toddler in her lap, and then gestured Iolanthe to proceed.
"I'll need your full name, dear," Iolanthe told her.
"Helen Joyce Skerritt."
The embodiment of the Potter Family Magic didn't move position, but somehow seemed to grow in size and sheer presence. She could feel magic – magic this time and not Magic – swell around her once again. A warm presence that she realised had to be the Potter Family Magic reached out and around her, wrapping her so securely, she was half-surprised that she couldn't see an actual physical blanket around her shoulders.
"On this night," Iolanthe intoned, her voice not much louder than before, but somehow deafening anyway, "we ask Lady Magic to witness the claiming of Helen Joyce Skerritt as a daughter of the House of Potter."
Now she felt Magic, depthless and weighty, rushing through the circle again, ruffling her clothes and bringing with it the scent of sunshine in the Spring. She was thankful that her hair was still braided, as fuzzy as they probably were by now, because it would be an absolute nightmare trying to get knots and tangles out of it after the work-through the night had given her.
"It is our intent and desire that she be accorded the full benefit and duty as a daughter of our House, just as any other born of our wombs."
Light, colours shifting too rapidly to identify, glowed softly in the concentric circles of the ritual space.
"As her House and family, we accept with honour the duty to aid and assist the development of our daughter to the fullness of her potential towards her goals and aims, provided they are good and just."
There was a sound, like wind chimes tinkling in the distance, or a brook babbling softly past one's feet. It sounded like nature, if nature had ever had a sound accorded to it and it alone – as infinite as the ocean and as energetic as pups at play.
"We swear, in the presence of Lady Hecate, to uphold our duty and honour by our daughter, to the best of our ability-" Iolanthe's form glowed, a bright white beacon on the other side of the ritual circle. Helen's breath caught at the statement. To swear to Lady Magic Herself that they would not abuse her was the greatest assurance she could have gotten that she was not signing away herself to a terrible fate. "-And to never abuse the gift of our daughter from Lady Hecate Herself." Even through the glow, Helen could see the gentle smile that rested on Iolanthe's face. "This we offer before Lady Magic and her witnesses this night!"
Magic flowed around her, and brought up memories of her mother poking and prodding to check that Helen was sure that she was comfortable with the dress she'd just finished sewing as it was, that she was comfortable moving and breathing, that everything was exactly how you want it Helen, because I'll not be going back over it again!
Helen took another deep breath, and the sounds and smells and lights suddenly calmed, as if waiting for her answer.
"I accept the offer and promise of the House of Potter," she said solemnly, heart pounding at the magnitude of what she was doing.
Lily mimed cutting her hand, and Helen pulled her wand to send a weak cutting charm at her non-dominant palm, managing to hide her wince at the sting. She swiped a little of Harry's blood from his cheek, and not knowing what else to do, clasped his little hand in her own.
There was a flash of light between their clasped hands and the sound of a deep bell ringing. She felt the Potter Magic swirl through her, filling her up and making a space for itself somewhere in and around her magical core. When it seemed to have found its spot, the magic went docile again.
Helen blinked a few times to clear the last after-flashes from her vision and looked up at the Potters with wide eyes.
"Wow," was all she could say.
Lily chuckled. "I know exactly how you feel," she said, the smile audible as well as visible.
The cut on her palm had been healed, and a glance told her that the gash on Harry's little forehead was closed up, much to her relief.
"Alright, now I finish this bond." She thought for a moment about exactly what she would say to Lady Magic about her bond to Harry.
When she'd decided, she gave herself a mental shake and prepared to become an instant mother. Merlin's pants, she was about to become someone's mother. Just like that.
She clarified his full name, assuming that she'd have to use his as they had hers, and then prepared her magic to complete the bonding.
"On this night, I ask Lady Magic to bear witness to my forging of a parental bond with this infant, with the blessing of our House and Family," she opened, remembering at the last moment that she was now magically a Potter, which would take some getting used to.
Yet again, magic rushed forth, brushing against her and Harry, gently enough that he didn't wake.
"I claim and accept Harry James Potter, as my own son, to love and protect, as much as if I had birthed him myself."
She paid no mind to magic shifting around them, focussing all her attention on ensuring that she didn't misspeak.
"I accept the duty and privilege to nurture and guide him, to assist and support him, to achieving his goals, provided they are good and just, to the best of my ability." The last portion she'd worried over, but she felt that after the commitment they had made to her, she could offer no less to their heir, the child who would now be her son. "And I swear before Lady Magic and the House of Potter, to never abuse the gift they give me in my son. This I offer before Lady Magic and Her witnesses this night!"
She felt Magic searching her again, more insistent this time as it rooted around to determine whether she was lying.
Iolanthe looked her in the eyes, a wealth of emotion hidden behind shades of white, and said, "The House of Potter approves this bond."
Helen cut her palm again, swiped a little more of Harry's blood, a bit stickier from where it had run into his hair. She reached out with her magic, to that place she'd felt Harry's little sun in earlier, and wrapped her magic around him as she clasped his little hand. There was a pulse of magic this time, and she felt something blossom into place somewhere behind her breastbone, warm and soft and filling something she hadn't realised was incomplete. Harry shifted, smacking his little lips as he nuzzled into her lap, and settled back down again.
When it died down, she straightened up, a sense of wonder at the strange feeling of her magic being connected to someone else's. Of course, she'd be exploring it later, but at the moment, it was incredible and new.
But beyond the sort of euphoria of completing the bond to Harry, she could distantly feel the sheer exhaustion just waiting for her to close the ritual as though it was behind a closed door. She'd sleep like a rock tonight. Harry was definitely down for the count at this point if that had taken as much out of him as it had her.
James caught her gaze and held it as he told her "Thank you for this. You don't know how much it means to us that you were willing to stand for us where we cannot." She was shocked at the depth of emotion she could read in his spectral eyes, but on reflection, she probably shouldn't have been. They'd both just died within minutes of each other and then had to exorcise some evil magic that their murderer had left behind in their newly orphaned infant son from beyond the veil. And that was after someone they trusted had abandoned their son in the dead of night. Now, Harry had not only Sirius, but Helen herself and Professor Flitwick as well, and he no longer had a magical parasite. That was eons better than injured, traumatised, and abandoned with a defenceless muggle. To be honest, she hoped she'd never be in a position to properly understand what they were feeling.
Helen couldn't think of anything to say to that that wouldn't come off as trite or flippant, so she just nodded instead and gently gathered Harry into her arms from his place in her lap.
James turned then to face Professor Flitwick. "Everyone told us you were a world-champion duellist before you started teaching," he began.
The shorter man eyed him bemusedly. "I was, and still am to an extent," he responded.
"The Family Magic said Sirius left to chase after and catch Pete – Pettigrew – for betraying us," James continued, expression lost somewhere between incensed and devastated.
Filius perked up, a glimmer reappearing in his eye. Even his ears, a bit small by kobelyn standards, had twitched. Helen privately thought, and would never admit to another soul, that he looked remarkably like a dog who'd heard the word 'walk'.
"I don't doubt he could catch him, but he's not thinking clearly. He'll be reckless and get himself into trouble. Please, if you can, could you find him before something goes wrong?"
"Pettigrew was the one who betrayed you?" Filius asked and both Potters nodded. "And Black had gone after him?" When they confirmed, he pressed. "How exactly did Pettigrew betray you?"
"We used a Fidelius Charm to hide the house, and Pettigrew was our secret-keeper," Lily answered, eyes hard and James' hand tightly clenched in her own.
It took a moment for whatever the significance of that was to sink in for him, but when it did. Oh, when it did. His expression morphed from suspicious to a snarl so vicious it raised the hairs on the back of her neck in two seconds flat. Looking at him now, she could imagine that this was what wix thought of when they used the slur 'goblin' to refer to the kobelyni. She couldn't remember ever seeing Professor Flitwick actually furious, even when he'd disagreed with what the headmaster had decided to do about one of those bigoted attacks on students – and he'd been plenty angry over those incidents. It was like looking at a completely different being. Full-blooded kobelyni had a greater amount of much sharper canines and fewer incisors than humans did. She'd never been in a position to realise that her Head of House had inherited that particular trait.
"That conniving son of-" he cut himself and whirled to face Helen and Eigyr. Helen was not proud of the fact that she clutched Harry a little closer when she saw something very close to hatred burning in his eyes alongside his fury. She knew it wasn't directed at either of them, but she was so very unaccustomed to ever seeing the small man pushed past a breaking point. She'd never even considered that he had one, as foolish as that sounded. As amicable and personable as he was, everyone knew he was an accomplished duellist, on top of being a charms master. Those two things together made it very dangerous to be on his bad side, which was a fact she was only now considering, as he'd always been something of a friendly uncle to much of Ravenclaw House. She might probably have pitied Pettigrew, but if he was the one who had handed Flitwick's adopted daughter over to be murdered...he'd better hope that Lady Hecate would have mercy because Albion knew the angry half-kobelyn would have none.
"I have a murderer to catch," he declared. It should have sounded ridiculous, this man barely four and a half feet tall, who usually could be lost among all the students he taught, announcing something so grand. Instead, it sounded like a promise – and one that would be delivered on immediately.
He turned back to face the Potters to demand, "Where is he?"
Iolanthe shook her head. "Neither Sirius nor Pettigrew are connected to the Family Magic, and so I have no way of tracking them," she told him apologetically.
"And he's an animagus," James put in. "A common brown garden rat with a thin tail, so we called his form Wormtail. He could escape and hide literally anywhere."
The Professor swore, almost shaking with frustration. Helen considered it for a moment. Maybe they could get one last bit of help from Magic tonight. "I may be able to find him," she said into the tense silence.
When they all turned to look at her, she explained. "If I know someone well enough, I can use my magic to look in on them wherever they are, provided we aren't separate by wards. Usually, the things I see relate somehow directly to me or someone I'm close to, but I think Magic boosted that somehow tonight to show me your deaths and let me find Harry."
Lily's eyes widened and Iolanthe looked intrigued.
"I don't know either Black or Pettigrew very well at all, but maybe Magic will give us one more miracle tonight," she told them.
Before she could overthink it, she closed her eyes, drawing on some of the Wild Magic that was still drifting through the circle. She focused as hard as she could on the names Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Wormtail. After a moment or two, she felt another person's magic join with hers. It wasn't Peppers' or the Flitwicks', and it took a moment before the name James flashed across her mind. She latched onto it because his magic knew them well, so maybe it would help.
No sooner had she done that than she got a very clear vision of what looked like a Grim tearing through a set of filthy back alleyways. There was a clatter as they came upon a fence, and she caught sight of a large rat rushing through a gap before Black materialised where the dog had been. He immediately apparated to the other side of the fence and smoothly transitioned back into the hellhound to resume the chase.
Her eyes flew open and she gasped, "I found them! They're in a muggle area, but they're moving fast and we have to leave now if we don't want to lose them!"
At her pronouncement, there was no time for teary goodbyes. She and Filius promised one last time to look after Harry and she closed the circle with a rush of magic. She staggered to her feet, suddenly lightheaded and only now realising how bone-tired she was, probably from using and directing so much magic during the ritual...rituals. But she could do this. She had to have enough left in her to get Filius to where she'd seen Black, even if she had to call Pepper to bring her back. She shoved the sleeping Harry at her Taana and grabbed Professor Flitwick's hand as he reached her, rounding on one foot and apparating them away.
They landed in a filthy puddle in an even filthier chilly alley, and she stumbled to her knees as her vision spotted and she panted like she'd run a marathon. Thankfully, neither of them had lost any parts on the way over. The exhausted young woman blinked the spots away and pointed to the other end of the alley with a shaking hand as she told her former professor, "They went that way!"
He took off immediately without a backwards look, disappearing with what she realised was a disillusionment charm before he'd even reached the end of the alley.
"Pepper," she called after she'd gotten her breathing back under control. It had been a while since she'd gotten magically exhausted. Nowadays, it only happened when she got really sucked into a project for her mastery, which she hadn't for a while. And she didn't think she'd ever gotten this bad either.
The little elf appeared with a louder than usual pop, actually quivering in place. She mentally kicked herself for not stopping to think that Pepper might be just as exhausted as she was after the ritual. Before she could get too upset though, Pepper's little hand locked around hers with an iron grip, purple eyes glowing with magic.
"Missy Helen be going straight to bed!" she declared. Helen didn't have the energy or the desire to argue with her. They disappeared with another pop, leaving the alley as empty and abandoned as it had been a minute before.
They reappeared in the living room of the cottage, and Helen had hardly blinked before Pepper had cast a cleaning charm and swapped out her clothes for the pyjamas she'd been wearing before the whole mess began. Eigyr was sitting on the couch with Harry in her lap, the toddler looking just this side of comically oversized in comparison to her smaller frame. She may have been tall for a kableyin, but she was still rather short for a human woman.
Now Helen could get a good look at Pepper, she realised with some shock that what she'd thought was exhaustion was actually something more akin to a child who'd had too many sweets.
"Pepper what-" she began, only to be cut off.
"There be so much Wild Magic!" Pepper squeaked excitedly, actually bouncing a little in place. "You be calling Pepper to help in calling Magic every time from now on," she commanded imperiously, a bony little finger wagging in Helen's face. There was no doubt she was completely serious, but the way her eyes glowed with magic and she couldn't quite keep the excited smile off her face and seemed a shiver away from vibrating right out of her own skin sort of undermined it.
Helen's mind was too tired to properly understand what was happening anymore, so she let herself be bustled towards her bedroom, Eigyr following behind with a contemplative look on her face and Harry drooling on her shoulder.
She really couldn't process how quickly Pepper had transfigured Harry's bassinet into a proper crib and cleaned him up. Pepper was still whirring around making changes that Helen couldn't track when she stumbled to her bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
I've cross-posted on AO3, where there's a better format for end-notes. I think it would be too long to put here, with this already ridiculously large first chapter. Main points: 1. goblin is a slur and they're actually called kobelyni (a word I made up myself cobbling together different ones) and have their own language, a few words of which showed up here. Kobelyn (pl. kobelyni) - the species, as well as a male (multiple males are 'Kobelynot'); kableyin (pl. kableyinot) - a female kobelyn; Taniu - Master (as in master of a craft); Taana - basically the female equivalent of Taniu; paju - father. 2. House Elves are more than just the caricatures of happy house slaves they were made out to be in canon. 3. Eigyr and Filius don't know about Lily's protection, so they (logically, but wrongly) believe Dumbledore tethered house wards to Harry, which is foolishly dangerous to do to a baby. The pale colour of its cord was to represent the fact that it wasn't yet active. 4. I was binging HP Harmony fics from author Keira Marcos' website (www . keiramarcos . com), and her skill with building worlds and lives for the characters inspired me try my hand at it (so credit where it's due). She also gave me the idea to see the goblins as a totally different species to what wix think/claim they are, though her take and mine differ.
Please let me know in the comments if this is something I should continue or keep to my own imagination.