Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile

And cry ‘Content’ to that which grieves my heart,

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,

And frame my face to all occasions.”

King Henry VI, Part III

***

June 28, 1995 - The Daily Prophet

Sandwiched between two advertisements, near the bottom of the last page:

Triwizard Tournament Comes to an End at Hogwarts: Neville Longbottom Declared Winner

There’s no mention of Cedric’s death at all.

***

There’s a Muggle coffee shop in Mayfair, in the style of a Japanese coffeehouse with stadium seating overlooking the baristas.

“You want me to keep quiet on this?”

Rita addresses her question to her cappuccino, tapping scarlet nails off the cardboard sleeve. There’s a cheery little penguin logo there, stamped in gold. “For how long?”

A rustle in the row behind her as Remus shifts. “Play their game until we tell you otherwise.”

Rita grits her teeth so hard she feels her back molars grind together. There’s no form of torture, she thinks bitterly, like knowing something important without being able to share it immediately with everybody in the nation, preferably while twisting it to sound salacious and horrible for everyone involved. She’s been seething ever since Barney enforced the gag order on her about the Diggory boy’s death.

But the Marauders aren’t telling her something, and she knows it’s crucial to understanding the silence. As crucial as Barney’s closed-door meeting with Cornelius Fudge three days ago, and the grim look Barney had worn when he’d called in Flavius—Ministry Affairs Correspondent and utter hack—and Andrew—Crime Correspondent and a worse writer than having a week-dead kneazle at the quill. (Rita does not have a very high opinion of her coworkers and dislikes the co- in front of workers; she feels the Latin prefix antonym of contra- would be much more accurate, as she views them primarily as adversaries to work against. She takes great pleasure in sabotaging their work whenever they ask her to proofread.)

And of course, Barney had made a point of making their intern cry. But that isn’t exactly new; the Midgen girl cries at the slightest provocation, ever since Rita locked her in the Archives basement with the ghoul her first week for insinuating in that pretty little manner of hers that Rita might rely on her Quick-Quotes Quill too much. Rita feels this is an important act of mentorship on her part, and one of her better acts of service; any aspiring journalist should learn quickly that the only way to rise was for someone else to fall, and Rita will give up her national by-lines over a pile of dead bodies made up of the entirety of the Prophet office.

“They want shots at Augusta,” she tells her cup, “and at Dumbledore. Flavius is working on a piece about his upcoming demotion from Chief Warlock, and Augusta’s removal from the subcommittee on Magical Appropriations and Budget.” Her tone grows sourer. “Not that he’ll let me get eyes on it.”

Flavius is too distrusting, which is another fault of his; what does he think she’s going to do, purposefully add misspellings again?

Remus turns the pages of the Financial Times, voice measured. “Take the shots.”

“So, the rumors are true, then?” Rita pounces, unable to physically keep the question in anymore. “About the falling out between Fudge and Dumbledore, and the Potters and the Longbottoms? About Neville’s claims and fragile mental state?” Her fingers inch longingly toward the clasp of her crocodile clutch. “How does that make James feel, knowing his godson is being subjected to such underhanded manipulation? Sad? Angry? Distrau—”

Remus clicks his tongue once, as you would at a disobedient owl. The faintest trace of magic winds its way across the back of her neck like a lover’s caress, the reminder of her Vow. Rita falls silent.

“It makes James feel,” Remus says politely, after a while, “incredibly loyal to the Minister, and not another word should ever breathe otherwise.”

Rita’s eyes widen. The little penguin looks as though it’s dancing with how fast her heart is racing.

“Take the shots, Rita,” Remus continues. “Make yourself useful. Valuable, even. Pour a river of poison from that quill of yours. Do that, and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of, too. For this, and all the events to come.” His fingers drum upon his coffee cup, and she can feel him considering her. “There’s a Muggle phrase, you know. One we quite like. No better friend, no worse enemy.” A pause. “We’re a bit like that. Aren’t you very glad we’re friends?”

In her periphery, she just catches Remus smiling gently at his empty coffee cup, and Rita feels a shiver of bone-chilling dread.

Only the Marauders would describe magically binding her to their service in perpetuity at the expense of her literal life as friendship.

“We’ll let you know,” he adds casually, as though it’s an afterthought, “when we’re in need of your other particular talents.” A pause. “There might be some manors and offices coming down with beetle infestations very soon.”

And she knows she’s in danger—she really does, she’s a fucking gossip columnist forcefully conscripted into what appears to be some sort of political coup and/or war, when all she wanted was to talk shit for a living—but the part of Rita that craves gossip feels as though her wildest dreams are coming true. She’s going to be allowed to spy on the upper echelons of their society with the full permission and approval of the Head Auror?! She nearly squeals. Sure, it’ll be to further James’s ends, but all that extra dirt she’s going to dig up?!

Well. It will keep her fed, to say the least. And the rest of Magical Britain will be eating well, too, right alongside her. Because Rita cares about keeping the people informed. It’s why she became a journalist, after all, along with the talking shit part.

Remus is standing, now, and leisurely rummaging through his pocket for his wallet.

“But a word to the wise,” he says, and his voice is so soft she nearly misses it over the clatter of machinery behind them. “Call it a professional courtesy. Pay attention, Rita, to the disappearances. We have a feeling they’ll be rising.”

Rita freezes, fingers stilling on her cup.

“What are you—” She starts, then stops. “Is … is he really—?”

“I’ll be by this week,” Remus interrupts, “to place your wards myself.”

He places a crisp pound note on his seating, and Rita stays frozen, the first inklings of real fear pouring down her spine at what could be worse than the Marauders lurking.

“And make sure you leave breadcrumbs,” Remus adds quietly, “for discerning readers to follow.”

***

July 1995

“Not there!” Petunia hisses, waving the flashlight frantically as though she’s landing a plane. “Those are my rose bushes, and they won an award, not that you’ve ever won anything or know what that feels like—”

Lily makes a garbled noise of frustration and shifts her spade.

“NOT THERE EITHER!” Petunia whisper shrieks, kicking her this time with the toe of her gardening boots in aggravation. “If you dare to so much as dig up a twig of my hydrangeas, so help me, Lily, I will bury you alive under the wisteria and drink tea over your unmarked grave every morning while your husband weeps on national television pleading with the public for clues—”

“I NEED TO LAY THE BLOOD WARDS SOMEWHERE,” Lily hisses back at her like a cat, positively fuming, now. It’s the strongest heat wave to hit Britain in nearly forty years and she should be inside Potter Manor enjoying Tilly’s homemade blackberry ice cream, but instead she’s crouched in Petunia’s garden in the middle of the night trying to fortify her sister’s home, while Petunia breathes down the back of her neck and thwarts her at every turn.

“Stop saying blood wards,” Petunia says at once, with a terrified look over her shoulder at Privet Drive Number 2. She’s dressed head to toe in black like an absolute psychopath, replete with a balaclava, and Lily can’t look at her without losing what’s left of her sanity. “I told you not to say blood wards—”

“It’s one in the morning!” Lily whisper-shouts back, clods of dirt flying from her upraised hands. “Who on earth can hear us when we—”

“I think I’d rather die,” Petunia continues, on a roll, now, “than have anyone know my house is bewitched. The Taylors are very close to the new Vicar, you know, and if they get wind of this—”

“How would the Taylors get wind of this?” Lily demands. “You made me do it while they’re visiting their niece in Surrey. You made me bug their house to make sure we knew exactly when they were leaving for Surrey. And then you made me break in to double check they were gone, and to check if her Lady Dior bag was actually a fake—”

“It was fake!” Petunia bursts out, so vindicated and triumphant it makes Lily’s temples throb. “I knew she couldn’t have gotten off the waitlist before I did! What does she think she’s playing at, waving that faux leather monstrosity around at church as if she’s Princess Di? Has she no shame?!” She’s practically dancing in her schadenfreude, the flashlight bobbing madly all over the yard. Her voice takes on a gleeful tone. “Oh, when Beatrice Cooper and Cecily Smith find out, she’s done for—”

“There is a war on!” Lily howls at her. “Can we focus on the war for a minute—”

“Your war,” Petunia shoots back, color rising in her cheeks. “You always think your interests are more important than mine.” Her voice rises while Lily splutters at having the war described as one of her interests. “We have to discuss your evil Dark Lord, but we can’t discuss Helena Taylor or the comment she made about my sherry trifle. She called it soggy, Lily!”

Lily, despite herself, straightens with affront. “Soggy?” She repeats, utterly outraged. “Soggy?!”

“Soggy,” Petunia hisses.

“That was Mum’s recipe!” Lily bursts out, gripping the spade like a weapon. “How dare that cow—you have never made a soggy sponge cake in your life, or I will eat my hat—”

“Thank you,” Petunia says furiously, eyes shining like a bobcat’s in the dark. “Thank you. You know what—” She makes a grab for Lily’s arm, dragging her back up, “—I think we should forget this blood ward business, and go straight back to Wisteria Walk, and you should do that funny magic trick where you disappear things, but I want you to start with her fur coat—”

Lily allows herself to be pushed, feeling this is an excellent plan and the Taylors shouldn’t have a flatscreen TV nicer than her sister’s, either, if they’re in the business of criticizing her mother’s trifle, before she stops herself with a groan of frustration. “Wait. Tuney. No. The war!”

“The war will still be here tomorrow!” Petunia barks, trying to steer her down the garden path like a disobedient golden retriever. “Helena Taylor and her horrid daughter and husband will be back tomorrow, so this is really our best window—”

“The war—”

“Oh, war,” Petunia spits, sounding disgusted. She puts her hands on her hips, suddenly frowning beneath her balaclava. “You lot go to war awfully quickly, don’t you? It’s like a mild disagreement, and poof!” She snaps her fingers, blinding Lily with the flashlight. “You’re at war again.”

“So?” Lily demands.

“Haven’t you ever tried mediators, or, I don’t know, diplomats?” Petunia asks, a little judgmentally. “It feels terribly unreasonable just to get a war on right away like it’s a lasagna.”

Lily screams into her hands in frustration. Petunia spitefully flashes the flashlight in her eyes again.

“The Dark Lord is back,” she says, taking deep breaths and fighting her temper, “and we need to get this done tonight, since we’ve already put it off for nearly three weeks—”

“You know, Pansy says he and his followers dress very poorly.”

Lily stares at her sister, bewildered. “What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

“Nothing.” She sniffs, crossing her arms. “Just trying to show interest in your interests. Something you’d know nothing about.”

“The Dark Lord is not one of my interests!” Lily thunders back, losing her temper. “That’s like saying my hobby is Hitler. Stop saying that!”

“For all I know, Hitler is your hobby,” Petunia throws back churlishly. “You have about as much fashion sense as he does and you’re always shouting and marching which is very German of you—”

“I AM NOT ALWAYS SHOUTING AND MARCHING—”

“Mum?” Dudley’s voice interrupts them, sounding utterly baffled. They both freeze, looking up.

Dudley is hanging out his window, filling out the entire space with his impressive new physique from months of boxing. He has a leather jacket on still and has clearly just arrived home.

He’s also gaping at the pair of them, as though they’re baboons in the zoo.

“Diddykins!” Petunia chokes out, thrusting the flashlight into Lily’s hands. “Are you just back from tea at the Polkiss’s, then?”

“Tea?” Lily hisses. “At 1 a.m.? Are you daft, Petunia? He’s clearly been drinking!”

But Dudley is not going to let this go. He evidently feels he has the upper hand on unacceptable behavior, and Lily can’t entirely disagree with him.

“What are you and Aunt Lily doing?” He demands, ogling them. “When did she even get here?”

“Never you mind!” Petunia shouts back, losing her head completely. “We’re just doing some nice, light, nighttime gardening—”

Dudley stares at the bushes, then at his mother. “Why are you wearing a ski mask to garden?”

“Some of the plants require masks, dear,” Petunia says. Dudley keeps staring at her doubtfully, and Petunia’s temper flares. “Nice night, Diddykins? You’re back awfully late. Should I let your father know?”

Dudley blanches, seems to think very hard for a moment, then shuts the window. He closes his blinds a moment later for good measure.

“Good boy,” Petunia says, staring with satisfaction at the blinds.

Lily turns on her sister. “Now, can I lay the blood wards?”

“Stop saying blood wards! You promised!”

*

It takes another hour for Lily to get the protections in place, and by the end of it, Petunia is feeling so spiteful that she orders her to prune the hedges while she watches. Lily lies out on Petunia’s cold kitchen floor after, neck and back aching with exhaustion and dripping sweat, while Petunia graciously allows her a piece of stale bread for her troubles.

“The appointment’s at ten on Tuesday, by the way,” Petunia says, as she hands her half a glass of milk to wash it down. “Don’t be late and don’t forget. And make sure the boys look orderly, if you can manage it.”

Lily lifts her head from where she’s cushioned it on the runner in front of the sink. “What appointment?”

“For their passports,” Petunia says crossly, as though she’s being slow on purpose. “I’ll be taking them, obviously, but you’ll need to drop them off.”

“Their what?” Lily demands, wondering if she’s having a heat stroke.

“Their passports, Lily,” Petunia snaps, losing her temper entirely. “You haven’t existed at all since 1971, nor have you paid a single tax—” She shoots Lily a disdainful look, as though she’s freeloading on society, and Lily splutters indignantly, “—so I registered all three of them as wards of mine and Vernon years ago, so they’d at least exist. Legally, they’re mine, but we still need to bring them in to get their passport photos taken and for the interviews—”

“But why would they need passports?” Lily demands, head spinning. She remembers Petunia badgering her about her children’s legal status years ago, mainly to scold her for it, and Lily acquiescing and signing things she’d thrust in front of her to shut her up. And her car is in Petunia’s name, of course, but for passports….

Petunia explodes, now, as tired and frustrated as Lily is despite doing half the work. “In case they need to get out!” She hisses at her. “You’re the one who won’t shut up and keeps nattering on about this bloody war, and now you don’t remember the plan?!”

She throws the rest of the bread at her, and Lily abruptly remembers.

“Majorca,” she says, almost reflexively, but Petunia just glares at her. “But—”

Petunia cuts her off, evidently deciding she’s too stupid to allow to speak. “I know your lot can travel by unnatural and undignified means, but aren’t those all monitored the same way we monitor ours? I mean, they’re official modes of travel, aren’t they?” She sounds dubious, as if she has a hard time believing wizards can monitor anything properly, and Lily … must admit that’s fair. They are pretty bad at it.

“If you take a—” She wets her lips, eyes darting nervously around the kitchen as her voice drops so low Lily has to read her lips to make out the words, “—broom—”

Lily’s eye twitches, holding in her laughter. If she laughs, Petunia really might kill her, and they’re in a room with many sharp knives. But she pronounces broom the way a pastor would pornography.

“—they can follow you, but if you take a plane …. Well.” Petunia straightens, suddenly condescending as her voice goes back to full volume. “I highly doubt this Dark Lord of yours will brave the queue at Heathrow in his unfashionable clothes to intercept my niece and nephews if they fly out from there. He wouldn’t know the first thing about an airport terminal.”

Lily’s jaw drops, and for a moment, she merely stares at Petunia, stunned. Then she feels her lower lip wobble.

Petunia, if anything, grows more homicidal. “Don’t cry,” she snaps at her furiously. “Don’t you dare cry.”

“Tuney,” Lily chokes out, vision blurring with her tears as she shakes apart on her kitchen floor. Petunia makes a deeply aggravated noise and seizes the paper towels, thrusting them at her as though her tears will corrode her tilework. Apparently, Lily doesn’t qualify for tissues.

But Lily doesn’t care; she cries anyway, clutching the paper towels to her chest and feeling such an outpouring of love for her temperamental, awful, clever sister, who’s already planned her children’s safe exit from the country if they need it. Petunia is right: Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy wouldn’t know the first thing about Aviation Security Officers or customs. Ivy, Hardwin, and Ralston could waltz right out of Britain with the passports Petunia’s getting them, and the wizards wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to find them, because they’d never bother with checking Muggle administrations.

Petunia has made her children real in a way Lily can’t, because she’s made them Muggles, like her. They can disappear like Muggles, slipping into the mundane world as though it’s a Disillusionment Charm, making their mother’s heritage—so hated in their own world—its own sort of potent spell of protection.

A passport, she thinks, heart aching, is Petunia’s blood ward.

Lily fights magic with magic, while Petunia fights magic with paperwork. It’s just another way, Lily thinks, she’s always been the stupid sister.

“I—thank you,” Lily chokes out at last, looking at her displeased sister with watery eyes. She’s been under so much stress and so tense for weeks, and for Petunia to have done this …. “Thank you, Tuney. I mean it.”

Petunia huffs, although she looks slightly mollified. “One of us,” she says, “needs to keep our heads about us.”

Lily tactfully does not mention the balaclava. “Do you want to go Vanish things at the Taylors?” She offers, seized by a sudden desire to fulfill Petunia’s wishes. “I’ll Vanish her whole house if you want.”

Petunia pretends to consider it for a moment, then grabs her keys. “Just enough of her valuables,” she says, “to make her feel she’s going mad. But not enough to convince them they’ve been robbed.”

“I can do that,” Lily says fervently, scrubbing furiously at her tears as she stands to follow her out the door.

She stops, though, in the threshold. Petunia makes an impatient sound, already halfway down the garden path. “I. Wait.”

“What now?” Petunia asks irritably.

Lily rounds on her, pinning her sister in place with a glare. “Have you been using my kids for a tax write off this whole time?”

Petunia freezes, looking caught, then scoffs. “Four mouths are a lot to theoretically feed, Lily.” When Lily makes a noise of outrage, she just crosses her arms. “It’s not my fault the state never sent anyone to check.”

Lily keeps glaring at her, but Petunia only lifts her chin.

“Father would say it was smart,” she says, as if it’s her trump card. “You know he would. He always told us to find every tax break we could.”

Lily ….

Petunia interprets her silence as victory. “If you’re done delaying us with your petty slights,” she says, shooting Lily a look, “we need to make Helena Taylor pay for what she said about my trifle.”

Lily grinds her teeth and stomps the whole way back to the Taylors.

***

It takes three declined Floo Calls to Longbottom Manor before James loses it and Apparates straight to the Hogwarts gates, determined to make a racket of epic proportions until someone comes to fetch him.

It’s Snape, because of course, it is; he’s probably the only one that has fuck all else to do in the summers. By the time he arrives to check the source of the disturbance, James has managed to animate all the winged boars along the gates to sing and conjured an orchestra to accompany them. It sounds positively awful. James waves at him from his rock, where he appears to have been carrying on a conversation with himself. Snape stares at him with rage.

“What,” he says, and a vein in his temple is throbbing beneath his greasy hair, “is this godawful drivel.”

“The Devil went down to Georgia,” James says idly, conducting the fiddle. “It speaks to me, you know?” He side-eyes him, then. “Honestly, Severus, you’re so uncultured.”

Snape grinds his jaw, evidently refraining from cursing James through the wrought-iron bars. “Is there a particular reason,” he says from between his teeth, “for your current mental health event?”

“What else am I supposed to do to get your attention?” James asks, exasperated. “I suppose I could just use one of the passageways you never discovered, and we did—” And he’s rewarded with Snape turning a lovely shade of bone-white that he’s missed very much, “—but Albus has tightened up the wards.”

Snape’s eyes narrow to slits. “Minerva’s Floo,” he says, “still connects to Potter Manor, if I recall.”

James throws him a derisive look. “Stalk me much?” When Snape’s lip peels into a snarl, he relents. “Don’t be so thick. If I use the Floo, who could witness me throwing such a public scene at the gates?”

It takes a moment for his words to register through Snape’s rage, but when they do, he freezes. His eyes shoot up, scanning the hilly landscape behind James with a veteran’s eyes as he searches for his tail. James knows when he spots him because his eyebrows shoot up in affront.

“Dawlish?” He asks, lips barely parting to form the name. “That’s rather insulting.”

“I thought so, too,” James says, and Snape looks deeply unhappy to find they agree on something.

He considers him for a moment longer, and then his lip curls into a derisive sneer.

“This is all a mistake,” he says.

James gasps, faux excited, and mutes the orchestra. “Everyone gather round!” He shouts at the boars, cupping his hands to his mouth. “Our resident tosser is making an announcement nobody cares about!”

Snape glares at him. He knows it’s his imagination, but he could have sworn he heard Sirius snickering at him on the wind.

“You make a terrible spy,” he hisses, “and you and Black are going to get yourselves killed.”

James rolls his eyes. Snape would absolutely love for them to get killed, but James is fairly confident the devil would take one look at them and yeet them both back to the mortal plane. He didn’t spawn them to keep them in hell, after all.  “Of course, I make a terrible spy,” he says, and pauses while Snape looks surprised. “Spies are supposed to be unremarkable and easy to overlook, aren’t they?” When Snape flushes puce, James continues blithely. “Little gray men you wouldn’t look twice at. Ordinary little grunts. Boring motherfu—”

“I think,” Snape snaps, and oooh, he’s made him mad, now, “your little performance could only be enhanced by me leaving you out here overnight.”

“I think you’re right,” James says, settling back down on his rock. “The boars take requests, you know.” Snape just glares at him. “No? Okay. House choice, then.” He concentrates, and with a flourish, produces a synthesizer. “Take On Meit is, although I don’t know if the electronics will work this close to the castle; I suppose we’ll find out if it explodes.” Snape looks at him as though he dearly wishes he could drop him into the Black Lake, and James makes a reassuring noise as he sets the synth to floating. “Don’t worry; you’ll like it. Padfoot’s very fond of this one and it grows on you with each—”

“Why do you know so many Muggle instruments,” Snape hisses out, staring at the synth as though he’s contemplating hitting it with a Bombarda.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m very dramatic,” James says. “I need a broad range of musical selections for important moments. Hand me the sheet music for the boars, would you—”

“I will not hand you the sheet music—”

“That’s enough, James,” Albus says wearily, emerging from the misty path behind Snape and staring at the two of them as though they’re giving him a headache by existing. “And I’d appreciate if you didn’t take out your foul mood with me and Augusta by antagonizing my professor. And Severus ….” He turns, shooting him a disappointed stare. “You don’t always need to engage.”

James and Snape both twist twin scowls onto the headmaster.

“I’m not antagonizing him,” James begins loudly. “I’m simply making conversation—”

“I’m not engaging,” Snape refutes hotly at the same time. “If anything, I’m defusing—”

Dumbledore is making their beef about him, which they both find extremely insulting. He can’t just swoop in and appropriate their hatred like this; they’ve spent years building this enmity.

Albus ignores them. “Severus,” he says with a trace of impatience, “let him in, please.”

Snape grumbles and opens the gate the barest inch. James kicks it open spitefully, aiming for Snape’s nose, but he jumps back in time. Dumbledore’s lips purse, his serene expression growing a bit fixed as he pretends not to notice their continuing feud.

“Well, Head Auror?” He asks politely. His eyes flick pointedly to where Dawlish is hiding. “How can Hogwarts help you this evening?”

“Your office,” James says flatly. “If you please.”

*

They’ve barely settled into Dumbledore’s office before he’s twisting a disapproving look onto James.

“Why have you come?” He asks, dropping the frosty expression immediately for one of keen concern that puts James’s hackles up. “You must know it’s a risk for you to come here.”

James snorts. “It’s not a risk, because I stormed straight to Fudge an hour ago in a right snit and announced I was coming here.” He leans back, balancing on the back legs of the poufy chair. “He was rather delighted, if you must know.”

Dumbledore looks surprised, then amused. “Clever,” he remarks, leaning his chin onto his hands. “Although I must say, you don’t seem too torn up about assisting the Ministry in dragging my public reputation through the mud.”

“Well, you’re not helping matters by making that speech to the students at the end of year feast, or that speech announcing Voldemort’s return at the International Confederation of Wizards last Thursday and getting yourself thrown off the stage,” James shoots back. “You lost your Chairmanship, by the way, in case you missed the morning Prophet.”

“It’s truly remarkable how many times Flavius managed to work in the word senile,” Dumbledore comments, sounding unbothered. “Then again, he’s never had Rita’s skill for wordsmithing, so we can’t expect much in the way of ingenuity in insults.”

James rolls his eyes. “I’m here because Augusta won’t let me or Lily see Neville.”

Dumbledore’s lips thin, the twinkle in his eyes dimming. “Yes, I’ve gathered as much.” When James simply glares at him, he lets out a breath. “James. It sells the story—”

“I don’t give a damn if it sells it!” James snaps, temper boiling over. “My wife is beside herself, and so am I, by the way, thanks for asking, because Neville thinks he killed Cedric, and he’s trapped in that house—”

“Augusta,” Albus interrupts in a carefully controlled voice, “is perfectly capable of caring for Neville.”

“Augusta’s spent his whole life telling him he’s not worth half of Frank, and you know it,” James snarls, and the headmaster winces. “I know she loves him, but I wouldn’t exactly put her down as my number one provider for mental health services.”

“I know you care for him,” Albus says, “but your priority right now has to be your cover.”

James gapes at him, astounded. “Neville is my cover. Fudge believes I stormed here, for Neville.” He stands, resorting to pacing as Prongs dances in agitation under his skin. “Do you know how highly suspicious it would be if I simply stopped caring about Neville? The only thing less believable would be if Sirius and I suddenly stopped talking.”

“Well, yes,” Dumbledore says, somewhat baffled. “Because you’d be in Sirius’s trunk.”

There’s a slight thud near Fawkes’s cage. Dumbledore peers at his phoenix in consternation, and Fawkes makes a chirruping noise at him.

“Right, well, Neville doesn’t have a trunk, but it’s the same line of logic.” James stops, turning to fix him with a look. “I’m not in the Order, Albus. I’m not at your command. I don’t do organizations anymore.”

“No?” Dumbledore leans back in his chair, watching him from vivid blue eyes. “What do you do, James?”

James smiles, one designed to slice. “Bargains,” he says smoothly. “And the only thing you have worth bartering with is my godson.”

There’s an odd expression in Dumbledore’s eyes as he scrutinizes James; it’s almost pitying.

“We’re being watched, James,” he says finally. “You know that.” His fingers drift, almost absently, to his wand. “Hagrid and Olympe had to leave Britain on foot, and they had tails all the way through France before they managed to shake them near the Alps. Anyone who is close to me is being closely monitored.”

“Which is your fault,” James counters. “You brought this on all of us in that hospital wing.”

Dumbledore leans forward. “Even if I can get Augusta to agree, if Neville is regularly Flooing to your house, the Ministry will notice.” He fixes him with a stare. “Won’t it be a bit strange, if the godson you’re insisting is being deluded continues to stick to his story even with regular visits to you? How long do you think it will be before Fudge begins to question your loyalty?”

“They won’t find out,” James says flatly, “if the location we’re meeting him at is under a Fidelius.”

Dumbledore’s brow crinkles. “Potter Manor isn’t under a Fidelius.”

“I meant Grimmauld,” James says, and then Sirius says in an irritable voice, “Can I finally take this off?”

Dumbledore jumps, snatching for his wand, and Fawkes squawks, flapping his fiery wings like an enraged turkey; but Sirius just rips off the invisibility cloak and frowns around at the office, looking sweaty and annoyed.

“It’s way too hot,” he complains, “to be stuck under that thing for so long.” He shoots James an aggravated look. “When you volunteered us to sleep overnight outside the gates, I nearly cursed you myself, you know—”

“I knew they’d let us in!” James argues, raising his hands in affront.

“And what were you doing,” Sirius continues, voice rising as his perceived grievances grow more egregious, “letting Snape pick a song—”

“I couldn’t tell him you’d picked it!” When Sirius continues scowling at him, he makes a coaxing noise and conjures an elaborately painted fan in an extravagant usage of Transfiguration, immediately setting about fanning him with it. “Starlight, I’ve wronged you. You’ve suffered so much and been so brave.”

Sirius tilts his chin up imperiously like a cat, allowing James to fan him. “Go on,” he says grudgingly.

“Please stop,” Dumbledore says hastily, before they can get on a roll, “and explain.”

Sirius and James both twist to stare at him, James still fanning Sirius as though he’s an emperor.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Sirius says, as though he’s being purposefully stupid. “With Dawlish outside and everything. James needed to smuggle me in to bargain. That way, Fudge won’t ever know I was here.”

“Explain,” Dumbledore clarifies, “about Grimmauld.”

Sirius crosses his arms. “Don’t you need a safe house for your extracurriculars?”

Dumbledore freezes for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly. “You’d offer your house?”

Sirius smiles, and it’s disconcertingly like James at his most tricky. “With conditions.”

James makes a show of pulling out a chair for Sirius and conjuring him some water in a crystal goblet. Sirius shoots him a pointed look, still clearly irritated with him about his time spent under the cloak in a heat wave. James swiftly seizes the candy bowl off Dumbledore’s desk, unwrapping a sherbert lemon for him. Dumbledore fights his eye twitch.

Once Sirius has been appeased, he sits and crosses his legs, ticking his demands off his fingers.

“For starters,” he says, “we’re sealing everything except the first floor, and one guest bedroom for injuries. Anyone else gets injured, they’re out of luck and sleeping in Kreacher’s boiler room. You won’t have any access to the rest of the house.”

“Isn’t that a bit impractical?” Dumbledore interjects, looking confused. “Where would you and your family—”

“We won’t be living there,” Sirius says flatly. “Orion has nothing to do with the Order, and the food’s better at James’s, anyway.”

“Tilly’s going to be miserable with Kreacher,” James says sadly. “He always makes more work for her.”

“Kreacher makes more work for me,” Sirius says emphatically. “It’s about time it’s someone else’s turn.” He turns back to Dumbledore. “And if you want to use it, I’m the Secret Keeper, not you.”

Dumbledore’s eyes narrow at that. “Sirius—”

“No,” Sirius says, and his eyes gleam silver in the late afternoon light. “We can’t stop Mad-Eye and Kingsley and Tonks from joining you, and we know you’re recruiting out of our Aurors. We can’t leave them without a safe place. But I won’t allow the likes of Mundungus Fletcher into my bloody house, regardless of how infallible you believe your judgment to be. That’s non-negotiable. Accept it or we walk.”

Dumbledore studies him, lips tight. “Anything else?”

“Neville needs to be brought there at least once a week so we can see him,” James says flatly. “I don’t care if you tie Augusta up in a closet for the duration of his visit, and you can lock us out of the billiards room while you meet or whatever so we feel left out and everyone knows we’re not part of the clique, but if you want a fortified safe-house and our Ministry intel, we want regular access to Neville where we’re not monitored.”

“I would prefer,” Dumbledore says, and James can tell he’s picking his words carefully from how slowly he’s speaking, “that Neville’s not kept … abreast of the Order’s activities at this stage.”

Dumbledore does love his secrets.

“We have no say in what Neville knows or doesn’t know, because we’re not part of the Order,” Sirius retorts. “If you’re asking us to lie to him about what it’s being used for, we won’t. But it’s not as if we’ll know your activities.” When Dumbledore continues to hesitate, his eyes narrow to slits. “Neville isn’t negotiable, either. We’re only doing this so we can have a safe place to see him, and you’ll only convince Augusta to allow it if we give you something in return.”

“Dinner,” James says. “Once a week, or the deal’s off.”

Dumbledore looks between them for a long moment, before his gaze settles on James. “Do you plan,” he asks calmly, “to fight this entire war by yourselves?”

James just stares at him, a little incredulous, before his gaze slides to Sirius. He sees his astonishment mirrored in Sirius’s face, that wry look that says, we’ve never been alone.

But Dumbledore doesn’t understand what a pack means. He’s always stood alone, a singular figure of remarkable strength, and he doesn’t know that four people is sometimes preferable to four hundred. There’s strength in numbers, but there’s more strength in absolute loyalty.

Better the four of them, James thinks, to die together on their own terms, than to end up swallowed whole in the machinations of someone else.

Well, the four of them and Rita, he amends. Do they count Rita? He doesn’t know. She’s sort of indentured to them. Four and a half, he decides.

“We fought the most important battle of our lives,” he says finally, “by ourselves.” He feels Sirius’s eyes on him, but he refuses to look away from their former headmaster. “And we were more than enough.”

“We’re small group people,” Sirius puts in lazily. “We don’t shine in big groups. I think you wrote something to that effect in one of my letters home, once.”

“If it’s an issue of trust—”

“I trust three people,” James says flatly, “and no one else. That will never change.” He clenches his hand around the scar on his palm. “My children will be nowhere near the Order or the war, and that won’t change, either. But I can’t stop Neville from being at the heart of it, and we won’t leave him to fend for himself.”

Dumbledore studies them both, and James sees sadness in his eyes, at perhaps what they’ve become. But he’s had a role in that, James thinks; they were tools, once, and he can’t be surprised they won’t agree to be tools again. At last, he gives a short, tight nod.

“Very well,” he says wearily, and he looks older than James has ever seen him, every year of his hundred-odd years. “Then I’ll accept your bargain.”

“Great,” James says. “We’ll let you know when it’s ready for occupation.” He stands at once. “Now, do you mind terribly bringing us to Augusta’s before we come back to storm a dramatic exit out of the gates for our eager audience? I have a plan for the fountain.”

Sirius groans, glaring at the cloak.

***

He finds him in the greenhouse, bent double over a tray of Screechsnap seedlings. The dying afternoon sunlight turns his hair into another ray of light, bled through with gold. He looks taller, James thinks, and thinner; as though he’s filling out into himself, even as he tries to make himself shrink.

“You’ve stayed away,” he says in greeting, even as his eyes stay locked on the tray. James had made sure to hum as he entered and made a show of stomping mud off his boots. The last thing he wants is to startle him in his own house.

James snorts, leaning against an untidy pile of potting trays. “Neville, have I ever stayed away from you?” Neville smiles, but doesn’t lift his head, and it makes his chest ache. “Your dragon of a grandmother has kept me away. She says it’s for the optics, but she’s in a right mood with me and Sirius. Lily nearly sent her a cursed hat.”

“Where is she?” Neville asks.

“Inside, taking turns screaming at Dumbledore—who’s placating her—and Sirius, who’s no doubt goading her.” He picks up a seedling and it squeaks at him, and Neville quickly snatches it back. “I had to storm Hogwarts and make a scene to get five minutes with you, you know.”

“Did you really?”

“Of course, I did. I squatted outside the gates and made the winged boars sing at Snape. He was livid.” Neville’s lips twitch up briefly, and James grins. “Ah, see? I knew you were my kid. Only one of my spawn would take pleasure in Snape’s suffering.”

“Well, he certainly likes to make me suffer,” Neville mutters.

“That’s because he is unhappy,” James says seriously. He sits on the ledge of his workbench, swinging his legs. He sighs. “I’m not going to ask if you’re fine, because you’re not.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Neville asks in a measured voice, and James doesn’t think he imagines the slight tremor in his hands. “Make me talk about it?” His voice grows more bitter. “Tell me how brave I was?”

“I’m going to sit with you,” James says, heart aching for him. “If you’ll let me. And tell you I love you, even if you don’t want to hear it.”

Neville trembles against the table.

“Nothing that happens out there is real, Neville,” James says quietly. “This is real, and it always will be. And that will never change.”

“Do you have to do this?” Neville whispers, and he sounds tortured.

James closes his eyes for a moment. He wishes, so badly, he could tell him no.

“Yes,” he says at last. “I do.” Neville closes his eyes as if to block him out, and James doesn’t want to touch him unless he initiates it, so he speaks faster. “He’ll already have placed his spies to destabilize the Ministry, and he’ll only plant more with whatever intelligence that bastard Crouch spent a year digging up. This is the best way Sirius and I can protect you, and you know that.”

“But they’ll all want you dead if they find out,” Neville breathes.

James freezes. Neville turns finally to look at him, and the whites of his eyes show all the way around. He’s scared, James realizes, for him.

“Voldemort and the Ministry,” he says, voice growing more urgent. “They’ll both be after you. You’ll be on your own, with both sides hunting you down, and it will be because of me—”

“It will be because of us,” James corrects, keeping his voice light but firm, because he can see the self-loathing and guilt in his eyes, now, and he won’t let him carry this, too. “Not you. Sirius was voted most likely to annoy a Dark Lord to death, you know. And I was voted most likely to become a Dark Lord.” He crosses his arms. “We’re perfectly capable of infuriating the entire nation into a manhunt and murder on our own.”

But Neville doesn’t smile. “I don’t want you dead,” he whispers. “Please.”

Carefully, James reaches out, and when Neville doesn’t pull back, he cups his chin in his hand. “What is it with everyone thinking we’re going to wind up dead?” He complains, but Neville only grows more stubborn. He sighs. “Neville, if you think Ministry grunts or Death Eater numpties can catch me and Sirius, you don’t know us very well.”

“But—”

“No,” James interrupts, gripping his chin more firmly. “Neville, we’re not stupid. I mean, we are generally stupid, but not about things like this. We’re not leaving ourselves undefended, and we’ve planned more than you could ever know. Wormtail won’t catch us wrong-footed again. They won’t catch us. Any of us.” He stares at his hopeless expression, willing his words to register. “If something goes wrong, we’ll lead them on a merry chase all over the continent, and we’ll have quite a great deal of fun doing it. Honestly, we should probably thank you.”

It probably is bad, James thinks, how much he and Sirius are looking forward to potentially becoming outlaws. But they’ve just been so bored going to an office every day.

“Swear it,” Neville says flatly, and his eyes hold James. “Swear you’ll be safe.”

James pulls him into his chest, cupping him against his chest. His heart aches for Frank and Alice’s son. He’s in the most danger of them all, but all he can think about is James’s safety.

“We’ll be safe, son,” he whispers into his hair. “I swear it.”

Neville releases an exhale that shudders through him, and then he relaxes all at once, slumping into James’s arms and clutching him so tightly it’s as if he’s afraid he’ll disappear. James feels dampness spreading across his shirt, but he ignores it, running his fingers soothingly through Neville’s hair.

“We’ll be fine, Neville,” he repeats. “We’re only sorry we have to participate in this theater.”

Neville lets go then and looks up at him with his jaw clenched.

“They all think I’m cracked, don’t they?” He asks, and James sees a trace of fire in his eyes. Indignation, maybe, but more like righteous fury. “Gran won’t let me read the papers. She’s cancelled our Prophet subscription. But I know what they’re saying.” His voice grows bitter again. “I’m fragile.”

James sighs. “If it makes you feel better, they’ve thought I’m cracked for years, and they keep handing me more power like they’re happy about it.”

“But they haven’t called you fragile,” Neville insists, and there’s definitely a temper, there.

Neville has a fierce temper, and while it’s slow to rouse, it burns with a steadiness that worries James. His anger endures. Ivy is like a summer thunderstorm, battering until she exhausts herself, and Orion is much like a nuclear bomb, determined to wipe out everything around him along with himself in one fell swoop. But Neville burns, slow and white-hot, with determination.

“Have we reached the point of deciding which type of insane is better than the others?” James asks, a little amused. “Don’t worry about it too much.”

Neville bites his lip, looking like he’d like to argue, then breathes out. “How’s Ivy?” He asks. “And Aunt Lily?”

“They’re all right,” James says gently. “Busy. Ivy has her OWL in August for her apprenticeship and Remus has her dueling every day.” He pauses. “They miss you. And so do the twins.”

“I miss them, too,” Neville whispers, and James hears the yearning in his voice, and for a moment, he’s tempted to go back into the manor and join the screaming match with Augusta in the parlor. He’s been left alone with his thoughts for too long, twisting everything into his fault, and James can’t stand it.

“You can tell them that yourself next Wednesday,” James says, and he grins when Neville’s head shoots up in surprise. “At dinner.”

“But—” Neville stares at him, hope burning in his eyes, and James’s bargain with Dumbledore was worth it just for this alone. “But I can’t be—the Ministry—”

“The Ministry,” James says, “can’t monitor the Floo in a house under a Fidelius. We’ll be laying one in short order on Grimmauld.” Neville’s eyes sharpen, then, with understanding and a bit of pain, at the omission of Potter Manor. “It’s part of why the screaming’s still going on, I expect.”

“Gran won’t allow me at Grimmauld,” Neville says, deflating.

“Dumbledore will make her,” James assures him. “We made a deal with him.”

Neville looks up, frowning. “You hate Dumbledore.”

“Yes, but we love you,” James says, with a put-upon sigh. Neville flushes slightly, looking down, and James grins, ruffling his hair. “It’s terribly inconvenient. Consider it your birthday present.”

Neville drops his head back to James’s shoulder, mainly to hide his smile. He’s taller now, this boy of his, and it makes James so very sad Frank isn’t here to see it.

“Did Orion scar?” He whispers, and he hears guilt in his voice, as if he’s sorry he forgot to ask.

We all scarred; James wants to tell him. Every one of them in that room, from Bill and Arthur to Moody and McGonagall, scarred that night. The only difference is their scars aren’t visible.

“He did,” he says gently, and Neville shudders. James laughs, then, and lifts his head. “Don’t feel bad for the bastard. It only made him more handsome, and he’ll be sure to rub it in your face like he’s been rubbing it in ours.”

Neville rolls his eyes, looking annoyed and very normal for the first time, and James claps him on the shoulder, just as the shouting spills out from the manor and onto the back lawn.

“Come on,” he says cheerfully, leading him toward the greenhouse doors. “Let’s go watch the show.”

***

“Where’s fawn?” James asks the next morning, harried as he tries to collect himself for work. Fudge has invited him and Sirius to a private meeting with his undersecretaries to discuss the state of education in Magical Britain and provide their input from a Defensive magic perspective, and he’s spent half the night cleaning out the ground floor of Grimmauld until he fell asleep in a pile of curtains. He can’t find his pocket watch anywhere; he suspects the twins took it. They’ve been a bit obsessed with finding a way to animate clockwork devices, in a way that bodes ill for the rest of them.

“She’s still asleep,” Lily says, and when James frowns in worry, she rolls her eyes.

“She’s been dueling all week, James,” she says, with a note of reproach in her voice. “Along with preparing to sit her OWL in August. Let her sleep. She needs the rest.”

James sighs wearily, leaning back. “I suppose that’s true. We don’t want her going mad.”

Lily hums. “She needs a break. Perhaps I’ll bring her to Petunia’s for a—”

James snorts and immediately wishes he hadn’t when Lily swings toward him, nostrils flaring.

“Do you have a cold, dear?” She asks with fake sweetness. “Or something to say about my sister?”

James panics, but he wasn’t sorted into Gryffindor for nothing. “I only mean … Ivy is at a critical juncture in her studies,” he says carefully. “Wouldn’t it be best for her to rest here, without you and Petunia?”

Lily’s scowl deepens. “Oh, so Tuney and I are destabilizing influences? Is that what you’re saying?”

James throws a hunted look at Ralston where he stands suspended halfway to the dining room doors.

Ralston looks him dead in the eye, then slides the doors shut, trapping him in there with his angry wife.

There’s a reason Ivy is his favorite, James thinks grimly, right before the yelling starts.

***

“Where’s Dad?” Ivy asks, yawning as she follows the smell of bacon into the library. Bizarrely, the twins are eating breakfast in there, a full spread across the largest table near the fireplace.

“Downstairs in the dining room,” Flounder answers without looking up from his book on wards. He’s gotten marmalade on the cover.

“And Mum?”

“Downstairs in the dining room, bullying Dad,” Minnow says, right before he glances up at her with a frustrated huff and waves his scroll at her. “Can you help us with this?”

“What’s she doing?” Ivy demands, but she leans forward, anyway, inspecting the diagram he holds up. It looks to be some sort of clockwork construct they’re trying to animate, a bit like a gollum or a Muggle robot; there are Ogham runes scratched into the side, forming a rune chain meant to breathe life. She scans the chain and snorts. “I think you meant to draw ohn, not gort.”

Ralston groans as Ivy laughs; gort is the Ogham rune that represents ivy, and she never tires of pointing it out.

“Don’t think too much of yourself,” he mutters, scribbling the mistaken rune out with his quill.

“Mm.” Ivy musses his hair. “I’m always on your mind.” Ralston grumbles mutinously, and Ivy turns back to Flounder. “Why is Mum bullying Dad?”

Minnow shrugs, looking unconcerned. “Nothing he didn’t walk straight into.”

Her little brothers, she thinks, have no loyalty. She starts toward the doors, prepared to rescue her father herself, but she’s intercepted in the threshold by Orion—no doubt following the smell of bacon himself—and promptly forgets her own loyalty at the sight of him. His hair’s still damp from his shower and he’s unfairly handsome in his dueling attire of a worn t-shirt and gray joggers, and his face twists into the roguish grin she likes best when she practically runs into him. He sweeps her up in greeting and presses his lips gently to her forehead with a hum, ignoring Ralston’s gagging noise.

“Are we eating breakfast up here today?” He asks brightly, setting her back down and wrapping one arm around her to cage her against his chest. “I thought I heard screaming in the dining room.”

“What’s going on with you two?” Hardwin asks, peering at them suspiciously from over his glasses.

Hardwin has far too many of the Evans genes, Ivy feels. He still refers to Orion nearly exclusively as that boy, as if Orion hasn’t been a fixture in his life since the day he was born. And he’s far too nosy and prone to eavesdropping, which is only exacerbated by his dislike of Orion. As far as her brothers are concerned, Orion is a nuisance that takes up far too much of her time, when her time would be better served paying attention to them.

It helps nothing that Orion takes great pleasure in antagonizing them.

“What do you mean, what’s going on with us?” Orion asks, crossing the room to throw himself into a chair. He stands again almost immediately, making a point of snatching up Hardwin’s plate and dragging it across the table. Hardwin makes a noise like a frustrated cat, but Orion just pops the last piece of Hardwin’s bacon into his mouth, grinning at him.

“You’re acting even weirder than usual,” Ralston puts in, with an irritated glance at him.

“Oh?” Orion reaches for Ralston’s grapefruit, and when Ralston moves to block him, he flicks his wand out, neatly body-locking her brother until he finishes perusing his plate. Ralston’s eyes bulge with rage as he watches him scoop up his hash browns. “Are we?”

“Yes,” Hardwin snaps, tugging at his twin’s raised arm. “Let him go, you prat.”

Orion releases the spell with a sigh, dragging Achievements in Charming out from under the stack of scrolls. “You’re distracting us,” he says, “from studying.”

“Go back to your own house, then!” Ralston snaps, still fuming from the body bind. “You’ve been over here constantly! You show up the second Ivy wakes and stay until she goes to bed! Half the time you fall asleep in her room!”

“Oh,” Orion says shamelessly, with a wink at Ivy, who pretends to drop her quill to hide her grin. “Do I?”

“You know you do!” Ralston retorts, incensed. “Dad’s stopped even kicking you out, because he knows it’s useless! You just come over here to eat all our food and bother us all day, and we need a break—”

“Oh, no,” Orion says in sympathy, but he ruins it by looking utterly delighted. “Didn’t anyone tell you, yet?”

“Tell us what?” Hardwin asks waspishly.

“We’re moving in,” Orion says, popping a grape into his mouth with a shit-eating grin. “Permanently.”

Ralston and Hardwin stare at him for a moment in wordless shock, then both of them are standing.

“DAD!”

“DAD!”

“I knew they’d be excited,” Orion says, watching them go. “They’ve missed me since the summer of Wormtail, you can tell.”

Ivy sighs. “You’re going to bully them into giving you their room again, aren’t you?”

“Obviously.” Orion glances at the slightly ajar doors, then leans across his seat to steal a kiss. When he finally releases her, he breathes the rest of his words into her ear. “It’s next to yours, after all.”

Ivy hits him with his Charms notes, and Orion grins at her, close enough for her to spy the faint freckles on his nose. She lifts one hand to tap them, mesmerized, but she ends up tracing his scar instead, a habit she’s picked up in the past few weeks. Orion stills under her touch with a low hum, eyelids fluttering shut obediently as he allows the touch. He knows she needs the reassurance.

With careful applications of dittany and repeated sessions, it’s healed beautifully, into a thin, silver slice, shallow and without any raised edges to pull at the muscles of his face. (Her mother’s supervisor at St. Mungo’s had given her a rare, warm look when he’d inspected it, impressed with her work.) It only enhances his looks, and Orion knows it, when he bothers to think about it at all.

But Orion could look like Moody, and Ivy would love him.

Ivy follows the line of it with her index finger, starting above his right eyebrow near his temple and curving downward, across his eyelid and orbital bone until it ends just below his cheekbone. Her fingers hover for a moment, remembering what it looked like when they’d—

Fast as a snake, Orion’s hand shoots up to catch her fingers. He holds her gaze as he presses a kiss to her palm, warm and sure, before he settles her hand against his cheek instead.

“Fawn,” he says gently, “I’m fine.”

Ivy just looks at him.

She knows every inch of his scar by now: how it feels and how it curves. She knows how he got it, and the sound he made when it hit, and the sound she made when her heart fractured. She knows the long minutes it took to heal it, and the way each breath had felt like glass in her lungs as she watched. And most of all, she knows why he has that scar.

Lots of people talk about love, and the ways people show it. But Orion Black bears his love for her etched on his face. She knows she’ll never be able to look away from him.

“Fawn,” he repeats, calling her back to herself as he presses his thumb between her brows. He’s had to do that less often these days, with the more space they put between them and June, but whenever he does, his smile is always so easy afterward: patient and warm, like something to fall into. A reminder he’s safe.

Ivy looks at him, and he reads her thoughts in her face. He pulls her chair until it touches his, resting his arm along the backrest of hers, and Ivy curls into him wordlessly, throwing her legs across his lap. Orion grabs her outer thigh and drags it securely into him, keeping one hand resting there as he allows her to be enclosed in him.

Ralston isn’t wrong in his complaints; he’s just wrong on who he blames. If they were inseparable before, it’s nothing on how they are, now. But Ivy can’t fully relax, yet, without being able to hear his heartbeat.

 “Quiz me,” Orion orders imperiously, “or give me back my notes.” He leans back in his chair slightly, bringing Ivy with him as he drums his fingers along her leg. “If I fail this, Flitwick will have me carving pumpkins by hand and capturing bats with a net out of sheer spite for the Halloween feast.”

He’s alive, Ivy thinks. And he’s going to remind her of that every day until she stops needing the reminders.

She picks up his notes and resumes quizzing him on Substantive Charms.

Downstairs, the screaming multiplies, but Ivy feels it makes a rather lovely backdrop.

***

“Again,” Remus says, watching as both Ivy and Orion lie sprawled and panting on the floor.

Orion groans, rolling over to a sitting position. His t-shirt is soaked in sweat. “Can’t you at least give us water, you sadist? It’s boiling.”

The dueling courts at Potter Manor aren’t situated in the main house, but rather behind the stables, in a low, long stone building that rambles into a copse of beech trees on the outskirts of the woods. It’s old, Remus knows; James thinks it might be the oldest part of the grounds. The floor is simply packed earth, and there’s no air conditioning; the wards enclosing it cancel out any temperature control charms.

“You can drink water,” Remus says pleasantly, “once you’re back at Grimmauld and cleaning.”

Ivy moans self-pityingly. “This hardly counts as a summer holiday. Our only breaks are to do more work.” She drops her head back. “I almost prefer when Moody is here. He’s more humane than you.”

“Well, someone has to cover Kreacher’s slack,” Remus says reasonably, and he is not enjoying this, thank you very much. “Go on, Ivy, put the cloak back on for this round—”

“I am not,” Ivy says, finally sitting up in outrage, “putting on the cloak.”

With James and Sirius busy gathering intel and plotting (and showing far too much glee for Remus and Lily’s comfort at the idea of having a potential manhunt after them in the near future, but that’s a different problem), Remus has been tasked with drilling the demons in dueling, with help from Moody on his days off from the Order. None of them have recovered from what they walked into in June, and while the children showed remarkable cunning and resilience to take down Crouch on their own, they were caught badly off-guard by the reality of a gifted, older wizard with killing intent. They’re both so used to being the most talented in their year, they hadn’t anticipated how much faster-paced and vicious a duel would be.

While the demons complain endlessly and constantly threaten mutiny, Remus knows they’re both relentless. Ivy is driven by a single-minded intensity matched only by Orion’s, much like when they were children. But that intensity is focused, now. Neither of them, he thinks with a potent mixture of sorrow and the rage that has never quite abated in his chest, have forgotten how defenseless they felt during the unexpected attack in Moody’s office. Orion still wakes screaming Ivy’s name, from nightmares he didn’t block Crouch’s Killing Curse. And Ivy’s eyes linger on Orion’s scar far too much.

They master easily enough the basics of dueling: impediment jinxes, Stupefys, Expelliarmus, and Protego. They’d known them mostly, and Orion has had quite a great deal of practice with Moody’s detentions last year and his habit of attempting to kill him. Remus is confident they can escape and evade any average to moderately gifted adult wizard that may try to get the jump on them.

Where it gets harder is when they stop teaching them to duel and begin teaching them to become duelists. There’s a vast difference between doing just enough to escape an opponent, Remus thinks grimly, and doing all you can to conquer one. The Marauders have fought to the death before, when escape was never an option. They need their children to be able to do the same.

And there’s a vast difference, too, between the two mediums: a true duelist relies on each spell caster’s innate talents. Orion and Ivy are more than talented, which is ironically where the problems begin. He has half a mind to send for Flitwick on some of the more frustrating days, although he’s aware the man might finally snap and kill them all if he’s forced to teach the demons even during his summer holidays.

Ivy’s talents lie in macro-manipulations of the environment. She has the raw power to put behind any spell, even one as simple as a Depulso, to make it deadly depending on her intent (she mentions something about a messenger dwarf and a staircase, and Orion laughs so hard Moody Stuns him out of spite). And with her talent for Transfiguration, it’s enough for her to warp and weaponize her environment against her opponent, same as James does. James spends a long afternoon teaching her to drag the floor up first, until it becomes instinctive, to swallow and sink an opponent’s leg. It’s enough to throw them off balance and trap them, and hopefully to break an ankle. Either way, the distraction can prove deadly. The more Ivy can weaponize the battlefield itself, the likelier she is to land a severe blow to subdue her opponent—much like James once landed the Severing Hex that saved all their lives.

Her instinctive Transfiguration allows her the ability to transform incoming attacks, usually into a more harmless state. When Remus sends fire at her, she’s quick to turn it into smoke, and she’s even directed the smoke back at him, a boiling mist that succeeding in blinding him long enough for Orion to sneak around him from behind and Stun him.

But the drawbacks of Transfiguration are the longer casting times, the need for incredibly precise movements as you alter molecular structures, and the extreme focus it demands of the caster. (Moody takes great pleasure in breaking her concentration with loud pops and bangs, as though she’s a dog he’s training to be less jumpy.) When she’s pressured, she falls back on the most instinctive elements or materials for her to transmute, and she shows an impatience to end the duel by transfiguring her opponents directly. While one direct hit renders him a toad for an extremely unpleasant afternoon—the monsters spitefully leave him in the dueling court and go to visit Buckbeak and swim in the river before Ivy deigns to reverse it—she’s prone to mistakes when pressured on time. When Remus had sent shattered glass at her earlier, rather than transform it, she’d simply dragged up a section of the floor in front of her and transfigured it into a gold-plated shield—18k gold, according to Ivy, who seemed insistent this was important—which a well-placed Bombarda punched straight through.

(“Steel, Ivy,” he barks, as she groans on the ground and glares at him. “Or stone as a last resort, although the risk is higher of shattering and projectiles. Gold is soft. You know this.”

“Gold is easy,” Ivy snaps, frustrated with him and herself as she holds out one hand above her head. She’d lost her temper earlier and simply shaken out into her fox and bit him in the leg instead of attempting to duel, so he’s wary of pushing her. “McGonagall made me transfigure gold every day in first year spring—”

“Then I’ll owl her to have you focus on steel,” Remus says, clasping her hand and dragging her up from the ground. “Again.”)

But while Ivy is powerful, she’s limited, too, by her wand. Apple wood, as Ollivander warned them, reacts poorly to darker magics. She drops her wand when Moody attempts to teach her the Entrail-Expelling Curse as a last resort defense in close combat, cursing up a storm as the wood burns her fingertips.

(“Well, girl,” Moody says, watching with some amusement as Orion blows cold air over her palms and Ivy glares at her wand as if it’s betrayed her, “you’ll never master Fiendfyre.”

Orion brightens at once. “I bet I can master Fiendfy—”

“No one is teaching you Fiendfyre!” Remus and Moody shout at the same time, because they quite like having a house.)

But she makes for an interesting and complex duelist, and a bit of a conundrum for them to solve. Her magic is by nature a powerhouse force, her most powerful spells requiring time and precision to cast, much like Dumbledore. Unlike Dumbledore and her own magic, Ivy herself is quicksilver in flight; she’s evasive and swift on her feet like James, with an instinct to duck and a knack for dodging. A fast, agile duelist requires fast, short spells, but her magic demands bigger movements. The only solution is for her to become fast enough in her casting to support her own speed, at which point, Remus knows, she’d become close to impossible to defeat. 

(“Can’t Dad train me?” Ivy demands one morning, as Remus pulls her to her feet again. She’d tried to get clever by conjuring a fire whip, and Moody had smothered the fire by yanking all the air out of the room and nearly suffocating her. “He has the same problems I do—”

“Which is why he’s making us solve them first before he gets to you,” Moody growls. “Who do you think taught him to duel by putting him on his arse?” He glowers at her. “Who do you think broke that habit of his of always attempting to turn people into trout?”

“You definitely didn’t break that habit,” Ivy mutters, with a yearning look at the river full of toads.)

Orion, it turns out, has almost all the opposite problems, in new, annoying ways. 

His gift for Charms means his magic is meant for quick evasions and swift disarming: illusion charms to Confound and disorient opponents and combat moves requiring little concentration to put them down quickly, allowing him to chain spells rapidly.

Orion himself desires blood. He’s powerful and aggressive, and his blackthorn wand is a warrior’s wand: he learns the Entrail-Expelling Curse with too much ease. He has trouble, though, controlling the intensity; the nature of Charms is creative interpretation, with much more room for maneuvering and innovation. The higher his emotions get as the duel gets his blood up, the more overpowered and vicious his spell work becomes.

His magic also shows little concern for his own wellbeing, which is so very Orion, it’s difficult to train out. Even his simple movements, like aiming a snare at Moody’s leg to hook him down, turn into chaos when he manages to slash both himself and Ivy with it as well, knocking all three of them to the ground. He casts a Silencio that robs him of his own voice along with Remus, and Remus neutralizes him with a non-verbal Expelliarmus (Orion is a nightmare for the rest of the day, furious he’s too young yet to reliably cast non-verbal spells). And when they teach him the area charm—a specialty of Kingsley’s that sends a shockwave through the ground, stunning all opponents in a ten-foot radius—he manages to stun himself as well, and lies on the ground in embarrassment for at least five minutes.

He also shows no inclination toward Defense, ignoring entirely the nature of Charms as a defensive stronghold. When faced with the choice between defense and offense, Orion smashes the offense button, relying on his speed and werewolf strength to weather or evade hits. He learns the hard way when Moody hits him with a Bone-Breaking Spell.

(“Shield, boy!” He shouts, as he stoops down to heal his broken arm. “You had the room and space to shield, so take it!”

“Shields are boring,” Orion complains, although under his breath so Moody can’t hear.)

But he shows a rather diabolical creativity for weaponizing simple charms, and he’s a terror with illusion charms from his practice on Lockhart. He manages to make Moody hallucinate a raging fire, and the duel stops altogether while they all gawk and watch the Auror roll madly on the ground in an attempt to put out the inexistent flames when all his spells fail to stop it.(Moody leaves for the rest of the day in a fit of pure pique and doesn’t come back for three days).  He also lands a Cheering Charm on Remus that’s so overpowered, Remus abruptly drops his wand and hugs Moody, telling him how much he loves him and how wonderful he is, which allows Ivy to conjure steel cables and lasso them together. (It is the least pleasant experience of Remus’s life once Orion reverses the Cheering Charm, and he realizes Moody has been screaming abuse at him in their cartoonish prison. Ivy and Orion leave them there and come back grinning, both of them looking suspiciously mussed and windswept. Remus doesn’t have the faintest clue what they were busy doing, but they both look far too smug.)

And Orion, Remus thinks with no small amount of annoyance, instinctively moves as close as possible to his opponents. On more than one occasion, he simply forgoes magic altogether and punches Remus or Moody in the face instead.

(“STOP DOING THAT, BOY!” Moody shouts at Orion from where’s he’s suspended from the ceiling by his ankles as he rubs at his swollen jaw. “YOU’RE GOING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED.”

Orion sniffs, crossing his arms upside down as he dangles like a disobedient Christmas ornament, reminding Remus achingly of the stubborn, cowlicked boy he first brought home.

“You’re just mad it worked,” he says, without ever thinking of apologizing.)

Still, Remus has to work hard to hide how pleased he is with both of them. They’re far past the expected talent of their age, and easily the match of most adult wizards. And as a pair—

They’re frighteningly effective.

Orion’s ability to keep constant pressure and a barrage of near reckless spell fire allows Ivy the time she needs to cast something diabolical. Ivy, in turn, can keep him from dying with well-placed conjurations or physical barriers, before he lands something truly vicious.

(“They’ll be terrors,” Moody admits grudgingly one afternoon, as they watch the pair of them flee to the river away from them. He’s sporting a new black eye courtesy of Orion, and his grizzled mouth is tipped slightly into a smile that might be mistaken for fond as he watches them. “Like a pair of hellhounds.”

“That’s what we’ve been aiming for,” Remus says with his own smile, his entire body aching from when Ivy lost patience and gouged a wall out and threw it at him, and he promptly loses the ability to complain about how the children turned out.)

Which is why he simply stands, now, and tucks his hands behind his back. “Cloak on, Ivy,” he tells her. “Your mother wants you able to duel in it.”

“So, she can cut off hands better,” Orion mutters.

“Don’t you have a box for me to fill?” Ivy shoots back, kicking him in the leg. He catches her calf and scowls at her.

“Again,” Remus says. “Orion, you need to master Deprimo without blowing a hole through yourself.”

And they rise, groaning and swearing, to continue being beaten on.

***

James’s reparations to the twins for surprising them with Orion moving in is excusing them from having to clean out Grimmauld. Because their parents are lazy along with being tyrannical, they also immediately excuse themselves from cleaning, too, remanding the task to Orion and Ivy with their trademark lack of tact.

(“You have to understand, fawn,” Lily says, hurrying past in her lime green Healer’s robes importantly, “With the war back on, we’re just all so terribly busy—”

Ivy chases her to the Floo like a hound, spitting mad. “I don’t have to understand anything, you liar. You picked up a shift to avoid cleaning! We heard you!”

Lily dives into the fire, saying something about stopping by Petunia’s afterward.)

Remus, they notice, is called into a mysterious double session at the Wizengamot, then has Very Important Meetings at Gringotts all week, exactly in the afternoons when he releases them from dueling. He usually pretends to go to the bathroom and then just never comes back. When he returns in the evening with new books, he says with a straight face he found them on the street outside Gringotts.

James and Sirius don’t bother explaining themselves or coming up with excuses; they just wake up early enough to avoid them and flee for the Ministry.

While Ivy is fuming, Orion has no issue with their assignment. He’s much more interested in snogging Ivy on every available surface in Grimmauld, without fear of interruption from the rest of their hypocritical family who are avoiding helping. Ivy quickly sees his point of view on this after the second time he pins her to the dining room table and kisses her until she sees stars, and she begins to feel her family has done them an enormous favor. It’s been hard to find any time alone, apart from all the times they Stun Remus and leave him there for a couple hours. And they still need to avoid the twins then, who lurk around Buckbeak frequently. The situation has not been helped by the fact Orion’s only grown more attractive to the point where she can barely stand to look at him without wanting to do something to him. If he winks at her one more time and trails his fingers down her sides at dinner without her being able to kiss him, she’s certain she might die.

*

“How’d packing go?” Remus asks them at dinner that night, and he’s perplexed when Ivy turns bright red and Orion grins in a way that should be illegal, slinking back in his chair to stare at her with possessive satisfaction.

“Great,” Orion says, still staring at Ivy, as one hand drops below the table. “We really enjoyed ourselves. Don’t you agree, fawn?”

“Mm,” says Ivy, staring at her plate as she shifts pointedly away from him in their chairs. They’re always tangled together these days, in the aftermath of the attack; it’s rare to see more than a foot of distance between them. Orion, of course, has benefitted shamelessly from James being so busy.

Orion’s grin only widens, like a predator watching prey. Ivy glares at her plate.

Remus has a hard time not rolling his eyes; his son is as hopeless as Sirius, and just as incapable of hiding his feelings. If he’s that happy with spending time alone with Ivy, he’ll probably combust if he ever actually manages to date her. He’s starting to wonder if Sirius might have the right idea of it, and they should be helping him win her over. James will kill them, of course, but Orion was willing to take a Killing Curse for his daughter. He won’t stay mad long. 

“It’s been really hot,” Orion adds blithely, popping a piece of watermelon into his mouth. “Don’t you think it’s been so hot, fawn?”

“Mm,” Ivy says again, glaring at the ceiling, now. Orion leans over and drags her chair back toward his with a grin, right before he crowds her space and begins neatly picking the cherry tomatoes out of her salad and piling them onto his own plate.

Remus hums, missing the way his son is smirking at Ivy, who’s pointedly not looking at him. “Well, use a cooling charm.”

He’s certainly not going to help them. They’ll be fine on their own.

*

Unfortunately, it means they also haven’t made much of a dent in the actual packing or cleaning, and by Monday—two days before Sirius and James promised to hand the house over to the Order—the situation’s become rather dire.

“Right, well, that’s all my stuff,” Orion says grumpily, shoving the last of his trunks through the fireplace and tossing his Firebolt after it. Kreacher had come back early today, mainly just to thwart their attempts at packing the house, and he’s lurking around the grand staircase muttering and putting things back whenever Orion’s back is turned. Orion has a suspicion he’s going to use their vacancy to put the house elf heads back up.

Orion’s in a foul temper, if he’s honest; he was so delighted at getting to kiss Ivy, he’d forgotten they’d have to actually do the packing.

“What about your dads’ stuff?” Ivy asks, popping her head out from the drawing room down the hall. She’s been warding and locking all the cabinets and putting anything valuable into a duffel bag Sirius enchanted with an Extension Charm, to bring back to the Manor. Orion scowls at the sight of her; she looks adorable, with her hair back in a bandana and her wand tucked behind her ear, and he has to pack.

“They can live without their stuff,” he says pettily. “I think we should just seal the upstairs and teach them a lesson about foisting responsibilities onto us.”

Ivy shoots him a look, then turns to Kreacher. “Kreacher. Do you think you could pack Sirius and Remus’s clothes and personal items?”

She frames it as a question, but Kreacher still freezes and bows deeply to her.

“Of course, Young Mistress,” he warbles, and he disappears far too fast up the stairs. Orion’s almost positive he’s going to undo everything he just did, and he’s going to pack exactly none of Sirius’s items out of spite.

But Ivy frowns after him, looking puzzled. “Why is he calling me Young Mistress?”

Orion … is not about to admit Kreacher’s under the impression she’s his soon-to-be wife.

“He’s probably just having a moment,” he says vaguely.

Ivy’s still frowning. “But—“

“Kitchens,” Orion says firmly, yanking her to her feet and tucking her beneath his arm. “While he’s upstairs, we can actually make progress on his boiler room.”

Ivy relents, following him down the landing into the kitchen. They haven’t done much in here; it’s not as if Orion, Remus, or Sirius were passionate about cooking, and Kreacher’s never going to be winning any awards. Besides, the Potters have everything they’ll need, and if it’s a safe house, the residents might need to cook.

But most of the cabinets haven’t been opened since they were kids, and Ivy had a bad habit young of stashing valuables in places she deemed unassailable, which usually meant cabinetry. It’s a habit she shares with Kreacher.

Ivy eyes Kreacher’s cabinet covetously. She’s never been allowed in there, and it was one of the few rules Remus and Sirius had enforced on them young. The peace with Kreacher had been so tenuous the first few years, even she hadn’t dared to break it.

But Kreacher will never willingly move his treasure nest to Tilly’s kitchen; it will be on them to relocate it quickly and apologize for it later.

“How long do you think we have until he’s back?” She asks.

Orion lolls across her, forearms wrapped securely across her neck as he props his chin atop her head and leans his weight on her. He hums contemplatively. “Twenty minutes, tops,” He guesses. “He’ll want to get the house elf heads back up while we’re not paying attention, and he’ll probably try to stage the hand box in the foyer with a Permanent Sticking Charm.”

Ivy sighs and lifts the duffel bag. “It’s time.”

Orion whistles, low and impressed. “He’s going to kill us.”

“Yeah, well, we can let him hunt a house elf later as an apology,” Ivy grumbles. “He’ll be madder if someone steals his stuff.” When Orion continues to look at her, astounded and fond, she grows defensive. “Remus can deal with him!”

“You know the last time we messed with his stuff he demanded a banquet as reparations, and Dad actually had to send an invitation to Narcissa—”

“It’s not like she came!” Ivy argues back. “She just sent flowers! Besides, Remus deserves it for making us pack.”

“Fair,” Orion says, forgetting the past five days where he’s thoroughly enjoyed himself. He presses a kiss to the crown of her head then reluctantly lifts himself off her, approaching the cupboard. “Fire away, fawn.” He throws open the cabinet. “Clock’s tic—”

Orion goes eerily still.

“O?” Ivy says, neck prickling. The pause has gone on too long. She takes a step toward him, trying to see around him into the nest of dirty blankets. “Orion, what’s—”

A long, low growl works its way up Orion’s throat, not sounding like it should be made by human vocal cords. The muscles in his neck are bulging like snakes beneath his skin, and his back is shuddering beneath his t-shirt. Ivy freezes.

“Orion,” she tries again, heart suddenly racing. She takes another step, close enough for her fingers to reach out and brush his shoulder coaxingly. “Orion, what’s—”

And suddenly, he’s gripping her by the shoulders and propelling her backward, past the table and all its chairs until her back clatters loudly against the closed kitchen door. She blinks, utterly baffled but unharmed; Orion had pressed his own hands behind her and taken the impact himself. She looks up at him and grows cold at the look of naked fear on his face.

“Get my dad,” he bites out. “And stay out of this room.”

Ivy doesn’t ask any questions; she doesn’t say, but Sirius is at work or insist on helping. She flees from the room, because Orion Black would never order her to do something unless it was life or death.

In the hallway, she hardly pauses to breathe before fumbling for her charm bracelet. She locates the dog charm and presses down until it grows white-hot, and then slumps against the kitchen door and waits, wand in hand. She can’t go in; Orion told her she couldn’t. But she can rest on the other side of the door, as close to him as possible, and wait until—

“IVY!” Padfoot’s roar comes from the Floo.

“HERE!” Ivy screams, because she’s not hurt but she has no idea what’s wrong, and Orion is frightening her. “THE KITCHENS!”

Sirius appears so fast it’s as though he Apparates, and he’s wearing the face she never sees, the one she knows means death. He scans her over head to toe, but he doesn’t relax; his gray eyes find her face, and his expression darkens at what he sees there.

“There’s something in Kreacher’s cupboard,” she says at once. “Orion won’t let me in there, but he told me to get you. He … his wolf thinks it’s a threat.”

Sirius’s expression grows grimmer, and he strides into the kitchen before she finishes speaking, making a beeline for his son.

“Close the door,” he orders, and Ivy does, with no questions asked.

***

Orion doesn’t say a word when he enters; he’s fighting too hard for control of his wolf to speak. He points, muscles taut in his forearm, at a gold locket resting in the nest of blankets. It’s a gaudy, ugly thing, the size of a chicken’s egg and studded with emeralds in the shape of an S on a thick, gold chain, and Sirius feels Padfoot growling beneath his own skin in warning.

It feels as if it’s hunting them.

He knows every piece of jewelry in this house. He’s seen every piece in this house, passed between Ivy and Orion’s grubby, little hands, and he knows this doesn’t belong to the Blacks.

He approaches slowly, wand drawn, heart hammering, and pushes Orion back. Orion fights him for a moment then relents, staggering back a foot and gasping in a breath that seems to hurt him. Sirius sweeps out a tentative probe of his own magic. He recoils at the vile, unnatural strain of magic that greets him like the lash of a whip, weeping like an oil spill from the glittering emeralds.

Orion growls again, and his entire body shudders.

“Orion,” he says, eyes never leaving the locket. “Get your father and James, and don’t come back in here.”

Orion’s barely staggered out the door and collapsed into Ivy’s supporting grip when Kreacher appears with a crack, wailing at him with a ferocity he hasn’t seen since his mother was alive, calling him despicable, deplorable, nasty, cruel, putting Master Regulus’s greatest sacrifice at stake, and Sirius’s brain short circuits at the mention of his little brother as something bitter and horrible begins to take shape—

“KREACHER!” He bellows. “What does my brother have to do with that abomination?” He doesn’t know what else to call it; he doesn’t know what it is, he just knows it’s terrible, and it carries evil, and it needs to be destroyed.

Kreacher starts crying in truth, flinging himself onto the stone floor as he beats his head upon the tiles.

“Master Regulus,” he chokes out between sobs, “died for it.”

And Sirius goes cold all over, just as James and Remus crash through the closed door.

***

And later, after James has called for Lily and Ivy and Orion have been safely removed back to the Manor to watch Hardwin and Ralston—

After Kreacher has told the four of them the story of the cave in halting, gruesome detail, and Sirius has wept until he’s been sick all over the back garden and screamed for his brother’s death and broken half the things in Grimmauld—

They sit on the dueling court of Grimmauld, warded to the gills and drunk as hell, and stare at the locket on the floor.

“Fiendfyre,” Lily throws out, with only the faintest slur. She’s pale beneath the red of her hair. “Fiendfyre will kill anything.”

“Can we kill it, though,” Prongs says shakily, “if we don’t fully know what it is?”

It’s a half-truth; they know it was the Dark Lord’s, know it’s full of a twisted, evil magic, know Regulus died—dragged into the lake, made into an Inferi, and Sirius will find a way to kill every single one of those monsters in that cave to ensure his brother finally knows peace—for the hope of destroying it, and they have a terrible feeling they know what it is.

Sirius, at least, knows, the same way Regulus instinctively knew. He was raised a Black, after all.

“Fiendfyre will kill it,” Sirius confirms. If it’s what he knows it is.

“Should we …” Lily hesitates. “I know I should say, let’s do it sober, but—”

“It’s sentient,” Prongs confirms. He’s the most sober of the four of them, and his wand has never moved from where it’s pointed dead center at the locket. “It might find a way to kip off, if we leave it overnight.”

It’s an unsettling realization, and they all stare at the locket behind its wards on the floor, their skin crawling.

“Do we—” Remus begins, then swallows. He’s not as sensitive as Orion is, but he’s struggling to be near it without giving into his instincts, which order him to protect his pack. “Dumbledore might know more.”

“Dumbledore,” Lily snaps, temper rising at once, “is on his own side. We’re on our side, remember? We swore.” And she holds up her right palm, where her scar gleams silver in the dim lighting. It’s a mark they made years ago, now, after Dumbledore’s visit to the Potters, while they sat drunk on their drawing room floor and made a vow. “This—” She waves her hand at the locket, “—changes nothing about that.”

“There could be more,” Remus says quietly, as if the idea makes him sick. “He could have made more, Lily.”

“Then there will be one less,” Sirius says, swinging himself onto his feet with hard eyes, “after tonight.”

Fiendfyre kills it, which confirms Sirius’s last suspicion upon what nature of monstrosity it was.

But the four of them decide to keep it to themselves, for now. The only other person who would care to listen, is the person who would use them and their children first without compunction. The man they’ve needed to bargain with to even see Neville.

They forbid the children of speaking of it when they find them the next morning red-eyed and stinking of liquor. But they also tell them it’s been taken care of, that they did right to fetch them immediately, and that they will always protect them. That Sirius will be building a nice new memorial for Uncle Regulus in the gardens, if they’d like to help him plan the designs and flowers. That Kreacher will be taking a few days off to recover; it’s not anything they did, but he just needs some rest.

They accept this answer readily, without any questions. Orion’s reaction to the locket startled Ivy badly, and she’s more worried about him than she is a necklace. Orion merely complained after a Death Eater nearly blew his face off, but the necklace is enough to leave him silent and thoughtful in a way she’s rarely seen him, as though he’s thinking very hard about something.

“It smelled like danger,” is all he says when she asks.

Ivy knows he means danger to the pack.

But Orion doesn’t deserve anything except to be perfectly happy, all the time. She’s happy to forget.

*

Sirius lays the Fidelius on Grimmauld, and Augusta allows Neville through for dinner.

Orion insists on attending. He doesn’t say much; just watches Neville with veiled, distant eyes, nostrils flaring occasionally as though he’s assessing something.

He sneaks back into Ivy’s room that night through her window after James throws him out. (He’s gotten much better at it since the first time he broke his wrist, and he no longer uses bedsheets tied together.) He curls around her on the bed, his warmth like a furnace as he strokes her hair. Ivy hums sleepily, burrowing into him.

“Fawn,” he says, when she’s nearly asleep. “I don’t like you alone with him.”

Ivy just burrows deeper into him, resting her cheek against his heartbeat. “You’re so jealous,” she says, drowsy and fond.

He presses his lips to her hair.

“Something like that,” Orion says.

***

The week of Ivy’s birthday, James arrives home from the Ministry to find the Weasley twins sitting patiently in his living room with an ominous looking binder and a large, black, box. That’s not necessarily abnormal, but they are being held at harpoon point by Ralston and Hardwin, which definitely is. And they’re accompanied by Percy, of all people, who looks grim and pale.

For a moment, James can only gape, and he seriously contemplates walking back through the Floo to avoid whatever this is. But both sets of twins jump to their feet at the sight of him.

“Dad,” Ralston says, looking pleased with himself. “We caught intruders.”

“We’re not intruders,” Fred says irritably. “We’re business partners, and your sister let us in.”

“None of us invited you,” Hardwin interjects mulishly. “You don’t have an appointment.”

“Well, we didn’t have an official appointment,” George corrects. “More of a standing date. And it’s really hard to escape from our house, but Mum’s gone all day—”

She must be at Grimmauld, James thinks. His eyes flick to Percy’s silent form, then back to the twins, who look a bit shifty. Bill and Charlie have both joined the Order, but he’s heard nothing about the middle Weasley brother. Clearly, Percy hasn’t been told.

“What we’re saying is,” Fred interrupts, hefting the binder like a weapon and shaking it threateningly at James, “is now a good time to keep your word?”

James … abruptly remembers what he promised them.

He sighs, rubbing at his temples. “Let me get Sirius,” he relents, turning back toward the Floo, and the Weasley twins beam at him, even as his own twins scowl.

They end up meeting in the drawing room, with Ralston and Hardwin drawing up chairs as if they have a say in any of this and looking supremely judgmental, right before Fred and George insist on them being excluded.

“We’re your investors, too!” Ralston says angrily, outraged as a cat.

James pinches his nose bridge under his glasses. “Ralston, you’re ten and have no money.”

Ralston turns on him, looking betrayed. “I’ll have your money, one day, when you die,” he hisses.

James … should probably watch out for his sons.

“You’re competition, is what you are,” George interjects, hands on his hips. “We’re not having you stealing our designs—”

Hardwin stands, and there’s the telltale Evans flush of temper on his cheeks. “As if,” he spits, slow and furious, “we’d ever do anything as basic as prank items.”

“We deal in weaponry,” Ralston snaps, equally insulted. “Not leisurely pursuits.”

“Then you won’t mind missing the meeting!” Fred says cheerfully, grabbing for Hardwin and steering him toward the door as George makes a beeline for Ralston.

“We have more important things to do,” Hardwin snaps, fighting Fred’s grip as he storms toward the door himself, “than looking at your novelty items—”

Ralston twists in George’s grasp, equally outraged.

“Cheers, then,” says Fred, right before he shuts the door in their faces. James thinks he hears a noise of pure fury behind it, right before George casts an Imperturbable Charm on the door.

“Smart,” James says. “They’re very nosy.”

Percy, he notices, stays.

“Head Auror,” he says curtly before taking his seat, and his voice is low and hard. Crouch had pitched it higher, James realizes, feeling a bit sick; he must not have been aware of Percy’s natural register.

He’s recovered from his imprisonment, lean and long again with a build like Arthur and Ron’s rather than the stockier twins, and he’s so very quiet. He’s harder, too, with a sharper edge; when he shakes James’s hand, his eyes flick up and sear into him. He holds himself perfectly still in the high-backed armchair during the twins’ presentation, like a heron at a pond, watching for fish to pluck and devour. 

The only part of him that moves is his hands; he’s tearing a napkin absently between his fingers the whole time he watches his brothers, into smaller and smaller shreds.

But then again, James never knew the real Percy. He might have been hard all along, cut more from the cloth of his dead uncles than his father.

The twins pull out the stops, and James finds himself more than a little impressed with their ingenuity, willingness to test their products on themselves like psychopaths, and inventiveness in naming. Their Portable Swamp blueprint is impressive enough Sirius starts pouring over it with suggestions, and James loves their fireworks, designed to multiply if they’re Vanished and explode if they’re Stunned.

They even demonstrate their prototype Skiving Snackboxes for them, with Fred eating a Puking Pastille and vomiting magnificently into a bucket George conjures for him. The only problem is, Fred has difficulty swallowing the other half to stop vomiting.

“Amazing,” James says, examining the rest of the pastilles, while Fred beams at him around the bucket. He looks pale and sweaty and entirely too pleased with himself. He holds up a purple chew. “What about the nosebleed nougats?”

“Oh, we don’t have those right yet,” George says.

“Yeah, you kind of just keep bleeding until you pass out or they wear off,” Fred adds.

Percy twitches, a vaguely irritated expression crossing his face before it goes placid again.

“And you’re asking us for money to test these on kids at school?” Sirius asks, delighted by the chaos of this statement.

“We prefer the term Research and Development,” George says in a dignified manner. “It sounds much better than experimenting on children.”

“And to start a mail-order service,” Fred adds. “If we can take out adverts in the Daily Prophet, Mum and Dad won’t see it, because they refuse to read it these days. That way, we can start creating value for our—” he bows with a flourish, then promptly seizes the bucket to dry-heave, “—shareholders.”

“We haven’t invested yet,” James reminds them.

Fred suddenly looks determined. “George,” he says, “it’s your turn with the Nougats.”

Percy twitches again.

“Aren’t you worried about your brothers telling your mother?” Sirius asks, reading over their fireworks schematics.

“No,” Fred says, ticking his brothers off his fingers. “First, Ron can’t read. Neither can the ghoul in our attic, and we do like to count him. Bill is too indulgent and feels guilty all the time—”

“Charlie is too busy chasing dragons and being in the wrong country,” George puts in.

“—And Percy’s basically catatonic these days.” He glances at his elder brother, and there’s something in his eyes, James thinks, that makes his heart twist. As though he’s daring him to yell at them. “Look at him. We dragged him out of the house for an illicit trip and we’re breaking rules in front of him and plotting the destruction of his alma mater, and he barely cares.”

Percy’s jaw clenches slightly, but he doesn’t say a word.

He just keeps watching James.

They take the twins out of their misery and agree to invest—after James hammers them for 15% of their profits, feeling as though Griphook might actually be pleased to see him for once and his sons might even forgive him for their ejection—and stand once the hour’s up. The twins are so delighted, they look as though they’re going to burst and begin flying. They promise to send them regular reports on the ongoing human experimentation they’ll be conducting with James and Sirius’s money.

Personally, James feels this is the best investment he’s made in years. 

“Mum will be home soon,” Fred says, grinning ear to ear and still looking slightly stunned. “We better get back.”

“Yeah, if she catches us, we’re all dead,” George says, grinning similarly. They’ve nearly made it to the doors when they stop.

“Perc?” Fred asks, frowning.

Percy startles so badly it makes the twins flinch back.

“Hm?” He says, turning toward them and blinking rapidly behind his horn-rimmed glasses. The napkin clenches suddenly, crushed in his fist. He answers them with sudden briskness. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

Fred’s faint frown deepens, and James sees a gentleness in his face so at odds with the twins’ usual smirks. “Are you coming?”

“Mm.” Percy says. “In a moment.” His eyes shoot back to James. “I’d like to speak with Head Auror Potter.”

“Head Auror Potter, he says,” George ribs in a posh tone, and Percy flushes faintly, casting the twins an irritated glance. It’s the most human emotion he’s shown, and the twins both relax at once, grins spreading across their faces at the familiar annoyance.

James suddenly understands why the twins have glued themselves to him; they’re the brothers most likely to badger and annoy him into himself, out of whatever quiet darkness he’s in.

“Well, we’ll just wait outside then,” Fred says, sounding enthusiastic again. “We’ll try to smooth over the twins—”

“Watch out for the harpoon,” James says wearily.

And the twins both disappear, closing the drawing room doors behind them. James gets a feeling they haven’t gone far.

“How can I help you, Percy?” he asks, leaning forward in his chair.

James has a hard time looking at him; he keeps remembering their stake-out of Crouch Manor, and the self-satisfied, smug expression Crouch had worn when he’d left with Percy’s face. Left, he thinks, from tormenting him.

He will never stop feeling guilty that they might have rescued him sooner.

Percy hesitates, looking between him and Sirius.

“Minister Fudge,” he says abruptly, “has offered me a position in his office. Junior Assistant to the Minister.”

James raises an eyebrow, not letting his thoughts show on his face. “Congratulations. That’s an excellent position for a recent graduate.”

“Remarkably good,” Sirius says, in that insinuating tone that drives most people mad.

Percy’s eyes narrow slightly. “Yes,” he says. “I think so, too.” He’s twisting the napkin again. “My father thinks it’s a bribe. To keep quiet about what happened.” He takes a deep breath, seeming to decide something, then lifts his eyes to search James’s face again.

“And he thinks he means to use me to spy on them,” he says flatly.

Arthur, James thinks, isn’t wrong. But he can’t read Percy’s face, apart from the hard lines of it; he can’t understand which loyalty he’s probing about, and he doesn’t know what exactly he remembers of his imprisonment. Who he saw. What he heard. What he’s blocked even from himself.

Percy’s sealed statement had been unsurprisingly sparse. He’d been captured by Crouch. He’d been kept under the Imperius for the first few weeks, until he learned to fight it off. And then Crouch had chained him and force-fed him Dreamless Sleep, allowing him to rouse for intervals only long enough to feed him before forcing him back under. No one knows if that’s what truly happened, save for Percy. The case had been closed swiftly, with no further follow-up interviews.

“That’s a bit of an insinuation,” Sirius says neutrally.

Percy’s still watching James, with those hard, bright eyes. “Yes. It certainly sounds outlandish.” His head tilts. “But you believe the Minister.”

“We have complete faith in Fudge,” James says firmly.

“You believe Neville to be lying.”

James sharpens at that, and he feels Sirius shift beside him. “Neville isn’t a liar. He’s being misled by Dumbledore and Augusta.”

“Yes,” Percy says. “We’ve all heard how distraught you’ve been, being denied access to him.”

James says nothing.

“You trust the Minister, then,” Percy says. “And believe there’s no reason I shouldn’t take this job.”

“My loyalty,” James says flatly, “is to the Ministry.” He watches Percy back, but he can glean nothing from him, except that hard shine in his eyes. “I’m Head Auror, after all.”

Percy watches him for a moment longer. His fist clenches around the napkin.

“Very well,” he says at last. He throws him another inscrutable look. “Then if you believe him, I’ll take the job.”

James’s stomach twists.

“An excellent decision,” he says.

***

James arrives late to the restaurant for his private dinner with Fudge, because he has no time management skills and also because he doesn’t want to go and is sort of hoping he’ll get struck by lightning on the way. He arrives twenty minutes late and God does not choose to conveniently smite him. He figures the Minister will forgive him; his late arrival will allow him to choose the wine, which is something Fudge feels passionately about and James cares not at all about.

It’s a quaint, luxurious hole in the wall— quite literally a hole in the wall off the main road somewhere in Wiltshire, that expands into a center atrium of hammered gold. It’s been bewitched to resemble eternal spring; a waterfall rolls luxuriously down the back wall, and magnolias and cherry trees flower among gray stones that loom like islands out of the pink-tinted mist. Jabberknolls and Fwoopers swoop through the space, the Fwoopers muted with a Silencio to avoid driving guests mad. A collection of low tables and couches dot the atrium for casual patrons. Galleries ring the upper levels, leading to a warren of private rooms behind translucent fabric walls designed to let the light in while keeping conversations private.

It’s all rather lovely, until the hostess leads him into a private room on the top floor, and he looks straight at Lucius Malfoy, dressed in sapphire wool robes and sneering at him. Then James feels rather like a dog that’s been tricked into going to the vet.

“Now, now,” Fudge says, wagging a finger at them both. “I know you two have your little rivalry over that Governor’s position—” And James has the immense satisfaction of seeing Lucius’s jaw clench with irritation before he masks it, “—but I find it hard to believe two of my dearest friends and closest supporters can’t put their old House pride aside for the sake of their country and a proper meal and company, hmm?” He grabs for the vintage. “Your Minister commands it.”

James lets out a bright, merry laugh and slides easily into the chair next to Lucius. “Well, if my Minister commands it.”

Lucius stares into James’s eyes for a heartbeat longer, then turns to Fudge with a genial grin.

“Who can’t get along with James Potter?” He inquires with a laugh. “He’s the most charming man in magical Britain.”

“Oh, Lucius, you silver tongued swallow!” James cries out, throwing a hand to his forehead like a swooning heroine. “I bet you tell all the wizards that!”

Lucius nearly spits wine out his nose, but James just smiles, wide and merry, as he claps him on the shoulder far too hard. If Lucius is determined to figure out which one of them should win an acting award, he’s about to find out it will be James every day of the week.

Lucius recovers and forces a rueful laugh, smiling at James. Fudge chuckles and pours James a glass of wine, looking at them both with a pleased expression.

Two good puppets, James thinks. Two good lying ass puppets, undercutting their puppeteer in different directions.

He and Lucius just might end up getting along by the end of this nightmare.

“I knew you couldn’t be immune to him, Lucius,” Fudge teases.

“No one is,” Lucius says. His smile deepens a bit. “And he’s raised,” he continues, “the most charming daughter in Britain, or so I hear.”

James’s fingers clench on the stem of his wine glass.

“Oh, Ivy is a wonderful girl,” Fudge says, and there’s real sincerity in his voice, which is what makes all of this so horrid. His smile grows a little amused. “I take it you’ve heard this from young Draco?”

“Draco has his crush, of course,” Lucius says easily. “But everybody’s talking about her.” His eyes stay on James. “She’s the talk of the town.”

“As if James would raise a modest child,” Fudge says indulgently. He lifts his wine glass. “To young Ivy Potter. The talk of the town, just like her father.”

“Just like her father,” Lucius repeats, his eyes still on James.

James smiles at him, warmly, and drinks.

Lucius’s death, he decides, is going to be particularly gruesome.

“And how is my nephew?” Lucius asks much later. “Has he recovered from his maiming? I heard he may be disfigured.”

“Oh, Lucius,” Fudge says, reprovingly, but James barks a laugh.

“He’s more handsome than ever, the bastard,” he says fondly, and Fudge chortles. “The scar makes him look quite dashing, like a rogue from a novel. But that tends to be the Black genes.” James smiles at him. “Your wife will be happy to know that he still makes for a proper heir of her house.”

Lucius’s lips look so tight James is surprised they don’t crack like plaster. “How good to hear,” he says, and James can hear the strain. “We were very worried.”

“We got your fruit basket,” James says sincerely. “It was very nice.”

We didn’t send a fruit basket, Lucius’s eyes hiss. Stop going off script.

James sips his wine and crosses his eyes at him over the rim. If Lucius wants to put on a play of familial friendship for the Minister, he should have known James would never consent to being the understudy.

James is the whole goddamn play.

“And the card,” he continues, affecting a moved tone, “was very touching. I loved your drawing.” He looks at the Minister. “He drew him and Orion, flying a kite together, like they did when he was young.” Lucius’s eye twitches. “It was very sweet.” A pause, as James measures how ridiculous he can make this. “He used watercolors and everything.”

A muscle in Lucius’s cheek starts throbbing.

Fudge laughs. “Well, now we know where Draco gets his talent! You know, I’ve heard from many recent Hogwarts graduates he’s rather artistic.”

“Ivy says he’s very talented,” James agrees earnestly, watching Lucius silently crash out. “He likes to work with a lot of different mediums, and he does some exhibition pieces. He even did a collectible badge last year that he drew himself. He gave it out to all his friends to wear.” He sips his wine. “It’s very adorable.”

“How charming!” Fudge cries out, sounding delighted. “Lucius, you might need to look into getting him his own studio!”

Lucius looks at the steak knife as though he’s seriously considering slitting James’s throat and then his own wrists.

“Mm,” he says, eyes narrowed into slits as James smiles at him like the Cheshire cat.

“Oh, Lucius,” Fudge says, mistaking his murderous fury for embarrassment. “You old softie. Look how far you’ve come, from filing legal injunctions against Orion to sending him a handwritten get-well card.”

“That’s what his card said!” James piles on, nodding along. “He said he couldn’t think of a better heir for House Black than Orion. He even sent grapes, you know, to signify family togetherness. And pomegranates, as a symbol of eternal love and loyalty.”

“I didn’t know fruit had so many meanings,” Lucius says from between his teeth.

“I’ve a book I can lend you, it’s very thorough.” James pats his hand. “But it’s been very nice, to find some common ground and agree Orion makes the best heir for House Black. Don’t you agree, Lucius?”

A long pause, as Lucius visibly struggles against the corner James has backed him into.

“Yes, I agree Orion is very good,” he gets out all in one breath.

“To Orion Black, then!” Fudge says, lifting his glass again. “The next Lord of House Black!”

James raises his wine glass, smiling at Lucius.

Talk about my daughter again, his eyes say, and I will cut you.

Lucius looks like he’s swallowing poison as he mumbles the toast.

***

“I’m so glad you could come tonight, James,” Fudge says later over port, and there’s an earnestness in his voice that lets him know he means it. “And I’m relieved, really, at how well you two get on.”

“Like a house on fire,” James says, smiling, “with a family trapped inside it.”

Lucius glares at him.

“Lucius and I have been working on something, and we’d love your input,” Fudge continues. “It’s a bit of a pet project of mine, and a cause I care very much about. Lucius here has been remarkably helpful in helping me draft the legislation and drum up support in the benches, but we both think it would be helpful to have the Potters’ approval and endorsement. You are, of course, the leading family of the light, with the tragic loss of the Prewetts.”

He doesn’t, James notices with some amusement, mention the Longbottoms. The Longbottoms are much older than the Potters, with a much more storied peerage. But the Longbottoms are out; the Potters are in. The king is dead, long live the king, and all that.

“What’s the bill for?” He asks curiously.

“Magical wards,” Lucius says smoothly.

James doesn’t let his thoughts show on his face. “Oh?” He says lightly.

Fudge leans forward in his seat, looking animated. “Think about it, James. We’ve never truly established a regulated system for magical wards. In all our thousand odd years of governing, we’ve never established basic protections for our own children!”

“I know it,” James says grimly, thinking of Orion’s small body and stubborn expression in that hospital bed, all those years ago. “It drives Lily mad. The Muggles apparently have a very thorough system for child protective services, with judges and courts and visits to check conditions. They make us look positively negligent, according to her.”

A look of distaste skates across Lucius’s face at the idea of Muggles viewing him as inferior, matched by one of dismay on Fudge’s.

“Do they really?” Fudge asks, sounding irritated. “I better ask my counterpart, then, the next time I see him. He’s never mentioned this to me before, and I’m sure I’ve asked—”

James nearly snorts wine out his nose imagining the terror on the Muggle Prime Minister’s face at Fudge leaping out of his fireplace to accost him on the specifics of his child welfare services. The poor man might have a heart attack before he gets him the correct brochures.

“It’s been an oversight of ours,” Fudge says, shaking his head. “And it’s gone on for far too long. Magical children who lose their parents are often placed with next of kin on a case-by-case basis, but do we really know if those are the best homes for them?” He hesitates for a moment, eyes watching James over his glass. “For example, Augusta—”

James keeps his expression open, calm, and Fudge leans forward, lowering his voice.

“Well. What she’s doing to that boy.” Fudge shakes his head. “Frank would be horrified.”

“She’s hard on him,” James says quietly, tracing the rim of his glass with his index finger. At this angle, he can see the scar on his palm; at this angle, he can tell just enough of the truth to make it into a lie. “She sees the ghost of Frank in him.”

Fudge sneers. “She sees ghosts everywhere. Even Dark Lords.”

Lucius smirks knowingly at James across the table.

Fudge leans back. “This bill would give the Ministry the power to regulate this space, with the establishment of a Department of Magical Children and Families. It’s the first step of some sweeping regulations I’m planning for Education and Wizarding youth. I’ve been far too lenient on that front, and it’s time the Ministry is actively involved in what our children are being taught. But I’m getting ahead of myself.” He chuckles. “With this bill, the Ministry would oversee granting, monitoring, and assessing custody status for Magical wards. Custody would need to be renewed on a three- or five-year basis, or perhaps annually—we’re still ironing out the finer points, of course.” He smiles at James. “What do you think?”

For a moment, James wants to laugh. It’s exactly the sort of bill Lily’s fumed about the wizards lacking, and the sort of protection that would have been made for a case like Orion.

And they’re only passing it to try and strip Neville from Augusta.

“I think it’s wonderful,” he says, and Fudge beams at him. “My wife would love it.”

“We’d love to have her advise in some capacity,” Fudge says at once, “if she’d be interested, on how we handle Muggleborn wards.”

Ah. So, he really wants James on board.

James nods affably. “Lily would be happy to offer her perspective. And Remus would certainly be willing to lend mine and Sirius’s votes to such a measure, along with a statement of support.” He pauses. “But we would prefer to see godparents officially listed as priority status for next-of-kin.”

Fudge’s eyes sharpen knowingly. “We would of course,” he says fervently, “codify godparents as the first choice as the preferred home for Wizarding wards, and we can write that into the bill. It was their parents’ wish, after all, for their godparents to be their parents in their absence.”

“My word, James,” Lucius says lightly, “are you trying to be the new Weasleys? As I hear it, half of magical Britain’s chosen you for godfather.”

“It must be because I’m so charming, because I’m certainly not responsible,” James says, and Fudge roars with laughter.

“You know,” Fudge says, as if the thought’s just occurred to him and he hasn’t been working his way toward it all evening, “sometimes I wonder if we made a mistake all those years ago, when we decided where Neville should live.” He twirls his glass, shooting James a look. “Frank wanted you, after all, to raise his son. Not his mother.”

“We’ve always only wanted what’s best for Neville,” James says diplomatically.

“And that’s what we all want,” Fudge says quickly. “What’s best for Neville.” He pauses, twirling the glass faster. “Lucius had an idea, you know. About using Neville’s custody assessment as the first show of this new bill. He is, of course, the most famous magical ward.”

“It would show that everybody is treated fairly in the eyes of the law,” Lucius cuts in smoothly. “No one is above assessment. And it seems to be worth reviewing where young Neville is placed, given recent … events.” He sips his wine, affecting a pitying tone. “Augusta seems determined to break the poor boy mentally.”

“And there might be a better home for Neville,” Fudge adds carefully, “A more suitable one, where he’s given the attention and support he needs.”

“Lily and I would be happy to have him,” James says.

Lucius laughs. “James, you have a good heart, but don’t you have enough mouths to feed? There’s more than one candidate for Neville’s placement.” He pauses, looking thoughtful. “You know, Cornelius’s undersecretary, Dolores Umbridge, is a very capable woman. She’s expressed interest in perhaps—”

“I’m afraid,” James says, smiling at Lucius much more sharply, “Frank and Alice didn’t want Dolores Umbridge to raise Neville, no matter how capable she is. They wanted Lily and I to raise him.”

“And we should honor Frank’s wishes,” Fudge says quickly, scenting danger as he shoots Lucius a look. “That’s what we all want: to honor Frank’s wishes, and ensure Neville is in a home that supports him. He’s a delicate temperament; he should be with people he trusts.”

He pats James’s hands, voice softening.

“I think he should have been placed with you from the beginning,” he says seriously. “I could tell he’s very attached to you.”

James’s hand trembles minutely.

Lucius smiles, a little sourly, at being thwarted. “Of course,” he says. “Neville’s wellbeing is what’s most important. James and Lily are the best choice.”

“Then it’s settled,” Fudge says, clapping his hands. “We can count on your support, James?”

James smiles at him, heart like a stone in his chest as he thinks of Augusta. “You have my full support, Minister, and Sirius’s as well.”

“Excellent,” Fudge says, gesturing for the check. “But you’ll like Dolores, and Lucius is right; you should meet her. She’s a big part of my future plans.” He flashes James a conspiratorial grin. “Our future plans.”

“Hear, hear,” says Lucius, and he sounds so wooden and unenthusiastic James kicks him under the table, because James is carrying this performance on his back. 

“She sounds charming,” James says. “And you know I love charming people.”

“You’ll meet her in August,” Fudge says idly. “She’ll be at the fundraiser for St. Mungo’s; you’ll be attending the gala, of course?” James nods, and he claps him on the shoulder, brightening at once. “Good man. I’ll have my secretary send over a few extra tickets for you and your party, then. You should bring this charming daughter of yours and Orion; Lucius and I need to get a look at his nephew’s handsome face, and it will be good for them to know Dolores in advance.”

Fudge winks at him, and James feels a trickle of dread at who exactly will be filling the Defense post this year.

“Of course,” James says with a lazy smile. “You know we love a good party.”

*

Lucius pauses as he’s putting on his cloak.

“The offer still stands, you know,” he says, near casually.

James just raises an eyebrow at him.

“His offer,” Lucius clarifies, “still stands.”

James snorts. “I figured I’d be blacklisted, what with my habit of decapitating his best lieutenants.”

“Yes, well,” Lucius says drily. “Recruitment takes precedence, I suppose. Much like a hydra, if you cut off one head, you find yourself in need of another.”

James gives him an impressed look. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor.”

“It’s very deep,” Lucius says, “and only brought out by uncomfortable dinner parties, where we’re both manipulating a Minister who’s under the impression he’s manipulating us.”

“I won,” James says smugly.

Lucius doesn’t take the bait. His eyes only glitter, as he looks at James. “He’s always wanted you,” he says, “And Black. You know that.”

James doesn’t answer. Lucius looks at James a moment longer, and his tone takes on a gentler note, like an older brother looking at a rebellious sibling he knows will meet a bad end.

“You’re not seventeen anymore, Potter,” he says. “You have things to lose, now.” He strides toward the door. “Consider it, at least. For the sake of your family, if nothing else.”

James waits until he’s nearly reached the door before he calls out, “If he wants me to consider it, shouldn’t he make fair return?”

Lucius stills, fingers stretched onto the door handle. “He’s not in the habit of giving gifts,” he says in a measured voice. “He much prefers obeisance.”

“That’s a shame,” James says, prowling after him like a tiger through tall grass. “I was always pants at obeisance. I’m much better with bargains.” He stops behind him, a bite in his voice as he hisses his next words at him. “And there’s a pair of hands we dearly want for a box. I hear he only has one made of flesh these days, but we’re not picky.”

Lucius freezes. James’s smile grows vicious.

“We’d prefer them delivered attached and alive,” he purrs. “A gesture made in good faith like that?” He whistles theatrically. “Well. It’d go a long way with us.”

It’s Lucius’s turn not to answer.

Peter Pettigrew is far too valuable to the Dark Lord, and they both know it. He’s the servant who broke out for him and brought him intel; who outsmarted Dumbledore; who resurrected him and regenerated his body.

And he’s the servant who serves as a constant taunt to James Potter.

“Consider it,” James hisses at him, and he stalks past him to the Apparition point.

***

July 30^th, 1995 - The Daily Prophet

WIZENGAMOT PASSES NO WIZARD LEFT BEHIND ACT

Landmark new bill grants Ministry the power to consider, assess, and evaluate the placement of Magical Wards under age 17 on a yearly basis. Backed by a bipartisan coalition, the bill marks a sweeping reform for Minister Fudge’s government, as he seeks to revolutionize and formalize protections for vulnerable Wizarding youth and shore up education in Magical Britain.

The first custody assessments are expected to be conducted as soon as August…