Chapter Text
Prolonging the inevitable. That is what it feels like when Hermione shows Harry the time turner hung around her neck - when she grants him four more hours of life. What is there left to do but free Buckbeak, free Sirius, and save his friends when Harry has already seen himself drained dry by a dementor’s ghostly breath?
Thirteen years old. Such a long time, such a short time. At least he can be proud of what he’s done, proud of how he’s more than the Dursleys ever thought he was. He kisses Hermione on the cheek, hugs Ron so long that his best mate laughs, and says goodbye.
“I need to go,” he says, grey-faced. He’s faced death three times before - Voldemort’s avada kedavra, Quirrel in First Year, the basilisk not even a year ago today. “Sirius is still out there.”
“No, Harry,” Hermione whispers, tugging on his arm, begging him to stay. “We haven’t worked out how to stop the dementor yet.”
“There is no stopping it.” He gulps. “I love you both.” Either he goes or Harry from the past dies. And no, that doesn’t make any sense, but he knows what he needs to do. Putting on a brave face, he steps out into the cold.
“Ron, get McGonagall!” Hermione calls out as Harry begins to race off into the woods, as Lupin’s wolf-form howls, as she loses sight of him amongst nightfall. “RON, GO NOW OR HARRY IS GOING TO DIE!”
His gut is churning with nausea as he holds his trembling wand. He watches from across the frozen lake as his past self falls to the floor, as Sirius lies there unconscious. Harry grieves for what he could have had - a godfather to take him in over the summers. “Oi, dementors!” He calls out, drawing their notice. “EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The spell produces faint wisps. Prongs is nowhere to be seen as the dementors swoop over him, giving his past self the chance to slip away, to drag Sirius’ body to safety. Harry watches his past self watch him, a panicked realisation on his other self’s face. Strangely, he feels at peace. At least there will be no summer of hell this time. The cold sadness blankets him like a bed of snow and he fades to black.
He thought that would be the end.
“You should have forgotten,” Death seems curious. It idles to Harry and drapes a cold skeletal hand over his face. He stands in the train station, feet flat on a white endless ground. Everything is behind a pane of invincible glass. Touchless, formless, beyond him. “Why did you remember, Harry Potter?”
“I dunno,” mumbles Harry. He doesn’t feel anything at all.
“I wonder…” Death is intractable. Everytime Harry tries to look at it, his eyes glaze over. Skip past. It’s like a dark patch in the corner of his vision, never really there when he turns to see it. “I wonder…” Death is numb. Cold. Brittle.
Harry is mad that there is no relief, as was promised. No heaven or hell or silent end. Only on and where that leads.
Death clicks its fingers. The sound does not echo, does not touch or rebound. It only is. “Goodbye.”
He floats, warm and safe. The voices are muffled outside but he is not required to listen. Only to live.
He lives, half-awake, half-asleep. There is a sense of time coming to an end, of something big happening. One day, he feels it - the rupture. Harry is born, kicking and screaming, from Walburga Black’s womb and into the firm crib of her arms. His vision is blurry but he recognises her voice from when he was inside her. Mum , an instinct in his brain provides. You’re my mum .
No, she isn’t. Harry has another mum - with red fiery hair and glowing green eyes. His real mum. He doesn’t want to forget her, to forget where he came from. He doesn’t want his thirteen years of Harry Potter to be rendered meaningless.
Maybe , a testing voice. A suggestion at most. Maybe it doesn’t have to be meaningless.
/
“Thea!” Sirius is chasing him around his room, causing his five year old stubbly legs to bang into things as he shrieks and runs. “I’m gonna get you!”
His mouth giggles excitedly as Sirius pounces, hands tickling at his arms, neck, and tummy. Knowing all his sensitive spots by now. “Siri, stop!” Harry hasn’t managed to stop his voice sounding young and reedy yet. He still struggles to articulate his consonants and stop his ‘th’ words from sounding like ‘ta’ ones.
“I can’t help it,” Sirius pouts, almost eight, and far too charming for his own good. “You’re too tickl-y, Thea. I need to remove all the tickles from you before the Notts hear about it!” He puts a finger to his lips, shush. “Or they’ll eat you…”
“That’s not true!” Harry claims, futilely.
He and Sirius bicker for a few minutes about the Notts. Harry knows they’re a Death Eater family - almost all of the families Walburga lets him associate with are Death Eater families, notably including Harry’s own - but their youngest, Polaris Nott, is not as evil as Sirius says she is.
Sirius likes to use his age difference against Harry, insisting that his “younger sister” is too naive and little to know the evils of dark magic.
What Sirius doesn’t know is that Harry has lived thirteen years before this five and if you combine his two lives then he is old enough to drink in the UK.
It’s strange being brought up with a boy who will grow to be his godfather. Harry supposes maybe it’s a good thing he never had time to bond with Sirius before he had the Dementor’s Kiss. They’re both starting fresh.
“Amalthea! Look at the state of you,” Walburga taps her wand on Harry’s knees, quickly healing the sharp red bruises from the rough play. “How could you do this to your sister, Sirius?”
Looking at the ground in apparent shame, Sirius mumbles, “Sorry, Mother.”
Walburga taps a wand, on his knees this time, and the bruises appear on Sirius identical to the ones recently removed from Harry. He inhales a tight pained breath. “She will never grow to be a dedicated Lady of the House of Black if you insist on treating her like a boy.”
“I am a boy!” The words slip out of Harry, driven by a childish inhibition. Oop, he puts a finger on his lips, eyes wide with dismay. I didn’t mean to say that.
Walburga frowns. She turns to Sirius with severe anger. “See what you are doing to her! You are twisting her mind, Sirius Orion. Apologise to your sister.”
“Sorry, Amalthea.” Sirius does not sound as if he means it this time. Rather, he is pouting, as if this apology is Harry’s fault.
In a way, it is. Harry should have kept his mouth shut.
With an approving nod, Walburga taps her wand on Sirius’ knees again. The bruises age by a day or so and turn to a foreboding purple. It is not a complete forgiveness but it is more than Sirius must expect by the surprised ‘o’ on his face.
After that, Harry is no longer allowed to play alone with his brother. He spends his days being prepared by Walburga, who looks increasingly resentful of this fact. His mum dresses him head to toe in older fashioned women’s robing and dolls up Harry’s hair and face as if he actually needs to be formally dressed for every family dinner. He is not allowed to play rough, to run around, or to have playdates with boys his age without a ‘chaperone’.
Polaris is a fast friend who Harry falls out of touch with the more he realises how disparate their beliefs are. Polaris jokes about muggles and people that Harry used to call allies. She’s boring and uptight and her parents no longer let Harry come over to play when they hear Polaris parroting some of the pro-muggle sentiment that Harry can’t repress.
Walburga says nothing on the topic. She blames Sirius instead, cursing her son with blistering boils until he apologises, and sectioning Harry off to stay in his room. He leaves only to read, eat, and practise the cello. No matter how hard Harry tries, he simply isn’t musical or graceful or the perfect daughter that Walburga expects.
She keeps him locked away until he can reach her unpassable standard. Which is to say, indefinitely.
Harry’s first accidental magic is to heal a bird that he finds crashed against his window. Standing up on his bed, hands reaching out, he pulls the trembling creature against his chest. He pets its blood-soaked feathers and cries tears which, much like Fawkes, are healing in nature.
Cooing it to sleep, the bird’s bones reset and it flies away in the morning, leaving Harry drained but pleased. He is ever so faintly envious at how freely it escapes his new childhood home.
His second accidental magic occurs when he hears shouting through the walls. Sirius and his mother are rowing about how he went to Diagon Alley on his own, how he stole candy from Sugarplum’s Sweets, how Walburga thought he was dead, how Sirius knows it wouldn’t matter to her anyway. The fingers in his ears can’t block out the argument but the magic does.
The room softens until it is a deathly silence. Harry drifts off to sleep, reminiscing of a time when he was more than a daughter kept in an ivory tower - an idle porcelain bored doll for his mother to dress and teach. But he knows his past is barely better than his present. It’s a question no one should have to ask themself- is it better to be locked away and neglected or locked away and prized?
He begins to forget his previous life. He forgets the colour of Hermione’s eyes or whether or not Ron had six siblings or five. Things he used to take for granted, like basic muggle maths, no longer come easily to him. As much as he travels through his memories, night after night, it is to no effect.
So Harry does what he promised Sirius he’d never do. He goes to the family library and searches for a dark spell that will keep his old memories fresh - for a way to make it mean something.
(Because how useless would it be if life was simply a cycle of doing and forgetting, of being reborn into different times in the universe, never able to actually have an impact on the world. Harry chooses not to believe in that reality.)
He steals Orion’s wand when his father is conked out over an open bottle of Fire Whiskey. It buzzes in his hand and Harry wants to spin with the excitement of feeling magic again. He sneaks up to the library, crawling under the frames of the paintings who are usually sombre and sleepy at this time in the evening.
Memimi me is a chant that Harry has memorised - having nothing to do but read and practice etiquette for years on end. He places his wand at his temple, whispering the words hurriedly, book open in his lap, knowing that someone could walk in and catch him at any time. This kind of magic requires no skill, only a need.
It is an exchange. For now, Harry asks for clarity and memory. He asks to remember who he is and what he stands for. He asks to remember everyone he has ever loved. In exchange, at a time in the future, the spell will take from him the opportunity to change. For better or worse, he is Harry Potter and that is all he will ever be.
At age seven, Walburga announces over dinner that Harry is betrothed to Enoch Wilkes.
Soon enough, they will go to Gringotts to sign what needs to be signed. He pouts into his meal and Sirius knocks knees with him under the table in commiseration. It is a brittle solidarity. He isn’t close to Sirius, no matter how much he wishes. Walburga won’t allow it and the paintings all around Grimmauld Place track his every move ever since he stole Orion’s wand. He can’t even shower without someone in the house knowing about it - and yes, it is creepy.
Sirius himself is betrothed to Alice Fortescue and although the idea of being in a loveless marriage is boring and political at best, Sirius has said that he’s glad that Harry wasn’t born nearer to Sirius’ age since it would be in Black family tradition to arrange an incredibly ‘close’ marriage.
Sirius ships off to his First Year of Hogwarts and Harry is left alone, brain trawling over scatterings of memories from his previous life. Locked in his room, Harry paces and cries and hits the wall. It is such a useless feeling, to be a child. No one will listen to anything he has to say. If Harry ever brings up wanting to leave the house, to see people his own age, to write a letter to Sirius, Walburga smiles in that stretched out unhappy way that means he is disappointing her and Orion’s brow furrows in disapproval.
But why do you need to? Orion would say. You have everything you need here.
If you’re sure? His mother would say and Harry bows his head, twisted in guilt. He writes his letters and he can’t be sure if Walburga posts them but there isn’t anything more he can do. After that ritual chant, he wonders if the spell didn’t take, because he doesn’t feel like the invincible Gryffindor who slayed the basilisk and saved Ginny from certain death.
Maybe it is a sad truth that this is who Harry has always been - a scared child trapped in a crappy situation, doing what he must.
Kreacher pops into existence beside him, his ugly face made uglier by how it is scrunched in distaste. “Mistress Amalthea must accompany Kreacher to Gringotts for her signing.”
Harry dresses himself into public robes, not a piece of skin on display, and resents himself for following his mother’s wishes when she isn’t in the room to enforce it. But if I only make her proud, if I’m only normal enough for her, maybe things will be different. Maybe she will learn to love me. The old childish sentiment lingers, that Harry would be enough for someone if he only tried hard enough.
After Harry holds out his arm, Kreacher clamps his wrist so tightly that it hurts and apparates him to Gringotts’ Bank. Walburga waits in the lobby and she is pleased that Harry has dressed as he is supposed to.
While her eldest has put his nose up at her and had the nerve to be Sorted into Gryffindor, her youngest still obeys.
She places a hand on Harry’s back and leads him to one of the backrooms. Kreacher trails behind them, dragging his feet and sneering at any and all things, living or dead, that they pass as they make their descent to the lower levels of the bank.
“Lady Black,” Dreadhook, their family account manager, does not bother to address him. “Did you bring your key?”
Walburga sneers and drops the key into Dreadhook’s outstretched palm. The goblin snatches it and shoves it into a complicated locking mechanism that takes up an entire wall. The cogs click and rumble and the wall opens up to reveal a room shaped like a dome with walls covered in mosaic.
There are hundreds of stories of Blacks here glued side by side in pieces of cracked ceramic. Harry follows his austere mother into the room and to the rim of a sunken platform in the centre. He can’t help but want to investigate the visions of past battles and relatives, the large portraits of magical creatures and the small people shrunken into their stature of humanhood.
“Amalthea, eyes here,” snaps his mother.
Harry breaks line of sight with the mosaics and watches his mother take two careful steps down onto the platform. A wide-lipped metal bowl sits before him.
“And what should I do, Mother?”
“Not yet.” Walburga watches Dreadhook with ire until the goblin scowls and leaves the room, locking them in together. Alone.
“Stand before the bowl.” He steps forward, listening closely to her voice. His stomach twists with jitters. Am I being sacrificed? He doesn’t know enough about the Blacks to know if this is normal. “Hand out.”
Harry hisses as Walburga drags her wand against his hand, “ Diffindo. ” The blood bubbles up from the clean cut and sloughs into the bowl, pooling in a way that makes Harry feel faint.
A lump forms in his throat. “What are we-?”
“Quiet.” His voice stops. “Now, Amalthea, it is time for you to complete a tradition that all women of the Noble House of Black must do once the Lady of the House believes they are ready. Only if you succeed will you be considered a Lady of the House once you reach majority. Do you understand?”
“You did this test,” asks Harry, unsurely.
“Yes.” Walburga stares him down. “I did this test when I was sixteen years old.”
His mouth feels gummy. “Mother, why am I doing this now? I am only seven.”
“It is up to the Lady of the House to decide when her daughter is ready for this.”
And you believe I am ready. Harry closes his eyes and exhales. Whether he likes it or not, they are locked in together and Walburga is the only one with a wand. The only way to leave this room is to complete this test.
“I understand,” he says.
Walburga nods, her expression inscrutable but not unkind, and a glimmer of hope begins to shine within Harry. I’m making her proud, he assumes. That means more than he wants it to.
“Now, I will leave this platform and before I return, you must have stolen and destroyed a piece of mosaic.” Firmly, she says, “ Je brûle et persiste; I burn and persist.”
Once the vault clicks shut behind her, Harry searches the walls for a weak piece of mosaic. He pulls with his fingers at a partially dislodged piece to no avail. He hits it with his fist, causing his knuckles to split and his clotted arm to dribble blood listlessly.
“What sort of Black are you, a muggle?” Harry hears a snicker which gives him pause. He spins around and spies one of the mosaics snickering at him. It is a platinum-blonde woman with silver eyes who sits atop a rather emaciated muggle man - as if he is more animal than person. The muggle is captured in a state of permanent anguish and the Black is seized by smugness.
“I am Amalthea,” lies Harry, stepping towards the woman who looks down at him. “Who are you?”
“I am Lady Black!” The mosaic preens. “You are a child. You do not belong in this room.”
“Mother thinks I am ready.” Harry paces around the room, searching for clues. There is nothing here but the bowl, the walls of the dome, and the perfectly secure ceramic. What am I supposed to do?
“Your mother is a cruel witch,” snickers the deceased Lady Black. “This challenge requires magic.”
Harry stops. Confused, he asks, “Magic? I am magical, my lady.”
“Yes, yes, but you do not have a wand, do you, young heiress?”
Patting his dress robes, as if a wand might be hidden in the folds, he shakes his head.
“Then your mother has left you here to die. She must believe you a squib or a threat to the sanctity of House Black. It is not the first time a Lady Black has done this to her successor.” The mosaic seems rather unphased by that information, as if perfectly content to watch Harry waste away into nothing.
“And why are you telling me this?” Harry bites his inner cheek to repress the sentence ‘ do you truly want to watch me suffer like the horrible old hag you seem to be?’
“I am giving you the freedom of truth - an end to suffering. You need not attempt this puzzle or claw at the walls like a doleful muggle. You need only lay down and accept death as it greets you.”
“There is no end to suffering, my lady.” Harry paces the room, renewed in his decision to complete this puzzle, if only to spite his murderous mother. “Not for me, it seems.”
“Wise words from one so young,” the former Lady Black hums. “A shame your challenge is impossible.”
Harry puts on his bravest face and feelings rise within him similar to when one faces certain death. Only this death is no quick deterioration from basilisk venom or the minute or so of ice cold before eternal sleep granted by the Kiss. This death is slow and agonised and thirsty.
He dips his hand into the bowl of half-congealed blood, coating his fingers in the dark substance. Despite all his reading in the Black Library, he has never attempted to use blood as a conduit. He knows it is possible and that it is a brute force method to magic - to physically place the magic onto an object and will it to be a certain way. In this case, to burn.
He draws the runes of kenaz and algiz. “Burn,” he commands it. “Burn up and fall off.”
“That is not a spell, stupid heiress.” The dead Lady Back’s commentary is barely helpful.
“Inferno,” insists Harry, willing it to work. “ Incendio. Death to my mother. Death to this mosaic.”
“ Incendio is a spell. Congratulations. It appears completely ineffective, however.”
“ Burn ,” hisses Harry, the parseltongue springing to his lips with old familiarity. A bitter reminder of what he has lost and what he has kept. The blood lights up, glowing orange. “ Burn and fall. ”
“I certainly did not expect that.” The chatty mosaic sounds impressed. “A parselmouth. Will wonders never cease?”
“ BURN, ” Harry is hoarse with frustration, “ AND DIE. ”
The mosaic piece he is focused on - the end of Lady Black’s pointed shoe - chips, blackened and sooty, and falls with a soft clink. Harry picks it up, wincing at its heat, and watches the door, waiting for Walburga to return. A few moments pass.
“Put it in the bowl of blood,” the ancient Black suggests, uncaring that he has defaced her legacy. “That is what I did when I took this test.”
Feeling wobbly and exhausted, Harry puts it in the bowl and barely resists the urge to lean against the bowl. The complicated vault lock opens and Walburga steps inside, her expression unable to veil surprise. She had thought he would die here.
“Mother,” Harry asks, hoarsely, a deep sense of betrayal filling him, “did you intend to leave me here to starve?”
“Yes,” she says, neutrally. Her eyes take in the bloody runes on the wall, the blackened spot where Harry made his claim. “But you have proven me wrong, Amalthea.” Her lips curl into a dark rewarding smile. “You have proven you are mine.”
The emotions mix and blot with one another, forming a murky experience of sadness and relief. Does she love me now? Surely not, but Harry means more to her than he did before.
“Come. Mollis tergeo. ” Her wand arcs and dips. Harry’s cut arm is washed by an invisible sponge and wrapped in sweet-smelling bandages. “You have done well.” Walburga’s arm on Harry’s back feels more meaningful than before.
She claps, “Kreacher.”
The house elf appears with disgruntlement. Harry wonders if he too is disappointed that Harry has survived this test. “Yes, my lady?”
“Prepare Amalthea a treacle tart for this evening. She has earned it.”
Harry stares at his mother. He hadn’t known his preference for treats was that evident. He is left to wonder what else she has learnt about him - what led her to leaving him in this room. What I can change.
“It will be done, my lady.”
A week later, he receives his first letter in response from Sirius. His brother complains about how long it took Harry to write but is too excited about Hogwarts to notice the dates of Harry’s letters. Walburga has finally sent them.