Chapter Text
Grimmauld Place was thoroughly unwelcoming: the portraits had begun spitting monologues about blood purity and the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black as soon as they’d seen Harry at the door, the house was a maze of twisted, narrow halls and staircases that were as misleading as they were old, and the door had tried to seal itself shut once it sensed Remus stepping closer.
There wasn’t a single thing anyone could’ve done or said that would’ve made him think of it as anything other than the greatest place in the world.
“What do we do first?” he asked, excitement building in his chest even as the portraits’ words echoed in his ears.
Sirius, beside him, took off his sunglasses and rested them on top of his head, looking around the dark hall critically; he looked healthy, good, despite having only left the hospital a few weeks prior.
They’d stayed at the Leaky Cauldron while things were sorted out and Sirius got a new wand, clothes, and everything a newly-released ex-Azkaban-prisoner needed, and Harry had been bought more things in the past few weeks than he had ever been bought in his life. He’d felt extremely guilty about it, but Sirius had refused to listen to his protests. Remus, looking very used to Sirius’s behavior – he’d bought him several things, as well, because they go with your eyes, Moony, come on, you can’t tell me I’m wrong – had told him there was no talking him out of it.
Sirius had apparently inherited an obscene amount of money from a distant uncle – the legitimate Black fortune must’ve gone to Cousin Cissy, Harry, which means it’ll go to Draco, said with a smirk and a wink that Harry didn’t understand but made him blush anyway – and was hellbent on spending money whenever he wanted.
“Get rid of the portraits,” he said, pulling his wand from his sleeve and waving it in a simple pattern that took most of the portraits off the wall: they floated mid-air in shocked silence for only a second, before they began floating down the hall, towards the deepest parts of the house, all while complaining loudly and telling Sirius he ‘couldn’t do this’.
Remus pulled a face when he entered the house, and, with a wave of his wand, began opening curtains and windows, revealing old, gothic furniture and brittle blackwood floors. Everything was ancient, and decay evidenced its lack of inhabitants for the last twelve years: there were cracks along the walls, holes in the floor, and the house seemed to be collapsing into itself, hunched inwards like it was sad, like the ceiling would drop onto them at any moment.
Harry hoped it wouldn’t; neither Remus nor Sirius seemed worried about it.
Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust, and there was mold in some corners, in the rotting wood; it’d need work. Harry never imagined he’d be so excited at the prospect of spending the entire summer doing something that would’ve made his life hell at the Dursleys’.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asked curiously, looking up at Remus: he and Sirius had known each other for years, since they were eleven, and Harry had known Ron for much less time than that and had already been to his house. On the other hand, he didn’t think he’d ever see the inside – or, most likely, the outside, either – of Malfoy Manor.
“No.” Remus didn’t look particularly happy to be there now, either, but he followed Sirius through the door, pausing when he noticed Harry stood still. “You okay? We better join Sirius before he starts tearing up the floorboards.”
Harry grinned a little bit and stepped inside, feeling magic shudder around him in a way he’d never felt outside of Hogwarts. Already, the room seemed brighter.
“I don’t think that’d be such a tragedy,” he said, carefully watching his step to avoid any of the spiders. They stayed unnervingly still, as though staring him down, but it was hardly the first time he’d ever lived with critters. The cupboard had been filled with them, which had mostly desensitized him.
Remus snorted and threw his arm around Harry’s shoulders as they walked inside together, letting the door shut after them.
Ginny saw Malfoy Manor for the first time through Draco’s eyes, and she didn’t recognize the feeling of it. It didn’t feel like the Burrow, nothing like home; it just made her feel sad, a shocking tide of resentment building behind the second heartbeat in her chest.
The second time, she saw it with her own eyes, when she stepped through the floo; Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy were out of the country, and though they’d left a note, they hadn’t mentioned when they were coming back or where they’d gone. The house-elves knew she was there – and were presumably ordered to tell Draco’s parents of anything and everything that went on in their house – but they never interacted with them, used to doing their jobs without being heard or seen.
“I can’t believe you have a piano,” she said, sitting down at the piano bench with wide eyes. It was black, shiny, and much bigger than she had expected pianos to be. She’d never seen one before.
“I took lessons when I was younger,” Draco told her, sitting next to her. He played a few harmonic notes, and Ginny mimicked the movement dissonantly. “I think all of my lessons were just there so that my parents wouldn’t have to deal with me.”
Ginny didn’t doubt it. “I never learned an instrument.”
All her brothers ever wanted to do was play quidditch, and they never wanted to play with her: the only times she played before Hogwarts was whenever they weren’t home, usually taken to the city by her dad when they needed clothes, since they – especially the twins – grew in and out of them like they were trying to win a contest.
“That would’ve been much more fun,” Draco said, even though she hadn’t said it out loud. She didn’t wonder how he knew.
She didn’t know how she’d known about him being in trouble, the term prior, but she’d seen it in her head, felt it in her ribcage, a sort of animal fear that she’d known only in the Chamber, an echo of thoughts and feelings that she hadn’t noticed before, but could now recognize as not her own, as Draco’s.
She knew he experienced the same thing, although she wasn’t quite sure when she’d realized.
“We could play quidditch now,” she said with a grin, and his smile widened.
They were running out the back door towards the gardens before he’d even finished nodding his head.
Hermione’s parents loved Crookshanks: she told them all about how he had saved her, her friends, and Harry’s godfather Sirius, who’d spent twelve years in Azkaban for a crime he didn’t commit, tragically separated from his mate, who’d been Hermione’s professor.
They didn’t understand a lot of it: the concept of mates was one they only understood theoretically – she, as well, couldn’t understand the visceral sort of need described by romance books or other witches and wizards because she hadn’t lived it, couldn’t imagine needing someone so desperately that she would think they were a spy and a traitor and a Death Eater and stay with them, never tell anyone – and they didn’t understand Azkaban: Hermione had tried to explain, and they’d gotten worked up about trials and human rights, since having creatures that sucked out every happy memory someone had and regularly drove people mad had to be some sort of violation of them, and even if it wasn’t, who would stand for it?
Wizards would; Hermione didn’t know how to explain it to them, but she understood, at least a tiny bit. Magic could do anything, and witches and wizards that were both powerful and heartless enough to do what they did needed to somehow be stopped.
She didn’t say that. She knew they’d hate it, and she wasn’t even sure how she felt about it herself.
They also didn’t quite understand how Crookshanks could’ve known Sirius was Snuffles, and Scabbers was Pettigrew, but they didn’t need to understand: they were grateful anyway.
They threw him a Welcome Home party with a tuna cake that her mother had ordered from one of her baker friends, and her dad even bought him some of those fancy freeze-dried salmon treats that they sold at the pet store.
Hermione took a picture of the three of them.
Ron got an owl from Harry the third day of summer vacation, and it wasn’t carried by Hedwig, but a small, fluffy brown thing that looked more like a furball than an owl, and chirped ceaselessly like he was chatting with Ron.
He tore it open impatiently – he used to spend the entire summer worried about Harry, living with those awful muggle relatives of his, and he didn’t have to do that anymore, he was with Black and Lupin – and read the letter quickly.
He was inviting him over to Grimmauld Place – Grimmauld Place? Witches and wizards did usually name their homes, like his parents had named the Burrow, like the Malfoys’ Malfoy Manor, but Grimmauld Place? That was the least welcoming name Ron had ever heard – and he told him all about it: how it seemed to swallow up any sunlight that entered it, how the Black family portraits wouldn’t stop screaming about blood purity and old family values, about a house-elf named Kreacher who Sirius loathed but couldn’t get rid of, and about his new room: he sounded elated.
Ron was grinning so wide his cheeks hurt.
The owl’s from Sirius. He’s sorry about taking Scabbers away, and he hoped a new pet might make up for it.
Ron looked at the owl dubiously, and it tilted his head at him with a squeak.
“Don’t get excited,” he told it warily. “I’m not keeping you unless Crookshanks approves of you first.”
The owl gave a soft hoot and flew onto his bed, settling onto his pillow with a few comfortable chirps. Ron scowled.
He had to see Hermione as soon as possible.
Harry wrote to his friends every day without fail, and they wrote back: Hermione wanted to know everything about Grimmauld – magical homes are such fascinating examples of semi-sentient magic, she said in her latest letter – and she and Ron were both looking forward to visiting. Draco didn’t seem to care much about the house itself, but he did mention he missed Harry and hoped they could see each other soon, which made Harry’s stomach flutter for some reason.
Neither Remus nor Sirius went through his mail; they were never angry when he let Hedwig out of her cage – they never demanded he put her in her cage at all in the first place – and they didn’t raise their voices when he burnt breakfast (they didn’t want him to make breakfast at all! It was only Remus who cooked, because apparently, Sirius couldn’t be trusted near fire at all), or when he left his clothes on the floor because he was in a rush, or even when he dropped a glass and it shattered against the floor.
They didn’t even make him clean it up; Sirius just waved his wand and it was all gone, and he didn’t comment on it, never brought it up again.
It felt too good to be true, but he decided not to question it: he’d enjoy it as much as he could for however long it lasted. If it ended – when it ended – he’d figure things out.
“McGonagall was right.” Sirius was grinning when they landed, fluttering snitch clamped tight in Harry’s’ hand. “You are good.”
“He’s been on the team since his first year,” Remus snorted, turning the page on his book. “Why did you think that was? Luck?”
It was odd, living with Sirius and Remus: it reminded Harry a bit of the Weasleys’, where everybody liked him, but since it lacked other people – the Weasleys had six sons and a daughter to watch and fuss over, which meant that their attention was always somewhere, almost never specifically on Harry – it meant that he had the adults’ attention all to himself, which he was entirely unused to.
The Dursleys – who hadn’t put up a fight at all once Sirius showed up at their door with a grin that was all teeth and the Prophet article that called him a mass murderer and told them Harry was leaving with him – ignored him entirely unless they were angry at him, which meant that Harry was largely left to his own devices, as long as he didn’t bother them in any way.
In Grimmauld, it was nothing like that: Sirius and Remus had yet to get angry at him about anything, they regularly talked to him – about anything! Everything! They never excluded him from conversations at all and asked him about his opinions – and took him everywhere with them, even to places that cost money.
“Shut up, Moony.” Sirius tossed the broom aside – nothing nearly as special or expensive as Harry’s Firebolt, which had been a gift from him after all – and stretched, t-shirt riding up to reveal a few inches of pale skin. “I just wanted to see for myself.”
He never wore robes: they’d gone shopping for a few items – although Sirius insisted they all needed more clothes – and they’d done so exclusively in the muggle world. Sirius liked dark clothes and muggle t-shirt bands, leather, a ton of things that would’ve made Aunt Petunia clutch her chest and mutter something about god.
Remus dressed like he had when he was Harry’s professor, but in much newer, better-fitting clothes. Soft jumpers, cardigans, button down shirts, vests, loose trousers. He looked like he was meant to be a professor in some fancy, far-off university like the ones Harry had seen on muggle films.
“Obviously you got that talent from me.” Sirius grinned, as he walked over and plopped himself down on Remus’s lap. Remus didn’t even bat an eye. “Because James was never that good.”
“That makes no sense.” Remus shut his book, and Harry grinned as he took a seat across from them, watching as Remus wrapped his arms around Sirius’s waist.
Harry didn’t listen to their bickering; instead, he watched them. He was a little embarrassed – and felt like an intruder – but they touched each other freely, exchanging hugs, physical affection, and chaste kisses in ways that Harry had never seen before, especially at the Dursleys’, and especially between men.
Aunt Petunia frowned at any couples who even dared sit too close to each other in park benches, and she might’ve actually fainted if she’d seen two men together the way Remus and Sirius were.
He knew it was normal, in the wizarding world. Firstly, because Remus was an alpha and Sirius was an omega, but, even if they weren’t, simply because wizards didn’t seem to care. Anthony Goldstein had asked Draco out the year prior, and no one had batted an eye. They’d made up tons of rumors about him and Cedric Diggory, and no one had thought it weird. He’d seen more than a few couples walk the Hogwarts grounds hand-in-hand, and it didn’t matter if they were both boys or they were both girls.
Hell, McGonagall was married to Madam Pomfrey, and no one had once said a word about it. He hadn’t even known about it until Hermione had mentioned it!
He didn’t know why it made him feel so warm.
“I was thinking tomorrow we could go to the cinema,” Remus said, which made Harry blink. “I haven’t been since I was – nineteen? Shit, I was nineteen.”
Harry had been only twice.
“We went to see that awful musical film, didn’t we?” Sirius asked excitedly. He looked at Harry. “Lily took us. She said it was really good, but we didn’t understand any of it-”
“You didn’t understand any of it,” Remus teased. He grinned. “James didn’t, either. Your mum spent our entire way home explaining it to him, Harry, but he kept getting hung up on the details.”
Harry settled in for a retelling of the time his mum and dad had watched Grease together.
“There’s no way that’s true,” Theo drawled, from where he was gracefully leaning back in one of the chairs. They were sitting by the edge of the lake in Malfoy Manor – Theo had been told to entertain himself, since his mother’s friends would be visiting, which was her way of telling him to shut up, get out, or both – so he’d come to visit Draco, who’d been both thrilled and, later, a bit shocked: Theo was turning into every bit the pure-blood, respectable young man that every couple in their parents’ circle would’ve expected and wanted their sons to be, and Draco would’ve been lying if he said he wasn’t a little bit jealous.
Theo fit into their world – into their parents’ world – in a way Draco never would, and it was impossible not to be a little bit bitter when he seemed to be rubbing it in his face simply by existing, even if Draco knew it wasn’t on purpose.
He’d grown taller, surpassing Draco by only a few centimeters, and his features had sharpened practically overnight, giving him a handsome, aristocratic look that everyone in his parents’ parties would appreciate. He wore the right clothes, which fit him perfectly, he said the right things, had developed an attitude to match: confident, careless, as though everything around them was beneath him.
“It is,” Ginny replied, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back. It was a rare sunny day, so the three of them were laying underneath the sun and soaking up warmth in the gardens of Malfoy Manor. “Charlie’s done it tons of times.”
“No one can ride a dragon,” Theo said. He and Ginny seemed to like each other in an odd sort of way, and decided to show it by constantly arguing: if Theo said the sky was blue, Ginny was hellbent on it being grey. If Ginny said the weather was nice, Theo suddenly – and very vocally – disliked everything about it. “They’re beasts.”
Draco couldn’t quite decipher their relationship, but he didn’t try, either.
“He lives in a dragon reserve,” he said, because Ginny and Ron had both told him in separate occasions, and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it; he lived in a dragon reserve. It had to be the absolute coolest place on earth. “They hatch hundreds of dragon eggs per year.”
Charlie had told him in a letter; it seemed that he had no one to talk about dragons with, in his family. They didn’t really like them, and Ron was still upset that he hadn’t gone into Quidditch, which meant that when he’d heard about Draco loving magical creatures as much as he did, he’d told Ron to tell him that he’d be happy to answer any questions he may have.
Draco had had a ton, obviously, and he’d finally taken the time to write him at the end of the term prior; he’d immediately – and enthusiastically – responded, and now they corresponded semi-regularly, constantly talking about magical creatures, and Draco had a growing stack of photographs that Charlie sent, all of them of the dragons at the reserve.
He’d told Draco he’d let him pick the name for one of the eggs they were waiting on, and he was thinking about it day and night, because it had to be perfect.
“Hatching a dragon egg isn’t the same as riding a fully grown dragon,” Theo drawled.
“I have pictures,” Draco said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his arm. “They hatch them, raise them, take care of them. Why would it be so impossible for them to ride them?”
“Because they’re beasts.”
“They’re sweethearts.”
“They can burn a city to the ground on a whim!” Theo exclaimed, gesturing widely; Draco grinned. It was nice to get a reaction out of him, a glimpse of something that wasn’t apathy. He’d do it as many times as he could.
“So?” Draco asked. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
Theo looked at him incredulously, and Ginny snickered.
“Besides,” she said, being contrary on purpose. “How’re they going to bend their heads a hundred and eighty degrees and burn the rider off their back? That’s impossible.”
Draco didn’t point out that there were many alternatives to that, and that if a dragon didn’t want to be ridden, there wasn’t a single witch or wizard who could’ve forced it to, because Theo was looking at them with a mix of exasperation and amusement that was familiar and welcome and warm, and he didn’t want it to disappear.
“You’re both wrong,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Want to bet on it?” Draco asked.
Hermione spent every evening for a week reading up on magical homes.
“They feed off their inhabitants’ magic!” she exclaimed as her mum prepared dinner, practically bouncing around her while she stirred something on a pot. “It’s how they’re maintained! And it does it all by itself, there aren’t even any spells required! The book doesn’t say anything about it, but I do wonder if more magic is required if the home is bigger.”
They were like sponges, the book said: everything was, really. If there was enough magic around something for long enough, it’d begin soaking it up, and it would eventually become so utterly ingrained in every fiber of its being that its very existence would become dependent on there being enough magic to sustain it.
“I’d assume so, wouldn’t you?” her mum asked.
“It makes sense!” Hermione agreed vehemently. “I can’t wait to go to Ron’s, Harry’s! They’ve got to be so different! Ron said his parents built the Burrow, which means it’s fairly recent. It must still be able to exist on its own, even if they’ve lived in it for years. Although I do wonder if it matters that there are nine wizards regularly living there. That should mean there’s more magic around, shouldn’t it? Does that mean it’s easier for it to become a magical home?”
In Grimmauld, for example, there were only three people: Harry, Black, and Lupin, and even that was too recent. She wondered what state it had been in when they’d first gone to live in it, and knew she had to visit as soon as possible, if only to keep a journal to document its improvement.
It also made her wonder about Malfoy Manor. She had no idea if it was really the Malfoys’ ancestral home, or if it was a more recent purchase. She could imagine Lucius Malfoy living his entire life in his family home due to whatever sense of traditionalism that drove him, but she couldn’t imagine how any family could live in one house, especially across so many generations. Her parents had their flat, and her grandparents lived each in different places. She had no idea what house her great-grandparents had grown up in, and she had never even thought to ask.
How would it work, if the Malfoys had had more than one child? Even now, if Draco was meant to inherit it, did it mean he’d live with his parents until they died, and then would take over Malfoy Manor as his own? Or was he supposed to move out until his parents passed, and then become master of the house? And would he inherit it? The Malfoys were too traditional for them to mean for Draco to keep his last name and not take his alpha’s, but if he did, the Malfoy family line would die out.
Did that mean they were effectively heirless?
She felt like those questions might be a little too insensitive to ask, so she hadn’t done so, but curiosity was burning inside her.
“The Burrow?” her mum asked with a raised eyebrow. “They named their home?”
“All magical homes are named,” Hermione said.
“Perhaps we should name the flat,” her dad said, from where he was sitting on the table reading the paper. “How do you like Evangeline?”
Hermione wrinkled her nose. “No.”
“What about Hubert?” her mum said.
“Hubert?” Hermione asked with great distaste. “No one’s named Hubert!”
“Cordelia.”
“Gerald.”
“Philomena.”
“It’s not after people!” Hermione exclaimed. “It’s – like Malfoy Manor, not – not-”
“Granger Flat,” her mum said. “Meh, it could use with a little more kick to it.”
Hermione huffed and threw her hands up.
“Where’s Ginny?”
Ron grimaced at the question, looking down from where he, Fred, and George were hovering in the air on their brooms, about to begin a game of quidditch.
“Uh, with Draco, I think,” he called, hoping his mum didn’t make him come down to look for her.
“Again?” Mum was frowning. “Are they… together?”
“Of course not, mum!” Fred called down from his broom, rolling his eyes. “They’re just friends!”
“Two people can be friends, you know!” George exclaimed. “Even if they’re an alpha and an omega! Or a boy and a girl!”
“Frankly, it’s a little insulting that you assume they’re together just because of their-”
“Fine, fine, stop!” Their mum scowled. “Just – keep an eye on them, alright?”
There was nothing Ron would rather do less, but he and his brother called back a chorus of yes to appease their mum. She went back inside, and Fred’s mouth twisted as he tossed the quaffle up and down, keeping his eyes on it.
“They’re together, aren’t they?” he asked.
“What?” Ron exclaimed. He’d hoped his brothers fully believed in their point, because if they thought that Ginny and Draco weren’t together, then maybe Ron could convince himself that Ginny and Draco weren’t together. The possibility of it was disgusting enough to nearly have him retching. “You said-”
“Please, it was a load of hippogriff shit.” George smirked, rolling his eyes. “They’re practically glued together. She couldn’t have claimed him any more clearly. He smells like her all the time, is always wearing something of hers, they even sleep together at school! What do you know?”
Ron scowled. “They’re not together.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously!” Ron defended hotly. “I asked Draco! They’re not dating!”
“Come on.” George rolled his eyes. “She doesn’t sleep. She’s up pacing or reading or doing whatever the hell it is she does all bloody night, we hear her in our room. And then she floos to Malfoy Manor the moment she can.”
“She comes back rested and showered, smelling like expensive soap and what I can only assume are Draco’s sheets.” Fred pointed out, still tossing the quaffle up and down. “She spends every hour of the day there!”
Ron scowled. “So what? They’re weird. It’s not a secret!”
“Did you ask Ginny?” Fred pressed. “She’s a bloody awful liar.”
“You ask her!”
“She’d hex us,” George said, pulling a face.
“Better you than me,” Ron muttered. Fred threw the quaffle at him abruptly, and it hit Ron in the stomach before he caught it, eliciting a punched-out groan from him. He struggled to maintain his balance on his broom. “Hey!”
“Don’t be a baby.” Fred grinned, already flying away. “Come on. You start.”
Ron scowled but concentrated on the game.
“Harry.” He heard distantly. “Harry!”
He didn’t know where he was: he was peering through a half-open door in a body that wasn’t his. He had a cane, and his muscles ached with age-
“Everything’s ready, My Lord.” Harry knew that voice; he’d heard it before, he knew-
“Good,” someone else said; they were both men, but the second voice was high, shrill, and familiar in a way that made panic settle into Harry’s bones. “I have given you a second chance, Lucius, to prove your loyalty. If you fail me again, I’ll be letting Nagini have your boy as a meal, do you understand? She has so been itching to sink her teeth into him.”
“Of course, My Lord.” The man sounded vaguely nauseated, but he didn’t react: Harry could see his profile, long, white-blonde hair, a straight nose, pale skin. He bore resemblance to someone he knew, someone he cared about, and it felt important to remember who, but he couldn’t think: it felt as though all his memories were hovering just out of his reach, slipping through his fingers like smoke if he tried to reach for them. “As always, your kindness is undeserved. I’ll make sure you won’t regret it. If we act after the Quidditch World Cup, it’ll be easier to reach-”
“Harry!” He woke up with his heart pounding in his throat, a searing pain pulsating from his scar, and his hands immediately flew to his face with a groan. “Is everything okay? You were having a nightmare.”
Harry had to blink a few times to clear his vision – his heart was pounding, his breathing coming quick, his sight was blurred-
His glasses were pushed into his hand, and he put them on, blinking heavily.
Sirius was sitting next to him with a worried, gentle hand on his shoulder, and Remus was hovering behind him with a concerned frown. Harry had to blink again to even realize where he was, why he wasn’t alone: he wasn’t at the Dursleys’ anymore. He was in Grimmauld, with Sirius and Remus, and he’d fallen asleep on the sofa while they were resting from filling in the holes of the walls in the living room.
“Are you alright?” Sirius asked again. “Does anything hurt?”
Harry looked around: the room was still a mess of wood, wallpaper, furniture, and a variety of tools and material they were using to fix Grimmauld, and outside, the sun was setting. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a nap.
“Harry?”
He looked at Sirius again.
“Sorry,” he croaked, sitting up. Sirius helped him, and Harry heard the distinct snap of a few ounces of chocolate being broken off the bar. He was holding his hand out before he had even thought about it consciously, and Remus passed him a few squares of chocolate. He’d done it dozens of times, when he was his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor and teaching him the Patronus charm. “I think I had a nightmare.”
“It’s okay.” Sirius still looked worried. “Does your head hurt?”
He realized that he was still massaging his scar with two fingers, so he dropped his hand with a wince. “My scar… it’s only hurt once before, when – when Voldemort was nearby.”
It hadn’t even happened when Voldemort was Riddle in the Chamber, which meant… well, Harry didn’t know what it meant. It couldn’t mean that Voldemort was nearby, could it? Not in Grimmauld Place, better hidden than any other place Harry had ever seen, excluding Hogwarts.
Remus and Sirius shared an alarmed look, and Sirius immediately began waving his wand in complicated patterns that Harry didn’t recognize.
“He’s – gone.” Remus sat beside Harry, in the space Sirius had just vacated. “Isn’t he?”
Harry shifted uneasily. He didn’t know how much Remus and Sirius knew about what had happened in his first and second year at Hogwarts, and he didn’t have a clear-cut answer.
“I think so,” he said. “Or – he’s hiding. In our first year, he tried to come back by drinking unicorn blood. He had somehow – melted himself into Professor Quirrell’s head, or something.”
“The wards are safe,” Sirius muttered to Remus, taking a seat next to him. Then, “Melted himself into someone’s head?”
Harry nodded. “He was in the back of his skull. Deformed and – weird, and he kept saying he was weak, but he was there. And in our second year…”
He hesitated. Sirius didn’t know Ginny, but Remus did, and Harry didn’t want to make them think that she had somehow helped Voldemort on purpose, and they both knew Draco; he wasn’t sure if he would’ve wanted them to know.
“Hermione mentioned something to me last term,” Remus said, after a brief silence. “About the Chamber of Secrets being opened?”
Harry winced and nodded. “Ginny opened it. She was possessed by – well, by Voldemort, but before he was Voldemort. His name was Tom Riddle. And she – he was using blood magic and a basilisk, but before he could complete the – sacrifice, I sort of… killed? His diary. I don’t really know how that was connected, but it worked.”
It was then that Harry realized how little he truly knew about things he himself had done, things that had happened to him. Why did poisoning the diary work? He didn’t know. How had Voldemort even appeared on the back of Quirrell’s head, and why had Harry’s touch burned him? No bloody idea.
He didn’t know how to explain any of it.
Remus and Sirius were staring at him blankly, and for a moment he wondered if he should’ve kept his mouth shut; they wouldn’t like hearing about Voldemort, no one did-
“Shit,” Sirius said, before shaking his head. “Where was Dumbledore?”
Harry winced again; he remembered Draco’s anger, telling them it wasn’t their job, that Dumbledore shouldn’t be so fucking useless, but he couldn’t disagree more: it wasn’t like he knew that Voldemort would try to kill Harry, or when, and he had many things to do, not just sit around and wait for something to happen.
“He helped,” he said, but it sounded weak to his own ears. He tried again. “He was lured away both times.”
Remus and Sirius shared an undecipherable look, and Harry’s stomach felt heavy.