Chapter Text
⚡︎
𝑬𝒀𝑬𝑺 𝑾𝑰𝑻𝑯𝑶𝑼𝑻 𝑨 𝑭𝑨𝑪𝑬
ᴄʜᴀᴩᴛᴇʀ xɪɪɪ . ᴩᴇʀꜰᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴜɪɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
⚡︎
THE Ancient and Noble House of Black was to bring upon him, ultimately, his own ruin. Of that, Harry was entirely certain. Grimmauld Place was drowned in thick swarms of doxy-invested dust, misery clinging to the peeling wallpaper, dousing the warped floors with oil and grit and foul magik. Carefully toeing their way past each room felt the only reasonable pace to keep a constant between them, the seat of the once-formidable House of Black so dreadful to behold that even Nott, who had surely spent much of his life dabbling in Black Arts, pointedly avoided skimming the narrow walls which flanked them with terrible portentousness. Perhaps once had the entryway been a grand fixture of Number Twelve, though the years had riddled it infested with dampness, stringy with cobwebs fluttering from every scrubbed corner. Harry, briefly, recalled Kreacher's voracity when last he had seen the elf inside of the home; he had scrubbed it madly, day and night, murmuring sweet wishes for his mistress' comfort in her home.
Whatever effort had once existed to maintain the place had now faded from reality. Archaic portraits and those newer hung along the walls in a meticulously-organised settlement, rusty nails clinging unto their gilded frames fiercely; members of the Black family, put to rest as the enchantments around Grimmauld Place rendered them into slumber, were painted adoringly on the foregrounds. Of all the portraits that flit by them, it was the largest and most prominent of them which made his stomach sink. No matter that it had been cloaked with drapery, her face hidden from view: Walburga Black's presence loomed over them like a stinking heap of rot hanging from the ceiling.
"Don't touch that one," warned Harry over his shoulder, his steps lightest when he passed by the painting of Sirius' mum. A wicked woman, with not a nice thing to be said of her from his godfather's mouth. Despite what he had expected of Nott, his insatiable thirst for knowledge, the boy remained pensive and steadfastly silent.
Much of the decor curled into the effigy of a serpent, garish to look upon and live amidst, but as the hallway stoppered to an end and opened to a sizeable dining room, it flit away to calming tones. "A grim place," muttered Nott, disgruntled by a string of webbing he had walked into, brushing himself off with sharp, jerky movements. His eyes flit over the room they had walked into; lined with a long, mahogany table under which were tucked a number of ornate chairs befitting the old grandeur of the Blacks. "Who lived here?" he wondered, almost as if to himself.
Harry shrugged, and felt his spine go rigid. Peeling himself out of his coat, he slung it over the back of a chair he drew out straight thereafter. Throwing himself into it, he slung a leg over one of the arms and lolled his head back. "Sirius," he admitted, in a small voice, throat tightening. He stared blankly at the ceiling, then to the wall opposite where stood a line of three tall, murky windows shadowed by fastened drapes. "Sirius' parents, their parents. Dunno how far it goes back, but this place . . . I don't think it's used for anything anymore." Anything, he wanted to scoff.
When Dumbledore had bade his permission to continue to use it as Order Headquarters, Harry had not had the will within him to agree. It had been Sirius' house, regardless of how dearly the man had abhorred the place; it was not . . . not somewhere to be sullied by war, but to keep memory. It was a childish line of thought, and one that had brought the townhouse to abandon following the commencement of the summer. "Kreacher lives here," he remembered, through the thickening miasma of fog in his head. "Maybe he can come back." Hope filled him unbidden. Although no longer would he dare to admit it of the grouchy old house-elf, he had missed his biting snark. The hatred in his eyes had made Harry feel alive, for a short while.
Nott brushed a finger skeptically along the back of one of the dining chairs, sweeping a thin layer of dust from the dark wood. "It wasn't left for very long," he mused, a note of wariness in his voice. Harry thought he must have turned to look at him, for the direction of his voice felt far more pointed when next it sounded. "What was it used for?" Harry's fingers tightened around his knee, the other hand flexing around his holly wand - which he had drawn out, idly, to flip with boredom. He'd been a fool, he realised, bringing Nott here. The thin prickles of guilt which still stewed within him curdled, rejoicing as they swelled and made his heart twist in its poise. He wasn't his father, he reminded himself.
But, still, his mind reeled for an answer - any answer - that would not have Nott running to the Death Eaters with glee. ". . . Safehouse." He, eventually, settled upon. Then something within him struck, and Harry sighed as he straightened, meeting Nott's searching gaze. The boy was stiff from the earlier afternoon; Rowle and his chase. Dusk peeled through the many windows like vivid slats of rebirth, far removed from the dreary day that had accompanied them for hours like a black omen. It bathed Nott in light, the sunset, and Harry looked quickly away from the sight. Standing with a muffled groan, from his jeans' pocket he fished out his undersized trunk and settled it down on the table. "You reckon we have enough money for more food?"
It had been long since they'd had a decent meal, and privately he hoped sorely for some leftover change to assuage the memories of cold beans and stiff fruit.
Blinking, Nott rustled in his pocket and withdrew a pale hand curled into a fist, stuffed with their leftover money. When Harry had left Surrey, he had done so with no more than thirty pounds. Now, as Nott muttered a counting over the measly coins left, he guessed they had been left, in a matter of days, with far less. "Seven," he told Harry, a gentle frown curled upon his face. "Only seven." Harry groaned, and ran a hand roughly down his face. Surely the neighbours wouldn't notice if a few notes went missing? He considered, before shaking his head and rolling his stiff shoulders.
"Right, right - that's. . . fine, I suppose," Harry poked at his spelled trunk, and bade it willfully, ever so willfully, to enlarge back to its regular state. "Kreacher should be able to find some things for us, when he comes back. For now just. . ." He trailed off, frowning as the trunk refused the spindly push of his command. Nott snorted softly, and perched on the arm of another dining chair as he waited. "Don't touch anything, yeah? Not around the house, I mean: wicked enchantments everywhere. Last year, there was a music box that enchanted everyone to sleep when it sung. I don't even want to know what's in the rooms we didn't get to clean." Recalling the memory somewhat fondly, the panic to keep it far away from their spring-cleaning efforts, Harry's lips twitched weakly. He tapped the top of his little trunk impatiently, and felt a string of energy pulsing in his fingertips.
Nott, who did not appear entirely disturbed at the ominous nature of the house, merely gave a small smile. "Charming," he drawled, wryly, twisting his neck to peer at the dresser pressed up against the back wall, embossed with the Black family's crest, its raven dusty and plastered into place mid-soar. "I wouldn't have expected less, from a family as this. Very indulgent in dark magic, weren't they?" Swiftly, as if the room bored him, Nott had turned around to study Harry intently, as if he found his efforts at resizing his trunk far more interesting than the ancestral home of Black. As if in agreement, Harry huffed and nodded absently, clicking his tongue triumphantly when the trunk shuddered and popped back into proper size.
Wrestling with the latch of the thing, his eyes turned briefly to Nott with a frail gleam of humour. "You wouldn't know the half of it," he remarked, amusement a thick note of his words. Harry wondered if Nott's family were much the same, though smartly decided to remain silent on the matter. Of a murderous father and thieving aunts, there was little doubt of it. After short pulses of thoughtful silence that carried with it the brunt of their exhaustion, Nott made a curious little sound and shifted from his unusual perch. "You lived here," remarked the boy, eyes narrowed. Harry paused. "I doubt your muggle family are Blacks, but I was lead to believe you've always stayed with them. Not in London."
The past week had revealed to him the painstaking reaches of Nott's damnable sense of intrigue; the cunning of his slender, sticky fingers which wormed their way expertly through cracks splintered however unintentionally through one's visage. Harry's teeth grazed the inside of his cheek as, finally, the trunk's latch fell loose and opened with a hushed squeak. For what felt like ages, he did not respond, if even there was a query to answer at all. He heard it all the same, saw it in the peculiar sparkles that brightened Nott's green eyes, so utterly unlike his own in every way. Maybe his fingers had begun to shake, for opening the lid of the trunk, itself, became a harrowing feat. Harry had never wanted to return to Grimmauld Place, and in his own way, detested every inch of Sirius he could see in the horrible house.
"I stayed here last summer; only last summer," he explained, strained. His jaw worked stiffly as he peered into his trunk and began to fish blindly through it - perhaps for any loose money scattered at the bottom. Not once did he gaze over to Nott, shaken by his prodding, although for some reason he felt compelled to continue. To divulge everything to a boy he had met not three weeks before. "Sirius let me live here until September, or - really - however long I wanted to stay. I just- . . ." Throat convulsing around their own flexes, Harry cleared his throat roughly, thinned his lips, and tilted his head sidelong to Nott as his hand came away with a measly two pounds. "Here." he offered, quietly, watching as the boy's fingers skimmed his palm to take the gathered coins.
Thinking, then, of the tale of his aunts - before that, of Nott's mother who had passed so long ago - Harry deemed it a fair enough trade to be satisfied with what he had given. A tale for a tale. He was unsure whether or not to laugh, or to cry. Unlike what Hermione deemed to be true, speaking of Sirius felt far more painful than simply thinking of him. To speak his name aloud - give it soul and face - reminded Harry that his godfather had, at one point, been alive. He had not merely been a figment of his imagination. It was easier to believe his grief did not exist, if he tried to convince himself that Sirius had never, either.
They were meant to have lived together, thought Harry, torn between a befuddling twist of anger and sorrow. They were meant to live together, and be alive and safe, and forget the world around them - and, in turn, let it forget them, too. But he knew, then, standing in the tomb of a noble family's memory, that it could never happen. Not again, if ever the time had lived at all.
Harry's teeth peeled at his bottom lip, before he grunted softly at Nott and stepped back from the table. "Don't touch anything," he reiterated. "I'm gonna go . . . find some stuff for us. Bathroom's safe, if you wanna go." As perhaps it regularly may have, his colloquialism didn't appear to irk Nott so much as trouble him. The other boy was gazing at Harry like he were a particularly interesting puzzle, picking apart the dry tectonic plates of grief flecking off of him by the most fragile wind. It made him feel strange, watched, and he hated it. Without another word, Harry twisted on his heel and departed from the dining-room, toeing his way past a certain floorboard he knew would squeak loud enough to rouse Mrs. Black's portrait.
Perhaps what was worse to realise was that it had not been that very long at all, since last he had been inside Grimmauld Place. Harry tried to liken the house to the picture it had been the year before, as he climbed the stairs and waved away a dangling web of dampness. No matter that the walls were still dark and dreadful; when the Weasleys and the Order had lived here, they had brought with them some modicum of light. Relief, more so, for that he had not needed to suffer the Dursleys any longer than usual. The first landing was one he recalled clearly; the room he and Ron had slept in together lay at the other end of the hall, shouldered by another, stamped with a thin golden plate he could not read from where he stood. Upon the nearest wall, by the rise of the next staircase, the portrait of Phineas Nigellus had remained empty for over a year.
Harry dragged his fingers along the dusty balustrade of the stairs, and paused at the first door he came upon. It held no plaque like the other door, nor the familiarity of the last, but instead felt permeated by an indescribable sense of cold. Fingers wrapping, after some deliberation, around the doorknob, he jerked it open and winced at the jarring shriek of hinges which had not been oiled for - what had been, undoubtedly - decades. Pointedly ignoring his own advice, Harry took the first step into the room, and coughed around a mad flurry of thick dust spraying up from the floor. It was vicious, and clogged his nose for minutes before he scrubbed frantically at his eyes and sniffled. "Merlin," he muttered, unhappily, reluctant to take another step lest another storm of dust kick up again. Nonetheless he took it, and drew himself further into a room of aged grandeur toppled beneath years of neglect.
It looked nothing like what he imagined Sirius' room would be, and so he smartly assumed that it was not. There hadn't been many members of the Black family left when Sirius had lived here, pondered Harry with half of his interest drawn to the pristine bedding rotting at its furthest corners. An armchair had burst at the velvet cushion, and the thick, dark drapes over an uncleaned window swallowed the room with darkness. Yet it was the dim light of the corridor that let him see, and so he hardly bothered to draw them and blind himself needlessly. It was hardly as if he would be returning, anyhow. To his ire, the room was frustratingly impersonal. There were few clothes in the wardrobe he peered warily into, half-expecting a nest of doxies to assault him, or perhaps a cursed rug to spring out from beneath the lavish bed. Nothing came.
A dull gleam sat upon a neatly skewed bedside table, however, jerked him upright. Harry made for it without a thought and picked from the stand the unpolished frame of a picture. After moments of attempting to squint through the murkiness of the glass, he took his sleeve to the pane and scrubbed furiously until an image beneath made itself known. It was wizarding, and had not yet lost its magic despite the dreariness that Number Twelve had delved into so pitifully.
Dark brow furrowing, he stared at it blankly for what felt like hours, until the soles of his feet hurt and his stomach tightened with hunger. The picture displayed a row of students in an ornate chamber, decorated prettily with enchanted ornaments that appeared rather Christmas-like. A man stood in the center of their line, enormously portly around the middle with a walrus-like moustache and gleaming, gooseberry eyes; in his hands he hailed a goblet, smiling cheerfully. By his closest right side, four young men stood, prominent amidst their average-looking classmates. Harry peered at them closely, and startled when he thought he had caught a glimpse of Sirius.
No, he mused almost immediately. The boy in the picture wore robes of such richness that Sirius would have spewed at the prospect of wearing, with a head of black curls neater than his godfather had ever kept his own. Though their noses were the same, the silver of their eyes visible even in the greyscale of the picture, Harry knew the boy could not be Sirius. At his side was another, shorter, with sandy hair and dark, sullen eyes. Regardless that they appeared rather well-raised, the second boy held a slight slump to his posture, with a thin face and displeased frown.
. . . But it was the boy, closest to the portly man in the middle, who made Harry stiffen. His stomach coiled with nausea, and in little more than a blink had his temples begun to seize with a great discomfort. Throat swelling painfully, he moved not an inch at the face of Tom Riddle, more handsome than he had been in the Chamber, a sly smile curved upon his mouth. What was this doing in Sirius' house? He wondered, frenzied, fighting the urge to hurl the picture-frame to the other side of the room; feel some minute sense of satisfaction as glass ravaged and sliced at Riddle's perfect face. How did Sirius' family know Riddle before he'd become . . .?
"-STAINS OF DISHONOUR! FILTHY HALF-BREEDS, BLOOD TRAITORS, CHILDREN OF FILTH!"
He jumped, picture clattering to his feet as the house shuddered. From the ground floor had come a yelp of surprise, and a furious little noise thereafter, drowned out pathetically by Walburga Black's screeching. Harry pulled himself out of the room, the drag of his trainers scattering sand-trails into the dust of the hardwood floorboards, staggering down the stairway until he stumbled unto a perplexing scene. Some part of him, albeit a very small one, had somehow assumed that Sirius' mum might have been pleased to see a pureblood like Nott in her home . . . But, so apparently, the woman was pleased by hardly anything. If portrait withheld the blood of its inhabitant, her face may have been beet-red with fury, her grey eyes wild with rage.
Standing afore her was Nott, pale eyes wide and taken aback, though posture rigid and unsure of what to do. Harry felt a laugh catch in his throat, so utterly overwhelmed by everything, and darted forward to try and tug her curtains closed. Whatever magic compelled them open fought against him with valour, and being so close to her made his ears ring, a mounting headache catching inside of his skull. "FILTH! YOU - POTTER! BY-PRODUCT OF DIRT AND VILENESS!"
"SHUT UP!" screamed Harry, blood boiling as he wrestled with her curtains. He felt a fool, but so long had the day been that he cared very little for looking stupid anymore. Suddenly, he was no longer in Grimmauld Place. In the depths of his mind, Dumbledore's sad, kindly eyes stared at him from behind his desk; watching, watching, as Harry destroyed his office like a poorly-tempered child. "JUST - SHUT - UP!" Then the shrill rip and slide of the curtain rings against the bars screeched through the entrance hall, and her ceaseless shrieking was muffled behind a number of velvet-woven charms. His forehead knocked against the curtains, an unpleasant sensation against his fevered skin though Harry hardly felt it.
After some time, hesitant fingers grazed his shoulder. He jerked his head up, breathing hard, and met Nott's pale eyes. Then, looking at him for a second more, Harry knew who the sullen-faced boy in that odd picture had been. Cantankerous Nott. "Potter," muttered Nott, and it took him a second to realise it was an effort of the boy's to coax him into an adjacent room. One he recognised keenly, in its battered ornacy. The living-room had persisted through the worst of Grimmauld Place's deterioration, it seemed, and bore, still, the marks of Mrs. Weasley's frantic cleaning on the mantel. "You look like you've seen a ghost." It was no joke, could not have been if it came from him, but Harry entertained it anyhow, and perched obligingly on one of the dark chaise sofas in the room.
Wringing his fingers together tiredly, he sighed and reached up to rub at the aching bridge of his neck. Even beyond the weight of his glasses, a soreness had persisted there from the very instance they had walked into that town square not a few hours before. Like the biggest idiots in the world. Right into Rowle's hands, they'd played. "I guess," said Harry, forlornly, before blinking wistfully and peering at Nott, who had taken the seat beside him. "How does your dad know the Black family?"
"What?" By the expression upon Nott's face, Harry had failed to maintain some sense of steadiness to him - some manner of politeness. Ever had simply blurting things out been in his nature. Despite himself he chuckled weakly and leaned against the back of the sofa, twisting his fingers in the tough fabric of his jeans. Surely he couldn't have expected Nott to understand straight away . . . But the boy had become a landmark of surety and poise in his life, most embarrassingly enough, and Harry had dumbly assumed he would have known his intentions instantly. What he had seen in that room.
Recalling Riddle's face once again made his blood spark, and he tampered it swiftly before it could light into something more menacing. His scar prickled, as if it sensed his very thoughts. "I found a picture upstairs, must've been pretty old from what the people were wearing. There was a boy, looked just like you, standing next to . . . one of the Blacks, I suppose." He had looked identical enough to Sirius for Harry to mistake them, he noted with some measure of grimness.
To his bewilderment, Nott snorted quietly and picked at the edge of the sofa's arm, where plush fabric met carved ebony wood. It seemed to be rich enough that, once, it may have inspired great pride in the Blacks who had lived at Number Twelve. Now, there was no-one left to admire it but a half-blood and a traitor. He was, Nott, wasn't he? Running away with the Chosen One - anyone would have taken that as a betrayal. Harry hardly supposed Voldemort would be elated at the prospect of his follower's son disappearing on a honeymoon with his sworn, teenage enemy. "Every pureblood family is connected, Potter, it's our way. My . . . father - he was acquaintances with Orion Black when he attended Hogwarts, but always liked to fancy themselves friends." He spat the word as if it were venom, and dug his nails into the arm of the couch.
"Black didn't care for my father as my father cared for Black, and all Black cared for, as everyone does, is power."
Harry considered it for a moment, before tilting his head back, letting it rest upon the support of the couch and stare blankly up at the ceiling from which hung a crystalline chandelier. "Not everyone," he told Nott, quiet with consideration. "Not you." He couldn't ever recall Nott speaking of plans to dominate the world, to rise high in the ranks of Slytherin House and surpass even Malfoy's terrible reputation. Even when he had hardly known the other boy, he had been a recluse shadow-clinger; a wallflower. Inanely, Riddle's voice purred in his ear. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it.
When Nott huffed he realised, rather humiliated, that he had spoken Riddle's words aloud. "Perhaps," Nott remarked, rather sardonically. "Perhaps not. Maybe I do have thoughts of power, and maybe I don't. It's more human to be in purgatory than confident in surety." Harry lazily lolled his head to the side and regarded the boy with a perfectly sensible measure of incredulity. He was ridiculous, sometimes, though Merlin it fascinated him. Begrudgingly. Reluctantly.
With a loud groan, Harry dragged his palms down his face and knocked his glasses askew. "God," he moaned. "Who even talks like that?" By his side, Nott laughed - a little, restrained sound of amusement - and said nothing.
⚡︎
When dawn rises in skinny, dust-laden slats through the open drapery, a croaking voice splits through air thick with restful serenity. "Master Pot-maker is lazy," grumbled Kreacher, stumbling into a dresser and stabbing a toe against the corner with nothing louder than a mutter of discontent. "Master does not even wake to see Kreacher's boon. Master is an ungrateful half-breed swine." There's a hand touching his own, and for a second of horror Harry thinks it's Kreacher, before heavy eyes force open and note, with mortification, that the situation is far far worse.
Trepidation of the enchantments littered about the house had worn the two of them down to sleeping in the living-room, upon the chaise where Nott insisted Harry took his rest instead of himself. With thin blankets that hardly kept them warm, it was a sleep better than any other in days, though no less troubled. Sprawled on an aching back, the crick in his neck protested when he turned his head to peer downwards, on the thin stretch of blanket that Nott slept upon. Utterly unaware of how Harry, face warm and twisted with horror, drew back the fingers that grazed his and sprung up from the couch. His trainers were missing as was his jacket, and Kreacher's beady eyes looked over him critically when he materialised from behind a large piano tucked against one of the room's walls.
"Master Potter does not try to present himself well?" asked Kreacher, snidely.
Harry scoffed and rubbed an eye, trying to feel around for his glasses before shoving them on his face. "Shut up, Kreacher," he shot back without a second instant. His spine felt rigid, muscles twisted in every wrong way, and, at his very core, his magic felt mangled and afraid. It was . . . disconcerting. "What's this - boon you're talking about?" Making some silly, half-hearted gesture with his hand, he dismissed the house-elf's judging flick of the eye, and stamped down the joy he felt at beholding the elf once more.
Some part of him thanked Merlin, whatever higher power there must have been, that one of Nott's crazy aunts hadn't skinned Kreacher for dinner.
A rustling sounded from Kreacher's hand, and when Harry looked down, he was holding a plastic bag. In succession, his stare turned from the bag to the end-table by the chaise where no longer lay the money he had fished from the bottom of his trunk the day before. Thieving little- "Kreacher has brought sustenance for Master Dog-son," declared the elf, fingering the loose handles of the bag with curiosity as he settled it down unto an armchair with a jerky stretch of his arm. Harry reached for it, and eyed Kreacher's stiff limb wearily, and rustled through the bag. Inside lay a few underripe fruits and packaged meat, and- "What's this?" asked Harry, drawing out a curled scroll of a map.
Kreacher grunted. "Nott asked Kreacher to buy a muggle map," he explained, grouchily, as if even speaking Nott's name made him wish to spit, "so Kreacher bought Nott a muggle map." Ah. Very good.
Harry sent off a hushed thanks, thinned his lips, and looked towards the house-elf once more, noting the delicacy with which he handled his left shoulder. However long he had remained in Nott's manor-home, likely it had not done him any favours - though, somehow, Kreacher felt more agreeable than he had before. To some extent, naturally. "You hurt?" Harry questioned, bluntly, to the minute widening of the elf's eyes and a lipless snarl curling over his black teeth. But he had gauged the split-second crack in his cloak, and felt his stomach drop. When he got his hands on those women-
Hermione would have screeched at him for the thought. Harry didn't care for it.
"Master Plotter should not care if Kreacher is hurt, or if Kreacher is unhurt - which Kreacher is not," insisted the stubborn thing, scoffing at the abhorrent idea and clicking his tongue moodily. As he made to slink off into the main hall, Harry called him back with a deep frown and settled himself on the armrest of one of the slim-pillowed chairs. For some reason, though his feelings towards Sirius' elf were largely impartial, the thought of anyone harming him made his chest tighten with pain. So he bade Kreacher to sit, stared sharply at him until he complied, and gingerly prodded at the hanging, skinny shoulder the elf had been guarding so ferociously.
Kreacher's hateful eyes hardened as Harry's fingers grazed a large, discoloured patch of skin bleeding into the grey pallor of his flesh. It was horrible to look at, worse to feel the dislodged bone beneath the surface, and stare into eyes which did not behold the pain one might have expected. Maybe elves felt things differently, wondered Harry, before deciding that even the thought was not enough to allow him to leave Kreacher alone with a clear conscience. "How'd this happen?" he muttered in ask, trying to avoid rousing Nott from sleep some way away. Still did the boy rest in content, his neat hair mussed and an arm slung to the side of himself, laid flat on his stomach in slumber.
When the elf didn't respond, Harry sighed roughly. It was too early for this. "Kreacher," he tried again, a little less gently. "Why didn't you fix this? I thought house-elves had, like, healing magic." At least it was what he had gathered from Dobby, whose burn wounds had seemed to heal miraculously fast after punishing himself inanely at a slight misdemeanour.
The menacing sneer on the elf's face deepened. "Nasty Notts," hissed Kreacher, snapping at Harry's fingers with a razor-shaved maw. His dark teeth caught the light of the morning, and made them gleam like pure obsidian; weathered and persistent, stubborn against all tides of the earth's passing time. "Kreacher was not meant to remain at Nott Manor, no, but nasty Notts discovered Kreacher remaining and delivered justice unto poor Kreacher for trespassing." He balked and drew his hand away from the elf's shoulder, stomach spiking with unfounded anger. They had touched him, just as he had suspected - had, in some part, feared.
But he knew no healing spells that would help, and felt plainly useless right then . . . until he recalled, from last year, a room tucked in the basement of Grimmauld Place where had spent much of his time a particular dungeon-bat. "Try and find some potions to fix that," ordered Harry, not unkindly. "Snape's brewing-room down below; maybe there's something to help you there." And when Kreacher slunk away, most disgruntled at being inspected like a child with a grazed knee, Harry realised with a start that no longer was Nott asleep but instead staring at him blankly.
Merlin, but it was uncomfortable, that stare. "My aunts," began Nott, as if he were not entirely with the world, "they touched Kreacher?" Harry swallowed and reached down the armchair to grab Nott's requested map. He nodded stiffly, and watched the boy's face contort into something cruel - afore then it softened, and turned impassive. His sandy hair dipped into a tired nod, and tapered fingers dragged through the locks in a frail try to tame them. "I don't suppose there's anything to eat?"
"Not yet," said Harry, quietly, watching him with close regard. He gauged Nott when he stood, stretching shortly before padding around the room until he stood afore a tall window, morning kissing his pale face. In the desolate blackness of Grimmauld Place, it felt impossible that such softness would grace anyone in face; it appeared to be a habit of Nott's, to defy any sense in the world despite being the one thing he was entirely sure did make sense within it.
The longer that Nott stood there in silence, the more compelled Harry felt to run. And so he did, departing the living-room with featherlight steps and walking back up the darkened staircase to the first landing. From the day before, he had left the door open - the door of the room which had once, he guessed, belonged to Orion Black. Sirius' father. Inside he saw nothing but darkness, and swerved around the threshold with an anxious eye. But for Black's room and his and Ron's, there is one door left on the floor - merely one room. Harry spent a while staring at the plaque pressed against the dark door, and found that in the haze of the early morning nothing of the imprinted words made sense to him. He peeked his head into a number of rooms as he wandered aimlessly through the house; attempting to push down pangs of sharp concern as clattering sounded from the kitchen-way upon the ground floor.
There is one room, however, he lingers within. Every wall, from toe to ceiling, had been stretched over with the likeness of a curling tree; each fanciful branch twisted its own tune, fashioned faces that were much the same, others not so closely, but ones that he knew, he reckoned, like the back of his hand by the time he had finished staring. The tapestry room had always been one of Harry's favourites, if there were any spaces in Number Twelve that could be treated with adoration - even something so slight as fondness, at times. Trailing his finger from branch to branch, never once daring to graze the dips of leaves of grey-green, Harry's touch paused above an ugly singe on the wall.
It was large and resembled the rot of a leaf, messy as though it had been blasted in great haste.
Beneath it, Harry imagined he would see Sirius' name embossed on the wall, by the side of a peculiar skull named Regulus, and twin-vines named Walburga and Orion. No matter how hard he looked, the blast did not dissipate under his silent, wilful command. There was no skull to put to Sirius' death, no name to mark that he had once been part of the expansive line of Black. If he did not belong to the Blacks, then surely he had, amongst the Potters. They had treated him with kindness, his grandparents, remembered Harry with remarkable stillness. His dad had been Sirius' best friend. They had been brothers in all but blood, for names were so easily interchangeable - like turning tides and sweltering snows. . .
Eventually, he departed that room, too.
Shadows called his name, but he responded to none, and tried to shy away from the curious eyes of the few portraits left in the house that had not departed from their frames. The uppermost landing he avoids like the plague, unknowing and yet entirely knowledgeable of what he would find. For long had he evaded grief, and had no desire to be needled in reminder of it. Harry wanted none of this - had not even wanted to go to the Ministry that day. But he had, all for that he had thought Sirius would be there, too.
When Harry returned to the bottom landing and slipped into the kitchen, the partially-burned scent of bacon rashers on the hob filled his nose. He had never considered that Kreacher would ever cook the two of them anything remarkably pleasant, for his grudges felt to be held centuries-long, and knew he was proved right when he found Nott afore the oven instead of the house-elf. Hopefully he was somewhere nursing his gruesome wound. And there Nott stood, softened by sleep and quietened by its calm, dressed in one of Dudley's over-large shirts he had scrabbled out of Harry's trunk for that he had run out of any fresh clothes of his own. It fit him well. Harry knocked a shoulder against the doorframe and approached the flat of the little table within the room, upon which was stretched the map that Kreacher had so obediently brought from - Merlin, it felt weird to even think - a muggle shop down the road.
Fixed to the small table by the weight of a few pieces of meaningless clutter, his fingers brushed over the ink markings that the boy had already sketched down on the page. There was a circle above Surrey, where the miniscule letters of Little Whinging were printed on the paper, and jerky lines connecting each place they already had visited. Whilst Nott obsessively fret over the bacon, Harry doubted pureblood boys were trained in the simple art of cooking, he continued to look over the map. Over each line which told him the terrain of every place he considered; forests and cities and the likewise, all rising from the map to paint themselves in his head.
Then he noticed a queer note on the paper, and felt his lips curl faintly at the corner. "You want to go to Wiltshire?" asked Harry, seeming to startle Nott who hadn't done so much as notice his appearance. Turning over his shoulder to gauge the other boy's expression, Harry cocked a brow and pressed, "What's in Wiltshire?"
"Nothing." admitted Nott, after many beats of silence, eyes turning back to the stove. It felt not like a truth, but little like a lie, at the same time. A strange talent of Nott's, to turn his words both earnestly and in deceit. Harry hummed, shrugged it off, and spent the rest of his morning restlessly awaiting breakfast - even doing so much as familiarly poking around the kitchen cabinets and pulling out whatever cutlery Mundungus Fletcher hadn't yet pilfered for himself. When Nott jumped half a metre into the air, oil springing out at him from the weary frying pan, Harry deemed it swell time to relieve him of his duties and take it over himself.
Seated grumpily at the small table of the kitchen did Nott look over the map with a distracted eye. "There's nowhere," he told Harry, dourly. "London is too close to the Ministry, Dumfries too close to Hogwarts, and Basingstoke-" Pressing his teeth together in a frustrated grounding motion, long fingers curled into soft palms as Nott leaned back heavily in his seat and tapped a bare foot gently against the floor. He had noticed that Nott had an incessant habit of doing that; tapping his foot, whenever he could not figure out some sort of particular mystery.
Harry looked briefly over his shoulder as he tried to manipulate the knobs of the gas stove to extinguish, and when he eventually succeeded and lifted the pan from the hob, slumped his shoulders laxly. Nott's eyes caught the motion, following it with a tautness to the hinge of his jaw. "South," suggested Harry, vaguely. "North. What's it matter? We didn't die in the forest, did we? Avoiding cities: that's more important." But when he thought on it a little longer, even the thought of returning to a town as desolate and eerie as Clark made his spine tingle and turn rigid. Wondering if Nott might even survive weeks in the forest more, he shovelled the rashers onto two plates and settled them on top of the map, to Nott's dismay.
Slowly, like he had more wish to pour over dull thoughts than to eat, Nott picked up his fork and stabbed at the bacon. There was a churlish set to his mouth, and an odd gleam in his stare. "I might set the street on fire, Potter, if I have to remain with that ghoulish woman for any longer than a week." he swore, vehement. Surprised at the sudden burst of anger, Harry laughed around a mouthful of food and almost choked on the grease.
He wiggled his shining fork at the boy and tampered down another snort of humour. There were very few pleasant experiences in his track record when it came to laughing at Nott. "You're lucky she likes you," drawled Harry, sarcastically. "I don't think she's ever taken so badly to someone in her house since Lupin." Last summer, Mrs. Black had sworn through nights and days at Lupin's appearance by Sirius' side; every word spittled from her lips was another vile insult at his lycanthropy, and how utterly half-bred the kindly man truly was. It had angered Harry deeply, but had not appeared to faze Lupin as much as it ought to have. The man held a calm temperament, and had simply given Mrs. Black wry, little smiles before promptly shutting her curtains with ease.
"Likes me." mumbled Nott, rubbing at his eye with a free hand. Then, blinking away the daze of dawn from his vision, he rest the same hand on the map and jut his finger on top of an expanse of what looked to be a quaint town - situated in the West Midlands. "There," he said. "Cokeworth - by Telford. Sound familiar?"
He wracked his brain for a few seconds, before shaking it with surety. "Nope. How far's it, you think?" Harry shoved another forkful of bacon into his mouth, and just barely held back a noise of pleasure at the flavour on his tongue. He might never have shown his face again, had it come out. Nott shot him a glance as if to say that Harry ought to have expected lesser of his knowledge - an odd thing, decidedly, but increasingly acquainted with any stretch of land beyond the main south. He was beginning to suspect that Nott had not ventured any further north than Banbury, and wondered briefly on the whereabouts of Nott Manor.
"Right." he grumbled, as Nott's foot knocked against his shin with purpose, taking up the abandoned pencil nearest to him and rounding Cokeworth with a sloppy, pointed circle.
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A night came, and a night passed. Autumn, though still was it midsummer, was beginning to settle over England with the tall stalks of trees yellowing their bouquets of leaves. Even the many branches that crept into the back-garden of Number Twelve from the neighbour's were mere spindles, albeit for a few hardier leaves yet remaining. Kreacher had come and went, and had taken to his merry routine of slinking in the shadows and cursing at the portraits of the Blacks he did not especially like. After witnessing the wall of house-elf heads by the staircase, Nott had refused to ascend it, green-faced, and resided primarily on the ground floor thereafter.
Long ago had Nott given up trying to pry answers out of Harry as to whether or not it would be smarter to travel by one train or many, the boy too engrossed in his little, muggle book to pay mind. His pencil sketched absently, soon falling from between limp fingers as the room dimmed, bathed itself in great darkness, and brought upon him a sleep of dreams. On the end-table of the chaise upon which Nott slept, his radio hummed its song smoothly - though contorted out of sense every so often, a grating to the ears. It lulled him to nothingness, and when his dreams came, they were of the countryside; of tall trees, sweet air, and freedom beyond freedom.
The longer he ambled within the willowy reaches of an endless meadow grassland, picking one foot up over the stalks before the other followed, the wider his valley became. At his back the sun shone cold and early, grey in the stead of gold, as if all colour had been leeched from it in perpetuity. Perhaps its warmth had gone to the freezing stars, which did not hang over his head though the sky remained dark with the young hour. Harry bore still, in his dream, the Gryffindor jumper he'd donned before going to sleep (the very one that Mrs. Black had promptly silenced herself upon hearing, and looked well about to being sick on herself). The longer he walked, the less tired his legs became, and the fresher his lungs breathed.
Part of him wished never to wake from the dream, though to leave behind the waking world was a feat of itself despite its cruelty.
Just then, as a single, vivid calla kissed the tips of his fingers - the only spot of colour to be seen for many miles -, Harry glimpsed a figure on the distance.
It was tall as a young tree, draped in black so ornery it appeared to be a robe fashioned of Number Twelve's curtains; lithe and still, for a moment he was reminded frighteningly of Nott, before he approached closer, and bore the terrible monstrousness of its face. No matter how close he walked, each step drew him further from the figure, though its face from this distance was clear. Ever-shifting, like the answers to a puzzle borne of wilful oblivion. From the high planes of a starved visage, hollowed cheeks stretching tautly across sharp bones, eyes glittered like rubies and merged into emeralds the longer Harry dared to look at it.
From the flat plane of a slitted nose did one emerge: a handsome face, akin to one he had seen many times afore - and frequently in other, passing dreams. Although its hands did not move, the impression that they were raised in offence bullied him strongly, pulled like a compulsion at Harry's navel until his knees weakened, and the clarity of his hearing was stuffed with cotton and filled with the vile whispers of words he could not decipher.
Panic filled him from bone to lash.
Harry's breath staggered like it had been caught in the fingers of a captor, squeezed until life drained from his eyes, but the figure had yet to move. It changed, morphed from one face to another, and each facade it showed was as known to him as the last. The grass seared through his clothes, every sweet brush a whip's lash to his skin, breaking down to bone and splitting skin with fiery ease. He must have screamed - surely he had - for his throat was raw, filled with the awful tang of blood and clotting behind his eyes until they felt swollen enough to burst. Tom Riddle stared back, afore the Dark Lord took his place, and Riddle returned once more.
Screams did not echo in the valley, he soon realised, as if he had remained there an eternity-long to come to know this.
Turning his eyes shut, feeling them pulse and beat with their own want behind closed lids, his breath returned to him with one, titanic gasp. The noise was hoarse and pathetic, and pinched at his waist to bend him at the hip in a bow. Harry beheld it, then, whispers and visions alike. Flashing glimpses of the waking world: a cavern of water and dead things lurking; the glistening fangs of a serpent that dripped black venom and burned him to his marrow - a chalice that gleamed as viciously as avarice . . . Rings - serpents - chambers - shattered mirrors - whispers of veils -
- . . . Himself; at its very crux, the last string of a beating heart that was so, so black-
He startled awake. Prodding at his nose like the first herald of comfort in the world, Fable's swift tongue flit out and pecked the tip of Harry's nose. "Leaf," she urged, though not with any panic. "Leaf is of fear again. It is this cave, dark and terrible, is it not?" For hours had she evaded Number Twelve to explore its overgrown garden, and had returned in the late evening sorely disappointed at the lack of full mice. According to her, they were stripped to bone and gaunt, like the house leeched from their vivacity and took it for sustenance. Gasping shallowly, Harry raised a hand and waited until Fable had twined herself around his wrist to sit up. Drenched in sweat, his jumper stuck to his back and peeled away uncomfortably when he shifted.
"No," breathed Harry, heart thrumming like a caged hummingbird's. He shook his head, ran a hand down his face, through his hair - everything to assuage the sense of fear festering within him. The sense that he was, somehow, being watched. "I'm fine. I'm not afraid." Fable gave a disbelieving tut, but allowed him his momentary fib, spurring herself into a spew of nonsensical rambling as he shakily picked himself up from the floor. Wherever Kreacher had gone, he had gone far enough that his searching throughout the house made no noise that wafted down to the living-room; for that he could not hear the clatters of his meaningless prodding, he found himself somewhat appreciative.
Fable paused, then, and rest her growing head in the crook of Harry's elbow. "There sounds strangeness from outside," she lilted, curiously. "Like . . . unfit - like unnatural." When had she learned the word 'unnatural'?
Shaking off the thought, he wet his lips and nodded wordlessly in response to her words, inching towards a tall window, on the furthest wall to the chaise. With fingers trembling (for what reason, he refused to acknowledge), Harry reached up to peel away the thick drape and squint to peer outside. Had one looked, themselves, they might not have thought it nighttime at all. Overhead, the sky was cast in light crowned by clouds that billowed like menacing, silver storms; they shrieked and twisted in the sky, whistled the wind and whipped it each way it could, an unstoppable force of manoeuvered will. Around his wrist, Fable hisses, perturbed, and nestles her nose further into the crook of his elbow.
From the skies, a face bursts from the clouds, skeletal and serpentine at once. It hailed crashes like thunder, and fell loose its jaw to let loose a long, forked tongue curling around the clouds around it. Emerging from it came a noise of such terror that Harry stepped back, ears ringing, and let go of the drapery with a start. Riddle's face stared back blankly - then the Dark Lord's, then Riddle's once more. His breaths were uneven, jagged, and had picked up a note that had Fable's body coiling tighter around his arm. Behind him, he checked, Nott had miraculously not roused, and remained blissfully asleep.
Peeling the curtain open once more, Harry saw nothing but a sky of black, undisturbed from night.
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