Chapter Text
Harry woke up with a scream, and only just managed to lean over the edge of the bed before throwing up what was mostly bile.
Sitting up straight in his bed, he looked around with wild fearful eyes, his breathing hard and his skin sticky with sweat. He sighed in relief when he realised he was in his bedroom at Grimmauld Place, glad that he’d made a habit of silencing the room before going to bed. With shaky hands he pulled out his wand from underneath his pillow and vanished the mess he’d heaved onto the floor before most of the smell could reach his nose.
A quick Tempus told him that it wasn’t even five in the morning yet.
He’d gone to sleep early the previous day, after having exhausted himself by helping Sirius redo the library, and neither of them had eaten much, hyper-focused on their work as they’d been. At the beginning of their project, Sirius was all set on throwing out anything they found, but Harry had managed to convince him that it would be better to simply store things in the attic, kept safe under Stasis until they could check them for Dark Magic.
The work had tired him out both physically and magically though, so it hadn’t yet been 9 o’clock when he’d retired to the bedroom Sirius had let him make his own.
The feeling of what he had seen in his dream, his vision, was still clinging to him, and after casting a Freshening Charm on his mouth Harry cast a Cleaning Charm on himself in the hopes that it would get rid of the sickening feeling. It only half worked. With the connection Dumbledore had explained to him before the summer hols started it made more sense now why he was having trouble keeping himself out of Voldemort’s mind. The Occluding seemed to help, but not enough, and part of him was terrified that Voldemort had shown him on purpose. That he knew.
Harry shook himself. That was impossible.
Still, knowing that what he had seen had really happened — had not had the too soft, too staged, look of the false vision Voldemort had forced him to see of Sirius being tortured, but the too real look of seeing through Voldemort’s eyes — made his stomach threaten to turn itself inside out again.
Draco, looking too pale, walking into the dark room with a blank expression. Voldemort ordering him. Draco saying he ‘wasn’t worthy’. Narcissa, writhing and shrieking, Draco’s face contorted with fear for his mother. Voldemort’s glee.
Nothing had been said explicitly, but Harry had some idea of what Draco was being forced into. Part of him wanted to argue that there was no way, no way Voldemort would make a 16 year old boy a marked Death Eater. No way. Unless… Unless it was Lucius’ punishment, for the failure of the man and his wand.
Harry felt physically ill. The nausea and worry from the vision, and the sudden pang of fierce guilt, all churning inside of him. It was he who had gotten Lucius jailed. Had he caused this?
He had already been worried, of course. Draco hadn’t replied to his writing in the notebook for weeks at this point, and he had been terrified before they parted at Hogwarts — Draco to take the Hogwarts Express to London and Harry to take the floo from Dumbledore’s office directly to Grimmauld Place.
Harry felt more like a part of everything now that he was staying with Sirius and Remus (when the latter was home). There were the Order meetings, which Harry still weren’t allowed into, but Sirius and Remus were authorised to give Harry more information.
McGonagall had taken to visiting a few times a week to have tea or dinner, and Harry had been surprised to find that he enjoyed her company very much (and had begun calling her Minnie out loud rather than just in his head). Only a few days earlier, Dumbledore had come to enlist Harry to help convince an old professor, Horace Slughorn, to come back to teach at Hogwarts, and Hermione and the Weasleys would be coming for breakfast in the morning.
Harry was well on his way to becoming an animagus by now too. He was surprised that it had gone so well so far, and that it had gone so fast. Now he was just waiting for an electrical storm to appear, and in the meantime holding his wandtip to his heart every sunrise and sunset and saying the incantation “amato animo animato animagus”. He’d even felt a second heartbeat the last couple of days.
Sirius and Remus had kept their promise to keep it a secret, and the three of them were the only people who knew. Ron and Hermione didn’t know, and Harry hadn’t even told Draco about it. Not while at Hogwarts, and not in the weeks since the school year ended.
Harry laid back down with a sigh that was more of a self-deprecating huff.
Despite being happy about being in the magical world even over the summer hols, Harry missed Draco so much it was by this point a constant ache in his heart. With each passing day Draco had been silent his worry had increased both in intensity and validity, and now it seemed that Voldemort had forced him into his ranks.
And Harry could do nothing!
He felt so utterly helpless. No, useless. People called him ‘the Chosen One’, and yet he couldn’t even protect his own boyfriend. Reaching an arm under his pillow he pulled out the notebook Draco had given him at the end of their fourth year and looked through it. The last thing Draco had written to him was “stay safe”, and that had been more than a month ago. Harry had told him the same thing back, of course, and clearly Draco had needed it more than him. Harry still wrote to him every few days, just little things, begging him to be okay and to look after himself. It was sort of pathetic really.
Harry groaned and got up, his shaky legs struggling to keep him upright. There was no way he would be able to go back to sleep now, so instead he put the notebook back and went downstairs to the kitchen.
With all the work Harry and Sirius had been doing in the old townhouse, helped along by Molly Weasley’s trusted household spells (she had happily lent Sirius one of her best books on the subject when he’d said he wanted the house to be safe and nice for Harry, though he had neglected to mention to her that Harry would be using the spells as well), the kitchen looked much brighter and inviting than Harry imagined it ever had done. In fact, the house itself felt more at ease in general. It was warmer and lighter, and while still dimmed, it wasn’t as dark and creepy as it had been.
The first thing they’d done was fix up the two bedrooms — Harry’s, and Sirius and Remus’. It had made a huge difference, and Harry had relished the opportunity to choose colours and furniture for his own bedroom for the first time. The walls were a soft blueish green, the furniture dark wood, and more greens, blues, yellows, and burgundy gave the room a sort of cosy autumnal feel that Harry loved. He loved autumn, it meant being back at Hogwarts.
Making himself a large cup of tea, Harry sat down by the now gleaming kitchen table and continued reading one of the books he’d found in the Black library. He had been reading a lot since he came to Grimmauld Place, swallowing book after book in true Hermione fashion. Turned out feeling safe and cared for did wonders for one’s focus and memory.
They were looking through the library while also working on the other rooms in the house, and Harry had found more than one interesting book. Some were fiction, but most were about various branches of magic. Harry found that he was enjoyed learning more advanced magic. Minnie often tutored Harry in Transfiguration and Ancient Runes when she visited, and really any subject Harry was curious about. Harry had pestered her about learning more about werewolves that was not the anti-werewolf rhetoric he’d heard most of before and even Remus seemed to believe. Which had been quite shocking for Harry to realise, considering how intelligent and thoughtful Remus was. It seemed devastatingly sad for Harry that Remus, the kindest and sweetest person he had perhaps ever met, up there with Luna and Neville, should believe such monstrous lies about himself. Of everyone, he felt that Remus deserved it the least.
Harry had managed to talk Remus into teaching him to cast spells wordlessly (an idea he’d had after not being able to cast in the Death Chamber because MacNair was choking him). Sure, they would strictly speaking be learning it at the beginning of sixth year anyway, but Harry figured he may as well learn from Remus, considering he had had no idea who their DADA professor would be.
He was glad he had, because this Slughorn fellow didn’t seem like a very good teacher, least of all for DADA. Though, of course, it could be that he would take over Charms for Flitwick and Flitwick, who had been a duelling champion, would take the DADA post. Though that didn’t make much sense either, as Flitwick must have already been teaching Charms when Slughorn was last a Hogwarts Professor. The diminutive Professor had once told Harry that his mother had been one of his favourite students, and Slughorn had said the same thing, so both must have been teaching at the same time.
And the way Dumbledore had spoken about him, Slughorn had to be teaching one of Harry’s subjects, so Ancient Runes and Arithmancy was out. Still, Harry thought to himself, so long as Slughorn didn’t attempt to maim or kill him he would be a safe number two on the list of DADA Professors Harry had experience with.
Harry shook his head and tried to shift his focus back to the book he was reading. This particular book was on blood magic, and Harry had been surprised to learn that most blood magic was Light, or Grey at the most, not Dark. He supposed his assumptions about it was based on the ways the use of blood in magical ritual was portrayed in muggle media — human sacrifices and the like. In reality most of these rituals only required a single tiny drop of blood, just like with his notebook. Even the hellish ritual to bring back Voldemort had only needed three drops of Harry’s blood, and he seriously doubted Wormtail had truly needed to cut off his entire bloody hand.
He wondered vaguely whether muggles’ portrayals of magic often affected wixes’ view of certain magic. The books Minnie had given him about werewolves had explained that the wixen world had adopted several anti-werewolf beliefs from the muggle world, through muggleborns as well as through some purebloods who viewed magical creatures as lesser and sought any means to discredit them. Harry despised how magical creatures were treated. He forgot sometimes that his little bubble was really an outlier on several issues, like creatures’ rights. Even Dumbledore had only allowed the one werewolf to study at Hogwarts in the last 50 years.
When Sirius arrived in the kitchen several hours later, Harry was nearly finished with his book. Sirius was lightly dressed, his feet bare, and it said something about the changes that the house had undergone.
Most of the changed had to do with a ritual Harry had discovered in a Black Family Heritage book in the library, and forced Sirius and Remus to join him in. It made it so that the three of them were connected to the house through their blood and magic, which meant that they could sense the house’s own magic more clearly and communicate with it. The house actually viewed them as family, and so worked harder to keep them safe and happy. It also meant that every change they had done to the house since actually stuck.
Last summer they had all spent weeks trying to clean and fix the place up, and yet nothing had worked. They’d deep clean a room and the very next day it would be just as dusty and gloomy as it had been before they did anything. The only place where anything had stuck at the time had been the kitchen, and even there it was minimal and only because they all tended to congregate there, creating a mix of positive magic in that one spot.
“Good morning, Prongslet. You’re up early,” said Sirius, looking very much like Snuffles as he stopped to yawn. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“Just a tad,” said Harry, smiling at his godfather. It was stretching the truth a bit, considering he was having a lot of trouble sleeping, waking up from nightmares most nights, but Sirius didn’t need to know that.
Since Voldemort was now known to be back, everything had taken a decidedly darker turn in the wixen world and beyond. People were disappearing or being discovered dead. Like Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, who had been at Harry’s hearing the previous year and was the aunt of his classmate and fellow DA member, Susan Bones. Ollivander too had been declared missing, and was thought to have been either taken or had disappeared of his own accord shortly before everything that happened in the Department of Mysteries. Harry, though, knew exactly what had happened to him. He’d seen it.
“Better get dressed, Harry, unless you want to greet our guests in your pyjamas,” said Sirius, smirking at Harry, who was wearing nothing but one of Dudley’s old massive t-shirts over his boxers.
Sirius was already dressed in his usual dark jeans and tight t-shirt. Harry honestly wanted to ask Sirius to help him buy a new wardrobe, since he didn’t have to hide his money from the Dursleys anymore, but he wasn’t even sure how to begin that conversation. At least not without revealing too much about his life at the Dursleys.
“You’re probably right. I didn’t pay attention to the time,” he said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll come down and help you cook breakfast once I’m dressed, shall I?”
“Only if you want to, Prongslet,” was Sirius’ reply.
Cooking in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place was a far cry from what Harry was used to, and he had even said as much without thinking once, which prompted Sirius to ask him what he was used to and who taught him to cook at all. Harry supposed it was a reasonable question, one he should have expected, considering most boys his age were much less capable in the kitchen than he was. Harry had only answered with a shrug and a “my aunt, I guess”, but he noticed that Sirius looked at him in suspicion at times.
And that was one of the main reasons he was hesitant now about mentioning the clothes. He really didn’t want to talk about the Dursleys. Frankly, he wanted to forget they existed, and he knew that feeling was mutual. He was always careful not to show his torso, even in the Quidditch locker rooms he tended to either change before getting there or do it strategically so no one could get a good look. He rarely ever showered in the locker rooms either, and when he did he wore his towel over his upper body.
The only people who had really seen it were Ron, Hermione, and Draco. Probably Poppy too. They hadn’t discussed it much, Ron and Hermione knew he’d just shut down any conversation about it, and Poppy hadn’t ever mentioned them.
Draco had already seen the scars littering his front and back that first moment in the Prefects’ bathroom and tried more than once to talk to him about it. Not while they were working on Occlumency though. Draco had told Harry from the start that he wouldn’t use Occlumency training as a way to bring up the topic, and he had stuck to that, but that hadn’t stopped him from asking at other times. Not that he got much out of Harry. He’d asked about them not long after their fifth year began, because he noticed there were more of them than there had been. Newer ones.
Sure, the Dursleys had stopped most of their more violent antics after Harry started at Hogwarts, probably feeling like they’d be found out more easily, but they still had their moments.
Harry did help Sirius cook breakfast. Despite everything at the Dursleys he truly did enjoy cooking, at least when he wasn’t forced to and was allowed to actually eat the food himself. There was something so soothing about the entire process, knowing the ingredients and how and when to mix them to get the result you wanted, and it was nice to see people he loved enjoying something he had made. He had even cooked for Draco a couple of times during the last year, in the Room of Requirement. The memories made a sharp pang of pain shoot through him, and he had to throw a Stasis Charm over the eggs he was frying just so he could pause and Occlude.
He couldn’t think of it, not now.
When the Weasleys joined them they were accompanied by Hermione. She had spent the previous night at the Burrow, and she and Ron would spend the next night with Harry before going back to their families. They had agreed to meet in Diagon Alley to get their school stuff in a few weeks too, once their booklists for the new year arrived, and because everyone had deemed it safest for Hermione’s parents not to join them she would be staying with the Weasleys for a few days and go with them. At the same time they had also agreed that Hermione and the Weasleys would be staying at Grimmauld Place the week before they were to return to Hogwarts, as it was both easier to get to King’s Cross from there and safer to do so.
The Weasleys who were joining them today consisted of Molly and Arthur, Ron, Ginny, Bill, and Fleur Delacour — who was now engaged to Bill. She had started working with him at Gringotts and must not have forgotten her pash on him from when he came to Hogwarts during the TriWizard Tournament. Harry hadn’t been sure whether he was happy to see her or not when he’d first visited the Burrow that summer, the memories she brought with her not the best, but she was her usual exuberant self towards him, and surprisingly enough it actually calmed him and let him focus on the present.
Fred and George were busy with their new shop, and currently lived in a flat above it, so wouldn’t be joining them this morning, but they had promised Harry in their last letter that they would see him when they all came to visit Diagon Alley. Percy was still not talking to the rest of the family, though he must have known by now that both he and his beloved boss (who was no longer his boss at all, as Fudge had been replaced by an ex-Auror named Rufus Scrimgeour) had been dead wrong all this time. Charlie, the last of the missing sons, wasn’t coming home for the summer at all. No one had said it outright, but Harry thought he might have been asked to help gather support abroad, as he was officially a member of the Order.
So since Remus was currently away, they were ‘only’ 9 people, not counting Kreacher, who would refuse to sit down with them no matter how kind Harry was being to the grumpy sod.
Because Harry actually was being kind to Kreacher, and on purpose. Before leaving Hogwarts, after the whole debacle at the Department of Mysteries, he had discussed Kreacher with both Dumbledore and Draco. Kreacher had been taking Sirius’ “get out” orders literally and gone to Malfoy Manor, where he of course had been treated as important, because he had information Lucius wanted. And Lucius had made Narcissa, as a Black, draw information out of Kreacher.
Now that Kreacher was specifically not allowed to talk to the two adult Malfoys or Bellatrix, Harry was hoping treating him better might help him change a little. So far he wasn’t sure he was succeeding, but he wasn’t giving up just yet anyway.
For some strange reason, Molly and Ginny were less than enthusiastic about Bill’s relationship with Fleur. Ginny had even nicknamed her ‘Phlegm’, and decided that it would be much better if Bill got together with Tonks, despite Bill and Tonks clearly having no romantic interest in each other whatsoever. In fact, Bill and Fleur both looked absolutely besotted with each other, and Harry really couldn’t understand what they all had against Fleur. When he’d said as much, Ginny had rolled her eyes at him.
“Of course you don’t, you’re a bloke. She’s got the lot of you panting after her like dogs!”
Harry couldn’t exactly explain to her that he was very gay and in love with Draco Malfoy, and was therefore in no way panting after Fleur Delacour, so he tried to talk around those facts instead.
“I’m not ‘panting after her’ at all, I just don’t see what you think is so wrong with her. From what I remember from the Triwizard Tournament she could come across as quite full of herself, but all in all she was surprisingly caring and an exceptionally talented witch. She’s also clearly head over heels in love with Bill, and it seems to be mutual, so I’d rather be happy for them than talk shit about Fleur behind her back.”
Ginny had scoffed and not answered, for some reason taking great offence by Harry not being on board with her dislike for Fleur. Harry, meanwhile, was rather stunned by how negative Ginny, Molly, and Hermione (of all people) were towards Fleur. Sure, Fleur was a bit vain, but she was a quarter Veela and had grown up with that as a huge part of her identity. She was bound to be vain, really. She was gorgeous and saw no reason to hide behind false modesty.
Though perhaps Harry just recognised the similarities between her and Draco. Not just the obvious ones (the hair and general beauty), but also that the vanity was a bit of a shield. Maybe Ginny thought that Harry was ‘panting after’ Fleur because Harry was constantly reminded of Draco when she was there, and he missed him. The git. It was incredibly strange to have such warring emotions about Draco at the moment. Harry knew he had to be careful, his home seemed to be regularly invaded by Death Eaters (at least based on what Harry had seen through Voldemort over the summer), and he was overcome with worry about him, but he was also angry that he wasn’t even trying to make contact. Surely he could write in the notebook? Could ask for help? Or at least let his boyfriend know he was alive?
While it was hard to be social that day, his disturbing vision still so clear in his mind and only held back by his Occlumency, Harry was happy to see his best friends again. Hermione had been on holiday in France with her parents (her maternal grandparents had moved from France to England when Hermione’s mother was young, so she had family there, which was another reason Harry found Hermione’s dislike of Fleur’s “French peculiarities” so strange), and she was excitedly telling Harry and Ron about the places they had visited when three owls arrived at the same time, and Sirius let them in through the small kitchen window.
“Hah,” he said as the letters were dropped on the counter and the owls flew off again. “It seems Dumbledore knows you’re all here today. I believe these are your OWL results.”
He waved the three envelopes in the air as he spoke, and Hermione had been halfway out of her chair before he saw fit to actually give them to them.
Harry had received 8 OWLs out of his 9 OWL subjects. He wasn’t too disappointed by the one he hadn’t passed. Divination had been a lost cause from the start, especially when their last professor hadn’t even worked out of human divination practices. Harry wasn’t actually complaining about that, Firenze had been great. He simply hadn’t prepared them for their exams at all.
He was surprised to see that he’d received an Outstanding in History of Magic. He would have to give Draco his thanks fo—
He shook the thoughts away quickly before they could spiral out of control, scolding himself for continuously doing this, and instead forcing his focus back onto his OWLs.
The Exceeds Expectations in Astronomy was to be expected really, considering how their exam had been interrupted (just the thought had Harry wishing Umbridge had never returned from the centaurs), but he was less happy with the Exceeds Expectations in Potions. He really felt like he should have gotten an Outstanding, considering his work during the exam. He wouldn’t be continuing taking Potions then, since Snape only accepted those with Outstanding OWLs for his NEWTs classes.
“Seven OWLs,” exclaimed Ron happily.
“Seven OWLs, that’s more than Fred and George got together!” Molly was beaming at her youngest son.
“What about you, Harry?” asked Sirius.
“Eight OWLs, two E’s and the rest O’s,” Harry replied, putting down his letter and returning to his breakfast.
“Wonderful, Prongslet!” Sirius patted his back, and they grinned at each other.
Harry and Ron looked over at Hermione, who had yet to say anything. She was frowning down at the parchment and worrying her bottom lip. Ron rolled his eyes and snapped the parchment right out of her hands, making her jump a little.
“Yeah, as I thought. Nine O’s and one E.” He looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. “You’re actually disappointed, aren’t you?”
Hermione blushed, but scowled a little all the same.
“I should have done better in Defence, especially with the DA.”
Harry had to laugh. It was nice to see his friends behaving just as normal, especially considering what they all went through in the Department of Mysteries.
“I heard Professor Dumbledore took you out somewhere the other day?” asked Molly a little later, sounding annoyed. Apparently she had wanted Harry to stay with them at the Burrow for the summer, and seemed to think Dumbledore wouldn’t have taken him out if he had, though how she got to that conclusion Harry had no idea.
“Yeah,” replied Harry. “He wanted me to help him convince an old professor to come back to Hogwarts to teach. A Professor Slughorn?”
“Oh!”
Eyebrows were raised by the three eldest around the table.
“He was our Potions Professor,” said Sirius.
“Ours as well,” said Molly, and Arthur nodded in agreement.
“Wait,” said Harry. “Potions Professor? I— I knew he taught my parents, but I just figured it was Defence. I mean, we already have a Potions Professor?” He exchanged looks with Hermione and Ron, both of them looking as confused as he was.
“I suppose old Dumbledore must have caved and given Snivellus the Defence Against the Dark Arts position he’s been lusting after,” said Sirius bitterly.
Harry had been trying to convince him to be less aggressive towards Snape, if only because Harry couldn’t see that their hostility was good for anything and he wanted Sirius to be the bigger man here, but so far it was a bit of a lost cause.
“He wouldn’t!” Ron said with a gasp, looking offended at mere idea of it.
Sirius merely shrugged, and Harry had to admit that that seemed to be the most likely result. They all knew Snape had wanted the position forever, and Slughorn didn’t strike Harry as someone who were very flexible with what subject they taught. Or flexible in any sense of the word.
And Dumbledore trusted Snape, they knew that. Harry, however, did not — and couldn’t help feeling quite worried at the thought of Snape as their DADA Professor.