Chapter 17: So it goes

DISCLAIMER: Is child abuse remarkably prominent but thoroughly glossed over throughout the Harry Potter books? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter 17

I am, of course, limited to strictly muggle means of investigation, and I should do most if not all of it myself. My old family have clearly already had magical trouble, serious enough to drive them out of their home, I don't want to be adding to it. Plus, me taking an interest in this family is a potential clue to the time travel aspect and the last thing I want to do is leave breadcrumbs that the enemy can follow to that particular disaster. It's an even bigger bombshell than the getting-magic thing which even Moody felt ought to be compartmentalised.

Until that's done, however, I have far too little information to even begin to speculate.

-oOo-

I don't get much done for the rest of August, since I'm spending a lot of time devising and enacting educational and enriching activities for Harry and Dudley. Translation: We're hanging out and playing, mostly working through Dudley's backlog of educational toys. Including, to my enormous delight, the top-of-the-line Thomas Salter Chemistry Set that I was never allowed to have as a kid.

Dudley, to my mild surprise - the lad has been coming right out of himself with a bit of attention, between his dad and me - takes to science and the underlying mathematics like a duck to water. When I mention this to Vernon, he arranges a trip to one of Grunnings' labs to see the experiments in action - they're working on plasma deposition, which is the coming thing in drillbit coatings, we're told - and both boys get enthused about science. I have the brainwave of telling Dudley that if he learns his science he'll be able to do at least some alchemy, which is quite close to magic, and I can see his eyes light up. Harry was already keen on the idea because that's what Nana Perenelle is all about.

There's no real chance that Dudley will get far enough to start doing authentically magical stuff. Only one muggle alchemist in history managed that: Robert Boyle, and he had a lot of help. And was - still is, I'm told - a genius, which Dudley, for all he might well have hidden depths, ain't.

Every other weekend I take ageing potion and we go on excursions to see cool stuff small boys will enjoy. Stuffing a small child behind the seats of a two-seater sports car is a massive adventure for whichever of them it is that gets to ride that way but mildly illegal and I appear to have caught the contemporary slack attitude to vehicular safety. I start planning a 2+2 coupé conversion: I'll need to get 'er resprayed again after, but reshaping the bodywork and fitting seat brackets shouldn't be too hard, it barely counts as transfiguration. I'll lose some boot space, is all.

Petunia is glad of the respite, her health has taken a turn for the worse that she assures me her GP says is nothing to worry about and will pass in a few weeks. I take her at her word. Once the boys are back at school I make myself busy buying real estate: there's a nice 4-bedroom detached on Wisteria Walk that has become available and, house-buying chains being what they are, I should have it by Christmas at the latest and probably sooner.

I also buy a couple of hundred acres of fourth-rate grouse moor, subject to a long list of grazing rights and the last fifteen years of a shooting lease, in what was the historic county of Westmorland but is now Cumbria. I've picked it because it's part of the old manor of Hangleton, and a bit of research with the brokers for such things tells me that the lordship of the manor went on the market a few years previous and while any manor lordship would have done for my purposes, this one is amusingly apropos. The historic boundaries take in Little and Great Hangleton (known locally as Upper and Nether Hangleton, never mind what's painted on the road signs) and the hamlets of Bottom Laithe and Lingy Pits.

It's a steal at five grand, and while the only one of the feudal perquisites still attached to the dignity is the right to hold a Lammastide Market Fair - which if I settle there I might resurrect as a beer festival or similar - what it does mean is that the Land Registry now has me down as Lord of the Manor and I'm entitled to have that noted on my passport when I get one. I didn't need to buy the land to buy the lordship, but for it to count for my purposes I do actually have to hold land within the manor and a house would be an obvious target.

The tricky part is getting Vernon and Dudley to do their bit.

Vernon, for his part, falls about laughing. "You want me to do what?"

"Make oath as my sworn manor bailiff, and Dudley and Harry as my men-at-arms," I tell him, grinning back, "it makes you knowing about magic completely legal because you'll be officially my feudal vassals."

"I knew the magical folk were a lot of crackpots, but -?" Vernon trails off and shrugs his bewilderment at the lunacy of it.

"Well," I tell him, "it's a law passed in the 1690s that never got updated. Among the things the wizards don't have is a Law Commission to go through the books to deal with things like that. And don't forget, this stuff is on the books on our side too: I've spent a bit of money and now I'm a lord. Which is crackpot nonsense all by itself."

"Picturesque, I call it," Vernon says, with a sly look on his face, "it's only crackpottery if it's a wizard doing it. Us normal folk, we have picturesque traditions."

I chuckle, impressed in spite of myself. That was actually quite a good bit of self-deprecating humour by Vernon's standards. It might just be that he's acquiring a bit of self-esteem. We make progress, indeed we do.

When I told the solicitor I retained for the conveyancing of the land and title what I was going to do - we're going to need a Commissioner for Oaths and all solicitors hold that office - he got a laugh out of it, too, although the reason I gave him was that Dudley, 'my nephew's foster-brother' wants to be a knight and this is the nearest I can get for the boys. So long as I don't personally train either Vernon or Dudley (or pay for their training) in any kind of warlike skill, it doesn't break the laws on private armies. For the statutory five quid per head for the oath-swearing fee it's a remarkably cheap transaction.

It's going to be about five minutes work a year for Vernon, banking the rent cheques from the farmers and the guy who owns the shooting rights, and some fun games for the boys dressing up as medieval fighters, in return for a land grant in leasehold of a square foot each of my garden on Wisteria Walk - Dudley wants to plant a tree in his, bless him - and they're all going to be my sworn feudal retainers. Which quite large stretches of the world still had in 1692, and more than a few wizards and witches wanted their household staff and, yes, private armies, in on the secret of magic, so there's an exemption in the Statute of Secrecy. Most of it fell by the wayside over the centuries since, but the law was never amended. It would have taken a full-dress international agreement, which aren't trivial to arrange. As soon as we have Vernon and Dudley's formal oaths sworn and the leaseholds registered, they are officially and lawfully Knowledgeable Muggles entitled to be registered as such, and exempt from Obliviation.

While that's going on, I have a media monitoring service run by a Manchester PR firm looking into various aspects of the life and times of my old home county over the last ten years, drawn widely enough that I can pick out the information I want from reports that include a much wider trawl of information. Wouldn't do to have records pointing specifically at one house that's known to the Ministry, after all.

What I learn is that on the night in question emergency services were called to a gas explosion at my old house, in which an entire family of six people were killed. There were calls for a public inquiry into gas safety standards (which wouldn't help, my father was an indefatigable DIY-er and this was in the days before you needed a Gas Safety Certificate to sell a house: he did all his own gas fitting, the idiot, it's a wonder any of us lived to adulthood) and quotes from concerned neighbours. Some of whom I'm going to re-visit for some surreptitious legilimency to see if there are any exploitable flaws in the memory charms, because they sound decidedly out of character for the people I remember.

Of course 'gas explosion' is the cover story of choice for quite a large number of events the press and public doesn't need to know about, and it would appear that at least one of my siblings was a muggleborn witch or wizard. Or my counterpart in this universe is, which is a bit of a surprise. Nobody of the same surname as me turned up in the books, after all but then they wouldn't if they died in '81. What remains for me to discover is whether alternate-me getting my Hogwarts letter - the incident is at about the right time - prompted a visit from the Death Eaters (in which case someone's in for a really surprising vengeance) or this version of my parents were bad enough that one of us spawned a monster that killed everyone.

Figuring that out, I'm going to have to ruminate on.

-oOo-

"You! Off, one minute! That was a dangerous tackle and this is a game, not a fight. Be more careful next time! Free kick!" It's a pick-up game on the park, it's my turn among the dads (and in my case 'uncle' whose 'other nephew' is 'off visiting family') to be referee - taking over for Vernon, who has quietly admitted that he doesn't personally care for footy, so he's sharing out the coldbox full of drinks he's brought - and Lord the little savages are playing up today.

Obviously we can't give out red cards, it's just supervised football on the local rec, but by the same token, it's supervised football so we do have to at least try and civilise the little heathens out of their tendency to leg-breaker tackles, shirt-pulling, sneaky handballs and pretending not to understand the offside rule. So it's sent off for a minute for anything that'd be a yellow card offence, and a telling-off into the bargain if it was an immediate red card infraction. We've noticed that the ones whose dads are actually present tend to behave a little better.

"Come on, Harry, up you get," I tell him. He's sprawled in the centre circle, cropped as he was looking for an open teammate. A second or two more and he'd have had the ball at the feet of one of his team's self-designated strikers - they're eschewing the traditional 4-4-2 for what looks like a 2-2-6 formation, because that's how small boys play football - but the other team's frantic rush to defend after Dudley cleared it from the goal line right to his foster-brother's feet more or less stampeded him under. Smallest kid on the pitch and Harry's not even slightly intimidated, he's playing up his wizard durability and with what looks like a natural instinct for ball games. Because there's no way my coaching got him that good with a ball at his feet.

The free kick - Harry takes it, and I honestly can't tell if it's accidental magic or he's really Bending It Like Beckham - goes through to what we're calling the penalty box, one of the bigger kids heads it across and it gets more or less scrambled through the goalmouth by two kids who immediately start arguing about who had last touch. I make them toss a coin for it - I couldn't tell, being too far away, I'm quick on my feet in my new body but not that quick - and my turn as referee is over. We're changing over every time a goal is scored.

"You're in bloody good shape for a banker," DC Polkiss tells me as I grab a bottle of orange juice from Vernon's coldbox. It's a cool day as October goes in Surrey, but I've just spent the last ten minutes keeping up with two dozen hyperactive little boys.

"Lot of time spent in hotels, and it's either the hotel gym or call-girls for entertainment. Since a lot of those jobs were out in third-world shitholes, the local talent tended to have things unknown to medical science. So that was the choice: match fitness, or incurable galloping clap." This is not from personal experience, but a chap I was at university with went into merchant banking and it was a story he told during a reunion night.

The story gets me a laugh, because Surrey suburbanites don't see the fundamental problem with first world bankers lording it over the developing world and their problems. I choke down the urge to try a little political conscience-prodding.

"Here, there's that dog again," someone says, and sure enough, there's a big black animal nosing about the shrubbery at the far end of the rec.

Well, hello Padfoot, I think. I might be jumping to conclusions, here, but as summer meandered into autumn, Moody has been telephoning on the regular with updates on the situation with Pettigrew, Crouch, Crouch Junior, and Black. Life in Azkaban, Life in Azkaban, Dementor's Kiss, and released into convalescent care respectively. I've bought Moody a pager so I can get in touch in return: he doesn't have a phone of his own and we're a bit early in history for mobiles that aren't the size and heft of breeze-blocks.

Of course, it might not be Black at all. It could just be a random large black dog that just happens to be hanging around while Harry is playing football. I mean, dogs naturally make a complete mess of trying to act nonchalant and like they're not watching one kid in particular.

"He doesn't look like he's a problem dog," I say, "although from the looks he's out on unauthorised walkies. I used to have a dog that did that a lot. Proper little Houdini, he was. Always out wandering on his own. But god help me if I slacked off on the walks I took the little bugger on."

More laughs, and in the moment of distraction the dog vanishes. I have no idea what Black is up to, beyond checking in on Harry. Much depends on whether he's listening to Dumbledore or Moody: I know Moody has had a word and suggested a polite, calm approach and what he understands to be the reason for Pettigrew's capture, but I have no idea what Dumbledore has said.

-oOo-

We get back from the footy and, as we are all firmly instructed to do, go to the back door so as not to track mud all over the hall carpet. There are now two women of the house, and both of them approach the issue of domestic hygiene with a serious-minded fervour you don't normally see outside student politics.

Petunia and Winky are at the kitchen table with tea and biscuits - never a good sign, Winky has been here barely more than a month and has a serious Party Rings habit already: an elf on a sugar high is an unholy terror - and from the looks they've been hitting the neighbourhood gossip hard. After the shock of getting clothes from Crouch, Winky came to Privet Drive like it was the last oasis in the Sahara and Moody had given her a map to it.

It took her less than a week to get settled in and find that she had a kindred spirit in Petunia as regards cleanliness, tidiness and Keeping Up Appearances. The existence of Brownie Guides, named for and adhering to the values of her people, was a joyful revelation to her and learning that Petunia was a veteran of same formed an immediate rapport. Petunia, for her part, discovered that having a partner-in-gossip capable of invisible snooping set her on course to be the absolute queen of the neighbourhood busybodies. Winky, in her smart little tea-dress and pinafore stitched together from yellow dusters - Petunia laid in a stock, and a selection of sewing patterns and supplies - has gone native.

"If you would, Winky?" I ask, indicating my muddy boots, and two grinning muddy boys. Vernon's bringing up the rear and nowhere near so encrusted.

"How is you getting so filthy?" Winky demands to know, snapping her fingers to get the worst off us.

"Football, Winky," Harry tells her, grinning through the filth, "If you're not covered in mud, you haven't been having fun." That's a direct quote from me, as it happens. Harry's fastidiousness takes a back seat on the footy pitch.

"I was goalie," Dudley tells her, relying on Winky's soft spot for him to get away with being head-to-toe with goalmouth cack. Give the little chunk credit, he's not afraid to eat dirt in the cause of keeping a clean sheet, and his response to being outnumbered in his own penalty box would shame a viking. There are probably a few cuts and bruises under the mud, and he's been favouring his left leg as he squelched home. It is, he assured us, the good kind of hurt.

Petunia snorts in amusement. She's less unhappy about the boys coming home covered in shite now she's got Winky to help.

"Muddied oafs at the goal," Vernon quotes, in a vague and musing sort of way. He doubtless has fond memories of coming home wearing half the park from his own youth.

"Was always more of a flannelled fool at the wicket, myself," I respond. "Right, showers, you two. Dudley especially, that goalmouth was hangin'."

"Don't touch anything on your way up," Petunia says, "but before you go we have an announcement."

"Oh, is it that time already?" Vernon asks, with an unreadable smile on his face, "I wasn't paying attention to the calendar, Pet."

"Well, the morning sickness has subsided at last," she says, "especially as Winky was good enough to get me a potion for it."

"Old Mistress used the same potion," Winky avers, "so Winky knew what to ask the 'pothecary for, and the goblinses give lots of Galleons for muggle money."

"Huh." I hadn't thought about that. Petunia's a squib, so potions work for her. Should've thought of that. I get her meaning immediately, of course, although I do wonder how I missed the signs. Not that I was particularly making note of what times of day she was puking.

Both boys are looking confused. "Dudley," Petunia says, "you're going to have a little brother or sister. Harry, a new cousin. I'm going to have a baby."

"Winky can't tell yet if it's to be a boy or girl, not until baby grows more." Winky is vibrating in her seat. She's been an absolute treasure with the boys, I can see her being a godsend with the new baby. Another inhabitant for what I'm sure she quietly thinks of as her house.

"Been wondering," Vernon says in diffident tone, "if there's any way to tell if littlun has, you know …" he waggles his fingers in the casting-a-spell gesture he uses to mean magic.

"Not as far as I know," I tell him, "if there was a reliable way of knowing that before their magic comes in, magical families wouldn't do horrible things to try and scare magic out of their children." I spare a silent thought of sympathy for poor Neville Longbottom. Thrown into the sea off one of Blackpool's piers? Surviving that should've clued everyone that he was magical: not drowning in those waters if you fall in isn't just magic, it's a fucking miracle.

"Well, it's all one to me," Petunia says, "Magic has its uses, but I have to say I've not been impressed with most of those that have it." I choose to take that as a reference to Dumbledore and Snape, and James Potter in his pureblood cluelessness. She was back on christmas-present terms with her sister before the end, and is oddly fond of Moody. About which last I'm a bit baffled, but nobody ever promised me that everything would make sense all the time.

Winky's nodding along. "Elveses can't tell either. Mistress Petunia already asked Winky. Winky is sorry."

Both boys look gobsmacked. "Shower!" I remind them, bending down to get my boots off. Winky will have them clean and shined before I'm showered and changed and back down for lunch. I've told her I don't particularly care to be done for, just a personal preference and I'm pretty sure I know which bit of my childhood that hangup comes from, but Winky absolutely does not give a shit. Fortunately I'll have a refuge to retreat to soon, once the contractors are finished with my house on Wisteria Walk and it's up to the standards I'm used to.

"Congratulations, you two," I say once I'm able to step inside without getting lynched by a houseproud elf, "how far along?"

"Three months," Petunia says, "I'm hoping for a girl."

"One of each," Vernon remarks, apparently under the impression I can't count, although I restrain my urge to sarcasm. He's been cheerful and easygoing for weeks. I'd put it down to getting laid regular - it certainly is the spur for him getting to the gym twice a week and watching what he eats, not that I needed the bloody details he furnished me with - but apparently he's full of himself with impending new fatherhood. It's not in me to begrudge him his joy.

"Quick work," I remark with a grin. Because I can count. Petunia must've caught less than a week after I stopped possessing Vernon.

Vernon grins and buffs his nails on his Barbour, earning an eyeroll from Petunia. Winky has vanished, doubtless to see to the boys.

I'm going to have to take some time to think about this. The bun in Petunia's oven is entirely off the map the books draw. What caused this, beyond the obvious? Did getting more comfortable with magic move Petunia to come off the pill because she was no longer afraid of having a little wizard or witch? Did the improvement in Vernon's health make him capable of doing the deed, or is it the improvement in Vernon's appearance that made Petunia rekindle her interest in sex with Vernon?

I've been making a point of respect for the Dursleys' privacy recently - which is how I missed the pregnancy, of course - and I decide this doesn't count as a safety-of-Harry issue so I'll probably never know. Probably don't want to know, come right to it. It does mean Harry's getting something more like an actual family during his time at Privet Drive, so I resolve to just take the win without questioning it further.

More important, and a question for the future, is whether they're right to worry about having a magical child. The genetics of magic is a vexed question, and the writing on the subject on the magical side is a collection of superstitions at best and overt racism at worst. The interesting question is whether it's purely genetic or whether there's more to it than that. Has being possessed for a year done anything to change whatever it is about Vernon that meant his firstborn was as unmagical as him?

-oOo-

It's another week before I see Black again.

I had had all kinds of scenarios planned out for sidling up to him while he was doing his half-arsed surveillance - half-arsed measured against Moody, who I'm not good enough to spot until his magic goes active enough to hear - and buttonholing him.

What actually happens is that, shortly after Petunia gets back from walking the boys to school, the doorbell rings. From where I'm sat in the dining room, boxing and coxing between a pile of O-Level revision guides and alchemy texts, I can hear Petunia getting a little flustered, and then reading out the laminated card I made for her with the guest-right words. Whoever's giving the responses is male, youngish.

"... just through here, Mr. Black," are the first words I hear clearly from Petunia, "I have things to be getting on with so I'll leave you to it. Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?"

There's a murmur in response and the door opens. I stand up and walk around the table to extend a hand, looking up from my kid's height. "Sirius Black, I presume?"

"Ah, yes," he says, looking a little taken aback, "I was, uh, expecting someone older."

I sort of was, too. I mean, my mental picture of him is still the mid-forties Gary Oldman even though literally nobody I've met so far looks anything like the actors who played them. The man who just walked in doesn't look a day past thirty. He's actually in his mid twenties, but a few years of Azkaban have clearly taken their toll.

And, hilariously, he does look like someone I recognise: me. Or, rather, my pre-mortem self, just with different coloured eyes. It's true what they say: there's only so many faces to go around. My brother once met my exact double working as a security guard at an airport in Italy, which means that in this universe there are actually three copies of that face walking around. Well, two, since one of them apparently died in '81. Oh, there are differences, he's missing the facial scar from the suicide attempt, and at a guess he's half a head shorter than my old self was, the hairline is just a little higher and the hair not as solid a black, and he either doesn't have the mutant teeth I was born with or wizarding orthodontics has been deployed. He's in not-obviously-wizardly attire, wearing what looks like a Marks & Spencer first-court-appearance suit, but with a dress shirt. If he's going to stick around we're going to have to work on his grasp of subtle details.

"Age is a bit of a vexed question with me, Mr. Black," I tell him. "I mean, I've got birth certificates for seven and thirty-one, this body came of the vat at the end of June, I've celebrated a fiftieth birthday, and I've spent long enough entirely outside time that I can't really put a reliable number on how long I've been around."

"Huh. Moody said talking to you could be offsetting." He shakes my hand anyway.

"Have a seat," I tell him, "there'll be tea and biscuits shortly, I don't doubt. Winky is entirely without fear or favour in enforcing standards of hospitality."

Black furrows his brow. "An elf? In a muggle home?"

I grin back. "Majority magical, actually, since Petunia has magic. Just not enough to attract a Hogwarts letter. If she'd been born to a magical family, they'd call her a squib. Vernon and Dudley are the only non-magicals, muggles as you'd call them, living here. She was with the Crouches, I trust you heard the story?"

"That that wasn't Mrs. Crouch I saw buried? I heard. Removed a big obstacle to me getting a trial when old Barty Senior was arrested."

"Well, when he got arrested he ripped off his tie and gave it to her, although what he thought she'd done to deserve it I have no idea. I think Petunia's going to have it framed, she's so pleased to have an elf here. They get on famously."

"This Petunia - the one at the door?" I nod, "She's Lily's sister?"

"The very same."

"Huh. I remember Lily and her not getting on so well, she didn't like magic."

"They didn't, although it wasn't so much magic she hated as the fact that magical folk were excluding her from it. There might have been a reconciliation in the works, but Lily's death prevented it."

We have a moment of silence for the dead, during which a tray of tea and biscuits pops into existence on the table.

"Thank you, Winky," I say to the empty air. To Black, "So, what brings you here today? I know you've been out of jail nearly three months at this point. I'm guessing some of the time since then has been spent in hospital?"

"Some. Most of it, actually. The rest was various administrative details. My grandfather, well, he -" Black stops. Stares at me. "I'm sure you don't want to hear about the family settlements."

"Unless you want me to take a professional interest, no," I tell him, conveying as best I can with a smile that I'm entirely not serious about that, "While I was a lawyer, estate management and planning was never an area I practised in, although I passed the same exams as the chaps who did."

He nods along with that. I get the distinct sense that he has come here with some kind of agenda and is having trouble with getting past 'opening remarks'. There's a bit of an uncomfortable pause.

We fill it with the mundane business of pouring tea and serving ourselves biscuits. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to get Black talking, since he's a lot less damaged than I was expecting. Clearly, St. Mungo's does good work. Moody hasn't shared much other than that he 'set Black straight' about Harry's situation here, saying Dumbledore had already had his pennyworth with Black. Unfortunately Moody had to fit his call to me in around a busy period at work, not able to chat at length, so I have almost nothing to go on.

"So," Black says once he's got his tea, with two sugars in it like an utter heathen but at least he doesn't put the milk in first, "I'm not supposed to be here."

"Oh?" I'm quite glad that the Potter genes include sufficiently expressive eyebrows that I am able to give him 'intrigued' and 'encouragement to continue.' At some point I'm going to get some zero-prescription spectacles for staring at people over the top of, and I shall be able to have conversations without feeling like I have a speech impediment.

"Moody tells me you've, ah, met Professor Dumbledore?"

"I have," I aver. "He came with the intent of investigating Harry's finances, but it turned into what amounted to muggle-baiting. Certain words were exchanged between us. Also, between him and the muggle in question, certain punches."

Black chuckles, "Moody was keen to make sure I knew about that bit. He's in a bit of a snit with the Professor."

"He say why? Or, rather, was he specific? I know a few of the possible reasons, of course."

"I like to think I've known Moody long enough to say it's probably all of them. Which ones were you thinking of?" Black gives me an engaging smile. I think he's trying for disarming and encouraging and if I was a teenage girl it might work. At a guess, he's looking to cross-check the things Moody and Dumbledore have been telling him.

"Purely from Moody's point of view? I'd start with him trying to get Moody to do his investigative leg-work for him with only half the story, all of the complete fuckery that impacted the welfare of a couple of children that Moody then discovered, most of which is Dumbledore's fault, and then he discovers that Dumbledore is working to correct a miscarriage of justice without consulting his oldest friend in Magical Law Enforcement? There's probably more, of course. He's certainly had some pithy things to say on the subject of you not getting a trial, and at the very least Dumbledore dropped that particular ball. He was directly involved in the trials, he ought to have at least asked the question when you didn't get one. Administration of justice is a subject on which Moody has capital-v Views."

"Huh." Black sits back and takes a sip of his tea. "You know, I didn't think about that. Was he? Dumbledore, I mean?"

"Involved? Certainly. At least closely enough to get one of his agents off with all charges dropped." I'm not sure how sensitive a subject Snape is with Black at this point. Moody's not shy about calling the man Dumbledore's 'pet Death Eater,' and I'm pretty sure I remember that Crouch announced it in open court so it's not like I'm giving away a state secret.

Black's eyes do, however, narrow when I tell him Dumbledore got someone off, in contrast to the concern his own welfare elicited from the man. That's all I need, for the time being. The esteem in which Dumbledore is held does actually count for something in magical Britain. It wouldn't do to destroy that, nor undermine him too much, not when it will be useful later. What I do want to do is keep all of his problematic decisions, errors, and omissions in the forefront of as many minds as I can manage. In theory it'll promote critical thinking; there are far too many people treating Dumbledore like the leader of his own personal cult. Giving the old git a very real sense that he's not just above the law, but above all norms of civilised behaviour.

Black shakes his head. "Not important right now. He did tell me that Harry was safe and that the people he was with wanted no contact with the wizarding world. Moody told me that was a lie, and from, ah, Petunia's performance at the front door there, you're at least ready for it."

I shrug. "Dumbledore ordered no contact with the wizarding world. Put spells on the house to help that along, but he didn't ask if anyone was willing to accept his authority. And, worse, didn't check that everyone living here was in a fit mental state to accept the spells he cast without reacting badly."

Black winces. "Not exactly an expert, but compulsion and confundment and similar spells can have screwy effects."

"Especially on the mentally ill. The mind is a complicated and sensitive thing," I keep the scoffing about Vernon's mind being in any way either complicated or sensitive firmly on the inside, "and even small causes can generate large effects. The parable of the bird turd on the mountainside comes to mind. One little dollop of shit triggers an avalanche, next thing you know everyone in the valley below is dead."

"That bad?" Black raises an eyebrow.

"Close to it. The suicide was, fortunately, on the instalment plan and there was a counter to the worst of the insanity that Dumbledore didn't know about. Lily Potter was a very smart young lady."

"Sounds weird to hear you call her that. From the look of you, she's old enough to be your mother."

"Fifty, remember? If the way I look is making you uncomfortable, I've got ageing potion. I generally go for mid-twenties or thereabouts, which is still a long way off how old I actually am, but at least you aren't trying to have a conversation with someone who looks like a kid."

That earns me a head-tilt from Black. After a pause, he waves the offer off. "I think I better get used to it. And, you know, I'm a wizard. I ought to be able to handle weirdness."

I choke down the licking-your-own-balls joke. Strictly speaking I don't know he's an animagus. "Anyway, Dumbledore thinks this house is protected by Lily's self-sacrifice. It isn't. Harry is, and I suspect his father had a part to play in it as well, but the house itself was protected from before the night the Potters were murdered." I've got a bit of a prepared spiel on the Defensor Patriae by now, informed considerably by Dr. Hartlib's helpful responses to the letter I sent, and I rattle it off for Black.

"So as long as Harry satisfies the conditions of Dumbledore's linking spell, he's got the benefit of not just Lily's protection, but the entire magical defense of the realm?" Black is goggling. His teachers remembered him in the books as smart, and he's picking through the implications gratifyingly quickly.

"Oh indeed he does, and anyone who comes against him will find his effectiveness degraded, his decision-making impaired, and suffering bad luck at the worst possible times in the worst possible ways." Between Lily's genius and Dumbledore's blundering, little Harry has actual plot armour. "Which is why it's important to keep Harry here, happy, and firmly linked to that defence. And the defence uncompromised, which means that unless you've got some deep well of patriotic feeling toward the United Kingdom of Great Britain Possibly Including Northern Ireland, you can't spend too long here. It doesn't like defending what it sees as foreigners."

"Huh. And you say Lily basically tricked this magic into action over this house?"

I rock a hand. "She was an ex brownie-guide. The indoctrination is strong with them, certainly in the better packs. So, while she wasn't the only person with authority over the magic, she was certainly the only one who knew to use it. So, you know, not really a trick, more like 'all the officers were dead and command fell to the senior lance-corporal.' And I'm not sure that you can trick something that old and powerful, it's a magic that has been informed by the best and worst of the nation's defenders for over a millennium. If it wasn't going to be important now I doubt she could have commanded it then. Time and causality get decidedly odd when magic's involved, hence divination and allied trades. Did she foresee that this would become an important redoubt for the defence against the enemy? Could have done, it's not like the future is inaccessible to a determined enough use of divination. I could see the magic reaching back in time to maybe help things along, there're signs in history of it having done the like before. Some of the military blunders this country has faced from its would-be invaders have had surprisingly deep roots." Looking at you, Medina Sidonia. And given how it helped the later defence of Britain, I shouldn't be surprised if it helped the Fall of France along in '40. It happened much the same way in this universe as it did my native one, and required a startling number of utter muppets to be well entrenched in senior positions in Britain, France and Belgium alike.

Black gives an amused 'huh'. "So it's like playing billiards with a time turner? You can carom off a ball that was there twenty minutes ago?"

"Not a bad analogy. I know it has been affecting me and everything I've been doing for Harry." It actually takes effort to get those words out. Moody's observation that he noticed the effect of the magic on his decision-making - I've no idea how, and I don't have a good plan for asking him for lessons beyond 'fling myself at his feet and beg' - caused me to pay much closer attention to my own thought processes than I had been doing. There is a definite difference between how I think as a disembodied spirit and how I think when I'm sat here in the flesh unless I firmly resolve to think otherwise. It requires a mindset of 'I know better here on the ground than someone distantly removed from the action' and every single trick of overcoming executive dysfunction I ever learned in therapy, and I still ain't sure I'm thinking my own thoughts. I've noticed a reluctance to move properly into the house I bought, too. The defence on this house thinks of me as an asset and wants to keep me.

Black's looking a little perturbed at that admission, and at a guess my difficulty in saying it aloud has shown on my face. "Should I be worried?"

"You? No," I tell him, "It doesn't think of you as a possible asset or enemy. You'd probably compromise the defence if you moved in, as I say, but that's about the limit of how much you can interact with it as a pureblood wizard and Harry's godfather. Me, I'm trying to weigh the merits of going along with what a thoroughly pre-modern magic thinks is the best for Harry or moving out and gaining some freedom of action to fight according to more up-to-date standards." Saying that costs me a horrible sense of wrongness and guilt such as I haven't experienced since before I died. This thing knows where my buttons are and has no merely human compunctions about pressing them. On the positive side, it isn't up to speed on early-twenty-first-century mental health care and how it arms the afflicted to deal with intrusive thoughts and feelings. Which may be a clue as to how Moody copes: he's lived a lifetime of trauma and is still functional.

"Well if you're helping Harry shouldn't you stay?" Black asks in all innocent helpfulness.

"Yeah, don't help it along," I snap back, "Look, sorry about the tone, but actually trying to talk about this out loud is a bit of a strain. And I'm not talking about leaving, just moving to the next street over. From where I can be just as much help to Harry - and, have to admit, Dudley, who has grown on me rather - as I am while in residence. The point is that I need freedom of thought and action to be a more effective help to Harry, and, in the wider context, fighter in the coming war." The intrusive shame and guilt eases somewhat. What if I'm only pushing against it for my own ego's sake, and this is a bad idea? Yeah, intrusive thought. Or is it?

"Are - are you all right?" Black asks, snapping me out of the spiral of rumination.

"Sorry," I say, pinching the bridge of my nose against the coming headache, "subtle mind-affecting magic that you can just barely distinguish from your own emotional scars. Total bastard to cope with. Dumbledore stuck a few standard secrecy spells on top and turned the whole thing into an utter devil's brew of mindfuckery. Not much of a problem if you just go along with it, but fighting it's a complete sod."

"I can imagine," he says, "My family tried something similar with me. Trying to 'cure me of youthful rebellion' or some such rot."

"And you're still willing to talk to your Grandfather?"

He shrugs. "He's not the only family I've got, but if I convince him that the arse-kissing is sincere, then I get all the family entails and I can do right by the decent relatives I have."

Oh dear me, Sirius, you and my old self are more alike than just in looks. "Know how that one goes. By rights I should have been a lot more on the outs with my old family than I was, but they keep hold of you by the regard you still have for the decent ones."

He gives me a funny look at that. Hopefully the point of rapport still scored. "You're letting them think you're still dead?"

"I am. It's not as heartless a decision as it might appear, but the reasons why that happens to be the case I'm keeping private. I've got found family now, and my kids are honestly better off believing me dead and with no clues to lead anyone back from me to them."

Black nods along. "I shan't pry. Look, I came to talk about Harry. Moody told me you were very protective of him, and openly willing to be ruthless about it. That right?"

"It'll do for the in-a-nutshell version, yes."

He sits back and takes a long, considering drink of his tea. "You know I could go before the Wizengamot and seek custody."

"You could, certainly. There are some very compelling reasons why you shouldn't, though. Which, unlike Dumbledore, I've given you some of. Want the rest?"

He extends a hand, palm up in the time-honoured 'go on' gesture.

"Harry had a bloody rough go of it, the first three and a half years he was here. Until I showed up, the Dursleys' own problems, compounded by the frankly idiotic spell-work Dumbledore put on the house, made them treat both the kids they had charge of terribly. It's taken me a year of some frankly shady behaviour to get them to where they're a functional family in their own right, and a decent foster-family for Harry. I mention this as context for the important thing for both the children - with a third on the way, as it happens - in this house. What they need, after the big changes I brought about, is an extended period of stability. The aim of the parenting game is to make yourself redundant by giving the kids a safe place to learn and grow, and that means a predictable environment. A big upheaval in Harry's life, right now? I've got to say, it'd not be good for him."

"The other kid's a muggle?"

"Just like his father. Although I don't like the word 'muggle' very much."

"What do you call them?"

"People."

That gets his back up a bit. He gives me a hard stare. I can see his mouth tightening up like he's damming up a torrent of outrage.

"Don't look at me like that. Your family might have been extremists, but giving them a different name like they're some kind of alien species? That's where it starts. Get your mind right on that point and you're a step further away from the horseshit they tried to make you believe growing up."

He's still not happy about it. The temper's looking less likely to burst its banks, but still. I've clearly prodded a tender spot.

I press on. "Thing is, shitty attitudes like racism, or the blood purity nonsense, they're insidious. If you're raised with them, it's all too easy to take that first step away from what they drummed into you as a kid and think 'Job Done'. And the smugness blinds you to the fact that it's still there, colouring everything you think and do and while you're maybe not part of the problem any more, you're not yet part of the solution. I'm speaking from personal experience on this one. It took years to get all the bullshit out of my thinking and if I was to put my hand on my heart, I can't swear it's all gone quite yet. So, yes, when you're taking decisions about the kids in this house, you have to consider all the kids. Without sorting them into the boxes your parents would have put them in."

He looks a bit nauseous at that last. "That's … not a bad point, actually."

"Well, I put a lot of hard work in to getting this family straightened out, which I don't want to see wasted, so I'm not entirely altruistic about this. But yes, if you uproot Harry now, you're not just hurting him, but his foster-brother into the bargain. Thing is, there's a lot of involvement in Harry's life you can have that isn't full-on adoption."

"Such as?"

"Like what I'm doing. Fun uncle who takes the boys out at weekends. Source of all kinds of extra educational outings and activities. You know, godfather stuff. And if you want to be on hand to look after Harry's welfare and safety, well, I've got a house right here in the neighbourhood. Move in, scandalise the neighbours a bit."

"Eh?" The last bit seems to have shocked him. It was meant to.

"Well, two grown men, no women in evidence," I grin at him, "They'll be tying themselves in knots trying to figure out which of us is -"

"OI!" He looks affronted at the very idea, which tells me something about magical culture that I couldn't have just straight-up asked anyone. Clearly Dumbledore has spent a century in the closet for a reason.

"I'm joking, I'm joking. I'll be mostly appearing as a kid, we'll figure out a story about you to leak to the neighbours via Petunia. See what the dating scene's like for an ex-con and we'll figure out what to tell your girlfriend if it gets to the point of you moving her in."

"Very muggle attitude, assuming I'll be moving a girlfriend in," he says, with a sly tone, "I was always told the muggles just rutted like beasts without benefit of marriage."

"Hey, don't knock it until you've tried it. I think you have to go back three generations in my family before you find anyone who was born in wedlock. We all got married eventually, like, but in my case my daughter was old enough to be her mother's bridesmaid."

"I suppose I should be ready for things like this. I mean, I knew muggleborns at Hogwarts, but I suppose I wasn't seeing them where they lived, was I?"

"I'd tell you my family wasn't normal, but that's not really helpful. 'Normal' is one of those insidious myths that gets bandied about to make people feel bad about how they choose to live their lives even though they're not hurting anyone. 'Normal' can go shit in its hat for all I care. You get more of it in the magical community because it's so very, very small. A village where everyone's got their nose in everyone else's business."

He nods. "That's about right, yes. I ran away from home when I was, oh, going on sixteen, after that ham-fisted attempt at controlling me. I swear my mother was more concerned about what the rest of magical society would think."

"And horrified at the thought you'd talk to outsiders about what went on at home?"

"It's like you were there." A sudden worried look. "You weren't, were you? I mean, you're sort of a spirit and able to step outside time?"

I can't help but laugh. "No. Personal experience, remember? There might be that lit'ry line about unhappy families all being unhappy in their own way, but there are some remarkably common elements. When it comes to the past, though, I've seen remarkably little outside the moment Harry became an orphan."

He sits bolt upright, he clearly Has Questions.

I hold up a hand to stop him. "It's difficult to tell you anything meaningful you won't get from someone who examined the scene. Things are very different on the spirit side of things, hard to put into words. They died well, and bravely, and made their deaths mean something for Harry's survival. And for his welfare, if Dumbledore hadn't meddled. Or meddled too little, rather. I dare say the Dursleys might have coped a lot better if he'd actually managed the situation as he ought to have."

He deflates a bit. "I loved them, you know. I was hoping they might have had some … I don't know, message?"

I catch myself on a moment. It would be so very, very easy to tell him a pretty lie. Wouldn't do any harm. Thing is, I'm exercising a lot more self control and self-examination than I usually do, what with trying to keep the magical defences out of my brain, and while there's something to be said tactically for building a further point of rapport that way, ethically I should be more careful. "Not as such, no," I tell him. "I interacted with Lily briefly, she was at the centre of the magic she was working and so I was drawn there specifically. But there's a bit of James's legacy that lives on, I've seen myself reading it in several possible futures. And there's a quote from it that I think might reassure you about where I think the limits are in looking out for Harry and building a decent world for him to grow up in."

"Oh?"

"I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

With that, I have my man. Oh, he's rough around the edges. Not just from Azkaban, either. Raised by racists in an abusive home? That leaves marks, as I can personally attest. He's impulsive, troubled, has a deal of growing up to do in some ways and is aged beyond his years in others. But, above all, wants to see the world that hurt him change and for Harry to have a long and happy life. Yeah, we're going to get on just fine, and spend the next couple of hours making plans. I'll tell Harry and Dudley he's coming, and we'll have a big introduction with party food and fun activities at the coming weekend. And - best part - he agrees to be my spotter for getting my wand-work and apparation squared away.

Mischief Managed.

NOTES:

Dudley turning out to have an aptitude for maths and science despite a reading difficulty? Just like a chap I went to school with. Spent a lot of time in the slow kid class until they figured out he was dyslexic - this was in the days when assessments weren't routine, and the assistive stuff was in its infancy - and ended up, when last I heard, doing R&D in pharmaceuticals.

Robert Boyle you should have at least heard about in school when they taught you about Boyle's Law. In our history, one of the last alchemists, and probably the first chemist in the modern sense.

Manor Lordships are a real thing: 'Manor' didn't originally mean 'big house' as the modern usage has it, they were tracts of land capable of being economically self-supporting, granted in return for feudal services, usually but not always of a military character. (The Manor House was the residence of the landowner, though not every manor had such a dwelling and it usually isn't called Something Manor.) As the law developed from 1066 onward, the 'dignity' of the lordship was held to be separate from the land that gave rise to it and could be sold separately at least from the 1925 reforms onward. (The change was entirely accidental, arising from a fluke in the wording of the Act that created the modern Land Registry) A small number still survive (and there are firms that will research and resurrect defunct ones, using legal doctrines that I'm not personally sure hold water) and can be bought. I've gone with Hangleton purely for economy's sake: don't want to add a new location.

As for why? Apart from the Statute of Secrecy loophole - which I wholly invented, but it's the kind of thing that happened all the time in old legislation - I understand you have to have Lordships in Harry Potter fanfiction, even though it's directly stated in the books that there are no titles of nobility in the wizarding world. So I had Mal buy one.

Bottom Laithe and Lingy Pits are real places, just nowhere near where I've situated Hangleton. (Gisburn Forest and at the foot of Fiendsdale, both places I've been hiking in the last few weeks.) You want picturesque place names? We got 'em.

Football formations: 4-4-2 is your classic four defenders, four midfielders, two forwards formation. The swirling mob of small boy football has everyone trying to get goals with a few kids hanging back out of sheer common sense, hence 2-2-6.

Vernon and Mal are quoting from Kipling's "The Islanders" although I suspect Vernon would be outraged if someone explained what it was actually about.

Blackpool Pier - there are actually three piers, and I spent a lot of time on them as a kid, the grandparents I got sent to stay with a lot lived there - isn't quite a death sentence if you're chucked off it, but those waters drown two or three people a year (usually drunks: Blackpool in season is kind of a party town, for 'puking drunk' values of 'party') just by accident.

The story about the Italian security guard is just as it was told to me, and confirmed by my sister-in-law. I'm told he even had the same haircut and beard. I've done it this way mostly as a crack at how vague most descriptions of people actually are, in stories and witness statements alike. (It's for this reason that Identification Evidence is one of the more vexed bits of the Law of Evidence).

Mal's mental health problems are patterned after, but not identical, to my own. Please, if you recognise anything of your own life in what is depicted here and you aren't getting help, seriously consider it. The chances of it improving matters for you are honestly quite good, these days.

Sirius accidentally quotes one of the funnier bits from The League of Gentlemen. A personal favourite of mine, not just because I was - like the writers - brought up in the north of England not far from the real town it's based on.

Finally, from the disclaimer: Harry, Neville, Snape, Sirius, Dudley for certain. Quite possibly Draco and Hermione into the bargain: posturing bullies and pushy over-achievers seldom come from happy homes. Luna comes off as probably neglected (well meaning, but Xeno doesn't strike one as the most present of parents). Much has been said about Molly Weasley's parenting - the kind of woman who's great with kids other than her own. And we're expected to believe Ariana Dumbledore went Obscurial from one single incident when she was raised by a man whose reaction to that incident was torture and murder of all involved? Okay, the last one is giving Rita Skeeter's reporting more credence (geddit?) than it deserves, but still. That's a lot of abusive homes in the magical world.

Fanfic recommendation: Sympathetic Properties by Mr Norrell, only on FFN as far as I know, which dives deep into a very entertaining imagining of the interactions between wizards, goblins and alchemists arising from one very small, simple change in Harry's response to the Dobby incident. And has the most entertainingly lunatical Dumbledore I've yet seen in fanfiction.