Disclaimer: Chances are if you missed the disclaimer in the first chapter, you’re skimming this fic and probably missing more of the story than you think.
Chapter Three
Storm Wall
Harry sat cross-legged on the polished wooden floors of the smallest bedroom of Number 4, Privet Drive.
Dawn had made her entrance in a wash of red – a blazing splash of colour that had slowly faded to the pale dove grey of the summer storms. A light wind blew through the open window, tangling the curtains and tugging on Harry’s clothes. He breathed deep and smiled. Mornings to him had always been special.
On his trip through Diagon Alley yesterday, Harry stopped by Gringotts in hopes of finding some way to make money. He’d received a rather interesting series of documents concerning his godfather’s finances instead.
For one, under Ministry Law, suspects could only be held for a maximum of six months without trial. Once that time has expired, suspects must either be released or summoned to trial if there was sufficient evidence against them.
Not only was Sirius convicted without trial, but the Ministry had also refused his request for Veritaserum. Understandable, for the truth potion could be overcome; but it was a rare thing. Maybe one out of one hundred people could resist the potent serum. But they hadn’t even tested Sirius to see if he was part of that atypical one percent.
And second, the Ministry had sent paperwork to freeze Sirius’ assets and seize his liquefied possessions. As it were, Gringotts could only freeze the assets of convicted criminals, and Sirius had never been officially found guilty of any crimes. The Ministry had been trying for years to confiscate the resources of imprisoned Death Eaters, which included Sirius whom they were holding illegally.
Harry chuckled and began sorting through the mountain of paperwork. It’d been awhile since he’d done things the legal way, but he just couldn’t resist retaliation when someone was stupid enough to bring their own rope to a hanging.
The Ministry would not know what hit them.
Shorner stared at the crisp letter unfolded on the desk next to the heavy tome with the cracked leather bindings. The letter was simple, a single sentence writ on a crisp sheet of fawn-coloured parchment.
Perhaps this will help.
A part of him wanted to call in the people from Curse and Poison Control and hand this over to them fast as humanly possible. But the chances of a package making it this far into the Ministry without being vetted by several experienced potions makers and curse breakers was slim to none. And other than its mysterious appearance on his desk, there wasn’t a hint of magic on the letter or book. The letter had been writ by hand, not magic and the book was a dime a dozen copy from a printing press – probably a cheap Knockturn Alley knockoff by the way the ink had bled and run over the title page.
Sharr, read the title page in a hard black typeface, Seventh House of the Lords of Magic. The detailed crest under the name displayed a rearing thestral on a full moon backdrop with an overlay of a crossed dagger and wand under a violet rose in bloom. The banner underneath read: IN VITA EST NEX.
This was the sort of thing the wizarding world occasionally checked over their shoulders for. The paranoia pertaining to the Sharr family was justified in its extremity. Over the years, the line had produced many powerful witches and wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, mages – several of whom were very, very dark. These were people who had gone so far off the deep end they might as well be sailing through the black, uncharted waters of an abyssal trench.
‘Not dark as in evil’, Shorner reminded himself, ‘but rather, dark as in questionable sanity dark.’
The madness so prevalent in the Sharr line was usually attributed to intermarriage with a variety of dark creatures; Old World Families were well noted for marrying outside of acceptable circles. Say what you would about pureblood dogma: Sometimes breeding would out and appeasing all of the hungers running through their blood had driven more than one Sharr Lord or Lady off the edge. Families like the Malfoys, Notts – having only been around since the early Middle Ages – disdained the practice of interspecies marriage. The only madness that could be attributed to them was the product of inbreeding and incest.
It was a shame that many of the Old World families had died out, mostly due to infighting.
Shorner turned the page. A large, twelve-pointed star was spread across the middle of two pages, its edges not quite meeting up due to the cheaply made bindings.
The twelve-pointed star was the symbol of the Twelve Houses of the Lords of Magic, which was the actual title of the Old World Families. The Families were divided in half – six Light and six Dark as represented by the star. Six points of the overlapping triangles gleamed in the gold and crystalline white of the Light Families and six in the silver and matte black of the Dark Families. And at each of the points rested a name printed in the same heavy typeface as the rest of the book, a quick artist’s sketch of the house crest in black and white.
He thumbed through to the back of the tome where the more recent history would be written. Some of the names he raised an eyebrow at. Venus Slytherin 1846 – 1891 who, granted, wasn’t the Heir of Slytherin, but she was fascinating nonetheless. She’d married Carracus Sharr, and they’d had a son named Timonzel Sharr, who had been the one to go through the Veil the first time in 1898. He’d married a vampire, by the name of Lady Mir A’dayr who produced an heir named Devon Sharr. Interestingly enough, the son of Devon Sharr was Artimis Sharr 1914 – 1962, the man more commonly known as Lord Grindelwald.
Lord Grindelwald had been known for two things: his madness and his wife – a dark veela by the name of Bree Verall who, before her death, had been one of the most beautiful women of the magical world.
The term “dark veela” was a complete misnomer. There was no such thing. Oh sure, they were stunningly beautiful and had a psychic “allure” somewhat similar to veela.
But what the wizarding world termed “dark veela” was actually a breed of Unseelie. Morrigans, who ate the flesh of the living and the dead; they were the Children of Cailleach Bheur, born of Winter’s bosom. Mother Shipton, the famous prophetess of the sixteenth century, had reportedly cackled with laughter when asked about Morrigans and replied, “Woe to you who tangle with Maledicte’s Get. The most comely faces hide the most hideous monsters.”
Maledicte’s Get – cursed born – was a good term for them. Morrigans were dangerous business best left to history and legend. The Fae, both Seelie and Unseelie, involved themselves less and less in the mortal world as science took hold, but there were still those amongst the wizarding world who were wary of fey affairs.
Shorner began tracing names through the muddle of information again.
Artimis Sharr and Bree Verall had two children, both of whom were girls. The oldest, Alissé Petunia Sharr was nine years older than Lily Aideen Sharr, and she seemed to have suffered a debilitating disease in early childhood. Alissé’s name disappeared after one last mention of her sister being born in 1960.
He could think of only two reasons why a child of the Sharr would vanish so readily: death or disfigurement from disease.
During the late 1950s, a type of magical cholera had swept across Western Europe. The disease had fed on the magic of the person, and most of the early cases had been lost. Those that had lived were left as little more than Muggles – even squibs had more magic in their bodies than those few survivors. There was a very good chance that Alissé was still alive – alive and bitter for what she’d lost, if someone hadn’t been merciful enough to obliviate the memory of magic from her.
In the margin of the book, written next to the name of Lily Aideen Sharr in the same handwriting as the letter, was the name Hadrian James Sharr.
Nothing else, just a random name inked into the book.
Irritation and no small amount of alarm rippled through Shorner.
Who had left the letter? And what did they want him to find?
Shorner hated having his strings pulled by other people and this, on top of the Veil rising from its dormancy, left a chill along the skin of his spine.
The timing was too convenient, but the most disconcerting part in all of this?
Only David North and himself knew anything about the Veil going active.
And Shorner didn’t believe in coincidence.
A sudden flash of insight hit Shorner, and he found himself running through the busy bullpen towards the dusty rooms where the birth records were kept. Lily Aideen Sharr had been born in 1960; not many magical female children had been born that year – of course! That was why he had remembered it! The beauty of bureaucracy was that they recorded everything.
Dust swirled in the air as he pushed open the tall doors to the Archives. Magic couldn’t be used in here without setting off a myriad of alarms so Shorner stifled a sneeze and looped the collar of his robes up over his nose.
The birth records were kept in cedar filing cabinets lining the back rows. Shorner strode through the tall rows of bookcases to the back of the room, the dusty picture windows throwing grey motes of light over the Archive floor.
None of the cabinets within reach were marked for the year he was looking for. Shorner grabbed the sliding ladder and dragged it over to the drawers marked for the 1950s. Twenty feet up, he finally spotted the correct cabinet.
Perching precariously on the teetering ladder, Shorner yanked open the filing cabinet drawer with 1960 written across the placard, almost pulling it off the magically oiled glides in his haste. In the back was a thin file labelled Sharr, Lily Aideen. Shorner opened the folder to the single page that was in there. Sharr, Lily Aideen, it read at the top. Female: Born – 30 January 1960. Died – 31 October 1981; Parents: Artimis Sharr & Bree Verall; Weight (at birth): 5 pounds, 6 ounces; Surviving family: Hadrian James Sharr, son.
1981.
The thirty-first of October in nineteen eighty-one – what was so significant about that date? And there was nothing else written in the folder; no blood work, no accidental magic – nothing.
A piece of the puzzle clunked into place.
Dread, it was dread that made his fingers shake. It was dread that made his heart race. And it was dread that made him climb down the ladder towards the filing cabinets marked Muggleborns that sat under the windows. Shorner opened the drawer to the births of 1960; there were only three files marked for the birth date of 30 January 1960, and two of those were boys. He pulled out the folder marked Evans, Lily Anne.
Flipping it open, Shorner placed the two folders side by side on top of the cabinets. Evans, Lily Anne. Female: Born – 30 January 1960. Died – 31 October 1981. Parents: Unknown, adopted on 23 December 1963 by Morgan & Elizabeth Evans; Married to James Nicholas Potter 21 April 1979; Surviving Family: Petunia Evans, sister; Harry James Potter, son.
They were almost exactly the same. Shorner began to laugh. ‘Who am I kidding? They’re the same person!’
He calmly tucked the folders under his arm and closed the filing cabinet, a quick series of runes written across the backs of the folders negating the alarms and tracking charms that would go off the moment he removed them from the Archives. He slipped back through the maze of the DoM to his office, the world around him muffled and distant like he was walking underwater.
His office door closed behind him. Dropping the files onto his desk next to the letter, Shorner collapsed in his chair before his feet could go out from under him.
Hadrian James Sharr / Harry James PotterShorner was in over his head and sinking fast.
The rubbish bin next to Harry’s makeshift desk was quite full by now, overflowing with balled up pieces of paper. He had spent most of his morning and a good part of the rainy afternoon drafting and re-drafting a Petition for Redress from the Ministry. There was no doubt in Harry’s mind that Sirius’ appeal was going to fuck up in as many ways as possible. It was one of Murphy’s Laws: what can go wrong, will go wrong and will do so in the worst way imaginable.
It was getting dark now. The Dursleys had left about an hour ago to drop Dudley off at a friend’s house and to go out for dinner and a movie. They had obviously not invited Harry and had they not been quite so frightened of him, they probably would have locked him in the cupboard under the stairs.
Petunia hadn’t mentioned the incident in the kitchen since it happened. Nothing on the mess or him pointing a gun at her or him using magic on Dudley. But there was something new in the way she looked at him now, a wariness that hadn’t been there before. She was someone who was used to dominating the household, and he had brushed aside Petunia’s authority over her own little fiefdom the same way one would brush aside an errant crumb on the tabletop.
He half expected the police to come knocking on the door any day now.
Harry reached for a blank sheet of paper, accidentally knocking a pile of parchments over with his elbow.
“Shit,” he said as he scrambled pick up the papers. A loud clunk echoed from somewhere below him and it had nothing to do with the feathery hiss of drifting paper. Harry froze and spread his senses outwards; the Dursleys were not due to be back for another three hours. There was somebody magical in the house, somebody magical who was definitely not supposed to be there.
Harry reached over to the mattress where his Beretta lay from when he had been cleaning it, gun oil smeared onto the sheets. He picked up the weapon and loaded a magazine in it as he padded barefoot towards the door.
Now that he was in the hallway, Harry couldn’t believe that he hadn’t sensed this person sooner; the taste and feel of magic was so strong that even an ordinary Muggle would know something was off.
Harry prowled downstairs, sticking to the shadows as he went. The person was in the kitchen, whoever it was. He slipped through the doorway of the living room into the darkened kitchen. The metallic click of the safety being flicked off echoed through the black space. “I want to know who you are and what you are doing here.”
It was her perfume he smelled first: thick, sweet and inescapably wild, like orchids and vetiver and velvet night skies.
“Oh, it is not myself that you should be concerned with at the moment.”
The cultured voice that answered was rich, suggestive and most definitely feminine. Not taking his eyes or his gun off the figure’s now faint outline, Harry reached out and flipped the light switch.
Poets and tyrants alike loved describing a woman’s beauty. From the likes of Byron to the Song of Solomon, odes were written to the curve of her breasts, the arch of her neck, and the sway of her hips. Wars and blood feuds the same were often started over a woman whose visage made man lose all sense and reason.
Harry was of the opinion that it was women, not men, who ran the world, and everyone else were just lapdogs to their whims.
In the stark, utilitarian brightness of the Dursley’s kitchen sat a woman who could give even Fleur Delacour and her veela kin some serious competition.
She lounged idly on the kitchen table; the line of one slim, long leg crossed over the other drew his eye to where her pale skin met the charcoal grey of her skirt mid-thigh. The fluorescent glow of the kitchen light should have washed out her features. It didn’t.
Fine jewel-tones of deep blue, green and amethyst glimmered where the light glinted off her snowy hair. White hair – not white-blonde like the Malfoys or the silvering of old age – but white like fresh snow, white like perfection, a white that made him think of things like avenging angels. She smiled, and lips the colour of mulberries curled into a smirk that smacked of satisfaction. Even a cat would be hard-pressed to match the sheer hedonistic pleasure of a slow smile like that. Oblique green eyes flickered blue-white and back again as she looked him over in return.
Jaw-droppingly beautiful would not come close to describing her.
She wore her snow-white hair tied back in a shining knot at the nape of her neck, long hair spilling over her shoulder. A fitted button-down in a shade of blackberry and heeled oxford boots completed the ensemble. Opals gleamed at her throat and ears in shifting hues of crimson, sapphire and violet. She looked like the CEO of a powerful international company. Well, either that or the matron of a criminal empire. He wasn’t that good judge of character.
But he did wish he was meeting her something other than ripped jeans and a t-shirt that had seen better days.
“And just what is it that I should be concerned with cause it’s not every day I have someone break into my house looking like a seriously expensive hooker.”
She raised a white eyebrow and gave him a rather condescending smile. “You were much more polite when I last met you.”
Harry laughed. “I may have been knocked on the head a few times in the past, but believe me sweetheart, I’d know if I’d met you.”
She didn’t bother to hide her amusement. “Stubborn. I usually appreciate it in a man,” she replied, wrapping her mouth around the words in a very distracting way.
There was no trace of a smile on Harry’s face now. “I do so hate to disappoint,” he said, his light tone at odds with steadiness of the weapon he held in her direction. “I take it quite personally you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” she drawled. She sounded like she was playing with him. She probably was. Her eyes flickered over the gun. Harry didn’t like how easily she dismissed the weapon. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what it was intended for like a lot of the wizarding world, it that she wasn’t bothered at all. Few had power enough to laugh off bullets. Chances were the Berretta wouldn’t work too well against her anyway.
Harry sighed and flicked the safety back on before tucking the gun into the back of his jeans. “Alright, I give up. What do you want?”
“You should be more concerned, Harry. This is your life we’re talking about.”
Crossing his arms, he leaned against the counter and chuckled. “Oh Gawd, please tell me this isn’t another one of those ‘join me or die’ moments. ‘Cause I gotta tell you – I’ve had more than enough to last a lifetime.”
“You died.” She said it like she was describing the weather. Bland. Factual.
Wind rushed in his ears.
“White light. Team dead. The murmur of dark water in your ears – you were supposed to be dead, too.”
His blood hummed in his veins, violent and hungry. He gripped the counter to keep from hurling himself at her.
“But you woke up here instead. And now your world has gone topsy-turvy, and you are floundering in the wake of madness,” she murmured, mulberry lips wrapping sensuously around the words that kept chipping cracks in his psyche.
“Who are you?” The words emerged low and harsh, like the sound of cars travelling over gravel.
Her lips quirked into a smile. “You owe me.”
He snarled, and his vision flared red. “I owe you? I don’t even know who you are!”
She cut him off. “You have a debt to me. I’m calling it in.”
“The fuck you are!”
“Hold. Your. Tongue.”
He did.
Silence turned the space between then into a mile long expanse of no-man’s land. Behind that fair, exquisite face was ice and steel, something so utterly inhuman that it had forgotten what mortality was like. She was old, ancient more like; he wondered how he could have missed this. And how long ago it was that she became something else, something that could imitate humanity, but wasn’t. Wasn’t even close. The notion that this strange woman was not fabricating what she said occurred to Harry. He began to wonder if he had the whole story; there was that blank spot in his memory between detonating the bombs and waking up in his younger body. It bothered him, more so than he wanted to admit to.
She bothered him. Very few people managed to do that.
Something about this didn’t ring quite right, and a twinge of unease started in his gut. This woman with her beautiful face was very, very dangerous. He was in way over his head. He knew it. She knew it. And she was more than a little pleased with the status quo.
She smiled, slow and cruel and extraordinarily beautiful. “I’m not the kind of woman who gambles lightly. I’m not placing bets if I don’t know I’m going to win. But you,” she tilted her head and Harry watched as her pupils changed into cold, inhuman slits. “I’m willing to place a wager on you.”
Harry struggled to unstick his jaw. “Such confidence,” he croaked. “You do know my track record isn’t so hot.”
Her lips peeled back into what should have been a smile. It wasn’t. Any signs of humanity had long been discarded. “I like to think you have a bigger incentive to succeed this time.”
She brought to mind a phrase Moody had taught him: Never ever forget that there will always be someone bigger, better and stronger than you.
The temperature in the kitchen was cold enough to freeze his breath. “Incentive? What’s this thing called incentive you speak of?” He grinned. “You don’t think I had enough before?”
“Do you know what would have happened after your death?”
That stopped all of Harry’s cognitive functions. “What?”
“The world didn’t end with you, Harry. That’s a very selfish thing to think.” On a lesser being it would have been a petty taunt. On her it was just a rather malicious way of telling the truth. “Your friends lose hope, and your little resistance group is picked off one by one. Your faction falls.
“Voldemort has won, and he is greedy. Europe is next. The Americas are next. And they are fighting against too many enemies with too few allies. They fall as well. Russia, Italy, Africa. Everyone falls. The world is conquered. Your enemies celebrate their victory.
“A year goes by, and supplies are running low. They begin to fight amongst themselves for what little is left in the world. The ravaged planet is destroyed beyond repair, and they hoard what little they can find, killing each other so they can preserve their meagre supplies. Twenty years later, there is nobody left; wizards, inadaptable and selfish, have killed off the very thing they need to survive – Muggles. And with the release of so much magic, the world tears itself asunder and is cast into darkness.”
There was a small stillness at the end of her words. Like the earth itself stopped to listen to her presage its last laboured breaths.
A bruised knot of tension pulled tight inside his chest. Harry laughed. He laughed because that was the only thing he could think of doing. There was a hysterical edge in his laughter that made him wonder if he hadn’t already plunged over the lines dividing sanity from madness. His breath petered out, and he wiped at the tears trailing from his eyes, marvelling at how empty he felt.
Harry stared at his bare feet peeking out of the ragged hemline of his jeans. “Who are you?” he said finally, looking back at her green, feline eyes.
She watched him, a primordial being from far before the concept of time, someone old and powerful even when his own race still used tools of stone and claw. “I am Mab,” she murmured. “Queen of Air and Darkness. Monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe. Ruler of the Unseelie.”