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 Seven
Silence of Mayhem
Things never work out the way they should or the way they were planned. It was a constant, sort of like the laws of gravity. When the shit hit the fan, gravity would eventually pull it back down.
Where it landed, now that was the interesting part.
Sirius’ overgrown claws rattled steadily against the concrete sidewalk as he trotted through Magnolia Crescent.
So this was where Harry grew-up.
How sickeningly…normal.
For all the interesting inventions the Muggles came up with, it seemed to Sirius that they occasionally suffered from a dire lack of creativity; the humdrum architecture and design of Surrey enforced that fact in his mind. He was also sure he had seen that same colour and model of car in no less than six different driveways.
Sirius desperately hoped Harry had not turned out as boring as Little Whinging, Surrey appeared to be.
He would be about thirteen now; James, at that age, had been so small. One of the shortest boys of their year really, beaten out only by a few Ravenclaws and a lone Slytherin. It had been a major point of contention for James and Sirius grinned at the memories it provoked. The clarity of his mind was not fully restored yet, but the animagus was simply grateful to be rid of the dementors’ presence. After twelve years of oppressive silence, broken only by the screaming and incoherent babbling of the other prisoners, anything was a welcome change. Sirius had started to forget what it was like to be around real people, not just old memories and dreams born of delirium.
The depression, which had been circling the point where his thoughts began to fade, dug its claws in with a sudden vengeance. ‘Sirius! Old chap, it’s good to see you,’ it chirped gleefully. ‘Thinking about James again? Guess what? At the end of your miserable day, he’s still dead. You fought with him, remember, two weeks before he was murdered. Slaughtered actually. You heard how the Aurors had a terrible time piecing him back together, didn’t you? And to think it was your fault. You, who argued so hard in favour of Peter, you didn’t forget that, did you? And how could you, when I am here to remind you. And remind you. And remind you!’
It laughed and the urge to scream rose in his throat. Maybe if he screamed loud enough, James would take away the voice. He was always so good at making things better. But the voice was right; James wasn’t here. James was dead. James was lying six feet below ground level in the Potter family cemetery. ‘Potters lie in potter’s field.’
The Grim look-alike shook his head and altered his course for the thick bushes beside a small playground; the shadowy expanse of dreamless sleep soon claimed his waking thoughts.
It was the sharp scent of ozone that woke him.
Dazed and disoriented, Sirius’ brain momentarily overloaded from the extreme sensory information. Small hairs prickled along his spine and he had to resist the urge to roll over onto his back, paws up, in the classic pose of submission.
‘Predator!’
Sirius inhaled sharply through his mouth and the taste of dark magic numbed his tongue and made his teeth ache. Fear was not something Sirius would readily admit to, but whoever – whatever this thing was that reeked of deep black power – he did not want to tangle with it. There were not many things in this world that could make him feel small and powerless and fearful. The few that could were creatures best left to nightmares and history books.
It stepped into the harsh, white glow of the streetlamps.
He was a striking young man of an indiscriminate age and despite his apparent youth, his manner told of a hard-won wisdom and maturity. Lean in his dark jeans and faded t-shirt, the youth moved with a careless, effortless grace, a hunter’s cadence to his step, shoulders thrown back, eyes sharp and alert; he carried himself like a killing machine who knew what he was capable of and was perfectly comfortable with it.
And yet, there was something else.
There was something in the youth’s feature’s that bespoke of a familiarity Sirius desperately did not want to admit.
It was in the glossy, blue-black locks and the finely carved features. It was in the milk-pale skin and the generous curve of his mouth. It was in the raven’s wing eyebrows and the wide, canted eyes in a shade of green only found on cats and killing curses.
In the boy that stank of dark magic, Sirius saw the son of Lily and James Potter for the first time in twelve years.
Harry hadn’t wandered the streets of Privet Drive and the surrounding areas since he was fifteen. It was downright eerie to look at the homes filled with people and not see the destruction he remembered.
He knew this was only a placebo for what was really troubling him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The book about House Sharr sat on his desk back at Number Four, its pages turned back to his family tree. Harry had the oddest sensation that he could still feel the upraised words on the tips of his fingers. There was no doubt of their impression into his mind. Constant movement seemed to ward off the encroaching shock.
How could someone prepare themselves for knowledge that their life, their name, was a lie? Well, not really a lie, but a hell of a lot more elaborate than previously thought. It was a silly question, because no amount of preparing could ever make one ready for having their life turned upside down twice, and counting, in less than a month.
Running a hand through his hair, Harry walked over to one of the aging picnic benches in front of the playground and lay back against the table, limbs sprawled haphazardly.
He was a scion of House Sharr, the Seventh House of the Lords of Magic. The weight of that name was staggering and it made him feel light-headed.
Which was worse, being Harry Potter or being a Sharr? He grimaced and scrubbed his face with his hands, feeling a bit raw on the inside and sure that his sense of self would be shattered come morning. The idea that he had once identified himself as “Just Harry” was laughable and more than a little ironic. His mother wasn’t Lily Evans; she was Lily Aideen Sharr, a Lady of House Sharr, a blueblood, an honest-to-God fucking aristocrat. The purebloods were pale imitations in comparison to the Twelve Families.
Had she known? Known who she was? Known that she was the daughter of one of the most infamous dark wizards of modern times? Known that the legacy of the blood running in her veins was older than the concept of time? Known that her heritage lay in deep, black magic? That her mother wasn’t a Muggle, but actually a dark veela? The last one Harry shied away from. The possibility that his wants and needs were driven by an insane need to feed off of lust, violence and blood was a little more than his mind could handle at the moment.
Harry wanted to push all of this out of his mind, out of his life. He could run, hide behind any one of his numerous aliases. It would be scarily easy to wipe himself off the face of the earth, leaving no trace of Harry Potter behind.
But knowing what he did of Mab, she would probably haul him out of whatever hole he was hiding in and set him back on course – if not with a little torture beforehand.
The Sharr name gave him a powerful alias that would lend him standing with the other Lords of Magic and a basis from which he could work with them, fulfilling his part of the bargain with Mab. There was also a pendant that he needed to find; it was something like a family ring, something that would give status to his claims to the Sharr name.
But there was no way in Hell he would let it slip that Harry Potter was also a Sharr Lord. No fucking way. Even in his mind, that particular scenario was nightmarish to the extreme.
And it was giving him a headache.
Harry sat up and pressed fingers against his temples. Fuck, if it didn’t feel like he had a meat cleaver buried in his skull.
Logic dictated he move on to the next pressing subject. How was he going to deal with those whom he knew to be Death Eaters and other allies of Riddle? He couldn’t treat them all like the necromancer; many of those people were in key places that would require much subtlety on his part to remove them from this world. Blowing shit up was fun and all, but not when you were dealing with individuals like Lucius Malfoy and his ilk. He would have to weaken their power base first, which was easier said then done.
That and he needed clean Hedwig’s cage. Birdshit got rank after two weeks in a closed up room. Said owl hooted dolefully at him from her perch in the large oak overshadowing the playground.
Harry grinned wryly. “Sorry I locked you out, girl. At least you didn’t get stuck in there.”
He felt a little stupid trying to reason with an owl, but it beat waking up in the morning with a half-regurgitated mouse sitting next him on the pillow. The snowy owl spread her impressive wingspan and swooped gracefully onto Harry’s knee.
It was odd being back, he mused as he stroked Hedwig’s feathers. And it wasn’t just the near inconceivable fact that he had travelled back in time. It was the little things, like looking over at his makeshift desk and finding his old glasses and holly wand, both items having been destroyed early on in the war. Things like his photo album and trunk of school supplies, his Gryffindor Quidditch jersey and invisibility cloak – just the simple items made him feel nostalgic. They also made him feel old, because the simple joy that once accompanied them had diminished.
With the war, Harry’s meagre belongings became even slimmer. He was sure that he could shove most of his possessions into one small bag with the use of little to no magic; the phrase ‘down to the bare essentials’ held quite a different connotation for himself than it probably did for most.
Despite the fond memories his before-the-war belongings invoked, he couldn’t help but feel weighed down by them. It was a stupid way to think, with an even more ridiculous reason behind it, but his possessions weren’t really his. They were the other Harry’s, the before-the-war Harry’s. His holly wand hadn’t worked quite as well as he remembered, hadn’t felt quite as comfortable in his hands.
Harry tipped his back and exhaled with a sigh. A light breeze caressed his skin, washing away his thoughts. There was a sort of comfort in watching Hedwig spread her wings and soar against the wind, a bright splash of white in the night sky. He could count on one hand the number of opportunities he had to simply relax and not have to think. He began to nod-off with the alleviation of his headache.
Something shifted in the bushes behind him and Harry reacted on instinct.
He found himself crouched on the ground, wand outstretched, a large hole smoking in the playground foliage, nose to nose with a trembling, Grim-like dog with pale eyes and dark fur.
Shorner eyeballed the towering stack of papers on his desk with trepidation. This would be the third such stack of papers he had received from both the Muggle and magical government of Brazil.
The Brazilian magical government had found traces of a foreign magical signature along a stretch of land once occupied by a very powerful necromancer. They were inclined to merely write it off as La Muerte having made the wrong person angry; Shorner would as well, if North’s tracking charms hadn’t said different.
Shorner was coming to regard Harry Potter as an extremely dangerous individual. He had dropped off the grid almost as soon as he’d shown up and other than a few fading traces of magic, the young sorcerer had effectively disappeared. Either he was hiding in the Muggle world or Harry Potter had access to something that could block customary magical tracking – Shorner was operating under the hunch that it was a little of both.
And now, to find out that Potter had simply waltzed into the necromancer’s compound and annihilated him…
He shuddered.
What was he trying to do? Become the next dark lord? Merlin knew he had the right kill ratio; in addition to the necromancer, there had been about thirty other wizards of varying calibres and more than one hundred Muggle soldiers within the compound. Where a tropical fortress once stood, there was nothing but ruins and a large, grisly smear on the ground they had determined to be La Muerte himself.
Add into the operating assumption that Harry Potter was also a Sharr Lord and Shorner was beginning to feel like he was holding a very potent mixture in his hands. Should he or should he not tell the Heads the danger level had increased?
He knew he should, there was no way to predict where Potter might strike again – or when for that matter.
The sudden flurry of pounding on his office door startled him from his musings. He hauled himself out his chair to find David North waiting impatiently on the other side.
“The tracking net picked up a high level shredding curse close to the original trace network,” he said, breathing heavily, dark circles waning heavy and purple under his eyes. “There’s no magical signature attached to it. It’s your man.”
The exhaustion left as adrenaline began to take its place. “Tell Crevan he has a go-ahead to scoop this bloke up. I want to question this one personally.”
The leaden sensation of anti-apparation wards going up broke the staring contest between himself and his godfather.
Fuck!
Harry reached out and grasped one bony shoulder. “Sirius, I know you have questions, but if you want to keep your mangy arse dementor-free, you’ll get yourself to Knockturn Alley and meet me at The Painted Rose. And you will do this without being seen. Do you understand me?”
The emaciated animagus seemed stunned for a moment, but he nodded as well as a dog could and slunk off into the shadows. Sirius was once well on his way to becoming an Auror; he was more than capable of taking care of himself.
Harry crept towards heavy darkness surrounding the oak tree. ‘Let’s see who are the jokers I’m dealing with now.’