Chapter 351: Chapter 351: The Black Sanction
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29 March 1995, Black Manor
Arcturus Black sat in his office, drinking a very old bottle of Firewhiskey, and reminisced at the remains of his legacy. He couldn't help but wonder why everything had to go to shit without so much of a head's up. His entire legacy was now made up of Narcissa and her brat of a son, and Andromeda's estranged family which wanted nothing to do with the Black legacy.
He had observed the remnants of his family very carefully for years. The Malfoy brat was a disappointment enough, and Andromeda's daughter, while showing a lot of promise due to her nature as a Metamorphmagus, was out of reach due to her mother's refusal to even meet. He was proud that his granddaughter had done well for herself despite being forced to fend on her own after his foolish son banished her, but he didn't want the spite she held for the Black name to affect his heir.
At the end of the day, he resigned himself to the fact that his family name would fade away. Perhaps his crest would end up being unlocked to one of his descendants one day, and he hoped that people would still remember the Black name by then. He decided to just retire and wait for Death to take him to see his beloved Melania. At least, he did until he met Harry Potter.
It was nothing more than a passing curiosity at first, but it had been the kick in the arse he needed to finally start to hope once more. He thought he had stricken gold with the boy. A descendant of his sister, with enough potential to spearhead the family name into the annals of history, immortalize the House of Black and return it to his rightful place in history.
He was quickly disillusioned with Dumbledore and was understandably wary of being used. It took some patience, and it worked. He supported the boy, became his guardian, and he didn't disappoint. He rebuilt his family fortune from scratch; his Gringotts vault probably had more gold than it held for at least a century. He had done this in a single year.
However, this had a bit of a side effect in the fact that he started to care once more about the world around him. The inevitable war between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, like every other Champion of the Light and Dark, would be disastrous. It would be on a scale that even the Great War would look like a small battle. The signs were there. The vampires started to become active once more, on a scale unseen since the Great War, ever since Grindelwald was active and the Goblins started to increase their fees and fortified every branch of their bank. Normally, he would have left things as they were, finding no reason to leave his manor. He was old, too old to really care, too old to fight in any meaningful way. He had gotten rusty, and so had his friends.
Still, with a possible heir on the horizon, he wanted to make sure he would survive the fighting. He gathered the old guard, his old team that fought Grindelwald's forces, and told them the situation, which led to a small militarization of most of Europe. He made connections, an entire web of information gathering from all over the world. Italy was especially profitable after Harry tricked the Black Widow into giving him half of her properties. Arcturus used the tournament as a cover to build small spy networks in every country he visited. He used considerable resources to make that happen in such a short term, but it worked. He had achieved what he could until the Third Task happened, until Voldemort returned, and Harry Potter disappeared into thin air.
Arcturus found himself without an heir, without his main motivation of even preparing for the war, and with a fucking war happening on his own doorstep. Apparently, the werewolves got an upgrade somehow, some woman called the Red Witch came out of nowhere to resist the wannabe Dark Lord, but she did that by massacring half the Wizengamot in their homes.
He had to return home and saw an entire country in chaos, the dementors having defected, and the mages being nothing more than spectators waiting to weather the storm.
No matter what he expected, Arcturus could see no way out of this. The Wizengamot was useless, almost entirely scared to submission, and the ministry had refused to deploy its Aurors to keep the peace. Shops all over Britain were closed and Diagon Alley was barely more than a ghost town with only Gringotts being opened. The entire country had gone to shit, and an economic collapse was imminent.
He couldn't exactly keep making connections in the continent while half of his properties were burning to the ground, and he spent the previous few months doing some damage control, saving whatever investments could be in danger while leaving Sebastien Delacour to continue their purpose later. It was going well too on that front. They had been able to identify dozens of Vampire nests from all over the continent and they had planned a lot of coordinated attacks to eliminate them before the inevitable fighting started.
The plan was simple, to get as many followers as possible and turn the war into a single battle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. No wizard was going to follow Dumbledore into a war, not without an ideology to follow. In the Great War, they had done so just to resist Grindelwald's forces, and people followed Grindelwald after decades of speeches and propaganda.
So far, the advantage they held was Dumbledore and Grindelwald's secrecy. Harry told him that they were working together, that they weren't planning on fighting, and that might be the case. There was obviously a large game at play. However, the Black Patriarch knew better. After whatever plan came through, Grindelwald and Dumbledore would inevitably have their battle, as every champion of Light and Dark did. It was in their nature to fight after all.
Hopefully one of them would die giving them an opportunity to take the other by surprise. It had happened before, most of the time due to betrayal or sheer luck, but that was the only hope they had. It was better to turn the war into a single battle between two Archmages. An entire army against a wounded Champion was the best they could hope for, given the circumstances. It was literally the only path to victory, and even that was pretty flimsy and relied on a lot of optimism that things would go their way. Arcturus had hoped that Harry would have been the one to do it himself since he obviously could hold his own better than an entire army of Aurors and Hit-Wizards.
All in all, things weren't going well. His preparations in Britain were in ruin, the country was about to collapse. Harry Potter was gone, probably dead. For the hundred's time, he wished that the boy had unlocked the Black crest instead. It would have immediately made him part of the Black family tapestry, and that would have cleared any doubts in the matter. The boy would have likely appeared when his son would have inevitably unlocked the crest. It tracked the lineage of every holder of the crest, and unfortunately, Harry Potter wasn't one of them.
Arcturus spent considerable resources trying to find any trace of the boy and found nothing. The Greengrass girl had said something about a secret room in Durmstrang, but all he could find was a destroyed area with traces of some weird corrosive magic. The Hit-Wizards he had hired were freaked out by it, especially since it destabilized most of the spells they cast. After months of searching and thousands of Galleons wasted on Diviners and trackers, he had very little hope that his heir was still alive, and with that realization, the small spark of ambition he held left was quickly fading away as well. There was no reason to fight when he had no legacy left anyway.
Arcturus took another sip of Firewhiskey, the burn reminding him that at least he could still feel something. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes drifting to the old family crest above the fireplace. The Black name, so proud and unshakable once, now seemed like a relic of a bygone era—a shadow of its former power. There was a time when the Black family name commanded fear and respect, but that time had long since passed. It died with Sirius and Regulus, due to his son's foolishness. He should have known that Orion wasn't ready. He should have eased him into becoming a competent Patriarch. He shouldered a large portion of the blame for his family's circumstances and he accepted that long ago.
The weight of his own failure bore down on him as he thought about the ghosts of his ancestors. The entire thing, the war, the subterfuge, it was all a failure. Merlin, the boy. Harry Potter was a bright young man, and he failed him. He promised to guard the boy, his sister's blood, and yet, he was gone. He missed him dearly, far more than he liked to admit. The boy's sharp wit endeared him, and things were never boring with him around. He probably should have tried to reign him in, to give him small boundaries for his own protection. The boy would have resented him, of course, but it was better than him being dead.
He took another sip and groaned, "Oh, Melania, if only you were here… You'd have known how to handle the boy. You could have stopped this."
A soft voice spoke up from the other side of the office, "Arcturus."
Arcturus, even with his reflexes dulled by his old age, cast a blood-boiling curse at the voice in a fraction of a second, only for his curse to fade into nothing, "Well, that's a vicious way to greet me back."
The Black Patriarch finally recognized the voice, and the person he had just attacked, and froze. It was the familiar form of a teenager, "When was the first time we met?"
"It was in the summer before my second year. You sat next to me in the Leaky Cauldron and asked me to be your heir. I ended up asking you for books about Basilisks."
"Harry?"
He looked far better than Arcturus would have expected to be, well he expected him to be dead, but the boy looked rested and well-dressed. The boy's green eyes crinkled in amusement, and he spoke up, "In the flesh. I guess you could say that tales of my demise were greatly exaggerated. I always wanted to say that."
"Where have you been? What happened?" Arcturus asked quickly.
"There was a magical accident back in Durmstrang, I was trapped somewhere. I just got back yesterday. It's a long story, believe me. How have things been on your end? I heard that Britain is become quite the shitshow."
"You don't know the half of it. The country is most likely to collapse soon, and I don't even think the ICW is going to touch us with a ten-foot pole until the fighting stops. Even then, Magical Britain will be beholden to them, completely."
The boy nodded gravely, "Yeah, I could gather that. I didn't think could get so bad even without Dumbledore's involvement."
"So, what are you planning?"
"Nothing. I'm in as much of a bind as you are. I could theoretically kill the Red Witch, but then Voldemort would be able to do as he pleases which isn't exactly ideal, and I can't kill Voldemort without first killing Longbottom and even then, I'd be breaking a prophecy, and I already experienced how that would happen."
Arcturus knew the boy enough to discern that he was hiding something, "You're not telling me everything."
The boy took a deep sigh, "I'm tired, Arcturus. I really am. Ever since I came to the magical world, it's been one crisis after another, without me even getting to take a breather. I want to stay hidden for a little while, and enjoy my life for a while before getting back into the fray. Interfering in Britain would raise the spotlight once more. Even Dumbledore and Grindelwald still think that I'm dead."
"People will die," the Black Patriarch commented.
"Probably, but it's not my problem. A government shouldn't need a teenager to fix its messes."
"Alright," Arcturus agreed.
"What?" the teenager agreed looking confused.
"Alright, I won't push you to interfere in the conflict in Britain. I'm not an idiot, Harry, I'm just surprised by your switch in priorities. A few months back, you would have jumped at the opportunity to fight them."
"I'm not a hero."
The boy sounded strangely resolute when he said that and Arcturus answered, "You are, and believe me, it's not something I like. Heroes have a tendency to die young after all. You might deny it, but you have always prioritized saving people. You have sacrificed many things for other people's safety and that makes you a hero. I never cared for that; I wanted you to be great, to make your mark in history, and I suppose heroism on a road to greatness. However, if you need a break, then I'm more than happy to help you in that regard."
For some reason, the boy's expression soured before straightening back, "That's good because I need a favour."
"What do you need?"
"I need Nymphadora Tonks' location."
Arcturus was about to ask him what he could ever want with his great-granddaughter, only for a loud bang to echo across the manor. He barely had time to yell, "Something is wrong with the wards," before he was swept off his feet slightly by the impact.
Black Manor stood with a gigantic hole on its side, and a man floated in. Calling him a man wouldn't have been exact. He certainly looked humanoid, but his serpentine face and red eyes showed the thing's true nature. Lord Voldemort had come for Arcturus Black.
The chill from the hundreds of dementors surrounding them started to settle all over the manor, and Voldemort spoke up, "Arcturus Black, you're a hard man to find. Your wards were very impressive. They could have stopped anyone from coming here. Well, almost anyone. You'll find that there is very little that could protect you from the likes of me, especially when I'm motivated."
An unfamiliar voice spoke up, one that made him freeze in his tracks, "Don't kid yourself. You had the dementors slowly freeze the wards dry to make a small weak point towards the ward's anchor, which you blasted easily. Not many people know that they can also absorb magic."
Where Harry Potter stood just minutes prior, a strangely familiar face, one that slipped Arcturus' mind, stared back at Voldemort. It was still that of a teenager, a bit older than Harry himself, with hazel eyes, black hair, and sharp features. He wouldn't have looked out of place in a Wizengamot meeting.
The boy stared unflinchingly as the madman's red eyes glowed further in confusion and fury, "You! How can you be here?"
The boy who was pretending to be his dead grandson for some reason spoke up, "Hello, Voldemort. If it's all the same to you, I'd like my body back."
That was when Arcturus realized that the disguise that Harry Potter had taken was that of Tom Riddle, essentially Voldemort himself. He had no idea what the boy was planning, but at least it would prove to be interesting.
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AN: Thank you all for your well wishes, I finally feel a bit better after that weirdly persistent cold. Anyway, I hope that this chapter will make up for the lack of action in the previous one a bit. I wasn't sure about adding the confrontation with Voldemort this early, but I decided to just go for it and put a little twist to make it more interesting. I hope this chapter came out like I wanted it to, and I don't mind rewriting it if you don't like it. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.
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