章 47: C047 - Sad beginnings to a birthday
"Really, Talion? I pay for a room for you in Hogsmeade, and I still have to pick you up at a holding cell in the ministry?"
I scowled at my mentor, Professor Flitwick, who looked at me in annoyance and some relief as I was led to the main office of the DMLE by a recent Hogwarts graduate who was an auror-in-training like Nymphadora Tonks.
But nobody could have been more annoyed at this whole situation than me.
After all the aurors at the inn finished their 'investigation on scene', one of the aurors who was red in my Eagle Vision insisted that they had to take me in overnight because they needed the statements of all four attackers before they could determine that I acted in self-defense. The comatose innkeeper downstairs and my destroyed door apparently hadn't been a dead giveaway.
Head Auror Scrimgeour was reluctant but still agreed. His workday should have long been over by that point and he just wanted the situation to be dealt with. The paperwork for me having to stay the night in a holding cell could wait for the next day and cutting me loose then and there would have been more annoying since I'd leave the country the following day and wasn't available for questioning or something along those lines.
So I was taken to the ministry, and they handled me like a common criminal as those aurors antagonistic to me volunteered to process me and confiscated my wand and searched all of my belongings against my will once Scrimgeour left for other business or to go home or whatever.
The height of their arrogance and audacity came when the food and drink they tried to give me in the cell was actually potioned. Something I found out by looking at the tray with Eagle Vision that declared the contents of the tray 'magic items', which was not even the case for the food prepared by the elves in Hogwarts since I started checking for that. I was naturally suspicious.
I alerted one of the aurors that wasn't orange or red in my ocular ability of that fact when they passed my cell during their patrol, and since they knew I had some kind of relationship with their boss' boss, Amelia Bones, they took my complaint seriously and checked the food.
It wasn't a lethal poison but a potion that would dull my mind and make me sleepy. A common 'antidote' for magical exhaustion that many of the aurors had in stock and that resulted in a deep, peaceful and rejuvinating sleep after a long day at work. So a knockout potion of sorts.
Investigations into how that could happen were obviously still pending, but Amelia reassured me first thing in the morning that they would find out how that happened, even if I couldn't explain how I learned that the food was dosed without my wand.
I didn't hold my breath for them to find the culprit or what they planned to do to me should I have slept even a wink while in the cell.
And I also noticed just how cold Amelia had been to me after previously even going as far as inviting me over for New Year's Eve. She didn't even get me out my cell and left me there.
Apparently my stunt with Lord Black cooled her enthusiasm behind building a relationship with me... which I must admit stung a little. In her mind, I could only have been a cunning or rather resourceful orphan who tried to not get swept under the rug of society by any means necessary. But if that was how she wanted to deal with the only son of her late good friend, my mother, so be it.
By this point, I was thoroughly disillusioned of any notion of justice in Magical Britain, even if I was just a kid who got dealt a bad hand by being put into a position where I constantly had to fear for my safety and no adult authority figure to fully trust except for Filius Flitwick. Though, even my mentor I chose to only trust partly. Because for all his teachings and all his valuable life lessons and favors... his indignant blustering after I was tortured, cut, and burned in school led to no arrests and no real consequences that I didn't personally inflict on my attackers.
Everything came back to money, status, politics, and power. The righteous had no place in this society and nobody cared because the common people lived in blissful, peaceful ignorance since the awful things happened only to a few behind closed doors. Crying foul when these few unlucky people got the short end of the magical stick would be too late, but if nothing happened to them personally, the rest of the ignorant magicals would never know.
But I could live with that.
I survived a coordinated attack of four trained wizards. Sure, I was warned beforehand and had ample time to prepare myself. But my Eagle Vision and its ability to show me my enemies, even hidden ones, combined with my now justified paranoia would give me a leg up for any future confrontation.
Unless they somehow came at me through the courts and tempered with or otherwise planted evidence to frame me in order to throw me into Azkaban, I was certain that I could slowly but surely kill my way through these miscreants.
The more they attacked me, the more they plotted against me and used these petty schemes, the more I was itching to start what my Assassin Brotherhood's training was telling me to do: become a sheppard to society and cull the sick animals lest they infect the entire herd.
I've seen the Italian Brotherhood do it pretty convincingly during countless dreams for most of my school year.
"How much have they told you? Has Patrick filled you in?" I asked as I reached the Hogwarts charms professor and was finally handed my wand from the trainee auror standing next to him. Another recent graduate and Ravenclaw alumni.
One I technically should have had a decent relationship with, because he was one of the students on 'DADA rotation'. Ever since Halloween, following Quirrell's death, the first to fourth year students were mostly told to do self-study during DADA lessons. Most of the time prefects would keep the students in line and answer a few questions that popped up. Other times students like the auror-to-be looking at me with a wry smile would teach the younger students the spells we should have learned from a professor to varying degrees of success.
It was a good thing that Flitwick taught me dueling and I didn't need to rely on getting taught combat spells by the underqualified and unenthusiastic N.E.W.T. students.
Other than me, only the O.W.L. students and above got the luxury of getting a few lessons by the headmaster and whatever other professor had time to spare this past school year.
Since I was so far ahead of everyone, most of the time I joined those N.E.W.T. students on 'DADA rotation' in teaching my peers the first year curriculum spells and even helped out second years, mostly Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. Which earned me heaps of house points once it became known, especially from Professor Sprout who had nothing but unending praise for my diligence and approachability.
Since nobody else had the skill, the decency, or the aptitude to teach the same way I did, it came as no surprise that those countless points resulted in Ravenclaw winning the House Cup with a convincing 90-point lead in the end.
I ignored them, of course, but Slytherins in general and Ron Weasley and Michael Corner from Gryffindor in particular didn't like that one bit.
"They told me most things, I presume. There were no blatant omissions compared to what your elf told me," Flitwick answered me as he gave the auror standing next to him a look in clear suspicion. The young man had been a Ravenclaw student until literally yesterday, so he squirmed almost desperately under Flitwick's glare. I had to assume that thanks to his lineage and appearance that Flitwick was no stranger to getting the... short end when dealing with people, those in power in particular.
Awkwardly, the man coughed and handed over my extended pouch, shoes, and cloak and looked even more embarrassed when I started dropping all of the pouch's contents on an empty table next to us while Flitwick took out his wand while giving the trainee auror a pointed look as my mentor joined me in checking my stuff for spells without question.
But fuck them all. If they try to potion me inside a holding cell, I sure as shit won't trust that they don't curse one of my belongings or steal something from among the random assortment of items I carried.
When everything came back in order after I silently checked all of it in encruciating and minute detail, with none of the items looking cursed in my Eagle Vision and Flitwick confirming that he didn't find anything either with his own detection spells, I walked away with my professor without thanking the auror when I finished packing everything.
Sure, that auror wasn't involved with what happened to me since his outline in my vision was a neutral white, but before I got an official apology from the department, they can all suck an egg, even Amelia.
"Did Patrick give you my go-bag for our travels?" I asked after Flitwick and I reached the elevators. We were going to the ministry's atrium with the public floo fireplaces.
Next to it was an office of the International Portkey Authority that would allow us to travel to Italy instantly with an official portkey. The two of us would have come here through the public floo had I slept in Hogsmeade.
"He indeed has. He is a meticulous and hardworking elf," Flitwick explained before looking at me. "You were questioned without a guardian or solicitor present?"
I scoffed before shaking my head and answering, "Of course I was. I bested four grown wizards that were out to get me. Do you think they would wait for due process since I'm a nobody orphan grandson of an alleged Death Eater that nobody at the ministry liked?"
"You're getting a tutor in Wizarding Law next year, I won't hear any objections," Flitwick idly commented as he looked back forward instead of looking into my eyes. "You need to understand your rights better if you want to stay ahead of your enemies. Playing by their rules was stupid. Even if the truth was in your favor. Watch all of them, even the illegal animagus, walk free on a technicality before we get back from Italy despite your official statements."
"Should I have asked for a lawyer? Advocated for charges to be brought against them?" I asked with furrowed brows. Getting a dedicated law tutor was actually a pretty decent idea. This wouldn't be my last run-in with the law if my first year in the wizarding world taught me anything.
"We'll talk about it when we are outside of these halls. I contacted one my acquaintances to follow the proceedings for your attackers and filed anything you could have done differently before they took you out of the holding cell. Waiting here for the powers that be to do something in the name of justice won't do us any favors. You have a tournament to win," Flitwick commented with a neutral mask on his face that gave away nothing.
He was more angry than annoyed now, I felt it clearly despite seeing his indifferent expression. But thankfully, he wasn't angry at me.
-----
It was Harry's and I's birthday at the last day of July and I was back in England. Diagon Alley, more specifically.
I won the under 18 tournament bracket by an absolute landslide and became a minor celebrity for the weeks following the finals because of my convincing display that left no doubts about my prowess. I had been to Diagon Alley rather openly a few times since then and Magicals kept stopping me to praise me for winning some glory for Magical Britain. I even had a Rita Skeeter interview I had to suffer through that resulted in a pretty long article that actually painted me in an okay light despite me not engaging the Gossip Empress of Magical Britain much.
At least she didn't find out that it was me who gave her all the juicy scoops that she had been working on recently and since she didn't do me dirty, I wouldn't have to let her know either.
The duels in Italy had honestly been completely boring until the finals where I faced a seventeen year old Bulgarian witch built like an Amazon warrior goddess who actually managed to put up quite a fight. Everybody else focused way too much on fancy spellwork and complex spells and was outdone by me just by the virtue of their atrocious physical conditioning. It came as no surprise to me that pretty much all of them were pampered and obnoxious purebloods who were put in that tournament by the virtue of... money.
In the end, I won most fights by deflecting one spell, sidestepping the second and then aiming a stunner at their legs after closing some distance since their footwork was complete garbage and nobody had the reflexes to dodge a point-blank spell aimed at their lower body.
I wasn't allowed to attend the 18 to 21 bracket or the regular dueling circuit afterwards, but I honestly would have liked my chances to win the former and reach the top 16 if I hadn't met the four semi-finalists early on in the tournament for the latter. Flitwick either overprepared me massively, or everybody else just sucked real hard, and they all had terrible trainers who weren't allowed to teach those pureblood flowers that attended anything too strenuous.
Or, well, my Isu-bloodline enhanced physique buffed by goblin-created body strengthening elixirs was like a cheat code for honorable magical 1-on-1 combat, and I had actually decent talent.
As I sat all alone in Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour with my purchases for the second school year in my extended pouch, I waited for my Hogwarts roommate Harry. We had a sort of birthday date planned where we wanted to treat each other to ice cream as an early lunch since neither of us had any positive memories for our birthdays.
But it seemed like I waited in vain as the shop slowly filled up in the early afternoon. I had already eaten two cups of ice cream after waiting for several hours so that owner wouldn't kick me out and pondered why Harry hadn't come.
Before the second school year in canon, Dobby tried his absolute damnest to stop Harry from attending Hogwarts to protect him from Lucius Malfoy's plan - which was getting a Horcrux into the school and opening the Chamber of Secrets. Not that I thought Lucius actually knew that that would happen and what the diary of the dark lord even was.
But would that still happen in this world? Through a letter from Lord Black I received while still in Italy for the tournament, I learned that Sirius was no longer in St Mungo's and instead was back in Grimmauld Place to finish his treatment, and Harry was in regular contact with his godfather the moment the school year ended. Surely, canon wouldn't apply here, and Dobby should not succeed in isolating the boy-who-lived.
Especially since Harry had seven loyal house elves, and it was impossible for a single Dobby to outsmart all seven of them for a whole month, let alone all summer.
"Oh thank Merlin, you're still here," a voice I was all too familiar with breathed out in relief as I was thinking about my second school year and what changes I could expect from the original timeline.
Looking to the side with my Eagle Vision active, I saw a golden outline in the form of Harry, like always, and a rather large dog in glowing, deep green light beside him.
This Harry was not an impostor, and that dog was clearly Sirius in his animagus form. Yeah, my paranoia increased since the latest attack.
"Harry, happy birthday," I greeted as I gave Harry a small nod before I looked at Sirius and whispered, "Good day, Lord Black."
The dog, with an all-too-human expression, looked at me in disbelief as Harry commented in a quiet voice meant for just the three of us, "Told you nothing gets past him. Talion's weirdly obsessed with the animagus spell."
I gained a sheepish grin as I took Harry's arm and walked us over to the counter to order more ice cream. Florean and his hired help, a Hufflepuff fourth year I couldn't quite find the name of, looked at me and the owner shook his head with a wry smile before he took our order.
Once Harry and I were seated in my booth once more with Sirius sitting beside Harry to eat the ice cream Harry ordered for him while still in dog form, Harry explained, "We've been out and about twice since I met Sirius. People go absolutely bonkers when they see him. It's worse than them seeing me, honestly. One kid even started sobbing uncontrollably when Sirius smiled at him. He was around eleven. It was mental..."
"No need to explain. I'd run around in my animagus form nonstop as well, if I had one," I waved away and enjoyed a third flavor for the day. "Got any presents from the girls?"
Harry blushed a little as the dog next to him grinned like a mad man, or rather mad dog, as my roommate admitted, "Yeah. Lisa, Sue, Hermione, Cho, and Susan from Hufflepuff all gave me really, uh... thoughtful... gifts at Neville's birthday party yesterday when the clock hit midnight. I didn't get anything via owl-mail yet... but I never do outside of Hogwarts, I suspect..."
Ignoring that Dumbledore very likely restricted Harry's access to mail outside what the headmaster could check himself when his boy-savior wasn't at his school, I latched onto the fact that I wasn't invited to Neville's party.
I thought the Hufflepuff herbologist prodigy and I had been good enough friends after spending a year going to two extracurricular activities together and having a common friend in Harry to maybe hear about it, but apparently, I misjudged our budding friendship.
That rare magical Italian cactus that grew at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea that I sent him for his birthday yesterday that I bought while in Rome was really wasted as a gift for Longbottom. He even invited Cho Chang instead of me, not that I knew the circumstances of that invitation, the relationship between the Longbottoms and the Changs or the guestlist of the party in the first place. I knew for sure that I could count on one hand the times that I saw Neville and Cho do more than nod in greeting this entire school year when I saw them in the same room.
Taking another spoonful of magical tomato-basil ice cream since I was done with the sweet stuff for today after waiting for so long, I eventually took a deep breath and decided to tease Harry just like his godfather apparently did instead of whining about it. Harry wasn't the one who didn't invite me, Neville was.
"So you got gifts from like a dozen witches? I get Lisa, but the others brought gifts to the party of another boy? Did Neville advertise your attendance?"
Sirius' grin became even more pronounced as he regarded his godson and started laughing under his breath.
"I... Lisa planned it all. They all took turns k-kissing me," Harry revealed as his head turned completely red.
Huh. Now, I started to get angry about not being there for real. What an event to miss!
"And they made fun of me for joking about wanting a harem," I idly commented with a small shake of my head.
"It's not like that!" Harry hissed but got even more embarrassed because it came out way too loud. He looked at Sirius, who was now openly snickering in his dog form and corrected with gritted teeth, "It's more complicated than that, okay??"
"Uh, what?" I asked in disbelief. Why didn't Harry stop at 'it's not like that'? "What the hell did Lisa do? Do I need to get a new room next year so that you can house all your girlfriends?"
Sirius almost fell over from laughing as Harry angrily ate the ice cream in front of him and ignored both his godfather and me.
'What the shit did I miss?' I thought in incomprehension. 'And why is Harry angry at us for it???'
Slowly finishing my ice cream as we sat in silence except for Sirius' unending woof-like giggles that never truly stopped, I asked Harry with a sigh, "Okay, different topic. Want to talk about why you came only four hours later than agreed without informing me with the help of one of your elves, or is that an embarrassing topic, too?"
"Sorry, mate," Harry excused with a sheepish look into my eyes before his gaze turned downward into his bowl of ice cream once more. After a short silence, he more asked than stated, "It, uh, slipped my mind?"
Alright. This clearly wasn't my day. Positive birthday memories will have to wait until next year. Ugh, to think that I turned down meeting both Isobel and my aunt Bella Farley for this because the witches only offered to meet around lunch as they were otherwise busy today...
I closed my eyes and processed my emotions with the help of Occlumency as my face slowly slipped into a mask of indifference. Clearly, my friendship with Longbottom wasn't the only thing I misjudged. Or I could just accept that everything that happened with Harry was a little overwhelming to the orphaned savior who grew up in an abusive home without love.
He attended his first birthday party among dozens of friends. He apparently made out with half a dozen witches as his girlfriend watched? And, of course, he finally had family in his life thanks to me getting Sirius out of Azkaban and I could only assume he liked spending a little time with his godmother Alice Longbottom before or during the party at the Longbottom estate.
I consoled myself thinking about the gifts waiting for me at my home in Goldsborough, hopefully. I did meet Padma and her twin sister Parvati, Isobel, and Lara in Rome during the tournament. All four of them reassured me that they had suitable presents for me prepared. Penelope told me before the year ended that she wanted to do something for me, too. As a thank you, of sorts. And I would be very cross with my history of magic neighbor Mandy if she didn't think to at least write me a card either.
In any case, I already got an early birthday present from Flitwick in the form of an empty grimoire that he personally created for me as both a birthday present and a gift for winning the dueling tournament. He encouraged me to write my own spellbook since 'all great charm masters did that', and the grimoire he gave me was an absolute work of art. In an emergency, it would even work as a focus, though it would take some getting used to, Flitwick told me.
He promised to instruct me in its usage after I filled a few pages starting in the second school year.
Eventually, it seemed like Sirius noticed my growing indifference and nudged Harry as he pointed to a pocket on Harry's jacket with one of his paws.
Not looking up because he was still embarrassed and didn't seem to notice that him forgetting about our birthday arrangement made me angry at and disappointed with him, Harry threw over two letters with slightly different House Black sigil wax seals.
A letter from Sirius, and one from Arcturus was my best guess as I looked at the black dog, who gave me a small nod as his laughter stopped. He looked at me with understanding in his eyes, seemingly having noticed that Harry's words had stung.
I opened one of them under Sirius' urging and silently read a letter that Sirius had penned for me while Harry continued eating his ice cream.
'Dear Talion,
My grandfather, Lord Acturus Black, informed me in no uncertain terms that my trial and my acquittal were in large parts thanks to you. For reasons unknown to me, the old man even made me swear an oath that I would never tell a soul of your involvement and for me to inform you about said oath. He said you would know what that meant.
Be that as it may, it is with immense gratitude that I extend to you a debt of life...'
I looked up with wide eyes as I was in complete shock. A debt of life offered like this in formal text was a huge thing in the magical world. It was pretty much a carte blanche to ask for anything I wanted... The black dog opposite me gave me a solemn nod, and I continued reading the letter.
'... for your immense help. No matter how selfless or selfish, meticulously planned or entirely coincidental this help was extended, your deeds have released me from hell on earth so that I may finally fulfill the oaths I have given my best friend before his untimely death.
If there is ever anything that you need, whether it is to fight your enemies, right a wrong, teach you an obscure spell, prank the whole school of Hogwarts, help you win a girl's heart, or hide a body - know that you have made an eternal friend of Lord Sirius Orion Black and by extension, Most Ancient and Noble House Black.
With warmest regards,
Padfoot'
Well. Other than helping Harry just to help Harry, this letter, this reassurance and promise, was why I ever bothered getting Sirius out of Azkaban.
But now that I had it, I didn't know how to feel about it.
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