Helios’s Awakening 01

Index

>>

Helios’s Awakening

Part the First—
I’ve got peace and I’ve got love, but I’m up at night thinking I might lose it all.
—“Beautiful Things,” Benson Boone

There was a knock on the door.

He only heard it because he had stayed up late reading one of his text books, One Hundred Magical Fungi and Where to Find Them.  He had discovered, quite by accident, that if he blew on the tips of his third and fourth left hand fingers, they would light up as if he were casting a Lumos Spell.  It was a little difficult holding his hand up to light the pages, balancing his book on his knees, but he got on by just the same.

He was pretty certain he had heard a knock.

Getting up out of bed, he blew on his fingers and extinguished the light.  He looked out the window and peered down into the street below.

The street lamp at the end of Privet Drive was lighted, but he could only see shadows.

The knock sounded again.

It was definitely for Number Four.

Uncertain what to do, he dithered a bit, but then opened the door to his room and peeked out into the hallway.  It seemed like the Dursleys had already gone to bed.  Should he answer the door?

Stepping out past his bedroom door, he tiptoed down the stairs and looked back up toward the sleeping rooms.

It must be well past two in the morning.

Who would be knocking on the door now?  Could it be a wizard?  Could someone be knocking on the door for him?

It certainly couldn’t be one of Aunt Petunia’s friends or someone from Uncle Vernon’s work.

He waited, but no one knocked again.

Perhaps they had gone away?

Carefully, he eased the door open and peaked out.  A figure in a black cloak was standing in the doorway, her face hidden, and he wondered who it might be.  It was definitely a witch.

“Hello?” he asked.

She took in a deep breath and sighed.

“There you are.”  She seemed almost relieved, as if she half expected him not to be there.  Where else would he be?

He just waited.

The witch was unusually tall, coming almost up to his full height.  Her messy dark curls fell out of her hood over her shoulders, and her shoulders seemed slim.  She lifted up her head as if to get a better look at him, but he still couldn’t see her face.

“It’s nearly safe now,” she said, confusing him even more.  “May I come in?”

“Er—”  he looked behind him.

The house still seemed to be asleep, which seemed a little—unusual given the commotion downstairs even though they were keeping their voices down.

“Right.  Sure.”

She wasn’t holding a wand to him.  She seemed to be safe—unless she meant to be luring him into a false sense of security.

Carefully he held open the door for the witch, and she moved past him into the hallway and, when he indicated the way, into the living room.  She looked about her and waved her wand, taking it out from the folds of her cloak, the room lighting up with magic.  She turned to him and finally took down her hood.

He startled.

He was looking into a face so like his own it was almost unnerving.

“You can see who I am,” the witch told him, putting away her wand and taking a seat.

He just stared at her.  “You’re—”  He swallowed.  “Are you a Potter?”

She laughed.  It seemed a little strangled.  “No, not a Potter,” she confessed.  “I was born a Black.”  She looked up at him.  “Sirius arranged it all for me.”

He looked at her, recognizing his godfather’s name, and took a hesitant seat.

“Sirius?  Sirius Black?”

“Yes, Sirius.  He’s my cousin.  You know he’s your godfather, of course—”

“Yes,” he agreed, remembering the man who was skin and bones.  He had escaped from Azkaban just two years before and was now on the run.  He had the same wild and messy hair that he himself had but he had assumed that was because it was unwashed and because he was living life as an animagus.  He probably didn’t even remember what a comb was.  However, looking at this witch—this Black—she looked just like Sirius—just like him—how was this possible?

“I’m your mother,” the witch explained, taking a deep breath.  “It wasn’t safe for me to keep you, so Sirius arranged for his best friend to take you—just until it was safe.  We didn’t realize how dangerous it would be.”  She bowed her head.  “We didn’t realize the Dark Lord would go after you even there.  I—I didn’t realize it would take—years.”  She whispered the last word as if it were a confession.

“But James Potter—Lily—”

“Your guardians,” the witch confirmed, looking at him with the same blue-grey eyes he had.  

His eyes always looked a startling green in photographs, everyone said they were green, but when he looked in the mirror, he always saw a blue-grey.  

“They were good people.”  She took a deep breath.  “The Dark Lord is—his strength has weakened.  It’s now no longer safe for you to be Harry Potter.  We think it’s safer for you to come home.  It’s not over but it will end soon.  You have my word on that, darling.”

“Wasn’t he gone—before?  I know Dumbledore said he wasn’t—” he explained hesitantly.  He thought back to first year when Dumbledore said that Quirrel was working for Voldemort—but he had seen no evidence.  “Hasn’t he always—hasn’t he?”

“What does Dumbledore know?” the witch asked, scoffing.  She seemed to try to pull herself together and smiled.  “We now know the Dark Lord is considerably weakened.  We confirmed it only last week.  My cousin Regulus was a great help in securing this defeat.  But, of course, you don’t know of our cousin Regulus.  Why should you?” 

She looked at him lovingly.

No one had ever looked at him that way before.  It startled him.  He blinked and looked at the witch more closely.  She really did have the same blue-grey eyes he had.

“Who are you?” he asked, puzzled.

She laughed.  “Of course, you don’t know.”  She blinked once and took a deep breath.  “I’m Andromeda.  Andromeda Tonks.—and you’re my son, Helios Black.”

This was not as startling as it should have been to him.  On the curve of his spine, in what appeared to be black ink, was a tattoo that had always been there.  At first it had only been a line, which Aunt Petunia had tried to wash off, but by about the age of seven it had formed into words.  Helios Perseus Black.  Toujours Pur.  When he had gotten his Hogwarts letter, he had half expected it to come to Helios Black.  That was his name, wasn’t it?  But the wizard world insisted he was Harry Potter, when the brand on his back determined he was someone quite different.

And this which, Andromeda Tonks, was telling him he was, in fact, Helios Black.

He must have visibly shaken because she reached out and quieted him.

“I know this is a lot to take in.  I know you’ve lived your life as ‘Harry Potter.’  I never understood why Lily gave you the nickname ‘Harry.’  So terribly plebian.”  She shook her head, her mass of wild hair sashaying around her elegant face.  It was clear she didn’t approve of the name ‘Harry.’  Helios, after all these years, wasn’t entirely certain he approved of it either.  “I have so much to tell you, darling.”  She carefully took his hand in hers.

Andromeda’s hand was so small.

“Why,” Helios licked his lips, “Why is your name ‘Tonks’ and you say I’m a ‘Black’?”  It didn’t make much sense to Helios.  Didn’t parents and children usually share the same surname?  Had Andromeda gotten remarried since Helios was born?  But wait, didn’t she say she was born a Black?  How was this all possible?

Andromeda looked slightly uncomfortable. “How to explain this?  The Blacks are blood purists.  Our House words are toujours pur.  That’s French for ‘always pure.’” 

Yes, Helios was aware of that.  He’d researched that when he was still in primary. 

Andromeda took a deep breath.  “I married a Muggleborn.  Ted Tonks.  I was disinherited.  We had a daughter, your sister.  Your half-sister.”  She looked into his eyes carefully.  “I decided, just before you were born, that I had made a horrible mistake.  I—I—”  She breathed in again.  “I had you.  Ted Tonks is not your father.  We’re separated now.  Divorce is quite impossible in the magical world.  It doesn’t exist.  Since you’re my son—and not his—you carry my name, Black.  Since I’m still married, I’m still Madam Tonks.  It is quite the conundrum, darling.”

Helios’s head was spinning.  One thing he did grasp onto, however.  “Who’s my dad?”  If it wasn’t Ted Tonks, it had to be someone else.  “Is it James Potter?”

Looking even more uncomfortable, Andromeda glanced away.  “No.  No, James is just Sirius’s close friend.  He was someone Sirius trusted to care for you.”  She paused.  “Your father is someone very eminent.  You’re pure of blood, my darling, that I promise you.”  She looked back into his eyes with a blue-grey gaze.  “I see so much of him in you.”

Strange.  Helios saw so much of himself in Andromeda.  If people thought he was an exact copy of James Potter, they were blind.  He was an exact copy of Andromeda Tonks, down to her pureblood cheekbones and arch nose.

Helios must have been silent for too long because Andromeda looked worried. 

“How do you feel?”

“That explains the tattoo.”  That was certainly true.  This was also a chance not to be ‘the Harry Potter,’ anymore, if he thought about it for a long moment.  No one would think him a coward any longer—hopefully.  It had all gone sideways since his name had come out of the Goblet of Fire.

“But you do believe me?” she checked.  “I have proof, back home.  Not just the brand on your skin.  It’s back at Grimmauld Place.”

“Yes, I believe you,” Helios agreed carefully.  “We have the same eyes.”

She looked confused for a moment.  Then, with a small ‘oh’ she took out her wand and waved it.  “That’s better,” she said.  “I put your eyes under a glamour when you were still a baby to make you look a little more like Lily.  You looked nothing like her.  I didn’t want questions to be asked.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment.  “It takes strong magic to see through a glamor.”

Helios shrugged.  “I’ve always been able to see my eyes.  I had to be told they were green.”  He paused.  “I have a sister?”

“Nymphadora.”

Helios stared.  That was practically worse than Helios and he’d had years to get used to that.

Andromeda seemed to understand his reaction.  “Nymphy hates her name.  She’ll have you call her ‘Tonks.’  She’s an Auror now.  She just qualified.”  Pride colored her voice.  “She took her father’s side in the separation, of course.  You may not get to meet her for some time yet.”

“Oh.”  Helios wasn’t sure what to say.  “Have you come to take me away?”

The light came back into Andromeda’s eyes.  “Yes.  I know it’s late, but everything is prepared.”  She reached into her robes and took out a letter written on parchment.  “I have it all explained here for Mrs. Dursley.  If you can pack your things, we can be off.  I have the house under a sleeping charm.”

That explained why no one had woken up during the conversation.  They weren’t being loud, but there was movement in the house.  Helios thought the Dursleys a little more self conscious than sleeping through an entire visit from a witch.  They were, after all, paranoid of everything magical.

“Where are we going?” Helios asked as he walked back toward the stairs, Andromeda following him. 

“Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place,” she told him.  “It’s Sirius’s childhood home.  Regulus, whom I mentioned, lives there.  He said we could use it.  My flat was too small.” 

Once again, the name Regulus meant nothing to him.  It must be some relation.  Sirius.  Regulus. Andromeda.  Nymphadora.  These were all Latin names and clearly purebloods.  They were all, it seemed, Blacks.

Helios took the stairs two at a time and led Andromeda to his room.  He quickly began dumping his books and clothes into his trunk, no rhyme or reason to his packing.  Andromeda took out her wand and pointed it at a pile of clothes, which then began to fold itself.  With her help, they were easily done in less than ten minutes.

Hedwig’s cage was empty, and Helios popped his head out the window, scanning the skies for her.

“Your owl will find you,” Andromeda promised, picking up his broom and laying it on top of his trunk.  “Owls always do.”  The cage went next, easily fitting into the bottom, clearly helped along a bit with the help of Andromeda’s wand.

“She’s not just any owl,” Helios told her.

Andromeda smiled.  “I’m sure she’s not,” she reassured him.  “I had a cat like that once.  Smartest creature you ever saw.  I swear he was as sentient as any wizard.”  She chuckled to herself, her face alight with amusement.  “I always keep a cat.  Hope you don’t mind.”

“My friend Hermione has a cat.”  Not that she was his friend anymore.  She had taken Ron’s side in the Goblet of Fire argument earlier that school year.  Then she had dated Viktor Krum, not that he really minded that.  If she wanted to go mad for a Quidditch star, he wasn’t going to stop her.  It was just mildly amusing that she dropped Ron as quickly as she had dropped him.

“Then you’re used to them,” Andromeda put in, interrupting his thoughts.  “Good.”

She minimized the trunk and carried it under her arm.  “Put your cloak on.  It may be summer, but there’s still a stiff wind and we have to walk to a safe enough point for Apparition.”

Helios had never heard of Apparition, but he put on his wizarding cloak that he’d purchased a year before, a deep burgundy, and followed Andromeda out of the room.  She had left the letter for Aunt Petunia on his pillow (after making his bed with magic) and they exited Number Four together.  Andromeda closed the door to his room, which made Helios think it would be a good week before Aunt Petunia found the letter.  It was not like they were going to check on him.  If he didn’t show his face, they would think ‘good riddance.’  Maybe it would be until September before they noticed he hadn’t gone back to Hogwarts.  Wouldn’t that be a laugh?

No one to notice Helios was missing except for a mother who had left him with strangers for fifteen years.  How sad his life had become, not that he was the self pitying sort, at least he liked to think so.

“I hope you weren’t too fond of it here,” Andromeda asked carefully as they shut the front door behind them.  “This was Dumbledore’s choice for you.  I had no say in it.  I would have put you somewhere else, though where I’m not exactly certain.”

“No.  No love lost here,” Helios promised. 

Andromeda looked at him from underneath her hood and nodded.  She led him down the street and down toward the park, but they bypassed it and went into a little wilderness that Helios never had reason to explore.

When they were in the thicket, Andromeda turned to him and looked up into his blue-grey eye and smiled at him softly.  “This is going to be strange.”

“How strange?”

But she didn’t explain any further.  Instead, she reached out and it felt like Helios was being pushed into a tube and pulled out from the other side.  He slammed into the pavement somewhere quite different from where he started and leaned over and vomited out his entire dinner.

“There we go,” Andromeda soothed, rubbing circles on his back.  “It can be startling the first time around.”

“What was that?” Helios gasped, glad he hadn’t thrown up over his shoes.

“Apparition,” Andromeda told him again, but that didn’t tell Helios anything more than what she had already said.  “We were in Little Whinging, and now we’re in London.—Come.” 

Helios took a moment to center himself and then followed Andromeda out past some houses and down a cul de sac and several dingy looking terraces.  They came up to one that looked particularly grey, and Andromeda led them up to the door and put her hand on the doorknob and it opened with a click.  “Black blood lets you in,” she explained.  “It will always open for you.”

Helios went in, looking around, and saw that the house was even darker on the inside than the outside, if that was even possible.

“Kreacher!” Andromeda called and a house elf, gnarled and ugly, appeared with a distasteful look in his eyes.

“Mistress Dromeda,” he wheezed, taking her cloak.  “I ams so glads you bes home.”

“This is your new master,” Andromeda explained.  “My son, Helios.  You’ll recognize him from the tapestry.”

Kreacher looked up approvingly at Helios with tennis ball eyes and nodded, taking his cloak and placing it over his arm.  Helios noticed that there was an umbrella stand made out of what appeared to be a troll’s foot.  It was rather disquieting. 

“Good to have littles master,” Kreacher was explaining.  “Master Reggs is in Tapestry room.”

Andromeda nodded and put Helios’s trunk down.  “Come, Helios,” she beckoned, saying Helios’s wizard name for only the second time.  It was strange hearing it.  He still wasn’t used to it.  How did ‘Harry’ come from ‘Helios’?  It beggared the imagination.

“You know, just ‘Harry’ is fine,” he tried to explain as he followed her up to a landing which had several house elf heads mounted on the wall.  They looked positively ghastly. 

Andromeda looked over her shoulder at him indulgently.  “I named you ‘Helios.’  I’m not going to call you anything else.  All Blacks are named for the heavens.”

“Are they?” Helios wondered aloud as they walked into a dank drawing room that had a fire roaring in the grate. 

“Andromeda is not just a Greek princess, she’s a constellation,” Andromeda explained to him as they came to an open door, which she led him through.

A wizard in grey robes was sitting in an armchair, reading a small book that fit between his thumb and pointer finger easily, a cup of tea on an end table beside him.  He looked a great deal like Sirius, with long black hair, grey eyes, sharp cheek bones, and an arch nose.

He looked almost identical to Andromeda—and to Helios.

“Ah,” Andromeda greeted as she came in.  “Regulus.  The brightest star in the constellation Leo,” she added for Helios’s benefit.

The wizard—Regulus—looked up and smiled.  “Andromeda.  I had quite despaired you wouldn’t be here by breakfast.”

“It took me some time to locate the house,” she apologized, coming up to Regulus, taking his hands, and kissing his cheek in a familial fashion.  “Cousin,” she said, turning to Helios, “this is my son, Helios.  Darling, my favorite cousin, Regulus Black.  He’s been tracking down the Dark Lord since before you were born.”

Helios wasn’t entirely certain what to do or say.

Regulus seemed to know for him.  He came up to Helios, grasped him by the shoulders, and kissed his cheek.  “So wonderful to have you back in the fold,” he greeted.  “Any son of my cousin’s is welcome here.”

“Er—thank you.”

“Now, you must be tired,” Regulus suggested, “but you’ll be wanting proof.  I daresay this is all a bit confusing.”

It was, but the evidence of Andromeda Tonks’s face—of Regulus Black’s face—was damning. 

If Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had been lying about magic Helios’s entire life, they could have been lying about James and Lily being his parents.  If they didn’t know, then his entire life could have been a lie.  If there was some definitive proof—other than the strange brand on his back—“Do you have a birth certificate?”

“I have one better,” Andromeda promised, walking to the far wall to a dingy looking tapestry.  “This is the Black family tapestry.”

Helios glanced at Regulus and walked over.

Andromeda pointed to a scorch mark.  “This is your godfather Sirius.  You see Regulus beside him.”  There was a stitched face of the man standing in the room, the name Regulus beneath it, the years 1962 underneath it, showing the year of his birth.  Two lines shot up from it and the scorched mark to Orion and Walburga, their parents.  It seemed the husband and wife were cousins.  Andromeda traced the line of Walburga to her younger siblings Alphard, childless, and Cygnus, who had three daughters.  A scorch mark, Bellatrix, and Narcissa.

“That’s Draco Malfoy!” Helios exclaimed.

“Yes,” Andromeda agreed carefully.  “He’s your cousin.  Cissy wrote and said he was in your year.”  She tapped Narcissa’s name again and brought her finger over to the scorch mark.  She then traced two lines down.  One was to Nymphadora, in light grey, no portrait, and then one to him, Helios Perseus, his portrait stitched in vibrant colors, his blue-grey eyes shining out of the tapestry.  His lightning bolt scar was even on his forehead.

“It’s the old magic, you see,” Andromeda explained.  “You’re a Black and a pureblood so you appear on the tapestry.  Nymphadora is a Tonks and a half-blood, so she’s just a shadow.”

Helios hummed.  He leaned down and squinted to look at the stitched portrait of Draco Malfoy.  It got the grey of his eyes exactly and the pointedness of his chin.  “It must be magic,” he concluded.  He stood up.  “It doesn’t list my father.”

“As I said, your father and I aren’t married.  It doesn’t recognize him.”  Andromeda admitted this carefully, not looking at Helios.  “Magic is a strange thing.”

“Very strange,” Regulus agreed.  “She can’t even speak his name.”

Helios’s eyes widened and he turned back to Andromeda.  “You can’t even tell me?”

“No,” she admitted carefully.  “I wouldn’t even be able to tell him, even if I wanted to.”  Her eyes turned back to the tapestry.  Her mood shifted, “You’re having tea with Narcissa’s son tomorrow.”

Helios was shocked.  “Malfoy?  But he’s horrible.”  He also had a white neck that arched out of his starched collar, which made Helios uncomfortable.

“I don’t care,” she stated sternly.  “The Triwizard Tournament was an absolute disaster.  It was lucky I was able to prove to Mr. Crouch I was your mother otherwise I never would have gotten you out.”

Helios stared at her.  His name had come out of the Goblet as the fourth champion and it seemed like he would have been forced to compete, but two days later it had been announced that the contract was not magically binding as he had not had his guardian’s permission.  He had been released with little ceremony and with only a small byline in The Daily Prophet.  Viktor Krum had won the Tournament, sweeping Hermione into a kiss when he had come out of the maze with the Triwizard Cup, and Helios had never been so glad not to have everyone’s eyes on him for the first time in his life.

So what if everyone, including Ron, thought he was a coward?

“Malfoy thinks I’m a coward,” he told Andromeda carefully.  “All of England thinks I’m a coward.”

Regulus looked up.  “I did read something in The Prophet when I was working on the Dark Lord problem.  Still a problem, mind you, but a much more manageable one.”

Andromeda regarded Helios carefully and motioned him toward a recently reupholstered couch.  “I know differently.  I explained it all to Narcissa last Christmas.  She should have explained it to Draco.  Surely you noticed a change in his behavior last term.”

Helios thought about it.  Perhaps Malfoy had been a little less aggressive after Winter hols, but that’s about the time that everyone just began to ignore him.  He shrugged.  “Does it make a difference?”

“It makes a difference,” Regulus promised him.  “Draco’s mother is a Black.  Your mother is a Black.  You’re family.  Your parchments will be drawn up within the week and there will be no more of this ‘Potter’ nonsense.”

“We must get your vision corrected,” Andromeda mused, looking at him critically.  “I wonder how it got so bad.”

Helios supposed it had something to do with straining his eyes in a dark cupboard, but he wouldn’t mention that.  Andromeda didn’t need to know.  It was over now.

“It’s near sunrise,” Regulus remarked, turning from his book and looking out the window.  “Helios’s Awakening.”

Helios looked at him oddly.

“That’s what the Ancient Greeks called it,” Regulus explained.  “We better get some breakfast in you and let you sleep before Draco comes over in a couple of hours.  I understand he has a surprise for you.”

“Yes,” Andromeda agreed.  “A wonderful surprise.  Narcissa told me you play Quidditch?”

Helios nodded.

Andromeda’s eyes gleamed.  “It wouldn’t do to ruin it.”

And with that, they all got up and walked to the kitchen, where Kreacher had prepared for them a pot of tea, toast, fig jam, and prosciutto.  Helios had never had a breakfast that good.  When the sun had fully come up, Kreacher showed him to a room done up in silvers and peaches, his trunk at the end of the bed, and Helios collapsed. 

A vision correcting potion was given to him just before he went to sleep.

When he slept, he dreamed of lost mothers, and thought that none of it could be real…