Lost Boy 17

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Lost Boy

Part the Seventeenth

Harry was in the gardens with Maia, Apricot, and Regulus.  Barty couldn’t get away that day.  It had to do with his father and the Ministry.  They were running through the maze that was at the edge of the bed of flowers and casting tickling charms at each other.  It was a mock war.  Every time they were hit with a tickling curse, they would lose a point.  They each started out with five.  Whoever held out the longest, won.

Rabastan came and got Harry.  “Sorry, Mr. Potter,” he apologized as Harry still had three points left.  “The Dark Lord wishes to see you.”

“No!” Apricot protested as she cast a tickling hex toward him, but Harry feinted to the side.  “You can’t take him away!  It’s two against two.”

“My apologies, Miss Selwyn,” Rabastan responded, picking up her hand and lifting it to hover two inches beneath his lips.  “I would never do anything to purposefully vex you.”

She gave him a small smile before the sound of someone approaching caused her to rush in the other direction.

Harry fell into step with Rabastan Lestrange.  “She’s going with Barty Crouch, Jr., you know.”

“Crouch will never allow the marriage,” Rabastan replied knowledgeably.  “The Selwyns are too historically dark.  I’ll catch her when she falls.”

“You don’t think Barty will go against his father?  He has the makings of a Death Eater.”

“That boy has the makings of a spy.  He doesn’t have the spine to be anything else.”  Rabastan huffed.  “No, I just need to bide my time.”

Harry looked up at him.  Rabastan was certainly handsome and he was one of the Dark Lord’s favorites.  Barty was not in the inner circle of friends unlike Regulus and Harry.  He would not get any special dispensations.

Harry was brought to the Dark Lord’s study where Lucius and a beautiful witch with deep grey eyes, a strong jaw, brooding good looks, and black messy hair was waiting.  She had the looks of a Black.

“Ah, Hartwig,” the Dark Lord greeted.  “You know Lucius.  Are you acquainted with Madam Lestrange?”  Ah, so this was Bellatrix.  She was one of Lucius’s greatest friends, Stephagenia’s cousin, and Narcissa Black’s elder sister.  She certainly had the Black height being only an inch or so shorter than Lucius.

Harry took her hand and let it hover below his lips in a pureblood nicety before releasing it.  She smiled at him.

“I hear your mother is a Black.”

“Yes, Madam Lestrange.”

“Which Black is that?”

“That is not up for discussion,” the Dark Lord interrupted.  “Such happy discussions are for another time.  Needless to say, Hartwig was so lost that his parents cannot even be located even though they appear on a hereditary parchment, which I have seen with my own eyes.”  His ocean blue gaze brooked no objection.  “Now.  I am telling you three, and it shall not leave this room.  Stephagenia Black is divorcing her worthless excuse for her husband.  I would have her be completely free of him, so we shall be killing him in cold blood so that her vined ring will reset itself.  Hartwig, I understand you cannot even torture Muggles.”

Harry swallowed.  “Er—no.”

“Your soft heart does you credit.  You have other talents.”  His eyes shone blue.  “Can you approximate the looks of Stephagenia Black?  Her eyes, her hair, her form, her voice?”

“With a little practice.”

“Then you shall practice.  You will go as Stephagenia to reconcile with Sirius Black.  You will take your favorite cousin, Bellatrix, with you.  Bellatrix will do the deed.  Then we will bring Stephagenia to the house, stage it, and leave the Dark Mark in the sky.  Lucius will be nearby for support.”

“Is Steph aware of the plan?” Bellatrix asked carefully.

“She knows we are killing her husband, not how or when it will happen.  You have one week to prepare.  In a week’s time, we will reconvene here.  I will have robes for you, Hartwig.”  His eyes bore into Harry’s, looking for any resistance.  He found none.

Bellatrix hesitated.  “Are you certain you don’t want me to take the Polyjuice potion, my lord?  Cross gender Polyjuice can be dangerous.”

“We’re not using Polyjuice,” the Dark Lord informed her.  “We’re using something much better.”  His eyes gleamed.  “I’ll leave you to see Hartwig’s handiwork for yourself.—That will be all.”

Harry hesitated, but then left with Lucius and Bellatrix.

As soon as they left, Bellatrix turned to him.  “Why, you’re a poppet.  I see why Lucius left my horrible little sister for you.  You are quite handsome.”  She smiled at him.  “However, I am worried about this Polyjuice.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Lucius promised her.  “Trust in Hartwig’s abilities.  You will be presented with an exact copy of Stephagenia and even you won’t be able to tell the difference.”

She looked at him skeptically.  “If you say so, Lucius.  I merely worry.  I wish for no harm to come to your paramour.”

“Fiancé,” Lucius corrected, holding up Harry’s left hand to show off the emerald.

Bellatrix blinked and stared.  “Lucius—how—”  Then she smiled brightly.  “The law change.”

“The law change,” he agreed.

“However did you con Uncle Orion into changing the law that canceled your engagement to Narcissa?”

“I asked the Dark Lord,” Harry told her, giving her a small smile.  “He was most receptive to the idea of my future happiness.”

Bellatrix looked at him wide eyed.  “The Dark Lord was most—receptive—Why, Hartwig, you are a wizard of hidden depths.”

“Many hidden depths,” Lucius agreed, lacing his fingers with Harry’s.  He picked up Harry’s hand and kissed the back of it.  “We are most happy, Bella.”

She smirked at him.  “I can see that, Lucius.—Well, we have much to prepare for.  Stephagenia, I understand, lives with Uncle Alphard.  So we just have to lure everyone else away…”

And so the planning began.

Harry spent the next several days in front of a mirror carefully changing the shape of his face to look like Evans.  He lightly dusted it with freckles, he flicked his eyes to grass green, and he straightened his hair and even figured out how to style it atop his head.  He made his bones break and reform into the shape of a woman.  Wide hips, thinner waist, womanly thighs.  His feet were much smaller.  He had to learn how to walk again.  His arms were much shorter and more delicate.  Fortunately Erky had been giving him a manicure twice a year so that he didn’t have to worry about his nails.  They still looked feminine.  The morning of the deception he would have them painted pink. 

Breasts were difficult.  That took him three days.  Once he achieved breasts, he didn’t shift back.  He wasn’t sure it wouldn’t take him another three days to grow them again.  He bound them when he went down to breakfast and took lunch and dinner in his room.

Euphemia looked at him oddly and even cornered him on the fifth day and asked, “What is going on?”

“I’m working on a metamorphmagus transformation?”  It came out as a question instead of a statement.

“Of Stephagenia Black?” she guessed.  “You left your freckles on.”

Harry gasped and whispered them away.

Euphemia rubbed her wrinkled forehead.  “Has the Dark Lord asked this of you?”

Harry hesitated, unsure what to answer.  “He’s not going to hurt Stephagenia.”

“He just needs to borrow her likeness.”  Aunt Euphemia didn’t seem happy.  “She’s your mother.”

“Not yet,” Harry disagreed.  “Not ever.”

“We both know that you think of James as your father.”

“Not since he woke up,” Harry argued.  “He’s very much my little brother now.”  He took a deep breath.  “They’re never going to marry.  Stephagenia is married now to Sirius.  Nothing is going to change that.”  (Nothing but Sirius’s death in two days, and then she was going to marry the Dark Lord, Christ’s blood save them.) “I will never be born.”

“There should never be two of you in the timeline,” Euphemia stated gently, placing her hand carefully on his shoulder.

“No, of course not,” Harry agreed.  “That would be weird.  Stephagenia is also in love with me.”

“Still?” Euphemia asked in worry.

“Still,” he agreed.  “It’s weird.”

Euphemia didn’t look like she knew what to say to that.

“Well, you should spend the next few days in your room,” she decided distractedly.  “I don’t want James to notice your transformation.  When do you go?”

Harry hesitated.  “You’ll know when I come back.”

She nodded.  “Quite right.  Best if I have deniability.  You take all the time you need.  We’ll tell James you caught wizarding flu.  That takes a week to get out of your system.”  She leaned over and kissed him.  She barely had to reach up to touch his cheek.  Harry was still tall as Lily Evans (or Stephagenia Black) but he was not as tall as he was as Hartwig Potter.

He took a deep breath.  “Thank you, Grandmother.”

“I’ll have Erky send up those cookies you like,” she promised.

Harry smiled and went back to his room.

He more fully transformed into Evans.  He found his hair was actually curly when he thought about Evans and not straight hair, and realized she must have been blowing it out straight all these years.  The vanity of witches, he thought as he shook his head.

His fingers were much smaller and more slender.  His vined ring groaned and contracted, sticking into the bone.  Harry took up his wand and placed an obscuration spell on it so that other wizards would realize he was wearing a vined ring, but wouldn’t realize what it looked like.

The worst was the sex organs.  Harry stared at the Hogwarts sex education books for a long time and eventually just wrapped up his manhood into a small bow so it wasn’t so noticeable.  There was no reason to make himself an actual woman.  That would be preposterous.

His tastebuds, he noticed, changed.  He liked sweets a lot more and he asked Erky for hot chocolate at breakfast the next morning.  He even sent down for a second cup.  He wondered how Evans stayed so thin.

He skipped church on Sunday, ostensibly because of the wizarding flu.  He wrote an apology letter to Reverend Olmstead that he had Euphemia deliver.  He sat with his prayer book as he listened to the bells go off at All Saints.  Something ached inside him.  He didn’t like missing the Eucharist.

Lucius came for him just before teatime with a portkey and robes.

Staring at him, Lucius murmured, “I hope this is reversible.  I can’t bear to look at you like this.”

“Is my mother so ugly?”

“Quite ugly,” he agreed.  “She’s a woman.”

Harry laughed and took the robes.  He had some trouble with the undergarments, but he figured them out eventually.  He recognized the robes as a pair that actually belonged to Evans.  They were a pale blue with embroidered butterflies along the hem.  He put his hair up in the mirror and applied the lipgloss that Lucius had brought.

“Oh, no, no!” Bellatrix cried when she arrived.  She had brought an entire cosmetic palette and set about doing Harry’s entire face.  “There now, Poppet, she cried when she was finally done nearly forty-five minutes later.  “You looked quite the pureblood witch.”

Harry looked in the mirror.  “I’m not sure this is how she does her face.”  The eye make up was subtle but still dramatic.

“But this is how I would do it for her, and we’re on a girls’ night,” Bellatrix informed him.  “Now, you must call me, ‘Bella.’  Sirius is just ‘Sirius.’  Never ‘Siri.’  Steph never called him that.”

“Okay,” he agreed, his voice much lighter than it usually was.  “And I’m seeing if we can work it out.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “She never told me what was wrong other than that he was ‘ungallant,’ but just let the conversation guide you.”

“Okay,” Harry agreed.  “I think I’m ready.”

He was fortunately wearing slippers.  He wasn’t sure he could have handled heels.

They all grasped an old ragged book, and the familiar feel of a hook around his navel grasped him and he fell through space until he slammed down elsewhere in Godric’s Hollow.  He recognized Honeysuckle Lane.

“That’s that,” Lucius declared.  “I’ll just be down at the pub.  You know how to reach me, Bella.”

“As ever, Lucius,” she agreed.  He lifted her hand beneath his lips and then released it.  Taking Harry’s hand, he entwined their fingers and squeezed before letting him go. 

Harry watched him walk away before he and Bellatrix made their way down the lane toward Black’s Hole.

Bellatrix knocked three times with her knuckles.

It took Sirius many minutes to answer.  He was very disheveled when he did.

“Steph!” he cried, clearly surprised.  He leaned up against the door.  “What are you doing here?”

“Wizard Father wants us to make up,” Harry told him, “before Uncle Orion finds out.  I’m here to find out if we can reach a settlement.”

“A settlement?  You want to reach a settlement in our marriage?”

“Yes,” he agreed, trying to sound confident.  “Two separate residences perhaps, separate bank accounts, showing our faces at the same social functions.  You can be gallant at social functions, can you not?”  He made to cut past Sirius into the cottage but Sirius blocked him.

“You’re not being very gallant now,” Bellatrix noticed.  “You won’t even let your wife and cousin into your shared cottage?”

“It’s not that—” Sirius told them carefully, looking behind them carefully as if more wizards would pop up from behind the shrubbery.  “If you could come back at another time.”

“What better time is there than dinner on Sunday?” Bellatrix asked in that way she had about her.  She sounded completely reasonable while making him sound as if he was the unreasonable one, even though they were the ones who had dropped by unannounced on him.  “Why, do you have company?”

“Company?” Sirius asked, clearly full of false bravado.

Harry narrowed his grass green eyes.  He didn’t like where this was going.  He may have his problems with Evans, but she was his mother in another lifetime and she didn’t deserve a philandering husband.  “Company,” Harry repeated.  “A guest.  Is it James Potter?”  Harry knew for a fact it wasn’t James Potter.  He’d left him at home, writing to Millie Flint.

“Oh, I’ve been dying to meet him,” Bellatrix cooed, sliding Sirius forcefully aside and entering Black’s Hole.  Harry was not far behind her.

Sirius ran in after them, saying, “I think you better leave.”

“Who’s here?”  Bellatrix looked like a kneazle sniffing out a mouse.

“No one’s here!”

Bellatrix wasn’t having any of it.  She was now climbing the stairs.  Sirius was rushing up after her.  For some reason, he wasn’t going for his wand.  “Bella!”

Harry was following close behind them.

Bella clearly knew how to find the bedrooms because she was opening and closing doors until she opened one and gasped.  “Sirius, who is this?”

“Who is who?  No one’s here, Bella!”

Bella took out her wand and pointed it at someone in the room.  “Obliviate!” she cried.  Then, “there now, you poor thing.  Get your clothes now and go.  Nothing happened here.”

A few moments later there was the sound of scurrying and a hastily dressed Muggle hurried out past Harry and down the stairs.

“Wait!” Bellatrix called and she cast a body bind hex on the Muggle.  She fell the rest of the way down the stairs and hit her head.  Harry just stared at her.  What was Bella thinking?

He ignored the Muggle.

Harry took a deep breath.  “You fucking bastard!”  He hoped that was something Evans would say.  “We’re not even divorced and you’re fucking around with the local Muggles.”  He stormed down the stairs, stepping over the Muggle.  It wouldn’t do to trip and fall.

“Steph!” Sirius Black cried, hurrying after her.  “I love you!”

“You have an odd way of showing it,” Harry pointed out.

Sirius grabbed him by the arm and forced a sloppy kiss on him.  It was very uncomfortable and extremely wet.  Harry struck Black across the face and forced him to let go before scrabbling away from him.  “Don’t kiss me, Sirius Black!” he demanded, “especially after that!”

“You’re my wife! I can do what I—!”

He was suddenly silent, became stiff as a board and fell to the floor.

Bellatrix stood behind him and flourished her wand.  “Body Bind Hex,” she told Harry.  “Always useful.  Now, we’re going to stage that little bitch stabbing Sirius in his sleep.  Don’t worry, I’ll do all the work.  Stephagenia doesn’t even need to be involved.”

She levitated Black up the stairs and put him in the messy bed then lay him on his stomach and splayed out his arms.  Summoning a kitchen knife, she then levitated the Muggle to her.  “Imperius!” she cackled, pointing her wand at the Muggle girl.

What Harry watched next was surreal.  The Muggle picked up the knife, stabbed it several times through Black’s back, all the while crying, was obliviated and then, covered in blood, ran down the stairs with the knife in her hand.  Fortunately (or unfortunately), the Muggle had left her bra behind.

They Apparated out of the back garden as soon as Lucius showed up, complimenting Bellatrix on her ingenuity.

Harry was glad to get to Potter Abbey and change back to his original form.  Of course, it took two days to get rid of his breasts.  That was unfortunate.  He didn’t feel like himself for days. 

He asked for The Daily Prophet to be sent up to him every day after Uncle Fleamont was done with it and he saw, four days after the murder, that Sirius Black had been murdered by a Muggle in his marriage bed, his bride being nowhere to be found.

On his first day back in the world, Harry went and had tea with Evans at The Wicked Stepmother.  “How does it feel to be a widow?”

“Wonderful,” she answered.  “I can’t believe he was having an affair with a Muggle while I was out visiting my wizard father.  I can believe she stabbed him.  He was worth stabbing.”

“Yes, strange,” Harry agreed, catching her eye.  “Is that the story?  You were visiting your father?”

“For a few days to pack up my things for Merlin’s Castle,” she agreed.  “It seems he—strayed.  He was found by the local milkman who was wondering why no one was picking up the milk.”  She took a sip of her tea. “Of course, the Muggle girl he was having an affair with had been detained a few days before.  They were searching for her victim, but they hadn’t checked in on the happy Black couple.”  She gave a fake smile.

“How horrible,” Harry commiserated.

“I understand I have you to thank.”

“—and your cousin Bellatrix,” he agreed.  “She did most of it.”

Evans made a sound in the back of her throat.  “Bella really is a dear.  I’ll write her a note.”

“You’re not wearing black.”

“Witches wear yellow.”

And she was wearing yellow.  Bright yellow.  She must have had the robes done up especially, perhaps even before Black had been murdered. 

“You’re not going to marry James, are you?  He’s not prepared for it.”  Harry took a sip of his tea.  He had to check.  It would be just like Evans to disappoint the Dark Lord again.

“No,” Evans agreed.  “He’s not prepared for it.”

That wasn’t exactly the answer he had in mind.

“Marvolo has other plans for me.”  It was going to be like that then.

Harry grimaced.  “Just promise you’re going to give your children Latin names.  No more ‘Hartwigs.’”

“Who named you anyway?”

“No idea,” Harry answered truthfully.  “It’s unlike ‘James’ or ‘Stephagenia.’”

“My mother named me,” Evans informed him, “your grandmother Elnora.  I was almost named ‘Stephanora.’”

“That would have been easier to pronounce,” Harry murmured.  “Promise me you’ll invite me to this wedding.”

“I can’t make that sort of promise,” Evans admitted.  “You know what Marvolo is like.  There will be the six months of mourning and then anything could happen.”

“True,” Harry agreed.  He looked over at his mother.  He couldn’t believe that he had looked her exact copy not a week earlier.  He never wanted to metamorph into a witch ever again.  It was extremely uncomfortable.  “Sirius Black is on my hereditary parchment as your husband.  I suppose the Dark Lord will be there in six months and any children you happen to have.”

“I guess he will,” Evans supposed.  “What a complicated tree it will become if James marries Millie Flint.”

“He might marry someone else.”

“He might.”  She didn’t sound convinced.  “I would marry you tomorrow if you would have me.”

“I’m your son!”

“Not in this life.”  Her grass green eyes flicked over to him.  “I’ve already married my cousin.  The two of us only share fifty percent DNA as the Muggles would have it.”

“You have got to be joking.”

“First cousins share twelve point five.”

“A great deal less,” Harry argued.  “You could have been my mother.”

“‘Could have been’ being the operative term.”  She reached out toward him but was careful not to touch him.  “I burn for you, Hartwig.”

He glared at her.  “I’m going to start calling you, ‘Mother.’”

“It won’t change anything.”  She took her hand back.

“It’s a reminder.”

“Perhaps you came back in time for me,” she suggested.  “James Potter wasn’t right for me.  His son was.”

“Then I should have been his son by another woman,” Harry told her pointedly.  “As I am not, your argument is moot.  You also forget, I fancy men.”

“Preferences can be changed.”

“Do you want to kiss Morag McDougal?” he asked urgently.

The idea caused her to pull a face.

“I make my point.”

She reached forward again.  “It’s contrary against nature.”

“You’re contrary against nature.  I just don’t understand you, Mother.  Your own son.  It’s disgusting.”

“You weren’t my son for so long,” she told him desperately.  “We grew up separately, at Hogwarts together, you were my Prefect.”

He blew air out of his nose.  “Mother.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You’ve forced my hand.”  He pushed his cup away from him.  “I don’t think we should see each other again.”

“Hartwig,” she begged.

“I’m sure we’ll see each other at Riddle House.  The Dark Lord will want you about.”

“Hartwig, that’s not—”

He stood up and took her hand, lifting it to beneath his lips, letting it hover.  “Goodbye, Mother,” he said formally before leaving her.  He walked down the hallway and went to the floo.  He paused a moment before taking the floo powder and throwing it in, watching the flames go green.

Evans was so distressing.  He didn’t like his mother’s lust and her playing in politics.  She punished him for not returning his affections by becoming engaged to the Dark Lord.  The Dark Lord used Harry against her by using him to kill her husband. 

When he arrived at Potter Abbey, he took off his cloak and draped it over his arm.  Taking the stairs two at a time, he went up to the third floor and into his bedroom.  James would be at his studies.  Euphemia would be in the potions lab.  Fleamont could be in the potions lab or in his study.  He might even be at his club. 

Throwing his cloak onto the bed, Harry went up to his hereditary parchment and traced the lines down to his name.  Phineas Nigellus married to Ursuala Flint, down to Cygnus.  Cygnus was married Violetta Bulstrode and then went down another line to Pollux.  Pollux was married to Irma Crabbe which moved to Alphard, who married Elnora Prewett, down to Stephagenia.  She was linked to James Potter on the left and then down to Hartwig James Potter.  On the right she was linked to Sirius Black III, 1960 to 1978.  Two husbands, two different timelines.  There might be a third husband in another six months.  ‘Marvolo.’  What was his surname?  ‘Gaunt’ like Maia?  Was he Sacred Twenty-Eight?  That would make a certain amount of sense.  

Harry continued to stare at his hereditary parchment well until the sun set.  Erky had to come get him get him for dinner.  He was no closer to finding answers than when he had first come into the room.