The Dark Countess

Title: The Dark Countess
Author: ExcentrykeMuse
Fandom: Harry Potter Series
Pairing(s): (past) fem!James/Gideon Prewett, (future) fem!James/Voldemort
Rating: PG13
Word Count: 6k
Warning: mentions of rape, mentions of torture, mentions of abuse, forced marriage, time travel, pureblood culture, Dumbledore bashing, slight Sirius bashing, age discrepancy (16/52), pureblood!Harry
Prompt: for Juniper—this is not exactly what you asked for, but time travel, fem!James Potter, time travel, pureblood Harry, forced Order marriage, interfering Dumbledore, and Harry going to Voldemort for help.  I got a lot of it in.  I hope you enjoy the finished product!

The Dark Countess

Harry stood in front of the Dark Lord with his head held high.  He knew he could show no fear.  The Dark Lord could smell fear.  Harry was here for his mother.  His mother was the most important person in the world.  He would do anything for her, even face the Dark Lord, who was as beautiful as an angel.

It had been Severus Snape who had helped him.

Snape and Jacquetta Potter had hated each other at Hogwarts, but even Snape could see the abuse Gideon Prewett heaped upon Jacquetta.  Even Snape couldn’t ignore the withered beauty.  He had listened when Harry had whispered to him what was wrong when Snape had found him crying down a fourth floor corridor, clutching one of his mother’s letters.

He had gotten him this interview.

“Harry,” the Dark Lord whispered, his voice beautiful.  His eyes flashed blue.  “You want to change allegiances.”

Nodding, Harry took a quick breath.  “In exchange,” he qualified.

“Yes, your allegiance comes with a price.”  He held out a hand to the side and Snape placed the short list of Harry’s demands in it.  The Dark Lord looked down and read them.  “You want your mother removed from her home, her marriage annulled, and full immunity and safety given to her.  You ask nothing for yourself.”  His eyes flashed up.  “Your mother is the foremost potioneer in Europe, greater than mine.”  (Snape didn’t move a muscle.). “—and you deliver her straight to me.  Is marriage to your father that detestable?”

Harry had to repress a shiver that wanted to run down his spine.  “Dark Lord,” he breathed.  “Gideon Prewett is a monster.  Nothing you have done in this war can compare to what he has done to my mother.  As soon as my mother is safely removed from his house, I will cast off his name and no longer call myself ‘Harry Prewett.’”

Murmurs erupted around them from the surrounding Death Eaters.  They were all wearing bone white masks and hoods, but Harry didn’t bother to look at them.

“Silence!” the Dark Lord ordered and there was an immediate hush. 

Everyone immediately focused on Harry.

“You would renounce the name of a Sacred Twenty-Eight family for your mother’s name of ‘Potter’?” the Dark Lord checked.

“Yes,” Harry agreed.  “And I offer my services to you, although I am only a schoolboy.”

The Dark Lord looked into his eyes and Harry felt the Dark Lord slip into his mind.  He didn’t resist although his mother had taught him the basics of Occlumency, knowing the Dark Lord wanted to know what was so heinous about Gideon Prewett’s actions that Harry would risk everything for his mother’s safety.

Their eyes stayed connected for several long minutes, memories passing through Harry’s mind as the Dark Lord viewed them, before the Dark Lord slipped from his thoughts.

Harry slumped to the floor, physically exhausted.

The Dark Lord tapped his wand against his knee, clearly in thought.  “Very well,” he decided.  “But I shall give you one better.”

The court held its breath as they waited for the Dark Lord to make his pronouncement.

“I will make it so it was as if your mother had never married Gideon Prewett, granting you your life, Harrogate Potter, in return for your favor of carrying out your plan.  Tell me, is it true that it was your grandmother, Euphemia Potter, who was nearly barren?  That there was a rumor that your grandfather had a lovechild not of his wife?”

Harry’s eyebrows rose, remembering his mother speaking of the rumor once when he was just going into Hogwarts.  “Nothing ever came of it.”

“Something will come of it,” the Dark Lord disagreed.  “Come with me.—Severus!”

The Dark Lord moved to exit, everyone beginning to whisper at once, and Harry pulled himself off the floor, going to follow the Dark Lord.  Snape helped pull him to his feet, pushing him forward as they walked out of the large chamber and into a hallway.  A tangled snake that had been curled up in the shadows unfurled and silkily slid after them, her large tongue teasing out of her enormous jaw, tasting the cold air around them.

Harry’s hands dragged along the papered walls as he pushed himself forward, Snape still holding him up, and he was grateful when the Dark Lord turned into a study and he was able to collapse into a chair in front of the desk, not even waiting for the Dark Lord to offer him a seat.

The Dark Lord immediately started removing memories from his head, pressing his wand to his temple and removing thin silvery images and bottling them up.  He took out a total of seven and then began to pen a letter. 

“You look half dead, Potter.”

“I—” Harry wasn’t sure how he could refute it.  The Dark Lord had viewed his entire childhood.  He had seen all the curses, all the beatings, all the humiliations, all the rapes.  The Dark Lord was not a subtle Legilimens.

Snape quickly left and returned with two pepper ups and a potion Harry didn’t recognize.  Harry didn’t bother to ask before taking all three.  Instantly feeling better, he sat up straighter.  The Dark Lord glanced at him, not approvingly, but definitely with a begrudging sort of emotion.

“You will allow Jacquetta Potter to marry where the Dark Sect approves,” the Dark Lord told him as he sprinkled salt over his letter to dry it.  “If you want to prevent Dumbledore from marrying her to Gideon Prewett to secure her potioneering skills for the Order of the Phoenix, she must be secured for the Dark Sect.”

“But she is married to Gideon Prewett,” Harry told the Dark Lord carefully.  “She has been for seventeen years.”

“Yes, she’s thirty-five years old,” the Dark Lord agreed.  “We’re going to turn back the clock.”  He folded the letter into a complicated shape and then sealed it with wax and his signet ring.  “None of it will happen.  Your mother will not be the ghost she now is.—Put that next to your heart so it does not get lost.”  He handed over a pouch with the seven memories and the letter. 

Wondering what this was all about, but wanting to save his mother at all costs, Harry opened his robes, undid his tunic, and placed the pouch next to his heart and against his skin before redoing his clothing. 

The Dark Lord looked him over.  “The password is ‘Merope Gaunt is your mother.’  Repeat that after me.”

“Merope Gaunt is your mother,” Harry told him.

“Good.  Now, you’re going to take this,” the Dark Lord opened a drawer and handed a large time turner over to Harry, “and turn it nineteen times.  Your mother will be sixteen years old.  Your age.  You will sit in that seat until you see me again.  You will not move despite hunger or thirst.  When you see me, you will tell me the password and hand me the pouch.”

Harry licked his lips carefully.  “What if—what if the husband you choose for my mother,” Harry asked, the full weight of the plan coming together for him, “is worse than Gideon Prewett?”

“Can anyone be worse than your father, Mr. Potter?” the Dark Lord asked seriously, and Harry supposed that he already knew the answer to that.

He took the time turner and put the chain over his head.  Looking over at Snape, he told him seriously, “I’m sorry that you’ll hate me as a Potter in nineteen years.”

“I might forgive you,” Snape told him thoughtfully.  “I hated your mother.  I might not hate you, her half-brother.”  He shrugged.

Harry took a deep breath and slowly began to turn the time turner nineteen times backward.  After one turn the Dark Lord and Snape disappeared.  After three turns he saw the Dark Lord standing near the window and their eyes connected, but he continued to turn, never losing count.  When he reached sixteen turns, the window was open and rain was pouring into the room and he got slightly wet.  At nineteen turns, the room was dark, the candles extinguished, and he sat in the chair, unmoving.

After several long minutes, he took off the time turner and set it down on the desk.

The Dark Lord appeared in the room two days later.  Harry had fallen a little asleep and woke up to a wand at his throat.  His green eyes flew open and he stammered out, “The password is—‘Merope Gaunt is your mother.’”

The Dark Lord, looking slightly younger but no less handsome, lowered his wand and looked at him with a question in his startling blue eyes.  “Who are you, wizard?”

“This will explain everything,” Harry told him, carefully reaching into his robes and undoing his tunic, taking out the pouch.  “It’s a letter and seven memories.  From you.”

The Dark Lord’s eyes flickered to the time turner on the desk.  He reached out and took the pouch.  Flicking his wand, he disarmed Harry and encased him in ropes.  “Stay there,” he ordered.

Harry wondered where else he would go.  At least he’d cast a refreshening charm on himself the night before, taking care of all his bodily functions.

The Dark Lord was gone for a good three hours based on how the light fell into the room.

When he came back, the pouch was gone.  He released Harry from his bonds and returned his wand.

“Harrogate Potter,” he checked.  Yes, the Dark Lord had called him that before.  His mother had named him ‘Harry,’ but the Dark Lord had called him ‘Harrogate.’

“—Yes,” he answered.

“You’re the lovechild of Fleamont Potter and Sabrina Fairchild.”

Harry was unsure if the Dark Lord was deciding this or if the letter had told him that.  Harry had no idea who Sabrina Fairchild was.  He supposed she had dark hair and green eyes.  His green eyes had always been a mystery.  The Prewett brothers had brown eyes and his mother had hazel eyes, so the green eyes must have been a throwback to some Prewett or Potter ancestor.

“I know nothing of my mother,” he told the Dark Lord carefully.

“Her name is Sabrina Fairchild,” the Dark Lord told him.  Once again, Harry didn’t know if he had just decided this or if it had been in the letter.  “We’ll have a forger write you a letter of introduction.”

He came around the desk and sat down, setting his wand to the side, showing he didn’t view Harry as a threat.

“You’re sworn to my service in exchange that your mother, Jacquetta Potter, be saved from a future marriage with an Order member, specifically Gideon Prewett.  You clearly love your mother very much.”

So, he did know that he wasn’t Fleamont Potter’s lovechild. 

“Am I still a pureblood?” Harry asked carefully.  He wasn’t a pureblood extremist, but his mother had brought him up with pureblood pride.  It did matter, even if just a little bit.

“I would never ruin a pureblood’s blood status,” the Dark Lord insisted offhand.  “You can take whatever memories of your actual mother you like and apply them to the mystery of Sabrina Fairchild who, in fact, died in obscurity several years ago.  I care not.  That is your own affair.  You now have the privilege of knowing your mother, Jacquetta, as she was as a sixth year student.  You will be going into sixth year with her, and you will try to be sorted into Gryffindor.”  He looked at Harry speculatively.  “You will turn your mother to our side and when she is courted by a member of the Dark Sect, you will encourage her.  I will save her for you as agreed and you can live with her openly as her brother and as one of my Death Eaters.”

“Thank you,” Harry breathed, a tinge of desperation in his tone.

“Someone will come and find you a room.  As I said, a forger will write you an introduction and you will be given a broom and a compass.  You can fly to Potter Abbey.”  He waved his hand.  “You may go.”

Harry didn’t have to be told twice.  He got up and walked out toward the door.

The Dark Lord cleared his throat.

Harry turned.

“It is customary to bow and address me as ‘my lord.’”

Shocked, Harry quickly bowed.  “Thank you, my lord.”

“Don’t forget again,” the Dark Lord instructed, waving his hand once more.

Harry bowed again for form and left.

A wizard in blue robes was waiting for him and he was shown to a room and a bowl of warm soup was waiting.  He inhaled it, having not eaten in days, and then collapsed on the bed fully clothed.  When he awoke, the sun had already set and another bowl of soup was waiting.

The next morning, he was awakened by a knock at his door.

“Your letter of introduction,” this wizard said.  He had a slightly large nose and curling brown hair.  “Your mother Sabrina Fairchild died three weeks ago and you’re being sent to your father, Fleamont Potter.”  He was then handed a broom.  “I trust you know how to work one of these.”  Then there was the compass.  “Say where you’re going, and the compass will point due north.  Or straight to wherever you’re going.”  A bag was brought forward.  “You have two changes of robes and a set of pajamas.—You won’t be marked because you’ll be infiltrating Hogwarts.” Ah, the Dark Mark.  Harry had been wondering about that.

Harry looked over all of this.  “Yes.  Thanks.”

“The Dark Lord would wish you good luck, but he’s not so plebian.  You’ll get your Death Eater mask when you need it.  We don’t need Madam Potter going through your things and finding it.”  He winked.

Harry rolled his eyes.  “Yes, thanks for that.  Who are you?”

“Rabastan Lestrange.  And you’re Harrogate Potter.  Who’d have thought?  We got a Potter on our side.  A spy in Dumbledore’s camp.”  He slapped Harry on the back and then left.

Harry hefted the bag on his shoulder and left through the window, the compass hanging around his neck.

He’d only been to Potter Abbey a couple of times in his life.  His father, Gideon Prewett, didn’t really like it.  It had gotten a little wild in the last couple of years, the last house elves having died.

When he got near to it, he stopped mid air, and looked at the neat potions fields and marveled at the majesty of his mother’s childhood home.  It really was quite beautiful.  The manor house stood proudly with rows of potions fields around it, neatly tended by house elves, that had all been left to go to seed by the time that Harry could remember it.

He flew up to the front door, adjusted his robes and ran a hand through his messy black hair, and pulled on the knocker.

A house elf with floppy ears came and opened the door.

Harry didn’t recognize her.

“Er—” Harry began before he took his bag off his shoulder and reached in, grabbing his forged letter.  “I’m here to see Sir Fleamont Potter.”  He held out the letter.  “I’m happy to wait.”

The house elf took the letter, tested its magic against the seal, and then let Harry in.  He was led to a small antechamber which had a bench for him to sit on, and he set down his bag.  He didn’t really want to sit himself, having flown for several hours down from Yorkshire all the way to Devon, and he walked around, looking at the paintings on the wall.

He heard someone approach before he saw anyone.

When Fleamont appeared, Harry was surprised how much they looked like each other.

Fleamont had the same messy hair, the same ears, the same chin.  The nose was a bit crooked, as if it had been broken at some point, and his eyes were hazel like Jacquetta’s.  He also had a bit of a belly from good living and was holding a pipe, but he was definitely Harry’s grandfather.

“Harrogate?” Fleamont asked.

“Yes, sir,” Harry answered, putting his hands behind his back respectfully.  “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“It says here you’re Sabrina’s child.  I—”  He seemed at a loss for words.  “I remember our time in Harrogate well.”

It seems like they’d had a tryst in Harrogate and Harry had been accidentally named after it.

“Mother always spoke well of you, sir.”

“That was good of her.”  He paused.  “Well, come on with you.  Let’s get a good look at you.”

Harry picked up the bag and followed his new father up the stairs and into a study that was painted blue and had pots of potions ingredients in the windows.

“There we have it,” Fleamont said as he positioned Harry next to a window.  “Yes, you have her eyes.  I see it quite clearly.  Ah, you have a broom.  Quite right, quite right.  Well, I’m afraid your stepmother will be quite angry with me.  I never quite let on I had an affair with Mistress Fairchild, let alone that I had a son, when she was pregnant with our Jacquetta.  She’s not going to take kindly to it.”

“Er—” Harry wasn’t entirely sure how he should answer that.

Fleamont threw his hands up.  “That’s my problem, m’boy, not yours.  You are quite clearly a Potter, and I have it all here from Sabrina’s law wizard.  You are quite rightly here, and you will certainly be going to Hogwarts on the next train up.  Now, why don’t you wait here while I go and tell the Missus.  I’ll have a house elf send you up something to eat.  A strapping wizard like you must be hungry after flying all the way here.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Think nothing of it, think nothing of it!”  He puffed at his pipe and walked out the way he had come, leaving Harry in his study. 

For the second time in just a few days, Harry found himself left alone in a wizard’s study with nothing to do.  He just took a seat and did the only thing he could do: he waited.

It took Fleamont several hours to tell his wife, Euphemia, and going by the crashes Harry heard, his new stepmother wasn’t very happy with his existence.

After half an hour, a house elf came in with a cheese plate, and he was eventually shown to a guest bedroom. 

He didn’t see Euphemia for the three days he was at Potter Abbey.  Fleamont escorted him to Diagon Alley, which was an experience.  The alley was virtually deserted, with wizards huddled in doorways, never staying one place too long, afraid to be caught out.  There were posters of known Death Eaters everywhere, but Harry tried to not think about it, going about his shopping, getting his Hogwarts robes and his schoolbooks, not asking for an owl or anything extra as he didn’t want to be a bother.

He arrived at Hogwarts in mid October and met Jacquetta at the Hogsmeade train station.  She was wearing her Hogwarts robes with her wild black hair falling around her shoulders, and Harry had to restrain himself from running to her and hugging her.

Immediately upon seeing him, her face broke into a bright smile.  “Harrogate?” she asked.

“Jacquetta,” he breathed, setting down his trunk on the platform.  “I didn’t know you were coming to get me.”

“I asked Professor McGonagall,” she told him.  “Father wrote me about you.  Mother, too, but Father asked me to look out for you.  I always wanted to have a little brother or sister and now—”  She was talking a mile a minute and Harry just stared at her in wonder.

His mother had always been demure, quiet, too afraid of her shadow.  Gideon Prewett would curse her at the first sign of independent thought.  The only time she showed any sign of defiance was when it came to Harry and his well being, taking all the curses so that Harry wouldn’t have to.

But now, now Jacquetta was smiling and happy and chatting as she tried to pick up Harry’s trunk and lead him to a horseless carriage.

“No, I can carry that,” Harry told her, just staring.  “You’re in Gryffindor?” he asked, seeing her red and gold tie.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed carefully.  “It’s fine if you’re not.  I won’t mind, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were in Gryffindor together?”  She looked at him hopefully, her hazel eyes shining.  “My friend Sirius is in Gryffindor but he now has a girlfriend,” she rolled her eyes.  “You should stay single.  You forget all your friends when you start going.”

“I’ll—I’ll try to remember that,” he promised her.  He’d never have a girlfriend in his life, if Jacquetta didn’t want him to.  He’d never go against her.  He loved her too much.

“I just know we’re going to be the best of friends,” she told him after he handed her into the carriage, “as soon as Father wrote.  Mother’s angry, of course, but I just knew when I got Father’s letter that you were everything I had secretly wished for.  Sirius likes to prank everyone, and that’s fun for awhile—do you like to prank?”

Prank?  “Er—no.”

“That’s fine,” she told him.  “We can find plenty to do.  Hogwarts is such a large castle.”  She pushed her long black hair over her shoulder.  “Did Father not offer to fix your eyesight?”  Moving forward, she touched the glasses on his nose.

Harry blinked.  “Er—no?”

“I wore glasses when I was a child,” she told him, “but then Father developed a genetically specific potion tailored to me and my exact vision discrepancies and I took it when I was seven.  Haven’t needed glasses since.”

“Er—” Funny, Harry had never heard that story.  Why had his mother never done that for him?  Had Dumbledore worked her so hard she hadn’t had the time to develop the potion for him when he was a child? He’d often noticed that she brewed potions so late in the night that she cried herself to sleep—He was going to kill Dumbledore in this timeline before he ever got his hands on his mother, he vowed.

“I’ll write Father,” she promised with a small smile.  “I know he’ll do it for you.  You’re his son.—If it’s Mother that’s stopping him, I’ll see what I can do.  She can deny me nothing.”

Funny, Euphemia Potter had denied Jacquetta choice of husband.  Fleamont Potter had been dead by the time Jacquetta had been forced into an Order-approved marriage.

Harry tried to smile.

Dumbledore was Headmaster in this time.  Harry’s trunk was set aside and Harry was taken to the Headmaster’s office where Dumbledore was waiting, twinkling.

Harry hated the twinkling.

He noticed that Jacquetta was slightly uncomfortable in Dumbledore’s presence.  It had already begun then.

Harry made sure to stand between Jacquetta and Dumbledore at all times, protecting her.  He couldn’t help it.  He would always protect his mother.

“Young Harrogate Potter,” Dumbledore greeted.  “Or do you prefer Harrogate Fairchild?”

“I’ve always been a Potter,” Harry answered, trying not to sound defensive.  “My father fully recognizes me.”  He shared a glance with Jacquetta.

“Of course, of course!” Dumbledore decreed, although as far as Harry was concerned, he absolutely had no standing.

The Sorting Hat was sitting on a chair in front of the Headmaster’s desk.

“Shall I?” Harry asked, quickly picking up the hat and setting it on his head without having anyone tell him.  It didn’t go over his eyes, now that he was sixteen, and he wasn’t at all surprised when the hat breathed out, Ah, I see we’ve met before, Harrogate Potter.  What secrets do we have here?

He was promptly sorted into “GRYFFINDOR!” and taken by the hand by his own mother and shown to a tower that hadn’t changed in the next eighteen years.

There were faces he recognized from the Order of the Phoenix.  Sirius and his wife Lily, for example.  Peter Pettigrew was someone new.  Remus Lupin was just a story.  Mary McKinnon was here.  There was Frank Longbottom in seventh year, but Harry couldn’t find his wife Alice anywhere.

None of them had ever helped his mother.  As far as Harry was concerned, they were all traitors.

Jacquetta talked a mile a minute, organizing his books for him and marking the chapters they had already read and showing him their completed assignments.  Harry had already completed the work in his own time, but he honestly didn’t mind.

The first sign from the Death Eaters came when Severus Snape slipped him a note in Double Potions when he deliberately knocked him to the ground.

“Snape!” Jacquetta shouted.  “I know you hate me, but do you have to hate Harrogate on sight?”

Harry slipped the note up his sleeve and pulled himself to his feet.  “It was just an accident, Jacquetta,” he assured his new sister.  He looked over at Snape.  “I got in the way.”  He glared at Snape.  “Nothing to be sorry for.”

Snape practically scoffed.  “If you say so, Potter.”

Not getting a chance to look at the note until after lunch, Harry saw it was a black card with white script.  Forbidden Forest.  Saturday.  One o’clock.  Both of you.  LV.

How was Harry going to possibly Jacquetta into the Forbidden Forest?  He had two days to think of a reason.

At dinner that night, while sipping pumpkin juice, he asked, “Do you think there are unicorns in the forest?”

Jacquetta looked over at him, her eyebrows furrowed.  “Why do you ask?”

“Mother,” Harry murmured, speaking of Jacquetta in the future, “always said when she died she would always be with me as she would come back as a unicorn.”  She had told that to him once after his father had used the Cruciatus Curse on her for over four minutes and he had been crying.  “I wonder if she’s come looking for me.”

“Oh, Harrogate,” she sighed, reaching out and placing her hand over his.  “We can go and check if you like.”

He hated manipulating Jacquetta like this.  He glanced into his pumpkin juice and looked into her beautiful hazel eyes.  “Really?” he asked, hopeful.

“Yes,” she agreed, moving a little closer so no one would hear them.  “We can give everyone the slip and go tonight or tomorrow.”

“No,” Harry rushed in before biting his lip.  “Let’s go over the weekend when everyone’s busy with homework or canoodling.”  Canoodling?  When had Harry ever used a word like canoodling?  “We can say we’re going to the library, and if anyone says we weren’t there, we can say we found an empty classroom.  It’s the perfect time to disappear because we could be anywhere.”

“I don’t have Quidditch practice,” Jacquetta agreed, “only in the morning.  Oh, Harrogate, you missed try outs!” she cried.

“Never mind that,” Harry soothed her, knowing how proud she’d been in the future of his seeker abilities.  “I can try to get the Captain to let me on as an alternate.—I’ll talk to him tomorrow.  Who is it again?”

“Hennessey McLaggen.  I’ll introduce you tonight.—But that’s perfect.  We can slip off after lunch to practice if the pitch isn’t being used.”

Harry thought that was a bad plan because anyone could go out to the pitch, but he didn’t correct her.  He needed to get Jacquetta into the woods.  “We’ll take our brooms, then,” he suggested.

“Okay,” she agreed, leaning away and turning back to her meal.

Well, at least he had gotten her to agree.

Sirius Black was curious about Harry, but Harry gave him the cold shoulder.  He knew Sirius was friends with Jacquetta.  Gideon Prewett hadn’t allowed his mother friends in the future, but now, at Hogwarts, they were friends, but all Harry could remember was how Sirius had turned a blind eye to Jacquetta’s suffering at the hands of her husband.

He was unfortunately on the Quidditch team and tried to give Harry pointers Saturday morning about how to talk to Hennessey McLaggen, but Harry just stood up and went to go talk to Hennessey on his own.

“You’re a seeker?”

“Yes.  I’m rather good.  I understand Jacquetta is a chaser?”

“Hmm.”  He took a sip of his tea.  “Well.  I have a seeker, but not a reserve.  Didn’t find one at try outs.  We wrap at lunch, but I’ll let you do a couple of laps and a few moves just as we break, and we’ll see how you do.  You have the build for a seeker.”

Sirius was a beater.  Figured.

Harry watched the practice.  His mother had moves.  He never knew.  Gideon Prewett never let her fly.  She was too busy brewing the Order potions even when Harry was first learning to fly on a broom.  It was Gideon who taught Harry.

Harry wanted nothing more than to fly with his mother now.

When the practice broke up, Harry jumped on his broom and flew around her head, and they started a game of chase as all of the other players landed.  Harry whooped for joy as he flew circles around his mother and pulled off a few dives, delighting in her laughter, before they heard a whistle and finally came to land.

McLaggen was waiting for them in the stands as well as Sirius Black who had stuck around.

“Go on, Sirius,” Jacquetta urged.  Harry had snuck into the kitchens early that morning and grabbed cheese and bread for a picnic so they wouldn’t have to go into lunch before they headed into the Forbidden Forest.

“Jackie—” he whined.

Harry saw red.  “Say that again!” he demanded, marching over to him.  “You’ll use a lady’s full name, Sirius Black!”  He had slipped his wand out of his sleeve, but Jacquetta was pulling him back.

“Harrogate, it doesn’t matter—”

“Of course, it matters.  It’s your wizarding name.”

He’d heard Gideon Prewett sneer ‘Jackie’ too many times in his life to hear Sirius Black use her name too casually.

“Okay, okay!” Sirius cried, putting up his hands.  “Merlin, it’s just a name.”

“Just a name?” Harry demanded.

“Gentlemen,” McLaggen demanded, breaking up the fight, Jacquetta still pulling Harry away.  “Break it up.  Sirius, go back up to the castle.  Potter, take a breath.”  He waited until Harry relaxed his position and Sirius hopped on his broom and began to fly toward a castle.

“He always calls me ‘Jackie’,” Jacquetta told Harry slowly.

Odd.  Sirius Black had always called her ‘Prewett’ in the future.  “I don’t care,” Harry told her.  “It’s your name.”  He took a deep breath and turned to her.  “You’re my sister.  It’s my job to protect you.”

McLaggen cleared his throat.  “Well, you better learn to get along with Black.  You’re now on the team.  I’m going to talk to McGonagall and see if there’s any way I can make you lead Seeker.  That was a Wronski Feint!”  He clapped Harry on the back.  “Welcome to the team!”

Jacquetta beamed and hugged Harry around the neck.  “Isn’t that wonderful, Harrogate?  We’ll be on the team together!”

“Yes, well, clean up and I’ll see you at lunch.”  McLaggen hopped on his broom.  “Potter, Potter.”  He nodded to each of them and then headed back up to the castle.

Harry looked at Jacquetta mischievously and then climbed under the stands to where he had hidden the bread and cheese.  They made a picnic on the Quidditch pitch and at quarter to one they shouldered their brooms and walked into the Forbidden Forest.

At first Harry felt a little silly.  He wasn’t sure how to hunt for unicorns.  He also wasn’t sure who they were meeting and how they were supposed to run into each other.

“Do you think they’re a little bit further?” Jacquetta asked when there was a snap of a twig to their left.

They quickly looked over and Harry saw a shift of blackness.

“What was that?” Jacquetta whispered.

“I’m not sure,” Harry murmured, stepping closer to her and taking out his wand.

The blackness shifted closer and became more realized until Harry saw a wizard—and it was the Dark Lord, holding up his hands in supplication, although his wand was held in one of them.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he greeted, coming closer.  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jacquetta breathed out and turned her head to Harry.  “Not a unicorn,” she joked.

“No,” he agreed.

“You are unicorn searching?”  the Dark Lord asked, his blue eyes lighting up in interest.

“My mother passed,” Harry told him.  “I thought her soul might be searching for me.”

“I grieve with thee,” the Dark Lord told him, though Harry doubted it, although the Dark Lord sounded sincere.  He certainly looked sincere.

Jacquetta, it seemed, was noticing him.  He was just as handsome as ever with shining blue eyes, auburn hair, an aquiline nose, and pureblood cheekbones.

“What brings you here?” Jacquetta asked.  “The Forbidden Forest is an odd place to be walking.”

“It is,” the Dark Lord agreed, reaching forward and taking Jacquetta’s hand and lifting it to just below his lips, letting it hover before releasing it.  “May I have my lady’s name?”

Startled, she paused.  They were wearing jeans and old Quidditch jerseys with brooms over their shoulders.  Her hair was up in a messy ponytail.  Harry knew this was not how Jacquetta would want to present herself.

“Potter,” she answered.  “We’re the Potters.”

“Miss Potter,” the Dark Lord answered.  “My name is Marvolo Gaunt.”  Interesting, given that his mother was the Gaunt.  It seemed the Dark Lord chose to take his mother’s surname as well while ignoring his father’s lineage.  “I’m in the Forbidden Forest because a crone insisted that if I came here, at this time, I would meet my future wife.”

Harry blinked.  Twice.  The Dark Lord wanted to marry his mother himself?  There had never been any murmurings that there might be a Dark Lady.  How had Jacquetta captured his attention?

It seemed like Jacquetta was also stunned into silence.

“Are you sure?” Harry asked despite himself.  “Today?  Here?”

“I checked with an astrologer, just to be sure,” he assured Harry, his eyes flashing a warning.

Harry wouldn’t doubt that if the Dark Lord decided to marry Jacquetta, and if it was somehow fate, he would have double checked.  He must have missed her the first time and was now repairing the timeline.  That would explain why he had given into Harry’s demands so quickly when Harry had nothing to offer the Dark Lord in exchange for his mother’s safety.  Maybe that’s why Dumbledore had married off Jacquetta the day after she had graduated Hogwarts?  Perhaps Jacquetta had been a crucial chess piece between them and not just a worldclass potioneer whose allegiance needed to be assured through marriage, when she was already from a light family and her allegiance should have been a foregone conclusion?

The pieces were all falling into place. 

It made perfect sense.

Harry poked Jacquetta in the shoulder to remind her she hadn’t spoken.

“How-how romantic,” she finally stuttered.  “Y-you’re Sacred Twenty-Eight.”  She glanced over her shoulder at Harry who smiled at her encouragingly.

“We’re purebloods,” he reminded her.  “You won’t tarnish Mr. Gaunt’s bloodline.  Quite the reverse.”

Jacquetta gave him a doubletake.  “You’re a blood purist?” she asked him.

“Your mother is a Flint.  There’s nothing wrong with being proud of our bloodline, Jacquetta. —Is there, Mr. Gaunt?”

“No, Mr. Potter,” he agreed, trying to catch Jacquetta’s hazel gaze.  “Quite the reverse.”

Jacquetta turned back to the Dark Lord.  “We only just decided to come unicorn searching the day before yesterday.”

“I’m afraid,” the Dark Lord told her, “the crone told me three years ago.  It’s been decided for quite some time, Miss Potter.”

She gasped and fell silent, clearly thinking.  “My mother wants—”

“We don’t care what Euphemia Potter wants,” Harry interrupted.  “Lady Potter doesn’t like me.  She obviously doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”  He poked Jacquetta again in the shoulder.

She turned to him and smirked.  “No, I suppose she doesn’t.”  Jacquetta turned silent again.  It seemed she was shy around wizards.

“Shall we go unicorn searching?” Harry suggested.  “You can go ahead and I’ll chaperone several paces behind.  If you see a flicker of white, you can tell me and we’ll switch positions.”  He reached out and took Jacquetta’s broom from her and looked at her encouragingly.

She took a hesitant step forward and at Harry’s encouraging looks, walked up to the Dark Lord, looking up at him hesitantly until he offered his arm.

Harry fell behind them as he promised.

“You haven’t told me your name yet, Miss Potter,” the Dark Lord began.

Harry smiled.  The future was changing for the better.

The End.