Death's Alchemist Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6

Bellatrix Black had been awake for nearly an hour before anyone in the house realized she was angry, which she considered one of her more impressive accomplishments. Usually Narcissa noticed within minutes, Andromeda within seconds, and their mother seemed capable of knowing before Bellatrix herself did. Yet on that particular Friday morning, Bellatrix had managed breakfast, half a cup of tea, and nearly four pages of the Daily Prophet before Narcissa finally lowered her spoon and stared across the table.

“What?” Bellatrix asked, turning to another page.

“You’re doing that thing,” Andromeda accused.

“What thing?” Bellatrix asked, glancing over her paper indignantly.

“The thing where you pretend you’re reading,” Narcissa grumbled.

Bellatrix looked over the top of the paper at her youngest sister, who smiled sweetly back. Across the table, Andromeda buttered another piece of toast. “She’s read the same article three times.”

Bellatrix slowly lowered the Prophet. “I hate both of you.”

“No, you don’t,” Narcissa quipped softly.

“I could.”

Andromeda snorted. Morning sunlight poured through the tall windows of the Black dining room in Liverpool. The light seemed to catch against silver cutlery and polished wood and even the collection of family portraits that seemed forever disappointed by whatever happened beneath them. One particularly unpleasant wizard had been glaring at Bellatrix since she was eleven. She had never learned his name and, after discovering how much this seemed to offend him, had made a point never to ask.

“There,” Bellatrix said, folding the newspaper sharply. “I’m no longer pretending to read.”

Narcissa glanced toward Andromeda, whispering conspiratorily, “Still angry.”

“Perhaps the Prophet deserves it,” Bellatrix countered snarkily.

“It usually does,” Andromeda agreed.

Bellatrix’s mouth betrayed her with the faintest twitch. It was sometimes irritating how easily her sisters read her. They resembled one another enough that strangers rarely needed introductions to know they were Blacks, though Bellatrix had always found the attention this received rather dull. People noticed faces, clothes, names; easily impressed people noticed all three. Narcissa had already perfected the peculiar talent of appearing perfectly composed while listening to everything said within twenty feet of her, while Andromeda possessed the considerably more irritating habit of thinking about things nobody had asked her to think about and then insisting everyone else do the same. Bellatrix, being the eldest, had spent seventeen years being told she ought to know better. Usually she did. It had never stopped her.

“What happened?” Andromeda asked.

Bellatrix glanced once more at the headline responsible for ruining her morning.

MINISTRY DENIES REPORTS OF DARK ACTIVITY IN YORKSHIRE

Two witches had disappeared outside Appleby, and the Ministry saw no evidence connecting the disappearances with several others that occurred during the previous year. Bellatrix thought that was probably just the incompetence of the Ministry, but that also wasn’t what was grating on her nerves.

Something interesting was happening. Everyone seemed to know it. Adults simply preferred pretending otherwise whenever their children entered the room, a habit Bellatrix found particularly insulting now that she was seventeen.

“Father knows something,” she said at last.

Andromeda’s hand stopped halfway toward her tea, while Narcissa leaned forward almost immediately. Bellatrix smiled. That was better. “He and Uncle Orion were talking last night.”

Andromeda gave her a knowing look. “You were listening.”

“I was walking past,” Bellatrix said, turning her head up at the girl.

“You stopped walking,” Narcissa accused.

“For reasons entirely unrelated to their conversation,” Bellatrix added.

“Of course,” Andromeda said with a roll of her eyes.

Bellatrix ignored her. She had technically been walking past the study when she overheard them, and whatever pause in her journey followed was irrelevant. “They mentioned disappearances in London and somewhere near Bristol as well. Father wasn’t worried.”

That was the part that had stayed with her. Cygnus Black worried about marriages, embarrassing relatives, Ministry legislation, Andromeda’s opinions, and whether Narcissa might someday make a decision about her own hair without consulting Druella first. Last night he had not sounded worried. He had sounded interested. Perhaps even impressed.

“Who were they talking about?” Andromeda asked.

Bellatrix looked toward the empty doorway before lowering her voice: “I don’t know.”

Narcissa immediately laughed into her tea. Bellatrix’s eyes narrowed. “That’s why I’m angry.”

One more summer remained before her final year at Hogwarts, and then Bellatrix would be finished with being sent away whenever conversations became interesting. Nobody would dismiss a question because she had schoolwork to concern herself with, or tell her that she would understand when she was older. Bellatrix had spent most of her life watching important people enter rooms and seeing how quickly everyone else turned toward them. She had never envied those people exactly. Envy suggested she wanted something that belonged to someone else, and Bellatrix had always preferred the idea of having something entirely her own.

“What are you smiling about?” Andromeda asked.

Bellatrix reached for another piece of toast. “Nothing.”

Narcissa sighed dramatically, “She’s planning something.”

“I’m eating breakfast,” Bellatrix said simply.

“You can do both,” Andromeda said with a snort.

Bellatrix looked between her sisters and deliberately widened her smile until Narcissa groaned and Andromeda laughed. The laughter had not quite faded when the dining-room doors opened.

“Whatever it is,” Druella Black said as she entered, “Narcissa is too young, Andromeda will object on principle, and you will attempt to deny responsibility before noon. I already know.”

Bellatrix’s smile disappeared. “Good morning, Mother.”

Druella’s gaze moved once around the table and took in the abandoned newspaper, Narcissa’s poorly concealed amusement, and the toast knife still in Andromeda’s hand. She looked as though she had been awake for hours rather than arriving late to breakfast. Her dark robes fell without a wrinkle, her hair had already been styled, and the only sign that the day had not proceeded exactly according to her design was the faint line between her brows. Narcissa immediately sat straighter to avoid her mother’s scrutiny. Andromeda lowered the knife to her plate, deciding it safer to judge the tension in the room before continuing her breakfast. Bellatrix did neither, though she did move her feet from the empty chair beside her before her mother could notice.

Cygnus Black followed a moment later with a folded piece of parchment in one hand and the expression of a man whose breakfast had been delayed by other people’s incompetence. He was not dressed for the Ministry, but he had already fastened his outer robes and there was a dark trace of sealing wax against one thumb. Bellatrix’s eyes went at once to the parchment. Her father noticed, turned it over, and placed it facedown beside his plate.

“You’re late,” Bellatrix said.

“Then you have had additional time to improve your manners,” Druella replied, taking her usual seat.

Cygnus glanced among his daughters as a fresh pot of tea floated from the sideboard and settled before him. “Did we miss anything?”

“Bellatrix declared that she hated us,” Andromeda said.

“Before or after breakfast?” Cygnus said as he filled his cup.

“During,” Narcissa chirped, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Then I doubt it will endure,” Cygnus assured.

Narcissa covered a laugh with her napkin. Bellatrix looked from her father to her mother, wondering how long they intended to pretend there was nothing unusual about either of them appearing after the meal had nearly ended. Cygnus unfolded his napkin with maddening calm. Druella inspected the tea before pouring it, then added precisely half a spoonful of sugar. Their lateness had not rushed them. If anything, it had made the room wait.

Bellatrix slid the Daily Prophet across the table until it stopped beside her father’s plate. “Two more witches have disappeared outside Appleby.”

Cygnus glanced at the headline. “So the Prophet claims.”

“It also claims the Ministry sees no connection to the London or Bristol disappearances,” Bellatrix said, fishing for a reaction.

“Then the Ministry has made its position admirably clear,” Cygnus responded steadily.

“That was not what you said last night,” Bellatrix accused, but immediately regretted it.

Andromeda went very still. Narcissa’s eyes widened above the rim of her cup. Druella finished stirring her tea before setting the spoon carefully into its saucer, but Cygnus only looked at Bellatrix, his eyes narrowing, his temper threatening to break loose. “The study door was closed.”

“Not properly,” Bellatrix replied, knowing there was already trouble and deciding to double down on her efforts.

“An error I shall correct,” the man said through gritted teeth.

“That still isn’t an answer,” Bellatrix said simply.

“No,” Cygnus agreed, releasing a breath. “It is not.”

Bellatrix felt the old irritation rise again. He had always done this when she was younger: answered the question surrounding the one she had asked, then waited for her to tire of chasing him. It had worked when she was nine. At seventeen, it merely made her more determined. Across the table, Druella watched her over the edge of her cup with an expression Bellatrix knew too well. Their mother had never mistaken persistence for maturity, particularly when Bellatrix was the one demonstrating it.

“You heard a private conversation,” Druella said. “You were not invited into it merely because your father failed to secure a door.”

“I did not ask to be invited. I asked who they were discussing,” Bellatrix countered.

“And your father declined to answer,” Druella said coldly.

“Because I’m still at school?”

“Because he decided not to answer.”

There was a difference, at least in Druella’s mind. Age could be argued against. Authority could not. Bellatrix leaned back in her chair, unwilling to give her mother the satisfaction of seeing the rebuke land, and looked again at the folded parchment beside Cygnus’s hand.

“Uncle Orion sounded impressed,” Bellatrix mumbled.

That earned her something. Not much, but enough. Cygnus’s fingers stopped against the rim of his cup, while Druella’s eyes shifted toward her husband.

“Orion is easily impressed by men who speak with certainty,” Druella said.

“This man has offered more than words,” Cygnus replied with what seemed like exasperation.

The answer seemed intended for his wife rather than Bellatrix. A small silence followed it, the sort that would have passed unnoticed in another family. In theirs, all three daughters heard it. Narcissa looked down at her plate. Andromeda watched their mother. Bellatrix watched everyone.

“What has he offered?” she asked.

Cygnus’s attention returned to her, and for the first time he seemed to want to discuss what was on his mind. “A question. One that will have to be answered by people considerably older than you.”

“That sounds like something people say when they dislike the answer,” Bellatrix added, hoping he might reveal more than planned if she sided with him.

The corner of his mouth moved, though whether in amusement or warning Bellatrix could not tell. “The man in question has reminded certain families that the Ministry’s vision for the future is not the only one available to them. Perhaps with the right backing, there could be…other options.”

Andromeda frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Druella said before Cygnus could answer, “that sometimes when powerful men are dissatisfied, lesser men are often eager to place themselves in front of them with big dreams and ideas that might make them feel important.”

Cygnus lifted his tea. “You make ambition sound like a character defect.”

“Only when it belongs to men without the discipline to control it,” the woman countered sharply.

There it was again. Bellatrix suspected this argument had begun behind closed doors. Cygnus and Druella Black did not argue in front of their daughters. They exchanged observations sharpened finely enough to draw blood and trusted everyone else to pretend not to see it. Bellatrix had watched them do it for years over Ministry appointments, marriages, money, and the less respectable branches of their family tree. This was different. Her father was interested. Her mother was beyond wary; she seemed against it. Neither of them seemed frightened.

Bellatrix looked at the newspaper again. Until that moment, the disappearances had been intriguing because adults refused to discuss them. Now they were something more. Somewhere beyond the dining-room windows, a man she had never met had managed to impress Orion Black, interest her father, and make her mother choose her words with care. Bellatrix wanted his name.

Before she could attempt to go in for the kill, Druella set down her cup. “The Rosiers and Lestranges are coming on Sunday.”

The sudden change of subject was so deliberate that even Narcissa looked offended by it.

“Why?” Andromeda asked.

“Because they were invited,” Druella said with a colder tone than she usually gave her daughters.

“That does explain most visits,” Bellatrix said.

Her mother’s eyes moved to her. “You will all be present. Properly dressed and capable of passing an afternoon without interrogating your father about matters that do not concern you.”

Bellatrix glanced toward Cygnus. “Do the Lestranges concern me?”

“They concern this family,” Druella replied. “That should be sufficient.”

Narcissa reached for the marmalade with studied innocence. Andromeda’s expression had closed in the way it did whenever family and obligation appeared too close together in the same sentence. Bellatrix felt no such discomfort. The Lestranges were old, wealthy, and usually dull, but Sunday now offered something breakfast had not: more adults speaking when they believed the girls were listening to something else. Rodolphus had always had a soft spot for Bellatrix; perhaps he would tell her the name her family seemed hesitant to speak.

Cygnus finally turned over the folded parchment on the table, but only for a moment, before he tucked it inside his robes. Bellatrix saw the broken edge of a dark seal and a single letter written across the top in a narrow, elegant hand. It was not enough to form a name. It was enough to confirm there was one.

Druella began discussing Sunday’s arrangements as though the conversation had been settled. Andromeda objected to the dress selected for her. Narcissa asked whether their cousins would be attending. Cygnus reached for the Prophet and turned past the article without reading it. Bellatrix returned to her toast and allowed the rest of them to believe she had surrendered.

Whatever had held her father’s attention and earned her mother’s suspicion had a name. Before the summer ended, Bellatrix intended to learn it.

.o.

“This bloody leg is going to be the death of me.”

Harry remained crouched behind the old chair in the living room, wand held loosely between two fingers as he attempted to stabilize the old piece of furniture with a mix of magic and Muggle handiwork. A few conjured tools here and there, and a whole new leg of the chair settled against the floor with a quiet scrape, leaving the chair level for what might have been the first time in centuries. Harry pushed against one arm, then the other, testing his work. It refused to wobble.

“There. Try throwing him onto the floor now,” Harry quipped, feeling accomplished.

The chair, which had spent the better part of two weeks creaking, threatening to fall over on Dumbledore whenever he visited, offered no reply. It stood beside the cold fireplace with all the dignity of an antique that had never done anything wrong. Harry suspected Dumbledore had noticed the unstable leg immediately and simply chosen not to mention it. The Headmaster seemed to enjoy unnecessary danger when it arrived in sufficiently mundane forms.

Harry ran his thumb along the repaired seam. Someone had attempted to mend it before him, though the charm was old enough that the wood had begun separating around it again. The chair itself might have been as old as Hogwarts for all he knew.

He stood and returned his wand to his sleeve. Only a few weeks had passed since his meeting with Flitwick in the empty Hogwarts library, not nearly enough time for Peverell Manor to feel like home. It had, however, begun to feel less like a tomb. Harry had cleared the worst of the dust from the drawing room, the kitchen, and two upstairs bedrooms, though he continued using only one of them. The lamps worked more often than not, the fireplace no longer filled the room with smoke, and several piles of books had appeared wherever Dumbledore and Flitwick found an empty surface.

The laboratory remained another matter. Harry had cleaned enough of it to work, which meant it was already becoming untidy again. Chalk covered one wall. Flitwick’s revised calculations occupied another. Dumbledore had left three books on temporal theory open across the central table, each marked with scraps of parchment bearing questions Harry could not yet answer. The Manor did not look inhabited so much as interrupted, as though its previous owner had stepped outside and Harry had wandered in before anyone noticed.

The chair was different. Dumbledore had chosen it on his first evening at the Manor and returned to it every visit since. Flitwick preferred the sofa, usually balancing a book across one knee while his feet failed to reach the carpet. Harry occupied whichever seat remained beneath the least parchment. No one had assigned them places. They had simply become theirs.

Harry looked toward the clock above the mantel. It was nearly seven.

Flitwick had intended to arrive an hour earlier. Dumbledore had said he would come later, although Harry had learned that later could mean anything between dusk and breakfast when Dumbledore used the word. Harry had prepared tea regardless, along with enough bread and cheese that neither man could accuse him of neglecting himself. Food had presented one of the first practical problems of living in 1969. Peverell Manor belonged to him, apparently, but ownership of an enormous house did not place Galleons inside his pockets. Harry had refused Dumbledore’s offer of money almost immediately, which had resulted in a lengthy argument about whether accepting temporary assistance constituted charity. Flitwick had eventually settled the matter by pointing out that a house large enough to contain three kitchens, fourteen bedrooms, and an entire corridor nobody had yet managed to open almost certainly contained something its owner could sell.

Harry had been careful. The books remained untouched, as did the portraits, the family silver, anything bearing the Peverell crest, and every object that seemed likely to possess a history he did not yet understand. The Manor had contained plenty that met none of those conditions. Two disused kitchens alone had surrendered stacks of plain copper cookware, cracked cauldrons beyond practical repair, and enough brass fittings to make Harry wonder whether one of his ancestors had expected metal to become extinct. There had been crates of empty potion bottles in the cellar, several pieces of ordinary furniture abandoned in servants’ rooms, and an entire cupboard filled with identical pewter dishes that no family, however large, could possibly have needed. Dumbledore had introduced him to a discreet estate merchant who asked few questions and paid fairly for salvage. None of it had made Harry wealthy, but the resulting Galleons covered food, replacement clothing, laboratory supplies, and the occasional drink without requiring him to sell anything that might one day teach him who the Peverells had been.

A soft burst of blue light appeared beside the window. It gathered itself into the shape of a small bird, though not one Harry recognized, and Flitwick’s voice emerged from its beak.

“Harry, forgive me. An obligation in London has escaped both my calendar and my memory until the last possible moment. We will continue Monday evening, provided Albus has not buried you beneath additional reading by then.”

The bird inclined its head apologetically before dissolving into sparks. As Harry watched the last of them disappear, his stomach unexplainably sank for a moment, before he whispered, “All right.”

He crossed to the table and moved Flitwick’s teacup back onto the tray. The room did not seem particularly emptier without him. It had been empty before the message arrived. Harry had simply expected that to change.

Another sound came from the entrance hall a few minutes later—not a knock, but the soft rush of parchment passing through the Manor’s wards. Harry found the note waiting on the floor beneath the narrow window beside the door. Dumbledore’s handwriting crossed the front:

Harry,

A matter at Hogwarts has required more time than I originally believed. I regret that Filius and I have conspired to leave you entirely to your own devices. Please resist interpreting this as an invitation to resume your experiment without supervision. If my obligations are complete this evening, I will check in on your progress.

Albus

Harry stared at the final sentence before grumbling, “I wasn’t going to do another experiment by myself.”

The Manor remained unconvinced.

He carried the note back into the drawing room and placed it beside Dumbledore’s untouched cup. The repaired chair waited beside the fireplace, steady and unoccupied.

Harry sat on the sofa and opened the nearest book. He reached the bottom of the first page without remembering the beginning, started again, and discovered halfway through that he was listening for footsteps that would not come. He shut it with more force than necessary.

The problem was not that Harry disliked being alone. He had spent enough of his life surrounded by people who wanted answers, photographs, speeches, or pieces of him that solitude had once felt like a luxury. Even after the war, he had occasionally disappeared into the quietest room available simply because nobody else was there.

This was different. Ron and Hermione were not in another house. They were not across London or busy with work. Ginny was not training. George was not at the shop. Harry could not send an owl and complain that Dumbledore had assigned him six hundred pages on the movement of magical energy through unstable boundaries.

They were not too busy for him. It was much worse than that. They had not even been born yet. Harry removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. The thought had become easier to carry during the past few weeks, but easier did not mean light. Dumbledore and Flitwick filled enough of his days that Harry could sometimes forget the size of everything missing around them. An evening like this made the absence impossible to overlook. He replaced his glasses and checked the clock again. Seven fifteen.

It was Friday night. Harry was twenty-two years old, living alone in an enormous ancestral manor, and had somehow built his entire social life around the availability of two men who had once been his professors. “This is pathetic.”

Harry pushed himself from the sofa. He had spent the morning studying, most of the afternoon in the laboratory, and the first part of the evening repairing a chair for someone who was not coming. If he remained inside, he would either reopen the books or convince himself that Dumbledore’s warning constituted a challenge. Neither seemed particularly healthy.

He returned the tea tray to the kitchen, changed out of the robes he used in the laboratory, and paused in the entrance hall while fastening a cleaner set. The mirror beside the door gave him an unimpressed version of himself: black hair refusing every attempt at order, round glasses, pale scar, and faint shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of sleep had entirely removed since the war. At least he no longer looked as though he had recently survived an explosion.

The evening air was warm when Harry stepped outside. The sun had begun lowering beyond the fields surrounding the Manor, spreading gold across the upper windows while the lower floors disappeared into shadow. The wards passed over him with a cool ripple and closed again at his back. Godric’s Hollow was close enough to reach in minutes by foot, so Harry chose to walk.

The narrow road curved between fields and low stone walls before descending toward the village. Harry had crossed it several times since returning from Hogwarts, usually for supplies or because Dumbledore believed fresh air could solve problems that advanced magic had failed to address. Tonight there was no purpose beyond reaching the pub Harry had noticed near the square.

The village was settling into evening as he arrived. Windows stood open against the summer warmth, and somewhere beyond a row of cottages a wireless played loudly enough for the music to drift across several gardens. Two children chased one another around a tree while their father pretended not to notice them avoiding bedtime. An elderly witch waved from a doorway, and Harry offered the woman a nod of his head and a wave back.

Godric’s Hollow still unsettled him in ways Peverell Manor did not. The Manor was strange because it no longer felt like his. The village was strange because he knew what it would become. There was no memorial in the square, no collection of flowers beneath carved names, no ruined cottage preserved behind a sign. James and Lily Potter had never hidden here together. Voldemort had never come for them. Harry had never been carried from the wreckage.

The road leading toward Charlus and Dorea’s house appeared on his left. Harry looked down it before he could stop himself. He had not returned since the afternoon Dumbledore brought him there. Dorea had invited him, Henry had offered him a drink, and Charlus had watched Harry with the cautious recognition of someone staring at a face that belonged among his family portraits. Harry had spent the weeks since finding reasons not to test whether those invitations remained open. Tonight he kept walking, though it took slightly more effort than it should have.

The pub stood near the far end of the square, tucked between a grocer and a narrow house covered in climbing ivy. Its hanging sign had faded badly enough that Harry could not decide whether the painted creature was a stag or a horse suffering from an unfortunate curse that might have given it antlers. Warm light shone through the front windows, accompanied by laughter and an argument about Quidditch loud enough to reach the street.

Harry stopped outside the door. He had entered pubs alone before. Usually someone recognized him within minutes, and solitude became impossible. Here, the name Harry Peverell meant little beyond the old Manor on the edge of the village. Harry could order a drink, sit somewhere quiet, and listen to people complain about teams whose players had retired before he was born.

That sounded almost normal. He pushed open the door. The room was smaller and brighter than the Hog’s Head, with low wooden beams and tables worn smooth by years of use. Conversation dipped as Harry entered, but only briefly. A few people glanced toward him with the mild curiosity afforded to a stranger who might eventually become a neighbor, then returned to their drinks.

Harry approached the bar and ordered a firewhiskey. His funds were not unlimited, and he knew if he wanted to enjoy his evening, a stronger drink might be the place to start. The barman placed it before him without asking whether he had defeated any Dark Lords recently, or survived anything remarkable, or intended to comment on Ministry policy. Harry decided he liked him immediately.

He had just raised the glass to his lips when a familiar voice carried from farther down the bar: “Peverell.”

Harry went still.

Then he turned toward Henry Potter.