Chapter 1: A Father's Demand and a Forbidden Bond
The kitchen wasn’t a place for cooking. It was a reliquary for decay. Flickering candlelight bled across walls of stained obsidian, catching on the rusted iron of empty potion racks and the greasy sides of cracked cauldrons. The air tasted of burnt wormwood and iron, undercut by the sweet, sickly scent of something long dead, preserved in jars that lined the highest shelves. Rabastan leaned against the heavy oak table, its surface gouged and stained, feeling the hum of the cursed objects upon it vibrate through his bones.
Across the room, Rudolph was a study in stillness, pouring a viscous, black liquid from a flask into a smaller vial. His hands, pale and long-fingered, moved with a surgeon’s precision, a stark contrast to the wild tremor Rabastan had to constantly force down in his own.
“He wants us in Leeds on Tuesday,” Rabastan said, the words too loud in the dense silence. “Some mudblood magistrate causing problems. A public speech. A warning.”
Rudolph didn’t look up. “A warning implies subtlety. The Dark Lord does not deal in warnings anymore. He deals in examples.” His voice was a low rasp, sandpaper over stone. Azkaban had stolen its music, leaving only the notes of a closed tomb.
“I’m tired of examples.” Rabastan pushed off the table, the restlessness in him a caged bird beating against his ribs. He crossed the space in three strides, his body moving before his mind had fully caught up. He pinned Rudolph against the edge of the counter, a hand flat on the cold stone on either side of him. The vial rattled in Rudolph’s grip. “I’m tired of the smell of burnt hair and screaming. It’s the same. Every time. It doesn’t… it doesn’t land anymore.”
Up close, he could see the fine maps of suffering etched into his brother’s face. The sunken eyes, the premature silver streaking through the dark hair at his temples. Rabastan’s own madness was a hot, snapping thing. Rudolph’s was a glacier, deep and frozen and infinitely more dangerous.
Rudolph finally met his gaze. The black depths of his eyes held no reflection, just an endless pull. “It is not for your amusement, Bastan. It is our penance. And our purpose.” He lifted a hand, not to push him away, but to trace the sharp line of Rabastan’s jaw with a knuckle. The touch was a brand. “You are unsettled.”
“I’m bored.”
“You are haunted.” Rudolph corrected him quietly. He set the vial down carefully. “The dementors left their fingers in your mind. They pluck at your thoughts when you are idle. You need focus.”
“I need—” Rabastan cut himself off, dipping his head until their foreheads touched. He breathed in the scent of him—old parchment, dark magic, the unique ozone-storm smell of their shared power. It was the only thing that ever made the screaming in his head fade to a whisper. “Something real.”
For a moment, the only sound was their shared breath and the distant drip of something from a tap. The candle guttered, stretching their silhouettes into monstrous shapes on the wall. Then Rudolph spoke, his lips almost brushing Rabastan’s.
“I felt something. During the Goyle cleanup. After the curse-fire.”
Rabastan went still. “Felt what?”
“A… resonance. A pulse.” Rudolph’s voice dropped, becoming confessional. “We were apparating from the alley behind the burning shop. The air was thick with ash and panic. And for a second, just a second, I felt a spike of magic. Raw. Untrained. Wild like a storm-surge. It wasn’t one of ours.”
“A witch? In that muggle filth?”
“No.” Rudolph pulled back just enough to watch Rabastan’s face. “It came from a muggle. A woman. She was across the street, held back by a police barrier. She was watching the flames.”
Rabastan snorted, a short, sharp sound. “Muggles don’t have magic.”
“This one did.” Rudolph’s certainty was absolute. “It was chaotic. Like a child’s magic, but stronger. A tsunami trapped in a teacup. I saw her… for a moment, her eyes reflected the curse-fire not as orange, but as green. Avada green.”
A strange, cold curiosity dripped down Rabastan’s spine, cooling the restless heat. He straightened, though he didn’t step back. Their space remained shared, charged. “A squib, maybe. A powerful one.”
“Squibs are voids. They have no pulse. This was… a presence. An active, screaming presence. It was like looking into a broken mirror and seeing your own reflection, but twisted. Wrong. And right.” Rudolph’s gaze grew distant, seeing the memory. “She was afraid. But not of the fire. She was afraid of what was inside her. I could taste it.”
The implication hung in the toxic air, thicker than the smell of the brews. A muggle, with magic. It was an impossibility. An abomination. The very cornerstone of their world, of their cause, rejected it utterly.
And yet.
Rabastan felt a hook catch in his gut. A new kind of hunger. Not for violence, not for the old, familiar rhythms of cruelty, but for the puzzle of it. For the wrongness. His own chaos resonated with the description.
“Where is she?” The question was out before he could consider its weight.
Rudolph’s eyes snapped back to him, sharp and assessing. “Why?”
“You felt it. You brought it up. Don’t pretend you don’t want to know.” Rabastan’s lips curled into something that wasn’t a smile. “A freak of nature. A secret the world hid. Doesn’t that intrigue you? More than another dead mudblood in Leeds?”
“It is a danger. An unknown variable. The Dark Lord would demand she be dissected, studied, and disposed of.” Rudolph stated it as fact.
“I’m not talking about telling him.” Rabastan’s voice dropped to a whisper. He saw the flicker in Rudolph’s eyes—not disapproval, but calculation. The thrill of a secret shared, a risk taken. It was the glue between them, as much as the passion and the damage. “Not yet. You found her once. You can find her again.”
Rudolph was silent for a long time. The candle flame shrank, deepening the shadows around them, leaving their faces half in light, half in utter dark. He reached out and gripped the back of Rabastan’s neck, his fingers cold and possessive.
“It calls to you, too,” Rudolph murmured, not a question. “This broken magic.”
Rabastan didn’t deny it. He leaned into the grip. “Maybe it’s not broken. Maybe it’s just different. Maybe she’s like us. A thing that doesn’t fit.”
A faint, grim approximation of amusement touched Rudolph’s mouth. “She is a muggle.”
“She’s a mystery.” Rabastan countered, his own wild eyes alight with a new, consuming fire. The empty boredom of the last year shriveled and blew away like ash. “Find her. Let’s see what she is. Let’s see if she screams.”
The grip on his neck tightened, then relaxed. Rudolph’s expression was unreadable, a mask of ancient stone, but a new, calculating light had ignited in the depths of his sunken eyes. He gave a single, slow nod.
“We find her first,” Rudolph conceded, his voice barely more than a breath against Rabastan’s cheek. “We understand what she is. Then we decide her use.”
Rabastan’s answering grin was all teeth, a predatory flash in the gloom. The promise of the hunt, of a mystery that wasn’t just another blood-soaked chore, sent a current of pure energy crackling under his skin. He dipped his head, capturing Rudolph’s mouth in a kiss that was less about affection and more about sealing a pact. It was brutal and claiming, a clash of teeth and shared breath that tasted of bitter potions and desperate power.
When they broke apart, the kitchen seemed smaller, the darkness more intimate. The cursed objects on the table hummed in sympathetic vibration.
The cursed objects on the table hummed in sympathetic vibration.
Across London, in a small, cluttered flat above a Chinese takeaway, Lisa Grimm scrubbed at her hands under the kitchen tap. The water ran clear, but she still felt the phantom heat on her skin, saw the afterimage of green flashing within the orange inferno. She jumped at the sound of a key in the lock.
The door swung open and Harry Potter stepped through, looking older than his seventeen years, his shoulders bowed under an invisible weight. He managed a tired smile the moment he saw her. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.” Lisa shut off the tap, drying her hands on her jeans. The familiar routine of his homecoming—the drop of his bag, the shrug of his jacket—grounded her. “You look like hell.”
“Cheers, mum. Long day.” He ran a hand through his eternally messy hair. “You okay? You’re buzzing.”
She was. A low-grade static was fizzing just under her breastbone, a leftover jangle from the afternoon. She leaned against the counter, crossing her arms. “There was a fire. Down in Walthamstow. That dodgy little magic shop.”
Harry froze, his green eyes sharpening instantly. “What kind of fire?”
“The exploding kind. The kind the regular fire brigade couldn’t put out for ages. It was… wrong.” She shook her head, trying to dislodge the memory of the flames seeming to cling to the bricks like liquid. “I was on perimeter duty. Keeping the crowds back. Saw the whole thing.”
Harry listened, his expression grim. He knew her instincts were rarely wrong. “Casualties?”
“The owner. A Goyle, the briefing said. No one else. But Harry…” She met his gaze. “It felt aimed. It felt like a message.”
He let out a long, weary breath and moved to the kettle, flicking it on. The mundane sound was a comfort. “It probably was. The Death Eaters are cleaning house. Getting rid of weak links, suppliers who talk.” He pulled two mugs down. “I’m glad you were just on the perimeter.”
“Yeah, well, my thrill was enough.” She paused, watching his back. “Your turn. What’s the weight?”
He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He kept his back to her as he spooned tea leaves. “Dumbledore’s got a new task for me.”
The air in the kitchen went thick. The static under Lisa’s skin spiked, and the overhead light bulb flickered once. Harry turned, eyeing it curiously.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lisa hissed, the words exploding out of her. She pushed off the counter. “That old, meddling bastard. When does it end? Has he not put enough on you? You’re a kid!”
“I’m not, really,” Harry said quietly.
“You’re my kid!” She shot back, her voice cracking. She began to pace, the energy in her needing an outlet. “That’s it, I’m calling him. I don’t care if he’s the greatest wizard alive, he needs to learn to fight his own damn wars and stop burying the young under them. Especially not you. Not my son.”
The word ‘son’ hung in the air. It wasn’t biological, but it was the truest thing in the room. Harry stared at her, his defiance melting into something raw and vulnerable. He was used to concern, to anger on his behalf, but the ferocity of her protection—muggle, copper, utterly fearless—still stunned him. It was a different kind of magic.
“Lisa,” he said, and his voice was soft.
“Don’t you ‘Lisa’ me. I mean it. What is it this time? Fetch another cursed diadem? Have a nice chat with a giant spider? Go on a bloody horcrux hunt?” She was throwing out terms she’d painstakingly learned from him, her hands chopping the air.
A faint, real smile touched Harry’s lips. “I can’t tell you. You know that. It’s for—”
“—my own safety, yes, brilliant, fantastic.” She stopped pacing, putting her hands on her hips. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears of frustration. “I just got you. I’m not ready to lose you to some grand, tragic plan hatched by a man who treats people like chess pieces.”
Harry crossed the space between them in two steps. He didn’t hug her—she wasn’t the type for casual embraces—but he put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. “You won’t lose me. This… this is why I fight. For this. For a safe, boring flat above a takeaway. For you calling Dumbledore a meddling bastard.”
She swatted at his arm, but the fight drained out of her, replaced by a weary, deep-seated fear. The light bulb stabilized. “You’re a terrible sap. And you need to eat. Dumbledore’s tasks can wait until after pasta.”
They cooked together. It was a silent, focused ballet in the narrow kitchen. Harry chopped onions, Lisa fried the mince. She seasoned by instinct, he followed her directives without question. The earlier tension dissolved into the sizzle of garlic, the steam from the boiling water, the simple, tangible act of making dinner.
They ate at the small table by the window, watching the neon sign from the takeaway below paint the room in cycles of red and blue. No more talk of fires or tasks or wars. Just the clink of forks on plates, a quiet comment about the football scores, the shared, comfortable silence of two people who understood each other’s ghosts.
For a few precious hours, the world outside, with its cursed objects and hunting brothers, ceased to exist. There was only the quiet fortress of the flat, the taste of basil and tomato, and the unspoken, fierce promise that whatever came, they would face it from this same small table. Together.
The pasta and the quiet did their work. The adrenaline of the day and the weight of the unspoken task seeped out of Harry, leaving exhaustion in its wake. He’d moved to the worn sofa, claiming he was just going to rest his eyes for a minute. A minute became five, then ten. His breathing deepened, evening out into the slow, heavy rhythm of sleep, his glasses slightly askew on his face.
Lisa, washing the last plate at the sink, watched him. A fond, aching tightness gripped her chest. He looked so young like this, all the wariness smoothed from his features. Just a boy, tangled in a too-big hoodie, one arm dangling over the edge of the cushions.
She didn’t see the famous Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. She saw the scrawny, furious fifteen-year-old who’d turned up on her doorstep in the middle of a rainstorm, covered in mud and hex burns. She’d been a Detective Constable then, working a routine missing person’s case that had stank of weirdness—vanished animals, reports of odd lights. She’d found him hiding in a disused shed behind the old mill, wand pointed at her heart, eyes wild with a fear that was years deep.
He hadn’t trusted her. She hadn’t believed him. Not at first.
But he’d been alone. And she’d seen that particular brand of loneliness before, in the eyes of kids who’d fallen through every crack the system had. It wasn’t a social worker’s call she made that night. It was a human one. She’d bought him a kebab, listened to his impossible story, and instead of calling psych services, she’d cleared out her spare room. A temporary arrangement, she’d told them both.
Temporary had become permanent through a thousand small moments: teaching him to drive her old Ford in an empty Tesco car park, him showing her, with terrified wonder, how he could make a flame dance on his fingertip. Fighting the Ministry bureaucracy together, using her police credentials to forge a Guardian of Magical Minor form that Dumbledore, with a twinkle of profound relief, had magically ratified. It wasn’t adoption papers. It was stronger. It was choice.
On the sofa, Harry flinched. A small, sharp jerk of his head. A low groan vibrated in his throat.
Lisa put the plate down quietly, her copper’s senses switching on. Nightmare.
But his lips were moving. No sound came out. His brow furrowed in concentration, not fear. In his mind, Harry was somewhere else entirely.
It was the same fragmented, visceral rush—the swooping nausea, the sense of being a passenger behind alien eyes. Voldemort’s consciousness, a cesspool of hatred and cold intent.
He was looking down at a stone floor. A rough-hewn, circular chamber. Not Malfoy Manor. Somewhere older, damp. The air was frigid. Before him knelt a man, robes filthy, trembling so hard his chains rattled.
“The prophecy… the record…” the man sobbed.
A long, white hand entered Harry’s field of vision. It held not a wand, but a simple, tarnished silver knife. Ritualistic. Ancient.
“The Hall of Prophecy holds only the echo,” a high, cold voice said. Harry’s/Voldemort’s stomach coiled with a familiar, contemptuous pleasure. “The true recording was always elsewhere. Dumbledore knew. He lied to you all. A comforting fable for the Order.”
The knife moved, not to kill, but to trace a symbol on the stone between the kneeling man’s hands. A triangle, enclosing a circle, bisected by a line.
“He lies still,” the voice whispered, ripe with malicious satisfaction. “The boy is not what he believes. His protection is not love. It is a leash.”
The vision splintered, pain lancing through the connection—
Harry gasped, bolting upright on the sofa. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum. His scar was a line of white-hot fire. He clutched at it, sucking in lungfuls of the flat’s calm, takeaway-scented air.
“Harry?” Lisa was there, perched on the coffee table, her hand hovering near his knee. Not touching. Ready. Her eyes scanned his face, reading the trauma there. “Bad one?”
“Yeah.” The word was scraped raw. He fumbled for his glasses, shoved them on. The familiar room snapped back into place, but it felt thin, unreal. The vision’s words echoed in his skull, corrosive, seeking weak points. He lied to you all. A comforting fable. “It was… different.”
“Different how?” Lisa’s voice was steady, a anchor line.
He looked at her, really looked at her. The woman who’d fought social services and Ministry officials for him. The one person whose loyalty had never been a question, never part of a plan. Dumbledore’s plan. Always the plan.
“He was talking about the prophecy,” Harry said, the words tasting like ash. “The one Dumbledore told me about. That it’s stored in the Department of Mysteries. That it’s why Voldemort wants me.”
Lisa nodded slowly. She knew this story. It was their bible, their curse.
“In the vision… he said that was a lie.” Harry met her gaze, his own bright with a chaotic blend of fear and dawning, terrible outrage. “He said the real record was somewhere else. That Dumbledore knew. That he’s been lying… to the Order, to everyone.” He swallowed hard, the next feeling worse than any pain. “To me.”
The silence that followed was deafening. The hum of the refrigerator seemed to grow louder. Lisa didn’t dismiss it. She didn’t offer comforting platitudes. She took it in, her detective’s mind weighing the source, the motivation, the possible truth.
“Why would Voldemort think that?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
“I don’t know. To mess with my head? To make me doubt Dumbledore?” Harry ran both hands through his hair, pulling at it. “But it felt… certain. He was gloating. Like he’d uncovered a secret.” He looked at her, lost. “If Dumbledore lied about that… what else has he lied about?”
Lisa said nothing for a long moment. The trust in Dumbledore was the bedrock of Harry’s war. To shake it was more dangerous than any curse. She chose her words with the care of a bomb disposal expert.
“One vision isn’t proof of anything,” she said finally. “It’s intelligence. Could be true, could be bollocks. But it’s a lead.” She leaned forward, catching his eye. “You don’t have to decide tonight. But you don’t have to blindly believe everything you’re told anymore, either. Even by him.”
It was the permission he didn’t know he needed. The unconditional support to question, to doubt. It didn’t calm the storm in his head, but it gave him a compass within it. He wasn’t alone with this suspicion.
Across the city, in the obsidian kitchen, Rabastan Lestrange watched his brother pore over a vast, leather-bound ledger that smelled of mould and melancholy. Rudolph’s finger stopped on a name, underlined in faint, fading ink.
“Grimm,” Rudolph murmured, the word a soft exhalation in the dark.
Rabastan drifted closer, looking over his shoulder. The candlelight bled across the page. “Grimm?”
“Lisa. Age thirty-four. Occupation… Metropolitan Police. A detective.” Rudolph’s black eyes lifted from the page, meeting Rabastan’s restless gaze. A slow, understanding passed between them. The woman at the barrier hadn’t been a random bystander. She’d been there in an official capacity. She’d been working.
“A detective,” Rabastan repeated, a smile touching his lips that held no warmth, only a sharp, predatory interest. “How very… orderly. For a creature of wild magic.”
He reached out, touching the brittle page where her name was written. The static he’d felt since his brother first described her seemed to buzz in his fingertips.
“Find her,” he whispered, the command barely audible.
Rudolph closed the ledger with a definitive thump. The hunt, it seemed, had already begun.