Albus folded his hands on the table and frowned at Harry across the Great Hall. Harry's shoulders tightened in response, as if he knew he was being watched, which was not what Albus wanted.
But something had happened over the Christmas holidays, and Albus needed to determine what it was before he made a move.
Sirius had sent Albus a letter full of ramblings that honestly made him sound drunk, about rituals and stars and darkness and how they had "scoured" Harry. Albus had written back asking what was going on, but Sirius's next letter wasn't much clearer. It sounded like he was talking about a dream he had had.
Had the Malfoys broken into Grimmauld Place and used the Confundus Charm on Sirius? Had they taken some of his blood? But it seemed to Albus that they would have slaughtered Sirius if they could find their way past the wards, not used a fairly harmless jinx on him.
Albus had arranged to be standing near the entrance hall when the students walked into it after the holidays, and he'd seen Harry's scar looking—different. Paler, duller, less like the bright red mark it had always been.
Perhaps the Malfoys had been working to weaken the connection between Voldemort and Harry? Albus could understand why they would want to do that, honestly. It would be a way for Lucius to maintain his allegiance to Tom without Harry being affected by it.
But the only thing that had ever affected the scar was Tom himself. Had they brought Harry and Voldemort into contact?
If so, Harry showed no sign of it that first evening. But then Albus had heard from Minerva and his other professors about his spells causing chaos in the classroom, apparently because they were overpowered.
This is beyond worrying, Albus thought, looking at Harry with memories of a first-year Tom Riddle swarming through his mind.
Albus had discreetly cast a few charms that would warn him of the presence of a wraith, of a possessed person, or of someone who had been close to a wraith or a possessed person in the last week. The charms had simply faded and dissipated. They read as if Harry were only himself, with no passengers.
On the other hand, that curse scar on Harry's forehead was like nothing Albus had ever seen before.
So he had written to Remus, and again to Sirius in case a clearer answer would come back this time, but until Remus could make it to the school on a day before the full moon and uses his enhanced senses to see if anything was wrong, Albus was stuck in a holding pattern.
Waiting.
And wishing, futilely, that Henry Malfoy had never discovered who he was, if it was going to lead to this much chaos.
Narcissa managed not to wrinkle her robes, but probably because she was holding Lucius's hand instead of them. And if her husband had winced once or twice at the strength of her grip, he had said nothing.
She loved him more than she could ever say, and not least for bringing her to the outskirts of Muggle London, where Regulus had asked to meet, on the night of a full moon.
The air in front of them broke apart, and Lucius had his wand aimed at it immediately. But it was only a house-elf, one Narcissa recognized. He bowed to her at once.
"Mistress Cissy," he croaked.
"Kreacher," Narcissa said, a little faintly. She had thought he might still be alive, but had dismissed it as a realistic possibility. Suddenly the wards of Grimmauld Place and Sirius's reluctance to let them in were looking like much less of a problem.
But she pushed the notion out of her mind. They were there for a different reason. "Is it truly Regulus?" she whispered. "Truly?"
Kreacher's eyes gleamed with something deep and bright as he reached up and tugged on his ears. "It is. It is Master Regulus returned."
Narcissa closed her eyes with a bone-deep shudder, while Lucius was the one holding on more tightly to her hand now. She knew she would have questions to answer when they returned to Malfoy Manor, especially about how she had thought this might have been a trick but had wanted to come anyway.
"Thank Merlin," she whispered. "Kreacher, what happened to him?"
"He is telling you that, Mistress Cissy."
Narcissa bit back a protest. Yes, she would have wanted to claim that right for herself if she had returned to her family after years of a mysterious absence.
"Very well. You will bring him now?"
"He is being here, Mistress Cissy," Kreacher said, and snapped his fingers, and a Disillusionment Charm that must have been powered by house-elf magic for her not to notice it fell away from a patch of air next to them.
Narcissa sagged against Lucius. It was her cousin, her favorite cousin, her—her younger cousin. Who looked exactly like a teenager instead of the man in his thirties he should have been.
"How?" She put almost no breath behind the word, but Regulus seemed to hear it. Or read her lips. Or simply know what she was going to say.
....
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