Any sane witch or wizard did not visit Azkaban on a careless whim. Not even if someone within its walls might've meant something to you once, the chances of ever seeing them again were slim, so the effort of making it there and then enduring the wretched island itself for any amount of time was more often totally pointless.
Not just because no one was ever released from Azkaban. No 'out on parole' or 'released for good behavior' or any such muggle terms—no 'ten to twenty years' or minimum sentences, it was always for life. Azkaban ate souls, devoured them into nothingness, it never gave anything back. To be condemned to the island was an eternal sentence, and the sheer vastness of the mass graves beneath it's foundation made for one of the most terrifying inferi pits in existence. Because you never walked free—people banished you to this isle and promptly forgot about you for good, ensuring that one day you would simply be part of the bones buried here and nothing more.
The international wizarding communities—those that knew about the British wizarding prison at least as it was all rather hush-hush—condemned this place as heinous and vile. A war crime even, although she was fairly certain that was a muggle term that hadn't yet tainted magical communities in the UK.
The Black family believed in many things, some better than others and some not so convenient in certain eras, but one of those things that Narcissa had always taken a liking to, was the concept of a second death.
The first death was when you breathed your last. The second was when someone spoke your name for the last time.
In many ways, Azkaban was a way to live your second death before your first—most people outside of this island did their best to speak in hushed tones in quiet corners when discussing the crimes you might've committed to land yourself here, avoiding speaking your name less someone overhears you speaking about 'taboo' subjects. Anyone who might've once cared about you would grieve your loss like a real death since there was no chance to ever see you walk free again… and even if there was, there would be no way you'd be the same person who walked out of this place as who was dragged in.
Azkaban was death. If your wife or husband was sentenced here, your marriage was automatically annulled, and their estate liquidated for your convenience. That was how final a sentence here was.
So most people did not visit inmates here. They mourned, they grieved, they moved on.
And even you had the inclination to visit once or twice anyway, the trip was, to be frank, horrible.
Apparition was banned so you needed to travel by boat on ever-stormy waters across the channel, which was bad enough, but then you were physically and magically searched, and relieved of your wand while on the island which was frankly so far below what purebloods deemed acceptable it was quite literally rock bottom. Especially considering the most obvious downside: the guards.Walking with dementors escorting you while wandless… it was unthinkable for a Slytherin to willing put themselves in a disadvantaged position like this. Prisoners also talked, most of them driven well mad after only a couple months in this place, so they screamed at you as you walked by, spilling secrets easy as breathing. It was a great way to gather information if you dared risk it, but it also meant there was no way anyone else who visited wouldn't know you'd been here.
In fact, Narcissa hadn't made it three meters into the first corridor of the prison before she deduced the Minister, a woman from the Davis family, and a muggleborn man had visited in recent months. She filed the information away for later although doubted it's usefulness. Well… maybe not the Davis woman, she could probably use that. And anything on the Minister was good, although him visiting the prison he was technically in charge of wasn't that suspicious.
Still.
Best not to dawdle.
She had genuinely thought getting into Azkaban without anyone being any the wiser would be… more difficult. She needed to have this conversation in person, she needed to make it home unscathed, and she needed only one person to ever know she'd actually done this: her target.
Not even Lucius would approve of this kind of thing (less the point of the trip and more the being unarmed for any portion of time bit), so she simply didn't mention her afternoon plans at breakfast this morning. They didn't always agree and on this battle they were of quite differing opinions on who would be the best guardian for the young Potter—they hadn't been able to come to a consensus so really, whoever got there first would win. So, it needed to be done and it needed to be done quickly, less her husband beat her to the punch. It unfortunately meant she didn't exactly have his support, but it wasn't like she needed it—it wouldn't be the first time she'd walked her own path much to Lucius' displeasure.
She had some amount of her own personal funds to spend should she need to be discrete however there wasn't a good way to bribe the people she needed to without dipping into their shared vault. Or taking a chunk out of her Black inheritance fund which was mostly supposed to be inherited by Draco someday, so she hesitated touching that even if this little excursion probably wouldn't have taken much of a dent… too many 'small' deductions would add up, she knew.
She had a thing for the delicate, beautiful, and exorbitant—she understood her own shopping habits to not make that a habit in the first place.
She had plenty of contacts and favors to cash in so it was only a matter of going about checking in with her network of allies—only to be started when one of them said she wasn't the only one interested in something similar.
"You didn't hear it from me, but someone else wants the truth. I'll get you in with none the wiser, in exchange you just need to tell me if he's really innocent. The truth."
She agreed to the deal.
But she would do no such thing without some certainty that whatever truth she delivered would not harm her future plans… but a little digging here and there, and she had a name.
Sebastian Greengrass.
By all accounts he was a fellow grey ally, but by all accounts she honestly didn't know what to make of the man. He was no nonsense and stern, hard to read even for her… but readable he eventually was. His youngest daughter was not going to live long, born with an illness that made her delicate and his eldest took a lot after him except with a bleeding heart that Narcissa didn't need to be at Hogwarts to see. They were dealers but they were no Zabinis. Invaluable, but they had a light-tinted moral code they kept tight under lock and key.
Just because Greengrass family probably sympathized more for the light than the dark didn't mean a thing in the end though. If it was for a deal, it would be done—be it Albus Dumbledore or the dark lord himself. Personal opinions had never impacted their business, although they certainly had plenty of those opinions—more so than the typical Slytherin, she noted.
Which put her in an interesting position. Who has asked Greengrass for this truth? Or, was it not even the truth he was after? Should Sirius be innocent… and Narcissa had always been of the camp that he probably was… the Minister was dead in the water so far as his career went. Someone after any scrap they could get on Fudge would definitely start here, however…
Fudge very much did not want what could potentially be the greatest blunder of his career to see the light of day.
He was so unsubtle it was pathetic, but people got fired, had their wages docked, even arrested and kept for interrogation for weeks just for poking their noses close to this issue. Narcissa had half a mind when Draco was just learning his letters that if it were convenient perhaps Sirius should at least have a trial—but it was far from convenient actually.
In fact, it was hard to get this opportunity, even for her who thought herself quite a talented snake.
Not that Fudge was talented, but he legitimately had perhaps too-much power and was stupid enough to use it blatantly for selfish reasons. She'd voiced her half-thought to Lucius but even he, who'd wormed his way into being a close confidant to the Minister over the years, had never been able to make a dent in Fudge's rock-solid refusal to admit he might've been wrong. You couldn't speak sense into a rock after all, no matter how clever a speaker you were—and Cornelius was certainly stupid and closed minded enough for it to feel like speaking to a brick wall sometimes.
In fact, he'd shut down so hard several years ago when Lucius brought it up delicately, that he'd refused several of their invites to dinner afterwards. They'd decided then that jeopardizing their in with the Minister wasn't worth it, they'd have to find another way.
But years had passed, and no opportunity had ever presented itself.
She hadn't actively looked as she had a son to raise, a house to run, and politics to sway, but had she noted some convenient opportunity in front of her she would've taken it. It just hadn't happened upon her as of yet.
Now it wasn't about convenience though, this was about Harry Potter.
More importantly, this was about Draco.
The difficulty of this task was not something to scoff at even considering what a dunce Fudge was—the twat had power and was dangerous with it and this was the one thing he could not be manipulated away from. The fact Greengrass had arranged for this was… telling.
It meant he was being paid very, very well.
Unreasonably well, actually.
First there was the ministry clearance: any visitor needed to be cleared to enter via the wards around the island and this was the one ward that they hadn't cheaped out on when hiring Gringotts for the job. No one set foot on this island without Fudge knowing and he would know immediately where said visitor had gone since Sirius apparently had his own personalized ward probably for the sake of Fudge keeping tabs on his career's greatest mistake. A lot of the bribe money Lucius had slipped into Cornelius' pocket over the years probably went to this ward because she'd learned a thing or two about Azkaban's protections from the goblins over time and she knew this was one of the best. To be able to pay enough to a goblin of high enough skill to slip into not only Azkaban's ward, but then Sirius' own ward while not tipping off their original employers… it was not a small sum of money in the least, and that being said by an extremely wealthy woman who didn't often think those thoughts.
Then there was the island itself, actually putting up with being here was unpleasant and there were still the few actual human guards who monitored things. They would either have to be diverted from work on a particular day, distracted while she was here, or bribed into turning a blind eye. Which, was easier said than done as you didn't just volunteer to be a guard on this god forsaken island, you had to be the hardest, most righteous ass, 'by the book', there's-no-grey and evil-is-evil-and-deserves-to-die kind of auror to be willing to spend any kind of time on Azkaban just to ensure prisoners never saw the light of day again. Even she found trying to convince or bribe those types of people not worth the effort it'd take to just have them killed instead, but sudden deaths of Azkaban guards were a bit higher profile than most. Too many suspicious deaths of Azkaban guards could easily be seen as an attack on the prison itself and would only strengthen security.
The last and most critical challenge though: the dementors themselves.
They couldn't be bought or persuaded, they followed only Fudge's orders (to a point) and part of that ministry approval piece of the puzzle was not only allowance past the wards, but also Fudge's personal order that that visitor was allowed on the island and for the dementors not to suck out their soul. Without that order then anyone who wasn't supposed to be here was attacked and left an empty husk of who they arrived as. Given the hundreds of them in this prison, no matter how talented a witch she fancied herself, she wasn't going to get around that.
So when she set foot on the island and two dementors didn't attack, and instead seemed to escort her from a couple meters behind her as she traced her way through the corridors of Azkaban to where she was instructed the right cell was, she wasn't too proud to admit she had no idea what Greengrass had done.
The deal was that no one would know she was here—that suited Greengrass too from what she understood. So clearly Fudge hadn't given the order, and yet…
The idea that Sebastian Greengrass knew how to undermine the Ministry's control on the dementors of Azkaban was, frankly, fucking terrifying.
Horrifying, if you will.
It also meant her rather flippant thoughts of their bleeding hearts would be kept firmly to herself and she probably owed the grey family a bit more respect than she'd previously afforded them.
She took a deep breathe and quickened her pace without seeming to be in a rush or anything. She'd taken several calming draughts before getting off the boat to prepare for this, and she only had a certain amount of time until they wore off. She was an extremely level headed person so keeping calm was easy for her, but still… she'd done enough wrong in her past that the effects of the dementors were already eating away at the corners of her mind and she wanted to be long gone before the potions wore off and the full effect of Azkaban started eating her alive.
It was cold, and damp, and completely miserable here. Prisoners were screaming at her madly and she tried not to imagine she heard her sister's voice lost in that cacophony of noise somewhere.
Glamours would not work under the ward so she went physical with her disguise, shielding herself in a long white cloak and white robes beneath it already turning slightly grey from the grim of this place that seemed to pollute even the air around her. She had the hood pulled all the way up and a white scarf pulled up over her nose to shield most of her face—not very creative, but effective enough for this trip. It only had to last less than an hour, if that, and she picked up her pace quickly as she followed the directions she was given and memorizing every twist and turn of the hallways to ensure she knew her way back too.
True to what she'd heard, Sirius' cell was with what could be considered the 'highest priority' prisoners. She recognized many as death eaters, but made sure not to visibly turn her head towards them. Checking the few cells before her target, she saw many lifeless bodies sprawled on the ground of the dingy, bare cells. Either in sleep, exhaustion, hopelessness, soulessness, or death—she didn't know and if they weren't eavesdropping on her then she didn't care.
The dementors behind her fell back and seemed to peak their nightmarish hooded heads into nearby cells as if double checking if they consume or not. She heard soft whimpers and one gargling half-screech so she knew those nearby were more than preoccupied temporarily as she went to the bar of what she assumed was the right cell.
And she had to assume she'd counted correctly and this was right one because the figure inside looked… almost nothing like the cousin she'd one had. The threadbare rags were pathetic enough, but the positively skeletal nature of his frame and the pure greyish-blue tone of his skin meant he very easily couldn't just been an enchanted inferi instead of a man. He lifted his head as if sensing her there and his face too… filthy, gaunt, merely skin stretched across bones at best. The pits beneath his eyes were dark as ink and his eyes…
She almost did a double take because his eyes were… clear?
"Sissy?" She almost didn't hear it, his voice all but broken from disuse—or many years of screaming and a damp, drafty cell slowly tearing away at it. But heard it she did, and yes… that was definitely him. He might've looked surprised even but he was visibly exhausted and beaten, and there was so little left of his face there probably wasn't much there to form real expression anymore.
"Sirius." She greeted, not lowering her scarf but placing one finger over where her lips were to remind him of listening ears. Whether he got that or not, she didn't give him a chance to speak before continuing—she was on a time limit after all. "I'll refrain from asking how you've been and skip the niceties for now."
His lips twitched, barely, lacking any actual mirth. She was sure this place had stolen all of that from him long ago—her too, as she was truly feeling the effects of this place and felt no warmth at the bad joke. She didn't need to feel a thing to play a part though.
"You're my first visitor in eleven years." He stated flatly, blank almost but also quite… strongly, for someone in his state.
She paused.
"Am I now?" Narcissa frowned behind her mask, something… itching at the back of her brain. "I am aware the werewolf has been trying to visit but he is denied visitation rights to Azkaban as a dark creature." She stalled for time, watching his eyes react to that news, growing deeper for a second as he lifted his head higher.
Whatever flashed there faded in a second though—the light of hope seeping out of him just as quickly as it had sparked to light from the dementors less than ten meters away.
But still, he knew and his face seemed to reflect an… intelligence she wasn't expecting.
That was it though, wasn't it?
He wasn't insane.
He was calm and talking and despite drowning in soulless breath and the deep dragging feeling of the island itself, he hasn't lost himself even a bit. He was miserable and sick and a broken man without question, but he was not insane.
She knew what insane looked like, after all. She'd been raised by it. Her closest sister was practically the definition--she was intimately aware of what insane looked like.
And this was not it.
"Moony… did that? Does he think I'm guilty too?" He asked genuinely, sincere despair echoing much more confidently around his naked cell now.
Narcissa took half a step back and smoothed out the front of her robes.
"Who knows. Most condemned you immediately of course, but the lack of a trial causes a lot of the truth to be muddled, in certain circles."
Translation: most dark and grey families knew he likely wasn't guilty at all, or at least there was a good chance he wasn't. Or at the very least he'd been imperioused—he was too loyal to James Potter for it to be anything else, and there'd never been a whisper of Sirius Black in the dark circles of the last war. It was only the Light idiots who had ever for a second thought him earnestly guilty… or believed the lie that perhaps he'd gone insane.
Talking to him now, if he had spent the past eleven years in this hell-on-earth and could still speak in full sentences coherently, with no emotion, Narcissa knew he hadn't gone insane when he was still a free man.
"And then of course a decade passed and even those with doubts simply pushed it from their minds. It's all in the past now, after all." She pressed him a bit, testing.
And it worked, as he scowled openly all of a sudden. Anger, not muted this time.
It would make sense: dementors suck away all good emotions, but anger wasn't necessarily good. It could be genuinely evil and nasty, so of course he would still be able to feel it.
"What do you want, Narcissa?" He demanded, his weariness giving way for half a second to be flushed with warm, growing vitriol.
Ah… that was the question then, isn't it. No time to waste beating around the bush.
"Do you want a trial, cousin?"
He stared at her for a long minute, almost… distrusting. Of course he couldn't feel hope, but she assumed he was warring with that lack of emotion when they both knew it definitely should've been there.
"Yes." He got out, breathless.
"You're not guilty, are you."
"No." His face twisted in that gnarled anger once more before calming. It probably took too much energy to keep it going long. "Peter was the rat. I lost my temper and tried to kill him, yes, but he cut off his finger and fled. He's an illegal Animagus—literally a rat—so it was easy for him. I convinced James and Lily to use him since I was clearly the obvious choice—he would've been a safer choice. What a load of crap that was."
He said it so blankly, but she could feel the haunted echo seeping from his tone, like marrow slowly draining from abandoned bones when the flesh had long since turned to ash.
She only nodded, accepting this for once as a truth she didn't need to question.
"Why would you help me." He asked.
"My son. Draco." She put a hand over her heart as if that would sway him of her honesty. She knew it wouldn't as he never knew her as a mother, but she was being honest, and it frankly didn't matter if he believed her or not. "Of all else I am, good or terrible, I am a mother who loves her son. And my son has become close with a boy who desperately needs a family; for Draco's sake there is little I won't do, even if that means coming here and bringing suspicion on myself in order to free you."
"Free me…" He frowned, eyes closing as if in weariness as he tried to grasp this concept. "Who… family…"
Okay, so maybe he wasn't all there.
"Harry Potter, cousin. Your godson." She insisted, and his silver eyes widened at the reminder, jaw dropping slightly as in seemed to sink in.
"Your son… Harry…" He repeated almost too quiet for her to hear.
"He's a fine young boy, Harry. He's the spitting image of Evans, and Draco considers him his closest friend. The boy has come to visit a couple times and now it is clear he is not fine with the living arrangements Dumbledore set for him. I believe it is abusive in nature, the muggle vermin they are."
"What?"
He instantly animated, and oh yes, the anger wasn't stolen here. It burned hotly as if singing off the damp despair in the air.
She leaned in, voice low in a solid hiss, smooth like ivy but firmly unyielding because he needed to hear her.
"Use this anger and live, cousin. Do not do anything foolish to risk your position and I will see about getting a trial. If you love your godson then sit tight and play nice and you will have your werewolf and your godson back in time."
His chest was moving in silent breathes, almost hyperventilating to a point as his anger took hold and probably overwhelmed him with emotion he hadn't had to deal with in years. He moved, but didn't seem to know what to do with his own body.
"I…." He seethed, seeming to be unable to speak. Too furious to form words as his expression twisted with anger unimpeded by kindness or love or rationality. All of that had left him along with the warmth of his body eleven years ago.
"Do you hear me, Sirius?" She demanded, more urgently now.
She never had anything against her most foolhardy cousin, but he was impulsive. He was the very worst parts of a Gryffindor in his brashness and callous selfishness. As a teen if she'd ever been able to look past his being sorted into the lion's house, his total disrespect for the way Slytherin operated and how he spoke and acted without giving an utter fuck who he insulted or trampled on had made cutting him off only too easy. She never had time for that shit, and past opinions and familial ties aside, they'd both been perfectly content never speaking or dealing with each other again.
He hated Slytherins and she could not stand to deal with stupid Gryffindors.
Things had changed and she needed to deal with him now out of necessity for her own plans, but that simply meant she needed to nip those impulsive, selfish and narrow-minded instincts in the butt immediately or else this would all be for nothing.
"Sirius!" She all but snapped at him.
"Save Harry," He snapped right back at her, dementor-twisted anger dripping from his tone and fire burning intensely in his eyes. "Forget about me and save him!"
"He's safe at Hogwarts right now and I'm doing that by saving you, you idiot." She hissed. "But that means no matter what you hear or what you see you will say in this cell until you are called for your trial. If you cannot do that simple task then Harry will go right back to those muggle vermin who beat him!"
"I can't just do nothing!" He insisted.
"You will or I will murder you slowly myself for ruining my plans." Her face twisted in a glower, pulling her scarf down to be sure he saw the full glory of her glare. Unfortunately he was just as much of a Black and had a matching death stare of his own. "I can take care of this if you for once in your life think things through. You yourself just confessed that Lily Evans and James Potter are dead because you could not form a decent plan to save your life! Or, rather, to save the lives of anyone you love."He was on his feet and slamming his hands into the bars of his cell.
"NARCISSA!"
She refused to back off, simply pulling her scarf back up coldly, safely from the right side of the cell door.
"Don't blame me for being honest, cousin. If you had formed a plan like a Slytherin, like you'd been raised… you would not be in this cell right now. Lily and James would not be dead, and Harry would be a safe little Gryffindor raised by people who loved him. Not another you or me or—" She scoffed, rather loudly and out of character for her but the bitter irony was unavoidable. "Or yet another Regulus, huh?"
His knuckles were white, and they cracked and began to bleed from how hard they gripped the bars, something indescribably written over his face.
She struck while the iron was hot.
"You cannot do anything. You are helpless. Suffer on that if you'd like, but I will fix this now and I do not care if you believe me or not, I simply need you to obey." She tapped the cell door sharply, once. It echoed coldly in the stone cell. "Stay put."
She poured every ounce of authority and compulsion she could into those words, and she watched them pierce his eyes like blades into his psyche.
He wasn't truly a Black.
He felt pitiful things like guilt.
And that was why he was weak—why he was locked away and why he would be manipulated now.
It was why he was loved by many.
Although all those many guilty, foolish people who loved him feared to remember him now.
When his eyes grew dark, she knew she'd won. She couldn't well do more but hope he actually listened to her now, and then continue to chip away at her plan until it bore fruit—despite preferring to work carefully, the quicker she could do this the less time it would give Sirius to get impatient and do something stupid.
Point made, she turned to flee the prison with her chin raised high.
Only for the very blood in her veins to ice over, freezing her to the spot she stood as extremely real growls suddenly echoed out loudly from the other side of the cell door too close to her left.
Her breath froze in his lungs, a fear she hadn't felt in decades seeping into her skin and she was just… paralyzed.
Something roared and she jumped, the cell dark once she'd stepped away but every sense she had was screaming that there was a monsterright there and to flee immediately—every hair on her body standing on end from the terrorizing sound.
Right… Sirius Black was an outcast to the family name, but no matter what he'd chosen in life or the tattered family tapestry, he was still the blood heir of one of the purest and most pristine magical bloodlines in existence. The fact he had not sided with the dark lord was a big deal back in the day as he'd been trained essentially since birth to be someone worth that title… and she was keenly reminded that her old family had been brutal in many ways.
So far as Narcissa was aware, Sirius had never once used his training once he reached Hogwarts.
But she remembered her own upbringing, remembered Bella taking to her own with the utmost glee. She remembered the things her sisters had eventually been capable of.
She remembered her father saying Sirius had once been a prodigy. She remembered vivid nightmares of him beating down Bella when she could not outmatch their little cousin despite being older, despite wanting to outshine the true Black heir if only she could just manage it.
Narcissa suddenly remembered the way Sirius had once been very good at avoiding punishment by following orders.
Before he threw it all away, that is—all that talent and power and legacy for some mudbloods and some freedom.
She'd almost forgotten that sliver of relief she'd felt, buried beneath everything else when she'd watched her cousin get sorted into Gryffindor instead, when she realized all that talent and power and legacy was not actually going to be the noose around her neck for the duration of her life until it wound too tight to breathe.
Right. Anger was the only option of manipulation in Azkaban, but it may not have been the safest.
She knew how to play the anger of a Slytherin… perhaps she did not quite understand the lions as much as she fancied she did.
No… no, she was fairly certain she understood Gryffindors.
But she could admit she probably forgot that Sirius was first and foremost a Black, perhaps… a little too quickly.
Yes, but she remembered quite clearly now.
The growls seemed to echo around the corridor loudly, and the cold of this island of hell made her shiver a bit violently. She needed to get out of here—time was not on her side and as her heart beat faster she knew those calming draughts she'd taken before coming ashore were wearing off a lot faster than she'd hoped they would.
She gently touched the stone wall beside her as if to steady herself. It felt disgusting, slick with grime and death like the skin of a corpse.
"As I said, be patient. You will have your moment, but only if you wait for it. I remember you were a very brash sort so hopefully over a decade in here has taught you a lesson—you may have been sorted into Gryffindor but your blood is the purest of Slytherin, and Slytherin does not necessarily mean dark. Use that, and obtain victory for everyone here, not just to exact one moment of revenge—but to achieve the happiness of your godson. If you destroy his chance of having a family because of your impulsiveness, I will kill you myself, Azkaban walls or no."
The growls increased, and she risked one glance behind.
He was there in the bars, silver eyes burning into her with something that set a different type of chill over her skin. He might've played the part of a innocent, sane prisoner well, but now he truly looked mad… and yet she could tell her words were biting at his psyche. Hopefully they're take root and twist inside of him until he believed them too.
Hopefully his belief would be enough.
"I will be seeing you then, Sirius."
She fled.
The growling filled the entire cell block with a vengeance, seeming to grow louder just to chase her out since the man himself was stuck, unable to follow her to properly express his anger.
Once she was far enough away to be clear of the noise and the exit was firmly in sight as she made her hasty retreat…she smirked.
She had a feeling this would be quite interesting.
000
Harry was pretty good at blocking out whispers. The neighbors on private drive had never actually spoken to him personally, but instead everything they'd known about him had come through Petunia's waspish rumors and Vernon's grumbling complaints about their delinquent nephew, so Harry assumed they'd believed the absolute worst about him. He'd seen the cross streets to avoid him and lock their car doors if they saw him out gardening, so he knew it was bad.
Dudley too, without anyone to stop him and his parents actually encouraging it, had made up truly outlandish things about his cousin and him punching anyone who dared get too close to the tiny Potter into submission meant kids his age had a lot to whisper about too. Also, kids sucked at moderating their voices to it was less whispers, and more just blatantly talking about him when he could clearly still hear them.
And since starting Hogwarts all bets were off: he was fully and confidently weird even by muggle standards, much less wizard ones. But that had always been fine, it was his choice and also he was vain enough to not mind the stares and whispers.
Now though….
There were… certainly a lot of whispers to deal with all of a sudden, and the sheer volume was surprisingly disorienting.
He wanted to say he only cared about what his important people thought about him being a parselmouth, but somehow his list of important people had expanded significantly and oh yeah, he was kind of involved in the whole house unity initiative things he'd kickstarted so when the houses all started acting funny he definitely noticed. His dormmates were clearly the most imminent people as they lived with them, Neville clearly having the highest priority, but after their early morning football practice the day after Blaise got to work on the rumor mill that seemed to have been smoothed over.
Neville… was definitely surprised, eyes getting impossibly wide when Harry told him, but he got over it pretty quickly considering. Even fessing up his lineage conundrum, the blond had simply been just as stumped as Harry himself was before seeming to come to terms with it.
"I think you've made it pretty clear you don't care about tradition so far. Besides, I'm fairly confident in you being you regardless of what I think on the matter so… uh, are you looking for my opinionon it?" Neville had rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly when Harry had pressed for more of a reaction.
"Well yeah? You're a pureblood so it means more to you. I didn't even know this was a thing until I accidentally talked to a snake in front of Slytherins."
Neville gave him the driest look at that, which had Harry blushing a bit.
"My Slytherins that is—no one I didn't want knowing at first!" He defended himself.
"Well… as much as I hate to say it, the Slytherins are the ones whose opinions really matter. They're the ones who'll cause trouble over it. I guess… some Gryffindors might be offended somehow? Or be afraid I think. I can't imagine most will think it much worse than you sitting at the Slytherin table—you didn't notice how much they hated that at all last year, so this'll probably be fine too."
Harry blinked.
"Wait what?"
"Yeah, exactly." Neville's blue eyes traced over his face carefully, as if trying to determine if his surprise was real. "I think you think you understand Gryffindors maybe… a bit more than you actually do. If you don't like what upper years say or do, you somehow just… ignore them?"
Well damn.
An angry fifth year Gryffindor isn't exactly as deadly as an upper year Slytherin—if they don't have a wand in their hand I'm pretty safe usually, unlike a slightly peeved Slytherin could spell some unknown disaster before I know what hit me.
"Huh." He frowned, scratching his brain. He… really didn't have the capacity to worry about that at the moment, but it wasn't like it wasn't a problem. "If I miss something huge could you like… tell me? I know the whole school is going to know soon enough but I might've overextended myself." He confessed.
For some reason Neville looked happy at that admission.
"Sure. Maybe you should just focus on the first years for a bit."
Harry didn't really know where that came from but he wasn't against it, so he agreed and they easily got back into playing around in their lazy morning practice.
Dean and Seamus knew they were on the pitch and came down to meet them later in the morning to join in, and since it was obvious they hadn't heard yet, Harry had decided to graciously fill them in.
"What!?" Seamus had all but shrieked, although Dean looked just as lost at that reaction has Harry had been. One quick lesson on Slytherin's lineage later and he too looked taken aback but not outright against it or anything.
"Harry you can't tell anyone that! Bloody hell if the Slytherins find out—"
"They already know." He admitted, derailing the Irishman's tirade.
"Oh." He blinked. "Shit—what are you going to do!?"
Harry was very amused his first reaction was trying to protect him, unaware it was all under control already—and that was precisely why he loved Seamus.
"I actually found out because I accidentally spoke to a decorative snake in the Slytherin common room—Draco saw me do it and enlightened me on why it was a big deal. Blaise actually is the one telling the whole school so he's in control of the rumor mill to an extent, so I hope it won't be too bad." He shrugged. "I knew everyone would find out somehow so having someone on my side do it the way I wanted it to happen was my best bet."
Dean perked up with a smile. "Blaise is good at rumors—that was a good call."
Which made Harry narrow his eyes at the tall Gryffindor who just smiled 'innocently' back.
"Okay what has Blaise told you?"
"Nothing much."
Harry did not believe him.
But, he shelved that as not quite relevant at the moment.
"Ignoring that for now, as for handling the Slytherins—Blaise's got that. He's phrasing it like this is something good in their politics somehow, and also I've been in their common room. They've got decorative snakes who've heard all their little schemes for a while now and I'm the only one who understands them; the threat to their secrets is enough to get them to back off for the foreseeable future, trust me."
"Huh, fair enough." Seamus seemed reassured by that if not still visibly agitated by the whole thing. "But bloody snitch, parseltongue?"
"Ha! You said it too!" Harry jabbed a finger in his face indignantly and Seamus instantly retaliated.
"It's your stupid bad habits rubbing off on me, nothing more! Buzz off!"
They dissolved into squabbling and eventually got back to kicking around the ball, but other than Seamus continuing to give disbelieving remarks periodically about how it was possible, none of them seemed too tripped up by the development. Dean seemed to pick up on the fact this was not a small development, but like Harry didn't have the background to truly care himself, and Neville of course resumed his focus on struggling to be a goalkeeper more than what they were talking about.
They stayed out and played for several more hours, and slowly but surely the football club learned where he was—and also started to hear the rumors themselves so joined in not only to play but also confirm for themselves that the rumor was true. Luckily the club at least had long since gotten over their hesitation in just talking to him themselves—he wasn't a celebrity or some strange creature, he was part of their club and got just as dirty as the rest of them playing games. He missed goals and got outrun by better players and also gloated playfully when he made a good steal or a successful goal, he wasn't a teacher or an authority figure or anything more than a classmate.
And a classmate who'd proven to love to talk to any and everybody many times—most of them were in this club because they'd been cornered by him at one point or another in the first place—so thankfully they were happy to just walk up to him and ask.
Many had varying reactions, a lot falling into either the Dean or Seamus category since there were a ton of muggleborns in the muggle sport club who didn't get it and wanted confirmation on why this was a big deal, but also a ton of generous and understanding half or purebloods who mostly seemed concerned about what Harry was going to do. A quick conversation soothed most of them and then getting down to play some football relaxed any other concerns they had.
There was a third group though, which was where the likes of Hannah and others seemed to fall. They seemed hesitant to approach him, but once they did and he confirmed the rumor for them, they seemed to just gape a bit with wide eyes.
"…oh."
Was all Hannah had said before awkwardly getting back to the pick-up game they were playing.
As for what that meant… hell if Harry knew.
Still, for the first day after the news had spread through the Hogwarts rumor mill, things had gone pretty smoothly if he did say so himself.
Monday when classes started up again though, he definitely noted how much of the school he hadn't infiltrated yet. There was a large population of the upper years who, outside of the snake house, took to blatant whispering and staring when he walked through the Great Hall at meals, in the library, or in the halls even. Luckily his year level seemed familiar enough with him to either keep it to themselves more tactfully, ask him to his face, or simply get over it decently quickly, so his actual classes turned out fine. By Wednesday all second years seemed to be over it and thankfully were more focused on the potions exam Snape had sprung on them for this Friday. Not to mention the new quidditch team line-ups were announced the same day his parseltongue rumor had broke so the two topics of conversation seemed to compete with each other and eventually quidditch won out as the more interesting of the two.
Harry had overheard a couple Ravenclaw seventh years in the library muttering about it Friday afternoon and they also seemed to just toss it up as something reasonably impressive for "The Boy Who Lived" to possess, and while any other time that would piss him off, it seemed Blaise had done his job well. They weren't mad or disgusted, and by the following weekend most of the school seemed to be generally with the program—or at least the blatant whispering and stares had seriously eased off.
Theo thought it was likely because he was openly talking about it to anyone who asked. Rumors got bad when people started making shit up and with no one being able to confirm anything one way or another they tended to spiral—especially amongst children who had poor understandings of what was possible or not in the real world and still had a bit of childhood imagination in them making things worse. With pretty much the entire football club and all second and first years being able to say 'I asked Harry himself and he said…', any time some wild rumor came up it was stomped out pretty quickly as being unreasonable.
It was exhausting, don't get him wrong, because he ended up having essentially the same conversation literally hundreds of times, and then started having repeat conversations when the same people would come back to him to confirm if a new rumor was true or not. He was very relieved when even the twins got tired of it all and started dramatically following him around as 'body guards', telling people to get out of his way or he'd sick a snake on them.
The twins being the twins, they got away with the drastic flair and earned many laughs, which got more of the people their year levels (3rd to 4th) seeing how unreasonable bringing up a dead horse every conversation was.
The people who were his biggest concern were definitely the upper years—particularly Slytherin and Gryffindor house. He knew the older Slytherins weren't going to do a damn thing right now, but that would not remain the case forever, he knew. He'd have to keep an ear to the ground and just get ready for whatever it was they'd end up doing with that information but he knew he likely had plenty of time until that day.
So, ironically, his biggest issue was going to be the upper year Gryffindors who, true to Neville's warnings, were not thrilled with this in the slightest. Thanks to being reminded to look for once, he found the dirtiest looks and nastiest rumors were definitely sourced there.
Luckily, peer pressure worked better on Gryffindors than most others so when most of their underclassmen got over it within a week, the upper years started keeping their suddenly less-popular opinions to themselves in turn. They still talked about it amongst themselves though which Harry was sure was only deepening their negative stances on the matter with people who agreed with them. There was suddenly a distinct lack of warmth in his own house though that was hard to miss, which was… weird. Gryffindor was supposed to be the warm house with their cozy common room and boisterously friendly people. When a decent chunk of a previously extremely loud, bustling common area was very noticeably silent when you walked by, you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice.
In a single week Harry suddenly found the polite ignorance and respectful distance people kept to each other in the Slytherin common room much more comfortable.
His own house aside, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw reacted pretty much how he'd expected: Hufflepuff were some of the first to get over it and dismiss it as some random "Boy Who Lived" talent, while Ravenclaw was visibly scratching their brains trying to work it out. It was him sitting at their table for breakfast one day and getting drawn in by Lu and some of his year mates on the how debate that he realized they didn't know about him actually being related to Slytherin. They were talking about the parseltongue trait being genetic or not, theorizing about his lineage, and other such things they were brainstorming and it was almost immediately clear they didn't know Harry had confirmed his relation to Salazar Slytherin.
He didn't immediately correct them and went back to Neville, who confirmed as much that he didn't think Gryffindor knew that much either.
He wondered at that for an afternoon before deciding he wouldn't bring it up himself. No one had outright asked if he knew and therefore he would be fine just letting the matter drop—the Ravenclaw prevailing theory that maybe parseltongue wasn't genetic like everyone thought it was seemed to be picking up a little steam and if people went with that instead of getting suspicious about his bloodline, it would probably suit him better in the long run. He wasn't going to hide it exactly, but he wasn't going to bring it up of his own volition either.
Besides, if the full story hadn't gotten out, then it was probably Blaise's doing, probably on purpose for some specific reason only he knew. Harry hadn't actually wanted the school to know about his ability, he just knew that it eventually would and wanted to get on top of it, and the tall Slytherin had actually done a great job breaking the news as Harry had requested it be done. If Blaise had his own agenda while he was doing this, although it was probably against his better judgement, Harry let it slide.
But eventually, as all things do, time kept moving on.