Thanking Sirius and wishing Harry a happy birthday once more so as to not cause a scene, I left the ice cream parlour the moment Harry finished his ice cream.
Originally, I wanted to ask Sirius if I could tag along with both Quidditch fans to watch the finals of the World Cup together with them. But I got two tickets for some nice seats from the department head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports as a bonus for my impressive wins at the tournament when Flitwick and I came back from Italy with the trophy in hand. And I didn't want to spend the day with Harry either, at least considering my mood on our shared birthday.
Idly walking towards a used book store while waving a few friendly hellos to the wizards and witches recognising me and congratulating me for winning the Under 18 International Dueling Tournament as a 14, now 15 year old, I thought about my next plans now that I knew Dobby didn't stop Harry from going to Hogwarts.
Was the Chamber of Secrets still happening? I didn't know. With the different circumstances compared to canon, I couldn't know.
Very clearly, by the list of books we were made to purchase for the coming school year, Lockhart wasn't our DADA teacher this year. So Lucius Malfoy wouldn't get in a fistfight with the Weasley patriarch and drop the diary horcrux into Ginny's cauldron during Lockhart's book signing. I didn't see or hear about an event like that being planned either, and I purposefully asked about it at Flourish&Blotts. Malfoy still might target the youngest Weasley, but it would have to happen under different circumstances.
Or Lucius would drop the horcrux into a different student's belongings altogether. Since there were no mentions in the news about a new law that would allow the Ministry to check magical homes for dark artifacts, things were different in the first place. To my knowledge, that law was the whole reason Malfoy ever tried to get rid of the horcrux, and since Arthur Weasley in his capacity as a ministry worker in the relevant department raided Malfoy Manor, Lucius chose Ginny for the artifact the dark lord left behind as revenge.
So I wasn't sure if year two's central theme happened and the horcrux opens the Chamber of Secrets. I knew for sure year three's central theme wouldn't happen because Pettigrew was dead and Sirius a free man. So no dementors.
Flitwick had ample time to tell me about the Triwizard Tournament, but he didn't drop even a hint, so year four's central theme was out as well.
Voldemort wasn't resurrected yet as best as I could tell, so year six and seven were out, too, and nobody broke out of Azkaban, not even Sirius.
Was Umbridge coming to Hogwarts to increase the ministry's influence over the students, and we get canon year five's central theme early? But Harry didn't 'try to undermine' Fudge's authority by claiming Voldemort was alive again after Cedric Diggory died in the Little Hangleton cemetry at the end of the third trial, so that made no sense either.
By all accounts, I should be happy that next school year could be as relaxed and safe as the last one after Quirrell died at Halloween, but I wouldn't relax until Halloween of year two. If nobody was petrified or killed, I'd happily use the entire school year to make sure nobody would dare bully Luna Lovegood while using my remaining energy to become an animagus. Well, I'd do both even if people got petrified left and right.
Lost in thought, I had long arrived at the second-hand-books store I was walking towards and idly leafed through a few worn tomes without finding what I was looking for. I wasn't technically looking for anything specific either since I already had plenty of books I hadn't finished reading and comprehending from the pile Patrick bought from the hag in Leeds, but I was sure I knew what I wanted when I saw it. These old books could contain real masterpieces, even technically forbidden knowledge like blood magic and rituals or I'd find books with copious notes like the half-blood prince's potion book, even if not at the same level most likely.
Taking another deep breath after putting down a leatherbound book without a title on the spine or cover, I activated my Eagle Vision to look for special books after finding nothing exciting again.
"Oh?" I perked up as I walked across the messy shop with its towering stacks of used books and made my way to a book that was outlined in gold in my magical view. By now I found out or rather reasoned that items and people important to my mid- and longterm goals were golden in my view.
It took me a moment to free the book from its pile under the amused stare of the storekeep, and I took in a sharp breath as I opened the first page to read the inscription.
'To those who want to unleash their wild side, all I learned about the 'beast within' in Magical Africa - Edgar R. Burroughs'
Just the first few pages made me sure that this book was a tell-all book about African magical knowledge about all things Animagus and Avatarism.
And just what I was looking for.
It took me a while to haggle with the owner of the store because I sadly showed way too much interest with my gasp, and I eventually left after paying way too much... or maybe not even close to enough. I would only know how to feel when I finished reading the book.
"Talion?" As I walked outside, a warm voice gently dragged me out of my musings.
I looked to the source and saw two Slytherin first years Natalie Rosier and Isodora Selwyn, together with a stern looking but pretty woman, who had a passing resemblance to Isodora - very likely a mother or aunt.
"Madam Rosier, Madams Selwyn," I greeted with a short bow after showing the women a small, polite smile.
The older Selwyn woman gained a pleased smirk but still silently urged her younger family member to introduce her.
"Talion, meet my mother, Lady Beatrice Selwyn. Mother, meet one of the smarter Ravenclaws in my school year who is in part responsible for our grades in Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts. And, of course, recent international dueling champion, Talion Macnair," Isodora primly presented with a small blush on her fair cheeks.
She didn't blush because she had a thing for me or because she was too shy to introduce me to her mother, but rather because she knew how I thought about this overly formal noble posturing. Whenever we talked in the library, which admittedly wasn't all too often unless Isobel was involved, I let my amusement about such behavior known. Since they were just fourteen and fifteen themselves, both of them had ingrained these formal mannerisms, but they merely acted them out to please their family instead of truly living them. Acting like you were supposed to was a major requirement for girls in Slytherin, at least I thought so.
"Greetings," I once again said as I addressed Isodora's mother, who gave me a small nod with a pleased smile.
So she wasn't a Death Eater or she was an impeccable actress. Which was weird because despite Isodora's pleasant company, I was under the impression that the Selwyns were part of the Death Eater faction. But maybe they simply had a few family members who were fanatic followers of the dark lord, like many other families of the darker factions who didn't follow Voldemort out of sincere loyalty to his cause.
A few small pleasantries later, Lady Selwyn allowed her daughter and her daughter's friend to catch up with me and excused herself as she walked into a potion's store not too far away to continue running whatever errand she wanted to run in there.
"Happy birthday," Natalie wished me when her best friend's mother was out of earshot and gave me a small hug that Isodora quickly copied before I thanked the two young women for remembering the day. I didn't need to think long about why they even knew about it.
"Did you do anything nice so far? I heard Isobel talk about how happy she was with the gift she found for you. Have you opened it yet? Have you opened the gift Isodora and I sent you?" Natalie asked in a small voice which didn't diminish how eager she sounded.
"Uh, I ate some ice cream in good company and spoiled myself a little by browsing some books. You know, like Ravenclaws do," I waved away as I gestured to the book store behind me and hoped my consoling smile assured the girls that I wasn't down about how I spent the day so far. To my knowledge, we weren't friendly enough to say anything but 'fine' when asked how you were. "I haven't had the chance to open gifts yet. I came here extra early to finish shopping for next year's school supplies ahead of all the other shoppers, and only had a single owl arrive by the time I finished breakfast. My elf will surely accept anything else sent my way, so I waited to open it all at the same time."
"I see, I see. Do send me a small card. I want to know first hand what you think of Isobel's gift! She was simply too proud of herself. I must know what it was," Natalie excitedly inquired with a very expressive grin that I wasn't used to from the usually much more 'proper' Rosier charms prodigy and silent leader of the Slytherin girls of the first year.
"Sure I can do that. I think my owl Nyx is probably a little excited after all the owls that came to my dwelling today since she'll get to send all the thank you notes I'll have to write," I reassured and continued with some pleasant small talk about how next year was going to go before Isodora's mother stepped out of the potion store and urged the two girls to finish their talks with me.
After a proper farewell that earned me another pleased nod from the mature pureblood witch, I made my way to the public floo.
I was no longer afraid that Dumbledore would be interested in finding out that I didn't go back to my orphanage after I broached the topic with Flitwick while in Italy. I told him about a warded ancestral home nobody knew about and that I wanted to spend my summer there with my elf so that I could continue my studies in peace without having to hide it from the muggle orphans in the orphanage. What was Dumbledore going to do? Have me the dueling champion and alleged pureblood forcibly dragged to a muggle orphanage? I would have no scruples running that story to Rita Skeeter.
As my first lesson in Wizarding Law, Flitwick even filled out an application for early emancipation for me so that nobody would question why I wasn't going back to the orphanage at 'mere' 14, now 15 years old, which I did on 'a whim' and not as a legally sound choice. The hearing with Madam Hopkirk and two other ministry officials was due in another week. Apparently, my emancipation would be in large parts handled by the Improper Use of Magic Office, which I didn't quite get. Was it because they would lift the trace from me or something along those lines?
I'd have to find out then, I supposed.
Knowing how mature I was, Flitwick also immediately agreed with me living on my own ahead of time and prepared an item for me that lessened my paranoia immensely. A wardstone that redirected owl mail. I was attacked often enough that my head of house didn't even need to ask whether or not I needed such an item.
Instead of owls coming directly to me, I charged this runestone with my magic by casting 'Lumos' as I pressed my wand tip on the stone, after which it acted as a homing beacon for all magical owls that were tasked with sending me letters. From there, I only needed to instruct Patrick to pick the mail up from where the owls left it with the stone after checking the deliveries for charms and curses, and I no longer feared that Malfoy or anybody else could find my little shack simply by following an owl.
A fact that I didn't advertise, of course, like my small white lie that I just told Natalie and Isodora when I said my owl would be excited to see all the other owls that brought me gifts.
Taking the public floo to the backroom of a laundromat in York, I stepped out of the back of the shop into an abandoned, empty alley and called for Patrick to take me home.
Once there, I opened Arcturus' letter while eating the birthday dinner Patrick had prepared for me. Lasagna and a nice salad. My elf loved Italian cuisine, it seemed. I wasn't complaining.
'Talion,
If my instructions were met, I wish you a joyous birthday.
I doubt the new Lord Black extended this offer to you as I know he rejects much of what our family stands for, but I know many magicals covet our family's deep foundations. And they are correct to do so. As such, I want to reward you for your help in the matters of my grandson's legal trouble and helping restore House Black's honor with something more material than mere favors and flowery promises.
You may use this letter to be granted access to my family's ancestral home at 12 Grimmauld Place, London. A grumpy excuse of an elf called Kreacher will escort you to the illustrious Black Library once you show him this letter. Simply knock the snake-headed ancient knocker to the left of the main entrance with this letter in hand to summon him. You may peruse the Non-Family Magics sections of the library at your leisure until you reach your magical majority.
Do not try to gain access to the Family Magics section or steal any of the books unless you manage to confirm that you have Black blood running through your veins with it coming from at most four generations in the past or Sirius for some reason offers you a blood adoption. The wards inside the library are not for the faint of heart should you choose poorly.
Use this time wisely, strengthen your foundation, and shore up your magical knowledge so that your vengeance may be realised more smoothly and more thoroughly. I hope you'll think of me when you deal with my grand-nieces obnoxious husband. But no need to spare her or her sorry son for my sake, unless either of them are the last person with Black blood alive at that point in time.
Yours in spirit,
Lord Arcturus Black III
PS: Don't bother to answer. By the time you read this letter, I will have already shed my mortal shell. Do think about pursuing my daughter, I give you my express permission.'
I reread the letter once or twice and started grinning rather madly for a short moment after ignoring the post scriptum message. Now, I no longer needed to leverage the life debt that Sirius owed me to read a library that I suspected to be at a similar level to the Hogwarts library. And even if it wasn't its match in quantity and volume, I knew for sure the quality was its equal at the very least. Arcturus' words all but confirmed it in this letter.
I just needed to make sure I didn't give the portrait of Headmaster Phineas Black a reason to report my comings and goings to Dumbledore. That could be done by giving out misinformation to the portrait or Kreacher, disguising myself, staying anonymous, or simply not walking past any portrait frames that might or might not exist for Phineas at Grimmauld Place.
I had one month until the second school year started. I planned to visit the library at least once to see what I could gain by going there during the next two summer breaks. But I wasn't yet sure if I would go before or after the Quidditch World Cup finals on the 18th in a little over two weeks.
I could maybe learn a life-saving spell in the meantime... but I could also annoy myself to no end by meeting Harry early if he stayed at the Black ancestral home together with his godfather and chose to still be a twat. And, honestly, I was already quite sure that I would come out on top if a mob of drunken Death Eaters randomly attacks cowardly and equally drunk Quidditch fans unless I was hit by a stray spell from a dead angle or one those terrorists brings his A game.
My confidence came from the fact that I used my warding knowledge gained through dreams about Heimdall and the information printed into my head by the talking hat during the last Occlumency lesson to create something that would make sure that I would kill at least a few of those magical terrorists before slipping away unseen.
Last week, I succeeded in creating something I dubbed 'blackout-stone', a magical wardstone covered in Old Norse runes that creates a fifty-meter-diameter sphere of dense, illusory, black smoke upon activation.
It did everything I needed from the smoke being impossible to remove with wind, blocking even the brightest 'Lumos' to be seen from an outstretched wand-hand, all the way to allowing me to still perfectly see everybody else with Eagle Vision.
They didn't last long before running out of magic and breaking because of me using subpar raw materials and I contemplated concentrating the area some more to extend the time those stones could remain active. But if nothing destroyed the few wardstones I managed to create thus far early for some reason, I had a little over a minute in complete darkness to harvest the lives of plenty Death Eaters as I jumped into action wielding two hidden blades and a wand. And I still had time to create more wardstones.
Sure, I would have to retire the hidden blades and never use them again while in Hogwarts for two years or more so that nobody could connect the dots to implicate me through continued use. But I didn't care much for that. I'd never get a chance as convenient as that before Voldemort's ressurection... if the attack at the finals would even happen as it did in canon.
Oh, how I hoped it did now that I had that blackout-stone created.
"Patrick, could you bring me the mail after checking it for charms and curses?"
I heard a pop followed by another a few moments later and saw around a dozen wrapped gifts on the bed to the side of the dinner table. The one-room wooden shack was truly small, but I didn't care much about that. It felt like home regardless.
"Anything you didn't bring?" I asked as I stood up to check my gifts while ignoring the small stack of letters Patrick dumped on the table for the moment.
"Patrick has two packages and a letter he didn't bring. I feel dark magics from them. Patrick also kept the owls," my elf commented surly.
"Alright, please contact the auror department first thing tomorrow. Can you deal with that on your own? Pretend you did it without my knowledge to protect me from harm."
"Patrick can do that," my elf confirmed. "Patrick was at the ministry very often because of young master's grandfather. Patrick likes lying to sneaky aurors under master's orders."
"Thank you, Patrick. Remember to make a scene. Don't talk to just one of the aurors. Best if you crashed into their offices with a loud commotion by dropping the owl cages," I suggested with a sincere nod as thanks that had my scarred elf preening with a wide, unsettling grin. 'He likes lying, huh?'
I didn't have much hope for justice, but I wouldn't ignore low-hanging fruits either. Let them put in the work for covering up crimes instead of just taking it all.
I searched the gifts that weren't hexed or otherwise cursed that Patrick dropped off and started with Isobel's wrapped parcel. Natalie's comments earlier made me quite curious, so I opened her gift that actually had a golden outline in my Eagle Vision first.
Just looking at the thing I unpacked, I was thoroughly... confused. A lone, scaled glove?
It took reading Isobel's card to learn that gloves of this kind were made in the 13th century by an unrivaled leatherworker in Isobel's family during the time the MacDougal's clan started its rise. A leatherworker who claimed to have traveled the whole world - according to legends in her family while riding on the back of a dragon - and made a total of 77 basilisk hide gloves in his life. Individual gloves not pairs, that were used all over the world for centuries by aurors and hit wizards who were often involved in active combat and needed protection in magical fights.
Many of these gloves had long been destroyed over the course of the over six-hundred years since they were created because even with their enchantments and inherent qualities, the durability of the basilisk leather wasn't infinite. The right hand glove I received was one of the last seven of these creations still in the MacDougal family's possession.
Thanks to her ancestor's craftsmanship, the lone glove that I unpacked allowed its wearer to - and I dearly hope I read that right - 'slap away spells' since the basilisk hide was impervious to minor magics and highly resistant to even powerful curses. The wearer simply needed ridiculous reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Which I thankfully had in spades.
What a thoughtful, totally over-the-top, luxurious gift. I doubted that I could find something of equal value that I wanted to part with for Isobel's birthday in early October. But she couldn't expect me to find something like that either, I hoped. After all, for all intents and purposes, I was a penniless orphan with a burned down ancestral home who made a few galleons together with the Weasley twins according to public knowledge. An amount so small that it covered around two years of Hogwarts tuition so far.
With a small shake of my head, I donned the glove with a big grin and started unpacking my other gifts after fully reading Isobel's note where she once more thanked me for 'saving her life' during the attack at Hogsmeade where I shoved her off the bench and out of harm's way.
I received a jade gardening spade from the Patil twins because of my love for herbology that they bought while on a trip to India for the first weeks of our summer vacation.
A shimmering dragon scale on a leatherband necklace carved into the head of a falcon that is said to be a talisman granting good luck in fights and hunts from Lara.
A signed edition of Magical Uno, the first ever playing set card of the game created... according to the Weasley twins who gifted it to me.
Books and magazines from a few of my Quidditch teammates and framed snippets of every article Hilliard published about my Quidditch escapades in the Daily Prophet.
A relatively big, framed, moving picture of me kicking a bludger with a falling overhead kick during the Quidditch game versus Slytherin from Natalie and Isodora. That picture really looked bad ass.
And finally, a small mountain of flower pots in all shapes and sizes from my second favorite teacher, Professor Sprout. For convenience's sake, all these pots were charmed so that they could be stacked into one big pot like a Russian Matryoshka doll. For my future plans for a steady income, I really needed these as a start since Lucius Malfoy and his cronies burned down my ancestral home in Glasgow, Scotland that used to have a small but serviceable commercial greenhouse infrastructure that Walden Macnair allowed to fall into disrepair - not that it mattered in the current state the estate was in.
There were some who didn't send me anything which dampened my mood, but those living in the muggleworld like Sue, Mandy, and Hermione possibly just didn't have convenient means to send me anything in time. I knew for sure those three didn't have their own owls, so I still held out hope that the small gifts I got for their birthdays during the next school year would be reciprocated.
In the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter much anyway. Yes, they knew it was my birthday. But we were just year mates at a boarding school. We weren't best friends for life or romantically involved or anything.
I'd appreciate a card with well wishes, but I wouldn't hold them in contempt for not doing anything for my birthday. It wasn't like I got any actual presents before attending Hogwarts in this life anyway. And I didn't throw a party either. From my understanding of magical and non-magical social norms, gifts were only truly required if you attended a birthday party. And even then, it was up to each person to see how much effort they wanted to put into it.
You needed to put as much effort into a relationship as you wanted to get out of it in return, I figured, so I could only chalk it up to that in the coming years if they truly didn't get me even just a card.