HP one shots

Luke 1:30 and Queen Anne's Lace // KillerSeeker

Summary:

The issue of Harry Potter ends up being more complicated than any of them expected.
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They decide that Harry's room will be blue. Periwinkle, to be exact. Before that, Barty spends most of his evenings arguing loudly with Sirius, who thinks Gryffindor red is the most appropriate choice. Barty, who isn't nearly as passionate about Slytherin house colors as he pretends to be, learns that arguing with Sirius is a fantastic way to pass the time.

Harrison is the one who decides it, in the end. He claims periwinkle will be a familiar color for the real Harry when he arrives, and even Barty doesn't know if the changeling is being honest or just making up fairy stories to distract him and Sirius.

It doesn't really matter. The room is periwinkle and everyone is pleased. Remus likes the color well enough, and likes even more that Barty and Sirius can no longer argue about it. (They quickly prove that they can, and will, but there's no heat behind it and they all like the noise. Even if they don't admit it.)

The horcruxes have worn on the household, despite being absorbed as quickly as possible. That kind of dark magic can't exist in a place without tainting it, and for once the darkness is anything but soothing to Barty. He'd been involved with Voldemort for too long and the man's magic still had too much of a grip on him. Barty feels the drain of the horcruxes even more than the other Grimmauld Place residents. Harrison, possessive as a nundu over his territory, keeps them far away from Barty.

Barty makes it easy on him. He spends most of his time outside in the gardens and allows himself to pretend that he doesn't know the intricacies of the magic behind splitting a soul.

Despite being removed from it, Barty knows that Hufflepuff's cup is the last piece they find. He doesn't know much about how they had discovered all the locations, only that Harrison has a wicked accuracy for sniffing out pieces of Voldemort's soul and it only gets easier the more of it the changeling eats. He thinks Dumbledore has something to do with it as well, but he avoids the man almost as carefully as he avoids horcruxes. Truly, he's content knowing nothing but that Harrison is unharmed by so much contact with the gross magic.

Now, though, they're all gone. He never has to deal with Voldemort again, and Harry will be coming home. Harrison, too, is more excited that Barty had expected.

"I wonder if he's like me," Harrison says when Barty asks about the change in mood, "D'you think they told him who he was? Or did he grow up thinking he was fey?"

"I feel like that would have been harder to fake than it was for you," Barty tries to be reassuring, but he's not very good at it. He never had been. Slick and clever had always been more his strong suit than charm or earnestness. Azkaban, though, had made it worse. It stripped away the sweetness from his expressions and he's not recovered it. Harrison seems to understand the sentiment anyway; just like Barty, he's no good at being human.

The beauty of Grimmauld Place is that neither of them are expected to be. Half of the residents aren't human in the first place, which is a good starting point. The other two had both spent over a decade being tortured. Barty hadn't spent as long in Azkaban as Sirius, but he knows what it'll do to a person. Probably, before Azkaban, Sirius would have had enough energy to be upset that his not-godson came in a pair with an ex-Death Eater. Especially since Barty's pretty sure that Sirius personally knew the Longbottoms.

There were probably plenty of things Sirius had energy for before Azkaban that he doesn't now. And the thing is, Barty gets it. Sirius drifts around the house, avoiding his mother's portrait with a practiced ease that makes it easy for Barty to imagine a teenaged Sirius avoiding the real thing. The portrait is one of the first things Barty gets rid of. Pureblood family portraits are notoriously hardy, but Barty is a Slytherin with a grudge. He's never been grateful to someone quite like he is Sirius Black.