Cadw sat heavily in the big chair behind the massive desk, propped his head
in his hands, and let the horror of the day wash over him. What had he got
himself into? What had been concealed from Andromeda, aside from near
everything about the boy now in his charge? He’d been treated unforgiveably
by the magical world for some time, but the more personal slights and
injuries…he’d no idea how the child continued to function. How could a
child grow up hated and have any kind of positive or even functioning
self-esteem? Any sense of the worth of his own life?
And he was a child still. The family magic made that thoroughly clear the
moment that connection with him slammed home. He’d have picked up on Harry
in any case, but the way he felt… Seeing him next to his friends certainly
thumped it into one’s reality. They both felt like adulthood lurked just
about the corner. Harry simply didn’t and it sent all his protective
instincts raging. Why hardly mattered in the here and now. It changed his
whole approach to Harry. If he hadn’t noticed…
[[MORE]]
If he hadn’t noticed, then he’d likely have mucked everything up. He’d have
treated Harry as more of a nascent adult than the boy would be capable of
handling and Harry would never feel safe or comfortable with him. If there
was one thing he’d learned raising his younger siblings, it was that
children needed to feel safe and attached. He wouldn’t need the kind of
very physical care a young child did, but he would, very likely, need more
supervision and attention than he'd ever had before.
He’d have to tread carefully, but he could plan from here. Children needed
different handling, gentler for a start. A child like Harry, who apparently
had been handled terribly from infancy would require even gentler handling
still. Oh, not letting him run loose as he had without anyone caring enough
to stop him. Firm, consistent boundaries, established immediately were the
answer. Harry would resent him, at least at the beginning. He knew this. He
knew all of it from having to take over immediately from his own parents
and older brothers when they were killed. His sister had more or less
destruction tested his resolve and his love for months. It was only now, as
adults, that she’d told him any of what it was like without him there, how
the house had been while he studied at Oxford. He had a sinking feeling
that some things may have been worse for Harry.
Cadw considered the next few months and groaned. Some of what he’d heard
today finally made sense of his usual end of June wobbliness. The anxiety
building and building from Easter on, ending in at least one day of flat
panic never had made sense to him, hitting as it had seemingly out of
nowhere. In nineteen-ninety-two. He’d invaded the sanctuary of the day room
to ask a few pointed questions after seeing the scarring on Harry’s hand.
Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley were surprisingly forthcoming regarding their
yearly exploits. As Miss Granger explained, her parents knew everything
anyway and she didn’t think he’d want to distress Mrs. Weasley by passing
most of it on, so it only seemed fair to give him the information he wanted.
Bright girl, that one, and utterly devoid of shame when it came to helping
her best friend.
Giving in to impulse, he rose and went to the Floo niche. A few feet above
the fire, it allowed him to make a call without crouching on the hearth. He
pulled a chair over, tossed Floo powder into the embers banked there and
called,
“The Aerie, Wales. Caro.”
His sister answered allmost immediately.
“Everything all right?”
Her voice had his shoulders relaxing for something like the first time
since he’d stepped foot in England.
“You weren’t asleep, were you?” The mantle clock showed ten.
“I thought you might need to talk tonight.”
Simple, direct. She always spoke directly with him.
“I’m doubting myself tonight.” He couldn’t quite keep the despairing note
from his voice.
“Over?”
He heard a chair shift about on her side of the connection as she settled
in while he tried to formulate an answer.
“Look, I have a lovely cup of tea and all the time in the world for you. We
can go all night if we need to, and if you need me I can be there in a few
hours. Even if you say you don’t, I may turn up anyway.”
Cadw sighed, vaguely regretting his impulsive call. She would simply turn
up on the doorstep at a thoroughly unsociable hour and harass him in person.
“I should never have sent you off to non-magical Oxford. We all should have
run screaming the minute you said Psychology.”
“Mm,” she sipped tea. “And I can smell dragon dung from miles away.
Especially from you.”
“I don’t know if I have it in me to deal with both a child ripped away from
his Paterfamilias twice and the wretched political mess I’ve landed
myself in the middle of.”
“Twice?” He could hear her sit up and the sharp note of interest in her
voice.
“If Sirius didn’t have something to do with siring the child, then I’ll eat
my Master’s thesis. Adoption, my foot. Harry was his just as much as he was
James and Lily Potter’s. He looks—”
“Everyone says exactly like his father.”
“Only if James Potter lost several inches in height and a good bit of
weight, developed the Black family facial structure, and had ear surgery.
The Potter hair is there, I’ll grant you that, and his glasses are
completely awful, but he’s a Black. And likely some Prewett in the mix. His
best friend is a Weasley, but his mother is a Prewett and he carries the
line. It’s subtle, but it’s there.” Cadw wished he’d thought to ask for a
tea tray before locking up for the night. “This is going to sound
completely mad, but he still…the family magic is insisting that he isn’t as
near adulthood as his age would imply.”
“Mm,” she hummed. “Bad childhood? Do you know anything about that?”
“Neglect, definitely. The contents of his trunk had Mrs. Harris looking
incredibly grim and the maid sniffling. He’s had to do for himself in most
ways, it sounds like. Mrs. Weasley tries to be there for him, and so have
other friends’ parents, but I got the impression that he…well, he doesn’t
particularly trust adults.”
“I’ll make him a badge.” Caro laughed drily. “We can have a fort in the
garden.”
“I know that he was housed by his mother’s people and that the Weasley boy
he’s friends with looks grim every time he thinks about it. I also know he
hasn’t had any kind of reasonable support by most of the adults in his
life, at home or at school. I got a bit more from his friends this evening,
mostly about their school experience. They couldn’t keep it back any
longer, I think, and I’m someone who can actually do something about it.”
“Which, even if Hogwarts has had some positives for him, you are viewing in
the worst possible light because you hate boarding schools on principle,
especially for children under fifteen.” She sounded amused.
“Children ought to be kept at home.” He couldn’t help sounding short. “I
have no problem with day schools and we have the means to make every school
a day one. There isn’t any reason for an eleven-year-old, or, god forbid,
an eight-year-old to be away from home all term time with dodgy
supervision.”
“And both the child and everything you’ve heard about his life…wait a…why
are his friends telling you?”
“Harry is currently passed out in the nursery sick room, which we are very
delicately not calling the nursery anything, and has been passed out
since this afternoon, roughly two minutes after putting him into the
carriage at Gringotts. It is, apparently, something he does at the end of
each appalling year he’s been at school. Exhaustion, yearly, and no one
thought it concerning.” Cadw felt like spitting tacks. He knew the spell
for it, in any case.
“You are going to go through that school like salts through a goose,” Caro
murmured.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “Geese don’t eat salts and you certainly
cannot force a goose to eat anything it does not wish to eat.”
“Why don’t…are you certain you don’t want me to come just yet?”
“Not just yet, please. I’d like to give Harry a chance to come down from
his yearly brush with death and I will explain that before I inflict the
wider family on him. He’s…I got the distinct impression that he’s trying
very hard not to be…fragile.”
Caro groaned. “And we know how that goes. You can absolutely tell me to
bog off, but could you tell me everything from today from entering England?
I have a feeling it’s important.”
“They held me up at the border, for one. I had to get the Welsh government
involved to get through, and it wasn’t just what happened when Father and
Mother and our brothers were killed. Someone very much did not want me
taking custody of Harry. I was late getting to the bank; he’d already taken
the ring and…I honestly have no idea what happened there. I walked in to
the room and there was Harry on the floor, all over blood, with his friends
and Mrs. Weasley who was in the middle of a valiant attempt to clean him
up. Something about the scar and his forehead and a screaming phantasm. I’m
hoping to get a bit more from Gringotts tomorrow.” He paused, pinching the
bridge of his nose.
“Well, that’s certainly an introduction.” Caro sounded entirely too
entertained. “What did you do?”
“Sounded like an utter idiot. I said something like ‘I’ll be beating them
off with sticks in a few years’ before I pulled myself together.”
Caro spluttered tea, choking on laughter.
“Yes, we can all have a laugh at my expense. Harry then showed that he’d
learned manners somewhere, apologized for being unable to get up off the
floor, and made introductions as best he could. I got everyone back here as
soon as possible. Harry passed out completely on the way. I think his
friends…it sounds like it was a thoroughly awful year for everyone at
Hogwarts. They…his mother’s people apparently hated both magic and Harry
for having it.”
“I had one of those feelings.” Caro sighed deeply. “So he lost his parents
and went to family, but family who very much didn’t want him. That’s…that
is going to be an unholy mess to sort through.”
“It gets even better.” He couldn’t help the sarcasm. “The utter mess I
became very June? That was the family magic going very thoroughly bonkers
because the child nearly died every year from eleven on. His first year was
a possessed teacher, his second was a basilisk, the third involved sodding
dementors, fourth year had the Tri-Wiz so I got to spend from October on
having the wibbles, and last year included a teacher determined to torture
him with a Black quill *and *the Ministry assault course. So you have a
child likely desperate to be loved, or at the very least not hated,
catapulted into danger after danger and then praised for nearly dying to
save everyone else. Or, apparently more recently, marked out as a liar
until the truth could no longer be denied and then castigated for not doing
enough.”
Caro groaned. “Why are the English such nitwits? All heroic nobility? Just
go on a quest to recover a magic comb and have done with it and leave the
children to be children.”
“I don’t think we can blame the English only for this one. It’s the perfect
storm, isn’t it? And he sorted into the House of heroic nobility and
chivalry.”
“Right, can you burn down a stone-built castle, do you think? It’s empty
right now, yes? Siege engines at dawn?” The light tone she used faltered at
the last. “I have never been happier that you told Hogwarts to bog off when
they came knocking.”
Cadw have a short bark of laughter. “I don’t think we need to go that far.
I keep getting the urge to go buy every soft toy available, immediately,
but I don’t think it would be terribly well received a the moment.”
“Right now? He’d never get near them if the neglect was bad enough. I think
it likely there’s a large crate of things with a ‘Not for Harry’ label
pasted across the top somewhere in his psyche. Look, just…be your
incredibly and horrifically annoying self. You do actually know what you’re
doing with children, especially when there was a less than optimal
childhood involved. You got us through it intact.”
“Can I do it again, though?”
“That is entirely up to you. If I know you, though, you already have the
start of a plan because you’re a mad bastard that way.”
He snorted at that. “Yes, I have. He curled into me when I picked him up.
Just…instant trust, Caro.”
“And there’s your heart gone, if it wasn’t already when he summoned his
nice manners while all over blood and concussed. You, sir, are a wet mess.”
“Probably, yes. Thank you, Caro. I shouldn’t keep you up any later.”
“Says the sleep obsessed. I should probably warn Harry about all your
overbearing ways,” she teased.
“I won’t object if you want to write him. I think he could use as many
friendly voices as he can get. And you can commiserate over me sending
people to bed and nagging about overshoes.”
“I know where you keep your underclothes and am willing to divulge that
information if you bring up overshoes again.”
“You know where I keep my decoy underclothes. Do you think me foolish
enough to leave anything like that unguarded? With you and your brothers
trying your damndest to get rid of me those first six months? I’m a step
ahead, my girl.”
“Ass,” she said, without heat. “If you need me, even if it’s just for moral
support, you tell me immediately.”
“I will, you horror. I’ll let you and Ger know when we’d appreciate a
visit.”
“And I’ll send Harry a note…and perhaps a very snazzy badge, as well. Just
to remind you.”
“You’re a terrible influence. Get some sleep?”
“Yes, you fussbudget. I love you.”
“I love you too, Caro.” They closed the connection at the same time.
Cadw went out of the study and across the hall to the stairs. As he walked
up, intent on getting some rest himself, he felt better about the whole
mess. Politics could go hang; he had higher priorities.
Source: wellpresseddaisy
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