I find the lack of Batman/HP crossovers… disturbing.

Happy Halloween/All Hallows Eve!

His ward, Richard Grayson, was in third year when the Dark Lord returned.

The next morning, Bruce Wayne, pureblood, walked into the ministry and erased all evidence that his ward was half-blood at best.

Dick would be upset with him, but if forced to choose between Dick's survival and his son's opinion of him? Bruce had already chosen. It was a poor thing to think, but Bruce was a true Slytherin, and Dick should have been a Hufflepuff.

At eleven years old, the boy had been trapped in his head, broiled over trying to hold onto the hope of justice. He argued the hat to a standstill, demanding over and over again to go to the house he'd heard always watched the shadows. The house that veered towards strength and safety. The house of alliances and allies who would take him as far as he could go. The house that would teach him how to never be vulnerable again.

There were lots of ways to be a hatstall, and Dick was never one to leave his destiny in anyone's hands but his own. Dick would understand why Bruce changed the records, but he would never be happy that it had happened, much less that it had happened without his consent, but this was the truth:

Bruce Wayne witnessed the last trial of the Triwizard Tournament.

He sat by his ward in the stands, comfortably relaxed, enjoying the evening before it all went sideways.

When Harry Potter burst out of the maze with a portkey in one hand and a dead body in the other, screaming about the Dark Lord's return. When a Dementor's Kiss was administered on a man without a trial. When the papers changed their Potter Rhetoric for the first time since his birth. When words like 'insane,' and 'attention-seeking,' and 'dangerous,' followed the Boy Who Lived back to wherever he was hidden away each summer, apparently without giving a single word in his own defense.

Bruce would draw his own conclusions, regardless of what the papers, gossip, and politicians said. He always had. He always would.

He concluded it was safer to be a pureblood Wayne, now more than ever before.

000

Dick may not have actually been born into the Wayne family, but there were some things that you simply learned when growing up in a pureblood household. It was easy to spot outsiders when it came to meal placement, not because of using the incorrect fork or fumbling the placemats, or even having elbows on the table, but because they would not wait for the lady of the house to eat the first bite.

There were other things as well: the proper way to behave around your elders, and lines in the sand about how to behave around those younger. The types of flowers appropriate for bouquets and the type of flowers which should only be seen in a garden or potions jar. The right times of year to give gifts, what gifts were appropriate, and how to write the perfect 'thank you,' card for every occasion (and every occasion warranted them.) How to write letters which weren't 'thank you,' cards. How to write Italic. How to write in Secretary hand. How to write in a mix of Secretary and Italic, and when it was most appropriate. How to write letters to someone below your station. How to write a letter to one you considered an equal. How to write letters to a superior.

Dick had long written his letters to Bruce up the center of his parchment. It had been an abrupt, cruel moment, when, without any comment, the first letter came aligned to the right. It killed Bruce to write back with his own hand aligning to the left.

By sixth year, his Slytherin son wrote letters in patterns. He gave anecdotes of what happened in classes, writing in a tone that could be read as gleeful or sullen depending on the reader's perception of intent. Mostly, the letters read like facts. His tone was formal, dates written clearly, all propriety, leading to correspondence like:

October 8, 1998

Father (the 'r' slightly smudged, possibly out of spite, but looking well enough like Dick's specially cultivated band of clumsiness that only one searching for it would notice it was the only smudged word in the entire letter),

I hope you're well. It's been a dreadful week here at Hogwarts. The weather is awful and only seems to be getting worse. There's an unnatural amount of frost and ice, so we're largely trapped within the castle until something can be arranged. It's maddening.

Recently, the behavior here has been worse than usual, and I don't doubt the weather is in part agitating it. This last Tuesday, when Professor Carrow was teaching Dark Arts, a Hufflepuff called Gloria Hench tried to avoid doing her assignment (to cast a stinging charm) so Professor Carrow instructed us to cease practicing on our partners, and instead, sting her. It was a notable moment in a day when overall, morale has been very low.

How he could leave room in his words to make taking upwards of fifty stinging charms sound like a minor punishment for a minor infraction, Bruce—wished he didn't know.

The letters continued on in that manner, each ending with a short list of requests. Treats, the sorts of things Dick hasn't really requested in all his years before, barring his miserable first year when everyone needed something cheering, and Bruce had nearly pulled him out before the first semester had ended—but no one would question gifts being delivered to the heir-apparent of what was once a grand bloodline.

Bruce kept all the letters in a small chest by his office desk, swaddled in as many protective charms as he could manage, warding against fire, water, aging, and general maliscious intent, for one day a record would be needed—

Before locking them away, Bruce handed the list of requests off to Alfred (and each time, after a moment of hesitation, he handed off the rest of the letter, as Alfred deserved to know what was going on with their boy, regardless of how business the letters felt.) The gifts were prepared. Toffees, treats, a few small chocolate cakes, extra parchment, ink, quills, bags of nonpareils and sweet-coated peanuts. They didn't risk cereal anymore, as they might have once, in case another student realized it was not simply an exotic treat from some distant wizarding community. Just muggles, manufacturing flour.

(Too much 'risk' in cereal. It sounded ridiculous, with three boxes of the stuff sitting in their pantry alongside the cow tongue, pumpkin seeds, jars of nettles, and sticks of cinnamon.)

Bruce once hoped he'd never see the day when cereal spelled out 'risk,' but Dick would be able to eat whatever he pleased once he came home for break. He wouldn't be able to go back to summer school, and his online studies in the muggle would would have to be discontinued, but he'd be whole and alive. In a world with Lord Voldemort resurrected and playing puppet government, 'whole and alive' was Bruce's bottom line.

Hidden in the package treats they sent to Dick were shrunken gifts, hidden treasures. First aid supplies. Medicines disguised and homebrewed potions. Pain dullers and antidotes. Bezoars ground into every encrusted treat. Parchment charmed with messages for his son's eyes only, bringing news of the outside world.

They didn't know if the supplies were being handed out to an inner-school resistance or primarily went to comforting his underclassmen, but the requests kept coming, and Wayne Manor kept complying. There was very little they could do to get responses—all the mail going in and out of Hogwarts was tracked and inspected. Each day that passed without outing them as blood traitors brought with it something like a distant cousin of relief. Not a sense of victory, but proof they still had some breathing room. His son was uncompromised.

They'd met the bottom line.

000

The portrait of his parents hung above the grand fireplace in the library.

The painted imitations stared into each other's eyes, always sighing and clasping their hands around each other's wrists. The portrait's occupants didn't speak often, and when they did, it was no louder than a whisper. All portraits had their personalities created by the painter's perception of their subject—paintings knew as much about themselves as their painter knew, resulting in a real impression, if not an original one.

Bruce knew it could have been much worse. The portrait above the grand fireplace spoke of quite, overwhelming love. There were so many ways it could have been worse.

The Wayne family had been labeled blood-traitors thirty years before, when Martha Wayne campaigned for the cessation of the Statute of Secrecy and Thomas advocated the sharing of medical secrets between worlds.

The family label was re-evaluated when the Waynes were murdered by one of the very muggles they sought to reach out to.

At the time, Bruce was a year too young for Hogwarts.

Grief reclaimed the family name as Pureblood without intending it. Victims of muggle violence— the old shame of his parent's views was ignored by and large by the wizarding community, who focused on the murder.

Always focusing on the murder.

Always focusing on death.

(Bruce closed his eyes and steadied his breathing. Above the fireplace, his parent's portrait looked down upon him, concerned and silent.)

Bruce was Slytherin, cunning, ambitious, and above all, loyal to his own.

Just because the rest of the wizarding world has forgotten what his parents wanted didn't mean he had. His own tragedy didn't blind him from seeing the same pain in others.

On the contrary.

He had always been aware.

While the wizarding community focused on death (focused on the scars) Bruce could shift his eyes, and see the child lying in a pool of their parent's blood.

In 1981, his petition to adopt the Potter boy had been swiftly and succinctly denied.

He didn't make the same mistake with Grayson.

He asked the boy personally, and the boy said 'yes.' That was all the permission he needed.

Bruce placed the paperwork in the ministry file the next time he stopped by on casual business. The same papers he changed when he arrived that horrible, humid day four years later, when Richard was in third year and a child was dead.

A few obliviates, a few confunduses, and Richard had always been part of the Wayne bloodline: the product of an affair during Bruce's post-graduation travels, whose name of 'Grayson' came from his mother, an obscure and foreign pureblood.

If no one had heard of him before his debut at Hogwarts, well, such was the reclusive and secretive manner of the Waynes. Such was the manner of affairs. It mattered very little, really. The paperwork was there, as was his pedigree, sitting in the ministry offices for as long as anyone cared to recall. There would be no dispute.

(Dick didn't speak to him for weeks. But he understood. He was Slytherin enough to convince the hat to let him into the house—but Bruce didn't want to follow that train of thought. Dick should have been a Hufflepuff, because even though he understood, that didn't make him less upset at the principal of it all.)

000

The Dark Lord didn't approach Wayne Manor personally, but an imperiused minion was not a much better substitute.

Of course, Bruce agreed to the offer.

What pureblood family would not be thrilled to regain their rightful places at the helm of the wizarding world?

He emphasized that he was not much of a fighter—no one would question that, not with his grades in school. Back then, Dark Arts had still been Defense, and Bruce had not taken well to having no control over his tutors. He acted out. Was almost expelled from Hogwarts multiple times. His grades reflected it.

Half of it was how very little he'd cared. Half of it was what he'd eventually recognized as an extension of the same paranoia that told him if no one ever saw him, it would make him less of a target; if no one thought much of him, fewer people would look his way when books went missing from the forbidden section of the library. By the time he'd pulled himself together in seventh year, it was second nature to hide his proficiencies. It was hard to fight habit. He'd yet to fully defeat it.

So he sighed repeatedly that he was really not much of a fighter, but he knew a few things about management. If it pleased his Dark Lord, he'd like to have his little corner of land—the land around Wayne Manor, called Gotham Field. Surrounded by muggle civilization. Small cities. Smaller towns. His own little kingdom—and he'd like to have his own discretion in dealing with it, until such a time as his Dark Lord's conquest was complete.

It would not be much, and it was far from a final plan of action, but it would buy him time and shield both muggle and wix in Gotham Field from the worst of things, at least for a while.

Wayne Manor itself was not quite as secure.

The fidelius charm on it was old. Old enough to be spread thin, but not old enough to be renewed. It was unwise to layer multiple contradicting fidelius charms—it confused the magic, made entry uncertain, and never guaranteed exactly who or what would be able to enter at any given time as the enchantments warred for dominance. Truly, it was better to know others could get in than to be blinded by hope and then taken by surprise.

When a secret keeper died, the secret passed on to those who had been 'in the know,' and with each of those subsequent deaths, the secret grew even weaker. Long hidden caverns appeared when the descendant of a secret keeper arrived and blurted out the location to the world. Treasures were dug up and graves exhumed.

Had Bruce or Alfred been the only people invited into the house before Thomas Wayne's death, there may not have been any trouble, but the reality was that they could not call the house at all secure when also factoring in immediate family of the gardener hired to clean up the hedges years before, all the guests invited to galas and political events in the Wayne ballroom, and Bruce's childhood friend Thomas Elliot, whose company he had later grown to very much regret.

Bruce's forefathers may have cared greatly about their privacy, but Martha and Thomas Wayne had not been much for keeping secrets.

(They were both much better people than he was.)

Without a powerful fidelius charm, no matter how many anti-spying and infiltration charms he placed, the Manor still felt vulnerable.

So he built a bunker.

The swift-flowing waters of local rivers had carved out a complicated cave system which stretched out for miles beneath Gotham Field and its surrounding areas. He could find no records to indicate if a fidelius charm could even be powerful enough to hide such massive formations, and in the absence of time to experiment, he did the next best thing: he blocked off a section of the cave, turning a massive underground cavern not far from Wayne Manor into a 'room.' Massive though it was, the clearly defined boundaries made it a simple thing to enchant after it had been given a name, which functioned as the address.

He told only Alfred, and wrote to Dick about something to show you when you come home for Christmas. He received a reply back about how the Gryffindors are acting up again. It sounds like they're upset about something that happened to one of their Seventh years, Longbottom—

Bruce Wayne knew Augusta Longbottom, but had only ever heard of Frank and Alice Longbottom. He closed his eyes, leaned back his head, and hoped against hope that history would not repeat itself.

000

He didn't get the chance to show Dick the cave beneath the manor, not before he showed it to someone else.

Perhaps some of the Dark Lord's did not get the memo that Bruce would be handling Gotham Field alone. Perhaps they were impatient for results that would never come. Perhaps they were locals. Perhaps they were outsiders who felt they'd finally run into a pureblood supporter weak enough he who wouldn't mind his authority undermined. Perhaps they hadn't paid attention to lines drawn on maps.

There were Snatchers in Gotham Field. So long as they were not sent intentionally, how they got there was of little consequence. They were in his territory.

Bruce found them by happenstance on one of his nighttime walks.

Walking was something he'd done for years since the death of his parents. On restless nights, he walked. It gave him something to do. Kept him sane. Kept him from running out into the night and blasting everything in sight, or—he wasn't really sure what he'd do if he hadn't walked.

He had run, once. He'd run off at seventeen and traveled the world, reviving an old tradition, stretching his travels out over years, hoping to steady himself. It had helped, somewhat. But then he'd come home. A Dark Lord rose, and Bruce went home.

He couldn't in good conscience abandon his home to be the site of more bloodshed and murder. Not then. Not now. Not even if his connections with the rest of the wizarding world, much less any resistance movements, were shaky at best. But it wasn't a matter of connections. It was a matter of looking out for one's own.

So he walked at night.

And he heard screams.

The power for the disillusionment charm was already half summoned before his wand was all the way out. Disillusionment was not as perfect a form of hiding as an invisibility cloak, but he preferred it for the greater mobility and, especially, because it could not be accio'd away. Under the mask of night, to blend was to be invisible.

He raced down three blocks of the neighborhood before finding the source of the scream.

Snatchers were known for going after dissidents or muggleborns. Not muggles. They didn't get rewards for muggles. But no one protected muggles, and no one became a Snatcher out of kindness in their heart.

Five Snatchers ran down the street, not seeing Bruce in the slightest and heading right for his position. They laughed, tossing spells carelessly at a muggle teenager. The situation took a moment to assess. The boy ran quickly and was dodging at least some of the spells under his own power, but if any of the Snatchers actually aimed and got lucky—

"Here boy, here! Heel, boy!" One called, shooting off a spell, red and sharp. It left a dark smudge where the muggle's ankle had been a moment before.

Another snatcher whistled, sending something curving and blue whizzing towards the muggle's head. The muggle jerked left, the spell just missing his ear. "Aw, come on; I had that one!"

Too soon, it happened. The snatcher in front took the time to steady their aim and think through their spell before letting it fly. The muggle boy twisted to dodge in a way that would have worked, only to have the arc of light curve and slam heavy into his thigh. He crumbled with another shout.

Wix live in this area, Bruce thought, looking around. Some lights were turned on in the nearby houses, but no faces looked out the windows. No wands poked through curtains. Damnit, are they all that scared?

Of course they were. Of course they were scared. Scared of Voldemort and what he might do if he discovered they were muggle sympathizers. If they were muggle sympathizers.

If you're a muggle sympathizer, act like it, he thought, because no matter how frightened the wix of the community were, the boy lying on the ground in a leg-lock jinx had so much more reason to fear.

The teen faceplanted, groaned, and pushed himself back up a moment later. He hadn't even taken a moment to be stunned, immediately trying to scramble onto his feet. He stopped only after discovering he couldn't separate his legs. He twisted onto his back and started clawing at his pants, panting and grunting. Then, apparently thinking without pause, he declared it a losing fight and started dragging himself away from the Snatchers by his hands.

"Aw," one of the Snatchers said, "Ain't he just the cutest?"

"You touch me and I'll bite your fucking face off," the muggle boy said, still trying to put distance between them. Bruce raised his wand.

"You know," another Snatcher said, "I've always wanted a pet."

"Not this one," said a third, cooing. "I think he's rabid. Look at those l'il teeth."

Bruce fired.

The ones who spoke were the first to fall. The others wasted time in their panic, searching for the assailant with their eyes rather than trusting their instincts or thinking through where the assault came from. By the time Bruce apparated was behind them, it was far too late.

One by one, the snatchers fell. They would be unconscious for several hours, long enough for Bruce to figure out what to do with them—though at that moment, he was leaning heavily towards snapping all of their wands and leaving them in the bottom of a ravine.

Though perhaps the middle of a muggle London police office would be a better choice. Worst came to worst, those muggles could defend themselves.

First, though, he had to take care of something more important.

There were eyes at the windows, now. Faces peering out through doors. Too late to matter. Bruce cast two spells, both for privacy, before removing the disillusionment charm and approaching the muggle boy—now the only person who would be able to see him, as long as he stayed within the six meter radius the look-away spells specified.

Not that the teen would go far with that leg-lock jinx still on him. But he was giving it a valiant try.

He jerked away when Bruce approached, eyes darting between his wand and the five Snatchers who lay not far away from him.

"Who—?" he gasped it out, "What?"

"It's okay now," Bruce said, doing his best to sound calm. He may have sounded monotone. Dick always said he was terrible at expressing, but still, he tried. He raised both hands to show no ill intent, even though one still had his wand in his right hand, pinched between his thumb and pointer finger. Despite his wand, the muggle boy seemed to relax at the gesture. "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm just going to release your legs and make sure you're all right."

"What was that?" the boy said, no longer scrambling backwards. He rolled onto his back, propping himself up with his elbows. "How—what were those lights?"

"Magic," Bruce said, close enough to the boy to kneel down to his level. If explanations kept him calm, then he could explain and just wait until he escorted the teen home safely before obliviating him. "Before you protest, try and think if there's any other explanation for what you've just seen. Now just stay still a moment."

Bruce lowered his wand to point at the boy's legs and spoke the counter-curse aloud. The boy's legs, once held rigid, instantly relaxed. Bruce heard him take in a deep breath.

"Okay," he said in a smaller voice. "Okay, wow. All right, then. Fuck."

"Are you hurt?"

"A little freaked out," the boy said, eyes wide. He stared down at his legs.

"Physically?"

The boy's gaze shifted. He looked up at Bruce for a long second before holding up his palms. Shallow cuts and scrapes covered them from where he'd tried to drag himself along the ground. Flecks of dirt and small rocks were visible in them.

Bruce nodded and lifted his wand again. He wasn't the best healer, but this? This he could do. Once again, he made sure to speak the spells aloud for the boy and give him some warning before the magic took effect. No glow, no flicks, just an itching sensation and skin slowly knitting back together, expelling any foreign matter in the process. Once he was done, the skin of the boy's hands were smooth and unmarred as if they'd had weeks to heal.

The boy stared at his hands and brushed his fingers along each palm before pressing his hands up to his face and against his cheeks to feel them both at once. "That is so weird."

Bruce tried to smile. It may have come out flat, but at least the boy was all right. "All right, now, to get you home. Where do you live?"

Midway through reveling in his newly patched skin, the boy froze and looked up, if possible, more wide-eyed than he'd already been.

"…around," he said.

"I promise, I just want to make sure you get home safely," Bruce said, raising his hands again to placate.

The boy hesitated, eyes flicking to the left (a tell? Or he's thinking) before finally saying, "That might be sort of complicated."

There was a strange little twist in Bruce's stomach as he considered the possibilities, but he took in the boy's attire—oversized clothes, patchy and torn. Far too light for so late in October. Not recently washed. Homeless. "Is there some place you stay that's safe?"

The boy appeared to bite the inside of his cheek and frowned. "I go where I can get. Look, I'll be fine, thanks for your help with those… whoevers, but I don't need pity."

"Do you have any family at all? Even if they live out of the area, if you want, I can get you to them." Bruce may have been desperate.

The look on the boy's face told him enough.

There were things they said about Slytherins. Things that in-house were comforting and out-of-house sounded like condemnations. Things like 'Slytherins only look after their own.'

And Bruce had decided that all inhabitants of Gotham Field were his own, whether they knew him or not. Orphans, though. Orphans had been part of his own for even longer.

Bruce looked over the boy again. He was recovering rapidly from his ordeal, but he was gaunt. Wide-eyed and wary, but he no longer appeared at all frightened. His features suggested potential Irish ancestry. Dark hair, bright eyes. He looked so very much like the son Bruce could not currently protect; it sent another twist into his stomach just thinking of abandoning this boy to the streets with his memory wiped and muggle-haters still on the loose—especially when Bruce could prevent that. Not when he could bring the boy up to the manor, could give him a hot meal and a safe place to sleep at night.

Really, there was no question. Not once he really thought about it.

"All right, chum," Bruce said, putting his wand away and settling himself down in front of the boy. "I have an offer for you, and you're welcome to refuse, and I'll leave you alone—but if you say yes, you have to be able to keep a secret. Will you hear me out?"

A moment passed, and the muggle boy nodded.

His name was Jason.

000