Horace Slughorn shivered as he got out of the carriage that had brought him to the village, casting another warming charm on little Ivy to be safe. Raven's Moor was perpetually freezing… with the exception, of course, of the areas dedicated to worship of eldritch things associated with heat. Horace's ancestors had dealt mostly with entities of the deep earth, so the forbidding manor he was now slowly climbing the steps to was surrounded by a treacherous swamp. It was cold and wet.

Horace looked down at the child in his arms and sighed, then raised his hand and knocked on the large doors. They creaked open after a moment, having recognized him by his blood and magic. For the first time in seventy-three years, Horace Slughorn was home.

"Who's there?" a cranky voice demanded, an odd clattering sound beginning to move towards the door.

"It's Horace, Grandfather," Horace replied calmly.

"Is it, now? After all these years?" Horace's grandfather growled as he appeared at the top of the long staircase that dominated the entrance hall. He was a skeleton — literally. No flesh or muscle wrapped his bones, and his eye sockets were empty. There was no hair on top of his head, and he didn't bother with any kind of clothing. What would be the point? There was nothing to hide.

"I have come to seek sanctuary," Horace said, bowing his head.

"That school not safe enough for you anymore, boy?" his grandfather demanded, stomping down the stairs.

"No, Hogwarts is safe," Horace said, shaking his head. "But it's no place to raise a child." He held Ivy up.

"That one isn't of our blood," Horace's grandfather said suspiciously, the odd noises coming from his empty nostrils suggesting he was sniffing the air.

"From their father's side, they're descended of the Blacks," Horace said. "They've inherited an acute manifestation of the Curse of Age, and their parents are dead. I'm claiming that they're Laertes' child in order to establish the reason for my adoption of them."

"Really now? The Curse of Age?" Horace's grandfather asked, perking up. "I will grant your request for sanctuary, but you really must allow me to study them."

Horace ground his teeth. This was the primary reason that he had left when Elizabeth was born… but in this case, he had actually been counting on it, damn him. "On the condition that your studies are not harmful to them, I accept," Horace said. Mad though his many-greats grandfather was, the old revenant had a rare gift for delving into Wild Magic. If anybody could prepare Ivy to face Tom, it was Altair Slughorn, who had broken the bonds tying the Slughorns to the Blacks and established them as a family in their own right.

"Harmful?" Altair scoffed. "What do you take me for? A subject like this isn't so common that I can simply go out and fetch a replacement if I break it."

"As you say, grandfather," Horace agreed.

"You may get settled in," Altair ordered, "and then you will reestablish yourself in the community. I won't have you freeloading."

"As you command," Horace agreed again. This, too, had been expected. Raven's Moor (and quite possibly the entire world) survived only because every family in the village sabotaged every other family's efforts at every turn. It was a dangerous dance of politics and Dark Magic with consequences on a global scale. The never-ending competition had caused Raven's Moor to produce many of the most brilliant magical minds in Europe… but also many of the most dangerously unhinged. It had been nearly a century, but they were still dealing with the fallout of Alexandra Lovegood's successful opening of a portal straight to the elemental essence of Fire — it had been closed a mere minute after she had been utterly consumed by the ensuing blaze, but rogue 'heliopaths' still cropped up from time to time, sometimes as far away as South America.

The less said about the continuing fallout of Rowena Ravenclaw's experiments, the better. There were nearly sixty square miles of the Moor that were considered not only uninhabitable but fatal to so much as enter, all centered around a single small laboratory that had been the site of experiments on… something, some sort of creature. Nobody was sure what, but the area was full of a thick mist and anybody who ventured inside went mad and refused to leave, all the while suffering phantom wounds that didn't bleed and couldn't be healed. Forcibly removing them only made their madness worse, and allowing them to stay resulting in them vanishing forever.

And this was the little slice of Hell to which Horace had brought Lily's child. Lily, he had always thought, would have flourished if she had been raised in Raven's Moor — she had always teetered on the edge between brilliance and madness, but had a fundamental kindness to her that kept her from becoming the monster her instincts seemed to demand she be. He was counting on her child being the same way.

It didn't take long for Horace to have his bags unpacked and a spacious room on the second floor of the manor set up for his habitation. A decisive jab of his wand transfigured a chair into a suitable crib for little Ivy, and he nodded in satisfaction.

"Time to meet the neighbors, I suppose," Horace murmured. The question was whether or not he should take Ivy with him on the rounds. If he didn't, he wouldn't be able to control the circumstances under which the other families of the Moor learned of their presence… and it would involve leaving Ivy unattended near Altair Slughorn. While Horace was reasonably certain that his many-greats grandfather would hold to his word and do no lasting damage, it was the 'lasting' part that worried him. No, he wouldn't be leaving Ivy here… which meant that he needed to be ready to protect Ivy in the event that any of the families were as… quirky… as he remembered.

The first one would no doubt be at least as bad as it had been in the past. Horace shuddered, then sighed and cast a a series of defensive spells on Ivy, who watched his wand movements with wide eyes.

"Up you get," Horace said, scooping Ivy into his arms. "Let's go see the other inmates of this madhouse, shall we?"

The nearest property to the Slughorn ancestral home belonged to the Lovegood family, unfortunately. The Lovegoods were notorious even for denizens of Raven's Moor, and not just because they were better-known due to a few members of recent generations settling down in more populated areas. They were descended from the same line that had produced Rowena Ravenclaw, though they thankfully weren't direct descendants of the mad genius herself… but they were avid demonologists and necromancers who frequently interbred with demons of all kinds, causing their bloodline to be a minefield. You never knew what traits a Lovegood might develop as they aged and came into the fullness of their magical inheritance, as Horace's older sister had learned when her girlfriend abruptly developed a lust demon's life-draining powers mid-coitus… and that was where the other half of the major problem with Lovegoods began.

Horace knocked on the door to the Lovegood castle, giving the lava in the moat a nervous glance. He half-expected a heliopath to launch itself out and attack him as he waited for someone to answer the door, and wasn't sure if it might be preferable to…

The door creaked open.

"Horace?" a delighted voice gasped, and he was pulled into a hug by unnaturally-strong arms.

"Helen," Horace greeted, voice strained. "Your nose appears to have fallen off."

"Has it? Bother," Helen remarked, sounding unperturbed as she released her hold on Horace and brought a hand up to prod at the spot where her nose should be. "I'm sure it will turn up. It always does."

"Quite," Horace replied, the corners of his smile twitching as he struggled to continue looking cheerful.

Helen Lovegood née Slughorn had died when her girlfriend manifested her demonic heritage, but Lovegoods were necromancers. Her death had lasted all of the seven minutes it had taken Persephone Lovegood to set up the ritual necessary to revive her as a corpse-puppet, soul tightly bound to a decomposing body. Corpse-puppets were not, unfortunately, the most durable of undead, and required quite a lot of maintenance — the fact that Helen was still in such good condition nearly a century after her death was nothing short of a miracle, and a sign that maintenance was likely performed on a near-daily basis. In his youth, Horace had heard quite enough about how much Persephone and Helen enjoyed said maintenance to deeply scar his mind — he still had to fight the urge to flee whenever he heard the name 'Lovegood.' The first time he'd had one in his class and reached the name on his attendance list, he had shrieked and dived underneath his desk. It had taken Albus an hour to get him back out, and Horace still refused to be ashamed of his actions. It had been an entirely reasonable course of action when confronted with a surprise Lovegood.

"It's so good to see you, though!" Helen continued, oblivious to Horace's ongoing trauma. "What brings you back to the Moor?" Her eyes… no, eye, Horace noted with sick fascination — the left was intact, but the right appeared to have rotted almost entirely out of its socket… fixed on Ivy. "Oh! Is she yours?"

"They are now," Horace said. "This is Ivy. They were Laertes', but…" He swallowed. "The last Dark Lord's men killed him and Annette. I've moved back here to raise them — I'm living with grandfather now."

"Oh, I heard they had a baby!" Helen exclaimed, clasping her hands together and beaming. "And they've got an acute Curse of Age? How old are they now…? Let's see, the card I got was back in May, so…" She counted on her fingers, needing to use the middle finger of her right hand twice in order to account for her missing ring finger. "About six months?"

Horace cursed internally — he had been counting on nobody remembering that Laertes' daughter had been quite a bit younger than Harry Potter. He would just have to run with it — metamorphmagi didn't age in the same way that ordinary children did, so it would all work out in the end if he was careful. If anything, being forced to hide Ivy's true age might prove a blessing — while it wouldn't be inconceivable to Tom or his more intelligent followers that Albus had entrusted 'Harry Potter' to Horace, even Tom's suspicious mind would discount a metamorphmagus child who was supposed to be nearly an entire year younger than Harry Potter.

"Yes, that's right. May 25th," Horace agreed.

"I thought so. What a little cutie," Helen cooed, tickling Ivy's chin with one rotting finger. Ivy cooed back and grabbed at the finger, which detached. Ivy stared at it for a moment before sticking it in their mouth, Horace's attempt to grab it a fraction of a second too slow.

"Ivy, no!" Horace gasped. "Spit that out right now!"

"It's fine, Horace," Helen laughed. "Persephone can grow me a new one. Cats and birds eat bits of me all the time."

"That's not the problem!" Horace exclaimed, studiously ignoring the unwanted information. "What if it makes them sick?"

"I'll have you know I'm very clean," Helen sniffed. "I wash almost every week, if I remember."

Horace gagged and redoubled his efforts to convince Ivy to spit out the finger that they were sucking on. "Please, Ivy? I'll give you candy when we get back home. You like candy, right?"

Ivy stared into Horace's eyes, then spat the finger into his face. "'kay," they mumbled.

Horace sighed and wiped the drool off of his face with his handkerchief, then handed the slightly slimy finger to his undead sister. "Please keep all of your digits to yourself," he half-begged.

"I'll try," Helen said, but she didn't seem particularly concerned. "You should come inside! I know Persephone would love to catch up with you and see little Ivy, and the rest of the family will be thrilled to have you back."

Every fiber of Horace's being screamed for him to flee, but Altair would be furious if he did. He took a deep breath and put his foot over the threshold, reluctantly entering a place he had sworn he would never visit again.

If Raven's Moor was Hell, then the Lovegood castle was the ninth circle, Horace concluded. The room dedicated to entertaining guests was circular, with multiple levels of rounded benches surrounding a couple of chairs in the middle. The chairs in the middle were, of course, for guests — and the Lovegoods all sat on the benches, completely surrounding their poor victims. The worst part was that the setup meant that Horace currently had Lovegoods behind him, which was the last place you wanted to have them… with the possible exception of right in front of you, of course.

"It's lovely to see you again, Horace," Persephone Lovegood said, giving him a gentle smile. She was perched daintily on a bench, Helen cuddled up to her side. "I hope you've been well." She didn't look like she had aged a day since Horace had last seen her, and he didn't want to know how that had been achieved. For all he knew it was just an illusion, but Lovegoods tended to look down on those — their feud with the Greywoods was legendary.

"I have," Horace replied, smile fixed. "Teaching at Hogwarts was quite rewarding."

"I'm glad to hear it," Persephone said, inclining her head. "I do hope that retiring to take care of Ivy didn't cause you much distress."

"No, not at all," Horace answered, shaking his head. "I'd been planning to retire soon anyway. This just pushed up the schedule a little."

"Marvelous," a balding male Lovegood that Horace didn't recognize said, leaning forward in his seat. "You know, my great-granddaughter is only a little older than your Ivy. Her father is Abroad, but I'm sure he would be happy to return to give his daughter a playmate."

'Abroad.' That was how the Lovegoods referred to Lovegoods who had done the unthinkable and left the Moor — they treated them as if they were simply traveling and that it was a given that they would one day return to stay, no matter how many years went by since their departure. Horace was no fool, though — a Lovegood Abroad was still a Lovegood, and if they were less dangerous than those living in the Moor it was only because there were fewer of them in one place.

"I'll keep that in mind," Horace replied, mentally marking that Lovegood as a man to avoid at all costs lest he find himself pressed into arranging a playdate. The less contact Ivy had with Lovegoods, the better — he certainly didn't need them befriending one. Helen's childhood friendship with, eventual courtship of, and death and 'revival' at the hand of Persephone had taught him everything he needed to know about how that kind of thing ended.

"Do you intend to stay once Ivy has grown up?" an elderly woman asked, her sharp eyes emphasized by the odd stitches in the discolored flesh that surrounded them.

"I'm not sure yet," Horace 'admitted,' even as he mentally rebelled against the idea. Better not to give the Lovegoods the idea that he might leave the land they regarded as so important. "I might."

"Hmm," the old lady mused, eyes narrowing. "Well, I hope you see sense and fulfill your duties, young man. It would be good to have a Slughorn with sense around the Moor again. That geezer Altair…" She scoffed.

"…has my honored grandfather done something to upset you?" Horace asked carefully, dreading the answer.

"Altair," another elderly Lovegood, this one a man, began. The name sounded like a curse on his tongue. "Has been Meddling With Things That Man Ought Not To Be Meddling With."

Horace had never heard more terrifying words from a Lovegood in his life, and he had once been forced to sit still and listen to Persephone Lovegood recount how much she enjoyed the feeling of his sister's brain squishing between her fingers during maintenance. What could possibly be so bad that a Lovegood believed it should be left alone? It was documented fact that they had the blood of demon lords running through their line! Anything so bad that people crazy enough to breed with demon lords wanted no part of it had to be apocalyptic.

"And… what might those be?" Horace croaked, a cold sweat breaking across his forehead.

"Moving pictures," hissed another Lovegood.

And with that, all of the tension that had built up in his body vanished. Horace had been away so long that he had forgotten about the Lovegood stance on photographs.

"I'll talk to him about it," Horace said diplomatically, wondering why his grandfather had taken up an interest in photography.

"See that you do," yet another Lovegood snapped. "Bad enough that the Muggles are doing it. We don't need that old skeleton mucking around with that kind of nonsense, too."

That brought Horace up short. Had Muggles developed the ability to take moving photographs? He felt like he would have heard something about that. Did 'moving pictures' mean something different in this context? He had forfeited his best opportunity to ask the Lovegoods for details by acting as if he understood what they meant, so he would have to hope that his grandfather was willing to explain.

Horace made a show of checking his pocket watch, thankful that Ivy had continued to be a quiet baby throughout this torturous meeting. "I hate to run," he said, "but I've got a number of other stops that I need to make today, and it's already a quarter past one."

"You have to go already?" Helen pouted. Persephone patted her arm and gave Horace a knowing look.

"Feel free to visit again at any time," Persephone said. "Helen and I would be delighted to entertain you and Ivy."

"Thank you," Horace said stiffly, rising and giving the room of Lovegoods a bow. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you around."

"Count on it, boy," the old lady who had first raised the subject of his grandfather cackled.

Horace shuddered as he made his way out of the castle. He would never get used to Lovegoods.