Disclaimer: Except for a few characters borrowed with permission from whydoyouneedtoknow, this is Jo Rowling's beach, and she has been kind enough to allow persons such as myself to play here. All I'm laying claim to is the design of this sand castle.
When the Wind is Southerly
by MercuryBlue
Chapter 1: Prologue to the Omen
Saturday, the seventh of August, 1993, started out as an ordinary day.
For much of the world, it would remain an ordinary day. Most people would never be able to look back and think that there was any difference between August sixth, seventh, and eighth, save the usual differences between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Certainly most people would have little if anything to distinguish August seventh from the Saturday before, or the Saturday after.
But some lives changed on Saturday, August seventh, 1993. Even if those whose lives changed didn't know it at the time.
The children's librarian in a certain town in Surrey, for example. On August seventh, she checked out eight books for five children, a personal low. But then, it was a Saturday, most children wanted nothing to do with books on Saturday period, and it was early August. The just-got-out-of-school finish-homework-early-enjoy-rest-of-summer kids were all long finished, the school's-starting-next-week oh-my-god-must-do-homework kids were nowhere near starting, and Greater Whinging didn't have a summer reading program, no matter how hard anyone tried to get it in place. Too much bother for the librarians or something, and never mind that all the work would fall on the children's librarian, who, being the one doing the most pushing for the summer reading program, was volunteering. In any case, she spent most of the day rereading Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon, with occasional breaks to push her brown curls out of her eyes.
The librarian's ten-year-old son, also, thought he was having a perfectly ordinary day. A good fraction of the adults sniffed in distaste at the sight of him, which was annoying but unavoidable. If they didn't want to believe that it was neither his fault nor his mother's that he'd never known his father, that was their problem. The area children tended to echo their parents' opinion of him, which was one reason why, whenever his mum was at work and he wasn't at school, such as today, he could be found curled up in a chair in the corner of the kids' section of the library, nose firmly entrenched in his book du jour (Prince Caspian today, for the umpteenth time) and blue eyes absorbing every word.
The librarian's elder brother and sister-in-law the dentists and their bushy-haired bibliophile daughter weren't precisely having an ordinary day—who, while on holiday in France, could? Their day was no different from that of any other British tourist in Paris that day, though very few of these tourists could see the newspaper rack the girl stopped beside for a moment. She made sure to keep the newspaper tightly rolled and tucked under her arm till they had reached the privacy of their hotel room and she could translate the world news articles at her leisure; very few people, tourist or native, would not be astonished to see how the pictures in this newspaper moved, and getting accosted by too-curious people would interfere with her being able to read the news from England. The news of the past week was...worrying, to say the least.
Equally worried was one of the girl's two best friends, this one on holiday with his family in Egypt. At present this flame-haired horde was swarming a bazaar in Cairo. One young man, who had burn scars on his arms, was examining a golden dragon figurine. Another adjusted his glasses so as to better appraise the display of necklaces, though he was distracted from this by shouting at his rowdy twin brothers to behave. The small girl had her arm around the tall young man with a ponytail to match hers as he explained the hieroglyphics in a particular cartouche to her. A balding man and a plump woman, obviously the parents of this miniature population explosion, stood hand in hand where they could keep an eye on every one of their scattered offspring.
The young man in question scowled at his family. None of them were overly concerned about the news that had arrived a few days earlier. Hell, his rat seemed more concerned about it than they were! But then, there was a fair distance between Egypt and England, and it wasn't their best friend with his neck on the chopping block. The bastard in the newspaper had blown twelve innocent people to bits to make sure the one he was aiming for was dead; why would he balk at killing a thirteen-year-old boy?
Or, for that matter, an eleven-year-old girl or a thirty-five-year-old woman. It was fortunate, thought the woman, that that madman had no idea that her daughter existed. Or rather, no idea yet. He would come for her eventually, she was sure. Come for them both. He'd as good as killed his best friend, his almost-sister, had meant to see his godson dead; he had killed their other friend, bravely—suicidally—trying to avenge his friends. Why not go for a clean sweep? Kill the child he'd orphaned, kill the woman he'd betrayed, kill the friend whose friends he'd killed before, and kill his daughter as well, the minute he learned she lived.
The girl in question had no trouble deducing her mother's train of thought. Nor did the betrayed man she was thinking of, though he had not seen her for most of twelve years and was nowhere near her now. That train seemed to have quite a few stops.
Another station on that track was in London, where a white-haired schoolmaster conversed with a scarred veteran, his neon-green-haired trainee, the lion-like Head Auror, the monocled Head of the DMLE, and the pirate-like Auror whose personal assignment it now was to track down and capture this madman before he could harm anyone else, least of all the Boy Who Lived. The schoolmaster had already taken one step to ensure the boy's safety at his school, namely, hiring as his Defense teacher the one man who could best predict the murderer's actions. Now he intended to be sure the boy would live long enough to reach the school.
The twin centers of all the worry were blissfully unaware of the fact. One, half-starved, half-crazed, and on the run, was headed south through Surrey to exactly the place no one wanted him to go, far sooner than anyone expected him to get there. The other, at his destination, was quietly mopping up the spaghetti sauce his cousin had managed to spill on the kitchen floor.
One more evening, was the only thought behind Harry Potter's emerald-green eyes at the moment. One more dinner. One more night.
Then he just had to sleep in next morning, or pretend to, and Aunt Marge would be gone, and he'd be shut of her quite possibly for always, and Uncle Vernon would have to sign his permission slip, and he'd be able to go to Hogsmeade with Ron and Hermione. Uncle Vernon couldn't blame him for the spilled spaghetti sauce, nor for the delay in getting dinner cooked caused by mopping up the kitchen, nor could he prove the exploding wine glass had been magical in nature, and there hadn't been any other, ah, missteps. Nor would there be, because the kitchen was done now and he was retreating to his room for the rest of the afternoon...
THUD.
"MUMMYYY!"
"BOY! GET DOWN HERE!"
So much for that idea.
Dudley, it turned out, had slipped and sprained his ankle. In punishment, Harry was being confined to his room for the afternoon and evening and denied dinner. That was good, even with having to go hungry, but as Harry headed to his room, Uncle Vernon had cornered him and very pointedly tore in half the Hogsmeade slip.
Not good.
On the bright side, no more Aunt Marge.
Not that that was much of a bright side.
Harry stared out the window and watched the clouds go by.
Some time later, Harry was summoned to clear and wash the dishes while the Dursleys conversed at the dinner table. The topic of conversation was, naturally, himself. Apparently it hadn't occurred to them that he could hear every word. Or else that was the point.
"It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day," said Aunt Marge, gulping down brandy. "Bad blood will out." Somebody ought to introduce her to Malfoy. There's bad blood. "Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia—" Sure you're not. "—but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families." Define 'best families'. "Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us." You don't say.
It was really quite fortunate that he had dishes to wash. He could attack the dirty dishes instead of her. Else she'd probably be a big red splat across the wallpaper.
"This Potter," Aunt Marge said loudly, splashing more brandy into her glass. "You never told me what he did?"
"He—didn't work," Uncle Vernon said with half a glance at Harry. "Unemployed."
Uh-huh. Sure.
"As I expected! A no-account, good-for-nothing—"
What was that? It had sounded like the door clicking open...
"—lazy scrounger who never did a day's honest work in his life—"
Neither have you, now shut up. I'm trying to listen.
"—burden on the decent, hardworking members of society, and now he's left us his brat who'll be just like him—"
Right. Definitely going to investigate. If only so I'll get out of here before I kill her.
"Don't you walk away when I'm talking to you, boy! Get back here!"
Harry, two steps out of the kitchen, fixed a polite expression on his face and turned to face her. "Were you speaking to me, Aunt Marge? I was under the impression that you were having a private conversation that didn't include me."
That took her aback. She'd certainly spent long enough going on about how he willfully ignored the rules of polite society; why did it shock her so that he was obeying them?
"You insolent little whelp!" Not for long, unfortunately. "When your elders and betters speak, boy, you listen!"
"I thought you were having a private conversation," Harry repeated, keeping his voice as polite as he could force it. If nothing else, a polite voice was quieter than an angry one, and therefore easier to listen over. "I thought listening to private conversations was impolite. Consequently, I wasn't listening."
"Don't you tell me what's polite and what isn't!" Ha. Touché. "Just like your worthless parents, aren't you? Don't give a damn what anyone else says—I bet that's your life's ambition, to be just like your father, isn't it? Isn't it?"
"As a matter of fact, it is," Harry said steadily. There was a funny prickling on the back of his neck... "There are worse ways to be."
"Worse?" Aunt Marge demanded, on her feet now. "Worse than being a drunkard, a thief, a vagrant, a scoundrel?"
"Excuse me," Harry said as calmly as he could manage (not very). "Whatever gave you the impression that any of that was true?"
"Whatever gave you the impression it's not?" She was advancing. "You obviously need to be taught manners, boy." She raised a fist—
—And a skeletal hand stopped it in midair.
"Lay a finger on him and you will live just long enough to regret it," growled a voice just above and behind Harry's head.
Uh-oh.
Aunt Marge froze in place. Dudley looked like he was about to faint. Uncle Vernon seemed petrified. Aunt Petunia was dead white and trembling. Harry turned slightly in place, just enough to see the man behind him, and felt his blood run cold.
It's Black.
Black's gray eyes slid from Aunt Marge to meet Harry's. "Go get your Hogwarts things and anything else you don't think you can live without," he ordered.
How does he know about Hogwarts? "W-what are you talking about?" he asked, beginning to edge towards the kitchen. The tremble in his voice didn't need to be faked.
Black dropped Aunt Marge's arm, which fell limply to her side. "I'm getting you out of here, of course. I'm not leaving you a second longer with these people." His voice sounded hoarse, as if he hadn't used it in years.
Now where was that attitude ten years ago, when it might have been useful? "So you're kidnapping me. What if I don't want to go?" Harry was into the kitchen now, Black was turning towards him—away from the others. Who weren't taking the cue to run.
Black frowned. "Can't imagine why you wouldn't. She was about to crack your skull open, if you hadn't noticed."
"I'd sooner be bruised than dead," Harry retorted. Right along the counter, now...
"Now that sounds like James Potter's son," Black said, with a bit of—was that approval in his voice? Okay, this is getting weirder by the second. Not that it mattered— "You're a Gryffindor, of course."
"Griffa-huh?" Harry asked, plastering a confused look on his face. Nearly there...
"Oh, don't give me that. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. Are you a Gryffindor or aren't you?"
Now!
Harry snatched the newly cleaned, still-wet butcher knife from the counter and dove for Black—blood spattered—a bony hand closed around Harry's wrist—Harry wrenched free and grabbed that arm with his free hand—
Black thudded onto the floor, Harry on top of him, with the knife pressed to Black's neck. A slash along Black's jawline was bleeding freely, but it didn't look like it had hit anything important. Black's right arm was pinned under Harry, who was holding tight to his left one. Breathing hard, heart still pounding double-time, Harry shifted so he was kneeling on Black's chest and looking him straight in the eye.
"I don't want to kill you," Harry told him. "I already mopped the floor once today, I don't want to get your blood all over it and have to mop it again. So I suggest you stay still."
Black closed his eyes and began to laugh, a shuddering, choked, entirely mirthless laugh. A trickle of blood ran down from where the edge of the blade bit into his shaking neck, but he didn't seem to care.
Harry glanced at the Dursleys out of the corner of his eye. Under any other circumstances, the shocked expressions on their faces would have been priceless.
"Just push down on the knife and get it over with," Black said, still laughing. "Should've known it'd be you who killed me. Shouldn't surprise me at all."
What is he talking about?
"Now might be a good time to call that hotline, Aunt Petunia," Harry advised. Aunt Petunia got to her feet, still trembling, and slowly began to dial the number.
"Do it, boy," Uncle Vernon ordered abruptly. "World needs fewer people like him."
Harry turned his head to meet Uncle Vernon's eyes, meaning to say, If I do, what does that make me? But the moment his eyes left Black's, he found himself flying into the wall, knifeless and with a very sore wrist.
The phone, its cord cut, clattered onto the floor.
Stupid, Harry thought bitterly. It makes me stupid.
Black was standing against the back wall, one arm tightly around Aunt Petunia and the knife pressed to her neck with the other.
"Now, everyone do what I say, and nobody gets hurt," Black said softly.
This is not good.
"You three—" He jerked his head at Vernon, Marge, and Dudley. "Don't move a muscle till I say you can. Petunia, the same. Harry—" Black turned to look straight at Harry, sprawled across the kitchen floor. "Why don't you run upstairs and grab your things?"
Harry scrambled to his feet and pounded up the stairs. He was two steps toward his room when a much better plan occurred to him. He ducked into the master bathroom to grab a hairpin, then vaulted the stair railing to land, catlike, in front of his cupboard.
Which was not visible from the dining room.
The lock was open inside of two seconds. Harry kicked open his trunk, snatched his wand off the top and yanked his cloak from the side, threw the cloak over himself, and dashed back to the dining room.
The tableau was frozen exactly how he'd left it. Harry took three steps in, careful to step on no one's toes, aimed at point-blank range at Black's head, whispered "Petrificus—"
—The wand was yanked from his hand.
"Nice try, Harry." The cloak came flying off into Black's face, and he let go of Petunia to tuck it under his arm, though she didn't dare move because of the knife at her neck. There was a thump to the left, quite possibly Aunt Marge keeling over and dying from the shock of seeing someone appear from out of nowhere in the middle of the room. Harry lunged, grabbing for cloak, wand, knife all at once—twisted the knife from Black's right hand—ducked away from the wand tip as Black hissed something Latinish—dragged Black's arms apart, twisted his wrist till something cracked, pushed Aunt Petunia away—
"Run!" Harry yelled to the Dursleys. The word broke their attitude of frozen fear, and none of them wasted any time getting out the back door. Vernon and Dudley were considerate enough to haul Marge out between them. But in the second Harry took to shout, Black whispered a spell Harry couldn't duck in time. The air around him seemed to thicken to the consistency of molasses—or was it that his body simply became too heavy to move with its usual ease?
Movement was still possible, if just barely, Harry discovered a second later. It took entirely too much effort, and a crippled turtle could have outrun him, but movement was still possible.
"Stubborn little son of a gun, aren't you?" Black asked, his voice admiring. "Sprained my wrist, too." He felt the offended body part, pressed too hard, and hissed something indistinct. "Make that broke my wrist." He transferred the wand to his unhurt right hand and pointed it at his left wrist. "Ferula." It bandaged itself, sloppily. "I suppose that'll do to be getting on with. Now, let's try this again, and don't do anything stupid this time."
Black switched wand hands again, picked the knife off the floor and stashed it in a pocket of his ragged gray robes, put the wandless hand on Harry's shoulder, and (presumably with magical aid, since Harry was having difficulty moving on his own) steered him out of the room.
There was a red stain on the tile, Harry registered dimly on the way out of the dining room. Shaped unmistakably like the heel of a shoe. And another, just where he'd had Black pinned, half looking like a blob of ketchup and half like a heel print. No wonder Black had seen him coming.
And Black was a wizard. This complicated matters. A skinny thirteen-year-old wizard with his wand in hand had an incalculable advantage over any Muggle, however strong and well-armed, but a wandless teenager had no hope against a full-grown fully-trained wizard with a wand.
"Why is your trunk under the stairs?" Black inquired.
"Uncle Vernon doesn't like magic," Harry explained sullenly. His mouth wasn't afflicted with the same sluggishness as the rest of him, but he was not in a mood to be cooperative. Even if cooperation was the best option at the moment. Certainly it beat dying hands down. "Most of my schoolbooks are upstairs, though. I have to get my homework done whether Uncle Vernon likes it or not."
"He doesn't know you hijacked your books, I take it."
"Of course not."
The trunk floated up level with Harry's waist. Black lit the wand (He didn't say Leviosa. He didn't say Lumos. He didn't say anything. I wonder if I could do that?) and peered around the inside of the cupboard, grabbing Harry's broom. "A Nimbus Two Thousand? James would kill for a broom this good."
"Draco Malfoy's got the 2001," Harry commented. "I still whipped him good last year at Quidditch."
"You're a Chaser, then?" Black inquired, sounding almost friendly, as he steered Harry up the stairs, trunk and broom trailing behind. "James was—one of the best."
Harry tried to shake his head, but stopped—it took too much effort. "Seeker," he corrected. "Might've set a school record in the Hufflepuff match, it didn't last but five minutes. I've got the room with all the locks on the door."
Black flicked the wand, and the door flew open. "Bit hard on your things, are you?"
"That's Dudley's stuff, not mine," Harry corrected. "My stuff's all under the loose floorboard under the bed. Third from the left." The board popped up, and the full pillowcase came flying out to thump into the open trunk. "And Hedwig's cage is in the back of the wardrobe." It came flying out. "That's everything I've got."
Black raised an eyebrow, but latched the trunk and transfigured it and the cage into miniature versions of themselves, which went in his robe pocket. The broom went over his shoulder.
Pop.
Pop-pop.
Pop-pop-pop.
"Timing is everything," Black muttered. He grabbed Harry's arm. "Hold on tight—"
Crack.
Everything went black—the blackness pushed in all around him—couldn't breathe—
A moment later, when he could force air into his lungs again—no time to look round before he was being squashed through the blackness again. A glimpse of dark waves on pale sand—a vague impression of dark tree shapes—nothing but air and cloud and falling—rocky mountain path. Air. Blessed, blessed air.
Black let him go. Off-balance and unable to move quickly enough to correct it, Harry tumbled face-first onto the solid ground. Something sharp, probably a rock, encountered his cheek, setting it to stinging.
"What was that for?" Harry demanded a minute later, when he thought he'd gotten his breath back.
"I just hopelessly confused our Apparition trail," Black explained, breath heaving but with a note in his voice rather like the tone either Weasley twin had when letting Harry in on a prank they'd pulled. "The Ministry folk will have no trouble picking up that we went from Surrey to Cornwall, and less trouble than that following us there. It won't be hard to track us from Cornwall to Calais, either. But before they can go investigate where we appeared in Calais, they need permission from the French Ministry, which may or may not be forthcoming."
He seated himself on the ground, still talking. "If they get that in a timely manner, it will be difficult but probably not impossible to tell that we went to the Black Forest—at which point, of course, they need to get permission to investigate from the German Ministry. And if by some miracle there's enough of a trace left there to track us from Germany, the last place was two hundred feet above the English Channel. It'll take a miracle just to find the spot we Apparated from, and the magical traces have already blown away. We aren't going to be followed here."
Harry absorbed that quietly. So that was how Apparition worked. The airless blackness was everywhere and nowhere at once. Sort of like between in Anne McCaffrey's Pern stories, except no telepathic dragons. "I suppose I'm not allowed to ask where we are."
"Oh, you can ask," Black said cheerily. "As long as you don't expect an answer."
"Thought so," Harry muttered
"Up," Black ordered, standing himself. "We're going to see our present home."
"Cheery décor," Harry observed once they were inside.
"It's a sight better than my mum's house," Black told him. "And it'll look much better once I've got it all transfigured and shiny-looking."
It was a cave.
Black took Harry's trunk and Hedwig's cage out of his pocket and tossed them toward Harry. "I'll just make sure we can't be snuck up on. Don't go anywhere." He reinforced the order by turning some of the dirt floor into a rocklike manacle around Harry's ankle, then left the cave.
Harry sat down, recognizing dimly that motion was much easier than it had been ten seconds ago, and began staring at the wall.
It looked like he'd be here awhile.
A/N: Reviews are good. Flames are bad. Praise is nice. Constructive criticism is preferred. Questions are welcomed. Proper grammar is appreciated. Email addresses are required if you want a reply. Clear enough?