Chapter Text
A few days before Blaise’s birthday party, Harry and Rose travelled to Oxford University to meet with Maitri Asan. Magical Oxford was as old as its muggle counterpart, accessible from the muggle world via a hidden door in the main hall. It was more a collective for researchers than school, though it did offer a few courses on business administration and law. It helped fund Masteries and, though many researchers worked closely with the Department of Mysteries, wasn’t officially affiliated with it.
They flooed into the main hall in a brilliant flash of green fire, stepping out into a cathedral-like room, with a tall, arched ceiling of dark wood and moving murals painted on the walls. The murals – a precursor to moving portraits – depicted famous scenes from magical history, among others. There was King Arthur, pulling Excalibur from stone. There was Atlantis, encased in a bubble on the sea floor. There was Hogwarts herself, the trees of the Forbidden Forest rustling in a painted wind. The murals glowed gently with imbued witchlight, illuminating the room.
A secretary met them at the floo, picking them out easily. They were, after all, the youngest people in the room by far. Everyone else looked anywhere from eighteen to eighty.
“Good afternoon, Mr Potter, Miss Potter. If you would follow me please, the Department of History is just this way.”
They followed the secretary through a series of twisting corridors and narrow staircases, the pathway illuminated by torches. At last, they passed a sign that read “Department of History,” entering a narrow corridor lined with more corridors branching off on both sides. Each branch was labelled something like “High-Risk Experimentation Rooms 1-10” or “Low-Risk Meeting Rooms.” There was a distant scream of “WHO LET THE VELOCIRAPTORS OUT?!” as they passed, making Rose look worriedly at the secretary, who seemed unfazed.
“Don’t worry,” they said breezily. “Some experiments react badly to silencing wards, especially the high-risk ones. They all have emergency stasis options, so we’re quite safe.”
Rose wanted to clarify that she was worried less about herself and more about the fate of whomever was apparently trapped in a room with velociraptors, but she kept quiet. She wondered whether or not Parseltongue would work on dinosaurs – dragons, too. If only she’d thought of using Parseltongue for the first task… but no, she’d never have used such a ‘Dark’ talent back then, golden Gryffindor girl that she’d been. Perhaps next year, when Harry’s name presumably came out of the Goblet of Fire, she’d mention it to him.
They turned down a hallway labelled “Preservation Rooms: Fragile Artifacts.” The secretary tapped their wand on the doorknob and a series of lights appeared around it, swirling and spiraling and ending with the quiet click of a lock. The door swung open on silent hinges.
Maitri Asan was a short, unassuming woman. Her hair was sleek, black, and pulled back into a braid. She had warm brown eyes and skin just a shade darker than Harry’s. She looked to be in her mid-20’s, but as a witch she could very well be in her 50’s. She gave a curt nod to the secretary who left, then turned to Harry and Rose once the door clicked shut.
The weight of preservation magic in the room was suffocating. The walls were made of stone, illuminated by witchlights hovering in a neat grid on the ceiling. There were cupboards and drawers all long the walls, each neatly labelled.
$Well met$ Maitri Asan hissed, dipping her head. $I am Master Maitri Asan. You may call me Maitri$
$Harry Potter$ Harry replied. $Well met$
$Rose Potter$ she echoed. $Well met$
$We will be speaking in Parseltongue$ Maitri said. $For my English is poor, and I do not know how much Hindi you know$
“Our guardians insisted we learn,” Harry said in accented Hindi. It’d taken quite some time with the language orb, and a great deal of Memory Potions, but they’d learned.
Maitri gave a pleased smile. “Wonderful. Now, do you know why you’re here?”
“To help you translate the –“ Rose paused, not knowing the Hindi equivalent for Parselscript. $Parselscript books?$
The woman laughed a little and switched back to Parseltongue. $Yes, precisely. Now, how much do you know about Parseltongue and its written equivalent?$
Harry and Rose exchanged glances.
$Nothing$ he said. $We didn’t even know there was a written form until we found the library in Slytherin’s Chamber$
$Unsurprising$ Maitri agreed. $There was a purge beginning with the rise of Christianity where Parselmouths were hunted down and killed. Many fled to India and the Middle East, and any who stayed went into hiding. There were many purges after that, rising and falling with the popularity of Christianity, and as a result much of our heritage has been lost in these parts of the world. So, before we begin, I will give you a brief history of our people.
$All Parselmouths are descended from those few first blessed by the naga, a now-extinct species that were half-human, half-snake. They were semi-aquatic and lived underground, and many Parselmouths therefore find themselves comfortable in such places.
$Parselscript was devised as a form of communicating with other Parselmouths during the earliest purges of the Roman Empire. We would leave messages and warnings on riverbanks, the writing looking like the imprint of a snake to anyone else, directing fleeing Parselmouths to safety. They were put outside safehouses and villages that would give shelter to the refugee, and over time, as the Parselmouth settlement in India grew, it became a way to pass down knowledge from one generation to another.
$The cache you discovered is the greatest trove of Parselscript literature in the world$ She gestured around the room, barely larger than Rose and Susan’s dorm. There was something incredibly sad in the way Maitri spoke, of a people persecuted by their neighbors, forced from their homes and into foreign lands.
$Most of what we have here are histories, many of which are unique$ Maitri continued. $Though there are several older texts that we have copies of at Brahmaloka University, such as Fulvius Sulla’s La Fuga, detailing his escape from Britannia at around 350 AD. Your job will be to translate these copies exactly as you read them, as the intricacies of Parselscript translation into different languages is poorly studied$
It was simultaneously better and worse than Rose had imagined. It was interesting to read such ancient texts with such ease, used to as she was to parsing the archaic language some Ancient Runes’ texts were written in, but also heartbreaking. She and Harry were each working on a part of La Fuga, which was Latin for “The Flight” or “The Escape”. Rose was allotted Sulla’s early life, which meant she had to record Sulla listening to the sound of his daughter being burned alive as he escaped, had to write down his feelings of guilt and shame that he, a Squib, could do nothing. Her heart went out to this ancient stranger – they were family, in a way, connected through time via happenstance and the thinnest tendril of blood, but they’d both been hated for something out of their control.
(they’d both been victims of prejudice, and lost loved ones to it)
(prejudice was insidious. It could be blatant or subtle, and it had its little claws in every aspect of Rose’s life)
(she wanted. It. Gone)
When they took a break for lunch, they chatted quietly about what they’d learned. Rose thought she was developing a friendship crush on Maitri – the older woman was well-spoken and put together in the way Andromeda was, but with a playful edge she usually kept restrained that reminded her of Sirius. She defaulted to formality when nervous, which was useful in academic spaces but less so in social ones.
$Your newspaper called your discovery groundbreaking but really it would be more accurate to call it earth-shaking$ Maitri laughed, gesturing grandly.
$I was so excited when the Dean of Oxford invited me over that only the quick thinking of my wife prevented me from burning down our home. This is the best thing to have happened to me since my wedding$
It was… educational, Rose decided. It was odd to look forward to and dread something in equal measure – she’d nearly been brought to tears by Sulla.
$If only I had been born with magic. My mother once cut down a small army to protect her child, but I could not even kill five men to protect my own. I will hear her screams, smell her burning, feel the ache of her loss for the rest of my days, and it is no less than I deserve$
At 3 o’clock, the secretary returned to escort them to the floo.
“See you next week,” Rose called over her shoulder. She would’ve said it in Hindi, but Maitri was using a Hindi-locked dictaquill, and she didn’t want to accidentally ruin any translations.
“See you,” Harry added.
Maitri gave an acknowledging nod from where she was bent over several different scrolls, cross-referencing and dictating something too quick for her to catch.
The secretary shut the door behind them, where it locked automatically with a click.
They took a different way out this time, passing by a sign that read ‘Library.’ Rose, seeing it, stopped in her tracks. The secretary turned and gave a laugh when they saw what she was looking at.
“Would you like to visit?” They asked. “Hogwarts students are free to access most of our books, you know.”
“What.” Rose said.
“Oh, Merlin,” Harry groaned.
“Harry!” Rose whisper-shrieked.
“What?” Harry sighed.
“This is an English translation of Mesh-ki-ang-gasher’s theory of inverses!”
“Riveting.”
“Shut up, can’t you just feel the magic coming off of it, Mesh-ki-ang-gasher was a genius – “
“Rose, I don’t know who that is. Just like I didn’t know the last half-dozen people who’s works you’ve shown me.”
“He was the first ruler of Uruk but later left to study at Atlantis, but Harry, this is the only English translation in existence, the original’s been lost, and it’s just sitting here on a shelf - ?!”
“At the most well-defended university in Europe,” the secretary put in, looking amused. Their name was Alex, and they’d been holding back laughter for the past hour. “Would you like to borrow a copy?”
“Oh, could I?” Rose asked breathlessly.
“Add it to the pile,” Harry sighed.
“An English translation of Mesh-ki-ang-gasher’s theory of inverses?” Samantha Page gasped. “It must be the only one in existence!”
“Thank you!” Rose cried, gesturing widely. “See, Harry, that’s the appropriate response to – “
“Don’t worry,” Michael Brown stage-whispered to Harry. “I don’t know what they’re on about either.”
“Just what I’d expect from someone who got an ‘A’ on their Runes OWL,” Samantha sniffed. Michael clutched his chest dramatically, miming injury.
“Samantha!” he cried. “How could you – “
“Very easily, I assure you,” Samantha giggled. Michael sent accusing eyes at Rose, who widened her own.
“You!” he cried. “You taught her that!”
“Taught her what?” Rose asked innocently. Harry snigg*red.
“Everything alright?” Eleanor Page, Samantha’s mum, asked, poking her head in from the kitchen. Behind her, pots and pans were doing some sort of dance in the air, flying every which way, dodging peeled potatoes and wooden spoons and mixing bowls.
Harry had corresponded with Samantha and Michael all year, taking up Samantha’s urging to visit at last. Samantha and Michael had both grown since Rose had last seen them at her Ancient Runes OWL last summer, but there was an air about them that was just so irrepressibly young.
(innocent)
(that was the word)
(they were innocent)
“Fine, mum,” Samantha grinned. “Michael’s just being a prat, as usual.”
“I am not, you absolute muppet – “
Harry and Rose burst out laughing.
“You absolute what?” Rose gasped through her laughter. Samantha turned her grin onto the younger girl as her mother returned to the kitchen.
(Samantha’s father, Sirius had found in his background check, had been a muggleborn killed by Bellatrix Lestrange herself. Eleanor Page had never remarried)
“Muppet,” she repeated. “It’s a muggle insult, apparently.”
“Is it really?” Rose giggled. “How wonderful. Harry, do remind me to call Malfoy a muppet when we next see him.”
“I’ll bring a camera,” Harry grinned back.
“What’s this I hear about calling Malfoy a muppet?” Lavender Brown asked curiously, returning from the bathroom.
“Exactly that,” Rose beamed. “I’ll send you a photo.”
“Oh, please do,” Lavender said earnestly, not a trace of guile in her expression. Rose was impressed. “It’ll be nice to have some blackmail on the blond ponce.”
(Rose fixed that image in her mind: Lavender, honey brown curls shining in the sun, eyes gleaming with humor. She carefully overlayed it onto one of an older Lavender, laying blood-soaked and unmoving on the ground as Parvati cried)
The morning before Blaise’s birthday party found Rose sitting at the dining room table. Sirius sat across from her, nails biting through the skin of his palms. There was a growing pool of tea on the ground, dotted with white teacup shards.
“I don’t understand,” Rose said quietly. She stared down at the newspaper uncomprehendingly. Pettigrew stared back, whimpering, and cringing back from the camera.
PETER PETTIGREW ESCAPES FROM AZKABAN, the headline blared. Rose looked at it, eyes tracing the letters. And after all the trouble the Ministry had gone through to get him captured – after everything – it had taken a country-wide manhunt to catch him that first time, they’d needed to post Aurors on practically every street corner and in the end had only caught him because he’d visited his mother, who was now deceased –
“How could he have escaped?!” Sirius snarled, slamming his fist into the table. “Those bloody incompetent Ministry fools – “
“The animagus-containment wards wore off,” Harry read in disbelief. “And so Pettigrew just… transformed… and ran.”
“This is absurd,” she said weakly, mind blank with shock. “Is this a bloody fixed point too? Someone must escape Azkaban?”
“At least it’s just him,” Sirius muttered. “And not my bloody cousin or something – “
“’Just’ Pettigrew brought back You-Know-Who in my past life,” Rose said quietly. “D’you think that’s what he’s setting out to do now?”
“Well, he’ll have to find You-Know-Who first, won’t he?” Harry asked uneasily.
“It took about a month last time,” Rose said hollowly. “I’m sorry, I should’ve – “
“Left me to rot in Azkaban?” Sirius sniped. “Gone to live with your magic-hating aunt, just to ‘preserve the timeline’? No, Rose, this isn’t your fault. I… I’m going to rejoin the Aurors,” he said.
“You sure?” Remus asked quietly. Sirius had been on the force during the war but had quit once he’d taken custody of Harry and Rose. She knew he’d been thinking about rejoining ever since she and Harry had gone off to Hogwarts but was afraid it’d bring back too many memories of James. Rose understood fearing one’s own memories; she suspected Remus did as well.
“Yeah, I… we knew him best, didn’t we? Who better to hunt him down?” Sirius said uncertainly.
“Let’s not do anything hasty,” Harry interrupted. “It’s not like Pettigrew’ll ever get in here, is it?”
“That’s true,” Remus agreed. “C’mon, Padfoot, let’s sleep on it.”
“It’s morning,” Sirius protested weakly as he allowed Remus to lead him away.
“And that’s why I can’t go anywhere without at least two other people with me,” Rose finished with a sigh. “Even though Pettigrew would have to be categorically insane to even think about coming after one of us.”
“Azkaban isn’t exactly known for turning people into sane, rational members of society,” Blaise pointed out. “I wouldn’t put it past him.” He stretched out his legs lazily. They were lounging under a copse of trees near a pool on the grounds of Zabini Manor. It had taken a great deal of begging and liberal application of puppy-dog eyes to get her here. It helped that the Zabinis were notoriously protective of their neutrality.
“Would he even be able to get into Hogwarts though?” Daphne asked skeptically.
“Seeing as Quirrell was being possessed by You-Know-Who during all of first year, I’d say that’s a ‘yes.’” Rose said dryly.
Blaise choked. “I’m sorry, what?”
Rose blinked, realizing she hadn’t talked to them about the confrontation. “Was that… not what you were told?”
“No,” Theo said emphatically. “Dumbledore just told us you stopped Quirrell from stealing something valuable! Not about the… Dark Lord?!” He said that last word with all the horrified incredulity of someone who’d just discovered their pet had been a secret animagus the entire time.
“Oh,” Rose said lamely. “Well, I did stop him from stealing the Philosopher’s Stone, so I suppose that’s not untrue.”
What followed, amidst gaping mouths, was a brief summary of the confrontation with Quirrellmort.
“You… faced down the Dark Lord… and survived?” Theo said incredulously.
“To be fair, he wasn’t trying to kill me until the very end,” she pointed out.
“What were you doing until then?” he asked, in the same tone. “Having a chat?!”
Rose paused. “Well…”
“Dear Circe,” Blaise groaned. “You had a bloody chat with the Dark Lord?”
“Are we not going to talk about the fact that he’s somehow still alive?!” Daphne demanded, looking uncharacteristically frazzled.
“I thought everyone knew,” Rose said defensively. “Anyway, back to my point: if bloody You-Know-Who can sneak into Hogwarts undetected, then who’s to say that Pettigrew can’t? He’s a bloody rat animagus, those things are everywhere.”
“… Are you so sure he was undetected, though?” Theo asked slowly. The astonishment had faded from his expression, leaving only a calculated thoughtfulness.
Rose looked at him sharply, narrowing her eyes. She flicked up a few privacy spells before answering, taking note of how they stilled when she drew her wand.
“No,” she said bluntly. “I’m thinking Dumbledore lured him to Hogwarts as a trap, believing that with both the Stone and Harry there he wouldn’t be able to stay away. You-Know-Who tried to kill Harry too – remember that fall he had? Right onto a sword? I’m not very impressed by Dumbledore’s track record of keeping his students safe. I think if he has a reason to want Pettigrew on the school grounds, the rat will be able to get onto those grounds perfectly fine.”
Theo nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s what I…” he trailed off. All three of them were looking grim.
“He’s really back, then,” Theo said quietly. Rose looked at him and suddenly remembered his family. Namely, his Death Eater father. There was a conflict in Theo’s eyes, a storm that’d been brewing ever since the beginning of second year when he’d all but openly declared his friendship with her. He’d been able to pass off their friendship as a good political move to his father, but once Voldemort came back – once he truly came back – she doubted very much that that would continue to be allowed.
(if, she reminded herself firmly. If he came back)
“We’ll give you sanctuary,” she said. “If you need it. That goes for all of you,” she added, making eye contact with Blaise and Daphne. Their families had stayed out of the last war, but in this one they were her friends. She was doing everything she could to avert a war, but if she failed…
(each and every one of them she’d first spoken with for a purpose, an underlying reason, but now they were her friends, and she would do whatever it took to protect them)
Daphne tossed her hair, but there was a slight pallor to her skin that she couldn’t quite mask. “I’d like to see him try. Greengrass Manor has some of the strongest wards in the country.”
“And the Zabinis are nearly as vicious as the Blacks,” Blaise added.
“I should be fine,” Theo said quietly. “But… thanks, Rose.”
She gave a weak smile. “Well, I’m the one who’s dragged you into all this, so it’s the least I can do.”
Blaise threw a handful of grass at her. She batted at them, scowling.
“Don’t be such a self-sacrificing Gryffindor,” he said scornfully. “We’re all capable of making our own decisions. We chose to be friends with you knowing what that would entail.”
“It’s insulting of you to think that we were somehow tricked,” Daphne sniffed.
“Let me put this in words for your little Hufflepuff brain,” Theo began. “We’re your friends, and no upstart Dark Lord is going to change that. Is that clear?”
Rose couldn’t help but give a faint laugh. “Crystal.”
If her eyes were a bit shinier than usual, no one mentioned it.
(it was odd – Rose would’ve expected her sleep to be more disturbed after Pettigrew’s escape, but after weaning herself off of Dreamless Sleep, she’d only woken a few times to the feeling of her skin burning, and that was all)
(it was extraordinarily mild, and there was something almost… pleased… about it)
