Chapter Text
There was a room in Grimmauld Place that Nem couldn’t go into.
There were actually a lot of rooms in Grimmauld Place that Nem couldn’t go into. The dining room, which had cursed silver and china. The drawing room, which had cursed bric-à-brac. The library, which had cursed books. Pretty much any room that contained cursed artifacts was a room Nem wasn’t allowed in without permission, which was never given. It really limited her weekend explorations of the house.
But this one room, at the very top of the Grimmauld Place, underneath the attic which was yet another haven of dark rubbish, drew Nem’s interest because no one ever went in it. There was a sign on it that might explain why, but Nem knew that Sirius, and Remus, and inevitably Harry, would ignore things like signs and the concept of privacy and barge in if they wanted to. Nem had heard enough stories about the Marauder’s Map and her dad’s various exploits at Hogwarts to know that much.
The sign was self-explanatory.
Do Not Enter
Without the Express Permission of
Regulus Arcturus Black
It was her dead uncle’s room.
Nem knew that almost no one came up to the top floor of Grimmauld Place. There was Sirius’ old bedroom, but he and Remus used the master bedroom on the floor below, and Regulus’ bedroom. Nem already knew what was in Sirius’ old bedroom. Posters of motorcycles and girls in bikinis. At eight years old, she knew way more about Sirius than she wanted to, and Remus was always telling him to stop, no matter how interested Nem was. What she didn’t know was anything about Regulus, other than he followed the evil wizard who killed her parents, and that he was dead. The tapestry in the drawing room she wasn’t allowed in proved that, but it didn’t say how.
Sirius never talked about his brother, and no one wanted to make him upset by bringing it up. He was already upset about living in Grimmauld Place, despite how old it was and how powerful the spells on it were. It wasn’t just a house, it was a magic house, and Nem hated that she couldn’t live at Grimmauld Place with Sirius, Remus, and Harry. She didn’t care what Dumbledore said. It was another thing about her life that wasn’t fair.
Nem listened carefully for any signs of pursuit. She had snuck away after dinner, while everyone else was in the garden, flying. Everyone except for her. The garden was yet another place Nem was not allowed in unless Sirius or Remus was there, but it was perfectly fine for Harry to do what he wanted. Once Sirius said it was lucky the house let her in at all, then laughed. Nem wasn’t supposed to hear that, since he was talking to Remus. It was shortly after the first time Nem was invited to spend a night. When they said it wasn’t too risky.
When she didn’t hear anyone coming up the stairs, Nem placed her hand on the door and pushed. Sometimes that worked in Grimmauld Place, but this time it didn’t. Nem frowned, then looked intently at the doorknob. It was silver, and shaped like the head of a snake. Nem opened her mouth, not entirely sure what was going to come out.
“Nem!”
Nem scowled, then spun away from the door. She nearly crashed into Kreacher, who was staring at her as hard as Nem had stared at the doorknob. She crossed her arms. Kreacher hated Sirius, hated Remus, and hated Harry too. No matter how nice Harry was, it only made Kreacher hate him more. And besides, Kreacher wasn’t bound to obey Remus or Harry, like he had to obey Sirius and Nem.
“Are you upstairs?” Remus called. “It’s almost time to leave!”
Nem tightened her arms around herself. She didn’t want to leave. She didn’t want to go to muggle school while Harry got to get tutored. She didn’t want to go back to them.
“Anemone!”
Nem huffed angrily, then ran down the stairs to her bedroom before Remus could come up to investigate.
When Nem was first allowed to sleep over at Grimmauld Place, she got a room that had a big, empty frame in it. Nem didn’t connect it with all of the other portraits in the house, all of which were occupied, until one night she got up to use the toilet and saw an old man with a pointy beard watching her. Apparently it was Sirius’ great-great-grandfather, Phineas Nigellus. Nem was furious they made her sleep in a room with a portrait to watch her when no one else had to. Sirius and Remus, and even Harry, all said she wasn’t different from them, or inferior or whatever, but Nem knew that wasn’t true. She had seen the tapestry, and all the people burned off of it. Nem knew she had never been on it in the first place.
In her bedroom, which was as black as Nem’s name and completely free of portrait spies, she quickly shoved the books she nicked from the library into her rucksack and stuffed her clothes on top. It didn’t take long for Remus to darken her doorway. He was wearing brown robes, like he was a monk. With his light brown hair and light brown eyes it made him look like one of those old photographs before they worked out how to do colors properly.
“I’m almost ready,” Nem muttered.
Remus gave her a gentle smile. “Sirius is going to take you on his motorbike.”
Nem’s mood immediately lifted. “Really?” Sirius’ motorbike was big and loud. Usually they made her take the floo to Mrs. Figg’s house, or Remus took her on the train and she got picked up.
“Arthur’s helped install an Invisibility Booster,” Remus said, his smile growing, “and I’ve put a Muffling Charm on it.”
“That’s great,” Nem said, smiling back, while secretly wondering why they hadn’t done that years ago. There were a lot of things she wondered about, and questions she didn’t ask. She was always worried something would go wrong, that she would say or do something that meant she couldn’t visit at all.
Nem checked to make sure her rucksack was secure—she didn’t want to explain how she got books out of the library—then followed Remus downstairs.
Sirius and Harry were waiting by the front door. Sirius was dressed like a muggle in jeans and a jacket, not the suit Remus wore when he had to take Nem back. Harry had his broom with him, the Nimbus 1900 he got for his birthday. His face was pink and his hair messier than ever. Nem imagined she would look like that if she was allowed on a broom.
Harry was already ten. He was going to Hogwarts next year. Nem wasn’t. She knew that. She had known that ever since they explained to her why she couldn’t live with them all the time. Why it was better for her not to.
Nem knew the truth. They cared about Harry more than her.
She loved her brother too, but sometimes it felt like the jealousy was eating her alive.
“Ready, kid?” Sirius said, grinning at her.
“Yeah,” Nem said, adjusting her bag. She gave her brother an awkward hug, which she blamed the stupid broom for.
“See you next week,” Harry said, smiling warmly.
Nem clamped her mouth shut and nodded. Harry never visited her. He never sent her any owls—it was one of the stupid rules—he never had to do chores and never got threatened with frying pans or belts or the cupboard. The Dursleys never actually did anything, but if Sirius and Remus just left her there and no one ever checked to make sure she was fine, Nem was convinced those threats would become reality. Of course, none of that stopped her cousin or his friends. It didn’t stop the Dursleys from hating her, from hating that she had to live there, hating that Nem had to call Number Four Privet Drive home to protect her mum’s last remaining blood relatives. Those protections would work if Harry lived there, but Harry was magic and Nem wasn’t, so things were how they were.
“Bye,” Nem said, trying to sound like it didn’t bother her. From Remus’ expression, and the longer hug he gave her, Nem knew one person wasn’t convinced. Sirius didn’t seem to notice, though, throwing the door open and hastening down to his waiting motorbike.
“Can I go too?” Harry asked eagerly. “I could fly myself!”
Nem wasn’t surprised by the question. Harry asked every time, and every time the answer was the same
“It’s not safe,” Remus told him.
Harry got a stubborn look. “I could use dad’s invisibility cloak!”
Nem shook her head, then walked through the front door, leaving Harry to argue with Remus. She climbed into the motorbike’s sidecar and stuffed her rucksack down by her feet.
The motorbike roared to life. Nem shot Sirius a dirty look. Aunt Petunia would shout the house down if they caused a scene. If they were too freakish. Sirius only smirked at her, yelled, “Hold on!” and the motorbike shot into the sky.
Nem gripped the sidecar, squeezed the tears out of her eyes, and watched her brother wave goodbye until Remus shut the door and Number 12 Grimmauld Place once again hid itself from view.
Remus was right. It wasn’t safe, not for Harry Potter, not for the Boy Who Lived. As for Anemone Black, Sirius’ squib daughter, no one was after her. No one expected anything from her.
Nem smiled to herself. That was exactly what she was counting on.
One of Nem’s favorite stories about her parents was about the night they died.
After Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon finished shouting at her, and sent her to her room, Nem threw herself on her bed and hid her face in her pillows.
It was hard not to think about how her mum and dad were dead, since she lived with the consequences every day. Her and Harry, but Harry didn’t seem that bothered by it. He got to live with Sirius and Remus all the time. He got to be a wizard. Nem would rather have a scar and magic than no scar and nothing.
When her frames pressing against her face started to hurt, Nem rolled onto her back and resisted the urge to hurl her glasses at a wall. If her aunt and uncle heard, or Dudley heard over his stupid computer game, that would only start the shouting anew. Instead, she roughly pushed her glasses up and pressed her hands firmly against her eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. She was going to be nine soon. She was too old to cry.
The story of her parents dying, of what happened that Halloween, was also the story of why Nem had to live with the Dursleys and Harry didn’t. Why she was a squib, why Sirius and Remus and especially Dumbledore insisted she learn to live in the muggle world, to live without the magic she never got the chance to have. Nem once heard Dumbledore, on one of his rare visits to Grimmauld Place, speculate that she might have been born a squib anyway. Nem didn’t believe that for one second. When Voldemort killed her mother, he killed Nem’s magic too.
Nem’s fingers dug into her face. Sometimes she wished they had just left her with the Dursleys and never said anything. Then she wouldn’t know what she was missing
She went through the story again, as she had a thousand times before.
Voldemort had been after her parents, for some reason. No one ever explained why. Nem knew Harry didn’t know. He thought it was because Voldemort was evil and had a habit of wiping out entire families. Sirius and Remus thought it was because her parents were part of the Order of the Phoenix, but there were other members of the Order whose homes weren’t placed under the Fidelius Charm. Nem didn’t know, and the few times she spoke to Dumbledore—rather, listened to Dumbledore explain why she had to keep living with the Dursleys—Nem got the impression that he knew more than he let on. Dumbledore was hiding something.
So, her parents and brother lived under the Fidelius Charm. Since Sirius was the obvious choice for Secret Keeper, they thought it would be clever to make it Peter Pettigrew. Sirius convinced her parents. They even told Dumbledore that Sirius was the Secret Keeper. What no one knew, what no one even suspected, was that Peter Pettigrew was a spy for Voldemort. A week after the Fidelius Charm had been performed, Peter betrayed them. He told Voldemort the secret, and then Voldemort came to Godric’s Hollow.
No one saw what happened. Harry had nightmares about it, but he said he only heard laughter and saw a green light. Nem didn’t have any nightmares, though sometimes she imagined she also remembered it. It was impossible, but Harry being alive was impossible too.
Voldemort went into their house. Her dad was in the front room, and Voldemort killed him first. Voldemort went upstairs and killed her mum. Then, he tried to kill Harry, but it didn’t work, for some reason. That’s what they always said, for some reason, but no one ever explained what those reasons were. All Nem knew was that her brother survived the Killing Curse, and he had a scar from it, and that was why people call him the Boy Who Lived.
Sirius had gone to check on Peter that night, Halloween, but there was no one at Peter’s hiding place, and no sign of a struggle. Sirius hurried to Godric’s Hollow, where he found the house destroyed and a man named Hagrid carrying Harry out of the ruins.
Nem shut her eyes tighter and pressed her hands harder.
Hagrid was taking Harry to the Dursleys, to their aunt, on Dumbledore’s orders. Nem had no idea how Dumbledore knew her mum sacrificed herself, but he used that sacrifice to cast a powerful and ancient spell that protected the person who was saved, and the blood relatives who took them in, from being harmed by the murderer. Dumbledore said it was the most powerful protection, the strongest shield, he could provide.
There was a problem, though. A problem that made Sirius leave Harry with Hagrid and run into the house.
Nem’s mum had been pregnant at the time.
Pregnant with her. The only people who knew were her mum, her dad, and Sirius.
Sighing, Nem rolled onto her side and reached for her rucksack. She took out her clothes and tossed them to the floor, then pulled out the dragonhide gloves she found in the garden shed.
Sirius took her mum’s body to a Healer he trusted, and by that time Nem’s heart had stopped. She could have died too. But, she didn’t. Sirius named her and claimed her as his own daughter. When Sirius went to retrieve Harry, he found Harry had been left on the Dursleys’ doorstep with only a blanket and a note.
Nem put on the dragonhide gloves, then took a book out of her rucksack. It was bound in some scaly skin and had a black snake on the cover. When Nem opened the book it hissed at her, then tried to bite her with fangs that sprouted from the pages. The fangs glanced off her gloves, and Nem shook the book until it stopped hissing.
Things got confusing after Nem was born. Dumbledore tracked Sirius down, heard the truth about Peter Pettigrew, and about Nem. Peter had been missing ever since that night.
Nem didn’t know how they did it, but they worked out that Voldemort using the Killing Curse on her mother also took Nem’s magic. Or maybe it was the backlash of her brother not dying, or another curse, but that was what Dumbledore said happened. Then, there were two babies. One who had survived the Killing Curse, and one who was a squib.
Dumbledore had already cast the charm on Aunt Petunia. It had to be sealed, otherwise the Dursleys, Nem’s aunt and cousin, her mum’s only blood relatives, would be vulnerable. One of the babies had to go.
Nem flipped to the front of the book. She understood why it was her. She had known her entire life.
The charm protected the Dursleys, but it also protected her and her brother. When Voldemort came back, if he came back, he wouldn’t be able to touch either of them. To hurt either of them. She understood that she was a squib, and squibs were treated like second-class citizens in the magical world. Worse. She knew that Sirius adopted her, made her his heir, and that her last name was Black instead of Potter because that was another type of protection. Sirius gave the Dursleys money to take care of her, and he checked on her every week. Nem knew she looked a lot like her brother. She knew she couldn’t go to Hogwarts. She knew exactly who to blame.
Nem gripped the book in her hands. She had learned loads about Voldemort and Death Eaters and blood purity. She listened to Kreacher ranting about it all the time, about filthy mudbloods stealing magic.
She looked down at the book, an old book, a cursed book, a book filled with dark magic that hissed promises at her that Nem knew better than to believe.
Nem didn’t have magic, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t use magic.
A grin stretched across her face as she took in an illuminated page seething with serpents, a drawing of a snake with a black dagger driven through its head. She couldn’t do the ritual by herself, but that was what Kreacher was for. And then no one would be able to keep her out of any room in Grimmauld Place.
Nem started laughing.
Voldemort had stolen Nem’s magic. She was going to steal it back.