Harry Potter: Seducing Destiny

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Hestia drove me all the way to Islington, just a short walk from Kings Cross Station to my destination, Number 12, Grimmauld Place, the ancestral townhouse of the Blacks. I had read somewhere that this area was also used to film Sirius Black's familial residence in the movies. It was only natural that a fantasy version of this world would have the original house on that very street. The moment he stood between houses marked 11 and 13, while whispering 'Toujours Pur,' the houses slid apart, and the missing townhouse came into view as if someone had somehow squashed it between the other two.

"This… is the Black Townhouse?" Hestia asked with disdain.

"Yes."

The derelict building in question was sunk in grime and growing vines, rust and a pervasive smell of decay adding to its grotesque ambiance. Soft hissing noises came out of the oddest corners, and effigies of magical beasts adorned the rooftops.

"Yep," she deadpanned, "it's grim and old alright."

"She's a little dusty," I played along, as if it was perfectly natural to have a house look like a clusterfuck of vines, dust and grime, "but she's the one. I'm told she feels way better when you get inside."

Hestia cracked up at that. "Smooth. I'm already wetting my panties at the thought of being with you in there. It's so… stirring."

I rolled my eyes. Hestia Jones was a relentless tease. Unless, of course, she was planning on acting on them, in which case, she was a hot and aggressive flirt.

"Seriously, that isn't a home. It's a big bag of diseases just waiting to explode. Have you seen this thing? How can—" She looked around at the neighbourhood, "why doesn't anyone just do anything about it?"

"An obscuring ward," I said automatically, as if the answer was waiting on my lips. At Hestia's puzzled look, I explained, "Muggle-repelling wards with a memory-wipe function added to it. Pretty complicated, but likely the least lethal out of all the booby traps spread around the place."

Hestia whistled. "Yep. Nymphadora was right. You don't feel like a third-year student at all."

I arched an eyebrow at her.

"I mean," she blushed, trying to explain using animated gestures, "It's just… you know stuff."

She was right, and I wondered how I did. The knowledge had come to me as completely and immediately as if I had lived there for years: pure information. I looked around at the garden, at the vulture effigy. It contained a ward stone that could deploy an anti-apparition and anti-portkey ward for two hundred feet around the entire house before unleashing a poisonous fog into the entire area.

See? That's what I was talking about.

"The building's been lying like this for over a decade," I added.

True. The Black manor was a haunted house, but it wasn't supposed to be this dilapidated. Unless Dumbledore had the Order of the Phoenix clean the entire thing and make it habitable. Harry had only gotten there after his birthday in the books, and Ron had mentioned how Molly Weasley had them clean the house all summer.

"But… Why are we here?" She asked, fidgeting, "I have this feeling that something's wrong."

I chuckled. "Part of the ward scheme. Anyone that's not a Black or hasn't been particularly invited here is overwhelmed with an ever-increasing sense of impending certain death. Unless you've remarkably strong Occlumency shields, I suppose"

"Mm-hmm, and how do you know that?"

I lifted my fist, the tanzanite Black ring shining conspicuously on my middle finger. "This told me."

That was a half-truth. Maybe it was the Ring, maybe not. There was simply no way to know, and Mantle-rings had an annoying tendency to never come off one's finger, not unless you wanted to disband it off its enchantments.

Quirky? You've no idea.

"Right… Lord Black and everything."

"Conditional, but yes. And you're right. It's best if I go in first. If things look good, I'll invite you in. But first…"

I drew in breath and focussed on my will and magic. Whatever little I had read on summoning told me that a definite intent, laced with power, was the most important attribute in any form of summoning.

This was no different.

"Kreacher!"

The moment I spoke the word, there was a sudden thrum in the air, as if the mere mention of the name was enough to trigger a magical response, not unlike an incantation. I waited and looked around, wondering when Kreacher would pop in, screeching about half-bloods and blood-traitors.

But nothing happened.

That was odd, so I tried again.

"Kreacher."

"...was something supposed to happen?"

I looked at the weird look Hestia was giving me. "I'm trying to summon the Black family elf."

"And where is he?"

I gestured towards the house.

"In that? No fucking way."

I ignored her and tried for the third time, and still nothing happened. I was worrying. Maybe Kreacher would not respond unless I became the proper Lord Black? Or was something else at play? Maybe I was doing it wrong? Either way, I wasn't about to enter this decrepit place without magical aid, Lord or not.

Inhaling, I tried something different.

"Dobby!"

There was an immediate flash of bright light accompanied by a loud 'pop', and it knocked me flat on my back. I blinked for a few seconds and found a small creature sitting on my stomach, a pitiful google-eyed thing with long, droopy ears and a filthy tea towel worn as a tunic. Almost as quickly as I realised this was Dobby, the elf shrieked at me and grabbed me by my chest.

"HARRY POTTER CALLS FOR DOBBY! DOBBY BE HERE!"

I hissed at his high-pitched tone, and sat back up, Dobby slowly stepping away from my body. "Stop shouting, Dobby. This is a public street! You can't be seen here. It violates the Statute of Secrecy!"

The elf's mouth snapped shut, and he grabbed his ears and pulled them down into a makeshift gag. "Bad Dobby! Very bad, Dobby! Dobby make Harry Potter angry! DOBBY BE IRONING HIS EARS FOR—"

I focussed past the gruesome vision of the poor elf ironing his own ears and snapped. "Enough!"

That shut him up. The elf looked at me with piteous eyes.

I sighed. "... Sorry! That came out of nowhere!" I'm irritated, Dobby, and I have questions I want you to answer. Do you understand?"

"Harry Potter apologising to an elf! Dobby thought Dobby knew of Harry Potter's greatness—"

"Yes, yes, we've already established that!" I replied firmly but not unkindly. "Now tell me, Dobby, are you still looking for work?"

Dobby didn't answer aloud, but after a brief hesitation, he shook his head yes.

"Thing is, Dobby," I began genially, "I recently gained some properties that need to be looked after. So I was wondering, would you like to work for me? Even with pay, if that's what you want."

"Eek!" squeaked the creature. "Harry Potter be asking Dobby if Dobby wants to work for him?" Then, more slowly, almost in a histrionic whisper, he added, "Harry Potter be giving Dobby a choice?"

"Obviously," I drawled, "You're a free elf, aren't you? If I want your services, I need to hire you, and you need to agree to being hired. That's the way it works."

Something about my words had an effect because Dobby suddenly stood perfectly still, his ever-constant twitching suddenly vanishing into nowhere. Instead, he stared back at me with those large, bulbous eyes, and I stared back at him. And believe me, there was something broken about them.

I'm not sure how to explain, but staring into that elf's eyes was one of the most unsettling experiences I've ever had since I found myself in this world. There was something very wrong with them, like they were empty, like someone had scooped out twin holes in his skull only to fit them with glass spheres and declared them as eyes rather than anything remotely like the real thing.

Like I was looking into the eyes of a corpse.

They held an uncomfortable stillness to them, a calmness so complete that you instinctively knew it was a lie, like the false tranquillity before a vicious storm.

And then Dobby spoke in a tremulous but determined voice I — that Harry had seen the elf use only once.

— "You shall not harm Harry Potter" —

"Dobby… Dobby accepts, Harry Potter. Dobby, be your elf."

And just like that, the spell was broken. The tension in the air vanished entirely, and in its place was a sudden notification.

You have gained World Anchor

Dobby Elf — 43% World Anchorage

Current World Anchor Analysis

World Anchor — 167 / day

Required World Anchor - 15

Somebody's active!

Meta-Luck — 19

And that was it. No affinities. No perks. Just a World Anchor. I'd have questioned the lack of the former if not because I hadn't expected the Anchor to exist. World Anchors were formed through sex, and I had definitely not fucked the little guy. So… how?

Speaking of World Anchors, they rose at an almost crawling rate. Sure, Hermione's anchor had given me a massive boost with its initial spike, but that was all there was to it. And believe me, we had really fucked since then. From intense face-fucking for hours, to cumming in her pussy, I had enjoyed both holes many, many times over the time we had spent together. I had shot my seed inside her and on her, made her swallow it, and spent hours with it on her skin and hair. I had fucked Hermione in every corner of every room of my house, including the kitchen. And despite all that, her anchor had grown by a measly three percent.

Which was strange, because Ginny's had climbed from her initial 22% to a gaping 50% within a week.

Headaches, remember?

One thing was evident. If I really wanted to raise my anchors and, by extension, my Meta-Luck, I needed to fuck more girls, and periodically.

Might as well fulfil Hestia's wish for an orgy with 'groupies' for good measure.

That begged the question. Why had Dobby's acceptance triggered a World Anchor while Hestia's secretarial vow hadn't? Perhaps the oaths involved in the Vow only maintained the secrecy of information, but did nothing to conjure loyalty? But by that logic, Romilda was certainly not loyal to me, while Hestia valued me way more than she probably did, given I was her employer.

Gods. This was giving me a headache.

"What should Dobby be doing, Harry Potter sir?" asked the hyper excited elf, who was literally bouncing around, as if he couldn't wait to follow orders.

"He's something, isn't he?" Hestia asked. "I've never seen an elf as… excited as him."

I shrugged. "He's an acquired taste." Turning to Dobby, I said, "I'm going to enter the house. The wards should allow me, since I'm technically the owner. Once in, I'll call you. It's possible there are things in this house that might attack me, so be ready."

"Things?" Hestia echoed.

"Doxies, pixies, boggarts, maybe a drunk and crazy elf?" I began listing my fingers and then turned to Hestia. "I'll call for you once the coast is clear. No matter what happens, stay away from the ward line."

Hestia stared at me.

"... what?"

"Definitely not like a third-year." She repeated.

I smirked at her, and taking a deep breath, stepped past the ward-line.

…

…

I lived.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

I stepped through and the energies of the invisible wards poured through me like warm syrup. There was a bit of a tingle as it passed over the surface of my body, and then it was gone.

As were my clothes. Like completely.

I had not expected that bit.

Still, it wasn't the worst possible thing that could have happened. I still had the Black ring shining on my finger. I had not materialised the Potter ring, but I could still feel its invisible weight on my middle finger, and I still had my wand. Sadly enough, conjuring clothes wasn't something I could do at this point, and I certainly would not touch these flea-inflected carpets or try to transfigure them into a robe. They'd probably smell of fleas too.

Besides, what was that quote again? Learn to fight naked and they can never disarm you. Which is fine, I guess, as long as there aren't mosquitoes. Not very inspiring, given where I was entering.

"Harry Potter sir?" I heard Dobby's voice. "Should Dobby come in now?"

I turned around, and found Hestia looking at the townhouse, her brows crooked in tension as she tried to seek me out. They had specifically designed the outer ward to prevent people from actually seeing through, except for an illusion of the frontage and nothing else. I could literally point my wand at her and casting something dark and lethal and she wouldn't even notice.

Dobby kept staring in my direction, googly eyed.

… I swear I'll never understand elves.

"Wait," I told him. "If I need you, I'll call you."

Inhaling, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, willingly entering a scourge of all things tidy. The derelict building was sunk in pitch-black darkness, with dampness, rust, and a pervasive smell of decay adding to its grotesque ambiance. Soft hissing noises came out of the oddest corners, and decapitated heads of house-elves served as decor and lamps for dim illumination. The entire place was at least four times as large on the inside than outside, and had its long, gloomy hallways lined with thick muslin carpets.

And snakes.

Lots and lots of snakes.

On the candelabra, on the railings, on the doorknobs. Hell, even the hallways seemed to curve in an eerily snake-like manner.

Tom Riddle would've felt right at home.

Still, nothing had come out of the shadows to strike or kill me yet, which was good.

"Dobby!" I whispered. "Come to me."

With a soft 'pop', Dobby was standing right beside me. I was glad to see his ragged loincloth still on his form. The last thing I wanted to do in this haunted house was to check if Dobby's testicles were just as bony and wrinkled as the rest of him.

…

I swear my imagination needs therapy.

"Uh, Dobby, can you conjure a robe for me?"

The elf looked down in apology. "Forgive me, Harry Potter sir. House-elves be unable to conjure cloth."

"...I see."

Must be something to do with clothes setting them free.

"Fine," I yielded, "be ready for anything."

I raised my wand up in the air.

"LUMOS SOLEM!"

A blinding white orb of sunlight and intense heat exploded out of my wand tip, shooting out towards the ceiling, illuminating the entire antechamber in a bright golden glow. And with that came a vicious screech. It wasn't the volume of an air horn, or a marching band. Or the Hogwarts Express train. It was far beyond anything I had ever heard in my life, and given it was happening inside a relatively small, enclosed, acoustically reflective area made it so much worse.

Every single piece of glass in the room shattered. Wild shadows exploded, their screeches feeling less like sound and more like someone had thrown me into an enormous vat of jelly. I suffocated, the pressure pricking against my skin and painful to my ears. My heart was in my throat and my shoulders shook like someone had doused me with ice-cold water. And then when I raised my head, I found doxies — reptilian, winged and fanged, their numbers in thousands, with their hungry, feral eyes staring at me.

And then they attacked.

"DOBBY!" I yelled. "Kill them!"

The frail-looking elf raised his hand and snapped his fingers. I could only gain a brief impression of a portal opening up to… somewhere else, before an unnatural fire exploded out of that opening, one that looked like lava only no longer bound by gravity, and along with that hellfire came incoherent screams of fury and terror as the doxies burned, the crimson and gold flames incinerating them as the flames scorched through the entire chamber and—

Snap!

The flames flickered out of existence.

Dobby bowed to me in subservience and looked up in slight apprehension.

"Did I do good, Harry Potter sir?"

I gave him an incredulous look. The little elf had just manifested a firestorm of all things, incinerated an entire doxy swarm and who-knows-what to bits and then snuffed it with a snap of his fingers. And he was looking at me, asking if he had a good job? If this was what the average elf was capable of, why were they so accepting of their subjugation? I was almost planning on purchasing a dozen elves and seeing if I could end Voldemort and his Death-Eaters for good measure before I remembered that these purebloods also had elves attending them. Could it be that outside of servant work, it was also the elves' duty to guard their masters from other elves?

Looks like I had something for Hestia to find out after all.

I was still going to purchase a dozen elves. For boosting my World Anchors, if nothing else.

"Yeah," I said, "Yeah, you did good. Keep doing it and you'll be the best elf in the universe."

Dobby straightened up and preened at my words. I could have sworn the little fellow rose by an inch or two.

I looked around at the now desolate ante-chamber and called out, "Kreacher!"

"Who's there?" cried out a voice so shrill that it felt like nails on a chalkboard. I hastily drew my wand out and stepped past the antechamber, into a large drawing room. Compared to the previous one, this one was actually well lit, yet had a strange, foggy feel to it. I could actually see the couches and the tables and the portraits hanging on the wall, and the artistic sculptures adorning the walls. And on one the couches, sat a lady in her thirties, dressed in a nineteenth-century gown with frazzled jet-black hair that fell all over her face, while her dark eyes stared down at me with a strange, maniacal gleam in them.

"Who's it?" She demanded snobbishly as she stood up, her voice just as shrill as before. "Who's it that dares to defile the home of my ancestors?"

And just like that, I knew who she was.

"Wal—" I croaked,"Walburga Black?"

The mask of snobbish superiority suddenly dissolved from her face, only to be replaced by an inordinate confusion. "Walburga…" she croaked, "that was my name." Her tone was too reasonable for a pureblood extremist in the service of Voldemort.

I didn't know what to think. Walburga Black was supposed to have a magical portrait hanging near the antechamber. She wasn't supposed to be alive, was she? Another deviation from the books? But even if she was, why had she allowed the house to deteriorate into such a sorry state?

Walburga peered at me, growing more depressed with every passing second. "Wait… does that mean you can see me?"

I blinked.

"...yes?"

"Harry Potter sir?" Dobby asked.

"Yeah?"

"Dobby wonders who Harry Potter sir is talking to."

I stared at him for a silent second and then pointed at the woman. "There! Can't you see her?"

Dobby peered in her direction for a moment before turning back. "Dobby regrets, sir. Dobby sees nothing."

I blinked and stared at Walburga.

Wait.

Was. She had said Walburga was her name. That could mean a lot of things.

She regarded me quietly, her eyes now steady on mine. "Uncle Arcturus's words hold true then." The shrillness in her voice was gone, replaced with something enigmatic. "You can see me."

"What are you?" I asked, looking around. "A ghost?"

"A wraith. A remnant of what I was. Stuck in a perpetual illusion."

"Ilusion?"

"Yes," she said calmly. "Some of appearance only. Some of seeming."

I narrowed my eyes. "I don't understand. Why can't Dobby see you?"

"Uncle Arcturus judged me responsible for the end of the Main Line. After Regulus died and Sirius got carted off to Azkaban, the House of Black fell to ruins. Arcturus cursed me to be trapped in this house of my forebears, guarding it, protecting it, until a Black scion entered its halls. Only one of Black blood may see and interact with me."

She was a wraith. A memory. It was eerily close to what Riddle had done with his diary. Only instead of a soul shard, a remnant of the real Walburga remained trapped in this house after her death. Suddenly, the condition of the house didn't seem so surprising anymore.

"What happened to Kreacher?"

The woman tilted her head, studying me. "You know of Kreacher."

I tried not to give away anything. "I do."

"How?"

"It's not important."

"To you, perhaps."

Damn it. Alive or wraith, this woman was proving herself to be annoying. "I have made a cursory study of the Black family. Kreacher was supposedly devoted to your son Regulus and hated Sirius with a passion." I grew increasingly conscious of her attention. "What happened to him?"

"Stars," she murmured, her lips spreading into a slow smile. "So adorably naïve."

I clenched my jaw. "Answer the question."

"Why should I?"

I held up my right hand, the Black Ring on full display. "I am Lord Black and–"

The rest of my words were drowned in a vicious, shrill laughter as Walburga threw her head back and sat laughing at me for a good thirty seconds. I felt my face heat with irrational embarrassment before she met my gaze again.

"You lie," she hissed. There was an undercurrent of disdain in her tone. "The true Lord Black holds complete dominion over this house. Over me. But you don't. And you've just proved it."

She crossed her legs with a squeak of leather and settled back on her couch. "You're no Lord. You're just a kid with delusions of power." She allowed herself a glance at my nudity and scoffed. "A weak-willed wizard that stands before me like a shameless man-whore. Black blood or not, you're but a mewling squib descendant, trespassing into the Black Lord's property by exploiting the goblins' lust for gold."

Well, I thought, she isn't wrong. But I would not get what I wanted by playing nice. Drawing myself up to my fullest height, I met her dark eyes.

"You're wrong, woman," I claimed, parseltongue slipping into my voice, "I'm Harry, son of James, the grandson of Dorea Black and Charlus Potter. Through her, I claim descent from Phineas Nigellus Black and Sirius Black, the Second founder and architect of this very dome. I have survived the one you call Lord Voldemort as a baby, vanquishing him until he was but the meanest wraith, seizing the power of his Parseltongue as my conquest. I've survived under desolate conditions and killed Salazar Slytherin's mighty basilisk, standing upon his statue in his vaunted Chamber of Secrets. I've matched wits with Death Eaters, my superior in age, and experience and prevailed, and the elf standing beside me is proof of that. I've faced an endless horde of dementors and come out as the winner. I'm Harry, son of James and Lily Potter, and the godson of Sirius Black. I'm the Boy-Who-Lived, and I've matched with the goblins of Gringotts and seized control over the wards of this manor, and regardless of your paltry arguments and bigotry, I will become the greatest wizard this world has ever seen, with or without you in it."

That seemed to please the woman immensely. Her disdain fractured, revealing a wide smile, showing her white teeth. "Impressive claims." She looked down at my dangling manhood and added, "for someone that can't even conjure a robe."

"For fuck's sake," I waved my wand at the couch closest to me and yelled, "Scourgify!"

A mini-gale exploded out of my wand and washed over the furniture. With an angry counter-wise flick of my wand, I cast my second spell.

"Vera verto."

A spell based on equivalent exchange. Vera verto was a generic transfiguration spell that could transfigure nearly anything to anything else, providing constraints of magical power and innate resistance of the object. But I wasn't trying to transfigure a non-living object to a living creature, just cloth. So it'd do fine.

In less than a second, an identical copy of my robes lay upon the floor. I picked it up, and with absolute zero regard to the apparition's presence, quickly put it on.

"There!" I snapped. "Happy?"

"Hardly, but at least you don't look like a man-whore any longer."

"Now tell me," I growled. "What happened to Kreacher?"

Walburga lifted a fingertip to her lips. Then she smiled again. "What is that information worth to you?"

I folded my arms. "Not much to me, but a lot to you, I imagine. You can either tell me and be done with it, or I can become the Lord Black and extract it out of you, and that time, I needn't be so polite."

Her voice went down to a whisper. "Do not play me for a fool, Potter. I know my tapestry. Narcissa's boy stands in line to become the next Lord Black. That you swindled this property from him shows your cunning, but ultimately, it means nothing." She hissed. "Draco Malfoy will become the next Lord Black."

Only if he stayed alive, I didn't say.

"True. But there's nothing that stops me from… oh you know, shutting down the wards and demolishing this place down, preferably using a muggle bulldozer. I'll tear down the defences of this place, ransack the Library and shift it all in my private vault. And there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Walburga's already pale face blanched and she sat bolt upright on her couch. "You dare–"

"Shut up!" I snarled, and it came out loud enough to ring off the walls of the room. "I'm not finished."

She jerked as though I had slapped her. Her mouth dropped open, and she blinked at me.

"I'm Lord Conditional at the moment," I snapped. "And that means the wards obey me. Now you may serve me, aid me in my desire to make House Black gain back the power it once commanded, or you may be crushed, like an insect. Make no mistake, Walburga Black. Sirius chose me as his heir, and I have ways to sideline Narcissa Malfoy and her bloodline. If nothing else, I can exterminate Draco Malfoy like the vermin he is. And then, you'd be magically compelled to obey me."

Her lips tightened. "You'd slay your own blood for power?"

"Yes," I hissed, my hands clenched into fists. "The Moghul Sultans had a saying. Kingship knows no kinship!" I leaned towards her for emphasis. "I don't have time for your mind games. You don't scare me, lady. I came here in a quest for power, and if you keep pushing me, I'm going to push back. Hard."

Walburga's anger evaporated. She leaned back into her couch, lips pursed, her expression placid and enigmatic. "Well, well, well, not so easily captured, it'd seem. Dorea Black's bloodline shows its worth after three generations."

"Nundu pucky!" I deadpanned. "What's it gonna be?"

The apparition stood up and walked towards me. I clenched my fists and tried not to react to her sudden invasion of my personal space. She walked around me, stalking like a predator, her eyes watching me like a hawk.

Finally, she spoke.

"The Boy-Who-Lived," she whispered, "there was a time when I cursed your existence for vanquishing the Dark Lord. You ended what could have been an odyssey in the history of Wizarding Britain. And yet, you speak the formidable serpent tongue like the Dark Lord himself."

I didn't react.

She eyed me speculatively. "Perhaps there is hope for you. Tell me, Harry Potter, how far are you willing to go to become the Black Lord?"

I crossed my arms and frowned. "Whatever it takes."

Walburga smiled.