Ten years had passed since that night in Grimmauld Place, and Johnny Lestrange barely remembered any of it. Sometimes, on the edge of sleep, he thought he saw a flash of green and smelled mildew and old wax—but the dream dissolved before it could become a memory, and by morning all that remained was a strange sensation in his chest, like a word on the tip of his tongue that refused to be spoken.
The life Johnny knew was something else entirely. It was made of sunny mornings in a two-story house in Suburban Grove, on the outskirts of London, where the trees grew crooked on purpose and the garden gnomes were so stubborn they already had names. It was made of the smell of burnt toast and potions bubbling in the kitchen, books piled in every corner, a cousin whose hair changed color with her mood, and an uncle who explained how Muggle appliances worked with the enthusiasm of someone discovering fire for the first time.
In short, it was a good life.
The Tonks home looked nothing like the manors that carried Johnny’s name by right of blood. There were no tapestries bearing family crests, no shadowy corridors, no house-elves muttering about blood purity. There was pale yellow wallpaper in the kitchen, peeling a little at the corners, and a fireplace that served both for Floo powder travel and warming feet on winter nights. There were pictures everywhere—not the solemn, motionless pictures of Muggles, but wizarding photographs that moved and waved: Ted and Andromeda on their wedding day, laughing so hard they slipped out of the frame; Tonks at eleven, holding her Hogwarts letter with violet hair sticking out in every direction; Johnny at five, riding a toy broomstick that floated a foot and a half above the ground, wearing an expression of absolute concentration.
That last picture had a story.
It hadn’t been a toy broomstick. It had been Tonks’s Cleansweep Seven, which she’d left leaning against the upstairs hallway wall. Johnny, who at that age had already developed the inconvenient habit of touching anything he was told not to touch, had climbed onto the broom out of curiosity—and the broom, recognizing his intent, had taken off. It shot down the hallway, plunged down the stairs in a dive that would have made a professional Quidditch player go pale, and flew out through the living-room window—which, luckily, was open.
Ted dropped his newspaper and ran into the garden, shouting his nephew’s name. Tonks, who was thirteen and supposed to be watching her cousin, tripped over her own feet trying to catch him and landed face-first in the pansy bed. Andromeda, who had been in the kitchen preparing a headache potion, heard the shouting, went to the window, and saw Johnny circling the garden oak three meters up, his black hair streaming behind him and his eyes wide—not with fear, but fascination.
Andromeda laughed.
It was a short, startled, almost involuntary laugh—the kind that escaped before someone could decide whether they ought to be worried. Ted, who was trying to reach Johnny by jumping with his arms stretched overhead, looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
“He’s two years old!” Ted shouted.
“Five,” Andromeda corrected, still smiling. “And he flies better than Dora.”
“That’s not a compliment!” Tonks called from the flower bed, spitting out dirt.
Johnny eventually landed on his own, with the ease of someone who did it every day. He climbed off the broom, looked at the three adults—one panting, one covered in dirt, one laughing—and said, with the seriousness only five-year-olds could manage:
“Can I go again?”
The answer was no. But the picture stayed.
Other memories were scattered through the house like breadcrumbs marking a trail. The corner of the living room where Andromeda had taught Johnny to brew his first potion—a simple tonic for hiccups, which he had prepared with such precision that his aunt had raised her eyebrows. The armchair by the fireplace where Ted sat with Johnny on his lap and explained things about the Muggle world—how electricity worked, why Muggles needed airplanes to fly, what a telephone was. Johnny listened with the silent attentiveness that was his trademark, absorbing every detail and asking questions that sometimes left Ted without an answer.
“Why do wizards think they’re better than Muggles?” Johnny had asked once, at seven, while Ted showed him how a Muggle radio worked.
Ted stopped. He looked at his nephew carefully, like someone choosing the right words to carry a weight that should never have rested on a child’s shoulders.
“Because it’s easier to feel special when you have someone to look down on,” Ted said. “But being a wizard doesn’t make you better than anyone, Johnny. It only makes you different. And different isn’t better or worse. It’s just... different.”
Johnny was silent for a moment, processing. Then he nodded slowly, as if he were putting the words away somewhere safe inside himself.
It was that same year—when he was seven—that Andromeda decided to tell him the truth.
There was no dramatic moment, no revelation surrounded by tears and embraces. Andromeda wasn’t that kind of person. She sat with Johnny at the kitchen table on a rainy afternoon and told him. She told him about Bellatrix and Rodolphus. About the Death Eaters. About Voldemort, the war, the night the wizarding world changed. She told him about Black Manor, about Kreacher, about the baby she had found in a dark room, with eyes that reminded her of someone she had never really gotten to know.
Johnny listened without interrupting. His eyes—dark green, almost black in the gray kitchen light—never left his aunt’s face. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He didn’t ask why.
When Andromeda finished, they remained silent for a long time. Rain tapped against the windows. The kitchen clock ticked. And then Johnny said, in a calm voice that didn’t fit his seven years:
“Thank you for saving me.”
Andromeda’s eyes burned, but she didn’t cry. She simply reached across the table and squeezed her nephew’s hand. Johnny squeezed back.
That night, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling of the room Andromeda had decorated with enchanted stars that glowed in the dark, Johnny thought. He thought for a long time, with that silent intensity that belonged only to him. And deep in his chest, in a place he showed no one, something ignited—not anger, not sadness, but something sharper, more patient. A decision.
His parents had chosen Voldemort. They had chosen a man over their own son. They had knelt before someone and called it greatness.
Johnny would kneel before no one. Never.
He would be stronger. Stronger than Voldemort, stronger than the shadow his parents had followed to ruin. Not to destroy, not to rule—but to prove, silently, with every spell he learned and every challenge he overcame, that he was worth more than everything his parents had abandoned him for.
He told no one. Not Andromeda, not Ted, not Tonks. He kept it inside himself like an ember—small, steady, impossible to extinguish.
And he kept smiling at breakfast.
A year later, when Johnny turned six, something unexpected happened.
It was an autumn morning, and Johnny was sitting beneath the oak in the garden, reading one of the Hogwarts books Tonks had given him. She had a habit of bringing home her old schoolbooks and dumping them on her cousin’s bed, with comments scribbled in the margins like “this part’s boring, skip it” and “Snape asked this on the test, memorize it.” Johnny read everything, including the boring parts, and memorized everything, including what Tonks told him to ignore.
That was when he heard the beating of wings.
He looked up and saw a raven. But it wasn’t just any raven. It was enormous—larger than any raven Johnny had ever seen—with feathers so black they seemed to absorb the light around them, and intelligent eyes that gleamed like polished glass beads. It landed on the oak’s lowest branch and stayed there, staring at Johnny with an intensity that wasn’t normal for a bird.
Johnny stared back. He wasn’t afraid. He felt something else—something he didn’t know how to name, as if an invisible cord had been stretched between him and the animal, vibrating at a frequency only the two of them could hear.
“Hi,” Johnny said.
The raven tilted its head.
Johnny slowly extended his hand. The raven descended from the branch, landed on his arm with surprising lightness for its size, and stayed there, its talons firm but careful, as if it knew exactly how much pressure to use without hurting him.
Andromeda, watching from the kitchen window, dropped her teacup.
“Johnny,” she called, coming out into the garden. “Don’t move.”
“He won’t hurt me,” Johnny said, with a certainty he couldn’t explain.
Andromeda stopped a few steps away, looking at the raven. Her eyes narrowed. She recognized the creature. Not personally—she had never seen one up close—but she knew what it was. She knew whom it belonged to.
“It’s a blood-bound animal,” Andromeda said, kneeling beside Johnny. Her voice was careful, measured. “Do you know what that means?”
Johnny shook his head.
“Some very old wizarding families have animals bound to the family’s blood,” Andromeda explained. “They aren’t ordinary pets. They’re magical companions. They serve the bloodline, not just one person. When the last member of the family they recognize is free and alive, they find them. No matter where they are.”
“And which family does he belong to?” Johnny asked, though something inside him already knew the answer.
“The Lestranges,” Andromeda said. “You’re the only Lestrange who isn’t imprisoned or dead, Johnny. He came to you because you’re the heir.”
Johnny looked at the raven. The raven looked at Johnny. And in that gaze was a silent, ancient understanding that needed no words.
“I’m going to call him Gloom,” Johnny said.
“Gloom?” Tonks, who had appeared in the back doorway with shock-pink hair and a piece of toast in her hand, grimaced. “What a terrible name. Call him Corvus. Or Shadow. Or Lord Blackfeathers.”
“Gloom,” Johnny repeated, with the calm firmness of someone who had no intention of negotiating.
“Gloom,” the raven’s silence confirmed as it settled onto Johnny’s shoulder as if it had always been there.
Tonks rolled her eyes, bit into her toast, and went back inside, grumbling that her cousin had no creativity whatsoever when it came to names. Johnny smiled—that small, sideways, almost secret smile—and stayed in the garden with Gloom until the sun went down.
From then on, the raven never left. It slept on the windowsill of Johnny’s bedroom, flew circles over the house like a sentry, and had the unnerving habit of appearing out of nowhere whenever Johnny needed it—sometimes before Johnny even knew he needed it.
And now, on the morning of July thirty-first, nineteen ninety-one, Gloom was perched atop the wardrobe, its head tucked beneath its wing, asleep.
Johnny woke to the sound of eggs being cracked.
He lay there for a moment, listening. The sound came from the kitchen—the familiar clink of a spatula against a frying pan, the hiss of melting butter, the low murmur of the wizarding radio Andromeda always turned on in the morning. Sounds of home. Sounds of routine. Sounds that, to Johnny, meant safety in a way he had never needed to put into words.
He got up slowly, shaking out his long hair—black as ink, falling to his shoulders, with white tips Tonks had dyed the previous summer. It had been her idea, obviously. She had shown up one day with a bottle of permanent hair potion and a smile that promised nothing good.
“Hold still,” she’d said, pushing Johnny into a chair. “It’s going to look amazing. Trust me.”
“The last time you said that, my hair turned orange for a week,” Johnny had replied.
“Details,” Tonks had said, already applying the potion to the tips.
But this time she’d gotten it right. The tips turned a pure, clean white that contrasted with the rest of the black in a way that looked intentional—as if Johnny had been born that way. He had looked in the mirror, turned his head from side to side, and said nothing for several seconds. Then:
“I like it.”
Tonks had punched the air.
Now, on that July morning, Johnny went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. When he looked in the mirror, he saw what he always saw—a boy of eleven, almost twelve, with very pale skin and a fine-boned face, handsome in a way people noticed and he pretended not to. But today the morning light entered through the bathroom window at a different angle, and his eyes, which looked completely black in the half-light, were pale green. Bright green. Like new leaves after the rain.
Johnny blinked at his reflection, ran his fingers through his hair to undo the knots of sleep, and left the bathroom.
The Tonks kitchen was the heart of the house. It had a stove that worked half on gas and half on magic, a wooden table covered in signs of use, and shelves crammed with jars of ingredients ranging from ordinary sugar to powdered unicorn horn. The windows looked out onto the backyard, where the gnomes were already awake and making noise among the roots of the oak.
Andromeda stood with her back to him, stirring eggs in the frying pan. She wore an apron over her wizarding robes, and her brown hair was tied in a loose bun. In her early forties, she still carried the Black bone structure—the firm chin, watchful eyes, the bearing of someone raised to walk with her spine straight. But there was a softness in her that no Black had ever possessed, a kindness that wasn’t weakness but choice.
“Morning,” Johnny said, leaning against the doorframe.
“Good morning, dear,” Andromeda replied without turning. “Sleep well?”
“More or less. Gloom kept croaking in the middle of the night. I think he saw a rat on the roof.”
“Or a gnome. They’ve been climbing onto the gutters again.” Andromeda turned and set a plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the table. “Sit. Eat while it’s hot.”
Johnny sat down and picked up a piece of toast. He looked around.
“Where’s Uncle Ted?”
“He went to work early. Apparently there was an invasion of Cornish pixies at the Ministry. They got into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and made quite a mess.” Andromeda said it in the tone of someone reporting the weather, but there was an amused glint in her eyes.
Johnny laughed.
“Sounds fun.”
“Sounds like a nightmare,” Andromeda corrected, though the corner of her mouth betrayed a smile. “Now, before you eat, do me a favor. Go wake Dora.”
Johnny raised an eyebrow.
“Isn’t she exhausted from Auror training?”
“She took a restorative potion as soon as she got home last night. She should be fine.” Andromeda paused, then added with the wisdom of someone who knew her daughter: “But she probably won’t want to get up anyway.”
Johnny smiled and went upstairs.
Nymphadora Tonks’s bedroom was a disaster. Not figuratively—a literal, concrete, three-dimensional disaster. Clothes covered the floor like a second layer of carpet. Books, parchment, and empty Chocolate Frog wrappers fought for space on the desk. A poster of the Weird Sisters hung crookedly on the wall, and in the corner, a pile of Auror training equipment—cloaks, boots, a practice mannequin marked with spell damage—formed a sort of accidental sculpture.
Johnny had told her to clean it up. More than once. More than ten times. Tonks listened, agreed enthusiastically, and didn’t move a single object.
He knocked on the door. Nothing.
He knocked again, harder. Nothing.
He opened the door and found his cousin sleeping with her head where her feet should have been, her feet where her head should have been, one arm hanging off the bed and the other hugging her own pillow as if it were a stuffed animal. Her hair, which had been shock pink the night before, was now an indeterminate moss green—the color it turned when she was sleeping deeply.
Johnny approached and poked her cheek with his index finger.
Her hair changed from moss green to teal.
He poked her again. Teal to lilac.
Again. Lilac to burnt orange.
Johnny laughed softly and kept poking, watching her hair change like a sleeping kaleidoscope—orange to turquoise, turquoise to gold, gold to a vivid red that lasted only a second before returning to its usual shock pink.
Then he shook her by the shoulders.
“Wake up, Dora. We’re being attacked by the garden gnomes.”
Tonks shot upright. She was on her feet before she’d properly opened her eyes, wand already in hand—an Auror-training reflex—with her hair now sticking out in every direction like a pink hedgehog.
“Where?!” she demanded, spinning around, ready for battle. “Where are they?!”
“In the kitchen,” Johnny said, his face perfectly serious. “They’re attacking Aunt Andromeda.”
Tonks ran out of the room. She tripped over her own foot on the stairs—as always—and burst into the kitchen, wand raised.
“Where are they?!” she shouted.
Andromeda, who was calmly pouring tea, looked at her daughter.
“Where are what?”
Silence.
Johnny appeared in the hallway, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and that small, calm, devastatingly satisfied sideways smile.
Tonks looked at him. Looked at her mother. Looked at him again.
“You—” she began, pointing her wand.
“Dora,” Andromeda warned.
“Levicorpus!”
Johnny felt his feet leave the floor. In an instant he was floating upside down, his black-and-white hair hanging like an inverted chandelier, five feet above the kitchen floor.
“If you keep this up,” Tonks said, holstering her wand with a flourish, “you’ll outdo even the Weasley twins. And they’re professionals.”
Johnny smiled upside down.
“That’s the goal.”
Tonks narrowed her eyes, but the corner of her mouth turned up. She flicked her wand, and Johnny descended smoothly, landing lightly on his feet like a cat.
“Both of you, sit down,” Andromeda said in the tone of someone who had seen that scene too many times to be impressed. “Breakfast is getting cold.”
They sat. Johnny took another piece of toast and a few ginger biscuits Andromeda had made the night before. Tonks attacked the scrambled eggs as if she hadn’t eaten in three days, her hair now a stable bubblegum pink that meant she was in a good mood.
“How’s training?” Johnny asked.
“Mad-Eye Moody is a maniac,” Tonks said through a mouthful. “Yesterday he made me duel three enchanted dummies at once while shouting ‘CONSTANT VIGILANCE’ in my ear. I think I’m deaf on the left side.”
“You’re speaking normally.”
“It could be permanent. I might be deaf and not know it.”
“That’s not how deafness works, Dora,” Andromeda said.
“Mom, I’m practically an Auror. I know how deafness works.”
“You’re a first-year trainee.”
“Details.”
Johnny bit into his biscuit to hide his smile. It was always like this. Mornings at the Tonks home had their own rhythm—a choreography of teasing, laughter, and affection disguised as bickering that made Johnny feel exactly where he belonged.
That was when they heard the sound.
A sharp hoot, followed by a beating of wings, followed by something entering through the open living-room window with the precision of an arrow. Johnny turned his head and saw an owl—not very large, with black-and-white feathers arranged in clean stripes—land on the back of the sofa. It carried a thick envelope in its beak, sealed with red wax.
The kitchen fell silent.
Andromeda and Tonks looked at each other. It was a quick glance, charged with something Johnny couldn’t immediately read—expectation, perhaps, or restrained happiness trying not to spill over too soon.
“Go on, Johnny,” Andromeda said, her voice carefully casual. “Get the letter.”
Johnny stood and went into the living room. The owl watched him with round, patient eyes as he removed the envelope from its beak. He stroked its head—the feathers were soft and cool—and the owl hooted once, satisfied, before spreading its wings and flying out the window, vanishing into the blue morning sky.
Johnny looked at the envelope.
It was made of thick, yellowed parchment, the kind that looked handmade. On the front, in emerald-green ink and elegant, precise handwriting, it said:
*Mr. Johnny Lestrange* *The Tonks Residence* *Suburban Grove*
Johnny turned the envelope over. Pressed into the red sealing wax was a crest he knew by heart—from Tonks’s books, Andromeda’s stories, and the dreams he told no one about. A lion, an eagle, a badger, and a serpent surrounding the letter H.
Hogwarts.
That was his Hogwarts letter.
Johnny stood still for a moment, holding the envelope in both hands and feeling the weight of the parchment between his fingers. It wasn’t heavy—it was only a letter—but it seemed to carry the weight of everything that would come afterward. Everything he had planned in silence while lying in bed and staring at the enchanted stars on the ceiling.
He looked toward the kitchen. Andromeda and Tonks stood in the doorway side by side, both smiling. Andromeda wore that restrained, proud smile that belonged only to her. Tonks wore a wide-open smile that filled her entire face.
Johnny smiled back and gave a little hop—small, quick, almost involuntary. The kind of gesture that escaped before he could contain it.
“It came,” he said. “It finally came.”
“Open it already!” Tonks said, practically bouncing in place. “Read it! Read it!”
Johnny broke the seal carefully—Tonks would have torn the entire envelope, but Johnny wasn’t Tonks—and unfolded the parchment. He cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and read aloud with an excitement he rarely let show:
“‘Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore. Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock of the International Confederation of Wizards.
Dear Mr. Johnny Lestrange, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The term begins on September first. Please send your owl by July thirty-first to confirm your attendance. Enclosed is a list of the required books and equipment.
Sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress.’”
Johnny turned the page and continued:
“‘Books: The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, Miranda Goshawk. —A History of Magic, Bathilda Bagshot. —A Theory of Magic, Adalbert Waffling. —A Beginner’s Guide to Transfiguration, Emeric Switch. —One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, Phyllida Spore. —Magical Potions and Preparations, Arsenius Jigger. —Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt Scamander. —The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, Quentin Trimble.’”
“I’ve already read half of these,” Johnny murmured, almost to himself.
“Nerd,” Tonks coughed.
Johnny ignored her and continued:
“‘Equipment: One wand, One standard-size pewter cauldron (size two), One set of glass phials, One telescope, One brass scale.
Permitted pets: Students may bring one of the following—an owl, a cat, or a toad.
Uniform: Three sets of plain black work robes, One plain black pointed hat for daily wear, One pair of protective dragon-hide gloves or similar, One black winter cloak with silver fastenings.
Transportation: The Hogwarts Express departs from platform nine and three-quarters at King’s Cross Station at eleven o’clock.’”
Johnny lowered the letter and looked at it once more, as if he needed to make sure the words wouldn’t disappear.
“I need to send the confirmation,” he said, already thinking. “I can send it with Gloom. And...” He looked at Andromeda. “Can I ask whether blood-bound animals are allowed? The letter says owl, cat, or toad, but Gloom isn’t any of those.”
Andromeda nodded.
“Send the confirmation and ask the question. Gloom is part of your inheritance, Johnny. Dumbledore will understand.”
“I’ll do it after breakfast,” Johnny said, returning to the table.
Tonks sprang out of her chair.
“Not after breakfast.”
Johnny stopped with his toast halfway to his mouth.
“What do you mean?”
Tonks smiled—and it was that smile. The smile that meant she already had a plan and Johnny had no choice.
“Send the letter now, get Gloom, and get dressed. We’re going out.”
“Where?”
Tonks crossed her arms, tilted her head, and her hair changed from bubblegum pink to a bright gold that matched the sunny morning.
“Diagon Alley, little brother. You’ve got a shopping list to take care of.”