Deciding to become Helios Black was the easy part.
Doing it properly was something else entirely.
Harry sat at the long, scarred table in Grimmauld Place with Hermione's journals spread open before him, parchment layered atop parchment, margins filled with her precise, relentless handwriting. Candlelight flickered across diagrams he knew by heart—circles within circles, names annotated with dates and cross-references, warnings underlined twice.
Blood adoption is not symbolism, Hermione had written, hard enough that the quill had nearly torn the page.
It is not a charm. It is not paperwork. It is a rewriting of magical truth.
Harry rubbed his eyes.
If he was going to be Sirius Black's son, it couldn't be a story alone. Not with the Black family wards. Not with house-elves, rings, vaults, and blood-tuned protections.
Words would fail the first time magic was asked a question.
He needed blood to answer.
Two rituals. Both illegal. Both erased from British libraries. Both punishable by life imprisonment or worse.
Blood Adoption.
Magical Signature Rewriting.
The first would bind him into the House of Black through blood, not as a ward, but as issue. The second would ensure that every detection charm, every ancestral ward, every piece of magic that tasted him would read Black, not Potter.
Not Harry.
Helios.
Harry leaned back slowly.
No one in Britain would perform them.
Ritual magic had been hunted nearly to extinction—not because it was inherently dark, but because it did not answer to authority. You could not regulate a circle drawn in blood and will. You could not tax an oath sworn to the bones of the world.
The Ministry feared what it could not license.
Which meant Harry knew exactly who he needed.
Albert Hemlock.
The name sat heavy in his chest.
Hemlock had been old when Harry first met him in the future—ancient, really. His back bent, hands trembling, eyes sharp as broken glass. He had been the Phoenix Legion's healer, though healer barely covered it. He worked with poultices, runes, chants older than wandwork, rituals designed to correct rather than suppress.
He had been imprisoned in Azkaban for one reason:
He practiced ritual magic.
The Hemlock family curse was documented—quietly. A blood curse laid generations ago, sophisticated and cruel. Every Hemlock who lived past fifty lost their mind. Rage. Paranoia. Hallucinations. Some turned violent. Others simply… vanished into themselves.
Albert Hemlock had watched it claim his children.
His grandchildren.
His great-grandchildren.
He had turned to ritual magic not for power, but for survival.
The Ministry had called it "experimental dark practices."
Hermione had called it desperation.
Harry's fingers tightened on the page.
In the future, Hermione had broken the curse.
She had dismantled the bloodline curse piece by piece, traced it back to its origin, and rewrote it—freeing every living Hemlock in one night. Sane. Whole.
Albert Hemlock had wept.
Then he had followed her anywhere she asked.
Harry knew the timeline.
By the end of his fifth year, Albert Hemlock would be arrested. Dragged away from Hemlock Manor. Thrown into Azkaban to rot alongside criminals and monsters because the Ministry did not know how to categorize a man who refused to stop trying to save his family.
Which meant—
Harry closed the journal.
—right now, Albert Hemlock was still free.
Still at the manor.
Still surrounded by family members who feared their own birthdays.
Still desperate enough to listen.
Harry stood.
"Alright," he murmured to the empty house. "Let's go steal a healer."
Hemlock Manor did not announce itself.
It lay folded into the countryside like a wound that had never healed—wards heavy and uneven, magic clinging to the land with the brittle tension of something strained too far for too long. The air tasted wrong the moment Harry stepped onto the grounds.
Fear had weight.
He felt it in the way the wards pressed against his skin, testing, tasting, hesitating.
He followed the gravel path to the house.
Inside, the atmosphere was worse.
Whispers echoed down hallways that should have been empty. A man laughed somewhere—too loudly, too suddenly. A woman sobbed in a room with the door locked from the outside.
Harry moved through it all without flinching.
He found Albert Hemlock in a study that smelled of dried herbs, ink, and exhaustion.
The old wizard sat hunched at a desk littered with scrolls, his white hair thin and uncombed, fingers ink-stained and shaking as they traced a diagram that Harry recognized instantly.
A stabilization circle.
Unfinished.
Hemlock looked up sharply.
"Who are you?," he snapped. "I don't take visitors."
Harry closed the door behind him.
"You will," he said calmly. "For me."
Hemlock's eyes narrowed. "You have five seconds before I curse you into a chair."
Harry reached into his trunk and placed a single journal on the desk.
Hermione's.
"…what's this?," he whispered.
Harry met his gaze. "From the woman who can breaks your curse."
Silence slammed down like a dropped blade.
Hemlock's breath stuttered. "That's not possible."
Harry leaned forward. "You could to see your whole family break from the curse."
Hemlock's hands began to shake violently.
"You're lying."
Harry opened the journal to a marked page.
Hemlock read.
Then sank back in his chair as if his legs had given out.
"How… someone figured it out," he breathed. "I never saw—who is this woman—"
"She is someone who is going to change the world," Harry said simply.
Hemlock looked up at him, eyes suddenly sharp despite the tremor in his hands.
"Who are you?"
Harry did not answer immediately.
Instead, he placed his left hand on the desk and let the ring reveal itself.
Hemlock sucked in a breath.
"A Black," he whispered.
"Not yet," Harry said. "But I will be after a blood adoption ritual."
Hemlock laughed—a broken, incredulous sound. "Blood adoption?" he asked hoarsely. "In Britain? You might as well ask me to summon the old gods on the Ministry steps."
"I know it's illegal," Harry said. "I know it's dangerous but you will do it for the sake of your family."
Hemlock stared at him for a long moment.
"You want to be a Black by blood," Hemlock said. "Then you'll do it properly. No half-measures."
Harry nodded.
"Good," Hemlock said grimly. "Then sit down, boy. And start by telling me why you need to become someone else to survive."
Harry sat.
And began to tell the the back story he created—but honestly enough to matter.
Knockturn Alley breathed like a living thing.
Harry stepped into it without hesitation, cloak pulled close, presence deliberately sharpened. The alley reacted immediately—shadows deepened, whispers hushed, eyes tracked him from behind cracked windows and hanging signs.
This was a place that understood intent.
Harry had a list folded neatly in his pocket.
Two rituals.
No substitutes.
No compromises.
Hemlock's handwriting covered the parchment—ingredients marked, sources annotated, margins filled with blunt instructions.
Do not accept second-grade reagents.
Intimidate if necessary.
If they smile too much, leave.
Harry followed it to the letter.
The first shopkeeper—a hunched wizard with yellowed eyes—tried to palm off a diluted blood resin. Harry didn't raise his voice. He simply leaned closer and let a thread of magic coil around the man's wrist, tight enough to make the point without drawing attention.
"First quality," Harry said calmly. "Or I take your stock and your fingers."
The resin was replaced without another word.
In the next shop, he rejected powdered moonbone that had been cut with chalk. In another, he inspected pure silver himself, snapping it cleanly to test purity. Every time, the same pattern followed—hesitation, fear, compliance.
By the end, his trunk was heavy with power.
Ritual chalk harvested under specific stars.
Blood-ink preserved in stasis.
Black candles etched with sigils that predated wand magic.
Vessels, blades, threads, seals.
Everything was catalogued. Stored. Protected.
Harry considered Gringotts briefly as he sealed the trunk.
Then dismissed the thought.
Not yet.
Goblins were loyal to one thing only: leverage. They remembered every secret ever entrusted to them, and they sold memory as easily as gold when the price was right. Until the rituals were complete—until he was truly Black—he would not step into their halls.
After Knockturn Alley, Diagon Alley felt almost unreal.
Too bright. Too clean.
Harry moved through it like a ghost among shoppers, buying quietly—nutritional potions, preservation charms, preserved food. He avoided attention, paid in coin, and left before anyone could decide to remember his face.
At the Owlery, he prepared the parcel with care.
Food packed tightly. Potions cushioned. Wards layered to survive weather, pursuit, and suspicion.
The note was short.
Stay safe. Be strong.
Signed only:
—Helios
The owls launched into the sky, wings beating hard as they carried the weight away toward the hills.
Harry watched them until they vanished.
The cave was quiet when the owls arrived.
Sirius Black had learned to live in that quiet—the kind that pressed in on your ears, broken only by the crackle of fire or the distant call of something hunting. He sat near the entrance, back against stone, wand within reach, expecting Aurors at any moment.
Instead, he got owls.
Four of them.
They landed awkwardly, talons scraping rock, parcels thudding softly at his feet before they took off again without waiting.
Sirius stared.
He checked for curses first—old habit, sharp instinct—then carefully opened the bundle. The smell hit him immediately.
Real food, just like last time.
His stomach twisted painfully.
"Merlin," he breathed.
He found the note tucked between packets and unfolded it with hands that suddenly felt unsteady.
Stay safe. Be strong.
Signed:
—Helios
The name echoed in his head, sudden and sharp.
Helios.
He whispered it aloud before he realized he was doing it.
"…Helios."
The fire crackled.
His brow furrowed as something old stirred—memory without context, emotion without anchor. He rubbed a hand over his face, breathing slowly.
"That's… that's strange," he muttered.
The name felt familiar.
Too familiar.
He stared into the fire, eyes unfocused, and then—unbidden—the thought surfaced.
"Helios Alphard Black," Sirius murmured.
The words slipped out like they had been waiting.
His heart stuttered.
Alphard.
Uncle Alphard—the only one who had ever given a damn. The one who had left him everything when the rest of the family had already written him off as a disgrace.
The name he had once thought he might give a son.
If he ever had one.
Sirius shook his head sharply, as if that might dislodge the thought.
"Pull yourself together," he told himself hoarsely.
But even as he ate—slowly, carefully, savoring each bite like it might vanish—his mind kept circling back to the same impossible question.
Who is this Helios? Why is he sending him food?
The cave was quiet in the way only exhaustion could buy—no restless shifting. Sirius lay wrapped in a thin blanket near the dying embers of the fire, breath slow and even, body finally giving in after food, warmth, and days of relentless vigilance.
Harry stood at the edge of the cave and watched him for a long moment.
He had not come here to talk.
He had come because blood did not wait.
Fresh blood mattered. Ritual magic was cruel that way—precise and unforgiving.
Harry drew his hood deeper and stepped closer, every movement controlled, silent. The magic around him folded inward, swallowing sound, presence, even intent. To the world, he was nothing more than a shadow that belonged here.
Sirius did not stir.
Harry crouched beside him, heart steady despite the intimacy of it. Up close, Sirius looked worse than he had allowed himself to notice earlier—cheekbones too sharp, lips cracked, skin drawn tight with hunger and stress.
You deserved better, Harry thought, not for the first time.
He raised his wand.
A whisper-soft charm slid over Sirius like a second sleep—deeper, heavier, merciful. Harry waited, counting breaths, until even subconscious resistance faded.
Then he worked.
The blade he used was ritual silver, thin and narrow, etched with containment runes so fine they were nearly invisible. He pricked Sirius's palm with surgical precision, just enough to draw blood without pain.
Three drops fell into a waiting vial, glowing faintly as the runes sealed them.
Next, the hair.
Three strands, carefully selected. Long enough. Untouched by fire or blood or wandwork. Harry severed them cleanly, bound them with red thread, and slipped them into a second vial.
Throughout it all, Sirius slept on, unaware that his blood had just agreed to something it had never been asked before.
Harry stood, backing away slowly.
"Forgive me," he whispered—not because the act was wrong, but if the truth come out later, and it would hurt.
He left the cave as he had entered—unseen, unremembered.
Hemlock Manor was waiting.
The wards recognized him instantly this time, parting like curtains drawn aside for a long-expected guest. The old house thrummed with power, its stones etched with preparation and intent. Candles burned low but steady, their flames dark and unwavering.
Albert Hemlock stood at the center of the ritual chamber, sleeves rolled, hands already stained with ink and blood. He did not look up as Harry entered.
"You're on time," the old wizard said hoarsely.
"The blood is fresh," Harry replied, holding out the vials.
Hemlock took them reverently, inspecting the seals, nodding once in approval. "Good. That gives us one chance. If we fail, the magic will recoil. You will not survive a second attempt."
Harry stepped into the outer circle without hesitation.
"What about Sirius?" he asked.
Hemlock's mouth twitched. "He will feel nothing tonight. Later…" He shrugged. "Later, the magic will settle. He may feel… familiarity. Confusion. Blood remembers, even when minds do not."
Harry nodded. "That's acceptable."
Hemlock looked at him sharply. "This is not adoption in the sentimental sense," he warned. "This will rewrite you. Your magic. Your signature. Your inheritance lines.
"I know," Harry said.
The old wizard studied him for a long moment.
"You are not doing this for gold or power," Hemlock said quietly.
"No," Harry replied. "I'm doing it because it's necessary."
He raised his staff and struck the stone once.
The ritual circle ignited.
Runes flared to life beneath Harry's feet, ancient symbols crawling with power, older than Hogwarts itself. Blood was added. Hair burned. Names were spoken—not shouted, not declared, but acknowledged.
Hemlock's voice filled the chamber, low and relentless.
Harry felt it then—the pull, the pressure, the sensation of something vast turning its attention toward him. His magic flared instinctively, fighting, resisting, then—
Settling.
Accepting.
Pain lanced through him—not sharp, but deep, like his bones were being rewritten from the inside out. His chest burned. His left hand throbbed as the invisible ring blazed with sudden, undeniable heat.
Harry clenched his jaw and did not scream.
Hemlock slammed his staff down a final time.
"Done," he rasped.
The runes dimmed.
The candles guttered.
Harry dropped to one knee, breath coming hard, sweat soaking his clothes.
Hemlock stepped forward, steadying him with surprising strength.
"It's finished," the old wizard said softly. "Helios Alphard Black."
The name echoed.
Harry lifted his head slowly.
He felt… different.
As if a door that had always been closed had finally decided to recognize him.
Harry rose unsteadily.
"Thank you," he said.
Hemlock nodded. "Go. Before the magic finishes settling. The first sunrise matters."
Harry turned toward the door.
Behind him, Albert Hemlock murmured, almost to himself, "Merlin help them all."
And the world would soon have to learn what it meant to welcome a new Black.
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