There were two crests on the first page.
Peverell.
Black.
I studied them for a moment, then pulled the lamp closer.
All right. Sleep could wait after all.
The copy was fresh, but it reproduced the original's ornate handwriting, old seals, and annotations made by several different people. Beneath the crests was a date.
1734.
Hedwig hopped from the bed onto the desk just as I spread out the remaining pages. Her beak immediately went for the corner of the parchment.
"No."
She stopped.
"I paid for that."
She hooted and settled beside the lamp.
I moved the document out of reach.
Agreement of Reciprocal Archival Access between House Peverell and House Black.
It sounded harmless. Yet the name alone had been enough to make me forget how tired I was.
I began to read.
The agreement concerned neither money nor land, nor any marriage between the families. The Peverells and the Blacks had undertaken to grant one another limited access to sections of their family archives.
Genealogical material. Historical records of magic. Selected ritual documentation. Records concerning external protective enchantments. Documents relating to specific conflicts and historical events.
I went back to the third item.
Ritual documentation.
"Of course."
Hedwig tilted her head.
"The Blacks couldn't just exchange invoices."
I read on.
The most important clause was on the second page.
The right to request access shall belong exclusively to the individual recognised by the relevant House as its representative by blood and succession.
Representative by blood and succession.
The surname alone wasn't enough.
The next few clauses explained what the authors meant. The right belonged to the person at the head of the family's principal line of succession. Other relatives did not acquire it merely through kinship, marriage, or ownership of a share of the family's property.
I read the definition again.
It didn't have to be someone exercising every function of a formal head of house. The agreement distinguished between possessing the right and being able to exercise it.
I rested my finger beside that sentence.
So I might be entitled to request documents even if the Ministry still considered me too young to manage half my own affairs.
At least, that was how I understood it.
The exclusions came next.
The agreement did not allow the Blacks to enter a private Peverell vault, read wills, or examine the protections surrounding the ancestral seat. The same restrictions applied to the Peverells in relation to the Blacks.
I smiled faintly.
They trusted one another enough to sign an agreement. Not enough to leave a key under the doormat.
Healthy.
The language grew more difficult after that. Within a few minutes, I began to suspect that lawyers three hundred years ago had been paid according to the length of their sentences.
The actual meaning was fairly simple.
The agreement granted the right to apply for access to specific materials. The other family could refuse, but only on grounds listed in the document, and the refusal had to be formally recorded.
Disputes could be referred to arbitration.
The arbitrator was Gringotts.
I sighed.
"Goblins found a way to make money out of family arguments."
Hedwig looked up from preening her wing.
"I respect that a little."
I turned the page.
Attached to the copy was an abridged record of previous requests under the agreement. The earliest entries consisted of nothing more than dates and decisions.
1761 — access granted.
1789 — access granted.
1812 — partial access.
1847 — refused. Arbitration.
There was an additional note beside the last entry.
Ruling in favour of House Peverell.
I raised an eyebrow.
My ancestors had taken the Blacks to arbitration over access to family secrets.
I was beginning to regret receiving only the abridged record.
1883 — access granted.
1914 — operation of the agreement temporarily suspended.
1921 — operation resumed.
1943 — access granted.
My finger paused on the date.
The war. Grindelwald. Tom Riddle at Hogwarts.
Then again, someone might simply have needed an old marriage record.
Without knowing what had been requested, I couldn't tell.
I moved on.
1958 — access granted.
The next entry was different.
1976 — application submitted by House Peverell. Unfulfilled.
A name appeared beneath it.
Applicant: Elias Peverell.
For a moment, I simply stared.
My father.
Five years before his last recorded visit to the restricted vault. Five years before he left the wand with Ollivander.
I pulled the document closer.
Scope of request: Section VI — restricted materials.
No title. No description of what he had been looking for.
The status was even more irritating.
Pending.
"Pending," I read aloud.
Hedwig didn't react.
"An application from 1976."
Still nothing.
Apparently, she had no comment on how quickly the Blacks dealt with their paperwork.
A brief explanation followed.
No acknowledgement of receipt from House Black.
Only below that was a later annotation, clearly separate from the earlier entry.
Operation of the agreement administratively suspended owing to the absence of an active representative of House Black.
I leaned back in my chair.
Those were two different things.
First, Elias had submitted a request and received no acknowledgement. Later, the entire agreement had been suspended.
The second might explain why nothing was happening now. It didn't explain what had happened in 1976.
Had the Blacks ignored him? Had their reply been lost? Had my father obtained the information some other way and never bothered to close the application?
For now, I had a name and a few lines.
But the name was Elias's.
That was enough to make me want to know more.
I returned to the later annotation.
No active representative.
The Blacks hadn't died out. Narcissa Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Andromeda Tonks—I could name three living members of the family without consulting a single register.
But the agreement didn't call for just any relative.
It required the representative of the principal line of succession.
And I knew someone who might fit that description.
Sirius Black.
An innocent man in Azkaban.
I rested my elbows on the desk.
I had known about him from the beginning. Pettigrew too. Throughout my first year, that knowledge had sat somewhere alongside all the other events I remembered from the books and had no intention of dealing with immediately.
Now the name Black had appeared in my father's documents.
That gave me a greater interest in the matter. It didn't give me a plan for getting anyone out of prison.
First, I needed to establish whether I was even thinking of the right person.
At the end of the document, I found a list of the sections covered by the agreement.
First—genealogy.
Second—legal records.
Third—ritual materials.
Fourth—external protections.
Fifth—history of conflicts.
Sixth—restricted materials.
Seventh—mutual deposits.
I went back to the sixth.
Naturally, that was the one Elias had chosen.
I took out a sheet of paper.
Black agreement — identify the authorised representative.
Below that, I added:
Elias, 1976 — Section VI. What was he looking for? Why did he receive no reply?
I hesitated, then wrote one more name.
Sirius Black?
I wasn't going to turn up outside Azkaban tomorrow and explain to the Dementors that I needed a signature.
Even for me, that would be getting ahead of myself.
I could, however, check the registers.
The Ministry had confirmed my own succession status. It ought to know who represented the Blacks as well.
I sighed.
Hedwig hooted.
"Yes. I'm looking forward to it too."
I didn't go to the Ministry the following morning.
I went for a run. Ate breakfast. Read almost forty pages of a book on protective runes and wrote two letters.
Then I repaired a quill.
After that, I tidied the desk.
At half past one, I realised I had been staring at the folded Black agreement for several minutes.
I put it under a book.
That evening, I read the document again, initially just to check the definition of a representative.
While I was there, I checked a few other things.
The next day, I stopped pretending I would leave it until the end of the week.
What interested me most was how Sirius's estrangement from his family affected his status.
I remembered Grimmauld Place. After Sirius died, the house passed to Harry, so being burned off the tapestry evidently hadn't stripped him of every right to the family's property.
That didn't prove he met the agreement's requirements.
It did give me a good reason to ask.
Two days after finding the document, I returned to the Ministry.
The same woman was sitting at the information desk. She looked up before I could speak.
"Mr Peverell."
I stopped in front of her desk.
"You remember me."
"The name Peverell doesn't come up here very often."
She glanced at the folder under my arm.
"What do you need this time?"
"Information about another family's succession status."
"Which family?"
"Black."
Her hand paused over the paperwork.
"Are you a member of the family or a party to succession proceedings?"
"No. I have an agreement between the Peverells and the Blacks. To make use of it, I need to know who can act on their behalf."
I took out the copy Gringotts had prepared.
The clerk read the first page, then found the clause I pointed out.
"1734," she murmured.
"I noticed that too."
She ran a finger over the seal.
"Gringotts has certified the copy. And the agreement's current status?"
"Suspended, not terminated. There's an annotation in the record."
I handed her the relevant page.
She read for a moment.
"The Ministry does not arbitrate disputes arising from this agreement."
"I know. I only want to establish whom I should approach."
"This will not grant you unrestricted access to the Blacks' private records."
"A name and confirmation of whether that person can act under the agreement will be enough."
She looked at me again, then reached beneath the desk.
A form appeared.
"R-twelve. State your legal interest and the scope of the information requested."
I picked up a quill.
The form was two pages long, although most of the second page consisted of a declaration listing information I wasn't requesting.
Wills. Private financial records. Marriage documentation. Details of the family's assets.
I wrote that I wished to identify the representative of House Black for the purposes of the attached agreement, then signed at the bottom.
The clerk read my answers.
"Level five. Family Status Archive. Room fourteen."
She handed me another slip.
"Your pass. Keep it with you."
"Thank you."
She nodded and turned to the next person.
Room fourteen contained two desks, several tall cabinets, and enough filing drawers to make me suddenly grateful for the catalogue Gringotts had prepared.
An elderly wizard sat behind the nearer desk. His hair was very thin, and the lenses of his glasses were very thick.
I handed him the pass, the form, and the agreement.
He read everything carefully. I made no attempt to hurry him.
After a few minutes, he indicated a chair.
"Your application concerns only the identification of the person authorised to represent the other party to this document?"
"Yes."
"You will not receive the full line of succession or information concerning the family's private assets."
"I understand."
He stood and disappeared between the cabinets.
At first, I looked around the room. Then I examined the titles of the books on the neighbouring desk. Eventually, I began to regret not bringing a book of my own.
The clerk returned after more than ten minutes with a slim grey folder.
He set it down in front of himself and opened it.
The first page appeared to be a family tree. I could see seals on the second. He spent longer on the third.
Then he returned to the definition in the agreement and compared the two documents.
I waited.
"House Black currently has no active administrative representative."
"So there's no one who can respond to my request?"
"Not at present. That does not mean there is no person entitled by succession."
I straightened.
"Who is it?"
The clerk glanced at my form.
"Sirius Orion Black."
I had expected the name.
Even so, hearing it here, over an open file, made my heart beat a little faster.
"Sirius Black in Azkaban?"
"Yes."
"He's still registered as the Black heir?"
"As the senior surviving representative of the relevant line of succession."
I looked at the agreement between us.
"But he can't exercise the rights that come with it."
"Some of those rights," he corrected. "His capacity to perform certain representative functions has been suspended in connection with his incarceration and the administrative restrictions imposed upon him."
"Does being in Azkaban automatically remove someone from the succession?"
"No."
"Does it suspend their ability to represent the family?"
"Not in every case. In Mr Black's case, the relevant restrictions are recorded in the register."
I took a moment to work through that.
Sirius was still the right person. He simply couldn't act as the right person.
The old agreement was stuck somewhere between those two statements.
"Has he been formally excluded from the principal line of succession?"
"Not in the register we are consulting."
"What about being burned off the family tree?"
The clerk looked up.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Walburga Black removed relatives from the family tapestry. Does that have any legal significance?"
I couldn't tell whether the question surprised him or whether it was the fact that I had asked it.
"Symbolic family practices do not automatically alter succession status in Ministry records. They would have to be accompanied by a valid legal act."
I almost smiled.
You could blast your own son's face off a tapestry, and a clerk would still ask for the proper paperwork.
"What about a will?"
"The contents of wills are private information."
I nodded.
I didn't need the full history of Walburga's disputes with her son. At least, not today.
"Can any of the other Blacks act under the agreement in his place?"
The clerk consulted the copy again.
"Not on the basis of kinship alone. The document assigns the right to the representative of the principal line of succession. It makes no provision for automatic substitution by members of collateral branches."
"Narcissa Malfoy?"
"She does not meet the specified condition."
"Andromeda Tonks and Bellatrix Lestrange either?"
"Neither."
So there was no simple way around the problem involving a visit to the Malfoys.
A pity.
I didn't know whether Narcissa would let me into the family archives, but at least she wasn't guarded by Dementors.
"Can Sirius's capacity to represent the family be restored?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Through an appropriate change in his legal status or the lifting of the restrictions. The precise procedure would depend on the grounds for such a decision."
"Release from Azkaban?"
"That could provide grounds."
"Having his conviction overturned?"
The clerk closed the folder for a moment.
"I do not work for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Here, you may establish how Mr Black's current status affects the exercise of rights under this agreement. Not how to pursue his case."
He was right.
I was already moving beyond the question I had come to ask.
I looked at the form, wondering how much more I could establish without submitting another one.
"What document provides the basis for suspending his capacity to represent the family?"
That still concerned the agreement.
The clerk opened the folder and found the relevant entry.
"An administrative order associated with his incarceration."
"May I have the reference number and date?"
He dictated both.
I wrote them on a separate sheet.
November 1981.
"And the judgment?"
The wizard removed his glasses.
"There is no judgment in this file."
I knew Sirius hadn't been given a trial. Even so, the answer made me tighten my grip on the quill for a moment.
"Because these aren't criminal case records."
"Correct."
"So this doesn't establish whether a judgment exists."
"Precisely."
He put his glasses back on and looked at me expectantly.
I let it go.
The absence of a judgment from a family file proved nothing. Knowing the books made it easy to see an ordinary missing document as confirmation of everything I remembered.
On paper, I had considerably less.
A name.
A status.
The reference number of the order preventing the agreement from being acted upon.
Enough for today.
"I'd like written confirmation of this information."
"A certificate for the purposes of the agreement you've submitted?"
"Yes. Confirming that Sirius Black remains the authorised representative but cannot currently act under it."
The clerk nodded.
"We can issue a document limited to that purpose."
"How many forms?"
"One."
"I'm getting used to this."
He slid another sheet towards me.
I left room fourteen almost an hour later.
The certificate was short.
I appreciated that.
House Black.
Authorised representative by succession for the purposes of the specified agreement: Sirius Orion Black.
Below that was a note concerning his suspended representative capacity, along with the reference number of the document imposing the restriction.
I read it once more, standing to one side of the corridor.
I had confirmed what I expected. That didn't mean I was any closer to reading the materials in Section VI.
At least I now knew where the easy part of the search ended.
Another application to the archive wouldn't be enough. Nor would a letter to Narcissa or presenting my signet at the right desk.
To follow this route any further, I would have to involve myself in the case of a man imprisoned in Azkaban.
I put the certificate away.
On the way back, I sat down on a bench and took out my notebook.
I had several earlier questions beneath the name Black. I crossed out two and wrote down what I had learned.
Relevant representative: Sirius Orion Black.
Representative capacity suspended — Azkaban.
Order reference and date: see certificate.
My quill paused above the next line.
I could start asking about access to his incarceration records. Look into the rules for contacting prisoners. Try to interest someone older, more influential, and more patient with the Ministry.
Each possibility led to more questions.
Why Sirius in particular?
Why did I suspect he was innocent?
What did I know about Pettigrew?
I didn't have Peter standing in front of me in human form, or evidence I could simply place on a clerk's desk. I knew where to look for the rat. That wasn't the same as having a plan to catch him, expose him, and stop him from escaping.
I could try to come up with one.
I didn't want to deal with it now.
That answer was less elegant than all the sensible reasons I had already listed for myself, but it was closer to the truth.
I had gone to the Ministry to investigate my father's agreement. I had no intention of leaving with a resolution to spend the rest of the summer challenging Sirius Black's incarceration.
I felt sorry for him. Not enough to set everything else aside immediately.
I looked at my notes.
At least I didn't have to pretend the Peverell archives had suddenly made his innocence more important. They had made it more important to me.
I remembered a better opportunity from the books. Third year, Lupin, the Marauder's Map, and a series of events that had almost led to Pettigrew being exposed.
Almost.
I couldn't simply assume everything would work itself out. I knew perfectly well that it hadn't.
But if I was going to get involved one day, I would rather do it with more than a name in an old agreement and the belief that I would somehow manage.
I added:
Sirius's case — return to this later.
For a moment, I looked at the last word.
Then I underlined it once.
Elias's application from 1976 was still a separate question. Sirius's incarceration didn't explain why my father had received no answer several years earlier. Perhaps there was something about it in his correspondence.
I also had a catalogue, the fund's history, a locked vault, and a house I still couldn't locate.
I wasn't stuck.
One route had simply turned out to be considerably more difficult than the others, at least for now.
I closed the notebook.
Hedwig hooted when I returned to the room.
I put the folder on the desk and took out the certificate.
"I found out what I wanted to know."
She tilted her head.
"More or less."
I slipped the document into the Black agreement and set the whole thing aside.
"That can wait."
Hedwig watched my hand.
For a moment, I touched nothing.
Then I reached for the catalogue of Elias's documents.
The owl made a noise suspiciously like a sigh.
"This is a different problem."