Dinner at the Addams household was, as it turned out, more ritual than meal.
Harry had been dressed in a high-collared black tunic and matching trousers, accented with a faintly shimmering waistcoat that Wednesday assured him was made from the threads of funeral shrouds. He wasn't sure if she was joking.
He wasn't sure anyone was ever joking.
At precisely eight o'clock, the great bronze gong beside the hearth was struck by Lurch with a mallet the size of Harry's torso. The echo shook the chandeliers and caused a murder of crows on the roof to take flight in ragged formation.
From every corner of the house, the Addams family converged.
XXXX
The dining room was a cavernous chamber lit by candelabras made of rib bones and iron. The long table could have seated twenty, but only seven places were set; eight, Harry realized, if you counted the place where Thing sat perched on a velvet cushion, a dainty napkin tied around his wrist.
The centerpiece was an enormous stuffed armadillo resting atop a bed of black roses.
Harry sat between Wednesday and Morticia.
Opposite him sat Gomez, beaming behind a glass of something dark and smoking.
Pugsley plopped down with a grin, his shirt freshly singed and his pockets clinking with mysterious metal.
Lurch entered last, bearing the first course, bowls of steaming snail soup.
The snails were still moving, and Harry eyed the bowl as it was set before him. A single snail lifted its eyestalk to meet his gaze and sank below the broth with what Harry swore was tragic resignation.
He tried not to gulp audibly.
"Please," Morticia said with eerie warmth, "eat as much as you like. They're freshly dug."
"Hand-picked from the graveyard," Wednesday added. "They have a stronger flavor when raised near decomposing flesh."
Harry picked up his spoon with the hesitation of a man defusing a bomb.
Gomez slurped his with theatrical delight, licking his lips. "Ah! Like the muddy kiss of a swampy lover."
Pugsley poured something black from a flask into his bowl. It sizzled ominously.
Harry steeled himself, dipped the spoon, and tasted.
To his shock… it wasn't bad.
It was garlicky. Earthy. A little spicy. Slightly alarming in texture, but warm.
And oddly comforting.
He took another bite.
Morticia watched him fondly, and Thing gave him an approving tap on the wrist.
XXXX
Dinner continued in increasingly strange fashion.
The second course was charred crow with nightshade gravy.
The third was a salad of black moss and pickled roots that glowed faintly in the candlelight.
Gomez regaled them with tales of sword duels in Montevideo, where the loser was forced to write sonnets to the winner's mustache. Morticia chimed in with a story about the time she tried to summon a storm spirit on a bet and accidentally cursed an entire cruise ship with eternal fog.
"Tragic, really," she sighed. "They still haven't docked. But the romance was exquisite."
Wednesday taught Harry how to politely reject the ghost that sometimes tried to pass phantom peas across the table ("Just say, 'Not now, Eustace.' He'll understand.")
Pugsley challenged Harry to a beetle-eating contest. Harry declined with dignity.
"Soon," Pugsley promised ominously.
Harry laughed.
A real laugh.
The kind that bubbled up from somewhere untouched by cupboards and cold stares and years of not-belonging.
No one glared at him.
No one told him to be quiet.
He wasn't a freak here.
He was family.
XXXX
As dessert arrived—a towering, wriggling black pudding with sugared scorpions on top—Harry leaned back, full and a little dazed.
That's when the chandelier shook.
Everyone paused.
The flames flickered.
A gust of wind howled through the room, though the windows were shut.
And then—like a horror movie director calling "Action!"—the double doors at the far end of the dining room burst open.
A figure strode in with the confidence of a man who'd just risen from the grave and was delighted about it.
Uncle Fester had arrived.
He was bald, pale, and round, with dark-rimmed eyes that gleamed like a mad scientist's daydream. He wore a long black coat that trailed slightly behind him and gave off a faint whiff of ozone and something vaguely sulfuric. He looked like he'd just been electrocuted and probably had been.
"Sorry I'm late!" he bellowed, arms flung wide. "Had to recalibrate the lightning rod! I finally got it to summon bolts in the shape of swans!"
Gomez stood immediately, grinning like a man who'd just been handed a loaded cannon.
"Fester, you incandescent goblin, you've returned!"
The two embraced with the force of two atomic bombs, greeting each other midair. Sparks literally flew, and Fester yelped in delight as Gomez clapped his back hard enough to produce an audible thwack.
Morticia rose and kissed Fester on both cheeks.
"We saved you a bowl," she said. "Though I fear the snails may have expired."
"Oh, don't worry about me," Fester grinned, holding up a jar of something pickled and squirming. "Brought my own."
He turned, then noticed Harry.
His eyes narrowed.
"Who's this?" he asked, squinting.
Everyone looked to Morticia.
"This," she said proudly, "is Harry Potter."
Fester blinked. "The Harry Potter?"
Harry swallowed. "Um. Hello."
"He'll be living with us," Wednesday said firmly. "He's mine."
Fester's face split into a grin.
"Ohhhhhh excellent!" he cackled, stomping forward and clapping Harry on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his teeth. "A new Addams! That calls for a celebration!"
"We already had one," Morticia said smoothly. "You're just in time for scorpion cake."
"YES!"
He took the seat beside Harry, still buzzing with chaotic glee.
Harry, still reeling from the shoulder slap, gave a shaky smile.
Fester leaned in conspiratorially.
"If you ever want to help me build a ghost cannon, just say the word."
Harry stared.
"…What's a ghost cannon?"
"You fire ghosts at things," Fester whispered with glee. "Angry ghosts."
"…Cool," Harry whispered, unable to hide his excitement.
Fester gave a delighted squeal and dug into the cake with a fork shaped like a trident.
Harry took a bite of his own slice—and yelped as one of the sugared scorpions twitched.
Wednesday looked pleased.
"You're adapting quickly," she said.
Harry exhaled.
"I think… I think I'm going to like it here."
Morticia reached across the table and gently tucked a strand of hair behind his ear.
"You are home now, my darling."
Gomez raised his glass.
"To Harry!"
The family echoed it, some with grins, some with gleeful howls.
And at the far end of the table, Thing waved his little napkin in triumph.
XXXX
The manor had fallen into its usual symphony of nocturnal murmurs.
Doors creaked even when no one passed through them. Wind whispered lullabies through the chimneys. Far down in the garden, an owl hooted at something unseen, followed shortly by the faint rattle of chains from the family crypt.
Harry lay beneath the heavy velvet blankets of the guest bed, though Morticia had already called it his room. The mattress was firmer than he was used to, but it was warm. The sheets smelled faintly of cedar, ash, and roses. A low-burning lantern in the shape of a skull glowed from the nightstand, its flickering light casting dancing shadows across the walls, as though the room itself was alive and breathing slow, quiet breaths.
Morticia sat at his bedside, her silhouette backlit by candlelight.
She had not hurried him.
She'd helped him change into black silk pajamas—"Enchanted to be wrinkle-free," she'd said with a wink—and asked if he'd liked the dinner. He told her it was the most exciting (and slightly terrifying) meal he'd ever had.
She smiled, brushing back his fringe. "That's how you know it was a success."
And now she simply sat there, fingers folded neatly in her lap, her expression calm and watchful, as if guarding him from even the shadows.
Harry turned his head toward her.
He hadn't meant to say anything. He really hadn't.
But it had been building inside of him all evening, since the soup, the chandelier, Fester's arrival, and the moment Wednesday had declared that he was hers.
He blinked rapidly, lips pressed tightly together, trying not to make a sound.
But Morticia Addams missed nothing.
Her voice came soft. "Darling?"
Harry sniffed once.
Then, without a word, he sat up.
And threw himself into her arms.
Morticia didn't flinch. She didn't gasp or hesitate.
She opened her arms without pause and drew him close, gently folding her cool, graceful limbs around his trembling frame.
Harry's small hands clutched her shawl tightly as he buried his face against her shoulder.
"I-I'm sorry," he mumbled, his voice muffled and choked. "I just… I don't know why I'm crying."
"You're mourning," she said softly, brushing her hand through his hair. "Grief is not always for the dead, Harry. Sometimes it's for the things we lived without. The childhoods we should have had. The love we were denied."
He didn't answer, only nodded shakily, fingers still gripping her as if she might vanish.
"Thank you," he whispered, barely audible.
"For what, my sweet one?"
"For saving me."
Morticia's embrace tightened just slightly.
She closed her eyes and rested her cheek atop his hair.
"You needed only to be seen," she murmured. "And heard. And held. That is not saving, darling. That is belonging. And you belong here."
His breath hitched again, and he clung tighter.
She let him stay there as long as he needed, minutes, perhaps hours; time meant little in a house ruled by shadows and moonlight.
When he finally pulled back, eyes red-rimmed but calmer, Morticia cupped his cheek with one icy hand.
"Do you know what it means to be an Addams?" she asked gently.
Harry shook his head.
Morticia's smile was slow and proud, touched with something fierce.
"It means we do not flinch from darkness. We celebrate it. We do not conform, we define ourselves. We love without shame. We protect our own. And when the world tells us we don't belong…"
Her fingers brushed his temple, where the lightning bolt scar still pulsed faintly beneath the skin.
"…we remind it why it fears us."
Harry stared up at her, awestruck.
"You may not bear our blood," she continued, "but blood is only part of the story. Love, loyalty, power, choice… these are the true ties of family."
Harry blinked again, a single tear slipping down his cheek.
"And I choose you," she said.
He swallowed. "I've never had a family choose me before."
"Well, now you have several," Morticia said with a smirk. "A cousin who will try to electrocute you before breakfast, a sister who may attempt to decapitate you in the name of play, and a living hand who considers you a dear friend already."
Harry gave a damp, tired laugh.
"And me," Morticia added, leaning down to press a kiss to his brow. "Who will not let this world take you back."
Harry stared at her.
Then slowly, he nodded.
"I want to learn," he said. "What it means to be one of you."
Morticia stood, smoothing her gown.
"And you will. In time. You'll learn to walk through the world like it belongs to you. To speak to shadows. To smile in the face of fear."
She turned down the lamp, letting the skull's glow dim to a faint ember.
"Sleep now, my little serpent," she whispered. "You are safe. You are seen. You are home."
And with that, Morticia Addams glided from the room.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Harry lay back in bed, the silk sheets wrapped around him like a cocoon.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time, eyes heavy, heart full.
And for the first time in years…
He slept.
Peacefully.