Shades of Grey
By Orii15
Disclaimer: Do I look like J.K. Rowling to you? I mean, seriously, come on people.
A/N: Okay, I know it's been a long time. Here's the story:My grandpa died and then after that I had finals in school. So then I finally wrote this chapter and had in mind a certain place I wanted to get only by the time I'd gotten there the thing was about 30 pages long. So this is half of chapterzilla the rest of which I should have done by the end of the week. Enjoy.
Schedules were handed out at breakfast the next morning, right after I nearly had a heart attack when the owls delivering the mail swooped in through the window. Ginny grinned at me, and Collin laughed aloud—a friendly laugh though, not a ridiculing one.
Annoyance. "You're not going to do that every morning, are you?" said Sage. He was a serious looking boy with curly brown hair, a spattering of freckles not nearly as impressive as any of the Weasleys', and glasses with narrow rectangular frames that he pushed up his nose a little too often. Collin had assured me before that he wasn't really mean, just easily annoyed and twitchy when he was woken up by the screams of random dorm-mates at ungodly hours.
I shrugged "I hope not. I just forgot they did that is all."
Skepticism. "How could you forget that hundreds of owls fly into the Great Hall every single day to deliver mail? You weren't gone that long."
"I didn't forget. They caught me off guard."
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the guy who woke up screaming last night is easily caught off his guard."
"Shut up, Sage." Said Andrew Kirke amiably. He was short and skinny with brownish hair and wide face that usually held a broad smile.
Sage mumbled something inaudibly and took a huge gulp of coffee, grimacing as he burnt his tongue.
Excitement. "Hey!" said Colin, peering around the other two to look down the table, "Schedules are coming. Hope we don't get Double Potions on a Friday again, that was awful."
Sarcasm. "Schedules are coming?!" said Sage in a flat imitation of Collin "There's something you don't see every year."
Annoyance. "Shut up, Sage." Said Ginny. I was beginning to think that this was a sentiment repeated around Sage on a regular basis. "It's the first day of term and we have to be around you for the rest of the year so stop being a jerk for a bit and drink your coffee."
Exasperation. "Easy for you to say." Said Sage "You got a full night's sleep."
"Give it up, Sage." Said Kirke. "It's not like you aren't more than making up for losing a couple of minutes sleep. Can't you be pleasant or something? At least while I'm eating is all I ask."
Sage rolled his eyes. By this time McGonagall had gotten down to our part of the table and was handing out our schedules. Mine was in two colors, one for the classes I had with the fourth years and one for the ones I had with the fifth years—Potions, Transfiguration and Arithmancy. Colin was comparing our classes over my shoulder.
"All but three." He said happily.
"What three?" said Kirke "Is anyone else taking Divination? I don't want to be all by myself in that class if it's with the Slytherins again this year."
"I did tell you Divination was a useless subject." Said Ginny "Maybe you can drop it for a free period or something."
Kirke nodded absently "I'll probably need it. I heard fourth year Transfiguration is really hard."
"I'm not letting you be my partner this year either," said Sage "You always screw stuff up. You can work with Black and I'll be on my own."
"I don't think I'm in your Transfiguration, though." I said quietly
"That's not possible." Said Sage "What other class could you be in?"
"He got skipped." Said Ginny "Tim's in fifth year classes."
Sage snatched my schedule from me "How are you ahead?" he said, "I remember when you were here in first year, you never did anything. You just sat in the back and worked by yourself and then you didn't come back."
"They have different curriculum at Flinn's." I mumbled. "I'm only ahead in three things."
"Yea, right." Said Sage "And he's modest too, right?" he pressed the schedule back at me "You're ahead in the three hardest classes."
"Yea, well…" I couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"We should get to class." Said Ginny pointedly.
Classes weren't as bad as I remembered them being, and I found that it was easier for me now to work with a partner than it had been before. Sage continued being irritable at me for as long as he could manage. Colin told me that Sage was just one of those people who was always in a bad mood and more the better if he had a scapegoat to project that onto. I worked with Colin in our charms class and passed notes with him and Luna and Kirke during History of Magic—while Sage glared at us over his notes, which he was taking for the sole reason of having the pleasure of denying us a chance to study them before tests, according to Ginny. During Herbology, however, I found myself with out a partner until Luna approached me, wearing a pair of huge red earrings that resembled radishes. I smiled at her.
"Um, you don't have a partner, do you Luna?" I said. My voice was quiet.
Surprise. Delight. "No. Nobody wanted to work with me."
"Oh. Well, that's me as well. You want to be my partner?"
He wants to be my partner! Happiness. "Yes, that would be nice. It's much harder working by yourself."
"Yea, I know what you mean. I'll get the plant if you'll get the pot to replant it in."
"Right."
Luna was easy to work with and easy to talk to too, and although she had a habit of going off onto a completely random tangent, I liked talking to her. Luna was one person who always said what she was thinking and that meant she always meant what she said.
"I haven't seen you much since the train ride, Luna. Are Herbology and History of Magic the only classes Ravenclaw has with Gryffindor?" I moved my dragon's hide glove encased hand towards our plant, a voluminous bloom with bright petals, thorns and large fangs.
"No. We also have Potions with Gryffindor, but Ginny said you're taking that with the fifth years." Luna put one of her hands on the plant's stem just below the bud to hold it steady while I reached in to take the seeds from inside.
"Yea, I do. It's—actually I hated it yesterday, but we've only ever had one class so far." Grimacing I plunged my hand into the flower's mouth and felt around finding several round things I guessed were seeds. "It's not so much that I hate the class as I hate the people I'm taking it with." I made to pull my hand out but the plant bit down hard on my wrist. "Merlin!" I said.
It took both of Luna's hands and my free left one to free my right hand and it's meager handful of seeds.
"Are you okay?" said Luna
"Yea. It didn't get through the glove. It's not supposed to bite though, you think we did something wrong?"
Luna shrugged "Maybe if you held the plant and I got the seeds. My hands are smaller."
"Right. But if it bites you too, then we can always just trade it for a new one…or stun it, I guess."
"Have you talked to Malfoy since the train?" said Luna, who —to my slight annoyance—was proving much more apt at seeding the plant.
"Not since potions." I said, squeezing the bud of our plant a little too hard, so that it made a little noise like a growl and Luna had to pull her hand out quickly before it snapped down hard. "I've been avoiding him actually."
"Because he insulted your father." Said Luna. The look on her face was enough to tell me she knew it was more than that and was waiting to see if I'd tell her.
"Erm—sort of, yea." I said, staring at the ground. "There's more than that, but –it's complicated."
Luna nodded and reached into the plant again, not looking at me anymore than I was looking at her.
Tuesday night was my first Occlumency class with Snape. It felt strange to be finally learning Occlumency from a professor instead of a musty old textbook. It felt stranger to be learning it from a professor who hated me for no apparent reason other than my existence. When I arrived in Snape's office that evening he was waiting for me behind his desk, with a condescending sneer on his face. And this didn't surprise me. Nor did the fact that he was blocking me from hearing his thoughts. I took a seat opposite him at the desk and tried to keep my eyes off Snape and the many glittering jars on his walls because I didn't know what was in them and wasn't eager to find out.
"You're here on time at least." Said Snape. "Which is an improvement over most experiences I've had with your people." I could feel his gaze on me but continued to stare at my shoes. "Now," He went on "You have come to me to learn Occlumency. I shall not deny this request—because the headmaster gave it to me—but you must understand that to treat your particular, ah, affliction Occlumency will not act as a cure-all. You will need more than that to counter-act Subconscious Legilimency."
"What?" I said, looking up before I could help it and regretting it.
Snape glared at me "You will refer to me as 'sir', Black. Despite the fact that we are not in a classroom, I am still your professor and demand the necessary respect."
He caught my eyes for a second and then my gaze was hurriedly transferred back to my shoes "Yessir." I said quietly "But what did you mean, when you said Occlumency wouldn't be enough?"
"Occlumency is used to prevent others from entering ones mind. Your affliction, your subconscious Legilimency, is not an issue of others penetrating your mind, but rather of your mind uncontrollably penetrating those of the people around you. Obviously this means that more work and training must be used before you will be able to control it than if the situation called for Occlumency in and of itself.
"The problem is, Mr. Black, that for you to successfully control your mind you would have to use Occlumency against yourself which is exponentially harder than employing it against another person." Without looking up I could hear the sneer in his voice "Personally, I doubt you'll be able to do it, weak-minded as you appear to be, but the Headmaster asked me to attempt to teach you and I will not disobey him."
"Then what exactly do I have to do, sir?" I said "To use Occlumency against myself?"
"The first step" said Snape "Is to look me in the eye. You must not be afraid to make eye contact, it has no effect on your kind of legilimency."
I looked up. "Then why did you want me to look you in the eye, sir?"
"Stand up, Mr. Black. You must first learn to use Occlumency against someone else before turning it on your own mind. I shall count down from ten and then attempt to penetrate your mind. Your task is to stop me."
I stood, shifting my weight nervously as Snape began to count. He moved out from behind the desk and so I backed into the open space in the middle of the room and drew my wand as he had already done.
"Four" said Snape. I stiffened "Three…two…one. Legilimens."
And suddenly he was there, in my mind.
I was eleven, riding the Hogwarts Express for the first time. I had my knees drawn to my chest as if becoming physically small would make the voices quieter.
And there was Snape's voice, in my head. As if running a commentary on my memory as it flashed by. What he said—or thought or something like that—was Pathetic, Black.
I was six. There was that stupid psychologist again. Asking too many questions I didn't answer.
You are handing me weapons, Mr. Black.
I was twelve, trying not to look at the Daily Prophet with Sirius on it.
Have you forgotten the purpose of this exercise, Black!
I began to fight. I searched my mind, finding the place where Snape was and pushing him with all my might, not sure if that was the proper approach or not.
I was at Flinn's surrounded by the other boys, they were making jibes about Sirius and about me. This was just one time out of many and not the one I got expelled for. One of them shoved me, I fell to the ground and they all laughed.
"GET OUT!" I hadn't meant to shout this aloud but I had, meanwhile giving an almighty push at Snape's presence in my mind.
And then it was over. My head felt like it had been cleaved in two. I sank into the chair, breathing heavily like I'd just run a marathon.
Snape was staring at me. "In future, Mr. Black," he said finally " I would advise you to spend less time reliving your old memories, however precious they may be, and more time stopping the intruder to your mind. You lack focus, Black. You are too easily distracted, a quality you inherited no doubt from your father. Remember for next time that after you recalled what it was you were supposed to be doing you succeeded in less than a minute."
I was holding my head in my hands. "Are we doing that, again right now, sir?" I said, through gritted teeth. I'd never had a migraine before but they couldn't be much worse than this.
Snape registered the fact that I was in pain and thought for a second before saying "Once more."
I stumbled into my dorm half an hour later and near collapsed onto my bed, still fully clothed, not bothering to get under the covers.
"Tired, Black?" said Sage from across the room.
"Shut it, Sage." Said Colin.
I dreamed of Flinn's again that night and of Sirius and Leah and Malfoy and Death Eaters. All the while with the thoughts of the other boys in the dorm fluttering in and out of my head like strange birds or moths. When I woke up I was tangled in the quilt and I thought there might have been a bit of drool on my chin and the headache from the previous night had not left me, but at least I didn't wake up screaming.
At breakfast I got a letter from Leah. As usual her untidy handwriting meant it took a little while to decipher.
Dear Tim,
Hope Hogwarts is treating you well, or more specifically that the other students there are. Or at least better than what happened at Flinn's. You know what I mean, anyways, I've missed you—I know, I know it's only been about three days, but hey, I'm your mum, right? I'm allowed to miss you a lot. I've mostly been working a lot to make up for coming home to an empty apartment.
And that reminds me, I know we've already tried to talk about this, but I hope that talking with your dad didn't upset you too much. Thinking back on it I'm now of the opinion that it was a bad idea. I know you said it didn't upset you, but I also know you don't always speak your mind. Sometimes I have to guess what you're really feeling, and most times I guess close to right. So if you need to talk don't be afraid to owl me. (Only Dumbledore says to be careful with what you put in writing, so don't write anything you wouldn't want to be possibly intercepted. And your father says you may refer to him as 'Snuffles' in your letters so as not to say his name. ) And your dad also told me to tell you from him that you can owl him too if you have to. So I guess all said you've got one and a half dependable people to owl (and I think you know who the half is).
Not much to say about what's going on here, as I already said I'm just mostly working a lot. But that reminds me of something else I needed to tell you. I'm going to be away for maybe three weeks or a month at tops for work. Can't really give details here, obviously. But mostly I'll be doing stuff for my job. I'll try and write as much as possible, anyways and so that means you have no excuse not to write to me.
Much love sent here,
Leah
I frowned at the letter, though it was pretty much a typical Leah letter. My aching head was making it hard for me to think. I tucked the parchment into my bag and decided to write back later. I shoved my empty plate away and put my head down on the table.
That night I decided to start doing research about the curse Malfoy had used on me. The sheer size of the Hogwarts library made me feel like me chances of actually finding anything were lessened considerably, but this was all I had unless I could find a counter to the spell and Malfoy wanted an answer by Friday. I was there until the library closed, looking through the indexes of huge books of spells and flipping past random pages in hopes of turning up something by pure luck. All I ended up with was dust in my hair and a growing sense of dread in my chest.
There was no way I could say 'yes' to Malfoy, because that was simply unthinkable, and yet nothing good would come of my saying 'no' either. The threats he'd made on the train haunted me. What was the right choice here? Who could I ask? I remembered the letter from Leah that morning and decided to push the limits of the curse and see what I was able to put in writing. Any answers I could get on the subject, no matter how vague the question had to be, would be more than I had now. At the last second I decided to write to Sirius too, being a convicted murderer he'd have to know something about right and wrong as well.
I put quill to parchment but found I wasn't really sure what to say. Finally after starting over three times I had a letter that was fairly straight forward, and asked a relevant question that the curse let me say.
Dear Leah and Snuffles,
Hogwarts has been okay these last few days. There's not really much to say on the subject except that, yes, I've made some friends, no I haven't really beaten anyone up/been beaten up yet, and yes, I'm still hearing voices, but they're not causing me too much trouble or anything really.
But I have a question I need to ask you both. It's hard for me to explain the situation that has brought it up for various reasons, but I'd appreciate an honest answer. It's about right and wrong and choosing sides and that kind of thing. Hypothetically speaking, if there was a person who had a choice between right and wrong and he knew which was which more or less but he also knew that bad would come from both—i.e. both ways someone will get hurt and possibly die—then what should he choose?
This is sort of an urgent matter for me, and if you could both write back as soon as possible I'd really appreciate it. I'm sorry I can't give more details.
Write back soon,
Tim
I read it again and then copied it over and got both letters ready to mail. The question was not very specific but my hand cramped up if I tried to write about Malfoy or Death Eaters so this seemed to be as good as it was going to get. I walked up to the Owlery and after a little while managed to coax two of the school owls into taking my letters to Leah and Sirius.
Thursday passed too slowly for my liking. There was no response from Leah or Sirius when the owls came in at breakfast. I hadn't honestly expected anything so soon but that didn't mean I wasn't disappointed. I was beginning to feel more than a little panicked about the response Malfoy would want on Friday. This mostly resulted in my being more distracted and withdrawn than was usual. If my fellow fourth years noticed this than only Sage saw fit to comment on it, nudging me hard in the ribs with his elbow when I failed to respond to my name during role call.
"He's here physically at least, professor," said Sage "The presence of the rest of him has always been questionable anyways."
A couple of people laughed and Ginny and Colin both said, "Shut up, Sage," at the same time. I didn't look up from staring at the desk. I wasn't really interested in Charms at the moment—I was trying to figure out if there was a way I could get back to the library before my Occlumency lesson that night. I wasn't sure if it would even be any help to me if I could, after all I hadn't found anything the previous night and I'd been in there for a few hours. But the Hogwarts library was a really big place, which made me confident that there had to be something that would be useful to me in there. Somewhere among those myriad shelves was the book I wanted. The real question was if I was willing to take the one to a million odds of finding it in time. I would have about forty-five minutes to look if I skipped lunch and then perhaps another hour in between dinner and Occlumency—two if I skipped dinner.
The bell rang and I jumped then scrambled to put my things away in my bag, trying to remember what class I had next.
Concern. I wonder if he's sick or if he was always like this and I just forgot. Best not to let Sage notice anyways, he'll make a big deal."You okay?" said Colin, who was waiting for me to finish so we could leave together.
I shrugged "Fine." I lied "Stressed out a bit I suppose."
"Hogwarts' work harder than the stuff you had at your old school?"
"A bit." I stuffed my quill back into my bag and finally was able to close it and leave the room. "There's a lot more people here than I'm used to as well."
Colin grinned, "Was your old school one of those really tiny private schools? I almost went to one of those for secondary school, but then I got accepted here instead." Curiousity. Slight embarrassment.
"It wasn't small enough that everyone knew everyone else," I said, not meeting Colin's eyes "Just enough so that the people you knew were either pureblood snobs or their victims."
"Oh." Said Colin. We walked a bit in silence and then he said, "So which were you?"
"Which what?"
Curiosity. Some Mischievousness. "The two groups at your old school." He prompted, "Which one were you in?"
I met his eyes "I was most decidedly a part of the second group. I guess if I'd have been louder and meaner I would have ended up in the first one, but I was a transfer student and because they all knew about—I was in the second group."
"Oh." Said Colin again and then "Hey, you don't have Transfiguration with us, do you? Where are you going?"
"What?" I said and then I turned around and started running the other way. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was supposed to be going to Potions. Even moving as fast as I was I couldn't make up for the time I'd lost talking to Colin, I was going to be late. Nevertheless, I wasn't going to let Snape tell me I hadn't tried to get to class on time, I hurtled down the hallways then took the stairs to the dungeon three at a time and jumped the last few landed clumsily and kept going faster still. The bell rang when I was on the staircase and Snape was just closing the dungeon door when I got there, out of breath with my bag hanging lopsidedly on one shoulder.
"You're late, Black." Said Snape
"S-sorry, sir." I said trying to get back to breathing normally.
"That's five points from Gryffindor."
"Yes, sir."
"Take your seat, Black."
I saw Harry, Ron and Hermione looking curiously at me, but there weren't any empty seats on the Gryffindor side of the dungeon—every one had a partner. I kept walking over to the Slytherin side. Malfoy caught my eye and whispered something to the dark-skinned boy who was sitting next to him who glanced at me and then smirking, moved back a seat. I hesitated next to the only empty seat in the room.
"I believe I asked you to take your seat, Mr. Black." Said Snape "Another five points from Gryffindor."
Reluctantly, not looking at Snape or Malfoy or Harry, Ron and Hermione, I sat.
"I've been wanting to talk to you, Black." Said Malfoy "About that conversation we had on the train."
A/N: Well that's it. Cliff hanger?! Oh no's! We're DOOOOMed! and all that jazz. Review please, it only takes a second and it makes me happy.
A million thanks,
--Orii
