Title: Stronger Than Sunlight
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Content Notes: AU (Harry didn't grow up with the Dursleys), discussion of canonical child abuse, Slytherin Harry Potter, angst, drama, present tense
Pairings: None, gen
Wordcount: 3800
Summary: Everything goes smoothly with Harry's Hogwarts letter, enough that Dumbledore never needed to send Hagrid to escort Harry to Diagon Alley. But things stutter to a halt for several observers when Harry arrives at Hogwarts for his Sorting.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Songs of Summer" fics, short stories being posted during summer between the solstice and the first of August, and primarily intended as one-shots. As a result, I don't know if I will continue this or not.
Stronger Than Sunlight
"The firs' years, Professor McGonagall."
Minerva accepts the string of students from Hagrid with a smile. "Thank you," she says briskly to him, and then turns and leads the students towards the Great Hall. When she reaches the shut doors, she turns and scans them with eyes that have seen more than fifty years of Sortings. She can usually tell where most of them are going, who will be the most trouble, and so on.
There, yet another Weasley with a smudge on his nose. Minerva makes sure to mention tidying themselves up in the speech she gives, while she locates an obvious Malfoy, an excited-looking girl who might be going to Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, a nervous boy who might faint if he has to walk too fast, and—
There. Minerva hopes no one notices her sharp intake of breath. At least none of the children look at her.
Harry Potter. His dark hair and green eyes are unmistakable, even if Minerva can't see his scar at the moment because he's standing with his face in profile to her, talking quietly with a weedy, pale boy. She would know him anywhere.
His clothes do cause her to blink, though. Minerva remembers her impression of those terrible Muggles well, even after all these years. She's surprised that they would purchase him such good robes, soft black ones that rustle around him as he turns and moves towards the front of the pack.
Well, perhaps she misjudged them. Stranger things have happened. Unlike some people on staff, Minerva doesn't think her judgment is infallible.
She steps into the Great Hall to announce the arrival of the first-years, and watches as some of the young ones crane their heads back to absorb their first sight of the floating candles and the enchanted ceiling. The excited girl is chattering away to anyone who will listen about what she read in Hogwarts, A History. Minerva mentally marks that one for Ravenclaw, and as she places the Sorting Hat on the stool, manages to keep an eye on Mr. Potter.
He's smiling. Minerva holds in the impulse to smile back, and instead takes out the scroll and calls the first name.
She's glad that Harry Potter is relaxed and calm, glad that he apparently hasn't walked into the magical world with no idea of his fame or what happened to his parents. Perhaps Petunia Evans managed to put aside jealousy and spite after all, and make a good mother.
Severus tightens his grip on the stem of his goblet as he watches the names count down, closer and closer to that dreaded name.
He knows what he's going to see. Spoiled arrogance, the remnants of James Potter and Lily Evans mixed together in an unholy stew. Seven years of the boy in Gryffindor—although if Severus is lucky, only five of them to be spent dealing directly with the brat in class—and rushing around sticking his nose where he shouldn't, breaking rules, trying spells too advanced for his level and probably having them work, flaunting the Potter wealth, bullying people different from him.
The vision is so clear in Severus's mind that for a moment after Minerva calls "Potter, Harry!", Severus has to blink it away like an afterimage to see the boy who's walking towards the stool.
The boy has glasses, of course. But they have square frames and seem to be made of bronze, which at least is a change from his blasted father. And he has green eyes, but the expression on his face isn't arrogant or excited or nervous. It's just accepting, happy, as if this is another in a long series of conquests for him to make.
Severus sneers. So he's gone out the other side of arrogant and emerged into a world where he's complacent about everything, has he? It'll be up to Severus to shake that complacency, to make Potter realize that he can't run around just doing whatever he likes as one of Albus's darling rule-breakers—
"SLYTHERIN!"
Severus stares as Potter takes off the Hat, which crowned his head not long at all, and starts towards the table in silver and green. The Hall is mostly stunned silent, but one person is clapping. Severus looks towards who it is in numb shock, wondering if one of his older students mistakes Potter being in their House for a coup instead of a disaster.
It's Theodore Nott, on his feet and applauding. The applause spreads up and down the table, until by the time Potter reaches Nott's side, most of the Slytherins and a few of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs are clapping, too. The Gryffindors still seem as if they've been hit by a Confundus Charm.
"Really?" one of the Weasley twins asks loudly into the silence.
That looses a storm of chattering and hissing and shouting and whispering, but Minerva snaps her scroll out and calls loudly, "Rivers, Oliver!" Bless her common sense.
Severus draws his own glance away from Potter and stares into his goblet. It seems that there are worse things than a rule-breaking Gryffindor Potter striding around the school and flaunting his privilege.
Severus is torn between drowning himself in Firewhisky and laughing hysterically. He settles for a few gulps from his goblet and sidelong looks at Potter and Nott—who are conversing like old friends—and ones at Albus—who appears to have aged several decades in one instant.
Severus doesn't know why that last has happened. Can Albus really be that devastated by Potter being Sorted into a House that wouldn't have been anyone's first guess for him? Does he think that he can't favor Potter now, can't guide him down whatever ridiculous path to being a savior he was going to?
If he does think that…
Severus's mouth tightens. Well, he'll simply have to ensure that having Potter in Slytherin changes nothing very much, doesn't hurt the other students who have a real place there. If that means occasionally defending Potter from the Headmaster's heavy hand, then that's what he'll do.
Albus sits behind his desk and clasps his hands to keep them from shaking. He tells himself, over and over, that it's too soon to be sure of what destiny awaits Harry Potter. One coincidence isn't enough to predestine Harry to anything.
But that means almost nothing against the voice of his experience whispering, Tom. He's in Slytherin like Tom, he has one of them already eating out of his hand like Tom had Orion Black when he came to his own Sorting, and he has fame to achieve things that Tom never dared dream of as a student.
Albus closes his eyes. No, he cannot tell exactly what will happen without speaking with the boy. He'll have to do that as soon as possible, to learn if Harry just happens to be different than Albus thought he was, or if his relatives treated him better than Albus thought—feared—they would, or if—
It could be better. Everything could be better. Petunia might have overcome her jealousy the way you hoped, and she would have raised him to be confident. The Hat could have read that confidence as a reason to put him in Slytherin.
Albus sighs and shoves himself back from the desk. Things will look better in the morning with a little sleep. And he'll wait at least until the end of the first fortnight to speak to Harry. That will make him feel less pressured, and give him a chance to act like a normal student, a normal child. Albus will receive reports from his professors.
He goes to bed with his thoughts clashing and chasing each other around. He's paranoid. The cost if he doesn't question matters is too great. No child should have to bear the weight that the expectations of their world will place on Harry Potter. Harry Potter might well grow into a second Tom if the world spoils him, the way Albus was trying to avoid by leaving him in a safe, hidden place.
But he can make no decisions without more information.
Minerva can't help her darting stares when Harry Potter sits in the back of the classroom with Theodore Nott, of all people. And as a Slytherin, of all Houses!
There's also a girl with him who answers to the name Pansy Parkinson when Minerva calls the roll, leaning over to laugh quietly at something Mr. Potter says. Then she makes a remark of her own, and Potter ducks his head to put his hand over his mouth as he laughs.
"Mr. Potter," Minerva says crisply.
He immediately sits up and turns to face her. "Yes, Professor."
"Please tell me some of the reasons why Transfiguration can be dangerous for the average practitioner." It's what she just told them, but a student who wasn't paying attention wouldn't be able to tell her. If Potter can retain information despite not paying attention on the surface or taking detailed notes, she'll let him be.
As long as his laughter and talking doesn't get too loud, of course.
Potter's face assumes a contrite expression. "My apologies, Professor, if I seemed like I wasn't listening. It can be dangerous because the theory behind it is complicated, mistakes can be difficult to repair or even fatal, and people can think they're better at it than they really are."
Minerva has to nod. It's a good summation of what she already said, but in slightly different words, so he isn't just parroting. "Very good, Mr. Potter. In future, please keep the talking and laughter down to a minimum."
"Yes, Professor."
Minerva goes back to her lecture, keeping one eye on Potter, Nott, and Parkinson. Potter has got out parchment, quills, and ink now, and so have the other two. Potter takes fewer notes than they do, but that's not a crime, and he remains focused on Minerva for the rest of the lesson.
Well enough.
Severus doesn't let himself pause on Potter's name when he calls the roll for the first Gryffindor-Slytherin Potions class, but he really, really wants to.
And then, because he does have to do something to ease the pressure building up inside himself, he throws out a question as a test.
"Mr. Potter. Tell me the properties of aconite that make it particularly effective when added to the Wolfsbane Potion."
It's an absurd question, one that Potter will never be able to answer no matter how confident he is or how much time he might have spent studying his Potions textbooks before he came to class under advice from the older Slytherins that he should know them. The answer isn't in the textbooks. Severus will get an opportunity to vent his temper, and he can go back to having a normal disastrous class because of the dunderheads, instead of because of his own temper.
Potter sits up a little. A challenging glint has invaded his eyes, and he ignores the confused whispering coming from the other students. "Aconite has a connection to the full moon in legend and lore, Professor. Muggles sometimes believed it was an herb that you could consume to become a werewolf. It also stabilizes dragon's blood and unicorn tail hairs when added to the potion in between them. The mythological meaning and the stabilizing properties are what make it good for the Wolfsbane Potion."
Utter silence. Severus becomes gradually aware that more of his students are staring at him than at Potter, and snaps his mouth shut.
"Fifteen points to Slytherin," he says, and turns to question a Gryffindor—yet another Weasley, when will they stop multiplying?—about a much simpler question that, of course, he gets wrong. Severus happily takes points and acts as if all is right with the world.
Of course, it isn't, even before Potter and Nott work together to create a flawless Boil Cure Potion. When he thinks about it, Potter's correct answer to the question tells Severus a great deal, and not just that he studied before he came to school.
It tells Severus exactly who raised him.
And that makes a brewing darkness cloud his mind. He will have to involve Albus right away. Both the Unbreakable Vow he swore to protect Potter and his own commitment to making sure the Dark Lord does not return insist on it.
"Ah, Harry, my boy. I must say that I expected you to come by yourself."
Albus smiles at Harry, at the boy who smiles back at him with no trace of Tom's advanced guile but an amused look in his green eyes that troubles Albus, and ignores the man who sits in the other chair. As much as possible, he will interact with Harry, and not—
Not the disaster the other man represents.
"I don't know why you expected that, Albus," says Valerius Nott, crossing his legs and giving Albus a smile so bland he might be under an Apathy Charm. "After all, it is highly unusual for the Headmaster to call a child to his office when that child has committed no offense in school, and in such circumstances, one might expect the child's legal guardian to be with him or her."
"You are not Harry's legal guardian. Petunia Evans Dursley is."
"No, actually. I think you will find that the paperwork all lists me." Nott holds out the paperwork that's sealed with an official Ministry seal.
Which means less than nothing, of course. Nott is one of the many Death Eaters who walked free through a combination of bribery, blackmail, and pretending that Voldemort used the Imperius on him. Albus nonetheless takes the documents and looks through them carefully, hoping to find a loophole that Nott has missed and he can use.
There's nothing. For every line where Nott has signed, there's a matching one with Petunia's signature.
Albus closes his eyes to keep the ancient look that wants to overwhelm him from showing up on his face, and hands the documents back. Then he turns to Harry. He will have to use the direct appeal after all. "Harry, do you understand that I put you with your relatives for a reason?"
"Yes, sir. You were afraid that I would grow up with a swelled head. Or you were afraid that Death Eaters would find me."
Albus blinks. That's a more reasonable response than he expected, given who has raised this child. He looks at Nott, who only folds his arms and smirks.
"I think you should listen to Harry, Albus. Isn't that the reason you summoned us here in the first place?"
Albus faces Harry. "You know that, and yet you left her?"
"She wasn't very kind to me," Harry says quietly, and looks at Albus with a faint, faraway, sad look in his eyes. It might be feigned, the product of Nott's training, but Albus actually doesn't think so. It's too genuine. "She made me sleep in a cupboard—well, both her and Uncle Vernon did that—and she made me do chores all the time, and they took food away from me, and she swung a frying pan at my head once. And they didn't tell me anything about magic or my parents. They said they were drunkards who died in a car accident. They called me a freak. I didn't know what I was doing when my magic shouted for Uncle Valerius."
Albus blinks. "Shouted?"
Harry nods. "He said he heard a shout, a voice begging for someone to save me." Harry flushes, but keeps his head up and his attention focused on Albus. "I mean, I was just a little kid then. He asked the voice where it was, and I managed to give him the address before I passed out."
"Passed out," Nott adds, smiling at Albus, "because of wounds that his cousin gave him in a beating with several of his friends."
"I was five." Harry cuts off and closes his eyes. The words are cutting through Albus, too, worse than a Severing Charm. "I didn't let Uncle Valerius do anything to Dudley, because he was just a kid like me. But he had Aunt Petunia sign those papers, and he cursed Uncle Vernon so that he couldn't hurt anybody again."
"Such an admission—"
"Those curses are perfectly legal, as you know," Nott says affably. "They are often placed on the parents of Muggleborns who have harmed their children, as an alternative to taking the children away. Something I understand you find more palatable than giving the children to magical parents who might be Death Eaters." His smile widens.
"I feel that you cannot have told Mr. Potter of your past, to put it in such terms," Albus says, and smiles back.
"Oh, no, that was one of the first things he did," Harry says, and tightens the hold of his hands around his knees. "He said that he could give me somewhere else to stay. Or he could take me to the Ministry. But I didn't know who had left me with the Dursleys, and I was afraid that I would go back there if anyone knew. And Uncle Valerius was the one who came to help me. And Theo is my brother. I didn't want to leave him."
Albus stares at him helplessly. He knew—yes, he knew that Harry would have a dark and difficult time at Petunia's house. But he never thought that it would be bad enough to make a Death Eater's home look good by comparison.
And while he could definitely make legal trouble for Nott, if he wanted to, that would only make Harry resent him. Particularly if he sees young Theodore as a brother. That is a bond harder to break than one with a parental figure whose shortcomings Albus could point out. Theodore is only a child, as well. Harry probably has no reason not to be loyal to him, has probably never seen him do anything that would make Harry reject him, even bullying someone else as his cousin did.
Then again, that is partially because Valerius Nott has reared his son without much contact with other children. Or at least Albus thought he had.
Albus leans back and slowly exhales. "Well, if you know the truth—if you are happy there…"
"I am," Harry says, and his face is shining with every evidence of honesty.
"He is," Valerius Nott says, and smiles like a shark.
And Albus can do nothing but try to understand the political ramifications of this without disturbing the snarl unduly. Part of this is his own fault, and he has no choice but to accept that.
"Do you think he's going to make trouble for us, Uncle Valerius?"
Valerius smiles down at the child he has come to love as his own son, and shakes his head. "No. He could try, and he'll probably try to influence you and make sure you adopt some of his ideals. But he has to know that the truth would come out in the papers and make him look bad, and his guilt over that is a powerful weapon in our hands."
Harry grins up at him. "All right. Thanks. Well, I'd better get back to Slytherin. Theo was struggling with some of the Charms Professor Flitwick assigned." He waves his hand and trots off down the corridors. Valerius looks peacefully after him.
It wasn't a peace he felt when he first heard the shout, the "Help me! Please!" of a stranger's voice materializing inside his wards, and figured out what had happened. Much less when he opened the door of the cupboard under the Dursleys' stairs and saw that distinctive lightning bolt scar. He had to make some decisions quickly which he knew he might not be able to undo.
But he made them, and he's never regretted them. Valerius desires, above all, to position himself well in the world, to give the most possible paths and choices to his sons going forwards. He has Harry Potter's loyalty, and by being candid about his own past loyalty to the Dark Lord, it means that he'll never have to bear the consequences of his lies. He doesn't know yet if Harry will choose to wield his fame as a political weapon, or fight the Dark Lord, or take his side, or remain as far as possible out of the war and simply pursue some career that fascinates him. He doesn't know what Theo will do, either.
But all the paths are easy to live with. Valerius knows that Theo will be happy, and Harry will be happy, and they are all happy now.
And Valerius has two people to love, something he thought would never be true again after Sonya died giving birth to Theo.
He has made the right choice. Of that, he's certain.
"Harry! Come help me with this damn charm."
Harry grins as he settles into place on the bright green couch beside Theo. (He likes green, really, but sometimes the addiction to it in the Slytherin common room is a bit much). "I told you, you have to flick your wrist right first."
"Says the boy who thought he was left-handed."
"That has nothing to do with what we're talking about!"
Theo always brings up things that aren't related to what they're talking about, probably because it's the only way he can win arguments. Now he hits Harry with a pillow. Harry hits him back. He can feel people staring—supposedly this kind of behavior is only for Gryffindors, or something—but he ignores it.
He hasn't had to pander to what other people want of him ever since the day when a tall man with dark hair opened the cupboard, stared down at him, and asked quietly, "Is your name Harry Potter?"
Yes, he suffered. Yes, the man who raised him after the Dursleys got rid of him hasn't always been the nicest person. But at least he's honest, and Harry has an uncle and a brother he wouldn't give up for the world.
And he has options. Far more than he would have if he'd stayed with the Dursleys—there, the options were just misery and starvation and chores and more misery and more chores—and far more than he would have had if he came into the magical world not knowing anything about it and hunching his shoulders because they were all staring at him.
He doesn't know what he'll do yet. The point is that he has time to think about it, time to be a child and a son of the Nott family.
Theo finally gets tired of hitting Harry with a pillow and gestures at him. "All right, but seriously, show me how to do this one."
Harry settles in beside his brother and begins helpfully pointing out all the shortcomings of his current wandwork. Theo huffs and sighs at him, but listens. And Harry listens to the muttering around him slowly subsiding as people get used to the sight of him being the person he is and go back to their own homework or games or squabbles.
Harry smiles to himself. He was afraid of Albus Dumbledore, but the man wasn't so terrible after all. Not harmless, but not evil, and not all-powerful. And Harry will be on the lookout for more attempts to influence him if the Headmaster does take them.
Meanwhile, though, homework is a more immediate concern.
The End.
