Title: Bending History
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Blaise
Content Notes: AU in sixth year, angst, violence, underage kissing, discussion of character deaths
Wordcount:
Summary: Harry couldn't keep Sirius or himself or his friends safe in his fifth year. Grimly, he turns to other means to try and keep the survivors safe in his sixth year, including studying politics and using the power of his fame if that's what he has to do. If Blaise Zabini wants to be an ally for some reason, Harry will welcome him.
Author's Notes: This is one of my "Songs of Summer" fics, one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This is to fulfill a request by Roehemo asking for Harry becoming more political in sixth year and Blaise joining him as an ally because he feels Voldemort is a threat to everyone. The title comes from the quote by Robert Kennedy below. This fic will have two parts, one to be posted tomorrow.
Bending History
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
-Robert Kennedy
"I'm happy to see that you're recovering so well from Sirius's death, Harry."
If one more person said something like that to him, Harry was going to—
Keep silent and bite his tongue and nod along, really. The same thing he'd been doing so far. He didn't have much choice. He had already decided on his course for this year, and exploding at people over every single thing they said wouldn't serve him.
It hadn't served him last year. It hadn't kept Umbridge from cutting up his hand or issuing those ridiculous Educational Decrees. It hadn't kept his friends from following him into a hopeless battle.
It hadn't kept Sirius safe.
Harry breathed, and blinked, and said, "I'm trying."
Blaise frowned as he stared at the gap on the shelves. One of the books that he regularly used for pleasure reading had gone missing, and it wasn't as though it was the sort of book that most people would be eager to borrow. A history of the magical communities in Italian city-states during the Renaissance and how they had handled conflicts with each other wasn't their idea of either useful or light reading material.
He cast a Summoning Charm that would target the book, and was more puzzled when it didn't come zooming back to him immediately. If it had simply been reshelved carelessly, it would have.
Which meant someone had it.
Blaise then cast a Locator Charm, and strolled through the shelves in the direction of one of the nearly-hidden reading tables. Unusual, to find someone so far back here. These corners were both tucked away from the front of the library and almost without sunlight, making them more popular as snogging spots than study ones.
And then the sight of the person who had the book spread out in the table in front of him, along with curls of parchment at least as long as his right arm, slammed Blaise to a halt, and made him stand there just staring in shock.
It was Potter. And he was writing notes on yet another scroll in front of him, muttering under his breath and flipping back and forth in the pages of the book.
Blaise could have understood Granger, or one of the Ravenclaws. Potter?
It was so intriguing—especially since Potter had ended up back here without either of his constant orbiting features laughably known as "friends"—that Blaise decided he had to ask. He stepped out of the space between the shelves.
Potter looked up at once. His eyes were flat and green. Oddly enough, he didn't draw his wand or spit an insult, the way Blaise would have said he'd do at the sight of any Slytherin. But he looked at Blaise in a way that meant he'd be striking to disable if they dueled, at the very least.
"Hello," Blaise said, when he realized he would have to make the first move. "I'm Blaise Zabini."
"I know who you are."
The dismissal in Potter's voice made Blaise bristle. "Oh, do you? Why are you taking that tone, when we've never even spoken before?"
"I know that you're someone who talks about blood traitors and Mudbloods. Someone neither good nor useful," Potter said, and flicked him one more glance before he went back to his reading.
Blaise blinked, half-opened his mouth, and then shut it again. From the tension in Potter's shoulders, he was aware that Blaise was still present, but he was also very engaged in very busy scribbling, and real note-taking. Blaise wanted to know, with more interest he'd felt in anything except Arithmancy, what he was looking for.
"Why do you have my book?" he asked.
Potter wrote what looked like the end of a sentence and then stared at him. "It's not yours."
"It's the one I read most often when I need a distraction."
"A bit of light reading," Potter murmured for some reason, but then shrugged. "Should have checked it out of the library, then."
"I did ask you a question," Blaise said, and pulled out a chair across from Potter to sit down in, which just made Potter stare at him harder.
"I don't have to answer it."
"I could help you if I knew what you were looking for. I know that book better than anyone else in the school, I'm certain."
Potter arched his eyebrows and gave Blaise another glance that felt more in-depth this time, as if looking past whatever shallow surface he had thought Blaise had. Blaise found himself straightening his shoulders and sitting up. His interest deepened. For all that the Daily Prophet talked as if Potter was destined to lead the war against the Dark Lord, this was the first time Blaise had seen him looking at someone like a leader might.
"I'm looking for patterns in what cities were victorious," Potter said at last. "How they manipulated their wars to end sooner and fooled their enemies and escaped conflict with the lowest amount of casualties."
Blaise felt his mouth twitching. "Honestly, Potter? The way a lot of people did it was either poison or marriage."
Potter shuddered. "Well, the second one's out. And I don't know if Voldemort's body is susceptible to poison, considering he created it in a ritual—"
"Will you stop saying his name?"
"Why?"
"During the first war, he put a Taboo on it," Blaise snapped. He felt a shudder crawling up his spine, and fought it back. "He could tell where someone was when they said it, and he could send people right to them—or come himself. It's one reason that people who said it tended to die violent deaths right afterwards."
"See, no one's ever told that to me before."
"They probably assumed you knew. Why wouldn't they?"
"Yes, why wouldn't an orphan raised in the Muggle world by relatives who hate magic know everything about a wizarding war?" Potter said, and rolled his eyes. "If someone could have explained that to me in between the flinching and shrieking, I would have listened."
He went back to writing on his parchment. Blaise stared at him and blinked. "You were raised by Muggles?" he said finally.
"Yes?" Potter drew the word out, glancing up at Blaise. "I only found out this year that the Noseless One killed all my Potter relatives. I had nowhere else to go, so I got deposited with my mother's sister and her husband."
Blaise licked his lips. This was interesting news, and also terrifying news. He had assumed, like the rest of the sane half of Slytherin that didn't follow the Dark Lord, that Potter had been reared by some cronies of Dumbledore's, or even the Headmaster himself, and taught dueling and Dark Arts and all the other magic he needed to know to survive. Blaise had also assumed that Potter had been ordered to keep that hidden, or he would have been dazzling people in Defense and Charms a lot more than he had.
To find out that Potter had been Muggle-raised and apparently hadn't known basic facts about the first war was terrifying.
"Listen," Blaise said, his voice low and urgent. Potter pulled his eyes from his notes again to look at him. "You—you needed to know these things years ago."
"Yeah, I agree." Potter's voice was sharp with what was probably frustration, but he was doing it a good job keeping it under control. "But I didn't, and I don't have a Time-Turner, so I just need to try and learn it now the best I can."
"In your NEWT year?" Blaise asked, scandalized despite himself.
"What use is getting ready for NEWTS when the Man With a Snake Affinity is trying to kill me?"
"But—you have to look beyond the war, too. To try and survive. Otherwise, what's the point of anything?"
Potter laughed, a harsh cawing sound that reminded Blaise of his mother's raven familiar. "I can try and survive by learning the things I need to know. Someday, if he doesn't kill me, then I'll be able to take my NEWTS at the Ministry or whatever. But not now."
"You expect to die?"
Potter paused and looked at him, and his voice was oddly gentle when he said, "Zabini, of course I do. I'll try my very best to take him with me or at least make sure my death costs him, but I'm a lot younger than he is, a lot less powerful, and a lot less knowledgeable. Of course I think I'll lose."
Blaise closed his eyes. "Why aren't you running?"
"Because I can't leave people to face him by themselves."
Blaise stared at Potter again. He was looking calmly back at Blaise, although with his quill tapping on the scroll as if he wanted Blaise to leave so that he could start writing again.
Blaise didn't understand that kind of stubbornness. Or courage. Whatever it was. Then again, that was probably why Potter was in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin.
Blaise took a long breath, and said, "Let me help you."
"How, Zabini? By sharing your knowledge of this one book, you said, but what I need to do is so much wider than that—"
"History is my best subject," Blaise said quietly. "Actual history, the kind that I can take courses by owl in outside this school, not the kind that Binns teaches. I can tell you about the first war, teach you about the workings of the Ministry and the Wizengamot, show you how to get people on your side. How to read people. I'm good at that, too. If you want to convince people to help you so that you have a better chance of—of protecting them, I can help with that."
Potter studied him in silence for a long moment. Then he said, "Two questions."
Blaise nodded.
"What's your motivation for doing this? Fear? Something else?"
"You're our only chance for keeping him off," Blaise whispered. "And I don't even believe the bollocks in the Prophet about Chosen One this and Savior that. You're the one he's targeted, and you're the one who's fighting. Even Dumbledore isn't doing that much." Potter's face twitched, but he didn't say anything. "I want to live, Potter. And I owe you for keeping him off this long, when you aren't trained and you grew up in the fucking Muggle world."
Potter nodded. "Okay, acceptable. And the second question. Why do you want to work to save other people when you call them Mudbloods and blood traitors?"
Blaise lowered his eyes. "I don't care about them."
"All right. My question remains."
"I mean," Blaise said, and flapped a hand helplessly. He'd never had to explain this before. His mother knew how he felt, and people in Slytherin assumed enough things about his views that Blaise just had to make the right noises at the right times.
But here was Potter, sitting there with eyes as bright as a rainbow, and he needed the answer. Blaise tried to spell out what he hadn't put in words even for himself before this.
"I don't—they don't matter to me," Blaise said. "Not enough to hate them, not enough to hold them in contempt or have whatever Draco has against them. I just say the words so people like Draco leave me alone. I don't care about them enough to work to save them on my own, either. But they matter to you, and you're the one I need to save me. So I'll work to save them because of that."
Potter kept tapping his quill against his scroll. Blaise found himself incredibly tense, and tried to relax his muscles. So what if Potter rejected him? What did it matter? Blaise would then do his best to help Potter from the sidelines, such as sending him information with anonymous owls.
But it would make things so much easier if he did accept what Blaise said.
"Okay," Potter said quietly. "Thank you for being honest." He took another piece of parchment out from beneath the book and slid it towards Blaise. "This is my list of what I need to know about and don't know yet. Please look it over. If you can think of any topics that relate to these and which I need to know, please write them down."
Blaise took the parchment with fingers that trembled. He hadn't thought Potter would extend him this much trust, handing Blaise literal written proof of his ignorance.
It would have been his downfall with some of the Slytherins. But Blaise would feel an endless nagging irritation if he didn't reciprocate trust with trust. It was just who he was. He had made his peace with it.
"I will," Blaise said, and Potter smiled at him.
"Don't you think that you're spending a little too much time in the library, Harry?"
Harry looked up and laughed. "I never thought I would hear you all of people say that, Hermione."
Hermione blinked, then laughed herself. She looked down at the books spread across the table in front of Harry and shook her head. "Well, yes, that's true. But these aren't for classes."
No. They were some of the books that Zabini had assigned to him (because it really was like homework, Zabini's idea of helping him). History, descriptions of government structure, texts on body language written for actors who would have to compete with magical effects for an audience's attention, scrolls on persuasive techniques in writing and speaking, and on and on. Harry had to read them, but his primary task was taking notes in his own words, because they were both shorter and would be clearer to him later when he revised them.
"No," Harry said, and took a risk. "They're things I hope will help me build on my knowledge of politics and turn more people to our side."
Hermione's eyes widened, and she sat down on the other side of the table. "Goodness, Harry, should you be doing this?"
And here we go. "Yes, of course. If I don't want to be just a figurehead, then I'm going to have to take charge of my fame, and decide what I want to do with it."
"Manipulating people like that isn't the best use of your time. What about learning from Professor Dumbledore?"
"He's giving me those lessons I told you about that look into Voldemort's memories, so I can know him better. But he's not teaching me dueling spells or history that doesn't relate to Voldemort or anything like that." Harry waved his hand at the books. "That's why I'm looking up that stuff."
"Well, if Professor Dumbledore isn't teaching you that, he probably doesn't think you need it."
Harry shrugged. He didn't know for sure what Professor Dumbledore thought. Harry had tried asking him for dueling lessons, and Professor Dumbledore had said that Harry would get on quite well without them. He'd tried asking the Headmaster whether he'd thought Harry would survive a duel against Voldemort, and Professor Dumbledore had smiled and said it would probably never come down to a duel. So Harry had given up.
"Every little bit can help, don't you think?" he asked Hermione. "If we can persuade people to our side or at least get them to stay out of the way?"
"You can't persuade people like Umbridge."
"Oh, I wasn't talking about people like her. More about people like Seamus, who do get misled by the papers sometimes."
"I thought you were talking about Umbridge."
From there, the conversation devolved sort of the way Harry had expected. It was all right. Hermione had other things on her mind: the NEWTS, her endless longing after Ron and the fact that Ron was dating Lavender, why the Ministry wouldn't do something about Voldemort now that they'd been forced to acknowledge he was back.
She didn't know how much Sirius's death was driving Harry. Pretty much no one talked about Sirius anymore. She didn't know why Harry thought politics might be worthwhile, to make an impression on people and have others step up to lead the war effort if Voldemort killed him.
She didn't have to. That was one of the reasons Harry was allying with Zabini.
He would protect his friends and other people who depended on him in any way possible. Including leaving them free to pursue what they wanted without disagreeing with them.
The conversation slid sideways into Hermione's concerns, and never came back. And when she left the library, Harry went back to working.
"Why haven't you concentrated on dueling spells before now?"
"Because magical power isn't the be-all and end-all of ways to fight the Pale One," Potter muttered, shaking back his hair as he did the stretching exercises that he had looked up in some obscure dueling text. They were in the Room that Potter's Defense group had apparently worked in last year, but smaller than they'd probably used, the walls white stone and the floor covered with rugs. Warmth filled the room from floating balls of fire rather than a hearth. "And I'm not that strong. And I had other concerns, like teaching people what I knew."
"You're not that strong," Blaise echoed in disbelief. "You could cast a Patronus at thirteen. Do you understand how rare that is?"
From the half-lidded look Potter cast him, probably not. Blaise sighed in defeat and started working his own arms and shoulders in the patterns his mother had taught him long ago. "Okay, so this is probably something else that you didn't learn because you grew up in the Muggle world."
"Of course not, Zabini. I didn't even know magic was real until I was eleven."
Blaise's brain slid sideways into a ditch. He'd thought, somehow, that Potter might have grown up in the Muggle world knowing about magic in general and that he would attend Hogwarts someday, even though he didn't know the finer points of the first war or history or anything like that. But to hear that he hadn't known even that…
Potter caught a glimpse of his face and burst out laughing. "You look like a Kneazle who stepped in a puddle," he said, through his chuckles.
"I'm glad I amuse you," Blaise said, but he couldn't help smiling himself. It was a pity that it would take more than Potter just standing in front of people and laughing like that to change their minds and make them follow him, but the laugh would be a good start. It seemed to fill Blaise's soul with light and warmth.
"Anyway," Blaise went on, dragging his mind back to their conversation, "a Patronus is hard to cast because you have to put so much magic into it. You have to commit yourself. You can't go around losing your concentration to fear of a Dementor, or fear that you're going to get your soul eaten, or passing thoughts about what you had for breakfast that morning, or a Shield Charm, or whatever. You have to fling yourself into it to a frankly dangerous degree. So it's not much good for dueling."
"Then I probably won't be good at dueling magic, either."
"Then why bother to learn?"
"Because I'm going to try, Zabini. I said that already. I don't expect to survive, but I want to survive long enough that other people can take up the fight."
Blaise wanted to stomp his foot the way he'd done when he was younger and his mother had denied him a biscuit. It wasn't fair. Potter accepted the inevitability of his death but wanted to keep fighting, while other people didn't accept anything and just bleated for Potter to save them.
Blaise could at least comfort himself that he hadn't been one of those. But he knew it was only because he'd had the other options, like leaving the country, that most people didn't and Potter would never exercise.
"What I am saying," Blaise explained as delicately as he could, "is that you might be able to treat some dueling spells like the Patronus and commit yourself to them so completely that you can make a difference. Overpower them, in fact."
Potter glanced up, eyes gleaming sharp with interest, and Blaise's breath caught. Damn, when he looked like that, Blaise saw the future politician and leader of armies and defeater of the Dark Lord.
And Blaise's own commitment hardened. Maybe he couldn't make sure Potter would survive the Dark Lord, but damn if he wasn't going to try.
"How could I do that?"
"First," Blaise said, "we're going to work on your Shield Charm, since your strength lies in defensive magic."
And although Blaise didn't say it, it was also a means of getting Potter past his self-imposed block on using offensive magic, the conviction that he wasn't powerful. If he really believed that, then all the magical strength in the world wouldn't help. It would just stay locked away behind barriers built of Potter's own unwavering belief.
But if he got used to doing certain spell, the way he had with the Patronus, and got used to flinging magic into them…
Then he could use those spells in a dueling situation, and there was more potential for his survival.
Blaise didn't intend for his time to be wasted.
"Harry, my dear boy. What are you doing up here?"
Harry blinked and looked down from the stars that he'd been watching. He came to the top of the Astronomy Tower every night now, to look for Sirius. "Hello, Headmaster. Just stargazing."
Professor Dumbledore stood a few steps below Harry, looking up at him. "Stargazing," he repeated. "An odd thing to do outside of Astronomy class, one might think. And I do understand that you're not in NEWT Astronomy."
Harry shrugged. "It's a way to keep connected to Sirius, sir. To look at his star and remind myself that I'm going to do my best to win this war. And not allow any more Siriuses dying at the wands of a Bellatrix."
Professor Dumbledore sighed. "I told you once, Harry. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
"I know," Harry said, surprised by the context of that reminder into blinking at Professor Dumbledore. "But that was the Mirror of Erised, sir. Something I was never going to have because my family is dead. And I'm not trying to bring Sirius back or anything. I know he can't come back." The hole inside Harry seemed to widen as he spoke, but he ignored it as best he could. He would just have to live with it, and remember. "I can try my best to win this war. Isn't that what you were thinking I should do, when you were showing me Voldemort's memories?"
Professor Dumbledore was silent for a long time, the breeze on top of the Tower blowing his silvery hair back. Harry waited, a little impatiently. If it was just going to be silence and cryptic riddles now, he would rather the Professor leave him to his stargazing and remembering and planning.
A thought intruded into Harry's mind. Zabini at least fucking gives me things to learn. And doesn't get upset when I learn them.
"The idea that you can spare everyone from dying is what I meant," Professor Dumbledore said at last. "There will be casualties. It is the nature of war. I would not have you break your heart by wishing for impossibilities, Harry."
Harry held back his sigh with difficulty. "I know that, sir. I would have hoped you wouldn't take my words that literally. But I am going to try my best. That's the important part."
"Have you considered," Professor Dumbledore whispered, "that you may not live until the end of the war?"
"Of course I have. I think about it every day. Why should I let that stop me from trying my best?"
Professor Dumbledore blinked at him, and then smiled abruptly. "Of course. Do forgive me, dear boy. Sometimes the old cannot keep up with the racing minds of the young."
And he turned and walked down the Tower steps again, leaving Harry alone.
Harry shook his head and turned to look up at the sky again, and the bright stars. It didn't really matter if Professor Dumbledore was hinting that he knew about Harry's pursuit of political studies and disapproved. Harry would still keep going.
He was going to protect people with any means at his disposal. It didn't have to be just Professor Dumbledore's lessons.
It could be the outstretched hand of a Slytherin, too.