Previously:
Albus nods in agreement before heading back over to Harry, who had just been finished being checked on by Madame Pomfrey, Severus following right behind him.
Chapter 5 – Teacher's MeetingAs the two men reached the bed, Harry looked up, his face holding slightly more emotions.
"I–I'm sorry about earlier Headmaster, I–I didn't mean to be rude." He said, barley above a whisper, his eyes betraying the fear he felt.
Albus looked down on the boy with sadness, he appeared to be lost in thought for a moment before he spoke up, his voice calm and gentle. "It's quite alright Harry. Would you like to speak about something, anything at all? It could be about your favorite food, about Quidditch, or even about Ron or Hermione."
Harry looks down quickly, trying to hide the fear and sadness that had taken over his features. Starting quietly, he asked several questions, "Sir, how did I get here? Who found me? Why am I here? What's going to happen?" The last question, both Albus and Severus had to lean forward to hear.
Looking thoughtful for a moment, he moved so he was seated next to Harry's bed, Severus quickly took the seat next to Albus.
"Well to start with, three of the Professors here, myself included, went to go check up on you when we got a peculiar distress call. Second, the people involved in finding you were Professor Lupin, Professor Snape and myself; we were all in my office discussing some matters when we received the distress call. Thirdly, you are here for several reasons, all of which I'm sure you are well aware of, but the most important reason was you were in dire need of medical attention. Finally, what will happen all depends on yourself, I will not force you to do anything that you do not want to, no matter what it is, well unless of course it will cause you more pain, but know this Harry, if you ever need anything, all the Professors here will be more than willing to help, in any way possible. When I say all the professors Harry, I mean every single one of them," Albus says, glancing meaningfully towards Severus while watching Harry's reaction intently.
After a few moments, Harry looked up, he had silent tears flowing down his face, his lips moved but no sound came out.
After a moment, both Professors could hear what he was saying, although it was barley a whisper. "I'm so sorry, so, so sorry. I'm sorry…" he kept repeating over and over to himself, after a moment, while still repeating that phrase over and over he curled his knees up to his chest and hugged them, silent tears all the while pouring down his cheeks.
Albus face was extremely grave, his eyes holding no twinkle whatsoever. Moving quickly and extremely gently, he gathered Harry into his arms, letting the child cry silently on his shoulder.
As Albus gathered the crying boy into his arms, he looked over to Severus; the man had exactly no emotion showing on his face or in his eyes. He stared at Harry for a moment before getting up quickly and stalking out the door, nearly knocking over Poppy as she entered carrying another tray with different potions on it.
Albus just sat silently rocking the crying boy in his arms, saying soothing words every once in a while. After about thirty minutes of this the boy's tears turned into small hiccups, which slowly turned to slow breathing. Looking down, Albus realized the exhausted boy had cried himself to sleep.
Getting up slowly, as to not wake Harry, and with surprising strength for someone so old, he gently sat Harry back onto his bed and covering him with the blankets. Looking back down at Harry once more before he headed out in search for Severus, he realized Harry was already on his way to a full recovery, he only hoped Harry would allow everyone else help him get through everything.
As Albus walked out of the Infirmary, Poppy quickly went over to Harry, checking him over for any problems, insuring his safety, she did the same for Draco before setting down in a chair in between the two beds. Picking up a magazine about different healing philosophies from a stand to be able to read while watching her two patients.
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As Albus reached Severus's private chambers, he heard quite a racket coming from inside. Listening for a moment, he decided to go in before Severus ended up hurting himself. Knocking loudly, he promptly headed in, only to duck a flying vase.
Coughing loudly, Albus watched in amusement a Severus swivels around quickly, setting down another vase in the process.
"I see you haven't changed in letting out your anger Severus," he said amusedly.
Severus glared at Albus before giving
in and setting down in a chair with a large sigh, shaking his head. "Yes, well it's been a very long time since
I've been this upset."
Albus shook his head, waiting for
Severus to continue.
"It's just that, well, I wish I could have been there for him, I wish I could have stopped it all. What if I had treated him better? Would it have helped him? What if I paid attention to all the signs? Could I have stopped the abuse before it got out of hand? Wha-" Severus would most likely have continued on and on if it weren't for Albus cutting in.
"Severus, you cannot focus on the past and all of the 'what ifs.' It is indeed a very unfortunate thing that this has ever happened, although wallowing in the past will not help Harry right now. He is going to need all the support he can get right now, and when you do tell him about yourself, well he'll need your support more than ever."
Severus sat in silence for a while before nodding his acceptance to the Headmasters words.
"Well that's good, since we have that all under control, I would like to have a meeting in my office in an hour, please be there."
"Of course, although if I may ask, what's it for?"
"Well, since you'll be telling Harry about his parentage, all of the other teachers have to know. You cannot tell me otherwise so don't try Severus, they will most likely find out later, besides, I need to give them an update and to tell them about Harry." Albus replied with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes before quickly heading out the door before Severus could ask anything else.
Severus just shook his head at the old man. No one understood how he could be serious one minute and back to his old self the next, of course he wasn't very happy about telling everyone else about being Harry's true father.
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Albus sat quietly in his office awaiting the arrival of all the teachers, all except Hagrid that is, as he was away at the moment. As the minutes passed, several of the teachers arrived, and after another ten minutes everyone was crammed into the office, all of whom were sitting in all of the chairs, all of them that is, except for Severus who was leaning against the corner hidden within the shadows.
Looking over all of the faces located in the room, Albus distinguished several emotions, troubled expressions from Minerva and Remus while all of the others ranged for curious to concern and wariness.
Coughing quietly, the entire room settled down and you could hear a pin drop. Looking back to Severus, only to meet expressionless eyes, Albus looked back over across the room.
"I've called this abrupt meeting for several reasons, one of which is to let you know that there are two students in the hospital wing."
Almost immediately all of the teachers who didn't know this were shooting out questions until Albus raised one hand for quiet. It followed almost immediately afterwards.
"Yes, I'm sure you all will have many questions, but I must ask you to not interrupt while I explain, and I insist that you keep any of your comments to yourself until the end, most of your questions will be answered by then anyways."
The room nodded as one while Albus continued, "Yes, well, one of the students is a Mister Draco Malfoy." Most of the room gasped at that, not expecting anything like this.
"Mister Malfoy was found near the entrance hall by Severus, he brought the boy to the infirmary for Poppy to check over. It appears he's been injured severely, we have no answers as to why it happened and how he got here. We will have to wait until he awakens before we get any answers out of him and we, that is Poppy and myself, have no idea when that will be.
"The other student, I'm sorry to say is actually Mister Harry Potter."
As Albus finished that sentence, the entire room seemed to speak at once, all except the people who already knew, were outraged.
"Please everyone, please calm down, I wish to finish explaining everything before another member joins us tonight," Albus says, slightly sternly.
As everyone settles down once again, Albus continues, "yesterday evening while Remus and Severus were having a meeting with myself in this room, we received a rather intriguing call of distress. We recognized it as Harry's voice, we had come to the conclusion earlier that Harry needed some help, although we couldn't find a good excuse to bring him here. Of course the distress call gave us that excuse and we left immediately afterwards, briefly telling Minerva we would be going out, but not as to where.
"When we arrived at the Dursleys, to put it lightly, we were completely disgusted." He says, his voice becoming more and more grave as he continues. "It appears not only have the Dursleys been mistreating Harry, but it's been going on for quite sometime, he was barely alive when we reached him, luckily we got him here in time. Mister Potter was indeed awake earlier today, although he didn't say much at the time."
The entire room sat in complete silence, some people for different reasons than others. After a while (AN: can anyone give me Sprouts first name if Rowling ever mentioned it, if not can you let me know so I can make one??) Professor Sprout spoke up timidly.
"That boy seemed so polite, how could anything like this be going on at home?"
Before Albus could say anything, Severus spoke up for the first time, surprising some of the people inside the room, forgetting he was even there.
"Not that you would know it Sprout, but those are some of the more obvious signs of child abuse." He says dangerously quiet, before anyone could say anything else, Albus spoke up once again.
"Yes, also, as all of you may know, Sirius Black had been sighted around here."
The room went deadly silent, not only because of the abrupt change in conversation, but because of who the headmaster appeared to want to talk about.
"Yes, anyways, I would like to tell you a story, please do not interrupt me until I'm done, and I ask you not to talk about what you hear here today with anyone else, anywhere unless you are absolutely certain you are alone and no one can overhear you."
As everyone nods their agreement, Albus continues, "Well almost fifteen years ago, the Potters had to choose a secret keeper…" He continued on for quite awhile explaining the truth. He explained that at the last minute they had changed secret keepers and went to Peter, no one expecting the change and no one expecting the betrayal that would happen. He went on after that to explain how Peter had run straight to his master, and sold his best friends to the Dark Lord.
Everyone at this point gasped, but Albus continued as if nothing was wrong, he explained that after the fact, Sirius realized what Peter had done and had went to hunt him down and make him pay for what he did. As Sirius cornered Peter in the Muggle street, Peter had set up Sirius and had himself blew up the street, staging his own death and escaping through the sewers in his illegal animagus form of a rat. He then went and explained how Sirius was blamed for the deaths and betrayal and how he had later, with the help of his animagus form had escaped Azkaban and had came to Hogwarts to find Peter.
He finished with telling the other Professors how he had recognized Peter and how Harry had confronted Sirius in the Shrieking Shack. Albus also explained the encounter with everyone and he told how Sirius had later escaped on Buckbeak, but leaving out the more dangerous details. As he finished everyone, minus Remus who knew all of this beforehand, was deathly silent, unbelieving all of Sirius had to go through.
They all believed the Headmaster with no problem, although it was just hard to believe everything Sirius had to go through, especially since he was innocent.
Albus let everyone collect their thoughts before he started talking again. "I know this is a lot to take in at once, but there is another thing that has to be said before Sirius arrives, and he must not be told about this, does everyone understand?"
Albus looked around the room, making eye contact with everyone. He looked back at Severus, only to find him gone. Albus sighs to himself, Severus had just made it harder for himself by running away from it, hopefully he could convince everyone without him there.
All of the teachers, except for Remus who already knew what was going to be said, looked at Albus wondering what he could possibly say that they couldn't tell Sirius.
"We just found out recently that Harry has in fact, another living relative." The room gasped as one with this information, finally Madame Hooch (AN: need another first name here please!) spoke up, voicing the question that was on everyone's mind.
"But, we searched everywhere and we found out that there are no living Potters or Evans left, except for those terrible Muggles anyways."
Albus nods his head in acknowledgment, "you are correct Madame Hooch in saying all of the Potters and Evans are dead."
Here, everyone gave each other confused glances before looking back to the Headmaster looking for an explanation.
"However, we have also recently found out Harry is indeed, not a Potter."
Silence fell after this statement for a few moments before several voices could be heard asking for an explanation.
"I'm telling the truth when I say Harry isn't a Potter by blood, but by every other right he is, I doubt anyone but a select few, not including James, knew Harry's true heritage. It appears that Lily, knowing the truth about everything, put a charm on Harry to make him look like James until his fifteenth birthday where it would wear off completely, and she could explain it better, of course since she is no longer here, we have no way of finding out the exact reason as to why she did it.
"Anyways, as I was saying before, in a sense, James Potter adopted Harry without knowing it, it seems that he never knew the truth because only one of his friends knew the truth, and that was totally by accident that that had ever happened."
He paused here for a moment, letting everything sink in, he then continued in a deadly serious voice. "I repeat once again that we never had any idea that what I'm about to tell you ever occurred. I request you do not make any judgments until you hear the entire story and what is going to be done about it. Do you all understand?"
Everyone nodded their heads immediately, wanting to know who Harry's true father is.