Thank you for all the reviews! Most questions will still have to remain unanswered. Chapter 12, I promise. (And, well, um, Chapter 58, which doesn't happen until the AU version of PoA, for all the answers. Sorry about that).
But this is still the AU version of PS, for right now. Enjoy!
Chapter Seven: Humility"Fumo!"
"Harry!"
Harry smiled slightly as smoke filled the first-year boys' bedroom, to cries of protest and disgust from Greg and Vince, who had been studying, and Blaise, half-asleep on his bed. Blaise actually fell off the bed, choking and coughing. Harry might have choked himself, but he'd already cast the Specularis charm in front of him. A small, clear window of air hovered there, diverting the smoke to either side and letting him breathe. It also moved with him, so that he could see a short distance ahead.
He pronounced it again, this time more firmly and with a wider wand movement, and the smoke dissipated. Vince and Greg stared at him. Blaise glared up from the floor.
"Why did you do that," he asked, treating the word like a dead frog the Kneazle had dragged in, "in the middle of our bedroom?"
"Because Draco didn't think I could do it," said Harry with a shrug, falling back on his bed and hugging the knowledge that he hadn't forgotten the Smoke Charm to himself. He had the feeling that he might need it, just as he'd need Protego and all the rest of the shield and hiding spells his mother had insisted he learn. "Talk to him."
"I didn't mean that you had to demonstrate it right now," Draco whined from the bed next to his.
Harry closed his eyes and let the argument play around him. Such chatter, without a mention of his name or Connor's except in play, was the next best thing to silence—which he wasn't going to get with Draco around—for thinking about the dreams that had been plaguing him lately.
The dreams had been vague at first, formations of darkness that did not impress Harry, who'd grown up immersed in stories of Voldemort's first rise and the truly horrible things the Death Eaters did under his guidance. But gradually they sharpened, and he found himself in a maze of twisting corridors, advancing towards a door that opened on sharp, snarling teeth.
Then another figure had started appearing between him and the door. The figure was small and stooped, inconsequential. Harry supposed that was to stop anyone from looking too closely. But since he was someone who relied on the same defenses, he'd looked, and recognized the purple turban that wrapped the figure's head. And then he woke with his scar bleeding, which was, he thought, the last proof he needed. Professor Quirrell meant harm of some kind to Connor.
On the face of it, that was ridiculous. The professor stammered all the time and taught Defense Against the Dark Arts with shuffling incompetence. Harry did not care, though. He planned to follow Professor Quirrell tonight and see what he could discover about him.
"Harry!"
Harry blinked and sat up. Draco and Blaise were looking expectantly at him, Blaise holding his wand out in front of him. Above it floated a clear glass bubble that Harry recognized as a beginner's try at the Specularis spell.
"Not like that," he said, and settled down to show them the proper wrist movements. He supposed he might be asking for trouble, teaching magic to possible future Death Eaters, but refusing would only earn him a reputation as a smug git, and Harry wanted to avoid any kind of reputation at all. Besides, Harry rather thought some of them might be turned. Not all Slytherins were evil. Even Draco wasn't that bad most of the time.
"Come on, Blaise, a Gryffindor could do better than that," Draco taunted, and Harry sighed and revised his estimate of how much time this would take.
Harry waited quietly outside the Great Hall that night until Professor Quirrell emerged, and then fell in behind him. He wished he had their father's Invisibility Cloak, but he was quite sure that Lily hadn't allowed James to send it. He would have to rely on his trained silence and hiding abilities, and on the spells that he had learned if necessary, just in case Quirrell glanced around and saw him.
The professor continued hurrying ahead, though, as involved in his own thoughts as the other Slytherins had been in the argument about Quidditch that Harry had stirred up at dinner. He certainly never glanced behind him to see if anyone was there, and Harry was able to follow him easily through corridors and doors, up staircases, and around corners.
Then why do I still feel watched? Harry thought, as they rounded a corner and came to a shut door.
He didn't know, just as he didn't know for certain what the source of the pain in his scar was, but he knew enough to duck out of sight when Professor Quirrell looked around at last. Then the professor carefully withdrew a large silver key from a chain around his neck and fitted it into the door. A low snick, and he was past and in.
Harry waited in silence for one moment, then two, then ten. Then he crept towards the door, hoping it would be unlocked.
It was, but Harry could see little when he knelt and put his eye to the crack, and he didn't dare move the door. He did hear growling, though, and Quirrell talking in a low murmur, too quiet to make out what he was saying. Harry cocked his head. Was the professor not stuttering, or was that his imagination?
"Why are you here?"
Harry tensed all his muscles to keep from flinching or crying out, and then turned and glared at Draco, who had come up behind him. At least he'd had the sense to keep his voice to a whisper. "Working to protect Connor," Harry whispered back. "Why are you here?"
"I followed you from dinner," said Draco, with a shrug. "I know you made up that argument on purpose so no one would notice you leave." He crouched down beside Harry and grinned at him. "That was very Slytherin of you, really, Harry. A Gryffindor would just have dumped his plate over someone's head."
Harry resisted the urge to get into an argument about his proper House. "Be quiet," he whispered instead. "Professor Quirrell's in that room, and I don't want him to know we're out here."
"Why not?" Draco asked, too loudly. "He's a professor, isn't he? Why—"
Harry grabbed his arm and held it tight as the growls beyond the half-open door resolved into a chorus of barking. A moment later, there came a stabbing pain in his scar, which Harry took to mean that Professor Quirrell was running back towards them.
Harry didn't hesitate, but reached inside his robes for his wand. "Fumo!"
Smoke gusted from the tip and filled the corridor with a mist of gray. Harry grimaced; he'd forgotten to cast Specularis, and he could hear Draco choking, trying desperately not to give them away. And now he didn't know which way Quirrell would run. He was annoyed at himself.
He chose a direction that he vaguely remembered as being down the hall, away from the door, and tugged Draco in it. Draco came with him, his coughs escaping in small, muffled noises. Harry crouched over him and drew his wand fully. He could fight Professor Quirrell, if it came to that. He would have to, if the professor figured out who'd cast the Smoke Charm.
But the professor had gone. By the time the smoke cleared, Harry couldn't see anyone. He sighed, and scowled when he noticed the door was locked. There had gone his chance to see what was behind it.
His nostrils and lungs were stinging, but he wasn't badly off. Draco, however, would have to go to Madam Pomfrey. Harry coaxed him onto his feet, then coaxed him into walking, and shook his head as they staggered to the first staircase.
"Why did you follow me, anyway?" he muttered at him. "You didn't have to."
"I wanted to," Draco whispered, and then burst into another round of coughing.
Harry sighed and kept them moving. How very Malfoyish that answer is.
Harry didn't get another chance to follow Professor Quirrell. Draco had taken to clinging to his side again. He always had some excuse. He had missed writing down the Potions homework that day. He wanted Harry to teach him the Smoke Charm. Did Harry realize that it'd been ages since they played Exploding Snap together? He badgered and coaxed and snorted and taunted, and Harry wound up spending more time than ever in the Slytherin common room and the library as the weeks passed.
And, of course, he spent time away from Connor.
That drove Harry particularly mad, as he knew that Draco was doing it on purpose. But drawing too much attention would also be against his self-imposed rules. He knew that Draco wrote to his father every few days. Would Lucius Malfoy like to hear that the Potters' elder son felt so worried over the safety of the younger one that he couldn't trust the professors and the spells on Hogwarts Castle to protect him? And what would Draco think, if he began to consider that Harry's desperate attempts to get back to Connor might be prompted by more than mere sibling affection? Harry had shown, unwisely, how good he was at magic that most students didn't learn until second or third year. He practiced more often in broom closets and isolated classrooms after that, but the damage had been done. Blaise and Greg and Vince all watched him with something like respect, Draco with something like delight. And, of course, Draco insisted on learning every charm that Harry knew.
On and on it went, until Harry began to feel, exasperated, more like a Slytherin student than his brother's protector.
And then came Halloween. It stuck out in Harry's mind for other reasons afterwards, but the first thing that brought it to mind was the fact that he heard Connor be deliberately unkind.
That did not please him.
"Come on, Harry! I'm hungry."
"Just a minute, Draco," Harry said absently, craning his neck. Ron and Connor were just coming out of Charms class with the rest of the Gryffindors. He wanted to see his brother and wish him a happy anniversary. It was on this day ten years ago that Connor had defeated Voldemort and saved the wizarding world, after all.
They were just in front of him, and Harry was smiling and about to say something, when Connor snickered and remarked, apparently in response to something Ron had said, "Well, Hermione's got to be good at books; what else is she for?"
Harry stared. The remark reminded him of the one about Draco's name on the train. Connor was capable of deliberate malice, but it was always sudden flashes like this, which faded into appropriate remorse. And this one seemed so—undeserved. Hermione wasn't a Death Eater, not anything like one, and she hadn't taunted Connor that Harry had ever heard. At least Draco's father was a known quantity, a known enemy, and Draco could have been, too.
He found his voice at last. "Connor—" he began.
And then pounding footsteps interrupted him, and Hermione fled past them in tears. She vanished around the far corner of the hall before Harry could put out a hand or speak the words that might have stopped her.
Harry turned his head back and gave Connor a slow, deliberate glance. Connor flushed and opened his mouth, then hung his head.
"Go after her," said Harry. "Apologize, for Merlin's sake, Connor. That was uncalled-for." He paused for a long moment. "And unworthy of you."
Then he turned and stalked off, despite the fact that it was the longest conversation he'd had with his brother in a week. Connor gasped and shouted after him. Harry ignored him. The future leader of the wizarding world could not afford such flaws in his character. Lily had handled them with the silent treatment at home. Harry didn't know how well it would work here, but he was prepared to try the same thing.
Draco was very quiet during the Halloween Feast. He ate, of course, but he mostly watched Harry. Harry was brooding, and despite the pleading glances that regularly came his way from the Gryffindor table, he refused to look in that direction—perhaps because the Mudblood Granger still hadn't come back to sit with everyone else.
Interesting. I think he'd give up his life for his brother, but he's not willing to give up that fussiness he'd probably call his morals. Hmmm.
Draco at last opened his mouth to speak to Harry about it, but swung his head sharply around when the doors of the Great Hall flew open with a bang. Professor Quirrell staggered in and stood blinking on the threshold for a moment. His turban had come half-unwrapped from his head. The look in his eyes made Draco roll his.
"T-troll," he said at last, faintly. "In the dungeons. I thought you ought to know." Then he swayed and fainted dead away.
Chaos erupted then, with the Heads of House snapping at the prefects to take the younger children back to the safety of the common rooms, and the professors spreading out grimly to search the castle. Draco wasn't scared; he rose with the rest of the Slytherin table when he was told to, and headed calmly towards the dungeons. They passed Professor Snape on the way, his stride firm and his dark eyes flashing dangerously. Draco smirked. He felt rather sorry for any troll that had to face Professor Snape.
Then, of course, he saw Harry peel off from the rest of the House and hurry away.
Hissing, Draco snagged the back of Harry's robe and dragged him towards the line again. "What did you think you were doing?" he whispered in his ear. "You'll only get in trouble when Professor Snape sees you're gone, and I'll have to take the blame. Besides, there's a troll wandering around the castle, or did you forget that bit?"
Harry looked at him. Draco recoiled, dropping his hand. There was a stranger in Harry's eyes, determined, implacable, full of intent resolve. He didn't look like a first-year.
"Hermione's missing," said Harry softly. "And Connor and Ron just left the Gryffindor line. I think they've gone in search of her."
Draco snored. "That's a long chain of suppositions to hang your own safety on," he said. "Come on."
Harry shrugged. "I might be wrong," he said, calmly. "Maybe they didn't go looking for Hermione. But, regardless, my brother's out there. I am going to protect him." He said the last words with all the finality of a Runespoor's bite, and then turned and ran down the hall before Draco could stop him. Hesitating one last time—merely to make sure that the Slytherin prefects were too busy with everyone else to watch them go, Draco assured himself—he tore after Harry.
"All this for a Mudblood," he muttered.
"Just like our mother," Harry said, mildly, without looking at him.
Draco winced. Harry was like that, sometimes, striking home with one small and calm remark. "I didn't mean it that way—"
"Draco," said Harry, in a tone of infinite patience, "shut up."
Draco shut up. He followed Harry, who seemed to know where he was going. He nearly banged into him when Harry pulled up abruptly, and then peered over Harry's shoulder and around the corner. The sight in front of him was enough to take all the spit out of his mouth.
They'd found the troll.
It was huge, and gray, and lumbered like a sculpture come to life. It hesitated for a long moment, then moved into the girls' loo at the end of the hall. A moment later, two small figures pelted in after it.
"Connor," said Harry, with a tone in his voice that Draco couldn't identify, and then ran. He was unfairly fast, and Draco fell behind soon enough. He entered the loo in time to hear the screaming, though, and then to see part of the problem. The troll had backed Granger into a corner, and Potter and Weasley were trying to levitate its club above its head.
It failed. Of course it did, Draco thought; it was a Gryffindor plan. The club dropped, and the troll grabbed it and dealt a sideways blow faster than Draco would have thought it could move. The club only grazed Weasley, though it still dropped him unconscious, but caught Potter a devastating sideways blow that sent him flying into the wall.
Harry moved a step forward. Draco caught a glimpse of his face, and cowered. At the same moment, a ferocious, violent headache sent him to the floor. His shield was no longer enough to keep out Harry's rising power.
"You shouldn't have hurt my brother," Harry told the troll, which turned towards him, blinking stupidly. "You really shouldn't have hurt my brother." Draco felt all future plans to hurt Potter physically wither and die in the flame of his stare. Harry thrust out a hand. "Incendio!"
The troll's club burst into flame. It howled and dropped the thing, but Harry snapped, "Wingardium Leviosa!" and the club hovered, then flew back and smashed into the troll. The troll hopped around in a circle, burning and screaming. Harry took another step forward and said, in a voice that in and of itself carried enough power to make Draco's temples throb, "Finite Incantatem."
The fire went out, and the club fell on the troll's head with a very final crash. It collapsed with a little whimper, and then lay still. Draco shivered, both at the display of power and at the smell of burning troll flesh.
And there was also the little fact that Harry hadn't used his wand for any of those three spells.
Harry turned around, panting heavily, putting a hand out for support that wasn't there. Draco hurried to provide it, but only managed to catch Harry as he sagged to his knees. He didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say.
Granger crept out of the corner and stared at them.
"Connor," Harry said, lifting his head. His eyes had come back to almost normal, if glazed and panicked and wide was "normal." "Is he alive?"
"I'll check," said Draco, since it meant so much to Harry, and went over to Potter. He was breathing, and though there was a goose-egg on the back of his head and a bruise along his ribs when Draco gingerly peeked beneath his robes, he didn't seem seriously injured. Draco sighed and nodded at Harry. "He'll live."
"I would heal him," Harry muttered, "but I don't know any medical magic yet."
"What you do know is very fucking impressive," Draco said dryly. He felt the urge to giggle, and didn't give in, because once he did, there would be no stopping it. He was half-high on the feeling of magic that still ebbed and danced in the air, centering on Harry, and he had a headache that would have been appropriate for a night of stiff drinking. He dropped down to the floor again. "I don't think I can move," he said, pathetically, to no one in particular.
Footsteps invaded the room then, and Draco's head, making the pounding worse. He winced, and looked up to see Professor McGonagall, the Gryffindor Head of House, in the doorway, staring at the felled troll.
"What happened?" she demanded, turning and squinting at Draco.
Draco opened his mouth to explain, but Harry got there first, all smooth charm and utter believability. "It was my brother, Professor," he said. "He hurled a spell at the troll I've never even seen before, a combination of—of the Levitation Charm we learned just today and something that caused fire." He shook his head back and forth. The wideness of his eyes made him look innocent, Draco thought, and butter probably wouldn't melt in his mouth as he blinked at McGonagall. "The force of it knocked him out, and he's wounded, but he saved my life. He saved all our lives."
McGonagall's face softened, and she nodded once. Then she said, "But why were you here in the first place?"
Draco again attempted to assist the cause of truth, but Harry got in the way again. "I followed the troll, Professor. I thought I could defeat it." He looked down bashfully. "It just gets tiring, sometimes, living in my brother's shadow." He added a perfect ingratiating whine that Draco recognized as an imitation of himself. "Do you know what I mean?"
"That was extremely foolish of you, Mister Potter," said McGonagall, the warmth in her face mostly gone. "Ten points from Slytherin, for the utter, utter foolishness of your actions."
Draco opened his mouth to protest the unfairness of everything, but the other professors appeared then, clucking and exclaiming, and he got swept away in the general tumult. He did see Hermione Granger watching the entire scene with speculative eyes, her head cocked to one side. But when Harry caught her eye and mouthed, "They were coming after you," she appeared willing to let the matter lie.
Draco wasn't. While McGonagall levitated Weasley and Potter to the infirmary, and Harry trotted beside them, breathless and exhausted and happy, he fought his way to Professor Snape's side. The Slytherin Head of House leaned on the wall, his eyes alternately on his colleagues and the dead troll.
"Potter didn't do that," Draco insisted, when Snape deigned to pay attention to him. "Harry did. Wandless, even! And now the old cat's taken points, and it's—it's just all so unfair." He winced and fell silent then, because his head really did hurt.
"I know, Draco," said Snape calmly. His voice had some tamped-down emotion in it, but it was so repressed that Draco couldn't tell what it was. He merely surveyed the scene, and his eyes gave nothing away, either. "But I must wait a few days before restoring Slytherin's points. I have to account for why I gave them, after all."
"I didn't mean that part!" Draco wailed. "Well, not just that part! I meant—"
Snape nodded to him. "I know," he said. "But I have learned that the best way to confront our Slytherin Potter is not directly. He can resist that, and rather spectacularly well, it looks like," he added, with one more glance around the room. "We must wait, and be indirect. Now, come with me. I have a potion that will soothe your headache." He swept out of the room.
Draco winced and hesitated. On the one hand, he felt like he should be with Harry in the infirmary.
On the other hand, his head pounded like a gong.
In the end, he followed Snape, and composed a letter in his head to his father the whole way. Dear Father, Harry is being exasperating. And stupid. And risking his life where he doesn't need to, and then refusing to even take credit for it, which would be the only reason for such a thing. And he gave me a headache.