** This chapter's been beta-ed now, thanks to Diagonalist. Sorry for any mistakes before **
Disclaimer: I don't own, nor do I want to own, Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling owns them. I've no intention of making any profit off of this, it's mere used to satisfy my desire to write and possibly to amuse you, the reader, though you can pay me if you want. Lyrics to Defy You, of course, don't belong to me. They belong to the Offspring.
Warning: This will be R and will contain *SLASH* You don't like it, don't read.
Summary: Harry returned to Hogwarts after six years of self-exile into the Muggle World and the defeat of Voldemort.
AN: Well, I'm extremely sorry again for the lack of updates this week, I really tried to get one up last Sunday, but it just didn't work, and then I haven't gotten home after school before eight pm. But I know you all love me and won't hold it against me, right? Right?
Now, addressing some reviews, which by the way, I'm extremely grateful for. I think I received over fifty for the last chapter alone. I'm glad you guys liked it.
Artemis- I live near a few hills and I can barely stay upright when I'm snowboarding.
Lord R- I believe you are evil.
Frankie- I might be crazy, but who ever had fun being sane. *Laughs maniacally*
Eternal Cosmos- We can't have Snape figuring out about Harry this early on. That would completely screw up the rest of my plot.
Special Thanks- To everyone who reviews, but especially to the people who fed me. Food is much appreciated. Also, leave all questions about the cat alone for now. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised when you figure out what it is.
Dedication- This is for everyone who has "different" opinions.
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Chapter VII
Repercussions and Revelations
You
may push me around
But you cannot win
You may throw me down
But I'll rise again
The more you say
The more I defy you
So get out of my face
You cannot stop us
You cannot bring us down
Never give up
We go on and on
You'll never break us
Never bring us down
We are alive!
All my will
All my strength
Rip it out
Start again
The wind blows
I'll lean into the wind
My angle grows
I'll use it to win
The more you say
The more I defy you
So get out of my way
Can you leave it all behind?
Can you leave it all behind?
Cause you can't go back
You can't go back
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It was somewhat odd. The first full week of school wasn't even over, and already I'd gotten myself in a duel.
The students were still standing around the classroom, stupidly, and I was already regretting my actions, or rather words.
Well, not really. Severus Snape deserved whatever he had coming to him. I was going to hex his pretty little ass from here to next month. He was going to be seeing stars for weeks. He wasn't going to know what hit him!
…
So what if I was a little nervous. Even if I had defeated the world's greatest dark wizard of the past half century, Severus was still the man who'd taught me nearly everything I know. I had the right to be a little nervous.
Inside I was silently praying that he would just walk away, or ignore me, or something.
However, when he did wave his hand dismissively at me, I got angry. He wasn't going to just ignore me!
I'm a confused and contradicting myself, what can I say?
I stepped forward, and shouted angrily at Snape from across the room. "Are you afraid I'm going to prove you wrong!?"
The dark haired man snorted at me. "Hardly."
"Well then?" I demanded. I wasn't going to let this drop.
He ignored me and started walking out of the room. That was it. I wasn't going to settle for this.
Raising my wand, I tried to hit him with a simple curse; Jelly-legs, to be exact. It wasn't the most mature thing, but it wasn't as if I was trying to kill him… or maim him. I just wanted to provoke a reaction, and Merlin only knew how hard it was to provoke anything more than a quirked eyebrow from that man.
He blocked it, expertly, as I'd expected. His pride would not suffer letting anyone say he'd been felled by a simple child's curse.
The students' faces were ridged with shock. Their teachers were having it out in front of them in a classroom! What would be next? A vampire teaching at the school… Except that wouldn't be a surprise. Many students suspected Snape of being just that already, but even so.
Severus turned to face me, his expression calm, but his eyes burning with restrained anger.
"How pleasant," he said coldly. "You really are incompetent."
Severus raised a mage barrier and pulled out his wand. In that order…. Odd. I didn't know you could do that.
Dismissing the thought from my mind until I could analyse it later, I got into proper duelling stance and bowed. Severus bowed back, and then our duel commenced.
He started first, trying to hit me with an incapacitating spell. I managed to block it and counter attack with petrificus, which was easily blocked as well. We went on like that for a while, shooting harmless curses at each other. It was actually amusing, and sad, in a way.
Suddenly the severity of the curses and hexes increased, nothing life threatening, but harmful none the less. Sparks started to shoot from own wands along with the curses. We even had to start dodging some of them unable to cast the counter curses fast enough.
I wasn't surprised when Severus managed to cast a curse that I couldn't block. I don't even recall what it was, but it managed to knock me from my feet and caused me to drop my wand.
He started to walk over to pick it up, but I wasn't going to let him beat me that easily.
"Accio," I shouted, and my wand flew back into my hand. It was the advantages of wandless magic.
Severus looked dumbfounded, and I took advantage of his shock to get his wand away from him.
He stood there stupidly, or as stupidly as a Snape could, as I approached him, my own wand pointing at his throat.
"Incompetent, am I?" I asked, sneering. I could see the students around us had mixed expressions. The Slytherins were enraged and disappointed at me defeating their head of house. The rest were snickering and glade that the Slytherin professor had been taken down a notch.
I myself felt a little smug. I'd just defeated my teacher. Just ignore the fact that I had cheated a little, if you could count it cheating.
My smug feeling disappeared when I saw the small, tell-tale twitch at the corners of Severus' mouth that were as close to a smirk as he ever got.
"Yes," he whispered, so that only I could hear.
It was my turn to be dumbfounded as he raised a fisted hand and brought it down on my temple.
My last coherent thought as I fell unconscious to the floor was that the greasy bastard had cheated. I hadn't been expecting that…
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I woke up in what was presumably the infirmary.
I didn't open my eyes right away because I heard voices, and wanted to hear what they were saying. One speaker was Mme Pomfrey, and the other was…
"The foolish boy attacked me in my own class room. What did you expect me to do Poppy? Let him insult me in front of my own students. A student needs to respect their teacher. How are they supposed to do that if…?"
"Be quite you hypocrite!" Poppy said vehemently. "From what I've heard, you've been insulting the man since he arrived at Hogwarts."
"But he's…"
Pomfrey cut him off, still obviously irritated, but her tone much calmer. "If you don't be quiet Severus, I'm going to start spreading much deserved rumours about you!"
"But…"
"Enough!" she exclaimed, and I could almost imagine her throwing her hands up in frustration. "I believe you should leave now. The poor man is going to have one nasty bruise on his head when he wakes up. I wouldn't want to be you when he decides to take revenge."
I didn't know about the bruising, but I sure as hell had one nasty headache. My temples were throbbing in time with my heartbeat. Some Muggle Asprin would be greatly appreciated at the moment.
"But…"
On second thought, the pain was worth every minute of watching, or rather hearing Snape flounder.
"Go!"
I heard Snape's retreating footsteps as he obediently left the infirmary.
I kept my eyes closed as I heard Poppy approach my bedside, hoping to fool her into believing I was still asleep, but alas my hopes were short-lived.
"I know you heard the entire conversation," she said quietly. Knowing I was caught I opened my eye and looked at her sheepishly. "We were loud enough to wake the dead. A rock couldn't have slept through out conversation."
I had to smile, inwardly, at her comment as she went in search of a pain-dulling potion, no doubt unwillingly compliments of the very man who had put me here. There was a nice little twist of irony in that. Quite satisfying, I must say.
I tried to prop myself up on my elbows, but when I tried to sit up, my head began to spin and throb, so I promptly fell back down.
Wow, was all I could think. Severus was certainly a lot stronger that he appeared. I wanted to raise my arm up to rub the goose egg that must have formed on my temple, but something told me that wouldn't be a very good idea. Something about putting unwanted pressure on it…
I couldn't help myself though. I raised my hand to my head to touch the swelling bump, wincing as the tips of my fingers came into contact with it. Ms. Pomfrey slapped my hand away from my head gently and scolded me.
"You're a grown man. You should know better than to touch the injury." I smiled sheepishly again and she "humped" at my childish behaviour. She then handed me the small, stopper-ed vial. "I'm going to give this to you to take under your own advisement, but I must warn you, it is extremely potent. A bottle this size should last you for six or seven doses, so be careful."
I took the vial in hand and stared at the brownish-hued solution. As I'd surmised, Snape had made it, his elegant script on the label proof of that. Abnegati-Malaise, it read. I think the name translated into 'negation of pain.' That was reassuring.
I then realized Poppy was still speaking.
"…and the potion will also help to bring down the swelling. Now off you go."
I didn't want to feel that I'd been ignoring her, because I felt stupid enough as it was having let Snape get the better of me, so I didn't ask her what she'd said. Take small doses, pain and swelling go away. She wouldn't give me something that could cause too much damage, right?
"Thanks," I said, cheerfully. I didn't take the potion in the bed though, because I wanted whatever the horrible effects of the potion would be to take place in my rooms. I didn't want a second bout of stupidity to be witnessed. "I'm just going to sit here for a minute until the room stops moving."
Mme. Pomfrey just shook her head muttering something about men and their pride before going to the back of the room to, I assume, restock the medicine supplies.
It was a good thing I made the decision I did, because not only would I have fallen had I tried to stand just then, but Dumbledore also entered the hospital wing, and the expression I saw on his face made me feel that what he had to say would be taken better sitting down.
Dumbledore looked, to put it nicely, like shit. I was the first time I'd ever seen him like this, and frankly, it frightened me.
His blue eyes didn't hold the familiar twinkle then, and his face was weary. It was though he was exhausted and in desperate need of a long denied sleep. I suddenly felt a different sort of respect for the old man. I no longer worshiped him like I had as a child because I knew him to be a manipulative bastard, but from what I saw in his eyes…
He wasn't a headmaster of a school. He was the ruler of an entire race tired to making decisions that hurt those he loved because it helped the greater good. I saw then a man who realized that there was a knife's edge between selflessness and self-sacrifice, and a man could only balance that for so long and remain human. Albus was a strong man, and I almost regretted saying what I had in his office my first day back at Hogwarts, but as the expression went, men forget but never forgive.
I looked at him expectantly, and then suddenly he was back to his old self. That brief moment of anguish that I saw trying to fade like paint against the sun. I wasn't going to forget it. Maybe, if I puzzled over it long enough, I would be able to figure out what Albus had been trying to do and actually get over it…
But not right then; my head hurt too much.
"Ah, Ethan," Dumbledore said with what I now knew to be false cheerfulness. "I heard about your spectacular duel this afternoon. It seems out dear Severus took a slight beating to his ego." The man winked conspiratorially before saying in a whisper, "If you ask me, it was well needed. Between the two of us, it was a good thing, otherwise that man would have grown to big for his hat."
I let out actual laughter there. The thought of Severus wearing a hat, and the mental pictures associated with it were too much. Albus laughed with me, and it seemed unforced this time. For a short while I was able to picture myself before the end of the war, when I'd been young and not quite so jaded, and I thought 'Professor Dumbledore' could do no wrong.
My mirth changed to anguish on the flip of a coin, and I suddenly felt bitter. I was like a hormonal, teenage female, suffering from mood-swings at 'that time of the month.' I was just a roller-coaster of emotions for some reason, and I was ready to blame it on the bumped up head.
"I'm glad to be of service," I said, trying to regain that humorous mood, but failing miserably.
Albus composed himself after his laughter subsided, acting oblivious to the change in my change in moods, and for once I was grateful. I even managed to take comfort from his next words.
"I just stopped by to see how you were faring, and to congratulate you on your exceptional duelling skills…"
He was cut off by Poppy who called back from where she was standing. "That young man doesn't need commending, he deserves a cuff on the ear, which Severus kindly gave him. Honestly, attacking him in front of the students. You couldn't have sorted your differences out in private, now could you?"
I don't think Snape would have been willing to talk to me in private, or at any time, I thought bitterly, but I didn't voice it.
Dumbledore looked down at me and shrugged his shoulders. "I stand chastised. There is nothing I can do against the intelligence and intuition of women," he bowed comically to Mme Pomphrey. "So, by your leave, Milady."
To my shock, not only did Poppy seem to blush at that, but also the room had stopped spinning.
I slowly swung my feet over the edge of the bed, now able to sit up, and once my feet were firmly planted on the ground, I stood, and, miraculously, didn't waver.
I raised the potion in a gesture of thanks to Hogwarts' medic and left the infirmary, slowly making my way back to my rooms.
I was confused when I got there, mulling over the odd conversation I had had with Albus, not in words, but in emotions. I simply couldn't understand what I was thinking. I was strongly beginning to believe Snape had hit me harder that we all suspected, because I normally never felt this way. I was generally pretty good at interpreting my emotions as well as those of others.
Shaking my head, I resolved not to think of it at all until the morning.
Going to one of the drawers, I pulled out a teaspoon. I poured a small amount of the brown liquid onto the spoon, and quickly swallowed it all. I then rushed over to the sink and drank water directly from the tap. I'd forgotten Snape didn't believe in putting anything in his potions to make them feel better.
It was while I was standing with my head nearly in the sink that the effects of the potion hit me.
Poppy hadn't been kidding when she'd said it worked quickly.
I barely managed to make it to my bedroom before I passed out, still fully clothed, on the covers of the messy bed. I was out like a light. I hit the pillows like a ton of bricks. I…
Well, you get the idea.
I was so unconscious I didn't even notice the nameless Himalayan jump onto the bed and snuggle up against my head.
I'd missed dinner, but I didn't even wake up until the next morning, nearly late and having to rush to arrive at my own class on time.
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AN: Um… Sorry about the outcome of the duel, but I got so many reviews telling me to have Harry kick Sev's ass, and while that's what I was planning, the few reviews for the opposite really appealed to me, so I kinda did both. Hope you still liked it.
Okay, now I have three questions for you:
1) Would you mind if later on I did a chapter from Sev's, point of view?
2) Does anyone want a flashback into Harry's life in the Muggle world next chapter?
3) What are your opinions on going in depth into Harry's band mate's characters?
Give me feedback. If
you think it's worth continuing, tell me. If it should be scrapped, tell
me. If you got a new puppy and want to brag about it, tell me. If
you have random pointless plot ideas, I'd love to know.
Also, if you have any questions you want answered, e-mail me. I do check
my e-mail often, and there's a much better chance I'll get back to you.
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