Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
This is a rather different chapter from any I've done so far, but necessary, I think. And look, we've got a new POV character at the end!
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Gazing on ConnorIf there is one thing I have learned, Albus thought, as he moved into the Great hall for breakfast, it is the importance of adaptability.
He took his seat at the head table and nodded to Sirius and Severus, the only ones already seated there. Sirius nodded back at him, a bright smile on his face. He smiled all the time since Albus had given him the golden bauble to hang around his neck. It really had been simpler than Albus had thought it would be to confine his thoughts and turn them back towards calmness. Because Sirius had not often let him look into his mind before, he had not known how many of those thoughts revolved around Dark magic. Having a central focus made them far easier to confine.
Severus scowled at him and turned away. Albus hid a sigh. He had behaved badly earlier in the year, he knew. Had he walked more carefully, he might have managed to retain Severus's loyalty—though an unusually large piece of it seemed to have been given to Harry Potter.
He knew why he hadn't walked more carefully. His emotions had blinded him, most especially his horror and dread of what Harry was becoming.
If I had thought about it, Albus decided, as the porridge appeared in his bowl and he began to eat, I would have realized what I had to do. Alas, thought was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment.
He knew how to survive. He knew that things changed, and he did have to change with them. Had he retained that lesson in the forefront of his mind, rather than the lessons imprinted by doing nothing about Tom Riddle while he was still a child, then he thought he would still have Harry as at least a tentative ally.
Things change, but must they be shoved along? Tom would freeze all things into changelessness, so very greatly does he fear death. And with Harry, or rather, with the vates he could become, all is change.
He lifted his head, eyes seeking Harry across the Hall. He was seated at the Slytherin table, of course.
Albus sighed to remember his utter surprise when the Hat had proclaimed Harry for Slytherin. It wasn't what he had expected, from Lily's account of the boy and what he observed when he visited Godric's Hollow, but that did not excuse his reactions. So much had been lost in that moment. If he had been faster, then he could have contained the damage. He could have invited Harry to his office and explained that no one would disdain him for belonging to the serpent House as long as he still acted with proper caution and courtesy and chivalry. Harry understood the ideals of sacrifice and lived them better than anyone else Albus had ever seen. He would have understood the idea of continuing with the sacrifice.
Albus could even have cast an auditory glamour charm, so that the Hat's shout would have sounded as Gryffindor instead of Slytherin. Then Harry could have gone into his proper House, and much disaster would have been averted.
But that would have required me to have some idea of what the Hat was going to shout, Albus thought, as he finished his porridge and turned to his pumpkin juice, and as we have already established, I did not.
There was a tone of self-deprecation to his thoughts, and he did not know why there should not be. He had made mistakes. He could admit it now, now that it was late February and the first flush of many rages was past—Harry's unbinding his magic, demanding Sirius's past, hurting Lily….
Now he would have to live in the changed world that had come about at least partly as the result of his mistakes, and adapt to what followed.
I must still be the balance, he thought, and his gaze went from Harry to Connor. The Gryffindor was chattering with his friends. Sirius's return to sanity had been good for him. He once again had an adult at the school whom he trusted unreservedly, and his friends somewhat helped to make up for the loss of his brother.
I must be the balance between frozen order and unbridled chaos. Only on the middle ground can life continue in the wizarding world much as it had been, without the reign of terror that Voldemort would bring about cruelly or Harry would bring about innocently.
There was still the chance that things could proceed as they always had. Albus was not defeated. His pieces moved on the board yet. He could turn Harry back to his brother's side, and train Connor into the kind of leader who would swing the balance between order and chaos himself. Harry still bore part of the phoenix web. The longer he remained away from Connor, the more impatient it would get to bring him back to his brother's side.
That was the first possible path.
The second chance was that Harry would tear more and more free of Connor, and matters would continue to worsen. In that case, Albus knew, he would have to strike a truce with Harry—some bargain that would hold. He would have to ask the boy what he most wanted, and seal the matter, perhaps with a pureblood ritual. Albus dreaded matters coming to that pass, since he knew it would mean having to tell Lily that she really would never see her elder son again, but he was prepared to accept it now. In that case, nothing he did would make that much difference to Harry one way or another, until that fatal moment; this chance was the one that had the least impact on his plans.
That was the second possible path.
And in the third…
Albus narrowed his eyes, though he kept his face calm. The third was unpredictable, and he feared it would bring about the change and the chaos that he so feared. But he knew it also grew likelier the longer his patient, methodical plan to capture Peter again was delayed. At any moment, Peter might realize that Harry did not know the whole truth, or Harry might show it to him with a careless comment. And yet, the patient, methodical plan could not possibly be rushed.
If Harry learns the whole truth about the prophecy…
That was the third possible path, the one where Albus would have to do the most adaptation, the most pure survival, and the most careful guardianship. Should it come to pass, he would have to be Harry's ally, because there was no other choice with a wizard that powerful and that intensely violent at the mere mention of compulsion. Yet he would have to be prepared to turn against him at any moment, too, because if Harry went too far, Albus was the only one with the power and the commitment to hold him back.
And yet, the ironic edge to his thoughts, his constant companion in the last two months, pointed out, Harry would never have hated compulsion so much if you had not bound him. You have forged your own bane. You made him more like a vates by tying his magic.
Albus nodded, and put the regrets away. There was no room for them.
As Severus left to teach his first class and Minerva arrived to eat breakfast, as Sirius all but bounced out of the Hall while winking at Connor, as Harry stood and departed with the Malfoy heir in his wake, Albus sipped his pumpkin juice and reached out slowly, delicately. In his office, a Pensieve was glowing, and the memory it showed would be of a night twelve years ago when Albus had cast another phoenix web. From there, delicate, delicate threads of compulsion snaked out and towards Peter. Albus did not know exactly where he was hiding, nor how long it might take him to reconnect with the reordered phoenix web. He knew he was having some success; it was Peter who had suggested that Harry visit Albus, winning the Headmaster another chance to make an offer to Harry, and Peter had said that he wanted to visit with Connor, thus setting up a situation in which he could be seen as a great threat to the Boy-Who-Lived and the Ministry would agree to send more Dementors from Azkaban to capture him.
But Albus did not know when he would win, and the pressure to do something more than this was growing greater.
Albus put the regrets away again, and wondered what wizards did who had never learned that ability.
Harry wasn't surprised that Draco accompanied him to breakfast. The spider attack and the nightmare in early February had obviously frightened him. But since it was now a Sunday at the beginning of March, Harry felt a bit justified in turning around and confronting him.
"Draco," he said.
Draco looked at him. "What?"
"I'm going to the Owlery," Harry pointed out.
"Yes," said Draco, and looked at him.
"You don't need to accompany me there," said Harry. "It's the Owlery. People don't lurk up there waiting to ambush other people. It would happen in the dungeons if it would happen anywhere at all."
Of course, his internal history book promptly reminded him of some times during the First War against Voldemort and the war against Grindelwald when people had indeed been ambushed in Owleries. And Draco was shaking his head already. "You need someone with you at all times," he said.
"You trust me to be in Snape's office and Divination class alone," said Harry.
"I trust Snape," said Draco, and leaned casually against the wall. "And I have people I've talked to who are in Divination and are keeping an eye on you."
Harry blinked. "Who?"
Draco just smiled at him.
"I'm feeling a bit crowded," said Harry, after wondering who it could be and coming up with nothing. "Please, Draco, I'd like some time alone to send this letter off." He gestured with the small bundle, wrapped in silk, that he held.
"You're sending it to my father," said Draco. "I should be able to watch, I think."
Harry rolled his eyes and set off again. It wasn't worth arguing over. Besides, he didn't have the time. He had hesitated in sending the next truce-gift to Lucius as it was, and now it would barely get there in time for Lucius to choose the next gift and reply by vernal equinox. And right after he sent the letter off, then he was going to slip away from Draco, whether his friend liked it or not, and find Connor.
He kept trying to convince his brother of the truth. Each time, it escalated into punches, and the last time, Connor had drawn his wand. Harry knew he could have pinned his brother in place and forced him to listen with magic, even sent the truth driving into his mind; Snape was teaching him Legilimency.
That was exactly why he broke the confrontations off when he did. He would not compel Connor, not in any way. His brother had to listen freely.
They arrived in the Owlery to a welcome of coos and hoots and shifting on perches. Harry held his arm up, and Hedwig stooped down to him before he could call for her. Harry blinked, then shrugged and attached the bundle carefully to her leg.
"Lucius Malfoy, at Malfoy Manor," he told her, and fed her a bit of pastry he'd saved from breakfast.
Hedwig ate it delicately, slid a strand of his hair through her beak, and then rose and swooped through the window. Harry watched her go with narrowed eyes. When he concentrated, he thought he could see a binding that trailed her, or perhaps which she flew along, anchored to the Owlery's stones.
"What was in that?" Draco asked, startling him out of his daze. Harry blinked and shook his head. A faint headache from returning so soon to normal sight plagued him. At least it was better than the headache from the nightmares—which had, admittedly, lessened since his dream about the rat and the dog, so that he dreamed only of the circle of closing shadows.
"A stone I enchanted so that your father could break my neck if he crushed it," Harry answered, and turned towards the stairs.
Draco's hand on his arm jerked him to a halt. Surprised, Harry turned and found Draco staring at him, wild-eyed and angry.
"What?" He packed an awful lot of emotion in that one word, Harry thought dryly. He would have to get Draco to show him how he had done it.
Harry shrugged, trying to remove the tight grip. It just got tighter. "He gave me a branch that could break his neck if I broke it," said Harry. "I couldn't respond in less than kind."
"Yes, you could," said Draco, looking as if he didn't know whether to be angrier with Harry or Lucius.
"No, I really couldn't," Harry said, and lifted his chin to look Draco directly in the eye. "The truce doesn't work that way, Draco. He knew how vulnerable he was making himself when he gave me the branch, but he also knew I would give him a vulnerability back."
"What's his next gift going to be?"
"I don't know," Harry answered calmly. "This is the part of the truce where the one who initiated it gets to choose the gift, and I just have to make an acceptable answer. I get to choose my own midsummer gift, though."
Draco opened his mouth to say something else, but two things interrupted them at that moment: an owl gliding through the window and heading for Harry, and a cough from the doorway. Harry glanced past Draco's shoulder and saw Ron waiting there, looking a bit red in the face.
Harry said, "Just a minute, Ron," and took the letter from the owl's leg. It was a snort note only, without the Ministry seal, which didn't tell him who it was from until he'd opened it.
Dear Mr. Potter:
What you ask of me would be most unwise.
Rufus Scrimgeour.
Harry frowned and crumpled the paper in his fist. It was unwise to ask Scrimgeour to try and arrange to have Lupin as Connor's guardian? Why?
But he knew the Auror was unlikely to give him answers with further pestering, if this was all he had sent, and Harry owed him too much to pester.
That left him with almost no choice, again. Dumbledore would have been more suitable than either Lily or Sirius, and Harry had the most realistic chance of getting the Ministry to agree to the Headmaster, but Dumbledore had named his price for the guardianship, and Harry was not going back under the phoenix web. James returned everyone's letters unopened. Lupin was "unwise." Snape had developed a hatred for Connor apparently almost as great as his hatred for Sirius, and Lily and Sirius would both fight the choice of McGonagall.
I suppose I don't have any other choice but to ask her, though, Harry thought, dismally.
Ron coughed again.
"What do you want, Weasley?" Draco asked. "Come to Transfigure owl pellets into Galleons? Or perhaps this is the place that you do your laundry?" His gaze took in Ron's worn robes with spectacular contempt.
Ron turned red, but spoke to Harry instead of Draco. "I have a message for you from Connor," he said.
Harry stared blankly at him. "A message?'
"Too good to speak to his own brother, is he?" Draco asked with a sneer.
"Shut up, Malfoy, it's not like that," Ron snapped at him. "This is a pureblood thing." He glanced uncomfortably at Harry. "I suggested that he try it, and, well, he said he'd think about it. Now he's actually done it." He came forward and placed a small scroll in Harry's hand.
Harry glanced up at Ron as he unrolled the parchment. "You don't want to tell me what the prophecy was, do you, Ron?" he asked, the same question he'd asked every time he saw the other boy since that day in Trelawney's Tower. He'd overheard Ron and Connor discussing the prophecy in hushed tones, and knew the other boy had indeed remembered it.
Ron's face turned even redder. "I'm not a snitch, Harry," he said, with a kind of quiet dignity in his voice. "And I'm loyal to my friends."
Harry sighed. He suspected he wasn't going to get the truth out of Ron short of reading it from his mind or compelling him to say it. And both of those smacked of slavery to him.
He read the parchment, and blinked.
Meet me on the vernal equinox at sunset, in the Owlery. Do not approach me again before then. Connor Potter.
Harry let out a long, slow breath. Vernal equinox, when the winter turned to spring, and the day and night were exactly as long as each other. And sunset, a time of equal balance between dark and light.
This particular time and date had been used for reconciliation rituals almost since the beginning of pureblood culture.
Harry could feel himself smiling as he put the parchment in his pocket. "Tell him I'll be there," he told Ron, whom he now realized was fulfilling the formal role of messenger.
Ron nodded. "I'll tell him." He gave Harry a little bow, then turned and left.
Draco opened his mouth and said something sneering and disdainful about Connor or Ron or both, no doubt. Harry ignored him. His heart was beating, hard, with cautious hope.
He might be able to reconcile with his brother. He might.
At dinner the evening of the distasteful encounter with Weasley, Draco leaned back and scowled across the Great Hall at the chattering Gryffindor table.
Connor was the center of them, the prat. He wasn't at all subtle about it, either, which made Draco think he was rather missing the point of power. His mother and father had taught him all about that—his father with explicit lessons, his mother by living it. A Malfoy didn't just walk around proclaiming that he was powerful. It had no class, and it made other wizards more likely to put their backs up. Besides, it wouldn't work with Slytherins, with Ravenclaws, even with some Hufflepuffs, particularly the cleverer ones like Smith.
But it worked with Gryffindors, and there was a certain raw strength in the way that Harry's brother marshaled them. They knew he was having private lessons with Harry's mutt of a godfather, and they knew that he had some special secret magical gift, and they knew that something terrible had happened to his mother. Add the lingering mystique of the Boy-Who-Lived, and that won him sympathy and admiration in almost equal amounts. It was a rare Gryffindor who managed to resist a combination of glorymongering and pity-slobbering.
Draco narrowed his eyes with dislike as he watched the Patil girl say something to Connor. Connor said something back, and the Patil girl burst into giggles. Connor leaned back and made another observation, looking hard at the Slytherin table, and everyone started laughing, except Granger, who was obviously trying hard to concentrate on her book.
Draco turned and looked at Harry, and shook his head. The twins were hardly comparable. Harry didn't have to brag about his terrible tragic past or his power. He ate, he slept, he studied, he did homework, he walked around, he plotted an awful lot (at least according to his clock), and he made efforts to reconcile with prats who obviously didn't deserve them.
And he turned heads.
Power rippled out from him slowly and subtly, lapping onto others, making them think and whisper and debate, and thus inspiring other people to think and whisper and debate. Slytherins floated nearer to Harry bob by bob, lured by the fact that he had this magic and wouldn't use it to rule over them. Older students watched with narrowed eyes, and sometimes asked probing, testing questions that Harry answered with more honesty than he should have—except that the strength of his magic protected him. The Slytherins who had kept secrets from Harry last year were beginning to share them with him, forgetting that he hadn't been raised perfectly pureblood and didn't grasp many of the things that were instinctive to them.
Harry, the prat, continued not to notice.
Draco shook his head, and gave one more hard look at the Gryffindor table. There was the figurehead people actually paid attention to. Eating calmly beside Draco was the soldier who would actually change the world.
Granger looked up and met his gaze just then. Draco raised an eyebrow. She nodded back, confirming without words their deal that she would watch Harry in Divination class.
Sometimes, Draco mused, it was a good thing that Harry was so oblivious to emotional matters that concerned him. There were threats that he also didn't think to watch for, and this way other people could protect him without his peevish arguing.
Snape was in a foul enough mood to actually welcome teaching the third-year Gryffindors and Slytherins as they tumbled into class that second week of March. Anything was better than the fifth-year class and the Weasley twins.
They had varied the Eternal Repair Potion in a way that Snape still couldn't figure out, then used it to stick their classmates' cauldrons to the desks. No matter what spells Snape cast, the cauldrons remained stuck. The twins stood in front of him with wide, innocent eyes and hidden smirks no matter how many points he took from Gryffindor, so Snape had finally been forced to Vanish everyone's cauldron and threaten the students into obtaining new ones by next class. The twins had received two weeks' worth of detention, each, which Snape had deliberately scheduled to include times that he knew the Gryffindor Quidditch team was practicing.
The twins did not seem to care.
Snape didn't bother writing out the instructions for the Child's Game Potion. It was a simple antidote to several of the common hexes that children were always getting themselves hit with, for situations with accidental magic where Finite Incantatem wouldn't work predictably. He simply waved his wand, conjured the instructions, and barked, "You will turn in a sample of the potion at the end of class." That made everyone scramble for their cauldrons.
Snape caught a few betrayed looks from among the third-year Slytherins. He usually gave an introduction to the potion, at least, and explained what it did and why they were making it; unlike every Gryffindor but Granger, they actually listened. Snape ignored them. Life wouldn't hand them introductions to potions, nor would opponents on the battlefield stand still and patiently explain what every hex did. It was time they learned to stop leaning so heavily on him.
He was self-knowing enough to admit, as he stalked among the students, that part of his impatience came from the fifth-year class and part from the increasingly insistent flare of the Dark Mark on his left arm, so keen last night that he'd had to charm the limb immobile this morning. He was angry enough not to care.
"Like this, Neville," Harry was explaining as Snape circled them like a stalking werewolf. "The lavender petals have to go in before the beetle carapaces. Do you know why?"
Longbottom worried at his lip for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. "Because the petals make the potion smooth and ready to receive the carapaces?"
"Exactly," said Harry, so warmly that Longbottom flushed. Then he caught Snape's eye and paled.
Harry looked up, too. Snape scowled at him. Harry gazed calmly back, not at all intimidated. "Our potion isn't quite ready yet, sir," he said.
Snape noted to himself that he would have to find Harry a different partner than Longbottom soon. Longbottom had improved out of all recognition, and it was time that he, just like all the others, learned to stand on his own. Besides, Harry could more productively lend his knowledge among the other Slytherins. Crabbe was starting to slip badly enough that Snape soon wouldn't be able to bring himself to ignore it.
"I can see that, Potter," he said. "When do you think it will be ready?"
Harry turned his head to look at the directions on the board. "An hour from this point forward, sir," he said.
Snape sneered. "Then see that you brew it, Mr. Potter, instead of talking to me." He swept away. He could feel Harry's eyes on his back, still not intimidated. The boy had shown more tendency to argue with him this week about what Snape thought they should practice in their private lessons, as well as how often he should be allowed out of Hogwarts.
That will have to be corrected, Snape thought, even as he turned to vent his anger on a deserving target.
Connor Potter was partnered with Ron Weasley; they always worked together, unless Snape assigned one of them elsewhere. Currently, they were arguing in heated whispers about whether to add the lavender petals completely crushed, as the directions clearly called for, or in large shreds, because that took less time. Snape wondered what cruel whim of fate had sent him students unable to follow simple directions.
The Potter brat glanced up as Snape approached, and then narrowed his eyes and sneered. The look had Black stamped all over it. It was the same look he was always giving Harry whenever they passed in the corridors. Snape considered the brat a waste of time, beyond hope of redemption, and did not know why his ward continued to try and redeem him anyway, against Snape's explicit advice. That, combined with how much he resembled Black now, gave Snape all the excuse he needed to lay waste to the Potter brat's confidence.
"Mr. Potter," he said, and looked down into the potion. It was, of course, congealing, as neither Potter nor Weasley had thought to continue stirring it while they talked. "Pray tell me, do you intend to have the lumps in your potion large enough to injure whoever swallows it?"
Potter's glare intensified, but he said nothing. Instead, he lifted a hand to rub at his head. No, Snape thought, since he had become used to watching for the gesture with Harry, at his forehead.
A drop of blood welled from the heart-shaped scar, just behind his rubbing fingers.
Snape stared in fascination as the drop trickled down the scar and started to fall, and then moved a few precise steps backward.
The blood fell into the cauldron, and caused a prompt explosion of noxious fumes. Snape waited until Potter and Weasley had each got a good lungful before he caged the fumes in the air with a few sweeps of his wand and then Vanished them. He nodded to Granger.
"Accompany them to the hospital wing, Miss Granger. I will be spending time with students who are not so stupid as to disdain knowledge offered," Snape drawled, and moved back towards the Slytherin side of the room, feeling immensely better.
Of course, he did have to consider what it meant that Connor Potter was bleeding from a supposedly Voldemort-inflicted scar, much as Harry Potter was.
Nothing significant, I hope, he thought. If that brat is truly the savior of the wizarding world, then we might as well hand ourselves over to the Dark Lord right now.
Minerva had to admit, as she checked to make sure that the teacups were in place on the desk and that she was sitting in a straight, upright posture, that she was nervous. She had never done anything like this before.
Oh, there were some students she might have considered it for, but that was a different thing than actually doing it. And it was far different than doing it at the request of the student's brother.
A prompt knock sounded on the door, and Minerva let out her breath. "Come in," she called.
Connor peered around the door at her. Minerva eyed him. Harry was right. He did need someone to intervene. He might smile more brightly than ever, but his eyes were shadowed, and he looked as though he wasn't getting much sleep. He absently rubbed at his forehead and that famous scar as he shuffled across the room and slouched into the chair in front of her desk.
Minerva indicated the teacups on her desk. "Would you like some tea, Mr. Potter?"
He stared at her, then sat up in the chair. "Just tell me what this is about, please, Professor McGonagall," he said. "I thought we were going to discuss my Transfiguration project, not…" He trailed off and waited.
Minerva sighed and folded her hands in front of her. "I think that you need a different adult to look after you, Connor," she said, dropping the surname that might remind him of his family and distance him from her. "I know that Sirius and your mother are doing their best, but your mother is, obviously, deprived of magic and thus of much meaningful participation in our world. And Sirius is…unstable."
"He hasn't been for weeks!" Connor snapped.
"Yes, well." Minerva had once believed that it was impossible to think that Sirius Black really meant harm. That he didn't mean harm was the whole trouble, of course; when something bad did happen as a result of his pranks, he only had to wink and grin and look a bit contrite, and he was excused. But now, she was not sure. "That does not mean I'm not concerned over your future, Connor."
Connor's eyes narrowed, and an odd expression came onto his face. Minerva would have said it was Slytherin, if she didn't believe that the boy despised Slytherins with all his heart and would never look like one.
Willingly, she added in her head.
"You really think that Mum can't take care of me without magic, Professor?" he asked.
"I think that she has trouble enough taking care of herself," said Minerva quietly. When she had asked for more details about Lily Potter, Albus had willingly provided them, especially when she explained that she meant to comfort Connor Potter. He seemed to believe he was luring her back to his side. Minerva was letting him think that. "And I know that you are at a point in your magical education when you will need to keep learning even over the summer. And given who you are, Mr. Potter, you have…well, more threats than most to worry about."
"Voldemort's tried to kill me three times now," said Connor. "I escaped each time. And Sirius is teaching me now, and Mum can still teach me, even if she can't lift her wand and show me herself." A spasm passed over his face, something Minerva thought was anger or grief or pain. "Harry made sure she couldn't," he whispered.
Minerva leaned forward. "I am offering to train you, Connor," she said. "You could live at Hogwarts over the summer while you learned."
Connor blinked at her for a moment.
Then he shook his head.
Minerva frowned. "Is something wrong, Mr. Potter?" She cursed herself for the slip the next moment, as the boy's face became even more closed.
"You don't trust Sirius or my mum," he said softly. "And you didn't suggest my father or Remus, even though you could have. And you didn't suggest the Headmaster, who would be better at training me than anyone else, and maybe have some time during the summer, too." He looked her straight in the eye. "Please tell me. Did Harry put you up to this?"
"Yes," said Minerva, and then blinked, one hand rising to touch her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that. It seemed extremely odd that she had.
"Thank you," said Connor, and then slipped out of his chair and made for the door.
Minerva called after him. "Please, Mr. Potter, tell me that you'll consider it."
Connor paused and glanced over his shoulder. His face had gone quiet, his eyes introspective. He looked more like Harry in that moment than Minerva had ever seen him look.
"I'm sorry, Professor," he said quietly. "I can't. My mother lost a son, and Sirius lost a godson. I can't make up for Harry, but I don't want to make them lose me, too."
He shut the door gently behind him.
Remus forced himself to stop pacing. He had the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff third-years arriving for their Defense Against the Dark Arts class in five minutes. He couldn't look worried to death.
But he also couldn't stop himself from picking up the letter that lay on the desk and reading it again.
Dear Remus:
I have no reason to think that you'll read this once you recognize my handwriting, but I wanted to reassure you that I did get your letter. And I'm responding to you where I didn't respond to anyone else because I think you'll understand. Sometimes we Marauders take a long time to make up our minds. You and I were always the longest.
I'm safe. I'm at Lux Aeterna right now, just staring around me, and I'm thinking. It feels like years since I thought. It feels like sweeping cobwebs out of my mind. It feels like looking on the consequences and evaluating them. All of them.
And that's what I'm doing, Remus. Two and a half months of thinking, and I still can't make it all come straight in my mind. Of course, I have thirteen years of mistakes to think over and set to rights. Peter and Albus and the prophecy and giving up my position as an Auror and Connor and Harry and Lily.
Lily.
It probably doesn't shock you to know that I still love her, Remus. You were always good with things like that. And I always felt like I could talk to you about anything.
But not this time. Not everything. This is something I have to work out on my own, if I'm ever going to be the father—and the husband—I should have been. If I'm ever going to be the man I should have been, I think on the bad days.
Enough of this self-indulgent whining! Keep my boys safe if you can, Remus, and watch over Sirius. I did read one of his letters, and I know that his mind is safer now than it's been in a year, thank Merlin and thank Dumbledore (even though I can't stop thinking awful things about him, either).
I'll be there, if I can, at the end of the year.
Mischief managed,
James.
Remus let out a sharp breath, and then really did fold the letter and put it away again when the students came into the room. He would need all his concentration to deal with this class. Today was their first practical lesson, after months of theory; Quirrell and Lockhart had left the class in such a shameful state that Remus had felt compelled to start with that first.
Besides, any teacher, Remus was fervently convinced, would need all his or her concentration to deal with having Hermione Granger and Zacharias Smith in the same class.
He met their gazes with a calm smile as they settled into their seats, did a mental tally of the roll—everyone was there—and asked, "What was the last thing you remember me telling you about Dark creatures?"
Zacharias's and Hermione's hands were in the air at once, but Hermione's was marginally faster. Remus nodded at her. "Yes, Miss Granger?"
"That some of the Dark creatures feed on the fear they cause," Hermione said. She didn't only imitate his words, but also the intonation with which he'd delivered them. Remus wondered if she realized she did that with all her professors. Hearing Severus's deliberate pauses and slicing tones filtered through her voice was really quite startling. "Dementors, for example," she added, and that was more her own voice.
"Very good, Miss Granger," Remus said, with a nod. "Five points to Gryffindor."
"But you also said that we were going to face a creature that caused fear today," Zacharias cut in, using all his trained pureblood poise to try and make himself look taller than Hermione. "And I don't think that you would bring a Dementor into the school, Professor. Is it a boggart?"
"Five points to Hufflepuff," said Remus. He sighed as he noted Hermione glaring at Zacharias, and Zacharias glaring right back. At least we will be practicing magic in a moment, and they will need to be using spells, so they can't compete with each other at the questions. "Yes, indeed, Mr. Smith." He turned and walked back to the edge of the desk, gesturing with his wand to float out the heavy trunk he'd brought from his rooms. The trunk bucked as he set it down. More than one student flinched.
"A boggart will take the form of what you most fear," he informed his class. Everyone was paying attention now, he noted, and none of them looked ready to interrupt. "That is why they are considered Dark creatures; they pull emotions from their victims' minds, and, as Miss Granger noted, they do feed on them. The incantation to defeat a boggart is Riddikulus. It draws on laughter, an opposing emotion to the fear that boggarts try to invoke, and it requires the caster to use force of will, to resist the compulsion trying to overtake his or her freedom. And, of course, once others begin laughing, a boggart is done for." He measured the class with his eyes, looking past both the most eager—Hermione—and the most nervous—Neville. Finally, he nodded to Justin. "Mr. Finch-Fletchley. If you will come forward?"
Justin stood with a small swallow and came forward, his wand held out. "What was the spell, Professor?" he asked.
"Riddikulus," Remus supplied with a smile.
Justin repeated it to himself a few times, then nodded. "I'm ready, Professor," he said.
Remus cast Alohomora on the trunk, and stepped out of the way as the boggart burst free, a confused shape for a moment as it tried to pick out fears from the minds of the people around it. Then it focused on Justin, and abruptly became an enormous dog, with serrated teeth so long they overedged its jaw. Remus blinked, and hoped that Justin never faced Sirius in his Animagus form.
The boggart strode forward, snarling. Justin shivered and seemed to have trouble getting his wand up. His face had gone pasty white.
"Something that amuses you!" Remus called, ready to wave his wand and banish the thing if the challenge proved to be too much for Justin.
But Justin caught his breath, waved his wand, and shouted, "Riddikulus!" In the next moment, a baby bonnet appeared on the dog's head, and a tiny kitten was sitting on its neck, mewing and swatting at the dog's mouth to get its attention. The hound whirled about, seemingly confused, and the kitten clung on, hissing and spitting.
The class burst into laughter, and Remus nodded. "Well done, Mr. Finch-Fletchley!" He flicked his eyes to the person immediately behind him. "Mr. Potter?"
Connor stood up and came forward. Remus had to admit to some curiosity as to what form his boggart would take.
The hound burst apart into a cloud of smoke, and then rushed forward together into a smaller shape.
Remus felt his heart tighten painfully. Connor's boggart was Harry.
Connor was staring at his brother, or the form of his brother, with sick terror in his eyes. The boggart-Harry pushed his glasses up on his nose and took a step forward, aiming his wand at Connor and wearing a smile that Remus sincerely hoped did not come from real-life experience.
Connor aimed his wand, with difficulty, and managed to whisper, "Riddikulus."
It took him a few more tries, but the boggart-Harry finally tripped, broke his glasses, and started groping around blindly. The class laughed again—at least, most of them did. Remus noted that there was a nervous edge to the sound, and that Hermione was scowling as though her face would burst. Zacharias leaned back in his chair, gaze flicking around, coolly evaluating his classmates' reaction.
At least in that they are matched, Remus thought, heart heavy, as he motioned Connor back and Ron forward. Since Harry's boggart, after all, was Connor lying dead because of his failure.