And yes, sometimes Harry is a blind idiot. Others, not.
Chapter Seventeen: Like Rational Adults"I don't know if I'll ever see you again."
Harry blinked and looked up from the letter McGonagall had sent him, then stood and extended his hand to Vince as he walked across the library. "I know," he said quietly. "I don't think that you'd be safe from your father as long as you stayed in England."
Vince nodded. "It—it wouldn't have been so bad if I'd just done something to embarrass him in private," he said. "But he can't stand being humiliated in public." He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. "Mr. Malfoy is going to open the Floo so that my aunt can come through at one. But you're going to be gone then, aren't you?"
"Yeah." Harry glanced at the letter he'd half-crumpled. "Headmistress McGonagall wants me to come to Hogwarts a little early and meet some people she's hiring for this school year. I already know them, but she thought I should have the time to get used to them." It was bizarre, what she'd written. Acies Lestrange was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts? Remus returning to be Head of Gryffindor was minor, next to that.
There was something else McGonagall had written, too, but Harry was only going to think about that when he had to.
"I almost wish I could stay," mused Vince, then straightened and shook his head. "Thank you for saving my life," he said formally. "I owe you a Life Debt, and if you ever call on me to fulfill it, then I will."
Harry nodded. He knew he wouldn't be claiming that debt, though. Vince was lucky to still be alive, and Harry wouldn't jeopardize his safety again. Let him enjoy as much peace as might be left in France while he could. Harry hoped to stop the war before it spread that far.
Vince looked as if he wanted to say something more, but in the end he shook his head and left. Harry picked up the letter and scanned the last lines one more time. They hadn't changed. He put it in his robe pocket.
"Harry?"
Draco's head had popped up from one of the chairs in front of the hearth. Harry turned that way with a small grin. Draco had an anxious frown on his face, as if something had changed between them because he wouldn't be accompanying Harry to Hogwarts that day; Narcissa would escort him instead.
"You understand?" Draco said now, just like he had earlier. "I'm sorry, but I really need a certain angle of sunlight for this spell to work the way I want it to, and I want to do it today—"
"Of course I understand," said Harry, and he did. Draco had already modified a spell that he wanted to try, something to do with Ancient Runes and confining his mind in his own body. He'd said he could even adapt it to protect his body during battle, if and when he did manage to train himself to use the possession gift as a weapon. Harry was happy to see him taking the time and the care to develop an interest of his own. Elfrida might be right about Draco's time apart from Harry being his own choice, but since he had made that choice before they knew anything about McGonagall's letter, Harry wasn't about to deprive him of it.
He hesitated for a moment then, but he had already decided that part of overcoming his fear was making the overcoming a casual part of everyday life. He walked over to Draco and kissed his forehead. When he drew back, Draco was staring at him with wide eyes.
Harry didn't give him the chance to question. Narcissa was waiting by one of the other Floo connections to escort him to Hogwarts. He extended his left arm for Argutus, who had been curled on the back of Draco's chair, enjoying the glimpses of the colored runes in the book he read. He coiled drowsily on Harry's shoulder now. Harry hid a grin. The Omen snake would wake up fast enough when they bumped and jostled from fireplace to fireplace.
"Harry—"
Harry nodded at Draco. "Can't talk right now. Got to go." He hurried out of the library before he could let himself think about what he'd just done in either embarrassment or approval. Fawkes appeared above him, briefly, to flit a wing, and then soared away. The phoenix saw no reason to take a Floo journey with either Harry or that snake, Harry suspected.
"Mr. Potter. Thank you for coming."
Harry straightened from the bumpy fireplace crossing into the connecting room to the Headmistress's office, brushed soot off his robe, and listened in amusement to Argutus's outraged complaints while he nodded to McGonagall. "Thank you for inviting me, Pro—Headmistress." He hesitated a moment. "Are the people you wanted me to meet with here yet?"
McGonagall, who had been engaged in a staring contest with Narcissa, blinked and returned his gaze a moment later. Harry had taken in the room in the meantime. It was small and dusty, filled with odd objects that had little dust themselves. Harry recognized them as the silver instruments from Dumbledore's shelves, apparently heaped here because McGonagall had nowhere else to put them. There were no exits except the door she stood in front of and the hearth they'd come in by. Harry tensed minutely, but a voice from the Headmistress's office gave him something else to think about.
"I'm here at least, Harry, and looking forward to seeing you."
Harry edged forward and peered shyly—he couldn't help it—around McGonagall into the office.
Remus Lupin sat in a chair on the other side of the enormous desk that Dumbledore had so often used to make himself look stern, studying what looked like a Pensieve on the desktop. He glanced up swiftly at the small movement, though, and Harry froze at the sight of his face.
He looked so much more relaxed Harry could hardly believe it was him. His hair was covered in gray streaks, as it had been from the time he and Connor were children, but they looked natural now, as though Remus had finally accepted that they could make him look dignified. His eyes were a deep, pure amber that Harry couldn't entirely attribute to the full moon, since that was still almost two weeks away. And when he smiled and moved forward, holding his hand out, he had a confident stride that Harry had never associated with him. Remus had cringed most of the time, as if he were apologizing for existing. This man didn't cringe.
Harry took his hand and stared up at him (Remus, like most of the people Harry came into contact with, was still taller than he was, something that caused Harry no small edge of resentment).
"What—" Harry shook his head, embarrassed that awe was cutting off his voice, but sure that Remus would guess the question without needing to hear it.
Remus laughed, and the sound was one that Harry had never heard, either, though its closest resemblance was to Hawthorn's, since hers also ended in a little half-bay. "The Sanctuary, Harry. The Seers are very good with not only confronting someone with the truth of his soul, but making him face up to that truth, once he's accepted it. And, in this case, I decided that I wanted to reflect more of my strengths, instead of hiding them." He cocked his head and sniffed openly at Harry. "You smell of pain. It would have done you good to go there."
"I don't want to match what my soul looks like."
Remus shrugged, and then went back over to his chair to drop into it. Harry followed and sat across from him, barely aware of Narcissa coming to stand behind his seat and McGonagall taking her place behind her desk. "Sometimes we still have the choice, that's true," he said. "And I can understand your not wanting to be so separated from the world. But it was fine for me."
"What was it like?" Harry asked—unwilling, but thinking he had to.
Remus smiled. "Deeply peaceful," he answered. "I don't think I can paint a complete picture for someone who hasn't been there. And I think you're imagining fights of some kind, Harry, where the Seers try to confront someone with the mirror of his soul and don't let him turn away. It's nothing of the kind. You can rest and think of nothing until you're ready to think of healing."
He lifted his head, and his smile grew brighter, sharper. "They helped me remember that it's not my fault I'm a werewolf. I was bitten as a child, and I never asked to be. But I do know about the heightened anger that comes with having had the curse since I was so young. I do need to control that better. So I will." Remus didn't sound as if he were apologizing, simply stating a fact. "And they have learned how to brew the Wolfsbane Potion, and they have immense forests within the Sanctuary. I ran across them as a werewolf, and learned to glory in my strength and my speed." He laughed abruptly. "And I picked up a strange and serene manner of speaking that won't at all do for the rest of the wizarding world."
"It will do wonderfully for the Gryffindors, Remus," McGonagall murmured. "Never doubt that."
Remus nodded to her, and fixed his eyes on Harry, their amber going deep and sad once more. "I am going to ask your apologies for the weakness I once exhibited," he said. "Now, I can see it for what it was—too much love of my friends, impinging on what I should have done, and what I knew to be right. And though I loved Albus, though he was my mentor and the only person who knew what I was beforehand and welcomed me to Hogwarts anyway, I should have seen the depth of his corruption when he asked us to leave you defenseless in front of Voldemort." He had only the smallest twitch at the name, Harry was impressed to see. "So. Will you forgive me?"
"Yes," said Harry. "I didn't blame you, Remus, not nearly as much as I blamed—well, some of the others." No need to go about casting blame, when that would only hinder the healing. "And you've become the kind of person I think won't make those mistakes again." This time, he stood up and put out his arms.
Remus came and embraced him without further prompting. Harry was amused to hear the rasp of wood against cloth—Narcissa's wand coming forth from her pocket. Does she really think that I'm in danger with Remus? I would be in as much danger with Hawthorn.
"Where's Peter?" he asked, when he could step away, Remus's hands lingering on his back for an uncomfortably long time, and Remus had resumed his own seat with a quick, lithe movement.
Remus sighed. "He's gone to the Aurors already. He thought about coming to Hogwarts and saying hello to you, but he was almost sure someone would see and report him, and then he would look like even more of a fugitive than he already does." He paused, gazing deeply into Harry's eyes. "You know the whole mess with Sirius will have to come out for him to have a chance at being free again?"
Harry nodded. "I understand." He'd viewed a few more of the memories in Sirius's Pensieve, this time ones from his childhood that showed how profoundly he'd been hurt and driven to try and rely on himself before anyone else, and he knew that Sirius—as he had been, really, before Voldemort possessed him—wouldn't want Peter to keep silent and try to spare him pain. Sirius had gone where he couldn't feel it.
"Good." Remus smiled again. "I haven't seen Connor yet, but Minerva is planning to make sure we can meet the first night before term and he can get an idea of me. Right now, it's unsafe for him to leave his hiding place. Death Eaters have been prowling around it."
Harry nodded with a faint frown. Sometimes, he wondered whether it wouldn't be better if everyone knew the truth about his having been the one who deflected Voldemort's curse. That would at least concentrate the Death Eaters' attention on Harry himself, and make them leave his brother alone.
He put the idea in the back of his mind to think about later. Perhaps he could get Evan Rosier to spread the word among his former comrades for him. In the meantime, the door was opening.
"Thank you for coming in like a normal person, Acies." McGonagall's voice was perfectly correct, but she spoke with the same coolness that her stare to Narcissa conveyed. "Harry, this is Acies Lestrange, who will be teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts as Acies Merryweather." There was a question in her words that Harry thought he put to rest by standing, turning around, and bowing.
"It's good to see you again, Madam Lestrange," he said, while Acies's cloaked figure leaned against the wall.
"And you, Mr. Potter." Acies tugged the hood of her cloak down.
Harry couldn't help tensing—the last time she had done that, in the meeting during Halloween last year when he had seen her for the first time, he had met a pair of eyes that seared him. Now, though, he could see that Acies Lestrange was a pale-faced woman with long dark hair that had just the slightest hint of a metallic sheen to it when she turned her head, like scales. Her eyes were large and gray.
Briefly, they caught his. Harry jumped as he saw the same wildness he'd glimpsed last year.
"I can control my gaze," said Acies. "But it is difficult. I shall look no student in the eye for long when I teach my classes. Have you been practicing Defense, Mr. Potter? How good at it are you?"
Harry blinked, but answered, "About as good as could be expected, I suppose. None of the teachers except Remus ever really put us through our paces." He smiled at Remus, who gave him a comfortable grin back.
"Don't listen to Harry, Madam Merryweather," he said. He didn't even stumble on the name. Harry supposed he'd had a few days to get used to it, though. "He was excellent at all the spells I showed the class, as he is at all defensive magic. And, of course, he has more experience at identifying Light and Dark, and balancing between them, than any ten wizards."
"Is that so?" Acies's voice was low and thoughtful. "Then perhaps I will have to drill you a bit harder than the others, Mr. Potter."
"I would welcome the chance to learn more," said Harry, "now that the war is begun."
"Everyone knows the war has begun." Acies waved one hand as if to show that she thought little of such general knowledge, even as she tugged the hood of her cloak back over her face. "It is in the words of the Muggles, though they do not recognize the signs, and the songs of the sirens that throb through the water, and the bang of the mountain trolls' clubs upon the ground. And, of course, the dragons are singing with it."
"Have you been among the dragons, then?" Harry wondered if he dared ask for news of them. He had known no dragons but the three he freed last year, but he hoped they were well. No telling if they were the dragons that Acies had seen, though.
"Oh, yes," said Acies. "Wandering, and soaking in their music, and breathing it back to them. War and vates, war and vates, those are the substances of their talk. They see far and clearly, even as I do. They know that storms are coming." Harry, remembering what the Light had shown him about the storm coming on Midwinter night, started. "And they plan to be here to offer their help when the storms come. Their bodies are made of music, and they will need much music. But that will be no trouble for the wild Dark, and when Midsummer comes, the air itself will cry out the symphony."
Not at all sure what that meant, but comforted, Harry nodded. "It's going to be very interesting having you for a teacher, Madam Le—Merryweather," he said, deciding that he'd better get used to the name now.
"Is it?" Acies moved her head restlessly. "I would not know. I am not teaching myself, of course."
Harry could hear Narcissa making a low, puzzled noise behind him. He didn't know why. She was one of those who had first introduced him to Acies, after all, and she must have known her longer. He smiled, unable to help himself, and wondered what his yearmates would think of Acies. Perhaps she would be a perfectly ordinary teacher, but somehow, when she was talking about dragons and music with this intensity, he doubted it.
Then someone knocked on the door of the office.
And Harry remembered the last lines of McGonagall's letter, the other person she had said she wanted him here early to meet. He found his magic surging about him like grass whipped by the wind, and Acies cocked her head. Remus whispered, "Harry?" in a low, concerned voice, and Narcissa's hand gripped his shoulder.
"Since Harry is returning to Hogwarts," said McGonagall calmly, "I asked him to come here early to meet those professors he might be uncomfortable with. And that includes the one he is most uncomfortable with. I will have my teachers and Mr. Potter, since he is not a child, behave like rational adults." She stood and looked at Harry. "Are you ready, Mr. Potter?"
Her formal tone, and the name she called him, gave him time to steady himself. Harry glanced at Remus, Narcissa, and Acies. "I am, Headmistress. May I ask that I talk to Professor Snape alone?"
"No," said McGonagall, making Harry blink. "You will be around many other people at Hogwarts, Mr. Potter, including the students in your Potions class. I think it best for you to relearn how to interact in front of an audience immediately. I do not ask for warmth from you," she added, her voice dropping a notch. "Only rationality."
Harry thought he could do that. He'd lain awake thinking about Snape last night, and even talking to Argutus, and that had worn a little of his rage out. It helped that Argutus was crawling around on his shoulder to face the door now, flicking out his tongue and saying, "Am I going to see the one you were angry about? I wonder what he is like. I wonder what would happen if I squeezed around his wrist. But I shall only try to do that if he threatens you. It is useless to threaten without any reason." He sounded as if he were trying that one out as a philosophical pronouncement.
"All right," Harry said quietly.
"Come in, Severus," McGonagall called, and then the door opened, and Snape was there. Though he couldn't have known how they would be arranged in the room, his eyes went to Harry immediately and stayed there.
Harry stared back. Snape looked as he looked most of the time: pressed to the edges of his patience in having to continually deal with idiots. He bore a faint redness to his hands that Harry thought meant he must have scrubbed off the latest of a batch of Potions ingredients before he came to the Headmistress's office. Argutus flicked his tongue out and remarked, "He smells like dead things."
"He would not forgive you for saying so," Harry said, with his head turned towards the Omen snake, and then faced Snape again. He tried to keep his expression blank, his gaze and voice both as steady as always. "Hello, sir," he said.
"Hello, Harry." That was unfair, Harry thought, because Snape was not obeying the law McGonagall had laid down and acting entirely like a rational adult. He spoke with less than the warmth he would have displayed most of the time, but his voice was not cold, either. And he looked as if he were studying Harry, giving silent approval to the way he looked—as if he were worried about his health or his mental state or both, and were concerned about him when they'd been apart for the summer.
Harry ground his teeth. What right did Snape have to look at him that way? Even if Madam Shiverwood had a point and he had done the wrong thing for the moral motives, that didn't mean that he had to stare that way, as if he were a parent and Harry were his child. He was a guardian. That was all.
Except that if he did make a deliberate sacrifice of my love and respect, I doubt he thinks about it that distantly.
That just made him want to scream, so Harry shoved the thought away and locked it in a dark closet. He wondered what else he should say. The other people in the room all looked as if they thought the conversational burden should be on him, and Snape was apparently content to remain silent, his eyes devouring all sorts of little things about Harry that Harry had hoped he wouldn't be able to see.
Harry picked what he thought was a safe topic, after a moment of thinking. "How are you getting on with your potions brewing, sir?" he asked, and only heard his words after they were out and he saw McGonagall's quick disapproving look—sharp enough to cut glass. He winced and made some effort to relax his jaw.
"Well enough," said Snape equitably. "I shall soon have the hospital wing restocked. One benefit of being at Hogwarts most of the summer, unable to leave because Death Eaters are hunting for me."
And then he dropped the conversation again, and Harry had to choose something else. The silence rolled on like boulders. Finally, he said, "Are you eager for the term to begin, sir?"
"Of course," said Snape, and now his eyes were sharper, and he was speaking as he might have if they were alone, which was also unfair, because he had taken care not to act like such a—such a parent when he and Harry were in front of an audience in the past. "Along with the idiots that I must teach, there are the few students who have both the interest in Potions and the skills to make teaching them worthwhile. And my ward returns to Hogwarts with them. I have missed him."
Harry closed his eyes. He would have to calm down and not snap. McGonagall would not understand what was wrong if he snapped now. No one would, except perhaps Argutus and Remus, who could smell his emotions. They probably all thought this was kind, as close to caring as Snape ever got.
And it was. But it was not kind to do as he was now, speaking in a way that Harry wasn't ready to respond to, and couldn't answer honestly without sounding like a child.
A few more impatient, huffed breaths, and Harry was ready to step in a new direction. "How many students do you anticipate having in your NEWT class this year, Professor?" he asked. A safe topic. A neutral topic. A topic that Snape could not possibly twist back around to him, because Harry had not even taken his OWLS yet.
"Seven or eight," said Snape. "Perhaps even a smaller number next year. But I am assured of at least three next year: Mr. Malfoy, Miss Granger, and yourself."
Harry swallowed. Then he said, "Professor McGonagall, I trust that I've demonstrated my self-control to your satisfaction?" He turned his back on Snape. "I'd like to go home now, please, Narcissa." She'd told him to call her that, and he didn't often do it even now, but he just couldn't take any more of this. At least during Potions class, he and Snape wouldn't have time for this kind of private, killing conversation.
"Of course, Harry," said Narcissa, and escorted him back in the direction of the side room and the fireplace.
Harry tilted his head in response to Remus's soft farewell, but didn't show any reaction when Snape spoke his name—just once, with a deep mingling of several emotions in that single word. Madam Shiverwood might be right, but Snape could not simply demand forgiveness and have that forgiveness come to him. How could he? And why would he want to flay Harry alive with his words, if he were not taking pleasure in this?
I think she's overestimated Severus Snape. But Merlin knows I did that.
Snape stood still and watched Harry go with regret pressing against his heart like a knife-blade.
He knew, now, that he should have analyzed the ice of Harry's responses and met it with ice of his own. Then perhaps they could have eased past those awkward initial moments and forged the cool but working relationship the Headmistress wanted them to have. He could show how much he'd missed Harry, which was a perfectly sincere emotion, later in the school year.
Instead, he'd been tempted by the ice into thinking that Harry didn't realize his guardian missed him, and he'd lowered his defenses.
And now he hurt, and Harry probably thought him insincere.
Snape sighed. There was no easy path to take with a child like Harry, and no getting that easily out of what he had done. He knew that, intellectually, and yet he kept hoping for every confrontation to turn out better than it had.
Sometimes I am a fool.
But he was not so great a fool as to give up and retreat, or go cold again, the way he might have done last year. He would simply remain on the horizon, and not let Harry forget either what he had done or his motives for doing so. Harry looked healthy, but there was that depth in the back of his eyes that Snape knew spoke of loneliness, of too great a control. He obviously felt unwilling to simply let go of his emotions with the Malfoys the way he sometimes had with Snape.
He needs a guardian. He needs a parent. I will be there when he remembers or realizes that.
"It's not your fault, Severus." Lupin had actually stood and pressed his hand. "Harry's hurting right now, and the only thing he knows how to do is curl up and hide his pain. He'll come around eventually."
Snape wanted to snap at the bloody werewolf—just because Lupin had changed did not mean Snape had forgotten or forgiven what he had done the last time he was at Hogwarts—but he caught the Headmistress's frown and remembered what she had said about all the Hogwarts professors acting like rational adults. "Thank you, Lupin," he managed to say, between only slightly gritted teeth.
Draco studied the angle of sunlight coming through the window of the room he'd chosen for practice, and nodded once, wiping his hands off on his trousers as he stepped into the circle of runes he'd drawn on the floor. The runes were standard protection designs, but they weren't usually combined with ones for confinement; most protection circles kept people safe and baleful influences out, without caging those they defended like prisoners. Draco didn't know exactly what would happen when a circle was made to keep the baleful influence in with him.
He thought it would work. It was half a ring of protection combined with half a ring of confinement, though not as simply as having them meet in the middle; instead, Draco had drawn one kind of rune, then another, then the first kind again, until they were thoroughly mixed. It was the first idea he'd had, and he thought it was a good one.
He was sure it would work.
Well.
Pretty sure.
It was supposed to come alive when the sunlight struck the outer side of the ring of runes, which was an idea Draco had taken from Harry's description of the truce-dance. That was linked to sunlight and the passage of time, and it seemed to be pretty damn powerful magic. He wanted his rune circle to be the same way.
He watched. The sunlight crept across the floor, and crept, and crept, and then it struck the outermost rune of protection, falling at the same time on one of the runes of confinement.
The designs blazed, turning golden and white, so brilliant that Draco couldn't look at them. He sat down in the middle of the ring and closed his eyes, then tried to jump with his mind the way he'd practiced with Harry, reaching for his father—the only other person in the house right now, since Harry and his mother hadn't come back from Hogwarts yet, and Vince had already left with his aunt.
He bounced back, so hard that he went sprawling on the floor. Draco blinked and gasped, then grinned.
I did it. On my first try, I invented a spell! Well, a rune circle, not a spell, but still! I did it.
He sat up, flushed with success, and reached out to leave the circle. Since the runes had taken him so long to draw, he would leave them here, he thought, and use them again, testing and strengthening them.
The white-gold light bounced his arm back.
Frowning, Draco lunged forward with the full weight of his body behind his arm. This time, he nearly skidded to the other side of the circle. The confinement and protection runes beneath the place he'd tried to leave the ring were both lit, he saw, and only subsided into sparks as he remained still.
What he had done came to him quickly, of course. The confinement runes were working to keep his possession still, and didn't want his mind to leave the circle. The protection runes would hold his body safe in cases where someone outside the circle tried Imperius or a similar spell to get him to leave it, and they were identifying his possession gift as that kind of influence.
He couldn't just reach down and smudge the runes, either, since they spat sparks at him when he came near. He would have to wait until the sunlight moved across the circle, or perhaps until Harry came back and could use his magic to dispel the influence of the runes.
Draco sighed. Then he grinned, because he couldn't help grinning.
It almost worked perfectly. I still did it. I still made a spell circle. And I did it without Harry's help. Harry doesn't even know Ancient Runes.
He savored the small glow of pride that came with that, and sat down, patiently, to wait the sunlight or the passage of time out.