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Transition chapter, yay!

Chapter Thirty-Five: Stronger Than You Think

By the time he was finally able to leave the hospital wing, Harry had become used to the idea that the world had changed, but he still hadn't adapted well to one feature of it that looked to become permanent.

"There's really no reason for you to keep attending me now," he told Adrian Belby, who was the only one of the three Slytherins escorting him from the hospital wing back to the common room whom he knew at all well. "Madam Pomfrey says I'm past the danger from Rovenan's curse, and I can see people coming more easily than I could lying in a bed. I should be fine."

Adrian just looked at him. He was vibrating slightly with a pride that never seemed to leave him. Harry had seen the first signs of it when he showed up for his first round of guard duty with the bare left arm that he still sported. "You need to be guarded, Harry," he said simply. "So we'll stay and guard you."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," said Harry, keeping his temper with an effort. At least when Blaise or Millicent or Draco were with him, it was like talking with friends; he could forget they were there to protect him. Adrian and the others took it all so seriously. "I don't need guards now."

"Yes, you do."

Harry jumped. Adrian and the others reached for their wands. The Weasley twins ignored them all, falling into step with Harry as if they'd just met for a bit of a friendly chat. Harry smiled in spite of himself when he saw their bare left arms. Each bore a constantly moving lime-green tattoo that said VOLDEMORT IS AN IDIOT. Now and then, the insult changed.

"We're happy to share the duty," said the one Harry thought was Fred. He spoke to Adrian. "We have NEWT Transfiguration first thing on Monday, but that's the only class it would actually hurt us to miss. We can skive off the others and send illusions to them. What times do you most need an extra pair of hands?"

Adrian thought about it. Harry opened and closed his mouth several times. No one, of course, paid the slightest attention to him.

"Wait," he said. "Don't I get a say in this?"

"No," said Adrian, "because sometimes you're an idiot, Harry." It sounded as if he'd learned that by rote. He turned to Fred. "Tuesday mornings are thin right now. So are Wednesday afternoons. And you never know when someone might try to take advantage of a Quidditch practice."

A devilish grin replicated itself on both twins' faces. "Why, Belby," said the one Harry thought was George, "you're actually inviting the Gryffindor Beaters to watch your team's movements?"

Adrian paused, obviously abashed.

"No, he isn't," said Harry, and used a tone of voice that made them look at him and actually pay attention. "I am taking my safety seriously, I promise you. But Rovenan is dead, and we need to pull the school together, not yank it apart." He nodded to their bare left arms, including his own. "That kind of thing is a fine symbolic gesture. I have no problem with it. By guarding me all the time, though, you make it seem as if you fear for my life."

"We do," said Adrian.

"And would you trust a Slytherin near me faster than a Ravenclaw?" Harry demanded. "You must. All my guards so far have been Slytherin."

"That's about to change," said George.

"Gryffindors are a good start," Harry agreed. "But we have to have some Ravenclaw guards, too, or this all looks useless—like we're suspecting a House instead of the one member who turned out to have other problems." He ignored the twins' laughter and imitations of what they thought Voldemort tempting Rovenan must have looked like. "I want Cho. And Luna. And Draco said there were a few Ravenclaws on the inside of the Tower whom they trusted, who would have gone after Rovenan if they were shut out. I want to know who they are."

"That's actually a good idea, Harry," said another of his guards. She was Catrina Flint-Digsby, the female prefect he'd heard laughing about Marietta Edgecombe's transformation. She wound a curl of her hair around her finger as she considered him now. "We should have guards from all the Houses. That Smith bloke is an ally of yours, isn't he?" She grimaced as if she'd bitten into something foul when she mentioned Zacharias. Harry wasn't surprised. Zacharias seemed to strike most people that way.

"Yes, he is," said Harry, relaxing a bit. "I think we should mix shifts. If you really must, have someone from another House working with the Ravenclaw guards, but also have Hufflepuffs working with Gryffindors, and Gryffindors working with Slytherins. If you really want to do this at all," he added hopefully. He had the feeling that this would become a charade very soon. People had their marks and their OWLS and their NEWTS and the safety of their families—since there was a War on, after all—to worry about instead of him. Harry didn't want them to neglect their lives for his.

"We know the Ravenclaws Malfoy meant," said George. "We can get—"

"Their names for you," Fred finished. "Pair of pretty—"

"Girls, Harry." George winked. "Give Malfoy something to be jealous about. Keep him on his toes."

Harry felt a bit of queasiness in his stomach at the thought of Draco being jealous. He'd had enough of that last Tuesday, Merlin knew. "Don't tease him," he said, facing the dungeons again. He was resigned, not surprised, when the twins adopted marching attitudes and kept pace with him and his Slytherins. "Please."

"No more than he deserves, at least," said George innocently.

And a Weasley twin's idea of deserving doesn't match anyone else's. Harry shook his head. He could only hope they wouldn't hurt Draco too badly, or that the Ravenclaw girls weren't really pretty.

They were, of course. Fred and George often joked, but not when telling the truth would serve their purposes better. They even made a point of escorting the Ravenclaws over to the Slytherin table that morning, when Harry was trying to enjoy the first normal breakfast he'd had in four days and pretend that he wasn't the focus of all eyes.

"Harry Potter," said George ceremoniously, using a Sonorus charm to project his voice to all parts of the Great Hall, "your first volunteer guard has asked me to introduce her. This is Padma Patil, twin sister of Parvati Patil."

Harry nodded to Padma. He knew her, vaguely. She, of course, looked almost exactly like Parvati, but there was a steady gleam to her eyes that reassured Harry she wouldn't be as giggly as her sister. She was pretty, though, with large dark eyes, dark skin, and a long sweep of flowing black hair that she kept braided with blue ribbons.

"And this," said Fred, planting himself in front of the other girl like a knight protecting his lady fair, "is the beauteous, the gracious, the munificent, the beneficent—"

He staggered as though the person standing behind him had hit him. He grinned, and stepped out of the way.

"Isabell Neelda," he finished.

Harry blinked when he saw Isabell. He had assumed she had to be at least casually connected with someone in another House to want to protect him, the way Padma was to Parvati, but he didn't know her. She was a sixth-year, so that wasn't surprising. She had light brown hair, blue eyes, and was beautiful more for her smile than anyone else.

She caught his startled gaze, and winked at him, turning her head to the side and putting a finger to her cheek. To anyone else, it probably looked like she was making a flirtatious gesture. Only Harry saw the green-and-gold swirl of the tattoo that shone as the glamour she wore was brushed aside, and then vanished again as she swept her finger back the other way. He relaxed. She was Opalline, connected by blood to Paton.

"I've heard a lot about you, Harry," Isabell said, putting her hand out. Harry clasped it and shook. Draco made a sound from the side that was part grunt and part hiss. Harry withdrew his hand quickly, but Isabell didn't seem to take offense. "I'd like to be the first to apologize for the shameful behavior of my House. The moment Marietta gets out of the hospital wing, I am going to give her such a smack upside the head."

Harry turned his own head, and saw Draco's eyes take on an almost manic gleam. Harry had no idea whether his boyfriend had already taken revenge on Marietta, or whether Isabell had simply reminded him to, and had no intention of letting him think about it right now.

"Thank you, Isabell," he said, and nodded at Padma. "You, too."

Both Ravenclaws seemed to consider that enough invitation to sit down at the Slytherin table and start eating breakfast. The Weasley twins hovered around for a moment, grinning, but when Draco didn't oblige them by exploding into an immediate jealous fit, they pulled long faces and went back to eat with their fellow Gryffindors.

"Harry," Draco murmured into his ear as he leaned across the table to fetch the pancakes.

"What?" Harry asked.

"I don't think you'd do anything to make me jealous on purpose," said Draco. "I trust you. But you came near dying the other day. Pardon me if I'm a little protective, and going to watch every Ravenclaw who comes near you like a hawk for the next little while. It's just the way I am."

Harry relaxed. It could have been far worse.

Minerva sat calmly waiting for Aland and Julianne Rovenan. She had a Gryffindor scarf wound around her neck. She didn't need it; her office was perfectly warm with the fire in the hearth, and it wasn't yet so cold outside that a Scottish witch required protection from the elements. But she had wanted to wear it, to have that rich tumble of gold and red around her when she faced the parents of the boy Severus had killed, so she did.

The Death Eater boy Severus had killed.

Minerva adjusted the scarf, and nodded. Yes. That made the difference. She was sorry for the parents who had lost their son; even an accidental death at Hogwarts was always anguish to report. And during the First War, when Light wizard after Light wizard had perished and she had had to bring the official letters carried by ravens to their children, Minerva had learned to know almost every variation of anguish and grief a face might wear. She had never got used to any of them.

But she had gone on bringing the letters and reporting the accidental deaths. Albus had relied on her to do that even then. So this was not a new task. Yes, this time the student had died at the hands of a teacher, and Minerva had had that teacher go right on teaching Potions. She didn't care. She would not run. She would not take even the diplomatic measures that Albus would have taken, canceling Potions classes or having someone else cover them until such time as "the matter was cleared up," to use a phrase he had favored.

She knew what the Rovenan parents intended to do to her. She would still not back down.

A knock sounded on the door, though the wards in the staircase had already let Minerva know they were coming. She called, "Please do come in, Mr. and Mrs. Rovenan."

No pause; they were probably too occupied by their grief to wonder how she had known for sure it was them. The door opened, and they entered. Minerva took the time to study them in the few moments before they sat down in their chairs and leaned forward to stare at her.

Aland Rovenan had gone to a private tutor instead of coming to Hogwarts, and Minerva knew little of him. A proud man, said some of her sources, but others claimed that he was only shy. Right now, though, looking into the pale, pinched face in which his son's blue eyes shone, Minerva had the feeling that he would have no trouble finding words. He had come to demand what he saw as justice for his dead child, and he would have it.

Julianne was a different matter. She'd been a Hogwarts student thirty years ago, and Minerva remembered her with some fondness. She'd been skilled in Transfiguration, and earned the most NEWTS ever in the subject at the time, though the record was broken a few years later. She had blond hair, and the yellow eyes common to some of the pureblooded Light families. She'd been in Gryffindor. The worst thing that Minerva remembered being true of her was her merciless nature when roused. She had a hawk's gaze, and a hawk's soul.

Julianne started, as Minerva had thought she would. "Headmistress," she said, respect like frost in her voice. "We have sent a letter to the board of governors. A representative of theirs will meet us here in a few minutes. I trust that you have owled them and given them the password to your office?"

"Of course," said Minerva politely. She could be polite. These were grieving parents. And since they had been kind enough to tell her what they intended to do beforehand, she'd had plenty of time to ponder and react. As she'd said in her letter, the governors were welcome in Hogwarts at any time. Two of them had walked through the school the day after Gilbert's death, seeing for themselves that there were no more Death Eaters in any of the other Houses.

"Enough, Julianne." That was Aland, leaning forward, his hands clutching the sides of his chair. "I want an explanation from this woman before we demand that they sack her. I want to know why the hell she didn't go to Ravenclaw Tower herself and preserve Gilbert's life." He closed his eyes, and a sob rose up in his throat. "From the reports I heard, she let several students try to take vengeance for what Gilbert did to the Potter boy, and then Severus Snape went after him and killed him. And it was all with your tacit permission, Headmistress!" His eyes snapped open, and he stared at her. "I want to know where the hell you were."

"In my office," said Minerva quietly. "I had no idea that vengeance was planned, I assure you. I would say that the students were amply punished by what they encountered. As for Severus Snape—"

"We are asking that the board of governors sack him, too," said Julianne, and gave her a sharp, sweet smile. Minerva was reminded that she'd had a special hatred for Slytherins. "Just so that we're clear."

"Of course." Minerva showed her own teeth in return. Julianne was bird-like enough to rouse her own feline hunting instincts. "Severus Snape performed his duty to this school. You will know the story of his past. As such, he was aware of what the Dark Mark could do. Gilbert would have poisoned Hogwarts with the Mark if it kept burning. Professor Snape asked him to make it stop burning. Gilbert refused. So Professor Snape did what sometimes must be done in a time of war, and killed him."

She stopped abruptly, blinking at the image of the one her wards had told her was on the way up her stairs. Neither of the Rovenan parents appeared to have noticed her distraction, however. In fact, Aland took it as an excuse to jump back into the conversational fray.

"I don't believe my son was really a Death Eater," he said. "We haven't seen any proof."

Minerva raised her eyebrows. "Gilbert's body is in the hospital wing, under a preservation spell. I assumed you would wish to bury him in as perfect a condition as could be achieved. I will take you to see the corpse myself when our meeting is done, and you may see the Mark on his arm."

Aland hesitated. Julianne narrowed his eyes. "He cannot have been serious, then," she said. "Perhaps he used a spell to cast the Mark on himself in play. We know the reason that he used the spell against the Potter boy. He was upset because of what had happened to the girl he loves."

Minerva narrowed her eyes in turn. "Forgive me, Madam Rovenan," she said, deliberately using too high a title of respect, "but I was unaware that you considered young love a reason to try and kill another student."

"That was another exaggerated portion of the report that reached us, of course." Julianne clenched her fingers together like a hawk binding to a mouse. "We have heard people say that Gilbert used the Entrail-Expelling Curse. That cannot be true. We raised our son right. He would never turn to Dark Arts."

"And yet he did, in front of the Great Hall," said Minerva. "I can fetch all the witnesses that you like on that, Madam. But I see that our representative from the board of governors is here now, so perhaps we should suspend our conversation for a moment until he enters?"

Julianne inclined her head just as a sharp knock sounded on the door. Shaking her head over the ironies of fate, Minerva called, "Come in, sir."

Lucius Malfoy had a very predatory walk when he wanted to, and he had made his way to the center of the office before either of the Rovenan parents had turned to see him. He took Minerva's hand and bowed low over it, his eyes bright with a mixture of pleasure and dangerous amusement. "Headmistress, dear Lady," he murmured. "Always a breath of morning, to be in your presence."

Minerva held his gaze. She had faced Lucius Malfoy across several battlefields in the First War, had nearly died by his Killing Curse three times, and had nearly Transfigured him twice. And now they were allies. At least she thought she could live better in this violently changing world than Albus ever could have.

"Mr. Malfoy," she said. "If you would take your place?" She drew her wand and Transfigured one of the bookshelves into a chair for him. Lucius inclined his head in thanks, and sat down.

That was when Julianne Rovenan recovered enough of her breath to protest.

"Headmistress!" she all but squawked. "You cannot mean to have him here!"

"And why not?" Lucius cocked his head to the side and regarded the woman quizzically. "Much as I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Rovenan, I hardly think that you can object to me on the grounds of my not having lost a child."

"Not that! Do you deny that your son is Harry Potter's boyfriend, and that your presence here is therefore a conflict of interest?" Julianne had stood. She had a gleam in her eyes that said she was soaring in for the kill. Minerva stifled a groan. Julianne did get like this.

"I don't really think it's a conflict of interest, Mrs. Rovenan." Lucius continued with the thoughtful frown. "After all, we are not here to try and punish my son, or Harry Potter. We are here to determine whether Headmistress McGonagall and Professor Severus Snape should be retained in their present positions, or sacked. The governors agreed to send me because I once knew Severus Snape, and should be able to tell if he is lying or not." He lightly touched his left arm. "Also, it was understood that you had some questions about whether the Dark Mark on your son's body is, in fact, the true one. I can see why you would not want to trust Professor Snape's word on the matter. After all, he was not Gilbert's Head of House, nor his friend. I assure you, I can identify it. I, myself, am Marked."

"A servant of You-Know-Who, then." Aland was staring at Lucius, his face white with an emotion Minerva thought was loathing, this time.

"Never willingly," said Lucius at once, enough pride in his voice for five Rovenan parents. "I was under the Imperius Curse at the time, and reeling from the death of my father. I was captured, held, and used against my will. I escaped Azkaban by testifying against my former comrades, that is true, but most of them had served willingly. I never did."

Liar, Minerva thought, staring at Lucius. He has too strong a will to ever surrender to being a servant.

"We still cannot trust your word," Julianne insisted.

"And why not?" Lucius turned a wounded look on her.

"You are a Dark wizard!" Julianne flung those words at him as if daring him to deny them.

Lucius's eyes lost their innocence for the first time. "I am also a pureblood back to the time of the Norman Conquest," he said. "I challenge you to find one shred of dishonor according to the pureblood rituals in my family history. You will find none." He rose to his feet. "If you really wish me gone, I will go. Of course, the board will have to send someone other than the governor you requested. It seems that he is married to your sister. Now, that would be a conflict of interest."

Julianne turned her head away. Aland said, abruptly, "We want justice for Gilbert. That's all. If he really did use the Entrail-Expelling Curse, if he really was a Death Eater, then—then I want to know." His voice shook, but steadied when Minerva looked at him. "I want to see his body."

Minerva nodded. "But we must wait until the board sends someone other than Mr. Malfoy to conduct the investigation."

"If he can identify the Dark Mark, then I want him," said Aland.

"Aland!" Julianne turned towards her husband.

"No, Julianne." Aland was shivering like a stake in a high wind, but he stood and put one arm around her shoulders. "I—we have to know, don't we? I want to know. Either they're all terribly mistaken about Gilbert, and then we can sack a Professor who would kill a student for no good reason at all and make Hogwarts safer for the rest of the children here. Or they're telling the truth, and there are horrible things about him we never knew. I want to know what those are. I want to know my son."

Julianne leaned into her husband, and said nothing. Minerva wondered how much of her feral intensity had been a mask to hide the tear-blasted woman within.

Aland looked at Lucius and Minerva over his wife's head, and nodded. "I think we're ready to see Gilbert's body now."

Afterwards, after the parents had seen their son's body and suffered the painful shock of knowing that almost everything they'd believed about him was wrong, after the tears and the recriminations and the calm responses and the apologies for the recriminations, after the Rovenans had gone away shocked into silence but promising to talk to the newspapers about what had really happened, Lucius walked back to the dungeons with Severus.

He didn't know why. Severus had simply looked at him, and Lucius had recognized the look in his eyes that he usually got before a Death Eater raid. So he'd made his excuses to the Headmistress about taking tea in her office, and walked back into dungeons that still felt like home to him, even though he'd gone to Hogwarts half a lifetime ago.

Severus led him straight to his offices, a motion that made Lucius raise his eyebrows. At least the man had sense enough not to let him hear his password. Lucius really would have had to punish him if he'd been enough of an idiot for that.

Not that the man was an idiot, of course, not with the way he'd handled Gilbert Rovenan—publicly, asking him to stop, just the way calculated to raise the least amount of fuss. Lucius was sure that Severus had done it for just the reasons the Headmistress indicated, to stop the school from being poisoned. He was also sure that Severus hadn't been without pleasure in the deed, given what the boy had done to Harry.

Lucius still wanted to snarl when he thought about it. If the professors hadn't already checked their Houses for more Marked students, he would have done it himself. To have something like that happen to their young vates in the middle of all Hogwarts's wards and protections was unthinkable. And then to have his parents doubt that he'd been a Death Eater, and used a Dark curse!

Sometimes, the sheer thickness of Light wizards made Lucius repine that he'd turned from Voldemort. Of course, with Harry around, the Light wizards shut up and did as they were told. It was the only thing that made Lucius tolerate having them as part of the alliance.

"What did you want me to see?" he asked, once they were fully inside the office. He didn't doubt that Severus had brought him here to see something. Otherwise, he could have cast spells that wouldn't allow them to be overhead and told him the truth elsewhere in Hogwarts. Severus had always been good at that kind of thing.

"This." Severus was already turning around, a Pensieve in his hands. Lucius took a wary step closer, his hand on his wand. He didn't really think that Severus would turn on him, but one survived as a Dark wizard and a Slytherin by trusting one's paranoia, and he knew all sorts of spells that could be cast with a Pensieve. The Dark Lord had once kept a prisoner alive for seventeen days with one.

"It won't hurt you, Lucius," said Severus, catching on to his caution then and giving him an exasperated look. "Draco would never forgive me if anything happened to you, and what Draco doesn't forgive, neither does Harry."

Slightly reassured, Lucius still waited for Severus to put the Pensieve down and dip his head below the surface before he followed.

He found himself in Ravenclaw Tower while Severus asked Gilbert Rovenan to lower his wand. He stood on the floor, though, a distance from the battle, and he'd already heard Severus describe it, so there must be some other reason he was there. He looked around.

And then he felt it. He stiffened. There was a drifting mist in the air, coiling within the minds of everyone around them, carrying powerful Light magic and a whispering compulsion. Lucius focused on the whispers, willing them into clarity, and thought he heard Harry Potter before Severus, standing beside him, distracted him.

"I've been able to bring them that close," he said. He had his back turned to the battle, as if he couldn't bear to watch himself kill the boy again. Lucius doubted that, of course. Probably, there was nothing very interesting in a battle he'd had to relive several times. "Close enough to know that it's a spell trained on Harry. But I don't know much else about it."

Lucius tried, as best he could, to examine the state of his own mind. He couldn't discover much, but he appeared to be free of the spell. That didn't reassure him. "Why haven't you told anyone else?"

Snape snarled. "I have tried. The information slides from their minds the moment I speak of it. The spell can defend itself, Lucius. I think I only noticed it on Wednesday because I was specifically searching for signs that someone was about to try Dark Arts with the Mark burning, and then I trapped the memory in an Occlumency pool. We can discuss the thing, here. Outside the Pensieve, I retain the memory, but I am a trained Occlumens. No one else seems to."

Lucius held up a hand, his eyes closing sharply. "Wait. Wait."

Severus, to his credit, waited. Lucius was not sure that he could have done the same thing, if someone else had told him that much and no more. He dived into the depths of his memory, seeking out what he'd heard one day in a sleepy, dozy History of Magic classroom, when he'd forced himself to stay awake throughout the lecture to win a bet with one of his yearmates.

There are Light spells that affect the mind and influence the perceptions, that are capable, for example, of converting one's perceptions of a particular person into unfavorable ones—that is, ones that will hinder his actions and prevent him from doing whatever it is that you wish him to do. They are rarely used. For one thing, they require an enormous amount of power, and they would drain even most Lords and Ladies of Light. For a second, they are considered as immoral, skirting the edges of Dark Arts, a weapon to be raised only in war, if then. And for a third, they are subtle, and take a long time to work, time which may drain the wizard or witch fueling them, and they have odd limitations. They cannot cross water, for example.

Lucius remembered no more, because he had fallen asleep, but those words had entered his mind and burned there with peculiar intensity. His mind had been on the edge of dreaming, and everything seemed more real then, as his brain strove to distinguish between dream and waking. At any rate, he was sure that his information was correct, and that this was what the spell was.

And he was sure that only one Light wizard in Britain at the moment would have the strength and the motivation to use such a spell.

"Dumbledore," he spat, opening his eyes.

Severus nodded tightly. "So I assumed. And I assume that it is responsible for the recent spate of attacks on Harry, both in the Prophet and in the school. But how to spread the word of it, when you will lose the memory the moment you step out of the Pensieve and I cannot talk of it to anyone?"

"Can you write it down?"

Snape shrugged. "I tried that, too, but though I have seen my reader's eyes widen, they forget about it the moment they look away from the parchment."

Lucius cursed. "Then I think we must have our vates break the compulsion," he said. "Bring him into the Pensieve, show him what is happening, and ask him to snap the web." He narrowed his eyes at Severus, struck with a sudden thought. "In fact, why haven't you done that already?"

Severus's hesitation revealed the reason. Lucius rolled his eyes. "I know you care for the boy," he said. "So do we all. But I assure you, he would not thank you for trying to relieve him of this 'stress.' He would wish to be rid of it, because it influences others."

"I suppose I needed someone else to say it." Severus shrugged. "Do you think you will recover the memory of this once the spell is broken?"

"I hope so, but I cannot be certain," said Lucius. "At the least, you should be able to speak and write of the spell then, and you will convince others if you ask them to compare their feelings about Harry then to the feelings they had about him for the last few months." His mind was racketing and clicking along like the Hogwarts Express. "Doesn't Harry have a contact in Rita Skeeter?"

Severus's face drew down in a sneer. "That woman—"

"Is still a better reporter than any other on the Prophet, these days," Lucius cut in. "Ask him to contact her. Ask her to release an exclusive story on the effects of Dumbledore's spell, with proof on how he broke it. Not that Prophet readers need the truth. The very suggestion of this will muddy the waters."

"His parents' trial is in only a few weeks," Snape warned with a light snarl. "I would not want to put—"

"More stress on him." Lucius tossed his head impatiently. "It is likely that he will never have to live through a period of stress this intense in the next year. I would rather eliminate any chance of a Light Lord gaining control over the minds of his allies, and Harry himself, than see his parents or that Light Lord go free because of an undetected spell and your tender sensibilities, Severus."

"You do not understand what he is putting himself through—"

"I understand that he is stronger than you think," said Lucius. He locked eyes with his old comrade, and didn't back down. "Ask others if I cannot convince you. Narcissa, Hawthorn, Regulus. And he is vates. This is within his rights, his responsibilities, his duties as one who bears that name. He will do it, and he will do it eagerly."

Severus bowed his head. Lucius smirked at him, and then stepped back and out of the Pensieve.

He gripped his thoughts as he did so, trying to retain the memory of Dumbledore's spell. Of course, the man had been responsible for the wards of Hogwarts, but it seemed he had never bothered to set one that would detect Death Eaters in the school. Or perhaps the Headmistress had never bothered to set one. Lucius would speak to her about that before he left. He would offer his own Dark Mark as a test subject, if she needed something to anchor the ward to.

Wasn't I thinking about something else?

He shook his head, and left Severus's office without a backward glance. He did know that they'd been talking about Harry, and he'd said the boy was stronger than Severus thought.

And he is. Stronger than anyone else I have ever known. He survives everything, and that is what must be done before one can do anything else.

Harry saw doom fall with the Daily Prophet on Monday morning.

The owls had to circle the room before they got to the Slytherin table. That meant the other tables got their newspapers first. One by one, Harry saw smiles wither and die on their faces, and then they turned their heads and locked their eyes on him. Shock and horror and condemnation made their expressions change.

Harry closed his eyes when Draco received his newspaper. He waited until the sharp noise that said Draco had shaken it out, and then he gazed bleakly at the front page.

There was a photograph of himself, close and exceptionally clear. As Harry watched, he held up an Augurey chick, a greenish-black bird that was struggling awkwardly in his hand. He gave the camera a twisted sneer, and then smashed the chick's head open with a stone, and shocking violence.

Harry looked at the headline. The byline, of course, was Argus Veritaserum's; that was not surprising. It was the headline that did the damage.

HARRY POTTER: VATES OR MURDERER OF MAGICAL CREATURES?

Anonymous witnesses speak out about the horror of 'Potter Revels'

Harry swallowed his sickness, and clenched his hand on the edge of the table. He knew this wasn't true, of course not, but he knew what the article would say before reading it. It would claim that this supposed killing had happened during the time he was in hospital, only pretending to be recovering from the Entrail-Expelling Curse. It would hint darkly that he killed innocent and useful magical creatures, that his ambitions as vates were just a cover, and that there was a reason no one saw Dementors or unicorns any more. It would include many tantalizing details about how the murders had happened.

It would not be believed, not by everyone. But in the tense and heated atmosphere that had led to some members of Ravenclaw House who were not Death Eaters attacking him, which had led to the Veritaserum articles in the first place, Harry feared that the picture and the articles would do their work. Some people really would swallow it whole, and others would believe because they wanted to or it was convenient to do so.

He could find nothing else to think of for long moments as he watched "himself" smash Augurey after Augurey, until he felt a hand on his shoulder and Snape murmured in his ear, "Harry, come with me immediately."

Numbly, Harry climbed to his feet and followed, wondering what the magical creatures would believe, wondering how many wizards would turn against him, and praying that he could somehow wake up from this dream and have it not be real.

And underneath all that, burning and climbing like a dragon tunneling to the surface, was fury.

How dare they. How dare they hurt those I am supposed to protect.