Thank you for the reviews yesterday!
WARNING: Disturbing scenes in this chapter.
The chapter title, obviously, is from the Bible, Hosea 8:7: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
Chapter Forty-One: Reap the WhirlwindThis was interesting. More interesting than she'd expected it to be, actually.
Indigena Yaxley moved with the crowd flowing into the Wizengamot courtroom, nodding and smiling at everyone who paused to look at her. It was always easier to be friendly as Iris Raymonds than as herself. She felt as if she really were a new person whenever the plants beneath her skin flexed, reshaping her features into those of another witch. She carried another wand, too, and the Ministry officials had kindly registered that and given it back to her. Her real wand was carried, unregistered, in her robe pocket.
They hadn't checked for it. There were wards up that were supposed to make entering with an unregistered wand impossible, and none of the officials had any reason to be suspicious of the pretty young witch who flushed when her fingers accidentally brushed someone else's hand.
The yew leaves wrapped around Indigena's real wand kept the wards from functioning. It wasn't really their fault that they didn't know that.
The thing that made her visit to the courtroom interesting was the other people, though, not the tiresome Ministry officials. Indigena paused when she first stepped inside, looking around. She sniffed, and smiled. Here, away from her new Lord—the scent of whose magic was rather overwhelming—she could actually smell the different kinds of power the other wizards carried with them.
She was the most powerful wizard in the room, though she knew that would change when Potter entered. And she hadn't been sure, either, that she'd be more powerful than Severus Snape, the traitorous Death Eater who'd assigned himself Potter's guardian. It was a pleasure to find that she was, if barely.
Indigena made her way lazily towards the visitors' galleries. It didn't matter where she sat. Her new Lord had ordered her to keep an eye on Potter's trial and report anything interesting, but the true information would come from his words, as it did in any trial, not his face. Indigena didn't have to see him.
"Excuse me."
Indigena had turned her head backwards to study a witch with an unusual rose perfume a few steps behind her, and had stumbled into someone without meaning to. She turned around and gave a small shake of her head. "The apology should be mine," she murmured. She knew her face wouldn't show recognition. The plants were not very flexible, and when they reshaped her into Iris, Indigena only let them express emotions that she thought she might need, so as not to overstrain the vines. Feral pleasure at the sight of the Malfoys wasn't one of those feelings.
Lucius Malfoy nodded at her, as though to say that, yes, she should apologize, and then guided his wife up the steps. Indigena eyed them as they glided past her. Narcissa's white hand dangled within an inch of hers for a few moments, as the Malfoys had to pause to let more spectators flow past them. Indigena could reach out and grip it.
And the thorny rose she wore wrapped around her wrist could animate, digging its spines into Narcissa's palm and pumping in a few drops of poison that would hurt no more than a hard pinch and leave no mark. She'd be dead in a few hours.
Indigena would have done it, too—she believed in slaying one's enemies, not toying with them—but Lord Voldemort had claimed the right of killing all traitors, and he had promised Bellatrix Lestrange that she could have Narcissa. Indigena knew the requirements of honor perfectly well, since it was what had made her a Death Eater in the first place. She could not take a kill someone else had marked as his or her own.
She would have, instead, to enjoy the knowledge that death had come within an inch of Narcissa Malfoy today, and she had never realized it.
Indigena climbed to her seat in a silent, thoughtful mood, but only until she remembered her experimental thorns. Then she smiled. She could entertain herself until the trial began by thinking about how big they would soon grow, how much poison they were likely to store, and whether Evan Rosier was in very much pain right now as he writhed on them, pierced through the back and abdomen.
Harry lifted his head as he entered the courtroom. There was definitely an advantage to having been here before, though neither of the occasions he'd been inside it—for Fudge's trial, and for Snape's—was very pleasant. He had at least expected the bare stone walls, and the flickering torches, and the staring crowd, and the chair with chains in the center.
Of course, since he wasn't a criminal being tried but a "victim," as they insisted on calling him, the Wizengamot had conjured another chair for him. This sat not far from the one with chains, still almost in the center of the room, but it was lower and had a cushion on it. Harry took his seat.
He leaned back and tilted his head to meet the eyes of the staring Wizengamot, and the eyes from the visitors' galleries. He hadn't realized there would be quite so many people. Of course, with the Prophet and other newspapers having covered the story in breathless anticipation for so many months, interest would be high when the time for his parents' sentencing finally came.
Harry curled his lip. They think they're here to see me weeping and breaking down, the helpless child they've portrayed in all their articles. Well, I'm not going to. Even if I have to make myself look completely unsympathetic, I'm not going to break down.
He knew Snape and Draco, the Malfoys and his other allies, were up there somewhere. He knew they probably hoped, though for a different reason from the rest of the crowd, that he wouldn't maintain his mask. Harry intended to disappoint them, too.
"Attention," said a quavering voice enhanced by Sonorus charms. "Attention, wizards, witches, and gentlebeings. If you will sit down, please?"
Harry lifted his head to look at the old wizard standing near the front of the Wizengamot's platform, shuffling some papers in front of him. Harry didn't know him. He was extremely small, with barely any wisps of hair clinging to his head, and he wore a pince-nez. Harry nodded. They probably couldn't find anyone else to lead the questioning. Most of the Wizengamot were either against me or too closely connected with me, and of course Scrimgeour can't lead it himself. I suppose this one is neutral.
"My name is Tofty Sapientian," announced the old wizard. "I am an Elder of the Wizengamot, and I will lead the portion of the trial that consists of Mr. Potter's questioning." Harry could feel his eyebrows rise. They're not having the same person lead it all the way through? That's unusual. "Please, sit down and be quiet. There must be no interruptions while we proceed."
Harry relaxed a bit. So far, Mr. Sapientian sounded just like all the books of proceedings on child abuse trials Harry had read. He might not be the questioner all the time, but while he was, it seemed likely that he would be fussy and adhere to strict rules. That was just the kind of person Harry would want questioning him.
"A warning," said Sapientian, and stared in the direction of a pair of witches who wouldn't stop gossiping. When they finally stopped, he gave them a nod and continued. "Some of the memories discussed in this courtroom today will be extremely hurtful. Please depart now if you feel unable to hold the contents of your temper, your wand, or your stomach. Once we begin, the door will be locked, and no one will be permitted to leave until Mr. Potter's testimony is complete."
Harry listened, but it didn't sound as though anyone were leaving. Of course, the observers would have come here today knowing it was a child abuse case.
"Very well," said Sapientian, and spoke the spell that would lock the courtroom's doors. Harry shivered, but tried not to let the echoing boom get to him. He wouldn't feel trapped. The spell wasn't locking him in here with the past; it was locking him in here with the future. This was his chance to get as much for his parents as he could obtain.
"Mr. Potter."
Harry leaned a little further back in the chair and looked up again. He noticed the chair molding itself to his head, so that he wouldn't hurt his neck continually craning it to see. He made a mental note to thank whoever had constructed the chair like that, if he ever found out.
Sapientian's voice was gentle. "Please let me know at any time if you are unwilling to speak. It is our intent today to learn the truth, but nor our intent to make you feel uncomfortable."
Too late for that. Snape already did it by spreading the news to the papers. But Harry checked his bitterness. It might escape him during the trial, and that would be utterly disastrous. He nodded, instead, to show he understood.
"Now, I must ask: Are you willing to testify under Veritaserum?"
Harry shook his head. He knew the question was procedural only—very few child abuse victims chose the truth potion—but he did feel a brief, fleeting regret. If he could have convinced them that what he felt was true beyond a doubt…
But he would convince them that everything he felt was true beyond a doubt, and that was the problem with that. Harry shoved his anger down again and waited patiently for the first question.
Tofty Sapientian looked at his notes for a moment, then took a deep breath and said, "Mr. Potter, please describe the way Lily and James Potter, your parents, raised you."
Harry relaxed further. This was the kind of open question that gave him a lot of room to play in, the kind he'd been hoping for.
"Guardedly," he said. "We lived in a small house near Godric's Hollow, behind tight isolation wards, from the time my twin brother Connor Potter and I were one and a half to the day we started Hogwarts. The isolation wards were constructed out of fear of Voldemort—" a collective flinch from the court, which Harry thought would get tiresome soon "—returning, and his Death Eaters seeking revenge. My parents, of course, feared for Connor's life, and so, in addition to keeping him protected from the outside world, they trained me to be his defender."
Sapientian moved on to the next question. "Is it true that you had no choice in becoming his guardian, Mr. Potter?"
Harry kept the scowl off his face. Though they weren't leading the questioning, other members of the Wizengamot and the Minister would have had the chance to make up questions. He would bet anything that that particular one came from Scrimgeour, or maybe Madam Marchbanks.
"It is true that my training began very young, from the night that Voldemort attacked," he said, and rolled his eyes as more people flinched. It's a name. If they're that afraid of his name, of his shadow, how are they ever going to fight him?
Sapientian frowned slightly. "That's not what the question asked, Mr. Potter."
Harry spread his arms. "I was raised to believe in it," he said simply. "Many wizarding parents raise their children to believe in many different things, Elder Sapientian. Pureblood purity, for instance, or the need to keep our world safe and secret from Muggles, or the superiority of one Quidditch team over another." That got a chuckle from some people in the galleries, but they echoed in a mostly confused silence; Harry knew he wasn't reacting the way most of the spectators had expected him to. "In most cases, from the time they can talk, or not much after it. Would you describe them as not having a choice? I had the same lack of choice as they did, or the same freedom. I was raised in a certain way. That way made me what I am. Do I wish that my parents had chosen some different methods? Undoubtedly." He released just a bit of his anger from the Occlumency pools then, to flavor his voice. It wouldn't do to let them think he was emotionless about this. "But I cannot say I am sorry for everything I learned."
"Describe your training in detail for the court, Mr. Potter."
Another wide-open question. I do like Sapientian.
"I was raised to be my brother's guardian," said Harry. "To stay in the shadows while defending him; I was to present an ordinary front to the world, and never let anyone know that I was skilled in doing what I was. I expected I would lay down my life for him someday. There was a War coming, and my mother told me the Boy-Who-Lived had to survive to fight the Dark Lord. To do that, he needed his love and innocence intact. I was the one who would stand between Connor and the world, and I promised to do it."
He could see a few of the Wizengamot members exchanging glances. Harry hid a smile. Good. It's all in the way I present things. Snape got them on his side by twisting everything around. He can't blame me for doing the same thing.
Sapientian rustled through another series of notes. Then he made a soft sound and said, "Ah! Mr. Potter, I am now going to lift a memory from the Pensieve that was turned over to me and place it in the air above the courtroom. Don't worry," he hastened to add. "Only yourself and the Wizengamot members will be able to see it."
Harry tipped his head, and watched as Sapientian put his wand in a shallow bowl in front of him and then flicked it up, causing a spray of silvery droplets to animate and take form in the air above his head. Harry could see people from the galleries craning their necks, and heard many groans of disappointment. He ignored them, and watched as his mother and his younger self came into view, kneeling together in the fall of sunshine through a window. Lily had her hands clasped around his. Harry thought, from the look of his face, that he was six or so.
"A new morning," Lily whispered to him, with that intensity Harry had always loved. It made him feel they were playing a special secret game together, practicing an art that no one else in the whole world knew about. He shifted in the chair, emotions he hadn't felt in years returning to him. If he had managed to keep everything secret, if he had followed Connor into Gryffindor, then perhaps he could still have felt that, that intense and hidden pride that would have let him stand in a corner and not be noticed.
I'm allowed to regret it, he thought defensively.
"A new day," the Lily in the image continued to the Harry in the image. "So many possibilities for renewal and rebirth. Can you recite your vows for me, Harry? I'd like to hear them renewed."
Image-Harry nodded and began to say them. Harry mouthed them along with him. The words were still so ingrained in his head that, though it had been years since he'd recited them daily, he knew them like the beat of his heart.
"To keep Connor safe. To always protect him. To insure that he lives as untroubled a life as he can, until he has to face Lord Voldemort again." The little breath in the middle, that Harry thought signaled his mother's fear, and then they continued. "To be his brother and his friend and his guardian. To love him. To never compete with him, never show him up, and never let anyone else know that I'm so close to him. To be ordinary, so that he can be extraordinary."
The image dissolved. Harry blinked and glanced up at Sapientian. He had thought the Wizengamot would choose something more injurious to his parents' cause than just something he'd done every day.
Sapientian's voice shook as he spoke. Harry didn't know why. "Are all those vows true, Mr. Potter? You kept them all?"
Harry shrugged. "I attempted to keep them all. They were disrupted my first year at Hogwarts, when I was Sorted into Slytherin House, which my mother hadn't planned on." More words were burning on his tongue, about Snape and how he'd forced Harry to do various things that broke the vow of ordinariness, but he refrained. Say those things, and they'd just think he was still damaged.
"But—" Sapientian paused a moment, as if he were trying to think of how to phrase the next question. Harry was surprised. Isn't he just reading off a prepared list? "The last two as well?"
Merlin! Why is it always those last two that bother everyone? Harry nodded. "Yes. Every one of them."
"And how did you feel about this?"
Harry felt for traps in the question. "At what age, sir?" he asked finally.
"At the age you made them." Sapientian nodded jerkily at thin air, as though he'd forgotten he'd dismissed the image. "At the age you were in the Pensieve."
Harry shrugged. "I welcomed them, sir. I believed in them absolutely. I knew that someone paying attention to me could mean that I wouldn't be as effective a guardian to Connor. Either the Death Eaters might see me as an enemy, and then I wouldn't be able to surprise them, or I might get dragged into friendships and alliances and other commitments that had nothing to do with my brother. Of course, now I realize that's wrong," he added, barely resisting the temptation to make his voice a sing-song.
"So you were to be focused on your brother absolutely?" Sapientian asked, his voice so soft that for a moment Harry thought he would have to ask him to repeat the question. "He was to be your life?"
"Yes," said Harry. He felt uneasiness rising up his back, tickling at his spine. He thought he'd lost control of the conversation, but he wasn't sure how. He swallowed and leaned back on the chair, then sat forward again, then forced himself to stay still. He didn't want to look either as if he were taking a defensive posture nor as if he were squirming in his seat.
"Why?" Sapientian whispered. "What could possibly have been worth this?"
"A prophecy," said Harry. "A prophecy that marked my brother as the savior, and his elder twin brother as his powerful guardian. My parents were raising me, as they thought, in tune with the strict guidelines of fate. If my brother wasn't guarded, then he would have fallen."
"What did the prophecy say?"
Dread thickened Harry's throat like wine. He couldn't let the full knowledge of the prophecy out into the world, not when Voldemort might learn of it. "I never heard the full wording, sir," he lied. "I only know that that was the reasoning my parents gave, and so did Albus Dumbledore. None of them ever said anything to make me think they had any other main reason."
Sapientian sorted through his notes one more time, then frowned and said, "But here is a memory that may prove otherwise." He flicked his wand through the Pensieve again, and another image took shape.
Harry barely resisted the temptation to snarl. He knew this one. He'd seen it before. It was the memory of the time that Dumbledore had put the phoenix web on him, when he was four years old.
He sat through it in stony silence. He'd hated it the first time he saw it, and he still hated it, but he hated more the purpose it was being used for. He knew what Sapientian was going to ask next.
He realized he had his arms folded when the Wizengamot Elder dismissed the memory and turned back to him. He unfolded them, but made no other gesture. He probably looked too stiff, and his body language was giving him away already. Harry released a frustrated hiss of breath that should be too soft for anyone else to pick up, even with the courtroom's excellent acoustics. I can't believe I'm being knocked down already. What in the world happened to holding strong?
"This, Mr. Potter," said Sapientian softly, "looks rather as if your parents and Albus Dumbledore imprisoned your magic because they feared you, and trained you as a sacrifice to make sure that you would never turn on them. They treated you as little more than a thing, a tool."
Harry bit his lip. To speak now would be to spill words that he didn't want to say.
"You mentioned that I need only tell you if I was feeling uncomfortable, Elder Sapientian," he said after a moment. "I am."
"Do you wish to stop the questioning?" The Elder's voice was quiet, respectful, and Harry knew that he would if Harry wished it.
And Harry almost said yes, but then he remembered: this was the only chance that he would get to influence the court. For the rest of the trial, witnesses for defense and prosecution would speak, but he was neither. Pensieve memories would be shown, and challenges given by biased observers like Snape, with no counterbalance of his explanation.
He shook his head. "No."
"Then I will continue with the questioning," said Sapientian. "This explanation, of treating you like a tool or a weapon, has been presented to the Wizengamot by those who submitted the memory. Would you agree with it, Mr. Potter? Or would you give a different interpretation?"
Harry closed his eyes. He knew one truth that could make them dismiss that explanation forever. But to reveal himself as the Boy-Who-Lived and Voldemort's magical heir would be to cast doubts on the truth of the prophecy, and then the Wizengamot would only look more deeply for convoluted reasons as to his mother's training, when Harry had already told them the true reasoning behind it. She'd been afraid, and she'd thought she was obeying fate and the ethics that Dumbledore had trained her into. That was all, but they would dream up some outlook that made her a criminal mastermind. Harry knew they would.
So give them part of the truth and not the whole thing. You can do that, can't you?
"I turned out to have several dangerous abilities," he said simply. "My mother, as you heard from the memory, was frightened by the fact that I often Vanished things. What if I had Vanished my brother, or the house? I was too young to realize that some types of magic should be carefully restricted in use. The phoenix web took some of my abilities away from me until I was ready to use them."
"And when was that point to have been reached?" Sapientian questioned sternly.
Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think that my mother or Dumbledore ever mentioned a specific age."
"But we did just hear Dumbledore saying that the web would reweave your mind to its purpose," Sapientian said. Harry could see his hand shaking as he picked up another piece of paper, but he didn't think it was from either age or fear. "Is that true?"
"That is what happened," Harry acknowledged unwillingly. "For a time, my whole mind was shaped as webs. The phoenix web was at the very bottom of them all. I suppose that would count as weaving my mind."
Sapientian made a small noise that Harry thought meant he was ill. Harry found himself clutching the arm of his chair so hard his hand hurt, and removed it, flexing it slowly open and closed so that his fingers wouldn't cramp. The Many snake around his throat gave a little wriggle that said she wanted to get down and bite whoever was upsetting Harry. Harry switched to stroking her the moment he thought he'd exercised his fingers enough.
Calmness was my goal when I came in here. Why am I finding it so hard to attain?
He was trying a routine of breaths that should smooth the bubbling surface of his Occlumency pools when Sapientian said, "Would you describe the effects of the phoenix web for the court, Mr. Potter?"
Harry twitched. They aren't going to like this, either. But he didn't think he could lie. At least some of the Pensieve memories would center on the web, and it seemed that Sapientian knew them well, if he'd immediately plucked out one of them to look at. "It bound my magic," he said. "It bound my loyalty to my brother. It also made me unaware of itself. It was supposed to remain secret, a last line of defense; mostly, my mother and Dumbledore counted on my conditioning to make me loyal. But certain—events—in my second year brought it up out of the depths of my mind, and after that it broke. It was still focused on my brother, but it gave me pain, headaches mostly, every time I thought too deeply about going against my mother and Dumbledore's wishes on the matter."
"It made you into a slave," Sapientian summarized.
"No!" Harry sat up, frowning. "A slave can't break free of his confinement. I could. Once I learned about the phoenix web, I managed it."
"Slavery is not based on whether one can break one's own chains, Mr. Potter," said the Elder.
Harry sat back and thought rebelliously on whether they would consider house elves and goblins to be enslaved for that reason, and what the reaction of the court would be if he asked that. But he checked the impulse. He was not about to reveal secrets or debase his work as vates by comparing what had happened to him for a decade to the years and years of suffering endured by the house elves and goblins.
Control yourself, damn it!
Harry lifted his eyes back to Sapientian and said, "I'm ready for the next question, sir."
"There are many mentions in the court's notes of your being trained as a sacrifice, Mr. Potter," said Sapientian, shuffling through some more of the papers. "You've described a few of the consequences for us. What were others?"
Harry let out a little shuddering breath. He could do this, right? He had acknowledged that the sacrificial training hindered him as much as it helped him, that it was wrong. And if he could just pick the right words and make the Wizengamot see that it wasn't all bad, then he might stand a chance of lessening their hatred towards his mother.
"I was trained to give up my life for my brother if necessary," he said. "Leap in front of curses for him, but that was only the most obvious way. Make sure that I had no friends that came before him, or indeed any at all. That would have been the best-case scenario. No amusements that would detract from his position in my life. No concerns that could displace him from always hovering in front of my eyes."
"I understand that you both play Quidditch on the school teams in Hogwarts, Mr. Potter," said Sapientian. "How does that work, if you were trained not to compete with your brother in anything?"
Harry could have kissed the Elder for asking a question like that. He relaxed completely as he replied, "Obviously I've overcome some of my training, Elder, haven't I? I can compete with Connor now, and it doesn't bother me."
"But in the first years?" Sapientian pushed.
Harry hesitated. Then he said, "I made attempts to give the Quidditch victories to my brother."
"When did that change?"
"In third year," said Harry.
"And what happened then?"
How can I go into this, without revealing what happened to Sirius? "I would prefer not to answer that question, Elder."
Sapientian nodded, and Harry could see the shadows of other nodding heads moving behind him. Too late, he realized he should have answered the question in such a way as would leave key details of Sirius's madness and possession out. With his refusal, they just thought that he wanted to skip the details of his healing, as if he were ashamed of them.
Sapientian continued before Harry could object. "I understand that your mother's abuse of you was primarily mental and emotional, Mr. Potter, and your father's abuse of you primarily neglectful?"
"It was all mental and emotional," Harry said sharply, "and all neglect on my father's part." I don't want them thinking otherwise, and damn Sapientian for trying to do that, anyway. Skeeter said neglect and mental abuse weren't as common in the wizarding world. That means that there's the chance the Wizengamot won't take this as seriously, and will downplay the punishment for my parents' crimes.
"And yet…" said Sapientian, and then waved his wand. Another image took form. Harry recognized this one. He stood in front of a cleared space on the wall, where a bookshelf would normally rest. He didn't want to chance missing and hurting the books if his spell went wrong.
Harry watched as his younger self intoned the incantation for the Blood Whip Curse, and the stripes formed on his back, cutting the same thin lines that he'd healed when Marietta used the spell. His younger self bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, but resisted the temptation to cry out, mastering and riding the pain. Lily, of course, had told him it was always all right to scream under torture, because lost pride was worth less than lost life or limbs, but it had been a matter of pride for Harry to learn to resist pain without much of a pause. If someone used that curse on him in battle, then he needed to be able to accept it and still make his way to Connor's side.
The image faded. Harry realized his hand was clenched again, and the Many snake had slid from his neck to his arm. He shook his head, and turned his hand back along his arm to pet her. Dimly, he wondered why in the world the Ministry officials on the door hadn't demanded that he leave her behind in their care. He supposed they might have thought she was just a decorative necklace or band.
"Mr. Potter." Sapientian's voice came as if from far away, breaking and booming in on the silence that had filled his ears. "Will you tell the court how old you were in that image?"
Harry remembered. The memories were dangling in his mind, suspended like crystals in a glass of seawater. He took a deep breath. "Seven," he said.
Loud and angry sounds came from many of the onlookers around him. Harry closed his eyes and lowered his head to bury it against his arm. He knew it was an expression of weakness, but right now he didn't think that he could stand meeting the eyes that were looking at him.
"So your mother had you inflicting pain curses on yourself at seven years old?" Sapientian demanded.
Harry sat up. He could see now how Sapientian was trying to blur the lines, and he'd already known why. Make the Wizengamot think that it had been physical abuse, and he'd get an arrest more easily. But Harry was determined not to let him get away with that. If his mother was going to be imprisoned, then it had to be for what she'd actually done.
"It was my choice, sir," he said. "I knew that I needed training in enduring pain. So I chose to go the route of pain curses."
"Did your mother watch?" Sapientian asked.
"Some of the time," said Harry. "When the curse was a particularly bloody one, as that one was, she came up with a healing spell when I'd mastered the pain for a few minutes." He felt an emotion he couldn't even identify bubbling up in him like boiling water. He closed his eyes and tried to put a lid on it.
He didn't get the chance, because Sapientian was asking, "Mr. Potter, what would you have done had she encouraged your brother to use such curses on himself?"
"Damn it!" Harry winced when he realized that he'd said that aloud. He tried to hurry on before the stares coming at him could actively pierce him and force him not to continue. "I would have attacked her, of course. You saw my training. You know that she encouraged me to protect my brother."
"And if she had used such pain curses on another child?"
Harry made a deep, unhappy sound. The boiling emotion had got out of its pot and was flowing about him, making him feel sick and light-headed.
"Mr. Potter?" Sapientian's voice had lost its steel. "Do you wish to stop?"
And then James and Lily will die.
Harry sat back up and shook his head. "I'm fine, Elder," he said, even as he knew the pallor of his face and the shake in his voice belied that. "I can do this."
"Please answer my question, then." Sapientian was sounding as if he wished he had never asked it, which was at least something, Harry supposed.
"If she had used such pain curses on another child, I would have interfered," said Harry. "I was taught that only the Dark Lord's minions did such things. I would have thought that someone was using a glamour to appear as my mother, or perhaps Polyjuice. I knew about such things. I would have bound the offender down until my real mother could appear and reveal herself."
"So your mother told you histories of the First War, and of You-Know-Who's torturers?" Sapientian finished, turning another page.
"Yes." Harry hoped they would follow this subject. He was sure that it was a less dangerous one.
Sapientian nodded. It was only a moment later that Harry realized the motion was more akin to a fishing bird spearing its prey. "So you would have considered the use of such pain curses on your brother and other children as harm, but not on yourself?"
Harry turned his head away. "I don't think you really understand, Elder," he said, with all the calm he could muster.
"Mr. Potter, I wish with all my heart to be wrong about this," said Sapientian softly. "That is why we give abused children a chance to tell their own stories, because they know many things that none of us will understand, being outside those situations. But, without such speech from you, I am only stating what I see: that your mother taught you to believe yourself the exception to all the rules that normally govern children. You consider others as normal and would protect them from pain, but not yourself. It did not matter what you suffered, so long as it was in the cause of serving your brother. Is this correct?"
Harry knew he was a few inches from vomiting. And, damn it, his Occlumency pools were breaking apart. He just knew that he was going to cry or scream any moment. A particularly vicious rage had linked Sapientian's words to what Vera had told him last year, that he thought of himself as less than human, and was now suggesting, with a force and clarity Harry had never seen before, that his mother was the source of that attitude, that she was the reason he didn't think of himself as human, and that that was wrong.
Harry could feel his calmness slipping away, but more, he could sense his commitment to defending his parents slipping away. If the interrogation continued, he thought, with numb horror, he was likely to say evil things about them, things that would prejudice the court against them and confirm his worst fears.
"Elder," he said, when he thought he had control of his voice. It still wavered and cracked.
"Yes, Mr. Potter?"
"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can continue," said Harry. He had to get out of the courtroom, and now. He wasn't really worried about his anger destroying anyone there, but the rage had gathered its strength, whispering that he had a perfect right to testify against his parents and try to condemn them if he wanted. If he stayed, then the rage would make sure it destroyed Lily and James, not by lashing out with magic, but by speaking with his voice.
"Very well, Mr. Potter." Sapientian's voice was filled with respect. It made Harry want to laugh hysterically. Would he respect me if he knew the reason I'm ending the interrogation now? "The doors by which you entered are unlocked now. Please go to them. Ministry Aurors will escort you to your guardian."
Harry stood up hastily, keeping his head bowed as he strode to the doors. His eyes were blurred, and the Many snake was hissing and sliding up and down his arm, but it was done.
Even if you didn't save them. Even if, in fact, you've condemned them to death with your behavior.
The Auror named Wilmot who'd escorted him into the Ministry was waiting for him. He gently placed a hand on Harry's shoulder when he would have turned blindly up the wrong corridor, and murmured, "This way, Mr. Potter."
Harry let himself be guided. He didn't know what to think of, what to want. When he reached Snape, he knew he wouldn't have repaired his mask sufficiently. Snape would insist on comforting him, probably talking to him, maybe giving him a sleeping draught. Harry knew that he needed to stay awake and recover, though. They were bringing his parents into the courtroom next. He needed to return and see them.
"You will always have people at your back, Mr. Potter."
Harry glanced back at Wilmot, thinking that maybe this was a threat, perhaps from Voldemort. He would welcome the distraction of fighting for his life at this point. He thought it was easier for him than what he'd gone through in the courtroom.
But Wilmot was smiling at him, and he reached up and touched his eyes. Harry blinked as he removed the lenses that must have been covering them, and revealed amber eyes under the normal-looking hazel.
"You're—" Harry whispered.
"A werewolf, yes." Wilmot kept his voice low and soothing. "One who considers you vates, and who is therefore on your side." He paused and tilted his head. "I trust that you won't reveal me."
Harry shook his head in a daze. He couldn't imagine how a werewolf had managed to get and keep a Ministry job under Scrimgeour, but there it was. He could hardly betray him. Scrimgeour would sack him immediately. The anti-werewolf laws said that no lycanthrope could hold a paying job.
Wilmot winked at him, and returned the lenses to his eyes. "Someday," he said, "when all of this is past, I will introduce you to the London werewolves and the other refugees who have formed the packs. All of us think you're the most interesting thing that's happened for werewolves in generations, and the best chance."
Harry nodded. And perhaps Wilmot had known this, and perhaps he hadn't, but the reminder of the larger life Harry led outside the courtroom was working. He felt as if he were walking more steadily on his feet, and his breathing was calmer.
"Harry."
And there was Snape, hastening to meet him. Wilmot stepped back with a little bow, and Harry found himself ensconced in Snape's embrace. It said something about how worried he was, Harry knew, that he was hugging him in front of a complete stranger.
"Come with me," Snape whispered into Harry's ear. "I think you need a few hours away from the court, and then—"
"I can't," said Harry, yanking at his arms now. "They're bringing in Lily next."
Snape stared down at him with fathomless dark eyes. "And do you really think that you're strong enough to face seeing her?"
Harry turned his head away. "That's not the point," he said, knowing his voice sounded as harsh as the croak of a desert bird. "I have to know what she says. I can't miss a single moment of this trial."
"Harry," said Snape, softly now. "Isn't your mental health more important than what happens to your parents?"
"How can you say that?" Harry glared at him. "It's my mental health compared to someone else's life and freedom we're talking about."
"Someone else is always the key," said Snape, as if he were talking to himself, but he held up his hand went Harry started to protest. "We will go back inside," he said. "But the moment you start to hurt too badly, Harry, I will remove you from the court. And that is hurting in my estimation, not yours."
Harry swallowed and began working on his emotions, tucking them away into his Occlumency pools again. He'd failed once. He had no excuse for failing a second time. At the very least, if his mother were going to be condemned, he wanted to be there to act as a witness.
Why couldn't I have held strong? It would have been so simple. It seemed so simple when I was entering the Ministry.
He carefully ignored the rage that sat in the center of him now like a great crab, and gripped the idea that Lily had made him think of himself as a tool like a revelation. He ignored, even more carefully, the ripples that that idea was sending through him, what old assumptions it was smashing, what holes it was ripping in his defenses that there were just barriers of a special kind between him and other people.
Perhaps, by the end of it, he would see that he did deserve the same kind of consideration as others, and that terrified him for what it would mean.
But he was not going to think about that right now. He walked up to the galleries of the courtroom, Snape's arm tight and warm around his shoulders, and just as they entered, he saw the Aurors bring his mother out.