Notes to reviewers:
Xela: Whatever you say. Hold your horses, please! :) As I said, I'm a college student and am pretty busy. This is more like the posting pace I had in mind. I am, however, immeasureably grateful that you like my story so much. XOXOXO
HPluvva: I'm glad you're satisfied. Thanks for reading!
Kala: I have no intention of abandoning this story until it's finished, don't worry.
Lizella: Ok, gotcha :) You have your Snape and I'll have my Dumbledore, and we'll both be happy.
VoyICJ: Thank you thank you!!! I feel special.
Anonymous reviewer: Thanks so much! And cheers to you for being able to use the word "smashing" in a sentence (in that context). I love it so much, but with my flat American accent, it would sound silly :)
And, of course, Huffy darling, masquerading as "Bertie": So glad you read it. And liked it. Can't hardly wait for the NH CoS trip!!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the people, places or things in this story. That privilege belongs exclusively to the lovely J. K. Rowling, as I'm sure you're all aware.
Harry sat on the library floor, hurriedly snatching book after book from the shelf, almost upending the entire bookcase on his own head, until suddenly a restraining arm, resembling steel in its strength and reluctance to yield, clamped his arm to his side.
"Be careful, Potter," she scolded. "This is about saving my life, not ending yours."
"Sorry, Professor," he answered in a small, apologetic voice. "I wasn't paying attention."
"I can see that," she answered crisply, and Harry felt admonished. If he had looked into her face, he would have seen something that was not anger tinting the square spectacles, but the consciousness of failure was stinging his brain and he kept his eyes on the brown fibers rising up around his sneakers. "Have you found anything?" she whispered in a tone that Harry would have labelled as eager if it had come from anyone else.
"No," he responded bitterly, "and I've searched the whole section on curses. There just isn't anything," he almost shouted, and when the hard, uncompromising hand landed softly on his shoulder and squeezed it, he wondered whether it was to comfort or quiet him. Doubt made him wriggle out of the touch, and Professor McGonagall's voice was dry and businesslike again when she next spoke.
"Well, keep looking," she instructed him. "Professor Dumbledore and I are searching our own private libraries, and there is a chance one of us will find something. One thing more: although I'm sure Miss Granger would be delighted to spend extra time in the library, please don't inform her of..... all this. The poor girl has enough on her plate, especially as she has chosen to begin studying for the O.W.L.s six months in advance." Jealousy of Hermione had flared up scorchingly in Harry's throat at the pride lacing Professor McGonagall's tone, but it faded into wonder when he realized her remark was not completely serious. She was teasing, but she did not expect him to realize it. Two could play at this game.
"Yes, well, being the teacher's pet can put ideas in your head. Hermione just aims to please."
"I expect nothing less," she replied smoothly. Then, without warning, she added: "I wish she were more like you."
Harry couldn't speak, but somehow the word "Why?" escaped his air-locked chest.
"She reminds me of myself at her age," she replied simply. "The pursuit of all the knowledge in the world is a very lonely one."
"You've got another thing in common," he answered quietly. "You've both got me." He scrambled to his feet in time for her outstretched hand to fold neatly into his, although the motherly effect of the gesture was dampened when it brought his head up to tower two inches over her own.
"You're too tall, Harry," she managed to say through the tension spanning every line of her face. Harry knew she was trying not to cry, so he allowed her to change the subject. He privately acknowledged her shift from his last to his first name and wondered at it, but let her continue. "You can't imagine how that haunts me. Every day you grow, and I grow a bit more afraid..... it's not fair. It's not fair that your every step towards adulthood is a step closer to.....him," she finished in a whisper, dropping his hand and covering her face with her own. Harry politely looked away when her sobs burst from her; he was grateful it was the Christmas holidays, when it was unlikely anyone would come upon them and see her with her self-control in shards at her feet. He couldn't pretend to ignore her for long. Besides, he thought wryly, she left her dignity at the door, as it were, coming to see me like this, to check on me; definitely not in the job description.
"Please try not to worry about me," he begged as her tears slowed. "I'll be ready when that day comes. I have no choice; I'm the Boy Who Lived, remember?"
"You know, Harry," she remarked as though she had not heard him, "after the incident with the Stone at the end of your first year, I've dreaded the end of every school year. The next year, the Chamber of Secrets..... I didn't know whether that was your blood or....." She swallowed desperately and carried on. "But the Tournament..... I could see how pale and cold Diggory was..... but I couldn't see your face, only how transparent your hands looked. I didn't know what had happened, only that if he was dead, then maybe you..... I wanted every magical torture in existence visited upon that man," she added with a rueful, trembling smile, and Harry returned it, remembering her temper tantrum after the accident with the Dementor, followed by the Minister's lackadaisical attitude. "He got off far too easily."
"And then the Minister denied Voldemort's return," Harry prodded almost reluctantly. He was hating every minute that she tortured herself this way, but he knew if he stopped this line of conversation, she would continue it, alone, in her mind.
She flinched at the name, but ignored it, ceding him the right to say it. "I hate him," she said emphatically. "He wants to be your friend when you need an authority figure, someone to sign forms and make you look like his prodigy, but when your future and the futures of all the people who matter to you are at stake, he panics and hides in ignorance. He's a fraud, and if you aren't careful, Harry, he could be the death of you. Promise me. Promise that when I'm gone, you will only trust him as far as you can throw him, and that goes for everyone who sees nothing more than the scar on your forehead when they look at you. Promise, now."
"On my honor," said Harry gravely. "But you have to promise not to talk like that."
"How?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Like an old lady making out her will. Like you're already dead."
"And if I am?" she asked quizzically, raising her eyebrows at him and assuming a very familiar expression of disinterested skepticism. "I'm trying to prepare you for what is almost certainly inevitable. I'm trying to soften the blow."
"I don't want it softened!" he screamed suddenly, making her jump like a startled deer. "I want to feel every ounce of pain when you die because if I shut it off or try to make it easier, then you'll really and truly be gone. I'll..... lose you," he trailed off.
Brushing his cheek with her fingers, she contradicted him fervently: "No, you won't lose me. Remember all the ways you could still feel your parents with you, even if some of them were less comfortable than others," she admitted, remembering the Dementors.
"'You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?'" Harry muttered. Raising his voice, he explained: "Something Professor Dumbledore told me at the end of third year, when I explained to him about how I thought I saw my dad, but it was just my imagination," he finished hurriedly, not sure how much she knew about Sirius' 'great escape.' "He said my dad was alive in me."
"And he is," she agreed. "Don't ever be fooled by Professor Dumbledore when he pretends to be vague or oblivious, Harry," she added, smiling. "He is very wise, and he understands the mysteries of life better than anyone, even himself."
"But there's something more he wants, isn't there, some knowledge or experience or happiness, I can't quite figure it out," he rejoined slyly.
He smiled and watched through her unfocused eyes as her mind drifted and finally slipped back. "Harry, I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully." Harry grinned; even now, she still sounded like a schoolma'am. "Some things are more fulfilling and more precious when they're left unfulfilled. Unconditional trust; true, self-sacrificing friendship; the promise without the stain of betrayal..... these are the most valuable, the most rare, if not quite the best, things in life. Don't argue," she interjected as he opened his mouth to do just that. "Young people think that something should be taken just because it's there for the taking," she said with a shake of the head and a smile that made Harry feel two years old. "But they have yet to learn that some risks could never be worth taking. There's too much to lose. But then again, that has never stopped you before," she laughed. "Zooming around under the nose of an angry dragon. Most people would have run screaming in the other direction."
"But not you," he protested. "You're one of my sort, you can't deny it. And I think Professor Dumbledore is, too. How else could he be who he is, face disaster like he does and only come out stronger?"
"Harry. I'm going to get weaker, not stronger, as the week progresses, and you need to accept that. This is most definitely the wrong time to change the way things are."
"But....."
"Don't argue with me, Potter." He knew the issue was past the point of discussion then, and he settled for glaring at her defiantly, but with a hint of mischief. She spotted it and knew what it meant, and it frightened her more than all the nights filled with wakefulness and dreams of death put together. "Don't do this to me, Harry," she pleaded finally, and his determination cracked. Curling up on the floor once more and sitting cross- legged at her feet, he felt his rightful place again.
"You let me in," he said stubbornly, like a little child insisting on a promised treat. "You just let me, and it's too late for me to go back to the way things were."
"I don't want that, either, Harry," she said softly. "I don't want you thinking I'm a block of ice, or that you're just another face in a crowd of hundreds."
"Why aren't I?" he asked curiously.
"A promise," she said firmly. When he looked at her, confused, she rested a hand on his head and said mysteriously: "I knew your mother very well when she was a student at Hogwarts and afterwards. She trusted me very much. Don't even think it, Harry, you're not a duty," she snapped, and he gaped at her, thinking that her mind-reading skills were so reminiscent of Dumbledore it was scary. "She would let me hold you sometimes when she was busy around the house, making it a home. She and James would cook or tidy up, and I would hold you and talk to you. Knowing, of course, that you couldn't understand a word I said, but talking nevertheless. So you see, Harry, I couldn't not see to you after that night, a little over fourteen years ago now. Also, they cast a spell before they died, to seal the pact, a spell that bound us, in a way. Not in body or spirit, though..... a sort of fusion of our destinies. I suppose they were afraid you would try to escape me at some point," she laughed, but the sound was not mirthful, and Harry realized the bitterness she regarded herself with, saw how it fled when he showed her affection. He pushed himself up onto his knees and quickly threw his arms around her waist, holding his face to the soft creases of her robes and listening to her heartbeat.
"That must have been why I was so worried about you in the beginning," he blurted out in amazement, but quickly added, "although it's not been the spell for a while now, I can tell."
"So can I," she agreed, smiling. "Don't worry, Harry, the spell was only a catalyst. Catalysts simply set things in motion, they can't control the resulting reactions."
"So I've learned," he emphasized wearily.
"Well, then, all these years at school, going to classes, doing homework, facing near-certain death, have all been worthwhile," she teased lightly. "It's an important lesson," she continued more seriously. "It's one of the biggest and most important differences between you and the likes of Draco Malfoy. You've learned; he hasn't. And that might be why you will fight for hope and he for power. There's nothing more horrible or heartbreaking than a child who doesn't realize that the consequences of their actions could slip out of their grasp in an instant, and through no fault of their own. I'm sure he thinks he has everything under control, that he can choose his own fate at any time, and it could mean that he won't recognize true evil until it's staring him in the face and pointing a wand between his eyes. But, as you say, I needn't worry about you on that account."
Harry frowned slightly; she sounded so satisfied. "Tell me something, please," he answered, rising to his feet again and restoring the equilibrium. "If you could be sure that all of us would be perfectly alright, that you had nothing to worry you about any of us, would you want to die?"
"How could you ask me that? Of course I don't want to die. It seems restful, somehow, to think of the freedom in death, but no, I don't want to leave the life I have. Not anymore."
Harry blinked. "I'm sorry, I thought you just said 'not *anymore*.'"
"Not today, Harry. Some other time," she answered in a voice that Sybill Trelawney would have envied. He saw her mind was miles away, probably even on a different plane of existence, and he turned away with a sigh.
"Well, I'll keep looking for-Peeves!!" The cackling poltergeist zoomed away over the shelves, bouncing off the walls with glee, and Harry, rubbing his head where Peeves had dropped something very heavy and very solid, saw an enormous book lying at his feet. He opened it gingerly as a great puff of dust flew into his nostrils. He choked and spluttered out, "Peeves must have been very bored. He probably had to go looking for hours in the darkest corner of the basement to find this thing." He scanned the table of contents quickly, and his glasses jumped off his nose in amazement. He pushed them back over his ears and said in a hushed, reverent voice: "I don't believe it."
"What is it?" she asked curiously, leaning over his shoulder to read the blurred writing.
"Peeves is a genius," Harry muttered in the tone of one who has just found out that up is down and is learning to walk on his hands. "This is it, this is the answer."
A/N: MUHAHAHAHAHA!! I'm evil.
Xela: Whatever you say. Hold your horses, please! :) As I said, I'm a college student and am pretty busy. This is more like the posting pace I had in mind. I am, however, immeasureably grateful that you like my story so much. XOXOXO
HPluvva: I'm glad you're satisfied. Thanks for reading!
Kala: I have no intention of abandoning this story until it's finished, don't worry.
Lizella: Ok, gotcha :) You have your Snape and I'll have my Dumbledore, and we'll both be happy.
VoyICJ: Thank you thank you!!! I feel special.
Anonymous reviewer: Thanks so much! And cheers to you for being able to use the word "smashing" in a sentence (in that context). I love it so much, but with my flat American accent, it would sound silly :)
And, of course, Huffy darling, masquerading as "Bertie": So glad you read it. And liked it. Can't hardly wait for the NH CoS trip!!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the people, places or things in this story. That privilege belongs exclusively to the lovely J. K. Rowling, as I'm sure you're all aware.
Harry sat on the library floor, hurriedly snatching book after book from the shelf, almost upending the entire bookcase on his own head, until suddenly a restraining arm, resembling steel in its strength and reluctance to yield, clamped his arm to his side.
"Be careful, Potter," she scolded. "This is about saving my life, not ending yours."
"Sorry, Professor," he answered in a small, apologetic voice. "I wasn't paying attention."
"I can see that," she answered crisply, and Harry felt admonished. If he had looked into her face, he would have seen something that was not anger tinting the square spectacles, but the consciousness of failure was stinging his brain and he kept his eyes on the brown fibers rising up around his sneakers. "Have you found anything?" she whispered in a tone that Harry would have labelled as eager if it had come from anyone else.
"No," he responded bitterly, "and I've searched the whole section on curses. There just isn't anything," he almost shouted, and when the hard, uncompromising hand landed softly on his shoulder and squeezed it, he wondered whether it was to comfort or quiet him. Doubt made him wriggle out of the touch, and Professor McGonagall's voice was dry and businesslike again when she next spoke.
"Well, keep looking," she instructed him. "Professor Dumbledore and I are searching our own private libraries, and there is a chance one of us will find something. One thing more: although I'm sure Miss Granger would be delighted to spend extra time in the library, please don't inform her of..... all this. The poor girl has enough on her plate, especially as she has chosen to begin studying for the O.W.L.s six months in advance." Jealousy of Hermione had flared up scorchingly in Harry's throat at the pride lacing Professor McGonagall's tone, but it faded into wonder when he realized her remark was not completely serious. She was teasing, but she did not expect him to realize it. Two could play at this game.
"Yes, well, being the teacher's pet can put ideas in your head. Hermione just aims to please."
"I expect nothing less," she replied smoothly. Then, without warning, she added: "I wish she were more like you."
Harry couldn't speak, but somehow the word "Why?" escaped his air-locked chest.
"She reminds me of myself at her age," she replied simply. "The pursuit of all the knowledge in the world is a very lonely one."
"You've got another thing in common," he answered quietly. "You've both got me." He scrambled to his feet in time for her outstretched hand to fold neatly into his, although the motherly effect of the gesture was dampened when it brought his head up to tower two inches over her own.
"You're too tall, Harry," she managed to say through the tension spanning every line of her face. Harry knew she was trying not to cry, so he allowed her to change the subject. He privately acknowledged her shift from his last to his first name and wondered at it, but let her continue. "You can't imagine how that haunts me. Every day you grow, and I grow a bit more afraid..... it's not fair. It's not fair that your every step towards adulthood is a step closer to.....him," she finished in a whisper, dropping his hand and covering her face with her own. Harry politely looked away when her sobs burst from her; he was grateful it was the Christmas holidays, when it was unlikely anyone would come upon them and see her with her self-control in shards at her feet. He couldn't pretend to ignore her for long. Besides, he thought wryly, she left her dignity at the door, as it were, coming to see me like this, to check on me; definitely not in the job description.
"Please try not to worry about me," he begged as her tears slowed. "I'll be ready when that day comes. I have no choice; I'm the Boy Who Lived, remember?"
"You know, Harry," she remarked as though she had not heard him, "after the incident with the Stone at the end of your first year, I've dreaded the end of every school year. The next year, the Chamber of Secrets..... I didn't know whether that was your blood or....." She swallowed desperately and carried on. "But the Tournament..... I could see how pale and cold Diggory was..... but I couldn't see your face, only how transparent your hands looked. I didn't know what had happened, only that if he was dead, then maybe you..... I wanted every magical torture in existence visited upon that man," she added with a rueful, trembling smile, and Harry returned it, remembering her temper tantrum after the accident with the Dementor, followed by the Minister's lackadaisical attitude. "He got off far too easily."
"And then the Minister denied Voldemort's return," Harry prodded almost reluctantly. He was hating every minute that she tortured herself this way, but he knew if he stopped this line of conversation, she would continue it, alone, in her mind.
She flinched at the name, but ignored it, ceding him the right to say it. "I hate him," she said emphatically. "He wants to be your friend when you need an authority figure, someone to sign forms and make you look like his prodigy, but when your future and the futures of all the people who matter to you are at stake, he panics and hides in ignorance. He's a fraud, and if you aren't careful, Harry, he could be the death of you. Promise me. Promise that when I'm gone, you will only trust him as far as you can throw him, and that goes for everyone who sees nothing more than the scar on your forehead when they look at you. Promise, now."
"On my honor," said Harry gravely. "But you have to promise not to talk like that."
"How?" she asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Like an old lady making out her will. Like you're already dead."
"And if I am?" she asked quizzically, raising her eyebrows at him and assuming a very familiar expression of disinterested skepticism. "I'm trying to prepare you for what is almost certainly inevitable. I'm trying to soften the blow."
"I don't want it softened!" he screamed suddenly, making her jump like a startled deer. "I want to feel every ounce of pain when you die because if I shut it off or try to make it easier, then you'll really and truly be gone. I'll..... lose you," he trailed off.
Brushing his cheek with her fingers, she contradicted him fervently: "No, you won't lose me. Remember all the ways you could still feel your parents with you, even if some of them were less comfortable than others," she admitted, remembering the Dementors.
"'You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us?'" Harry muttered. Raising his voice, he explained: "Something Professor Dumbledore told me at the end of third year, when I explained to him about how I thought I saw my dad, but it was just my imagination," he finished hurriedly, not sure how much she knew about Sirius' 'great escape.' "He said my dad was alive in me."
"And he is," she agreed. "Don't ever be fooled by Professor Dumbledore when he pretends to be vague or oblivious, Harry," she added, smiling. "He is very wise, and he understands the mysteries of life better than anyone, even himself."
"But there's something more he wants, isn't there, some knowledge or experience or happiness, I can't quite figure it out," he rejoined slyly.
He smiled and watched through her unfocused eyes as her mind drifted and finally slipped back. "Harry, I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully." Harry grinned; even now, she still sounded like a schoolma'am. "Some things are more fulfilling and more precious when they're left unfulfilled. Unconditional trust; true, self-sacrificing friendship; the promise without the stain of betrayal..... these are the most valuable, the most rare, if not quite the best, things in life. Don't argue," she interjected as he opened his mouth to do just that. "Young people think that something should be taken just because it's there for the taking," she said with a shake of the head and a smile that made Harry feel two years old. "But they have yet to learn that some risks could never be worth taking. There's too much to lose. But then again, that has never stopped you before," she laughed. "Zooming around under the nose of an angry dragon. Most people would have run screaming in the other direction."
"But not you," he protested. "You're one of my sort, you can't deny it. And I think Professor Dumbledore is, too. How else could he be who he is, face disaster like he does and only come out stronger?"
"Harry. I'm going to get weaker, not stronger, as the week progresses, and you need to accept that. This is most definitely the wrong time to change the way things are."
"But....."
"Don't argue with me, Potter." He knew the issue was past the point of discussion then, and he settled for glaring at her defiantly, but with a hint of mischief. She spotted it and knew what it meant, and it frightened her more than all the nights filled with wakefulness and dreams of death put together. "Don't do this to me, Harry," she pleaded finally, and his determination cracked. Curling up on the floor once more and sitting cross- legged at her feet, he felt his rightful place again.
"You let me in," he said stubbornly, like a little child insisting on a promised treat. "You just let me, and it's too late for me to go back to the way things were."
"I don't want that, either, Harry," she said softly. "I don't want you thinking I'm a block of ice, or that you're just another face in a crowd of hundreds."
"Why aren't I?" he asked curiously.
"A promise," she said firmly. When he looked at her, confused, she rested a hand on his head and said mysteriously: "I knew your mother very well when she was a student at Hogwarts and afterwards. She trusted me very much. Don't even think it, Harry, you're not a duty," she snapped, and he gaped at her, thinking that her mind-reading skills were so reminiscent of Dumbledore it was scary. "She would let me hold you sometimes when she was busy around the house, making it a home. She and James would cook or tidy up, and I would hold you and talk to you. Knowing, of course, that you couldn't understand a word I said, but talking nevertheless. So you see, Harry, I couldn't not see to you after that night, a little over fourteen years ago now. Also, they cast a spell before they died, to seal the pact, a spell that bound us, in a way. Not in body or spirit, though..... a sort of fusion of our destinies. I suppose they were afraid you would try to escape me at some point," she laughed, but the sound was not mirthful, and Harry realized the bitterness she regarded herself with, saw how it fled when he showed her affection. He pushed himself up onto his knees and quickly threw his arms around her waist, holding his face to the soft creases of her robes and listening to her heartbeat.
"That must have been why I was so worried about you in the beginning," he blurted out in amazement, but quickly added, "although it's not been the spell for a while now, I can tell."
"So can I," she agreed, smiling. "Don't worry, Harry, the spell was only a catalyst. Catalysts simply set things in motion, they can't control the resulting reactions."
"So I've learned," he emphasized wearily.
"Well, then, all these years at school, going to classes, doing homework, facing near-certain death, have all been worthwhile," she teased lightly. "It's an important lesson," she continued more seriously. "It's one of the biggest and most important differences between you and the likes of Draco Malfoy. You've learned; he hasn't. And that might be why you will fight for hope and he for power. There's nothing more horrible or heartbreaking than a child who doesn't realize that the consequences of their actions could slip out of their grasp in an instant, and through no fault of their own. I'm sure he thinks he has everything under control, that he can choose his own fate at any time, and it could mean that he won't recognize true evil until it's staring him in the face and pointing a wand between his eyes. But, as you say, I needn't worry about you on that account."
Harry frowned slightly; she sounded so satisfied. "Tell me something, please," he answered, rising to his feet again and restoring the equilibrium. "If you could be sure that all of us would be perfectly alright, that you had nothing to worry you about any of us, would you want to die?"
"How could you ask me that? Of course I don't want to die. It seems restful, somehow, to think of the freedom in death, but no, I don't want to leave the life I have. Not anymore."
Harry blinked. "I'm sorry, I thought you just said 'not *anymore*.'"
"Not today, Harry. Some other time," she answered in a voice that Sybill Trelawney would have envied. He saw her mind was miles away, probably even on a different plane of existence, and he turned away with a sigh.
"Well, I'll keep looking for-Peeves!!" The cackling poltergeist zoomed away over the shelves, bouncing off the walls with glee, and Harry, rubbing his head where Peeves had dropped something very heavy and very solid, saw an enormous book lying at his feet. He opened it gingerly as a great puff of dust flew into his nostrils. He choked and spluttered out, "Peeves must have been very bored. He probably had to go looking for hours in the darkest corner of the basement to find this thing." He scanned the table of contents quickly, and his glasses jumped off his nose in amazement. He pushed them back over his ears and said in a hushed, reverent voice: "I don't believe it."
"What is it?" she asked curiously, leaning over his shoulder to read the blurred writing.
"Peeves is a genius," Harry muttered in the tone of one who has just found out that up is down and is learning to walk on his hands. "This is it, this is the answer."
A/N: MUHAHAHAHAHA!! I'm evil.