Harry Potter and the Puppetmaster of Hogwarts, Chapter 5

"A prank?" Harry began, doubtful. "Liiike what? Itching potions in those stupid dayglow robes of his?"

Sirius burst out laughing. "I have to say, that would be fun to watch! But no, nothing so mundane as that. When a Maurader wants revenge, he doesn't just use a common, garden variety type of prank. We crush them!"

A slow grin began crawling over Harry's face. "So what do you have in mind?"

Sirius glanced around, and then hurriedly cast a few more anti-spying spells. "Sorry pup," he said in a rather apologetic tone, although Harry didn't exactly see what he was sorry for. "I just really don't want anyone listening in."

Harry nodded. "Yeah; probably a good precaution. I mean, even without the spells on us, there could be some spells on the Shreaking Shack- I mean, it's known all over the school as the snogging place..."

Sirius smiled. "No need to teach your godfather how to suck eggs, pup; I know all the places to snog."

"And they wonder why your animagus form is a dog," Harry muttered. "But snogging spots aside, what are you planning?"

"First of all," said Sirius, pulling a large and ornate ring from his finger, "I need to give you this."

Harry took it from him, studying it curiously; it was large and almost gaudy, set with a ruby and black diamond grim's head, and it was not something that Harry would ordinarily be caught dead wearing. "What does it do?"

"What makes you think it does anything?" Sirius asked.

"Well, you'd think that anything that a pureblood would wear would either be a status symbol or it would be spelled to do something; they'd probably think it's so muggle to wear ordinary jewellery."

Sirius barked a laugh. "You could say that," he said at last. "For starters, this is the Black heir ring. I need a successor or everything will go to the Malfoys. Or worse, the Lestranges."

Harry stared at him. "Sirius..." he began.

"Don't start," was Sirius's reply. "There's a war going on, and it would be stupid not to consider the possibility of me dying, or anyone else dying, for that matter, even if I wasn't convinced Dumbledore will kill me as soon as I'm not useful. You're my heir, pup, deal with it. But that's not the only reason I'm giving it to you."

Harry could only listen mutely, rolling the ring over and over in his hand.

"The House of Black specializes in combating mind magic. Most of our jewels and ornaments have old Black family magic- don't ask me how they did it- that can detect psychetropics and compulsion charms- I even have a whole box of rings for warding off the imperius somewhere."

Harry blinked. "Do you know where they are? Those could be really useful," was Harry's comment.

Sirius nodded. "I think they're still in Reggie's room. But anyway, the Black heir ring is not only an heirloom, it's meant to protect impressionable heirs from being influenced and attacked, so it has double the protections. While it can't block things like hexes and curses, it keeps people from reading your mind with legillimancy and blocks compulsions and other mind-influencing spells, along with detecting and purging potions and poison in your food. Also, the stone on the ring also unscrews, and there's a compartment for a bezoir there- you'll have to get a new one though- I think Argent Black used it when his mother-in-law tried to poison him, and the ring hasn't seen the light of day since."

Harry looked at the ring with more interest. "So when you say it detects potions and poisons, how does that work?"

"The ring glows, except only the wearer can see the glow," Sirius told him. "Pink is for love potions, yellow is for loyalty potions, orange is for compulsion potions, and dark purple is for poisons and torture potions. It also detects legillimancy- mind reading- and glows blue if someone trys it, while also blocking the attack. Compulsion charms cause it to glow green. If someone trys to jinx you from behind or something it flows red, but since it's made for blocking mind magic, the only other things it can really block are kiddy jinxes."

"So what happens if you already have spells on, or have drank mind control potions, when you put it on?" asked Harry, already sliding it on.

"If you've just drank them, you just vomit," said Sirius matter-of-factly. "If they've already been absorbed, you-"

At that moment, Harry doubled over with a hiss of pain, and Sirius hurriedly eased him to the ground, pressing him down as he convulsed, until at length the tremors died down.

"If they've already been absorbed, that happens," Sirius told him unnecessarily, rubbing his back as his panting eased.

Harry sucked in a deep breath. "Merlin. I never want to go through that ever again."

"You should be fine from now on," said Sirius apologetically, "at least unless you drink anymore hostile potions.

Harry just struggled to regain his composure. "What happens next?" he said once he was calm and well enough to go on.

"Well, for one thing, we need to know who can be trusted. I'm pants at potions, so trying to brew veritaserum is out, but after I break all the spells on Snape we could maybe convince him to give us some; he'd probably think it's a fair trade for getting him out from under the twinkly-eyes bastard's thumb."

"I don't want to take advantage of him like that..." Harry began.

"Rubbish. He's a Slytherin, he'll trust us more of he thinks he knows our motives."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "And you know this how?"

"Just because I'm not a slimy snake doesn't mean I don't ever let my Slytherin side out to play," Sirius said, with an almost dangerous smirk. "Although I do think that some of the spells on me were repulsion charms keyed to Slytherins in general and Snape in specific, and maybe a few suppressants- I often thought there was something wrong with me because of how much I hated Slytherins."

Harry simply gaped at his godfather, having never seen this side of him. Then something else occurred to him. "But won't Dumbledore notice that Snape's missing?"

"Yes," Sirius responded, "But what would make him suspect Snape's with us, especially if we cast anti-tracking charms?"

"He won't, probably, but he won't stop looking until he finds a wizard or a body, and Snape probably won't be happy having to stay in hiding for years...oh!"

"What?"

The grin on Harry's face was positively wolfish. "I know how to brew Draught of Living Death."

"It's a second year potion, pup," said Sirius, uncomprehending.

"I also happened to overhear Yaxley talking with his friends at the World Cup."

"And?"

"Wouldn't it be horribly tragic if our dear defense professor was attacked by Death Eaters? And died? I can cast the Dark Mark, you know, and I could probably bribe the forensics team to say he died, and then we just wake him up and go about our business, and Dumbledore doesn't know what happened!"

Sirius stared at him. "Wow," he whispered finally. "That, if you can pull it off, will be the ultimate test of your pranking abilities."

"We'd have to get Snape to go along with it, but I think he'd be more than happy to If it meant he didn't have to spy and wasn't being controlled by Dumbles. But this is where you come in. Right now Snape is drugged in the Chamber of Secrets, because I couldn't figure out how to break the spells. I need you to help me counter them and get him back to health; it would be suspicious if I were missing from classes, and even if anyone found you missing, no one would suspect you to be helping Snape."

"Me, look after Snape? I mean, we'd kill each other in twenty-four hours!"

"Well do you have a better idea?"

"I take the spells off him and then polyjuice as you and go to classes, and you take care of the prat while he's recuperating. I don't hate him much anymore, but I'm definitely not playing nursemaid for the greasy git; I'd probably hex him."

"Has it occurred to you that if there's anyone he hates more than you, it's me?" Harry told him dryly.

"At least he has a reason to hate me," Sirius commented. "He might hate you because of James, but he *probably* won't hex you on sight..."

"Reassuring. Um, why does he hate you and dad, anyway?"

Sirius wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Sirius?"

"Keep in mind that I don't know how much of it was compulsions," Sirius said finally.

Harry didn't like the sound of that. "How much of what was compulsions?"

Sirius shifted on his feet. "We...well...weren't exactly friends in school," he said awkwardly. "James hated him because he fancied Lily. I hated him because he was a slimy snake. Remmy had ancient rune classes with him, and liked him ok, but he and Pettigrew always followed James or I. We...well...we always pranked the Slytherins. You know, the good old 'all your robes are flashing red and gold as soon as you enter the Great Hall', and 'the dungeons are knee-deep in whipped cream' kinda thing. But something about Snape always rubbed me the wrong way, James too."

Harry knew he wasn't going to like this.

"Fourth year was when it really got bad, because James went from wishing Lils would talk to him at all to wishing he could get in her pants."

A pause. Harry blushed furiously, not really wanting to think of his parents as lustful adolescents.

"But of course, Lily's only male friends were a Hufflepuff firstie named Gilderoy Lockhart whom she tutored in Charms and Snape, and James wasn't all that happy about that. And since James didn't think Gilderoy was much of a threat, it was Snape he focused on.

"In our defense, we really did think Snape was bad for Lily. He was poor, he was a half-blood, he was just plain unpleasant, and he knew more about the Dark Arts then most of our teachers, and what was more, he wasn't afraid to use them- poor Remmy got hit with nasty hexes he invented more than once. And he was always hanging around with Death Eater wannabes like Malfoy and Carrow and Avery. And...well...the pranks got a lot more targeted and a lot more nasty.

"Fifth year...I think now we went way too far, but it's too late to really think about that. James and I bullied him, Lily defended him, he hexed us with Dark magic, he got in trouble. That was basically the outline of that entire year, except after midterm exams Lily and Snape had a fight and Lily stopped defending him."

Harry listened in horror; all he could think of was Dudley and his friends, chasing him as he tried to escape their fists. If they'd been able to use magic...

"By seventh year, he'd taken the Mark, and we figured that was confirmation that he was evil, not that we could do much to him by then. At that point, Lily had started going out with James, and she made him promise not to hex Snape...at least not while she was around.

"Then we all graduated. James and I went into the aurors, Remmy pinned down a job in muggle London, Lily became an unspeakable, and Pettigrew mooched off of the rest of us like the miserable rat that he was; we were all in the Order, too, and we all forgot about him, except when we had to fight him during Death Eater attacks, and the time the aurors raided his house. I only saw him once after that, before Azkaban, and that was the day...your parents died. At the time, I thought he was slinking away to rejoin his master. I only later learned that he had gone back to Hogwarts to drink himself into oblivion."

"So you bullied him until he took the Mark, and then decided he was evil?" Harry's voice was unnaturally calm.

"Pup, he-"

"If you're going to say he was probably going to go dark anyway, I don't want to hear it." A pause. "Would you have done the same to me?"

"What?"

"Siri, the Sorting Hat almost put me in Slytherin," Harry told him. "If I had been the odd Slytherin half-blood with my nose in a potions manual and robes two sizes to large, would you have bullied me?"

"Pup, I-"

"I don't want to hear about it," Harry repeated. "Look, I'll catch you later, my friends are probably looking for me."

"Harry-"

"I need to think. If you still want to help me, meet me here in an hour and I'll sneak you into the school. But I'm not talking to you for a bit."

And without another word, Harry stalked out of the Shrieking Shack and down the tunnel.