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Chapter Twelve—Frustrated Ambitions

Nothing Charlus Potter said made the slightest bit of difference.

Harry sat in the Slytherin common room and scowled down at his homework, a tricky Transfiguration problem that he thought he ought to have to figured out by now, but hadn't. Besides, his mind was more than half on the fact that no matter what Charlus said, people just thought that his family was trying to get out of justified scorn for not taking care of an illegitimate child.

It was driving Harry mental.

He stood up and tossed his homework aside. He wasn't going anything done sitting here. At least he could take his homework to the library and study in peace and quiet, ignoring the taunting voices and Riddle's bullying and the "sneaky" hexes and jinxes cast in his direction by Slytherins who thought they could catch him off-guard. They never did, but that didn't keep them from trying.

Harry retrieved most of his homework and went to the library, finding his usual isolated corner. People didn't bother wending their way back here to try and talk to him, even the ones who were most interested in the "illegitimate half-blood Potter." It was a refuge, and Harry fell into a routine of taking notes from his Charms book and also understanding what he was reading, which happened more rarely than it should, without Hermione around.

Hermione. Ron.

Harry caught his breath around a burst of homesickness, and shook his head. So far, he hadn't happened across a book that would tell him how accidental time travel could have happened or how to reverse it, but that didn't mean he couldn't find one. Or maybe everything would reverse itself one night and he'd wake up in the present the same way he'd found himself in the past.

Everything was going splendidly, and then Orion Black just had to come around the corner. Harry didn't raise his head, steadily writing, hoping that the lack of "respect" that Black always demanded from other people would make him go the fuck away.

It didn't.

"What do you want, Black?" Harry finally snapped, rattled enough that he almost looked up. It was a struggle to keep his head down.

Black sat down across from him, which was beyond weird. "I've noticed that you're pretty good at Defense. Better than Riddle. I could use some help."

Oh, come the fuck on, that's not even subtle.

"No one's better than Riddle," Harry snapped, and looked up.

Black had his mouth open like he was going to say something, but instead he just stared. Harry's hand twitched with the temptation to wipe at his mouth or make sure he didn't have something on his face. He managed to keep it to, "What the hell are you staring at, Black?"

Black cleared his throat and dropped his book on the table. Harry hoped that he held his twitch in. In reality, seeing someone treat their books like that bothered him in a way it never had before, not when he'd had his own money to buy things like books.

"Riddle's good at curses. You're better at countercurses. I know you are. I've seen you reversing them. You do it faster than Riddle casts them."

Harry shook his head, wondering why Black thought his flattery would get him anywhere. Was this an attempt to find out things about him for Riddle? "But I'm not as strong as Riddle."

Black blinked, and said the last words that Harry would have expected to come out of his mouth. "Of course you are. I'd say that you're at least his equal."

What the fuck?

Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead, where an ordinary headache, one that had nothing to do with any potential scar connection to Riddle, was forming. "You don't need to lie to get me to help you, Black. I'll help you if you want." Truthfully, he probably shouldn't have, but he missed the D.A. and he missed helping people. What part of Defense are you having trouble with?"

"Dueling, actually," Black said, and that seemed to be that as far as the flattery was concerned. Harry felt a little relieved. He supposed Black just wanted help and had thought he needed to sneak up on it somehow since he and Harry hadn't been friendly up until this point. "How can you keep up the barrage of spells when you also have to identify what's coming at you and counter them at the same time? I always get caught up in analyzing the other spells and overthinking it."

That was something Harry could explain, and he did so gladly. He wanted to roll his eyes when he noticed the intent way Black was studying him and snap something about how Riddle would still be pleased with fewer observations, but teaching was more fun.

And it wouldn't have that much of an impact on the way people thought of him here, really. So the mysterious Harry Evans who showed up and disappeared after one year was a good Defense student. So what? It was still nothing compared to what Riddle had achieved.

"Orion."

Orion snaps out of a doze in the chair next to Harry's bad. Madam Eldiss tried to send him away, but Orion can out-stubborn her when she wants, and can also invoke the wrath of his father when he wants. Orion's been drifting in and out of wakefulness for a while now, but Harry's voice brings him fully back to it.

"Harry," he breathes, dragging his chair towards the bed. "Why did you—what happened—why do that?" It takes him a long moment to make his eyes focus on the hand that Madam Eldiss made feel better but couldn't heal.

Harry gives him a faint, grim smile. "Riddle said a sacrifice of pain was required to end the cage, and I needed Alphard out of there as soon as possible. Causing myself some pain in my non-wand hand was probably the best choice. I don't know what effect it would have had on my shoulders or arms, I need my legs to walk, and I didn't want that thing close to my head."

"You could have—you could have asked someone else to do it," Orion murmurs. Harry's hand doesn't have blisters all over the palm anymore, but the skin is still blackened, and his fingers are still gone. "You could have asked someone else to share it with you. Then maybe the pain would have been halved."

A strange expression settles over Harry's face, one that Orion recognizes after a second as pure and utter stubbornness. Usually, he sees it mixed with something else. "Ask someone else to share that pain with me? To take it up in my stead?" He shakes his head. "There's no way I could do that, Orion."

"But why?"

"I can't. Any more than I could have left Alphard to suffer in that cage. It's not in me."

Orion fumes in silence. Harry keeps staring back at him, and that expression is still there, strange to Orion even though now he understands it. He's seen Harry be stubborn before, with regard to using Dark Arts and acknowledging that Orion and Abraxas want to follow him, but both those things, he ended up compromising on. But this time, he looks as if someone could smash him into the floor and he wouldn't yield.

Someone did, Orion thinks, and his eyes go to Harry's hand.

"Why didn't you kill him?" he asks softly.

Harry rolls his eyes at him. Rolls his eyes. Orion is speechless with indignation, which allows Harry to go ahead and say, "Because I'm not a powerful pureblood with a powerful family to watch out for me and get me out of a murder charge, Orion. I would go to Azkaban if I was unlucky, be expelled and have my wand snapped if I wasn't. And Riddle is beloved by almost all the professors. Who were they going to believe if I tried and failed to kill him, him or me? If I'd succeeded, would they have testified on my behalf? Of course not. I made the best decision I could have in the circumstances." He stares directly into Orion's eyes. "Why didn't you make him swear an oath not to harm you and Abraxas and the other sixth-years?"

"What about covering you in that oath?"

"You know he never would have gone for that."

"I didn't believe he'd forswear his chance for revenge on me or Abraxas or anyone else in our year who irritates him, either. Alphard and the others? I judged he would. They're not valuable to him except as pawns to try to get us to do what he wants."

"So we both made the best decisions we could have with the information we had at the time, and being angry about it is silly," Harry says firmly.

"I can still be angry about it," Orion says. "You do have a powerful pureblood family to defend you, Harry. Or are you forgetting about the one you'll marry into?"

Harry blinks and readjusts his position on the bed. Then he says quietly, "I wasn't forgetting I would marry into your family…exactly."

"Then what?"

"I didn't know if your father would be willing to try and extend his protection to cover me when we're not married yet."

From the slight frown on Harry's face, Orion has the feeling it's more than that, but he doesn't feel the need to push on it. "Well, he would. I wrote to him in the strongest terms. He knows that you're the one I want."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because you're what I've dreamed of," Orion says, and watches, enchanted, as a blush steals over Harry's face. "A true lord and leader, who would take care of me, someone with enough power to follow but not so drunk on that power as to turn on me. And someone I could love, someone handsome and humble and willing to be my friend and admit me as an equal—"

"Please don't tell me that you regarded Riddle that way."

Harry looks faintly nauseated, and Orion doubts his hand has anything to do with it. He reaches out and squeezes Harry's good hand. "No. I thought of him as the lord I would have to follow, but only because I wouldn't get anything better. Well, and because he's so strong, and he would have probably killed me when I was sleeping if I hadn't yielded to him. I certainly couldn't have beaten him."

Harry hisses something, his eyes flashing. Orion can't believe that he's been so injured and he still gets upset at the thought of Riddle doing that to Orion. His hold on Harry's hand tightens, until Harry shifts.

"Now I have a better choice," Orion adds softly, and smooths his fingers down the outside of Harry's hand, watching it tremble for a moment.

"And that's the case even if I'm a half-blood who grew up in the Muggle world? Who has some kind of relationship to the Potter family that no one understands?"

"We'll get you recognized, Harry, don't worry about that. They'll suffer for neglecting you—"

Harry interrupts with a harsh sound. "No, Orion. That's not what I want. Charlus and the rest of the Potters had nothing to do with the way I grew up. I'm just asking if your father and the rest of your family will really accept someone like me."

"Yes. Because my choice matters, and because I found someone to fall in love with the same way that my father fell in love with my mother."

Harry seems to be bracing himself for something, and asks, "What about Walburga?"

"What about her? She'll accept you as much as the rest. I know that she might seem infatuated with Riddle, but she's really—"

"No, I mean. I heard a rumor going around Slytherin that you were betrothed."

Orion laughs so hard that he nearly tips off the chair next to Harry's bed. Harry gives him an irritated look, but it has no effect on Orion. He shakes his head. "No, Harry. She's not nearly powerful enough for me. Plus, she's my second cousin. Not that close, but not something my father would favor."

"Oh. I wonder why the rumor, then?"

Orion shrugs, not that interested. "There are some people who like thinking about all the possible marriages in the House of Black and other prominent pureblood families and speculating about what would happen—how powerful the children would be, for example. Someone was probably speculating about that. And it's not that unexpected. Walburga is a pureblood, close to me in age, and knows how the Black family works. It might seem natural if you were looking from the outside in and didn't know how strongly I value other traits." He smiles at Harry.

Harry doesn't smile back. "So I don't have to worry about her being jealous?"

"Only because she's determined to find a powerful husband and she'll be upset that I caught you first."

Harry sighs out slowly. "Okay. Then…you're still determined to take me home for Christmas and introduce me to your relatives?"

Orion squeezes Harry's good hand in answer.

Madam Eldiss chooses that moment to bustle back into the room. Her manner is quiet and reserved as she raises her eyebrows at Harry. "You know that the spell you must have exposed your hand to is among the Darkest of Dark Arts?"

"I suspected that. I didn't know for certain. It was a cage that would take a sacrifice of pain to dissipate."

"You didn't cast it, then."

Harry doesn't look offended the way he probably would have been before last night. He shakes his head. "No. But I had to dissipate it to prevent the caster from hurting a younger student, and it was the quickest and least incapacitating sacrifice I could think of."

"Perhaps in the short term." Madam Eldiss clutches her wand and takes a deep breath. "You know that long-term…"

"You can't heal it," Orion whispers. He suspected this, but it's crushing to hear it confirmed.

"It could be healed," Madam Eldiss says quickly. "But only at the cost of restoring the cage around the person who was inside it, or inflicting the sacrifice of pain on that person. That's one reason the spell is Dark Arts."

"That price is unacceptable," Harry says flatly.

Orion glances at him. "If we could convince—"

"No, Orion."

There's no doubt that that's an order, and Orion bows his head. Harry sighs and turns to the mediwitch. "I once saw someone conjure a silver hand for someone else," he says quietly. "Could you do something similar? Or tell me a spell that would? Or a Healer that would? Although it would just be silver fingers in this case." He glances at his left hand and holds it up to stare at the place where his last fingers would be.

Orion makes himself look, too. It doesn't look as bad as it did. And Harry would probably say that at least he doesn't use his left hand for writing or wandwork.

It still makes Orion sick to look at. It makes him glad that he's already sent a letter to his father describing what went on and the kinds of consequences that he wants to befall Riddle.

"I can do my best," says Madam Eldiss, bowing her head a little. "It doesn't mean I'll succeed. I know the spell you're talking about, and it usually requires both powerful magic and a sample of the blood of the recipient." She shoots Harry a quick, curious glance, probably wondering where he saw that spell.

Orion wonders that, too, but he's going to let Harry tell him before he accuses him of anything. He sits back and says nothing while Harry and Madam Eldiss discuss how much blood she'll need and when they'll meet to cast the spell. Then he asks, as she moves off again, "How much does your hand hurt?"

"Not a lot," Harry says, flexing and stretching it. The fingers that remain appear to bend well enough, Orion sees, when he squints at them. The tight, blackened skin on the palm has relaxed enough that Harry can move it back and forth. "I'm more interested in figuring out how we're going to take the next steps against Riddle."

"He's already started reaching out to the professors," Orion murmurs. "Implying that you attacked him without cause and he had to defend himself with whatever magic he could access. Saying nothing about Alphard, of course."

Harry sighs a little. "Of course he wouldn't. Well, there's still one professor who won't listen to him."

Orion blinks. Then he realizes who Harry means, and frowns. "But Professor Dumbledore doesn't like you, either."

"He used his own money to buy me robes and books and a cauldron. He likes me well enough."

"But that was before you were Sorted into Slytherin, right? Will he still stand up for you now?"

"There's something I know that he doesn't," Harry says quietly. "I'll use that if I have to. But I think we can use simpler weapons than that."

"I hope so," Orion says, staring at the only person he's ever met with the audacity to suggest blackmailing Professor Dumbledore. "What are they?"

Harry looks down for a second. Orion thinks that he's looking at his hand, and opens his mouth to reassure Harry that he'll be happy to pay for Healing if Madam Eldiss's magic isn't powerful enough to do it.

Then Harry looks up, and Orion starts. His eyes are wide and wet, and his lip is quivering. He lowers his head and looks away, his right hand flexing in the sheets.

"I suffer from delusions," Harry whispers. "That's what Professor Dumbledore believes. I told him some things he couldn't accept, but he accepted that I've been abused. And my mind has been deranged.

"Riddle, of course, senses vulnerable, weak prey. He picked on me and poked at my vulnerable spots and cornered me until I had no choice but to strike back at him." Harry sniffles and holds up his left hand. "And look who suffered more from it. Why would I use a Dark Arts spell on myself? No, he used it on me." Harry sniffles again. "Of course."

Orion blinks. He never would have thought about that, mostly because few Slytherins would admit weaknesses like this, or want to portray themselves as unstable due to abuse.

Harry, of course, is the one who would manage to deploy weakness as a weapon.

And it's a plan that will likely work with Professor Dumbledore, who likes to champion the underdog, so Orion smiles and congratulates Harry on it while his gaze strays over the rest of Harry's body, looking for scars he can't actually see.

How much abuse did you suffer, Harry?

And what did you say to Professor Dumbledore? Would you tell me?