Thank you again for all the reviews!

Sol and Romulus

"You're not jealous of me, right?"

Harry looks up. He's sitting on the grass in front of Lion's Door, the small and absurdly named house they moved to last year, and Sol is standing in front of Harry and looking at him with those hazel eyes that turn almost golden in the light sometimes.

Harry smiles and shakes his head. "No, of course not."

"Because Mum and Dad…" Sol trails off, and sits down on the grass in front of Harry to begin pulling blades. Harry almost tells him not to do that, but he doesn't think Sol would react well, so he keeps his mouth shut. Harry goes back to his book.

Sol lies on his back as if he's watching clouds. Harry wonders a little about what he sees—powerful wizards are supposed to be able to make out cloud-patterns better than others, and sometimes even use them to predict the future—but Sol will tell him if it's important.

"Because Mum and Dad think you are," Sol finally says, after so long that Harry thinks the conversation is going to lapse.

Harry sighs and shuts the book on his finger. "That's because Mum and Dad are ashamed."

"Of what?"

"Of producing a wizard that's almost a Squib. No one knew I would have enough strength to go to Hogwarts until the letter actually arrived." Except me. But Harry knows that talking about his own belief in himself just comes across as conceited, so he doesn't. "They were relieved when you and Romulus and Alicia were born, but that just makes them more concerned for me. Because what if I had turned out to be a Squib?"

Sol flips over on his side, his brow furrowed. His hair flops over his face. Harry thinks he should push it out of his eyes, but once again, he isn't going to suggest it. "That doesn't make sense, though. They're always talking about how you shouldn't treat Squibs differently from regular wizards."

Harry nods. "But it's different to think you have a Squib child yourself. They can be all for Squib rights in the abstract and still be ashamed of me in particular." He sighs when Sol just stares at him. "Look at it this way. Uncle Remus is one of their best friends, right?"

Sol bobs his head.

"And they support werewolf rights?"

Nod, nod.

"But wouldn't they still be upset if one of us got turned into a werewolf? If Remus ever accidentally endangered us? That's what I mean. They can support people who are werewolves but not want one of their children to be one."

Sol spends some time chewing that over, enough time that Harry goes back to his book. It describes the wand movements you need to achieve complex Transfiguration better than any other book he's read. Harry is pretty sure that he can get this right if he just works at it.

"That's different, though," Sol finally says. His voice is certain. Sol always takes a while to think things through, but he's strong in his conclusions when he comes to them. "Because werewolves are dangerous even though they can take Wolfsbane, but Squibs aren't."

"They're dangerous to the magic of a family."

"Mum says that's nonsense."

"She says it to other people, but she still thinks it deep down," Harry says quietly. "Mum's insecure, you know that. Her own sister was jealous of her. So many people thought that her marrying into a pure-blood family wasn't a good thing. She always feels like she has to be better than the pure-blood mothers at anything. And when her first child was almost a Squib, that just made some people think they were right, that mixing Muggle blood into a family was a death sentence for their magic."

"Oh." Sol exhales it long and slow, and then he stands up and runs into the house.

Harry shakes his head a little, and goes on reading.

Sol doesn't talk to him about that again, but it does have one unexpected consequence. The next time Lily sits down with Harry and tries to tell him gently that she doesn't think she can be a Healer, Romulus stands up for him.

"You shouldn't say that, Mum."

Lily blinks and glances at her youngest son. Harry glances with her. Romulus looks mostly like Sol, but his red hair is a little darker, on the side of auburn, and his eyes a little less hazel. He has an even more stubborn jaw, though.

"Harry's not a Squib," Romulus says, with all the certainty of nine years old. "That means he can be a Healer."

"But being a Healer requires very complex and subtle magic," Lily says. Harry watches the way her face softens when she speaks to one of her children who has safe, powerful magic. That's okay. One day her face will change like that for him. "Harry is stronger than we thought, but not as strong as that."

"But how do you know? You're not a Healer."

Harry keeps his face smooth with an effort. It kind of helps that he was working with Professor Snape on Potions for so much of this year. He has to remain blank around him at all times, or Professor Snape thinks Harry is making fun of him.

But Romulus just always says things like that, whether it's telling Dad that he's being a bully and shouldn't bully people, or telling Sirius he doesn't want to play right now, or toddling downstairs, the way he did when he was three, to scold everyone that Remus's door wasn't shut. And their parents have never known how to deal with him.

"I've talked to Healers," Lily says, her voice a little sharp. Harry looks at her and wonders idly if she sounded like that when she and Professor Snape lost their friendship, whatever the circumstances were. "I know that Alicia wants to be one. I do know what's involved."

"But Harry's always reading. So he'll be ready by the time he wants to be one."

"I don't actually want to be a Healer," Harry says calmly. "But thanks for defending me, Rom."

"Don't call me that!"

Harry shrugs and goes back to his book. Honestly, he does it because Romulus looks as cute as hell when he's pouting.

"I'm sorry, Harry, but I don't think that you can be an Auror, either," Lily says, apparently having decided to ignore Romulus's incipient temper tantrum.

Harry blinks and looks up. "I don't want to be."

"But you're always studying…"

"Well, there are other careers besides Auror and Healer."

"Yes, Mum, don't you know anything?"

That makes Lily send Romulus up to his room for a while, but she goes with him, so Harry can finally go back to his book. And late that night, when he's alone his room and sure that no one else is awake, he draws his wand—the latest charm he learned was a way to take the Trace off it—and aims it at a pillow on the other side of his bed and concentrates as hard as he can and makes the right wand movement.

The pillow turns into a cat, for just a second. The next instant, it's a fluffy pillow again.

But that's okay. Regular Transfigurations never last for that long, either. It's long enough to make Harry flop back against his ordinary pillows, exhilarated.

I'm going to be great someday. Then, they'll all believe me.

Aconite

Severus grits his teeth as Remus Lupin, of all people, chatters away next to him. He has to put up with the fool for at least a year, since Albus finally heeded Minerva's pleas and sacked Quirrell. That means he cannot strangle him. And he doesn't want to come close enough to be marked by a werewolf's nails, anyway, even when it is not a full moon.

His gaze strays to the Potter. He's reading at the Hufflepuff table again, as usual. The other third-years chatter around him as if he doesn't exist. Severus asked him once how he could bear that. Potter only stared at him with his brow wrinkling slightly.

"But I don't pay any attention to them," he finally said. "So why should they pay any attention to me, either?"

Severus didn't have an answer for that. He doesn't have an answer right now, either, except that no one should be that preternaturally accepting. He scowls at the Potter. In response, the Potter turns a page.

"Why do you hate Harry so much, Severus?"

"Because of how exactly he's like his father."

It's a practiced, automatic answer, one Severus perfected last year when he didn't want to reveal to anyone that he was actually tutoring the Potter in Potions. But as he watches the boy carefully maneuver a forkful of meat dripping with red sauce so that it doesn't mark the pages of his book, he realizes it is no longer true in any sense except as an excuse.

The Potter is nothing like his father. The younger one, yes. But Severus sees only one kind of arrogance in the way Harry Potter holds himself, meets people's eyes or doesn't meet them, reads at the table, and ignores the remarks made about his lack of remarkable magic.

The arrogance that says he can ignore them, because they will never be as great as he will be, one day.

It's a familiar kind of arrogance. It should be, when Severus sees it staring back from the mirror every morning.

"You know the difference between slicing and squashing, Potter."

Harry nods and studies the ingredients in front of him again. There's aconite, and tarnished crumbs of silver, and the corpses of dragonflies that have been dipped into some sort of covering he doesn't recognize.

It's the dragonflies that decide him, more than anything. He looks up at Professor Snape. "Sorry, sir. But this is part of the steps for preparing the Wolfsbane potion for Professor Lupin, isn't it?"

Snape's hands stop working over his own cauldron, but a second later, he makes a small, impatient sound, and scatters his own leaves of sliced aconite into the potion. "Yes," he says harshly, turning his head. "I am surprised you recognize it."

"I've been reading up on a lot of modern Potions history and different combinations of ingredients, sir."

"And?"

"I know that it's an incredibly complex potion, and my knowledge isn't great, as yet. I'm surprised that you're giving me the honor of preparing it with you, sir."

Harry means exactly what he says, but Snape looms over him a second later, staring and sneering down at him. Harry blinks. It is an honor, that Snape would trust him with something so complicated and delicate. He's not sure why Snape thinks Harry was mocking him, but that has to be what the expression on his face is about.

But Snape shakes his head a second later. "Does nothing faze you, Potter?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, sir."

"You meant it when you said it was an honor."

"Yes, sir. I know how high your standards are for the students you help outside of class. I didn't think I was anywhere near the level where I could help you yet."

Snape stares at him longer, and then snorts. "There are NEWT students in my classes currently who wouldn't have recognized this potion's ingredients without being told what they were. That is the reason, Potter." And back he goes to slicing, as if nothing has changed, adding only, over his shoulder, "Show me that you know the difference between slicing and squashing the dragonflies."

Harry works thoughtfully on the dragonflies that he now knows have been rolled, rather than dipped, in boiled deadly nightshade. He comes to one possible meaning for Snape's words immediately, but it takes until the end of the night, when he hasn't earned more than a few curt words, none of them a scolding, for him to dare to accept it.

Snape thinks—that Harry really has studied and proved himself worth something.

Harry permits himself a full five minutes of luxuriating in that knowledge in his own bed that night before he falls asleep. Then he wakes up in the morning and goes to his classes and his extra practice as usual.

No matter what, he isn't going to get a big head. Really great people don't have those.

Remus holds Harry back after class one day. Harry looks at him curiously as he slings his bag over his shoulder. Remus hasn't approached him much all year, although he also hasn't acted as though it's a surprise when Harry knows answers from the Defense textbook or can cast the spells right.

Now, though, Remus is frowning, and he locks the door before he speaks. "I need to know if you're cheating, Harry."

"Of course I'm not!"

Harry shouts it before he can stop himself. Remus raises a calming hand. "It's all right. I hadn't thought you were. But—you don't normally have the power to cast spells like the Riddiikulus Charm so strongly. Where did you get it?"

Harry debates telling Remus the truth, but Remus can never keep his mouth shut around Sirius, and Sirius can never keep his mouth shut around the Potters. He still doesn't want his secrets exposed. He settles for, "I have to practice casting a lot in Hogwarts."

"All the casting in the world won't make a strong wizard out of a Squib."

Harry sighs. Maybe he can prepare the ground a bit for the kind of revelation he'll have to make after Hogwarts. "Did it ever occur to you that the Healers might have mismeasured my strength? I can't really be a Squib because I got a Hogwarts letter. That Healer we used to see got arrested a few years ago for being drunk on the job. Maybe the one I saw was drunk the day he tested me, too?"

Remus only shakes his head, his mouth locking into a stubborn line. "It's very rare that Healers drink. I doubt the one you saw was."

"Fine. Then don't believe me."

"Harry, wait! I'm not trying to alienate you. It just seems that you're far more like an average wizard than I ever thought."

I'm not average. I'm extraordinary.

But Harry reminds himself again not to reveal that, because it would complicate things too much. And he still doesn't want a big head. And he's not extraordinary yet in anything except being one of the few non-Slytherin students that Snape helps. "Well, then someone was wrong. It's not me. It's not your eyes. Why couldn't it be the Healer?"

Remus is silent, his mouth pinched in thought.

Harry gives up on him making sense any time soon, and walks out of the classroom.

"You are not chopping the bannock leaves neatly."

Potter puts down the knife and turns away to stare blankly at the wall, exactly as if he had windows in his dungeon lair. Severus frowns at his back. Potter is acting as though he heard Severus and did not hear him at the same time.

Severus goes about soaking his own bannock leaves, boiling the scrim off the first stage of the potion, and combining the two solutions before he steps back and says, "Are you going to tell me the truth, or must I drag it out of you?"

Potter only shakes his head for a moment. Then he turns around and says, "Remus kept me after class the other day because he thought I must be cheating."

Severus feels as though his own stare has become as blank as Potter's was a minute ago. That a friend of James Potter would ever bring himself to believe that about of one of James Potter's children… "Why?"

"He thinks I'm too weak to cast the spells I've been casting in Defense."

"I heard about the third-year lessons. Ridiculously simple matters, given the Boggart and the grindylows."

"Yes, but he still thought I was too powerful. And I don't want to tell the truth because he would tell Sirius right away—"

"And Black has no conception of secrecy." Severus leans his hip against the table for a moment. Potter is reacting differently than any other child in the same situation. That makes it hard to know what to say, how to tune his voice. "So what will you do?"

"Keep it silent, for now. Let Remus write to Mum and Dad if he wants. They won't be able to get the truth out of me."

Not They won't ask. Severus studies the boy in front of him, and finds himself opening his mouth to offer the last advice he thought he ever would. "Wouldn't it be wiser to let them know what you have done? To let them know how powerful you really are?"

"I have to have undeniable proof. Remus is seeing me do the spells and he still doesn't believe me. I suggested the Healer who thought I was a Squib could have been wrong, and he refused to believe that, either. I have to show them that I can do some really big and impressive things."

"Helping me with the Wolfsbane, and now with the antidote to Veritaserum, is impressive."

"Yes, but Dad doesn't think it is."

Severus nods. He doesn't think that James hated Potions in school, but Severus's mastery of the subject will have given him a distaste for it. "Will you want me there as an audience for this reveal?"

Potter turns and stares at him. Severus realizes only then that Potter never intended to tell anyone about his help. He straightens. Of course he should prefer that. It would only get the Potters, perhaps Lily, into his office to shout at him. Of course he should prefer that Potter never tell the truth.

But that is not the way Potter's staring makes him feel. It is rather as if he has been promised some intricate pudding the elves have made and then ended up with the only empty plate in the Great Hall.

Rather as if his mother had promised some treat to him and then snatched it away, as she so often did, for lack of time or money or caring.

"I wish to be there."

Potter nods slowly, his green eyes shadowed and thoughtful. "All right."

And he goes back to chopping, and after a moment, so does Severus.

Harry steps back slowly. He's finally succeeded at Transfiguring a stone of the wall in the classroom where he practices into glass. Now he can try something else.

"Confringo!"

The glass shatters. Harry flings himself out of the way, even if he's absolutely confident that his Shield Charm can protect him. And the shards fly over his head and skitter along the floor, and nothing is left of the wall where the glass stood. There's a hole in the stone now.

Harry supposes that someone might be upset if they find that, but honestly, he's grinning too hard to care at this point. He used powerful spells, ones that are usually reckoned to be fourth year at least. No one could actually deny that he's stronger than they thought if they were to see him now.

No one will be able to.