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Tournament
"How is it that you ended up so different from your siblings when you were all reared in the same house?"
Harry glances at Snape. Why is he asking Harry this question? It's not a surprise to Harry that Romulus came to Hogwarts this year and Sorted Gryffindor at once. Any more than it's a surprise to him that Sol did the same thing. They are themselves and Harry is himself.
"I want an answer."
"I don't know. They just have that kind of personality." Harry glances down at the cauldron in front of him and frowns. Veritaserum is less complicated to brew than Wolfsbane, most of the time. He honestly doesn't understand why he's messing this one up. He leans over to read the instructions again.
"But you are a Hufflepuff."
"Yes, but you told me last year that you knew why, sir."
Snape huffs and leaves the room. Harry shakes his head. It's a mark of the professor's trust that he leaves Harry alone with his ingredients and cauldrons and all the other things that Harry could cause mischief with in his lab. That means that Harry won't hold it against him for being ridiculous about his siblings' House.
He spends some time carefully stirring his potion again, and smiles with relief as it turns clear. There. That's what he was doing wrong. Just not enough stirs in a clockwise direction. Veritaserum relies on precise following of numbers much more than a lot of potions do.
The door opens again. Snape comes storming back in. Harry looks up, wondering if he caught Sol or Romulus wandering around after curfew again and wants to take out his frustration on Harry. Although Harry will say that that doesn't happen often. Snape seems to be working grimly towards the day, just like Harry, when they will be able to impress the rest of his family, although Harry thinks that Snape finds all of it frustrating and Harry just thinks it's his parents.
But Snape parks himself in front of Harry, folds his arms, and proceeds to say nothing about any Gryffindor Potters. "You know that the school is buzzing about the Tri-wizard Tournament."
"Yes?" Harry stirs the potion gently again, because that's what the directions say to do.
Snape's eyes follow the motion of his hand, but he doesn't comment. "I have overheard your brothers saying that Sol Potter intends to enter it."
"That's stupid," Harry says in disbelief. His brother is more sensible than that, he's always thought. "Sol is just a third-year."
"He intends to get past the Age Line."
"Well, do you want to talk to him and discourage him or something? Not that I think there's any chance he'll manage it," Harry adds. Sol's magic is powerful, but he's undisciplined. He likes to rush through things, so he doesn't practice his wand motions and incantations often enough. Harry has worked with him sometimes, but Sol is on Gryffindor's Quidditch team and doesn't have a lot of free time for it, either.
"I want to know whether you encouraged him."
Sheer outrage almost makes Harry stop stirring the Veritaserum. He keeps going because he can't stop now if he doesn't want to ruin the potion. "That's ridiculous. Sir. Of course I didn't! You think I want either of my younger brothers involved in something that dangerous?"
Snape eyes him, then nods abruptly. "I thought that perhaps you wanted to make your name as a counselor to a young champion. The one who teaches him the magic he needs to know to survive."
Harry shakes his head impatiently. "I'm not interested in that, sir. Not in anything like that. I'll talk to Sol and make sure that he knows I think entering the Tournament is a stupid idea."
"He may find it all the more attractive for that."
"Sometimes he does things like that," Harry has to acknowledge, as he gives the final stir to the potion and then casts the Stasis Charm that will keep it still until Professor Snape has the time to add the next round of stirs. It has to pause like that under a Stasis Charm for a while, anyway. "But I have to talk to him because Mum is too far away to make him stop, and Dad might think it's a grand idea."
"Is he not mature at all, your father?"
Harry shoots a quick look at Snape. The man is good at casual, tilted as he is against the doorframe with his arms folded, but Harry isn't fooled. He heard all about the feud between Snape and his father long before he came to school, and not just from Dad, but from Mum and Remus, who were more neutral about it.
"Not about everything," Harry says, and leaves, mind already turning to what he can say to make Sol stop acting stupid.
As it happens, Severus is an audience to the Potter's attempted persuasion of his younger brother, much though he did not wish to be. He stops around the corner on one of his nightly patrols. It is not curfew, not yet, but only five minutes away. And apparently the Potter has chosen this time to speak to the Gryffindor one.
"But I want to! Just think what an adventure it's going to be! By the time I'm old enough to compete, the Tournament will be over!"
"Just think how dangerous it's going to be."
"But that doesn't matter. You should go on adventures to rescue people and show off your bravery."
"Who will you be rescuing though, Sol?"
"I read up on the Tournament, Harry. The Second Task is always a rescue of some kind. A helpless prisoner or a member of your family or something. I want to do it!"
One of Severus's eyebrows creeps upwards. Reading up on the Tournament is more than he thought any Gryffindor would do.
"But the other Tasks? They used chimeras for one of the First Tasks, Sol. In the last one where all the Champions ended up dying. And all of them were at least four years older than you."
"I want to do it! And I have a way to fool the Age Line."
"Oh?"
The Potter has just the right amount of disinterest in his voice, Severus admits. Sol Potter hesitates, but in the end, he can't give up on the effort of trying to impress his bored older sibling.
"I'm going to owl Dad to send me one of the really old artifacts from the vaults. Someone who's carrying it has to be an adult most of the time. The Age Line isn't going to know that Potters can carry it when they're younger than seventeen."
Severus tilts his head. It will not work, but the intelligence of the plan surprises him.
"Huh. Well, I don't want you to do it, Sol."
"You're just jealous that you didn't think of it first! And scared."
There is a soft hiss that could be mistaken for Parseltongue if one was not Severus and did not know better. Then the Potter storms past him, face dark. His younger brother leans out, saying, "I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't mean—you aren't jealous of me, I know that! But you are scared."
Severus watches his own Potter go for a moment. It seems the accusation of jealousy hit home. And why not? For someone who was thought to be a Squib—
Severus straightens his spine. And someone who grew up around Lily, who suffered from her own sister's poisonous jealousy. Of course Lily would fear that one of her own children would be jealous of the others possessing more magic, when Petunia had been, and desperate to prevent that dynamic at any cost.
Of course the Potter would be sensitive to such accusations.
Another thing we need to work on, Severus decides, and takes great pleasure to stepping around the corner and assigning one insufferable Gryffindor detention for being out after curfew.
Dragons and Healers
"I think you should not be so sensitive to accusations of jealousy."
Harry breathes in and focuses on the cauldron in front of him. He doesn't want to spend as much time these days with Snape; he thinks he knows as much about Potions as he needs to impress his parents and pass his OWL's with an Exceeds Expectations. But Snape keeps insisting on setting up appointments to brew and expecting Harry to be there.
So far, Harry has been there. He knows that attempting to sidestep Snape's weirdness will end up with him spending more time in detentions.
"Why are you sensitive?"
"Because everyone believes it," Harry says, drawing back his stirring rod and tapping it carefully against the cauldron's rim.
"I would not."
"With respect, sir, you're not a member of my family."
"And why would they believe it? It seems as if your youngest brother is—adequate in having a brain of his own."
Harry keeps his face down, so Snape won't see how he smiles at that grudging praise of Romulus. "Maybe my siblings won't. But you saw how Sol acted, as though that was the thing that made the most sense. And my parents say they don't want to believe it, but they're always talking about how I must be jealous of my siblings' powerful magic."
"Your magic is not so much less than theirs."
"Not the spells I cast, sir. But the strength I was born with? That's what made them think I would be a Squib."
"You cannot simply grow your magic by practicing with it more. Whoever tested you in the first place must have been mistaken."
Harry draws a breath for a moment, taking and holding it—that moment when someone else believed he wasn't jealous of his siblings. Then he shakes his head. "I want to say that, sir, but I can't know for sure. Remus seems pretty certain that the Healer didn't make a mistake."
"Remus Lupin is a fool."
Harry smiles at his cauldron again as he picks up the stirring rod, not because he likes hearing Remus called a fool but because it's different.
"We will work on the accusations of jealousy."
Snape sounds serious enough that Harry looks up. "How, sir?"
"Simple enough. I will speak harsh words and you will learn how not to react to them."
Harry snorts before he can stop himself, even though it might earn him a detention full of significantly less learning than this lesson. "And you won't enjoy the opportunity to humiliate a Potter at all, sir."
"I will not."
The words are grave in a way that seems impossible. Harry might be different from his siblings in a lot of ways, but he is still the son of someone who bullied Snape and someone who refused his friendship.
Their eyes hold for a moment before Harry looks down and nods.
Harry settles back in the stands. Sol didn't manage to get past the Age Line, after all, even if Father did owl him an artifact from the Potter vaults, and he's been sulking ever since. And he seems to think that Harry had something to do with his failure, even though Harry didn't owl their parents about Sol's stupid plan.
Romulus might have, though.
So now the school is sitting in the stands around the Quidditch pitch, watching the dragons for the First Task crouch over their nests, roaring. Huge partitions surround them to separate them from each other, but shift and flash so that the audience can see through them. Harry glances at the tent where Viktor Krum, Fleur Delacour, and Cedric Diggory are choosing who goes after which dragon.
Are they all mental? I wouldn't want to do this even if I was of age and defeating a dragon would show I really couldn't be a Squib.
Harry frowns. He sent an owl to St. Mungo's last week asking about the Healer who performed the test on him when he was a baby, and he hasn't heard back yet. That's kind of odd, now that he thinks about it. If they lost the records or had to talk to his parents instead, they would tell him that. Or they would have told Mum and Dad, and they would have immediately owled Harry.
He'll have to send them another message.
Before he can pursue it further, Krum walks out of the tent and towards the Hungarian Horntail. The dragon lowers her head and hisses at him. Smoke curls up from her nostrils. Krum is holding his wand and doesn't look nervous, but Harry has noticed that he never looks much of anything.
Krum stands in front of the dragon for long seconds, and then he runs towards her. She screeches and ducks her head. A blast of fire rushes straight at Krum.
He's already casting, some spell that speeds forwards and hits the dragon in the eye. Harry leans forwards, interested. The Conjunctivitis Curse. He's heard of it, and that it's good against dragons, but he's never had reason to cast it. He wonders if he could do that, if some insane twist of fate had placed him in the Tournament.
The dragon screams, throwing back her head. Harry doesn't listen to the inane excited commentary from Ludo Bagman, but watches as the dragon stomps back and forth, screeching. She crushes several of the eggs before Krum manages to retrieve the golden one that's supposed to be the goal of all the Champions. Harry shakes his head. He already knows that Krum is going to lose points for that.
Sure enough, he does, although Karkaroff tries to award him full points anyway.
Delacour does a little better, whirling in a dance to distract her dragon, a Chinese Fireball, and then hurling flames of her own at it. The Chinese Fireball rears off her nest, her wings beating and her jaws snapping as she tries to catch Delacour's conjured fire, which she seems to think is another, small dragon. Delacour speeds in remarkably fast, grabs the golden egg, and darts out of reach.
The applause is sincere from everyone except Karkaroff, who gives Delacour low points. Harry rolls his eyes. Imagine letting school pride of that sort rule your life.
But Karkaroff is a respected adult wizard, respected enough anyway to become Headmaster of Durmstrang. Harry wonders what he would have to do to receive respect like that.
Cedric comes walking out then, waving and smiling to the cheers of the crowd. Harry sits up. He thinks Cedric was an utter fool to put his name in the Goblet, but he still hopes that he does well. He's the only one of the Champions Harry knows at all.
He happens to catch his brothers' eyes down the stand. Sol is sulking. He eyes Harry and mouths something, but Harry turns his head away and doesn't look back. If Sol thinks it's stupid that Hogwarts is represented by a Hufflepuff, that's not Harry's fault.
Cedric's technique is the most innovative; he Transfigures a rock into a bounding, barking golden retriever that reminds Harry of Sirius in enthusiasm, if not looks. Harry admires his wand movements and again wonders if he could do that. Cedric ends up with the mother dragon, a Swedish Short-Snout, smashing a few eggs as she tries to go after the dog, but it's nowhere near the number Krum smashed.
Harry applauds as Cedric finishes and stumbles back to the tent so that Madam Pomfrey can heal his burns, then stands up. He finds himself close to Sol and Romulus in the press of the crowd, and Sol glares at him.
"It didn't look very difficult," he mutters. "They all survived, even."
Harry stares at his brother in utter silence, while Sol flushes harder and harder and Romulus looks on in concern.
"If you think that was easy, you know nothing about dragons or how much effort those spells took," Harry says finally, and strides down the stands towards the gathering of Hufflepuffs around Cedric.
"You're just jealous! Squib!"
Harry rolls his eyes enormously, and doesn't turn around.
Severus finds the Potter leaning against the wall of the corridor, contemplating the letter in his hands with a small frown. He doesn't glance up when Severus looms over him. Severus tries to see the handwriting on the letter, but it's small and cramped even by the standards of someone who makes his living reading ridiculous handwriting.
"What is that, Potter?"
"Something that I have to ponder, sir," Potter says, and sticks the letter in his bag, still frowning. He looks up. "Was there something you needed, sir?"
Severus says nothing for long seconds, studying Potter, while Potter stares past him, so abstracted that he doesn't react to the stare defensively, the way he normally would. His mouth is set in a grim line, his fingers tapping the side of his thigh.
Even now, he is so closed-off, despite the fact that Severus realizes he knows Potter better than anyone else in the world. He doesn't yield his secrets; he doesn't volunteer them; he doesn't give in to the camaraderie between them the way Severus knows most students would.
It reminds him of no one so much as himself.
"What are you doing here?" Severus knows his voice is too sudden, too harsh. That doesn't matter. It abruptly infuriates him that the Potter is standing in an out-of-the way corridor, thinking, not showing anyone the letter and discussing what to do with it, why it troubles him, and not showing off the magic that he's learned.
"Sir?" Potter turns his head to stare at him.
"Is there something so incriminating in that letter that you cannot read it in the Hufflepuff common room?" Severus barks, and then winces at himself.
"Not really incriminating," Potter says, with a shake of his head. "But thank you for reminding me it will be curfew soon, sir." He steps around Severus and walks towards the stairs that will lead him down.
Severus turns and catches his arm. Potter promptly draws himself up and to the side in a particular way Severus recognizes. He lets Potter's arm go, honestly shocked. Potter is reacting like a warrior about to enter a duel.
"Has someone been attacking you?" Severus asks the question as a substitute for the one he cannot ask. Why are you subjecting me to this treatment?
"No, sir. Of course not." Potter shifts back, and now he just looks like an ordinary student, pale and confused. "Is something wrong?"
Severus has a dozen things to say, and none of them will help. Potter is behaving normally; that cold guardedness is something Severus has not only seen in him before this, he's approved of it. For him to suddenly feel shut out by it is childish.
"No, Potter. Go to your common room."
Potter nods, and turns away.
Fourth Year
Harry thinks about the response he received from St. Mungo's for months.
He even thinks about it during Christmas, when he's home with the tree and the pile of gifts that Mum and Dad always set up, and all three of his siblings, and Sirius playing pranks on Remus and Remus chasing him around the room. Most of the time, Harry doesn't think about things like that just because he can't bloody concentrate.
But now, he has to.
He would have understood if the Healers had sent him some magically complicated theoretical explanation he couldn't grasp. He could have researched that until he understood the medical magic terms.
He would have understood if the Healers had directed him to his parents instead. Healers don't always release information about underage patients, even to those underage patients themselves.
But for them to just say that they had no record of the test that said he was nearly a Squib being performed at all...
Harry doesn't understand.
"I would have picked Mum or Dad. I can't believe it was Delacour's little sister and the girls Diggory and Krum are dating!"
Harry rolls his eyes as he walks past the staircase where Sol stands declaiming. They've just come from watching the Second Task, which for Harry was an hour of staring at grey water and wondering again about the Healers' letter. Sol seems angry that the rescues weren't more dramatic, or something.
"Harry!"
Harry turns around, a bit interested. It's rare that Sol wants to talk to him in public. He does come talk to him in private, and Romulus doesn't have the same problem. "Yes, Sol?"
"Aren't you ashamed that someone from your House chose to rescue his girlfriend?"
"Why would rescuing your parents be more interesting?"
Sol, who's taken a step towards the edge of the stair he's on and then posed in place, stops now. He's not posed. He just seems baffled. "What?"
"Why would rescuing parents be more important?" Harry repeats. "I heard you say you'd rescue Mum or Dad. Why is that better than Cedric rescuing the girl he attended the Yule Ball with?" He's so glad that he went home to get out of that one, and that Sol and Romulus are both too young to attend. It sounds like it was the most awkward evening in the history of Hogwarts.
"Because—because it would show that we could do things for once! That we don't have to have them rescue us!"
"Oh," Harry says. He considers it, then shrugs a little. That's a better reason than he thought his brother would have. "Carry on, then," he says, and turns away, his mind already turning back to the Healers' letter. He still hasn't decided what he's going to do about it.
In some ways, things would have been simpler if the Healers had contacted his parents and told them about the request. Then Harry would have been easily able to make the choice to confront them.
As it was, he's left with the depressing choice of assuming they lied or assuming they were concealing something even worse.
"Harry! I want to know something!"
Harry glances over his shoulder. "What?"
Sol takes a step down the stairs towards him. "Why didn't you try to enter the Tournament?"
Harry blinks. They've got an audience now, third-year Gryffindors and first-years, Sol and Romulus's friends, and a few passing Hufflepuffs who turn around to listen. Harry supposes they want to hear what he'll say about Cedric.
In fact, what Harry is going to say pleases nobody, but he sort of thought that it wouldn't. He says, "Because I'm not an idiot," and then continues walking down to the common room.
Harry, I do wish that you would not call your brother an idiot.
This time, the Potter was carrying the letter he had spent the day brooding on with him, and left it to one side on the workbench where Severus could see it. He reads it, thinking that the handwriting is Lily's and the sentiments expressed are too timid, too weary to be hers. Then he turns around.
"Does your mother try to arbitrate every dispute between you and your brother?"
Potter finishes sifting the powdered Abraxan hair into the cauldron before he looks up. "She mostly doesn't want me to be jealous of him. Of any of them, really."
"Why is she so afraid of your jealousy?" The Lily Severus knew was afraid of nothing.
"I don't know for sure, sir."
Severus narrows his eyes. He has learned to read those signals. "Use that brain you were born with and tell me what you suspect, Mr. Potter."
Potter stares at him again, probably for the compliment, but says obediently, "It really hurt Mum when her sister turned her back on her, sir. They had some kind of confrontation when I was three or so. Mum came back from that confrontation in tears. That was when she started talking about how jealousy was poison and no one should ever be jealous of someone else."
"And she is so convinced that you have something to be jealous of?"
"Of course." Potter looks more and more puzzled, which is at least different from the state of brooding he was in before. That is enough for Severus. "I'm the one with less powerful magic. Why wouldn't I be jealous of my siblings? That's the way she thinks of it."
"A stupid way to think of it," Severus says, and makes sure that Potter sees his sneer.
"I don't know," Potter says, and turns back to the cauldron. He's just in time to add the next pinch of mint after the rising puff of steam that signals the potion is halfway through the brewing process. "I mean, she doesn't know anything about the brewing I can do or the powerful spells I can cast. So to her, I'm just kind of an average student, sir."
Severus turns to lean against the table. "I thought you had stopped that nonsense of trying to acquire only Acceptable marks in other classes."
"Acceptable is what I just naturally fall into unless I really work at it, sir."
"Bollocks," Severus says, and has the pleasure of watching Potter turn to look at him with wide eyes, while his hands keep up the motion of adding plants to the potion. "Listen to me. You are perfectly capable of focused intelligence when studying subjects as diverse as Potions, Transfiguration, and Charms. I would appreciate if you did not insult me by pretending that you are an average student."
Potter slowly shakes his head. "I think you're having the same blindness problem my mother is, sir, just in a different direction." Then he turns away, as if to shield himself from the blast of Severus's wrath.
But Severus feels nothing except vindictive glee. He is past the barriers that were keeping him from understanding Potter earlier this year. He would rather be there than shut out for all the best Potter-hating reasons in the world.
"I know what you are truly capable of."
"In one subject, sir. Being good at brewing doesn't translate to being good at Defense or Astronomy or Herbology."
Now Potter is the one who looks as though the floor has had a small earthquake underneath him and he doesn't know what to do with the new position of the furniture. Good. Severus is more than happy to share the uncertainty. He steps forwards and looks down his nose at Potter, right now grateful for the length.
"You are holding back because you want to surprise and impress your parents. But as more years pass, you are less sure that they will be impressed by how you have concealed it for so long."
Potter actually falls back a step, and flicks a Stasis Charm at the cauldron. "Sir, it's illegal for you to use Legilimency against me."
"This is called reading common knowledge." Severus extends a hand that Potter watches like it's an adder. "I know your ambitions, and I know that you originally planned to reveal your skills to your parents as soon as you mastered a few charms. Then it became about mastering Potions. Then it became about other things. Why do you wait now?"
Potter hesitates long enough to make Severus think his gambit hasn't worked and he's going to keep his secrets. Then he shakes his head a little and murmurs, "Because it was about contesting the declaration a Healer made after I was born that I don't have much more magic than a Squib."
"I knew that as well." With effort, Severus keeps his voice level. "Is it not now?"
Potter hesitates another good, long time. Then he says, "I wrote to St. Mungo's to ask about the Healer who gave that test. I thought they would probably tell my parents I wrote to them, and that would force things out into the open. But instead, they wrote back and said that test had never been done."
Severus stares at him. Then he says, "But your parents and Lupin—"
"Were sure of it, yes, sir. Even Sirius thinks it happened. And it's not like I could remember one way or the other, I was too young, and my siblings weren't born yet." Potter stares at the floor with a pensive frown. "I've been debating how to handle it. I can't just go to hospital and demand answers. They won't give them to me. And if I speak to my parents..."
"They'll believe that you're jealous of your siblings and attempting to prove that you have more magic when it's not true." Severus rubs the back of his hand across his mouth. He's actually never seen or contemplated a situation like this. "Damn."
Potter nods. "In a way, it ought to be simple. I tell my parents, they say the test happened, I show them the Healers' letter. But I—" He stops.
"Yes?" Severus prods.
Potter looks aside. "I want them to believe me," he whispers. "I want them to be proud of me. I don't want them to say I wrote that letter."
Severus holds back the immediate impulse he has to snap. He could guess that that is what will happen. James Potter is simply not a deep thinker, and Lily is paralyzed by fear of what Potter's jealousy might make him think of his siblings. They might say they believed him, but the doubts would remain there, and sink deep, and perhaps never again be voiced while they haunted everyone involved,
From Potter's eyes, he knows all this. Severus would think him uncannily prescient, but perhaps he simply knows his family.
"I am—relived that you trusted me with your secret," Severus says, after trying to choose among several words that might offend Potter. "And there is an easy way that you did not think of."
Potter lifts his head. "What, sir?"
"St. Mungo's is unlikely to release the records by owl or to you directly, you are right," Severus says. "You probably only know as much as you did because they will confirm the existence of a record, or its non-existence. But if an adult posing as your father accompanied you to hospital..."
Potter closes his eyes tightly. "Thank you, sir."
And Severus feels the rush of savage triumph that he once only used to feel when Slytherin House earned the Cup.
He trusts me more than his family. I have his trust.
It should not be such a large thing. But it is.