Chapter 12
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After weeks of Harry avoiding contact, Susan finally noticed a mental check in via the bond from Harry the Saturday after her birthday while she waited anxiously in the entrance hall for her aunt to collect her. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Susan nodded, and tried to send reassurance towards him realising he must have felt her panicking about the what she'd find out today. She looked up to see him hovering and shook her head slightly to warn him against coming closer, she didn't want her aunt to catch her talking to him or she might jump to the unfortunately correct conclusion and show her disapproval.
She saw him frown slightly and felt rejection and sorrow through their bond as he turned away and realised he'd misread her reaction, but her aunt arrived before she could call out or run after him to explain and apologise for hurting him again.
She greeted her aunt loudly, hoping Harry was still in hearing distance and would understand. She tried to sound cheerful or at least to seem more anxious about what they'd find at the bank that upset about the incident that just happened though she knew she wouldn't be able to fool Harry about what she was feeling if he was still concentrating on her feelings, and she was sure that she wasn't as good at acting like she was fine as he was. Still at least Aunt Amelia seemed to accept her pretence, as she followed her aunt to the edge of the wards then held her arm as she apparated them both to Diagon Alley.
They made their way to Gringotts to meet with their account manager where Susan asked about betrothal contracts before accepting her head of house ring.
"I can only discuss that with the head of your house," the account manager said matter-of-factly.
"So you're telling me that I have to become the Head of House Bones before I can find out whether there's a reason for me not to want to become the Head of House until I'm twenty-one?" Susan asked snarkily.
"I'm afraid that is correct. What do you want to do? I'll back your decision either way," Amelia said gently. "But waiting isn't going to change anything if there is a signed agreement in the vault and it may reduce the number of offers available to you to choose from."
"Part of me wants to put this off so I don't have to deal with it yet and the other half of me doesn't think I can stand not knowing any longer, and there's also a part of me that wants to go and propose to the next decent bloke I see to invalidate all the contracts so I never have to deal with them, but I also want to know what Mum and Dad wanted for me," Susan said looking towards her aunt for advice.
"I find it's always better to know than not know," Amelia said gently. "Then you can come to terms with it. Your parents loved you dearly so I doubt the contracts are as bad as you fear."
"There's quite a few pompous asses or worse out there who have decent parents, as I'm sure you've come across in your line of work. Mum and Dad couldn't have known what their friends' sons would turn out like. What about the clauses and penalties?" Susan asked. "And are you honestly saying that none of the girls in Slytherin have parents who love them. Because they're all betrothed and the only one who seems happy about it is Parkinson and she's betrothed to Draco Malfoy who honestly treats her pretty shoddily, she's just so infatuated she can't see it. Parents do terrible things to their children regularly and still claim to love them."
"No, that isn't true there's no betrothal offer between the House of Malfoy and the House of Parkinson," the estate manager said, before frowning at the idea of anyone claiming a fake betrothal to one of his more wealthy accounts. "I must contact the parties involved and let them know if Miss Parkinson is purporting herself to be his son's betrothed," the account manager said, shocked enough to be indiscreet about a client's heir in front of another of his clients.
Susan frowned. "It might be only hearsay. I'm not friends or even friendly acquaintances with Malfoy or Parkinson so they wouldn't confide in me. I don't think I've ever heard either of them actually say that they're betrothed to each other but it's something everyone seems to know and she's definitely dating him, has been for years," she said carefully. "They're mentioned as a couple every time someone brings up the betrothals in our year and nobody has ever seemed to doubt it."
"Still both she and Mr Malfoy need to know the truth," Amelia said frowning.
'And I need to know my truths too. No matter who it is, I need to know,' Susan thought reaching out determinedly and putting on the Head of House Bones ring. It resized to fit her finger.
"I'd like to see the betrothal contracts please," she said as firmly as she could.
"There are several offers but none that have been signed by both parties," the account manager said passing her a locked box full of scrolls.
"Thank Merlin!" Susan breathed, sagging in relief. She read through them quickly. "What do I need to do to decline the contracts? Is there a protocol I need to follow so the families won't be offended, or will be less offended?" she asked.
"To decline an offer you need to simply destroy the original document or certified copy, which will in turn destroy the other party's copy, but I wouldn't advise you to destroy the offers without good cause unless you've accepted another contract or married without a betrothal. Anything else will be seen as an insult to the entire House. Feuds can be started that way," the goblin said calmly.
Susan huffed in annoyance, "You mean I have to keep all these contracts open and give the families false hope that I might accept when I know I won't? That's stupid!"
"That's house politics," Amelia corrected her gently. "Often the betrothal offer was made as a part of a business agreement between the two families, sometimes several generations ago. Allowing it to exist until you choose another is a sign of trust between the families."
"So they're not all proof that my father loved me," Susan said blandly.
"Previous heads of house may have made the offers but your father was Head of house Bones from before your birth, only he could have accepted a contract on your behalf," Amelia said mildly.
"Yes but one of the other families could have accepted a contract made by my however many greats grandfather and Dad wouldn't have had anything to do with it," Susan pointed out.
"It's not the way things are traditionally done," Amelia replied.
"I don't understand, there's an offer here from the House of Potter and the House of Longbottom and there's also copies of offers made by my father to the House of Potter and the House of Longbottom. How come my parents or theirs didn't just sign the offer already made instead of making their own as well? The terms are exactly the same, on all four contracts, I can't actually be betrothed to both of them, can I?" Susan asked baffled.
"No of course you're not betrothed to either house, let alone both. It was a safety measure during the last war. Dual contract offers to protect the children instead of binding them for life. And more than one because life was so uncertain in those days they were trying to guarantee one of the offers was still valid when you needed it, and as you can see neither you nor the young men are actually named on the contracts, had you had siblings they could have used the contracts as well," the goblin explained.
"How do they offer protection?" Amelia asked.
"If rolled up together the magic of the two offers would combine and the signatures would transfer from one parchment to the other making a pre-existing betrothal contract. That way if a dark wizard tried to force your parents to betroth you to their house, your parents or guardians could tell them that you are already betrothed and they couldn't blame you or your parents because the contract would show the date the contracts were made not the date you joined them together. Or if one of you were left without an acceptable guardian the other house could roll the contracts together to take custody of the child. Especially relevant in circumstances where all the close relatives have been killed leaving less trustworthy distant relatives or perhaps nobody in the family that's willing to take in the child, consider for example that Narcissa Malfoy is one of Harry Potter's closest relatives in the wizarding world outside of Azkaban and could have made a claim for custody of him in spite of the fact that her husband served the man who murdered the child's parents. If your parents were living they may have used the contracts to take custody to avoid him being placed with a dark family or in the muggle world. But if it wasn't necessary then the contracts could be left separate until they're destroyed when one of you marries or accepts another betrothal, and wouldn't prevent the young couple from making their own choices," the account manager explained.
"That makes no sense at all. How could having these offers sitting in my vault help me when neither I nor my guardian could get to them, especially since both Potter and Longbottom were orphaned as well and wouldn't have access to their copies of the contracts either. And if some of the rumours I've heard are true, Harry could have used someone with one of these contracts using it to take him away from his muggle relatives, but it didn't do him any good sitting here in my vault either," Susan said before turning to her account manager.
"Would you have brought these contracts out to protect me if Aunty had been forced to come in here and try to write a contract out?" She demanded. "And what if one of the dark families approached her with a contract already written up? So, what should I do with these offers? I don't want anyone to think I'm considering accepting their offer when I'm not."
"Yes that was short-sighted of my brother-in-law, he should have made sure that someone he trusted would have access," Amelia agreed.
"Having these offers in the bank would have prevented any guardian other than your head of house from being able to sign a betrothal contract for you and if your father was living, he would have had access to the vault to activate the offers if he needed to," the account manager said calmingly.
"Have these boys been pressuring you? Trying to take advantage?" Amelia asked angrily.
"No, Potter and Longbottom aren't the sort of wizards to pressure any witch into doing anything they didn't want to do. I didn't even know about any of these offers except one and he's not trying to take advantage of me that way either, he's just driving me crazy," Susan replied.
"Who is doing that and what exactly is he doing?" Amelia demanded.
"Ernie MacMillan is aware of the offer his family made and acts like our betrothal is a forgone conclusion and he thinks that as my future husband he has the right to criticise my choices and opinions, he often talks of what he will or will not approve of me doing or saying or thinking in the future and tries to force me to comply with his expectations. He wants a socialite wife to stay home and make him look good. I have already told him that the only way we'd be getting married is if my parents had already accepted his family's offer and the terms of the contract didn't allow me to change my mind, and he backed up a little, but he still treats me with a proprietary air most of the time. Like I said, he isn't trying to use it to press me for sexual contact, like you're worried about, he hasn't even made much effort to date me, I think he's invested in the idea of marrying a virgin. But he assumes he has a right to know about my private correspondence and to approve or disapprove of my friendships and actions, behaviour I wouldn't accept even if my parents had accepted his offer," Susan explained.
"Is he the boy you…" Amelia asked not wanting to mention the actual deed in front of the goblin, no matter what their usual reputation for keeping wizarding business confidential.
"No, of course he isn't, I'm not that stupid. I know he would've used it to enforce the contract, he frowns if I accept someone else's invitation to Hogsmeade as it is. If I was forced to marry the git he'd find himself hexed several times a day until he learned how to treat a wife as a person not his property. But there is a contract from that boy's family here too," Susan confided.
"Has that boy presumed on your interaction?" Amelia asked.
"No, he's been a perfect gentleman, I've only spoken with him a couple of times, he only contacts me to warn me about things I need to know. He's kept what happened quiet too, there isn't even the ghost of a rumour about it, even though we passed out and were both missing all night," Susan replied. "I don't think he knows about this betrothal offer. He never mentioned it or presumed upon it in any way. I think he would have told me if he knew. He's never even mentioned knowing that our parents were friends. I've come to realise that he doesn't know much about his family at all."
"Are you tempted to accept any of these offers?" Amelia asked.
"Yes. There's one I'd like to consider if he was willing to marry me too, I'd want to get to know him better before I made a final decision, but I won't accept any of these until after the war," Susan replied.
"You can't put your life on hold like that, the war could go on for years if not decades," Amelia protested, horrified at the idea, it sounded like Susan was preparing to fight.
"I don't want to end up a widow or leave my children to be orphans, and surely you don't want to be bringing up another generation of children. Not that there's any guarantee you'll survive either. You-Know-Who will probably be targeting the Aurors who can't be easily bribed or blackmailed into supporting him when he moves to take over everything," Susan said seriously.
"You still need to live your life. You can't spend your whole life behind wards hiding from the world, that's not living," Amelia said.
"Nor is it protecting the future of the house of Bones," their account manager stated.
Susan wanted to tell him she couldn't care less what happened to the House of Bones if she and her Aunt Amelia were both dead, but she knew it wouldn't be a good idea so she ignored him. It wasn't his opinion that mattered in this argument anyway.
"Why can't I give up my personal life to fight rather than being tied down with children? Everyone expects him to," Susan demanded angrily.
"Him? Who?" Amelia asked.
"Harry Potter, he doesn't date, he doesn't waste time goofing around with his friends. He spent his spare time last year trying to teach us all to defend ourselves when Umbridge refused to let us practice magic in class or teach us the spells we needed to learn and this year he spends nearly every evening either at Quidditch practice or training to fight, and I think he'd give up quidditch in spite of how much he loves to fly if his house didn't expect him to be on the team. He's hurt so often that he's learned to heal himself so as not to waste time in the hospital wing. How come we all get a life when he doesn't? He's sixteen and the professors have been depending on him to save the school every year since he was eleven and everyone just expects him to defeat the darkest wizard in a century. He has a martyr complex a mile wide and that's been encouraged by nearly every bloody adult he's known since he started at Hogwarts," Susan ranted.
"Language!" Amelia snapped without thinking, before processing Susan's complaints about the adults in Potter's life. "What do you mean?"
"I mean every year there's been something going on at school putting lives at risk and the professors either ignore the whole situation or are leading and manipulating Harry towards a providing a solution, making him feel like he has to save the school, rather than solving the problem themselves. Who was there for him when Professor Quirrell tried to kill him? Who was there to help when his best mate dragged him down into the Chamber of Secrets to fight the Basilisk and save Ron's little sister? Who was there to protect him when he was nearly kissed by a dementor three times in third year? Who was there to help him prevent his innocent godfather from being kissed, when nobody would believe him? Who was there to stand up and say that Harry was too young for the Triwizard tournament and that because he didn't put his own name in then he wasn't bound to compete? Nobody even stepped up and stopped the school from shunning him in second year when everyone said he was the heir of Slytherin when it should be obvious the Potters were a light family and again in fourth year when everyone said he cheated to get into the tournament when Dumbledore knew that he hadn't entered himself. Who cared that not one but two different professors were torturing him last year? At least one of them with the full support of the Headmaster," Susan demanded.
Amelia Bones got paler and paler with each question. She felt like she was going to pass out. Surely these things couldn't have happened at the school where she trusted the professors to keep her niece safe and protected.
"None of these incidents have been reported," Amelia stated. "Even with the petrifications, we were told that the culprit had been caught and the problem solved."
"If by the problem solved you mean that a second year faced down and killed a thousand year old Basilisk bigger than the bloody Knight Bus on his own and then destroyed the object that was controlling the student who was letting it loose. Yeah it was. Solved by Harry Potter while Dumbledore and the heads of house sat on their collective arses in their office preparing to close the school without any attempt to rescue a kidnapped first year," Susan replied snarkily. "Hogwarts is supposed to be the safest place in the wizarding world. Everybody says so. But it isn't for Harry. In fact, if it's safe for any of us it's only been because of Harry continually risking his life to make it safe.
"You seem very investing in Mr Potter's well-being?" Amelia asked suspiciously.
"With the Death Eaters active again I'm a high profile target for kidnapping to control you so I decided that I wanted to continue learning how to defend myself. He and his friends have been helping me with my training. Harry is the best DADA teacher we've ever had. Hermione says that it's shocking how few of our classmates have bothered to get to know him or to hear the truth about all the rumours of the things he's done," Susan said dismissively.
"You really do need to think about producing an heir, especially in times of war," the account manager said disapprovingly.
"Who would currently inherit if I die without an heir?" Susan asked.
"I'm not sure," Amelia said, looking to the account manager.
"A very distant relative, from a branch of the family that left Britain during the early days of the muggle first world war, there's no indication that he knows that he's the secondary heir but also no indication that he does not know either," the goblin replied.
"Why should I care about that if I were dead?" Susan asked.
Amelia paled and her account manager glared at her. He couldn't tell her that it mattered to him because he'd lose his position and the money would be lost to the British branch of the bank if a relative in another country became the next Lord Bones. "If you're not planning to produce an heir, perhaps you'd like to invest in some goblin made personal wards to increase your chances of survival?" he offered.
"Yes, I'd like to see my options for personal wards. Can I change who my heirs are?" Susan asked.
"You may choose anyone who is a male close blood relative but the only options until you produce a direct heir of your own are the cousin who is your current heir his younger brother or his son, and since we know nothing beyond their names and ages changing heirs would be irrelevant," the goblin manager said, calling for a tray of personal ward amulets to be brought to his office.
Amelia wasn't surprised when Susan chose to purchase more than one amulet. Her best friend Hannah had a birthday coming up and one of the amulets was just her style, though rather more expensive than anything Susan would normally purchase her. It was the very plain masculine amulet that concerned Amelia. It was deceptively expensive, anchoring the strongest personal ward but Amelia was sure it wasn't something Susan would wear and she refused to disclose who she intended it for.
It took several hours for Susan and the account manager to go through all of the other business involved in Susan taking over control of the House of Bones. Then Amelia took her home for a meal and some time to rest, so they could talk privately before returning to Hogwarts.
"I take it there were no unwanted side effects from unblocking your magic?" Amelia asked.
"Unwanted side effects? What do you know about the side effects of unblocking your magic? We've tried to find out what was going on and whether it will last but we can't find anything in the Hogwarts library, and we don't know who to ask, Mcgonagall, Pomfrey and Sprout couldn't tell us anything other than it is usually personal to the couple in question and therefore not documented and different for each couple," Susan asked eagerly.
Amelia looked shocked. "I was trying to make sure you weren't pregnant," she said worriedly. "What side effects are you talking about?"
"Oh! No, I'm not pregnant," Susan said dismissively. "I can feel what he's feeling, and he can feel what I'm feeling."
"You mean that you can feel his emotions?" Amelia asked.
"Yes, just vaguely most of the time unless he's feeling something strongly, but I can also feel it when he's injured or freezing or hungry, and I can feel when he's using strong magic or flying his broom. I can taste what he's eating, particularly if I'm eating at the same time and I can categorically tell you that beef casserole does not go with Caesar salad, and coffee is not drinkable mixed with pumpkin juice or tea. It's quite an effort not to be eating at the same time unless we're eating the same things when we can't sit at the same table. I can feel more details when I try but taste, smells and strong emotions or sensations come through all the time," Susan explained. "He said it's the same for him. If we're both concentrating hard on each other we can hear what the other hears, though we've agreed not to try to do that. We can't talk telepathically but if we make a time when we're both concentrating and both set up silencing charms around ourselves we can speak out loud and have a conversation without being anywhere near each other."
"You said you hadn't been talking to him," Amelia said suspiciously.
"I said I haven't been seeing him. We've been keeping our distance so as not to attract gossip. We figured if someone managed to notice that our magic got stronger at the same time as we became friends or started dating, they'd be able to guess what had happened, and I said we can talk like that, we rarely do unless it's to pass on something important, like to avoid the stairs while he's duelling," Susan replied.
"Yes, that's very good thinking. But I took it to mean that you weren't in contact with the boy?" Amelia said.
"Well we have to be trying at the same time for it to work so it doesn't happen often since we learned to control it, he hasn't tried to nudge the connection in weeks until he felt how anxious I was while waiting for you this morning," Susan hurried to explain. "I think he may have been able to tell where I was too because he was on the stairs coming towards me and he wouldn't normally be near the front door on a Saturday morning unless it was a Hogsmeade weekend but I haven't had the sensation of knowing where he is unless there's other sensations hinting at it."
"What do you mean?" Amelia asked.
"I can smell when he's in Potions and Herbology, I feel the movement when he's flying or running, I can tell whether he's indoors or outside or on the stairs, or doing practical work in DADA. I know when he's eating or sitting around food and I can feel the heat if he's next to the fire or the shower. If I connected strongly enough and he was connecting too I could see a bit of what he's seeing but a lot of the corridors and stairwells look the same so I couldn't tell you which one he was using or where he is unless he was somewhere that looks distinctive like the common room," Susan rambled as she tried to describe how much she could tell about Harry's location. She blushed slightly when mentioning the shower and Amelia relaised she might be feeling more sensations from it than heat. This connection of theirs created a level of intimacy she wasn't comfortable with her niece having with a boy she didn't know but it didn't see there was anything she could do about it.
"I've never heard of such a thing! Have you spoken to Madam Pomfrey about this? Is there anything she can do to break the connection?" Amelia asked, trying to remember which students had been on the stairs when she picked Susan up.
"Yes, and he spoke with Professor McGonagall, neither of them had ever heard of this happening either," Susan said. "Professor McGonagall said there were some documentation of mild side affects but no details and in most cases they'd faded after a couple of days but this hasn't gone away though it did fade a bit, or my brain learned to tell the differences between the signals coming from my body and those coming from his and allow me to ignore the movement, touch, sight and hearing. I still feel when he's in pain and taste what he eats."
"You're trusting a Gryffindor to keep his mouth shut about this?" Amelia said disgustedly.
"And he has Auntie. Better a Gryffindor than a Slytherin. He didn't even tell Professor McGonagall who I was," Susan said passionately.
"How many other girls had their magic unblocked? He didn't need to tell her. She would've already known!" Amelia yelled, astonished that her niece could be so naïve.
"Three other people had their magic unblocked and he was one of them. Telling McGonagall what happened to him didn't tell her who his partner was. Mind you she already knew I had a block and she might have guessed I'd had my magic unblocked when my transfigurations got a whole lot easier just after the testing at the same time as his, but that still wouldn't have told her we did it together. He already knew so doing it with him stopped me from having to tell anyone else about the block on my magic," Susan retorted.
"So it wasn't because you trusted him more than anyone else, he was just convenient?" Amelia asked incredulously.
"But I do trust him. He's one of the most honourable people I've ever met, he does what he believes is right in every situation whether it's the safest thing for him personally or not. Nobody I know has ever heard him tell an outright lie, though he bends the truth a little it's always been to avoid hurting someone else. Why wouldn't I trust him with this," Susan retorted.
"You make it sound like he's a paragon of virtue or a hero from a novel but they're not real people, he's a boy, just like all the others. He will have selfish moments and moments of cruelty, or just moments of thoughtlessness, like everyone does sometimes, some more than others," Amelia said not at all reassured by Susan's defence of the unknown boy.
"I've never known him to be deliberately cruel, even to people who hate him or hated his parents," Susan replied. "I know he's not a hero out of a novel, he can be lazy or easily distracted, he has a furious temper at times though he tries hard to control it. I was surprised when I realised how often he was angry."
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed and those who followed or favourited this story for your support.
