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Chapter Fifteen—Retorts

"The boy is out of control, Albus. I insist you do something."

Albus leaned back in his chair and sighed a little as he looked at Severus. The man radiated fury on a level Albus had rarely seen from him. Of course, until this point they hadn't had much reason to discuss Harry Potter, outside a few incidents when Albus had asked to make sure that Harry wasn't being bullied too badly by his Housemates. Severus's reports had always reassured him.

It had been years before Albus had realized that shouldn't be the case.

"What did he do that was so concerning, Severus?"

"He threatened to curse me."

"Foolish of you to confront the boy in a situation like this when he already used accidental magic on you, Severus." Albus was becoming less and less convinced it was accidental, but he wouldn't encourage Severus to distrust Harry. They would lose the war before it began if that happened.

Severus snarled and turned away, pacing towards a silver whirligig that Albus had inherited from his mother. He had never been sure what it did, but it had been fascinating when he was a child, shuddering and dancing in all sorts of directions. Severus's hand closed on the device and wrenched as though he would tear one of the arms off.

"He is dangerous, Albus. He already knows Dark Arts and he'll learn more from the Nott boy. You should not have permitted that friendship to flourish."

"I was unaware they were friends. And I did nothing to promote it."

"You should have kept more of an eye on the irresponsible, immature, reckless, completely unsuited to Slytherin—"

"You know the reasons why I have kept my distance from Harry, Severus. And I will thank you to put down that device before you break it."

Severus gave him a blank glance, and Albus decided that he had indeed forgotten he held the silver device. Then he shook his head and removed his hands from it. "This needs to be handled, Albus. Some of the reasons that you maintained your distance no longer apply. Do you think that the Dark Lord will find it hard to exploit that?"

Albus sighed. He had thought that allowing Harry a childhood instead of turning him into a weapon would keep him from Tom's notice, but, well, it seemed that Harry had found the path of the Dark Arts and a Dark friend to guide him down them anyway. If he hadn't come to Tom's notice already, it would happen very soon. "I agree, Severus. I will call Harry to my office and speak to him in the next few days."

"This is beautiful."

Theo didn't preen when Harry unwrapped the pendant that Father had sent him, but it was a near thing. He smiled and leaned a little closer. "It says that you are a treasured child of the House of Nott."

"Oh," Harry said, and ran the pendant through his hands. It was a silver crescent moon on a silver chain, both the metal and the shape chosen to convey the strongest sense of protection possible. "Does this mean…"

"Yes?"

"Well." Harry shifted back and forth, and Theo, who would have thought his discomfort absurd if this was someone else, found the word adorable rising to the forefront of his thoughts instead. "Brothers don't date."

Theo didn't laugh, but he came even nearer to it than he had to preening. He leaned in and put his hand delicately on Harry's thigh. "They don't," he agreed, watching Harry shiver and turn in search of Theo's warmth probably without realizing what he was doing. "But there are other ways that one might become a child of a House."

Harry's eyes darkened. He didn't need that spelled out for him. And for the first time, he was staring at Theo as if Theo was the center of the universe, or at least as fascinating as Harry had been for him since the first day he saw Harry doing wandless magic.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry drew back with a low hiss. Theo leaned back in his seat and smiled a little at the incredulous looks he was getting from Blaise and Draco. Not his fault if none of them had recognized the treasure in front of them.

"You are wanted in the Headmaster's office."

Theo stood up when Harry did. Snape's gaze cut to him immediately, his eyes flat and dark as beetle shells. "You are not invited, Mr. Nott."

"You didn't say that, sir."

"I am saying it now."

Theo continued to gaze at Snape for long moments, ignoring the way that Harry shifted uneasily beside him. It seemed that a confrontation Harry was ready to have in the bowels of the dungeons read differently to him when they were in the public Great Hall.

"All right," Theo said, and then turned and gently let out the pendant's chain, moving it so that it dangled over Harry's head and hung most of the way down his chest. "Don't forget to keep this close, Harry."

"What is it?"

Theo utterly ignored Snape's question, gazing into Harry's eyes and waiting for his nod. Harry nodded back at last. His right hand rose and played with the chain, while his left, down by his side, showed Theo the crossed fingers in a gesture he had sometimes used to summon wards.

Theo smiled. He had no desire to deprive Harry of his impressive magic, even if he liked that Nott magic would now join in protecting his chosen. "All right."

"All right," Harry echoed back softly, and followed Snape out of the Great Hall.

Theo sat back down and reached for Harry's plate of scones and toast, casting a Preservation Charm over it and conjuring a bubble that would hold it exactly level. Then he floated the bubble over to the empty end of the bench beside him and went on with his breakfast.

"What are you doing?"

Blaise's question was low and pointed. Theo acknowledged him with a nod, but kept eating. "Making sure that Harry has breakfast later on."

"Since when do you call him Harry?"

"Since recently."

Blaise was silent for a long moment, as if realizing that he could keep asking questions and Theo would just keep returning him the same bland answers. Then he shook his head. "I hope that you know what you're doing, Nott."

"Well, yes. Me too."

Blaise rolled his eyes, but turned back to participate in a conversation with Draco and the others. Draco glared at Theo until he saw that Theo had noticed him glaring. Then he found better things to look at, like his lap.

Theo finished eating and made his way towards the Charms classroom with the bubble containing Harry's meal floating alongside him. He paused to make it opaque before he entered the classroom. He didn't want to answer more questions about it.

"Is—you and Potter are friends?"

Theo glanced up. Longbottom was standing inside the door of the Charms classroom, his lip caught between his teeth like a particularly nervous rabbit. Theo nodded. "You remember I told you that Harry was the one who encouraged me to reach out to the people I bullied and try to make it up to you?"

"Sure. But you called him Potter then."

"Things change. You and Hermione decided that I could make it up to you faster than Harry did."

Longbottom frowned and made his way over to his usual chair, a few desks behind Theo. Theo assumed the conversation was over and pulled out his book. But a second later, Longbottom spoke again. "Why do you think Snape hates him so much?"

"I think it's a personal grudge to do with his family," Theo said, which was as much as he wanted to talk about this with someone Harry hadn't given him permission to share with. "But I don't know why it's been allowed to go unchecked."

"Maybe someone should check it."

Theo smiled, and he could tell by the way Longbottom started that the expression might be wilder than he'd been prepared for. But he sat where he was and didn't back away. "Maybe someone should," Theo agreed. "Someone will."

And then Professor Flitwick arrived, and they had to pay attention to the class.

But Theo's head was still buzzing with his plans, and he found it hard to concentrate on the intricacies of Face-Changing Charms. Especially because Harry still hadn't come back from the Headmaster's office.

I wonder if Dumbledore and Snape know what price they will have to pay if he's hurt?

"Harry, my boy, I have perhaps waited too long to have this chat with you."

Probably, Harry thought, as he sat back and trailed one finger down the links of the silver chain around his neck. "All right, sir," he said. "What did you want to say to me?"

Snape snorted from where he was leaning against the wall. Harry ignored him. He didn't know why Snape was here. He could have delivered the message and then left, but no, he'd had to march beside Harry to the Headmaster's office as if Harry were a simpleton who had no idea where it was.

"You are the subject of a prophecy."

Harry stared at Dumbledore. The Headmaster stared back, his expression somber. He didn't appear to be joking. "A prophecy," Harry said slowly. "Excuse me, sir, but you're my Headmaster, not an Unspeakable. I thought they were the ones who dealt with prophecies."

"I am also the one who led the resistance against Voldemort in the first war," Dumbledore said, and turned around to pick up a silvery Pensieve that was resting on the lowest shelf of a cabinet beside him. "That means that a prophecy concerning you and Voldemort was of great concern to me."

Chills ran down Harry's back for a moment. "That's the reason he attacked my parents."

"Yes. In truth, he was searching for you, the child prophesied to defeat him." Dumbledore gestured towards the Pensieve. It looked ominous, already full of a silvery memory as it was. "So it is time now for you to listen to this, and take up the responsibilities that the prophecy implies."

"Are you going to help me do that, sir?"

"Yes, Harry." Dumbledore's sorrow seemed sincere, but Harry had learned that that could be the case and someone could still fail him when it counted. "Please forgive me for not approaching you before now. I was afraid that if you knew the prophecy, you would communicate it to one of your Housemates who could carry it to Voldemort."

Harry swallowed. He thought it a poor excuse. He just waited, though, as Dumbledore pushed the Pensieve a little towards him and then tapped the edge with his wand. A shadowy figure twisted out of the silver surface, someone who looked vaguely familiar.

"Professor Trelawney?"

"Indeed. Hush and listen, Harry."

Harry listened, but he had to admit that part of his mind had been stirred up into chaos the way it hadn't been by Dumbledore's revelation that a prophecy existed. It just seemed impossible that that drunken hack could…

Then he heard what that drunken hack was saying, and his stomach seemed to dissolve and fall in particles of lead on his toes.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"

Harry stared at the Pensieve for long moments after the image of Trelawney had sunk out of sight again. Behind him, Snape made a slight hissing noise through his teeth. Probably getting ready to tell me how terrible I am and that I could never fulfill a prophecy like that, Harry thought distantly.

But then again, who would want to fulfill a prophecy like that?

"Do you see now, Harry? Why I kept this from you, and why you needed to know at last?"

"I think you kept it from me too long," Harry said, distracted, staring at the Pensieve and not really thinking about what he was saying. "Because I don't have any motivation to fight the Dark Lord. Why would I? No one here has ever done anything for me."

Theo.

But Theo wasn't in the office, and the more Harry could keep Dumbledore and Snape from looking in Theo's direction, the better.

"What?"

Dumbledore's voice was a croak. Harry blinked, and looked up, and saw Dumbledore staring him with his mouth slightly open, his hand stretched out imploringly.

Oh. This is good. Harry sat back and smiled slightly. "What part of that is a surprise, professor? Even you knew about something that seems highly important, and yet didn't tell me about it. People in Slytherin bullied me, or snickered at me and ignored me. The Dursleys locked me in a cupboard and deprived me of food and told me I was a freak and lied to me about how my parents died—"

"You are lying."

"You're a Legilimens, professor," Harry said, without even looking at Snape. He kept his gaze on Dumbledore, who looked more and more haggard, as though Harry was pressing a knife against his throat. "You know I'm telling the truth."

"No one would treat the Boy-Who-Lived that way!"

Harry snorted. "You did. Not sure why you think it's so unbelievable in anyone else."

"My dear boy." Dumbledore reached up and took off his glasses with a shaking hand, rubbing that hand down his face. "Why did you never say anything?"

Harry laughed. "Yeah, I was Sorted into a House full of people who hated me for my blood status, and then I found out my Head of House, supposedly the one professor I could go to for anything, hated me too for some reason and assigned me detention for breathing. You never approached me. Why should I have trusted you? Why should I have come to you? There's no reason for it. You just ignored me, and this is the result of your ignorance."

"There were…excellent reasons why I ignored you, Harry. And…I expected you to seek me out, to ask me…"

"Why? Why in the name of Merlin would I?"

"You knew that I was the only one Voldemort ever feared. And you knew that you were the one who defeated him. It made sense, didn't it, that I would have information you required? I only had to wait."

"Wait for what?" Harry ignored the way that Snape was shifting behind him. Snape couldn't hate Harry any more than he already did. Harry was, frankly, more interested in Dumbledore's weak excuses. "Because you said nothing, I just assumed you had nothing to say."

"I had to wait to make sure that you were not involved in the usual preoccupations of Slytherin students of your generation, namely the Dark Arts and following Voldemort." Dumbledore had put his glasses back on and was regarding Harry with pity and—something else. Harry wasn't sure that he could read it. "To make sure that you had a glimmer of compassion and respect and understanding for others. For you to show that you were different from the rest."

"And I never studied Dark Arts, and I was bullied by the rest of my classmates. That should have shown you—"

"It showed me that you were sunk within yourself," Dumbledore interrupted. "Seeking out other people—friends of other Houses—would have helped rehabilitate your image in my eyes."

"Rehabilitate," Harry repeated softly. It was probably a bad idea to show his hand so openly, but the rage burning within him wouldn't be denied. "What had I ever done to you, except not behaved as you wanted me to? Except not be a Gryffindor?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Selfish apathy is not the sort of material a hero is made of, Harry. It's better than someone who slings Dark Arts around, but not by much. If you had only befriended a Gryffindor or a Hufflepuff—if you had taken a Muggleborn under your wing—"

Harry's ears were ringing. He was sure the Headmaster was saying other things, but he couldn't hear them. All he could think was, He's basically upset at me for growing up abused with Muggles and not knowing about magic right away.

Everyone else would have been allowed to just behave the way they wanted. Or if I was in Gryffindor, I would have had Dumbledore's attention and I would have known how to fight against Riddle.

He hates me for being—me. For a situation he exacerbated and ignored and—

The magic rising in Harry battered against his chest. Harry found his hands winding into positions to shape a new ward without thinking about it. A defensive ward, he had to protect himself against the force of the magic that would otherwise devour him from within—

The magic surged through his fingers, burning his skin so severely that Harry cried out, and then carried on in front of him, sweeping outwards and around and around and around—

Harry felt something hot and hard crash against him, buffered away by the ward. He heard shrieks and screams. He opened his eyes and found himself sitting in the middle of Dumbledore's office.

In the only intact chair.

Around him was a scene of chaos. Dumbledore's desk had been cut in half, the pieces leaning against each other like drunken men in a pub. Fine ash covered them, the remains of the parchments that had probably been there. Dumbledore's chair was missing its legs, tipped on its side, and Dumbledore lay on it, covered in burns, stunned.

Harry turned his head, gaping. Shards of silver and other metals that had probably made up the strange instruments were embedded in the walls and the bookshelves. Fawkes's perch was gone, and the phoenix was hovering in midair, singing shakily to himself. Snape was lying on the floor with a shard of something in his neck.

Harry stared at him. He didn't—

He didn't appear to be breathing.

Harry lurched to his feet. Fawkes immediately began singing harder, as if he wanted to calm Harry down, but Harry shook his head and turned and ran for the door, snapping his hand out. The pendant around his neck, glowing with magic, spluttered and fell silent again.

It probably helped protect me against some of the magic that escaped the ward.

But it can't protect me against a murder charge.

Harry got the door open, and ran.