Chapter 5—Lines

Harry got post the next morning, and that surprised him. The Daily Prophet hadn't published any flattering or insulting articles about him lately, which was usually the main cause of him receiving mail from strangers. And, though the envelope was thick and his name written on the outside in what looked like calligraphy, the owl that delivered it was an ordinary, scruffy one that looked to have come from a common posting service.

"Who's that from, Harry?" Ron asked, leaning over Harry's shoulder to look at the letter, his mouth dripping porridge. Hermione glared at him in disgust and rapped his knuckles with her spoon, which he didn't appear to notice.

"I don't know," Harry said, and opened the letter slowly, wondering if it was going to be full of Bubotuber pus like some of the letters Hermione had received in fourth year. Nothing happened, though, other than the sheet of parchment inside sagging until Harry had to move it away from his own porridge bowl.

He glanced at the signature, and immediately folded the letter over. He couldn't chance Ron or Hermione seeing this.

"What does it say, Harry?" Ron looked a bit hurt that he was hiding the letter, Harry knew, but he couldn't help it. His heart had begun to beat so madly that he was in danger of losing his breath.

"It's to do with Sirius's estate," he said, grabbing the first lie that came to him, and the only one that might explain why he looked so upset. "I'm sorry, I just—I want to read it alone. Is that all right?"

"Of course, Harry," Hermione said, and hit Ron in the ribs with an elbow when he would have objected. "Especially since you've spent so much time studying lately, and you don't have Transfiguration until ten-o'clock."

Harry muttered something indistinct, and then ran out of the Great Hall. A few people stared after him, but not many. His efforts to make himself more inconspicuous had paid off in that way, at least. The muted reports of Death Eater attacks attracted more attention than the Boy-Who-Lived now.

Alone, Harry managed to read the letter without panicking.

October 29th, 1996

To Harry Potter:

I realize this may seem a strange way to send a letter, but it has taken me months to swallow my pride and approach you. An alliance between us would be of inestimable value, and I can only beg that you consider that before you reject my offer out of hand.

You-Know-Who's return to the wizarding world is of such momentous import that everything next to it seems small. I hope you will agree with me, and realize that the Boy-Who-Lived lending his public voice and support to the Ministry of Magic would help to calm panic and make our people respond to the war with reason, instead of fear.

Either of us can hardly be seen meeting the other. Therefore, I ask for a private colloquy on Thursday evening in Hogsmeade, at seven-o'clock. The owner of Zonko's is indebted to me, and will not question my wish to borrow the private room in the back of his shop for an evening. Send me a letter accepting the offer or declining it; either way, there is not much time.

Rufus Scrimgeour,

British Minister of Magic,

Former Head of the Auror Office,

Order of Merlin, Second Class.

Harry leaned his head back on the wall and considered as carefully as he could when thoughts were dancing around his head. Could he successfully sneak out of Hogwarts to meet the Minister? Of course he could, given the Invisibility Cloak, but should he? If someone found him missing, then—

And then Harry scolded himself, and yanked his thoughts back to that simple standard he had to test his every action by now. Would it help him defeat Voldemort and make up his debt to Sirius?

Yes, on balance, he rather thought it would. The Minister wasn't friends with Dumbledore, to Harry's knowledge, and he could provide Harry with evidence and information that Dumbledore was probably keeping from him out of a desire "not to worry him," or, at the very least, that he would want to know why Harry needed. And of course Scrimgeour would want something in return. Public support of the Ministry was a small enough price. Perhaps, if Harry could arrange things carefully, those public appearances would even ease other people's grief when he died.

There was the question of whether people would miss him on Thursday evening to settle, of course.

And then Harry grinned, and found his intuition was correct when he reread the letter. Yes, the Minister had asked for a meeting during the same time that Harry was supposed to serve Snape's detention. That was an iron-clad excuse for why Ron and Hermione wouldn't miss him, and Dumbledore was unlikely to go searching for him, either.

Missing the detention would place him in Snape's bad graces, of course, but Harry wanted to be there. He wanted Snape to be so enraged that he wouldn't be curious. And, so far, he hadn't got Snape to that point. Snape seemed convinced there was still some defiance in Harry that had to be broken.

But missing a detention should teach him that Harry was so stupid he couldn't be interesting.

Harry went to write the response to the Minister, and plan the best way to leave the school on Thursday evening. It meant he'd have to take several precautions. He didn't mind that. Taking precautions and making true plans had become a way of life to him.

Harry entered Snape's office for his Tuesday night detention with his eyes fixed firmly on the floor and his Occlumency shields bending and flexing. He'd have to lower them if Snape met his gaze again, and he hated the sensation of vulnerability that pricked at his mind without them.

Of course, he only had one more day of study until he was ready to practice the Siren Song, and that would make the Wednesday detention interesting. But, for tonight, he had to play the helpless victim without much more than wisdom to recommend the course.

He wondered absently when he had become so obsessed with secret advantages and having as many of them as possible, but then dismissed the thought as an absurdity. He knew exactly when it had happened, the day he'd grown up and realized he couldn't be a child anymore.

"You will be writing lines today, Potter," Snape said, and he didn't tell Harry to look up. "If you turn to your left, you will see the table, parchment, and ink you require, and the scroll you are to copy. You will go on until I tell you to stop."

Harry didn't say a thing as he sat down and pulled the scroll towards him. Even if Snape had a Blood Quill like Umbridge had, he wouldn't make a sound. Someone with stupid pride would try to resist like that, and his plan to deflect Snape's attention relied on Snape assuming he was the same person as last year, only magnified.

Snape's eyes on his face as he picked up the quill were like nails. Harry didn't care. He dipped the quill into the ink and looked at the first line.

Sirius Black spent most of his time in school hexing students younger than he was. He deserved to be put in Azkaban, and it was only an unfortunate coincidence that the crime that sent him there was not what he should have been punished for.

Harry sat quite still for a long moment.

"Did you or did you not hear me?" Snape's voice was so soft that the sound of Harry's heartbeat nearly overcame it. "I told you to write. You are not to cease the movement of your quill until I give you permission."

Harry went through several wild revolutions in his own head in the space of a few moments. He could do what he really wanted to do: refuse to dishonor Sirius's memory, which had become so important to him in the last few months, and throw Snape's punishment back in his face. But that would only convince Snape that he could be reached, that he was sensitive, and then the man would never shut up, never cease to worry at him.

Or he could sit and write quietly, which would admit the truth of what he'd seen in the Pensieve, but deny everything that was good about Sirius, everything Harry felt sorry about killing.

Well. When there are only two choices, then you make a third.

He took a deep breath and lowered his quill to the parchment. He could almost feel Snape's incredulity when he began to write, his eyes flickering back and forth between the scroll and his own work to make sure that he didn't miss or blot a word.

Of course, the sharp stare eased when Harry bit his lip and gave a sound suspiciously like a sob. Let Snape think he was weak enough to cry in front of him, like he had last night, but too proud to get up and walk away—or too afraid of losing more points for Gryffindor. Whatever impression of him Snape took away from this detention, Harry was determined that it would be a false one.

You cannot know me, not ever again. You're only a bump on the road to defeating Voldemort.

Meanwhile, he talked quietly to Sirius in his head, apologizing for what he had to do, telling him that he thought he was wonderful, and that he'd chosen the course he had—learning Occlumency, learning how to snare Voldemort, protecting his secrets from Snape—for his sake. The words he wrote down might feel etched on his heart, but they never could be, not compared with what he voiced silently to himself in the privacy of his own mind.

He knew Sirius hadn't been perfect. But Sirius was the only person in the world, other than Ron, who had ever offered to let Harry live with him, and he was the only person who would have done that and been just Harry's. Ron had his parents, and Harry wouldn't be his only brother, or the only child in the Weasley family if they had adopted him. He appreciated the offer, really he did, but it wouldn't have been the same as living with Sirius.

And even if he did have to acknowledge Sirius's faults, that didn't mean he had to think of them in isolation from his good points: his courage, his resilience, his loyalty to old friends. So Harry thought of them, and sometimes he sniffled to convince Snape he was breaking, and he wrote steadily on.

He could look weak in front of Snape. What was pride, next to the chance to remain free and pursue his own duty? Besides, it was false weakness.

Finally Snape said, when Harry was in the middle of a sentence about Sirius's incompetence in telling traitors apart from loyalists to Dumbledore, "Stop."

Harry obediently dropped the quill and turned to regard the Potions Professor. Snape sat with his hands folded in front of him, and when his eyes met Harry's, Harry could easily feel the bolt of Legilimency going home.

Given what he'd just been thinking about, it was easy to summon the memory of Sirius making the offer to let Harry live with him, and then the memory of Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, and then Sirius leaving Number Twelve Grimmauld Place in dog form to accompany Harry to King's Cross. Snape sat back when he'd seen that last one, and a faint smile played along his lips.

"And you realize that that was a sign of his recklessness?" he asked sharply. "You realize that he deserved to die?"

"He didn't deserve to die," said Harry, because there was no way he could let that one pass. He kept his head up and his eyes fixed on Snape's, a quivering, open, weak child to Snape's gaze. I'm that way. That's all you see. That's all you can see. "But I deserve punishment for having killed him."

He let his eyes and his voice fall then, until he was staring at his hands. His fingers were spotted with ink. He thought idly that he should make absolutely sure that his hands and robes were clean before he went to meet the Minister on Thursday. He wanted to impress Scrimgeour.

Silence answered him instead of the retort that he'd expected, and Harry finally looked up again. Snape had his face turned aside, and his features and eyes looked shadowed, as if he were thinking deeply.

No. No, damn it! No deep thoughts, Snape!

"I wish," Harry said, and flung all the passion he was capable of into his voice, "I wish it had been you instead."

And that was the right move, because Snape's eyes came back to him with familiar hatred, fierce disgust, and the dismissal that Harry most needed right now. Snape couldn't be suspicious of him, because he knew James Potter's personality, and he thought Harry was a copy of James.

"I am sure you do, Potter," Snape whispered. "After all, why shouldn't you wish for the person who's saved your life several times now to be dead, and the person who recklessly endangered his own to live?"

"He didn't endanger his own," Harry said. "I brought him out. I killed him. You said that."

"So I did," Snape said. "And it is true."

"Of course it is." Harry lowered his head and let his voice trail off as if he were too choked up to say more.

"You are dismissed for tonight, Potter." Snape waved a hand at him. "I suggest you think about what you have written, and how true it is."

Not at all, Harry reassured himself as he slipped out of the office. And tomorrow, Snape, won't it be your turn for a surprise?

Severus sat back, and resisted the impulse to tap his fingers against his lips. It was an old gesture he often used when he found an intriguing puzzle or mystery, but Potter was not intriguing enough to justify it. Really, there was nothing unusual in his behavior. Just like a teenager to be melodramatic. Just like James Potter's son to believe passionately that he was the center of the universe, and that everything, for good or evil, came back to him.

But Severus's instincts were on fire, and when they burned like this, he had to look more closely at what had caught his attention, senseless or not.

A Potter from last year would have screamed at him about the unfairness of that punishment rather than write those lines. A Potter believing himself responsible for the death of Black would have screamed those words, rather than write the ones on the scroll, which said nothing about his guilt. A normal Potter would have died rather than show weakness in front of Severus Snape.

He showed you weakness last night.

He was broken down then.

And this would have broken him less?

Severus could not believe that. He prided himself on the cleverness and appropriate nature of his revenge. The lines should have shattered Potter along new and different cracks, not only exploited the old ones. And Merlin forbid that Potter should get used to the torment.

Yet it seemed he had. He had only sniffled. So either the punishment had failed completely, which Potter's display later would argue against, or—

Or the weakness the night before had been a show, too.

But even there, Severus ran up against a quandary, because how in the world could Potter have thought of that ruse? He was too stupid, and Severus believed in Potter's stupidity as firmly as he did his own intelligence.

It was a puzzle, all in all, and Severus did not intend to let it go until he solved it—even though he reassured himself he could only do that by seeking out depths to Potter's imbecility never before seen.