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Chapter Ten—Bright Star
"If you would repeat what you did for our records, sir?"
The Auror facing Sirius now is one of the stolid sort who aren't going to be thrown off-stride by someone who doesn't want to talk to them, or short, clipped answers. Sirius would know, because he already tried both.
At least he did manage to detach Harry from him and get him sent to bed. Harry tried to linger on the stairs, looking back at Sirius, but Narcissa swept him up and on. Sirius has the feeling that she's going to keep a close eye on Harry for a while, after he managed to sneak past her when the safe room door was closing.
Sirius closes his eyes and massages his forehead, not caring if the Aurors see how tired he is. That they're more interested in finding out how he hurt Voldemort and killed the Death Eaters—who turned out to be a Yaxley and a Macnair—is absolutely typical of the Ministry. Harry already hates them. Sirius might as well join his godson in letting his disgust and contempt loose.
"The wards alerted me to the approach of an enemy," Sirius drones, staring over the Auror's shoulder at the far side of the kitchen. "I did my best to send my godson and my young cousin, Draco Malfoy, into the safe room with Remus Lupin, my friend who lives here. Harry managed to escape and run downstairs. Voldemort is targeting him, as you probably know—"
"I know what the boy claims," cuts in the other Auror, a young, dark-haired woman who hasn't spoken much. "But it's simply not possible that You-Know-Who was here and no one died."
"Fine," Sirius says, rolling his eyes, and ignoring the way she stiffens in outrage. "The Dark Lord impostor who showed up dueled Harry. I think he would have killed him if I wasn't there. He certainly launched the Cruciatus Curse at him once. I used Black family magic to attack Voldemort, and—"
"What kind of Black family magic, sir?" That's the Auror who does most of the talking, the tall, stolid man.
"A spell that my ancestors perfected," Sirius says, with a small shrug. "It's one that can pierce almost all the shields someone can raise around themselves."
"What's the incantation?" The Auror's quill hovers above the parchment he's been taking notes on.
"Why should I tell you that, when I would see it show up among the Death Eaters to be used against me and my godson in a few months?" In truth, Sirius isn't worried about that. It takes years to learn how to master the cold of the void without it eating you, and it also isn't common that someone can do it without training early in life. But it makes a convenient excuse not to further detail it.
The Auror's nostrils flare. "Sir. The Ministry is not subject to cooperation with the enemy of that kind—"
"Really?" Sirius begins to tick off the lies inherent in that statement on his fingers. "I was put in Azkaban for twelve years without a trial. You let Dumbledore slip through your fingers. You've lost a bunch of Death Eaters in a prison breakout. You—"
"None of that means You-Know-Who has returned," the younger Auror interjects.
"Of course not." Sirius drops his hand and smiles blandly at her. "It only explains why I'm so reluctant to give you information about the spell that I used to defeat the person who looks like him."
"It could be important information to allow others to survive battles with him and his forces."
Sirius meets the man's eyes with a thin smile. "Why, if he's only someone impersonating Voldemort and not the real thing? He isn't going to be that intimidating or that powerful."
They go around in circles with him for a while more, but Sirius refuses to surrender any specific information. He doesn't trust the Ministry. He only called the Aurors in the first place because he wanted them to see the remains of the two Death Eaters and confirm that they really had been killed by the Black wards.
They might or might not publicize that information. Frankly, Sirius doesn't care. He knows that it'll make its way to the people who need to know it, namely other Death Eaters and Voldemort sympathizers in the Ministry.
The more wary people are of attacking him and his godson, the better, as far as Sirius is concerned.
The Aurors finally leave, and Sirius closes his eyes. Then he stands. He needs to make sure Harry's asleep, and then he plans to collapse himself.
Remus falls into step beside him as he leaves the dining room. "I'm sorry," he says.
Sirius blinks at him. "What for?" His mind is already spinning, trying to find some way to connect Remus's apology to what happened, but he can't.
"I should have kept Harry in the safe room. I don't know why he managed to slip past me so fast—"
Sirius snorts and shakes his head. "Narcissa was outside the room and should have been able to keep him out of the battle, but she didn't, either. I don't like what happened, but it wasn't your fault, Remus."
A year ago, Remus might have been able to bull through what Sirius was saying and ignore it. Now he pauses and lets his nostrils flare a bit, presumably sniffing for some sign of increased sweat or other telltales of a lie. Sirius just smiles tiredly at him and keeps climbing the stairs.
"You do mean that," Remus says, tilting his head a little. "Then who do you blame for Harry being on the battlefield?"
"Harry."
Remus laughs, but Sirius just shakes his head a little as he goes up and taps on the door of Harry's bedroom. Harry makes a muffled noise that sounds like permission, and Sirius goes in and sits on the bed.
Harry is pale and shaken. However, he also has a dazed look about his eyes that Sirius knows means Narcissa has fed him a potion to deal with lingering pain and send him to sleep, so Sirius won't stay long.
"Please don't do that again," Sirius says, quietly but forcefully. "If I wanted you on the battlefield, then I would have told you that. If I ask you to stay in the safe room, then you should do that instead."
Harry worries his lip between his teeth, and Sirius has to blink harshly. He looks exactly like Lily at the moment, who would do that kind of thing before they took an exam or she had to make a hard decision. Sirius wonders if Snape has seen that particular gesture, and what memories it brought back to him.
"I had to save you," Harry whispers, sounding on the verge of brokenhearted. "Would you have called on that cold magic if I wasn't on the battlefield?"
"Probably not," Sirius admits. "But, Harry, it's not your responsibility to save me. That's the way that godfathers and godsons work. I'm supposed to protect you, not the other way around. And I've already done a poor job of that in the past. Please let me do a better job in the future."
"The way the Dursleys treated me wasn't your fault."
Harry's voice is slurring, and Sirius knows that he'll be asleep in just a few minutes. He grabs his godson's hand and squeezes it, hard enough to make Harry look at him again. Sirius says fiercely, softly, "But the way I ran after Pettigrew was. And the way I injured you after we'd barely started to get to know each other again. Let me make up for that."
"Okay?" Harry yawns, and then he falls asleep sitting up. Sirius eases him gently down on the bed and strokes his forehead, shivering as his hand passes over the scar and he feels something cold stir behind it.
Harry may argue in the morning that he can't be held to the promise he's made, given that he was more than halfway into dreamland at the time, but Sirius intends to try. He's not willing to suffer again what he did this evening when he saw Harry being hurled into the wall by Voldemort's spells
"The first thing you need to know is that Harry is perfectly fine."
That Narcissa chooses to lead with that as she steps through the Floo does not reassure Severus. He turns to face her, glad that he is by habit an early riser and none of the other children staying with him at the moment is up.
"What does that mean?"
Narcissa pauses in the face of his anger, and sighs. "There was an attack last night at Sirius's home, by the Dark Lord and two of his Death Eaters. The Death Eaters are both dead, and the Dark Lord fled."
"And you did not come to tell me the moment it was finished?"
"We were all exhausted," Narcissa says, and her tone is a knife that Severus would have been wary of feeling against his throat at any other time. But this time, he can only feel the rage swelling inside him, with fear not far behind. "Sirius used the wards to cut the Death Eaters apart, and a magic unique to the Black family to make the Dark Lord leave. Harry, meanwhile, had been dueling the Dark Lord—"
"How badly is he wounded?"
"All his wounds have been taken care of, along with the exhaustion, physical and magical." Narcissa looks him square in the eye. "Blame me and Harry, if you must blame someone. Sirius tried to insist that Harry stay in safe room at Grimmauld Place with Remus and Draco. But he slipped past the door, and past me, and I did not take extraordinary measures to ensure that Harry stayed in the house."
Severus closes his eyes. Harry is fine. Or, at least, he is alive and not wounded. The definition of "fine" might need some work once Severus gets hold of him.
"Harry's hurt?"
Mr. Nott has come into the kitchen now, because of course he has. Narcissa only nods to him and says, "Not now. He was somewhat hurt in a fight with the Dark Lord that took place on the grounds of Mr. Black's house."
"I want to see him."
"Mr. Black might not want you over there right now." Narcissa's remoteness is a match for the glacial fire burning in Nott's eyes. "He's still asleep, and Harry is barely awake himself."
"I'd still like to see him."
Nott's tone makes it sound like he's about to charge past Narcissa and through the Floo. Narcissa glances at Severus, making it clear that she thinks he should play a part in disciplining young Slytherins. Severus restrains his tongue with an effort, and reaches out to touch Mr. Nott's shoulder, making the movement large and obvious.
"You will help most if you will go and fetch some of the potions that Mr. Potter might need from my lab, Mr. Nott. I trust you to find the ones that will help with exhaustion and pain."
Nott pauses for a long moment, narrowing his eyes, as if to say that he knows Severus is trying to get rid of him. In the end, he nods and goes into the lab, letting the door fall shut behind him with a pointed thump.
Severus glances at Narcissa. "I will wait for a fuller account in Harry's own words before I attempt to discipline anyone."
"You should." Narcissa hasn't yielded the knife-edge to her tone at all. "It was an act of impulse, but in the end, he held his own until Sirius could reach him. And Sirius's unique use of Black magic saved him."
Narcissa sounds smug, but Severus couldn't care less about the magic Black chose, even if it did send the Dark Lord running. He cares about Harry, who was on a battlefield he was too young for, which might have caused him more trauma with memories of the last time he faced the Dark Lord and his dragon died.
Black can do whatever he wants, but if he proves an insufficient guardian for Harry, then Severus will remove Harry from his custody, no matter what difficulties it creates.
"It wasn't Sirius's fault. He told me to stay in the safe room. I'm the one who ran out and joined the battle."
Harry doesn't know how many more times he can say those words without sounding petulant about it. But they're true. Severus, stony-eyed in the chair next to Harry's bed, wants to find some way to blame Sirius somehow, but Harry isn't going to let him. He should be the one who gets all the blame.
If Severus even has to blame someone at all. They all survived, and Sirius exploded Voldemort's eyes. Why isn't that something to celebrate?
"What injuries did you sustain in the fight?"
"Only the ones I told you about," Harry says. "I'm telling the truth," he adds, when Severus just stares at him. "Voldemort flung me into a wall, and we traded curses, but I blocked almost all of them. He tried to use the Cruciatus on me, but I dodged it."
"Then why do you still look pale?"
"Because I used a lot of magic last night," Harry says. "In a very short time. And he woke everyone up in the middle of the night, the inconsiderate git, so it's not like I got to sleep straight through."
He hopes that will make Severus laugh, but Severus just considers him again, and then nods, in a critical way that makes Harry think that Severus is relying more on the evidence of his eyes as he looks at Harry, not Harry's words. He pulls a flask of some thick, milky potion out of his robe pocket.
"What's that?" Harry grimaces at the whiny tone of his own voice, and shakes his head a little. But he hates the thick potions, that ones that taste like chalk going down. "I promise, I'm fine."
"Your hands trembled while you were talking," Severus says crisply. "I think the Cruciatus affected you more than you've told me. Are you sure that you completely dodged it?"
"It only brushed my shoulder." Harry sighs and reaches out for the potion when he gets a long look. "But I didn't even really feel it. I thought I dodged it completely because I should have felt something if it affected me, right?"
"No," Severus says simply. "Not necessarily. You might have ignored the effects in the midst of battle and been unable to distinguish between it and other pains that you suffered later. Or it might have affected you with one of its symptoms, namely the tremors, without causing the pain. You still need a potion that can help you fight the aftereffects."
"I didn't know there was a potion like that. If there is, why are there people in St. Mungo's with the aftereffects of Cruciatus damage?"
"They are the ones who have been under the curse too long and cannot be saved. This potion is specifically for those barely touched by the curse. And you are putting it off drinking it."
Harry holds his nose and tosses the potion down his throat, while Lion hisses softly on his shoulder and offers to bite Severus for him. Harry strokes his snake to calm him down, then sighs and hands the flask back to Severus. He can feel the potion moving through him, thick and cold and making his stomach squirm as if he's going to heave it up at any second, and Harry swallows queasily.
Severus stows the flask in some pouch or pocket, and then he reaches out and clutches Harry tightly.
Harry feels his eyes open wide. He hugs Severus back, but uncertainty. It feels as though he he's gone from a scalding pot to a warm lake. Why did Severus scold him that way and give him the potion and everything, and then act as if he wants to hug the life out of Harry?
"When Narcissa told me that you had faced Voldemort in battle," Severus whispers, "there was no—I could not grasp it. That you had done that, and that you were alive and well." He draws back, and Harry ends up averting his eyes from what he can see in Severus's face.
"I know, with your personality, that other, similar things will happen," Severus says. "That you will face him again. But I will ask that you consider how we feel when you do. And that if you went into battle because you feared to lose Black, you remember that we feel the same way about you."
He didn't even choke talking about Sirius feeling the same way as him, Harry thinks dazedly, blinking at Severus. He can't blame the haze in his head on the potions Mrs. Malfoy fed him last night, even though he wants to. It's the devastation he can see lurking on the edges of Severus's expression, waiting to come out.
It would come out if Harry died. Harry knows that now.
He leans forwards and hugs Severus once more, to try and get rid of it. It also helps to let him duck his head and get his face out of sight, because he doesn't want Severus to see what his emotions are doing.
From the way Severus's arms return the embrace, he probably knows anyway.
Then Harry pulls back with a sigh. "Theo is probably wearing a hole in the carpet with the way he must be pacing outside," he says.
"Indeed." Severus draws back. "It is not only your guardians who worry, Harry."
It seems that he's not going to be permitted to ignore this after all. Harry nods. "I know. I'll try."
Severus nods back. "Good."