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Chapter Nineteen—Enemies Made

"If you were the one who allowed Mr. Nott to do this, I consider you absolutely irresponsible."

Severus scowls at Minerva, who stares back at him—for a moment. Then her eyes go to the hospital bed again, and Nott's limp and twisted leopard body. One of his arms has changed back, the broken one that Poppy spent some time treating. The rest of him is still a leopard, other than some shortening and flattening in his face where his feline jaws have begun to recede.

"I had no notion that Mr. Nott was this advanced in his studies," Severus says, which is true. He thought that Nott's boast of being able to complete the transformation so fast was based on wanting Harry to find him more valuable than he is. "And I certainly would not have encouraged him to become an unregistered Animagus had I known."

Minerva bites her lips as if she wants to shout some more. Severus knows full well the feeling of finding it relieving to shout. He simply has no intention of becoming her target.

"You will encourage him to register the moment he revives?" Minerva murmurs, drawing her wand.

"Of course," Severus says, and notices that Minerva is already making Nott's fur shiver and shrink. Sure that at least one of his students is in good hands, he can turn to the other one.

Harry wanted to stand by Nott's hospital bed, insisting he wasn't hurt, but then his winged snake made such a fuss that he admitted he was touched by the Cruciatus Curse. He keeps saying it only touched his shoulder and only for a second, but Severus stared at him until he sat down and agreed to let Madam Pomfrey check him over.

Now she has completed her treatment, and withdrawn with a warning frown in Severus's direction. Severus only barely keeps from shouting at her that he did all he could and she has obviously never dealt with someone as stubbornly determined to march into danger as Harry Potter.

Severus touches Harry on the arm, and Harry blinks and looks at him. His eyes are glazed with exhaustion, which Severus expected. But they're also focused inwards in a way that makes Severus instantly wary.

"What are you thinking of, Harry?"

"I thought that we shouldn't confront the Ministry yet and let Fudge know that we were on to Umbridge," Harry mutters. "So we went into danger, and Theo got hurt."

Severus refuses to add, "So did you," the way his instincts are urging him to. He simply brushes Harry's hair away from his forehead and murmurs, "So what has changed? Other than your not wanting to march into danger again."

"I have to change the focus of my fight a little," Harry murmurs. "I thought it was better to ignore the Ministry as best as I could and just let some of my allies handle them, and focus on Voldemort." Severus breathes through his desire to flinch. Black has recently stopped flinching. Black will not be braver than Severus. "But now I know that I have to handle them both." He frowns fiercely. "I wish I didn't."

Severus silently and fervently agrees, and wishes there was something he could do to spare Harry from it. There does not seem to be. "What are you going to change?"

"Do you think Madam Macmillan would mind handling some other things for me?"

Severus pauses. They have little contact with Gwendolyn Macmillan most of the time now. She handles Harry's press and does it well. Even the aftermath of the trial Fudge dragged him to wasn't as bad as it could have been thanks to her. "It would depend on what else you wanted her to handle, I imagine. She has told me that her skills do not lie in interpersonal interactions."

Harry blinks as if he doesn't know what the words mean, and then laughs shortly. "Oh, no, I wouldn't want her to try to make us allies or something. But she could use her influence with the press to start putting out negative information about Fudge, couldn't she?"

"Is that a wise thing to do, in the middle of a war?"

It hurts Severus to say, but he must say it. He can take revenge on Fudge in a way that would leave the man in office, and it is mainly Umbridge he wants to punish, anyway. But he is the one who has to think of the consequences to the war if the Ministry is in chaos or Harry pushes through the assassination of the Minister—even if it is only character assassination.

"I don't think Fudge is going to acknowledge that Voldemort has returned any time soon," Harry mutters. "And we need someone who will. Who would become Minister if Fudge was forced to step down for some reason?"

Severus has to pause and revise the list of possible candidates. Sometimes Dumbledore's absence from it still makes him feel as if a weight has unbalanced in his soul. "I suppose it would come down to a choice between Amelia Bones and Rufus Scrimgeour."

"I only know a little about Bones, and nothing about Scrimgeour."

"I am certain that one of our allies can prepare you a report on him," Severus says. "Black worked under him as an Auror, but that was long enough ago that I have no idea if his information would still be relevant."

Harry nods, without trying to defend Black's honor or knowledge. "That would be fine. I just need to know who we should try and make sure becomes Minister, who would be better to lead the Ministry in a war and admit there's actually a war coming."

Harry's voice is so bitter that Severus places a hand on his shoulder before he analyzes Harry's words for content. Then ice seems to flash through him. "Harry..." His voice is softer than he meant it to be as he stares at Harry.

"I know." Harry gives his head a little jerk, and looks at Nott's bed. Minerva has him almost entirely human now, but he still shivers a little as the fur sinks into his skin under her wand. "I don't want to do this. I don't want to play politics, and it's ridiculous that I should be in charge of trying to make sure the Ministry has a decent Minister."

"Is this—not the kind of thing that usually should be left up to the choice of the people?" Severus asks, as delicately as he can.

"Should be. Do you think they would actually kick Fudge out of office?"

Severus thinks of the public who has chosen Fudge and would probably do it again, and sneers despite himself. "No."

"And I don't think they would replace the Minister with an election if he has to step down unexpectedly, right? Because they need someone in the Ministry to make the decisions from day-to-day. Blaise told me that." Harry's eyes are wide and so haunted that Severus feels as if he's seeing directly through them into Harry's thoughts without using Legilimency. "They'll appoint someone to become interim Minister until the regular election comes around again."

Severus nods slowly. It's easier for him to reconcile himself to the idea of Harry being so involved in politics when it doesn't seem as if Harry is setting himself up to become a silent dictator. "You want to make sure that the person appointed is someone you approve of?"

"Yeah." Harry rubs his scar. It gleams redder than usual, but it isn't actually bleeding that Severus can see. "If it comes down to Bones or Scrimgeour anyway, then it's not much of a choice. But I need to figure out which one would be better and throw my weight as the Boy-Who-Lived behind them."

Severus nods again. Then he loses his battle against the things he wanted to say. "But we can consider that in the morning," he says, lowering his voice a little as Poppy turns away from Nott and begins to focus on Harry again. "You were clipped with the Cruciatus Curse, at the very least. You need to rest."

Harry grimaces, but nods. He climbs into his bed, staring across the hospital wing towards Nott. Poppy catches his glance and swoops in to reassure him while she casts spells that arrange the blankets more comfortably around Harry and fluff his pillows. "He'll be fine, you'll see, Mr. Potter. Right as rain with some rest."

Harry closes his eyes, but his brow is furrowed, and Severus doubts he will rest without potion-based help.

"Dreamless Sleep, Harry?" he asks, and makes himself keep his voice calm and as close to neutral as he can.

Harry's head nods on the pillow without his looking up to meet Severus's eyes.

That tells Severus more than anything else how badly needed it is, and he makes sure to give Harry a little more than the half-dose of the potion recommended for children his age. He would like Harry to sleep through the night without the kinds of dreams that might come from being tortured himself and seeing one of his friends come close to dying.

Then Severus seeks the privacy of his rooms, that no one might witness his own aftershocks.

Harry wakes in the night, and the first thing he does is roll over to check on Theo. He relaxes when he sees that Theo is breathing deeply, apparently caught in the thrall of a Dreamless Sleep Potion. He won't be happy when he wakes up and finds out about that, but at least it means he's not in any pain right now.

And it means Harry has some time to consider what he should do.

He knows Severus gave him Dreamless Sleep Potion, too, and that it should have lasted longer. But the burning in his forehead makes it perfectly clear why it didn't. Harry sighs and curls up next to the pillow.

He doesn't want to become some kind of chessplayer, the way Dumbledore was, or some kind of dictator. He doesn't want to encourage people to do anything other than what they would have done without his interference, even.

But it's also true that he absolutely can't allow Fudge to somehow dismiss what Umbridge did, or plant someone else in the school as the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor who would just continue Umbridge's reign of terror. Harry's hands tighten under his jaw. He absolutely can't allow that to happen.

So he will stop it. Because he has to. Because he wants to, at least in the sense that he wants to keep people safe.

He sits up and glances around the hospital wing. Other than Theo's deep, soft breaths, he can't hear anything. Madam Pomfrey was in her office with light flooding out from under the door when Harry went to sleep, but he can't see any sign of light now, or a shadow moving around. It should be as safe as it's going to get.

Harry closes his eyes and centers his mind, rocking it down into a small, clear place, the way the Speakers taught him. Then he calls out softly in Parseltongue, pitching his voice to travel between this world and the one where the Speakers live.

He didn't think he would ever do this. It's something Lyassa taught him to use for emergencies only, and surely the emergency was when Umbridge was attacking him and Theo, not now. But Harry does it anyway, letting the strains of almost-song fill his voice as his mind lingers on what could have happened.

His mind, too, is on the form of the creature that attacked Theo, and on the dreams that he's had full of fronds and watching eyes and stalking enemies.

"Harry."

Harry starts and opens his eyes. He doesn't know if he didn't expect it to work at all or if he didn't expect it to work so quickly, but either way, he's surprised. Lyassa, however, in her half-human, half-serpent form, is swaying back and forth next to his bed, her eyes tracking over his face and then turning to Theo in the next bed with an air of perplexity.

"You are not in danger," she points out. At least she keeps her voice soft, so that if Madam Pomfrey does come out to check on them, she shouldn't hear much.

Harry shakes his head. "Theo and I were in danger earlier today. And Theo fought something that I think might be your enemy." He describes it as well as he can when he really only saw glimpses from the corner of his eye, and had Theo's little testimony before he went to sleep, talking through a half-leopard, half-human mouth.

"The Great Cat."

The way Lyassa says it, there's no doubt that it deserves capital letters. Harry leans forwards. "What is it?"

"It is an entity that once ruled part of the magical world." Lyassa stops swaying and settles herself leaning against the side of Harry's bed. Well, Harry supposes that it would get tiring, at least some of the time, to continually move back and forth. "Magical humans of your friends' kind were its slaves."

"Not of my kind?"

"Its mind-control abilities did not work on Parselmouths. It could not lie to you, and when it spoke of power or rewards, you heard only growls and snarls instead of the rich promises that others did. For that, it tried to hunt you down, and doubtless encouraged others like your friends to turn on you."

Harry nods. He wonders if that's where some of the prejudice against Parselmouths comes from, but it doesn't seem important to ask about that right now. "Is there only one of it? How did you defeat it? Or how did the Parselmouths and humans?"

"It took an alliance of Speakers and Parselmouths. As long as it left us alone, we had little to say to it, but then it took offense at our alliances with Parselmouths, which strengthened you and even enabled some of the ordinary magical humans to throw off the Great Cat's yoke. It attacked us, and we broke it."

Harry cocks his head. "You mean, broke its power?"

"Yes, but not in the sense that you would mean it. The Great Cat was a truly immense power, in size and in strength. We could not kill it. It is immortal, and it is made of shadows, which means that it can only be wounded in glancing bites and blows. But we broke it into pieces, and the smaller ones, we could smother and deprive of power until they ceased to exist. I did not know that such a large piece had escaped or still existed anywhere in this world. Most of the surviving pieces fled to other dimensions. Interesting."

Harry sighs out slowly. "Will you help us fight it, then? And the human who called on it?"

Lyassa's tongue slithers out around her fangs and the corner of her pointed jaw. "We will be more than happy." She pauses for a moment, and Harry looks back, still crouched in the middle of the bed, wondering if there's going to be some price that he hasn't anticipated for this.

Lyassa finally clears her throat. "You have not reconsidered coming to dwell within our world? We would be more than willing to protect you from the Great Cat and other threats, and it would be easier to do so."

"Thank you for all you've taught me. But I'm not reconsidering it."

Lyassa looks at him with something that might be regret shining in her eyes, and nods. "Then I must warn you that this is not the last of our enemies that will find you. Creatures who consider Speakers their foes will extend that enmity to you. And we may not always join you in time to spare your life, or the lives of your allies."

Harry nods, steeling his heart. Something he has to accept, now that they're at war, is that people are going to die in that war.

"I accept the responsibility," he says softly. "And you should know that the magic you taught me did serve me while I was battling Umbridge."

"You must still have been wounded, if you are in this human healing place."

"A clip on the shoulder with the Cruciatus Curse. Severus was worried about me."

"I look forward to the opportunity to make this woman's life—what is the human phrase?—a living hell," says Lyassa pleasantly, and then her body becomes a blur of golden and green light before she vanishes.

Harry collapses backwards against the pillow, sighing. Immortal entities and Parselmouth politics. He shakes his head. He hopes that he'll have a chance to rest before the next challenge he has to take on, but he's not going to actually wish for it, because that would jinx it.

And sure enough, the next morning, Harry is glad that he didn't wish for it, although he did manage a good few hours of sleep before Madam Pomfrey woke him to have breakfast. Harry is eating some porridge with brown sugar and dried fruit on top, which Lion is complaining looks disgusting, when he hears a clatter of footsteps coming up the stairs towards the hospital wing.

Harry looks over. Madam Pomfrey is getting to her feet with a wrathful expression, but she's not fast enough to stop the visitors from spilling into the hospital wing.

Harry is glad that his eyes seek and find Severus's, and Severus gives him a tight nod. At least he believes the situation is under control, then, or not as bad as it looks. And behind him is Madam Macmillan, Harry's press advisor, panting a little and wielding her wand as if trying to decide between a charm to ease her breathing and a curse to punish someone.

At the front is Minister Fudge, who has a face more purple than his robes and his bowler hat clutched in one hand.

"I insist that you retract your accusations about one of my employees using Unforgivable Curses on you, Mr. Potter!" he roars.

Harry takes a deep breath, lays down his spoon, and turns to face this new kind of challenge.