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Chapter Twenty—Directed Violence

"Are you all right, Neville? You look upset."

Neville swallows and does his best to stand up straight and smile. If he droops all over the place, how will he manage to inspire anyone the way he needs to?

"I'm o-okay," he says, and then winces. He hasn't stuttered in a while. "Just got some bad news from my Gran about possibly having to continue my Occlumency lessons with Snape."

"Oh, she's still insisting on those?" Harry pops up from behind the row of plants in the classroom they adopted last year. He'll probably never have an instinctive touch with Herbology, Neville thinks, but he's getting better. "You hadn't mentioned them, so I thought she'd dropped the idea."

"She did, but she was just distracted by something in the Wizengamot. Now—now I have to start them again."

"Is Snape getting bad again? Blaise hasn't mentioned much."

"He's not bad in Potions, but…" Neville searches for something he can say. The real reason he doesn't want Snape prying into his mind is because he might see Neville's suspicion that Neville somehow carries a piece of Voldemort inside himself. "I haven't practiced as much in Occlumency as I should have. What if he says something?"

"I can make sure he doesn't."

Neville starts and looks at Harry. Sometimes Harry is just a normal kid, even slightly innocent, at least compared to some of the things Neville has seen. And then again, sometimes he sounds cold and like he could make Snape do something.

Neville shivers. If Harry can make Snape do things, Neville's not sure he wants to know about it.

"I r-reckon I'll have to have an actual Occlumency lesson and see how he is about it."

Harry leans close to him, his face bright and concerned. Neville smiles at him, but it feels a little off, and he thinks Harry can tell that.

"Is something else bothering you, then? Some reason that you think these Occlumency lessons would be different from last year's?"

"How do you do that?" Neville squeaks, jumping and staring at Harry with an expression that makes Harry smile a little. Neville hopes his friend won't tease him for it. "You just—know things! Do you know Legilimency, too?" he adds, suddenly afraid. What if Harry reads something from his mind and passes it on to Zabini? What if Zabini does something with the information?

Harry blinks and holds his hands up in front of him. "No, no, Neville, of course not. Frankly I can't see wanting to learn Legiimency. Occlumency sounds useful, but Legilimency would have me poking in other people's heads all the time, and frankly, those aren't very interesting places."

"They're not?" Neville asks, letting himself be distracted. He never did want to learn Legilimency himself, but he assumes people would have interesting secrets.

"People do stupid things like blame you for being the Heir of Slytherin and blame me for supposedly being strange and stupid. That's what my Muggle relatives thought, anyway." Harry shakes his head. "If I were a spy or something, maybe I'd have to learn it, but I'm not. So I might as well go on just letting people be stupid in their heads in private."

Neville laughs a little shakily, but reaches out a hand and claps Harry on the shoulder. "I'll tell you if Snape gets weird in Occlumency lessons, Promise."

Harry smiles at him. "Okay."

And Neville knows Harry is a real friend because of this: he really does feel better after talking to him, even when Harry is talking about how stupid most people are. Neville sometimes agrees with him when he thinks about the people he's met visiting Diagon Alley who ask eagerly when he remembers of the night Voldemort came after his parents.

Sometimes, you have to laugh.

Severus rubs his hand across his forehead. He did intend to begin the Occlumency lessons with Longbottom again tonight, as Albus asked, but he had to put it off. He's been skimming the minds of numerous students to see if any of them have knowledge of the attack by the supposed Heir of Slytherin. He's found nothing, and his mind feels tattered and burned at the edges because of it.

Albus could do the same thing, but he rarely has an excuse to interact with students the way Severus does. Someone would notice.

Why do you assume that a student or even a single professor would be able to stand up against you if they did notice? is something Severus wants to ask Albus. But he keeps his mouth shut and does what Albus says—some of the time. The Headmaster is not in the habit of confessing his plans to anyone.

Just as Severus swallows the Headache Draught he finished brewing a few minutes ago, someone knocks on the door. The door of his private quarters, not his office. Severus turns slowly, his eyes narrowed. Only the Slytherin prefects, and the Head Boy or Girl when one comes from his House, know the location of his quarters.

Well, and his colleagues, but Severus cannot a remember a time that one of them came knocking. Albus always Floos or sends his showy phoenix Patronus. Severus is past the point of being impressed, but that's not something he needs to say.

Severus makes sure his wand is close at hand as he stalks slowly across the floor, head cocked and listening. Whatever student is playing the Heir of Slytherin may be on the other side of that door. He counts under his breath before he flings it open.

He stops when he sees it's Harry Potter. "How did you know where to find my quarters?" he asks.

Potter beams at him. "Blaise told me. Can I come in?"

How did Mr. Zabini know—

But that's the kind of question that will never have an answer that's not upsetting. Severus takes a step back, shaking his head. "Yes, come in, Mr. Potter."

Potter's eyes are bright as he glances at all the books on the shelves. Sometimes Severus still finds it incredible that the son of James Potter became a Ravenclaw, but if he wasn't bookish before, his House has influenced him into going after knowledge.

Severus takes a slow step forwards, so that he can shield the books a bit and attract Potter's attention back to himself. "What do you need, Mr. Potter? I know this was not one of our regular lesson nights."

"No, sir, or I wouldn't have had to seek you out here." Potter turns to him, his face falling into a solemn expression. "I just wanted to warn you in case you have the idea to poke around in Neville's mind and use his secrets against him."

"Warn me of what?"

"Don't do that."

Potter speaks the warning in an absolutely calm tone, his eyes fixed on Severus's. Severus flinches away from the temptation to try and read the thoughts behind Potter's calm green gaze, given the way his mind feels, but he has the feeling he wouldn't like what he found.

"I would not use them against him, Mr. Potter."

"Would you report them to the Headmaster?"

Severus pauses. He has known about the conflict between Potter and Albus, yes, which seems to be based at least partially on the fact that Albus wants Potter to be the good, brave little Gryffindor that he obviously isn't. But Severus did not expect the guess about his own loyalties.

"I would need to if I found something out that would endanger Mr. Longbottom or other students," he says slowly. "If I found out that he was the Heir of Slytherin, for example."

This time, he stops because of the intensely disappointed look Potter is giving him.

"I really did think that you were smarter than that, sir."

"I said if, Potter."

"It was still a stupid example."

Severus narrows his eyes and ignores the pounding in his head, which gets worse when he focuses that closely on someone, the precursor to Legilimency. "I am still your professor, Potter. I deserve your respect."

"Not if you're going to be that stupid."

Severus finds himself staring helplessly at the boy who glares back at him, his hands fists at his sides and his eyes shining in a way that has nothing to do with Lily's. Then he sighs and eases back on his heels. "What is it that you are so upset about my potentially discovering in Mr. Longbottom's head, Mr. Potter?"

"Why would I tell you that? You've been hard on him."

"I was hard on you, and yet here you are."

"I can choose to learn Potions from you, and you know why I did. But Neville doesn't have a choice, and you never poked around in my head or did Occlumency lessons with me the way you did with him."

Severus inclines his head slowly. That is like Lily, that protectiveness in defense of her friends. Many people would say it comes from Potter, but few people remember that James Potter, as popular as he was, only had a few close friends and would viciously prank even them for a laugh. "Very well, Mr. Potter."

"Just like that?"

"What do you mean, just like that?"

"You can promise to be better to Neville and not take anything dangerous you might find out to the Headmaster just like that? I thought you would have more of a problem with it, and that's why I needed to come talk to you about it. What are your loyalties worth, if you turn your back on them like that?"

"I am doing what you required, you stubborn child!"

"But if you turn like that, then all the Headmaster has to do is give you a disappointed look and you'll flop over on your belly like a fish for him, too."

It is a long time since Severus has been consumed by such a towering rage. He stands there and breathes through it, since cursing Potter would earn a lot of attention he doesn't want to draw, and finally says, "I do not flop."

"Why did you change your mind, then?"

I have not been this honest in decades. Why does Potter, of all people—

But Severus cannot lie to himself, or he could easily get trapped in false memories and wander into the depths of his mind, protected by Occlumency, and never find his way out again. He closes his eyes. "My first loyalty was to your mother. She was—my best friend for a long time. There has been no one else like that, no matter what Albus thinks. So I will do as you ask for her sake."

There's silence, silence long and deep enough that Severus thinks Potter might have gone away. But he opens his eyes and finds the boy staring at him with an expression that carries more pain and understanding than he expected.

"Oh," Potter says, and then turns and leaves.

Unexpectedly, the gesture makes Severus want to throw something to the wall. He confessed such a painful secret to Potter, he did as the boy wanted, Potter doubted his first promise, and now Potter trusts him enough to just turn and go?

It is enough for the day. It is more than enough. Severus locks the door of his quarters and takes the kind of Sleeping Draught that will enable him to wake up easily at the smell of smoke or the sound of curses—unlike Dreamless Sleep—but which will keep him asleep through other disturbances, and casts a charm at the door of his quarters for good measure to keep himself from hearing any more knocks.

At least, when he falls into bed and the potion sends his mind spiraling down an old, dark, familiar pathway, it's only into slumber and not into the confusing depths of emotion that Lily's son has reduced him to.

"I do not understand why you are so upset."

Harry huddles close to Artemis, and closer to the brazier that is lit in the center of his and Blaise's hidden classroom, swallowing again and again. "I hurt him," he says. "I know that look on someone's face. And it turns out that he was one of my mum's friends."

"I understand that. I do not understand why the thought upsets you so."

"She would be upset with me for hurting one of her friends."

Harry is sure of that in a way that he is sure of nothing else about his parents. He still doesn't know for sure why they died, or what they would say about Sirius Black running away instead of taking care of Harry, or how they would feel about Harry staying with the Zabinis instead of Aunt Petunia. But he knows that his mum would hate it if Harry hurt one of her friends.

Artemis twines out of his hands and rears up so that her eyes are close to his. "I do not understand all the complexity of human friendships," she says, delicately, gently, the way she would hunt an insect. "But Sirius Black was your father's friend, was he not?"

"He was, yes."

"Do you think your father would be upset about you hurting one of his friends by ignoring Black and not going to live with him or being happy when he comes back at last? It seems to me that if you think that, you have not allowed it to stop you. You are planning vengeance on Black, as is proper."

Harry pauses and blinks. Artemis sways back and forth in front of him, and Harry's mind tumbles in several different directions. "It's different," he says at last. "Professor Snape was mean to me and Neville in class, but Sirius abandoned me and made me have to grow up with the Dursleys."

"Then you are upset about the degree of wounding?"

"Yes."

"Then you should not worry about it unless it turns out that you have wounded Professor Snape a lot more than it seems you have. He did not smell of the mental wounding. He smelled upset and in pain from the body, that is all."

"Oh."

"And you are going to hurt Black as much as he hurt you, which is proper. Everything is very proper when you greet the degree of wounding. You would have to kill someone who tried to eat you, but you can hurt someone who hurt you and leave them alive."

Harry laughs and settles back on the floor of the classroom, letting Artemis crawl up to his shoulder and curl there with her snout pointed at the fire. "Sometimes I forget that you're a snake, Artemis, you're so wise."

"I am wise always. And a wise snake deserves mice."

Harry smiles and reaches for the cage of Stunned mice that he keeps in the classroom. He and Blaise have to come back every few days to renew the Stunner, but it doesn't matter, not when it keeps the mice so fresh. "Here you are."

Yes, if he's planning to hurt one of his father's friends this badly, he can't be that upset if he hurt one of his mother's friends, especially when it was by accident. And Snape is going to do what Harry wants and not spread Neville's secrets around.

A successful day.

"Have you considered my request for an alliance in any more detail?"

Blaise leans back and looks at Nott where he lurks at the end of the sofa in common room. "Not in detail."

"Why not?'

"There's still too much I don't know about you." Blaise lifts one of the anti-eavesdropping charms that Mother taught him years ago. "And you know that Harry and I are close friends with the Boy-Who-Lived."

"Potter is."

Blaise pauses. He doesn't like that someone has been watching him closely enough to figure out his friendship with Longbottom is mostly feigned for Harry's sake, but more than that, he hates the feeling that he had enough telltales visible for someone to figure that out.

He shakes it off. "Whether or not you can believe what's convenient at the time, your father was still one of the Dark Lord's. It's likely that Harry will go up against the Dark Lord at some point, for Neville's sake." He emphasizes the name, and enjoys what's an uncertain flicker in Nott's eyes for a moment. "And I'll be dragged with him. That means that we can't trust someone who has close ties to a Death Eater."

"I am not my father."

Nott's voice is so low and passionate and full of hissing that Blaise could believe, for a moment, that he speaks Parseltongue. He ends up snorting, though, and letting his hands fall open. "But you live with him, and he could spy on what you're doing."

Nott's eyes widen for a moment, although Blaise doesn't know what he's said that's so interesting. Then he cackles aloud, and turns and strides towards the middle of the common room. A group of second-years flinches back from him.

Blaise shakes his head and returns to reading one of the books about defensive spells Mother set him. She taught him long ago never to ally with, or go up against, someone he can't understand, and he doesn't understand Nott.

Unless, like his beliefs, his goals are whatever's convenient.

"Stay after class, please, Mr. Potter."

Harry bites his lip and turns back around from where he was gathering up his books. Professor McGonagall sounds—tired. All of the professors sort of sound that way since the Heir of Slytherin Petrified Mrs. Norris, given that they're doing extra patrols and trying to find the Heir, but she sounds tired about him.

"Okay, Professor."

Anthony leans towards him and hisses, "What's wrong? I think that you did better today than usual."

"Yeah." Harry managed to Transfigure a mouse into a goblet with whiskers. That's better than he can manage half the time.

"Do you want us to stay?" Padma asks.

"I don't think she'd talk to me if you're here." Harry musters a smile, aware that Professor McGonagall's eyes are on them. "I'll be all right, you lot, go on."

"All right," Padma says, frowning at Professor McGonagall. "But we'll be saving a place for you at lunch, and we want to know right away if you're in trouble for something. As absurd as that idea is."

"Thanks, Padma," Harry says, touched. He would expect Blaise or Neville to be this loyal to him, but he didn't think he was that close to his Ravenclaw friends.

Padma nods firmly at him, and Anthony squeezes his shoulder, and they leave. Harry watches them go with a fond smile, but turns back around when Professor McGonagall clears her throat. She hates to be kept waiting.

The professor looks pained when Harry turns to her. She swishes her wand, cleaning off some mouse droppings from the edge of the desk, and says, "I want you to know that this was not my first choice, Mr. Potter."

Harry narrows his eyes a little. "All right, Professor. Can you tell me what's going on? I'm starting to get a little worried."

Professor McGonagall's smile is tight and strained. She sits down behind her desk and beckons Harry to a position in front of it. Obediently, he goes, trying not to think about what Blaise would say to see him obeying.

"It has become clearer and clearer that you are not where a second-year student should be in Transfiguration." It does sound like Professor McGonagall is picking her words carefully, but Harry's heart still drops as if falling through his chest. "I am afraid I am going to have to hold you back and give you remedial classes, Mr. Potter. This was not my first choice, but you are not improving."

"I did better today than I've done in a while, Professor!"

Harry pauses and bites his lip when he's said that, because it sounds like he's begging. Professor McGonagall, meanwhile, simply shakes her head.

"Skill in Transfiguration normally proceeds in a distinct pattern, Mr. Potter." Professor McGonagall slashes her wand down, and a black line appears on the desk in front of them. Harry stares at it and blinks. The line appears to be carved into the wood and depicts a jagged, wavering pattern that abruptly starts rising towards the far right edge of the desk. "Ups and downs in the first year, sometimes the first few months of the second one. After that, students begin to appear rapidly."

"We're still in the first few months of my second year, though, Professor." It's nearly the end of November.

"But you are not improving as fast as you need to." The professor shakes her head again, eyes bright and so pitying that Harry ends up clenching his hands into fists. "I have no choice but to remove you from the class. You will grow faster with my individual, undivided attention in these evening sessions."

"Doesn't that take a lot of your time, though, professor? Are you sure that this is worth it?"

"No time is too much if it's going to help my students, Mr. Potter, I assure you."

Professor McGonagall gives him a smile that's probably meant to be nice and encourage him to believe that he's in good hands. Harry folds his arms. He's shaking, but he's not even sure what the emotion is, fear or anger or worry.

Artemis hisses something soothing from a pocket, but Harry can't reply to her right now.

"Is there anything else I can do?" he asks, and he knows his voice sounds desperate. "I know my essays are fine, you give me O's on them, and I'm not disrupting the class or saying the spells wrong. I just—it's because I don't have the power, Professor McGonagall. Neither does Gregory Goyle, but you're not kicking him out of the class!"

Professor McGonagall looks at him with pity. "I'm not kicking you out of the class, Mr. Potter. Merely ensuring that you enter a more receptive environment in remedial lessons. And I will not discuss or compare students' academic performances."

"You sort of are, though," Harry says, and points at the figure on her desk.

"My decision is final, Mr. Potter."

Harry trudges out of class feeling as though his world is burning.

"No, Blaise, you can't kill her."

"I didn't say kill her. I said hurt her."

Harry gives him an exhausted smile over their little brazier. Blaise folds his arms and scowls at his best friend. Harry has been like this since McGonagall told him he has to take remedial Transfiguration classes, although Blaise didn't know the cause as to why Harry was drooping around the Great Hall until now.

"You can't hurt her, either."

"Can't I?"

Harry looks up from where he's been watching Artemis twine through his fingers. "You can," he says. "You have the ability. But I'm asking you not to. She doesn't deserve to suffer like Quirrell did."

"They both hurt you," Blaise mutters, but he's calming down, and he knows that Harry is right. There's also the fact that he feels—well, flattered. Harry believes Blaise could cause suffering to McGonagall that's equivalent to what Mother did to Quirrell.

It crosses Blaise's mind that Harry might be flattering him on purpose to get him to let McGonagall alone, but honestly, fair.

"It's not the same thing. McGonagall is really coming from a place of concern, I think. She sees me struggling and doesn't know why, so she thinks that I need more individual attention."

"Did you tell her it was lack of power, not skill?"

"I did, and I said that she wasn't giving Goyle remedial Transfiguration lessons, and she said she wasn't going to compare students' academic performances."

"Wait, did you say remedial Transfiguration lessons?"

Harry eyes him strangely. "Yes, Blaise. That's what I've been upset about since the beginning of the conversation, you remember—"

"No, you said that she thought you needed more individualized attention and she was removing you from the regular classes."

"What did you think she was going to do, have a party with me? I thought Slytherin taught you lot inference and implication without having to have it stated outright most of the time—"

"Harry. Listen to me."

Harry utters a long-suffering sigh, but he does shut up and nod. Blaise leans forwards with a smile. "Professors at Hogwarts can teach their regular classes the way they want, most of the time, but for remedial lessons, they need permission from a parent. I know for a fact that Crabbe tried to get Snape to teach him remedial Potions, but his father refused to sign the permission form."

"So you think—"

"Yeah, she thought that she didn't need to worry about the form because your parents are dead. But she doesn't know about my mother."

Harry begins to smile in a way that makes Blaise's heart beat harder. He never thought he would find a friend this good, and let alone someone who both understands and embraces Blaise's darkest tendencies.

It's a miracle, is what it is, and never mind what his mother might say.

"It is tedious, Professor Dumbledore, to continually come to Hogwarts because you have interfered with the learning of my foster son."

Aradia watches, entertained, as the Headmaster struggles with that one for a moment. In this case, it was not his fault. But to say so would be to betray the Head of Gryffindor House and someone who was his protégé when it came to Transfiguration.

In truth, Aradia is most entertained by the expression on the Headmaster's face, but she also enjoys the disgruntled looks that Minerva McGonagall keeps giving her.

"Mr. Potter needs remedial Transfiguration lessons," McGonagall says, when the Headmaster has remained silent for longer than is polite, or normal, or necessary.

"Then you could have told him that, and he could have contacted me. You made no effort to find out who his guardians were—and I know that students' aunts and uncles and the like have signed off on this form before. Why not simply ask him who his guardians were?"

"He has no guardians!"

Aradia sits up. Oh, this is interesting. "His parents are dead, of course, as most of the British magical world knows. But to say so confidently that he has no guardians? Why is that, professor?"

McGonagall flushes and flinches and glances at Albus. Obvious. If Aradia ran Hogwarts, she would demand better of the people she hired to teach.

Perhaps it is just as well that she doesn't.

"Please do tell me," Aradia invites McGonagall courteously when more seconds have passed in silence.

"I—know that Mr. Potter grew up with Muggles," McGonagall says, and folds her arms as if she thinks she can intimidate Aradia that way. Aradia gives her a tolerant smile. "And the worst sort of Muggles. They hate magic. They would not have granted him permission for remedial Transfiguration classes. Thus, I had to place him there on my own."

"Please tell me how you know that, Professor."

"Minerva."

Albus speaks quietly, but with a thrum of power to her voice that reminds Aradia who she is dealing with, and who the real power behind the throne is. She turns to Albus with a smile that she doesn't think disguises her hatred. But Albus, like so many people down the years, looks at her and ignores that hatred, or thinks it makes her a toddler and no worse.

They don't know what hatred can do. They might understand righteous anger, but they discount any emotion darker than that as the kind more likely to recoil on the person wielding it.

Aradia is glad for their misunderstanding. It will make their end all the sweeter.

"Minerva was there the day I placed Mr. Potter with his Muggle relatives." Albus speaks precisely, his hands folded on the desk in front of them, and Aradia will give him credit for this, at least his eyes are on hers and he appears ready to strike if she goes for her wand. "There was nowhere else for him to go."

"Indeed? Harry has spoken of his godfather."

"Then you will also know that I sent Sirius Black, and James Potter's other surviving best friend, Remus Lupin, on a hunt for powerful artifacts that I expect will prevent the return of Voldemort." McGonagall flinches. "You can blame me if you wish, Mrs. Zabini. But I also did not tell Minerva that Harry had become your foster son. You should blame me for that as well."

Aradia sighs a little. "As it happens, I might agree that Harry needs remedial Transfiguration lessons. But I insist on the form being signed so that all is done properly according to procedure."

"I was unaware that official guardianship papers had been filed, Mrs. Zabini."

"Given that you were totally prepared to give Harry remedial classes without them, I find it hypocritical of you to demand them now, Professor McGonagall."

McGonagall hesitates. Then she says, "May we speak with Harry together, and see what he says?"

"Yes, I can send him a note to come to my office—"

"Not in your presence, Headmaster."

Albus's eyes widen. Aradia enjoys the sight. "You surely cannot think that I would want to hurt Mr. Potter?"

"You have already questioned him as if he were a criminal and left him with abusive Muggles for ten years. I would say that you have done enough, Headmaster."

McGonagall swallows air so hard that she chokes. Aradia stands, letting her robes fall in neat folds about her, and smiles at McGonagall. "Shall we adjourn to your office and ask Harry to join us there?"

"You are making a mistake, Mrs. Zabini. We should all be allied in the fight against Voldemort, and he has taken enough of an interest in Harry that I believe he will return to try and hurt him again."

"You were the one who let Quirrell back into this school," Aradia tells him softly over her shoulder. "And if Harry does not want to be part of this war, he will not be."

In truth, Aradia suspects she and Harry and Blaise will all be caught up in it, because of her need to make Voldemort pay for what he nearly did and because of Harry's friendship with Neville Longbottom. But it is worth it, as they step out the office door, to see the look on Albus's face.

"You can understand why I want you to take remedial Transfiguration classes, Mr. Potter. And your foster mother agrees with me."

Harry shoots a betrayed look at Aradia. She continues to sit in the chair beside him with a pleased look on her face, hands folded in her lap. They're in Professor McGonagall's office, and the professor is sitting behind her desk and looks stern, the way she always does.

But she's not the decision-making presence here, and Harry knows it.

He tries speaking directly to Aradia. "It's just—you know that it isn't going to make a difference, Mrs. Zabini. It's power levels, not skill levels. I can practice Transfiguration all day long and get a little better, but I'll never be a prodigy."

"I do believe your father was a prodigy, Mr. Potter."

"I'm sorry, professor, but I don't know anything about my parents."

Professor McGonagall looks as if someone has force-fed her lemons. "Mr. Potter…"

"If you will improve with practice over time, then the remedial classes will help you," Aradia says. "It's extra practice, after all, Harry. And you know Professor McGonagall will give you her undivided attention."

Harry tries to say with his eyes That's what I'm afraid of. It's not even the humiliation of needing to have remedial classes. It's that if he spends time around the professor, she'll discover Artemis.

Aradia looks back at him with calm, merciless eyes. Harry has to give in with bad grace. She wants him to do this for some reason, and so he'll do it.

He just hopes she explains, eventually.

"All right."

"Excellent, Mr. Potter. If you could sign here, Mrs. Zabini…"

They walk down towards the Apparition point afterwards, with Blaise on Aradia's other side. He's the one who asks the question. Harry is too busy burning with resentment, and knows it, to ask in a polite way. "Was that totally necessary, Mother?"

"Yes. Harry, think about it."

"I have been thinking about it. I'm not a strong wizard. Nothing will change that!"

"The better you get at Transfiguration, the better you will get at combining that kind of magic with the magic that lets you create living beings."

Harry's eyes widen. That's not something that occurred to him, and he has to admit that he's not sure she's right, but it's at least intriguing. And he has got better at some of the Charms and Defense spells that he's learned because of constant practice.

"You're sure?" he asks, looking up at Aradia and ignoring Blaise's little gasp. He supposes not many people question Aradia. But he has to know.

Aradia reaches out and gently presses her hands on his shoulders. "I'm sure, Harry. You will grow stronger, and that will both keep you safer and help you make sure that our family is safer."

Harry slowly nods his acceptance. Now that the initial moment of humiliation of Professor McGonagall telling him he needs remedial Transfiguration is past, he has to admit that he likes it that Aradia—cares about this kind of thing.

Even if it's because of future violent things he can do.

As long as those violent things are aimed at the right people, though, Harry doesn't mind.

"Okay," he says.

Aradia smiles and touches his shoulder, then walks to the Apparition point and vanishes with a crack. Harry turns to Blaise, who is giving him an extremely skeptical look.

"I love Mother, but she's not always right."

"We're going to at least try it and see, right?"

Blaise gives in enough to smile at him. "Yes, we are."

Harry walks back to Hogwarts, heart much lighter than before. As long as he's with Blaise, he feels like he can do anything.