[Children of the Sun]: A Door Into Hope, gen, PG-13, 3/?

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Two.

Part One.

Title: A Door Into Hope (3/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None among main characters, background Lucius/Narcissa and Arthur/Molly
Content Notes: AU, angst, some violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry is mustering more and more support for the changes he wants to make in the wizarding world as he returns to Hogwarts after his first Christmas holiday. But as some people begin to believe he can make those changes, others see him as a threat.
Author’s Notes: This takes place in my Children of the Sun series after “The Secrets of Longbottom Manor.”

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Stealing Familiars

Harry went to his breakfast still thinking about Songleaper. Neville and Cedric both tried to talk to him, but Harry just smiled at them and went back to eating and thinking. Golden watched steadily from beside his chair, but there were no eggs this morning, and Golden curled up and sulked.

“Are you okay, Harry?”

Harry started and looked up at his foster brother. “Sure, Neville. I just learned something about familiars today that I need to think about.”

“Oh.” Neville turned quietly back to his own breakfast. Harry knew why. They couldn’t really speak openly of listening to familiars and encouraging them to change the hierarchy in the Great Hall. Harry patted Neville’s shoulder and left to be sure that he was on time for their first class, Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Professor Quirrell was already in the classroom when Harry wandered in. He looked up at Harry and nodded. He was still really pale, but he looked better than he had when Voldemort was possessing him. “What can I do for you, Mr. Potter?”

“I want to ask you some questions, sir. But I don’t want them to be insensitive. They might be.”

“Are they about my possession?”

“How did you know, sir?”

“There are very few other sensitive subjects that I think you might want to talk about, Mr. Potter.” Professor Quirrell laid aside the book on his desk and gave Harry his full attention. “Go ahead and ask. I’ll tell you if I don’t want to answer something, but there’s not much I would be willing to keep from you.”

Harry nibbled his lip. “Okay, sir. What—what was the possession like for you feeling your familiar? I mean, could you still feel and speak with her like normal, or did she seem far away?”

Professor Quirrell blinked a little. “When I felt more like myself, then it was as if she was on the other side of a wall. Our connection was distant, but it was there. When I was—when Voldemort possessed me most strongly, I felt a strong connection, but it was with his familiar, Nagini, the one possessing Alanna.”

Alanna hopped up in Professor Quirrell’s lap as Harry watched and huddled close to him. Harry smiled at her. “I’m sorry I have to discuss this when you’re right here, but it’s important.”

“She won’t mind.” Professor Quirrell had a weird expression on his face, though, like he minded. Harry hurried to ask questions before Professor Quirrell decided it was too weird and stopped him.

“Do you think she could have avoided being possessed? Are people’s familiars usually possessed when they are?”

“I do not know if there has ever been a situation like this,” Professor Quirrell whispered, and it sounded like he was talking more to Alanna than Harry. “I do not know of any situation where a wizard has become a wraith like Voldemort became. Or taken his familiar with him instead of having it disappear.”

Harry nodded. He was a little disappointed, but he’d already thought that probably Voldemort would be unique. “If you’d wanted the possession—”

“To a certain extent, I did.”

“I know, sir, but I mean, if you’d really disappeared into it? If you’d wanted it so much that your will became Voldemort’s?”

Professor Quirrell shuddered, and Alanna reared on her hind legs to nuzzle at his cheek. Professor Quirrell sighed and bowed his head so that his face was hidden from Harry’s. “I don’t like to remember how close I came to that. But yes. Say I did.”

“Do you think Alanna could have left you? If she thought you were evil and you would never come back, sir?”

Professor Quirrell looked up again and blinked. Then he looked down at Alanna. Alanna thumped her foot heavily down. Professor Quirrell looked back up.

“The loyalty of familiars is legendary, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looked steadily at him, and Golden reared up next to him. “That’s not an answer to my question, sir.”

Professor Quirrell made a watery sound like a laugh. “Yes, and you are persistent, Mr. Potter. Well. Let us say that I don’t think Alanna could have left me, but that’s because Nagini was possessing her as well. I think that perhaps she might have if I had totally succumbed and somehow she had managed to avoid it, or if she had not been possessed.”

Harry nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Professor Quirrell was the only person he really knew who had suffered something like that and who might have had their familiar walk away. At least he didn’t think it was impossible, the way Professor Snape seemed to think it was. Harry turned around to take his seat.

“Why are you asking this, Mr. Potter?”

“I met a familiar who’s thinking about walking away from his wizard, and I didn’t even know that was possible.”

Professor Quirrell sat up and stared at him. Then he said, “It is not,” in a sharp, decisive voice, at the same time as he reached up to touch the front of his robes. Harry wondered if he was gripping something underneath there. Maybe his wand? “There is no familiar that would walk away from his wizard without—there is none.”

“But this one might, sir. That’s why I wanted to know if you thought Alanna could have left you if she wasn’t possessed.”

Professor Quirrell bent down and smoothed his hand slowly across the middle of Alanna’s back. Alanna shivered and looked up at him with big eyes, Then Professor Quirrell said, “You don’t know what you’re saying, Harry.”

“I’m saying that I think it’s possible,” said Harry, and watched as Professor Quirrell gave a full-body shiver. “Are you all right, sir? Why does the thought upset you so much?”

“Because it is—unnatural.” Professor Quirrell spent a moment licking his lips. Then he said, “Do you know if this familiar’s wizard is possessed?”

“No, I don’t think he is.”

“Then this may be a trap.” Professor Quirrell leaned back in his chair and looked at Harry. He looked weary in the way that he hadn’t since he came out of the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey said he could start teaching again. “Please keep that in mind, Mr. Potter. Perhaps it is not. But I have learned that something that seems tempting and too good to be true always is.”

Harry just nodded, because he wasn’t sure why Professor Quirrell would think that Harry would want familiars to walk away from their wizards, and then took his usual seat in the front row of the classroom. Professor Quirrell went back to stroking Alanna. He didn’t look up again until a few other Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws started coming into the room, and then he stood up and tried to speak cheerfully.

“Hello, class. Today we will be studying the Disarming Charm…”

Golden reared up next to Harry and rested his nose on the tip of his elbow. Harry didn’t look at him, since Professor Quirrell was talking, but stroked the top of his head. It seemed Golden didn’t need anything. He just wanted Harry to know he was there, strong and steady as always.

*

“What am I going to do with you?”

Severus spoke wearily to the tin jackrabbit as he let Shadowstriker down off his arm into the corner by the fire where he usually slept. No one had come up and questioned Severus about anything to do with the jackrabbit; he hadn’t heard any rumors about a familiar leaving his wizard, either, or any hints at who Songleaper’s wizard might be. But the weight had been there all day despite that, as if the top layer of his mind had turned to stone.

Songleaper came hesitantly out of the shadows and sat up to stare at him. His eyes were huge and glistening, and Severus thought that if familiars could cry, he would have. He ended up lowering his head and rubbing his nose gently against Severus’s boot.

“I would not mind so much that you are here if you did not endanger the boy I have sworn to follow and protect,” Severus told the jackrabbit as he walked over to his small kitchen. Songleaper followed anxiously. “But you are here, and I know that Harry would never consent to let you go back to your wizard without doing something to change the situation.”

How was Harry going to change the situation, though? Severus frowned as he poured water for tea. Harry had plans to change the hierarchy, but they were ones that would work best gradually and over time, while this was an immediate situation.

Well, he had contacted Lucius to imply subtly that Harry was a politically naïve child and that Lucius would be best served by pretending to go along with Harry’s plans for now, then seize power in the future and use the “debts” Harry would owe him to get control over him. He couldn’t do more than that for right now.

As if on cue, the fire in his hearth flickered to life. Severus glanced at the green tinge in it and barely held back his swearing. He sat down in the chair that faced the hearth and sipped his tea. “Open,” he told the Floo.

In seconds, it did, and Lucius’s face floated in the flames, next to the lowered head of his wyvern Hecate. “Severus! I did catch you by yourself. I wanted to say that I had the most interesting message from Harry Potter today.”

“Did you?” Severus made sure to keep his face mild and interested, no more.

“Yes.” Lucius almost purred the word, and Severus could see the edge of one hand curl as though Lucius was clutching at an invisible pillow. “Or rather, my wife did. He said that he wasn’t sure of himself, and he needed people to guide him through this new world. It’s what Narcissa had already suspected, but Potter hadn’t come right out and said it before. He needs us. He needs our leadership. And it is much more likely now that Draco will control him instead of follow him, given that he’ll see Potter relying on us for guidance.”

Or he will be Harry’s friend, the way that he and Harry both want it to be. But Severus preserved a bland countenance as he nodded. “That is grand news indeed, Lucius. You will be in a position to influence perhaps the most important and powerful person to enter our world in three generations. Congratulations.”

Lucius gave him a condescending smile that made Severus want to strike out, but he kept his hands in their relaxed position. “Indeed. And we will not forget you, old friend. I promise. When we have risen to the top of the ranks as Harry Potter’s adoptive family, you will have an adjacent position.”

“Adoptive family?” Severus allowed his voice to be delicate. “I was under the impression that Augusta and Neville Longbottom filled that role.”

“For the present, they do.” Lucius flicked his fingers now as if dismissing dust. “But the boy barely knows them. The Longbottom woman made no move to reclaim custody of him even when she knew that he had survived. Why should he spend time with them and consider them family? He will spend more time with Draco soon, he will…”

After that, Severus only bothered to pay attention to the words so that he could revise them in a Pensieve later. He nodded and made the right noises, and realized when Lucius disappeared from the fireplace that his grip had cracked his teacup.

He glanced towards the shadowy corner where Songleaper hid and watched him with a quivering nose and brilliant eyes.

“I still don’t like it that Harry has to intervene to protect you and your wizard,” he told the jackrabbit. “But when I see the nature of the people who are currently in power, neither can I blame him.”