lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirteen.

Part One.

Title: A Door Into Hope (14/?)
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 Fourteen—Enemies and Friends

Narcissa frowned at the letter she had received back. She understood the value of moving slowly, of course, especially in cases like this one where revealing her ally to their enemies would be disastrous. But she was becoming dissatisfied at the lack of progress her ally had made.

Please understand. I can’t influence him to move too fast. He’s heard me express my true feelings sometimes, but he always assumed they were jokes or that I was frustrated. I have to nudge him in the right direction without making it obvious how much I believe the hierarchy should stay the same.

Which was all very well, Narcissa thought as she tossed the letter into the fire, but the only change she had seen so far was her ally’s husband forwarding Potter’s agenda. She might well have to choose someone who was positioned to move more daringly.

Venus rumbled inquiringly next to her. Narcissa let her hand dangle, and her familiar rubbed her head against it.

“Politics takes too much of my time, and too much time altogether,” Narcissa murmured, staring into the fire. “I think I shall tell my ally that I require some other proof of her—devotion.”

*

Harry slowed his steps. He’d left Professor Quirrell’s office a short time ago and was now walking back towards the Hufflepuff common room, but he thought there was someone behind him. Golden had remained alert without turning around, but now he did turn his head in that direction and pause.

“Someone’s there?” Harry whispered.

Golden bobbed his head once. Harry swallowed and reminded himself that he could do this, that he was all right and anyone who attacked him would end up paying for it. But his hands were still shaking as he called down the corridor, “My familiar senses you. Are you going to come out and talk to me?”

Silence. But Golden’s head was swinging slowly as though tracking something small next to the floor, which screamed “rodent familiar” to Harry.

The problem was, the only people he knew with rodent familiars wouldn’t be waiting in dark corridors to attack him.

Harry palmed his wand and thought as hard as he could of the Lumos Charm. Professor Quirrell had told them all the other day that even ordinary spells could turn into strong defenses if they had extra power and imagination put into them. When Harry’s whole mind was blazing, he snapped his wand up and called, “Lumos!”

The light that filled the corridor from end to end made someone shriek, although not in a voice Harry recognized. He heard the small pattering sounds of paws running away, and then Golden lunged and the paws stopped.

“Golden!” Harry chose Parseltongue without even thinking about it. “Please tell me that you did not eat someone else’s familiar!”

“I merely grabbed the small mouse so that he could not run away.” Golden slithered back to him, jaws held high but arranged so that they were more like a cage around a small, shivering copper mouse familiar. “I have smelled him before in the corridors, but I do not think that this is someone who was in classes with us.”

Harry peered down the corridor. “And you didn’t see or smell anyone human?”

“Someone ran away.” Golden blinked apologetically. “I was more interested in capturing the familiar.”

“It’s all right. It’s not your fault.” Harry looked at the mouse shivering in Golden’s jaws and hesitated. “Can you talk to him? Or is that something we shouldn’t do since he’s probably terrified of you?”

There was a long pause. Golden lowered his head, and Harry watched as his jaws parted. The mouse didn’t try to run, but sat quivering on the floor, staring ahead with glazed eyes. Harry winced. They really must have scared the poor thing.

“I cannot talk to him.”

Harry nodded. “Because we scared him and frightened away his wizard?”

“No.” Golden hesitated for a long time, and Harry looked up at him. Golden looped his neck gently around Harry’s arm. “The sense of a soul, of someone who can speak back to me from within another familiar’s body, is—not there. It is as if he is simply a pocket of air wrapped in fur who can walk and run and make noise.”

“You mean—he’s like an ordinary animal?” Although Harry felt sure the other wizard was gone, he followed Golden’s lead and kept speaking in Parseltongue.

“No. Even animals have that spark in them that makes them who they are and means they are not identical.” Golden lifted his head and met Harry’s eyes with ones that were, at the moment, as green as his own. “This mouse has no spark. It is like talking to a knife.”

Harry swallowed roughly and stared at the terrified mouse. He hadn’t tried to run away yet, which Harry was certain almost any other familiar would have after being stuck in a giant snake’s mouth for a few minutes. He reached out and put his hand in front of the mouse, and he still didn’t move. Harry asked quietly after a second, “Do you want to come up?”

The mouse crawled slowly towards him. Harry found himself watching the little creature. He kept thinking he would suddenly start moving stiffly, like a toy. But as far as Harry could make out, he moved like a normal mouse, and then sat trembling in Harry’s palm.

Harry turned away with a shake of his head. He needed to take the poor mouse to someone, and since Professor McGonagall already had Songleaper hiding in her office, that meant there was really only one choice.

*

Severus closed his eyes and sighed in what despair he could muster.

Then he reached out and took the copper mouse from Harry. The familiar sat inert in his palm, even when Shadowstriker coiled down Severus’s arm to take a good look. That was utterly different from the behavior of every other rodent familiar around serpentine ones that Severus had ever seen. Even some lizard and tortoise familiars got nervous looks from some mice and rats.

“You could not get his name?”

“No, sir.” Harry shook his head with a slight frown. His hand was resting on the arch of Golden’s neck, and he was gently soothing the snake with a back-and-forth motion. Or perhaps it was to soothe himself, Severus thought, since Golden seemed perfectly calm. Harry was the one who found it hard to look away from the copper mouse, apparently. “Golden said that trying to talk to him was like trying to talk to a knife.”

Shadowstriker hissed something abruptly. Golden looked up and hissed back. Severus concealed the jealousy that someone else could understand his own familiar and asked, “What did he say?”

“That the mouse doesn’t smell right either, sir. You didn’t notice that, Golden?” Severus had to smile slightly at the indignant tone to Golden’s reply. Harry looked up. “He says he does now. He says the mouse smells like an object. Like something that was never alive.”

Severus closed his eyes for a second. Yes, then the books on the Forbidden Arts he had read long ago were relevant now. “I fear that I do know what is going on.”

“What’s that, sir?”

Severus motioned for Harry to take the chair opposite him, and set the mouse gently on the table, then cast a spell that would cover the thing—it was hard to think of the mouse as an animal—in a cone of silence. He turned back to Harry and said softly, “There is a series of spells and rituals by which one can make artificial familiars. By taking a true familiar and cutting bits and pieces of the—the soul off, then—”

Severus stopped himself abruptly. Golden had slid past Harry and reared up in front of Severus. His tongue was darting out, and Severus thought he had never realized how big an anaconda could be when he wasn’t crawling on the floor. His hiss this time was sharp.

“He wants to know how you know that, sir.”

Severus pulled his left sleeve up slowly, baring his Dark Mark without looking away from Golden. He still felt the burn of old shame. But he had sworn his oath to Harry, and that meant he had nothing to hide now. “Because those Forbidden Arts books were common among the Death Eaters. I never met a familiar who I suspected had been made that way. Voldemort tended to look among the silver- and bronze-born for his followers, and apparently it was hard to make an artificial familiar of a level above copper. But the books were there, and that kind of knowledge was something I was expected to have and be comfortable with.”

Golden hissed something else. Harry listened with his head on the side, and nodded. “All right, sir. He wants to know if you would ever use that knowledge now.”

“Never.” Severus kept his eyes fixed on Golden’s brilliant ones. “I regret that I ever studied it. But I cannot regret the knowledge itself, since it may help us resolve this situation.”

Golden continued to eye him for a moment more, then dropped back to his belly and returned to Harry’s side. Severus found himself breathing out harshly. He hadn’t expected that, and he wondered for a moment if it was Golden’s size, his power, or the expected reverence that wizards were trained to have for golden familiars that had made him react that way.

“Sorry, sir. Golden gets overwhelming sometimes.”

“I know,” Severus said quietly. He cast a glance at the mouse on the table. It simply stood there, tail lying behind it and eyes vacant. “Well. This is at least something where I know what we are facing. And I would give a piece of my own soul to stop it.” His hand rose to trace the scales that ran down Shadowstriker’s back.

“You wouldn’t really, would you, sir?”

And then sometimes he had to remember that Harry was an eleven-year-old boy, and an incredibly earnest one. Severus shook his head and smiled a little at Harry. “I would not.” He reached out and picked up the mouse again. Once again, the button-like eyes stared past him. “I wonder if we will see the wizard who belongs to this mouse search for it, after all.”

“Why wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t it be noticeable if he didn’t have his familiar with him?”

“Noticeable, perhaps. But he could claim that the familiar was sick for a few days. And I am afraid…” Severus let his voice trail off, but both Harry and Golden’s gazes demanded he continue. “I am afraid that rather than try to find one who he must suspect has been seized by us, he might simply create another one.”

Golden uttered a single noise that struck the walls and floors like a bell. Severus stared. He had never heard any familiar, even one with the form of an elephant or dolphin, utter a sound like that. Harry didn’t seem as caught by surprise, but he reached out and put a hand on Golden’s head.

“You’re right, Golden. We have to keep them from doing that.”

Severus looked sharply at Harry. “We have no idea who the wizard or witch is who has this familiar.”

“But we know they must be related to the Medwyns.” Harry looked as hard as Golden in that moment, as ready to strike and demand answers. “I know that Draco has the genealogy of practically all the pure-blood families memorized. He can tell me if someone is related to the Medwyns or is a Medwyn.”

“That could compel him to defy his parents.”

“He keeps asking me how he can help, sir. I think he’s already there.”

Seveurs closed his eyes. That was news to him, and unwelcome news. Harry’s guardian, Augusta Longbottom, might simply go along with what he proposed. She seemed likely to be in awe of her new ward, from what little Harry had told Severus. But Draco had powerful parents who were already angry because their son was inclined to follow something other than the teachings they had tried to put in place for him.

“You don’t think we should do this, sir?”

“I advise you to consider the families of your friends,” Severus said carefully. “If Draco’s parents are unhappy with what you are doing and what you are influencing their son to do, they could harm you.”

“What about Draco?”

“They could harm him, too. And they might cause him greater danger than they would you, since he is in their house often and they could reach him more easily.”

There was a long silence. Severus finally looked again, because he had no idea what Harry was doing in that silence or what expression he was wearing.

Harry was studying him with a difficult, closed expression. Severus had honestly never seen the boy’s face that hard to read since he’d sworn to him. “Do you think Draco’s parents hurt him the way Neville’s gran used to hurt him?” he asked.

Severus started. “Do you mean that Augusta Longbottom abused Neville?”

“She always compared him to his father, sir. She was so upset about his parents that she made him use his father’s old wand and told him that his familiar wasn’t worth anything because Trevor is a toad. Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy do the same thing to Draco?”

“No,” Severus said. “They would never do such a thing. But they might use spells on Draco that can subtly influence the mind in order to make him do as they like. Or they might restrict the money he can spend, or forbid him to associate with you.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Then I won’t put Draco in danger. I’ll do research on the Medwyns myself. Will you help me, sir?”

Severus rolled his eyes. “I suppose that I can’t convince you to leave this alone.”

“No. Of course not. Someone is going around cutting up familiars and using parts of them to make others, sir. We can’t let them get away with that.”

Severus had known it would end like that, so he didn’t even know why he had protested. He sighed a little. “Very well. I will help you watch for someone without a familiar and research the genealogy of the Medwyns. But I want you to promise, in return, that you will remain close to Golden and not hesitate to use the magic that Professor Quirrell taught you.”

“I promise, sir.”

Harry’s face was so full of shining hope that Severus he knew he would have promised far worse to see it. He shook his head a little as he as watched Harry and Golden begin to talk about the plans they had for tracking down the wizard whose familiar they had more or less kidnapped.

Severus’s gaze went back to the blank-eyed mouse. He shuddered, and felt Shadowstriker echo the motion with a ripple of his sinuous body.

In truth, Severus thought this as much of a crime as Harry did. He had simply been less sure it was his place to interfere.

But he would protect Harry, and enjoy the rare feeling of doing justice at the same time.