Chapter Five of 'The Onyx in Radiance'- Consequences Befallen

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Five—Consequences Befallen

With almost the last of the money that had been in his pockets, Harry took a room at the Leaky Cauldron. Then he lay back with his arms folded behind his head and stared at the ceiling half the night, trying not to despair.

He was on his own. That was painfully obvious. No matter what he might say to Dumbledore, the man saw him as a neglected child who had delusions about traveling in time because he was trying to make himself feel special.

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath as he forced away the shrieking indignation in the back of his mind. This Dumbledore wasn’t the helpful man Harry had wanted him to be, but he also wasn’t the Dumbledore who had just told Harry about the prophecy a month ago. Harry would have to accept that he was no help and move on.

What do I do?

Harry grimaced and rolled over on his side. He had to do something to earn money, first thing. And he couldn’t really think of a way to do that legally, not when Diagon Alley was full of adults who would have their NEWTS or at least their OWLS. Harry had taken his own OWLS, but it wasn’t like he had any record of that or even what his scores had been.

So. He would go to Knockturn Alley. He would look for a position in a—a shop or something. There were probably people in Knockturn who would welcome someone who could use a wand. Harry knew that hags couldn’t, legally. He wasn’t sure about vampires and werewolves and others who lived in Knockturn Alley, but he didn’t think so.

If the laws are even the same here as they were fifty years in the future.

Harry swallowed back despair and shook his head a little. If he just decided everything was different and he had no chance, he might as well give up and die. He would do everything he could to fight his way to some kind of survival.

He went to sleep and dreamed about his friends, and Hedwig, and his own Dumbledore. The world he had left behind. He woke up with an ache in both his chest and his eyes.

He would have to find a way to survive first, but second would come finding a way back to them. He couldn’t just leave them there.

*

“Black, can I talk to you for a moment?”

That’s Harry, right before their Defense class begins. Orion considers his last name a bad sign, but it isn’t like he can refuse. He turns with a small smile. “All right. Do you want to go into the corridor?”

“No. Merrythought’ll be here any second.” Harry waves his wand and raises some wordless Privacy Charms around them. Then he turns to Orion and glares so hard that Orion flinches before he can stop himself.

“What exactly did you think you were doing, going and talking to Charlus Potter like that?” Harry snaps. His hands are clenched around his wand and the edge of his desk, but what concerns Orion more is his magic, boiling around him hard enough to make the air shimmer like hot water.

“I—I wanted to know more about your family, and force them to acknowledge you.”

It’s more honest than Orion thought he would be, but it’s that which seems to appease Harry. He leans back in his chair and stares at Orion in silence. Then he says, “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously! You deserve to have—”

“At the moment, all I have are rumors! Rumors that are swirling around about how I was abused in my childhood.”

Orion winces. “I, ah.” He forgot that those rumors would embarrass Harry and could prove a hindrance to the growth of his power in Slytherin as well as embarrassing the Potters.

“Well?”

It’s strange, Orion muses to himself. Of course his fear of Riddle has hurt him in the past, gliding in like a hurled glass knife to cut through his self-confidence in a dozen places, but it hurts less than the disappointment in Harry’s glare now.

“I forgot that you might not want that known,” Orion whispers. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to make the Potters acknowledge what their neglect did to you.”

Harry exhales explosively and runs his hand through his hair. At least his anger is melting away, and Orion doesn’t feel as if he’s cursed a unicorn anymore. “I just want to know how you knew. You couldn’t have heard any rumors about it before now, because there were none.”

Orion stares at him. “I mean…you had to have Professor Dumbledore buy things for you, instead of having the money that the Potter family does. And you’re small. You didn’t get to eat enough. And some of your reactions make it obvious that you grew up around people who treated you—less than well.”

“You see that, huh?”

“I mean, yes?” Orion hates babbling like an idiot, but he has to say this, even though Professor Merrythought has walked into the room and is giving Orion suspicious glances, probably because she can see him sitting next to a Potter who might be his next innocent victim. “It’s obvious.”

Harry rolls his eyes and takes down the Privacy Charm. “No, it isn’t,” he mutters under his breath.

“Yes, it is!”

Harry opens his mouth, but Orion has spoken too loudly, and now Professor Merrythought is turning towards him. “You had a thought on the lesson to share, Mr. Black?”

Orion sits up and says calmly, “I think that the essay we did was a waste of time, Professor.”

That draws gasps from around him. Merrythought isn’t generally someone who’s biased either for or against Slytherins, which makes her distinctly different from Dumbledore, and she’s a competent if uninspired teacher. That means that Slytherins generally try to show her respect in her classes.

And now everyone is staring at Orion as if he deposited a pile of feces in the middle of the common room.

Orion thinks briefly of doing exactly that, so he can compare these expressions to the ones he’ll get when he actually does it, and then shoves the thought away from him. Harry is being a bad influence on him, clearly.

“I—why, Mr. Black?” Merrythought seems so flustered that she’s willing to let him explain.

Orion sits up and glances around the classroom. Riddle’s eyes are hot and angry on him from one corner. Abraxas and Walburga are watching him with fascination. Druella Rosier is only pretending to look down at her nails.

And Harry is staring at him as if Orion deposited that pile of feces in the common room and then rolled in it.

Surprisingly, that gives him the courage to go on. Orion turns back to Professor Merrythought, smiles, and asks, “Why should we spend time writing an essay about illegal spells that we aren’t allowed to use, Professor? Wouldn’t it be better if we learned the countercurses to those spells? Then at least we would be using our wands.”

Riddle stares at Orion in turn. That’s the kind of thing he might say, although of course much more charmingly phrased to make the professor slobber over and believe in him.

(Most of the time, at least. Orion has noticed that for the last several months, Riddle has become more and erratic, and his charm doesn’t work for him all the time with other Slytherins, never mind the professors).

“Well, there is something to be said for that, Mr. Black,” Merrythought says, more calmly this time. “But I wish you to know about the illegal spells so that you might recognize when one of them is illegal to cast, and you should pull back your studies to stay within the limits of the law. I know that attraction to the Dark Arts has ruined more than one promising student I had…”

Orion leans back in his chair, satisfied and relieved to have escaped without detention, and glances back at Harry. Harry just shakes his head at Orion and starts writing down some of what Merrythought is saying.

“It is obvious,” Orion finally dares hiss out of the corner of his mouth when Merrythought is poking Walburga about the Dark Arts books that the Black library supposedly holds. (Well, it does. But Walburga doesn’t have access to that library and wouldn’t know).

“Why did no one ever notice it before, then?”

Orion opens his mouth, and finds that he has nothing to say. Harry glares once at him, as if enjoying Orion’s consternation, and then answers Merrythought’s next question, which is about the legal penalties for some particular Dark Arts spells.

Orion sits back with his mouth closed and his head whirling again. He has a lot to think about.

*

“I apologized to Charlus. Now I want you to do it, too.”

Harry didn’t wait long after Defense was over before bringing this up again. Orion sighs and turns to face him. Harry is glaring at him with his arms folded. They’re not far from the Transfiguration classroom, but in a little alcove shielded by a tapestry, which at least means no one is around to gape at them. Orion would probably hex anyone who did.

“I only spoke the truth!”

“They didn’t neglect me. They didn’t abuse me. I keep telling you that I’m not related to the Potter family here, but you won’t believe me. And now you’ve gone and fucked things up with them when I was content to have them ignore me.” Harry scrapes his foot back and forth on the floor. “You’re going to apologize.”

“Fine,” Orion mutters, because if he wants to stay close to Harry, he knows he can’t argue with the look in those fierce green eyes. “But I don’t understand. You look so much like them—and if they didn’t abuse you, who did?”

Harry sighs and takes off his glasses for a second to rub his face. Orion wishes that he had the right already to reach out and gently trace Harry’s cheekbones, or offer a Headache Draught and have it accepted. Well, he might have the second one, but it’s the first he wants. “It really doesn’t matter, Orion.”

“Of course it does!”

“Why? I promise that I’m able to stand up to Riddle. A childhood being abused by Muggles didn’t weaken me!”

“What?” Orion croaks, and his head spins for the second time in three hours.

Harry seems to realize what he admitted a second later, and grimaces. But he jams his glasses back on his face and folds his arms, too. “Muggles,” he says, calm and clear. “I grew up with Muggles. Yes, they hurt me. No, they don’t matter now. You don’t need to worry about them. I can still stand up to Riddle and protect you.” He hesitates, then adds, “Unless you don’t want a half-blood with a Muggleborn mother defending you.”

Orion just gapes and can say nothing. Harry slowly nods, apparently taking the silence for an answer.

“If you want to end our alliance because I’m not a pureblood—”

“No, that’s not it at all!” Orion says hastily. “I just never—raised by Muggles? Really?” He didn’t guess that at all. Then again, some of Harry’s carelessness and disdain of power hierarchies in Slytherin House might come from being raised by Muggles, he supposes. Orion just thought they were part of his personality.

“Okay,” Harry says, eyeing him. “And yes, I was. My mother’s Muggle sister and her husband.” Harry shrugs as if it doesn’t matter, even though Orion is absorbing every word in hopes of finding them. “They didn’t like magic much, and they didn’t really want to raise me after my parents died.”

“So your father might have been a Potter?”

Harry’s lips curve. “Maybe. A strong chance, let’s say.”

“So it could still be the fault of the Potters that—”

“No, Orion. It isn’t my parents’ fault that they died. And I never knew any of my father’s relatives. Until I discovered I was a wizard when I was elven, I had no idea about this world at all, or that there might be more magical people named Potter out there.” Harry folds his arms and glares. “I want you to leave this alone. And apologize to Charlus.”

And there it is. A direct request. An order, in a way. And Orion is subdued and awed by what he’s learned, and resisting doesn’t seem like a good idea to him, in any case.

He nods. “I’ll apologize to Charlus in the morning. Do you want to come with me to make sure that I’ve done it?”

“Merlin, no!” Harry looks a little appalled. “I trust you.”

Orion tries to tuck away his confusing feelings, including the flattery, to deal with later, but he thinks something shows on his face, because Harry abruptly turns crimson and begins talking about the spells Merrythought mentioned in an obvious distraction tactic all the way back to the common room.

Orion has thought of something else, though. Something that will fulfill Harry’s strictures and at the same time show anyone paying attention how highly Harry is valued.

*

So, the next morning, Orion waits until most of the Gryffindors and Slytherins are in the Great Hall for breakfast, and stands up and saunters over to the Gryffindor table.

Conversation dies at once. The only times that any Slytherin goes over there is to visit a Gryffindor sibling, and there are only two people in Orion’s House who qualify. He’s definitely not one of them.

Suspicious eyes focus on him as Orion bows his head to Charlus Potter and murmurs, “I’m sorry for our confrontation earlier in the week. It was wrong of me.”

Potter gapes at him for a second, then sneers. “You think I’m going to believe your apology, Black?”

“Yes,” Orion says, gazing at him serenely. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Harry staring at him, and his expression is not serene. Orion turns away with a little smile and focuses on the Gryffindor Potter. “You see, I made a little speech in the corridor about my feelings towards your family rejecting, as I saw it, my friend and fellow Slytherin, Harry Potter. It’s been brought to my attention that I was wrong, and your family didn’t abuse or neglect him. So I’m admitting in public that I’m wrong, and that means you’ll know I’m not lying.”

“Ah.” Potter draws himself upwards and puffs out his chest a little. “Apology accepted, Black.”

“Good.” Orion winks at him a little. “In a way, it’s a relief.”

That’s a leading line that a Slytherin would know to leave alone, but Potter falls for it immediately. “Why’s that?”

“It means that I was wrong about your family committing crimes against my friend, but right about the stupidity that appears to run in your line,” Orion says, smiling at Potter as he splutters. “Any pureblood family worthy of the name would have snapped up someone this impressive immediately. That you decided not to…” He shrugs a little. “I suppose you can’t be blamed for something that’s a hereditary trait, but still. Disappointing.”

He pauses a moment, watching the expressions chase themselves across Potter’s face, and then adds, “And it proves that Harry really is no relation of yours.”

Potter’s still staring at him as Orion saunters back across the Great Hall. He’s aware of a burning gaze from Riddle’s direction, but he sees no reason to meet it. He just publicly and openly declared his allegiance to Harry.

But then again, isn’t that part of what Riddle wanted? For Orion to get close enough to Harry to learn his secrets. Riddle’s dropped a few hints about it in the last days since the Parseltongue incident in the common room. Orion should learn all about how and why Harry is a Parselmouth and tell him as soon as possible.

Orion catches sight of the thundercloud forming on Harry’s face, and deliberately turns to come and sit down next to him, although he was sitting between Abraxas and Walburga before this. He leans forwards. “Let me have it,” he murmurs.

“You said that,” Harry says, his eyes brilliant with anger. Orion wonders if he’s aware of the way that his power has splayed out around him like the coils of a snake, or the way that some of the Slytherins who still follow Riddle in truth or try to stay out of the power plays have drawn back from him. Probably not, or he would be mortified. “Why in the world—”

“I had to know something.”

“What did you have to know, for Merlin’s sake?”

“If I could do something like that,” Orion says, staring Harry squarely in the face, “and you could refrain from cursing me.”

“Of course I wasn’t going to—”

Orion raises one pointed eyebrow. Harry might not know everything that Orion’s had to endure in the past six years, but he should be able to figure this part out.

And sure enough, Harry’s mouth shuts, and he frowns, and his eyes flicker to Riddle for a second. Then he nods, short and hard, and leans back with his arms wrapped around his middle and his eyes trained on Orion.

“You wanted to show me that you have a mind of your own and you aren’t going to just be a good little follower,” he says.

Orion swallows to hear it put so bluntly, and he nods.

“You wanted to know if I would get upset at you doing the apology, but in your own way, and slipping in another insult.”

Orion nods again.

“And you wanted to know if I would get upset about you praising me in public, and making it obvious why you—made the choices you did.”

Orion nods one more time, transfixed by the way that Harry is staring at him, eyes clear, anger suspended like a lacewing in the middle of a Shrinking Solution.

“So,” Harry says, and smiles. It’s the most sweetly terrifying thing Orion has ever seen. “This is my reaction. I’m not going to ask you to offer another apology, because frankly that’s useless. And the kinds of things you said are probably going to be more useful in the war with Riddle than not.”

War, Orion thinks wonderingly.

“But I do have to react. And your punishment is that I’m not going to speak to you for three days, so next time you decide to insult someone when I’ve asked you to apologize you can think about the consequences.” Harry promptly snatches the only thing left on his plate, a crisp red apple, stands up, nods at Orion, and strides away from the table through the doors of the Great Hall.

Orion shivers, eyes on Harry’s straight shoulders, on the way his robes flow around him, on how his arse moves under those robes.

He really does have a magnificent lord. And will have a magnificent husband.