lomonaaeren

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Chapter Five—Understanding

“Do you need to sit down, Harry? Get something to drink or eat? I had the impression you didn’t eat much at breakfast this morning.”

Harry blinked, hard, and looked up at Tom. They were in his office. Harry didn’t even remember the process of getting there. Esmeralda was looped around his feet, and Harry was sitting in a chair he vaguely remembered from the last time he’d come here, in second year.

He had made sure not to get a detention as well as not stand out in class, and especially not to come and talk to the professor. Every precaution he could take, he’d taken, to make sure that Tom wouldn’t remember him, wouldn’t see him as someone worth cultivating or looking into.

That’s all gone, now.

“Harry? Are you in shock?”

Tom’s voice was low and urgent. It shook Harry out of his contemplation, and yeah, maybe he was in shock, from the soft, soothing hisses and advice Esmeralda was giving. Harry trailed one hand across her back and smiled tremulously at Tom. “I’ll be all right. I just—could I get a cup of tea and some treacle tart?”

A second later, he thought how ridiculous he was, to request that as his food, but Tom didn’t seem to find it so. He nodded and stood with a snap of his fingers. A Hogwarts house-elf popped into the room, and Tom gave the order in a low, worried voice, never taking his eyes from Harry. When the elf was gone, he conjured a chair next to him and sat down, wrapping his arm around Harry.

Harry leaned into him and swallowed. The warmth of Tom’s body was creeping through him, and it was as soothing, in its own way, as Esmeralda’s soft voice.

“Have they always been like that with you?” Tom whispered into his hair at last. “Not listening to what you say, condescendingly convinced they knew what was best for you?”

“Not before I got Parseltongue—”

The tray with the food and tea popped up on the desk then. Tom turned Harry’s chair with a wave of his wand, and Harry sighed and grabbed a piece of treacle tart, stuffing it into his mouth. A wave of warmth went through him. He closed his eyes.

Tom’s hand descended on his back, rubbing in circles. Harry chewed and swallowed in silence for a few minutes, and then continued, “They were the best parents I could have asked for when I was a kid. I think they still are to Brian and Angela. This—this is because of their fear of snakes.”

“Ah. Their fears matter more to them than their child.”

Harry turned around to stare at him. “That’s not true!”

“It is if it means they essentially changed themselves as parents to avoid confronting that fear.” Tom reached up and brushed Harry’s fringe back gently. “And I am sorry if you dislike hearing me put it that way, but I dislike what they did to you in Albus’s office.”

Harry lowered his eyes and went back to eating his treacle tart. Tom didn’t move away from him, and Harry leaned more into the warmth, and finally spoke what he was most afraid of as he finished his last sip of tea. “Can I—I can’t really expect them to change their behavior, can I? Not when it’s a phobia. Those aren’t reasonable. They can’t be changed.”

“I don’t believe that,” Tom said quickly. “They could visit Healers to have the memories and fears sequestered. They could do the same with a master Legilimens, and they certainly know one.” Professor Dumbledore, Harry thought. “They could have learned spells that would make any snake you brought into the house harmless, rendered unable to bite, or unable to constrict anything larger than a mouse. They didn’t seek out these solutions because they preferred to remain in mindless fear and force you to change your whole life instead of changing theirs.”

Harry was silent as he toyed with his fork. Tom hesitated, and then said, in a dense, scraping voice, “Please tell me that you will not be choosing them over me, Harry.”

“Of course not!”

Harry hadn’t realized, until he said it, how vehement and loudly he would say it. And he felt a deep relaxation in his own body, along with Tom’s, and Esmeralda hissed softly, “You needed to say it.”

“Of course not,” Harry repeated after a few minutes, when he thought everyone had had the chance to get used to that. “I just—I’m trying to understand them. To be the reasonable one, so no one can say I’m not.”

“What would happen if someone said that you’re not?” Tom’s arm tightened around him.

“They would ignore me,” Harry whispered. “Say that they can’t reason with me when I’m so childish. And I think that the Headmaster might say that along with Padfoot and Moony.”

“Padfoot and Moony?”

“Oh.” Harry supposed Tom would have no particular reason to know their Animagus forms. “Ah, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. Sirius is best friends with my dad and owns the joke shop with him. Potter-Black Pranks. Remus is—”

“The student who was a werewolf? Yes, I remember.”

From the growing chill in Tom’s tone, he might not have too fond a memory of Remus, so Harry hurried on as best he could. “Well, he’s a teacher now at one of the smaller primary schools, and he was like an uncle to me growing up. And Sirius is my godfather. So their good opinion matters to me.”

“Did either of them know about this?”

“Not unless my parents told them and told them not to tell me they knew. And honestly, that probably wouldn’t have worked. Remus and Sirius are both terrible at keeping secrets from me.” Harry smiled a little. “But they might take my parents’ side if I seemed like the childish one.”

Tom was quiet for a moment, and Harry could imagine him squashing several things he wanted to say. Then he tilted his head down and murmured, “You’ll write to them, then, and explain things from your side. Be as calm as you like. Make the letter as long as you like. Only know that if they turn against you the way your parents have done, I shall not spare them.”

Harry half-smiled. “All right.” It was less than what Tom might have done, but given that what he might have done was probably suggestions for cursing Sirius and Remus until they listened, Harry would take it.

Tom leaned against him some more, and then drew back with a sigh. “As much as I’d love to monopolize your time, I do have another class to teach, and your free period is nearly at an end. What do you have next? Transfiguration?”

Harry nodded, and they chatted for a few minutes in an almost ordinary tone before they separated.

It couldn’t keep Harry’s memories from the meeting with his parents, and it couldn’t get rid of the hard parts of what would come, including writing to Sirius and Remus and talking with Angela. But at least he had someone on his side, someone firmly on his side.

Two people, Harry corrected himself, when he looked down and saw Esmeralda slithering at his side. A few people gave her nervous glances, but others smiled at him, and Hermione arrived at his side when he sat down in the back of Transfiguration, asking rapid-fire questions about spellcrafting and Parseltongue in a low voice until McGonagall’s lecture began.

It’s going to be all right, Harry told himself, and began to believe that it would far more than he would have expected to after a confrontation like that.

Having someone on his side made all the difference.

*

“That did not go as well as I’d hoped.”

Tom stared at Albus for a second, and then shook his head. “Of course it didn’t,” he said, and went back to gathering up his papers. Albus had shown up right after the third-year Gryffindor and Slytherin Defense class, and Tom had a few scorch marks and spell craters to repair in the walls along with the essays.

“I am at least pleased Harry decided to meet them and try to explain his side, and that you did not curse James and Lily. But…”

“Yes, it could have gone much better,” Tom said. He stacked the papers with a tap of his fingers and gazed at Albus over the top of them. “Do you know the source of Lily Potter’s fear of snakes? Harry told me where his father’s might have come from, but I am unable to account for hers in the same way. And it seems the more severe, if she couldn’t even bear for Harry to have his familiar with him in your office.”

Albus shook his head, his eyes gentle and regretful, and Tom decided he was likely being truthful. “It’s not something she’s ever confided in me, and it’s not something that—forgive me—was very relevant before this year. I didn’t know that young Harry was a Parselmouth. I didn’t know that his parents were forcing him to hide his gifts because of their fear. It still seems out of character for them, to me. They would usually have wanted to face up to such a thing and get Mind-Healing for it, at least.”

Tom nodded. “Then I shall simply have to speak with her.”

“On your own?”

“I’ll owl her and ask Harry if he wants to be there or not. But she can’t continue—they can’t continue—to act as if it’s reasonable to ask Harry to give up his familiar, his talent, and his future to placate them.”

“You are that determined to be part of his future,” Albus said in a neutral tone.

“Yes. We have chosen each other.”

Albus held his gaze for a second, then sighed and looked away. “It might cost Harry his family.”

“If he had left Britain as he’d planned on, it would have done that anyway. And they were already tearing their own family apart. If you’ve come here to ask me to have sympathy for James and Lily Potter, Albus, you’re wasting your breath.”

“Not that so much as to remember that you are not the only person in Harry’s life, and cannot be. He has an uncle and a godfather, siblings, friends, even if James and Lily abandon him.”

“And it will be part of my task to make sure that none of them think Parseltongue so frightening that they cannot stand to be in the same room with his familiar.”

After a moment, Albus inclined his head, smiling, and left the classroom.

Tom finished his minor repairs and then left with his stack of essays. He had sent Nagini to Harry with a message asking if Harry wanted to join him for a private dinner in his quarters, but that wouldn’t be for some hours yet. He could use the time to catch up on his marking and compose the first of the many letters he would need to write.

*

“But why didn’t you tell us you could spellcraft, at least? I can understand keeping your Parseltongue quiet and not doing well in Defense to please your parents. But why not tell us about the most important thing you were doing?”

Harry laughed in spite of himself. Trust Hermione to decide that his Parseltongue and even the beginning of his apparent affair with Professor Riddle weren’t important, not next to the chance to craft new spells.

“Because it was all of a piece,” Harry said, stroking Esmeralda where she was draped over his lap. They were on a couch in a corner of the Gryffindor common room that wasn’t that close to the fire but had enchantments that would channel the heat towards them. “I created the spells to keep my secret and make my visits to Esmeralda easier. I couldn’t tell you that without also revealing parts of the bigger secret. Better to keep all of them as close as I could.”

“And what’s going to happen now?” asked Ron, who had cast a spell on his chair so that it floated on its back two legs. He had his hand draped over Hermione’s in much the same way as Esmeralda was draped on Harry’s lap. “Are you going to keep protecting your secret? Keep as low a profile as possible until the end of seventh year?”

“Kind of hard when he’s got the giant snake following him around, isn’t it, Ron?” Dean asked. He was sitting on the floor with his chin propped in his hand.

“I mean, he could still keep the secret about spellcrafting, if he wanted to.”

“Not when Riddle practically shouted it to the entire seventh-year Defense class, mate.”

Harry broke in at that point. It had used to be Ron and Hermione that fought constantly, but once they’d started dating, it had switched to Ron and Dean. Ron seemed to need to argue with someone. “No, I won’t. But I’m not going to apologize for what I did in the past. I thought I was doing the right thing. Mum and Dad certainly thought it was.”

“You shouldn’t have to apologize,” Hermione said, although with a ferocity in her voice that Harry thought meant she was probably going to make his parents apologize if she could. “But seriously, Harry, how did you figure out spellcrafting? Is it something someone else could learn?”

“Definitely you could learn it,” Harry said, and smiled at her. “Just not easily.”

“I want to learn it. I don’t care if it’s easy.”

Ron groaned at that and shook his head at Harry. “You’ve given her a new obsession two months from NEWTS, mate. You have no compassion for my nerves.”

“Ron Weasley, don’t you start teasing him about something that’s connected to what his horrible parents did—“

“Mum and Dad aren’t horrible.”

That was Angela, because of course it was, standing at the edge of the circle of chairs and couches, her arms folded. Harry sighed. He’d tried to talk to her at lunch and dinner, but it hadn’t worked. She had just turned away from him and kept talking furiously to her friends.

“They did a horrible thing,” Hermione said. “They made Harry keep his Parseltongue secret. They didn’t have justifiable reasons for that.”

Angela’s jaw tightened. “Harry, can I talk to you, please?”

Harry nodded and stood up. “See you later, Hermione, Ron, Dean,” he murmured, and worked his way out between their seats. Esmeralda flowed after him.

Angela narrowed her eyes. “I don’t want that coming with us.”

“That is my familiar, she’s a she, and her name is Esmeralda,” Harry said. “And if you’re going to act as bad as Mum and Dad, then we don’t have to have a conversation at all. I’ll just send an owl to Sirius and Remus and the other people who want to talk to me.”

Angela looked as though someone had forced a pear down her mouth sideways. After a second, she nodded and looked away. “All right,” she said quietly, and then turned and walked away. Harry had to hurry to keep up with her. He glanced down at Esmeralda, but she was right beside him, and her tongue darted out at him.

“I am willing to be patient with the youngster. She is not an adult who should already know better.”

Harry saw Angela’s spine stiffen at the sound of the Parseltongue, but she didn’t turn around or shriek or ask him to leave Esmeralda behind, which was already better than Mum and Dad so far.

They made it out of Gryffindor Tower altogether, to one of the alcoves beside the second staircase that led up to the portrait. Then Angela took a deep breath and turned around.

“Mum and Dad shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “But you shouldn’t go around telling everyone that they’re horrible people, either.”

“Hermione came up with that word on her own,” Harry said, and leaned against the wall. He chased away the impulse to apologize and just give in to whatever she wanted of him. That kind of hiding to please his family was done. “And I’m not going to tell her she can’t have opinions.”

“But Mum and Dad were scared.”

“And so they should have forced me to never tell anyone about Parseltongue?”

“They were scared. They’re not horrible.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Then why didn’t they ever try to come up with some way to face down their fear, Angela? Why didn’t go to Mind-Healing? Why didn’t they bargain with me about casting spells that would make any snake that came into the house harmless?” He knew he was repeating Tom’s arguments, but so what? Angela was repeating other people’s, too. “Why was being scared the only thing that mattered to them, more than me being happy?”

Angela hesitated again. Harry waited. He could understand why she was upset to hear him criticizing their parents, but he wasn’t going to back down.

He couldn’t, not anymore. Maybe it was more because of Tom and Esmeralda than himself, but it was still true.

“They’re not horrible people,” Angela finally muttered, sounding sulky.

“Not to you. But they’ve been pretty horrible to me.”

Harry blinked at the sheer freedom of being able to say that, finally. Esmeralda reared up beside him and studied him with her tongue flicking out, and then twined one of her coils around his leg in a friendly fashion.

“You needed to say that,” she said. “I think that you have needed to say that for a long time.”

Harry gave her a faint smile. Then he looked up to see that Angela’s cheeks were red, and she said between her teeth, “What if you give up everyone else in the family just to have your stupid snake language? What if you have to give up me and Brian and Mum and Dad and Sirius and Remus?”

Harry closed his eyes. It had been the kind of thing he’d had nightmares about, one of the reasons that he had stayed silent for so long even when he’d felt as if iron bands were constricting his chest.

But he had to be honest. He met Angela’s eyes, took a long breath, and said quietly, “Then I suppose that none of you are the people I thought you were, and you’ll all choose some stupid fear of snakes over me. And I’ll still have Tom and Esmeralda and Ron and Hermione and my other friends in Gryffindor.”

Angela gave a single loud sob and turned around and ran in the other direction. Harry stared after her. He wondered if she was scared of snakes, too, and had never told him because it had never come up, or if she just really didn’t like hearing Mum and Dad criticized.

Well. In a way, it wasn’t his problem. Angela would get over it, or she wouldn’t, the same way Mum and Dad would get over it or they wouldn’t.

Harry shrugged, bent down to pet Esmeralda, and then made his way back to Gryffindor Tower. Hermione would be getting impatient to hear about spellcrafting by now.