[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Thou Shalt Have No Tournaments Before Me, 3/6, gen

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

“Blimey, mate. Isn’t that Oliver’s owl?”

Harry jerks his head up from his porridge (and plots of how to get past the wards on Moody’s door that stopped him when he took Salazar to the professor’s office) to stare at the large white owl soaring into the Great Hall. Her name’s Aria, and she’s not a snowy owl like Hedwig but an oddly large barn owl. Harry swallows when he sees that she’s clutching a smoking red Howler.

If that’s coming for him…

But it doesn’t. Instead, Aria turns and arrows straight towards Dumbledore.

Harry watches with an open mouth as the owl lets the Howler go in front of the Headmaster, who’s staring at it in bewilderment. The next second, the letter opens while hovering in midair and Oliver’s voice rings out over the Great Hall.

“YOU CANCELED QUIDDITCH! YOU CAN’T CANCEL QUIDDITCH!”

The Howler is trembling as though Oliver is there and ready to tear Dumbledore’s head off, or as if he was doing that when he dictated the letter. Harry can feel silence spreading through the Great Hall in waves, can sense more than one person staring towards Dumbledore with an open mouth, but he can’t actually see it since that would mean looking away from the Howler.

“AND YOU TRIED TO BLAME HARRY! THE BEST SEEKER I’VE EVER SEEN! THE SEEKER FROM GRYFFINDOR! I KNOW YOU WERE A GRYFFINDOR! DON’T YOU HAVE ANY HOUSE PRIDE AT ALL?”

Harry puts a hand over his mouth, because he’s snorting and he knows the sounds of laughter are going to escape and make more than one person stare at him. Or maybe not. They’re all staring at the Howler, too.

“THIS IS THE WAY THAT SLYTHERIN WINS WHEN THEY START PLAYING FOR THE HOUSE CUP AGAIN! DO YOU WANT THAT, DUMBLEDORE? DO YOU?”

The Headmaster is blinking slowly, as though he assumes this is a dream he’s going to wake up from. Ron is leaning against Harry’s left side, shaking so hard with laughter that Harry can practically feel every sound he makes even though he can’t hear them over the sound of Oliver’s shouting.

“I THOUGHT I COULD TRUST YOU TO PUT WHAT WAS RIGHT ABOVE WHAT WAS EASY, BUT APPARENTLY I WAS WRONG! STOP PRESSURING HARRY TO APPROVE THE TRI-WIZARD TOURNAMENT AND REINSTATE QUIDDITCH! OR YOU’LL REGRET THE CONSEQUENCES!”

The Howler dissolves in a wave of smoke and heat. Now Harry can hear Ron laughing, and what sounds like half the Great Hall. Maybe more Slytherins are laughing than other people, but it’s still pretty near universal.

Harry peers at the Head Table. McGonagall is sitting there as if turned to stone. Snape is staring down at his plate, the way he has pretty much every time he and Harry have been in the Great Hall together. (He ignores Harry utterly in Potions, and has McGonagall mark his essays). Flitwick, on the other hand, is laughing with his hands clasped over his belly.

Professor Moody looks far more shocked than he ever has in class, and is drinking backwards from his water cup in bewilderment. And Dumbledore…

The Headmaster looks old, and shrunken.

He stands up and catches Harry’s eye, and his face tightens a little. “Come to my office, Harry, please,” he says.

A hex shoots out from the Hufflepuff table, a Tickling Hex by the color of it. Harry watches open-mouthed as Dumbledore whips out his wand and stops it. Then Dumbledore turns his head and tracks the hex to its source with eyes that would make Harry cower.

“Miss Bones,” Dumbledore says.

“You should address Harry by his title,” Susan says, standing up. “You’re not even his teacher. Let alone his friend.”

Harry tries to telepathically beam no no stop this is suicide no no stop into Susan’s brain. But apparently she’s turned off her telepathic receivers. She has her arms folded and the stubborn look on her face that Harry dreads.

“This is a matter of extreme disrespect, Susan.”

“I’m following your example, Albus.”

At that point someone sitting next to Susan at the Hufflepuff table, whose face Harry can’t see from this angle, does reach out and try to tug Susan back into her seat. Susan totally ignores that. Her eyes are fierce and bright as she looked up at the professors’ table, and particularly at Professor Sprout.

“Why are you blaming Harry for canceling Quidditch and trying to protect students?” she demands of her Head of House. “Isn’t that your job? Shouldn’t you be grateful for anything that makes it easier?” Susan shakes her head with a disgusted expression. “Instead of upset?”

Professor Sprout closes her eyes. “Mr. Potter is being harmed and used and manipulated by people who want to take advantage of his technically having a Lordship title,” she whispers. “He’s too young to see that. I thought—if we showed that we are still the authorities at the school and shamed him into—”

“That’s stupid—”

“Miss Bones! Twenty points from Hufflepuff!”

Susan looks at McGonagall with totally unafraid eyes before she turns back to Professor Sprout. “We’re the House of fair play! If anyone shouldn’t be doing this, it’s us.”

“You’ll come to the office with me and Harry, Miss Bones,” Dumbledore says, his voice so cold Harry wouldn’t be surprised to see ice cubes appear in the air in front of him.

Susan walks around the end of her House table with a small smile. Harry is beginning to think that was her plan all along. She probably knew that Dumbledore would want to meet with Harry and didn’t want it to happen with them by themselves, so she came up with this way to accompany them.

Harry sighs. It’s understandable, and he admires Susan for standing up for her beliefs, and he should have foreseen this would happen…

But he wish it didn’t come with other people getting in trouble for him.

*

“Would you like a lemon drop, Harry?”

“I’d like you to get to the point, sir.”

Harry is tired of everything. He’s tired of being hexed in the corridors, even if that’s stopped now. He’s tired of professors frowning at him and acting like he’s a little boy who needs his hand held, while they also act like he’s an adult who needs to be manipulated into doing the right thing.

He’s tired of his friends being hurt, even if the only hurt for Susan so far is losing some points from Hufflepuff and having to endure Dumbledore’s thoughtful frowns.

Dumbledore closes his eyes and sits there for a moment. Susan opens her mouth. Harry steps on her foot.

Maybe Susan can tell that she’s gone far enough, what with having tried to hex the Headmaster of Hogwarts right in the middle of the Great Hall, so she subsides.

Dumbledore finally opens his eyes and nods. “Very well,” he says. “This has to do with the history of the title of Lord Slytherin that I asked you to look up, Harry, but apparently you did not.”

His voice is chiding. Harry bristles but manages to keep his reaction contained. “Go on, please, sir.”

“In the past, these kinds of lordship titles, or Heir titles, were used solely for manipulation when children wore them,” Dumbledore says, folding his hands together on his desk. “They were drunk with power, or rather, the illusion of power. Older people in the Wizengamot or their families used them like pawns to accumulate the most benefits for themselves. Of the last five children who carried the title of Lord Slytherin, four died violently, and the last was imprisoned in the Janus Thickey Ward for the rest of his life.”

Harry swallows, feeling cold. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “Who do you think is manipulating me, sir? Because it’s not my friends.”

“Your friends’ parents and guardians.” Dumbledore’s eyes are old, so old. “You may not know it, of course. I would not blame you for thinking that the suggestions your friends make are purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Your friends may even think so.” The glance he darts at Susan seems to indicate that he doesn’t think she does. “But in reality, those suggestions have been passed on to them by the adults in their lives, to find the best way of using the political power of Lord Slytherin to their advantage.”

“What’s to their advantage about holding a death tournament at Hogwarts?”

“In this case, their advantage would be that you do exactly as you are doing,” Dumbledore says quietly. “In other words, oppose the Tri-Wizard Tournament so that it is not held. And that will weaken international cooperation and increase animosity between different wizarding communities. If we have no allies beyond our borders that we can call on when Voldemort returns, he may well win.”

Harry stares at him. Dumbledore looks back. Harry doesn’t think the Headmaster is telling the whole truth, but he’s sure that Dumbledore is at least being sincere about what he’s saying. He really does believe it.

“I just don’t think a school death tournament will increase international unity that much.”

“It won’t,” Susan says unexpectedly. “I found a book on the Tri-Wizard Tournament in the library. Every time, the schools cheat to get their preferred Champions into the Tournament, and then cheat to help them win their tasks. The tournament was ended because of the large death toll, but also because it led to squabbles and assassinations and duels between people from the different schools.” She scowls at Dumbledore. “I don’t know why you think this time would be different.”

“We have an impartial judge that cannot be tricked—”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with increasing good will or helping people cheat!”

“This time, I have been assured no one will do that.”

Harry snorts. He can’t help it. “The way you were sure the Dursleys would treat me fairly, sir?”

“Stop calling him by a title, Harry,” Susan says, frowning at him. “At least until he does you the courtesy of using one back.”

Harry starts to argue that he’s polite even if other people are rude, but Dumbledore interrupts him. “I made the best guess I could, Harry. I was wrong, and you will never know how deeply I regret that—”

“Because you think confessing makes you look weak or something?” Susan asks.

Dumbledore ignores her. “But I still think you were safer with your aunt and uncle than you would have been in the magical world with Death Eaters able to arrange any number of accidents for an infant or toddler. And now you are out from under the blood wards’ protection, and my protection as well. I am offering you a chance to come back into it. To stop doing what Death Eaters like Mr. Nott and Mr. Malfoy tell you to do.”

“Theo and Draco aren’t Death Eaters!”

“I was referring to their parents, Harry, as I suspect you know. The younger Mr. Malfoy came with you to my office last year and was instrumental in convincing you that you had to emerge from behind the blood wards. And the younger Mr. Nott was one of the first to proclaim himself your follower, wasn’t he? Perhaps he was even the one who looked up your technical claim to the title of Lord Slytherin?”

Harry shakes his head, not in anger but disbelief. “And their fathers would want me to, what? Buy brooms for the school?”

“They would want you to come out from behind the blood wards. To believe that you could trust their sons. Who will deliver you into their fathers’ hands when the time is right. Now that you have been so useful to them as to destroy several international alliances in the planning stages, they can wait for a better time. Who knows how else you will benefit them in your uncoordinated thrashing around and determination to act like an adult?””

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Harry says, and stands up.

Dumbledore’s eyes widen. “Harry—”

“Neither Draco nor Theo have said anything to me about what their fathers want,” Harry snaps. “Some of the things they’ve wanted me to do, I’ve refused. I didn’t know anything about the Tri-Wizard Tournament until Minister Fudge came to the Woods’ house. I refused it because I want to keep kids safe. What about that don’t you get?”

Dumbledore sighs again. “You may have thought that is what you were doing, but they would have planted the seed of a suggestion—”

“You think my aunt has been, what? Using mental compulsions on Harry?”

Susan’s voice is soaring with outrage. Dumbledore turns a faint smile on her. “No, Miss Bones. I think that you have been caught up in this because you are a fair Hufflepuff who sees the potential good a person with Harry’s title can do. Unfortunately, everything good he has done has been outweighed by his opposition to the Tournament.”

“I don’t believe it would have gained you the international alliances you wanted. I don’t believe—”

“Come on, Susan.” Harry feels wearier than ever. He does think Dumbledore believes what he’s saying.

He also thinks Dumbledore is wrong.

“No reasoning with him, right?” Susan is looking back and forth between Harry and the Headmaster now, and nodding. “You’re right, Harry. I’ll follow you.” It sounds like more than just a promise to follow him out of the office.

Harry is too tired to deal with that right now, either. He leads Susan to the moving staircase, and ignores the soft sound behind him that might be Dumbledore sighing or uttering a call for him to come back.

He’s too tired.

*

But not too tired to notice that he’s apparently moving in a pack between classes now. Or a school like a fish school.

A school in a school. Someone cleverer than Harry could come up with a pun about that.

“Excuse me,” Harry says loudly when he’s sure it’s not just a coincidence. He emerged from Defense in a Hufflepuff-Gryffindor pack and got handed off to a Gryffindor-Slytherin one to walk to Potions, and then several of his friends from all the Houses followed him to the Great Hall for lunch after that, arguing loudly about Quidditch and possibly organizing their own teams in defiance of the rules all the way.

Theo glances at him. “Yes?”

“Yeah, mate?” Ron leans forwards from behind him.

Hermione just raises an eyebrow in that silent, judgmental way of hers that sometimes drives Harry mad.

“I don’t need bodyguards,” Harry says, and stares around at them, making sure to meet as many pairs of eyes as he possibly can. “No one’s hexing me anymore, and the kind of danger the teachers present can’t be defeated by them, anyway.”

Susan gives him a sunny smile. “We just don’t want you to get lonely, Harry.”

“It is right for Lord Slytherin to have bodyguards.” Ernie’s tone is lofty and pretentious, but his expression is, well, earnest.

“You’re not in danger right now, but you could be in the future,” Theo says.

“It’s better to have more than three people if someone does attack,” Ron says, with a decisive nod. “Good strategy.”

Harry wants to put his head in his hands, but with this group, they’re likely to start asking him if he has a headache. He sighs. “Look, I appreciate what you’re doing, but I also don’t want you to put yourselves in danger.”

“We would be in danger if the death tournament comes to Hogwarts,” Draco says, and struts towards Harry as if he can’t bear for every eye not to be on him at once. “We’re taking care of ourselves by making sure nothing happens to you now that might mean they could do that.”

Harry frowns. That’s true, but there’s also a hole in the argument somewhere, if he can just figure it out.

“We’re not bodyguards in any traditional sense of the word,” Justin says, and comes forwards to smile at Harry. Harry relaxes, a little. Justin is Muggleborn, and he wouldn’t put up with this nonsense if he thought it was really—feudal. “We’re just protecting a friend. We can’t do that for a friend?”

“Yeah, okay,” Harry says, and walks towards the Great Hall. The chatter about Quidditch immediately starts again, and Harry has to conceal a smile as he sits down at the Gryffindor table. It appears that he’s inspiring other people to rebel, too, and at this rate, the teachers will have to bring back Quidditch.

Besides, he can’t say that the main reason he doesn’t want people crowding around him all the time is that it makes it harder to scout out Moody’s office and come up with a plan to break past the wards.

*

Harry hasn’t bothered attending the detentions that Moody assigned him. Maybe Dumbledore talked to Moody, because he hasn’t bothered insisting, either. But now it’s night, and Harry is sneaking through the corridors under the Invisibility Cloak with Salazar’s cage, and Harry half-wishes he had attended the detentions so he would know the office better.

There has to be some weakness to the ward. Right?

“I don’t like this,” Ahalam says softly from Harry’s robe pocket.

Harry peers around a corner, dodges a Ravenclaw prefect who’s patrolling, and ducks into an alcove to draw his little snake out of his pocket. They’re both under the Cloak, so they can see each other, but Ahalam is wriggling unhappily. Harry could have told he was unhappy, anyway, since he talked so little just now.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says softly, holding Ahalam up to his face. They both ignore the way that Salazar stands on his hind legs in his cage and watches Ahalam hungrily. “I would have done something else if I could.”

“I don’t mean this,” says Ahalam, and his tongue flickers rapidly in and out. “You smell so unhappy. I want to do something. I want you to be safe. I want us to be in the nice place again. I want us to be hunting Dark things in the Dark-smelling place again. I want you to be happy.”

Harry closes his eyes and breathes calmness into himself, because getting upset or unhappy right now will just worry Ahalam more. “I want us to do that, too,” he whispers. “But we’ll get to do that at Christmas.”

“What is Christmas?”

“Like my birthday, but bigger.”

“Presents and cake? Can there be cheese? I like cheese. I enjoy cake. Will there be sinew-things in the presents?”

Harry chuckles and winds Ahalam gently around his shoulders. “I think there can be all those things.”

“All right. Then you will be happier now?” Ahalam winds himself tightly around Harry’s throat, but not tight enough to choke. They had to have a few discussions about that this summer when Ahalam went flying with him.

“I think I will.”

Harry steps up to the door of Moody’s office and crouches down. The ward has defeated him time and again, but he thinks he might have a solution now, and it’s thanks to Ahalam that he’s thought of it.

He closes his eyes, ignoring the way that Salazar bounces up and down in his cage and chatters, and focuses on the gentle thread of magic he can feel coming from Ahalam. He always feels it, but he doesn’t generally concentrate on it. After all, he can speak Parseltongue without needing to do that.

“Can you help me with the ward, Ahalam?”

“I am a very brilliant snake. I can do that. What is the ward? Where is it? Oh, I can smell it.” Harry can feel the gentle tickle of Ahalam’s tongue by his cheek as Ahalam darts it out again. “It is large and strong, but we are stronger. If you push with my magic and your magic at the ward, it should break. Break, ward, break!”

Harry can’t stop smiling. He reaches out and lets his fingers feather through the air above where the ward should be, and then he pushes magic as hard and sharply as he can into it, drawing on what he can feel offered from Ahalam.

For a moment, he wonders if this is what it’s like to have a familiar—

The ward shatters, and every alarm in the world goes off at once.

“Shit!” Harry curses, and then turns, picks up Salazar’s cage, yanks the Invisibility Cloak over his head, and runs off as fast as he can.

He hears drumming footsteps, and knows that the prefects and professors are going to be heading to Moody’s office. He navigates towards the dungeons, in the opposite direction, but still has to hide from them more than once.

He doesn’t know if they’re going to check that everyone’s in bed, but everyone knows about the animosity between Harry and Professor Moody, and the detentions Moody assigned him that he didn’t attend. They might check on him, if not everyone.

Harry is staircases away from the Tower, though, and he doesn’t know—

There’s a rumble as the wall shifts behind him. Harry stumbles away from it with a yelp he can’t stifle. At least it doesn’t sound as though anyone who’s running towards Moody’s office is taking this particular corridor to do it.

Harry turns around and stares at the hole in the wall. It’s a dark slot that opens onto a spiral staircase twisting up. He blinks and shifts a little, staring back and forth between it and a pair of rapidly approaching footsteps.

He wonders if he uncovered a secret passage by mistake or luck, or what.

Well. When in doubt, the randomly appearing secret passage it is. Harry ducks into it, and hears the wall slide shut behind him with a rumble. At least that means he can tuck the hood of the Invisibility Cloak back from his face and light his wand with a Lumos.

This looks almost like a regular part of Hogwarts, except dark and dusty (and enclosed inside walls, can’t forget that part). Harry walks up the staircase, waiting for it to move, but this one just stays still and steady.

He finally comes out near the Fat Lady’s portrait, and gasps the password. She lets him in as sleepily as she let him out, without opening her eyes. Harry sprints to his bed and jumps in, tucking Salazar’s cage down near the side of it. Then he gets up again to tuck away the Cloak and yank his robes off. At least he was already wearing pyjamas underneath them.

A few minutes after he’s lain down again, the door does open and one of the prefects looks in. Harry keeps his breathing light. His curtains are open. He doesn’t think any of the prefects know him well enough to know that he normally keeps them closed, anyway. Fred and George might, but they’re the only fifth-year students who could get him in trouble.

(And if Fred and George were prefects, everyone would be in trouble).

The door to the bedroom closes again. Harry opens his eyes and breathes.

*

“—HUMAN RIGHT TO PLAY QUIDDITCH! RESTORE HARRY’S HUMAN RIGHTS RIGHT NOW, DUMBLEDORE—”

Oliver’s Howlers have become a near-daily occurrence. Ron leans over towards Harry now, with his eyes narrowed, and asks, under cover of the shouting, “Did you go somewhere last night?”

Harry looks at him with innocent eyes. “I was in bed when you woke up this morning, Ron, wasn’t I?”

“Hmmm.” Ron does not look convinced.

Harry just beams back at him.

*

Harry doesn’t expect it, which is stupid of him.

Some of his friends eased back from accompanying him everywhere, maybe because of the bodyguard comments. Normally, Harry would still have Ron and Hermione with him, but they went to lunch and Harry went outside to walk on the grounds and think.

He still doesn’t want to ease his opposition to the tournament, and he won’t, but he does want to think through what Dumbledore said and why Dumbledore believes it. And if there’s some way that the Death Eaters will try to use him in the future.

A hex comes flying from nowhere. Harry twists away from it, and for a second believes that whoever it was has bad aim, because the hex shatters the stone next to his head. But then he realizes it wasn’t aimed at him.

“I am bleeding.”

Harry raises a trembling hand to pull Ahalam off his neck. Ahalam flickers his tongue out weakly at him. There’s a long cut down the middle of his back, pointing towards his tail.

“I am bleeding,” Ahalam says sadly again. “I hurt.” And he slumps over.

Harry grabs him and runs as fast as he can to Hagrid’s hut.

*

“The little thing’s going to be all right.”

Harry nearly falls over Hagrid’s table. He didn’t realize how much he was worried about Ahalam until he heard those words. Hagrid took Ahalam from Harry the minute they reached the hut and set about cleaning and bandaging his wound. He can’t cast the healing charms that would close the cut completely, and Harry doesn’t know them, but apparently Ahalam didn’t lose all that much blood, according to Hagrid.

“I just thought he did,” Harry whispers, still shaking.

“What’s that, Harry?” Hagrid’s hands are absurdly large as they cradle Ahalam’s small body, but they still do it gently.

“Nothing.” Harry sits up and shakes his head, taking a deep breath.

He doesn’t know who cast that curse. He can’t say for sure that it was Moody. It could have been one of the students who’s still upset about the Tournament and Quidditch being canceled.

But those students have largely stopped casting hexes, especially since there’s a movement now to get a semblance of House teams going, and some of his “followers” are still hexing people who try to hex Harry. (McLaggen’s limp is going to be permanent if he doesn’t watch out).

Harry thinks it was Moody.

And even if it wasn’t, he still yells at Harry about the Tournament and international alliances and Death Eaters using him and all the other stuff that Dumbledore was worried about and doesn’t have any examples of.

Harry is breaking into that bloody office tonight.

*

Harry asked for some books on wards, not from the library—that would mean Madam Pince and the professors would know what he was doing—but from his friends. Blaise supplied one with a wink and a smile.

And Ahalam has come along with him, insisting that he’s strong enough to lend his magic to Harry without collapsing from the blood loss. So here Harry is again, under his Invisibility Cloak with both Ahalam and Salazar, and aiming straight for the door of Moody’s office.

This time, he thinks he knows how to break the bloody ward.

He halts well short of it. One of the things Blaise’s book said is that the alarms tend to react not so much to the breaking of the ward—which happens in a small way every time the door opens—but to the presence of an intruder right next to the door. So Harry will break it from down the corridor and then see what happens.

He lifts Ahalam gently from around his neck and cradles him, closing his eyes. Ahalam wriggles with purpose, dancing in circles across Harry’s palms. Harry breathes in, breathes out, and then pushes with his magic, along with Ahalam’s.

And at the same time, his wand is in his hand, casting the alarm-muffling charms that Blaise’s book taught him. There are probably silent ones that will go off and bring Moody, but that’s different from bringing everyone patrolling in the corridors at night.

The ward breaks and splinters around them. Ahalam says, “We are very smart,” and sounds more like his old self than he has since the curse cut into him.

Harry opens his eyes, smiling. He’s pretty sure that it’s not a nice smile, but, well, Moody isn’t a nice person.

He walks swiftly to the door and sticks his lit wand into the office. Even he catches his breath at the flashes of glass and silver, and Salazar is practically drumming on the bars of his cage with his paws now.

Harry smiles, and opens the cage door.