lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-03-26 10:21 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-03-26 10:21 pm
Chapter One of 'To Earn Your Heart Like Gold'- Second Last Chance
Title: To Earn Your Heart Like Gold
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, Snape/Lily, past James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (James died to save Harry from Voldemort), emotional abuse, heavy angst, dysfunctional family, drama, violence, gore, past character death
Rating: R
Summary: Harry has accepted that he will never have a good relationship with his stepfather, Severus Snape, or his workaholic Unspeakable mother. But he still wants to have a relationship with his half-siblings. For that, he’s willing to put up with his stepfather’s ridiculous demand that he become good enough at Potions to take the NEWT as an adult. For that, he’s willing to deal with the tutor Snape’s arranged for him, the mysterious Tom Gaunt.
Author’s Notes: This is a new WiP. Please pay attention to the warnings; the depths of this family dysfunction cannot really be overstated. At the moment, I think this will be between ten and twenty chapters.
To Earn Your Heart Like Gold
Chapter One—Second Last Chance
"Back again, are you?"
Harry glanced up from the boiling pot, doing his best to watch without expression as his stepfather strode into the kitchen. He knew his face wouldn't be completely blank. That was another skill he lacked by Snape's estimation, along with brewing good potions, being intelligent, and having a reason to exist.
But Harry had managed to at least accept that, since he never would be a good person or a worthwhile stepson by Snape's estimation, he didn't need to care what the man thought.
"You invited me."
Snape gave a sound that might have been what a laugh sounded like after it died. "Yes. Because your mother convinced me to give you one more chance. One more chance to see Jennifer and Rosanna." Harry tensed at the mention of his half-sisters, unable to help it. "One more chance to prove that you are more than a bully's son."
"Better a bully than a Death Eater."
Snape drew his wand. Harry already had his out, and for a moment, they aimed at each other and the air between them thickened with the kind of violence that Harry knew as well as the taste of his own blood.
"Put the wand away," Snape said at last, voice barely audible.
"You first."
“Severus?”
At the sound of Lily’s voice, Snape lowered his wand, although he still stared at Harry, his hand flexing open and shut, as if he wanted to walk up to him and punch him. Harry sneered back to let him know the feeling was mutual, and then faced the pot again, waving his wand to make the soup within it bubble and stir, just as his mother walked into the kitchen.
“Sev—oh, Harry. You’re here!”
Harry turned to her with a polite smile. His mother was speaking brightly, but her eyes were over-bright, really, in the way that said she had stayed up all night studying magical theory again. And they flitted back and forth between Harry and Severus for only a moment before she visibly decided not to ask about the undercurrent of violence drifting through the kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re here, Harry.” Lily stepped up to smooth a hand over his hair, frown at it for a moment, and then kiss him on the cheek. Harry accepted it mainly because of how he could feel Snape glaring at them both from behind Lily’s head. “Severus told you about the deal that we’ve arranged?”
“I think he was just about to.”
As Lily faced Snape again, Harry shot him a hard grin and a wink. Snape looked as if he wanted to explode, but he couldn’t, not with Lily in the room. Harry knew he would pay for that later.
But he was an adult now. He could strike back. And he would walk away from the terms of this bargain if they were too hard or painful or ridiculous, he promised himself. No matter how much he wanted to see Jennifer and Rosanna again.
He would.
He promised.
“Well?” Lily asked, flipping a red braid over her shoulder. Both Harry’s sisters had inherited that hair, but neither had inherited her green eyes, which seemed to drive Snape mental—if he could get more mental than he already was. “Do you want to do it, or do you want me to?”
“You should, darling.”
Harry managed to stifle his gagging in time for his mother to turn back to him and direct a bright smile his way. “You know that you’ve never been competent at Potions, dear.”
“No, Mother.” Harry had never been competent enough at Potions to satisfy Snape, was what she really meant. Harry had done all right in classes with Professor Slughorn at Hogwarts, but he had never pursued the NEWT. He knew that Snape would have insisted that Harry study with him, precisely so he could disparage Harry’s efforts and tell him what a terrible brewer he was.
“To fit better into the family,” Lily said, and tossed her hair over her shoulder, “we want you to sit for and pass the Potions NEWT. The Ministry will let anyone do it until the age of thirty, which means that you still have eight years. That’s enough time to become good at it.”
“So I won’t see my sisters for eight years?”
“What—oh, no, that’s not what I meant! I was only speaking of the total timeframe—”
Something chimed in Lily’s pocket, and she took out a heavy golden watch and squinted at it, then sighed. “I have to go and see about a potion brewing myself,” she said. She leaned forwards and patted Harry’s cheek. Harry endured it. It felt familiar, after all, from his childhood, when Lily was always rushing away to attend to some potion or project awaiting her attention in the Department of Mysteries.
“Long and short, we want you good enough to take the NEWT by the beginning of the summer holiday,” Lily said brightly. “I know that you can do it. You got an Exceeds Expectations on the OWL. And we hired a tutor for you! Quite a brilliant young man, he hasn’t invented any potions yet but there’s no reason to think he won’t. He apprenticed with Desandra Ives, you must have heard of her—”
Harry had, but only because the house had been constantly filled with Potions chatter when he was growing up. It was what Snape did for a living, it was what Lily depended on for a good part of her work as an Unspeakable, and it was what Jennifer and Rosanna were both most talented at and wanted to do themselves someday. He doubted most other people would have heard of a reclusive Potions brewer from Eastern Europe whose main contributions to the world were improving a number of incredibly esoteric brews.
He nodded anyway.
“Good, then.” The watch chimed again. Lily glanced at it and nodded as if to another person. “Then you should get along well with him.”
Harry bit his tongue. Then he decided that he did have to say something since Lily was about to leave, and it wasn’t like he could trust Snape’s word. “And if I get a good mark on the NEWT, I’ll be able to see Jennifer and Rosanna? How good a mark?”
“An Exceeds Expectations—”
“An Outstanding,” Snape cut in. “I will accept nothing less.”
Lily turned to face him and lifted her head in a way that made Harry want to back off. “They are my children, too, Severus, and I say that an Exceeds Expectations will be enough.”
Snape backed down, the way he always did when Mother looked like that. Harry wished she’d done it more often. Then maybe he would have grown up without hearing endless stories of how much of a bully his father was, and how Harry’s fame at surviving the Killing Curse because his father had died had damaged the lives of the Snape family, and how Harry was lazy and unintelligent and likely to die young—
But he knew that such moments were true moments. They never lasted long. Lily would flit off and disappear into the Department of Mysteries or her locked and warded office at home, and Snape would just come up with a way to attack him when she wasn’t watching.
Harry resented her. He also thought that Lily might not have survived his father’s death, caring for Harry as a baby, and mourning her first husband if she hadn’t married Snape. It was a complicated stew that he had never managed to sort out.
“Yes, of course, darling.”
Lily nodded in satisfaction and faced Harry. “Your tutor is coming tomorrow. In the meantime, you can have your old room—”
“You know I’m storing ingredients in there, Lily.”
“He can have his old room.”
Wow, two moments in one day, Harry thought. He wondered why his mother was so intent on having him here. She must think the test to “prove” he “fit into the family” was as stupid as Harry did. Was this just her notion of a compromise with Snape’s stubbornness? Or did she think that this could really repair the relationship between her son and her husband somehow?
Probably it’s that one. She’s always more hopeful than circumstances warrant.
“Very well, I’ll move them,” Snape said, and turned away with a final glare to go down the corridor towards Harry’s room.
Lily faced Harry, frowning a little as her watch chimed again, but smoothed an encouraging hand down his robes. “Thank you for agreeing to come back and try to fit into the family, Harry.”
“You know that he won’t ever really think I fit here.”
“I’m not as pessimistic as that. If I were, I’d have given up—”
Lily stopped, but Harry thought he knew what she would have said. “After Dad died?”
Lily nodded, her smile strained. “Yes. Now, I have to leave, but there’s plenty to eat in the kitchen…”
*
“Greetings, Harry Potter.”
Harry felt his face heat up as he stood from the small table in the library where he’d been told to meet his tutor. He was starting to think he should have asked his mother more about the man. Yesterday, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Harry would study as hard as he could, even if the tutor was as annoying as Professor Slughorn. It was the only way he stood a chance of seeing Jennifer and Rosanna when they came home from Hogwarts for the summer holidays.
But the man walking through the solemn, dark room crowded with books and shelves made it seem small and unimportant. His dark blue robes made the black rug look shabby. He held out his hand, smiling a little as Harry swallowed and reached out to grasp it.
“I don’t usually earn such a reception.” The man’s voice was deep and smooth, and he tilted his head a little to the side. It was hard for Harry to decide what color his eyes were. They seemed to have shades of dark blue, like his robes, but maybe they were just deep brown. “Care to tell me why I have now?”
Harry swallowed back the temptation to say something stupid about how handsome the man was. He probably got that all the time. “I didn’t expect someone so near my age,” he said, which was at least true. He would have thought Snape would choose someone older who could “show Harry his place,” or some similar nonsense.
“Your mother thought it would make it easier for you to learn from me.”
Harry nodded slowly. The man was about twenty-five, or seemed so, but he was confident and carried himself with an air of power that Harry would never have. For a moment, Harry envied him that, and his features, and his Potions skill, and even his hair, as dark as Harry’s but a lot smoother.
Then Harry shook himself free of the grip of the stupid emotions. No, he would never be like the man, but that wasn’t the goal, anyway. The goal was to get good enough at Potions that he could see his sisters again.
“Do you think you can teach me everything I need to know to pass the Potions NEWT by June?”
The man glanced out the single, large window opposite the library’s door, as if he needed to remind himself that it was April. “It will be hard to guarantee you an Outstanding by then.”
“My mother said an Exceeds Expectations would be enough.”
“And is that what you want?”
Harry could feel himself blushing again, and hated himself for it. But hating himself was an old pastime, and he shrugged his way through the emotion. “I never cared enough to pursue a Potions NEWT when I was at Hogwarts. I’m not doing this to improve my skill.”
“Yes. To see your sisters. Mrs. Snape said.”
Harry bit back the temptation to tell the man that Lily published under the name Evans. Even if this stranger acknowledged the point, that didn’t change the fact that she used the name Mrs. Snape most of the time in everyday life.
Everyone in the family had the same last name. Except Harry.
I wouldn’t want to share a name with Snape anyway.
“Yes,” Harry said, and shook off the thoughts with a faint frown. They seemed to be swarming into the forefront of his mind more than usual. It was strange. These were concerns that he had laid to rest long ago. “So an Exceeds Expectations will be more than enough.”
The man stood in silence for a moment, contemplating him. Then he smiled, the sort of dazzling smile that could probably convince people to follow him to the ends of the earth. “My apologies. I know your name, but I never gave you mine. Tom Gaunt.”
Harry stiffened a little at the pureblood name, or more accurately, the blood purist name. But he quieted his instinctive distrust. If Gaunt really had those kinds of prejudices, he never would have accepted an offer to tutor a Muggleborn woman’s son.
“You’ve heard of my family, I see.”
Gaunt’s voice was low and almost—well, it was weird. Harry just held himself to a nod.
“I don’t fit in with them,” Gaunt said, and spread his hands in the kind of graceful motion that Harry supposed he might think of Snape as making if he’d believed the man capable of grace of any kind. “Something we have in common. My mother married a Muggle, and they didn’t think much of me. For all that I’m more talented than the lot of them ever were.”
Harry stared at him. “You’re a half-blood?”
Gaunt seemed amused. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“I—well, yes, never mind.” Harry was flushing again, but at least it was for a better reason than the handsomeness Gaunt couldn’t control. “It explains why you’re willing to tutor a half-blood in Potions.”
“That, and I find myself short of money lately. Apprenticeships are useful, but not lucrative.”
“What were you doing before the apprenticeship?” Harry asked.
“I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book. One could say, almost my whole body.” Gaunt’s smile flashed, but he was obviously inviting Harry to share the joke, not mocking, and Harry relaxed a little. “I understand that’s not the case for you.”
Harry shook his head a little. “I always liked practical classes the best. Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.”
“What do you do?”
“I work at the Pelargonium Garden outside Paris.”
Few people had ever heard of it, so Harry didn’t expect the way Gaunt’s eyes widened and he caught his breath. “Truly? You are far more skilled than your mother led me to believe.” For a moment, Gaunt’s eyes grew flinty. “And far different from what your stepfather said, but I already knew that he was…not to be trusted.”
Harry wondered for a moment if Gaunt had some kind of rivalry with Snape, but pushed the thought aside. He didn’t care about Potions politics. “I’m surprised that you’ve heard of the garden.”
“They’re only doing the most advanced breeding of flowers to ensure the health of unicorns and winged horses on the planet,” Gaunt said passionately. “Not to mention the kind of magical boost those flowers can offer Potions!”
Harry relaxed and smiled a little. “Well, yeah.”
“Your stepfather does not know you work there.”
“No.”
Gaunt examined Harry in silence for a few moments. “He is even more of a fool than I suspected. And you are much more interesting.”
Harry flushed brilliantly again, told himself there wasn’t an insinuation on those last few words, and sat back in the chair he’d occupied before Gaunt had stepped into the library.
He isn’t interested in you that way, Harry, get a grip. He already said that he took this job because he needed the money.
“Where do you want to start on the Potions front?” he asked.
Gaunt slid into the chair across from him. “Why don’t you tell me the particular places that you struggled in your Potions classes at Hogwarts? Not ingredient preparation, I’d wager, given your liking for the practical classes. The theory? The laws?”
Harry nodded and launched into the conversation, impressed. Gaunt was already a far better teacher than Professor Slughorn had ever been, since he’d been more concerned with trying to flatter the “Boy-Who-Lived” than paying attention to how much Harry struggled.
But part of Harry lay awake and alert inside his mind, the same way it did when he was watching a nursing unicorn mare twitch because he was getting near her foal.
Gaunt watched Harry with shining, covetous eyes, as if he were some rare jewel. Maybe he was like Slughorn, if quieter about it.
If he was quieter about it, though, he was also more intense.
Harry didn’t know exactly what Gaunt wanted from him, but he would be careful around the man.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Tom Riddle, Snape/Lily, past James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (James died to save Harry from Voldemort), emotional abuse, heavy angst, dysfunctional family, drama, violence, gore, past character death
Rating: R
Summary: Harry has accepted that he will never have a good relationship with his stepfather, Severus Snape, or his workaholic Unspeakable mother. But he still wants to have a relationship with his half-siblings. For that, he’s willing to put up with his stepfather’s ridiculous demand that he become good enough at Potions to take the NEWT as an adult. For that, he’s willing to deal with the tutor Snape’s arranged for him, the mysterious Tom Gaunt.
Author’s Notes: This is a new WiP. Please pay attention to the warnings; the depths of this family dysfunction cannot really be overstated. At the moment, I think this will be between ten and twenty chapters.
To Earn Your Heart Like Gold
Chapter One—Second Last Chance
"Back again, are you?"
Harry glanced up from the boiling pot, doing his best to watch without expression as his stepfather strode into the kitchen. He knew his face wouldn't be completely blank. That was another skill he lacked by Snape's estimation, along with brewing good potions, being intelligent, and having a reason to exist.
But Harry had managed to at least accept that, since he never would be a good person or a worthwhile stepson by Snape's estimation, he didn't need to care what the man thought.
"You invited me."
Snape gave a sound that might have been what a laugh sounded like after it died. "Yes. Because your mother convinced me to give you one more chance. One more chance to see Jennifer and Rosanna." Harry tensed at the mention of his half-sisters, unable to help it. "One more chance to prove that you are more than a bully's son."
"Better a bully than a Death Eater."
Snape drew his wand. Harry already had his out, and for a moment, they aimed at each other and the air between them thickened with the kind of violence that Harry knew as well as the taste of his own blood.
"Put the wand away," Snape said at last, voice barely audible.
"You first."
“Severus?”
At the sound of Lily’s voice, Snape lowered his wand, although he still stared at Harry, his hand flexing open and shut, as if he wanted to walk up to him and punch him. Harry sneered back to let him know the feeling was mutual, and then faced the pot again, waving his wand to make the soup within it bubble and stir, just as his mother walked into the kitchen.
“Sev—oh, Harry. You’re here!”
Harry turned to her with a polite smile. His mother was speaking brightly, but her eyes were over-bright, really, in the way that said she had stayed up all night studying magical theory again. And they flitted back and forth between Harry and Severus for only a moment before she visibly decided not to ask about the undercurrent of violence drifting through the kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re here, Harry.” Lily stepped up to smooth a hand over his hair, frown at it for a moment, and then kiss him on the cheek. Harry accepted it mainly because of how he could feel Snape glaring at them both from behind Lily’s head. “Severus told you about the deal that we’ve arranged?”
“I think he was just about to.”
As Lily faced Snape again, Harry shot him a hard grin and a wink. Snape looked as if he wanted to explode, but he couldn’t, not with Lily in the room. Harry knew he would pay for that later.
But he was an adult now. He could strike back. And he would walk away from the terms of this bargain if they were too hard or painful or ridiculous, he promised himself. No matter how much he wanted to see Jennifer and Rosanna again.
He would.
He promised.
“Well?” Lily asked, flipping a red braid over her shoulder. Both Harry’s sisters had inherited that hair, but neither had inherited her green eyes, which seemed to drive Snape mental—if he could get more mental than he already was. “Do you want to do it, or do you want me to?”
“You should, darling.”
Harry managed to stifle his gagging in time for his mother to turn back to him and direct a bright smile his way. “You know that you’ve never been competent at Potions, dear.”
“No, Mother.” Harry had never been competent enough at Potions to satisfy Snape, was what she really meant. Harry had done all right in classes with Professor Slughorn at Hogwarts, but he had never pursued the NEWT. He knew that Snape would have insisted that Harry study with him, precisely so he could disparage Harry’s efforts and tell him what a terrible brewer he was.
“To fit better into the family,” Lily said, and tossed her hair over her shoulder, “we want you to sit for and pass the Potions NEWT. The Ministry will let anyone do it until the age of thirty, which means that you still have eight years. That’s enough time to become good at it.”
“So I won’t see my sisters for eight years?”
“What—oh, no, that’s not what I meant! I was only speaking of the total timeframe—”
Something chimed in Lily’s pocket, and she took out a heavy golden watch and squinted at it, then sighed. “I have to go and see about a potion brewing myself,” she said. She leaned forwards and patted Harry’s cheek. Harry endured it. It felt familiar, after all, from his childhood, when Lily was always rushing away to attend to some potion or project awaiting her attention in the Department of Mysteries.
“Long and short, we want you good enough to take the NEWT by the beginning of the summer holiday,” Lily said brightly. “I know that you can do it. You got an Exceeds Expectations on the OWL. And we hired a tutor for you! Quite a brilliant young man, he hasn’t invented any potions yet but there’s no reason to think he won’t. He apprenticed with Desandra Ives, you must have heard of her—”
Harry had, but only because the house had been constantly filled with Potions chatter when he was growing up. It was what Snape did for a living, it was what Lily depended on for a good part of her work as an Unspeakable, and it was what Jennifer and Rosanna were both most talented at and wanted to do themselves someday. He doubted most other people would have heard of a reclusive Potions brewer from Eastern Europe whose main contributions to the world were improving a number of incredibly esoteric brews.
He nodded anyway.
“Good, then.” The watch chimed again. Lily glanced at it and nodded as if to another person. “Then you should get along well with him.”
Harry bit his tongue. Then he decided that he did have to say something since Lily was about to leave, and it wasn’t like he could trust Snape’s word. “And if I get a good mark on the NEWT, I’ll be able to see Jennifer and Rosanna? How good a mark?”
“An Exceeds Expectations—”
“An Outstanding,” Snape cut in. “I will accept nothing less.”
Lily turned to face him and lifted her head in a way that made Harry want to back off. “They are my children, too, Severus, and I say that an Exceeds Expectations will be enough.”
Snape backed down, the way he always did when Mother looked like that. Harry wished she’d done it more often. Then maybe he would have grown up without hearing endless stories of how much of a bully his father was, and how Harry’s fame at surviving the Killing Curse because his father had died had damaged the lives of the Snape family, and how Harry was lazy and unintelligent and likely to die young—
But he knew that such moments were true moments. They never lasted long. Lily would flit off and disappear into the Department of Mysteries or her locked and warded office at home, and Snape would just come up with a way to attack him when she wasn’t watching.
Harry resented her. He also thought that Lily might not have survived his father’s death, caring for Harry as a baby, and mourning her first husband if she hadn’t married Snape. It was a complicated stew that he had never managed to sort out.
“Yes, of course, darling.”
Lily nodded in satisfaction and faced Harry. “Your tutor is coming tomorrow. In the meantime, you can have your old room—”
“You know I’m storing ingredients in there, Lily.”
“He can have his old room.”
Wow, two moments in one day, Harry thought. He wondered why his mother was so intent on having him here. She must think the test to “prove” he “fit into the family” was as stupid as Harry did. Was this just her notion of a compromise with Snape’s stubbornness? Or did she think that this could really repair the relationship between her son and her husband somehow?
Probably it’s that one. She’s always more hopeful than circumstances warrant.
“Very well, I’ll move them,” Snape said, and turned away with a final glare to go down the corridor towards Harry’s room.
Lily faced Harry, frowning a little as her watch chimed again, but smoothed an encouraging hand down his robes. “Thank you for agreeing to come back and try to fit into the family, Harry.”
“You know that he won’t ever really think I fit here.”
“I’m not as pessimistic as that. If I were, I’d have given up—”
Lily stopped, but Harry thought he knew what she would have said. “After Dad died?”
Lily nodded, her smile strained. “Yes. Now, I have to leave, but there’s plenty to eat in the kitchen…”
*
“Greetings, Harry Potter.”
Harry felt his face heat up as he stood from the small table in the library where he’d been told to meet his tutor. He was starting to think he should have asked his mother more about the man. Yesterday, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Harry would study as hard as he could, even if the tutor was as annoying as Professor Slughorn. It was the only way he stood a chance of seeing Jennifer and Rosanna when they came home from Hogwarts for the summer holidays.
But the man walking through the solemn, dark room crowded with books and shelves made it seem small and unimportant. His dark blue robes made the black rug look shabby. He held out his hand, smiling a little as Harry swallowed and reached out to grasp it.
“I don’t usually earn such a reception.” The man’s voice was deep and smooth, and he tilted his head a little to the side. It was hard for Harry to decide what color his eyes were. They seemed to have shades of dark blue, like his robes, but maybe they were just deep brown. “Care to tell me why I have now?”
Harry swallowed back the temptation to say something stupid about how handsome the man was. He probably got that all the time. “I didn’t expect someone so near my age,” he said, which was at least true. He would have thought Snape would choose someone older who could “show Harry his place,” or some similar nonsense.
“Your mother thought it would make it easier for you to learn from me.”
Harry nodded slowly. The man was about twenty-five, or seemed so, but he was confident and carried himself with an air of power that Harry would never have. For a moment, Harry envied him that, and his features, and his Potions skill, and even his hair, as dark as Harry’s but a lot smoother.
Then Harry shook himself free of the grip of the stupid emotions. No, he would never be like the man, but that wasn’t the goal, anyway. The goal was to get good enough at Potions that he could see his sisters again.
“Do you think you can teach me everything I need to know to pass the Potions NEWT by June?”
The man glanced out the single, large window opposite the library’s door, as if he needed to remind himself that it was April. “It will be hard to guarantee you an Outstanding by then.”
“My mother said an Exceeds Expectations would be enough.”
“And is that what you want?”
Harry could feel himself blushing again, and hated himself for it. But hating himself was an old pastime, and he shrugged his way through the emotion. “I never cared enough to pursue a Potions NEWT when I was at Hogwarts. I’m not doing this to improve my skill.”
“Yes. To see your sisters. Mrs. Snape said.”
Harry bit back the temptation to tell the man that Lily published under the name Evans. Even if this stranger acknowledged the point, that didn’t change the fact that she used the name Mrs. Snape most of the time in everyday life.
Everyone in the family had the same last name. Except Harry.
I wouldn’t want to share a name with Snape anyway.
“Yes,” Harry said, and shook off the thoughts with a faint frown. They seemed to be swarming into the forefront of his mind more than usual. It was strange. These were concerns that he had laid to rest long ago. “So an Exceeds Expectations will be more than enough.”
The man stood in silence for a moment, contemplating him. Then he smiled, the sort of dazzling smile that could probably convince people to follow him to the ends of the earth. “My apologies. I know your name, but I never gave you mine. Tom Gaunt.”
Harry stiffened a little at the pureblood name, or more accurately, the blood purist name. But he quieted his instinctive distrust. If Gaunt really had those kinds of prejudices, he never would have accepted an offer to tutor a Muggleborn woman’s son.
“You’ve heard of my family, I see.”
Gaunt’s voice was low and almost—well, it was weird. Harry just held himself to a nod.
“I don’t fit in with them,” Gaunt said, and spread his hands in the kind of graceful motion that Harry supposed he might think of Snape as making if he’d believed the man capable of grace of any kind. “Something we have in common. My mother married a Muggle, and they didn’t think much of me. For all that I’m more talented than the lot of them ever were.”
Harry stared at him. “You’re a half-blood?”
Gaunt seemed amused. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“I—well, yes, never mind.” Harry was flushing again, but at least it was for a better reason than the handsomeness Gaunt couldn’t control. “It explains why you’re willing to tutor a half-blood in Potions.”
“That, and I find myself short of money lately. Apprenticeships are useful, but not lucrative.”
“What were you doing before the apprenticeship?” Harry asked.
“I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book. One could say, almost my whole body.” Gaunt’s smile flashed, but he was obviously inviting Harry to share the joke, not mocking, and Harry relaxed a little. “I understand that’s not the case for you.”
Harry shook his head a little. “I always liked practical classes the best. Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.”
“What do you do?”
“I work at the Pelargonium Garden outside Paris.”
Few people had ever heard of it, so Harry didn’t expect the way Gaunt’s eyes widened and he caught his breath. “Truly? You are far more skilled than your mother led me to believe.” For a moment, Gaunt’s eyes grew flinty. “And far different from what your stepfather said, but I already knew that he was…not to be trusted.”
Harry wondered for a moment if Gaunt had some kind of rivalry with Snape, but pushed the thought aside. He didn’t care about Potions politics. “I’m surprised that you’ve heard of the garden.”
“They’re only doing the most advanced breeding of flowers to ensure the health of unicorns and winged horses on the planet,” Gaunt said passionately. “Not to mention the kind of magical boost those flowers can offer Potions!”
Harry relaxed and smiled a little. “Well, yeah.”
“Your stepfather does not know you work there.”
“No.”
Gaunt examined Harry in silence for a few moments. “He is even more of a fool than I suspected. And you are much more interesting.”
Harry flushed brilliantly again, told himself there wasn’t an insinuation on those last few words, and sat back in the chair he’d occupied before Gaunt had stepped into the library.
He isn’t interested in you that way, Harry, get a grip. He already said that he took this job because he needed the money.
“Where do you want to start on the Potions front?” he asked.
Gaunt slid into the chair across from him. “Why don’t you tell me the particular places that you struggled in your Potions classes at Hogwarts? Not ingredient preparation, I’d wager, given your liking for the practical classes. The theory? The laws?”
Harry nodded and launched into the conversation, impressed. Gaunt was already a far better teacher than Professor Slughorn had ever been, since he’d been more concerned with trying to flatter the “Boy-Who-Lived” than paying attention to how much Harry struggled.
But part of Harry lay awake and alert inside his mind, the same way it did when he was watching a nursing unicorn mare twitch because he was getting near her foal.
Gaunt watched Harry with shining, covetous eyes, as if he were some rare jewel. Maybe he was like Slughorn, if quieter about it.
If he was quieter about it, though, he was also more intense.
Harry didn’t know exactly what Gaunt wanted from him, but he would be careful around the man.