lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-06-29 03:43 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-06-29 03:43 pm
[From Litha to Lammas]: Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord, This Lord Business series, gen, 1/7
Title: Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen, except for a few mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Lord Slytherin), violence, discussion of past character deaths, bigotry, present tense, ridiculousness
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4800
Summary: In his fifth year as “Lord Slytherin,” Harry is training with his followers, dealing with an overprotective godfather, combating the stupidity of the Ministry, trying to pass his OWLS, keeping Hogwarts students safe, and practicing Quidditch (Oliver would never forgive him if he didn’t). As if that’s not enough, he also has the Thestral Publicity Program.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This will probably have six to seven chapters, and is the sequel to my stories “Confusion Is Mine, Saith the Lord” and “Thou Shalt Have No Tournaments Before Me.” Make sure that you read those first; otherwise, this won’t make any sense. The title is a twist on the Bible quote, “Of a sweet savor unto the Lord.’
Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord
“Behind you!”
Harry keeps charging at Theo. By now, he knows that tactic Theo favors, trying to get Harry to look over his shoulder and keep his attention away from Theo. But Harry will stay strong this time. He will keep his eyes focused on Theo. He will win this duel—
Something tackles him face-first into the grass and dirt of Grimmauld Place’s courtyard and sends his wand flying.
Harry groans as he tries to roll over, but he can’t because of the huge weight on top of him. The huge furry weight, he realizes a second later. He reaches back, and Padfoot’s tongue descends for an equally huge lick.
“Get off me, Sirius!”
Sirius leaps off, but circles back around to bark in Harry’s face and slobber all over him. Harry pushes him away. His breath smells disgusting. “Have you been eating your own feces again?” Harry demands.
Sirius freezes. Theo, who looks as if he was about to say something in the lecturing tone he favors so much when he’s teaching Harry how to duel, freezes with his mouth halfway open.
“He does what?” Theo asks a moment later.
Sirius whines and glares at Harry accusingly.
“If you want me to stop telling people about it?” Harry asks him. “Stop doing it.”
Sirius turns and slinks into the house, a picture of dejection from his drooping tail to his drooping fur. Harry rolls his eyes and begins brushing the dirt and pebbles off his palms. Then he uses his wand to heal the mild scratches.
“He really does?” Theo asks.
“Yeah,” Harry says, and glances up to find Theo struggling against laughter. Harry grins. He likes it when he can make his friends happy. “He claims that it’s a natural instinct of his dog form and he spent so long in dog form in Azkaban that he can’t always resist it.”
Theo closes his eyes and snorts, one hand rising to cover his mouth and nose. He looks a little shocked at himself. Proper young purebloods probably aren’t supposed to make that kind of noise, Harry supposes.
“You can laugh if you want, Theo. No one here is going to judge you.”
Unfortunately, that snaps Theo right back into the somber mood he’s been in most of the day. He lifts his wand. “You need to learn when someone is creeping up behind you and when it’s just a distraction tactic, Harry.”
Harry sighs. “I know.”
“You’re powerful enough to keep your senses extended around you during a fight and hear when someone is moving behind you.”
“Not if they’re under a Silencing Charm!”
“I have faith that you could do it even then.”
“Sure, in Hogwarts,” Harry protests, waving his hand at Theo. “When the castle is watching out for me. But it would be impossible to hear an enemy under a Silencing Charm on an ordinary battlefield!”
Theo shakes his head stubbornly. “I know that you could do it if you really wanted to, Harry. You just need to try.”
Harry looks at Theo, opens his mouth to say something, and closes it again. Theo’s jaw is clenched, and his eyes have a shine that Harry thought was just exasperation. But he knows what desperation looks like on Theo.
“All right,” he says quietly.
Theo nods. “Thank you.” He raises his wand. “Now, try to keep your senses extended. I’ll grant you a minute to get used to the new sounds and smells before I start attacking you again.”
Because Harry knows Theo, he keeps a wary eye on him as he casts the spells that spread his senses out around him like drapes of cloth or flowing water. And sure enough, Theo’s next spell comes flying at him less than thirty seconds later. Harry rolls his eyes as he catches it on a shield. “I actually heard you starting to vocalize the spell, Theo.”
“See? I knew you could do it.”
“What about if someone is casting the spells soundlessly?”
“You’ll just need to keep going until you’ve got it.”
Harry grimaces, remembering what happened when he had to face Voldemort less than a month ago, and flings himself once more back into his training.
*
“I do not like it when you put me down and leave me behind. Why am I not in the duels? I could help you with the magic that saved you when it was us against the Dark Cloud. When I helped you break the ward. I want to help! Take me with you to your next duel!”
Harry smiles as he lowers his arm into Ahalam’s tank and Ahalam promptly winds up around his arm. He doesn’t like leaving Ahalam behind, either. Most of the time, the tank is barely used except when Ahalam sleeps.
But now, he tries to explain. “If you were in the duels with me, then Theo might hurt you. Not because he hates you, but because he knows it would distract me.”
“I think he hates me,” Ahalam says doubtfully, his tongue darting out. “The bad man who hexed me in Hogwarts hated me. No one would hex me who does not have me.” He wriggles comfortably into place on Harry’s shoulder and darts his tongue out again to brush against Harry’s cheek. “You will talk to him, and he will not hate me, and then I will be with you in the duels.”
Harry leaves the room trying to explain, again, that Theo doesn’t hate him, but that he’s trying to teach Harry how to function in a real duel.
Ahalam is not impressed.
“How could anyone hate me? I am very smart. I am very beautiful. Even Salazar wants to put me in his pouch because I am so beautiful. You need to talk to the thin boy and tell him that you will cast an illusion on my scales if necessary. Then I will not distract him during the duel. Do you think I would distract him because he is jealous of my beauty? Do you know a spell that would allow him to shed his skin and grow a new one that would please him? Why can humans not shed their skins? Why am I so beautiful and he is not?”
Harry is laughing by the time that he makes it down the stairs. Trust Ahalam to cheer him up and remind him that there’s more to life than duels and dodging spells.
“You could say that he’s beautiful in his own way.”
“But not as beautiful as me. I am very beautiful. Look at my scales, how they shine in the sunlight. Human skin does not shine that way—”
“Does that mean that you don’t think I’m beautiful, Ahalam?”
His little snakes pauses. Harry looks down at him, smiling. He’s outside the dining room where Kreacher has served lunch, but he’s willing to wait to go in until Ahalam answers the question. It’s important.
(And Remus tends to jump when he hears Parseltongue and he’s not expecting it).
“You are better than beautiful,” Ahalam says at last. “You are also very smart. You adopted me. You feed me cheese, and you listen to me. The only stupid thing you have done lately is to not take me with you to the duel.”
Laughing again, Harry steps into the dining room.
*
“No, Nott. This is my hour.”
“Harry didn’t know you were coming!”
Harry raises his eyebrows as he steps out into the courtyard. Theo comes over several times a week to practice with him, and Harry assumed that was what they would be doing again today. He didn’t expect Oliver to be standing in the middle of the cleared space (surrounded with wards both to keep spells from flying out of it and to keep Grimmauld’s vicious plant life from growing back) and arguing with Theo.
“Hi, Oliver.” Harry lets his confusion into his voice. “Why are you here?”
Oliver spins to face him. “It’s time for your Quidditch training, Harry.”
“I thought that wasn’t until tomorrow?”
“We have no choice!” Oliver unfolds something from his pocket and snaps it, rattling, out to its full size, shaking it at Harry. “Didn’t you see this?”
Harry takes the paper and stares at it. There’s an article on the first page about a new Seeker named Cailey Macdougal being hired for the Wimbourne Wasps. “Uh, yes, what about it?”
“That should have been your slot!” Oliver jabs his finger at the paper. “Who knows if there’s going to be another Seeker hired any time in the next three years? They should have held that slot open until you were ready! I know there were players from the Wasps at the Quidditch demonstration we put on at Hogwarts! But no, they had to go and hire this nobody!”
“Oliver, Macdougal is a professional. And you couldn’t expect them to hold open a Seeker slot for three years—”
“You have to be so good that they will! And now we’re going to show them what they missed out on by not hiring you!”
Harry stares at him. “Oliver—”
“On that broom, Harry Potter! Dueling practice is important, but what happens if you survive You-Know-Who and then you have no career because you didn’t keep up with your Quidditch training?”
Harry sighs and casts a hopeless glance at Theo. But Theo just looks like he’s about to laugh again, the traitor. He waves his hand at Harry and steps back, grinning.
There have been a lot fewer grins from Theo this summer, so Harry reckons he can make two of his friends happy, and leaves to go get his Firebolt.
*
Harry doesn’t notice it at first, mostly because he hasn’t been out of Grimmauld Place much since he arrived home for the summer. They’ve been to Diagon Alley a few times, and visited Hermione at her house and Ron at the Burrow, and went to a Ministry party that Sirius mainly wanted to attend so he could make everyone who’d thought he was a mass murderer as uncomfortable as possible.
But he notices when he proposes meeting Padma in Diagon Alley, and Sirius grins at him and says, “Sure. Let me get my cloak.”
“Uh…Sirius, I thought I would Floo to the Leaky Cauldron and meet Padma there.”
“Yes?” Sirius pops his head around the side of the cupboard where he’s getting the cloak out. “Is that not the plan anymore?”
“I thought Padma and I would meet by ourselves. She said she had something important she wanted to talk to me about.”
“Oooh, look at my little man, growing up,” Sirius says, and gives him the most disgusting leer in the history of the universe.
“Sirius! It’s not like that!”
“Why not?” Sirius whirls his cloak around his shoulders and turns to admire himself in the mirror hanging in the entrance hall, one of only a few that they have around the place. Kreacher doesn’t like them and keeps breaking them if they aren’t warded. “The lovely Patil doesn’t want to date you?”
Harry rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t date any of my followers.” The very thought makes something squirm in the bottom of his stomach. It—upsets him, the thought of dating someone who might feel they needed to keep him happy as Lord Slytherin and so couldn’t say no. Or someone who thinks they can get some kind of advantage from dating him. “It’s just—she talked to me during the school year about how she feared my power, and I think that she wanted to check up on me and haven’t turned into a Dark Lord or something.”
“Never mind, she’s clearly a fool.”
Harry grins weakly. “She wants to talk to me in private.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll sit at another table.”
“Sirius, can’t you stay here?” Harry wishes now that the dog-like instincts that Sirius claims to have in his Animagus form translated the other way, and it was as simple as saying “Sit! Stay!” to Sirius as it would be to a dog.
“No,” Sirius says, after a long, thoughtful moment of silence when he rolls his eyes up so that he appears to be studying his own fringe. “Afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, here’s the thing,” says Sirius, and gives him a bright smile. “It’s a funny story, don’t know if you’ve heard it. My godson was kidnapped by You-Know-Who recently and nearly died. That means that where he goes, I go. Don’t worry, I’ll stay at least five feet from you at all times. Far enough away not to be a burden, close enough to grab you if someone tries any Portkeys or Apparition.”
“Sirius, it’s Diagon Alley. Broad daylight. I doubt Voldemort will venture out and try to attack me there.”
“Five feet. Promise.”
“Sirius.”
“Look, we can make it six.”
“Sirius.” Harry faces him and forces his hands away from adjusting the cloak around his throat. “Listen. This is—” He stops himself from saying “serious” just in time, because Sirius will only make stupid puns. “Um, important. Padma said that she has to talk to me about something she found out about the Lord Slytherin title. She was already a little wary of me during the school year. If I show up with a, a bodyguard, then she’s going to think my power is going to my head or something.”
“She can think that all she likes,” Sirius says. He’s smiling, but it’s more like a baring of teeth. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let you get kidnapped again.”
“Sirius—”
“No.”
“Honestly, Harry, he’s right,” Remus says, coming around the corner and dropping a gentle hand onto Harry’s shoulder. Harry stares at him, betrayed. “If one of your friends will get upset because you show up with someone to protect you so soon after you were kidnapped, then what kind of friend are they? Just explain things to Miss Patil when you get there. I don’t remember her being unreasonable. She should be able to accept it.”
“And I promise I won’t eavesdrop,” Sirius says, holding up a hand. “Promise promise.”
“You’re crossing your fingers down behind your back, Sirius.”
“Oops.”
“It wasn’t really kidnapping, it was Voldemort using Vince’s oath against me,” Harry mumbles, but he knows when he’s lost a fight. And he doesn’t think Padma is unreasonable. She ought to be able to understand it if he just tells her everything.
“Too bad,” Sirius says, with the bared-teeth smile again, and then chivvies Harry towards the Floo.
*
“Hello, Harry. Thank you for coming to see me.”
Padma’s voice is a bit overly formal, and her eyes stray towards Sirius. Harry holds up a hand himself. “Sorry for this,” he says. “But my godfather is a bit overprotective of me since Voldemort managed to get at me.” He smiles at her hopefully. “Is it all right if he sits a few tables away and just watches over me?”
“Oh.” Padma has relaxed, and she sits back down in her seat near the Leaky Cauldron’s fireplace again. “Of course. If that’s what needs to happen, that’s what needs to happen.” She bestows an approving nod on Sirius. “I appreciate you coming along to keep Harry from getting into trouble, Mr. Black.”
“Call me Sirius,” Sirius says, and winks at her. He’s smiling as he turns to order butterbeer for both of them, but when he brings it, he does plonk the bottle down in front of Harry and wander over to sit at the next table.
Padma leans forwards and lowers her voice after one more glance in Sirius’s direction. “So I know that you’ve been resistant to researching the Lord Slytherin title the way Dumbledore recommended, but I decided to do it.”
“I’m glad you did,” Harry says, and he means it sincerely. He did mean to get around to researching the title. But, well, he just had so much going on last year, with classwork and Voldemort and trying to prevent the Tri-Wizard Tournament. “What did you find out? Is he right that it’s been used to manipulate people in the past?”
“Yes and no,” Padma says, getting a sheaf of notes out of her robe pocket. Harry nods. That’s sort of what he expected based on Dumbledore’s way of talking about it but also evading the subject. He could have just told Harry what he wanted to know. “It does seem like some of them were awfully young when they took up the title, and just did what their parents told them.”
“If they had parents, why didn’t their parents have the title?”
“Because it needs to be based on accomplishment,” Padma reminds him. “The parents might have been Parselmouths or something similar, but they didn’t do whatever needed to be done to meet that requirement.”
Harry blushes. “Right.” That’s something that he learned in his first conversation about the bloody thing.
“And not all of them had parents. Some of them were orphans, but their guardians or whoever manipulated them.” Padma spreads out her parchments, scans them for a moment, and then shoves one towards him. “Here. This is about Yvonne Fawley, who beat the former Lord Slytherin in a children’s duel a few centuries ago.”
Harry leans in and looks at the notes Padma has scribbled.
Yvonne Fawley: Lady Slytherin at 11; orphan adopted by her maternal aunt.
Within two years spoke up for restrictions on Muggleborns being admitted to Hogwarts.
At 15 supported a law that would have sentenced werewolves automatically to Azkaban upon being bitten.
At 17 directed her followers into attacks against the Gryffindor Head of House and Headmistress at the time, who was a former Gryffindor.
At 18 declared herself a Dark Lady and attacked the Ministry. Killed by Aurors.
Harry winces and hands the parchment back to Padma. “Yeah, it seems like she might have had some ideas of her own—the Fawleys are purebloods, right? But her aunt was probably behind a lot of it.”
Padma nods and tucks the parchment away. “It’s not everyone who claimed the title or Lord or Lady Slytherin,” she says, and gestures at the other notes she has on the table. “There are a few who got it young and still did good things with it. Or took the title when they were older and had both good and bad ideas. But I can see why Dumbledore is wary of you.” She pauses. “Why some people would be wary of you.”
Harry looks her in the eye. “Are you?”
Padma looks torn and spends a moment fiddling with a bangle on her wrist. “I—not personally. But anyone can be corrupted. Anyone can start doing things wrong while believing they’re right. Just look at Dumbledore. He really did believe that bringing in the Tri-Wizard Tournament was the right thing, and that it justified what he was doing to you.”
Harry nods absently. He’s thinking hard. “What do you think of oaths?”
“Easily become a trap,” Padma says slowly. “No offense, Harry, but I wouldn’t want to swear an oath to follow you or obey you.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of that,” Harry says. “I was thinking about swearing an oath to you. Or other people who could sort of keep an eye on me and tell me when I start going off the beaten path.”
Padma’s eyes are wide. “I—wouldn’t want the responsibility?”
Harry nods. “Okay. I can ask someone else. But what do you think of it as a general idea?”
“It’s not something that I remember reading about the other Lord or Lady Slytherins doing. But it’s also something that I think a few people would hate.”
“Like who?”
“Daphne. Theo. Susan. Probably even Ron.”
“We’ll talk to them and I’ll get their ideas,” Harry says, and waves a hand. “Maybe it’s not the best solution. Maybe it would be better to just have people feel free to come up to me and tell me that they think I’m going mad. But if they don’t feel free to do that, we need some other kind of formal structure.”
Padma sips her butterbeer and considers him. “You’re a lot calmer about this than I thought you would be.”
“The title is still stupid,” Harry says, leaning forwards. “Doing things to protect other students and help the school isn’t. But I can’t do that if I’m, I don’t know, proclaiming that everyone has to save a third of their lunch for Ahalam.”
Padma giggles abruptly and puts her hand over her mouth. “He would explode.”
“He would do it anyway if I let him eat all the food he wants to eat. Seriously, do you know how much of a pig he is? He complains and whines that he’s hungry, and I tell him that some snakes don’t need to eat more than once a month, and he just tells me that he isn’t that kind of snake. Then he says he’s very smart.”
Padma is laughing quietly, and at the next table, Sirius is smiling, too. Harry didn’t miss how Sirius became attentive and growled a little when he talked about swearing an oath. But that’s one reason he’s going to ask his other friends about it.
He will ask people and listen to their advice and turn it over in his mind. It doesn’t mean that he’s going to rush off and do what he wants all the time.
Of course, he’ll also ask other people about their perspectives. He doesn’t intend to just listen to Sirius or Padma or Theo or Oliver all the time, either.
(Well, maybe Oliver when it comes to Quidditch practice. But if he listened to Oliver all the time, Harry would be spending every waking moment on a broom, eating the “right” kinds of foods, or doing other exercises that would help him be a better Seeker. Harry likes Oliver, but he’s more than a little mad).
*
“No.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Theo—”
“No.”
“You got to say that kind of thing when you were talking about an oath you wanted to swear,” Harry snaps, stepping back and wiping sweat out of his eyes. They’re practicing in a large room Sirius created in Grimmauld Place by knocking down a few walls, since it’s raining today. “But this is one I would be swearing. At least tell me why you disapprove of me swearing it. Don’t just say ‘no.’”
Theo glares at him, chest heaving, even though Harry didn’t cast so many spells that he would have had to dodge. His voice is deep and angry. “Because it could restrict your power at inappropriate times and keep you from defending yourself, if it was worded incorrectly.”
“So we find some way that it won’t be worded incorrectly. Hermione could—”
“It’s not a good idea, for the reasons I just told you!”
“I want to at least consider it.”
“I don’t want you to consider it.”
Harry takes a breath and holds it. That kind of thing was never very effective at calming his temper when he lived with the Dursleys, but now he lives with reasonable people, and it’s fine. He breathes out and asks softly, “Theo, what do you want me to do? Only pay attention to your opinion and not anyone else’s?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I know. And I appreciate you teaching me dueling spells and everything. But I’ve got to consult with other people and see what they think.”
Theo looks at him with haunted, miserable eyes, and turns his head away. His voice is almost inaudible. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when things don’t work out.”
“I wouldn’t come crying to you. Whining, maybe…”
At least Harry gets to see Theo crack a smile before he springs back into the duel with twice as much violence as before.
*
“You are to be giving it back.”
Harry pauses, uncertain, outside the door of his room when he hears Kreacher’s voice inside. He wonders if Kreacher could be talking to Ahalam, but no, Ahalam was asleep in a puddle of sunlight downstairs, and Harry really doubts that he got up here that quickly.
He steps in, resisting the absurd urge to knock on the door.
Kreacher is standing in front of Salazar’s cage, glaring at Harry’s Niffler. Salazar is standing on his hind legs and has his teeth bared, his claws scrabbling against the side of the cage.
“Kreacher, what are you doing?”
Kreacher whirls around and glares at Harry, baring his own teeth. “You are to be making him give it back!” he shouts, holding his ears.
“Uh, give what back?” Harry reckons that Salazar probably picked up some trinket, but he doesn’t know how. Salazar has only been out of his cage a few times under Harry’s supervision since they got here, and that was to go after conjured gold rings in the courtyard.
“Master Regulus’s locket!”
Harry blinks. “What, hold on, I sort of remember this. Salazar picked up a locket when he was in the house the first time, right?” He frowns at Salazar. “You know that, and you only decided to ask about it now?”
“Kreacher only just now found out where it went!”
That’s reasonable, Harry has to admit. It would be hard to imagine that a Niffler would take a locket that has probably been sitting around the house for a decade at least. And Kreacher wasn’t right there when Salazar put the locket into his pouch, from what Harry can remember.
“All right, Kreacher. Just let me get it back. Salazar doesn’t have any reason to trust you.”
Kreacher stares at Harry and sniffs loudly, but moves away from the cage. Harry reaches in and pulls Salazar out. Salazar is docile in his arms, but he bares his teeth at Kreacher. Harry glances around just in time to see Kreacher stick his tongue out at Salazar with a horrible grimace on his face.
“Kreacher, you are not helping.”
Kreacher huffily folds his arms.
Harry speaks softly to Salazar as he reaches towards his pouch. Most of the time, Salazar is fine about having Harry open it. “I need the locket,” he says, and sticks his hand gently in.
With a bit of rummaging, he thinks he’s found it. Or at least, there’s a chain in there that doesn’t feel like the Transfigured gold that’s pretty much all Harry gives Salazar to pick it up. This feels slimy, for some reason. Harry starts to pull it out.
Salazar squeals and flips himself out of Harry’s arms, which he’s never done before. He runs madly for the door of the bedroom.
“Kreacher be making the Niffler into pie!” Kreacher bellows, and pops out of sight and then up into the doorway. Salazar brandishes his claws at Kreacher and then turns and runs back towards Harry, hiding behind him.
“Look, Salazar, we just want the locket,” Harry says, and bends down until he’s almost eye-to-eye with his pet. “Can we have it back, please?”
“Nifflers not be understanding English,” Kreacher scoffs.
Harry flushes. Of course they don’t. But he does feel the urge to reason with Salazar. Salazar saved his life in the battle with Voldemort. He reaches out and gently scratches on top of his pet’s head. “Can we have it, please?”
Salazar shrinks away from him.
“Kreacher be getting it out with a spell,” Kreacher croaks, and snaps his fingers.
There’s a burst of sound and light that seems to streak away from Kreacher’s hand and towards Salazar. Before Harry can yell about that, though, Salazar rolls over, avoiding whatever spell it was, and dashes forwards to bite Kreacher on the ankle.
There’s twin squeals, one from Kreacher, and one from Salazar. He runs towards Harry, jumps onto his arm, jumps from there onto his shoulder, and then leaps back into his cage, where he goes over to lap frantically at his water as if to get a foul taste out of his mouth.
Harry claps a hand across his mouth, so that he doesn’t burst into laughter.
Kreacher is rubbing his ankle, but mostly, he has an expression of injured dignity. He straightens up. “Kreacher is getting Master Regulus’s locket back one way or the other,” he says, in a quiet, menacing voice. “Kreacher is going now. To look up Niffler recipes.”
He pops away, and Harry sits down on his bed and shakes his head at Salazar. “You’re causing a lot of trouble, you know that? You could just give the locket back.”
Salazar continues to lap his water for a minute, then rolls over and curls up around his pouch in a clearly defensive gesture.
Harry sighs, shakes his head, and goes to try and reason with Kreacher.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Gen, except for a few mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Lord Slytherin), violence, discussion of past character deaths, bigotry, present tense, ridiculousness
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 4800
Summary: In his fifth year as “Lord Slytherin,” Harry is training with his followers, dealing with an overprotective godfather, combating the stupidity of the Ministry, trying to pass his OWLS, keeping Hogwarts students safe, and practicing Quidditch (Oliver would never forgive him if he didn’t). As if that’s not enough, he also has the Thestral Publicity Program.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Litha to Lammas” chaptered fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This will probably have six to seven chapters, and is the sequel to my stories “Confusion Is Mine, Saith the Lord” and “Thou Shalt Have No Tournaments Before Me.” Make sure that you read those first; otherwise, this won’t make any sense. The title is a twist on the Bible quote, “Of a sweet savor unto the Lord.’
Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord
“Behind you!”
Harry keeps charging at Theo. By now, he knows that tactic Theo favors, trying to get Harry to look over his shoulder and keep his attention away from Theo. But Harry will stay strong this time. He will keep his eyes focused on Theo. He will win this duel—
Something tackles him face-first into the grass and dirt of Grimmauld Place’s courtyard and sends his wand flying.
Harry groans as he tries to roll over, but he can’t because of the huge weight on top of him. The huge furry weight, he realizes a second later. He reaches back, and Padfoot’s tongue descends for an equally huge lick.
“Get off me, Sirius!”
Sirius leaps off, but circles back around to bark in Harry’s face and slobber all over him. Harry pushes him away. His breath smells disgusting. “Have you been eating your own feces again?” Harry demands.
Sirius freezes. Theo, who looks as if he was about to say something in the lecturing tone he favors so much when he’s teaching Harry how to duel, freezes with his mouth halfway open.
“He does what?” Theo asks a moment later.
Sirius whines and glares at Harry accusingly.
“If you want me to stop telling people about it?” Harry asks him. “Stop doing it.”
Sirius turns and slinks into the house, a picture of dejection from his drooping tail to his drooping fur. Harry rolls his eyes and begins brushing the dirt and pebbles off his palms. Then he uses his wand to heal the mild scratches.
“He really does?” Theo asks.
“Yeah,” Harry says, and glances up to find Theo struggling against laughter. Harry grins. He likes it when he can make his friends happy. “He claims that it’s a natural instinct of his dog form and he spent so long in dog form in Azkaban that he can’t always resist it.”
Theo closes his eyes and snorts, one hand rising to cover his mouth and nose. He looks a little shocked at himself. Proper young purebloods probably aren’t supposed to make that kind of noise, Harry supposes.
“You can laugh if you want, Theo. No one here is going to judge you.”
Unfortunately, that snaps Theo right back into the somber mood he’s been in most of the day. He lifts his wand. “You need to learn when someone is creeping up behind you and when it’s just a distraction tactic, Harry.”
Harry sighs. “I know.”
“You’re powerful enough to keep your senses extended around you during a fight and hear when someone is moving behind you.”
“Not if they’re under a Silencing Charm!”
“I have faith that you could do it even then.”
“Sure, in Hogwarts,” Harry protests, waving his hand at Theo. “When the castle is watching out for me. But it would be impossible to hear an enemy under a Silencing Charm on an ordinary battlefield!”
Theo shakes his head stubbornly. “I know that you could do it if you really wanted to, Harry. You just need to try.”
Harry looks at Theo, opens his mouth to say something, and closes it again. Theo’s jaw is clenched, and his eyes have a shine that Harry thought was just exasperation. But he knows what desperation looks like on Theo.
“All right,” he says quietly.
Theo nods. “Thank you.” He raises his wand. “Now, try to keep your senses extended. I’ll grant you a minute to get used to the new sounds and smells before I start attacking you again.”
Because Harry knows Theo, he keeps a wary eye on him as he casts the spells that spread his senses out around him like drapes of cloth or flowing water. And sure enough, Theo’s next spell comes flying at him less than thirty seconds later. Harry rolls his eyes as he catches it on a shield. “I actually heard you starting to vocalize the spell, Theo.”
“See? I knew you could do it.”
“What about if someone is casting the spells soundlessly?”
“You’ll just need to keep going until you’ve got it.”
Harry grimaces, remembering what happened when he had to face Voldemort less than a month ago, and flings himself once more back into his training.
*
“I do not like it when you put me down and leave me behind. Why am I not in the duels? I could help you with the magic that saved you when it was us against the Dark Cloud. When I helped you break the ward. I want to help! Take me with you to your next duel!”
Harry smiles as he lowers his arm into Ahalam’s tank and Ahalam promptly winds up around his arm. He doesn’t like leaving Ahalam behind, either. Most of the time, the tank is barely used except when Ahalam sleeps.
But now, he tries to explain. “If you were in the duels with me, then Theo might hurt you. Not because he hates you, but because he knows it would distract me.”
“I think he hates me,” Ahalam says doubtfully, his tongue darting out. “The bad man who hexed me in Hogwarts hated me. No one would hex me who does not have me.” He wriggles comfortably into place on Harry’s shoulder and darts his tongue out again to brush against Harry’s cheek. “You will talk to him, and he will not hate me, and then I will be with you in the duels.”
Harry leaves the room trying to explain, again, that Theo doesn’t hate him, but that he’s trying to teach Harry how to function in a real duel.
Ahalam is not impressed.
“How could anyone hate me? I am very smart. I am very beautiful. Even Salazar wants to put me in his pouch because I am so beautiful. You need to talk to the thin boy and tell him that you will cast an illusion on my scales if necessary. Then I will not distract him during the duel. Do you think I would distract him because he is jealous of my beauty? Do you know a spell that would allow him to shed his skin and grow a new one that would please him? Why can humans not shed their skins? Why am I so beautiful and he is not?”
Harry is laughing by the time that he makes it down the stairs. Trust Ahalam to cheer him up and remind him that there’s more to life than duels and dodging spells.
“You could say that he’s beautiful in his own way.”
“But not as beautiful as me. I am very beautiful. Look at my scales, how they shine in the sunlight. Human skin does not shine that way—”
“Does that mean that you don’t think I’m beautiful, Ahalam?”
His little snakes pauses. Harry looks down at him, smiling. He’s outside the dining room where Kreacher has served lunch, but he’s willing to wait to go in until Ahalam answers the question. It’s important.
(And Remus tends to jump when he hears Parseltongue and he’s not expecting it).
“You are better than beautiful,” Ahalam says at last. “You are also very smart. You adopted me. You feed me cheese, and you listen to me. The only stupid thing you have done lately is to not take me with you to the duel.”
Laughing again, Harry steps into the dining room.
*
“No, Nott. This is my hour.”
“Harry didn’t know you were coming!”
Harry raises his eyebrows as he steps out into the courtyard. Theo comes over several times a week to practice with him, and Harry assumed that was what they would be doing again today. He didn’t expect Oliver to be standing in the middle of the cleared space (surrounded with wards both to keep spells from flying out of it and to keep Grimmauld’s vicious plant life from growing back) and arguing with Theo.
“Hi, Oliver.” Harry lets his confusion into his voice. “Why are you here?”
Oliver spins to face him. “It’s time for your Quidditch training, Harry.”
“I thought that wasn’t until tomorrow?”
“We have no choice!” Oliver unfolds something from his pocket and snaps it, rattling, out to its full size, shaking it at Harry. “Didn’t you see this?”
Harry takes the paper and stares at it. There’s an article on the first page about a new Seeker named Cailey Macdougal being hired for the Wimbourne Wasps. “Uh, yes, what about it?”
“That should have been your slot!” Oliver jabs his finger at the paper. “Who knows if there’s going to be another Seeker hired any time in the next three years? They should have held that slot open until you were ready! I know there were players from the Wasps at the Quidditch demonstration we put on at Hogwarts! But no, they had to go and hire this nobody!”
“Oliver, Macdougal is a professional. And you couldn’t expect them to hold open a Seeker slot for three years—”
“You have to be so good that they will! And now we’re going to show them what they missed out on by not hiring you!”
Harry stares at him. “Oliver—”
“On that broom, Harry Potter! Dueling practice is important, but what happens if you survive You-Know-Who and then you have no career because you didn’t keep up with your Quidditch training?”
Harry sighs and casts a hopeless glance at Theo. But Theo just looks like he’s about to laugh again, the traitor. He waves his hand at Harry and steps back, grinning.
There have been a lot fewer grins from Theo this summer, so Harry reckons he can make two of his friends happy, and leaves to go get his Firebolt.
*
Harry doesn’t notice it at first, mostly because he hasn’t been out of Grimmauld Place much since he arrived home for the summer. They’ve been to Diagon Alley a few times, and visited Hermione at her house and Ron at the Burrow, and went to a Ministry party that Sirius mainly wanted to attend so he could make everyone who’d thought he was a mass murderer as uncomfortable as possible.
But he notices when he proposes meeting Padma in Diagon Alley, and Sirius grins at him and says, “Sure. Let me get my cloak.”
“Uh…Sirius, I thought I would Floo to the Leaky Cauldron and meet Padma there.”
“Yes?” Sirius pops his head around the side of the cupboard where he’s getting the cloak out. “Is that not the plan anymore?”
“I thought Padma and I would meet by ourselves. She said she had something important she wanted to talk to me about.”
“Oooh, look at my little man, growing up,” Sirius says, and gives him the most disgusting leer in the history of the universe.
“Sirius! It’s not like that!”
“Why not?” Sirius whirls his cloak around his shoulders and turns to admire himself in the mirror hanging in the entrance hall, one of only a few that they have around the place. Kreacher doesn’t like them and keeps breaking them if they aren’t warded. “The lovely Patil doesn’t want to date you?”
Harry rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t date any of my followers.” The very thought makes something squirm in the bottom of his stomach. It—upsets him, the thought of dating someone who might feel they needed to keep him happy as Lord Slytherin and so couldn’t say no. Or someone who thinks they can get some kind of advantage from dating him. “It’s just—she talked to me during the school year about how she feared my power, and I think that she wanted to check up on me and haven’t turned into a Dark Lord or something.”
“Never mind, she’s clearly a fool.”
Harry grins weakly. “She wants to talk to me in private.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll sit at another table.”
“Sirius, can’t you stay here?” Harry wishes now that the dog-like instincts that Sirius claims to have in his Animagus form translated the other way, and it was as simple as saying “Sit! Stay!” to Sirius as it would be to a dog.
“No,” Sirius says, after a long, thoughtful moment of silence when he rolls his eyes up so that he appears to be studying his own fringe. “Afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, here’s the thing,” says Sirius, and gives him a bright smile. “It’s a funny story, don’t know if you’ve heard it. My godson was kidnapped by You-Know-Who recently and nearly died. That means that where he goes, I go. Don’t worry, I’ll stay at least five feet from you at all times. Far enough away not to be a burden, close enough to grab you if someone tries any Portkeys or Apparition.”
“Sirius, it’s Diagon Alley. Broad daylight. I doubt Voldemort will venture out and try to attack me there.”
“Five feet. Promise.”
“Sirius.”
“Look, we can make it six.”
“Sirius.” Harry faces him and forces his hands away from adjusting the cloak around his throat. “Listen. This is—” He stops himself from saying “serious” just in time, because Sirius will only make stupid puns. “Um, important. Padma said that she has to talk to me about something she found out about the Lord Slytherin title. She was already a little wary of me during the school year. If I show up with a, a bodyguard, then she’s going to think my power is going to my head or something.”
“She can think that all she likes,” Sirius says. He’s smiling, but it’s more like a baring of teeth. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to let you get kidnapped again.”
“Sirius—”
“No.”
“Honestly, Harry, he’s right,” Remus says, coming around the corner and dropping a gentle hand onto Harry’s shoulder. Harry stares at him, betrayed. “If one of your friends will get upset because you show up with someone to protect you so soon after you were kidnapped, then what kind of friend are they? Just explain things to Miss Patil when you get there. I don’t remember her being unreasonable. She should be able to accept it.”
“And I promise I won’t eavesdrop,” Sirius says, holding up a hand. “Promise promise.”
“You’re crossing your fingers down behind your back, Sirius.”
“Oops.”
“It wasn’t really kidnapping, it was Voldemort using Vince’s oath against me,” Harry mumbles, but he knows when he’s lost a fight. And he doesn’t think Padma is unreasonable. She ought to be able to understand it if he just tells her everything.
“Too bad,” Sirius says, with the bared-teeth smile again, and then chivvies Harry towards the Floo.
*
“Hello, Harry. Thank you for coming to see me.”
Padma’s voice is a bit overly formal, and her eyes stray towards Sirius. Harry holds up a hand himself. “Sorry for this,” he says. “But my godfather is a bit overprotective of me since Voldemort managed to get at me.” He smiles at her hopefully. “Is it all right if he sits a few tables away and just watches over me?”
“Oh.” Padma has relaxed, and she sits back down in her seat near the Leaky Cauldron’s fireplace again. “Of course. If that’s what needs to happen, that’s what needs to happen.” She bestows an approving nod on Sirius. “I appreciate you coming along to keep Harry from getting into trouble, Mr. Black.”
“Call me Sirius,” Sirius says, and winks at her. He’s smiling as he turns to order butterbeer for both of them, but when he brings it, he does plonk the bottle down in front of Harry and wander over to sit at the next table.
Padma leans forwards and lowers her voice after one more glance in Sirius’s direction. “So I know that you’ve been resistant to researching the Lord Slytherin title the way Dumbledore recommended, but I decided to do it.”
“I’m glad you did,” Harry says, and he means it sincerely. He did mean to get around to researching the title. But, well, he just had so much going on last year, with classwork and Voldemort and trying to prevent the Tri-Wizard Tournament. “What did you find out? Is he right that it’s been used to manipulate people in the past?”
“Yes and no,” Padma says, getting a sheaf of notes out of her robe pocket. Harry nods. That’s sort of what he expected based on Dumbledore’s way of talking about it but also evading the subject. He could have just told Harry what he wanted to know. “It does seem like some of them were awfully young when they took up the title, and just did what their parents told them.”
“If they had parents, why didn’t their parents have the title?”
“Because it needs to be based on accomplishment,” Padma reminds him. “The parents might have been Parselmouths or something similar, but they didn’t do whatever needed to be done to meet that requirement.”
Harry blushes. “Right.” That’s something that he learned in his first conversation about the bloody thing.
“And not all of them had parents. Some of them were orphans, but their guardians or whoever manipulated them.” Padma spreads out her parchments, scans them for a moment, and then shoves one towards him. “Here. This is about Yvonne Fawley, who beat the former Lord Slytherin in a children’s duel a few centuries ago.”
Harry leans in and looks at the notes Padma has scribbled.
Yvonne Fawley: Lady Slytherin at 11; orphan adopted by her maternal aunt.
Within two years spoke up for restrictions on Muggleborns being admitted to Hogwarts.
At 15 supported a law that would have sentenced werewolves automatically to Azkaban upon being bitten.
At 17 directed her followers into attacks against the Gryffindor Head of House and Headmistress at the time, who was a former Gryffindor.
At 18 declared herself a Dark Lady and attacked the Ministry. Killed by Aurors.
Harry winces and hands the parchment back to Padma. “Yeah, it seems like she might have had some ideas of her own—the Fawleys are purebloods, right? But her aunt was probably behind a lot of it.”
Padma nods and tucks the parchment away. “It’s not everyone who claimed the title or Lord or Lady Slytherin,” she says, and gestures at the other notes she has on the table. “There are a few who got it young and still did good things with it. Or took the title when they were older and had both good and bad ideas. But I can see why Dumbledore is wary of you.” She pauses. “Why some people would be wary of you.”
Harry looks her in the eye. “Are you?”
Padma looks torn and spends a moment fiddling with a bangle on her wrist. “I—not personally. But anyone can be corrupted. Anyone can start doing things wrong while believing they’re right. Just look at Dumbledore. He really did believe that bringing in the Tri-Wizard Tournament was the right thing, and that it justified what he was doing to you.”
Harry nods absently. He’s thinking hard. “What do you think of oaths?”
“Easily become a trap,” Padma says slowly. “No offense, Harry, but I wouldn’t want to swear an oath to follow you or obey you.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of that,” Harry says. “I was thinking about swearing an oath to you. Or other people who could sort of keep an eye on me and tell me when I start going off the beaten path.”
Padma’s eyes are wide. “I—wouldn’t want the responsibility?”
Harry nods. “Okay. I can ask someone else. But what do you think of it as a general idea?”
“It’s not something that I remember reading about the other Lord or Lady Slytherins doing. But it’s also something that I think a few people would hate.”
“Like who?”
“Daphne. Theo. Susan. Probably even Ron.”
“We’ll talk to them and I’ll get their ideas,” Harry says, and waves a hand. “Maybe it’s not the best solution. Maybe it would be better to just have people feel free to come up to me and tell me that they think I’m going mad. But if they don’t feel free to do that, we need some other kind of formal structure.”
Padma sips her butterbeer and considers him. “You’re a lot calmer about this than I thought you would be.”
“The title is still stupid,” Harry says, leaning forwards. “Doing things to protect other students and help the school isn’t. But I can’t do that if I’m, I don’t know, proclaiming that everyone has to save a third of their lunch for Ahalam.”
Padma giggles abruptly and puts her hand over her mouth. “He would explode.”
“He would do it anyway if I let him eat all the food he wants to eat. Seriously, do you know how much of a pig he is? He complains and whines that he’s hungry, and I tell him that some snakes don’t need to eat more than once a month, and he just tells me that he isn’t that kind of snake. Then he says he’s very smart.”
Padma is laughing quietly, and at the next table, Sirius is smiling, too. Harry didn’t miss how Sirius became attentive and growled a little when he talked about swearing an oath. But that’s one reason he’s going to ask his other friends about it.
He will ask people and listen to their advice and turn it over in his mind. It doesn’t mean that he’s going to rush off and do what he wants all the time.
Of course, he’ll also ask other people about their perspectives. He doesn’t intend to just listen to Sirius or Padma or Theo or Oliver all the time, either.
(Well, maybe Oliver when it comes to Quidditch practice. But if he listened to Oliver all the time, Harry would be spending every waking moment on a broom, eating the “right” kinds of foods, or doing other exercises that would help him be a better Seeker. Harry likes Oliver, but he’s more than a little mad).
*
“No.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Theo—”
“No.”
“You got to say that kind of thing when you were talking about an oath you wanted to swear,” Harry snaps, stepping back and wiping sweat out of his eyes. They’re practicing in a large room Sirius created in Grimmauld Place by knocking down a few walls, since it’s raining today. “But this is one I would be swearing. At least tell me why you disapprove of me swearing it. Don’t just say ‘no.’”
Theo glares at him, chest heaving, even though Harry didn’t cast so many spells that he would have had to dodge. His voice is deep and angry. “Because it could restrict your power at inappropriate times and keep you from defending yourself, if it was worded incorrectly.”
“So we find some way that it won’t be worded incorrectly. Hermione could—”
“It’s not a good idea, for the reasons I just told you!”
“I want to at least consider it.”
“I don’t want you to consider it.”
Harry takes a breath and holds it. That kind of thing was never very effective at calming his temper when he lived with the Dursleys, but now he lives with reasonable people, and it’s fine. He breathes out and asks softly, “Theo, what do you want me to do? Only pay attention to your opinion and not anyone else’s?”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“I know. And I appreciate you teaching me dueling spells and everything. But I’ve got to consult with other people and see what they think.”
Theo looks at him with haunted, miserable eyes, and turns his head away. His voice is almost inaudible. “Fine. But don’t come crying to me when things don’t work out.”
“I wouldn’t come crying to you. Whining, maybe…”
At least Harry gets to see Theo crack a smile before he springs back into the duel with twice as much violence as before.
*
“You are to be giving it back.”
Harry pauses, uncertain, outside the door of his room when he hears Kreacher’s voice inside. He wonders if Kreacher could be talking to Ahalam, but no, Ahalam was asleep in a puddle of sunlight downstairs, and Harry really doubts that he got up here that quickly.
He steps in, resisting the absurd urge to knock on the door.
Kreacher is standing in front of Salazar’s cage, glaring at Harry’s Niffler. Salazar is standing on his hind legs and has his teeth bared, his claws scrabbling against the side of the cage.
“Kreacher, what are you doing?”
Kreacher whirls around and glares at Harry, baring his own teeth. “You are to be making him give it back!” he shouts, holding his ears.
“Uh, give what back?” Harry reckons that Salazar probably picked up some trinket, but he doesn’t know how. Salazar has only been out of his cage a few times under Harry’s supervision since they got here, and that was to go after conjured gold rings in the courtyard.
“Master Regulus’s locket!”
Harry blinks. “What, hold on, I sort of remember this. Salazar picked up a locket when he was in the house the first time, right?” He frowns at Salazar. “You know that, and you only decided to ask about it now?”
“Kreacher only just now found out where it went!”
That’s reasonable, Harry has to admit. It would be hard to imagine that a Niffler would take a locket that has probably been sitting around the house for a decade at least. And Kreacher wasn’t right there when Salazar put the locket into his pouch, from what Harry can remember.
“All right, Kreacher. Just let me get it back. Salazar doesn’t have any reason to trust you.”
Kreacher stares at Harry and sniffs loudly, but moves away from the cage. Harry reaches in and pulls Salazar out. Salazar is docile in his arms, but he bares his teeth at Kreacher. Harry glances around just in time to see Kreacher stick his tongue out at Salazar with a horrible grimace on his face.
“Kreacher, you are not helping.”
Kreacher huffily folds his arms.
Harry speaks softly to Salazar as he reaches towards his pouch. Most of the time, Salazar is fine about having Harry open it. “I need the locket,” he says, and sticks his hand gently in.
With a bit of rummaging, he thinks he’s found it. Or at least, there’s a chain in there that doesn’t feel like the Transfigured gold that’s pretty much all Harry gives Salazar to pick it up. This feels slimy, for some reason. Harry starts to pull it out.
Salazar squeals and flips himself out of Harry’s arms, which he’s never done before. He runs madly for the door of the bedroom.
“Kreacher be making the Niffler into pie!” Kreacher bellows, and pops out of sight and then up into the doorway. Salazar brandishes his claws at Kreacher and then turns and runs back towards Harry, hiding behind him.
“Look, Salazar, we just want the locket,” Harry says, and bends down until he’s almost eye-to-eye with his pet. “Can we have it back, please?”
“Nifflers not be understanding English,” Kreacher scoffs.
Harry flushes. Of course they don’t. But he does feel the urge to reason with Salazar. Salazar saved his life in the battle with Voldemort. He reaches out and gently scratches on top of his pet’s head. “Can we have it, please?”
Salazar shrinks away from him.
“Kreacher be getting it out with a spell,” Kreacher croaks, and snaps his fingers.
There’s a burst of sound and light that seems to streak away from Kreacher’s hand and towards Salazar. Before Harry can yell about that, though, Salazar rolls over, avoiding whatever spell it was, and dashes forwards to bite Kreacher on the ankle.
There’s twin squeals, one from Kreacher, and one from Salazar. He runs towards Harry, jumps onto his arm, jumps from there onto his shoulder, and then leaps back into his cage, where he goes over to lap frantically at his water as if to get a foul taste out of his mouth.
Harry claps a hand across his mouth, so that he doesn’t burst into laughter.
Kreacher is rubbing his ankle, but mostly, he has an expression of injured dignity. He straightens up. “Kreacher is getting Master Regulus’s locket back one way or the other,” he says, in a quiet, menacing voice. “Kreacher is going now. To look up Niffler recipes.”
He pops away, and Harry sits down on his bed and shakes his head at Salazar. “You’re causing a lot of trouble, you know that? You could just give the locket back.”
Salazar continues to lap his water for a minute, then rolls over and curls up around his pouch in a clearly defensive gesture.
Harry sighs, shakes his head, and goes to try and reason with Kreacher.