[From Litha to Lammas]: Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord, This Lord Business series, gen, 3/7

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Three

“Watch out, there’s a bat.”

Harry nearly ducks before he follows Ron’s gaze and sees Snape coming down a staircase just below them. Snape turns and stares at them, but only sneers a little before continuing on his way, vanishing down one of the corridors that leads towards the hospital wing.

“Why do you suppose he retired?” Ron asks as they keep walking after a tense moment of making sure Snape doesn’t reappear. “I mean, not that I’m not glad. It just seems odd that he would do it now.”

“He probably didn’t want to deal with me and the rest of you.”

Ron grins. “Yeah, that makes sense. Oh. Uh, Harry.” The smile falls off his face so hard that Harry turns to look at him in concern. “Do you think—what do you think about me trying out for Keeper this year?”

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Ron!”

“Really? Only Oliver was so good, and I’m—not.”

“You can’t get better if you don’t practice at it!” Harry claps Ron on the back, and Ron grins at him. “Believe me, if there’s one thing that Oliver’s drilled into my head, that’s it. You want to come practice with me tomorrow? I’m not very good with the Quaffle, so we should probably be near the same level of skill.”

“Yeah. Yeah, Harry! That would be great!”

Then Ron goes bright red to his ears and abruptly looks down. Harry stops in the middle of the staircase and folds his arms. “I insist that you tell me what’s wrong, Ron.”

Ahalam rears up on his shoulder. “Yes, tell him that we must know! Is it rats? Or mice? Or bats? He said something about a bat a few minutes ago. I can eat them if someone catches one for me!”

“Ron?” Harry asks gently, as he touches Ahalam’s back but doesn’t respond to him. He thinks that interrupting Ron’s brooding now might mean that Ron would retreat into silence again, and Harry really wants to know what’s wrong.

“I can’t practice tomorrow,” Ron mumbles. “I have a prefects’ meeting right after dinner, and I don’t know how long it will take.”

“All right,” Harry says. “Then we’ll practice the day after tomorrow.”

Ron shuffles around on the step to look up at Harry, ignoring the way that some of the Gryffindors going down the stairs give them irritated looks. “You’re not—you’re not upset that I got prefect and you didn’t?”

Harry stares at him with his mouth open. Just when it looks like Ron is going to open his mouth to repeat the question, Harry bursts out laughing.

“Oi, mate, it’s not funny,” Ron mutters, turning the color of a brick now.

Harry shakes his head, but can’t stop laughing for a long moment. He reaches out to put one hand on Ron’s shoulder. “Sorry, sorry, Ron. I’m not laughing at you. I’m just laughing because why would I be upset, when I already have twenty times the responsibility and the chores of a prefect on my shoulders?”

Ron straightens up a little, beginning to smile. “Oh, yeah. I sort of forgot about that.” He pauses. “Do you—do you think I deserved to get it? Obviously Hermione did, she’s really smart, but I’m not the smartest or the best in our year…”

“I don’t think prefects are always chosen from the smartest students,” Harry says, bending towards him a little. “Or there’s no way that Parkinson would be the Slytherin prefect.”

Ron laughs again. “Isn’t she part of the pack?”

Harry snorts. “No.” Parkinson has never shown any indication to become a follower of Lord Slytherin, and honestly, he doesn’t want her to. She has a habit of making snide comments to Hermione and Angelina and some of the other Muggleborn Gryffindors, and she probably does it to some of the Ravenclaws, too. Harry frowns as he thinks that he should try to follow up on that. He wants to make sure that Luna isn’t getting bullied by people outside her House, either.

“That could cause problems later, you know.”

“What, Parkinson not being a follower of mine? She’s never indicated that she wants to be, and I’m not going to force anyone—”

“No, I mean, people who taunt and attack your followers, and the way that you rush to protect them.” Ron gives him a grim look, reminding Harry of how he looked when he was playing that game with McGonagall’s chess pieces in their first year. “Probably people are going to get more nervous about it the more power you get. And some of them might step back because of that, but Parkinson is the kind who would keep pushing and pushing and pushing, trying to make you back down.”

Harry considers it. “Maybe you’re right.”

“But?”

“She’s not a problem yet. I’ll keep an eye on her if I need to, but I won’t go looking for trouble, either.”

“Don’t need to,” Ron says, nudging Harry with a shoulder as they make their way down the stairs. “It finds you on its own.”

*

“Welcome to Potions, OWL students!”

Slughorn comes sweeping into the room with his arms extended as if welcoming them home. Harry has to admit that at least it makes a difference from the other professors he’s had so far that day, McGonagall and Flitwick and Orrey. All of them made dire speeches about how much work the fifth-year students would have to do to pass their OWLS successfully. Professor Orrey, admittedly, combined the speech with peering at them with a gimlet eye as if trying to figure out who might do badly on the Divination OWL just to be able to drop the class.

(Harry likes Professor Orrey a lot more than Trelawney, but she is passionate enough about her subject that she assigns them lots of homework).

“I know that this is your OWL year, but I assume you’ve had more than enough instruction in that from your other professors!” Slughorn waves a lazy hand and sits down in the throne-like chair behind his desk. The room is a lot brighter than when Snape taught here, Harry notes, with moving portraits on the walls that seem to represent Quidditch players and Ministry officials. “For now, I want you to know that I will do my best to make sure that everyone in my class achieves at least an Exceeds Expectations.”

Harry relaxes a little. Maybe he can do better at Potions this year.

“I do have to start with a revision of your basic skills,” Slughorn says, waving his wand. A series of parchments flies out from behind his desk and lands on the tables in front of them. “For the first half of class today, a small written exam. For the last half, a practical demonstration for me of your dicing and brewing.”

Hermione looks as if she might combust at the thought of an exam that she wasn’t able to study for. Harry leans over and gently puts a hand on her shoulder, and she takes a deep breath. Some of the color comes back into her face.

“It’s all right, it’s only to see where we are,” Harry whispers, and Hermione nods at him determinedly before diving into the exam.

Harry doesn’t think he does that well, but at least he knows more than he thought he did. And as annoying as Slughorn might be, he does think that Potions will be easier this year without Snape.

When he starts to dice and mash his ingredients for the simple Boil Cure Potion in the second half of class, he’s certain of it. His hands seem to move more fluidly and faster, and he’s able to smile at Slughorn when the man sweeps up behind him and peers down into his cauldron.

“Oh, yes, very good, Mr. Potter,” Slughorn says. “It seems that you’ve inherited your mother’s natural talent.”

Harry finds himself wanting to ask about that, but he manages to stop from asking just in time. That’s the kind of thing that Slughorn probably does to get people in his debt, dangling the promise of knowledge in front of them. Instead, he manages to smile demurely and say, “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome, you’re welcome,” Slughorn says, nodding, and winks at him, and then swoops towards Neville’s cauldron. Harry catches his breath. Someone looming behind him is one reason Neville got a lot of his potions wrong.

But Neville doesn’t seem to feel about Slughorn the way he did about Snape. He smiles at the man and accepts Slughorn’s correction of his crushing technique for the snake fangs well.

Is it as simple as someone trying to help him? Well, yeah, probably .Snape never tried to help.

By the time they leave the classroom, Harry is feeling more confident than he has about Potions since first year, and that’s even with Hermione chattering nervously next to his shoulder, recounting all the questions that she’s certain she got wrong on the written portion of the exam.

“And I don’t think I got question ten wrong, but I don’t remember for sure if moonstones can also be used as a base for potions that calm agitation, and if they need to be crushed or powdered—”

“Give it a rest, Hermione!” Ron finally snaps.

As he and Hermione start bickering, Harry hides a grin. Oliver isn’t the only one who will never change.

*

“All right! Who wants to meet a Nundu?”

Half the Care of Magical Creatures class cringes away from Sirius, and Harry narrows his eyes. He doesn’t think that Sirius would have really sneaked a Nundu into Hogwarts, but if he even has the illusion of one—

“Now that Mr. Potter and Miss Granger are trying to murder me with their eyes,” Sirius says, with a laugh, “I can tell you that you’re in fact not meeting a Nundu this morning. It was just a brief test to see whether you recognize basic danger. And I am glad to say that, yes, you do! Full marks!”

“Why are all the new professors insane?” Harry hears Draco mutter. He has to fight to avoid nodding in agreement.

“We are going to be meeting a creature that one of my students has convinced me needs more attention,” Sirius says, leading them towards an apparently empty paddock. “How many of you know what a thestral is?”

Harry holds back a snort. He isn’t surprised that Luna is starting to influence people. At least this seems more likely to succeed than her attempt to persuade the house-elves to use thestral-hair napkins.

“Yes, Miss Granger?”

“They’re creatures that are invisible to anyone who hasn’t seen death,” Hermione says promptly, lowering her hand. “In general, they resemble bat-winged horses with a reptilian aspect and milky white eyes, and are considered omens of death, in the way that Grims are.” She gives Sirius a pointed look.

Sirius just grins. “Two points to Gryffindor. Now, I need to know so that our lesson can proceed. Who here can see thestrals?” He looks out expectantly over the class.

Harry turns around to look, and isn’t surprised to see Theo step forwards with his shoulders tensing. Harry touches his arm briefly, and Theo relaxes a little. Neville, to Harry’s surprise, follows him.

“Good, good. Anyone else?”

There’s a long moment when Harry thinks Sirius will give up asking and just go on with the lesson, but then, to his shock, a blond Hufflepuff boy steps forwards. It takes a moment of struggle for Harry to come up with the name. Zacharias Smith, right.

Sirius blinks and seems about to say something, but then he just nods and picks up a metal canister that’s been waiting near the fence of the paddock. When he lifts the lid, the smell of raw meat wafts into the air. “Let’s split into three groups, then. Each of you will have one person in them who can see thestrals, and they’ll direct you on where to place the food. Thestrals are meat-eaters, so you’ll want to be careful…”

Theo attaches himself to Harry without a word and points out a patch of slightly shimmery air that he says is an adult thestral. Hermione asks about foals as she holds out a piece of meat. Theo murmurs that they are none here.

He seems to be paying attention to the thestrals in front of them, but he’s looking at something else. Harry follows his gaze and sees him watching Smith.

“Something strange about him?” Harry asks softly.

“I didn’t think he could see thestrals.” Theo’s eyes are narrowed. “I would have heard about any incident of the kind, I’d think.”

“Hmm. You think something happened to him this summer?”

“I don’t see what else it could be,” Theo says, and then sighs and moves Harry’s wrist over. “No, my lord, please don’t shove your whole hand towards her mouth like that. She’s liable to think you’re offering her that as a treat instead of the beef.”

“Don’t call me my lord.”

“Then don’t try to feed your fingers to thestrals.”

In their bickering, Harry forgets about Smith for a while, but he notices him on the way back up to the castle after the end of class. Smith is walking by himself, except for Hannah Abbott, who seems to be asking him if he’s all right.

Smith answers her in a harsh voice, and then breaks away, stomping towards the castle.

Harry looks at Hannah. She just shakes her head.

Hmmm. Harry will have to keep an eye on Smith.

*

“Mr. Potter, I insist that you not bring your snake to class.”

Harry blinks as he sits down at a table a bit back from the front of the Defense Against the Dark Arts class. “I didn’t bring him with me, professor.”

“Preposterous, Mr. Potter. I know that you bring that creature everywhere.” Harry has never heard anyone inflect the word creature with contempt the way Umbridge manages. She waves her wand. “Accio Hary Potter’s snake!”

Harry tenses for a moment, wondering if Ahalam will come flying through the door of the classroom, but nothing happens. Umbridge looks briefly startled, then gives Harry a sickly sweet smile. “Exemplary behavior, Mr. Potter. See that you keep it up.”

“Yes, Professor,” Harry says, and exchanges a disturbed look with Hermione.

“Now,” Umbridge says, and clasps her hands together as she simpers at the class, “you should know that I consider your education of utmost importance. Among many other things, the history of this class is one of unmitigated violence.” She shakes her head. The moving cat on her pendant looks disapproving, too. “We will not be doing that. We will be concentrating on peaceful means to resolve our conflicts. Yes, Miss…?”

“Granger, Professor,” Hermione says, lowering her hand. “Does that mean that we won’t be casting spells in class?”

“That is exactly what it means, Miss Granger, with the exception of spells that calm minds and promote clarity.” Umbridge smiles at Hermione, which is kind of a horrible expression. “The Minister regrets the immense loss of magical life in the recent war and wishes to make sure that it does not happen again.”

“But this is our OWL year,” Hermione says, practically vibrating in her seat. “Doesn’t that mean that we’ll be missing out on spells that we need to cast in the practical portion of the OWL exam?”

“Are you saying that you disapprove of the program Minister Fudge has created to safeguard your futures, Miss Granger?”

Umbridge is the one who looks as if she’s vibrating now, and Harry reaches out and puts a hand on Hermione’s arm. He’s still not sure exactly what Umbridge is doing at Hogwarts, but it does seem likely that she’ll go after anyone who opposes her beloved Fudge.

“I just want to know how well we should aim to do on the practical portion of our exam, Madam Umbridge,” Hermione says. “That also safeguards our futures, after all.”

“In some ways, a proper concern,” Umbridge says, nodding. “But you will find that you will do better if you calm down and listen to the Ministry, Miss Granger. We are adults, after all, and inevitably wiser than you.”

Harry doesn’t have to turn to look at the rest of the class to know that there are a lot of discontented looks being thrown Umbridge’s way. He decides that he has to keep someone else from speaking up even more openly than Hermione, and raises his hand.

He regrets it when Umbridge focuses on him. “Yes, Mr. Potter?”

“Does Minister Fudge have a concrete plan for what happens if someone is attacked by Dark wizards?” Harry blurts out. “Or do we just need to try the diplomacy and calming that you’re suggesting?”

Umbridge smiles more widely and toys with the pendant for a moment. The grey kitten on it is watching Harry closely now. “You will find that if you are attacked by Dark wizards, Mr. Potter, you should call the Aurors.”

“But what happens if they’re late showing up?” Seamus asks, somewhat to Harry’s surprise. “Don’t we have to know spells to defend ourselves?”

Umbridge sighs, as if Seamus has been asking her five hundred questions instead of two. “If you paid close attention, Mr…?”

“Finnigan, Professor.”

“Then you would realize that using those spells only makes the Dark wizards you’re opposing attack you further. It would be best if you could flee. If that is not possible, then call the Aurors. And if that is not possible, then you can try the calming and peace-making techniques that we will discuss in this class.”

“I’d rather trust to the power of Lord Slytherin,” says Ernie Macmillan, who’s sitting near the front and who is all puffed up like a cat dropped off a balcony. “I’m sure he would protect us.”

Umbridge immediately whirls on him. Harry has the impression that she was waiting for someone to say that, although not why. “Explain your concerns to me, Mr. Macmillan. Why should you rely on Lord Slytherin, a mere child, rather than the Ministry, full of capable adults?” Her voice has gone back to sweet by the end of the words, and her hand is playing with her pendant again.

“The Ministry hasn’t seemed full of capable adults to me, Professor,” Ernie says, in that strong and pompous tone he has. “If it were, it would have put down You-Know-Who in the last war, rather than relying on Lord Slytherin to do it for them, wouldn’t they have? Stands to reason.” He nods to Harry, who is trying to send silent messages to Ernie to shut up. “That didn’t happen, so it’s better to rely on Lord Slytherin.” He nods again to Harry, obviously thinking he’s doing him a favor.

Harry sighs as Umbridge turns back to him. “And what do you think, Lord Slytherin? Do you intend to challenge the Ministry?”

Umbridge is smiling, but Harry doesn’t need Hermione’s elbow in his ribs to warn him not to trust that smile. He smiles back at Umbridge and says, “Of course not, Professor. My authority is limited to the school and the people who have chosen to accept it. I know that Minister Fudge has authority over the Ministry itself.”

“Ah. Then you are challenging the Ministry’s authority over the school!”

“Of course not, Professor. I acknowledge that you have the right to teach Defense. That’s why I’m in the class.”

“And do you intend to support the Minister’s campaign for peace?”

“I mean, as long as I can, Professor. If Voldemort kidnaps me like he did last year—”

“That did not happen. You-Know-Who is dead.”

Harry eyes Umbridge. He thinks he might know one reason why she’s here now. She wants to keep any rumors from spreading that Voldemort is around, maybe because the Minister thinks that would panic people or make them less prone to trust him.

Harry keeps his voice as calm as he can. “It happened, Professor. I was lucky that I survived. But I didn’t really survive because of offensive spells. So maybe it makes sense that that we should use calming charms and diplomacy.”

“You are lying,” Umbridge says, but she sounds calmer now. She wags a finger at Harry. “Naughty boys get in trouble for lying and lose House points. Ten points from Gryffindor!”

A murmur moves through the class, and Ernie turns red and opens his mouth. Harry beats him to it. “What does the Minister think happened at the end of last year when I was kidnapped, Professor?”

“The Minister is not aware of any such event,” Umbridge says promptly.

“Can I write to him and make him aware of it?”

Umbridge titters a little. “You can, of course, write him a letter, Mr. Potter. All the citizens of wizarding Britain are welcome to do so. But you ought to know that if you’re wasting Minister Fudge’s time, he simply won’t answer you.”

She turns away and picks up a book from the desk in front of her. “Now, we’ve wasted enough time with silly chatter about things that are not going to happen. Open your book and begin to read Chapter One. If you reach the end of it before the class finishes, then feel free to begin again. There will be no need to talk.”

Harry shakes his head as he begins to read. Of course, the book is as dry and boring as Umbridge’s talk about diplomacy and peace. It really does say outright that the best defensive magic to use is no magic at all, and that “ordinary” people should leave those kinds of spells to the Aurors.

Harry is going to have to do something about this, but he doesn’t know what yet.

*

“Salazar! Come here!”

Harry hisses his Niffler’s name, watching the shadows for any sign of him. He can’t believe that he’s trying to track his Niffler through Hogwarts at three-o’clock in the morning, but, well.

He woke up to go to the loo a few minutes ago, and noticed that Salazar’s cage was empty. That shouldn’t be possible, with all the spells that Harry layered on it, but he slipped free anyway. Harry used a tracking spell, drawing on a bit of Ahalam’s magic, to try and find him, and he knows that Salazar is up here on the seventh floor. But he can’t see him.

“Nifflers are nothing but trouble,” Ahalam says loftily from where he’s wrapped around Harry’s neck. “You should get a stronger cage for him that he cannot escape. You should imprison him in my tank. I will not be using it. And you should make sure that you do not give him any Transfigured rings or real gold in the near future. He does not deserve it. Unlike me. I am never disobedient.”

“Can you sense him anywhere, Ahalam?”

Ahalam darts his tongue out rapidly and swings his head around like a compass needle. “Up there, around the corner. What is he doing there? We must find out and then put him back in the cage. But only when you put it inside the tank.”

“Thanks, Ahalam,” Harry says absently, and runs around the corner, trying to be as quiet as he can. He has the Cloak on, but that doesn’t muffle the sound of his footsteps, or for that matter, his hissed conversation with Ahalam.

Salazar at least isn’t hiding, once Harry gets around the corner. There aren’t a lot of hiding places in this corridor, anyway, just a single tapestry on the far wall of what looks like a bewildered wizard and a lot of more bewildered trolls.

Salazar is over on the other side of the corridor, scrabbling at the stone wall with his claws and squealing.

“What is wrong with you?” Harry whispers furiously as he steps up to Salazar. He thinks for a minute that Salazar will run away from him, but he’s too focused on apparently trying to dig through the wall. Harry shakes his head as he scoops Salazar up and then casts a charm to blunt his claws when Salazar immediately tries to get away from him. “Come on, we need to get back to bed before Filch catches us.”

Salazar lets out another squeal. Harry grimaces. If Filch hasn’t heard them yet and come running to catch them, it must be because Hogwarts is protecting them. But that can’t last much longer.

Harry has to stop several times on the way back to Gryffindor Tower to wrestle with Salazar. This time, Salazar isn’t trying to scratch him, and he never tries to bite. He just wriggles with single-minded intensity to get out of Harry’s hold and race back to the seventh-floor corridor and the wall he’s obsessed with.

“Ugh, what is wrong with you?” Harry mutters again when they finally get back to Gryffindor Tower. He stuffs Salazar into his cage and then puts the cage into Ahalam’s tank. Then he layers new protective spells around it. “We’ll go for a run sometime in the next week, I promise. But not right now.”

“You should not reward him! You should reward me! My suggestion of using the tank around the cage was very clever and smart!”

Harry snorts and arranges Ahalam on the pillow next to his head. “I’ll think about it, if you go to sleep.”

“I can do that! Snakes are good at going to sleep! Much better than Nifflers are at staying in their cages! Did you know that I could also break the protective spells if I wanted? But because I am a good snake and very smart and beautiful, I stay—”

Luckily, Harry falls asleep somewhere in the middle of Ahalam’s chatter.