[From Litha to Lammas]: Of a Sweet Nonsense Unto the Lord, This Lord Business series, gen, 6/7

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Six

“What are you doing, you nasty little boy?”

Harry glances over his shoulder with a blink. He was walking into the Great Hall, and didn’t even know Umbridge was behind him. But this is as good a time as any to start his plan.

Technically, in fact, he started it last night. But the public part of it can only be done when he’s around Umbridge or talking about her to other people.

“Sorry, professor? I’m going into breakfast—”

“You did this!” Umbridge screams, and gestures at the stone walls around them with one hand. Harry sees all the students who are lingering to watch them, which is a good twenty-five or so, twist their heads and crane their necks as one to see what she’s talking about.

Of course, there’s no indication of what she is talking about. The walls are entirely free of magic or graffiti saying UMBRIDGE GO HOME or the like. Harry sighs a little as Umbridge spins to face him again. “Professor, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t affect the torches or the stone at all, and there’s nothing else—”

“You are going to stop this!”

“Professor,” Harry says, and lets a tone of exasperation creep into his voice, “what do you mean?”

“This!” This time, Umbridge’s swinging hand nearly hits him in the nose. Of all people, Harry sees Vince Crabbe start to draw his wand and step forwards from the line of Slytherins who have just come up the dungeon stairs. Harry catches Vince’s eye with a frown, and Vince leans back with a grumble. But he honestly has been doing so much better this year, not needing to call Harry to his side at all. Harry doesn’t want to ruin that for him.

“I still don’t see what you mean. And this just sounds like a baseless accusation because I’m not doing anything.”

“You little brat,” Umbridge hisses, leaning down until their noses are less than a centimeter about. Harry ignores Ahalam’s suggestion that it would be easy to bite her. “We’ll see who’s laughing after I speak to the Headmaster!”

She sweeps into the Great Hall as though she’s marching at the head of a parade. Harry shakes his head, rolls his eyes for the benefit of the people staring at him, and walks after her.

“You could make life unpleasant for her because she called you names,” Susan says quietly. She’s come from nowhere, it seems, to walk beside Harry. Then again, when Harry glances back, he sees a group of Hufflepuffs who must have come up their own stairs.

“She’s done a lot worse than that.”

“What?” Susan’s gaze darts to Umbridge’s back, and her hand goes down to her side and her wand for a moment.

“Don’t worry. I’m taking care of it.”

Susan glances at him from the corner of her eye. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing, when you tend to downplay threats to yourself.”

“This is a threat to more than me,” Harry murmurs, and then they’re in the Great Hall where people can overhear them and they have to split to go their House tables anyway. Susan looks doubtfully back at him. Harry gives her a reassuring smile.

“Mr. Potter, will you come up here, please?”

Harry drags his feet very obviously up to the professors’ table, where Umbridge is standing with a smug smile behind her chair. “Yes, Headmaster?” he asks, and does his best to sound whiny and bored. “What is it? I’m hungry.”

Dumbledore peers over his glasses at Harry, but doesn’t seem to know what to make of his attitude. “Professor Umbridge claims you have done something to the walls of the school, and she wants you to undo it.”

Harry sighs melodramatically. He’s glad that Ahalam is so amused that he can’t even speak Parseltongue right now. “She stopped me in the entrance hall and complained about it, too, sir. But she didn’t tell me what she meant, and anyway, I’m not doing anything. Can I please go sit down and have some breakfast?”

“He did it! He is Lord Slytherin, with power over the school! Make him undo it!”

Harry rolls his eyes all the way up and all the way down. Sirius, sitting at the far end of the table, looks as if he’s about to explode with laughter, but Harry warned him about this last night and he’s holding it down as best he can.

“What does she think I did, Headmaster? Remember, I can’t really affect professors unless they’re a direct threat to me. And I don’t think Professor Umbridge would say she was that.”

“Would you, Dolores?” Dumbledore murmurs, turning in his chair to look at her. “Are you a threat to Mr. Potter?”

“Of course not! I am only doing my job!” Umbridge spins towards Harry and stares at him again. “Now undo it.”

“I still need to know what exactly she thinks I’m doing,” Harry mutters, making sure to meet Dumbledore’s eyes.

“I agree that we need a clear explanation, Dolores. What are you saying? What are you accusing Mr. Potter of doing to the walls?”

“That!”

Umbridge is pointing at the wall behind the professors’ table. Dozens of students and all the professors turn around and look. There’s nothing there, of course. Harry makes sure to plaster his hand across his face and sigh again.

“Mr. Potter, if you could take this a little more seriously,” Dumbledore chides.

Harry straightens up with his best contrite expression. He never thought he was a good actor, since the Dursleys always seemed to see through him, but maybe it’s different when he has other people depending on him. “Sorry, sir.”

“Now.” Dumbledore glances at the wall one more time and shakes his head a little. “Please tell me. Did you place some enchantment on the walls that would only activate when Professor Umbridge was looking at them?”

“No, sir,” Harry says clearly, telling the truth to a Legilimens and not lying.

It really isn’t lying. He went and talked to Hogwarts last night, and explained that he felt unhappy and worried over Umbridge. But he said that it would be too noticeable if the school raised walls to block her the way it did with Professor McGonagall when she tried to get Harry to go to the Yule Ball, so could it just be subtly unwelcoming to Umbridge until she left of her own free will?

So now Hogwarts is doing that. Nobody else will notice anything, because there’s nothing for them to notice. Hogwarts isn’t trying to make them leave.

“He’s not lying, Dolores,” Dumbledore says, after a keen look at Harry that clearly says he knows something is going on, and turns to face Umbridge. “Perhaps you should go to Madam Pomfrey and have yourself checked over for a curse.”

“There is nothing wrong with me! It’s him!”

Umbridge starts towards Harry, and then stops. Harry would think that she’s angry enough at him not to, but it’s hard to ignore a spell being shot from the Gryffindor table that explodes like a firecracker right in front of you.

“Hands off the small Lord Slytherin,” George says.

“Yeah, maybe find someone more your own age to bully,” Fred says. His smile is just as friendly as George’s, but they’re both leaning forwards in a way that says they can spring over the table at any time.

“I must insist that you go to Madam Pomfrey, Dolores,” Dumbledore says, peering over his glasses at her. “And Mr. Weasley and Mr. Weasley, a detention to be served with me.”

“We’re always happy to serve detentions for protecting Ickle Lord Slytherin, sir!”

“Detention, here we come!”

Dumbledore shakes his head at both Harry and the twins, but then catches Umbridge’s eye and points at the doors of the Great Hall. “I really must insist that you leave, Dolores, and that you get yourself seen as soon as possible.”

Umbridge goes off, not quite stomping.

Fred and George both wink at Harry. He grins back and goes to sit down at the Gryffindor table. Things are already looking up.

*

“You said nothing about using yourself as bait.”

“I didn’t say anything to you at all about my plan to get rid of Umbridge after you used the Memory Charm and the Staggering Compulsion on her, so it’s really just a complete lack of information, not lying to you.”

Theo pauses. Harry keeps working to copy down information from the Defense book in front of him. He got it from the Restricted Section after Sirius wrote him a pass. It’s a highly interesting one that has a lot of countercurses in it that he doesn’t remember seeing before. And if his people are going to face Death Eaters, they’ll have to know things like that.

“I wasn’t accusing you of lying,” Theo says softly. He sits down across the table from Harry, watching him with eyes that have a look of concern in them when Harry glances up. “I was only saying…”

“I know. But I also know what I’m doing, Theo.”

“Do you? She could have attacked you in the entrance hall and no one would have been able to do anything about it.”

Harry snorts at him. Theo looks offended, but Harry only rolls his eyes. “Hogwarts would intervene in that case. It didn’t intervene for Ahalam last year because Moody attacked him and not me, but it raised those walls when Professor McGonagall wanted me to go to the Yule Ball, and it created that fire for the Veela students because I thought about them being cold, and it showed me secret passages when I needed to escape Moody. It can’t stop the professors just being professors, and it doesn’t stop words, or they would never have been able to tell me how disappointed they were about the Tournament last year. But actions against me, like I told it Umbridge would take or a spell she might cast at me? It’ll stop them.”

“You might get hurt first.”

“I think Hogwarts will react faster than that.”

Theo still looks skeptical, but also willing to let it go. Instead, he tilts his head curiously. “What exactly are you doing to her?”

Harry knows there’s something a bit off about his expression, because Theo eyes him cautiously, but he doesn’t retreat, so Harry feels free to talk about it. “Hogwarts is making itself unwelcoming to her. She’s feeling it without knowing exactly what she’s feeling, and probably seeing hallucinations, too. It’ll feed her paranoia and make it worse. Sooner or later, she’ll have a public breakdown, and at that point, Fudge will have no choice but to replace her.”

Theo stares at him. This time, Harry can’t make out the expression on his face until it cracks open in an absolutely vicious smile.

“That’s brilliant, Harry.”

Harry smiles back, and thinks his own smile might be a version of the dark one that Theo’s used so many times in the past. “She’ll wish that she hadn’t threatened my friends by the time she’s done.”

*

“Harry, are you doing something to Professor Umbridge?”

“No, sir. Honestly. I haven’t cast a curse on her or anything like that. She doesn’t even let us draw our wands in class. I think her paranoia might be catching up with her, though. She already thought my Defense study group was an army. It’s not surprising if she gets mental about other things.”

“…That is a good point, Harry.”

*

“It does seem a bit cruel, Harry.”

“I know, Hermione. But she was planning to not just have me renounce my title but go after Theo and Daphne’s families. Daphne’s mum just because she has creature blood of some kind and Umbridge hates anyone like that.”

“…Never mind. Being driven mad is too good for her.”

*

Harry walks through the front door of Grimmauld Place on the first day of the Christmas holiday and gets snatched up by Remus, who spins him around with a laugh. “Sirius told me what you did with Umbridge! Brilliant work, Harry!”

Harry smiles at Remus, but he’s a little puzzled. “Thanks. Did you have some specific reason to hate Umbridge, though? I didn’t hear anything about her before she became the Defense professor.”

Remus puts Harry down, and his eyes flash gold as he clenches his fists. Briefly, his fingernails look more like claws than anything. “She proposed legislation that would have kept werewolves under lock and key most of the time, just in case we ‘went on a rampage.’ And forbidden them Wolfsbane, because it has rare ingredients that could supposedly be better used elsewhere. Those proposals failed, but she managed to make it legal for someone who’s even suspected to be a werewolf to be sacked immediately.”

Harry stares at him with his mouth open. Then he says, “That’s awful. I’m sorry. I should have known…” He starts pacing.

“Harry?”

Both Remus and Sirius, who just walked in, stare at him. “Harry, are you all right?” Sirius asks gently, right over the top of Remus saying, “I wouldn’t expect you to know the name of everyone who’s awful about werewolves, Harry. There are so many of them.”

Harry doesn’t listen to them much. He’s accepted that some things are inevitable, like people asking him for protection because he’s a lord, and he wants to provide that protection. And even if he doesn’t really have any authority outside Hogwarts, people like Fudge and Umbridge still think of him as a threat.

If he’s going to be thought of as a threat, he might as well be one, so that he can protect more people from really stupid things like Umbridge’s legislation.

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Sirius steps right into his path, and that means that he has to stop pacing. Harry shakes his head a little and says, “Yeah, I’m fine. Well, not fine. There are so many terrible things that the Ministry and Umbridge and people like them are doing, and I didn’t know about.”

Sirius and Remus exchange glances. Remus looks uncertain when he turns back to Harry. “Harry, I didn’t tell you this because I wanted you to become…my champion, or something similar. You’re not to blame for not having known.”

“No. But I would be to blame if I didn’t do something about it now that I know.”

“No one expects you to—”

“But why not? I have the power to do it, and more fame than I know what to do with. If I just sit around and concentrate on my own personal life, that’s immoral.”

Unexpectedly, Sirius chuckles and leans forwards to hug Harry. “That’s your mum, right there,” he whispers into Harry’s ear, and squeezes him tight for a minute. “She always wanted to right an injustice. Your dad…well, he wouldn’t mind doing nasty things if he thought it was a laugh, but he changed as he got older. Lily changed him. She had a fighting spirit. You’re the same.”

Harry hugs him back, his mind already whirling with plans. It seems to him that there’s no direct way to influence the Wizengamot, but there’s definitely someone he can approach, someone who could help Harry.

Out of self-interest, if nothing else.

*

Griphook eyes Harry from behind the desk in the small stone office deep beneath the bank where another goblin brought Harry. He looks a bit cautious. “What can I do for you, Lord Slytherin? Why did you ask for me specifically?”

“Because you’re the only goblin whose name I know, and that’s a problem,” Harry says. He ignores the way that Griphook bristles, probably misinterpreting his words. “I need to know about other people. And I want to do something about Ministry laws that involve werewolves and Hogwarts and—other things.” He almost said “thestrals.” Luna’s Thestral Publicity Program is getting to him more than he realized. “I know there are laws that affect goblins, but not much about what they are. So I thought I could try to help you make things better, and you could try to help give me information.”

“Try?”

“I don’t know if I’ll succeed. I don’t want to promise something I don’t know for certain I can do.”

Griphook watches him in silence for long enough that Harry is almost certain the goblin will tell him to bugger off. But then he says, “This is unexpected, Lord Slytherin. Tell me what changed your mind.”

“There’s a Ministry official called Dolores Umbridge teaching Defense at Hogwarts this term, and she’s awful.” Harry thinks he sees a small start from Griphook at the mention of Umbridge, but he’s not sure. “I didn’t know it until Remus Lupin, who’s my godfather’s friend, told me, but she’s also tried to pass some absolutely awful laws about werewolves. She did get some of them passed. I want to stop her.”

“You could, from what I understand of Lord Slytherin’s power, easily make her leave the school.”

“I’m in the process of trying to make sure that happens.” Harry isn’t sure whether Griphook would report what he’s doing to someone or not, so he thinks it’s best to be vague. “But I also want to stop her more broadly. If she just goes back to passing horrible laws when she returns to the Ministry, then I haven’t done enough.”

“Most people would say that you had, Lord Slytherin.”

“Why are you referring to me by title?”

“It is your title.”

Harry gives up on understanding that for the moment. “If you could give me some ideas on how to stop her, or other people to talk to, that would be great. Or if you think another goblin would be better at doing this, that would be fine too. Just tell me who to talk to, and I will.”

Griphook is again silent for long moments, eyes running up and down Harry. Harry nearly looks down to see if he has mustard on his robes or something, the gaze is that intense. Griphook finally murmurs, “You understand that Umbridge is the symptom of a set of problems deep and interconnected enough that stopping her would, by itself, do nothing?”

“What are the problems connected to?”

“Human disdain for magical creatures and those who are our descendants. I believe that is Umbridge’s personal bugbear.” For a moment, Griphook’s teeth flash. “The larger wizarding mistrust of goblins, who need us even as they fear us. Human hoarding of wands. The Wizengamot’s refusal to hear most laws it thinks too…daring. Blood purism. Stagnation in the name of keeping things as they have always been.”

Harry swallows a little. “A whole mess, in other words.”

“Correct.”

“And you don’t think I can stop it?”

“I do not think you can. You may be able to make more of an impact than some others, however, considering your relative…power.”

Harry nods, his shoulders relaxing a little. “Then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Dedicate the rest of your life to fighting for goblins?” Griphook laughs, his mouth opening too wide while the sound that comes out of his throat sounds like pebbles smashing together. “You must know that that will make you unpopular.”

“Yeah, I understand,” Harry says. “But not just goblins. Werewolves and Muggleborns and thestrals and hosue-elves and others who don’t deserve to have their rights looked down on or taken away just because some humans are stupid.”

“Thestrals?”

“One of my friends is running a Thestral Publicity Program,” Harry murmurs, and flushes when Griphook gives him a skeptical stare.

But after a moment, Griphook shakes his head, evidently deciding that he doesn’t need to care about what one strange wizard or witch is doing. “You will not be able to hide what you are doing if you expect us to ally with you,” he says, sitting back with his hands folded over his stomach. “That has always been the sticking point in the past. Very few wizards or witches want to work with us openly when it means that magical humans’ loathing of goblins would transfer to them.”

Harry half-smiles, thinking of the way that Umbridge and Fudge just automatically assume that Harry is going to use his Lord Slytherin power for evil, and the way that people hated him when they assumed he was Petrifying people in second year, or when he and Ron and Hermione got caught out after curfew in first. “I’m used to people hating me.”

“There is another thing that you will have to deal with as well.”

“What is that?”

“Voldemort.”

Harry nods. “Yes, he attacked me last year when he possessed someone who had sworn an oath to me. He doesn’t have a body yet, as far as I know, but he could still possess someone influential.” He winces at the thought of Voldemort possessing Fudge. “I know that he won’t give up on trying to hurt me, and his blood purist followers are definitely going to be a problem.”

He trails off when he notices Griphook looking at him oddly. “What?”

“You truly believe that you will have time to work on the problems that we face and other magical creatures face when you are fighting Voldemort?”

“Well, yeah,” Harry says, a bit confused. “He’s part of the interconnected problem, the way I see it. I know that some werewolves supported him in the first war, because Remus told me that. I don’t think the fight against him is separate from the fight for justice for other people.”

“I…see,” says Griphook, in a tone that makes it clear he doesn’t. “But that is not the entirety of what I mean. I thought it unlikely that you would have time to fight other wars when the prophecy binding the two of you would pull you into conflict again and again.”

“What prophecy?”

*

“Did you know there was a prophecy about me and Voldemort?”

Sirius pauses in the middle of hanging Christmas decorations above the mantel and turns haunted eyes on Harry. “I forgot all about that,” he whispers. “I’m…so sorry…” He shakes his head. “Who told you about it?”

“Griphook. A goblin,” Harry adds, because of the blank look on Sirius’s face. He sits down in the chair he usually takes in this drawing room, staring at the fireplace and trying not to feel much of anything. “I reckon they keep track of things like that, because I suppose it has some bearing on the way they move money around…he talked a lot about Arithmancy, which I don’t know anything about…”

“Remus! I think Harry’s going into shock.”

“I am not bloody going into shock,” Harry says crossly, opening his eyes to see Sirius crouching down in front of him and reaching out to chafe Harry’s hands. “Honestly, Sirius.” He tries to pull away, but Remus comes dashing into the sitting room just then, his face pale.

“Shock?”

“He just found out about the prophecy,” Sirius says briskly. “I can’t believe I forgot all about it.”

“What prophecy?”

Sirius rears back and turns around to stare at Remus. “The bloody prophecy about Harry and You-Know-Who,” Sirius says. “The reason that Lily and James and Harry had to go into hiding in the first place, and the reason that the Longbottoms got attacked. I’m sure I must have told you about it!”

“Probably not, considering you thought I was a spy at the time,” Remus says, kind of acidly.

“I’m sorry about that, Moony, but this is no time to bring up old arguments—”

“Maybe we should, if you’ve managed to forget this much! You told the Mind-Healers you were doing better about remembering—”

“Prophecies weren’t exactly at the forefront of my mind when I was thinking about my worst memories in Azkaban!”

Harry stares at them, while Ahalam sticks his head out of Harry’s robe pocket. “What is a prophecy?” he asks. “You must tell me, because they are being very loud, but they are not explaining what it is, and it is obviously important. Is it some kind of sinew-thing? Are they fighting because someone tore up one of their sinew-things?”

Harry laughs in spite of himself. It really made an impression on Ahalam when someone accidentally, or “accidentally,” tore up one of Hermione’s books in the Gryffindor common room. The shouting went on for a while.

“Harry? Are you all right?”

“Just laughing at something Ahalam said,” Harry murmurs, and takes a deep breath. “I feel better, but I do want to know what the prophecy is about.” He focuses on Sirius, and softens when he sees how pale his godfather is. “I don’t blame you for forgetting about it, Sirius. I know that you do your best, but it’s hard for you to remember that much after Azkaban. Tell me what you do know.”

Sirius shoots a glance at Remus and makes some odd kind of gesture that Harry doesn’t understand. Remus shakes his head violently in return, and Sirius turns back to Harry and folds his arms across his chest. “There was a prophecy saying that a child born at the end of July would be able to vanquish You-Know-Who. And the children’s parents had to have defied him three times. The only ones who fit the prophecy were you and—”

“Neville,” Harry whispers. He knows when Neville’s birthday is now, a day before his. He half-closes his eyes. “And Voldemort knew about this? How did he decide which child to come after?”

“I don’t know.” Sirius reaches out and takes hold of his hands again, and Harry lets him. Sirius’s eyes are soft and gentle. “I never heard the prophecy in its entirety, only enough to explain why your mum and dad went into hiding.”

“Who would know about it?”

“I think the only person who would is Dumbledore.”

Harry gives a long sigh, nearly as melodramatic as the fake ones he was giving around Umbridge, and raises his eyes to the ceiling. “He’s always doing something to muck things up,” he mutters to himself.

Sirius laughs a little. “Yeah. Honestly, I never thought about the prophecy after I got out of Azkaban, but if I had, I would have assumed he’d tell you about it. It matters to you and You-Know-Who more than it does to anyone else.”

“It matters to the goblins, too,” Harry says, but he knows Sirius isn’t thinking of them.

He takes a few minutes to think about it, while Ahalam chatters away on his shoulder. “So the prophecy is a kind of webbing thing that ties you together with Voldemort? Why were they fighting about it? What does this web do? How powerful is it? If you find the spider that spun the web, can I eat it?”

“It’s a metaphorical web,” Harry tells Ahalam at last.

“I hate metaphors,” Ahalam says, drooping on his shoulder. “You can’t eat them.”

Harry smiles at him and turns back to Sirius. “I’ll speak to Dumbledore when I get back to Hogwarts,” he tells his godfather. “But for now, I’m not going to let this ruin Christmas. I plan to eat until I’m sick, open loads of presents, and give loads of presents.” He smiles, thinking of the gifts that he sent to some of his followers, and the stern letters he’ll get back from a few of them emphasizing that Lord Slytherin shouldn’t be sending people gifts. “That’s what this holiday is for.”

“That’s right!” Sirius says, and grins at Harry. “Fuck prophecies!”

“Fuck prophecies!” Harry agrees with a laugh.

“Are you going to mate with a prophecy?” Ahalam asks, poking Harry with his nose. “Or with a spider? I do not think it would be comfortable. If you find the spider, can I eat it?”