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Chapter Nine—Here Comes Sirius
“Those no good, shit-loving, dog-raping, wand-breaking—”
“How much longer do you think he’s going to go on?” Gaunt asked Harry as they leaned against the wall of Remus and Sirius’s sitting room and listened to Sirius rave. He was stalking up and down the center of the room, flinging his hands in the air.
“At least another ten minutes,” Harry muttered back.
Then he saw Remus aiming his wand, and grinned a little. The jet of water hit Sirius dead on, and he jerked to a stop and yelped, spinning around with a betrayed expression. “Moony! What does that mean?”
“That you’ve talked about this long enough,” Remus said calmly, and tucked his wand away. “Are you ready to sit down so that we can actually plan some kind of revenge, or will you declaim to the ceiling all night?”
“I see why your godfather has survived all these years. He has someone with sense around him.”
Harry grinned a little at the Parseltongue words, but glanced up to find both Sirius and Remus staring at him. “You never told us you could understand that language, Harry,” Remus said. Sirius nodded, seeming too stunned to speak.
Harry sighed. “I think we have a lot of things to talk about. If you’re done ranting, Sirius?”
“It’s not all they deserve. But I’m done.”
“We will bring them many things they deserve, Mr. Black,” said Gaunt. “But doing it is better than talking about it.”
Sirius pointed at him. “I like you.”
*
Sirius and Remus both looked ill when Gaunt had explained the concept of Horcruxes to them, and the horrified, sympathetic looks they shot Harry made him grimace. He would have gone without the explanation if there was a way to do that and still get Sirius and Remus to help. Or a simpler explanation.
Gaunt had laid it all out, though, including that he had the same condition. Sirius eyed him. Then he said, “Don’t you think it’s a bit of a coincidence, someone who’s a Horcrux coming to tutor someone else who’s a Horcrux?’
“Not at all. I am sure that Lily Potter sought me out on purpose.”
The mention of Lily put out Sirius’s smile like another jet of water. “I can’t believe I trusted her,” he whispered. “I can’t believe I thought that her marrying Snape was just some sort of mistake, that she was mourning James so much she didn’t know what she was doing.” Abruptly, he lunged over the table and hugged Harry so hard that Harry wheezed. “I’m sorry, kiddo! I would have stopped her if I knew!”
“Can’t breathe.”
Sirius sat back, but kept one arm around Harry’s shoulders, ignoring the way that it made him lean over the table in an awkward way. He turned to face Gaunt. “And you think you can take the Horcrux out of Harry without making him suffer or die?”
“I am sure that I know more about Horcruxes than Lily Potter does.”
Sirius nodded, but Remus’s eyes narrowed. Harry nodded. Remus must have noticed the same thing Harry did: Gaunt hadn’t really answered the question.
Well, that’s something I’ll have to ask him later, once we’re back at his house.
“Lily must have changed almost completely,” Remus said, as obviously deciding not to press Gaunt for an answer right now. “The woman we knew never would have done that.” He sighed then. “Or the woman we thought we knew.”
“I don’t know how long she’s been like this,” Harry said into the silence that followed that declaration. Well, Gaunt looked as if he would have liked to say something, but also as if he knew it wasn’t his place. “I would love to say that Snape corrupted her, but I don’t really think that’s true.”
Sirius scowled at the table and finally pulled back to sit in his own seat. “Because she’s running this experiment on you?”
“Yes. And maybe Snape was the one who came up with the idea of the experiment in the first place, but she had to do so much to go along with it. She could have quit and walked away, but she…” Harry shook his head. The tatters of the spell still seemed to flutter about him sometimes. “I don’t know why she did it.”
“I can think of one reason.”
Harry blinked and turned to Remus. Gaunt had leaned forwards at the same time, his focus on Remus total. Harry had told him Remus was a werewolf, and he wondered if Gaunt still thought Remus was dangerous.
“What reason?”
“Even at school, Severus knew a lot about the Dark Arts. I would assume that his knowledge has only deepened, along with his knowledge of Potions. And there were rumors that his Prince grandparents left him a lot of old tomes for lack of anyone else to leave them to. Perhaps Lily thought that she could learn most about the Dark Arts herself by starting a relationship with him, or at least have access to his books.”
“That’s fucking disturbing,” Sirius said.
“It does make sense.” Gaunt looked speculative, and Harry swallowed and reminded himself that it wasn’t Gaunt’s mum who might have married Snape for his Dark Arts books. “I had the impression that Lily Potter’s experiment consumed her totally. The elaborate nature of the spell she cast on Harry confirms that.”
“But you said you knew some way to remove the Horcrux from me. Why wouldn’t she discover it, too?”
“Because I only think that I can do it, Harry. I haven’t confirmed it yet. And I want to leave you the gift of Parseltongue. I think your mother probably wanted a way to remove the Horcrux completely.”
“And perhaps do something else?”
“What would that something else be, Mr. Lupin?”
Harry blinked and glanced away from Gaunt. Their moment of eye contact, when it had felt as if their gazes were locked together, had been weirdly intimate, and Harry felt as if he had been ripped out of the world for a moment and had only just come back.
“I wondered if she wanted to make sure that Harry would be free of corruption.” Remus’s tongue twined around the word, and he grimaced and shook his head. “It would explain some of the spells that she cast and that she let Snape cast. If Harry is a Horcrux, and she thinks Horcruxes can influence other people…”
“It would explain why she kept me from contact with my sisters,” Harry whispered.
Remus nodded. “And why she let Snape cast the curses he did. She might have thought it was the same as casting curses on an object she was studying, to see how it reacted.”
Harry shut his eyes.
“Or it was part of the price for keeping Severus bound to her quest to destroy the Horcrux,” Remus added hastily. “She knew how much he hated James. Getting him to agree to keep James’s son around in any capacity might have meant indulging some of his worst tendencies.”
Harry licked his lips. He felt sick, but at the same time, he could see the point of what Remus was saying. His mother was capable of overriding dedication. All this time, Harry had just thought it was to her job, but it might be to the idea of destroying the Horcrux.
If she thought she could destroy it, but she needed access to Snape’s books and maybe Snape himself to do so, she would accept the price of Snape casting curses on Harry.
Why not? It’s not as if she’s suffering them. Or even Jennifer and Rosanna.
“I want to kill her.”
Sirius’s voice was a deep rumble on the edge of a growl. Harry opened his eyes and leaned forwards. “No, Sirius. That’s up to me.”
“I want to kill her for hurting you.”
Sirius’s face was utterly blank, the way it sometimes looked right before he transformed into a dog. Harry shook his head. “I’m the one who has the right to decide if she’s going to live or something else is going to happen to her, Sirius. Not you. I don’t want you making that decision for me. Do you understand?”
“I could—”
“No.”
Harry must have put more magic into his voice than he knew. For a moment, Sirius and Remus’s wards shuddered around him, and Harry had the sense of their turning towards him, as if they saw him as a threat. He coughed and fell back to lean against the wall. Gaunt’s stare was practically burning a hole in the side of his head, but Harry didn’t look at him.
“I’m the one she primarily betrayed,” Harry said. “Leave her to me.”
“Yeah, okay.” Sirius looked wistful now, which was at least an improvement on Harry’s impression that he might transform and go careering across countries and wards to try and tear out Lily’s throat. “But I can help, right?”
“Why do you think we’re here?” Harry grinned at him, and Sirius grinned back, then turned to Remus when Remus pulled out an old book that looked as if it was filled with prank spells.
“Harry.”
It seemed he would have to deal with Gaunt after all. Harry turned reluctantly to face him. “Yeah?” He hoped it wouldn’t be a lecture on controlling himself so that they wouldn’t be arrested before they could get to Lily and Snape.
It turned out he needn’t have worried. Gaunt was bent forwards, and his eyes were glowing as if they were lit from within by distant lanterns.
“You reacted strongly enough to make the wards tremble.”
“I know,” Harry snapped, a little irritated. “You don’t need to tell me how childish that was, Gaunt. I know. And it won’t happen again.” He had no reason to take his temper out on anyone except Lily and Snape.
“You mistake me.”
“What are you on—”
Gaunt moved forwards, flexing his hips in a way that drew Harry’s attention to his groin. Harry’s mouth grew dry when he realized how hard Gaunt was. He snapped his gaze away, and shook his head a little when Remus glanced at him in concern.
“It’s all right,” he mumbled. He was glad that the words came out in English and not Parseltongue.
After a careful study, Remus nodded and went back to plotting with Sirius. Gaunt, meanwhile, had cast some charm that covered up the evidence of his erection when Harry turned back to him, impelled to glance down despite himself.
“It is all right,” Gaunt echoed him, teeth flashing in a bright smile. “But you need never be afraid that I am despising you for some lack of control, Harry. In fact, I think that you deserve to lose control more often than you do. Imagine doing so if you were with someone who would welcome that instead of fear it.”
Harry did picture it, in spite of himself. Gaunt’s eyes were bright with fascination, and Harry had never had someone in his bed he would have considered showing his Parseltongue to, let alone the way that his magic sometimes flared with his temper.
But Gaunt would never be afraid. He could probably meet Harry’s magic with his own, and he wanted to see more of it.
“I make a more tempting lover than I did before, I think.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Harry snapped, managing to make himself not look down at Gaunt’s groin. It took a lot of convincing. “That doesn’t mean that I want to concentrate on things like that right now instead of ways to punish Lily and Snape.”
Gaunt bowed, a full-on, flourishing-his-hand-at-the-waist gesture that made Sirius and Remus break off to stare at them. “I understand. I shall await your pleasure.”
“Bugger off,” Harry muttered, ignoring Gaunt’s low chuckle, and stepped up to the table to look down at what seemed to be a list of spells. “Are you going to cast all of these on Lily and Snape? Or recommend that I do?”
“Sirius and I were talking about that, Harry. We think—”
“We think that your mum and Snivellus are going to suspect something if you stay away for much longer,” Sirius interrupted, his eyes so bright that Harry was surprised he wasn’t bouncing in place. “But what if you went back and pretended to still be under that binding spell Lily put on you? Like you can’t help yourself returning? And then you put some of these time-delayed spells and hid some of these pranks around the house. So they can go off when you’re not there.”
Harry felt his lips lift in a smile. “Snape is still going to blame me if I’m not there when they happen. He always blames me.”
“So this will be no different. Honestly, I’m not worried about alerting Snape. He’ll abide by what Lily tells him.” Remus splayed a hand over the list of spells. “But I am worried about what Lily will do once she realizes that you’re not under her thrall anymore. She could be extremely dangerous when we were at Hogwarts. There’s no telling what she’ll be like now.”
Harry nodded. “I’d like to put some of those pranks outside Lily’s door and disrupt her experiment. I broke in to see what she was doing, and I couldn’t tell everything, but it was centered on this locket—”
“No.”
“What now, Gaunt?” Harry snapped, turning around. Sirius flinched a little at the Parseltongue, but Remus just kept watching intently. “Are you going to say that I can’t take revenge on my mother the way I want?”
“No. I am saying that the locket is a Horcrux, and some of those wards wrapped around the study are meant to contain it and channel its influence and connection with you in a way that I don’t understand. You were lucky that you didn’t disrupt them when you broke in that time before.”
Harry let out a short breath. Gaunt was making sense. Harry didn’t want him to make sense, but it seemed he couldn’t stop him. “All right,” he said aloud for Sirius and Remus’s benefit. “No breaking into Lily’s study. But I need to do something to make her suffer along with Snape.”
“I could make a suggestion,” Gaunt said. “One that would be safe as far as regards the wards wrapped around the Horcrux, but would still allow you to take revenge. And would even play into the Listening Charms.”
Remus looked intrigued. Sirius was bouncing in place now. Harry found himself smiling. “Tell me.”
*
“Come crawling back like the spoiled child you are?”
Harry ignored Snape as he swished the stirring rod around the cauldron one more time. The potion he’d been making inside turning so brilliant a red that Harry was afraid for a second that he’d done something wrong. But no, Gaunt had said that the Carmine Haunting Potion was supposed to do that.
“Are you paying attention to me, Potter?”
Harry turned his head and stared at Snape. He hadn’t wanted to betray too much that something was different, but Snape fell back a step. That had never happened. “I am,” Harry said softly.
“Are you still upset that I blinded you? That is like you. I bore worse than that in the past from your cursed father.”
“And so you thought you had to cast it on me.” Harry glanced at the Carmine Haunting Potion one more time and nodded. It had reached the final stages. He casually flicked his wand and cast a nonverbal shield over the top of the cauldron. “Well, that makes sense. You’re so bitter and twisted up about Dad and the rest of the Marauders that you’ll take your anger out on a child who never did anything to you.”
Snape sent a fireball flying at the top of the cauldron, surrounding some kind of small green leafy ingredient that probably would have made the potion explode. It bounced from Harry’s shield and rolled on the floor.
“You are a wretched child. A waste of time and space. I do not know why Lily bore you.”
Harry turned around and smiled. Snape fell silent abruptly. “Because she was in love with my father,” Harry murmured. “What about you? Can you be sure, even all these years later, that she loves you, instead of the chance to connect with the past that you represented?”
“Potter—”
“She might have thought it was better to fuck someone who was once tormented by the Marauders than someone with no connection to them at all.”
A yellow curse came flying from Snape’s wand. Harry had no idea what it was or what the counter to it was. But he put his trust in something else Gaunt had told him and hissed a defense, raising a Shield Charm at the same time.
The Parseltongue wove what looked like a stream of glittering green light through the air, which braided around the Shield Charm. It flashed with that green, deep and strong, and Snape’s curse bounced to the side and hit the wall, leaving a deep hole.
They stood in silence and looked at each other, Harry and the stepfather he would always hate. Snape’s face had gone pale, but also blank, the opposite of the seething hatred that Harry would have expected him to show.
“So.”
Snape stepped back, tucked in his wand, and nodded. “I must tell Lily her suspicions were correct.”
“What were those, Snape? That I might grow a spine someday?”
“That you would begin to use Parseltongue, and follow the cursed nature of the Dark Lord.” Snape’s lips were barely moving. “If you only knew how much she has hoped this day would never come.”
“But not you, right?”
“What?”
“You hoped it would come. You wanted to destroy me. You would have been happy if Mum had agreed to let you drown me or curse me to death when I was a baby, so that you wouldn’t have to watch part of James Potter grow up.”
Snape took a step forwards, and then stopped. His eyes were black, but Harry wasn’t sure what was driving him, hatred or anger or some combination or something else. He stared at Harry, then shook his head, turned, and walked out of the room.
Harry took a slow breath. At least it didn’t seem as though Lily or Snape would suspect anything was different just from this. He had always yelled at Snape, and he would defend himself from spells Snape cast at him. Of course he would.
He turned back to the Carmine Haunting Potion and studied it, then sighed wearily, as if something was wrong with the potion. Part of their plan depended on fooling the Listening Charms by giving them plenty to hear. He picked up the cauldron, moved his wand above it as if Vanishing the potion, and then carried it to the back door, where he would dump the red mash that would remain at the bottom.
In reality, he hadn’t thought the incantation to Vanish the potion, but another one. Gaunt had insisted that it would work even if Harry didn’t use the wand movement for it, if Harry wanted it badly enough.
And he had, and the potion had shrunk into a glittering red orb that looked a lot like illustrations of a Philosopher’s Stone Harry had seen in a book once. Harry slipped it into his pocket while he dumped nothingness from the cauldron out the back door.
He had already slipped a few time-delayed curses cast nonverbally into place around the house, but this…
This was something special, Gaunt had said. If he could brew the potion himself, correctly, and with hatred in his heart, and then use the spell to shrink it down afterwards and perform another spell on it.
Harry performed that spell, with nothing more than a twitch of his wand, and carried the congealed potion to his bedroom. He took a deep breath when he peeked into his pocket and saw it there, shimmering as black as obsidian.
This would hurt them.
Harry smiled.