Chapter Ten of 'To Earn Your Heart Like Gold'- Black Stone

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Chapter Ten—Black Stone

“I’m so glad that you decided to come back home, Harry,” Lily was saying as she rooted through the various spreads and marmalades on the table, presumably looking for something to put on her bread. “It’s not the same when you’re not here.”

“That’s probably just because you’re used to missing children in general, like my sisters.”

“They are not your sisters.”

“Severus, we discussed this. They are. In every way that matters.”

Snape started to say something else and then sat back with a disgusted shake of his head when Lily glared at him. Harry wondered how close he had come to blurting out the truth. Now that both of them seemed to think their little “experiment” on Harry was nearing the final stages, maybe Snape didn’t see the point of concealing the truth.

It would have been nice if that was the case. It would have been nice if Harry could simply have walked into the house and asked them what was going on and got a truthful answer.

As it was, they had concealed the experiment so long that Harry didn’t think he would get a true answer with much short of Veritaserum. Or the black stone curled up in his trunk.

“No, it’s specifically nice having you around, Harry.” Lily reached forwards and put a hand over his, marmalade apparently forgotten. “It’s a little reminder of James.”

Harry bit his lip and looked down, but not before he caught a glimpse of the absolute and shocking rage on Snape’s face.

It’s starting, then.

“I’m not him, Mum,” Harry whispered. “And you know that I’m not much like him because it’s not like I even knew him past the time that I was fifteen months old—”

“Once a Potter, always a Potter,” Snape said. His voice was slow and sleek, like a cat stalking Harry’s words. “As arrogant and hate-filled and intent on destroying the lives of people named Snape as your father ever was.”

“How did I destroy your life, Snape? It’s not like I was born at you. It’s not like I had a choice when Mother married you, even. You’re blaming me for things that happened before I was born and which I couldn’t control.”

Lily frowned at Harry. “You know that I don’t like family discussions at the breakfast table, Harry.”

In fact, that wasn’t something she had ever regularly said. She missed most meals because of being in the Department of Mysteries. But the last thing Harry wanted was to challenge what the little congealed ball of black potion was doing, so he lowered his head and murmured, “Sorry, Mother.”

“Lily—”

“No family discussions at the breakfast table, Severus.”

Yeah, Severus, Harry mouthed past his mother’s head when Lily turned to look at Snape. Shut up.

“He whispered a taunt to me, Lily!”

“I didn’t hear anything, Severus.” Lily sounded annoyed and tired. “Can we just eat and leave the arguments—these endless, circular arguments—for another time? I didn’t sleep well last night.”

That was something she would never have normally stayed at home long enough to admit, either. Snape looked startled and muttered something, sitting back with a cup of green tea. Harry concentrated on his breakfast as if too intimidated to look up, while shaky little thrills raced up and down his spine.

It’s beginning.

*

“This is a passable Wart Cure,” Gaunt said, surprise in his voice as he stared down into the cauldron bubbling merrily over the fire Harry had conjured. “Perhaps you’ll be worth something when my teaching is done after all, Potter.”

“Thanks, Gaunt.”

They had to keep up the act for the Listening Charms, something Harry had assumed would be the most tiresome part of the whole affair when they were planning it. But it had turned out to be unexpectedly fun. There were all sorts of teasing hints and double meanings Gaunt could drop without breathing hard, and Harry liked anticipating and answering them, or offering innocent words, like the last ones, but smiling a little so Gaunt would know what he really meant.

Gaunt stared at him with heated, heavy-lidded eyes for a moment before looking away.

Or not so innocent.

Harry shrugged that off. He’d meant what he’d said: he’d consider Gaunt as a lover if things worked out after his revenge was done. For the moment, he stepped back from the Wart Cure and looked at Gaunt, doing his best to adopt a humble expression.

“You think I’ll make a brewer?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as that. I was only hired to make sure that you got an Exceeds Expectations on your NEWT, remember? Any career after that involving Potions would rely on you to keep working on your skills.”

“But you think I could go further than that? Surprise my mother and stepfather?”

Gaunt’s eyes glittered rather like the little black stone of congealed potion and spreading its malign influence throughout the house. He reached out for a second and squeezed Harry’s wrist.

“I’m certain you’ll surprise them.”

*

“Harry, sweetheart? Can I talk to you?”

Harry twisted around from where he was sitting on the stone bench and looking out over Snape’s Potions garden. The man had come out to threaten him twice in the past hour. Harry normally wouldn’t have read much into that, given their “relationship,” but the second time he had been sweating and had repeated the exact same words he’d used before without seeming to remember that he’d already said them.

And now here was Lily, who had only gone to the Ministry for a few hours that day and was standing beside the bench, her hands twisting together. Harry swallowed a smile and nodded. “Sure, Mother.”

“I remember when you used to call me Mum.”

“Not much reason for me to do that in the last few years.”

Lily’s smile vanished as if someone had snatched it off her face. “Oh, Harry,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “If you only knew the kind of sacrifices that I’d made for you…what I’d done to ensure you were free…”

“Of what?” Harry drawled. He probably sounded like Gaunt. “It sure wasn’t abuse. I believe now that you knew what Snape was doing all along. I used to try to excuse you and pretend you didn’t see it because you were busy with your research, but you knew, didn’t you?”

“Harry?”

“You knew, didn’t you?”

The potion was having its influence on Lily, Harry thought in a detached fashion as he watched her squirm in place, eyes fastened on her lap. If it had been a real Carmine Haunting Potion, it would have made everyone who drank it experience visions of the past as if they were standing there, feeling everything they did at the time. It was more intense than a Pensieve and used in some Mind-Healing techniques to purge guilt or fear or rage. But with the alterations Harry had made and its present form as a stone not much distinct from obsidian, it would intensify the feelings of those the brewer hated.

Intensify the negative ones, at least.

“I knew,” Lily whispered at last. She turned to Harry more quickly than he’d expected and snatched his hands up before he could withdraw them. “But you don’t understand! There’s no way that I could have freed you if I hadn’t married Severus and had your sisters! You would have gone on living with that dreadful thing in you and eventually would have died, or worse than died, when Voldemort returned.”

Harry stared at her. “The thing?” he chose to ask, because the rest of it was too overwhelming to respond to at the moment.

“I won’t speak its name.” Lily’s eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed. “But yes. This was all to free you, Harry. All of it.”

“I—what? Why did you marry Snape?”

“The ritual needed him,” Lily breathed, leaning as close to Harry as she could. “The ritual to free you. I could have worked with him and not married him, maybe, but he insisted, and this was the best way to keep hold of him. And your sisters were part of the price. His price, not the price of the ritual.”

Holy Merlin.

Harry sat there, trying to feel what thundered through him, emotions that might not even have a name, and so Lily went on talking instead of being quiet the way she might have if he’d interrupted. “I tried to make sure they had the best lives possible. But Jennifer and Rosanna were never my priority. That was you, Harry. I promise, that was you. I couldn’t have done all I have without the components of the ritual in place, and so—”

“Snape is just a component of the ritual?”

Lily blinked at him, as if surprised by the disapproval in his voice. “Well,” she said, “so am I.”

Harry stared at her, feeling as if someone had turned his stomach to lead. He tried to say something, but there were no words that fit.

“I promise,” Lily said in a coaxing tone, “everything will be fine. We’re very near the end, now that you’ve spoken in Parseltongue. And I never knew that you were being so affected by the other components of the ritual.” Her face crumpled for a second, and then she visibly pulled herself away from the sadness. “I knew they affected you, of course, but not that strongly.”

Harry wanted to shout at her that of course he would be strongly affected by abuse, but he doubted it would get through to her with the strange mood the congealed potion had her in. And maybe Snape would notice if she did change her behavior towards him. “What is supposed to be the end result of the ritual?”

“I thought I mentioned it. You, free.”

“And the components?”

“You won’t have a terrible relationship with Severus anymore.”

Lily said it with such iron certainty that Harry found himself drawing away, found himself wanting to spit venom at her as if he were a cobra. “If you think you can make me—”

“You won’t have a terrible relationship with him because he will be dead.”

Harry stared at her, his mouth slightly open. Lily didn’t seem conscious that she’d said something most people would object to. She sat there with her appealing eyes fixed on him. Harry suffered a sudden flash of a memory from so long ago that he hadn’t thought of it in years. This was the way she had looked during the first years after James Potter had died.

“Does he know that?” Harry finally whispered.

Lily gave him a steel smile. “I think he does.”

“But—there’s no way that he would agree to die for James Potter’s child—”

“Do you think Severus is happy, Harry?”

“He would be if I weren’t here. He’s told me that more than once.”

Lily scoffed and rolled her eyes. Harry stared at her, a little dazed. He hadn’t seen this much animation out of his mother in—ever, maybe. She’d been distant and caught up in her work for years, and before that, she had existed in a grim, sad daze.

“He isn’t happy. I don’t know if it was too late for him by the time I got to know him as a child, but he’s never been happy. He’s twisted up inside himself. He told me once that he would have killed himself years ago if not for me.”

Harry sat there while the world he had believed in fell silently apart around him, and then stared at his mother out of the splinters. “And what’s going to happen to you once the ritual is done? Are you going to be a mother to me again?”

“Oh, sweetheart, I wish I could. But some things are unforgivable.”

Harry swallowed. Well, at least she knew that. He just wished she’d found some other way of demonstrating her devotion to him than this bloody ritual.

He started to ask why she’d cast the spell to bind him to the house if she was so set on freeing him, but the back door went flying open, and Snape stood there, his arms crossed as if he were braced against the cold. “Lily, what are you doing? There’s a letter from Jennifer at Hogwarts to answer.”

“Of course there is,” Lily muttered, and rolled her eyes again. “Coming, Severus.” She stood up, pulled her hair back behind her ears, and strode towards her husband.

Snape shot Harry a vicious, triumphant glance before he slammed the door behind him and Lily. Harry fell back on his bench and stared at the sky. He found that he had to cling to the bench to keep from falling off.

The reeling in his head was echoed in his body.

It had been—a hell of a day.

*

“And did you ask her about the binding spell?”

“I didn’t get a chance before Snape interrupted.”

“Then I hope that you don’t entertain any notion of forgiving her for this. Drawing you back to a house where you would be abused time after time—”

“I’m not going to forgive her, Gaunt, holy Merlin. I’m just saying that things are true that I never thought were true. I’m thinking about them. That’s all. Just thinking.”

There was a long silence. They were in Gaunt’s sitting room in front of the fire, the room where they had sworn their oaths to each other. Harry had told Gaunt about what Lily had said, staring into the fire while he did it. He had still seen his mother’s eyes, alive with a radiance that he wished had been there to protect him all his life.

She had done it in horrible ways, but apparently she had thought she was protecting him.

She had—what? Allowed Snape to do those horrible things because his death would pay for all?

Harry shook his head. The how of it seemed pretty clear to him now, but the why was still beyond him.

Or maybe it only made sense if you were in his mother’s mindset.

He started when Gaunt reached out to lay his hand over Harry’s. “And what will your next step be? I don’t think any of the time-delayed curses on the house have triggered, or you would have told me about them.”

Harry had to smile a little at the level of threat in Gaunt’s voice. He acted as though he had been wronged along with Harry, half the time. “No. The curses that are attuned to Snape are waiting until he actually does something to attack me, and he hasn’t yet.”

“And the ones attuned to your mother?”

“Will trigger when she does something focused on the Horcrux in me.”

Gaunt leaned forwards a little, quivering. His eyes remained intense, and Harry felt his own breathing become shallow. Intensity in his lovers, the few he’d had, had always mattered more to him than physical beauty.

As if Gaunt knew that, he drew back with a small, smug smile. “Well. Then I suppose that you might allow some of the pranks that your godfather told you about fair play. So that you can push them towards one or the other of those actions.”

“Why would I want Snape to attack me?”

“Do you want revenge or not?”

“I wanted answers more than that. And I’m getting them.”

“True, that’s why you brewed the potion and altered it the way I told you to,” Gaunt acknowledged. Harry couldn’t help rolling his eyes. Trust Gaunt to take credit for Harry’s successful brewing. “But can you trust that they’re honest? That a trained Unspeakable and an expert in the Dark Arts wouldn’t have means to resist that potion?”

“My mother has never undermined Snape in front of me before,” Harry protested, although a tremor of uneasiness had taken up its place in his stomach. “She’s always just ignored what he did or told me it didn’t matter or scolded him a little but then acted like her research was more important.”

“And so? They could know that you found out about the Listening Charms, and they know now that you can speak Parseltongue. So they might be acting in ways that could fool you specifically to keep you from doing something to them before the experiment runs its course.” Gaunt spat the word experiment.

“My mother said it was a ritual, not an experiment.”

“I don’t know that the terminology matters. Have you considered it?”

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment on what would happen if the experiment or ritual or whatever it was finished. The trouble was, he knew Lily’s intent, and he knew Snape was a component, but he didn’t know everything about how she had intended to accomplish it. He did want to know more about the binding spell, and what she thought would happen to him when the Horcrux was gone.

He looked at Gaunt again and shook his head. “I don’t want to interrupt this by cursing them or pranking them until I get all the answers I can from them.”

“Answers you don’t even know are honest.”

“You told me when you told me how to brew the potion that the black stone would pull honest answers from them.”

Gaunt stood abruptly. Harry moved a little back in his chair. Gaunt’s intensity had Transfigured somehow. This time, when he leaned forwards and stared down Harry in his chair, Harry had the feeling that he was barely holding back from attacking Harry.

“Consider it,” Gaunt whispered, and then turned and swept from the room.

Harry stared after him. He had always known he couldn’t trust Snape, and he had accepted years ago that he couldn’t trust his mother, and there had been times that he couldn’t trust Hermione to keep some instance of rule-breaking to herself or Sirius not to dash headlong into danger.

But he thought having to distrust Gaunt would be more dangerous than any of those.