lomonaaeren

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Chapter Eighteen—Reciprocity

“Mr. Potter.”

Potter looks up at Severus. His eyes are fearless, and Severus marks the difference from last year. Potter would listen to him impassively then, and just nod a little when Severus scolded him or took points.

It might be the result of what happened at the end of last term, with Quirrell. But Severus doesn’t think that’s the only reason.

“Yes, sir?”

“Stay after class,” Severus says, and notes with interest that both Goldstein and the sensible Patil—sensible enough not to get Sorted into Gryffindor—are lingering near the door. He nods to them both and brusquely turns his back, beckoning Potter after him. Changes or not, he needs to be the authority in his own classroom.

Potter follows him obediently. What gestures he might make to his little followers behind Severus’s back, Severus does not concern himself with. They stop near the storage cupboards that contain the most volatile of Severus’s ingredients, and he folds his arms and considers Potter. Potter considers him back.

“I wanted to make a peace offering,” Severus says at last.

Potter blinks. Then he says, “I don’t think you owe it to me as much as you do to Blaise and Aradia, sir.”

“Aradia?”

“Mrs. Zabini.”

“Of course,” Severus says with his mouth, while his brain says, You are on first-name terms with the most dangerous witch in Europe. He shakes it off. He guessed that already, after all. “I did not torment Mr. Zabini in class or insult—his mother the way I did you.”

“Oh.” Potter peers at him and then nods. “If that’s what you mean, sir, then please go ahead.”

Severus would have bristled last year at the air of gracious permission Potter is exuding. He forces himself to put it aside. He has come to understand many things, and one of them is that Potter is not the ignorable child Albus thinks. He clasps his hands behind his back. “I made—assumptions about you that were hasty. Permit me to apologize for them.”

“Why did you make the assumptions, sir?”

Severus takes a deep breath and prepares to flay himself open. At least it will not be as painful as the night Lily died. Nothing will ever be as painful as that again. “Because I was your mother’s best friend for a time, and your father was the bully who tormented me, partially because he was obsessed with her. You are—the combination of two people who meant a great deal to me, but at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. You see how this might have disordered my mind.”

Potter’s eyes widen. Sweet Merlin, it’s like looking into Lily’s eyes. Hers were never as guileless as people like Potter and Black thought. “No.”

“What? You do not accept the apologies?”

“I meant, no, I don’t see why it disordered your mind. Maybe you would have a reason to hate my father if he was still alive, but he isn’t. So why did you hate me? I’m a child. I have nothing to do with it.”

Severus averts his gaze. Potter has found a way to slip a knife into his heart that is—not the kind Lily’s death held but still sharper than Severus thought he would manage to wield. “You are right,” he rasps. “It only makes my apologies more urgently needed.”

“Could I ask you for help as a repayment then, sir?”

Severus opens his eyes with both surprise and relief. Paying back the debt he owes Potter would make him more comfortable than stumbling through words that will always be inadequate. “What do you want?”

“I want to learn more about Potions on my own than the class can teach me,” Potter says. “Faster. And I know that brewing on your own isn’t safe. And I have ingredients I want that aren’t in the common apothecaries.”

“You wish for private tutoring sessions?”

“And to share your storage supplies. Yes, sir.”

Severus stares at Potter and wonders when he will come to the end of the surprises that come along with this child. But then again, if he did reach the end, he would presumably be disappointed. He nods slowly. “I will afford you both.”

“Thank you, sir. Forgiven, then.”

The next instant, Potter is trotting out of the classroom, and Severus hears him talking to Patil and Goldstein before the door falls shut behind him.

Severus stares at the wall and then shakes his head. Yes, very well, it seems that Potter is even more different from a Gryffindor than he thought. Perhaps he would have ended up in Slytherin if not for the prejudice against his mother.

Lily, may I do well in making this up to him.

*

Neville frowns and rubs his forehead. Lately it seems that his scar hurts several times a day, the way it used to last year when he was in the Defense classroom. But these times are random. He can be in the Gryffindor common room, or walking through the corridors, or sitting at lunch. It doesn’t seem to hurt when he’s in class, but he can’t think why.

He’s worried that means Voldemort’s spirit has found a way through the wards again.

“Are you all right, Nev?”

Ron has come down the stairs and stands near the bottom, staring at him in concern. Especially concerned about the way that Neville’s hand goes to his forehead, it looks like. Neville hastily snatches his palm away and does his best to smile. “Sure, Ron.”

“Only…”

“Yeah?’

“If it’s something to do with your scar, and You-Know-Who,” Ron says, and comes a little closer and darts his eyes around the empty common room before he pays attention to Neville, “maybe you should go and tell Professor Dumbledore, right? Because he’s the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of?”

Neville nods. He can’t tell Ron about the negative feelings he has towards the Headmaster for making him take Occlumency lessons with Snape. Ron wouldn’t understand, and anyway, Neville has to put those feelings aside for the good of the war. “You’re right, Ron. I’ll tell him first thing before breakfast.”

“Good.” Ron smiles. “Now come up to bed, yeah? It’s almost one in the morning.”

It touches Neville that Ron got up to ask him if he was doing all right, when he knows that Ron loves sleep only a little less than food. “Coming,” he says, and stands, turning towards the stairs.

He pauses. For a minute, it looked as though someone was down here, a shadow moving in the corner of the common room. And it seemed that his scar hurt worse when he looked in that direction.

But the fire’s shadows aren’t that deep, and the more Neville looks, the more he’s certain no one’s there.

“Nev?”

“In the morning,” Neville agrees again, and goes up to bed. He can’t fight Voldemort if he’s not bright and alert.

*

“I’m sure that you know what I wanted to call you here to discuss, Mr. Potter.”

“No, sir.”

One glance at Harry’s set and unyielding face makes Albus feel old. He settles back in his chair and tries to resurrect his smile. It was so easy to bring to his face when the boy walked into the office a few minutes ago and went wide-eyed at all the books and Fawkes on his perch.

But now he’s sitting there with his mouth closed in a thin line, and he looks a lot like Mrs. Zabini looked when Albus spoke with her at the end of last term. He wonders, not for the first time, how much the woman has influenced Lily and James’s little boy.

How did they even meet? I would have sworn that Aradia Zabini would never set foot in the Muggle world.

“It’s your attitude to Professor Quirrell.” That gets nothing from Harry, so Albus is forced to continue. “He told me that you openly refused to trust him in front of two other Ravenclaw students, and that you refused to apologize to him.”

“I have nothing to apologize to him for, sir. He’s the one who let himself get possessed by Voldemort and who threatened my two best friends.”

“He did not have a choice about yielding to Voldemort’s possession,” Albus says, as gently as he can. In truth, he has doubts himself about the extent of Quirinus’s complicity in the events of last year, and will be keeping a close eye on him. But he cannot believe that someone who was not a Marked Death Eater would have understood the consequences of the possession. “And you attempted to hurt him last year.”

“When he was trying to kill me, yes, sir.”

Albus pauses. He got different stories about what happened in the tunnels underneath the school, and Quirinus made it seem like he was only holding Harry hostage so Neville would cooperate. “If that is the case—”

“If that’s the case, I don’t see why you would ever think I need to apologize to him, sir. And I’m not going to take Muggle Studies as a class, so there’s no reason that I would ever need to talk to him privately.”

“Surely understanding more about the world you grew up in…”

“Do you think that all Muggleborns should take the class then, sir?”

Albus sighs. Yes, in truth, he doesn’t have a reason to suggest that Harry work closely with Quirinus or take Muggle Studies. And although he would like it if Harry and Quirinus could work together, if they are all to be on the same side, one need not like another person to be allies with them.

“Very well, Harry. I cannot force you to apologize to him.”

“No, sir. And please call me Mr. Potter.”

“I was close with your parents. I am still close with your godfather and your parents’ other best friend, Mr. Lupin.”

For a long moment, Harry’s eyes seem to glisten strangely. If Albus did not have absolute confidence in the wards he has newly woven around the school, he would cast a discreet spell to check Harry for possession in turn.

“I have no memories of my parents,” Harry says, mildly enough. “And my godfather and Mr. Lupin have been abroad since I was a baby. You never visited me when I lived in the Muggle world either, sir.”

“I knew that your family felt uneasy with magic. I thought it better not to torment them with my presence.”

“And my presence?”

“They were your only remaining relatives. Your godfather is extremely busy on important business. But I promise that he will return someday, Harry, and I hope that you will become close to him as well as Mr. Lupin.”

Harry’s face goes intimidatingly blank, in a way that almost makes Albus wonder if he’s been taking lessons with Severus. But no, Severus would have told Albus if he had managed to turn away from his blind hatred.

“Yes, I hope I can become close to them.”

Albus nods. He hopes that for both Sirius’s sake and Harry’s, and for Remus’s, although Remus might decline to put himself forwards. But if that does not happen, it will be his fault, for ordering Sirius away, and not Harry’s.

“That was all I wanted to speak to you about, Mr. Potter. You may go.”

Harry nods to him, gets up, and leaves the office. Albus looks after him until Fawkes croons and then turns his mind back to the important business of the day, such as setting up ward notifications that will focus on the kind of Dark influence Neville told Albus he was feeling. That is a concern, in a way that Harry is not.

*

“What are you doing, Zabini?”

“Avoiding you, Nott.”

Nott laughs. Blaise turns around and faces him. Nott was bad enough last year when he took a creepy interest in Harry a few times. Now he’s staring pointedly at Blaise in the common room, and following him around when he leaves to meet Harry and Longbottom.

Like now. Blaise is going to be late if he doesn’t hurry, and Longbottom will be upset about that, and Harry is upset when Longbottom is upset. Still watching Nott, Blaise puts a hand on his wand.

Nott looks delighted, his grey eyes glinting in the light of the one torch sconce that fills this little dungeon corridor. “Is it to be a duel then, Blaise?” he almost croons. “I can’t wait to show you the spells I know. There’s one—”

“Incarcerous.”

While Nott was babbling on, Blaise actually cast. The spell is a simple one, but his mother taught him another wand motion that makes it more complex, and causes the ropes that bind Nott to the wall to spread-eagle his arms and conjure a gag for his mouth, too.

“See you later,” Blaise says, and walks down the corridor, shaking his head a little when he hears the laughter bubble from behind Nott’s gag.

He enters the disused classroom where they grow the plants and both he and Harry agree they can bring Longbottom and Goldstein and Patil. Their other, secret place is too important and special for that.

“Are you all right, Blaise?”

“I should be asking you that question,” Blaise says, glancing from one to another of them and raising his eyebrows. Longbottom is pale and has his fists clenched at his sides, while Harry’s face is a reflecting pool of smiles. Blaise knows how to tell the difference between that and the real one.

“You go first,” Longbottom whispers.

Blaise nods. “Nott tried to follow me here. I left him tied up with ropes, and he just laughed.”

“Creepy fucker.”

“Harry!”

Blaise laughs. Harry has become a bit more free with his real words after spending the summer with Blaise. Harry shoots a smile back at him and waves a hand at Longbottom. “No professor or prefect is going to hear us. We won’t lose points.”

Longbottom looks as if he would like to make a fine argument about why that isn’t the main reason not to swear, but has no idea how.

“Your turn, Longbottom,” Blaise says, and moves over to survey one of the chrysanthemums that Longbottom has somehow coaxed to produce a sweet scent. Coward or not, Longbottom is a marvel at Herbology.

“My scar keeps hurting. I’m afraid that some piece of V-Voldemort somehow sneaked in through the wards, but I don’t know how, and it’s in random places. Not one place like Quirrell’s classroom last year.”

Blaise turns his head and meets Harry’s eyes. Harry nods, in perfect accord with Blaise’s silent question. They won’t tell Longbottom that he’s probably right and how worrying this is. Or about the couple of ways they’ve thought of for someone to sneak past the wards.

“I w-went to tell D-Dumbledore and he just said that the wards would keep him out and it was probably nothing.”

“Condescending fucker.”

“Harry!”

Blaise coughs to conceal his laughter. Harry is explaining in a spirited way that Dumbledore, who made Longbottom take Occlumency lessons with Snape of all people, deserves it, and that being in Ravenclaw encourages you to learn and use lots of words. Longbottom is calming down, but he won’t if Blaise laughs.

“All right, then,” Longbottom finally whispers. “But if Dumbledore thinks that nothing is wrong, then maybe I’m just—feeling things. Or paranoid from last year.”

“No one could blame you if you were paranoid from last year.”

“What about you, Harry? Why did you look upset?”

For a long, silent moment, Harry meets Blaise’s eyes and says nothing. Blaise stands there and waits. Harry has to know that he isn’t going to get away with ignoring the question.

“Dumbledore called me to his office because apparently Quirrell complained to him that I wouldn’t apologize and wouldn’t go talk to him alone,” Harry finally says. “I explained a little more about the situation to him and reminded him that Quirrell could have killed me. He seemed taken aback. And he also thought I’d want to take Muggle Studies in the future.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? He seems to feel guilty about sending Sirius on that mission sometimes, so he thinks he has to give me advice or something. But he doesn’t.”

“Why did he send S-Sirius on the mission? Why didn’t he let him raise you?”

Harry smiles at Longbottom, but shakes his head. “I don’t know. I think that he just saw Sirius as a convenient way to accomplish what he needed done, and I was a baby, so I couldn’t object. And my parents were gone, so they couldn’t object.”

Blaise tilts his head as something occurs to him. But it’s not something he can ask with Longbottom in the room. He’ll wait.

“That’s not fair.”

“I think Dumbledore is committed to what’s right, but not what’s fair.”

Longbottom and Harry get into a philosophical debate about the terms. Blaise takes out his Herbology homework and settles down to work on it. He appreciates philosophy at times, but he finds it far less interesting than what he and Harry will talk about when Longbottom leaves.

Longbottom finally exclaims that Weasley will be looking for him and dashes out of the classroom. Blaise adds a final sentence to his paragraph and tucks his parchment away. Harry looks back at him with eyes that glint like malachite.

“We could punish Dumbledore, too.”

“I think that our focus should remain Quirrell. Dumbledore is the one who sent Sirius on that mission, but Sirius could have argued back if he’d wanted to. He didn’t.”

Blaise nods. There’s also the fact, unspoken between them, that Dumbledore is much stronger and smarter and more well-protected than either Quirrell or Black. That will influence their choice of victims.

“How much do you know about how your parents died, Harry?”

Harry blinks and draws his legs in towards himself. Blaise has noticed that he does that all the time when someone is talking about his parents or the Muggles. It’s interesting, but not a tell that Blaise is going to reveal to him right now. He has to have some way to keep up with his irritatingly smart Ravenclaw best friend.

“I don’t know much. Just that they were killed by Death Eaters, and betrayed by this Peter Pettigrew that Sirius is hunting down. And that Sirius couldn’t save them.”

“There aren’t many more details like that.”

“Even from the newspapers?”

Blaise shakes his head. “Mother wouldn’t have known much more than the papers reported, but she did go back and look in a few archives this summer when we started talking about how we could make Black pay. And because Longbottom is your friend, I think—”

“He’s our friend. I wish you would call him Neville.”

“He’s clumsy and fearful and too much of a Gryffindor. I might call him by his first name and smile at him, but you know we couldn’t ever reveal what we’re planning to do to Black to him, let alone what we’re going to do to Quirrell.”

Harry sighs, but doesn’t argue. “All right. So your mum looked in the newspapers. And she didn’t find much else?”

“No. The report of the Death Eater attack. It seemed as though your parents were visiting the Longbottoms.”

“Okay? Neville did tell me that they’d been friends, that even his Gran had told him about that. It wouldn’t have been unusual for friends to visit friends, right?”

“At the time, the Longbottoms were hiding under the Fidelius Charm, Harry. It keeps everyone except people who know the secret from even remembering that the house exists. Your parents could have known the secret if they were the Longbottoms’ friends, true, but the newspapers were explicit that Peter Pettigrew betrayed your parents’ Fidelius, not the Longbottoms’. Why were they living together, if they were? Or the more interesting question, why were your parents hiding in the first place?”

Harry’s eyes widen. Then he says, “And you don’t think Neville has any idea?”

“I think he would have told you if he did. And I also think that his grandmother is so caught up in hero-worship of his parents that she never bothered to tell him basic details about that night.”

“Yeah, she wants Neville to be his dad. It’s kind of disgusting. I’m glad that Sirius didn’t raise me if he would have been the same way.”

Blaise smiles. In truth, it’s hard to imagine Harry any other way than he is, open-minded and curious and loyal and a Parselmouth. But as he watches Artemis curl out of Harry’s open pocket and around his wrist, he’s reminded that Harry might never had had the need to create her if he had grown up in a more normal environment.

I will not wish for things to be different, Blaise decides, and tilts his head. “So, do you want to find out more about them?”

“I—can we wait until we’ve taken care of Quirrell, and whatever this remnant of Voldemort is that’s moving around? That’s a lot more dangerous and pressing than whatever happened to my parents.”

“Who taught you to prioritize?”

Artemis hisses. Blaise guesses the answer before Harry translates it. “She told me that a name for her was important, and so was food, and so was keeping magic a secret from the Dursleys. That was more important than trying to run away.”

“Were you going to?”

“I was thinking about it, before I made Artemis. I was lonely.”

Blaise decides they won’t discuss it more right now. “All right. Mother said that we can begin to move on Quirrell...”

*

“Potter? Are you well?”

Harry blinks for a second. The last person he expected stands silhouetted in the doorway of the hospital wing. “Er,” he says.

Professor Snape crosses the floor between Harry and the hospital wing door, frowning fiercely. “You were taken ill rather dramatically at the Ravenclaw table, I noticed. But the house-elves say that you have never complained of food allergies.”

Harry sighs. So far, his bargain with Snape has just resulted in him ignoring Harry in the Potions classes, and giving him a few extra lessons in dicing and crushing and weighing ingredients, the sort of thing Harry should know before he starts brewing experimental potions. Harry didn’t have any idea that Snape might care if he was taken ill.

Neville, now. It seems that Snape is bound to protect Neville somehow, if the way that he gave him Occlumency lessons is any indication.

But not Harry.

“Potter? You have not answered me. Do you have a food allergy you have only now learned of? Or did someone slip you a potion?”

Harry leans back and shakes his head with a small grimace. Aradia and Blaise would never tolerate him telling Snape the complete truth, but he can tell him some of it. “This is part of a plan to stop Quirrell, sir.”

“What is he doing now?”

“It’s about what he did in the past.”

Snape studies him with a frown, and for a moment, Harry thinks he won’t get it, or will raise some kind of fuss. But a second later, his eyes widen, and he steps back with a low hiss and looks around the room.

“What are you looking for, sir?”

“Aradia Zabini, hiding behind a Disillusionment Charm.”

Harry has to laugh, despite the way that he’s afraid it will bring Madam Pomfrey out of the room where she’s looking at some of the documents that Aradia signed this summer, making her the magical person anyone should summon if something happens to Harry. “It would be more sophisticated than that, sir, if she chose to come here.”

“She is not so choosing?”

“She’s not here yet.”

Snape studies Harry a moment more, eyes glinting, and then abruptly inclines his head. “As you were, Mr. Potter,” he says. “It was indeed an unsuspected allergy. I will talk to the house-elves to make sure they can isolate it.” And he turns and marches out of the room.

Harry leans back and sighs. At least Snape is going to let them go ahead with feeding Quirrell to the Suns.

Not that he might if he knew what we were really going to do. But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

*

Severus spends a moment standing in the corridor with his eyes closed, feeling out the limits of the Unbreakable Vow he swore to protect Neville Longbottom. He has to make sure that concealing the truth about Potter’s plan from Albus will not subject him to unintended consequences.

But no, the more he thinks on it, the more Severus feels his Vow is actually tugging him in the other direction. No matter what hopes Albus likes to spin for himself, Severus knows that Quirinus accepted the Dark Lord’s possession willingly. That means that he is an enemy of Neville Longbottom, and apparently of Harry Potter.

The Vow commands Severus to keep his mouth shut, in this circumstance, as a part of eliminating such threats.

Severus nods, and walks down the corridor, smiling thinly when he passes Quirinus standing near his office. The man doesn’t try to speak to him, stepping aside and giving him plenty of room.

The reaction satisfies Severus. He will continue to keep an eye on Quirinus, but it might be that he won’t have to. Aradia Zabini should take care of that problem very soon.

*

“Oh, my poor darling.”

Aradia watches Harry bite his lip while his eyes go brilliant with humor. He’s struggling to show the proper solemn face in front of Madam Pomfrey. However, the mediwitch is standing with her back to Harry while she explains the situation to Aradia, so Aradia gives Harry a sympathetic smile most won’t notice the edge to.

Harry rolls over and buries his face in the pillow with a bit of a yelp.

“Mr. Potter! Are you well?”

“Yes, sorry, Madam Pomfrey,” Harry says, and rolls over again with a gasp. “I just—had something funny. A tickle in my throat.”

It’s a lie with truth embedded in it, a technique Aradia has been teaching Blaise and Harry in order to deal with a Legilimens. Madam Pomfrey accepts it immediately and bustles off to find a potion that will help soothe “all such tickles.”

“Drinking the potion will do you no harm,” Aradia says, when Harry looks at her with a question in his eyes.

Harry smiles a little. “Are you going to do it?”

“Yes. I have no reason to hesitate, given what you have told me.” Aradia will be circumspect, in case Listening Charms and the like are embedded in the walls of the hospital wing, but she reaches over and squeezes Harry’s hand. “Meanwhile, I want you to rest and not cause the sort of trouble that you wrote to me you wanted to cause.”

“It’s not trouble.”

Aradia just looks at him, because hunting the source of whatever danger Voldemort has moving around the school is trouble by any definition of the word.

Harry squirms and mutters, “We just want to help Neville.”

You want to help Neville. Blaise wants to keep an eye on you. But Aradia doesn’t speak the words aloud. She simply nods and says, “I know, but I want you to keep yourself safe while doing so. I’m sure his grandmother wouldn’t be pleased with the thought that she had to rescue two people.”

More misdirection, and Harry smiles at her again and then leans back and drinks the potion Madam Pomfrey brings out to him without complaint. The mediwitch is clucking and fussing under her breath when she escorts Aradia to the door of the infirmary.

“I can’t find anything wrong for sure, but I hope that you’ll agree to his remaining overnight for observation.”

“I already told Harry I would expect nothing less.”

“I wish all parents were as sensible as you are, Mrs. Zabini.”

“I appreciate the compliment, Madam Pomfrey,” Aradia says, and smiles at her before slipping out of the infirmary to begin her hunt.

*

Quirinus paces slowly around his quarters. It’s the way that he thinks best, and right now, he has enough thoughts whirling through his head to occupy an army for months. The way Longbottom avoids him, the way Potter glares, the way Severus steps back as though the shadow of Quirinus’s robe would taint him—

Quirinus sneers a little, and paces faster. They will see who wins in the end, who is accounted a faithful servant of their lord when he returns. Oh, yes, they will see.

Quirinus reaches the end of his latest sweep through the room, and then pauses. There are long blue lattices of thin strands like frozen spiderwebs woven around the sides of his door. Quirinus narrows his eyes and shakes his wand into his hand.

Is this Severus, making a move at last?

Quirinus creeps forwards. The spiderwebs don’t move. Slowly, he forms an incantation within his mind that should disable them, and then lashes forwards, his magic traveling sharply down to the point of his wand.

The spell flows out and hits the spiderweb.

And gets stuck.

As Quirinus watches with wide, disbelieving eyes, the spell begins to spin around the spiderwebs, and then it becomes part of them. A freezing blue creature shaped like a dragon turns its head towards him and opens its eyes with a sound like clicking clockwork.

Then it lunges.

Quirinus has a moment to scream before the dragon wraps its bright blue body around him and takes its shoulders in his paws. It bows its head close and whispers, “You should not have touched them,” before it spreads its wings.

Quirinus has a desperate thought that the school’s wards will stop it, especially the new ones against Dark objects that Albus is so proud of, but the dragon leaps into nothingness as if the wards don’t exist. Quirinus finds himself kneeling abruptly on a stone floor, still wrapped in the coils of the dragon.

He looks up. Aradia Zabini is walking slowly across what seems to be a large, bare stone room, smiling.

Quirinus opens his mouth to scream a protest.

And his life as he knows it ends.