[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Truth is Wilder, gen, 2/7

[lomonaaeren]

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Part Two

“You needn’t think I will be forgiving, Potter.”

David says nothing. Mum told him that was the best way to deal with Professor Snape, who’s the Potions master at the school for reasons that David truly cannot understand. But then, there are some things that all the adults stop talking about when he comes into the room, like what exactly is wrong with Harry and the details of Peter Pettigrew’s betrayal.

“Why did you leave your own cauldron of Boil Cure to lunge after Longbottom’s?”

David takes a deep breath. Gryffindor. I wanted to be a Gryffindor. That means being brave and standing up for people who need help. “It looked like it was about to bubble over, sir. That meant Neville could have got boils—”

“Silence.”

David bows his head.

“I will be the one who makes the determination of what is needed in this class. And one simple-minded student interfering in another equally simple-minded student’s simple-minded work will not be tolerated.” Snape unfolds himself from the desk. He’s not as tall as David has always heard Voldemort was, but on the other hand, he’s tall enough to pass for the figure who looms in David’s nightmares. “The next time, you will leave Longbottom’s cauldron alone. And twenty points from Gryffindor. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” David says softly.

And he does. From brewing with Mum, he knows that potions left unattended, or with an incompetent brewer, are dangerous to everyone around them. But it’s possible that Snape did see the problem with the potion and had some solution in mind that would have worked better than the way David lunged and took the cauldron off the fire.

David also thinks that Snape would have just let the potion boil over and burn Neville, as a “lesson.” And he knows that the next time it happens, he’s going to act to save Neville again. He can’t let other people get hurt.

“Very well. And see Madam Pomfrey for those hands, Potter.”

Snape sweeps away. David looks down and winces at the sight of the blisters on his hands. He hopes that Madam Pomfrey has a potion or spell to clear them up. It’s going to be hard to write anything if they stay.

He didn’t think about getting burnt. He just—lunged and grabbed Neville’s cauldron.

As he leaves the classroom, and smiles at Ron and Neville, who are waiting for him, a little hope stirs to life in his chest.

Does this mean that I’m really brave after all?

*

“Harry, you will be starting lessons tomorrow.”

Harry gapes at Miss Miranda, who is ladling chunks of barely-seared meat onto her own plate. Harry gets the honor of sitting next to her tonight, so they can talk about what he did during the day. “I—Miss Miranda, why?”

“It’s not proper for you to do nothing but read about magical creatures all day.” Miss Miranda wipes some blood-juice off her mouth with a napkin. She’s a tall woman with sharp dark eyes and silver hair, fearsome when she frowns. She’s frowning at Harry now. “The other young people staying here receive lessons from their own kind. I’ll teach you myself.’

“But—”

“No buts.”

“But I can’t learn things like they do at Hogwarts,” Harry argues. “I don’t have wand magic.”

Under his chair, waiting for scraps of meat to fall, his magic hisses. At the moment, it’s wearing the shape of a huge, shaggy dog, kind of like a mastiff that Harry saw pictures of in one of the books.

Whoever heard of a dog that hisses? But even though Harry is trying to be kinder to his magic and understand it more, that doesn’t mean that he understands every choice his magic makes.

“Did I say that I would be teaching you the kind of magic you would learn at Hogwarts?” Miss Miranda bites into the hunk of venison she’s holding and thoughtfully licks the blood off her fingers. “Although you can learn Potions and Astronomy and the History of Magic just fine. Plus most of the Herbology.”

Harry slumps a little. The one thing about knowing he wouldn’t get a Hogwarts letter, he thought, was that he wouldn’t have to go bloody school. And here Miss Miranda is, telling him he’ll have to. “But I’m stupid,” he mutters.

“Who told you that?”

Miss Miranda’s voice is so sharp that Harry blinks at her. “I mean—all the teachers I ever had and my relatives.”

“The Muggles who abused you?”

Harry winces. “I don’t like the a-word.”

“Too bad. But it was them?”

“Yes, Miss Miranda.”

“They didn’t know what they were talking about, no more than they did when they said you were a Squib. And your Muggle teachers obviously had no idea how to handle a wizard child—”

“A magical child,” Harry corrects her firmly. He isn’t really a wizard, he thinks. He doesn’t have a wand and he can’t do magic like them. And he doesn’t want to think of himself as a wizard, either. Not when they abandoned him and everything was horrible because of them.

And some of the books on history that he has read don’t impress him with wizards, either.

“A magical human child,” Miss Miranda corrects herself. “But you see that even with Muggleborns who don’t know what they are and are failed by their primary school teachers. The fact is, I had a full Hogwarts education before Greyback turned me, and a rather more extensive education from my family.” She smiles with teeth that are as sharp as the ones Harry’s magic sometimes grows. “I can certainly teach you.”

Harry knows there’s something special about Miss Miranda’s family. She still sounds wistful about them, even after they abandoned her for turning into a werewolf. But he doesn’t know what it is. He sighs and nods obediently and reaches for his fork to eat the last piece of venison left on his plate.

His magic surges up from beneath his chair and grabs it.

Harry scowls at it as it ducks back underneath his chair. “Hey.”

His magic ignores him.

“I was eating that.”

Crunch, crunch.

“You don’t even have a stomach.”

The crunching finishes, and his magic hisses again.

Harry looks up to find Miss Miranda studying him thoughtfully. She asks, “What animals does your magic turn into, Harry?”

“Dog, cat, fox, snake, lion, tiger,” Harry lists without having to think. Those are the most common ones. “Um, sometimes a wolf. A bear, a few times. A shark.” That was sort of cool.

Miss Miranda nods. “All predators. That is interesting. And I think it might give me some insight on how to teach you.” She takes another bite of meat and tosses a scrap up. The jaws of Harry’s magic shoot out from under the chair and catch it in midair.

Harry looks down and drops a scrap of his own. This time, something that looks like a tentacle shoots out and picks it up.

“And it gives me an idea of who to invite as another teacher for you.” Miss Miranda smiles. “We need someone who is too strong, and frankly too kindhearted, to be afraid of any living thing.”

*

“Ready for your first match?”

David manages to smile at Hermione, who’s standing at the end of the Gryffindor table and looking at him with concern. “Yeah. I just—it’s weird—” He shakes his head and glances off to the side. Mum and Dad got his eyes fixed years ago when it turned out that he inherited Dad’s poor eyesight, via a spell that wasn’t available when Dad was a kid. He can see every gaping mouth and eye fixed on him.

He suddenly wishes his eyes weren’t that good. Then maybe he wouldn’t be on the Quidditch team as a first-year.

Hermione comes over and sits down next to him. “You know that everyone in our House wants you to succeed.”

“Not everyone here, though,” David mutters, and his gaze goes to the Slytherin table before he can stop himself. Malfoy scowls at him. The git is still angry that he isn’t on the Slytherin team, but apparently even going and complaining to Snape about that didn’t change things.

David has to admit he would have liked to be a Crup in the corner when Malfoy dared to ask for that, though.

“It’ll be fine,” Hermione says so firmly that David half-believes her. She squeezes his hand and sits back with a comfortable smile. “And you know that Higgs isn’t that great a Seeker. There’s no doubt that you’ll win!”

David nods and takes a drink of the pumpkin juice in front of him to keep from throwing up. He hasn’t told even Ron and Hermione and Neville, who are all good friends, about his fears and anxieties, and he doesn’t intend to.

Not just because he has to be strong for Ron and other people, either. He’s the one who chose to go after Neville’s Remembrall. He didn’t have to. And so he has to accept that he’s the one who put himself on the pitch in front of all those staring eyes.

He just hopes that his awareness of the audience will fall away the way it always has in the past when he’s played Quidditch with Dad and Uncle Sirius, and he’ll forget the disappointment of other people if he fails.

“That’s the spirit!” Hermione winks at him and claps him on the back, then sits next to him, chattering about some of the same Quidditch tips that she used to get herself through her first flying lesson. David breathes as slowly and serenely as he can, and only jerks a little when Oliver calls from down the table.

“Come on, Seeker!”

“You’ll be fine,” Hermione whispers again.

David smiles at her. She’s another one he doesn’t want to disappoint. Hermione took a chance on coming to the magical world as a Muggleborn—since the war, not everyone does, once they learn of the blood purity problems—and he wants to do well in everything for her as well as other people.

It’s nice of her to come to the match and talk about Quidditch when he knows she doesn’t care that much about games. He’ll repay that niceness.

“Thank you,” he whispers back.

“Of course.”

*

“And this must be little Harry!”

Harry really does feel little when he walks into the room at the sanctuary where Miss Miranda has Mr. Hagrid waiting, because Hagrid’s head is near the top of the ceiling. He stands up and holds out his hand for Harry to shake.

And then he stumbles to a stop, staring at Harry with his mouth open. It reminds Harry of the way that people looked at him in Diagon Alley.

“What’s going on?” he asks warily, stepping backwards.

Hagrid whirls around and confronts Miss Miranda, who’s standing near the doorway of the classroom. It’s large, probably to fit Hagrid, and has enchanted windows with sunlight pouring through them. The sunlight is enough to show Hagrid’s angry expression. “You never said he was Harry Potter!”

“I said he was Harry.” Miss Miranda folds her hands, but Harry sees the way her fingers are flexing, and reckons she’s getting ready to defend herself if she has to. “I did not lie about that. And I meant it when I said he has a creature he needs to relate to.”

“Harry Potter’s a Squib!”

Harry rolls his eyes. He’s so tired of everyone taking his stupid parents so seriously about that. “No, I’m not!” he snaps, and waves his hand. His magic, which is waiting as a black eagle on a shelf in the corner, spreads its wings and swoops down to his shoulder. “This is my magic! It just isn’t in my body, so those silly Ministry officials with their silly tests couldn’t find it.”

Hagrid gapes at Harry’s magic. Harry smiles a little at the attention, but he also casts Miss Miranda a concerned glance. Now that Hagrid knows his identity, is he going to go and tattle to the Potters?

Miss Miranda gives Harry a reassuring look, so Harry does his best to calm down and breathe normally.

“Aren’t you a fantastic thing,” Hagrid croons, and Harry is startled to realize that he’s addressing the magic. No one else does that. Even Miss Miranda, who is the first person to talk to Harry about his magic at any reasonable length, doesn’t speak to it. “Such a wee beastie, such a little thing…”

Hagrid holds out his hand. Harry thinks his magic might welcome the touch, but abruptly it puffs up into the shape of a floating dragon that reaches nearly to the ceiling, and snaps at Hagrid.

Hagrid laughs. Laughs.

Harry stares at him, and then at Miss Miranda, who is simply smiling as if all of this is going to plan.

“The cute thing!” Hagrid steps back with a grin and nods to Harry. “I reckon I can see why you didn’t want to go to Hogwarts, with the wee beastie next to yeh. There are people who would take it the wrong way.”

“Yeah, lots of people,” Harry says weakly. His magic, appearing puzzled as to why Hagrid isn’t afraid of it, floats back into place on Harry’s shoulder, with half its dragon length trailing off him and hanging nearly to the floor.

“Well, of course I’ll help you train it.” Hagrid beams. “The first thing that you always do for a wild creature is speak to in a soft and gentle voice. Have yeh been doing that?”

“Only—recently. It mostly just scared me when I lived with my Muggle relatives.”

“Well, that’s the first thing.” Hagrid sits down in the sturdy Transfigured chair he was sitting in before, and somehow seems to become smaller. Maybe that’s just because he’s speaking more calmly and relaxed, though. “Sit down with it and speak gently to the poor thing and see what happens.”

Harry does so, slowly. His magic slips off his shoulder and coils in front of him in the shape of a Runespoor, which Harry read about in one of the books on magical creatures he bought in Knockturn Alley.

“And you won’t—tell the Potters I’m here?”

“No. They’d be scared of the little beastie.”

That’s true enough. And Hagrid seems to care about animals even if he doesn’t really about magical people. Harry takes a deep breath and turns to face his Runespoor, which looks up at him with three swaying heads.

He wants to be magical, even if he doesn’t care about being a wizard.

“Hello,” he says quietly.

*

“I’m so glad you’re okay, David.”

David leans against Mum as she hugs him. He can feel the Headmaster looking benevolently at them from behind his desk. David keeps his face hidden in Mum’s robes as he shudders a little.

He was so scared when the broom started bucking. He’s trained for duels and that sort of thing, but not for someone else taking magical control of his broom. And that’s what it was. Someone seizing it, and nearly making him fall off, and—

He nearly failed in front of everyone.

He ended up practically swallowing the Snitch and saving the game, but it would have been so terrible if he’d just—

“Tell me again why this is necessary, Albus.”

Dad sounds angry and aggressive, the way he sometimes gets when they run into a former Death Eater like Malfoy’s dad in social settings. David looks up, despite the way that Mum tries to gently press his face back into her robes. He wants to know why Dad is angry at Dumbledore for what happened to David’s broom.

“You know that we would never have found the wraith otherwise, James.”

“You told me that you thought there was no danger to my son!”

“I did not think there was. It seems that Voldemort has found someone to possess. I did not anticipate that, I promise you.”

“What?” David interrupts. Mum presses the nape of his neck in the way that she warns him to keep quiet when the Minister is speaking, but there’s no way that David can, not after that. “Voldemort is here? Really?”

Dad and Dumbledore exchange a long glance. Dumbledore is signaling something with his eyebrows, although David can’t tell what, but Dad just shakes his head and folds his arms as if he’s about to start a duel.

So Dumbledore asks David to sit down, and tells him about their plan to lure Voldemort’s wraith out of hiding—which could have been anywhere in the world—to Hogwarts by putting the Philosopher’s Stone in the third-floor corridor and setting up traps to protect it.

David listens with his hands tucked beneath his legs, so Dumbledore and his parents won’t be able to see how they’re shaking.

*

Harry enjoys his lessons with Hagrid. He learns a lot about sitting still and letting his nervous, prowling magic come to him, sitting on his knee or his shoulder or draped around his waist. The sanctuary has all sorts of places for quiet meditation, and Harry takes advantage of them as much as he can.

But he also enjoys it when he can start sitting in on lessons with the goblin kids.

Miss Miranda admits that she’s not the best at maths or runes and it would be best for Harry to learn those with the young goblins. Harry points out that most goblins don’t seem to like humans much, and they might not agree to teach him. Miss Miranda gave him a big smile full of happy teeth.

“Yes, they might think that, but they think differently of those who stay here,” is all she says.

And now Harry is sitting in a maths class with the goblin kids, who all sit in rows on cushions with their legs tucked beneath them. Harry imitates them, and watches in fascination as the goblin with silver earrings he met at Gringotts—who goes by the name of Starfire—stands up in front of the class and gestures back and forth with gleaming claws.

“Who can tell me what twelve times twelve is?”

Harry blinks. That sounds a lot bigger than the numbers he learned in school. Then again, he never paid that much attention in Muggle primary classes, because he knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to do better than Dudley no matter what.

(Miss Miranda looked the least impressed by this fact when Harry told her, haltingly, a little about how the Dursleys treated him).

“Harry Potter?”

Harry snaps to attention on his cushion. “Sorry, Starfire,” he says. Starfire told him that she didn’t want any title like Madam or Professor, and that such things were for goblins who had earned them in duels. “I don’t know.”

“Did you not learn maths before you came here?”

The goblin kids have their heads turned, studying him sideways out of one eye each. They all have grey skin, but different runes and scars and tattoos on it. Harry feels kind of bare at only having, currently, a black raven sitting beside him picking at the tassels on the cushion. “Sorry, no,” he says, and then something makes him add, “Not maths with twelve. I think the highest we learned was ten times ten.”

For some reason, Starefire smiles as if he’s said a clever thing. She lifts her hands and spreads them, and Harry jumps. He supposes that he never had reason to notice before, but it’s still startling to realize that she has six fingers on each hand.

“Goblin maths go by twelve because of what we can count on our fingers,” Starfire says in a lecturing tone. “Human maths go by fives, and tens.” She nods to a slender goblin girl sitting on the cushion in front of Harry, who is taller than he is by half a head. “Shieldstone, answer the question, and then the explanation. In both.”

Harry doesn’t know what the last part means, but Shieldstone sits up as though she’s been asked to do something incredibly important, and bows her head a little. “One hundred forty-four is the sum of twelve by twelve,” she says, “and we begin our honoring of twelve at twelve. Thirteen is twelve plus one, not ten plus three. Ganash ganashmae arackiinden. Elganish ganash sel mo i norim, ellen sel mo nicket norpimez.”

Harry stares at her. He feels as though the ground has shifted sideways underneath him, and at his side, the raven has stopped pecking. His magic cocks its head, and abruptly changes into a long, slim snake, which raises its head and hisses into Harry’s ear, tongue tickling at the lobe.

“Speaking. Speaking. I want to learn the speaking.”

Harry swallows and glances at Starfire. She’s looking at his magic. Harry realizes with a start that she’s been keeping an eye on it the entire time they’ve been in the classroom. It seems that she probably always does that with the most dangerous thing in the room.

“Was that Gobbledegook?” Harry asks softly. A few of the books he’s read mentioned it, but he’s never heard it.

“It was,” Starfire says. The goblin kids are watching Harry again. “Do you know why I had Shieldstone give the explanation in both?”

“To—acknowledge that both of the kinds of people who speak those languages are here?”

Now the goblin children are all gaping at him. Harry cringes a little. He must have done something wrong, but he doesn’t know what.

Starfire laughs outright, a crackling noise that reminds Harry of the fire in his rooms at night. His magic turns into a shaggy beast like a bear with horns.

Harry huddles close to it. He doesn’t know why he’s being laughed at, but he knows that his magic might be only a breath from hurting everyone in the room.

Starfire must sense his upset. She shakes her head. “We are only pleased that you called us people,” she says. “And that you heard Gobbledegook without thinking it was a declaration of war.”

“But Shieldstone was giving an explanation…”

“That doesn’t always satisfy humans.”

Harry just nods. Then he remembers the amazing thing that just happened, and which he lost track of because Starfire seemed to be afraid of his magic, and that would be terrible news. He turns to his magic. “You can talk!”

Starfire laughs again, but Harry is pretty sure that there’s nothing malicious in it. His magic cocks its head and dissolves back into the image of a raven, which opens its beak and croaks in a whispery, hissing voice not all that different from what it sounded like as a snake.

“I have spoken. You did not listen before.”

Harry flushes. He can remember the fear and exasperation and dislike and sometimes hatred he felt for his magic before he came to the sanctuary, and he reaches out a shaking hand to touch its midnight-black feathers now.

“I’ll never not listen to you again.”

The raven cocks its head back and forth, apparently considering his words, then turns around and points its beak at Starfire. She reaches up towards one of her earrings, but the magic says only, “Want to learn the speaking.”

“I think it—wants to learn Gobbledegook,” Harry says, when everyone in the room just stares at the two of them. Him and his magic. He could learn to like the thought of there being two of them.

“Then we shall teach you,” Starfire says simply.

*

David shakes his head. “I’m not going up there.”

“But the twins said there’s a three-headed dog behind the door! Where’s your sense of adventure?”

David takes a deep breath and leans back a little on the couch. Ron and Neville are both staring at him, and Hermione has her mouth open as if she’s ready to launch into a lecture. At least Neville doesn’t look like he wants the “adventure” of investigating the third-floor corridor any more than David does.

“I’m going to tell you something important,” David says quietly, glancing around to make sure that no one is close enough to them to overhear. At least it doesn’t look like it. But David wishes he knew Privacy Charms, anyway. He’s concentrated more on dueling spells. “But you can’t spread it around, okay?”

They nod eagerly, crowding close, even Neville, glad to be part of the secret. David winces a little at the thought of that. He hasn’t always treated Neville the way a friend should have.

But now…

Now he tells them a summarized version of what Professor Dumbledore told him, that a very powerful magical artifact is being guarded by the three-headed dog and it’s bait for Voldemort. They believe him, because of course they believe the Boy-Who-Lived knows everything about Voldemort. They solemnly promise not to spread the story around, and sit there, hugging the secret to themselves, glowing with importance.

David watches and feels a little sick. At least he talked them out of risking their lives.

But he does wonder if bringing them into the secret like this doesn’t make him just like Dumbledore. Content to use children in wars.

He doesn’t have any choice, when Voldemort forced the war on you.

The thought sits there, though, and makes David nauseous with anxiety and the anticipation of future hurt.

And fear, always that, coiling around him and filling his stomach like an injection of cold venom.