[This Lordship Business Series]: I Have Been a Brother to OWLS, 8/?

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Fear of Snakes

“I have no idea what those are.”

Harry winces despite himself. He was really hoping that Sirius, who grew up in Grimmauld Place and got exposed to all sorts of stupidly Dark objects by his parents, would know what Voldemort might have done.

“Then I suppose we have to—”

Sirius reaches for the locket and abruptly snatches his hand back with a yelp. “Nott!”

“Apologies, Professor,” Theo doesn’t look particularly apologetic for hitting their Defense professor with the same stinging slap hex that he used on Harry yesterday.

Harry snickers, which makes Sirius turn to him with a wounded expression. “You’re going to allow your followers to treat me that way? Really, Harry?”

“Just don’t try to touch the locket, and you’ll be fine.”

“So these are Dark things that You-Know-Who created.” Sirius sits down, still closer to the table with the locket and the diadem than Harry would like, but he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that Sirius is an adult. “I wonder how one of them got into our house?”

“Well, I mean, your parents were followers of his, right? The same way that Mr. Malfoy had that diary.”

“Yeah, although neither of them were Death Eaters like Malfoy,” Sirius offers casually, and then his face darkens. “My little brother was, though. Mum couldn’t stop going on and on about that in the Howlers she sent me. Maybe this was something You-Know-Who gave to Regulus to hide for him.”

Harry just nods, although he wonders if Voldemort would really hand these things over to just anyone. The diary had the mission to try and let the basilisk loose on the school. What was the locket’s mission?

Or the diadem’s? Could it really tempt and possess anyone when it was locked up in a rubbish room that most people didn’t know existed?

Then Harry shakes his head. He doesn’t know enough about the—things. For all he knows, only the diary had a mission, and the others were just there to decoy people in and possess them and eat their souls.

Or something.

“You’ve really never heard of artifacts like these?” Theo is standing behind Harry’s chair, his attention on Sirius, although Harry can feel the flickering tension in him, as if he’s strung on wires. “You don’t know what they are?”

“I would tell you if I did.” Sirius’s face is apologetic as he glances back and forth between Theo and Harry. “On the other hand, I might be able to tell you where to look.”

Harry smiles a little. They’re in the middle of the Room of Requirement, which ought to be able to produce any books or research materials they require. Maybe it could reproduce the entire Black library in a pinch. “I’d appreciate that.”

*

“Lord Slytherin.”

Harry sighs a little when he sees Zacharias Smith bowing to the floor outside Gryffindor Tower. One of the first-years who was apparently staying up to participate in a past-curfew Exploding Snap tournament came to fetch Harry and tell him there was a “weird Hufflepuff” waiting for him outside. Harry guessed it would be Zacharias. Susan and Justin don’t qualify as weird.

“What is it, Zacharias?” Harry asks, trying to be quiet but also firm and commanding. Sometimes people just need him to be Lord Slytherin, without complications.

“Is he being weird?”

“He is being himself,” Harry hisses to Ahalam, who’s crawling up his arm. He keeps one eye on Zacharias, but just like he thought, Zacharias relaxes at the sound of the Parseltongue, instead of getting upset. Yeah, something is wrong, so it reassures him to be reminded that Harry is the all-powerful (snort) Lord Slytherin. “But I think something bad happened.”

“Then you shall solve it. I shall help. Then there shall be cheese.”

Harry chuckles despite himself, and Zacharias relaxes a little more. Maybe he thinks that if Harry can laugh, everything is under control.

“What happened?” Harry asks softly, and unfortunately, that’s all the reminder Zacharias needs to tense up again.

“My family’s—grown tired of waiting for me to become Lord Hufflepuff. They sent me an owl saying that I wouldn’t be allowed to return to Hogwarts after my O.W.L.s unless I made significant progress.” Zacharias swallows loudly enough to scare a Niffler and straightens up to stare into Harry’s eyes. “My lord, I’m afraid.”

“Where would your family send you?”

“They might send me to Beauxbatons, but they—I’m afraid they would just coop me up in my room until I agree.”

“What?”

“They’ve done it before.”

Harry’s stomach churns violently, remembering the summer before his second year when the Dursleys did the same thing to him, and he almost believed he would never see Hogwarts again. “Then I’ll help you. What do you need?”

“They—they said that I should meet my older cousin on the edge of the Forbidden Forest tonight, and tell him what progress I’ve made towards becoming Lord Hufflepuff.”

“And you want me to go with you to meet him?”

“Please,” Zacharias breathes.

This is probably the kind of situation that some of his other friends would yell at him for entering, but Harry has his wand and Ahalam. And he has his Invisibility Cloak tucked away in his pocket.

More to the point, though, Zacharias doesn’t seem like he could possibly be trapping Harry. He seems to be in genuine distress.

Harry nods. “Lead the way.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

*

“So you’re the Lord Zach has lost himself to.”

Harry doesn’t miss the way that Zacharias flinches at the words and the nickname. Maybe it’s an equal flinch for both. Harry lifts his chin and pulls on all the arrogance that people keep telling him he ought to have as Lord Slytherin, along with the way that Ahalam lies on his shoulder. He’s special. He has a snake. He can speak Parseltongue. He killed a basilisk. He’s special.

“Who are you?”

The boy who stands under the trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest flushes violently in the light of Harry’s wand. He doesn’t look familiar, although Harry has to admit that he wasn’t paying much attention to the Hufflepuffs at the point this boy would have been in school. “Tiberius Hufflepuff.”

“Hufflepuff? Then why aren’t you trying to become Lord Hufflepuff instead of Zacharias?”

“I had my name legally changed,” Hufflepuff answers, and then looks furious at himself for answering. “What does it matter? The important thing here is why you are making a member of the Smith family follow you!”

“He came to me and asked for protection.” Harry ignores the anxious way that Zacharias shifts behind him. It doesn’t matter if his family knows that. Harry is going to protect him. “I suppose because you couldn’t provide it.”

“He needs to become Lord Hufflepuff!”

“He said that he would need to undertake a quest for some special artifacts to do that, and also that some older family members of his had already failed those quests. Did you?”

Hufflepuff turns red in a completely satisfying manner, and whirls towards Zacharias. Harry promptly steps between the two of them. His wand is in his hand. Ahalam, who has a fine sense of drama when the occasion calls for it, has reared up and begun to hiss.

“Call off your snake!”

“He’s not attacking you. He won’t do anything if you don’t yell at Zacharias.”

“Zach!”

“He told me that he hated that name.”

“He’s a little boy. We’ll call him Zacharias when he’s proven himself.”

Harry narrows his eyes. There are echoes resounding in his head, ones that have the names Vernon and Petunia and Dudley behind them. There used to be a time when Harry believed they would call him something other than “freak” and “boy” if he just tried hard enough to be what they wanted him to be.

“You should call him Zacharias because it’s what he wants to be called.”

“I don’t know what he’s told you, but he’s a useless idiot.”

“Then you shouldn’t want him to be Lord Hufflepuff anyway.”

Hufflepuff stares at Harry for long moments. Harry doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He doesn’t think he much cares, either. What is wrong with Zacharias’s family? Why would they assume that he has to be Lord Hufflepuff and then despise him and bully him so much?

Harry doesn’t know as much about politics as he thinks would please his followers, but he knows that people who want him to be a powerful Lord Slytherin don’t put him down and bad-mouth him. This is probably less the result of the Smith family really wanting Zacharias to be Lord Hufflepuff and more them grasping whatever tool they have.

Because they’re frightened.

The insight leaps from nowhere and strikes into Harry, but he’s sure he’s right. He smiles. “You’re afraid of me.”

“We’re not afraid of a little boy.”

“The one who defeated Voldemort—look, you’re even afraid of his name—and killed a basilisk and defended Hogwarts students from the Ministry for the past two years? Of course. You would have to be smarter to be afraid of me.”

“You don’t want to make enemies of us.”

Zacharias makes a noise behind Harry that seems to confirm that. Harry doesn’t turn to face him, though. Zacharias isn’t going to be a victim here, at least not any more than he already has been. “I know that you’re already my enemies. You don’t threaten and try to coerce a friend of mine and get to call me your friends, too.”

“Friend?”

It comes from both Zacharias and Hufflepuff at the same time. Harry says mildly, “Of course. What did you think you were, Zacharias?”

“A follower.”

“He is a follower,” Hufflepuff says, shaking off his visible shock. “And he’s a poor tool, but he’s the only one we have right now. You’re going to release him from following you around and let him become Lord Hufflepuff, or you won’t like the moves we make in response very much. Right now, everyone is so in shock that you gave wands to goblins that no one is doing much about it. But what do you think will happen if we start telling people that we oppose it?”

“Then I’ll keep going.”

“You can’t.”

“If your family was that powerful, just as political players, you would already have someone who was Lord Hufflepuff. And you wouldn’t be so afraid of me.”

Hufflepuff takes a step forwards, until his face is just a short distance from Harry’s. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“What about the rest of your family?”

“Give Zach back.”

“No. And that was a stupid rhyme.”

Hufflepuff stands there for a moment longer, as if he thinks Harry is going to change his mind and start bowing down to him. Then he turns away with a rapid shake of his head and a mutter that sounds like, “We’ll see where you are when the change comes.”

“I don’t see a whole lot of people bringing change to the magical world right now. Are you sure that you don’t want to join up with me?”

Hufflepuff flinches at that, and then takes a step back and Disapparates. They must be closer to the edge of the wards than Harry knew.

“I’ve never seen anyone stand up to Tiberius like that.”

Zacharias’s voice is soft and distant, as if he’s so shocked that he’s not thinking about what he’s saying. Harry turns around with a small smile. “I promise that I’ll stand up to him if he comes back again. And any member of your family who does, too.”

Zacharias watches him with wide eyes which have devotion dawning in them. Harry holds back a sigh.

Theo would say that it’s better Zacharias is devoted to someone trying to protect him. Hermione might even say the same thing.

Hermione would probably add something about how Zacharias has probably never had someone to protect him, though, which Theo wouldn’t.

“Come on,” Harry says, putting a hand on Zacharias’s shoulder and squeezing. “Let’s go back to Hogwarts.”

“Yes, Lord Slytherin.”

“You don’t have to call me that unless you want to.”

“Sometimes I do.”

But at least Zacharias sounds a little sly, a little mocking, which makes Harry smile at him as they walk back to Hogwarts.

“The other boy left because of me! I am very pretty and very intimidating. I can speak Parseltongue and I am a snake! He is afraid of me.”

Ahalam, Harry thinks, will never change, any more than Oliver will.