Chapter Twenty-Four of 'Feather and Glass'- Heating Up

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Heating Up

Gryffindors are as subtle as smashed glass.

Blaise watches Granger and Weasley and Longbottom whispering together from beneath his own lowered eyelashes. Nott knows that something is up, and he lingers close enough to Blaise that Blaise’s elbow ends up nearly poking him.

“Step back, will you?”

“Are you sure that you want me to do that?”

Blaise frowns and opens his mouth, about to point out that he can’t brew this way—

And then something flies sparking into Goyle’s potion and makes it explode, all the thickened drops of Swelling Solution soaring out and straight towards Blaise. Blaise has a moment of intense irritation with himself that he didn’t pay close enough attention to raise a shield when he realized the Gryffindors were up to these antics.

Somehow, none of the potion touches Blaise or Nott. No, wait, not somehow. The drops smash into empty air and drip down as if against an invisible wall.

Blaise forgets all about the self-control that Mother has done her best to drum into him. He spins around and gapes at Nott, whose smile is secret and self-satisfied.

“What did you do?”

Even as Snape stoops down on Goyle and the people around him who got splashed like a sort of black eagle, Nott lifts his hand. Something is woven through his fingers, sparkling like a mesh of silver wire.

Blaise squints. He doesn’t have the chance to ask what that is before Snape fishes the remains of a firework from Goyle’s cauldron, and it becomes clear that Granger is ducking back from the Potions stores.

But Blaise’s mind keeps working at it while Snape reverses the effects of the Swelling Solution and then checks people’s wands. And the memory of something Mother told him once clicks just before he has to go up and hand his wand to the professor.

He whips around and stares at Nott.

“I told you that I could make a good ally,” Nott says, and his smile widens a little.

Blaise has to walk up to the professor and hold out his wand, so he doesn’t have the chance to say what he’d like to. But his mind is whirling and working away, trying to come up with another name for what Nott is, another explanation, and—

No. Mother knew what she was doing when she made sure that Blaise wouldn’t forget his lessons. There is only one name for what Nott is.

Defender. Someone who can instinctively sense danger coming, or at any rate something potentially painful, and raise wandless, invisible shields whose strength will match whatever danger they sense.

Blaise knows they once existed, but it’s a gift that runs only in certain bloodlines, and all of them were eliminated by the Dark Lady Ariana, the one before Grindelwald, who was Muggleborn and concentrated on destroying pureblood families she thought could challenge her rule. That doesn’t mean the talent couldn’t have survived, but it seems likely that Kalder Nott would have announced having it.

Unless he doesn’t. Unless it came through his wife.

Blaise turns to Nott again when Snape returns his clean wand to him. Nott gives him that smile in a stronger, darker version.

Or unless he knows nothing about it.

Blaise smiles back at Nott. His ally has become a lot more interesting.

*

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“If anyone can do this, it’s Hermione.”

Hermione blushes from where she’s stirring the cauldron. “Thank you, Ron, that’s sweet of you.”

Ron blushes and splutters and is probably going to say something about how he didn’t mean to be sweet and ruin the moment. Neville steps on his foot.

He glances around uneasily as Ron rubs his foot and Hermione goes back to stirring, counting ingredients under her breath. The bathroom where Hermione chose to brew the potion is kind of creepy. Haunted, of course, but Neville is used to ghosts, and it’s not that. It’s like the years when it’s been haunted and all the people who should have been there and weren’t have added up to make it lonelier than other bathrooms.

Harry would probably say that’s stupid, and Zabini would sneer at him and tell Neville to speak his mind in clear words, but neither of them is here right now, are they?

“How long will it take to be ready?”

“Another few weeks,” Hermione says absently, and tips something into the Polyjuice cauldron that looks like a stream of sludge.

Neville winces, and Ron catches it as he looks up. “What is it, mate?”

“That means it would be ready over Christmas…”

“Yes.” Hermione frowns at him as she straightens up and rubs her back. “I already heard Malfoy say he was staying over Christmas. I thought it would be the perfect time to question him.”

“Gran would never let me stay.”

Neville didn’t mean to be that emphatic, but both his friends blink at him. “Have—you asked her before?” Ron says slowly.

“No, but she won’t.”

Ron and Hermione glance at each other, and Neville wonders when they became the kind of people who can trade whole conversations in a glance. Harry and Zabini can do it, but Neville is a little upset to realize his two best friends are leaving him out.

“Why won’t she?” Hermione says at last.

“She wants me to maintain the exact same level of comfort and tradition that my parents did. My dad went home every Christmas from Hogwarts, so that means I have to do it, too.”

“Have you tried reminding her that you’re not your dad?”

Neville doesn’t mean to, but he laughs harshly, and the noise echoes off the tiles of the bathroom. Ron and Hermione stare at him.

“She knows I’m not my dad.” Neville knuckles at the corners of his eyes so he doesn’t actually start crying. “That’s why she keeps telling me I have to do what he did. To make me more like him. So she can have her son back again.”

“That’s terrible of her,” Hermione says hotly. “She should be proud of you the way you are! You defeated You-Know-Who!”

Neville smartly bites his tongue, because he’s not sure how Hermione would react to him saying that that doesn’t count because he doesn’t know how he did it. “Yeah, but to her, it would be best if I did that and I was like my dad.”

“I think I ought to talk to your grandmother!”

Neville swallows and thinks that he really wants to see that, and also that he never wants to see that. To distract Hermione, he nods to the cauldron and asks, “Isn’t that about to boil over or something?”

She whirls around and squeaks a little, then goes back to stirring the potion. Meanwhile, Ron edges nearer and lowers his voice. “D’you want my mum to write to your grandmother and ask her instead? Mum can get anything she wants. It’s a fact.”

Neville laughs a little and hears his voice go soggy. He scrubs his hand across his face again and shakes his head. “No, but thanks, Ron. I’d let you do it if I thought it would do any good.”

“I could still…”

Neville shakes his head a second time, and they go back to watching Hermione brew the potion. In a few minutes, Ron and Hermione are bickering again.

Neville leans back against air and closes his eyes.

If they had met Gran and knew her properly, they would understand. It’s not that Neville doesn’t think he could force Gran into doing what he wanted, if he tried. He could invoke his power as the Boy-Who-Lived, which Gran is in awe of, and make her back down.

He could. If he wanted.

But he’s seen Gran’s eyes when she looks at him, and he can’t bear to do so. Yes, she’s obnoxious and he wishes that she wouldn’t constantly compare him to his dad. But she also lost everything. You don’t try to make someone who only has one leg run as fast as someone with two.

Someday, she’ll come around. But she lost everything. Neville will give her time to reach the place where she doesn’t blame herself for what happened to his parents and doesn’t think that if she has Neville under her eye or her thumb every moment he’s not at Hogwarts, she can keep him safe.

She’ll reach it someday. She has to.

*

“I have a special treat for you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looks up with a face as pleasantly surprised as he can make it. He was on his way to the entrance hall to meet Blaise. They were going to say goodbye to Nott, who’s been more interesting ever since he revealed his ability as a Defender to Blaise. “All right, sir. But the train will leave soon.”

“This won’t take long. It’s merely words.” The Headmaster smiles at Harry with his eyes shining. “You should know that your godfather is on his way back from the Continent.”

Harry blinks, truly taken off-guard. He estimated that Black would be gone for a few more years. That was the timeline all his letters hinted at. “He finished the quest that you sent him on, sir?”

“I did not precisely send him on it, Harry. But no. He’s coming back so that he can spend Christmas with you.”

“Oh, but he could just stay on the Continent in that case. I’ll be in Italy.”

“I thought you were going to stay at Hogwarts, Mr. Potter. And that way, you could be with him.”

“I’m not sure why you thought that, sir.”

The Headmaster says nothing for a long moment. Harry just watches him and waits. Honestly, what is it with Dumbledore? He gets upset when Harry won’t do what he wants, and he also treats him like Harry has done something wrong sometimes, but then others, he calls him by his first name like he and Harry are best friends.

It’s enough to give Harry the kind of headache where it feels like the room is spinning dizzily around him.

Dumbledore at last takes a deep breath and steps away from Harry, clasping his hands behind his back. “If you wish to miss Christmas with your godfather, of course that is your choice.”

“If he doesn’t want to come to Italy or write to me any sooner than a few hours before I’m about to leave Hogwarts for Christmas, that’s his choice.”

Dumbledore looks at Harry again like Harry has disappointed him, but he only shakes his head and walks up the stairs. Harry shrugs and goes out to join Blaise in a carriage.

“What did he want?”

“To try and convince me to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because apparently Black is coming back to Britain to spend it with me.”

For a long moment, Blaise’s face is cold and unreadable. Harry just relaxes back into the carriage seat. He knows Blaise will never turn on him, and there’s no reason for him to worry about anything where Blaise is concerned.

“Why didn’t he write to you?”

“Because he’s stupid?”

Blaise’s mask shatters, and he laughs. “That would be the real reason. But what reason did Dumbledore give you?”

“None, really. He just said that Black was returning, and that I should go and pay attention to him for some reason.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about it. Just let Dumbledore and Black do whatever’s going through their heads, and you enjoy Christmas.”

Harry agrees eagerly. He’s looking forward to seeing Aradia again, spending time at Blaise’s house, getting to practice whatever magic he wants, and getting some great gifts.

He touches his pocket, where a cluster of feathers waits, and smiles. Giving great gifts is on his list, too.

*

“You mean he just left?”

“Yes. He said he was going to Italy with the Zabinis. Sirius, I am so sorry.”

Sirius closes his eyes and sags back against the chair he’s sitting in. He hopped out of Albus’s Floo prepared to see Harry waiting for him with a smile of cautious hope on his face. From the letters they’ve exchanged, Sirius knew better than to expect Harry to be all happy and open right away.

But this…

“I thought he would stay,” Sirius whispers. “I hoped he would stay.”

“I believe that the Zabinis have more influence over him than I thought. Aradia Zabini told me that she considers Harry her foster son, and, well, there would be little advantage, financial or otherwise, in adopting an orphan without powerful connections. I believed she would let Harry go gracefully when you returned. But obviously not.”

Siirus snorts bitterly and opens his eyes. Albus is standing near the Floo, regarding him with compassion. “Do you think this is my fault?” Sirius whispers. “For going on the quest to defeat You-Know-Who, and leaving Harry behind?”

“Of course not, Sirius. If anything, it is mine, for asking you to go on the quest in the first place.”

“Why he…why he couldn’t just wait…”

Someone knocks briskly on the door of Albus’s office, and he goes to answer. Sirius doesn’t pay attention, sinking back into his own sorrow.

He so wanted to see Harry. He was so looking forward to it.

“Sirius Black.”

Sirius starts and jerks around to face Professor McGonagall. Well, no, Minerva, she told him to call her Minerva shortly before he started on the quest with Remus. But it’s so hard to remember that when his instinct is to defer to her. He nods and smiles weakly. “Hello, Professor.”

“There are things you should know about your godson.”

“Does he come to you to talk about things? Only I thought he was in Ravenclaw, and he’d go to talk to Professor Flitwick—”

“I placed him in remedial Transfiguration classes because his magic is weak. And his magic is weak because of his childhood.”

Sirius winces. “He—he said something about not liking the Muggle relatives he lives with, I know.”

“He doesn’t live with them anymore, and frankly, that is an improvement.” McGona— Minerva’s jaw clenches as her nostrils flare. “He didn’t know anything about magic until he got his letter, and he tried his best to make sure that he could fit in with his Muggle family. His magic is permanently weakened, unless we manage to brew a potion that could give him some of the power back.”

Sirius feels as if he’s been punched in the stomach.

“Are you sure of this, Minerva?” Albus asks, his face startled and concerned. “I knew that Mr. Potter was struggling in some classes, but I had not thought it was that bad.”

“It was.” Minerva stabs Albus with her gaze, too. “And it’s as much my fault as yours. I agreed to let you put him in that home without raising any sort of protest.”

“You had your teaching duties, my dear. And you could not have stopped me.”

From the look on Minerva’s face, Sirius doesn’t think that Albus should have said that last part. He intervenes as quickly as he can. “How likely is it that you can brew the potion?”

“Severus has agreed to try.”

“I don’t want Snivellus anywhere near my godson!”

“Then perhaps you should have done your duty as a godfather and ensured that Harry attended some school other than Hogwarts,” Minerva says coolly. “Not only is Severus a professor here and teaching classes Harry is involved in, he also is teaching him Potions privately, from what I understand.”

Sirius stares at her. Then he pinches himself, hard.

“This is not a dream, Sirius Black!”

The words, even more than the pinch, bring Sirius back to himself. That’s the kind of thing Minerva said to him when he was a student, before the betrayal and the quest and Lily and James dying and—

Before.

He’s never going to have that time, and he never will again. He has to live in the world that Wormtail’s betrayal created. He takes a deep, painful breath. “Do you think Harry will consent to talk to me? I can get him the potion from somewhere else. I can brew it myself, if that’s what it takes!”

“Really? Aren’t you too busy to do so?”

“Please, Minerva, stop trying to shame Sirius. You know you should blame me, if anyone.”

Minerva doesn’t say anything, her eyes locked on Sirius. Sirius coughs and sits up and tries to explain himself.

“I—I want to destroy Voldemort so that Harry can live in a world free of him.” Minerva flinches, but doesn’t take her eyes from Sirius. “I put so much time into this project already. How can I just abandon it and walk away?”

“I don’t know. How could you abandon and walk away from Harry in the first place?”

“Minerva.”

“What, Albus? Do you think I’m lying? I’ve got to know young Mr. Potter quite well during our remedial classes, and I’ve seen that he thinks it.”

“Hitting Sirius while he feels this guilty is unworthy of a Gryffindor.”

Minerva’s lips tighten, and she opens her mouth to argue. Sirius holds up a hand and manages to forestall whatever she would say. He knows she’s speaking the truth. He knows he feels awful about it.

He knows Harry must feel worse.

“Harry made his feelings clear by going to Italy,” he tells Albus. “I’ll come back to Hogwarts for the Easter holidays and see if he wants to stay.”

“He might have wanted to stay if you had told him ahead of time instead of springing everything on him at the last minute,” Minerva mutters.

Sirius sees the moment that Albus makes his decision. He ignores Minerva and nods to Sirius with a little smile.

“I will certainly tell Harry, my dear boy. And hope that he makes the right choice for family and the future.”

“I can’t blame him if he doesn’t,” Sirius says hoarsely. “After I abandoned him for so long…”

“I believe Harry has his mother’s forgiving nature. If she could accept James Potter after years of ignoring him and believe that he sincerely changed, surely Harry can believe the same of you.”

Sirius manages a smile. He hopes it looks less ghastly than it feels.

He thinks of how hot and bright Lily’s temper sometimes burned, and shivers.

*

“If you would stop poking at it with your magic, then perhaps you could hear my explanation as to what it is.”

Harry starts and looks up at Aradia with a faint blush that she shouldn’t find as charming as she does. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Zabini—I mean, Aradia. It just feels sort of like my magic, but also not like my magic.”

Artemis, on his shoulder, hisses something that Aradia can’t understand and isn’t entirely sure that she wants translated. She sits down next to Harry. “That is because the force binding the amulet together is based on the force of desire and will. When you desire and will your little creatures to live, you are using much the same thing.”

Harry blinks and glances across the sitting room at Blaise. He seems to take comfort from Blaise’s relaxed smile, because he turns back to face Aradia. “So what does it do in this case?”

“It will allow you to make one wish. One,” Aradia emphasizes, when Harry perks up and examines the amulet with more interest. She takes it from him and turns it around, pointing to the runes scratched into the smooth amber of the central disk. “These resonate with your desire when you make the wish and hold the force in abeyance until you finish it. When you do, you must be sure that it is what you want with all your heart. If you have any doubt, then the wish won’t work, and the amulet will be damaged and unusable.”

Artemis hisses again. Harry absently hisses something back.

“What is she saying?” Blaise asks, which Aradia appreciates, since that means she doesn’t need to ask herself.

“She’s saying that I have to want something as much as I wanted a friend to use the amulet. As much as I wanted her to exist when I created her.”

Harry’s voice is soft and subdued. Aradia throttles the immediate response brewing up in her, and simply nods. Harry looks at her for a moment, then smiles.

“Thank you, Aradia.”

“You’re welcome,” Aradia says, and then turns and opens the gift that’s been sitting by her chair for more than an hour now. She runs her fingers lightly down the cover of the journal thus revealed. It’s a slender book covered in something that looks like a shimmering mixture of silver and sapphire. “What is this?”

“A journal bound in Artemis’s shed skin.”

“Thank you, Harry. I shall cherish it—”

“I didn’t show you everything about it yet! Don’t thank me yet!”

With an effort, Aradia also stifles the temptation to snort. Sometimes Harry gets to be a child, and she should do everything she can to encourage those moments. “All right, Harry. Show me what it can do.”

At Harry’s direction, she leans back in her chair with the journal balanced in her hand, and pulls a quill from a pocket to write in it with. It seems that the kind of quill doesn’t matter. Harry’s intense, serious expression is adorable as Aradia dips her quill in an inkwell she Summons and writes in the journal, Hello, Harry.

Harry closes his eyes and bows his head. Aradia glances back at the journal in front of her, wondering if his words will appear there. Or perhaps the journal will enable her to understand Parseltongue, since it is bound in Artemis’s shed skin.

Neither happens. Instead, words blossom to life inside her head, forceful as if Harry were speaking aloud, but as silent as vengeance.

Hello, Aradia.

Aradia jumps. The inkwell and the quill spill from her hand, and ink soaks the journal. Across the room, Harry jerks and lifts his hands to his temples, hissing in what sounds like discomfort. Blaise starts to his feet. Aradia shakes her head at him and waves her wand to banish the ink from the journal. Harry slumps over in relief.

“How did you enchant it?” Aradia asks softly. “And do you have a journal that corresponds to this one?”

Harry sits up, panting a little as he nods. “Yeah. I enchanted it with Artemis’s skin and willing really hard for it to work this way. Any time you write something down, I hear it in my head, and I can respond to you that way. And any time I write something in mine, you’ll hear it in your head, and you can speak silently to me, and I’ll hear it. I tried to work something out where we can communicate silently all the time, but it requires the kinds of enchantments that would mean changing my brain, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He peers at her, blinking. “Do you like it?”

Aradia inclines her head, smiling a little. She cannot say all of what she feels, all of what she means. There are too many words, too much wonder.

If he can do things like this at twelve, what will he do when he is properly taught?

“I do like it, Harry. Very much.”

*

“Why did you want to give this gift to me in private?”

Blaise can’t help the wary tone in his voice, even though he hates the way Harry flinches from it. Harry was so insistent about meeting in Blaise’s room and locking the door that Blaise thinks they’re hiding from Mother.

And that’s never a good thing. Not least because of what Mother will do when she finds out about it.

“I just wanted to—show you this. You don’t have to accept it.”

Harry is so visibly fidgeting that Blaise takes a deep breath and forces himself to calm down. He doesn’t have to be upset. Harry loves and respects Mother, too, if not the same way that Blaise does. They’ll find a good balance with her even if it turns out that this gift isn’t something she wants Blaise to have.

“All right.” He extends his hands, cupped, when Harry indicates he should.

Harry deposits a small pile of feathers in the center of his palm. Blaise blinks as he looks as them. He thinks they’re raven feathers, from the glossy blue-black sheen and the size, but he isn’t sure.

“Watch.” Harry closes his eyes and mouths some words, clenching his hands into fists. Artemis rises on his shoulder and sways along with him, although as far as Blaise can tell, she’s not literally controlling the magic that Harry is feeding into the feathers.

They stir and rise up in front of Blaise, who can remain calm, because he expected something like this. He wonders if Harry is making him a raven as well as a dragon like Ignis. He’ll appreciate the gift, of course, but it seems a little too big to be practical.

Instead, the feathers form into the loose shape of a raven, hovering in the air, not solid. It turns its head—its beak is made of feathers, too, and a gleam of light forms the shape of an eye—and stares at Blaise. Something thick and heavy bubbles out of it in place of a normal croak.

Then the feathers swirl in place and catch on fire. Blaise jumps back in surprise, and then sniffs and frowns. He was braced for the stink of burning feathers, but there’s nothing like that, in spite of him knowing that the feathers are burning.

“Harry?”

Harry pants for a second, lost in his magic so deeply that Blaise wonders if he’s going to faint. Then he opens his eyes, as the last feathers turn into brilliant flame without ash. “There.”

“What did you do?”

“The essence of the raven will linger around you,” Harry says, and holds out a hand. Blaise does the same thing. “It’ll take a death for you.”

“It’ll what?”

Artemis hisses, but Harry seems too preoccupied with answering Blaise to respond or translate. “You know how the monster has been Petrifying people? I think it’ll kill someone eventually. I don’t want that person to be you.”

“You’re still not making sense, Harry.”

“The raven will linger around you, and if something happens that could kill you, the raven will dive into the path of it and die instead.”

Blaise blinks and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t think many people do understand much about Harry’s brand of magic. “I—thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Harry’s smile is shy, but sincere, and it makes Blaise feel better about reaching for the runestone pendant that he made to give to Harry. “Here’s your present.”

Pleasure floods Harry’s face as he holds up the stone turning on its small silver chain. “This will hide Artemis, won’t it?”

Artemis hisses and pokes the pendant with her snout. In seconds, the magic Blaise infused into the rune ripples out and over her, wrapping her in a glittering shield that disappears almost immediately.

“Thanks, Blaise!”

“It’s small compared to what you gave to me.”

“Not to me.”

Blaise smiles at the look on his best friend’s face, and reaches out to clap Harry’s shoulder. Harry smiles up at him, and Blaise thinks that he’ll never find such friendship anywhere else.

That’s fine. He has what he needs right here.