Chapter Thirty of 'Feather and Glass'- Acknowledgments

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Chapter Thirty—Acknowledgments

“Well, Mr. Potter. You’ve had a bit of excitement this week.”

“Yes, Professor McGonagall.”

Minerva studies the boy in silence for a moment. She wishes she could ask if he’s all right. The news of how Mrs. Zabini defeated the basilisk was passed on to the professors, if not all the students, and of course the woman is Potter’s foster mother. And there was some kind of fight between Potter and Longbottom over the identity of the Heir of Slytherin. Albus hinted at that, and so did student gossip, without revealing any of the details.

Potter, though, settles into his seat for their remedial Transfiguration class and gives her an empty smile. Minerva sighs. She can’t help but feel she has gone backwards in earning Potter’s trust, even though she did nothing herself.

Well. Perhaps she can make sure that she does not assign Potter and Longbottom to work on the same projects in Transfiguration and the like, when Mr. Potter rejoins the regular class.

“Show me what progress you’ve made on the pins I gave you last week, Mr. Potter.”

*

“But how did you get the diary? Who gave it to you?”

Neville settles back in his seat near a secluded corner of the common room as he listens to Ron practically interrogating Ginny. Ron wants to know where the diary came from, of course, the way anyone would.

But he also, at least to Neville’s ears, is desperate to prove that Ginny had nothing to do with how she got possessed.

“I don’t know who gave it to me!”

Now that Ginny is free of the possession and back to her normal self, Neville is a little startled that he could ever have missed how different she was. She glares at people and answers them bluntly. She doesn’t look down and away or walk by herself or sit silent the way she was doing only a few days ago.

Neville is glad that she got away with so light a mark from the diary and could leave the hospital wing in a few days. But it makes him ashamed of himself.

“But then that means it could be one of the Slytherins!”

Neville winces as he realizes what Ron is driving at. He’s still trying to find a way that Nott or Zabini—or Harry, although he hasn’t said so around Neville since the revelation that Ginny was possessed—could have slipped her the diary.

“It was before Hogwarts, Ron, remember? I was writing in it before then!”

Ginny stands and flounces up the stairs before Neville can say anything about not antagonizing her. Now he sighs and glances at Ron out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t think she remembers more than that. You won’t find the culprit that way.”

“You don’t have any siblings. What do you know?”

Neville stares at Ron with his mouth a little open. He isn’t used to Ron being cruel like that. Most of the time, he says awkward things about how great Neville’s parents would have been if they’d lived and apologizes if he complains about his brothers too much.

Ron’s ears turn dull red, and he mutters something under his breath that Neville decides to take as an apology, because he doesn’t think he’ll get one otherwise. Then Ron runs up the stairs that lead to the second-year boys’ bedroom.

“He’s upset.”

“Yeah,” Neville says, turning to Hermione, glad that he has a friend who’s an only child and won’t hold the lack of siblings over Neville’s head. “I would be, if I had a little sister and she’d been possessed.”

Once, I did have another friend who was an only child.

Neville pushes the thought away. Sometimes the cold boulder because of what happened still sits in his stomach, but he can’t go around all the time thinking about his lost friendship with Harry. What happened, happened, and he doesn’t think Harry will forgive him.

“He’s not just upset about that.”

“Oh? What else is it?”

Hermione pushes her hair out of her face. Her eyes look shadowed. Neville wonders if it’s because she was wrong about the Heir of Slytherin, or if she’s just worried still about what happened. After all, she’s the “Gryffindor Mudblood,” the most well-known Muggleborn in their year, and she would have been a target in a way that neither Neville nor Ron would have.

“If he can’t tell who gave the diary to Ginny, he thinks they might come back and target her in some way.”

It takes a moment for Neville to work that out, and then he feels ill. “That there could be a reason they gave her the diary, and not anyone else?”

Hermione nods. “I mean, maybe whoever gave her the diary did just want random kids to be Petrified. But Ginny’s dad is also the one who’s helping make raids looking for Dark artifacts, right? So it makes sense that they might also have wanted to get the Weasley family in trouble.”

Neville ponders that. Yes, it makes sense. But he can’t think of one person that would apply to, specifically. There are always Dark wizards around—he’s heard enough of Gran’s rants about them—but they don’t regularly associate with the Weasley family. They would probably think it was beneath them.

“There’s really no clues?”

“Ginny says she can’t remember anything, and it’s not like her mum or dad would have invited those people over to the Burrow.”

Neville nods. “But Ron thinks he can figure it out?”

A small smile darts across Hermione’s lips. “If he shouts about it hard enough.”

Neville laughs a little, and then makes an excuse to go up to bed. He glances at Ron’s, but the curtains are pulled tight around the sides of the bed. Neville sighs and gets ready to go to sleep.

He ends up lying awake for a long time, staring up at his canopy and wondering who targeted Ginny, how he can keep it from happening again, how he can make sure that Ron doesn’t drive himself mad with his own paranoia—

And whether there’s anything he can do to make things up with Harry.

*

“I am not displeased that the situation is resolved, Mr. Potter. I am displeased that you resolved it without involving me.”

Harry stares at Professor Snape, searching his face carefully for any trace of a joke. But then again, Snape doesn’t joke, in general. His face is so stern and upset that Harry has to believe he means what he’s saying.

“But it wasn’t your responsibility to stop the Heir of Slytherin, sir.”

“I am a professor at this school. I had more responsibility than your foster mother.”

Harry sighs. He thought that telling Professor Snape the details of how Aradia fought the basilisk—without telling him that she took the whole carcass—and found the Heir of Slytherin would reassure him no one was in danger anymore. But no, it just made his face bone-white and mask-like. “It’s really okay, sir. She was always going to hunt it once it targeted Blaise.”

Professor Snape eyes him for a moment, as though wondering if Harry is only trying to make him feel better. Harry thinks he would do that if it would work, but he’s not sure what would make the professor feel better, if the news about the Heir of Slytherin didn’t.

“Thank you for telling me,” Professor Snape says at last. “It seems strange that the basilisk targeted Mr. Zabini, however, when he is a pureblood.”

Harry shrugs. “My roommate Terry got Petrified, and he’s a half-blood. I think the basilisk was just hunting, and Blaise happened to be there. We’re lucky that he got away in time.”

“How did he?”

“He was carrying a charm that could warn him of danger. And he says he saw the shadow and that it was a snake and the size of it, and he decided that it had to be a basilisk, because no other snake would be that big.”

To Harry’s relief, Professor Snape nods absently, his attention plainly on the basilisk and the Heir rather than exactly how Blaise survived. “I see. Would you be willing to carry a message to your foster mother for me, Mr. Potter?”

Harry blinks at the abrupt change of subject. “Okay, sir. What did you want me to tell her?”

“Ask her if she would be willing to give me one of the basilisk’s fangs, so that I might experiment with it. I would be willing to trade her Potions ingredients in return that are not as rare but are difficult to obtain.”

Harry scuffs his boot on the floor, a little ashamed that he didn’t manage to hide that Aradia took the basilisk carcass. “All right, sir. I’ll ask her and see what she says. But she might not be interested.”

“That is all right. I am interested in creating a potion that could protect against any snake venom.”

Harry cocks his head. “For Longbottom, sir?”

Sometimes he wishes Professor Snape wasn’t so smart, even though that’s also what makes him a brilliant brewer. His eyes come back to Harry, and rest there with a heaviness that makes his look feel like a touch instead. “Since when do you call the Boy-Who-Lived by his last name, Mr. Potter?”

Harry sighs. He has no choice but to speak up, he supposes. “Neville thought I was the Heir of Slytherin. And he—said some things. I sort of rubbed his nose in it when Aradia killed the basilisk and we found out Ginny Weasley was the Heir.”

Professor Snape examines Harry with more attention than ever. “Why did he think that you were the Heir, Mr. Potter?”

“Because I recently made friends with Theo Nott, in Slytherin, and, well, I spend a lot of time with Blaise. And I was also looking for the Chamber of Secrets with Blaise and Theo, so I was spending a lot of time in the dungeon.”

“And?”

“And what, sir?”

Harry can do a good blank face, better than ever thanks to Aradia tutoring him, but Professor Snape doesn’t look impressed. “I can tell when someone is lying by omission, Mr. Potter. What other reason did Mr. Longbottom have to suspect you?”

Harry hesitates. But he doesn’t think Professor Snape will reject him the way Neville did. It’s just—he has to know more about Parseltongue than Neville does. What if he manages to figure out that Harry gave it to himself, because his parents weren’t Parselmouths?

“Mr. Potter. I am waiting. Unless you trust me no longer?”

Snape is careful to keep his voice bland, but Harry knows it would hurt both of them if he didn’t trust Professor Snape anymore. So he sighs and lets his hand dangle into his pocket. Artemis, because she has a case of optimism as bad as any disease, hasn’t learned from the problem with Neville and cheerfully climbs his arm into the light.

Professor Snape’s mouth hangs open.

Artemis darts her tongue out a few times. “I have smelled the potions that this one has brewed,” she hisses. “They are far smellier than I am. What reason does he have to stand amazed?”

“Mr. Longbottom rejected you because you have a pet snake?”

Harry takes a breath, because he anticipated this, but it’s still harder than he thought to open his mouth and answer both of them at the same time. “Artemis, humans don’t only react to strange scents. I thought I explained that to you.”

“It is still strange.”

Professor Snape is standing so straight and still and silent that Harry is afraid to look him in the face. Maybe he shares Neville’s opinion on Parselmouths? Harry finally coughs and asks, “Say something, sir?”

*

It is beyond the reach of reason that the boy is a Parselmouth.

Severus could have accepted it with Longbottom, because the boy was marked by the Dark Lord, and Albus has hinted cryptically, a time or two, that that meant a passage of magic between the Dark Lord and Longbottom. But Harry was not involved in those events, and his parents were from lines not known for Parseltongue—

Then Severus’s thoughts stumble to a halt.

Do I know that Lily was not a Parselmouth?

It hurts to acknowledge, but it is the kind of thing that Lily would have kept from Severus if she only discovered it after the end of their friendship.

And hidden from others, for that matter. Slytherins would have been sure that she had somehow stolen the magic, Gryffindors would have—loathed her for it.

There is a Gryffindor who loathes Harry for it, Severus reminds himself, and shakes off his surprise. “Mr. Longbottom did not react well to finding this out?”

Harry shakes his head. There’s an enormous expression of relief on his face. What exactly happened? Severus wonders, as something in his stomach clenches in worry. “He found out because someone else sneaked around and told him. He was hurt that I was keeping it a secret. But he also thought I could be the Heir of Slytherin because I’m a Parselmouth.”

“You. The Heir of Slytherin.”

Severus can appreciate the ridiculousness of that now the way he did not when they were first discussing it. How in the world Longbottom arrived at that conclusion preoccupied him then.

But now he can understand, and he still looks at Harry’s bright, hopeful expression, and the way that the blue-and-white snake twins around his fingers, and thinks, Ridiculous.

“Yes, sir.”

Severus sighs and shakes his head. “I always had a low opinion of the boy’s intelligence. Was it truly because you had kept a secret from him? Obviously he kept from you that he was sneaking around and investigating you. Or having someone else do it.”

“He was hurt that I hadn’t told him, but also, Voldemort—sorry, the Dark Lord—is a Parselmouth. So I think he really believes, believed, that the Heir had to be one, and that made me a good candidate. Or a Slytherin, because it was hard for him to imagine someone who was opening the Chamber of Secrets and Petrifying people wasn’t a Slytherin.”

Severus swallows and nods. The House rivalry occasionally branches out in unexpected directions, and he has done his part and more to encourage that. “I am sorry that you were caught up in this, Mr. Potter.”

“It’s upsetting mostly because Neville’s not my friend now. But I’m glad that I could tell you I’m a Parselmouth and you took it so well, sir.”

Severus studies Harry carefully. He’s beaming at Severus, and something in his body that Severus remembers as always having been clenched is relaxed. “Well. It would take far more than this sort of revelation to make me turn away from you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry beams harder.

“What kind of snake is she?” Severus asks, extending his hand to the creature. He does not have any special affinity for serpents beyond his Sorting as a child and the occasional use of their skins as Potions ingredients, but he can admit that this one is beautiful. The mixture of cerulean and white on her scales makes her resemble a sky dotted with fast-moving clouds.

“I don’t know exactly. But she’s magical! She’s a lot smarter than a normal snake, and she has opinions, and she can hold actual conversations with me.”

Severus cocks an eyebrow up, noting that Harry has not actually answered the question, but it doesn’t seem that he’s lying, either. That at least argues that he isn’t trying to keep a dangerous snake concealed from his professors.

And with the way that Harry smiles down at the snake, who is currently winding her way onto Severus’s hand, he is relieved that he has another person he does not have to hide her from.

“What is her name?” Severus asks, as the serpent lifts her head and tastes the air near his face with her tongue.

“Artemis.”

Severus gives a small smile. Whether or not Harry knew what the name meant when he chose it, it is a good one.

“I am pleased to meet you, Artemis,” he tells the snake.

She gives a slight hiss that Harry listens to intently, and seems to choke up a little at. Severus tries to keep an eye on him while also closely watching Artemis in case she wants to return to her owner soon.

“She says that she’s pleased to meet you, too, sir.”

Severus executes a bow while holding out his hand in front of him so that there is no chance he will crush Artemis. “I am doubly pleased to meet such a courteous snake.”

If a large part of his courtesy is for Harry and not Artemis, Severus does not think that matters. Harry is already more mature, while at the same time being more innocent, than large swathes of his classmates. The least Severus can do is offer him someone who takes his passions seriously, the way he does brewing.

Harry murmurs tenderly under his breath to Artemis as he takes her back from Severus. Severus does feel compelled to ask, “Who else knows about her?”

“Oh, Blaise and Aradia, of course. And Theo, and Neville. And whosever saw me talking to her. I think it was probably Weasley.”

“Do you trust them to keep their mouths shut?”

“Everyone except Weasley, really. But if he tells people about Artemis and that I’m a Parselmouth, then I’ll tell people that his sister was really the one possessed by the diary and posing as the Heir of Slytherin.”

“Perhaps you can explain to me in more detail about the diary?”

Harry shrugs. “Sure, but I don’t know much about it. You should ask Aradia.”

Perhaps a correspondence with Mrs. Zabini is in order, after all.

“Oh, no, my potion!”

Severus starts. It is the first time in more than fifteen years that he has become so involved in a conversation that he has lost track of what a potion was doing. But indeed, Harry’s is about to boil over.

As Harry rushes to rescue it and Severus casts a charm that will keep the spilling mess on the floor from either coming into contact with Harry’s boots or corroding the cauldron it was brewed in, he wonders whether Mrs. Zabini will welcome his letters, or not.

*

Albus stares at the diary on his desk, his heart aching. He did not recognize the kind of Dark artifact that it was, not right away, as Mrs. Zabini seemed to. But he has done some research, including delving into the sort of aura-revealing spells that he hasn’t needed to use since he fought Gellert, and there is little doubt now.

This thing is a Horcrux.

It must be the way Tom managed to survive, the night young Neville vanquished him. Albus had other theories, but then, it was difficult to identify which method of immortality a young man who had traveled for decades researching Dark magic might have chosen. In a way, Albus is surprised that he went with Horcruxes. They are in many ways a cheap form of immortality, since they damage the soul that most Dark Arts practitioners want to use in other rituals, and the objects can be destroyed.

If one knows the way to do so.

So far, Albus’s research on how to destroy them has only turned up the method of Fiendfyre, and he refuses to use such a spell, so destructive and likely to turn on the caster. He will have to find something else.

Fawkes croons from his perch. Albus turns and holds his arm up, and the phoenix sails across the distance between his perch and Albus’s chair, his wings making a noise like flickering flames chasing each other. Fawkes rubs his head against Albus’s cheek and croons again.

“I suppose that you have no idea how to destroy a Horcrux, Fawkes?”

Fawkes beats his wings.

“No, you would have told me if your own fire could damage it,” Albus murmurs, and sighs. It seems that more research is ahead of him, and in some of the books that at present occupy only the most shadowy corner of the Restricted Section.

He grimaces. He does not look forward to handling tomes that will try to eat his fingers and poison his heart and mind.

But at least if he has those books, they cannot do the same to a student. That is a small comfort.

*

“What was it like, being Petrified?”

Harry looks up. Padma and Anthony and Michael and—well, everyone in the year, really, are gathered around Terry Boot, who finally got revived and released from the hospital wing today. He’s basking in the attention, but Harry can’t blame him. He would have been, too, if he’d been the one Petrified.

He picks up his book, checks to make sure that Artemis is safely asleep in his pocket and not visible, and then walks over and sits down at the edge of the group. Padma notices and makes room for him with a small smile, but then goes back to listening to Terry.

“It was so strange,” Terry whispers, one hand gesturing in the air as if he’s trying to gather spiderwebs in the palm of his hand. “Like I was tired, but couldn’t close my eyes. Like my muscles were always tingling, right on the verge of going numb, but never getting there. Like I was falling without moving.”

“You’re a good describer,” Harry says.

Terry smiles uncertainly at him. He hasn’t been close to Harry the way Padma and Anthony have been, but he seems willing to accept the compliment. “Thanks.”

A few more people ask him questions, and then Terry asks, “Is it true that no one was caught and punished for being the Heir of Slytherin? No one?” He sounds disappointed about it. Harry looks at him thoughtfully.

“There were rumors that it was a student possessed by a Dark artifact,” Padma says. She looks at Harry in turn. “But we don’t know who the student was, or what the artifact was. They’re just claiming that we don’t need to know that kind of thing.”

“Yes, we do! How can we effectively protect ourselves against things like that in the future if we don’t know who did it this time? Or what possessed them?”

Harry knows that he can’t reveal Ginny Weasley’s name without getting in trouble with the Headmaster, but he does deliberately fidget and draw their attention. “I want to tell you, but they made me promise not to,” he says.

“Who?” Anthony promptly asks.

“Well, the Headmaster. And a few other adults.”

Some of their faces darken. Harry watches them from underneath his eyelashes with delight. Good. The more people who dislike Dumbledore for things, the better. Harry dislikes him for the way he’s handled Neville, for insisting that Neville learn Occlumency from Professor Snape before Snape changed, for the things he’s said to Aradia, and for the way that he kept acting like it was important for Harry to meet up with Sirius Black.

And he has something for them to keep in mind that might be even better than them disliking Dumbledore, if he can convince them of it.

“Isn’t there anything else you can tell us?” Padma wheedles, propping her chin up in her hand and fluttering her eyelashes at Harry.

Harry is surprised by how uncomfortable that makes him feel. Of course she’s not really flirting with him, just teasing, but—

He doesn’t know. It’s just uncomfortable.

“I could hint at something. But then you might spread the gossip around, and Dumbledore and the others would know that I told.”

“We can keep this to ourselves, can’t we?” Anthony shoots an imperious glance around the group, and Harry puts a hand over his mouth to hide his laughter at how good he is for getting people to immediately nod hastily. “We can even swear an oath that we won’t talk about to anyone else!” And Anthony takes out his wand.

“An oath? That’s a little hasty,” says Michael. He’s drawn back as if remembering that he doesn’t regularly speak to Padma, Anthony, or Harry.

“Not really,” Anthony says. “We’ll just be careful with our wording, and it’ll make us bite our tongues if we try to tell someone.”

“But we could still write it.”

“It’ll shock our fingers, too,” Anthony says, with a relish that makes Harry wonder if he’s been wanting to try out this spell for a while. This could be just an excuse. “I promise, it won’t hurt too badly, but it will make sure that we keep our promise.”

It takes a little more goading, and in the end, Michael gets up and leaves, shaking his head. But the rest of them extend their hands, and Anthony cast the spell and has them all repeat the words. Then he puts away his wand, and everyone turns to stare at Harry.

Harry leans close to whisper. The older Ravenclaws have pointedly not been acting interested in Terry’s story, except for the prefects, who asked him if he was okay when he came back. Now they glare, but it’s not like they can intrude at this point.

“The student who got possessed was a Gryffindor.”

Padma gasps. Harry can practically see her mind make the leap to his recent fight with Neville, and he shakes his head. “It isn’t Neville.”

“But you aren’t speaking to him anymore, are you?” Anthony’s eyes are shrewd.

Harry shifts, but the others are staring at him, too, and he knows that he can’t keep it from them for long. He sighs. “No, but the reason we had a fight was that he thought I was the Heir of Slytherin. Either that, or one of my Slytherin friends.”

“But that’s stupid,” Stephen Cornfoot says, speaking up for the first time since Terry started describing what it’s like to be Petrified. He shakes his shaggy hair out of his eyes with a frown. “Why? Just because of their House?”

“Yeah.” Harry makes his voice small and looks down. “And sometimes Blaise and Neville didn’t get along before this. I think Neville would have probably always ended up doubting me and walking away from me.”

“Bet it was a bit of bad luck for him, for the real Heir to turn out to be a Gryffindor.”

Mandy Brocklehurst sneers a lot, and normally Harry doesn’t like her, but he smiles at her now. “Yeah, he was pretty shocked.”

“Could we ask him about it?”

“Then he would know I told!” Harry snaps. “Honestly!”

“And the oath will keep us from speaking of it,” Anthony reminds the others, staring around their little group and getting a series of reluctant nods. “No, let’s just think about this, and enjoy the evidence it provides that Gryffindors and Headmaster both mess up sometimes.”

Stephen laughs, and the tension breaks. Harry settles back in his own corner with Anthony and Padma—and the hidden Artemis—well-pleased.

His and Blaise’s goals aren’t coherent yet, but he knows this will help.

*

Blaise stands up when Theo comes walking back into the Slytherin common room from somewhere late studying for the end-of-term exams, and coughs.

Crabbe turns to look at him, and then Goyle, and then people on a few other chairs and couches, and then a wave of Slytherins from all over the common room.

“I wish to acknowledge,” Blaise says in a clear, carrying voice, holding Theo’s eyes, “that Theo Nott is a claimed and valued ally of the Zabini family.”

Some people stare. Others turn away, not caring. But some gasp, and Draco turns the color of weathered bone.

Theo is one of the ones who stares. Blaise holds his gaze still. They didn’t tell Theo ahead of time because they needed his reaction to be real.

Theo’s face cracks into a vicious smile that rolls across his face like ink, and he comes over to sit down next to Blaise.

Blaise catches a few gazes, and they turn hastily away. Blaise smiles himself and begins to work on his Charms essay.

Theo fought for him and Harry. He has valuable magic. He kept the secret of Harry’s Parseltongue. He’s powerful and interesting and intelligent.

Blaise intends to make sure that Theo never regrets their alliance.