lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Four—The Diviner’s Reach

Harry staggered back from the cauldron, swearing. He’d been experimenting with the Default Draught, which was a minor healing potion according to his book. But since it could return a person’s body to what that body had been like before an injury, and the book had said it was difficult to brew, Harry had thought it was worth learning anyway. There were people who would pay money for it.

Now, however, half the potion was dripping from the ceiling of his private workspace deep in the dungeons, and the other half was creeping along the floor, causing cracks in the stone as he watched. Harry waved his wand impatiently and muttered the Cleaning Charm he had also bothered to learn.

The spilled potion vanished, and the stuff dripping from the ceiling, but the cauldron was left ruined with what was in there. Harry scowled. It was a good thing that he’d been using a cauldron “borrowed” from a loud Hufflepuff who had left it in Slughorn’s classroom, the last day before term ended.

He spent a little more time cleaning up the mess, and casting a weak Wind Charm that would wave away some of the truly horrific smell. He was starting to see why more people didn’t experiment with potions. They could be bloody dangerous.

But they were the best path to gain his independence, so he would keep on making them.

When he left the workspace—which he had managed to find with his Dudley-inspired talent for discovering overlooked places he could hide—he paused and blinked. Marcus Flint was standing near the corner he’d been about to round.

“Flint,” Harry said, with a respectful tone that he’d heard other people use for the Quidditch Captain, and which Harry used for most older Slytherins. He kept his hand hovering near his wand.

“Not here to ambush you, Grayson. I wanted to talk to you about your flying.”

“My flying?” Harry echoed. They’d only had one lesson on the school brooms, and he’d done well enough. It had felt amazing, but it wasn’t useful.

“Malfoy said that he thought you had it in you to be a decent Quidditch player.”

Harry held back an exclamation. He hadn’t asked Malfoy for that recommendation, and he didn’t want to owe the pointy-faced little git.

On the other hand, they did have a sort of alliance, and if Harry just owed a favor he could pay back—

That was fine.

“I thought first-years weren’t allowed to fly on the House teams,” Harry said, instead of protesting, the way he’d planned on.

“We don’t have a good Seeker, and one of our Chasers is leaving at the end of the year.” Flint scowled in a way that emphasized how brutal the lines of his face were. Harry didn’t move his hand from its hovering position over his wand. “Malfoy told me he’s interested in the Chaser position. You could try out this year, and next year, we’d already know that we had a good Seeker. You interested?”

“Seeker is the most dangerous position on the team.”

Flint shrugged. “You’re small. Fly fast.”

Harry found himself smiling, a sharp-edged expression that Flint didn’t flinch away from. “Sounds like fun. I’d be able to use a Slytherin team broom?” The school ones were terrible.

“There’s no chance of someone giving you one, I suppose?” Flint’s eyes darted over Harry’s robes.

“No.”

“Only I recognized Sirius Black’s owl when it came to the breakfast table.”

“He wanted to own me.” Harry knew that he looked like he was snarling, but he didn’t care. If Flint was going to make him part of the team, then his victories would eventually depend on Harry—and Quidditch was about the only thing Flint did care about, from what Harry had seen. “No one can do that.”

Flint was still for a moment. Then he nodded. “Point taken. Show up tomorrow, and we’ll see if you can fly as well as I think you can.”

Harry waited until Flint had left before turning back to his corner, and his thoughts were whirling around him, deep and shadowy. But for once, he didn’t care. Almost everyone had left for the Christmas holidays. Harry thought that Flint had only been here because he was supposed to be studying to get his marks up.

No one can own me.

They might be able to sneer at him and despise him for his blood and make him do chores if he ever went back to the Dursleys. They might be able to make him bow in the corridors, for now, and hex him if he didn’t obey.

They would never make him bow in his soul.

Harry smiled and went to gather up the remains of the cauldron. You never knew. He might be able to use them for something.

*

“I wish Harry was here.”

James just nodded. He was sitting around the dining room table with Sirius and Lily. Arianna and Patrick had already gone to bed, exhausted by their own Christmas cheer, and now the adults were left to drink and mourn the child who should have been here.

“Do you think we could send him the gifts anyway?”

Sirius sounded like he was on the verge of tears. That told James how drunk he was. He reached out and squeezed his best friend’s hand. “No. How could we explain them? And I can’t—”

He cut off before he could say what he was thinking, but Sirius knew it. His face darkened with terrible grief. “You can’t send the Potter Invisibility Cloak to someone who’s not a Potter.”

“Yeah,” James whispered.

He still didn’t know what had happened with the spells that they had cast to hide Harry, why they had resulted in a magical disownment. He had never once thought that he didn’t want Harry to be his son, or a Potter. He had only thought, fervently, that they had to hide him and keep him safe, and so no one could know Lily and James were his parents.

Maybe that was enough, that wording in my head.

It still shouldn’t have resulted in a disownment, but maybe that was how the wish of “no one can know” had manifested.

James closed his eyes, and felt Lily slump against his shoulder. She was worn out with drink and sorrow and the necessity of performing happiness for their two younger children, and now she would sleep heavily.

At least there was still another week before she had to go back to Hogwarts and see Harry again. He’d stayed there for the holidays, according to what Lily had heard from old Slughorn. He didn’t have a family who welcomed him.

Will he have any gifts?

James closed his eyes and bowed his head. He did wish that they could send gifts to Harry somehow, even if the Cloak would be too precious to part with. But Harry was just as likely to reject them as anything else.

And that would be the final sorrow, James thought. He couldn’t think about Harry pushing away the gifts of the people who loved him the most in the world, if he had only known it.

He would break in that case.

*

Harry was glad that he had already looked up detection charms, because he spent a lot of time casting them on the boxes that had appeared at the end of his bed before he could accept that they were real.

When he had finished, though, it seemed that both boxes were completely real, and nothing more than they appeared to be. Harry had continued to stare at them for a bit, but in the end, he shook his head and unwrapped them.

There was a set of heavy cards, covered with rich colors and intricate images of towers, dragons, moons, suns, swords, and more, in one box. The note with them was in Nott’s handwriting, and said, These are Tarot cards. So that you can see your brighter future. Happy Christmas.

Harry traced his fingers along the cards, awed. He’d heard older Slytherins talk about them, but he hadn’t realized they would be so magnificent.

He put them aside and opened the gift that must have come from Malfoy.

And that was Malfoy’s name and handwriting on the intricate card inside the box, although he went on for several lines, unlike Nott, about what a favor he was doing Harry and how he just wanted to help him succeed in life, unlike some people who betrayed the traditions of their families and sent deceptive owls, he wasn’t saying who, just that it happened sometimes. Harry rolled his eyes and put down the card to take the gift out.

It was a thick scarf, black with silver accents, and so warm that Harry could barely stand to wrap it around his neck in the bedroom with the fire flickering. He gasped and stroked the soft material. Wool? Were there magical sheep?

He didn’t know.

What was more a matter of concern was that he hadn’t got either Malfoy or Nott a gift. Why would he have? They were purebloods with more money and power than Harry would ever have, and they could certainly—

Well, he would have if he had known that they would give him gifts. But he hadn’t known.

When he managed to calm down and stop thinking in wonder about how he’d got great gifts, Harry scowled at the thought of that. He couldn’t let these gestures go unanswered, but he also had to think about why Nott and Malfoy had made them in the first place. Did they want to own him, like Black might have? Had they wanted to put him in their debt and then have that hanging over Harry’s head when they came back?

I won’t allow that.

Maybe it had been some other motive, too, a gesture towards their future alliance, but Harry wasn’t going to let it go just in case it was the more mercenary motive.

But what could he give them in return that would dismiss the debt? He didn’t have the money to afford anything as beautiful as they’d given him.

Then Harry smiled. Beauty wasn’t a practical consideration. Usefulness was, though. And he knew exactly how he could do that.

He would just have to practice.

*

“What do you think Grayson’s going to say?”

Theo raised his eyebrows as he walked towards the common room beside Draco. They’d shared a train compartment together on the way back, and honestly, Draco was more tolerable than he’d been when they were younger. “Why should he say anything in particular?”

“Well, maybe just to me, then. I sent him a gift.”

“So did I.”

The look Draco gave Theo then was hilarious. Theo flashed him a smile that was probably more smug than Father would have thought he should give in public, and stepped into the common room.

“Nott. Malfoy.”

Grayson was standing up from his seat beside the fire, half-nodding and half-bowing to him. Theo thought he could get used to that, honestly. “Would you come with me? I wanted to return the favor you did for me.”

A few of the older Slytherins glanced over at them, but seeing nothing more interesting than that, they turned away. Theo smiled more widely. “Of course.”

Where did he come up with the money for what he intends to give us? Theo thought, but he willingly followed Grayson out of the common room and down a little-used dungeon corridor. He did wonder if Grayson was leading them into an ambush, but he really didn’t think it likely. After all, where would he have made those kinds of friends? Most of the House avoided him because of his blood status, and people in other Houses, even if they knew Grayson was Muggleborn, just despised him the more for it. A Muggleborn, in Slytherin?

As if it would have shown anything but stupidity for him to defy the lot of us.

Maybe Draco wasn’t thinking as clearly as Theo, because he was gripping his wand by the time they turned the last corner. Grayson glanced around as if making sure that he wasn’t going to be intercepted, then nodded and reached into a small hole behind a stone in the wall.

He turned around with two potions vials in his hands. “Happy Christmas. Nott, this one is yours. Malfoy, here’s yours.”

Theo was glad that he got his vial first. Grayson could obviously recognize quality. He held the vial up curiously, tilting it back and forth. The potion inside was thick and silvery, and he didn’t recognize it.

“Default Draught,” Grayson explained, when Theo glanced at him. “Take it after any injury, and it will transform your body back to its original state.”

Theo whistled a little. It was a difficult potion to brew, difficult enough and with a limited enough effect that most people preferred other healing potions. But Theo had heard good things about this one. It could reset the damage from curses as well as injuries.

“Thank you, Grayson,” he said. “A princely gift.”

Grayson’s face went still in the way that it did when he wasn’t sure if someone was making fun of him. In this case, Theo honestly hadn’t been, but that reaction was priceless. He thought he could spend a lot of time needling Grayson without getting tired of it.

“And this one?” Draco demanded. He must have had to swallow a huge chunk of his pride to admit that he didn’t recognize the potion Grayson had handed him. From what Theo had gathered, Draco had thought he would be the Potions prodigy of their year until he’d stepped into Hogwarts.

“The Permanent Strengthening Draught.”

Theo choked on his own spit. That potion would permanently change one feature of the drinker’s body—not just strength, even though that was what its name suggested. And it also couldn’t have been brewed from the ingredients that Theo had given Grayson.

“Why does he get a potion so much stronger than mine?” Theo demanded, then winced. He was being childish.

Grayson turned a remote gaze on Theo. “Because he did me two favors. He recommended me to Marcus Flint for the Slytherin Quidditch team.”

“You can’t play until next year.”

“No. But I can get used to flying with the team this year, and show them that I can be an asset.”

“I know exactly what I’m going to use this for,” Draco announced, probably bored because he wasn’t the center of attention right then, and drank the potion. A second later, he grinned and laughed, lifting his arms. The muscles there were already growing leaner and stronger. “I’m going to be the best Chaser.”

Theo narrowed his eyes. “You know that you might not get picked as a second-year?”

“If I’m the best, I will be.”

Theo had to admit that was true. Flint chose the best, and was utterly unswayed by politics and blood purity on the field. If there had been other Muggleborns in Slytherin who were good at Quidditch, he would have chosen them, too.

Theo turned back to Grayson, annoyed that his moment of triumph with the gift and the thanks had been undone, and asked, “Where did you get the ingredients for the Permanent Strengthening Draught?”

“The ones that you weren’t able to give me? The Forbidden Forest.”

Theo slowly nodded. It was true that most of the ingredients he hadn’t given Grayson were herbs and animal body parts of the kind that could be found in the Forest—if you knew how to find them.

It was incredible that Grayson had.

“You went into the Forest?” Draco demanded. “What a Gryffindor.”

“You got what you wanted, Malfoy, and my debt is repaid.”

Draco sniffed and flounced back up the corridor, rambling on about how he was going to be the best Chaser Hogwarts had ever seen. Theo was the one who held Grayson back. “You couldn’t have brewed either potion when we went home for the holidays.”

“No.”

“Then how did you get good enough at them to do it before we came back? And how did you get comfortable enough in the Forest to find the ingredients?”

Grayson smiled. It was a grim expression. His eyes glittered in the torchlight. They were the oddest color, sometimes blue, sometimes hazel, and sometimes with a tinge of green that Theo never saw in them otherwise. “I was determined that I would be able to pay you back.”

“Those gifts we sent you were gifts. Not favors.”

“And how would you have held them over my head and reminded me of them if I hadn’t repaid you?”

Theo didn’t know what to say. Grayson nodded and followed Draco down the corridor.

Theo followed with a frown. This should have been a triumph, and in some ways, it was. The Default Draught was worth more in terms of both gold and preciousness than the cards he’d got Grayson, but if Grayson was going to treat it like an equal exchange, Theo didn’t have to acknowledge that.

But Draco had come out of the situation better of the two of them, and—

That was just not acceptable, that was all. Theo intended to matter to Harry Grayson, and to do it better than Draco Malfoy.

Besides.

It was always worthwhile to keep a brewer of this talent close.

*

Harry waited until he was sure all his roommates were asleep—and if he had helped Zabini and Nott along with Slumber Charms, it didn’t matter. He held his lighted wand up inside his curtains and studied the spread of cards on the bed in front of him.

The simplest draw, one of the books on Tarot cards in the library had said, was simply to think about a question and draw a card from a random shuffle. Harry might need some time to learn how to interpret what the card showed, but he would still be able to get a sense of “yes” or “no” from the one he chose.

Harry closed his eyes. In a way, he felt stupid. He’d never believed in this kind of thing growing up.

But then, magic was real, and he hadn’t believed in that, either. So he might as well try.

He fixed the question he wanted to ask firmly in his mind, the way the book had said he must. Will I ever learn who my parents are?

He let his hand hover for a moment over the cards, and then drew the one that he felt a tingle of magic from. Or thought he did.

When he opened his eyes, he hissed despite himself. The card showed a broken, half-crumbled tower with lightning striking the top, and chimeras in flight in the dark sky around it, one of them coming close enough to the front of the card that it looked as if it were going to claw Harry’s thumb off.

The Tower.

I think I can see that the answer is “no.” If I can even trust that this is real.

Harry closed his eyes and let the card fall on the bed, then carefully gathered the deck up and tucked it away. They were still the most beautiful things he owned.

And if he lay back down and closed his eyes and shook a little, well, what of it? It could feel like a final note, the final death of his curiosity or his belief that he would someday find out about his parents, if just their names and how they’d died.

It didn’t matter.

He was himself. He would forge his own path.

I will bend as I need to, bow if I must, but no one will own me. I am free.

And no one can own me. That means no family can, either.

I am myself.