Chapter Ten of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“Mr. Potter. A word.”

Harry turned around and walked over to Snape, wondering as he went if he was going to get assigned detention over the summer, or a last-minute loss of points, or something. Slytherin had won the House Cup and Snape had looked pleased by that, but his pleasure never lasted that long.

His professor stood staring at him for a minute. Harry just stared back and said nothing. He knew that he would miss the train if he didn’t leave soon, but Snape wouldn’t care about that.

Snape finally cleared his throat and said, “I assume you are going back to the Muggle world for the holidays.”

“Yes, sir.” Harry had had a faint hope that either Hermione or Ron would invite him over for part of the summer, but Hermione was going to France with her parents, and Ron hadn’t said anything about it.

Snape jerked his head down in a sharp nod and then reached into his pocket and took out a thin silver ring. “You are to wear this at all times.”

“Why, sir?” Harry asked, without touching it.

“It will cause a device in my quarters to heat up if you are in mortal danger.”

Harry raised his eyes and stared at Snape. Of course he had known that Snape had fought Voldemort, so it wasn’t like he was working with the madman, but on the other hand, he also hated Harry. Why would he care about Harry’s safety in situations where he was outside the school? At least, more than other people? Harry knew some of his Housemates had had Death Eater parents and it seemed like they could be in mortal danger if Voldemort came back, too, but he'd bet Snape wasn’t offering rings to them.

Snape shook his hand. “Do you want it or not, Mr. Potter?”

Harry slowly nodded. He supposed it would be useful if Voldemort came back and found him in the Muggle world somehow. Since Quirrell had taught Muggle Studies, maybe Voldemort would know how. “Yes, sir,” he said, and took the ring.

“How much do your relatives hate you, Mr. Potter?”

Exactly what I want to be discussing in the entrance hall where anyone could overhear. But Harry only met Snape’s eyes and said evenly, “A lot, sir.”

Snape nodded and whipped his wand out. Harry tensed, ready to move, but Snape only touched his wand to the ring and said, “This will now inform me if you are in several different kinds of danger, not only mortal.”

Harry squinted at Snape. Then he said, “Thank you, sir.”

“Mention it to no one, Mr. Potter.”

“No, sir.”

Snape was already turning as if to sweep back to the dungeons. Harry stared after him, then slid the ring into his robe pocket. He had a few bits of torn cloth left over from practicing the Reparo Charm. He would string the ring on one of those and hang it around his neck. It would be less noticeable than wearing it around the Dursleys.

He didn’t think he would ever use it. But it was a nice thought.

*

“What are they doing here?”

Harry sighed. Nott and Zabini had shown up in the compartment he was sharing with Ron and Hermione, sat down, and refused to move. It was reasonable for Ron to think Harry knew why they were there, but wrong. “I don’t know. Push off, you lot.”

“Why should we leave our friend alone in unfriendly company?” Nott was smiling, but there was a hard look in his eyes that made Harry think he was itching to start a duel.

“You know very well that we aren’t unfriendly company!”

Harry held up his hand, and was a little surprised when they all fell silent and focused on him, even Ron, even Hermione who was puffing up like a cat. “I don’t want to fight,” he said. “And you know that Ron and Hermione are my friends, Nott, Zabini—”

“I thought you were calling us by our first names, Harry.”

“Why should I, when you do shit like this?”

Nott and Zabini stared at him in what seemed to be true astonishment. Harry leaned forwards and poured enough anger into his voice that hopefully they would just bloody believe him.

“I don’t know what you game is, but I’m not playing. These are some of the last minutes I’ll have with my real friends before I have to go back to the Muggle world for months. Get out.”

Nott and Zabini didn’t even pause to have a silent conversation this time. They just scrambled out. Harry leaned back, stared at the ceiling of the compartment, and exhaled in a way that was not a scream only because he was being as controlled as he could.

“Sorry about that.”

“No problem, mate.” Ron was staring at him. “You’re right scary when you want someone to leave you alone, you know that?”

Harry gave him as small and embarrassed a grin as possible and shrugged, stretching out one foot to nudge against Ron’s ankle. “Well, I don’t want either of you two to leave me alone. If I did, you’d know.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed, beaming at him. Harry wondered why, and then remembered what she’d said about the times that she’d thought someone wanted to be her friend in Muggle school, and then had turned out to be pretending. She would like it that Harry was straightforward and would just tell her if he didn’t feel like talking right now.

Harry relaxed further. Honestly, Gryffindors were just easier to be around than Slytherins. “Come on, let’s see if I can beat Ron at chess before we get back to King’s Cross or not.”

The answer was that he couldn’t, but he had a lot of fun trying.

*

“Harry.”

Harry rolled his eyes when he saw Nott and Zabini waiting near the door that he would have to use to get off the train. Ron bristled and reached for his wand, but Harry shook his head and nudged his shoulder into Ron’s. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to you before your parents come to get you, okay?”

“All right.” Ron still stared suspiciously at the Slytherins as he got off the train.

Harry stood in front of them and folded his arms. “What do you want?”

“We really did think you were our friend.”

Zabini sounded…hurt. Harry stared at him. Zabini met his eyes, and, well, if he wasn’t being honest right now, he was sure doing a great job of imitating it.

Harry sighed and felt as though he was being bathed in a huge blast of hot air. “Look. I just—I don’t like word games and dishonesty and you antagonizing my friends—my other friends. All right? I know you don’t like Ron and Hermione. You don’t need to come marching up and proving it. And settling a fight between you doesn’t sound like the kind of thing I want to spend several hours doing, either.”

“You don’t have different kinds of friendships?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“We know what kind of friendship Weasley and Granger have with you. It’s obvious.” Nott’s face was quiet, and he paused before he spoke, as if he were waiting for someone to tell him how to do it right. “But we thought we could have a different kind of friendship. One where we—tease you. Push you. Tell you things that you might not have known before.”

“Nowhere in there is anything about making my other friends upset.”

“We wanted to see how you would react.”

“Now you know.”

Zabini actually smiled. “Yes, we do,” he said, and put a hand on Nott’s shoulder when it seemed like he might have objected to prove a point or something. “All right. We don’t need to do that again. And you don’t want to have teasing your other friends be a regular part of the time we spend with you.”

Harry eyed them, and then decided that he was going to say something he’d carefully avoided saying all year. “No more than you want me to spend time teasing you about your mother on a regular basis. Or Nott about his dad’s past in a white mask.”

They sucked in their breaths. Harry stood and watched them, feeling more and more amusement as they just kept gaping at him. It seemed as though they hadn’t expected him to bite back.

Or maybe they just didn’t think I knew those things.

“When you said you didn’t want to play the game,” Zabini began at last.

“We thought that meant you didn’t know how to play,” Nott finished.

They really are like the Weasley twins. That made Harry wonder how well he would fit in with them even if they did manage to be real friends, but he ignored the feeling for right now. “No. You should have known better after seeing me take down Malfoy. It’s just that most of the time, I don’t see the point in saying mean things.”

“But if you could make other people laugh—”

“The ones I hear people say in Slytherin are meant to make someone laugh at someone else.”

“And you don’t want to do that,” Zabini said, as though talking to someone in a language that wasn’t English.

“No. I had it done to me enough growing up. Why would I want to do it to other people except to get them to back down?”

Nott and Zabini swapped a whole mix of complicated looks back and forth. Sometimes just looking at their faces made Harry tired.

“I think we do understand you better now,” Nott said at last, and he took a deep breath and thrust out his hand towards Harry. “So why don’t we start over again? Theodore Nott, I prefer Theo, I won’t antagonize your friends. Nice to meet you.”

Harry flicked an eye at Zabini, but he didn’t seem inclined to shake Harry’s hand right now, so Harry reached out and slowly grasped Nott’s hand. “All right,” he said. “Harry Potter, not a typical Slytherin, had no idea about my fame or magic growing up, if you hex Ron or Hermione I’ll hex you.”

Nott—maybe Harry could think of him as Theo—nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, and then he turned expectantly to Zabini.

Zabini paused as if composing his introduction in his head, then held out his hand to Harry in return. “Blaise Zabini, I won’t antagonize your friends, if you want to talk about my mother in front of me again a duel is the least of what you’ll be facing.”

“Blaise,” Theo hissed, apparently scandalized.

But Harry appreciated honesty in all its forms. He took Blaise’s hand and gave him a pleasant smile. “Harry Potter, I only use my weapons to defend myself, but if you do attack me, then you should think about what I’ve done already.”

Blaise’s hand tightened as if he wanted to squeeze Harry’s bones. But Dudley had given Harry lots of more painful squeezes and Harry just met Blaise’s eyes and held them until he blinked and turned away.

Blaise abruptly laughed. Then he said, “You can play the game. You just don’t see the need to, all the time.”

“No.”

Blaise stepped back and nodded to Harry. “I do think that we’ll get along fine, as long as you don’t mention my mother. And if you need help during this summer, I want you to write to either me or Theo.”

Harry felt a sharp pain in the center of his chest. He ignored it. “Don’t you live in Italy? A little far for Hedwig to fly.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Looking at the way Blaise was standing, Harry supposed it didn’t, even if he was really promising his mother’s magical strength instead of his own. Harry inclined his head. “Thanks, then.”

“No problem,” Blaise said, and turned away and melted into the flow of wizards and witches leaving the platform.

Theo lingered behind. “I’m less able to offer you help, because of Father.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t hold it against me.”

“You sound as if you already know the answer.”

“And you’re giving us another chance, despite the stupid thing we did by showing up ready to fight with Weasley and Granger.”

“Are you ever going to do anything besides state facts?”

Theo laughed and said, “I think we’ll be good friends, Harry. Good-bye. Have a good summer.”

Harry shouldn’t have let the words matter so much to him, he thought as he rode in Uncle Vernon’s car to the Dursleys’ house and saw the locks on the door and had most of his things, except his wand and Hedwig and her cage, locked in the cupboard. But words were what he had of his friends now, and he lay on the bed in Dudley’s second bedroom, thinking about them.

Maybe life in Slytherin wouldn’t be so intolerable after all.