Chapter Twelve of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“Are you okay, Harry?”

Harry smiled a little as he hugged Hermione. “Yeah, why?”

“You look—pale. As if you haven’t been eating right.” Hermione bit her lip and scanned him for a second. “Did your relatives not feed you?”

“They were all right,” Harry said, with a shrug. It was a good way to sum up the combination of so little food for the first weeks of summer and as much food as he wanted for the last month. “It wasn’t great. But I’m here now.” He sat down and clasped hands with Ron briefly. He thought Theo and Blaise would probably get another compartment, but that was all right. He would see them tonight in the dormitories, and for more time than Ron and Hermione throughout the year.

“You said a house-elf prevented you from writing back to us?”

“Yeah, it was the weirdest thing…”

Harry told them about Dobby, but not exactly about how he had kept Dobby from hurting himself. He thought Hermione might disapprove. Hermione looked highly interested in what he’d said about helping house-elves find freedom, though.

“I never considered what impact You-Know-Who might have on the magical non-human population! Do you think house-elves were kept from choosing their own partners and having families by their masters?” She practically spat the word. “Just abused more in general? How many elves worked for his followers?”

Since these were questions Harry didn’t know the answer to, he just had to listen, but he did so with a fond smile. Hermione was really great, and Harry was completely past the slight feeling of uncertainty he’d had last year when she seemed more like Ron’s friend. He was glad that he had someone to help balance the perspective he got from Slytherin and remind him of what was really important.

Probably end up obsessed with the state of my hair and robes if Malfoy was my main influence.
*

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry contained a silent sigh as he turned around and saw Professor Snape staring at him. He hadn’t done anything! He’d literally just walked into the entrance hall with Ron and Hermione, after riding the horseless carriages up to the school.

Ron and Hermione looked back and forth between him and Snape with wide eyes. Harry waved a hand at them behind his back. They couldn’t do anything to help him, and they would only get in more trouble if they tried.

In the end, Hermione bit her lip, nodded, and dragged Ron away. Harry followed Snape’s curt gesture into a dark corner near the entrance of the Great Hall. He kept his hand casually down at his side, but ready to go for his wand if he had to.

“Why did the ring not warn me that anything happened to you during the summer?”

Harry blinked. It sounded like Snape had expected the ring to work, which was…strange. “Because nothing happened to me, sir.”

“I received a letter from Mr. Zabini that argues otherwise.”

Harry stared. Had Blaise written to Snape when Harry couldn’t reply to him because of Dobby? Probably. But that had been more than a month ago, and Blaise hadn’t said anything about it when Harry wrote back. “No, sir.”

“You are saying I did not receive the letter?”

“I’m saying that someone interfered with my post for a while, so that’s probably why Blaise got worried. But the situation is resolved now. Sir.”

Snape leaned close enough to make Harry want to step away, except his back would have banged into the wall. “Someone interfering with your post is something happening, Potter. Explain it to me, now. Did you relatives take the ring from you?”

“No. I had it right here, all summer.” Harry lifted the strip of leather from around his neck to show the ring to Snape. “It just didn’t affect me the way it was supposed to.”

Snape shut his eyes. Harry had exactly one moment to wonder if he was chiding himself for his own stupidity, before he hissed under his breath, “You were supposed to wear it, Potter, you dunderhead. Then I would have felt you being in danger.”

“Oh.”

“That is all you have to say?”

It sounded like Snape was going to start breathing fire like a dragon any second, so Harry got there first. “Listen, sir, I couldn’t have worn the ring,” he snapped. “My relatives would have taken it from me right away. As it is, when my uncle finally saw it hanging around my neck, he tried to take it away.”

“And what happened then?”

Harry smiled. “I stopped him.”

“You should not have had to.”

Harry laughed before he could stop himself. “Well, I’ve always had to. Why should this be different?”

“Because you are in my House now.” Snape took a step towards him and lowered his voice. “You should have been able to depend on others, but you have not been able to. Now you can. Wear the ring.”

Harry simply stared at him, and wondered what he should say. Ask Snape how he planned to come up with a way to keep the Dursleys from noticing and taking the ring, if Harry wore it during the summers? Ask him what kind of help he could provide if his relatives locked him in the cupboard again or stopped fearing him?

But in the end, it wasn’t worth making a fuss over things that probably wouldn’t change.

Harry nodded sharply and slid the ring onto his right ring finger. It tingled for a second, and then he shuddered and stepped back from Snape as the tingle seemed to run right through the middle of his body.

“What was that?”

“That was the ring attuning itself to you and to the instrument in my office.” Snape slowly swept his eyes up and down Harry as though thinking someone else had appeared in his place. “You felt that?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and didn’t say that it would have been hard not to.

“I see.” Snape’s face was inscrutable again. “You may go in and sit down. I believe your Slytherin friends may have some questions for you.”

Harry just nodded and waited until it became obvious that Snape wouldn’t walk into the Great Hall ahead of him. Then he turned and did it, feeling his spine prickle. He hadn’t been that suspicious last year about thinking someone would hex him in the back.

But, well. It had been a spectacular end to the term, last year.

“Where were you during the train ride?” Theo asked, the instant Harry sat down next to them. The Sorting was about to begin, and Harry lowered his voice, since some of the professors got upset when students talked during the Sorting.

“Rode with Ron and Hermione.”

Theo looked upset about something, but then the Hat started singing, and it was too loud to talk, anyway.

*

Harry went to bed early, irritated. The common room was full of people either staring at him because of what had happened at the end of last year, or because they were firsties and awed at being in the same House as Harry Potter. At least Malfoy was strutting around trying to impress people, so Harry didn’t have to worry about him being in the bedroom.

Theo and Blaise were, though, and they promptly cast a Locking Charm at the door as he walked in. Harry tensed, muscles jumping, even though he tried to calm himself down by thinking about what Theo and Blaise had said.

They were friends. They were.

“Tell us what happened to you during the summer and why you didn’t sit with us on the train ride,” Blaise demanded at once, leaning forwards. He looked like he might try to leap off his bed and shake the truth out of Harry if Harry didn’t tell him. “You said in the letters you wrote back to us that someone had been interfering with your post, but you didn’t explain what that meant.”

“I didn’t know exactly what to say,” Harry hedged, sitting down on his own bed.

“You could start with the truth.”

“I didn’t want to lie to you. It’s just—what happened was so weird that I thought you might not believe me.”

Blaise stared at him in silence. Theo leaned forwards and spoke into that silence. He was resting on the bed with his elbows beneath him and looked eager in a more restrained way than Blaise. “Then tell us now, when we’re face-to-face.”

Harry nodded and told them that a house-elf had been stopping his post, although he didn’t use Dobby’s name. For all he knew, Dobby worked for either Theo’s family or Blaise’s and their parents were involved in this plot even though they weren’t.

Harry didn’t particularly want to think like that, but he had to.

Both Blaise and Theo looked disturbed when he finished. “The Dark Lord was here last year, but I thought that was a one-off,” Blaise muttered, lying back and staring up at the ceiling. “And you’re telling me he might come back?”

“I suppose so. I don’t see what other kind of plan could concern a house-elf for me specifically.”

Theo was quiet. Harry glanced at him, and then winced at the intensity of the look Theo was pinning him with. “What?”

“I think that you’re still hiding secrets,” Theo said softly.

“I told you, I don’t know how I defeated the Dark Lord—”

“Not about that. You said you persuaded the house-elf, which I can believe, but how did you keep him from punishing himself?”

Merlin. Harry had mentioned that the elf was trying to hurt himself to emphasize how serious the part about the plot was and why he had believed Dobby, but of course Theo had picked up on the lack of details. Harry grimaced.

Blaise joined in on the staring.

Harry decided the simplest way was just to show them. He reached out and picked up one of the small pillows from the head of his bed, then tossed it into the air. Both Blaise and Theo flinched and scrambled for their wands, and then paused and watched as Harry immobilized the pillow with a net of wandless magic, the way he had for Dobby.

“What,” Theo whispered.

“That’s incredible, Harry,” Blaise said. “You realize that not one in a hundred magicals can do that?”

Harry shrugged uncomfortably and dropped the pillow to the bed. “It just makes me stand out more, and I don’t like it. I have enough fame. I don’t want any more of it.”

“You realize we won’t betray you.”

Theo’s voice dragged Harry’s gaze reluctantly back to him. Theo was once again leaning forwards as if he might leap off the bed.

“I know.”

“Then why keep the secret?”

“I told you. I don’t like the attention.”

“And I think it’s reflexive by now,” Blaise added unexpectedly. “In the Muggle world, you didn’t have anyone to tell the truth to, or they thought you were lying. And here, you distrusted everyone because of being Sorted into Slytherin.”

Harry thought about it, then shrugged. That was probably a likely explanation. He kept to himself what he thought was the likeliest, that no one would have cared about things like this if he hadn’t been the bloody Boy-Who-Lived.

“No more secrets,” Theo said, softly, intensely. “We aren’t going to use them against you. Tell us.”

Harry smiled at him. “I trust you a lot more than I did last year, that’s for sure.”

But he still wasn’t going to tell them Dobby’s name, or that he would be working with Dobby and Hermione to free house-elves. They would disapprove of that, as purebloods used to the services of house-elves. They might not even see anything wrong with the way Dobby had been treated. Neither of them had commented on it when Harry told that part of the story.

And Dobby might still belong to one of their families or another.

And while they wanted his secrets…

It isn’t like they trust me with everything, either. It’s only smart to keep something in reserve.