![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: Creatures of Truth
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of canon pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry escaped the Dursleys before first year), angst, drama, violence, torture, minor character death, murder, selfish and ruthless Harry
Rating: : PG-13
Summary: Harry returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year more settled than he was last year when Sirius Black escaped, and even finds a mentor in the new Defense professor. However, his sense of security lasts only until he’s entered in the Tri-Wizard Tournament—the obstacle that might kill him at last.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s part of my “Creatures” series, following “Creatures of Worth,” “Creatures of Pride,” and “Creatures of Strength,” which you should read first. This should be five or six chapters.
Creatures of Truth
“Why do you think Dark Lords keep rising all the time, Professor Greengrass?”
“What does history tell you?”
Harry leaned back in his seat and thought about it.
Professor Greengrass sat across the table from him, one hand beneath her chin, watching him. Her gaze was sharp and critical in a way that Harry wouldn’t have tolerated from many other people, but she saw him as a student in a way that most of his professors at Hogwarts didn’t. Babbling might come the closest there.
And Professor Greengrass taught History of Magic in a way that was worlds removed from the repetitive, boring teaching Binns preferred. She deserved an answer.
“I suppose Dark Lords come from tensions that aren’t resolved and perhaps can’t be resolved,” Harry said slowly. “It’s similar to the Muggle history I learned in primary schools that way. Wars that are settled but still present as simmering hatreds under the surface. Resentment from people who have lost their privileges, however little sense that resentment makes. And weak governments.”
“There is some of that in the magical world as well, but there is another factor in the rise of Dark Lords that separates us from Muggles.”
“Magical power?”
“Exactly. A Dark Lord has individual magical power in a way that no Muggle does. Even Muggles who are armed with powerful weapons can have those weapons taken away, or, if they are heads of governments who command weapons, can be controlled or influenced by others. Or removed from power. No one can take a Dark Lord’s magic away.” Professor Greengrass leaned forwards intently. “Given that, tell me how this factor influences the rise of Dark Lords in our world.”
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. It helped him order his thoughts, and he knew Professor Greengrass wouldn’t mind. She never thought he was lazy or inattentive when he did that.
Unlike so many other teachers.
But Harry put aside the memories of Muggle primary that had got stirred up by thinking of his Muggle history lessons. After a moment, he said, “A Dark Lord can exploit those simmering tensions a lot more easily than an individual Muggle can. And they can seem—like a good leader because Aurors and magical governments might not have the resources to take them down right away?”
“Yes. A Dark Lord can also escape custody or capture more easily than most Muggles, since they might be able to tear through the wards that would keep most of our kind from Apparating.”
Harry opened his eyes. “It’s beginning to seem more remarkable than not that no Dark Lord arose between Grindelwald and Voldemort.”
Professor Greengrass flinched a little at the name, then laughed softly. “Your next essay topic will be to tell me why.”
Harry smiled. He thought that would be an interesting essay to write.
And to see how she reacted to.
*
“Tell me what you see.”
“A snowy plain. No footprints. The snow glitters under the sun, which is weak. The sky is mostly cloudy. In the distance is a large castle that looks like Hogwarts.”
“Very good. Now begin moving towards the castle.”
Harry hesitated for a second. He didn’t think he was supposed to step into the snow, which was undisturbed for a reason, and which might hide traps, but he didn’t have a broom with him—
A sharp snapping sensation flooded his mind, and Harry gasped and opened his eyes. Erik Anderssen shook his head from where he sat opposite Harry, cross-legged, on a smooth cushion. “You must not try to bring too much logic into your mindscapes. It will simply break them apart.”
“I was thinking of how I could move towards the castle.”
“You must envision yourself differently in your mindscape than you do in the real world.” Erik shifted his weight and shook out a leg that must be cramped. “Not as flying on a broom or Apparating or walking. As a bodiless mind, flying and traveling without wings.”
Harry paused. It seemed obvious now that Erik had pointed it out, but—“Wouldn’t envisioning myself as flying still be a continuation of the broom problem?”
Erik shook his head again. His face was calm, and he picked up a goblet of water that stood beside him and took a large swallow before he said, “Legilimency and Occlumency are different realms. You will learn how to picture yourself in them over time. For now, though, you must think of yourself as a bodiless mind. Can you do that?”
Harry thought back to the rare glimpses of the telly he’d got at the Dursley house, and how a camera would swoop over a landscape or up to a person without any body visible beneath it. “I think I might know how.”
“Good. Then let us try again.”
Harry closed his eyes. He knew that Erik was going slowly, letting Harry look at his mindscape for as long as he needed to before he tried to do something to it, with Erik parting the curtains of his own Occlumency. It wouldn’t be this easy when Harry was fighting enemies in his own mind, or trying to keep them out.
It didn’t matter. However hard it was, however long it took, Harry would master it.
*
“BOLLOCKS!”
Harry blinked and looked at Madam Marchbanks, who was standing by the kitchen table and glaring down at the Prophet spread across it. She looked up, saw him, and pointed at the paper with her cane.
“Read that before we speak,” she snapped, and used her cane to cross over and stand scowling out a window.
Harry’s first thought, as he approached it, was that the paper had printed some story about him again that Madam Marchbanks didn’t like. Or maybe tried to question her custody of him.
But no. Instead, the front page detailed Death Eater activity at the Quidditch World Cup, complete with a photo of a hovering Dark Mark that had supposedly been cast by a house-elf. The same house-elf had apparently murdered her master to get her hands on the wand. The corpse of Bartemius Crouch had been found not far away, his throat slit.
“I didn’t know house-elves could use wands,” Harry remarked, laying down the paper.
Madam Marchbanks didn’t respond, and Harry looked up to see that she didn’t have her hearing charms on. He sighed and walked around in front of her. Madam Marchbanks snorted at him.
“Bollocks!”
Harry nodded and then gestured to his ears. Madam Marchbanks grunted and waved her wand. Crystalline seashells curled into being around her ears, and she sat down and scowled at Harry as if he would tell her that the attack was real and the truth as reported.
“House-elves can’t use wands without the bidding of their masters, if they’re bound to a family,” she snapped. “And why would Crouch tell the elf to raise the Mark? Why would she kill him? Bollocks!”
Harry nodded. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I don’t know that any other explanation does, either.”
“Of course the truth does!”
“But do we know the truth?” Harry looked towards the paper on the table and considered some of the precautions he had taken to protect himself, which might be less than perfect if the Dark Lord was coming back. Or even just if the Death Eaters were active again.
He had one Death Eater who had passed on important information regarding Black’s supposed traitor status last year and might be accounted an ally—but might not. Harry respected Kalder Nott, and part of that was knowing how cruel and self-interested he was.
“No, we don’t.” Madam Marchbanks grunted and raised one hand to rub beneath her eye. “Between this and the rumors of the Ministry doing some stupid grand secret thing at Hogwarts this year…”
“What stupid grand secret thing?”
“Rumors, like I said,” Madam Marchbanks snapped irritably. “Heard it when I went to the Ministry this morning to discuss things with that stupid young woman who keeps thinking she can take your custody away from me. Would have told you earlier if you’d come down the stairs earlier. Rumors! Nothing of substance.”
“Something being planned at Hogwarts,” Harry repeated. He couldn’t remember hearing any rumors of that, either, and that was a bit disquieting, given that Zacharias and Theo at least probably had connections in the Ministry who wouldn’t keep things like that secret from Kalder Nott or Deborah Smith.
Unless Zacharias and Theo aren’t really your friends, and kept this from you on purpose.
Harry shook off the thought. He was getting better at rejecting the ones like that. They would just get in the way, and he thought he could trust Zacharias and Theo until something proved otherwise. And if he couldn’t trust them, he had methods prepared to take them down.
“Yes.” Madam Marchbanks leaned forwards, her hands clenched over the top of her cane. “You’re not to get mixed up in it.”
“Why would I want to?”
Madam Marchbanks cackled. “Good to know that I got the sensible ward,” she said. “Some of the things your lot get up to you, you would not believe.”
“I’m not like other teenagers,” Harry said, as politely as he could.
“No, you aren’t, so wipe that offended look off your face.”
Harry had to smile. Madam Marchbanks said things he disagreed with at times and things that upset him, like all parents if his friends could be believed, but she was also more sensible than those parents were at believing he could take care of himself.
“So what do we do about that?” he asked, and nodded to the Prophet and its story about the World Cup again.
“For now? Nothing. Stay out of it.” Madam Marchbanks scowled. “But I’m going to show you some of the more dubiously legal spells that I know. They would still get you in trouble if you had to use them to defend yourself, but I trust you to know when the circumstances warrant it.”
Harry nodded. That was another thing that made Madam Marchbanks superior to most guardians. She was dedicated to his survival, not to debates about morality.
Harry thought he got enough morality as it was, with the people who prattled at him at school.
*
“You’ll never be the most talented student at Potions. You don’t have the patience for it.”
Harry shrugged a little as he looked into his cauldron at the almost-perfect Calming Draught he’d just brewed. He’d asked Professor Plumeria to show him the most practical potions she could, which meant a lot of the ones that would help him recover from the aftermath of an attack, and also some healing ones. “Yes, Professor Plumeria.”
“You don’t care at all, do you?”
Harry looked up and held her eyes. His Potions Professor was looking at him with a curious, expectant gaze. Harry wasn’t sure exactly what she was expecting, though.
“I care about being able to brew the potions to your satisfaction,” he offered.
“Smart answer.”
Harry half-smiled. Professor Plumeria watched him for a moment more before she nodded and turned to the book on the lab table in front of her, flipping through a few pages.
“Let us begin with the modification to the Calming Draught that will also heighten your senses, as you requested to learn how to brew this…”
*
“Come here, Mr. Potter.”
Harry walked over to stand in front of the rocking chair where Deborah Smith, Zacharias’s grandmother, sat waiting. She considered him, as she had two summers ago, before his second year. Harry stood with his hands linked together behind his back.
He respected Madam Smith, just as he did Madam Marchbanks, but there was a center of hard morality at the core of Madam Smith that made Harry more cautious of her. He waited, and she finally nodded to him.
“I’ve heard that you’re interested in Arithmancy,” she said.
Harry didn’t blink. “Yes, Madam Smith. I picked it as one of my electives last year, and Professor Vector is an interesting teacher.”
“That says much while not saying much at all.”
Harry just smiled a little. “I’m getting old enough for politicians and the papers to notice, Madam Smith. I think it’s best to watch my language and not speak many words that I wouldn’t want to find on the front page of the Prophet.”
Madam Smith blinked at that, as if she hadn’t considered this angle. Then she said, “But you’re not interested in politics or looking to go into the Wizengamot.”
“Oh, no, Madam Smith. It’s only my fame as the Boy-Who-Lived, undeserved as it is, that makes people pay attention to me at all.” Harry ducked his head and made his voice and posture both small. The point wasn’t to fool Madam Smith, only to let her see that he didn’t intend to trade on his fame.
“Why would you say undeserved?”
“I was only a baby, Madam Smith. It’s probably my mother who did something to defeat You-Know-Who. I think she doesn’t get enough credit for it, because people are reluctant to say a Muggleborn was a heroine.” And Harry did think that. He also just didn’t care much if people credited his mother or not.
“You are wise beyond your years.”
“Thank you, Madam Smith.”
“I simply wonder how much of it is a front.”
Harry raised his head with a carefully crafted expression of surprise, so carefully crafted that he knew it would look natural. “Why is that, Madam Smith? I promise you that I don’t have any intentions to hurt your family or your grandson.”
Unless they hurt me first, and then I will defend myself with everything that’s in me.
In the room full of soft and brilliant yellows and golds, Madam Smith looked at him, and there was the unyielding morality in the center of her that Harry had sensed before. “Did you know that there is a magical ability called, somewhat sappily, Heart-Sensing?”
“No.” Harry felt as though his own heartbeat had picked up speed. If he hadn’t heard of it, if it could reveal the truth about him to someone who was virtually a stranger…
“It is a sappy name, but an accurate one. I can sense the general tendency of a person’s emotions—not what they feel on a day-to-day basis, but whether they are an anxious person, or whether they have problems with their tempers. Do you know what I sense from you, Mr. Potter?”
“Please tell me, Madam Smith.”
“Ice. Constant, unvarying. Granted, I’ve never been close to you when you were experiencing deep and unpleasant emotions. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you expressed even them in an icy way.”
True enough, Harry thought before he could stop himself. He had planned for Black’s imprisonment in St. Mungo’s and Lupin’s outing as a werewolf at the end of last Hogwarts term coldly enough, and he had plans in place to protect himself if even the people he most trusted turned on him.
He had planned out what things he would have to take if he had to hastily abandon Madam Marchbanks’s house, for that matter.
He looked up at Madam Smith and found her regarding him. He said softly, “It’s still the case that I have no plans to hurt your family or Zacharias.”
“But you don’t deny the charge of ice.”
“How could I, unless you had some reason to distrust your own magic?”
Madam Smith studied him with unreadable eyes. Then she nodded. “I am not inclined to report you, or torture you, or whatever you may be imagining. But that is true only as long as you don’t have intentions to hurt my family.”
“I don’t. But if one of them hurts me…” Harry dropped a few of the shields that he usually kept up on his own eyes and smile, and let his lips stretch enough to bare his teeth. “Tell them not to.”
Madam Smith shifted a little in her chair. “Good Merlin, child,” she said, in a different tone. “What happened to you?”
“You saw the Prophet stories about the ways my relatives treated me, I’m sure.”
“And that is all?”
“All?”
Harry couldn’t hold back the anger in his tone. Madam Smith raised one hand as if to shield from a flying spell with the power of her flesh and muscle alone. “Peace, child. Yes, I see. You are determined to make sure that it never happens again.”
“And hurt whoever I must, if they truy to hurt me.”
Madam Smith nodded. “It is better for our families to be allies than apart. Please go and spend time with Zacharias, with my blessing. His History marks have improved since you started sharing your History books with him.”
“Professor Greengrass makes the selections, Madam Smith. I just pass on the books she recommends. She’s pretty brilliant.”
“Mmm. Well, my gratitude in any case.”
That was carefully phrased. Harry nodded to her and said, “Thank you, Madam Smith. I consider Zacharias a good friend.”
She heard the threat in that, and the promise of protection. She gave a soft laugh and nodded. “And he considers you one, Mr. Potter. I promise, I see no reason why we should clash unless something drastically changes.”
Not on my end, Harry thought, and smiled at her before he went into the study room off Zacharias’s suite where his friend was waiting for him.
*
“Why didn’t you ask me about it?”
Harry had been staring at the Arithmancy equation in front of him with such frustration that he ignored Theo’s question for a minute. Then he blinked and leaned back in his chair. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Why didn’t you ask me about the incident at the Quidditch World Cup, when you know that my father’s a Death Eater?”
Harry stared at Theo in silence. They were sitting in Theo’s study room today, which was bigger than Zacharias’s and practically a miniature library with the shelves all over the walls and the books that lay on the several small tables and the niches crowded with bound scrolls. The predominant colors were grey and white, except for a mosaic of small stars in a dark blue sky on the ceiling. It was one of Harry’s favorite places, one of the most soothing.
“Why would I think he was there, just because he’s a Death Eater?”
“You know he was high up in the Dark Lord’s councils.” Theo’s voice was small, and his shoulders hunched as if he expected a blow. As if Dudley were going to show up any second, even though Theo had never met Dudley. The look made Harry want to cast a spell at someone, although he didn’t know who. “It makes sense that he would have participated in any planned Death Eater activity.”
“How planned was it to attack a bunch of Muggles and spin them through the air while making all sorts of noise in a public place?”
Theo paused. Then he said, “Not much.”
Harry nodded. “I think your father’s smarter than that. Or smarter than to let me find out about it, if he participated because he was drunk or something.” Theo’s jaw dropped a little, but Harry just went on. He found it hard to imagine Kalder Nott drunk, too, but one had to propose all sorts of hypotheses.
“And the Dark Mark and the house-elf?”
“Something else was going on there, unless Crouch Senior was suicidal, and none of the articles that have come out about it since are taking that angle.”
“No. No, I doubt he was. He was such a fanatic for law and order that he would have killed himself before he lifted the Dark Mark. His own son was a Death Eater, and Couch didn’t hesitate to sentence him to Azkaban.”
“Do you think someone could have cast Imperius on the house-elf or the like as vengeance for his son?”
“I doubt it. His son is twelve years dead. It would be odd to hold onto a grudge for that long.”
Harry nodded slowly, although he thought he could hold onto a grudge that long. It wasn’t a useful piece of information at the moment. “All right. But no, I didn’t think your father was there just because he was a Death Eater, and you don’t have to tell me if he was.”
“Some friends would be upset if I didn’t.”
“Your father gave me important information last year, and if he doesn’t consider me an ally, I don’t think he considers me a threat, either. It’s up to you to say what you want to say, Theo.”
Theo was giving Harry an odd look. Harry sighed. “What is it?”
“You really are what you say you are.” Theo gave a smile sharp enough to make someone bleed who hadn’t been through what Harry had, probably. “I almost wish you had Sorted Slytherin, to see how much you’d confuse all of them.”
Harry smiled a little. “They would have driven me mental. I don’t care about power except the power to defend myself.”
“That makes you unusual, too.”
Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter unless someone attacks me over thinking that I’m unusual. Are we going to finish this Arithmancy problem, or what?”
“Yes, of course.” Theo waited until they had turned back to the parchment, and then said, in a voice so soft that it was hard for Harry to hear it, “Thank you.”
Harry let the lifted corner of his mouth speak for him.
*
Harry hadn’t told anyone that he was still accessing the Grimmauld Place Floo.
Madam Marchbanks would probably have been all right with it, as long as she could check first for traps that Black and Lupin had left behind. And Theo and Michael would have thought it was cool. Zacharias and Parvati would have been more worried for him.
But Harry didn’t want any of them to know. This was his absolute last refuge, a place of his own that he could flee if even Madam Marchbanks turned against him. And it had benefited from Black going on a campaign against the Dark creatures and enchantments that his family had left behind.
He hadn’t touched the library, or if he had, it had been before Harry visited him. The library was full of books that Harry had a healthy respect for, but plenty he could read, too. And he would learn here about the spells and potions and curses that his professors might have hesitated to teach him.
He paged slowly through a large book that afternoon, when he had told Madam Marchbanks that he was going to Diagon Alley to wander around for a while in disguise. The book contained incantations that made Harry almost drool with the thought of being able to cast them and keep himself safe. Fiendfyre. The Curse of Living Death, which mimicked the potion of the same name. The Lobotomy Curse, which did exactly what it said. A way to block Heart-Sensing.
“Master Sirius’s filthy half-blood godson is here again.”
Harry peeked over the top of his book and snorted a little at the sight of Kreacher. “Kreacher is here, too,” he said, turning back to the book. “And as dirty as ever.”
“Kreacher is not being a half-blood!”
“No, but you’re walking around in encrusted dirt. And who knows what the age of that tea towel is?”
Kreacher gaped at him. Then he straightened up. “Kreacher can tell someone about Master Sirius’s filthy godson being here, yes!”
“Who?” Harry asked. It would be good to know the names of enemies.
Kreacher visibly fumbled for a second. Harry watched him, enjoying this. From the research he’d done on Black last year, he knew that a lot of his relatives were dead, one cousin was in Azkaban, another was disowned, and the Malfoys were probably the sort of people Black would have forbidden Kreacher from contacting.
Sure enough, Kreacher stomped a foot and said, “Someone!”
“Well, before you do it, clean yourself up,” Harry said. “Or they probably won’t believe the words of a dirty, raving house-elf.”
Kreacher spluttered wordlessly. Harry smiled and turned back to the book in front of him, pulling out a clean set of parchment and a new inkwell and quill to copy over some of the spells, just in case he did lose access to the library.
He didn’t think it would happen, though, or Kreacher would have made the threat before now.
*
The next time he went over to Grimmauld Place and saw Kreacher sparkling clean, in a white tea towel, Harry smiled into his book and didn’t mention it.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of canon pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry escaped the Dursleys before first year), angst, drama, violence, torture, minor character death, murder, selfish and ruthless Harry
Rating: : PG-13
Summary: Harry returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year more settled than he was last year when Sirius Black escaped, and even finds a mentor in the new Defense professor. However, his sense of security lasts only until he’s entered in the Tri-Wizard Tournament—the obstacle that might kill him at last.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s part of my “Creatures” series, following “Creatures of Worth,” “Creatures of Pride,” and “Creatures of Strength,” which you should read first. This should be five or six chapters.
Creatures of Truth
“Why do you think Dark Lords keep rising all the time, Professor Greengrass?”
“What does history tell you?”
Harry leaned back in his seat and thought about it.
Professor Greengrass sat across the table from him, one hand beneath her chin, watching him. Her gaze was sharp and critical in a way that Harry wouldn’t have tolerated from many other people, but she saw him as a student in a way that most of his professors at Hogwarts didn’t. Babbling might come the closest there.
And Professor Greengrass taught History of Magic in a way that was worlds removed from the repetitive, boring teaching Binns preferred. She deserved an answer.
“I suppose Dark Lords come from tensions that aren’t resolved and perhaps can’t be resolved,” Harry said slowly. “It’s similar to the Muggle history I learned in primary schools that way. Wars that are settled but still present as simmering hatreds under the surface. Resentment from people who have lost their privileges, however little sense that resentment makes. And weak governments.”
“There is some of that in the magical world as well, but there is another factor in the rise of Dark Lords that separates us from Muggles.”
“Magical power?”
“Exactly. A Dark Lord has individual magical power in a way that no Muggle does. Even Muggles who are armed with powerful weapons can have those weapons taken away, or, if they are heads of governments who command weapons, can be controlled or influenced by others. Or removed from power. No one can take a Dark Lord’s magic away.” Professor Greengrass leaned forwards intently. “Given that, tell me how this factor influences the rise of Dark Lords in our world.”
Harry closed his eyes for a moment. It helped him order his thoughts, and he knew Professor Greengrass wouldn’t mind. She never thought he was lazy or inattentive when he did that.
Unlike so many other teachers.
But Harry put aside the memories of Muggle primary that had got stirred up by thinking of his Muggle history lessons. After a moment, he said, “A Dark Lord can exploit those simmering tensions a lot more easily than an individual Muggle can. And they can seem—like a good leader because Aurors and magical governments might not have the resources to take them down right away?”
“Yes. A Dark Lord can also escape custody or capture more easily than most Muggles, since they might be able to tear through the wards that would keep most of our kind from Apparating.”
Harry opened his eyes. “It’s beginning to seem more remarkable than not that no Dark Lord arose between Grindelwald and Voldemort.”
Professor Greengrass flinched a little at the name, then laughed softly. “Your next essay topic will be to tell me why.”
Harry smiled. He thought that would be an interesting essay to write.
And to see how she reacted to.
*
“Tell me what you see.”
“A snowy plain. No footprints. The snow glitters under the sun, which is weak. The sky is mostly cloudy. In the distance is a large castle that looks like Hogwarts.”
“Very good. Now begin moving towards the castle.”
Harry hesitated for a second. He didn’t think he was supposed to step into the snow, which was undisturbed for a reason, and which might hide traps, but he didn’t have a broom with him—
A sharp snapping sensation flooded his mind, and Harry gasped and opened his eyes. Erik Anderssen shook his head from where he sat opposite Harry, cross-legged, on a smooth cushion. “You must not try to bring too much logic into your mindscapes. It will simply break them apart.”
“I was thinking of how I could move towards the castle.”
“You must envision yourself differently in your mindscape than you do in the real world.” Erik shifted his weight and shook out a leg that must be cramped. “Not as flying on a broom or Apparating or walking. As a bodiless mind, flying and traveling without wings.”
Harry paused. It seemed obvious now that Erik had pointed it out, but—“Wouldn’t envisioning myself as flying still be a continuation of the broom problem?”
Erik shook his head again. His face was calm, and he picked up a goblet of water that stood beside him and took a large swallow before he said, “Legilimency and Occlumency are different realms. You will learn how to picture yourself in them over time. For now, though, you must think of yourself as a bodiless mind. Can you do that?”
Harry thought back to the rare glimpses of the telly he’d got at the Dursley house, and how a camera would swoop over a landscape or up to a person without any body visible beneath it. “I think I might know how.”
“Good. Then let us try again.”
Harry closed his eyes. He knew that Erik was going slowly, letting Harry look at his mindscape for as long as he needed to before he tried to do something to it, with Erik parting the curtains of his own Occlumency. It wouldn’t be this easy when Harry was fighting enemies in his own mind, or trying to keep them out.
It didn’t matter. However hard it was, however long it took, Harry would master it.
*
“BOLLOCKS!”
Harry blinked and looked at Madam Marchbanks, who was standing by the kitchen table and glaring down at the Prophet spread across it. She looked up, saw him, and pointed at the paper with her cane.
“Read that before we speak,” she snapped, and used her cane to cross over and stand scowling out a window.
Harry’s first thought, as he approached it, was that the paper had printed some story about him again that Madam Marchbanks didn’t like. Or maybe tried to question her custody of him.
But no. Instead, the front page detailed Death Eater activity at the Quidditch World Cup, complete with a photo of a hovering Dark Mark that had supposedly been cast by a house-elf. The same house-elf had apparently murdered her master to get her hands on the wand. The corpse of Bartemius Crouch had been found not far away, his throat slit.
“I didn’t know house-elves could use wands,” Harry remarked, laying down the paper.
Madam Marchbanks didn’t respond, and Harry looked up to see that she didn’t have her hearing charms on. He sighed and walked around in front of her. Madam Marchbanks snorted at him.
“Bollocks!”
Harry nodded and then gestured to his ears. Madam Marchbanks grunted and waved her wand. Crystalline seashells curled into being around her ears, and she sat down and scowled at Harry as if he would tell her that the attack was real and the truth as reported.
“House-elves can’t use wands without the bidding of their masters, if they’re bound to a family,” she snapped. “And why would Crouch tell the elf to raise the Mark? Why would she kill him? Bollocks!”
Harry nodded. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I don’t know that any other explanation does, either.”
“Of course the truth does!”
“But do we know the truth?” Harry looked towards the paper on the table and considered some of the precautions he had taken to protect himself, which might be less than perfect if the Dark Lord was coming back. Or even just if the Death Eaters were active again.
He had one Death Eater who had passed on important information regarding Black’s supposed traitor status last year and might be accounted an ally—but might not. Harry respected Kalder Nott, and part of that was knowing how cruel and self-interested he was.
“No, we don’t.” Madam Marchbanks grunted and raised one hand to rub beneath her eye. “Between this and the rumors of the Ministry doing some stupid grand secret thing at Hogwarts this year…”
“What stupid grand secret thing?”
“Rumors, like I said,” Madam Marchbanks snapped irritably. “Heard it when I went to the Ministry this morning to discuss things with that stupid young woman who keeps thinking she can take your custody away from me. Would have told you earlier if you’d come down the stairs earlier. Rumors! Nothing of substance.”
“Something being planned at Hogwarts,” Harry repeated. He couldn’t remember hearing any rumors of that, either, and that was a bit disquieting, given that Zacharias and Theo at least probably had connections in the Ministry who wouldn’t keep things like that secret from Kalder Nott or Deborah Smith.
Unless Zacharias and Theo aren’t really your friends, and kept this from you on purpose.
Harry shook off the thought. He was getting better at rejecting the ones like that. They would just get in the way, and he thought he could trust Zacharias and Theo until something proved otherwise. And if he couldn’t trust them, he had methods prepared to take them down.
“Yes.” Madam Marchbanks leaned forwards, her hands clenched over the top of her cane. “You’re not to get mixed up in it.”
“Why would I want to?”
Madam Marchbanks cackled. “Good to know that I got the sensible ward,” she said. “Some of the things your lot get up to you, you would not believe.”
“I’m not like other teenagers,” Harry said, as politely as he could.
“No, you aren’t, so wipe that offended look off your face.”
Harry had to smile. Madam Marchbanks said things he disagreed with at times and things that upset him, like all parents if his friends could be believed, but she was also more sensible than those parents were at believing he could take care of himself.
“So what do we do about that?” he asked, and nodded to the Prophet and its story about the World Cup again.
“For now? Nothing. Stay out of it.” Madam Marchbanks scowled. “But I’m going to show you some of the more dubiously legal spells that I know. They would still get you in trouble if you had to use them to defend yourself, but I trust you to know when the circumstances warrant it.”
Harry nodded. That was another thing that made Madam Marchbanks superior to most guardians. She was dedicated to his survival, not to debates about morality.
Harry thought he got enough morality as it was, with the people who prattled at him at school.
*
“You’ll never be the most talented student at Potions. You don’t have the patience for it.”
Harry shrugged a little as he looked into his cauldron at the almost-perfect Calming Draught he’d just brewed. He’d asked Professor Plumeria to show him the most practical potions she could, which meant a lot of the ones that would help him recover from the aftermath of an attack, and also some healing ones. “Yes, Professor Plumeria.”
“You don’t care at all, do you?”
Harry looked up and held her eyes. His Potions Professor was looking at him with a curious, expectant gaze. Harry wasn’t sure exactly what she was expecting, though.
“I care about being able to brew the potions to your satisfaction,” he offered.
“Smart answer.”
Harry half-smiled. Professor Plumeria watched him for a moment more before she nodded and turned to the book on the lab table in front of her, flipping through a few pages.
“Let us begin with the modification to the Calming Draught that will also heighten your senses, as you requested to learn how to brew this…”
*
“Come here, Mr. Potter.”
Harry walked over to stand in front of the rocking chair where Deborah Smith, Zacharias’s grandmother, sat waiting. She considered him, as she had two summers ago, before his second year. Harry stood with his hands linked together behind his back.
He respected Madam Smith, just as he did Madam Marchbanks, but there was a center of hard morality at the core of Madam Smith that made Harry more cautious of her. He waited, and she finally nodded to him.
“I’ve heard that you’re interested in Arithmancy,” she said.
Harry didn’t blink. “Yes, Madam Smith. I picked it as one of my electives last year, and Professor Vector is an interesting teacher.”
“That says much while not saying much at all.”
Harry just smiled a little. “I’m getting old enough for politicians and the papers to notice, Madam Smith. I think it’s best to watch my language and not speak many words that I wouldn’t want to find on the front page of the Prophet.”
Madam Smith blinked at that, as if she hadn’t considered this angle. Then she said, “But you’re not interested in politics or looking to go into the Wizengamot.”
“Oh, no, Madam Smith. It’s only my fame as the Boy-Who-Lived, undeserved as it is, that makes people pay attention to me at all.” Harry ducked his head and made his voice and posture both small. The point wasn’t to fool Madam Smith, only to let her see that he didn’t intend to trade on his fame.
“Why would you say undeserved?”
“I was only a baby, Madam Smith. It’s probably my mother who did something to defeat You-Know-Who. I think she doesn’t get enough credit for it, because people are reluctant to say a Muggleborn was a heroine.” And Harry did think that. He also just didn’t care much if people credited his mother or not.
“You are wise beyond your years.”
“Thank you, Madam Smith.”
“I simply wonder how much of it is a front.”
Harry raised his head with a carefully crafted expression of surprise, so carefully crafted that he knew it would look natural. “Why is that, Madam Smith? I promise you that I don’t have any intentions to hurt your family or your grandson.”
Unless they hurt me first, and then I will defend myself with everything that’s in me.
In the room full of soft and brilliant yellows and golds, Madam Smith looked at him, and there was the unyielding morality in the center of her that Harry had sensed before. “Did you know that there is a magical ability called, somewhat sappily, Heart-Sensing?”
“No.” Harry felt as though his own heartbeat had picked up speed. If he hadn’t heard of it, if it could reveal the truth about him to someone who was virtually a stranger…
“It is a sappy name, but an accurate one. I can sense the general tendency of a person’s emotions—not what they feel on a day-to-day basis, but whether they are an anxious person, or whether they have problems with their tempers. Do you know what I sense from you, Mr. Potter?”
“Please tell me, Madam Smith.”
“Ice. Constant, unvarying. Granted, I’ve never been close to you when you were experiencing deep and unpleasant emotions. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you expressed even them in an icy way.”
True enough, Harry thought before he could stop himself. He had planned for Black’s imprisonment in St. Mungo’s and Lupin’s outing as a werewolf at the end of last Hogwarts term coldly enough, and he had plans in place to protect himself if even the people he most trusted turned on him.
He had planned out what things he would have to take if he had to hastily abandon Madam Marchbanks’s house, for that matter.
He looked up at Madam Smith and found her regarding him. He said softly, “It’s still the case that I have no plans to hurt your family or Zacharias.”
“But you don’t deny the charge of ice.”
“How could I, unless you had some reason to distrust your own magic?”
Madam Smith studied him with unreadable eyes. Then she nodded. “I am not inclined to report you, or torture you, or whatever you may be imagining. But that is true only as long as you don’t have intentions to hurt my family.”
“I don’t. But if one of them hurts me…” Harry dropped a few of the shields that he usually kept up on his own eyes and smile, and let his lips stretch enough to bare his teeth. “Tell them not to.”
Madam Smith shifted a little in her chair. “Good Merlin, child,” she said, in a different tone. “What happened to you?”
“You saw the Prophet stories about the ways my relatives treated me, I’m sure.”
“And that is all?”
“All?”
Harry couldn’t hold back the anger in his tone. Madam Smith raised one hand as if to shield from a flying spell with the power of her flesh and muscle alone. “Peace, child. Yes, I see. You are determined to make sure that it never happens again.”
“And hurt whoever I must, if they truy to hurt me.”
Madam Smith nodded. “It is better for our families to be allies than apart. Please go and spend time with Zacharias, with my blessing. His History marks have improved since you started sharing your History books with him.”
“Professor Greengrass makes the selections, Madam Smith. I just pass on the books she recommends. She’s pretty brilliant.”
“Mmm. Well, my gratitude in any case.”
That was carefully phrased. Harry nodded to her and said, “Thank you, Madam Smith. I consider Zacharias a good friend.”
She heard the threat in that, and the promise of protection. She gave a soft laugh and nodded. “And he considers you one, Mr. Potter. I promise, I see no reason why we should clash unless something drastically changes.”
Not on my end, Harry thought, and smiled at her before he went into the study room off Zacharias’s suite where his friend was waiting for him.
*
“Why didn’t you ask me about it?”
Harry had been staring at the Arithmancy equation in front of him with such frustration that he ignored Theo’s question for a minute. Then he blinked and leaned back in his chair. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Why didn’t you ask me about the incident at the Quidditch World Cup, when you know that my father’s a Death Eater?”
Harry stared at Theo in silence. They were sitting in Theo’s study room today, which was bigger than Zacharias’s and practically a miniature library with the shelves all over the walls and the books that lay on the several small tables and the niches crowded with bound scrolls. The predominant colors were grey and white, except for a mosaic of small stars in a dark blue sky on the ceiling. It was one of Harry’s favorite places, one of the most soothing.
“Why would I think he was there, just because he’s a Death Eater?”
“You know he was high up in the Dark Lord’s councils.” Theo’s voice was small, and his shoulders hunched as if he expected a blow. As if Dudley were going to show up any second, even though Theo had never met Dudley. The look made Harry want to cast a spell at someone, although he didn’t know who. “It makes sense that he would have participated in any planned Death Eater activity.”
“How planned was it to attack a bunch of Muggles and spin them through the air while making all sorts of noise in a public place?”
Theo paused. Then he said, “Not much.”
Harry nodded. “I think your father’s smarter than that. Or smarter than to let me find out about it, if he participated because he was drunk or something.” Theo’s jaw dropped a little, but Harry just went on. He found it hard to imagine Kalder Nott drunk, too, but one had to propose all sorts of hypotheses.
“And the Dark Mark and the house-elf?”
“Something else was going on there, unless Crouch Senior was suicidal, and none of the articles that have come out about it since are taking that angle.”
“No. No, I doubt he was. He was such a fanatic for law and order that he would have killed himself before he lifted the Dark Mark. His own son was a Death Eater, and Couch didn’t hesitate to sentence him to Azkaban.”
“Do you think someone could have cast Imperius on the house-elf or the like as vengeance for his son?”
“I doubt it. His son is twelve years dead. It would be odd to hold onto a grudge for that long.”
Harry nodded slowly, although he thought he could hold onto a grudge that long. It wasn’t a useful piece of information at the moment. “All right. But no, I didn’t think your father was there just because he was a Death Eater, and you don’t have to tell me if he was.”
“Some friends would be upset if I didn’t.”
“Your father gave me important information last year, and if he doesn’t consider me an ally, I don’t think he considers me a threat, either. It’s up to you to say what you want to say, Theo.”
Theo was giving Harry an odd look. Harry sighed. “What is it?”
“You really are what you say you are.” Theo gave a smile sharp enough to make someone bleed who hadn’t been through what Harry had, probably. “I almost wish you had Sorted Slytherin, to see how much you’d confuse all of them.”
Harry smiled a little. “They would have driven me mental. I don’t care about power except the power to defend myself.”
“That makes you unusual, too.”
Harry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter unless someone attacks me over thinking that I’m unusual. Are we going to finish this Arithmancy problem, or what?”
“Yes, of course.” Theo waited until they had turned back to the parchment, and then said, in a voice so soft that it was hard for Harry to hear it, “Thank you.”
Harry let the lifted corner of his mouth speak for him.
*
Harry hadn’t told anyone that he was still accessing the Grimmauld Place Floo.
Madam Marchbanks would probably have been all right with it, as long as she could check first for traps that Black and Lupin had left behind. And Theo and Michael would have thought it was cool. Zacharias and Parvati would have been more worried for him.
But Harry didn’t want any of them to know. This was his absolute last refuge, a place of his own that he could flee if even Madam Marchbanks turned against him. And it had benefited from Black going on a campaign against the Dark creatures and enchantments that his family had left behind.
He hadn’t touched the library, or if he had, it had been before Harry visited him. The library was full of books that Harry had a healthy respect for, but plenty he could read, too. And he would learn here about the spells and potions and curses that his professors might have hesitated to teach him.
He paged slowly through a large book that afternoon, when he had told Madam Marchbanks that he was going to Diagon Alley to wander around for a while in disguise. The book contained incantations that made Harry almost drool with the thought of being able to cast them and keep himself safe. Fiendfyre. The Curse of Living Death, which mimicked the potion of the same name. The Lobotomy Curse, which did exactly what it said. A way to block Heart-Sensing.
“Master Sirius’s filthy half-blood godson is here again.”
Harry peeked over the top of his book and snorted a little at the sight of Kreacher. “Kreacher is here, too,” he said, turning back to the book. “And as dirty as ever.”
“Kreacher is not being a half-blood!”
“No, but you’re walking around in encrusted dirt. And who knows what the age of that tea towel is?”
Kreacher gaped at him. Then he straightened up. “Kreacher can tell someone about Master Sirius’s filthy godson being here, yes!”
“Who?” Harry asked. It would be good to know the names of enemies.
Kreacher visibly fumbled for a second. Harry watched him, enjoying this. From the research he’d done on Black last year, he knew that a lot of his relatives were dead, one cousin was in Azkaban, another was disowned, and the Malfoys were probably the sort of people Black would have forbidden Kreacher from contacting.
Sure enough, Kreacher stomped a foot and said, “Someone!”
“Well, before you do it, clean yourself up,” Harry said. “Or they probably won’t believe the words of a dirty, raving house-elf.”
Kreacher spluttered wordlessly. Harry smiled and turned back to the book in front of him, pulling out a clean set of parchment and a new inkwell and quill to copy over some of the spells, just in case he did lose access to the library.
He didn’t think it would happen, though, or Kreacher would have made the threat before now.
*
The next time he went over to Grimmauld Place and saw Kreacher sparkling clean, in a white tea towel, Harry smiled into his book and didn’t mention it.
