[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Creatures of Truth, These Creatures series, gen, 4/6

[lomonaaeren]

“You killed a dragon.”

Harry stopped and turned around. The voice was one he hadn’t thought to hear again, honestly.

Parvati stood behind him with her arms folded. She shivered at the look on his face, but she licked her lips and stood her ground. “You killed a dragon,” she repeated.

“Yes. And you abandoned me.”

Parvati gave her head a quick shake. “I only stayed away from you because several members of my House said that they would make me stay away from you otherwise, and I—didn’t want to see what they would do.” She shut her eyes for a second. “And that included Lavender. I thought she was my friend.”

Harry studied her, wondering if he should believe her. She had deliberately followed him out of the library after sitting at a different table, and Harry had let her, shaking his head when Michael stood up to come with him. They were in a mostly deserted corridor now that led towards Ravenclaw Tower, and Harry didn’t think any other Gryffindors were likely to stumble on them here.

That didn’t mean Parvati was telling the truth, but it might make it slightly more likely.

“Why did you come to me now?” he asked. “I highly doubt killing a dragon impressed your fellow Gryffindors that much.”

A faint smile crossed Parvati’s face. “No, it didn’t. But they think that you taught me the kind of powerful Dark magic you used to kill her, and they’ve—decided that they shouldn’t prevent us from associating, in that case.”

“Ah. So they’ve decided that they don’t care about both of us, rather than caring about me.”

Parvati took a deep breath and threw her shoulders backwards. “Yeah. That’s what it means.”

“Explain to me why you think I should take you back. You did stay away from me and didn’t even attempt to send me a message to explain what was going on.”

“I was afraid someone would intercept it.”

Harry knew his face showed how much he doubted that, and Parvati swallowed and dug her nails into her palms for a second. “Look, not all of us know as much as you and Theo do about sneaking around.”

Harry supposed that was the case. But, “I still need some incentive to trust you, where before, I might have simply accepted that you couldn’t visit me.”

Parvati gave him a little nod, her eyes distant. She drew her wand, and Harry tensed. The only reason he didn’t pull his out was that he knew he could use his magic to break Parvati’s wand hand before she could curse him, just the way he’d done with Edgecombe’s.

Parvati said clearly, “I swear on this my wand that every word I speak in this conversation is the truth, no matter how tinged with shame it may be.”

It wasn’t a wording of an oath Harry had ever heard before, but it made a sharp tingle cascade through the air, and he felt a sensation like electricity gripping and shaking his skin. The small hair on his arms stood up. Harry blinked, and looked at Parvati.

Parvati lowered her wand, took a deep breath, and said, “I thought they were just concerned for me, and I thought they—were acting the way they thought friends should act, keeping me away from you. But now I know that they’re just fickle and even the girl I thought was my best friend in the whole world cares more about avoiding Dark Arts than staying at my side.”

There was a sheen in Parvati’s eyes that could become tears any second, and Harry winced at the sight of them. He didn’t know what he would do if she actually started crying. He would have to pretend that he cared, no matter how little he actually did, and he would be awful at that.

But Parvati luckily swallowed the tears and went on in a husky voice. “I know Lavender. She’ll come back in a little while and apologize and beg to be my friend again. But she’ll still think Dark magic is so awful that she would abandon me again if she needed to. You and Theo and Michael and Zacharias won’t.”

“And?”

“And, what?”

“Why are you so intent on this, Parvati? Why didn’t you just avoid me and beg the Gryffindors to take you back if you really cared about what they thought?”

Parvati stared at him in silence. Harry waited. Parvati finally bowed her head, hair sliding around her face, and whispered the truth Harry had been waiting for.

“Because that spell you used was impressive, and I want to know what it is. I want to learn Dark Arts, too. I want to kill a dragon if I have to. I want—that power, and I want it more than I want the good opinion of anyone in Gryffindor.”

Harry smiled. He could accept someone who hadn’t known her strongest desire until now coming back once she knew it. “All right. But you should know that you might not be powerful enough to maintain the shield that I used against the dragon.”

“As long as I can do magic like it.”

“That, I can teach you.”

*

Moody had been quiet since Harry had killed the dragon, looking at him in Defense as if he no longer knew quite what to make of him.

Harry decided he had to address it in their first private lesson after the Task. “Sir?”

Moody lowered his flask so that it dangled in one hand and stared at Harry. “Yeah, Potter?”

“Why have you been acting like you’re intimidated by me?”

Harry had chosen his words carefully. He was pretty sure that Moody would blow up at the idea of being intimidated by Harry, and they could act like normal people again once they got past this.

But instead, Moody stared at him and said softly, “Do you know what you did? Destroying a dragon like that is impossible, let alone doing it by turning the thing’s fire back against it.”

“But it’s not impossible. I did it. And you said that the shield was powered by hatred, and I was feeling a lot of hatred.”

Moody’s face was blank in a way Harry hadn’t known he could make it. Usually, the scars and the whizzing magical eye made it a lot more expressive than most people’s. “I thought that you would use the shield to deflect the dragonfire, sure. I never thought you would do anything more than that.”

“Why not?”

“I thought you wanted—magic. Knowledge. Survival. Not power.”

Harry blinked. Then he said, “I wasn’t specifically thinking about killing the dragon. I was thinking about surviving, and I wanted her to die if that meant she would stop breathing fire at me. But I didn’t think about turning her fire back on her specifically, and I didn’t think about turning her into ash.”

Moody gave a barking laugh that sounded almost desperate. “That’s worse.”

“Why?” Harry privately prepared to move if he had to.

Moody cocked his head and looked at him with that intent attention from both his eyes. “Because it means that you achieved an incredibly powerful magical result without specifically wishing for it. That’s—I don’t even know what to tell you about that. I’ve only seen one other person with power like that.”

“The Headmaster.”

Moody’s face did a weird dance of an expression, as if his scars were trying to rearrange themselves. “Maybe I should say two.”

“You-Know-Who.”

“I thought you would call him by his name, the way Albus does.”

Harry laughed a little, his attention still on Moody. This was somewhat strange behavior from a man who had previously only cared if Harry learned his lessons well, and Harry didn’t like it. “Why? I’m not close to the Headmaster.”

“Well, I did think you might have been raised with it…”

“I suppose you didn’t read the Daily Prophet three years ago, and didn’t see the stories about my being raised by abusive Muggles. I didn’t even know magic existed and I was a wizard until I was eleven.”

Even though I told him about the Muggles. Even though he was the one who insisted that I get over my reaction to the word “boy.”

Harry spun some of the same hatred and rage into a tornado in the center of his soul. If Moody thought he could just say whatever he wanted and behave differently without an explanation—

Moody seemed to sense the change in mood, because he straightened and considered Harry. “What do you think of—You-Know-Who?”

“He participated in making my life hell, but his influence since then has been pretty indirect,” Harry said. “He wasn’t the one who chose to place me with the Dursleys; Dumbledore did that. He wasn’t the one who tried to take me away from Madam Marchbanks last year because he thought she was an unfit guardian; Sirius Black did that. He didn’t owe me any responsibility to take care of me and abandon me like some people did.”

Moody nodded shallowly. “So you don’t spend much time thinking of him.”

“No.”

“What would you do if he appeared in front of you and offered you a place at his side or death if you didn’t take it?”

“I would do my best to kill him.”

Moody’s eyes widened a little. Harry wondered if he thought of killing a dragon as different than killing a human being, even one who had done the things Voldemort had. “Why? If he promised to spare you?”

“Because he would be trying to control me. And if he threatened me with death one time, what would keep him from doing it again, even if he promised not to? He could change his mind any time.”

“There might be promises he could make. Oaths.”

Harry cocked his head, studying Moody. Why did he care so much about this? Harry had explained that Voldemort was barely relevant to his life, and Moody was still pushing this?

Oh. Of course.

Moody was pushing to see just how Dark Harry was. Maybe Dumbledore hoped that even though Harry was willing to use Dark Arts, he wasn’t willing to actually join Voldemort.

“I wouldn’t trust him not to build some loophole into them.”

“Even if you could scan them for yourself, as carefully as possible?”

“I’m just a kid, sir. You-Know-Who has decades and decades of experience.” Harry ducked his head. “You said it yourself. I—willed the dragon to die. That’s not the same as knowing a spell that would actually destroy her, or going into battle with a plan. I’m just doing the best I can to survive this Tournament. You-Know-Who must know so much more, must have so much stronger control of his magic than I do.”

“Why was your rage and hatred against the dragon so powerful?”

“She threatened my life.”

“So you would do the same with—You-Know-Who.”

“If he threatened my life. If he just remained in the distance, I would only fight if he came for me. Or if Death Eaters did.”

“Any Death Eater?”

“Anyone who wanted my death,” Harry amended. He wondered if Moody was trying to trap him into some kind of confession about Theo’s father.

Moody studied him in silence for a long moment, then cleared his throat and seemed to relax. His magical eye whirred off to look out the back of his head again. “Albus didn’t describe you accurately. He said you were a quiet young man.”

“And what word would you use to describe me?”

“Intense.”

Harry laughed a little and pulled back on the tornado. The magic dissipated into a shower of sparks that Moody watched. “Sorry, sir. I can try to be less intense if you want.”

“Mm. No.” Moody’s face wore its own intense expression, but a pretty contemplative one. “I was having some doubts about what I ought to teach you next, what the ultimate goal of my training should be. But now I know.”

“What is it?”

“To teach you the magic you need to know, not what would make you a good Auror trainee or—recruit. You’re obviously never going to be that.”

“No,” Harry agreed softly. “I won’t be that.”

“And you won’t need to know the kind of diplomacy I had to learn to get along in the Auror Corps.”

“No, sir.”

“Because you would simply attack and kill anyone who threatened you.”

“If I had to,” Harry reassured him, wondering now if Moody might think he was suicidal. “I would try to run away first.”

“But if you couldn’t—”

“I would kill.”

Moody considered him for one moment more, then cackled and slapped his hands together. “Then you’re ready to learn the hardest version of the Confundus I know, one that only confuses people a little less than the Imperius…”

Harry happily paid attention.

*

Harry was always glad to see Madam Marchbanks, but he did wish that she hadn’t felt the need to come to Hogwarts because of the stupid demands Dumbledore was making. They were sitting in his office, along with a few other people, all of whom were also making the same stupid demands.

It must be catching.

“He destroyed a dragon belonging to the Romanian Preserve! When we brought the dragons here, it was with the understanding that none of the Tournament Champions would harm them!”

“Why did they put you in charge of the Romanian Preserve when you’re a moron?” Madam Marchbanks asked.

The man who had spoken bristled and shot her an angry look. He was a Weasley, Harry was pretty sure, because of his red hair and the freckles that crowded his face like they were staging an invasion. “We were told—”

“The Champions harmed them, too. The Conjunctivitis Curse—”

“We don’t count that as—”

“I can sympathize even with morons.” Madam Marchbanks’s cane slapped the floor. “After all, I trusted Dumbledore to put up precautions around the Goblet so that no one underage could enter it, and that didn’t happen.”

“My dear Griselda, I must insist on some respect.”

“Why? You don’t deserve any!”

Harry bit his lip and looked at the ceiling with the calm, semi-bashful expression on his face he had decided would be best for this exchange. At the moment, everyone was ignoring him, so he didn’t need to ruin it by speaking.

“No one knew he would be that powerful!”

“Then you should have kept him out of the Tournament, instead of sitting on your wrinkled old arse!”

The Weasley brother was staring back and forth between the Headmaster and Madam Marchbanks in bewilderment. Minister Fudge cleared his throat and decided that the world needed to hear from him. “It does seem as though the Romanian Preserve deserves some compensation for the loss of their dragon, Albus.”

“How could we have anticipated something like this?”

“That’s the same thing he said about my ward competing in the Tournament,” Madam Marchbanks told Fudge in a loud whisper that would have counted as a shout for most of the people in the school. “He doesn’t have a lot of sense.”

“I fail to see why you are talking to me about this, Minister.”

“Well, Hogwarts was the institution that hosted the creatures and signed the documentation that they would be safe—”

“It is not for us to pay the price,” Dumbledore said. He looked truly disturbed now, and he was smoothing his hand agitatedly down his beard. “The one who destroyed the beast—”

People turned to look at Harry for the first time, and he swallowed and lifted his chin, remembering how he had convinced the Healers in St. Mungo’s before his first year that he was a magically disturbed child who needed to be sheltered. He ought to be an even better actor now than then.

Hell, I convinced Black and Lupin that I liked them, for a while.

“I was so frightened,” Harry whispered. “Do you know how frightened I was? This Tournament is for people three years older than me! And we didn’t even have a competent Defense professor for the three years I’ve been here!” He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. “I struck out with my magic. Accidental magic. I just wanted—I wanted her to go away. I didn’t know it would do—that.”

“It’s true that there’s no spell in existence that can do what that did,” Weasley muttered, “so it couldn’t have been a spell.”

“There’s no one powerful enough to do it with just wandless magic, either!” Fudge said.

Madam Marchbanks cackled suddenly and let her hand rest on Harry’s shoulder for a second. “Says the Minister for Magic about the boy who defeated You-Know-Who.”

“When I was one?” Harry said, peering up and around the room, making sure to keep his tone uncertain. “I mean, I don’t know how I did that, either. And I think some of it was my mum. But I wanted to live.”

“Yes,” Fudge muttered as if to himself, his head bobbing back and forth. Someone had fed him a thought, Harry decided, so he would chew on it. “Of course, it’s different when it’s the Boy-Who-Lived—when Hogwarts can’t even protect him—”

“Someone else put my name into the Goblet,” Harry told the Minister tremulously. “I just—I didn’t have anything to do with it, but I don’t want to lose my magic! So I had to compete. I just—that’s why I just walked up to the dragon and took the egg, and then made her vanish. I wasn’t trying to do anything fancy—it was—I didn’t know—I—”

He shuddered and put his hands over his face as if a minute away from a breakdown.

“We certainly don’t blame you, young man,” Fudge said hastily. “And we know that you didn’t mean to make the dragon vanish on purpose, because there’s no spell that does that! And accidental magic imitates the effect of spells, like when a baby Summons a biscuit their parents won’t give them, eh? Well-known fact.”

Harry had to swallow howling laughter. He just nodded and kept his hands over his face. Fudge didn’t even seem to notice that his statement was self-contradictory.

“So, Albus, about Hogwarts paying for this dragon…”

“We don’t have enough money in the budget to spend thousands of Galleons on that.”

“Oh, well, perhaps we can come to a compromise…”

The conversation went on long enough that Harry dropped his hands from his face, although he kept himself huddled in his seat. He cast a glance up at Madam Marchbanks that he hoped their unfriendly audience would read as needing reassurance.

Can we go now? was what he was really asking.

Madam Marchbanks cleared her throat, interrupting an argument about exactly how much a breeding mature female dragon who still hadn’t had any eggs hatch in years was worth. “Can my ward and I be excused now? After all, he has no other business here, and this is for heads far less wrinkled than mine.”

Harry bit back his laughter again.

“There was one another matter that I needed to discuss with young Harry.” Dumbledore turned and smiled at Harry. Or “smiled.” The expression was so cracked and ridden by weariness that Harry had to bite back more laughter. “It concerns the Yule Ball.”

After some effort, Harry remembered that some people had been talking about a Christmas dance. He shrugged. “What about it, sir? I wasn’t planning to attend, if you had a question about my dress robes.”

“You must attend. All Champions must bring a partner and open the lead dance. It’s traditional.”

“Oh, I hadn’t heard that. But I’m not a Champion, sir, so you don’t need to worry about me.”

“Harry—”

“It intimidates him when wrinkled old arses use his first name,” Madam Marchbanks said loudly.

“I must demand respect—”

“That didn’t work the last three times, why do you think it’ll work now? Minister! Has anyone evaluated Albus for the sense Merlin gave a peacock in the last five years?”

“There is a Muggle saying, you know,” Harry said, peering up at Dumbledore and then shrinking back again when the man glared at him, “about how the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over when it doesn’t work, and thinking it will this time.”

“Go and get yourself evaluated, Albus,” Madam Marchbanks told him, getting to her feet with the help of her cane. “And stop tormenting my ward.”

“He must attend the Yule Ball.”

“No.”

“It is part of the magically binding contract,” Dumbledore said, and slapped his hand flat on the desk, then looked mortified when everyone stared at him. “You must go through with it, or you could lose your magic.”

“Did you write that contract with the quill you had lodged up your arse?”

“Griselda—”

“Oh, but you couldn’t put the quill up there, because it wouldn’t FIT with EVERYTHING ELSE you have lodged up there!”

Weasley looked as if he wanted to duck and hide. Harry put a hand on Madam Marchbanks’s arm, and shook his head with a little sigh. “I don’t think we have a choice, Griselda. After all, everyone else is already paying for Hogwarts’s failures. We’ll just have to do it, too.” He turned wearily to Dumbledore. “I’ll attend the Yule Ball and lead the first dance, Headmaster.”

“With what partner?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Dumbledore looked suspicious, but Fudge winked at Harry, a sight so horrible he wished he could use the Memory Charm on himself. “That’s the spirit, that’s the spirit! Wouldn’t do to give too much advance notice and disappointment to those who want to partner the Boy-Who-Lived, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry managed to say with a straight face, and escaped down the staircase with Madam Marchbanks.

She asked him to tell her his plan when they were beyond the range of eavesdropping spells and spying portraits, and spent so much time laughing about it that Harry felt in as good a mood as was possible when she left.

Even if he would have to take dancing lessons with Flitwick.

*

“You didn’t specifically want the dragon to vanish or turn to ash, then.”

“I wanted her to die.”

Theo watched Harry with his head on the side. They were practicing alone in their usual dungeon corridor again. Harry waited for him to continue.

Honestly, other than the discussion with Parvati, his friends hadn’t really tried to talk to him directly about the way he’d passed the First Task. Zacharias and Michael had alluded to it in hushed whispers. Hermione had just asked about the poor dragon, and accepted what Harry had said with no more questions. Theo had sometimes watched him with thoughtful, bright eyes, but also hadn’t tried to talk about it in detail.

Now, it appeared, about a week before the Yule Ball, they would.

“That was all.”

“It was a lot.”

“And the shield that you raised?”

“You heard the incantation.”

“Powered by hatred.” Theo said it in an odd, reverent voice. “I thought you were indifferent to most people, not that you hated them.”

“That’s true most of the time, but then again, someone who tries to hurt me is someone I hate.”

“Without exception?”

“Without exception.”

Harry held Theo’s gaze. He wondered if Theo was doing what Moody had done in that conversation they’d had right after he killed the dragon, trying to feel out whether something he’d wanted to recommend to Harry was even possible.

“You could destroy the Dark Lord, then. If you wanted to.”

Harry held his hands out and shrugged. “I don’t know exactly what my mother did to destroy him, and I don’t know, if he manages to come back, whether he would be in a form that could be affected by the accidental magic that I commanded, or the Hate Shield, or whatever actually destroyed the dragon. Hagrid told me before first year that he didn’t think the Dark Lord was human enough to die. I think that’s true.”

“You could—destroy the enemies of your friends.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “I could,” he said. “But I would need to know exactly what they were doing, and why I should destroy them instead of you or your father doing it.”

Theo shifted his weight back and forth. “They’re—enemies who made threats, rather than ones who are doing something right now. People who implied that they could hurt us in the future.”

“Perhaps who could hurt your family because of certain unfounded accusations of willing Death Eater participation in the past?”

Theo half-smiled. “We understand each other well, I think.”

“I might have trouble raising that much hatred if they weren’t also people who were trying to kill me personally, or make me unsafe. But I could try.”

“And of course, you have the facility to use non-magical means to destroy your enemies, as well.” Theo’s half-smile grew. “I would be honored to stand by your side as you continued your career of destroying your enemies.”

“And I yours.”

“Of course, although I should speak to my father before I make any commitments on the behalf of the Nott family.”

Harry smiled at him, and they went back to practicing dueling spells.

*

“Who is your partner, Mr. Potter?”

“They’re shy, Professor. So they came invisibly.”

Professor McGonagall started and stared past Harry at the air in such a way that made Harry sure she knew about his Cloak. Maybe because it had belonged to his father in the past. But she obviously couldn’t see anything now.

“You do know that you will have to lead the first dance, Mr. Potter?”

“Oh, I know. I practiced with them a lot before we came down here.”

McGonagall looked at him in some disbelief, but short of actually waving her hand around in front of Harry and touching his invisible partner, she had to accept that there was someone there.

There wasn’t, of course. Harry walked up serenely to the idiots who had decided to risk their lives, and gave the same answer to them when they asked who his date was. He was a little surprised to see that Viktor Krum had decided to bring Pansy Parkinson, but it wasn’t his business. The Durmstrang students did usually sit at the Slytherin table, so that probably had something to do with it.

They went through the motions of dancing—or at least, Harry did—and he solicitously commandeered an empty chair and a meal for his “date.” He made sure to memorize the expressions on the faces of some of the people around the table. Madam Marchbanks would want to hear about them when Harry wrote the owl to her.

Just before he left, Dumbledore stopped him. His look was grave, pointed, but also uncertain, as if he were trying to see the long-term implications of Harry’s decision to attend the Ball unaccompanied.

“Yes, Headmaster?”

Dumbledore sighed. “I find it hard to believe that you have so much hatred in you, Harry.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have left me with the Muggles, sir.”

“They were your only blood family…”

Harry just stood and nodded politely through the stupid justification, and then left the Great Hall with his arm around his “partner’s” shoulders. He looked back once, to catch both the unhappy gaze from Dumbledore and Theo’s bright smile and Parvati’s shaking shoulders and Michael’s and Zacharias’s sarcastic applause.

And a dark gaze from Moody, who was sipping from his flask as usual.

At least, if he decides to stop tutoring me because of the disrespect to the Headmaster or something, I can keep developing from my knowledge of the spells he did impart to me.