[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Chapter Thirty-Two of "Adagio"- Christmas Risks

[lomonaaeren]

“Harry!”

“Hi, Sirius.”

Black didn’t seem to notice that Harry’s greeting lacked some enthusiasm. He snatched Harry up and swung him around, with strength that Severus frankly hadn’t thought he possessed; Harry was tall enough now to reach Black’s shoulder. Harry did stiffen up, but he was smiling and normal by the time he landed on the floor again.

Severus caught his eye, to make sure that Harry didn’t need him to intervene. Harry just shook his head a little and started talking to Black about the Arithmancy problems he’d been working on before he left the castle.

Arithmancy equations that let him invent his own spells already. And ones that he works on in the company of two Death Eaters’ sons.

“Severus.”

Severus forced a polite expression onto his face as he turned towards Lupin. “Hello, Lupin.”

“Surely you could call me Remus?”

“I’m going to call him Snivellus!”

Lupin closed his eyes for a moment. There was a deeper silence and stillness from Harry’s direction that let Severus know Black would regret this.

“Sirius, please,” Lupin whispered.

“A Snivellus is what he is!”

Severus brought up his Occlumency and froze his reaction to that hated nickname. He should have done this earlier, he thought. He detached from the scene and could watch how ineffective Lupin’s patting and clucking at Black was. It just allowed Black to go ahead and repeat his actions. Lupin didn’t want to “upset him.”

Everyone else can be upset, however.

“Why did you come here with Professor Snivellus, anyway?” Black asked, and turned back to face Harry.

Harry looked at Black with eyes drained of enough emotion that even the dog faltered. “I don’t like that name.”

“Did he tell you that you had to say that?”

“No. I don’t like it because it reminds me of when the Muggles called me a freak.”

Black faltered again. Lupin glanced at Severus, but Severus, wrapped in walls of ice, was able to stand there and say and do nothing.

“I—but it’s him, not you.”

“He’s my Head of House. And he’s been kind to me.”

“Kind? Do you know what kind of hexes he was using in school?”

“Yes. Did he try to feed someone to a werewolf?”

Lupin winced hard enough to make him go forwards and grab Black’s elbow, dragging him backwards. “Excuse us, Severus, Harry,” he said, and took Black up the stairs from the kitchen to scold him.

Harry looked up at Severus. The thought in his eyes would have been clear enough even for someone who wasn’t a Legilimens.

Severus shook his head slightly. Harry settled back, but unhappily.

Then Molly Weasley bustled into the kitchen, and there was a hug that left Harry looking like a leopard about to claw someone’s face off, and Severus had to intervene.

“He doesn’t know you, Molly,” he said, in the kind of quiet, hard voice that made the Order members pay attention to him whether or not they wanted to. “And he hasn’t grown up with much kindness.”

“Of course!” Molly stepped back and raised her flour-dusted hands. “My apologies, Harry, dear. I knew your dear parents, so I feel as if I knew you already!”

“Oh, I see,” Harry said. Severus also froze his amusement at how shyly Harry could smile, at how he could cast his eyes down. “I suppose that would explain it. No one’s ever hugged me like that before.”

“Well!” Molly cast Severus a glance. He wondered idly if she thought he should forgive it, or not notice it, or not understand it. “I hope that you’ll feel welcome here, Harry. Ron is here—and Ginny, of course.”

She looked uncomfortable now, as if perhaps she had heard from her youngest son about Harry’s “failure” to rescue her daughter. Severus gave her his blandest look and turned to Harry. “You’re to stay inside the house, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

Even with Severus’s Occlumency, he found it hard to resist the urge to laugh aloud. He nodded. “Good-bye for the present, Mr. Potter. I shall see you after Christmas.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry turned back to Molly and started to ask her “shy” questions as Severus went back through the Floo. The last glimpse he had was of the melting expression on Molly’s face.

Severus shook his head as he landed in his quarters. Perhaps Harry wouldn’t have to spy, only appeal to the Order members as an innocent child, and they would treat him like someone who had to know everything.

They would never treat me like that.

But the thought was less bitter than it usually was, given that Severus now had an ally among the Order who could accomplish what he could not.

*

“Where is he?”

Severus sighed as he turned to the Floo. Barty’s head was floating in it. Well, John Dawlish’s head was floating in it. He shook his head. “Professor Dawlish, I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t welcome your company on Christmas Eve.”

Barty’s eyes narrowed in Dawlish’s face. Then he said, “My apologies, Professor Snape. I only meant that I can’t find Mr. Potter anywhere in the school.”

Severus nodded. He had the impression that Albus might have approached the real Dawlish at some point in the past about joining the Order, but Barty had probably ended the recruitment conversations as an unacceptable risk. “Mr. Potter is spending Christmas with his godfather.”

Barty’s expression became blank for a long moment. Then he nodded and said, “Right. Of course. I—forgot he had one.”

“I suspect many people did.”

“And—the most important person in the situation approves of this?”

It would sound like Barty meant Albus to anyone who looked at this memory in a Pensieve, but Severus knew the truth. He gave Barty a small smile and said, “I suspect that Mr. Potter would hardly leave the castle without informing him.”

Barty inclined his head, although his intent eyes said that he thought Harry might not have. “And you’re sure he’s safe outside the walls of the school?”

“Mr. Potter is rather an enterprising young man. And many students spend their holidays with their families, Professor Dawlish.”

“Of course.”

Barty gave him one more glance and vanished from the fire. Severus returned to the Dark Arts tome that he had received from the other man last Christmas, wondering idly if this had something to do with the way that Harry “steadied” the Dark Lord and Barty. Did they not want Harry so far away from them because of that?

Severus shrugged. Even if a day came when Harry broke free from the Dark Lord because it was what Severus wanted to do, Harry was not stupid enough to skip telling their Lord right now of where he was going.