[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Chapter Forty-Two of 'Adagio'- The Point

[lomonaaeren]

“I think his snake is a Horcrux.”

Severus paused and lowered the teacup he had been about to take a sip out of, focusing on Harry, who sat in the chair nearest his desk with an ancient book open on his lap. At least he had taken his studying for his OWLS more seriously after Severus had spoken to him. “Why do you think that?”

“I’ve been able to guide and nudge his thoughts back to the Horcruxes more often lately. They circle around Nagini the same way they circle around the other ones.”

“Have you identified how many he has yet?”

“With Nagini, and counting the diary? Seven.”

Severus hissed despite himself. He had once believed in the Dark Lord’s genius, though never as fervently as the other Death Eater recruits of his generation; he had simply been too cynical by then to revere to one man so much. But he had not thought…

“He is a fool.”

“Especially since he only planned to make six, and keep the shard of soul in his own body as the seventh in his private Arithmancy equation. He never planned on the one that’s attached to my soul.”

Severus had to close his eyes and pinch his nose. The Dark Lord’s stupidity was too great for him to express otherwise.

Harry chuckled.

“I must admit that I do not immediately see a way to gain control of Nagini the way that we have of the diadem.”

“I don’t think we need all of them, only some. Threatening part of his immortality would be a way to get him to do what we want. Especially if we know how to destroy the ones we have, and we insinuate that we know what the others are. Where they are.”

The triumph in his voice made Severus peer at him. “Nagini is not the only Horcrux you have identified.”

“No.”

“Harry.”

“The others are in places that would be difficult to access. A booby-trapped cave, the shack where the Dark Lord’s mother lived with her family, also booby-trapped, and Gringotts.”

Severus shuddered at the thought of assaulting Gringotts. He had never been sure how Quirrell had managed to do it four years ago. “The shack does not sound difficult compared to the others.”

“That Horcrux is a ring, and he thinks all the time about how he trapped it with a curse that I think he created himself. Memories of Arithmantic equations keep coming up when he thinks about it. I don’t think either of us could reverse engineer that curse enough not to be hurt by it.”

Severus peered at him, looking for some shade of insult about Severus’s spell creation skills—even now—but saw nothing but sincerity. He nodded slowly. Harry was admitting his own weakness as much as he was talking about Severus’s.

“You believe you will be able to identify ways to get hold of the Horcruxes eventually and use them to threaten the Dark Lord?”

“Or something better.”

“What are you talking about?” There had been a flare of the fire in Harry’s eyes when he spoke those last words that had been there when the Dark Lord was resurrected.

Harry paused, then shook his head. “It’s pretty new yet, and I don’t know if it’s going to work out. But if it does, then we won’t even need the Horcruxes as a chain on him to threaten him. He won’t be able to threaten or control us anymore.”

“How could you guarantee that without having a means to collect all the Horcruxes first, or breaking the vows you swore?”

“I didn’t say I would kill him. I said he would no longer be a threat.”

Severus studied him, but Harry sat there and radiated stubbornness. In the end, Severus capitulated with a sigh. “As long as you know that nothing you could achieve on that front would be worth the pain of losing you.”

Harry blinked, seemingly stunned. Not by the emotion, Severus thought, but by the fact that he had admitted it. Severus swallowed through his own dry throat.

When Harry’s smile came, it was wilder and gentler than any other Severus had seen from him. “I promise. I’ll be careful.”

And with that, Severus had to be content.

*

“You haven’t heard anything from the Dark Lord?”

Severus sighed and rapped his stirring rod on the edge of the cauldron so that the drops falling from it would land inside the brew. He had no desire to deal with melting pewter at the moment. “I told you that I cannot tell you of his orders, Barty.”

“I just want to know if you’ve heard from him. That wouldn’t constitute disobeying his orders.”

“How do you know? You have admitted yourself that you must have misjudged our Lord’s mind badly.”

Severus turned around in time to see Barty, or Dawlish, flinch where he stood against the doorway of Severus’s lab. In truth, Severus felt a sliver of pity for the man. Whether it was the Dark Lord’s paranoia or something else that had turned him against Barty, Barty looked closer to breakdown than he must have been when he was the half-mad Azkaban escapee that Harry hadn’t yet stabilized.

Or Harry’s Horcrux.

Harry’s research hadn’t yet revealed why it didn’t have such an effect on Severus.

“I just want to know if there’s anything you’re doing that I could be doing, too, to get back in his favor,” Barty whispered.

“Following his orders.”

Barty flinched and hunched, staring down at his boots. Severus let this go on for a moment before he said, “Albus has noticed the change in you. He’s been asking me and the other professors whether you fear the curse overcoming you.”

“I don’t. The plan was always for this particular identity to go at the end of the year.”

Barty still didn’t look up. Severus gave a sharp sigh and rapped his fingers on the table that held his cauldron. Barty jerked his head up.

“That is not the point, Barty. The point is that the Headmaster is noticing that something is wrong, and you should guard your behavior more closely.”

“What does it matter, if the Dark Lord has turned against me? He was the entire point of my existence.”

Severus blinked, because he had never heard Barty put it in terms quite that stark before. But he ended up sighing and shaking his head. “In truth, it does not matter. What does is that you must follow his last orders and keep your secrets and our Lord’s secrets hidden.”

“You really haven’t heard anything?”

“The last time he summoned me was the time when he asked that I tell you nothing.”

Barty gave a single sound suspiciously like a dry sob, and then whirled and fled. Severus stared after him, and wondered if the Dark Lord knew how truly loyal a servant he was losing. If he would reverse course or the like if he did.

But then he put it out of his head. He still had a Blood-Replenisher to brew, and research questions related to Horcruxes and means to defeat curses created by a paranoid Dark Lord to look up.

And, as it turned out, a Headmaster’s dying to enjoy.