lomonaaeren

“If you think about it…”

Ron crept very quietly closer to the corner he knew Harry and Nott were standing around. It was hard to spy on Harry without the Map or the Cloak, but it turned out Seamus had been keeping an eye on Harry himself. He was convinced that Harry was a traitor to Gryffindor as well as lying and mental, and he had told Ron about where Harry and Nott tended to spend their time.

A random dungeon corridor was sort of stupid, to Ron’s eye, but he supposed that they didn’t think they needed to put up wards if, most of the time, no one happened by. And if neither of them had noticed Seamus tracking them.

“If you think about it, what, Nott?”

“I asked you to call me Theodore.”

Ron stopped a good distance back from the corner and took the small mirror Hermione had given him, borrowed from Lavender, out of his robe pocket. Then he cast the charm that he and Hermione had spent a whole afternoon practicing and held the mirror up.

The surface of the glass shimmered and glowed for a moment, and then produced a perfect image of Harry and Nott the way that someone would see them if they were looking down from the ceiling directly above them. Ron leaned close, and then felt his jaw drop open.

Nott had his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

And Harry wasn’t pulling back, wasn’t—

Ron shook his head furiously. He had to concentrate on Nott’s words. Like Hermione would say, that was the important thing.

“Muggleborns cause danger for all of us,” Nott was saying, his voice low and intense. Ron probably wouldn’t have heard him if he’d been standing any further away from the corner. “I’m not saying it’s because they’re inherently stupid or dirty or any of the nonsense that Malfoy and his father like to spout. In fact, most of them are quite clever. But that’s the problem.”

“The problem?”

“They can tell their families about us. Muggleborns are prohibited from practicing magic in front of their families, of course, but no one makes them swear an oath to keep the secret of magic from their relatives. They can tell their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, their cousins, and anyone who doesn’t live with them and already know.”

“So what?”

“So the more Muggles who know, the more dangerous it becomes. I know that most of them don’t believe in magic, but it only takes one who does. Maybe because they’re religious in the way that the people who hunted us were. Maybe for some other reason.”

“That’s not the same as wanting to kill them all.”

“No. I know there are too many Muggles to kill. But we have to wipe the knowledge of our existence from their minds.”

Ron recoiled. According to his Dad, the Memory Charm used too much on Muggles had bad consequences. It was necessary, but the consequences weren’t good. And Nott was talking about—what? Some kind of mass Obliviation?

“That won’t keep more Muggleborns from being born.”

“Of course not. But if we bind them with secrecy oaths and wipe the knowledge from their parents’ minds, then we’ll be much safer.”

“You’d bind children with secrecy oaths?”

Ron scowled. He wasn’t a fan of that idea himself, given that the twins had almost got him to swear an Unbreakable Vow when he was a toddler. Supposedly it wouldn’t have taken, but…

But if it could have? If the oaths that Nott wanted to make Muggleborn children swear could take?

Ron felt ill thinking about it.

“How would you get around the fact that Muggleborn children would still perform accidental magic in front of their parents and siblings? And what about vanishing up to Hogwarts for ten months a year?”

“The spell that can make them ignore things like the exists. As do the charms that would alert the Ministry about powerful bursts of accidental magic in Muggle areas. The Ministry doesn’t want to suggest or use them right now because it would be political suicide with Dumbledore in control, but they exist. They’re not theoretical. We could implement them…”

“How powerful?”

“What?”

“How powerful would the bursts of accidental magic have to be, for the alarms to pick them up?”

Ron blinked. Harry’s voice sounded choked. Was he thinking about how Hermione might have essentially been taken away from her parents even without having to leave them? But Ron couldn’t remember Hermione telling him about how powerful her magic had been in childhood. She had summoned books and the like. He thought.

Hermione didn’t talk that much about her childhood. Ron knew that, just like Harry, she hadn’t really had friends before Hogwarts.

“I don’t know the exact strength of the charms,” Nott said slowly. “I know they exist, not exactly how they work, and why they haven’t been used. Can you give me an example of what you’re thinking about?”

“If a magical child Apparated, for example. To get away from something a Muggle was doing to—them.”

“Apparition gets tracked even if a teenager does it because it’s so rare for someone who isn’t seventeen or trained to be capable of it. I can’t imagine that the charms wouldn’t pick up on a child doing it.” Nott paused, and then went on in a gentle way that Ron didn’t trust at all. “Can I ask why you’re worried about it, Harry? Did you Apparate when you were a child? Why?”

Don’t you already basically know why, Nott? What are you trying to trap him into confessing?

“To get away from my cousin. He was chasing me with his friends, and if they’d caught me, it would have been—bad.”

Ron frowned. He knew that Harry’s cousin called him a freak and hated him, and beat him up sometimes, but he hadn’t known that Dudley had a bunch of friends he’d chased Harry with. No wonder Harry had hated Malfoy when he met him.

Except now they’re friends, or something.

Nott was speaking now, and Ron forced his mind away from thoughts about Malfoy. This was more important. “Then yes, the charms would pick up on things like that. They would have protected you.” His voice sank. “In fact, they would have made sure that you were placed with a magical family. There was no reason to have Muggle relatives take care of you.”

“It had something to do with blood magic. Love. Protection.”

Ron caught his breath in horror. Harry was going to tell Nott this? When he could tell Death Eaters and get them through the blood protections the next time Harry was at the Dursleys’? It didn’t matter how angry Harry was; he should have known better.

“That kind of blood magic can’t attach to a home where no love is.” Nott sounded so confident and pompous that Ron wanted to punch him in the face on general principles. “And someone in our world should have had the privilege of raising you.”

“Privilege. I suppose that would have been your dad? Or Lucius Malfoy? Someone who would have made sure that I grew up grateful for my place as a half-blood in the pureblood world?”

“No, of course not. It would have been a privilege because raising any magical child is. And because of your fame, yes, but that means that your magical family would have been under a lot more intense scrutiny than it sounds like your Muggle one ever was.”

Harry turned his head away, and then walked down the corridor towards Ron. Ron hastily waved his wand to get rid of the mirror and ducked back into the shadows, then around a corner, then another.

When he had almost got lost and was sure that Harry wouldn’t catch him, he leaned back on the wall and took a deep breath.

Ron could see why the notion of being safe from his cousin chasing him would appeal to Harry. But Harry really should have seen that other people, like Hermione, wouldn’t want to have the Ministry showing up all the time to interfere with their parents.

At least he had been arguing back a little against what Nott was saying. He just hadn’t done it enough, and Ron shook his head as he stood up.

He still thought that something must have happened this summer, or during the last weeks at Grimmauld Place, to make Harry so open to the stupidities that the Slytherins were spouting, but he had no idea what it could have been.

*

“A word of advice, Granger.”

Hermione turned around with her wand gripped in her hand. She had been going to the library to research the sorts of compulsion spells that someone could cast on a person resistant to the Imperius Curse, but the cold voice made her ready for a duel. Just because it was Nott instead of Malfoy meant nothing in particular.

Nott stood up with a smirk from where he’d been leaning against the wall.

“I don’t want your advice,” Hermione snapped, before he could say anything.

“Well, you’ll get it anyway, because you stood by Harry last year when Weasley acted like an idiot about his name coming out of the Goblet of Fire.” Nott shrugged. “He probably wouldn’t want to see you—”

“Since when do you call him Harry?”

“Since I invited him to use my first name, and he invited me to use his.”

Hermione shook her head and took a deep breath. That didn’t matter so much, wasn’t nearly as important as the fact that Harry would probably be influenced by her response to Nott. “Well, you should know that I still don’t want your advice.”

“And like I said, you’ll get it.” Nott smiled without letting the smile touch his eyes. Then again, Hermione wasn’t sure that he was capable of that. “Don’t push Harry to forgive you or associate with you. He might come around again in the future, but he won’t if you push him right now.”

“What would you know about it?”

“Right now? A lot more than you do.”

“We didn’t even do anything to him!”

“That’s not the way he tells it.”

“It’s the truth!” Hermione realized she was yelling and shook her head as she stepped away. No, she couldn’t waste time arguing like this. She knew that Nott was trying to distract her, or make her focus on getting angry and pushing her away from Harry altogether. She already knew that it was likely they had used spells on him, or potions.

She turned resolutely away and walked towards the library.

“Why do you think that you didn’t do anything to him?” Nott called after her.

Hermione looked back at the Slytherin. They were near enough to the library entrance that she thought someone else might come along any second, but for the moment, they were by themselves, and she could at least answer him.

“That’s something that I’m not going to tell you, when it relates directly to our side of the war,” she said.

“Your side of the war.”

“Mine and Harry’s.”

Nott had a terrifying smile that Hermione was glad she had never seen before. “Are you so sure that you stand on the same one anymore? Maybe you ought to ask Harry, see what he says.”

And he gestured a little to the side, where a shimmer in the air abruptly resolved into Harry pulling the Invisibility Cloak off his head and staring at her. The expression on his face was betrayed, and then he turned away and walked down the corridor, away from her.

“Harry! Wait!”

He didn’t. Nott stepped into Hermione’s path when she would have gone after Harry, and shook his head with faux sorrow. “I think you might have done something to him,” he said, then glided away in the same direction as Harry.

Hermione stood where she was and squeezed her eyes shut, not running or shouting since it didn’t seem likely it would work.

But then she opened them again and marched resolutely into the library. She would still look up material on spells and potions, but she would also ask her parents to send her some Muggle psychology books in the post.

The Slytherins might not know the Muggle name for it, but they were definitely brainwashing Harry.

*

“And…Potter?”

Ron snapped his head around. He’d been hovering over the pitch on his Cleansweep and trying not to be sick. He knew very well that he’d been the best of the candidates for Keeper, but he was so nervous that he thought his hands might slip off the broom handle due to the sweat.

That was nothing compared to his anger, though, when he saw Harry walking onto the pitch with the rest of the Slytherin team, arriving early for their scheduled practice. Ron angled downwards and landed with a stumble on the grass.

“Harry! What the bloody hell are you doing?”

Harry turned towards him with that empty expression Ron was learning to hate. “I’m the Slytherin Seeker now.”

“But Malfoy is!”

“Was,” Malfoy said. He didn’t look that happy about it, Ron saw, so maybe someone else had told him that he needed to give up his Seeker spot to Harry as part of their evil plan. But Malfoy still managed a smarmy smile as he hefted his broom. “I’m a Chaser now. Unlike Gryffindors, we choose the best people for the position.”

“You don’t have to play for their team, Harry.”

“I wanted to. I didn’t get to play at all last year.”

“No one did,” Ron snapped. He could feel his face turning red, but honestly, this was what Harry thought should happen? He should join a bunch of cheaters on the Quidditch pitch when he would be going up against Ron and his brothers and Katie and Angelina and Alicia and Ginny? All people he had played with before, all people he knew and trusted?

Ron couldn’t swallow the thick lump in his throat. He had never thought Harry would go this far.

Harry gave him a blank-eyed look and then mounted his Firebolt. In seconds, he was zipping around the pitch, and it made Ron a little sick to watch the way that he stretched out his hand and scooped the practice Snitch Ginny had been using out of the air.

More to the point, it made Ginny look sick, too. Ron knew that she had been wrestling with her crush on Harry given what he had turned into. It seemed massively unfair that she had to do the same thing with Harry as a Quidditch opponent.

“Isn’t your practice over, Weasley?”

Malfoy’s voice was taunting, and Ron found himself glancing instinctively at Harry to see if he would back Ron up in this argument. Harry glanced at him and said nothing.

Ron turned and flew back over to pick up their Quaffle. He ignored the Slytherins’ laughter as best he could, and put a comforting arm around Ginny’s shoulders when she flew back towards him and landed next to the Keeper’s hoop.

“He sounds like him,” Ginny whispered.

“Yeah, who thought we would hear the day when Harry sounds like Malfoy?”

“No. I mean, like him. Tom.”

Ron’s arm tightened. He didn’t want to think that Harry was going down the path of becoming a teenage Dark Lord. That had been the kind of suspicion they’d laughed about in second year.

But now…

Well, he had to wonder.

*

Hermione stood in front of Umbridge’s desk and clenched her hand down at her side. The glistening, bloody lines that she’d been forced to write with the woman’s blasted quill mocked her.

I must not defy my superiors.

“Perhaps the lesson will…sink in, now,” Umbridge said, and her voice was a fluting one that made Hermione want to attack her.

“And remember, dear, another detention tomorrow at seven.”

“Yes, Professor.” Hermione fought to keep her voice even.

Umbridge waved a hand to dismiss her, and Hermione turned and left. She was stalking along, her left hand wrapped around her right one, and she nearly drew her wand and did attack when Nott abruptly appeared in front of her.

“Get out of my way, Nott,” Hermione said, when she’d had a moment to recover. Her hand sent a dull ache all the way up her arm, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the wound was cursed. She should be able to use Essence of Murtlap on it, but she would have to do some research to decide if there was anything better.

She hadn’t expected the woman to use Blood Quills on her. God.

Nott stared at her, then looked down at her hand. Hermione lifted her chin. If Nott said something about how she deserved it, Hermione would hex him and take the detentions that both Umbridge and Snape would probably give her.

Instead, Nott murmured, “Why in Merlin’s name are you speaking up and getting yourself in more trouble?”

“It has to do with something called ‘standing up for what you believe.’ I understand why you’d be unfamiliar with it.”

Nott’s gaze snapped back to her face, so full of poison, so fast, that Hermione faltered for a moment. But that was exactly what he and people like him wanted, for Muggleborns to shut up and be good little citizens of the hell they were trying to make the magical world into. Hermione glared back at him.

“I do plenty of standing up for what I believe in,” Nott whispered. “That’s how I convinced Harry.”

Hermione gasped a little. She had still thought that Malfoy was the main culprit, just because he was the one who went around calling Muggleborns “Mudbloods,” and Ron also seemed to blame him for Harry joining the Slytherin Quidditch team. But she should have thought more about Nott.

He has a Death Eater father, after all.

“Convinced him that, what? All Muggleborns should be tortured to death? That he has dirty blood? That—”

“That Muggle families with magical children should be monitored,” Nott said flatly. “That their children should never be left alone and without support. The way you did to him this summer.”

Hermione closed her eyes in frustration, and to remind herself to hold on to her temper. Discussing this with Nott would be worse than useless. It would be showing Harry that she couldn’t keep his secrets.

And in the end…

Hermione just didn’t think that a few missed letters was worth Harry becoming a blood purist.

“If that’s what you think happened,” she said, and turned around and walked down the corridor in the opposite direction. It would take her longer to get back to Gryffindor Tower, but at the moment, every bit of distance from Nott was a good thing.

“Granger.”

She glanced over her shoulder. Nott was watching her with a strange gleam in his eyes that made her wonder why she’d never realized before how dangerous he was.

“You’re being tortured with a Blood Quill,” Nott said quietly. “It hurts. But you don’t have a government smear campaign targeted at you. You weren’t tried for underage magic before the Wizengamot. You didn’t have Dementors almost suck out your soul this summer. You didn’t have your best friends ignore you for weeks on end. You didn’t watch someone die last year. Can you blame Harry for the choices he makes?”

“My suffering doesn’t stop existing just because his is worse.”

“I’m not asking you to say that. I’m asking you to ask yourself whether his actions are so unforgivable. Whether you would really want him here to be tortured with the Blood Quill in your place.”

And Nott turned and slipped away before Hermione could say anything. Hermione closed her eyes and reminded herself about patience, again.

The psychology books her parents sent had been helpful. She wished Harry would come talk to her himself, but she understood why he wasn’t. Why Nott was showing up, giving her words that would either make her think Harry’s choices were acceptable or alienate her from him.

They were isolating Harry on purpose, the Slytherins. Keeping him from hearing any voices but theirs. Of course it would be easy for him to start thinking that they were right. And if Hermione started agreeing, that lost Harry one champion in the outside world who would try to rescue him.

I have to talk to him directly, no matter what.

*

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Ron. We have to reach him.”

Ron grimaced and rubbed his forehead. He could agree with that, but he didn’t know if showing up at the Slytherin team’s changing rooms after the disastrous game Gryffindor had played against them was the best idea.

Malfoy had apparently made up and sung that song. And Ron hadn’t even had a chance to miss more than three Quaffles before Harry had caught the Snitch.

For his new team.

At least it didn’t look as if Harry had sung along with the “Weasley Is Our King” song. But he hadn’t come and warned Ron about it, either.

Harry stepped out of the Slytherin team’s quarters before Ron could think more about that. He was wearing all his robes already, and his face was flat and emotionless. It didn’t turn that way when he saw them, Ron thought. That was just the expression Harry wore when he was walking around on his own and thinking he was by himself.

Unease raced down Ron’s spine. Hermione had had him read part of one of her psychology books, and Ron didn’t really understand all of it, but if someone just drastically changed their behavior like this and started associating with new people?

Yeah, Ron could see why those would be really bad signs, whether you were Muggle or magical.

“What do you want?”

“We want to know why you think it’s acceptable to hurt one of your best friends this way.”

Ron tried to shoot Hermione a glance without looking as if he were. That wasn’t what he would have started with, even though he was angry about “Weasley Is Our King.” He thought the other things were a bigger deal.

But on the other hand, maybe Hermione thought they were more likely to get a real answer this way.

“I didn’t know about Malfoy’s plan before he did it.”

“But you were still okay with it. You didn’t tell him to stop.”

“How do you know I didn’t? You’re not around all the time and watching me constantly anymore. Thank Merlin.”

Hermione faltered. Ron stepped forwards and took over the conversation, and he decided to keep going the way she had, even though it was a bit of a diversion off the path. “I watched you closely and just saw you ignoring the song. You could at least have warned me.”

“The way that you warned me about how you were spending the summer with my godfather?”

“We were spending the summer there because we had to keep safe from V-Voldemort and the Death Eaters! You know that my family and Hermione would both be targets because of who we are!”

“But it was fine to leave me alone and stranded in the Muggle world. Of course. When I’m the one that Voldemort wants to kill the most. It’s fine to leave me there.”

Harry’s eyes were blazing. Ron swallowed. He had never thought the green of Harry’s eyes was like poison before, but he could see the resemblance now.

“Voldemort doesn’t know where you are!”

“How do you know that, Hermione? How do you know that he wouldn’t manage to track me down? He literally couldn’t track you because of your being behind a Fidelius Charm, but he could have done it with me, if he has any Death Eaters who are at all familiar with the Muggle world. And if you think he doesn’t and there’s no way that he could operate in the Muggle world, then you should have been safe there, too.”

Hermione looked devastated. Ron decided that he had to take the burden off her again. “Harry, you don’t understand—”

“No, I don’t, and there’s no way that you’re going to fucking convince me.”

Ron wanted to get angry about the language, but then a light footstep sounded from around the corner, and a voice said, “Harry?”

It was Nott. Of course it bloody was. He came forwards and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, ignoring both of them so fully that Ron bristled. “We worried about you when you didn’t come back to the common room,” Nott murmured, brushing Harry’s fringe back from his forehead. He touched Harry’s scar without hesitation. Ron wasn’t sure if he could have done that himself. “You are coming, I trust?”

“Yes, Theodore.”

Harry was giving Nott a gentle, wistful smile, and Ron felt his stomach curdle with horror. Before he thought about it, he blurted, “You’re gay?”

“Wow,” Nott said, looking back at them with a slight wrinkle of his nose, as if he were seeing hippogriff shit he would have to clean up. “You weren’t kidding about the way they would react, Harry.”

“It’s not because you’re gay, it’s because you would be dating him!”

“Not the way it sounded, Ron,” Harry said softly. “Not at all.” He turned around, nodded to Nott, and said, “Yes, I’m coming. There’s nothing of value here for me.”

Ron watched them walk away together, and then glanced at Hermione. There were tears standing in her eyes.

“You—you think that we’ve lost him?” Ron whispered.

Hermione dashed tears out of her eyes and then took a deep breath. “We can still talk to Headmaster Dumbledore about this.”

“You know that he didn’t do anything this summer…”

“But he won’t want Harry lost to the Death Eaters any more than we would. Come on, Ron.”

Ron followed her to the Headmaster’s office, but he glanced over his shoulder as he went. Harry was walking beside Nott, laughing at something he’d said. He looked as Slytherin as any of them in finer robes than he’d ever worn, his voice and face as cold as theirs.

Why did we lose him? Why did he so easily become one of them? I really don’t understand.