Chapter Sixteen of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“You were the one who found Filch’s cat?”

At this point, Harry supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised Theo and Blaise would have heard the gossip and would want to confront him about it. He just grunted and nodded, paying more attention to the snake wrapped around his arm.

“It would be easier for me if I could give you a name.”

“I am not interested in making it easier for you. Hold the rat.”

Hedwig seemed, at least so far, fine with catching extra rats for the snake, and Harry had learned quickly how to immobilize them. He sighed and held up the rat, and the snake grabbed it and then began rearranging its jaws and the rat so it could swallow the thing.

“I don’t know how you can be close to it when it’s doing things like that.”

Harry could have said something cutting about how it was easier to be close to the snake than it was to be close to most people, but he didn’t see why he should. He just did more grunting and nodding.

“It is good. I am satisfied.”

Harry touched the snake’s scales, but it flowed off his arm and curled up on his pillow. It was doing that a lot, but with the winter closing in, Harry couldn’t blame it. There were times that he wished he could curl up and sleep the winter away.

“Harry.”

Like now.

Harry sighed and turned to face Theo and Blaise. “Yes, I was the one who found the cat,” he said. “I don’t know what else you want me to say about it. There was the message in blood and the water on the floor and the cat being Petrified. Those are all things that you confirmed you already knew about.”

“You are making the bed tremble by thumping it.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t even consciously realized that he was tapping his foot in agitation and making his bed sway. “Sorry.”

“I am going to sleep.”

“Are you the Heir of Slytherin?”

Harry’s eyes might have hurt with how hard he rolled them, but he considered it worth the risk. “No,” he said, as clearly and emphatically as he could, making sure it was in English. “You know that I was surprised I was speaking to snakes.”

“That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be Slytherin’s Heir. Just that you weren’t aware of your heritage until now.”

“So in your experience, do people who don’t know that about themselves usually go around Petrifying cats and writing messages in blood on the walls?”

Theo and Blaise looked at each other. Then Theo shook his head. “Not as such, no.”

“I’m not.”

“You know that a few people outside our House think you are? Longbottom and Thomas were whispering about it the other day.”

“That’s just because I’m in Slytherin and they think that being the Boy-Who-Lived should make me insanely powerful. It’s not because they know I can speak to snakes or really know anything about me.”

And it made Harry sore, honestly. He expected Slytherins to gossip about him at this point, but Gryffindor was supposed to be the House that didn’t have stupid blood prejudice. Harry supposed he was unlucky no matter what, though.

As long as Ron and Hermione didn’t start believing the rumors, then Harry could bear it. He just didn’t like it because he’d never done anything to Longbottom or Thomas, and yet they were whispering like he was a villain.

“You haven’t told them that you can speak to snakes.”

“I was under the impression you already knew that, Theo.”

“I knew it.”

Theo went back into silence again, the kind of evaluating silence that was Harry’s least favorite mood to spend time with him in. Theo was thinking deep thoughts of the kind that Harry couldn’t possibly understand, or something.

Blaise was the one who got up and went down with Harry to the common room, where half the conversations died as the people there saw Harry. Then they started up again, more trenchant and ferocious than ever.

Harry kept his head down, and worked on his Charms essay, and wished that he was less interesting to everyone alive.

*

“Stay after class, Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir.”

So we’re back to the games with Snape again, Harry thought crossly as he used his wand to clean up a spill near his cauldron. It had come from Ron’s cauldron, honestly, but Harry was pretty good with Cleaning Charms, and Ron had done his best.

“You all right, mate?”

Harry gave Ron a faint smile. Ron was lingering behind as if he intended to grab Snape if he were too mean to Harry, and Harry appreciated it, but he also didn’t want to get his friend in trouble. “I’ll be fine.”

Hermione grabbed Ron and pulled him out, although not without a concerned glance of her own in Harry’s direction. Harry thought she was more likely to assume a teacher had good intentions, but also wary of Snape for his obvious unfairness.

“Mr. Potter.”

“Yes, sir?”

Snape didn’t say anything else, so Harry turned to face him instead of staring after his friends. He kept his eyes on Snape’s robes and boots, though. It seemed to him that meeting Snape’s eyes was actively painful lately, maybe just because Snape seemed to suspect him for the bloody message about the Chamber.

He gave me the ring to protect me from my relatives, but he still thinks I’m up to no good.

“Has anyone accused you of being the Heir of Slytherin?”

What, you want to find out if you have company? But Harry wasn’t stupid enough to say something like that, and wouldn’t have been even before his first year at Hogwarts. He said passively, “A few of the Gryffindors seem to think I am, sir.”

“And the Slytherins?”

“A few have mentioned it.”

“Why is that?”

“They seem to think that because I’m the one who found the cat and the message, I must be responsible for them.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think they probably believe that I did it in hopes of fitting into Slytherin, sir.”

Snape paused long enough that Harry wondered if the professor would dismiss him. But instead, Snape said, “Do you have anything you want to tell me, Mr. Potter?”

“No, sir.”

And that was true. There might be some things that Harry wished he could tell Snape, if the professor would have supported him. But Harry had known that was hopeless even before the end of last term. Why should he expose himself to whatever insults Snape would heap on him just because things could have been different, in some other life?

They stood there, with dislike and weariness stretching between them, and then Snape sighed. “Go.”

Harry left the classroom, and shook his head a little at Ron and Hermione when he saw them waiting for him. “Snape just wanted to know why people think I’m the Heir of Slytherin,” he said. “Probably thinks that Slytherin will be shamed if they don’t have a bloodthirsty enough Heir or something.”

“Harry!”

Hermione’s scolding was reassuring, in its own way. Harry listened to what she said, and nodded. She could think that he agreed, if she wanted to.

Ron could think so, too, since he was nodding along to Hermione’s speech with a lot more enthusiasm. They both believed that the professors would protect the students. Neither of them had been brought to Dumbledore’s office and accused of cheating when a Bludger was stalking them.

But Harry shook his jealousy aside. In a way, he should be happy that Ron and Hermione were innocent enough that they thought Snape and McGonagall and Dumbledore were always really trying to protect the students instead of blame them. Harry hoped they never had to learn otherwise.

*

“You don’t have to really be the Heir of Slytherin to take advantage of the fact that they think you are.”

Harry sighed and drew a line through the paragraph he had started to write for Snape’s essay. Turning the page in his book had made him realize he was wrong about the significance of powdered sunstone to this potion. “What do you mean, Blaise?”

Blaise was silent.

Harry finally peered at him over the top of his Potions book, and found Blaise smiling at him. Harry swallowed, a little cautious. Blaise was more intense in some ways than Theo was, quicker to suggest painful curses and ways to hurt people. Harry thought it probably had something to do with his mother and the way he wanted to curse anyone who talked about her.

But it didn’t matter. Harry just needed to know when he should listen and when he should refuse to listen. Right now, he thought refusing would be more dangerous.

“What do you mean?” he repeated.

Blaise inclined his head shallowly. “You could command the other Slytherins to leave you alone, and they would. I think even Malfoy would. He’s a lot more cowed now that he knows you can speak to snakes.”

“And what happens when they find out I’m not the Heir?”

“Would they have to find out?”

“Of course they would. I’m not a good enough liar to keep a lie like that going for years—what?” Harry added, because Blaise’s mouth had opened a little and his hands had tensed around his own book.

“I thought you would say something about how you’re honor-bound to tell the truth. Or something equally ridiculous.”

“No.”

“You spend so much time with your Gryffindor friends that I thought for sure you would be influenced by them.”

Harry rolled his eyes, and didn’t try to conceal it. “People are more complex than their House stereotypes, Blaise. I’m half-convinced that the only reason most of us act brave or cunning or loyal or like studying is our life is because the rest of the people in the House do it, too. And some people don’t want to disappoint the Sorting Hat.”

“What about you?”

“There are certain things I have to do to survive. Maybe I would lie about being the Heir of Slytherin if I thought it was the only way I could survive. But I don’t think it is, and I still think people would be angrier when they found out than it’s worth.”

Blaise tapped his fingers on the cover of the book. Then he said, “I should go talk to Theo,” and got up and stalked out of the common room.

Harry shook his head as he watched Blaise go. He hoped his Slytherin friends hadn’t constructed some elaborate plan that depended on him being a good liar.

Although they should know me well enough to know I’m not that.

People who had been looking in his direction hastily shifted and glanced in another direction when Harry faced forwards again. Harry ignored them. People were always going to stare; he had come to expect that, at least. And also to think that he would just have to put up with it.