Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

“Zabini and Nott were hinting about you defeating a—a man disguised as a rat, or something?”

Harry stifled a groan as he leaned against the wall and stretched his arms. Dueling with Millicent was getting more and more physical, as she got confident with some of the minor hexes and started using the stronger spells her magic was more suited to. Still, it wasn’t anything Harry couldn’t handle, given the bruises that Dudley used to inflict on him.

“Sort of. It’s a long story.”

“Could I hear it?”

Harry studied Millicent carefully for a minute. She was standing in front of him with an odd expression, hopeful and not. It didn’t take him long to place it. That was the way he used to feel when his relatives dangled something in front of him that he knew they were going to take away. But he kept imagining how wonderful it would be if they did give it to him.

“Sure. Why not?”

They ended up sitting down on the floor, since the nearest classrooms were a long way off and Harry thought someone might yell at them for sitting on a chair anyway. Millicent listened closely to how Harry had approached Black, or the two times that Black had approached him, and gasped appreciatively when Harry told her how he’d managed to capture Pettigrew.

“So what happens now?” she asked, when Harry had run out of story.

“I don’t know for sure. I think both Black and Pettigrew went to the Ministry and he’s having a trial, but they haven’t said anything about it. And I don’t want to get my hopes up, you know? Just in case it turns out that nothing happens, or they declare Black guilty and throw him back in prison.”

A second later, Harry’s face burned. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid to confess something like that. He sounded like a weak, whining child, and Millicent would probably think—

“I won’t tell.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

Millicent was leaning forwards, earnest eyes fastened on him. “I said, I won’t tell. I know it could be a secret.”

“Could be?”

“You don’t want to tell me more about it in case you reveal what it means to you. I understand that. My life is full of things that could be secrets. If anyone cared.” Millicent’s mouth twisted a bit. “We’re friends. I’ll keep your secrets the way you’ve kept mine.”

Harry licked his lips. “I—thank you.”

“Thank you. I think that I’m going to pass Defense, thanks to you.”

Harry bobbed his head at her, and walked a little behind her on their way back to the Slytherin common room. They’d made it a point to enter separately up until now, but he sped up so that they were walking side by side when they got back to the door.

Millicent eyed him. “What are you doing?”

“We’re friends, right?”

“Right…”

“So we should walk together and show people that we’re not going to be intimidated out of spending time together because some stupid people might have stupid opinions.”

Millicent’s eyes brightened in a way that made Harry have to look away for a second. Then she cleared her throat and nodded. “Of course. And thank you.”

“You’ve given me as much as I’ve given you.”

Millicent looked as though she might disagree with that, but then the door into the common room opened, and they walked in together. There were some people gaping at them, but Harry ignored that. He went to fetch the snake, who had decided to stay in bed and sleep this time instead of, as it put things, “getting randomly hit and awakened by you jumping around.”

“Eggs,” hissed the snake, as Harry picked it up.

“I have eggs.” Harry had stopped by the kitchens that morning when the snake was still asleep. It wasn’t hard to find it now that he’d studied so many tracking and finding spells. He handed the first egg to the snake and watched it gulp the thing.

“I knew there was a reason I had a pet human.”

Harry rolled his eyes and fed the snake another egg. Then he flopped back against the pillow and closed his eyes as the snake curled up on his stomach, hissing fondly.

He was just wondering if he should practice his Occlumency when someone cleared his throat. Harry rolled over and blinked at the sight of Crabbe standing in front of him. Crabbe and Goyle normally tried to avoid the bedroom when the snake was out.

“Um,” Crabbe said, looking over Harry’s head. “There’s a professor at the door.”

“And they want to talk with me?”

“Um.”

Harry sighed and sat up, shaking his head. At least he knew the professor probably wasn’t Snape. Crabbe might be stupid, but he would have named the man. And it had to be the common room door, not the bedroom door, if it wasn’t Snape. The Head of House was the only one with regular access to Slytherin’s dormitories.

Harry still blinked when he stepped back out the common room door and found Lupin standing there. The snake hissed violently from under his robe collar.

“Hello, Harry.”

“Hello, sir,” Harry said slowly. He tried to think of a reason Lupin would be here, and couldn’t come up with anything. “What is it?”

“Do you have a few minutes?”

It was a Sunday afternoon, and Harry didn’t have anything else to do after his duel with Millicent, considering all his homework was done. He shrugged and warily trailed Lupin back to his office.

“I do not like him,” the snake announced. “I do not like his smell.”

“You and me both,” Harry muttered, even though he knew they meant different things.

“You cannot smell as I do. Where is your tongue?”

Harry might have enjoyed having that argument with the snake under any other circumstances. As it was, he ended up sitting up across from Lupin on a fairly comfortable chair while the man bustled around making tea.

Exactly what Harry didn’t want. He couldn’t relax in the professor’s presence, and he didn’t want to listen to more excuses. But he had to sit there, with a stiff smile on his face, and accept the teacup he had no intention of drinking out of.

“How are you, Harry?”

“Fine, sir.”

Lupin leaned forwards a little, as though thinking that Harry would volunteer more information. Harry stared over Lupin’s head at the wall. He had his doubts about whether this professor was a Legilimens, but just not meeting people’s eyes seemed to be a good practice in general.

Lupin finally sighed and leaned back. “Professor Dumbledore has told me about your interactions with Sirius Black. That must have been quite a shock.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you might as well know…”

Lupin paused, swallowing nervously. He seemed to do everything nervously, Harry thought, watching him. Deny that he didn’t want to teach Slytherins Defense, and hold private conversations, and serve tea.

Harry wondered for a moment what else Lupin did fearfully, and then discarded the thought. He honestly didn’t care about knowing.

“I was a friend of your parents.”

Harry stared at him. “What?”

“Your shoulder is tense.”

For once, Harry was focused intently enough on Lupin to ignore the snake. “Would you mind repeating that, sir?”

Lupin winced. “We were friends. And Bl—Sirius, and…Peter.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Lupin flinched and ducked his head. He always seemed to be doing that, Harry noted with a distant part of himself, the part that wasn’t floating around in fire-drenched fury. “It—it didn’t come up?”

“You could have mentioned it at any time, sir.”

“I’ll ask that you not take that tone with me, Harry.”

Harry stared at him, and then did his best to calm his anger, but only because some of the shelves behind Lupin were rattling. In the end, he had to retreat into the cold plain of his Occlumency to handle things, and he spoke mildly from the middle of suppressed emotions. “I still want to know why you didn’t tell me.”

“I thought that it would make you—feel bad. That you might wonder why I hadn’t adopted you or come to visit you."

"I might wonder that, yes, sir."

Lupin flinched harder than he had when Harry had asked about his reasons for not telling Harry the truth. “There were—I have a particular medical condition that would make it—hard for me to adopt a child.”

“And visits?”

“I understood that your Muggle relatives didn’t want a visit.”

“Who told you that, sir?”

Lupin hesitated. Then he said, “Professor Dumbledore.”

“Ah.” Harry nodded. His magic escaped his control enough to send a long, low hum through the floor, but he managed to restrain it by tucking away his immediate emotions in a dark blade of grass that was swaying on the edge of his vision. “So I couldn’t know you when I was a child. What about this year?”

“I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“So you hid.”

“Well—yes. And I thought that because I’d been friends with Sirius, you might believe I was in league with him.”

“I wouldn’t have believed that, sir.” But the clarity of Occlumency did lead Harry’s thoughts in a particular direction. He tilted his head. “On the other hand, if you were friends with him, you must have known about his Animagus form.”

Lupin froze as though he expected someone to leap out and club him around the head. “Yes,” he finally said, choking a little. “I—did.”

“And you didn’t inform anyone about that? Not even Professor Dumbledore?”

Lupin pulled at the collar of his robe as though it had turned out to be of heavier material than he’d thought. “I couldn’t—we learned when we were young. Just Hogwarts students, in fact. It wasn’t allowed, so we didn’t advertise it. Even the Headmaster never knew about it. I couldn’t—face his disappointment for—never telling him, even when we’d thought Sirius betrayed us.”

“Your shoulder is tense again. It was calm, and now it is tense. If you would let me bite him, this wouldn’t happen.”

“I see,” Harry said. He was proud of his voice, calm and glassy and without any cracks in the surface. “Why did you decide to tell me about the link with my parents now, instead of later in the year? Or not at all?”

“As a matter of fact, I thought Sirius had already told you.” Lupin forced his mouth into an approximation of a smile that made Harry want to wrinkle his nose. “So it seemed silly to hide a secret I assumed was already out.”

“Or you thought it might make me distrust you more?”

“Well. Yes. Also that.”

Harry floated in the middle of his cold reality and watched the man who had valued Dumbledore’s opinion above him. As Snape had. As everyone seemed to have except Harry’s own friends and Professor Flitwick.

“Well, there’s one thing you could do for me now.”

“Yes?” Lupin leaned eagerly forwards. “Do you want some stories about your mother? I assumed you must have heard more about James, but I could tell you—”

“Stay away from me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Professor. Stay away from me. I’ll attend your classes because I have to, but I don’t think anything of you as a person. You’re a coward and self-involved and more concerned with disappointing someone from your schooldays than being involved in my life. Go to hell.”

“Harry!”

Lupin was spluttering. Harry turned and walked out of the office, silently congratulating himself on the cold way he’d spoken.

“Your shoulder is less tense now.”

“That’s good,” Harry said, calm and confident in the middle of his Occlumency. It was tempting to stay there. Of course he knew that Blaise was right about the negative effects, but at the moment, those seemed small next to what he knew he would be facing when he returned to himself.

“I desire more eggs.”

“We can stop by the kitchen and get them.”

“What is a kitchen?”

Harry smiled. He had only had occasion to say the name a few times before in Parseltongue, so he hadn’t noticed that it didn’t really translate. “A place where they store and make food. Come on, I’ll show you.”

“It will be good.”

And it was. Harry deliberately maintained his Occlumency until he was back in his bedroom and had closed the curtains around his bed and locked them with a complicated spell he’d looked up a few days ago. He also made sure that the snake was firmly curled up under his pillow, as firmly asleep.

Then he let the Occlumency go.

In seconds, he was curled up with his arms around his head, sobbing quietly. He didn’t know why, except maybe that it was anger and sadness that had boiled up under the surface of his Occlumency and now needed to come out.

He knew—he knew, and he just let me—

Black could have killed me if he was really a murderer, and Lupin still cared more about Dumbledore than me.

Harry curled up so closely that he could feel more than hear his own crying. He wept until it seemed that he was trembling and wrung-out like one of the cleaning cloths that Petunia used to make him use. Then he sat up and cast charms that would dry his tears and make his face look normal.

“Harry?”

Harry started. That was Blaise’s voice, right outside the curtains.

“I’m all right,” he called, using Occlumency to tamp down the emotion in his voice and sound normal. “Are you?”

“I am, but Bulstrode told me that you went off with Lupin, and then I saw the expression on your face when you came back.”

At least Harry was pretty sure that the expression on his face hadn’t betrayed him too much to anyone else, because his Occlumency would have prevented that. He still hesitated a long moment before he cast the charm that unsealed the curtains and let Blaise in.

His friend immediately sat down on the half of the bed closest to the wall and looked quietly at him.

Leaving it up to Harry to explain.

Harry swallowed. “Lupin wanted to tell me that he knew my parents,” he said dully. “He was friends with them. And Black. And Pettigrew. So he knew about Black’s Animagus form and how he was getting into the castle.”

“And he told no one?” Blaise’s voice was a furious hiss.

“No. He said—he said that since becoming Animagi was against the rules, he didn’t want to tell Dumbledore and—disappoint him.”

“And his explanation for why he didn’t at least visit you before this?”

“He said Dumbledore told him my Muggle family didn’t want visits. And that he had a medical condition that meant he wouldn’t be able to adopt me.”

“A medical condition.”

Harry looked up. Blaise was staring at the wall beyond the bed, his eyes so wide that Harry turned to look instinctively in that direction, too. But there was nothing there.

“What?” Harry asked.

“Harry, how much do you want him to suffer?”

“Huh?”

Blaise bent towards him, his eyes so deep with determination that Harry felt as though he couldn’t look away. “Lupin. How much do you want him to suffer for what he did to you? Because I can make him suffer. I promise you. But I don’t want to do it if you would rather just forget about this.”

“I—Blaise, I wouldn’t want you to kill him. Or maim him,” Harry added after thinking about it for a second.

“This wouldn’t be that.”

Harry gnawed on his lip for a long second. He couldn’t imagine what else Blaise would be talking about.

But the hurt was still sitting in the center of his chest. It would retreat if he used Occlumency, but Harry knew that he couldn’t use that all the time. And Blaise would know if he retreated into it right now.

Harry studied Blaise for a long moment, and then nodded. “All right.”

Blaise smiled, a delighted, dark smile Harry had never seen before, and which made something strange shift inside his chest. “I promise that you won’t regret it, Harry. Let me write to my mother.”

He slipped away before Harry could decide whether that was a good idea or not. Harry lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.

He would need Occlumency and lots of time before he could completely soothe the wound Lupin had left him with, but at least he knew he would get there eventually.

*

“Does anyone know what’s going on?”

Harry shrugged as Malfoy sat down next to him. “No, I was eating. What do you mean?”

“Professor Lupin’s missing from the breakfast table.”

Harry blinked and looked up. Malfoy was right. Of course, Lupin was sick on a regular basis, so it wasn’t that remarkable.

On the other hand, Lupin was usually sick for a few days and then came back and was fine for at least a few weeks. It was unusual for him to have another sick episode so close on the heels of one that had just finished.

I wonder if Blaise poisoned him? Harry craned his neck to see down the Slytherin table. Blaise was sitting in his usual place and smiling. At least a few of the other students had eased away from him, although Theo sat at his side as always.

Theo looked as puzzled as the rest of them, though.

Did Blaise not tell him?

“Students, pay attention, please.”

Harry turned back to watch Professor McGonagall rising to her feet. She looked wan. Harry cocked his head. If Blaise had put poison in the professors’ food, maybe it had caught her, too.

I do hope that Blaise didn’t kill him. He promised.

It was a shock to realize, suddenly, that Harry was trusting Blaise to keep his promises.

In the midst of his blinking, he almost missed the beginning of McGonagall’s announcement. “Several of you might have noticed that Professor Lupin has had several illnesses throughout the term. And some of you might have heard the news that spread by official complaint through the school this morning. Professor Lupin is—is a werewolf, and will no longer be teaching at Hogwarts.”

The storm of gossip and roaring of questions that blew up made McGonagall respond sharply and eventually use a spell to call for silence. Harry barely noticed. He was too busy staring in Blaise’s direction.

Blaise half-smiled at him and toasted Harry with his goblet.