Chapter Forty-Two of 'For the Game'

[lomonaaeren]

Sirius came to dinner with a few burns on his face and hands. Harry stared at him until he sat back with a sigh and explained.

“Kreacher wasn’t happy at the idea of being sent to another house my parents used to own to work there. He tried to kill me. And he tried to curse me when he couldn’t do that. Normally, a house-elf couldn’t curse a wizard unless his master told him to do it, but he had some leftover magic from my dearly departed mother, it turns out.”

“You can…leave your magic to another person?”

“If you die and have a portrait made, so that you’re still around somehow to anchor the magic.” Sirius waved his fork and sent a portion of the roast Harry had made soaring over to another part of the kitchen. Harry concealed his snicker while Sirius drew his wand and cleaned up. “I don’t understand it. It’s pretty rare. But not while you’re alive.”

Harry nodded. He would have to keep that in mind, in case he ever…

Well. In case he ever.

“You’re going to be all right with my Slytherin friends coming to visit? If they can?” he added. He wasn’t sure that Theo would be able to sneak away from his father, and he didn’t know much about Blaise’s mother and her plans for Blaise at all.

“Yes.” Sirius laid his hands flat on the table. They really did have bad burns around the knuckles. “I know that you’re not just one thing, Harry.”

Harry blinked. “What d’you mean?”

“I mean that you’re not just my godson. Or the Boy-Who-Lived. Yeah,” Sirius said, nodding, when Harry grimaced. “Awful name, isn’t it? And you’re not just a Slytherin and a Parselmouth and the boy who killed a bloody basilisk, either. But you’re all those things, and that means I need to make space for them. The way I might not know how to if I’d got to raise you. So yeah, your Slytherin friends can come over.”

“What would I be like if you’d got to raise me?”

“The most Gryffindor Gryffindor ever to Gryffindor, of course.”

“I’m sorry that you didn’t get to.”

Sirius gentled, looking him in the eye for a long second before he stared down at the roast on his plate. “Me, too.”

*

“Hi, Theo.”

Theo stood in the kitchen for long moments, looking around. He shook his head when Harry glanced at him. “Father told me a few stories of this house. He was in school with Orion Black, you know. Your godfather’s father.”

“Yes, I know who Orion Black is.” Harry had had a nasty encounter with a portrait in the library who didn’t shut up just because he was a Parselmouth.

“Problems?” Theo caught Harry’s eye and held it.

“Just that according to Orion, I’m a disgrace not because I’m a half-blood intruding into his ancestral home, but because I’m a Parselmouth and a half-blood. Apparently I don’t deserve to speak it.”

Theo gave a little smile. It was a smile that seemed to pierce straight down into the heart of him, and did much the same to Harry’s heart, the way the sight of Theo’s throat or the sound of Blaise’s laughter had done during the school term.

Harry ignored it. He was the one who was heaving weird thoughts. He was the one who would be weird if he brought it up.

A freak. Like usual.

He controlled his breathing and nodded to Theo. “Do you want to see some of the curses that Sirius taught me? The books in the library are brilliant. And he doesn’t mind if I learn any kind of spell as long as I can use it to defend myself.”

Theo looked tempted, but he shook his head. “I think I’d like to visit Orion Black’s portrait and ask him a few things.”

“Theo, are you insane?”

A flicker of an expression across Theo’s face, too quick for Harry to tell what it meant. “Please don’t call me that.”

Harry recalled some of the things the original Death Eaters had been accused of, and wondered whether Theo’s father had been called mad and he resented it for the same reasons that Harry resented being called weird. Harry nodded. “All right. I won’t.”

Theo relaxed. “But it’s fair for you to ask why I want to see him,” he said, and he started towards the stairs. Harry followed him. “The important part is that I’m going to explain to the portrait that your blood has nothing to do with your worth.”

“Uh. It doesn’t?”

Theo froze for a long moment, and then turned around on the stairs. He met Harry’s eyes, searching. Harry did the same thing. He had long ago decided that he didn’t think any of his friends, even if they knew Legilimency or learned it, would read his mind.

“Why do you think that?” Theo whispered.

“I thought you believed it, and I was trying not to cause an argument by confronting you about it.”

Theo took a breath that, like his smile from before, seemed to travel all the way down into his chest, and then shook his head. “No, Harry. Of course not. I won’t deny that my father tried to raise me that way, but I was disabused of the notion long before I came to Hogwarts. My father encouraged me to read books and ask questions. I only recited the answers he wanted to hear, because that pleased him, but my thoughts have always been my own.”

“Okay,” Harry said, shoulders slumping under the weight of a relief he hadn’t even known he could feel. He smiled at Theo.

Theo swallowed oddly and turned to the stairs. “I’ll make sure the portrait doesn’t bother you again.”

“All right,” Harry said. “You can try.”

*

“Who’s this? Another half-blood come to claim gifts he shouldn’t have?”

“My name is Theodore Nott.”

Harry watched curiously as Theo halted in front of Orion’s portrait. His face was locked in a sneer Harry had never seen before. Even when Theo was dealing with people who made him impatient, the way Draco sometimes did, he mostly looked bored.

“A Nott? A pureblood?”

“Yes.”

Orion Black pressed forwards against the edge of the portrait. He looked a lot like Sirius, but only if Sirius had never gone to Azkaban, and had spent all his time practicing Dark magic, besides. His face had a permanent sneer that ran deeper than Theo’s. “And you’re friends with this one?” He jerked his head in Harry’s direction.

“Yes.”

“Why? Don’t tell me that you’re just desperate to follow a Parselmouth lord. Your father has a much better one.”

Theo smiled with only his lips. His eyes looked dead. “Do you know what happened to people who carry the Dark Mark when the Dark Lord perished?” he asked softly.

“I don’t believe he perished.”

“Then temporarily went away the night he confronted Harry. It makes no difference to me what you call it.”

Orion hesitated for a long moment, as though searching for a trap in Theo’s words. Then he grunted. “No. I was dead by then.”

“My father is still alive,” Theo said. “But only by courtesy. He eats. He drinks. He measures out what he eats and drinks with precise spells, as a matter of fact. It’s no longer a source of enjoyment to him. He exercises and practices magic because he knows it’s a matter of keeping his body and power healthy. He reads books that he thinks will be useful in the future. But never for pleasure. He hasn’t been able to read anything for enjoyment since the night the Dark Lord—vanished.”

“You’re a liar.”

“No.” Theo’s face and voice were oddly merciless. “What I am is a voice of the truth. He paid a price in life and soul for his service to that monster. It’s one I’ll never pay.”

Orion stared at him. Then he turned to stare at Harry.

“How did you vanquish him, then?” Orion finally demanded.

Harry spread his hands.

“That is not an answer!”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, free to be dry and impatient with an adult the way that he usually couldn’t be. It helped that this adult couldn’t reach out and do anything to him. “I was one year old. I don’t remember much of that night, if anything. If you ask me, it’s more than likely something my parents did.”

“But that isn’t an answer, either!”

“You’re the one who swore your life to serve a madman,” Harry snapped, thoroughly exasperated. “I’d say you’re the one who deserves to question your choices, more than I do.”

Orion reared back, staring at him. Then he whirled and marched out of the portrait. Harry relaxed a little. At least he knew, because of Sirius, that there was no other portrait of Orion specifically that was anywhere in the house.

“Good answer.”

Harry glanced at Theo, smiling. “Thanks. You too.” He hesitated, and then didn’t ask about Theo’s father, since it seemed unlikely Theo would talk about it. “Do you want to see the library?”

“Of course.”

Harry laughed a little as he led Theo up the stairs, thinking absently as they went about the differences between having Theo over, and having Ron and Hermione. Ron and Hermione were great, of course. They could argue and bicker, but they would always stand behind Harry in the end.

But with Theo, he could be more relaxed, and not worry about saying or doing something that would make him sound too cynical or too blasé about Dark Arts or—

Too Slytherin?

Harry shrugged as he opened the door to the library. Yeah, maybe that was it.

*

“So how many books did Theo ask to borrow?”

Harry laughed as he led Blaise into the library and watched his friend’s eyes widen greedily at the sight of the full shelves. “Only a few, oddly enough. One on curses that Bl—Sirius is also having me study, so Sirius made a copy of it for him, and one on magical history, which I didn’t know he was interested in.”

“He’s been getting more interested in it lately,” Blaise said, walking up to one of the shelves and standing easily to reach a book above his head. Harry burned with a bit of envy. He was probably never going to be as tall as Blaise, even when they finished growing. “He says that what Binns teaches is so rotten there has to be more under the surface.”

“All right. If he says so.”

“So what are you interested in?” Blaise asked, turning around and dividing his attention between Harry and the book in his hand. From the title, it looked like something about Dark artifacts. “Parselmouths? Curses? Languages?”

“Languages?”

“Well, Parseltongue is a magical language. I just wondered if you were interested in anything else that concerned those.”

Harry shook his head a little and wandered over to browse the shelf underneath where Blaise had been looking. Sometimes a book seemed to tingle against his magic and call out to him, but that wasn’t the kind of thing he was ready to share with anyone. “I suppose curses. Things that will help me survive.”

“Life is more than survival.”

“Yes, but you have to do that first.”

After a long moment of looking at Harry, studying him as if he thought that he would find a trace of an unusual aura around him or something, Blaise just shook his head. “True enough.” He held up the book. “Would Black mind if I borrow this? My mother has an interest in how artifacts are created, and so do I.”

“Just ask him. I don’t think he’ll mind.”

“Thank Merlin you have a guardian who understands that people need to study ahead of their year level.”

More like a guardian who’s desperate to make up for not being in my life for so long, Harry thought, but he nodded and followed Blaise down the stairs.

Sirius not only enthusiastically agreed to let Blaise borrow the book, but was waiting for them in the kitchen with Muggle pizza. Blaise kept stopping while they were eating to study the pizza from several angles.

“It won’t bite you back,” Harry said, after the third time.

“I know that. I’m simply marveling that they can make something that looks as if it’s made entirely of artificial materials taste so good.”

Harry laughed, and the snake complained about his shoulder shaking, but what really bolstered his mood was the contented look on Sirius’s face.

*

“Guess what I have!”

Harry blinked and glanced up. Sirius had departed through the Floo that morning with a mysterious expression and a shake of his head when Harry had asked him where he was going, and the snake was hunting in the garden. Harry estimated he’d been alone for at least three hours. It was hard to drag his mind away from the book of fascinating spells in front of him, which would help him strengthen his heart and lungs and skin and muscles. “What?”

Sirius was dancing up and down in the doorway of the library, his hands behind his back. “I told you to guess!”

“Um…a live Kneazle?”

Sirius laughed, a sound that got more bark-like and less raven-like every time he did it. “No!”

“Uh…Ever-Melting Ices?”

“Those are a thing?”

Harry laughed a little at the expression on Sirius’s face. “Yeah. Apparently they melt all the time and cover you with the ice flavor, but don’t actually lose any of their substance.”

“Brilliant. We’ll have to try some!”

Harry nodded, although he made a mental note to brush up on his cleaning charms. “Then I give up.”

“Ta-daaaaa!” Sirius said, whipping out two bright golden things from behind his back.

Harry blinked and leaned forwards. Sirius danced up to him and held out the nearest golden thing. Harry took it slowly, thinking it was a Transfigured Galleon and might change back the minute he touched it. It was a trick that Sirius had pulled when Ron and Hermione were there.

But no, the golden thing remained the same, and now Harry could see that it was a ticket. He read the words on it a few times and then stared at Sirius.

“How did you get a ticket to the Quidditch World Cup?”

“I went and stared at a couple people in the Ministry who feel sorry that I was imprisoned for so long. Amelia Bones chief among them.” Sirius looked smug. “She doesn’t want to take the time to go to the game anyway, what with her work, so she was happy to give me her tickets after a bit of persuasion.”

“Wow,” Harry said, a little overwhelmed. It wasn’t so much going to the game itself; he didn’t have enough experience of Quidditch or liking for it to really want to. It was that Sirius had gone and dealt with people he’d probably rather never see again just so that he could get a gift for Harry.

“You like it, right?” Sirius asked anxiously. “You want to go?”

“Of course I do,” Harry said, feeling a twinge of remorse for not reacting with the over-the-top happiness Sirius had probably expected. He got up to hug his godfather. “I don’t play Quidditch, so I don’t know as much about it as I should and sometimes I don’t feel like cheering for Slytherin at the Hogwarts games. But it would be nice to know more about it.”

“And cheer for people who deserve it!” Sirius was all but hopping up and down. “There are Pensieve memories of games you can watch! Wait until you see Bulgaria’s Seeker, Viktor Krum, he’s brilliant and there are these moves he pulls off…”

Sirius led the way downstairs, chattering, and Harry followed with a soft smile on his lips. It meant a lot that Sirius would do something like this, whether or not Harry liked Quidditch. He was doing it to show he cared.

And by now, Harry was accepting that Sirius really did.