Chapter Eight of 'Inter Vivos'- Allegations

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Chapter Eight—Allegations

Harry shoved the portrait open, but slowly, so that he wouldn’t alert the crazed murderer standing there and make him run off down the corridor. His own excitement was thick in his blood by now, pounding through his body and making him shake with it. Yes, there was still some fear and some anger, but the main point was that he was doing something about all the stupidity around him, and that hadn’t happened since he confronted the basilisk last year.

I bet this is an adventure Malfoy would love to be on, he thought, but he didn’t exactly have time or a secret passage to sneak down to the dungeons from here and fetch Malfoy before Black disappeared.

His first sight was encouraging. A man with long dark hair was pacing back and forth, his hands clenched, his head swaying from side to side like an angry bear’s. Now and then he hissed under his breath as if he was complaining to someone who wasn’t there. His face had a haggard look, and his eyes were wild. Harry smiled a little. Good. He deserves some torment for betraying my parents.

Harry considered him for a moment, until he realized that Black’s pacing was always back and forth in the same small square of space. Harry grinned and prepared a tripwire jinx. It was one of the smaller spells that Snape had had him study, but it would tighten wickedly around someone’s ankle if the caster commanded it to.

And then he couldn’t cast it after all, because Black whirled around and stared at the portrait again—and straight into Harry’s eyes.

Harry nearly lost his grip on the wand. He’d never seen someone look so desperate, and when he saw those eyes widen, with recognizing him, he was sure, he was paralyzed with shock for a moment.

But then Black made a swearing noise in his throat and started forwards.

Harry immediately slipped through the portrait and put his back against it as it shut. He might be hurt himself, but he wouldn’t make it easy for Black to hurt anyone else. And now his wand was in his hand again, and his hand was steady. He even managed to sound threatening when he said, “Don’t come any closer.”

“Harry, Harry, Harry,” whispered Black. One hand twitched as if he would reach out and touch him, but luckily he was smart enough to keep it still.

The words sickened Harry. They sounded like ones a godfather would say bending over a cot. “You killed my parents,” he said. “You helped him kill my parents. And you want to kill me. I’m going to kill you.” His voice wavered on the last words, or it would have sounded more impressive, he thought.

“I didn’t kill your parents,” Black said. “It was Pettigrew. Peter. The rat.” He laughed as if he found his joke enormously funny, and Harry tensed further. The laughter was loud. Someone would come and find them if they weren’t careful, and then he wouldn’t get to deal with this situation and his parents’ traitorous best friend by himself.

“Pettigrew’s dead,” Harry said. He aimed his wand carefully at Black’s chest. There was a spell that stopped the heart, too, but the incantation was long. Harry wondered if he would finish it before Black attacked him. He wasn’t ready for nonverbal magic yet, Professor Snape said, but maybe he could whisper it just beneath his breath and it would still count.

“He’s not,” Black said firmly. “He could turn into a rat, and he was the one who betrayed your parents. We switched Secret-Keepers at the last instant. I used to be the Secret-Keeper, but now he is. Was.” He paused for a moment, as if he had lost track of what they were talking about.

Well, that’s what happens when you’re insane, Harry thought. He began to speak the first syllables of the spell.

“And now he’s here,” said Black, gesturing so emphatically that Harry jumped and lost the thread of the spell, “hiding in the school. He’s a rat. He’s your friend Weasley’s rat. Scabbers.”

Right. Scabbers killed my parents. Harry braced himself against the portrait and prepared to try the spell again. He couldn’t believe he was being so weak. The Dark Arts were supposed to be tempting, corrupting. Why couldn’t he finish a spell like this on the first try any more than he could finish a complicated charm in Professor Flitwick’s class? Black would kill Harry if Harry didn’t kill him.

“Look,” Black said abruptly, his eyes fixed on Harry and his manner changed again to a cajoling one, “we were all Animagi together, James and Peter and—and Remus and I. I could turn into a dog, and Peter could turn into a rat, and your father could turn into a stag. Watch. I’ll prove it to you.” And then he vanished, and in his place was the large black dog Harry had seen as he was running from Privet Drive after blowing Aunt Marge up.

Harry stared. His mouth had fallen open, and he hated that, but he could feel some faint stirrings of doubt inside him.

The dog turned back into Black, who was keeping his distance from Harry, his hands raised in the air. “I don’t have a wand,” he said. “But I know a spell that forces an Animagus to turn back into their human form. You go get Peter, and I’ll teach you the spell. You could force him to turn back to his human self. That would at least prove I didn’t kill him. And there are potions that can make someone tell the truth, too.” Black’s eyes shone suddenly. “I know you’re friends with someone who can brew them.”

Harry swallowed. His eyes were burning. He would have said that he was about to cry, but he knew he gave up crying a long time ago.

“I should just tell someone you’re here,” he said.

“You could do that.” Black’s face was unreadable now, and he had crossed his arms. But his eyes were darting across Harry as if he wanted to memorize him. “But I don’t think you will. You’re a Gryffindor, Harry.” His grin showed up again suddenly, and Harry thought it was the way his father had smiled in the pictures Hagrid had given him, before Seamus burned them. “Go. Get the rat. The spell has no effect on an animal who’s not an Animagus. I’ll let you use it on me first, so you can see how it works. Go.” His voice lowered, and he whispered. “Go get him. Please.”

Harry nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure why he was trusting an insane murderer, except that he seemed a little less like an insane murderer than Harry had imagined he would. He turned to open the portrait again.

Then he heard a low snarl. He whirled around and lifted his wand, ready to strike if Black had turned back into a dog and was going to hurt him.

Instead, Black had faced alertly down the corridor, sniffing as if he had a dog’s nose in human form, too. Then the shadows parted, and Professor Snape came around the corner at the other end of a lit wand.

His smile was horrible.

“Black,” he said. “I should have known, really.”

He fired off a curse without pausing, but Black had already dodged. Snape coolly adjusted his position and cast again. This time, though, Black had turned into a dog, and he had jumped at the portrait with all his feet out—

And somehow slipped a paw into a tiny crack around the edge that Harry hadn’t even noticed he left. The portrait banged open, and Black slipped inside, his tail a curving slice of darkness before it vanished.

Harry grabbed the portrait and yanked it open, and then he tore inside, Snape right behind him. The professor was cursing, but in a voice so low and cold it sounded inhuman.

It was easy to tell where Black had gone; a series of muddy pawprints led straight across the Gryffindor common room and up the stairs towards Harry’s bedroom. Harry ran faster, ignoring the way Snape shouted for him to wait, and began climbing the stairs himself. His mind was full of Black tearing apart Ron in his haste to get to the rat, or because he really was mad.

“Impedimenta!”

He tripped, and in the next moment, a Body-Bind encircled his arms and pulled them tight to his sides. Harry yelped in frustration as the wand clattered from his hand with the sudden movement, and he pitched over against a chair before he could stop himself.

Snape slid past him. Harry glared at him in betrayal. Snape looked at him calmly for a moment, then shook his head.

“You are still not up to dueling with a mad wizard on your own terms,” he said. “You are to stay here and out of danger, Potter.” And he fled up the stairs with his robes flapping around him like bats’ wings.

Harry wanted to point out that he had dueled a basilisk on its own terms, but he couldn’t move his jaw. So, instead, he set out to get free, concentrating his will grimly to break the bonds, the way Snape had hinted was possible, or to summon his wand to him, the way he’d managed to after blowing up Aunt Marge.

*

Severus knew that he was taking the Gryffindor stairs as if he were mad himself, but within the whirl of his emotions, he was quite calm. He knew what he needed to do.

Capture Black. Take him to Dumbledore. Watch as the Dementors sucked out his soul.

He had to admit, it was the thought of the last that he enjoyed the most.

He burst into the bedroom full of moonlight and shadows and sleeping boys, most of whom only made muffled noises of protest when they heard the noise. And then he realized there were two struggling animals, too, the dog leaping madly over the one empty bed in pursuit of a rat.

“Stupefy!” Severus shouted, and the red beam shot out from his wand.

Not in time, it appeared, because it only struck one post of Potter’s bed and made it wobble in place. Rat and dog disappeared beneath the bed.

Severus wasn’t used to fighting non-human opponents, and Black had always had an astonishing amount of luck. He spent a moment telling himself that because otherwise he would explode in rage, and that was not conducive to bringing Black within range of the Dementors.

A black paw shoved into sight, groping about wildly from beneath the bed as if its owner had dropped something.

Severus aimed at it again, and again missed.

A rat scuttled past his feet, squeaking. The dog followed the same route a moment later, and Severus tripped. He heard Black’s barking, and he knew it had a mocking edge to it.

For a moment, the Tower melted around him, and he was back in the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow where Potter’s father had saved his life, and rage and humiliation and fear burned in him, that they always seemed to win, all of them, and he was nothing but the plaything of their jokes and of fate—

And then he brought himself back to the present with a sharp mental smack in the forehead as he heard a squeal of pain. Whirling around, he saw that, for some reason, a large cat had caught the rat near the door and was playing with it, tossing it from paw to paw. The dog frisked around it, not barking, but letting its tongue hang out of its mouth, panting like an idiot.

Severus had had enough of this nonsense as well as of his magic misfiring. He aimed his wand and silently incanted the spell that would force Black to resume his true form.

A flash like lightning cut the darkness of the bedroom, and resulted in confused, sleepy cries from the brats, as the dog became Black, who looked as idiotic as Severus had expected on all fours with his hair hanging in his face. But, to Severus’s surprise, the rat flying between the cat’s paws was suddenly a small, hunched man with watery eyes and long hair also straggling in his face, as appeared to be the Gryffindor fashion of late.

Pettigrew. Severus would have known him anywhere, just as he had had no trouble recognizing Black and Lupin after all these years.

He did live.

Severus wasn’t given a chance to work out the riddle. Pettigrew had changed back the next instant and taken a flying leap past the cat, whom he had half-crushed when he resumed his human form. Black tried to follow, and of course Severus Stunned him, as he had been trying to do since he entered the room.

Pettigrew was a cause for concern, doubtless, but Black was the one who had entered the school, stalked Potter, and somehow broken out of Azkaban.

I daresay the Ministry will be interested to know how he did that, Severus thought idly, as he cast Expelliarmus to summon Black’s wand, in case he had one. If they give him a chance to answer questions before the Dementors eat his soul, of course.

An exquisite shiver of pure pleasure ran down his back as he contemplated the inevitable outcome of this night’s work.

And, of course, the rage and panic in Black’s eyes.

*

Harry saw his wand come towards him. He had to concentrate for just a moment more, and then he thought he would probably be able to break free.

But then a small rat ran down the stairs and in the direction of the portrait of the Fat Lady, and no dog, or human, followed it.

Harry, his dread increasing, remembered Snape’s face and the way he had looked when he marched up the stairs. He might have killed Black, and that was why he wasn’t following the rat. Never mind that Harry had been about to kill Black when they met before the portrait; he’d changed his mind since and wanted to listen to the man’s story, and if Snape had killed him, then that wasn’t going to be possible.

He exerted a mighty effort, as mighty as he could, fueled by desperation, and the Body-Bind snapped like a string. Harry snatched up his wand and took the steps two at a time.

He burst into a room where Ron, Dean, and Neville were all out of bed and chattering at each other and at Professor Snape about what had happened. Seamus was hanging back, his eyes wide. When he saw Harry looking at him, he sneered, but he also folded his arms and edged away, the way he’d done since the burning incident.

Harry calmed down his instinctive anger and looked at Snape, who had Black lying at his feet. Perhaps Black had been Stupefied at one point, but now he was awake and adding his voice to the general chorus, using some words that Harry didn’t think even Uncle Vernon knew. Snape had his arms folded and was watching the commotion with a look of peace that Harry hated. He could have shut Black up; he could have explained things to Ron, Dean, and Neville. But he didn’t want to.

Harry tapped his throat with his wand and cast Sonorus. “Everybody shut up,” he said loudly.

Everyone winced as his voice echoed through the room, and did so. Black looked at him hopefully. The other boys, except Seamus, who continued to huddle in the far corner, stared at Harry. Snape had his eyes half-closed, as if Harry were a strange potion he’d lost the recipe to.

“I have something that will tell us the truth,” Harry said. “Or part of the truth.” He reckoned he really had no way of knowing for certain that Pettigrew was the one who had betrayed his parents, even though he thought he could tell who the rat had really been, unless Black took a truth potion.

Everyone just stared as he walked across the room and picked up the map he had dropped on the bed in his haste to get out the portrait. He looked at the lower floors of the castle.

And there, hurrying towards the front doors, was a dot labeled “Peter Pettigrew.”

Harry took a deep breath and laid the map down on his bed. “All right,” he said, turning around. “So Pettigrew didn’t die when Black blew up the street. He probably blew it up himself, and turned into a rat to hide what he’d done.”

“A rat?” Ron sounded weak.

Harry nodded gently at his friend. “He was Scabbers, Ron. I’m sorry. He’s probably been hiding in your family because he didn’t want Black able to look for him.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Snape, with that tide of coldness that Harry still found it hard to deal with. It shut Ron up and drove whatever he’d been about to say back down his throat. Now, Harry found, Snape’s eyes were fixed, rather coldly, on him, in challenge and what looked a lot like loathing. “Excuses were made for their crimes and pranks in school, but Black is no longer a schoolboy.”

“It’s still true, Snivellus,” Black said, undaunted, amazingly, by Snape’s manner. “I switched as Secret-Keeper with Peter at the very last minute. He took my place, and then he betrayed James and Lily to Voldemort.” Harry liked him better immediately for saying the name. “Why, I don’t know. But I can guess. He was always jealous of us.” Like someone else, his gaze on Snape said.

“Black.” Snape was hissing like a cobra, like the snake Malfoy had summoned with the Serpensortia spell. His hand drifted down to his wand, and Harry found himself stepping in between Snape and Black without even knowing what he was doing.

“We need a truth potion,” said Harry. He looked Black in the eye. “And we need to know everything, not just a few scraps of truth that can’t be denied.”

Black was smiling. “There’s nothing I’d like better.” He paused, and then added in a slightly embarrassed tone, “Well, except being your godfather, Harry.”

Harry swallowed. A pulse of longing traveled through him, and of hope that he’d given up on long ago. Hadn’t he learned yet that every time he thought he had someone just for him, it turned out to be a lie?

But Black was looking at him like that. Like he really wanted to adopt him. Like he’d be able to take Harry home and give him a life for him alone.

I hope it’s true, Harry thought suddenly, his limbs trembling. I hope he can really be my godfather, and if he’s not lying to me right now, then maybe he won’t lie to me, and I can have a home.

*

Severus sat in his rooms, and forced himself to simply sit, his hands folded on his lap, his eyes shut and his breathing calm and steady. He had thought about brewing a cup of tea, but the activity would only have churned up his mind and forced his thoughts to move, and the tea the house-elves brewed never tasted the same. So he enforced silence and stillness upon himself, and cleared his mind as he would when practicing Occlumency, and waited.

The clarity that came upon him helped to slot the happenings of the last month neatly into several categories, and already Severus could feel his personal involvement receding, his breath smoothing out, his mind approaching this as a problem in Potions rather than an insult that Black had given him.

The first category was the use of truth potions. The Ministry didn’t like the answers that were coming from Black, which threatened to reveal the fact that he’d never had a proper trial. They continued to insist that each truth potion must be faulty and send for another “expert” from St. Mungo’s or their own Potions department to brew another. Thus, though Black had now been in custody a month and made his confession numerous times, there were few officials who yet believed him.

The second category was the fact that Pettigrew had finally and firmly escaped; searches in the Forbidden Forest and elsewhere by Aurors had failed to turn him up. Of course they had. Severus could have snorted when he heard. How did one use techniques refined for hunting human criminals in order to capture a rat? The Aurors had trouble even with Mudblood criminals who managed to use knowledge of the Muggle world to evade them. Pettigrew in rat form was identical to any ordinary animal, unless one was able to capture him and look closely at his toes. And despite the Head Auror’s truly ridiculous enthusiasm for the plan of Summoning all the rats in the British Isles and comparing their toes, Severus knew his conclusions would remain the truth.

The third category consisted of the way that Dumbledore insisted on keeping Black prisoner in the school, rather than turning him over to the Ministry or sending him back to Azkaban. Severus had protested against that tactic, and not because he feared Black. (He did not fear him; he hated him. But Dumbledore did not seem to understand the difference, perhaps because neither emotion was common to him). He had pointed out the possible danger to the children if Black followed his impulsive nature or Pettigrew returned for revenge, just as he had pointed out the danger if Lupin forgot to take his Wolfsbane Potion one day. But the Headmaster had smiled at him and gone gently, implacably, ahead.

And the fourth category…

He had to pause, then, and chip away at some of the heat overcoming his own mind before he could begin thinking about this last topic rationally.

The fourth category was the way that Potter hung about Black with stars in his eyes and trust on his tongue.

He was absolutely convinced that the mongrel’s story was true, of course. After numerous testings with Veritaserum—one of which had been Severus’s own batch—Severus had to admit he believed the same thing. But there were larger matters to deal with, which, of course, Potter did not see.

For one, Black was no fit guardian for a child. He might, perhaps, treat the boy better than his Muggle family had; Severus had not managed to work any solid facts on that family out of Potter. But that did not mean Black would give him shelter, or structure, or reassurance, or the training that Severus knew he needed to defeat the Dark Lord. He would not teach him the subtleties of morality or the tricks of facing and living with himself that Severus could. Potter would lose the spark of strength and intelligence that Severus had seen in him, having it trampled out by Gryffindor stupidity and “cleverness.”

For a second, Potter believed Black perfect. He did not see how consumed by his own darkness, his mental instability and his time in Azkaban, the man was. He would make excuses, and he would continue to make them until the day that Black failed him, fatally and finally. Perhaps even then he would believe. The man was a connection to his dead parents, which Severus could never be.

Unless you revealed…

Severus snarled, and nearly opened his eyes. No. His memories of Lily were private, his own. He did not see a reason to open them up to the hands of the unwashed. And certainly the boy would turn for confirmation to Black, and Lupin, whom he had grown closer to since Black’s capture. Severus would not have them know that, even now, he still thought about her, the woman they would call James’s and say Severus had no claim to.

The truth was simple.

He was losing the boy.

Potter was becoming less than he could have been, more irritating and more forgetful, since Black’s appearance. He had not kept his bargain to improve his marks in Potions. He did not seem even to be continuing his lessons in the Patronus Charm with Lupin. Instead, he spent time listening to Black and Lupin’s stories and practicing obsessively on the broom Black had given him, as if that would somehow protect him.

The other truth was also simple.

Severus did not want to lose the boy.

In the silence of his rooms, in the coldness of his mind, far from anyone who could taunt him, or see into him and guess the truth, Severus faced the hardest thing of all. He had done much for James Potter’s offspring, more than could be excused with talk of debts, what the boy owed him or what he could become and might feel he owed Severus in the future. And he had done it without thinking of it as revenge on James.

Severus sat still, his head bowed, and let his breathing deepen and carry him down a slow spiral, giving him time to adjust to the truth he had discovered.

He wanted to remain a part of the boy’s life now, and he would not be able to do that if Black and Lupin took him over entirely. But he was also unable to think of a tactic at the moment that would let him reinsert himself smoothly back into Potter’s confidence. It was only too evident, from the sharp glances the boy had given him, that he resented the way Severus had Body-Bound him to keep him out of danger the night they confronted Black, and that Black and Lupin had told him stories of their conflicts during their schooldays from their perspective, rather than Severus’s.

So he must remain still, and think.

Well, so, Severus decided, as he opened his eyes. It will give me more time to adjust to this truth than I thought I had.

And to stop flinching from the way his insight cut when he turned it on himself.

*

Draco waited impatiently outside the secure room on the fourth floor—as far as possible from any classrooms—that the Headmaster had used to confine Black. Potter was in there, laughing and talking as fast as though he thought Black really was cleared right now and able to adopt him. His words were happy, and friendly, and free, the way he had never talked to Draco.

But Draco had a claim, too, one that he had a right to make.

Especially if Potter thinks of himself as a special Gryffindor now that he’s got a Gryffindor godfather. You hold Gryffindors to their word.

He thought, for a moment, of the time he’d waited outside the hospital wing last year in order to hold Potter to his promise about having an adventure with him.

And you know how well he kept that one.

Draco curled his lip. He was always having to do this, wasn’t he? Well, this time the adventure was his, and Potter would have to get used to being a sidekick on it. But he would be a sidekick. Draco wouldn’t let him back out any more than Potter would have let the Weasel or the Mudblood back out last year.

The door to the classroom opened, and Draco heard soft murmurs of protest. Then Black laughed—his laughter sounded like a bark, Draco had always thought—and pushed Potter out the door, thank Merlin.

“No, no, Harry, get going now,” Black said, voice filled with affection. “I think you’re getting behind on your Potions homework. Not that I wouldn’t, too, with Snivellus for a teacher.”

Is Potter just going to stand there and let him say that? Draco thought incredulously.

But apparently, yes, it would happen, because Potter laughed in what seemed to be agreement and then stepped out into the corridor. Black shut the door behind him, though not before Draco heard Lupin’s voice ask a mild question. Black responded brusquely, and the rest of it was cut off by the door.

Potter turned around, smiling, and then started when he saw Draco there. The smile slid off his face at once. He took a step back, as if he assumed he’d have to defend his mad godfather and his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor from the horrible, bad, evil Malfoy.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

Anger overcame Draco’s resignation. “The help you promised,” he said in a clipped tone. “Remember? You said that you would be my friend and teach me to face monsters if I persuaded my father to stop the hippogriff’s execution.”

Potter blinked, as if he thought his promises had been made in a dream.

“Instead,” Draco went on, and the anger felt good as it sped through him, crowding aside both the acting lessons Professor Snape had given him and the emotional control his father was always insisting he practice, “you’ve stopped attending the meetings with Professor Snape and me, and you haven’t paid any attention to me in the past month.”

“I didn’t insult you!” Potter said.

“But you didn’t help me,” Draco insisted. “And my father informed me today that some of the appeals for the hippogriff have been pushed aside. We have a month at best for me to convince him I really don’t want to see the beast die.”

Potter folded his arms and looked stubborn.

Draco paused, then drove the nail in. “Unless, of course, you don’t really want to see this addressed,” he murmured. “Unless you’re content for the hippogriff to die, as long as your precious godfather can live.”

*

Harry looked away.

He wanted to not feel guilty. He and Sirius had been talking about feeling guilty, about how you often felt that way about something that wasn’t your fault, and slowly Sirius was leading him to stop feeling guilty that he’d assumed things about Remus too soon, and that he’d tried to attack Sirius when he first showed up.

But maybe you did actually have to feel guilty about breaking a promise and not doing what you’d said you’d do.

Harry did care about Buckbeak, but he hadn’t thought of him in weeks. There was Sirius to get to know, and stories about his parents to hear, and Remus’s lycanthropy to explain. Harry had been a little shocked about that at first, but at least he understood why Snape disliked the two of them so much. And it was wonderful to finally hear the full story about his Dad saving Snape’s life.

But Sirius isn’t the only person in my life.

And, sneaking another look at Malfoy’s dissatisfied face, Harry got a dim glimpse of something. It was like the time last year when he’d wanted to use that potion on Seamus and then decided against it, but this time he understood it a little more clearly. He had Slytherin thoughts, and Gryffindor ones. And he couldn’t abandon one side of himself because he didn’t like it.

Maybe, if he had just stopped associating with Snape and Malfoy at the beginning of the year like he’d wanted to, then he could have just Gryffindor thoughts. But he went to Snape for help, and he enjoyed Malfoy’s friendship, a little, and he didn’t see any other way that he was going to save Buckbeak.

And hearing what Malfoy’s father was like…

Harry loved the Weasleys, but he didn’t think Ron could ever understand the Dursleys. In Ron’s world, families loved each other. That was just what they did. And it seemed the case in Hermione’s world, too, though she didn’t talk about her parents much. So Harry was living in another world, and Malfoy was the first person he’d ever known who could join him there.

And Harry had given up Malfoy because Sirius was new.

I’m always going to be pulled between Gryffindor and Slytherin, I think. It’s not going to stop. I’ll just have to get used to being both.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

Malfoy looked at him with remote eyes, his nostrils quivering as if he were still upset, but Harry could see that he’d surprised him a little. He’d probably expected some big defensive shout. “What?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeated. “It was wrong of me to ignore you like that and not even talk to you.” He opened his mouth to explain why he had, that Sirius was the first person he’d ever known who wanted to adopt him, but then shut it again. Malfoy would only think of that as defensiveness.

And besides, it’s private. Harry was trying not to show too much enthusiasm even around Sirius, or at least only enthusiasm that would lead Sirius to think about their future together and not about Harry’s past. The Dursleys were his. He was not going to talk about them. That would be weak.

“That’s not enough,” Malfoy said. “It doesn’t make up for neglecting us all these weeks.”

“I know,” Harry whispered. “But will you give me a chance to make it up?”

Slowly, Malfoy inclined his head. It was a grudging nod, but it was there, and Harry thought a bit of the cool scorn had gone out of his face.

A bit.

“If you come with me to Professor Snape’s office right now,” Malfoy said, “and prove that you mean what you say.”

Harry fell in behind Malfoy without a word of complaint. He didn’t talk about anything else, either. He needed the silence to think about being both Gryffindor and Slytherin, and how he was going to manage that when Sirius and Snape hated each other.

He was pleased to note that Malfoy kept turning around on the way there to stare at him, as if Harry was a weird Potions ingredient that hadn’t reacted the way he expected it to with something else explosive.

*

Severus was—

One could not call him happy, he thought as he watched Draco’s face intently with most of his gaze, trying to guess what the boy was thinking, whilst he watched Potter with the corner of his eyes. He had experienced that emotion when Lily was alive, and not since. He would not debase it by comparing this state of mind with that one.

But he was content.

Draco had solved the problem the way he had last year, but this time, Severus thought the solution more likely to be permanent. Summer would be coming up in a few months, but in the meantime, Potter was theirs. And he was listening attentively to what Draco said about his father when he would say anything at all, and when Potter could, he offered advice.

Severus had counseled Draco, in private, to reject some of that advice. Potter was too fixated on avoiding weakness and showing stoicism. He did not appear to realize that Lucius would expect some weakness from his son, because he had trained Draco to be submissive to him if not to anyone else; too much strength would only cause him to wonder what Draco had been thinking, or studying.

Potter had less nuanced ways of dealing with his problems, still, but he was drifting back to Draco and Severus, spending time with them, and learning, it seemed, to trust Draco if he would not completely trust Severus as yet. He was not entirely lost to them.

And when Severus insisted on teaching him Dark Arts and potions, then Potter would listen with good grace. There were some spells he still turned up his nose at, but Severus pressed him on those and forced him to argue his reasons for not using them. Each time, Potter would stumble, or else he would say something new and surprising.

Slowly, the new and surprising things were replacing the wordlessness. Severus thought that anything which kept Potter from retreating into that unnerving, apathetic silence was a good thing.

And Potter would never be great at Potions, the way Draco was, but he had a good memory when he wished to exercise it. He had reacted the way he had in class, Severus thought, because he had decided that he would get scolded no matter what he did there, so why try?

His attention returned to Draco as he realized that Draco had just claimed, in an extremely bland and cool voice, that Vincent and Gregory had gone for a midnight snack by themselves last night and not lost their way coming back to the Slytherin common room—and Severus could not tell if he was lying or not.

“Draco,” he said.

Draco’s head came up, and his lip quivered a bit, but he kept looking at Severus. He seemed more determined to persevere through discouragement than Potter, because he allowed himself to fail more.

“Did that happen?”

Draco’s face broke into an instant small, sly smile, which revealed his pleasure at Severus’s lack of certainty, but did not actually tell Severus the answer, the way a wide grin would have. He waited, his arms half-folded, and then Draco shook his head.

“Vince and Greg can’t manage without me, yet,” he said.

“You will be telling your father a lie much bigger than this one,” Severus murmured in warning.

Draco looked at him without flinching. “But you’ve always said mastery of the small things must come first, sir.”

Severus inclined his head in a long, slow nod, which he knew Draco would understand even though Potter was looking at him blankly. This was what he preferred: for his students to dig the compliments he intended to give them out of his words, rather than force him to give them directly. It had to happen with Potter, but then, though Potter was closer to Severus in reactions than he might have expected, Draco would ever be closer in soul.

Now Draco stepped aside, and Severus turned to Potter, drawing his wand as he did so. “We will duel,” he said. “You will name the spell as I cast it. For every one you mistake, you will be forced to name a potions ingredient that reacts with asphodel.”

Potter grimaced, but he still drew his wand and waited with tense alertness.

Yes, Severus thought as he brought his wand around and down in the Slashing Curse, I am content.

Chapter 9.