lomonaaeren | Chapter Fifteen of 'Inter Vivos'- Struggle

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Chapter Fifteen—Struggle

Harry found a dark little alcove down the corridor from Snape’s office and tucked himself into it. Darkness seemed to be the only thing that would help his head, and at least as long as he huddled down and closed his eyes, he wasn’t walking anymore, and reflections of the torches couldn’t sway in front of him.

His head still hurt, though.

Greasy git Snape, he thought, but he wasn’t really angry, even as he drew his wand and cast a Soothing Charm that Sirius had taught him so he could help the injuries of comrades on the battlefield. He was tired instead. What else did I expect? He isn’t content to make the lessons a disaster. He has to hurt me.

And he has to find out about—that.

But Harry didn’t even have the strength to be upset about it right now. He knew that Snape wouldn’t tell it to anyone else, because then they would have to wonder how he learned it. His Slytherins would start suspecting something if the Potions professor who “hated” Harry Potter somehow knew his most intimate secrets. McGonagall would bristle and charge in to defend Harry, and surely Snape didn’t want to deal with her. (Harry didn’t want to deal with McGonagall on a rampage, either, and he had seen the threat of her cow Sirius like he was a puppy). Dumbledore would nod and stroke his beard thoughtfully and say something about how Harry had to stay with the Dursleys anyway.

So Snape wouldn’t betray Harry’s secrets because doing that would just be stupid and he would endanger himself. And if there was one thing Harry trusted Snape to be, it was self-interested.

The Soothing Charm had helped a bit. Harry could open his eyes and stand up without feeling as if he wanted to vomit or faint, at least. He wobbled, put a hand on the wall, and decided that he would have to walk up to Gryffindor Tower like this.

And avoid Sirius. Sirius would just get angry if he saw Harry, and unlike Ron and Hermione, he wouldn’t assume it was the normal effect of a detention with Snape. And he would ask questions, and there would be conflicts, and Harry didn’t want that. At least Snape was doing a fine job as a mentor to Draco. He should be able to stay in that position, instead of being turned into a toad or sacked because he had cut Sirius up and used his liver in potions.

Harry was so busy wondering what kind of potions would use an Animagus’s liver that he didn’t hear the soft footsteps or the swish of robes behind him until it was too late to hurry away. Not that he could have anyway, he thought, as he turned around defensively and immediately received a stabbing pain like an icepick through his forehead between his eyes. He groaned and put a hand over his scar.

“Potter,” said Snape, and then he took a deep breath and spoke as if he had to forcibly remind himself of what had happened between them. “Harry.”

That reassured Harry, at least. Snape was not really sorry, not really changed. He sounded as if speaking Harry’s first name was a physical effort. “Snape,” he said, in exactly the same tone, and turned around again to walk away. He would cast another Soothing Charm as soon as he had climbed a staircase. Sirius said they should never be cast within five minutes of each other.

“Harry,” said Snape.

Harry rolled his eyes. His vocabulary is getting as bad as Dudley’s, if that’s all he can think of to say. “Will this take long?” he asked, not having to feign a yawn. “Only I have a Potions exam to study for tomorrow, you see.”

“You have never studied—”

Yes, familiar Snape back again. Harry felt fully justified in continuing to walk away.

With a jabbing of his nose like an angry vulture picking at its prey, Snape swirled over to stand in front of him again. Harry stopped walking and stared up at him, calmly unimpressed. Snape had done the worst he could do. He had learned the worst he could. And Harry had already worked out all the reasons that Snape wouldn’t tell anyone else. What in the world did he think he had left to threaten Harry with?

“Did you not think that it would be wise to get a headache potion from me?” Snape asked. He held out a vial with a thick liquid in it that would probably kill Harry in seconds. “Or an assurance from me that you will be got out of that vile house and the care of those vile Muggles as soon as possible?”

After all the times that that had been promised and not delivered—by teachers who had noticed something off with his behavior, by Uncle Vernon if he just “behaved himself and stopped his freakiness,” by Sirius who kept telling him stories of what would happen when they finally caught Wormtail—Harry was irritated that hope could still rise in him. He pushed it away. “I’d have thought you’d like them,” he muttered. “They’re doing what you wished you could do to me, aren’t they? You should be cheering them on. And I’m not taking a headache potion you brewed even if the only alternative is having a headache for a whole month.” His head throbbed then, and he had to control the impulse to crumple over in agony. He hadn’t showed Uncle Vernon that he was hurting or hungry. He wasn’t going to show that to Snape, either.

Greasy git that you are, he thought, and lifted his head so that he could defiantly look Snape in the eye.

*

Severus had to breathe hard to control his rage. How dare the boy cast doubt on his brewing skills? The headache potions he offered would work whether or not the person taking them believed they would, which was more than Severus could say for some of his “colleagues” at St. Mungo’s.

And then he caught himself.

Not that it was easy, he thought, staring at the boy’s thin face and sunken eyes—perfectly obvious when one knew what one was looking for, but not so obvious outside that. He still saw James when he peered at—Harry. The eyes were the strongest link to Lily, and he had managed to ignore them for years. He still thought the boy put less effort into Potions than he could have, did not offer sufficient gratitude for such things as Severus’s apology to him in the office, and disowned his brain on numerous inappropriate occasions. Harry could be better than he was. He could be a rival to Draco. And yet, he refused to try. He had absorbed the dogma of the Sorting Hat so thoroughly that ambition was anathema to him.

And your prejudices are charging ahead of you again, Severus reminded himself, as rage once more sped his breathing.

They would probably continue to do so, Severus admitted, as he gazed at the boy. The brat. The imbecile. Potter. Harry. No matter how much he disliked it, he still saw James there, and he saw someone whose failures were his own, not his father’s, and could have been remedied without much work. Severus would have understood a genuine lack of talent. Apathy he could not understand.

But the fact remained that he had been wrong. The starvation was an objective thing, something that had happened and affected Potter’s body and brain. Severus did not have to adopt Harry’s perspective on it to acknowledge it.

He had not known it, though he could have seen it. He had been wrong.

He hated being wrong—not least because it meant he would have to refactor so many different calculations he had made regarding the boy, and adopt this new fact into an array of knowledge he had been certain was closed. Oh, he had expected to learn new things about Potter, but only as reflections or deepenings of those facts he already knew—a difference of degree, not of kind.

He had been wrong.

To move himself past that, he would need to keep the new fact in front of his eyes at all times and try to be a bit more civil with Potter. To persuade Harry to trust him. He would make long, slow advances before he arrived at a tenth of the trust he deserved, he knew, but he was willing to do it now, and that made the difference.

“I have never wished to starve you,” he said at last, because that was the one of the boy’s assertions which he felt most competent to respond to and respect at the moment.

“Oh, come off it, Snape.” Harry yawned at him, and then winced and lightly tapped his temple, as if even that movement had increased his headache. “Maybe not starvation, but you’ve wished you could hurt me and get away with it.” He gave Severus a lopsided smile and tapped his head harder. “And now you have. Congratulations.”

“I did not mean to do that,” Severus said, and his voice grated in spite of himself. Did the boy wish a second apology? Did he not know how rare it was to win even one from Severus?

“You could have fooled me.” Potter leaned one shoulder on the wall and yawned at him again.

“Do not yawn!” Severus could have regretted his bark when Potter flinched and ducked his head—it had probably increased the pain pounding between the boy’s eyes—but it was Potter’s fault for making him do it. “You are hurting yourself on purpose,” Severus continued angrily, softening his voice a bit. If he persists in stupidity, not all the starvation in the world can make me regard him as intelligent. “I will not have that. And for the same reason, I will not allow you to remain silent about what your relatives have done to you,” he added, thinking that the boy would understand that connection. It could hardly be more obvious.

“Oh, you’re going to tell? Who?” The boy yawned deliberately again. “They’ll wonder how you got the information, you know. What excuse are you going to make up so that you can go on spying?”

Severus licked his lips. He did not understand Potter’s response. The boy did not—seem angry about what his relatives had done to him, and it was up to Severus, as the only person other than Potter and the Muggles who knew about this, to find out why. “I will tell those who should know, who are manifestly on our side,” he said. “Dumbledore—”

“Who told me that there was no one else to care for me, and that I had to go back to them.” Harry folded his arms and eyed Severus as if he were an interesting species of flobberworm. “Try again.”

Severus closed his eyes and massaged his own temples. It had been a long time since anger had given him a headache. Black was the next natural choice, but out of the question; even if he believed Severus, which was doubtful, he would attempt to kill the Muggles, and Harry needed him alive more than he needed him in prison. “I will tell Draco—”

“You won’t.”

Severus snapped his eyes open. The boy was standing in front of him, staring at him with eyes more black than green, and around him vibrated a subtle hum of power. Severus swallowed. Accidental magic. Usually, by this point in a wizarding child’s development, such magic was well-trained and would not burst out in a wild flare, but abuse was not usual, and neither was the way that, it seemed, Potter had grown up in absolute ignorance of his magical heritage; the lack of other possessions from his parents rather argued that.

“You won’t,” Harry whispered, his voice a literal growl now. Severus knew it was only the magic making it so, and that the Dark Lord had more of a claim to cause fear, but still he fought the urge to step back. “Draco has too many burdens already. He’s fighting just to survive, and to keep his father unsuspicious. He really wants to meet with me, but he won’t because he knows it will endanger us both. He’s undergoing a harder year than either you or me. You leave him alone.”

Severus had to pause because, before anything else, the fierce protectiveness in Harry’s voice startled him. A few remarks Dumbledore had made and the way that Draco’s eyes were always glued to Potter if he didn’t watch himself came together in his mind then, and formed a new picture.

A second fact I have got wrong.

It irritated him, and his voice came out more snappishly than he had intended. “Draco would wish to know that you are in pain, you stupid child—”

“But he can’t do anything about it, and it would only distract him.” The hum of Potter’s accidental magic was subsiding now, at least, as though he imagined he had made some unanswerable argument. “The way that these Occlumency lessons are a distraction from my training. So we’ll give them up, and you can go on hating me, and everything will be the way it was before.” He nodded his head a few times.

And a third fact came along. I have no chance of gaining his trust unless I think of a different tactic entirely. He is further from me than I realized—into the territory of regarding his abuse as normal and unexceptional.

“Harry,” Severus whispered.

“You don’t have the right to call me that,” Harry snapped, with a viciousness that made Severus sting although there was no magic associated with it. “I never got to hear my parents calling me that. I can’t remember it. So you don’t get to call me that.” He turned around and walked up the stairs from the dungeons with immense dignity.

Severus, left in place standing at the foot of them, closed his eyes and massaged his temples again, but this time for a different reason.

Not only did he have no idea how to go about rescuing Harry, the ideas that immediately formed in his head were architectures of ash that needed to be dashed to pieces, based on the way that Harry had reacted to mention of Draco and Dumbledore.

And Severus was still wrong.

Three new facts in the space of an hour. How many more will there be? How far away, in truth, am I held from helping Harry and keeping my vow to Lily?

A newer and even more unwelcome thought stooped on him then.

And how much of the distance between us is my own fault?

*

Draco didn’t know what had happened to Harry in the month or so since they’d last been able to meet—Dumbledore had judged it too dangerous for them to meet again after only a fortnight—but he knew he didn’t like it.

Harry came into the classroom with a set, tense face, hugged Draco without seeming to notice he was there, and then sat down across from him and listened to Draco’s efforts to fool his father without a word. Without a word. The last time they’d met, even though Draco had been the one to talk for an hour, Harry at least made little grunts and nods and asked questions in the appropriate places. Now he listened, and it was eager listening, like the words were water that he needed to ride out thirst, but he didn’t respond.

And Draco needed a response.

He tried to think of why, but it only made him irritable, the way that half his thoughts concerning Harry lately did. One night he’d missed six hours or so of sleep because he’d lain awake worrying that Harry might be dating Chang on the sly and lying about it to him. And then he had lost another hour because he tried to figure out why this worried him so much, and he couldn’t. Did he have some kind of attraction to the girl? He couldn’t find one, but the worry wouldn’t go away.

He could do something about this, though.

So he finished the story of how he’d sent a half-groveling, half-prideful letter to Lucius as quickly as he could, and then stared at Harry and said, “Talk.”

Harry blinked like someone waking up from hypnotism, or Draco’s father after he’d related some deed of the Dark Lord’s. “Talk?” he asked helplessly.

“Yes,” Draco said, his worry making him snap. “That motion where you flap your lips and your tongue and your teeth and noise comes out.”

Harry promptly crossed his eyes, opened his mouth, and started making random gabbling noises as hard as he could.

“Prat,” Draco said, laughing in spite of himself. “I just realized that you’ve barely said a word about how your summer went, or what you’ve been doing whilst we had to glare at each other across the room.” He pushed his chair closer to Harry, who looked unaccountably nervous, as if he thought that talking about those things might somehow add to the burden of fooling his parents that Draco had to bear. “So talk about it.”

“Well, you’ve seen a lot of it,” Harry said, after some consideration. “I’m still doing badly in Potions, all right in Care of Magical Creatures, and I’d do better in Defense Against the Dark Arts if we ever got to cast a bloody spell.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes and glared holes in the wall behind Draco.

Draco relaxed. This was more like the Harry he knew, whilst the one that listened to him so intently was like the apathetic Harry of second year. “I can’t decide what Umbridge’s game is,” he said.

“Oh, I can.” Harry was practically snarling; his hands clenched into fists in front of him as if he’d like to strangle someone. “She wants us to be perfectly trained little Ministry pets, and she promises she’ll teach us ‘unknown magic’ to get people so curious about it that they’ll do anything she says.”

Draco leaned back in his chair and looked at his friend appraisingly. (And even the word “friend” had the power of irritating him sometimes, especially when Blaise was asking why he and Harry weren’t friends anymore, and Draco didn’t know why the irritation any more than he knew “why” about the rest of it). “That’s a good analysis. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.”

Vague alarm flickered across Harry’s face, but was gone almost instantly. Draco doubted he would have noticed it if he hadn’t spent a whole summer watching his father’s every expression so that he could tell what he was feeling at the moment. “Well, Sirius said something about why she promised unknown magic,” he said, and rolled a shoulder. “It’s obvious when you think about it.”

“Not always to me,” Draco said quietly. For some reason, he felt they were coming up to the heart of what was troubling Harry. He wanted to pursue it. Maybe if he kept quiet, Harry would talk to fill the silence and Draco could find out what was wrong.

Harry licked his lips for a moment. Then he said, “And she’s been concentrating on me especially in our Defense class. I reckon she thinks that if the Boy-Who-Lived supports the Ministry, a whole lot of other people will, too.”

“That makes sense,” said Draco. “What have you been doing to show that you don’t support her?”

A wicked grin curled Harry’s lips and made Draco’s stomach drop. He shook his head at himself in annoyance. Why did he feel like he wanted to faint when he was sitting down? And when Harry wasn’t as frightening as Lucius?

“Making little speeches of my own in Gryffindor Tower,” he said. “Telling everyone who’ll listen that she’s a Ministry plant, and Fudge only wants our mindless loyalty. Teaching—” And he swallowed and broke off.

“Harry,” Draco said. He felt the urge to push his chair closer again, and this time, he didn’t fight it. “Tell me.”

“It’s something that could be dangerous for you to know,” Harry said, staring at him in worry. The expression fit naturally on his face, the way it hadn’t last year. Draco wondered how many times Harry had been looking worried lately. It must have been when he wasn’t around to see it, since Harry was mostly scowling or laughing when Draco looked at him. “I don’t want you to get in trouble with Lucius.”

“Lucius isn’t a Legilimens,” Draco said, confident that Harry would know what he was talking about since Professor Snape had mentioned Harry taking Occlumency lessons in passing.

“But Voldemort is.” Harry’s hand found his and squeezed it. Draco licked his lips. It was suddenly hard to breathe. “I don’t want you to have to hide this from him. I don’t think you could do it.”

Insulted, Draco narrowed his eyes. “Why not?” he demanded.

“I mean—it’s not that I don’t think you’re good at Occlumency.” Harry ran a distracted hand through his hair, and Draco had to bite his lip so he wouldn’t tell him to leave it alone. “It’s that I think Voldemort is a better Legilimens.”

Draco squeezed his hand and let it go. He did understand, probably better than Harry knew; because he never talked about Occlumency and Legilimency, Draco had no idea how far advanced he was in it. Perhaps he had no idea about sliding barriers and transparent walls and winds of nothingness and how difficult it was to keep one’s thoughts shielded behind such things whilst a probe flailed and crashed against them.

And the Dark Lord would be more subtle than Snape in his Legilimency. Yes, Draco could see why both the professor and Harry were concerned.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else, then.” Harry brightened. “I want to hear more about what your summer was like. Are the Muggles noticing the Dark Lord at all? Or do they just think that he’s something else, a series of natural disasters or something?”

“They don’t notice him at all that I heard.” Harry snorted. “Sometimes the attacks happen on Muggle property, but my relatives would sniff each time and say that the people who were hurt deserved it for being strange.”

“Well,” Draco said without thinking, “maybe they deserved it, but not for that reason.”

Harry spun around to face him, looking as if he were poised to hit Draco. “What do you mean?” he demanded softly.

“Well,” Draco said, blinking at him, “their blood. The Dark Lord thinks he should kill them because they’re half-bloods and Mu—”

“Don’t say it.”

Draco stared helplessly at Harry, who had narrowed eyes and flared nostrils, as if he believed that he needed to defend someone standing behind him. Probably Granger, Draco thought in resentment. Since they couldn’t spend a lot of time together now, he had no time to explain to Harry about blood beliefs and how they really weren’t as restrictive as he thought they were and made a lot of sense.

“All right,” he said calmly. “I won’t. But the Dark Lord does think that, and that’s the reason they’re dying.”

“Or being attacked.” Harry leaped to his feet and began to pace around the classroom. Draco watched him, wishing he wasn’t so far away, and wishing he knew why he wanted Harry to be closer. “I don’t know how many deaths there have been so far. The newspaper’s on the Ministry’s side as usual, and of course Umbridge preaches about the deaths but keeps the numbers secret to frighten us.” He swung around at the far end of the classroom and stared past Draco at the wall the way he’d been doing earlier, as if he didn’t really see him, sucking fiercely at his teeth all the while. “I wish I knew, because then I’d know something more about what Voldemort is capable of, and maybe what he wants.”

“But why do you have to know?” Draco asked, swinging his legs. “I mean, Professor Snape should, and Dumbledore would want to, and maybe Professor McGonagall.” From certain things the professor had let slip, it seemed she’d fought in the first war. Draco couldn’t quite believe that, though. Her prissy fussiness had no place on a battlefield. “But you don’t have to know unless Voldemort comes after you directly.”

Harry’s face took on a haunted, hunted expression that Draco had sometimes seen in the mirror that summer after a whole day of trying to placate Lucius. “I can’t tell you that, either,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’m sorry, Draco.”

Draco gripped the back of his chair, a surge of anger taking him by surprise. “Why not?”

“Because Dumbledore told me not to.” Harry looked at him with wistful, searching eyes that made Draco hope he would change his mind for a moment, but his voice was firm when he continued. “He told me not to tell even Ron and Hermione.”

“‘Even’ your friends?” Draco jumped to his feet and wrapped his arms tight around himself, the anger and the worry joining together in a thick emotional wave that tried to paralyze his tongue. But he still fought through it and talked, because he had to. “So I’m not worthy to be considered in the same category as them, am I?”

“I don’t consider you in the same category as them!” Harry stared at him. “But not because you’re not worthy.”

Draco paused, and felt some of the mingled emotion drain away. Harry was saying Draco was special, that he was important in a way Harry’s closest Gryffindor friends weren’t. For some reason, that suited Draco even more than Harry’s claiming Draco was his best friend instead of the Weasel.

Someday I’ll have to figure out all these ‘some reasons’ I don’t really understand, he decided, and then shook his head to get rid of some of the thick crowding thoughts. “All right,” he said. “But I wish you could tell me.”

Harry came up and shook his hand. “Thanks for understanding,” he said. “And I wish the same thing.”

Draco tried not to preen, but that was another thing it was getting difficult not to do around Harry.

*

“Right!”

But Harry had learned something about the way that Sirius taught dueling by now. He dodged left instead, and the stone beside him blew up with an impressive explosion.

“Left!”

And now it was time to run straight ahead, and leave Sirius’s Blasting Curse to burst uselessly behind him whilst Harry rammed Sirius in the chest with his head. Sirius fell over, laughing and cursing and trying to keep hold of his wand, but Harry cast the Disarming Charm and the wand soared into his hand.

Laughing still, Sirius rolled over and held out a hand. Harry shook his head and levitated Sirius to his feet instead. The first four times he’d tried to help him up, Sirius had pulled him down instead, locked his arms around Harry’s neck, and announced his own victory. When Harry protested, Sirius proclaimed a solemn rule that whoever was left standing at the end of the battle was the victor, whether or not they had their wand with them. So, since then, Harry had been wise and kept far away from Sirius when it seemed he’d lost.

And he “lost” more and more often with Harry. Harry didn’t think his magic was actually growing stronger, but it was certainly growing better-trained. He could do things more rapidly and with less effort that he’d been able to cast simple Levitation and Light Charms at the beginning of the term. He understood the way that curses and their defenses fit together, and why they worked—on an instinctive level, not on a theoretical level. Sirius had admitted that he wasn’t up to teaching Harry the theoretical part of Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Harry told him not to worry about it. All the extra reading he’d done over the summer and under Hermione’s tuition meant that he had a good grasp on theory.

And that meant he’d been ready to become a teacher in his own right, so he’d started a small group of students working under him in the Room of Requirement—which Remus had told him about—whenever he could. Harry found he understood the things he learned better when he taught them to someone, and sometimes he actually corrected a problem that had been in the way of his own training, like the wrong grip on a wand or a slurred pronunciation.

It wasn’t just for him, of course. If the training sessions let one of his friends survive when Death Eaters stormed the school, Harry thought the long hours of coming up with spells to test and practicing them on his own were worth it.

Whether or not I survive against Voldemort.

And because a realistic version of the final battle was that he wouldn’t, Harry had been trying to get used to that idea, too.

“Harry?”

Sirius was staring at him, head cocked to the side, and looking worried. Harry shook his head and gave him a smile that was as bright and cheery as he could make it. Sirius had enough to worry about with both the Ministry and Voldemort hunting him; apparently Voldemort took it personally that Sirius had located Pettigrew over the summer and almost killed him before more Death Eaters show up.

Or he wants to kill Sirius because Sirius is important to you, said the voice of his thoughts.

I don’t care about that right now, Harry snapped at the voice. No, the more important thing at the moment was to keep Sirius from worrying.

“Just wondering whether or not I should introduce that one to the Army,” he said, and Sirius relaxed.

“Of course you should! This isn’t some kind of honorable war. We have to fight dirty if we’re going to survive.” Sirius brandished his wand at an invisible enemy in the corner of the Room of Requirement.

“We?” Harry asked quietly.

“Yes, of course, the Order—” Sirius sighed and dropped his arm. “Right. Dumbledore asked me not to talk to you about that.”

Harry nodded in resignation. He reckoned Dumbledore thought that Harry had heard enough information with the prophecy and the fact that Draco and Snape were spies; he had dropped hints about an Order but confirmed nothing, and Harry knew for a fact that sometimes Professor McGonagall went to meetings with other people in the Headmaster’s office. And now Dumbledore was avoiding Harry.

Because he thinks that Voldemort could reach through the curse scar and learn what I know?

Harry shifted uneasily. It was true that he hadn’t felt Voldemort doing that, but also true that Voldemort might be subtle enough to avoid sending any signals.

But the alternative was Occlumency lessons with Snape, and Harry had already decided that no price was great enough to make him go back to that.

“Well, I know you have an appointment with the Army now,” Sirius said, elaborately checking his watch. “And I have an appointment with a werewolf who’ll be overwrought if I’m five minutes late.” He winked at Harry, cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, turned into a dog, picked up his wand in his mouth, and scampered out the door with a faint click of nails and a shadowy motion that might have been a wave of his tail.

Harry leaned against the wall for a minute after Sirius was gone. He was tired. It seemed like he always had a hundred things to think about, even though he’d numbered them once and it was just fifty. Learning all these spells, lessons with Sirius, teaching Ron and Hermione and the others in the Army, wondering when Umbridge would step up her “recruitment” efforts and try to publicly force Harry to agree with the Ministry, dreaming about Voldemort, trying to keep up with news, worrying about Draco and Snape…

But he could do it if Draco and Snape could. No one was going to say that he was a complainer or arrogant and couldn’t do his part of the work.

Someone knocked on the door. Harry started and turned around. That would be Ron and Hermione and the rest, of course. Since Umbridge wasn’t teaching them in Defense Against the Dark Arts and Harry had to train anyway, they’d started this little group. “Come in,” he called.

*

It was easy enough to infiltrate Potter’s little group. The students came into the Room of Requirement under Disillusionment Charms; Severus only had to slip one over his own head, ensure that no one brushed against his robe or looked at his shadowy shape for too long, and then find a corner out of the way the moment he was inside the Room.

It resembled a simple dueling chamber, with shielded walls that would not bounce curses back at the participants, the occasional mattress to fall on, and no sharp corners. Severus felt his mouth pull into a grimace as he considered it. He would train someone like Potter, who had a need to know much more Dark magic than the simple Black would ever teach him or allow him to learn, in a more realistic environment: with treacherous ground underfoot, corners projecting as a menace and an offer of shelter, and the occasional mirror or pool of water that would reflect the magic back as happened in nature.

The way that you trained him before?

Severus snarled, not wanting to remember the Dark Arts lessons he had once given Harry in his office, because then he would have to remember how those lessons had dissolved into useless pandering, and then turned his attention to the “instructor.”

Potter stood with his hands at his sides, surveying the small group in front of him with narrowed eyes that he probably imagined were “expert.” Severus had already swept them with his own gaze, and what he saw caused them to sneer. They were all the Gryffindors of Potter’s year save Finnigan, a few Ravenclaws—led by the Lovegood girl—the most arrogant Hufflepuff it had ever been Severus’s displeasure to encounter, Zacharias Smith, and the youngest Weasley. Each of them stood in an awkward parody of a dueling stance. Longbottom was the worst, unsurprisingly.

This was the group Potter thought would survive conflict with the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters, if matters came to that pass? They would be better off depending on their guardians to take them from the school before that happened.

“Good evening,” Potter said quietly. “All right. Last time, we practiced the Patronus Charm. How many of you have made progress since then?”

The Patronus Charm? Severus suffered a moment of incredulity. He had come to see what Dark Arts knowledge Potter dared to spread around the school, and he found the boy teaching something he had learned in his third year?

He watched, still silent, still disbelieving, as Potter made the rounds of his “students,” adjusting the grip on their wands some of the time, encouraging them to think happy thoughts, and describing what it had felt like when his own corporeal Patronus burst from him. Longbottom demanded to see Potter’s Patronus again, which Potter obliged him by showing. The stag galloped twice around the room, making Severus’s chest tighten with remembrance of the time a year and a half ago when Potter had used it to fight the Dementors going after Black and Severus’s own doe had run with it.

But he is as arrogant as ever, he thought a moment later. Someone like Draco would have refused Longbottom’s request, because of course attention being paid to him was less important than the advancement of the others in the class.

“Thank you, Harry,” Longbottom said with a shy smile. “I think I can see how to do it now.”

“You’re welcome,” Potter said softly, and began to circulate among the others again, pausing to shout encouragement to Granger when she produced a wisp of silvery light from her wand.

So arrogant, just like his father—

And then Severus remembered, again, the abuse he had discovered, and which he had seen more facts of within the last month and a half since the failed Occlumency lesson, and he cursed softly. Once again, his mind had begun its painful oscillation between the old position, which did have its evidence and which he could not entirely abandon, and the new one he hated and which made him feel helpless because he had still not thought of a plan to aid Potter.

Just because he is abused does not mean he is not arrogant, his mind sniped back at once.

But the basis of that arrogance is destroyed now, Severus thought. He had decided that the boy’s spoiling at home had contributed to his expectation of special treatment at school. And now he had learned that the boy barely received adequate nutrition at home, but he still saw Potter show off for attention, and smirk in triumph when he achieved something, and insist on being first in Quidditch. Severus did not know what would happen when the Slytherin-Gryffindor game was played, in a fortnight, but he did not think it could be anything good.

His emotions mixed and melted into one another, and became anger again as he watched the way that Potter bent down near Lovegood, listening to her inane rambling with a faint smile on his face. So willing to help others, but he will not accept help for himself. So determined to see others survive the war, but he will not take the actions that would best ensure he does.

That is true arrogance, yes. To think that he can survive on his own, and that his safety is of no more importance than one cracked vial among a set of twelve. That is determination to die a martyr. That is Gryffindor “nobility” stretched to its greatest extremes.

And whether he considers it in that light or not, that is what he is doing.

At last, Severus stood and slipped out of the room in silence. He would try one more tactic before he took the step that he feared he would have to take. And if that tactic did not work…

Then he would have to do as he had done before, without realizing it, and rely on the persuasion of the one person Harry would not be able to ignore.

*

Draco oriented on the Snitch. He flew towards it. He was aware of everything around him in that moment: the prevailing wind, the shouts from the stands, the Bludgers cracking together uselessly over his head, the relative positions of the Gryffindor players. He was focused, intent, alert. He could not be beaten.

And then Harry dropped from above him in a combination of spirals and swooping that Draco had never seen before—it made him look more like a bird than a human—and scooped the Snitch out of the air with a simple motion of his hand.

Draco pulled up, panting hard. He found that he wasn’t able to watch as the Gryffindor team surrounded Harry like a group of bees congregating around a flower. Even Weasley’s miserable performance as the Keeper hadn’t mattered. Nothing had, not when the Gryffindor Beaters were the Weasley twins and not when their Chasers were more competent than the Slytherin Chasers.

And not when they had Harry to Draco’s pathetic attempt to catch the Snitch.

He landed and strode towards the showers, ignoring the way that Vince and Greg called after him. They liked to chat to Draco after a game and hear where they had gone wrong. But since they hadn’t done anything wrong in this match, since it was all Draco’s fault that they had lost, he didn’t see any reason to stop and talk to them.

In the showers, he stripped and flung his broom against the wall, then stepped directly under the water, running it loudly enough that he had a plausible excuse to ignore anyone who might try to speak to him. The others came in, muttering and gnashing their teeth. Draco ignored them, instead bracing his hands on the wall and tilting his head back so that the water could comb constantly changing fingers through his hair.

Why can’t I defeat him, just once?

For the first time in years, Draco was feeling as if Harry was better than he was, again. He knew that he was as brave and as strong as Harry; he knew that. But this was one area that he couldn’t pretend to be his equal.

If he had let me win—

And then Draco snarled and shook his head hard enough that drops of water leaped away from his head and shattered against the wall as if made of glass. If he had let me win, then I would have yelled at him about that. I want a victory that I earned for myself, or it doesn’t mean anything.

He felt a sour amusement then, because he sounded like a Gryffindor, principles of fair play and all that. But he strongly suspected that there was no other way to play Harry. He was so good that Slytherin cheating never had much effect. And it was no consolation to think that he would leave school in a few years and then Slytherin would have the chance of winning the House Cup again.

I’ll be gone, too, and I won’t get to play a match opposite an inferior Seeker.

At last, when the water was running cold and Draco could no longer pretend that he wasn’t hiding, he stepped out of the shower and reached for his clothes. He heard someone yelp, and he tensed, shaking his head and squinting rapidly to get the water out of his eyes so he could see.

He was just in time to see a blurred glimpse of black hair and red robes before they whisked out of sight and Harry’s muffled voice said, “Sorry. I thought you were already dressed, because it seemed that the shower shut off a long—anyway. Sorry.”

Draco smiled slowly and reached for his own robes, casting a Drying Charm on the way. He felt a deep satisfaction at Harry’s reaction, though he had no idea why. At least there’s something I can do that he can’t, and that’s be comfortable naked.

But it seemed connected at the same time to his feelings about Harry dating Chang, which he didn’t understand. Draco scowled again and drew his trousers on roughly, then called, “You can look now.”

“Oh, good.” Harry edged back into sight, his cheeks furiously red. “Um. I came to see how upset you were about losing the game.”

Draco’s good mood was gone in seconds. “I’m really upset,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be, if you lost it?”

“Yeah.” Harry looked at him worriedly. “It just—I’m sorry, Draco. If there was a way that I could have let you win the game and win it for my House at the same time, then I would have done that. Sorry.”

“Would you say that to Diggory?” Draco demanded, taking a step closer. The answer to his question suddenly seemed of overwhelming importance. “To Chang?”

Harry blinked. “Of course not. They’re not my friends, and I don’t care so much if they lose a game.”

“Then stop being patronizing,” Draco snarled, and turned away. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, except that his reply to Harry wasn’t exactly right, but he didn’t care; he was the aggrieved party here, and Harry’s apology wasn’t up to his standards. Why should he be uneasy about anything concerning the situation? He ought to be angry instead.

“I wasn’t trying to be patronizing.” Harry’s voice was angry now, too. “I was just saying that if—”

“I heard you!” Draco spun around. “And it is patronizing, and if you don’t stop patting me on the head and looking at me like I was a kicked kitten, I am going to hurt you.” He picked up his wand to make the threat clearer.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you at all!” Harry shouted, and retreated.

Draco leaned his forehead against the wall and breathed deeply for a few minutes. The whole ridiculous spectacle they must have made paraded in front of his eyes for a moment, and he laughed bitterly.

Harry, it’s not as simple as that. It’s more complex. It’s more complex than friendship.

And there Draco ran into a wall in his own mind, because he and Harry were friends, and he knew that what he felt for Harry was friendship (combined with some greed because he’d missed being Harry’s friend for two years and had a lot of lost ground to make up for), so how could it be more complex than that?

*

“Severus.”

Severus said nothing, and kept his eyes steadfastly fixed on Dumbledore’s desk. He knew, now, that it had been a mistake to come here.

There was no way he could tell the story as the boy’s memories had told it, with convincing evidence that suggested Potter did need help no matter how much he might protest otherwise. And he couldn’t tell it without fuming against the boy’s shortsightedness and the way he insisted on concealing the abuse. And he couldn’t tell it without the bitterness leaking through that no one had rescued him from his father’s emotional abuse. Like the abuse of Potter’s relatives, it had never escalated to beating, but it didn’t need to in order to have deleterious effects.

And so he had told the story to Dumbledore, riddled with reservations and emotions of his own, and Dumbledore had reacted in a predictable way.

“I believe you are misunderstanding the situation,” the Headmaster said gently, “the way that you so often do with Harry. I have no doubt that he would have come to me himself if it was this bad and complained. You must admit, Severus, you often exaggerate the trouble he gets into.”

“But I exaggerate it to his detriment.” Severus looked up and into Dumbledore’s eyes, though it was difficult not to stand and simply depart in indignant silence. He tried to remind him that he was here for more people than just himself, but that actually made it harder to deal with. The thought made him snappish and increased the temptation to leave. “This time, if I am exaggerating, it would be in the direction of helping him, and, for that reason, you choose to distrust me?”

“It is less distrust,” said Dumbledore quietly, “than needing the full story. I cannot lightly sacrifice the Dursleys’ blood protection.”

“If he dies of malnutrition,” Severus asked, “does that blood protection matter?”

“There is another factor at play here,” said Dumbledore, who seemed serenely determined to ignore the content of Severus’s words and focus on the tone instead. “I would not place another burden on Harry. He already deals too much with the expectations from his classmates, the wizarding world, and now the Ministry, and he has no recourse to young Mr. Malfoy’s friendship as he did last year, and now he is training compulsively with Sirius. Talking about something he is not ready to talk about would stress him further.”

Severus only stared for long moments. “You will not risk saving him because you might stress him,” he said at last, to be sure that he understood Dumbledore’s position.

“I made a great many mistakes before, believing that I understood the situation of people around me better than they understood it themselves.” Dumbledore looked down at the desk, but not before Severus had seen agony in his blue eyes, agony he did not believe was feigned. “It is true, sometimes children do not know when they are in danger, but I saw, last year, that Harry had become an adult. I must wait until he comes to me and speaks of it himself. I owe him that much courtesy, that much trust.”

Severus rose to his feet. “You have let your fear blind you to what must be done,” he said. “How unlike a Gryffindor.”

And he strode from the office before Dumbledore could come up with a retort. As he understood now, coming to Dumbledore had been a mistake.

So he would have to tell the one person who stood the best chance of reaching Harry.

*

Harry concealed a yawn as he hurried towards the classroom where he and Draco had met before. He wished he could be in bed; nightmares had plagued him so much for the last few weeks that sleep was precious.

On the other hand, meetings with Draco were even more so. Draco hadn’t asked to see him at all since the Gryffindor-Slytherin match, and the glares he gave Harry in class had felt uncomfortably as if they were for real. And Harry hadn’t felt comfortable asking him just in case that endangered Draco somehow. So, when Harry got the terse note that said Come at once, he felt compelled to obey.

He stepped into the classroom and paused, looking around in confusion. No one was visible, not even under the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm. Uneasily, he drew his wand, wondering if someone else had figured out that he and Draco met here and had forged Draco’s handwriting.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

No, that was Draco’s voice. Furious and hurt, but Draco’s voice. Harry turned towards him, wondering if he had somehow learned about the Army.

“I can train my friends, but it would be dangerous for us to meet that often,” he said. “If you want to practice spells—”

“I’m not talking about that,” Draco spat. He was in the shadows next to the door, which was the reason Harry hadn’t seen him immediately. Now he stepped forwards, his fists clenched, and glared at Harry. “I’m talking about why you didn’t tell me the truth about your relatives trying to starve you to death.”

Harry gaped at him. And at once he thought of Snape. It was the only person Draco could have heard this from. And the next second, he was angry enough to have cut Snape down with a Slicing Curse if he’d stepped through the door. Didn’t he know that Draco had enough to worry about without this? He was the one who taunted Harry about not appreciating the sacrifices that other people made for the war. Why wouldn’t he appreciate Draco’s sacrifices and leave him alone and not make him worry?

“I didn’t want to upset you,” he said. “And anyway, you couldn’t do anything; I was in the Muggle world, and you were with your father. If you couldn’t even write me because it was too dangerous, how could you have come to my relatives’ house and tried to stop them?”

Draco flung his arms about, not answering for a long moment. Harry nodded, satisfied that he had an argument that would win the debate for him.

“That’s not the point!” Draco burst out at last. “Why didn’t you tell me when you were at school? We could think up some safe place for you to go. I could arrange a way to smuggle food to you, no matter how dangerous it was! Harry, you have to be able to—they don’t let you eat! That’s abuse!”

“Lots of kids have worse things happen to them,” Harry said, bristling. Why doesn’t he care that I tried to stop him from worrying? “Your father might have cursed you, maybe killed you.”

“Just because I’m in danger doesn’t mean you’re not in danger!” Draco actually stomped his foot, which Harry thought was a sign of how childish he was acting. “Harry, you have to let us help you.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Us?”

“Professor Snape and I—”

“He broke into my mind, gave me a headache, and stole my memories without my permission,” Harry muttered. “And now he told you and made you risk this meeting that your father or your friends might find out about. There’s no way I’ll trust him. I wouldn’t trust him if he carried Voldemort’s head up to me by way of saying he was sorry.”

“But he’s the only one who can help!” Draco was somehow shouting in a whisper, which Harry thought was impressive, but which wasn’t about to convince him. “He went to see Dumbledore, but he said that was useless. Dumbledore doesn’t want to move you.”

Harry gave a little incredulous laugh. Don’t they think that I would have figured out a solution already, if it was that simple? “Of course not. He told me last term that I had to go back to the Dursleys’.”

“But someone could help you,” Draco said lowly. “Professor McGonagall could take you.”

Harry snorted. “She doesn’t breathe without Dumbledore telling her it’s all right.”

“Then you could tell Dumbledore how it really is.”

Harry lifted his head proudly. “How it really is is less bad than you imagine, Draco. They let me eat three times a week—”

The door of the classroom slammed back on its hinges. Harry stared, then realized it must be Draco’s accidental magic acting up, the way his still did sometimes when he was angry.

“You didn’t tell me,” Draco said, sounding as if it were a personal betrayal. “You were suffering like that and you didn’t tell me.” He stepped closer to Harry, staring at him. “You suffered that all your life and I never knew. I thought we were supposed to be best friends.”

“This summer was worse than any other time,” Harry began, and then stopped. It was his turn to get angry now. “I didn’t tell anyone, not just you. Ron and Hermione knew I was a little hungry, but—”

“Intectus!”

Harry yelped as his robes dropped to the floor, followed by his shirt and trousers. “Draco!” he shouted, and tried to cover up his groin, before he realized that he was in his pants and that was all right.

But Draco didn’t look as if it were all right. He stared at Harry’s chest and arms and legs as if he were about to make the door of the classroom bang around again. Harry folded his arms defensively. So what if he was a little skinny? So were a lot of people.

A voice tried to whisper in the back of his head that it was different, that most people weren’t this skinny, and not for his reasons. But Harry ignored that. He wasn’t going to complain. He had survived. He would go on surviving, and if he was good enough at the training, then he would kill Voldemort at the end of this year. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to go back to the Dursleys because the blood protection wouldn’t matter anymore.

He wasn’t going to complain. And he had worked so hard to keep Snape and Draco from finding out, and then they just stole the knowledge from him. Harry narrowed his eyes, anger boiling up inside him.

“You should have told me,” Draco said, and now he sounded furious again. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders before Harry was even aware that he was that close and shook him. “You should have told me, you tosser!”

Harry leaped back and gathered up his clothes. “I didn’t want to,” he said. “And that should have been reason enough.”

“You don’t trust me.” Draco’s face was falling into the sneer he’d worn since the Slytherin-Gryffindor game.

“If you have to call it trust,” Harry said, “there’s no one I trust that much. And I hate it that you took this from me instead of just asking and then respecting that I didn’t want to talk about it.” He yanked his shirt violently over his head, not caring that it almost tore his glasses off his face.

“It sounds like you hate me.” Draco’s wand hit the palm of his hand. “You’re really saying that, aren’t you?”

And Harry’s tiredness with everything overwhelmed him. He’d tried to be good and patient and respect the sacrifices Draco was making, and look where it got him.

“Fine, I do!” he yelled. “You were a sore loser, and now you’re sore that I won’t tell you something I didn’t tell anyone, because it doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to be around you anymore!”

He tore out of the room, dragging his robes along behind him, heat boiling behind his scar and racing through his eyes.

*

Left alone in the classroom, it occurred to Draco that that might not have been the best way to go about confronting Harry.

Chapter 16.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

Whoa! Another excellent chapter. This story just gets better and better!

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

I *love* stories with angst and this has angst by the bucketful!

I can't believe how much I wanted Snape to find some way to 'fix' things for Harry! And he couldn't. And now Harry is estranged from Draco too!

Aaaghhhh! Make it better! Please make it better! Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on top! :-)

Wee fix:
- The hum of Potters' accidental magic [Potter's]

Re: Inter Vivos 15

From:

lomonaaeren.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-02-12 12:45 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

phangkyu.livejournal.com

chapter fifteen: in which everyone - EVERYONE - is a proficient idiot.

Great as always; love the progression here, and come to that I really love the tone of Siege Mentality (so far, anyway). Out of interest - genuine curiosity rather than petulant whining, so if it sounds like petulant whining please don't take it to heart - do you reckon the next installment of the vampire fic is happening in the next few months, or is it a way away yet?

(Updates all of the time yaaaaay)

From:

Chapter Fifteen of 'Inter Vivos'- Struggle

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