lomonaaeren | Chapter Twenty of 'Inter Vivos'- Arrangements

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Chapter Twenty—Arrangements

“I don’t actually remember—all that much of the battle.”

Harry’s confession was made in a soft, troubled voice, whilst he and Draco sat in the hospital wing next to Black’s bed. Black had gone to sleep with an exhausted whimper the moment Madam Pomfrey aimed her wand at him. She had declared that he was in too much pain to keep awake when Draco questioned her; Professor Snape had always taught him that someone who was taking healing potions of any kind should be awake when ingesting them.

Draco let Harry lean his head on his shoulder, and stroked his hair. His other arm was curled around Harry’s shoulders. Harry let one hand dangle limply in his lap, but his left arm embraced Draco’s waist so furiously that Draco knew he would probably have bruises tomorrow. He didn’t care. He was happy, despite everything, and it took only a few gestures from Harry to make him so.

“And I think I’ve lost other memories, too.” Harry raised his head, glanced briefly at Black, and then glanced away as if he found it difficult to look at him. Draco didn’t blame him. Madam Pomfrey had said that Black would probably escape with a deformed spine and one twisted hand, and that he should count himself lucky if he did. “I can’t remember some of my training sessions with Sirius. Some parts of my childhood. Some times I shared with Ron and Hermione.” He took a deep breath and shivered. “Some of the time I spent with you.” The voice in which he whispered those words was tiny.

“I don’t care,” Draco said, and pulled Harry closer to him still. He wondered if an acute observer, like his father, would be able to tell how much Draco loved Harry. He decided he didn’t care. No one was here except them, Black, and Madam Pomfrey, and she had barred the doors so that no one else could come in. Anyone with an emergency could contact her through the Floo, she’d said shortly. Professor Snape was talking with Headmaster Dumbledore, and Draco privately didn’t expect him back for hours yet. “I’ll tell you all about those times, and I can put memories in a Pensieve for you.”

Harry gave him an exhausted smile. Still, Draco thought his face looked better than it had looked all year. He was carrying less weight, now, and it seemed that the worst had happened that could happen.

Draco did have to remind himself that wasn’t true. The Dark Lord knew about his friendship with Harry, now, and he would be sure to tell Lucius. Draco couldn’t go home. He didn’t know what would happen between him and his parents.

But he and Harry and Professor Snape and Black were all alive, and Snape had said, after peering into Harry’s mind with Legilimency, that he stood a chance of recovery as long as he worked for it. They would still have to strive to close the connection in the curse scar, but they could do that, just like they could help Harry recover his memories.

Draco felt capable of doing anything, with Harry by his side.

“Do you know how long the Dark Lord was in your head?” Draco asked. It was something he wanted to know, but more because he wanted to know everything about Harry than because he was worried. Right now, he felt too drained and contented to worry, and there was Harry’s hair to stroke.

Harry sighed, but didn’t tense up. “No. I was having dreams for months, though. Nightmares that were vivid and got more vivid all the time. Mostly with you dying.” His mouth became tight for a moment. Still his shoulders under Draco’s arm were relaxed. “I think he must have crept in that way, and the dreams were a way of tightening his possession.” He looked up at Draco, his eyes anxious. “But he knows all about you now.”

“And you,” said Draco, because he wasn’t about to let Harry begin that routine of declaring himself in less danger again, “and Professor Snape. So things will have to change. That’s why Snape went to talk to Dumbledore.”

Harry made a muffled noise of contempt under his breath. Draco cocked his head. “What? Do you really think that Professor Snape won’t fight for you to spend the summer away from your horrible relatives?”

“I think he’ll fight,” Harry said shortly. “I don’t think Dumbledore will agree.”

“But he has to know that you probably wouldn’t survive another summer with them.” Draco shook his head, his indignation growing. “Why would he send you there in the first place? Why would he tell you about the prophecy and then send you back there and make you try and bear it alone?”

“I didn’t tell him all the details,” Harry said. “I didn’t even tell you all the details. He might not know how bad it got.”

“Don’t defend him.” Draco tapped one leg emphatically against the bed they sat on; he would have slapped down one hand, but he didn’t want to let go of Harry. “He suspected, and that’s enough. And then Professor Snape tried to tell him earlier in the year, and he didn’t listen.”

“I know.” Harry rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t really want to defend him. I reckon—I feel just done with fighting right now, you know? All carved out. I’ll have to rest a while before I can start again. And I don’t know if I have the strength to sit around blaming and accusing Dumbledore.”

Draco nodded, his decision as to whether he was going to tell Harry he loved him made. Harry would look on that as additional stress right now. Draco didn’t want it to be stress; he wanted it to be a gift. So he would wait.

And that would let him become a little more used to it, too.

“Well, then,” he said. “Trust Professor Snape to fight your battles for you, right now.”

Harry made a face. “Do you know how strange that sounds? If you’d asked me what one sentence I wouldn’t ever be saying two days ago, that would be my first choice.”

“You mean your last,” Draco corrected. “Because the other sentences you could think of would be more likely.”

Harry elbowed him in the ribs. Draco pretended to be much more hurt than he really was, mostly because he was so glad to see a smile on Harry’s face again.

*

When Severus stepped into Dumbledore’s office, he found him waiting with his hands clasped behind his back. But Severus could read the old man’s expressions better than anyone else alive, and he knew that he was not nearly as calm as he pretended to be.

“The Dark Lord was in the school,” said Severus, because he saw no use in being gentle about it. Perhaps, if someone had been blunt years ago, some of Harry’s pain and mine could have been avoided. “He possessed Harry and used him as a weapon against Draco and against—his godfather.” Strange how those words came out less bitterly than speaking either of Black’s names would have. “He was wounded mentally in the process of fighting off the Dark Lord’s possession and has probably lost some of his memories. How important they are, I cannot tell without detailed investigation, which of course will have to wait until some of the wounds in his mind have begun to heal.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes and bowed his head. He looked crushed, but Severus was not able to call up much sympathy for his pain. There were others who ached worse.

“And I suppose,” Dumbledore whispered, “that you have come as Harry’s champion, to tell me how things will be.”

“I want explanations,” Severus said. “But I am the one making the arrangements, yes. Harry will not go back to his relatives. They almost starved him to death. And Finnigan marked him far more deeply with the burning of his possessions than you have showed you knew, and Umbridge tortured him over the Christmas holidays, with Cruciatus. I have come for knowledge, and I have come for justice.” He advanced a few steps towards Dumbledore, his hand on the wand in his pocket.

“You will teach Harry Occlumency, so that we may close the connection in his scar?” Dumbledore spoke softly, not looking up.

Severus felt a swell of triumph. For him to teach Harry Occlumency would require continued access to him over the summer, and he knew that Dumbledore would not risk Severus going to the Dursleys’ home, just in case he tried to take revenge on them. “Draco would be the better choice,” he said. “Harry trusts him more, and he is accustomed to thinking of Draco’s mental touch as bringing pleasure instead of pain.” He shuddered a little. Given Draco’s confession the other day, his own wording brought unpleasant images to mind. “But I will feed Draco my knowledge.”

Dumbledore looked up quickly. “It would be too dangerous for young Malfoy to visit him.”

Severus sneered slightly. “Draco has been revealed in any case. The Dark Lord has been spying for months. Harry had the nightmares that are a symptom of possession. We must keep Draco over the summer, and make arrangements for separating him from his parents. The charade of their friendship being hatred is at an end.”

“I have no legal right to take him from his parents—”

Severus drew his wand and took a step forwards. Dumbledore watched the wand with a sad calm that was infuriating, but just now, Severus was thinking more of Harry and Draco’s fate than of his own anger. “You are the head of the Wizengamot,” he said with quiet force. “You can manipulate public opinion better than Rita Skeeter. You will come up with an excuse that will remove Lucius Malfoy’s legal right to Draco. Well-supported testimony of Lucius Malfoy’s Death Eater activities will be enough to do it. I suspect Narcissa Malfoy would support such a move.” He was, in reality, not sure of that at all, but he knew how to persuade her so that she would do it. “And Draco will be sixteen in a few days. Not yet of age, but old enough to make a court case as to why he should be spared his father’s tender care for the last year of his childhood.”

Dumbledore’s face was pale, his gaze cold and straight. “It would deprive us of popular support at a moment when we most need it, with the Ministry consolidating power,” he said.

“They are consolidating power because you have not seen fit to oppose them.” Severus knew a trick to make his voice vibrate louder than anything else in the room, a useful trick when one was teaching students who thought that because they sat in the back of the class, the professor couldn’t hear them talking. His voice made the delicate silver instruments on the shelves and tables and Dumbledore’s desk vibrate. “Dumbledore, you have a reputation from killing Grindelwald that is robust for all that it is fifty years old. You have a vast web of contacts who would die for you if you asked them to. You are the most powerful wizard in Britain, nearly an equal with the Dark Lord himself. You can take charge of this war. Why you have been leaving it up to Fudge and a fifteen-year-old boy, I have no idea.”

Dumbledore took a deep, pained breath. “Because the last time I had too much responsibility,” he whispered, “it ended so very dreadfully. With the death of my sister, who depended on me, and the permanent alienation of my brother. I defeated Grindelwald not because I wanted to become a hero but because he had wounded me personally. He was my mistake to clean up. But since then, I have tried as best I can to avoid having and using too much power.”

Severus stared at him in silence for long moments. Then he hissed like a steam kettle, and didn’t care that it caused Dumbledore to look at him in pain and surprise. He had not known this reason was hiding behind the doddering fool’s lack of action, but he ought to have guessed. Gryffindors. They make one mistake and think they should pay for it the rest of their lives.

He pushed aside the feeling of familiarity to that description.

“You have had power since then,” he said harshly. “If you really didn’t want it, then you would have found some way not to accept the leadership of the Wizengamot. You wouldn’t have become a professor at Hogwarts, and you wouldn’t have become Headmaster when they offered you the chance. You certainly wouldn’t have led the Order of the Phoenix in the first war. That was too much like your conflict with Grindelwald. You ought to have feared any situation that reminded you of your horrible mistake most of all. Yet you took it. So do not tell me, Albus, that you are a reluctant hero who emerges from his lonely house to do what he must only when called. You have been active in the world, not passive. Except in the matter of Harry Potter. I want to know why. I want to know what makes him so different from all the rest.”

Severus could feel disgust welling inside him as he spoke the words—and pity. For so many years, he had envied the attention that Harry Potter received from Albus Dumbledore, because he had been sure that Dumbledore held the key to his own redemption. Now he wondered if that attention ought to be considered bane instead of blessing. Perhaps Dumbledore had paid so much attention to Harry that he had seen the evil consequences of interference, and so had refused to interfere even when he should.

“I have always striven to use my power for the good of others, and not their hurt,” Dumbledore began.

“You have failed,” said Severus coolly, and was pleased beyond words to see that the words gave Dumbledore pause.

“I have striven, nonetheless,” said Dumbledore.

“And still you failed.” Severus leaned forwards. “Slytherins are wiser than Gryffindors, in this respect. The Dark Lord is wiser than you are.” Dumbledore frowned; Severus knew that he hated to hear his wisdom questioned. “We know—he knows—that power is a positive force, not a negative one. What you do with it matters more than what you refrain from doing. Too often, refraining from action is only an excuse to sit back, and, when evil happens in spite of you, to claim that at least you are not at fault. Has that been your besetting sin, Dumbledore? Have you cared more about what others think of you than what happens to them?”

“Severus—”

“I have done evil to Harry in the past,” Severus continued. “But at least I have endeavored to make it up this year. I would rather have my clumsy efforts in mind when I think of what has happened to him than a perfect, spotless impotence. And now I have saved his life and perhaps his sanity. Tell me why you did not.”

And Dumbledore yielded. His eyes closed, and he staggered backwards, his hand clasped on the chair next to him.

“He was a child,” he whispered. “An infant. So small. Much smaller than the children who come to Hogwarts, who have had eleven years of being molded in their own families, and who are unlikely to be hurt by me because of their sheer numbers—and because so few of them suffer a crisis in which I can aid them in any way. I couldn’t chance taking him in and rearing him. He was too much like Ariana. And if someone associated with Hogwarts had adopted him, there was the chance I would have seen him on a regular basis, and hurt him then. So I left him with a family who, whilst they might hurt him, could not damage him with magic.”

Severus folded his arms and stared at Dumbledore. He half-wished to leave, but the desire to hear this strange tale out to the end kept him still.

“And when he came to the school—” Dumbledore shuddered and opened his eyes. “The first time he stepped into the Great Hall and stood waiting for his Sorting, I read his mind, Severus. And I discovered that Voldemort had left a shard of soul within him, and that he is a Horcrux. Voldemort made him one accidentally on the night that Harry crumbled his first body and drove his spirit away. He must die for Voldemort to be finally vanquished. Oh, Tom made other Horcruxes as well, like the diary that Harry has already stabbed. But this is one of them. Harry is one of them.” Dumbledore was whispering by the time he came to the end of his speech. “How could I become too close to him? How could I attempt too hard to save him? Every time I saw him come near to death, I wondered if that might not be a kinder fate for him. Indeed, I wondered whether it might not be the saving of the world.”

Severus went cold. He closed his eyes and fought his own sickness for long moments.

He did not know why this was such a surprise. He knew that the Dark Lord had long since begun to research Dark Arts and Dark ways of making himself immortal. But then, no one Severus had heard of in either history or legend had made more than one Horcrux.

And yet, there was not a doubt in his mind what he had to do.

“I will seek out some way of handling this,” he said. “In the meantime, Harry will go to an Order safe house for the summer. Not Grimmauld Place,” he added, seeing Dumbledore’s mouth open. “The atmosphere of the place would be wrong for him, with what he has suffered. To a place where he will not have Black’s constant company, or mine, or Draco’s. To a place where he can see other people as much or as little as he chooses, and can eat whenever he wants, and where he can rest and heal. That is what he needs right now.”

“And Draco?” Dumbledore was regarding Severus as if he were a sudden, new, thirteenth use for dragon’s blood.

“He will come with me,” Severus said quietly. “Our personalities are more compatible than mine and Harry’s.”

Dumbledore shook his head. “There are so many things to arrange—”

“And unlike you, I am not afraid of arranging them.” Severus raised an eyebrow at him. “Begin the legal proceedings to remove Draco from the custody of his parents. And do inform Harry’s relatives that he will not be returning to them. I need you for nothing else right now.” He turned and left the office.

He was more than halfway down the moving staircase before the tremors from disgust and sickness had faded, but they did fade. Harry was his priority, not Dumbledore.

He reached the bottom of the staircase and moved off in a rapid stride towards Minerva’s rooms. The moment she saw Severus’s memories of what had happened to Harry under Umbridge’s wand and heard part of his conversation with Dumbledore—what Severus deemed it wise for her to know—then his main difficulty would be in persuading her to leave enough of the toad-like woman for trial.

And he could do this, now. He breathed a few times, inflating his lungs experimentally. He was freer than he had ever been.

He need not fear that Dumbledore would revoke his protection and send Severus to Azkaban, because he understood Gryffindors. And Dumbledore had even more than the usual obsession with honor and keeping his word, as it appeared now.

You will have to find someone else to give you redemption.

But as he knocked on the door of Minerva’s bedroom and heard her sleepy response, Severus felt as though that, too, might be manageable.

*

Harry wasn’t looking forwards to this.

But it had to be done, and thinking about the way that Snape and Draco had helped him made it easier. He pushed open the door of the hospital wing and stepped inside.

Ron and Hermione turned around from Sirius’s bed and looked at him. Sirius shuddered a little, but imitated them. Harry sighed. He knew it would be some time before Sirius could separate Voldemort and Harry in his mind.

It didn’t help that he no longer felt as connected to his friends as he had. He seemed to have lost fewer memories of Draco than of them; it was as if Voldemort had thought Harry’s older memories were the dearer ones, and dug them out of his mind first.

But that’s in my head just like me being Voldemort is in Sirius’s head, he reminded himself firmly, and let the door fall shut behind him as he turned towards the bed again. Hermione was in full scolding mode by then.

“Harry! How could you have let Malfoy help you, and Snape, and not us?” She shook her head at him. “We would have—”

“Because you were asleep,” Harry said, in the sort of blunt voice he hadn’t used all year, “and it happened so fast.”

Hermione fell quiet, gaping a little. Ron frowned, but didn’t say anything. Sirius leaned forwards. “Does this mean that Snape and Malfoy are taking you over?” he demanded.

Yes. Let’s get right to the heart of the matter, shall we? Harry knew that his best friends were probably thinking the same thing at the moment. They still weren’t used to being left out of the adventures that Harry had at the end of the year, though Snape had been included more times than they had.

Harry blinked as he thought about that, but it was in the class of things he could deal with later. His world had become very divided in the last little while, into things he could deal with later and things that had to be dealt with today.

“I didn’t leave you out on purpose,” he said. “That’s what’s been happening this year, because I didn’t want to talk to anyone about things like the nightmares and I was teaching you, but I wasn’t training with you. So I left you out then, and I’m sorry. But I’m not going to leave anyone out now. That includes you, Sirius, and you, Ron, and you, Hermione.” He thought it was good to say their names; it made them relax a bit. “So I’ll tell Sirius about the abuse—”

“What?” Sirius breathed, looking appalled.

“And I’ll tell you about the prophecy, and what I know about fighting Voldemort.” Harry raked his hand through his hair and started pacing back and forth. He did wish that Draco was here. Bizarrely, there was a faint wish in his mind for Snape. But it was good for him to do this on his own. If Snape was right and he was a mixture of Slytherin and Gryffindor traits, then he had to keep in contact with both sides of his nature. “But I’m going to be friends with Draco and Snape, too.” Another bizarre thing; could anyone in the world say they were friends with Snape? Except Draco, maybe. But Harry wasn’t going to worry about that right now, either. He was trying to make his life simpler, because that was what he needed. “I don’t want you to tell me to leave them out of this.”

“Harry, you don’t know what Snape’s done,” Sirius began.

“I don’t care,” Harry said. “He saved my life last night, Sirius. And yours. He stopped me from hurting you further.” He turned and looked at his godfather, feeling sorry for him. Sirius would have to get used to a deformed spine and hand, but at the moment, he looked more lost than anything. He wouldn’t want to change his mind about prejudices he’d carried for almost thirty years, Harry knew. “That matters more to me than what he did in the past.”

“But he’s a Death Eater!” Sirius slammed his good hand down on the bed.

“Pretending to be one,” Harry said. “He was a spy, but Voldemort knows about him, now, so he’ll have to stop.” He hadn’t known it would be such a relief to say those words until he said them. “He’s been on the side of the Order all along. And I am going to know about the Order now, Sirius, so stop jumping.”

“And if Malfoy calls me a Mudblood?” Hermione’s eyes were very wide, her face tight.

“Then I’ll ask him to stop,” Harry said. “But I won’t abandon him.”

“He’ll run off and become like that nasty father of his,” Sirius muttered.

It sounded like a last dying effort at protest. That made it easier for Harry to keep from shouting at him. “He won’t,” he said. “He would ask me to fight him and sit on him, if he had a mind to do that. And even then, it would probably be Imperius.”

“I just,” Hermione said, and shook her head. “We’ve felt cut off from you this year, Harry.”

“I know,” Harry said. “That was my fault. I’m sorry.” Keep going straight ahead, being cutting and strong. You know that was the way Snape fought Dumbledore. Nothing else would have worked. He could barely believe the arrangements for his summer that were going forwards, either, or that Aurors had arrested Umbridge this morning. “But it doesn’t mean you get to blame Snape or Draco for it.”

“How can we know things will change?” Hermione put one hand on her hip.

“You’ll have to wait and see if they do, I reckon.” Harry stared her down.

Hermione and Sirius both looked as though they wanted to argue about Snape and Malfoy some more, or redirect the conversation to Harry’s own faults, but they couldn’t seem to think of anything to say. Harry felt a moment’s pride in that. It wasn’t often he managed to render Hermione speechless.

Finally, Hermione left, and Ron followed her. He put his hand on Harry’s shoulder as he went, and smiled at him.

“I can live with Snape and Malfoy, mate,” he whispered back. “I ‘m just glad they make you happy.”

He was gone before Harry could reply, or thank him. Harry stared after him in wonder, then shook his head and approached Sirius.

Sirius looked at him with fear he couldn’t hide for a moment. At last he said, “I’ll get over this, because I want to.” He stretched out his arms, and Harry went to him and hugged him.

“It’ll be hard,” he said.

“Everything in life is hard.” Sirius’s twisted hand stroked his hair. Harry thought the feeling odd for a moment, until he remembered that Draco had done the same thing the other day. Sirius’s touch didn’t feel as good as Draco’s, but he knew why. “It wouldn’t be any fun if it wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. For the first time in a day, he had time to think about the corrosive guilt. “I should have said something about the nightmares I was having. Snape said they were the first sign of possession.”

“But you didn’t know about that.” Sirius’s stroking hand didn’t falter. “And it’s much easier to forgive you when I love you the way I do, Harry. I might see your face in my dreams for a while, but I know you aren’t You-Know-Who.”

Harry closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Sirius. Maybe, given enough time, he’d be able to forgive himself, too.

*

OWLs were passing in a haze.

But then, Draco had expected that. He hadn’t studied as hard as he would have ordinarily, because he had more important things happening in his life: fooling his father, training with Harry, trying to figure out what his feelings meant. Yes, the last had been resolved, and he wouldn’t have to do the first anymore, but what had happened in the intervening days since those things had changed hadn’t exactly been restful.

Besides, he was as prepared in Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts as he was ever going to be, thanks to Professor Snape’s lessons, he had never done poorly in Charms or Transfiguration, he could do competently in Astronomy, and he didn’t care about the other subjects. So he knew he was going to come out all right.

He saw Harry briefly during the exams. They had a moment to smile at each other and not much else. Harry looked haggard and walked with his head bowed, as if his thoughts were heavy. Draco wished he could take him off for a private talk, but that would have to wait for the beginning of the summer. Granger had Harry in a study session most of the time when he wasn’t actually sitting the exams.

At least Draco knew they would have that time during the summer. Professor Snape had called him into his office shortly after the Potions practical finished. Draco came in with his mind buzzing with recipes and his hair actually mussed; there had been a brief moment when he couldn’t remember how to brew the Draught of Peace.

Not that that’s much of a surprise, when there’s a war on, he mused, and then banished the silly thoughts when he saw the shadowed way Professor Snape regarded him. He stood out of the way so that the professor could cast locking and silencing charms on the door, and leaned on a table to keep from knocking himself over with a yawn.

“Dumbledore has thrown his support behind an attempt to remove you from Lucius’s custody,” said Snape without preamble. “We need to know that you freely consent to this.”

Draco was silent for a moment, but with shock, not because he needed to think. He knew Dumbledore had been doing something as far as regarded Harry’s abuse at the hands of his relatives. He’d never expected the same level of attention.

“Yes,” he said. “I—of course I do!”

Snape smiled thinly, his eyes watchful. “You would live with me,” he said, “because the wards on my house are strong enough to protect us and our personalities are compatible. Is that acceptable?”

“More than,” Draco said. “And my mum could visit if she wished?”

Snape picked up a parchment from his desk without speaking and held it out. Draco unfolded it, his hands shaking as he recognized his mother’s handwriting.

Dear Severus:

I knew this was coming from the moment I saw how my son rejected the gifts Lucius tried to offer him and clung to his independence instead. I have done what I can to leave him free to choose. If he had accepted the principles that Lucius offered, I would have nodded in silence, but as it is, I must give you my approval.

I hope that you will occasionally welcome a third person in the house at Spinner’s End.

Narcissa Malfoy.

Draco licked his lips and tried to say something, but in the end every word he might have uttered was too private. So he just shook his head, looked up, and said, “D’you think Father will do anything to her?”

“I doubt it.” Snape looked viciously satisfied, now that he knew Draco’s decision. “I do not believe that he ever knew where her sympathies lay, or that she has served the Dark Lord less than willingly. And she is clever enough to keep her allegiances hidden from him even now.”

Draco nodded, thinking it through. “And I can see Harry sometimes,” he said. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Professor Snape hadn’t said Harry was living with them. “I can help him cope with his knowledge of the possession and the Occlumency and the prophecy—”

“The prophecy,” said Snape flatly.

Draco felt a moment’s start of guilt, but he thought it through, and decided that Harry would probably be telling Snape the truth anyway. Or, well, he would have to; he’d already told Draco that he’d told his friends and there was a lot of shouting. And he would be mad or a fool if he didn’t trust Snape after what Snape had done for him. Draco knew he was neither. “Dumbledore told him about the prophecy concerning him last year, about how he would have to battle the Dark Lord alone,” he said.

Snape closed his eyes and said, “I see,” after long moments. Then he opened them and said, “I am very proud of you for what you did in the battle against the Dark Lord, Draco—the way you survived, and the spells you thought of.”

Draco felt a warm flush of pleasure run over him. Part of him was aware that Snape was distracting him from whatever about the prophecy disturbed him, but he could accept that, especially when Snape came forwards, put his hands on Draco’s shoulders, and stared searchingly into his eyes. He didn’t use Legilimency.

“You will be a fine man,” Snape said softly.

Draco had to look away.

*

Severus lifted his head when Harry entered his private rooms. He came cautiously, looking around as if he thought that Severus would cast a spell to make monsters leap out of the walls at any moment. In his hand was clutched the new wand that Ollivander had been to the school to help him choose. Severus thought the wood was aspen, but he did not know the identity of the core. Harry’s old wand had proved irreparable even with Severus casting the spells; the phoenix feather core had disintegrated and could not hold the wood together, a much more serious defect than a simple break.

Harry’s eyes were haunted. Now that he knew how much they had to be haunted with, Severus made an effort to keep his voice softer as he said, “I have several things to tell you. You know about the arrangements for the summer.”

“Draco mentioned them.” Harry’s voice was still wary, which made Severus stifle a sigh. Harry took a step back that let him keep his shoulders turned to the wall and gave him a sight of the open door. “So, where is this place I’m going to be staying?”

“In a place called Copsham Cottage,” said Severus. “Named for a Muggle place that I believe the Headmaster was very fond of, once.” Harry’s face darkened with distaste at the mention of Dumbledore, which did not give Severus confidence. But he would have to mention Dumbledore’s name more than once in this conversation, so he pushed on. “You will have me and Draco to visit you whenever you like, and more than one adult member of the Order will stay with you.”

“Sirius?” Harry’s face lit up, but there were shadows in the back of his smile, and Severus knew why, none better. He stifled, in turn, the jealousy that immediately rose when Harry asked about Black and nodded.

“Or Lupin, or one of the adult Weasleys, or others,” he said. “This is an arrangement that Dumbledore would have made long since if he had thought about the matter as he should have done.”

“Why didn’t he?” Harry asked, and suddenly there was a lash of fury in his voice and his green eyes shone the way Lily’s had done when she was confronting Severus over turning to the Dark Arts. “Why didn’t he ever care? Why did you have to force him to care?”

“He was worried about hurting you, because another child in his care had died,” said Severus. “And he was afraid of you.” He gestured to the scar on the boy’s forehead and spoke the words that were only less hard than the words he was soon to speak. “You carry a part of the Dark Lord’s soul inside you.”

Harry froze. “What?” he whispered.

“He was trying to become immortal,” said Severus. He spoke as stiffly and neutrally as he could now, and resisted the impulse to hurry through it. “He divided his soul into pieces. Horcruxes, they were called. The diary that you destroyed in your second year was one. And his soul split again when you destroyed his body. Perhaps, as his spirit flew, it broke then. It would have been in a tattered state.” It was the best explanation Severus could come up with, at least. “You have a shard of his soul inside you. He cannot die as long as you are alive.”

Harry closed his eyes, and said nothing. Severus did not know how to read his silence, and he knew that the next words he spoke might destroy his ability, his right, to do so forever. But Harry had to know.

“I have recently been informed that you know the prophecy.” Let him think Dumbledore told me. He does not need to know that Draco blurted it out. “You should know that the Dark Lord already knew part of it before he hid in your head. I was the spy who overheard it and carried the news to him. I was the one who sent your parents into hiding and—killed them, indirectly.”

Harry’s breathing grew very fast for a moment, but he opened his eyes with a perfect, fragile glaze of calm stretched across them. “Thank you,” he said. “May I be excused, please?”

In his voice, Severus could hear the echoes of a thousand times when he had asked the Muggles the same thing. He would have to do something about the Muggles, but for the moment, he had to do something about the evil he had done.

“I would give anything to undo it,” he said, and he did not understand why his throat was so thick and his own breathing came fast. “I begged him to spare—her. It did not happen, but—I begged him to do it.”

Harry nodded. “Knowing that helps.”

He had not changed his expression or his tone a hair. “Harry,” Severus said, and then discovered that the hardest words of his life were, after all, yet to come. He had blurted out the facts as fast as he could, and now, seeing the effect they’d had on Harry, he was appalled. “I hope—that is, I will not come near you for the rest of the summer if you do not wish to see me, but I will still be training Draco, who will be training you in Occlumency. And—I wish to see you.”

“I know that.” Harry’s eyes were very far away, and Severus had not a clue what he was thinking. “And I reckon I have to get used to it. I have to get used to the fear in Sirius’s eyes when he looks at me. I have to get used to knowing that Voldemort used my body to curse Draco with the Cruciatus. I have to get used to mediating between Ron and Hermione and Draco and Sirius and you, and to the holes in my memory, and to the—change in my spells.” He gave his new wand a swish.

“I would do what I can to help you,” said Severus. He felt helpless, and he hated being that way. “I wish—I cannot change the past. But I wish I could.”

Harry swallowed, and looked up at him again. “I know,” he said, and his face and eyes were present this time, though so weary that Severus wanted to turn away. He looked as if he were really struggling to accept all this instead of simply stating the facts that he had to accept, and Severus did not know how a single teenager could do that. “It’s just—a lot to get used to, all at once.

“But I do appreciate the fact that you’re honest with me,” he added. “And that you arranged for me to stay somewhere else during the summer. And that you helped me against Voldemort. I just don’t want to see you for a month.” The final words rushed out. “I—that’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Severus, and restrained the urge to advise Harry about the holes in his memory. There was no one Harry would probably trust to inspect his mind except Draco, and Draco was not yet skilled enough in Legilimency. He did say, because he could not help himself, “Are you all right?”

Harry snorted, sounding human again. “Define all right.” Then he shook his head. “It’s a lot to get used to all at once,” he repeated. “But I have to grow up and do it. It’s not going to go away just because I want it to. The past’s not going to change, as you said.”

He nodded formally to Severus. “Thank you, sir.” And then he turned and marched out of the room.

“I could send Draco to you,” Severus told his back, because he did not think Harry should handle all this by himself.

“Not this evening,” Harry said, without turning or slowing. “I always did my best mourning and raging alone.”

And he shut the door before Severus could even make the reassurances about Harry’s not being alone that he realized, now, he ought to have made from the beginning.

*

Harry climbed the steps to the Astronomy Tower without realizing they had all gone past until he was leaning on the battlements. Then he let himself just stand there and stare at the Forbidden Forest and the nearly full moon until his eyes blurred and the urge to cry left.

It was so much. He didn’t know if he could handle it all.

But it was grow big enough to encompass all of it, or die.

And Harry didn’t plan on dying.

As he stood there, anger flared in him. It was different from the mindless, unreasoning rage he’d felt when Voldemort was in his body and mind, and it was different from the dull way he was always angry at the Dursleys.

He was angry at everything he’d lost. Because Dumbledore had decided that he should spend his childhood with sadists. Because Voldemort had killed his parents. Because he’d spent so much of the year apart from Draco and had that stupid fight with him. Because he’d been distancing himself from Ron and Hermione, assuming without even thinking about it that they couldn’t stand beside him in the battle against Voldemort. Because he had spent so much time distrusting Snape.

He’d been robbed. There were so many things he was missing, so many things he didn’t know about himself, didn’t understand, even though he would have his bloody sixteenth birthday next month.

And one thing he intended to do was to get those things back.

He was going to fight to regain his memories. He was going to fight to keep his friends and get Sirius over the fear in his eyes. He was going to stay close to Draco and Snape despite all the things tugging him in the opposite direction.

He was going to reject this piece of Voldemort and bloody get his life back.

He’d put up with so much: Dumbledore’s silence, Snape’s treatment before he learned better, Voldemort’s nightmares, Seamus’s burning his things, the Dursleys’ starvation, Draco’s danger, and so many damn secrets about himself. No more. He was put in Gryffindor a reason, wasn’t he? He got things by fighting, didn’t he? He’d had to strike back at Voldemort when Snape helped him, in the graveyard, when Tom Riddle was in the diary, when Voldemort lurked in the back of Quirrell’s head. And he’d had to fight the Dementors to keep Sirius alive, and he’d had to fight to listen to Snape instead of just running out of the room tonight, and he’d had to fight his distrust of Draco.

(Right now he was fighting to consider, instead of just reject, the implications of naming Draco ‘beloved’ the way he had. But that was a battle he’d have to wage for some time longer).

And no matter how right the prophecy turned out to be—and Harry didn’t think it was completely right, since he knew very well that Draco wouldn’t let him fight alone—he thought he could fight his fate, too, and take hold of destiny with both hands, and give it a good yank in the other direction.

It was worth trying, anyway. Anything was better than just lying passively back and letting people trample over him the way he had been doing.

Harry reared back and cast a Patronus upwards. The silver stag shot away from him, pivoted in the air, and gave him a full, sweeping salute, bowing its antlers, from the top of the sky. Then it reared and charged into the starlight.

Harry followed its progress with an unblinking stare, and reached out a hand to pull his future down, kicking and screaming, to eye level.

He was going to be a warrior no matter how things turned out, wasn’t he? Then let him be a willing one. He thought Dumbledore’s mistake, and Snape’s, too, was to hide from what was obvious as long as they could. Not him. He was done with that. He was going to go out there, and go into battle, and use whatever power he had to get rid of all the things that stood in his way.

Unjust things. He finally realized that. He’d been afraid of hurting someone, but that was like Dumbledore; you could try and try not to hurt someone and end up hurting them anyway.

So from now on he would try acting, and see where that got him.

The night rushed forwards, the earth spinning through the darkness, bringing the day closer and closer, and Harry opened his arms to embrace it.

Chapter 21.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

Wow, what a great chapter!

From:

slashpuppy.livejournal.com

There was just *soooo* much in here.

Finally getting an understanding of why Dumbledore has done the things he's done with respect to Harry! God Dumbledore comes across as selfish!

I don't think I can feel more sorry for Harry than I do at this moment. Poor, poor boy! There's just so much resting on his thin shoulders. I'm glad he's decided to stand up for himself and take action rather than passively giving in to his 'fate'!

I kinda cried at this line though:
And he shut the door before Severus could even make the reassurances about Harry’s not being alone that he realized, now, he ought to have made from the beginning.
Even when Severus is trying to do what's best he misses out on doing something so fundamentally important!

Looking forward to the next chapter!

Wee fixes?
- He was, in reality, not sure of that at all, but he knew how to persuade her so that he would do it. [so that she would]???
- I 'm just glad [I'm]

Re: Inter Vivos 20

From:

lomonaaeren.livejournal.com - Date: 2009-03-05 02:07 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

cheshyre

Wow

From:

Chapter Twenty of 'Inter Vivos'- Arrangements

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