lomonaaeren | Chapter Twenty of 'Practicing Liars'- Information Gathered, Information Given

Title: Practicing Liars (20/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Summary: AU of HBP. Harry found out that he was Snape’s son two years ago, and he’s carefully concealed it. But now Snape is his Defense teacher, and Draco Malfoy is up to something, and Dumbledore is dying, and the final battle is coming up, and everything is getting very, very complicated.
Pairings: Background Ron/Hermione and Ron/Lavender. Harry and Draco have a ‘complicated friendship’ which will become a preslash relationship. For obvious reasons, Snape/Lily is mentioned.
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence (lots of violence), profanity, angst, character death (not Snape, Harry, or Draco), slash and het hints.
Author’s Notes: While I’m hoping to make this plot at least somewhat original, I know that I’m treading on well-covered ground. I don’t know yet how long the story will be, except that it will be novel-length. Practicing Liars is being written for my dear soft2smooth2000, who has helped me wonderfully with keeping track of and linking to my fics on LJ.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty—Information Gathered, Information Given

“Would you like a sweet, Harry?”

That’s different, Harry thought, rubbing his eyes, to have a choice instead of just lemon drops. But he ended up shaking his head. He was still in a half-daze of panic about what Snape had found out that hadn’t ended when he rode the staircase up to Dumbledore’s office.

He can’t—he can’t know. That was the only comfort Harry had. He suspects, maybe, but he doesn’t know for certain. He would have said something if he did.

Gradually, Harry managed to wrestle his breathing and heartbeat back under control. He took several deep swallows. Snape had taken a chance on reaching out like that, and he would probably be offended that Harry wanted nothing to do with him. Harry thought he would back off and probably never speak of it again.

But what if he doesn’t?

Harry clenched his hands into fists. He had to come up with a plan to make Snape back off, if he didn’t do it of his own free will. But since Snape didn’t seem like he would listen to lies anymore, what should Harry do?

“Are you quite well, Harry?”

Dumbledore had been watching him all this time and waiting for him to pay attention. Harry blushed in mortification and dropped his gaze to the floor. “I’m all right, sir,” he said quietly. He tried to put aside the problems that had preoccupied him for too many months. Snape was no one and nothing to him. A man who couldn’t be his father, because he didn’t love Harry, who only wanted to “connect” with him because he wanted a new way to torment him. In the end, Harry would ignore him and outwait him, and that would be enough.

Yes, why shouldn’t it be? Harry suddenly thought, with a surge of excitement that made the problem look smaller. He doesn’t have any proof that I’m his son, since I tore up that letter from Mum. It would take him months and months to try and get custody of me, if he even tried. And by the time that the Wizengamot or someone else decided, then I’d be of age, and free. He can’t do anything to me then, even if everyone accepts that we’re related.

Harry began to breathe more easily. He leaned back in his chair and looked expectantly at Dumbledore, head cocked. Yes, everything was going to be all right. He could think about something else now.

“Yes,” he said more firmly, because Dumbledore was watching him with a concerned expression. “I’m fine, sir. What did you want to tell me?”

Dumbledore sighed and spun a corner of his beard. Fawkes, who had flown from his shoulder to a perch when they came in, flew back and nestled his head under Dumbledore’s chin. The Headmaster scratched his back and regarded Harry with a dark gaze that made him feel very adult. He sat up and tried to look that way.

“I can endure it, sir,” he said.

A faint smile crossed Dumbledore’s face, making him look at once sadder and wiser. “That is not what I fear, my boy,” he said. “Think back. Do you remember the artifact that you saw briefly, the locket I had destroyed?”

Harry nodded and shivered. He didn’t think he would ever forget how malevolent the stupid thing had looked. The only thing he’d ever seen that compared to it was Tom Riddle’s diary, as least once he knew what it was.

“The artifact is one of a series of powerful objects that are most important to Voldemort,” Dumbledore said quietly. “They are called Horcruxes, and they are a rare and Dark means of gaining immortality.”

Harry froze. When he could speak, he felt as though someone had just carried him up on a broom to a dizzying height and shown him how small his problems with Snape were in the general scheme of things. “Do you mean that he really can’t die, sir?” he croaked. “That the prophecy has to end with me dying?”

Dumbledore closed his eyes. “The Horcruxes can be destroyed,” he said, with a helpless gesture of one hand. Harry thought he would have gestured with his wand once, and remembered that his magic was weakened. “Once they are all gone, then Voldemort can die. Five are gone now—five of the seven he made. He split his soul, Harry, into many pieces, and embedded the pieces into objects. But destroying the object destroys that piece of soul. It is difficult, but I assure you that it can happen, Harry.”

His voice was quiet and determined. Harry took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Five, sir?”

“Yes.” Dumbledore opened his eyes and gave him the ghost of a smile. “The diary that you destroyed in second year was the first. It was the existence of the diary that made me suspect what Voldemort might have done. I destroyed another, a ring, this summer, and then a locket and cup since. Though Professor Snape does not know it, he rid the world of the fifth Horcrux when he slew Nagini.” His face turned solemn, and he held up his right hand to show the thick scar on his wrist that Harry had seen before. “Never forget that the cost is high, Harry. Destroying the Horcruxes is a hard and dreadful quest, not a merry adventure.”

Harry nodded, though he could feel the excitement growing in his chest. The Horcruxes might make Voldemort hard to defeat, but they were a way to do it, and before, Harry had thought that he would never learn how to. “I understand, sir. What are the other two Horcruxes? Where are they? Do you know?”

“One I suspect is the tiara that belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw,” Dumbledore said. “Voldemort prizes artifacts associated with the founders of Hogwarts. The locket was Salazar Slytherin’s, for example, and the cup belonged to Helga Hufflepuff.” He smiled slightly. “I have not, so far, encountered any evidence that Voldemort has graced an artifact of Godric Gryffindor with his attentions.”

“But you don’t know where to look for the tiara?” Harry asked, even though he suspected Dumbledore would have said if he had.

Dumbledore slowly shook his head. “I must identify it before too long. The chances increase with each day that Voldemort will discover some of his Horcruxes are missing and decide to make new ones. He will hide these better and there would be no chance for us to destroy all of them in time.” He paused.

Harry waited, but the silence just went on filling up the office, and at last he decided that Dumbledore wanted to be asked about the last Horcrux. He leaned forwards. “Where is the seventh one, sir? And do you know what it is?”

“Right in front of me,” Dumbledore said. Harry thought he was admitting that he didn’t know where it was except somewhere in Hogwarts until Dumbledore added, “It is you, Harry.”

Harry just stared at him, not understanding.

“My boy,” Dumbledore whispered, “I am so sorry.”

Harry sat back with his arms folded around his chest, blinking hard. He felt the same way he thought he might have felt if Uncle Vernon had decided to beat him really badly: more stunned and disbelieving than upset. He swallowed and licked his lips, but didn’t think he could get any words out.

“What happened when Voldemort confronted you as a baby,” Dumbledore said somberly, “was a complex magical event, the implications of which I did not fully understand until much later. You are an accidental Horcrux, Harry. He did not mean to lodge a piece of his soul in you. But from what I understand of the magical theory, though the Horcruxes helped him survive the reflected Killing Curse—reflected by the power of your mother’s love and sacrifice for you, Harry—he could not survive intact.” Dumbledore closed his eyes. “I am so sorry,” he repeated.

Harry unlocked his jaw at last and suppressed the impulse to rock back and forth. It would be soothing, the way it had been several times at the Dursleys’, but it would look weak, too, and Harry was desperate to avoid looking weak. Dumbledore had trusted him with this information, trusted him to take it like an adult. Harry would do that.

“Does that mean I have to die, too, sir?” he asked in a whisper.

Dumbledore gave him a look so tender that Harry thought he could have been happy for days just because of that—if only the look hadn’t been connected to the other things he’d just told Harry.

“That is the only way to be certain of destroying the Horcrux,” Dumbledore whispered. “His soul is entwined around your soul, Harry. As long as you survive, Voldemort cannot die.”

Harry swallowed again. He closed his eyes, but the knowledge followed him into the darkness behind his eyelids, which had always been his last refuge, and wouldn’t leave him alone.

Well, at least this means I really won’t have to deal with Snape ever again, he thought, and barely kept in a hysterical giggle.

“But who will kill him after I die, sir?” he asked, clinging to calmness and sanity and practical decisions with his fingernails. He’d become used to practical decisions after he got his mum’s letter. The fact of Snape sleeping with his mum wouldn’t go away, so he had to deal with it. He had to deal with this the same way. “If I die, then I can’t be the one to kill him, no matter what anyone says.”

“Your sacrifice will still kill him, Harry,” Dumbledore said, very gently, so gently that Harry wanted to cry again. He locked his teeth against the urge. “You are the hero of this war, never doubt it. It is the only way you can be.” His voice turned low and cold, and Harry would have run out of the room if he was Voldemort. “I will kill him. I promise you that.”

“But—but your magic is failing,” Harry said, staring at him. He had to stare, even though tears were prickling along the corners of his eyes and would probably fall out if he looked, because there was no other way he could express his incredulity.

Dumbledore gave him a small smile. “I think I can trust you with this knowledge now,” he said, “though Professor Snape will not like it.”

That gave Harry a little warmth. He leaned forwards.

“My magic is not truly weakened,” Dumbledore said. “That is a rumor we spread about to make Voldemort more arrogant, more likely to act impulsively and in the full sway of misplaced confidence. In truth, a less powerful wizard than I could kill him once the last Horcrux is removed—”

Once I’m dead, Harry thought. Because that’s what it means. He didn’t think he had any choice but to hammer himself with the words, again and again, until they became real and he could start accepting them instead of denying them.

“But there are few who could survive the assault of his magic long enough to get close and defend themselves against him.” Dumbledore touched his chest with one hand, his face anguished and yet serene. He looked like he was the one who’d accepted the reality of his own death. “I promise you, Harry, I can do that.”

Harry thought of the way Dumbledore had dueled Voldemort in the Atrium of the Ministry, and nodded. Yes, he believed it.

It was a bit of a comfort.

And that was what had started the process of acceptance, he suddenly realized. He closed his eyes and sat there.

“I must ask that you tell no one about this,” Dumbledore said. “I am afraid, to tell you the truth, of how your friends would take it. And that includes Mr. Malfoy.”

Harry opened his eyes and nodded. There was no fucking way he was going to tell anyone about this. Ron would storm and protest and decide to do something stupid like tie Harry up to keep him from going out and doing what he needed to do. Hermione would fling herself into a frenzy of researching different solutions, and she would get more and more upset when she found out there was no other way.

And Draco…

Harry bowed his head. That was another responsibility before he died.

I’ll have to get Draco used to the idea that I’m leaving him.

“I understand, sir,” he said.

“I think you do.” Dumbledore’s face and voice were both weary. He shook his head as though someone was pressing on his eyelids and making him do it. Harry knew that kind of heaviness. He wished there was something he could do in return that would take away the weight. “Please, Harry, come to me with questions if you have them, or to ask for support if you need it.”

Harry hid a bitter smile as he stood, but he thought he could do that only because Dumbledore wasn’t looking. The Headmaster would have seen the smile and demanded to know if there was anything he could do for Harry.

But it’s not about that, is it? Harry thought as he rode the moving staircase down to the bottom. It never is. It’s about what I can do for other people.

He had to struggle with a thick, salty bitterness in his throat, as though he’d choked on seawater. Finally he could open his eyes and stand up straighter, and he even felt marginally better.

I knew it would be like this. I think some part of me always knew it. And maybe—maybe it’s better this way. I mean, my parents are dead. Sirius is dead. They would try to protect me from dying, but this way, I’m just rejoining them.

Ron and Hermione and Draco will be hurt. I can’t do anything about that.

He breathed in and out, all the way from Dumbledore’s office back to Gryffindor Tower. Just get used to it. That was what he would have to do.

I wonder if I’ll be used to it by the time I have to die?

Harry shook his head and decided to think about places where the Ravenclaw tiara could be hidden instead.

*

Something had happened to the boy.

Severus knew that as surely as if someone had taken him aside and whispered the secret into his ear, or he had pulled it from the boy’s head with Legilimency.

Potter still went about his duties. Now that Draco had left the hospital wing, Potter accompanied him to their shared classes and defended him against the attacks of the curious. He spoke with his best friends, though they gave him uneasy looks and didn’t always look eager to initiate a conversation. Severus had heard him asking Albus whether Draco would be safe in the Slytherin dungeons.

But the glow in his eyes was dulled, and it seemed as though his head had turned to iron and he carried it upright only with an enormous effort.

He avoided Severus, too. He had never failed to attend their Occlumency sessions and private duels before. But Severus waited for him impatiently on the next evening after their abortive confrontation that he should have appeared, and had to accept that he wasn’t coming a half-hour later.

Severus engaged him all the more fiercely in class. The boy battled with a grim demeanor, still skillfully but without the animated brilliance that was his birthright. And several of Severus’s spells slipped through his shields, which had never happened before.

One day, as he was snatching his books up, Severus heard Granger exclaim something. Potter snapped back a response in a low voice. Granger looked near tears, but ran out of the room, leaving Weasley to bring her satchel. The girl must be distressed, Severus thought. He could not remember seeing her demonstrate so little regard for schoolbooks before.

Potter tried to melt away when he saw Severus coming, but Severus seized his right arm and shook his head in warning. “Stay,” he whispered.

The boy stood oddly still. Severus glanced downwards and realized that Potter’s face was white and he swayed on his feet. Severus shifted Potter’s arm to the side, and felt the warmth of blood beneath his exploring fingers.

In an instant, even though Potter stubbornly fought him, Severus had pulled the sleeve back and was staring down at a thin, jagged cut across Potter’s forearm. Severus knew the origin of that wound the moment he looked at it. The Vein-Cutting Hex he had used had struck after all; he’d thought Potter had deflected it. And though it had not sliced the vein it was targeted at, Potter’s arm was slimed with blood and he was in obvious pain, shifting back and forth and gritting his teeth. The hex had properties that prevented the blood from clotting or the pain from easing.

“Little fool,” Severus whispered. He lowered his wand so that he could touch the spell and heal it. He was not a mediwizard by training, but he had learned to take care of injuries such as this one on the battlefield.

The boy whipped his arm free and backed away from him. Severus opened his mouth to snap at him about not being an idiot, and then stopped. The boy’s eyes were full of distrust and hatred, nothing unusual.

The fear was.

Then the fear was gone and his wand was in his hand and he looked grimly accepting of a duel.

“Little fool,” Severus said again, but this time his voice was weakened by his disbelief and he knew it. “I would not have hurt you.”

Potter glanced down at the blood that covered his arm. His smile was perfect. He didn’t need to say a word.

“I would never have used such a spell if I had not thought you were in the condition to defend yourself,” Severus snapped, and cast the healing charm, though it was not as effective from a distance. Potter gasped in surprise as the cut tugged itself shut. Severus thought it would have been best to turn away and say no more, but the impatient words spilled out of him. “What happened? You have not been yourself in the last fortnight.”

Potter tossed him a scornful glance that Severus would have said was pure James Potter before, and knew was purely himself now. “As if you know enough about me to realize when I’m acting normally.”

“You have denied me the chance to know you better,” Severus said. He had held back the memories of what had occurred when he confronted his son, because they were useless and would only make his temper worse, but he allowed them to flood his mind now as he gazed at the boy—the boy, who should have been his boy. Perhaps it was sentimental, but he had to think of Potter differently on finding out that he shared Lily’s blood and none of James’s. How differently, he was not yet certain. “I told you I would like to.”

Potter snorted and folded his arms. He winced when the newly-healed skin on the right one pulled, and Severus opened his mouth to tell him he would need to be careful of the wound for a time. Potter bulled ahead, however, interrupting him. “You can’t even decide what you feel about me or what you want. Meanwhile, I know that you’d hurt me if I was stupid enough to let you close.” He cocked his head, and his eyes glinted. “I’ve got harder things to face than not having your approval.”

Severus would have liked to snap. He wanted to so badly. But that had availed him nothing in the recent past, and he had an objection to gratifying the boy’s poor opinion of him by pursuing another failing strategy.

“Perhaps,” he said in a low, controlled voice. “But you do not know how your life might change for the better if you have my approval. And my help.”

Potter rolled his eyes. “I can’t brew potions,” he said, as if reciting from a list. “I’m not Slytherin. I’m not perfect. So your approval is impossible, and not something that I miss at this point. I get plenty of approval from my relatives.”

“Do you?” Severus advanced a step. “I have been thinking, you see. Your wound put me in mind of it. When you broke your arm in your second year, you did not cry out.”

Potter stared at him. “Are you mental?”

“And you did your best not to show your pain just now.” Severus nodded to his arm.

“Because you would have given me so much love and sympathy if I had,” Potter snarled, backing up a step.

“Such a high level of pain tolerance is unusual in one so young,” Severus continued. “Yes, it can be learned, but I am aware that you have received no training of that kind. So it must originate in something else, and, combined with the other signs that I have noted, I began to wonder—”

“No one’s paying you to wonder.”

Potter’s eyes were almost black with hatred. Severus met them calmly.

“Do you know,” he asked, “what I would do, when I grew old enough to be dangerous with a wand, and my father tried to lift his hand to my mother?”

“I don’t care,” Potter said. “I don’t care, all right? They’re your past and your slimy, greasy, pure-blood—”

“I told you I was not a pure-blood,” Severus murmured, almost hypnotized by the desperation and pain in Potter’s face. Yes, those were the same emotions that had looked out of his mother’s eyes when his father was drunk. Tobias had usually screamed at her and slapped her, rather than anything worse, but that was enough for a woman as emotionally fragile as his mother had been, worn down by long years of the same thing.

A slow, deep anger began to rise from within him, like the gathering of a tsunami that would take long minutes to reach the shore.

“And this is the story of your grandparents,” he continued. “Are you not interested?”

Potter backed further away, eyes squinting, his left hand pressed to his right arm. The cut had come open again, Severus noticed.

It took more strength than he had thought it would to refrain from tending to that immediately, but he knew the more important thing at the moment was to bind Potter to him with certain promises.

“I threatened him,” Severus said. “I rarely had to cast a spell. The image of what I could do was enough. Those who have limited and narrow imaginations in other respects usually understand pain, because it is what they inflict on those around them.” His voice lowered into a whisper. “I have not felt the need for that rage since my father’s death, and I assumed I never would again. That is only one of many mistakes I have made.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Potter screamed, his voice cracking. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! My relatives love me!”

“Love to use you for their own benefit, perhaps.” Severus drew nearer, step by delicate step. If he could only involve the boy in his emotions and make him forget that Severus was there, except as a voice prodding him to confront his own demons… “You deserve to have a life independent of them. You deserve to have—”

He stopped, not because Potter had interrupted, but because he had simply drawn himself up and was giving Severus a steady, unsmiling, grave look. Once again, it took all the life out of his green eyes, but this time, Severus saw acceptance there rather than unconsciousness of what was passing around him.

“Life,” Potter said quietly. “Right. You have no idea.”

And he turned and walked out of the classroom.

Severus gazed after him with narrowed eyes. He knew that he had lost again, but he was not certain why.

I will find out. And the third time shall be the end.

*

Draco didn’t have to wait as long as he’d thought he might. Potter emerged from the classroom white as salt, and Draco was on him in an instant, shoving him into the wall.

He nearly hesitated when he realized that Potter’s right arm was all over blood, but since Potter was already twisting and trying to get away, Draco decided to ignore it and take a firmer grip.

“I’m sick to death of being kept out of everything important,” he said, while Potter stared at him in surprise. “Something’s happened to change you. You need help. So talk.”

Chapter Twenty-One.

Chapter Twenty of 'Practicing Liars'- Information Gathered, Information Given

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