Chapter Forty-Six of 'Practicing Liars'- Buildup to Battle

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Forty-Five.


Title: Practicing Liars (46/50)
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.



Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Six—Buildup to Battle

It seemed to have gone so fast, when Harry tried to think about it.

*

Draco was yawning behind his hand when Harry next saw him, sliding into his usual seat in Snape’s Defense class. Harry frowned at him, wondering if he’d had a late night because Harry had kept him too long and he’d had to scramble to study. But when he gave him a look of concern, Draco just waved it off with a smile and a little shake of his head.

Harry faced the front again, and noticed that Snape, who was stalking up and down in the aisle between the tables and eying them intently, seemed similarly tired. Harry tapped his fingers against his wand. Were they coming up with some plan? Facing down some threat that I should have been there to handle? Talking to Dumbledore again? They seem to keep believing that I’m incapable of things like that, and they’re wrong.

“Potter.”

Harry actually looked at Snape without acknowledgment for a minute, because it seemed so strange to hear that name coming from his mouth. Then he sat up and gave his father a grim little smile. He was going to show Snape and Draco that he could do his part and play the game as well as anyone. “Yes, sir?”

“On your feet.” Snape was speaking in the quiet way that Harry had once dreaded, because he knew it meant he was about to get into the worst trouble. On the other hand, that had changed along with lots of other things since he and Snape had spent time in the dungeons together. Or Harry felt that it had changed.

I hope he knows that, Harry thought, as he rose to his feet and bowed without taking his eyes off Snape.

“We are going to give your classmates a small exhibition of real dueling,” Snape said, his fingers curling around his long ebony wand. He returned the bow and then lifted the wand in a long sweep that Harry recognized without thinking about it. He had already dodged in a zigzag pattern, the better to confuse the bolt of light that came out of Snape’s wand and was supposed to find and incinerate him.

The bolt of light came out anyway, of course, but it missed Harry and hit the wall. Snape was already casting again, and Harry had started the minute he was sure that first spell was going to miss him. You didn’t dare hesitate when you were fighting someone as skilled as Snape.

“Ignis!” Harry cried.

Snape’s spell was nonverbal, but Harry recognized the sharp curling motion of his fingers on the last swirl of it. Snape had already taught him to watch for telltale signs like that; every wizard had them. Harry’s, according to Snape, was wearing every emotion openly on his face.

And Snape’s is acting overly eager when he casts a spell that’s meant to humiliate me, Harry thought, holding his wand up even as he fell into a crouch and put his hands over his head.

His fire spell blazed up and cast a shimmering nimbus of red light around the Defense classroom before exploding like a firework. Harry heard students cry out in fear, but he had deliberately chosen a spell that wouldn’t harm anyone except the target he was thinking of when he cast it. From the firework explosion, a single bolt hammered at Snape, compelled to hunt him no matter how he dodged.

By contrast, Snape’s Stripping Spell touched Harry’s hands only, and thus couldn’t do the work it was supposed to—rendering Harry naked, confused, and easily distracted. Harry popped back up, shaking his head, and watched to see how Snape was coping with his own attack and what he should be doing next.

Snape cast a shield he had told Harry was called a Water Net, a shimmering series of bubbles with blue lines between them, specially made to deal with fire spells. Harry’s magic tore through it without slowing down. Harry grinned. Shields like that were difficult to cast with the sheer power that Harry put behind his incantations, and Snape had been the one who taught him that.

Harry had no pity as he watched his father dodge and then swirl his cloak out, enchanting it into a trap that would capture, hold, and dissolve Harry’s burst of fire. He used a spell that would have humiliated me in front of more people than just him. And probably made Draco jealous, too. I know that he wants me to be ready for anything when I duel Voldemort, but he should be ready for anything, too.

The stone under Harry’s feet began to shake and crack. Harry didn’t wait around and gape at it, though he hadn’t seen Snape cast Calling the Earthquake at all. He just danced back, keeping his feet moving all the time so that the spell couldn’t settle around him and create a deep pit, and turned Snape’s robe to a devouring bat that spread its wings and settled around him, biting at the back of his neck with sharp fangs.

The earthquake spread to the foot of Hermione’s table and stopped. Her eyes were very wide, and Harry briefly gave her a reassuring smile. None of the spells he and Snape used would harm the other students. They were either targeted to hit only the individual the caster was thinking about or would be stopped before then.

Snape finally threw off the bat, and blasted it to small smothering blue sparks with a negligent wave of his wand. Then he turned to face Harry. Harry put up his head, trying not to show how intensely he was panting. He ought to be in better shape than this.

“Very good, Mr. Potter,” Snape said, and Harry, Draco, Ron, and Hermione would be the only ones who knew the meaning of the emphasis he put on the last word. “But do you think you will always win?”

“No, sir.” Harry shook his head, eyes fastened on his father’s face. “I know that’s one of the reasons we practice, so that my stronger enemies can’t take me by surprise.”

Snape sneered at him and turned around. But Harry had learned to watch his eyes rather than his face. Snape’s mouth was a way of deceiving people, with all its sneering and all its smirking and all its harsh words. But his eyes gave away his real emotions more than Harry thought he really knew or would be comfortable with.

He had looked proud, for a fleeting moment. He had given the tiniest nod.

Harry took his seat again. He was panting and covered with sweat, and he didn’t dare look at Draco, because he was sure he would see desire there. He put his head in his hands instead and stretched his arms out, acting as if he would sleep for the rest of the class. He felt as if he could.

A Stinging Hex hit him on the ear and made him jerk his head up.

“Pay attention, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nodded to his father and set out to prove that he could do as he was requested to do.

*

Draco didn’t want the day of the battle to come.

Whenever he looked at Harry, he thought of something else he wanted to tell him, an observation he wanted to share or some caution to offer. And though he usually caught up with Harry in the evening and managed to say something, it was never enough. Harry would hold him, snog him, or, one memorable evening, push Draco to the floor and rub against him and pant loudly enough to wake up half the school, but that was never enough, either.

Draco had wanted to stand beside Harry on the battlefield. He’d pictured it without entirely knowing what would happen next, but that one image was clear in his head: marching out to stand with Harry next to the lake in front of Hogwarts, or near the Forbidden Forest. Draco had wanted to see the Dark Lord’s eyes widen when he realized that Draco didn’t need to cower in the school, but could face him.

But Professor Snape had looked at him during one of their brewing sessions when he mentioned it, and said, “No.”

Draco glared at him and closed his hand hard on the glass of the stirring rod, trying not to break it. “What do you mean, no?”

“The Dark Lord would only have to kill you,” the professor said, his hands sorting among shells, stones, and flower petals with a skill Draco envied, “and Harry would break.” He held up one petal in front of his eyes and frowned at it critically. Then he nodded, and it drifted onto the potion forming in the cauldron. Meanwhile, except for when he evaluated the petal, Professor Snape never looked away from Draco. “You know that you are not skilled enough to defend yourself from him. Not yet.”

Draco stared at the professor. Snape showed no sign of backing down, and Draco knew he was capable of casting a sleeping charm and a binding one and leaving Draco to lie in a closet somewhere while the battle took place. After all, they were brewing these potions behind Harry’s back.

“But his friends are going to be with him,” Draco tried. He hated the whining way his voice sounded, and he paused and cleared his throat until he was sure that he could speak with some dignity. “They’re less skilled than I am. They know less about the Dark Arts than I do. If they’re there, I should be.”

“They may imagine that is what will happen,” Professor Snape said, with a trace of contempt that never entirely left him when he spoke of Harry’s friends. Draco comforted himself now by imagining what would happen if they could hear it. “It is not. They will do as they are told. They are even more children than you are.”

“If age has anything to do with it,” Draco said, refusing to look away from the black eyes that bored into him, “why does Harry have to do this?”

“There are bonds,” Snape said, and glanced down, at his cauldron, which was the only reason that Draco knew he was just as upset about this battle as Draco, but had even fewer ways to show it. “Bonds that link him and the Dark Lord. If anyone could defeat the Dark Lord, then Dumbledore would simply have done it himself when he felt his magic fading. I doubt he would have passed up a last chance to be a hero.” The professor’s voice was choked by the time he spoke the last words, and Draco thought it was easier for him to be furious with the Headmaster than to think about what might happen to Harry.

“It’s not fair that he has to,” Draco muttered, his fingers scraping the rim of his cauldron as he reached for another scrap of swan skin.

“No,” Professor Snape said, in the same tone he had once used to tell Draco that he could not be on the Slytherin Quidditch team during his first year, no matter what privileges Potter might get. “But it must be done.”

“We should be on the battlefield, then,” Draco said, deciding he had found the foolproof argument. “We should help him bear his burden.”

For a moment, Professor Snape’s fingers tightened on the rim of his cauldron, and his face was pale with a longing that made Draco lower his eyes. He didn’t think he’d been meant to see that much private emotion, ever, from his Head of House. Witnessing it, however involuntarily, made him uncomfortable.

Then the professor was himself again, and he spoke in the same flat, cold voice. “We would be distractions for him. He would be thinking about how to keep us safe instead of how to fight the Dark Lord.”

“How can he?” All of Draco’s passionate fear burst out of him, and he stepped around his cauldron without even thinking about it and faced Snape, staring at him. He did manage to put his hands behind his back, because he couldn’t open his fists, but he wasn’t suicidal enough to make it look as if he was about to hit Snape. “How can you let him do this? You know that he’s not going to win, no matter how good he is at Defense Against the Dark Arts and no matter how much power he has. The Dark Lord just knows more. He can use Dark spells that will have Harry tortured to death before Harry can even act.”

Snape stood looking at him for long enough that Draco felt slightly ridiculous. Then he lowered his head. Draco flinched back when he saw the spark burning in Snape’s eyes.

“Never assume,” the professor breathed, “that I am emotionless about this.”

“No, sir,” Draco said, backing away a step for safety’s sake. “I didn’t. It’s just—I think you could make Harry stop. If he would listen to anyone about not doing this, it would be you.”

*

Severus had to close his eyes against that intense temptation. It was a thought he had had before this night, during the week he had watched Harry walk about with his jaw clenched shut and his eyes blinking now and then as though he was staring into the sun.

I could demand that he stay behind, that he not fight alone. At the very least, he should take me with him. I have training that would make me more valuable on the battlefield than any student, and less likely to panic.

But though he had the power, he did not have the right. He knew that Harry would give in, but without grace, and then he might not possess his son’s trust again even if they did both survive the battle.

Strange, that he had once contemplated the impossibility of ever ordering Harry Potter to go through a true ordeal or obey school rules. He would go through pain willingly, and he would obey the rules under duress. But Severus did not have the power to prevent him from saving the world, no matter how much he wished he did.

As Harry had said the other day, the sixteen years they had spent apart had left their mark. Harry would listen to him, care for him, perhaps respect him. But he was on the verge of adulthood and used to raising himself, and he would not always obey.

It hurt Severus to hold himself back, not to use the power that, for once, seemed to lie in his hand exactly when he needed it. But he could not, and he met Draco’s eyes and shook his head in a sharp motion that made the boy turn away at last.

“Harry would not forgive me,” he said. It was a piece of knowledge that would have been insufficient for Albus, perhaps even for Minerva, but Draco had the same kind of closeness to Harry to risk, and he nodded, shoulders slumping.

“We will stand ready to join the battle if we can and if it looks possible,” Severus added, the only concession he could offer the disappointed boy. “We will not let him fall alone.”

Draco gave him a pathetically grateful glance. Severus bit back the sneering words that he would have used automatically with many other Slytherins to get them to adopt a different expression. Draco was different from them, and he and Severus shared a deeper relationship than simply student and Head of House.

“Thanks,” Draco whispered, before he frowned, checked his potion, and began to brew again.

Severus returned to his work as well, keeping one eye on Draco. The boy had not yet destroyed or damaged a potion, but the slight alertness the watching required kept Severus from thinking of what he longed to do for Harry, and could not.

*

“Harry.”

Of course he’s going to do this. Of course. Harry took a deep breath and turned around to face Dumbledore.

He’d been walking back from the Room of Requirement, where he’d spent one more evening training Dumbledore’s Army as if nothing was wrong. Everyone watched him with strained eyes and tense smiles, but no one said anything. Harry was grateful for that. He’d had a quiet few hours that let him practice dueling and watch over other people who might need the skills he was teaching them to survive the battle. It wasn’t as good as more practice duels with Snape, but Harry didn’t think a hundred duels like that would really make him ready to face Voldemort.

He’d stayed behind to “make sure the Room was cleaned up,” but in reality to stare at the walls and try to imagine the spells exploding around him for real in a few days. He didn’t have to imagine Voldemort’s face. He could see it every time he closed his eyes.

And now Dumbledore had come up to him as he was walking along the corridor nearest Gryffindor Tower. Harry cleared his throat and stood to face him, trying to keep his hand from twitching towards his wand. He didn’t think Dumbledore was about to attack him.

Well, he mostly didn’t think that.

“Sir?” he asked, and began listing the subjects that this conversation could be about in his own head: the spell that Dumbledore planned to use to give Harry his magic, a final apology or plea for forgiveness, or a reminder of battle strategy. It didn’t have to be something that should make Harry afraid of being alone with Dumbledore.

“You must be wondering how I knew when Voldemort would attack.”

Harry looked up and blinked. See, an even more harmless subject than you anticipated, he taunted himself, and managed a nod. “Well, sir, I did wonder. You seemed certain he was going to come, but I didn’t know how you could be.”

Dumbledore smiled sadly and touched the place on his arm where Harry knew the Horcrux-infected wound was, though he had a glamour that covered it again. “The bond that linked you and Voldemort came about because he managed to place a Horcrux in you,” he said, “essentially behind your scar.”

Harry nodded again, watching Dumbledore’s hands constantly. He didn’t know what the Headmaster’s tells were, but he wanted to be alert anyway, just in case he moved—

Then he tried to get rid of his fear with a blast of irritation. Dumbledore is not here to duel you.

“It seems that sustaining a wound from a Horcrux does much the same thing,” Dumbledore said calmly. “I began to have dreams of Voldemort and what he was doing.” He gave Harry a guilty glance. “Unlike the disaster that was your Occlumency lessons—and I do apologize for inflicting those on you, Harry—I did not need extra training to control the connection. I have used the bond but little. I did, however, manage to implant some interesting dreams in Tom’s head, and nudge them out of dangerous paths at times. I needed him to come to Hogwarts, but not until you had a certain amount of readiness that you did not have at the beginning of term.”

“Until the Horcrux was gone,” Harry said. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Dumbledore. “Sir, when did you give up on the idea of killing me and start thinking that the Horcrux could be removed instead?”

Dumbledore sighed. “Ah, Harry, do not ask me that.”

“But I am,” Harry said, his hands clenching into fists in spite of himself. He knew he would lose if he tried to duel with Dumbledore, even if his magic was really fading, but his confusion demanded an answer. “I mean—if you knew that I was going to have to die, you’d plan around that, not around when you thought I had some special kind of training, because I wouldn’t be alive to use it.”

Dumbledore studied his face as if he was looking for something. Then he waved his wand and murmured a Finite. Harry flinched reflexively, but nothing seemed to happen.

“I am not the only one wearing a glamour,” Dumbledore said softly.

Harry’s hand flew to his cheek. Yes, the soft buzz of magic that he got when he was wearing the spell to disguise his face was gone. He quickly cast it again and glared at Dumbledore, waiting for the explanation.

“When I saw you early in the term,” Dumbledore said quietly, “after your first experience with the white Dementors of your bloodline curse, I recognized the features you were trying to hide. I hoped—I hoped for many things, Harry. But I was not certain. I began to hope that I need not kill you after all. I delayed and I pushed and I said certain things when they needed to be said, and what I hoped for came to pass.”

Harry licked his lips. “You were hoping that Snape would volunteer to brew the potion that you thought you needed to take out the Horcrux, at least if he found out that he was my father.”

Dumbledore nodded. “I could not brew it on my own, not once my magic began to fade. And perhaps I underestimated Severus, but after the bitterness of your fifth year, I was not sure that he would brew the potion and do it correctly merely because I asked him to. Not when it was for you.”

“You did underestimate him,” Harry said dully, trying to deal with the idea that Dumbledore had manipulated him and Snape into becoming closer. Or was it even manipulation? Harry was wondering if they ought to give the Headmaster credit for being that smart and controlling. Sometimes it seemed as though he simply let circumstances fall out and hoped that it would be favorably.

“Perhaps so.” Dumbledore gave Harry a small smile. “Having seen the way that he tries to support and protect you, I think so.”

Harry shook his head. “But you could have brewed the potion before that, before you learned about the—about what Snape is to me but after you learned about Horcruxes.”

Dumbledore sighed. “The simple truth is that I did not think of it, Harry. I am not a Potions master. It might seem as though that matters little, since I have made some discoveries that contribute to general Potions knowledge. But while Severus immediately had ideas for what potions would work, I did not, because I am not accustomed to thinking in that direction. I began to research Transfiguration first, as that is my particular field of specialty, and found nothing there. And then I learned my magic was fading. And then I saw beneath your glamour.” He looked at Harry again, a faint half-smile on his face. For the first time, Harry thought, it looked as if he was mocking himself and not someone else. “I should have thought matters through and asked Severus for help. I did not. I know that your friend Miss Granger thinks few wizards have logic. That certainly applies to me.”

Harry stared at him, and said nothing. He felt there ought to have been a better explanation for that, a less fallible one.

But didn’t he only feel that way because he’d been so accustomed to thinking of Dumbledore as infallible? He would have accepted this explanation from Snape or McGonagall or someone he didn’t idealize so much.

And he’d just got through thinking that Dumbledore wasn’t as smart and formidable as they’d all given him credit for.

Harry swallowed and said, “I need to know that this is the absolute last lie you’re going to tell me, sir. Or,” he added quickly when he saw Dumbledore opening his mouth, “the absolute last truth.”

“It is,” Dumbledore said calmly. “I came to ask if you would like me to make an Unbreakable Vow to tell only the truth from this point forwards. I do not know if that would satisfy Severus. The Vow compels death if one breaks it, and he might feel that, because I am so close to death already, it would not matter to me. But you and I both know the importance of my surviving for a few days more so that I may transfer my magic to you.”

Harry nodded slowly. As strange as it was, he was closer to Dumbledore than to Snape or Draco in some ways. They both understood self-sacrifice in a way Harry suspected was probably impossible for Slytherins.

Then Snape stepped out of the corridor behind him and clasped Harry about the shoulders. His wand was trained on Dumbledore. His face was pale and expressionless in a way that Harry didn’t like, because he suspected it was what Snape looked like when he was playing a Death Eater.

“How did you know where I was?” Harry asked, trying to move. Snape’s hand clamped down, and it was the tight kind of hold you shouldn’t challenge, so he stood still.

“Locator Spell,” Snape said, not taking his eyes from Dumbledore. “I heard what he said, and I will take him up on the Unbreakable Vow.” He gestured to Dumbledore’s wand with his own. “Harry will serve as our Binder.”

It was a strange and awful thing, the little ritual they went through in the corridor, with Dumbledore swearing in a clear voice to tell the truth from now on, to transfer his magic to Harry without hesitation or holding back, and never to try and manipulate them again. Harry stared at the circle of fire around Dumbledore’s wrist and wondered how he was ever expected to be normal after this.

But Snape’s presence was like a steady fire, and Harry decided that he could depend on him, some of the time.

Then he caught sight of the way his father was looking at him as the Vow finished, and found himself smiling. He probably won’t let me not depend on him.