lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2010-06-23 07:23 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2010-06-23 07:23 pm
Chapter One of 'Chosen Chains'- Hello, Tension
Title: Chosen Chains (1/5 to 7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, D/s elements, violence, sex, profanity. EWE.
Summary: Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait—and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.
Author’s Notes: This will be an irregularly updated story of, probably, five to seven parts, with fairly long chapters. The D/s elements are limited, but an important part of the story, and I haven’t often written them before, so please don’t read it if that bothers you.
Chosen Chains
Chapter One—Hello, Tension
“I still don’t understand why Annie would have to go away,” Mrs. Crompton said, her expression so distressed that Harry nodded sympathetically in spite of himself.
It wasn’t easy. He had spent almost three hours in this hot, cramped room with young Annie Crompton, a Muggleborn girl just experiencing her first signs of magic, and both parents. He had explained the existence of the wizarding world to them, demonstrated his own spells, explained why he had been called in to help them—there were a few other half-bloods and Muggleborns who could have come, but most of them were on holiday right now—and told them that Annie wouldn’t need to go a magical school until she was eleven. Both Crompton parents refused to understand.
Harry reminded himself to be patient, and tried to ignore the sweat creeping down his neck and the tension coiled in his muscles. Annie, small for six years of age and with dark hair that struggled into curls, was his focus here, or should be. She sat on a chair between her parents and watched him with squinting blue eyes.
“It would be hard to have her practicing magic among Muggles,” Harry said, for the sixth time. He glanced at the walls, hoping to distract his attention, and then jerked his head away when he saw the photographs of mother, father, and child. This house resembled Number 4 Privet Drive too closely for comfort. It was even in Surrey. “And hard to hide our existence then.”
“Don’t see why you need to,” Herbert Crompton said, leaning forwards to thump a fist down on the stool in front of him. Annie jumped, but smoothed her expression out again before her father could notice. “She can give it up any time she likes. Not that important, is it?”
“I’m sure something could be done with seaweed to help wean her off it,” Adela Crompton said, one hand fluttering in front of her. “They can do wonderful things with seaweed now.”
Harry sighed. The Cromptons had accepted the existence of magic much more easily than some of the Muggle parents he spoke with; that wasn’t the problem. They simply didn’t want anything to disrupt their perfect, normal existence.
Just like the Dursleys.
Magic crept up his chest and into his hair in bright tendrils, which never did anyone any good. Harry did his best to ignore it. It was unlikely to manifest in ways the Cromptons could notice unless he got much angrier than he was now. “She can’t just drop magic,” he said. “She has to have some kind of training. If she decides that she doesn’t want to go a magical school, then she can do that. But she’d need a few years of learning to control her magic first.”
“She doesn’t need it.” Mrs. Crompton turned and smiled mistily at Annie. “Did you ever see any child that self-possessed?”
Not many, Harry thought, meeting Annie’s eyes again. And that’s the problem.
The Cromptons seemed to have ambitions for Annie even higher and more stringent than the ones Petunia and Vernon had entertained for Dudley, but they expected her to actually achieve them. Harry could see the awards placed along the walls between the photographs and how Annie sat too still, shoulders drawn up as if someone had shouted into her face.
No signs of actual abuse, he thought—he was familiar with those by now—but she was supposed to be her parents’ golden child, their perfect little girl, and had curled into herself under the pressure.
Not that things would be that much easier for her in the wizarding world, where tensions between pure-bloods and Muggleborns were creeping up again.
Harry forced himself to hold his breath so he wouldn’t give in to the anger, and then glanced at the Cromptons. “Magic is different than emotions, ma’am,” he said. “Things she wants, people she thinks are threats, small and fleeting desires—the magic will react to all of those, and in a wilder and wilder way unless she gets training.”
“Is this some kind of therapy?” Mr. Crompton was trying to look down his bespectacled nose at Harry, which might have worked if he was in any way impressive, or Harry easily frightened.
“Of course not,” Harry said. “She’ll get help, yes, but only to learn how to deal with her magic. I can see that she’s smart and doesn’t need any help other than that.”
The Cromptons preened. Annie widened her eyes and stared at Harry as if he had said something far more remarkable than what he had.
“But it has to be her decision,” Harry said, looking at Annie. “If she doesn’t want to get training right now, she doesn’t have to. But then it will make it all the more important for her to spend at least a little time in a magical school when she’s eleven.”
“Why is the age of eleven so all-fired important?” Mr. Crompton fidgeted in his seat and tried the glare again. Harry clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t snarl at a man who really did love his daughter.
“Because that’s when wizard children are trusted to handle their wands,” Harry said. “Most students attend the magical schools soon after their eleventh birthday.” It had taken a long time to remind himself to say magical schools and not Hogwarts, and not because he wanted to be more inclusive. It was the strict truth. Hogwarts had been closed since the war.
Bitter iron filled his mouth. Harry licked his lips and wished he could spit.
“Our Annie doesn’t want any of that,” said Mr. Crompton.
“You’re sure about the seaweed?” asked Mrs. Crompton.
“Maybe we should ask Annie what she wants?” Harry said, but the hardness of his voice made both of them shut up and sit up straighter. Harry turned to the girl and waited. He felt a vicious satisfaction in making the Cromptons stop babbling, told himself that he shouldn’t, and felt it anyway.
Annie moved her hands a bit, the only visible sign of agitation Harry had seen her give since he arrived and started explaining. Then she looked him in the eye and asked, “What happens if I don’t get training? Specifically?”
Harry nodded to her. “You can cause danger to people when you’re young and your magic just reacts. I made one of my aunts inflate like a balloon and float in the air.” Mr. and Mrs. Crompton looked ready to faint. Harry ignored their reaction. He was more interested in Annie’s. “I wanted to get away from some kids who were chasing me and ended up on a roof. I get angry at a teacher and turned her hair blue. I didn’t know what was happening. No one told me I was a wizard. I found out when I was eleven, and I was happy about it, but I really wished someone would have told me sooner.” He softened his voice, leaning towards her. “That’s one reason I come around. Even if you don’t want to be any part of the wizarding world, you need to know what’s happening and you deserve to have a name for what you are.”
“A witch,” Annie said. She sounded as though she were trying the word out.
“But she doesn’t have to be,” Mrs. Crompton said. “No law says that she’s required to be.”
“No,” Harry said, as mildly as he could under the circumstances. “But it could be dangerous for her if she’s not.”
“Would she die?” Mr. Crompton flashed an apprehensive look in Harry’s direction.
“No,” Harry said again. “But she could be hurt.”
“What would the neighbors think, though?” Mrs. Crompton took on an expression that reminded Harry very much of Aunt Petunia. “I’m sure you’ll understand, Mr. Potter, that we have to think of our reputation and our honesty. What are we going to say if Annie goes to a school like this? ‘Oh, yes, we sent her to a school for people who can do magic?’ It’s a bit abnormal—”
One of the photographs on the wall abruptly jumped out of its frame and landed on the carpet. Both the senior Cromptons stared at it with their mouths open. The glass in front of it hadn’t broken or otherwise parted to let it through, which Harry knew was startling when you were seeing it for the first time.
“Sorry,” Harry said pleasantly. “A bit hot in here, isn’t it?”
Magic hissed and curled under his fingernails. Harry turned his hands over so that they wouldn’t see. No doubt about it; when he got out of here, he would have to go in search of stress relief. He hated to do it, but it had been three months. Clearly something had to be done.
“In the end, Annie is the one who has to make the decision,” he said. “And she has five years to do that.” He smiled at Annie, but she only looked cautiously back at him. Harry thought she’d probably had a lot of practice at telling when someone was putting on a polite mask but was angry behind it. “If she doesn’t get training before she’s eleven, the wild magic will calm down a bit. But after that age, it increases again. Please do consider that before you decide that she can never go.”
He stood up. Mrs. Crompton stood up with him, shaking her head. “I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “What will it matter to her ability to get along in the real world?”
Harry suddenly had an idea about what might work here. He should have thought of it right away, given that Hermione was so oriented towards good marks, and he thought her parents had trained her to be high-achieving.
But then again, he no longer spent a lot of time thinking about Hermione.
He leaned forwards and caught Mrs. Crompton’s eye. “You’re forgetting that she would have two worlds to conquer,” he whispered. “If she wants high marks in magical school, surely someone who’s had a Muggle education would do better than someone who’s had nothing but a magical one?”
Mrs. Crompton suddenly looked thoughtful.
Harry gave her a smile, the least strained one he could muster under the circumstances, and then turned and held his hand out to Annie. He hoped that he wasn’t putting her in a worse situation than before, with the pressure to do great coming from two directions, but he literally couldn’t think of any other tactics that would work right now. He would try again, and try to do better, once it wasn’t so hot and he was less stressed. “Good-bye, Annie. Think about what I said, won’t you? I’ll see you next week.”
Annie looked up at him with wide eyes before she took his hand. “Good-bye,” she said.
No words of promise or decision one way or the other, Harry thought as he nodded to her and took his leave. Well, and he could hardly blame her, when her parents were right in the room with her and obviously listening for her to say something wrong.
“Good-bye,” he said to the Cromptons in general, and in less than a minute he was out on the street and walking briskly away between the nearly-identical houses. He was ready to admit that this street might have a little more character than Privet Drive, but surely not much.
I hope that it won’t drive a magical child mad to grow up here, he thought, and spun to Apparate the moment he found an isolated back garden. Then, the instant he landed in his house, he went to find paper and pen. He was accustomed to sending messages by Muggle post now, since he almost never communicated with the wizarding world and hadn’t replaced Hedwig.
As he was writing out his carefully-worded request to Bradley, the Muggle man he had gone to three months ago, an annoyed tapping and a hoot came from his front window.
Harry swore and flicked his wand in a nonverbal spell that jerked the window up. The owl flew in, landed on his desk, and stood there staring at him, shifting from foot to foot as if the letter it carried physically hurt it.
Harry snapped his fingers, and this time the blast of wandless magic tore the letter free and threw the owl a good foot backwards. It caught itself with a flutter and a screech and zoomed to sit on the back of a chair this time, hunched over.
Harry knew he hadn’t hurt it, and therefore felt free to ignore it as he tore into the envelope. Goddamnit, he wanted business done for the day so that he could get of here and to Bradley’s house.
The envelope was the thick, resistant kind that only the Ministry used, and Harry felt the magic curl through him once more, melting the seal so that he had to tilt the letter away from him as wax dripped on the floor. Then he half-tore the letter removing it, and threw it on the desk to lie there, burned along the side. Harry turned and stamped convulsively on the envelope until he thought his temper had worn out.
Then he finished writing his own letter and went to post it before he came back and confronted the Ministry’s moronic missive.
Dear Mr. Potter:
It will please you to know that we are requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts. The Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, as well as other important artifacts, have temporarily been placed beyond our reach, and the portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore has requested to speak with you before he reveals their location. This is a formality only, and should take no more than a few days of your time. If you will please send your reply by the owl that brought the letter, we will await your coming no later than the thirtieth of July.
“Unlucky for you, huh?” Harry told the owl, which shook its feathers into place with a soft whirring noise and then pretended to ignore him.
Then he stood there, turning the letter over and over in his fingers, and thinking. He could translate the Ministry’s language well enough; “a formality only” meant that it was something highly important and difficult they were trying to make sound simple. The portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore making a request meant the old man was being seriously obstructive. And “requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts” meant…
Harry shook his head. He had left the wizarding world because of arguments over what exactly the Ministry’s role in the reopening of Hogwarts should be. They had wanted to take over the duty of appointing the Headmaster and the school governors, not to mention examining all the classes taught and changing things about.
Well, and he’d left because they sacked him. But Harry honestly thought he might have gone anyway.
Then there was the bitter shouting and words with the two people he had considered his best friends in the world.
Harry rolled his eyes in irritation. He wasn’t here to remember. He was here to make a decision about whether he would answer the letter or not.
There was no reason for him to do so, looking at it from one angle. The Ministry had told him he wasn’t welcome back, and he doubted that they would give him a voice in the way they ran Hogwarts now.
On the other hand, what would happen if he went back, spoke to Headmaster Dumbledore’s portrait, and located these “important artifacts,” but forced through a price for doing so first?
Harry smiled. He wrote his response, with a touch here and there of wording that would warn anyone who looked at it that he was returning reluctantly. They would be expecting that, and think they could pat him on the head, offer him a biscuit, and still make him save them all.
Harry did enjoy setting people up to expect one thing and then disorienting them completely.
He paused as he realized one thing—he wouldn’t have time to arrange an appointment with Bradley, at least not one to their satisfaction, before he had to leave. It took a lot out of Bradley to cope with what Harry needed to really relax. He would want several evenings to prepare, and he would try to persuade Harry, as always, to accept something less deep and severe.
Harry shrugged. Spending time with a man like Bradley was one means of getting rid of stress. Going back to the wizarding world and irritating everyone in sight was another.
*
Draco knew he would look ridiculous to anyone peering into the room from the outside: approaching the cauldron with a chair cautiously outstretched before him and a long, braided rope in his free hand.
Then again, most of the people who might have put their heads into the room like that were not experimental potions brewers.
He waited until the bubbles exploding in the cauldron had subsided into silence again. Then he lashed out with the braided rope, hitting the rim and making the room ring with the sweet sound of rapped metal.
The bubbles at once exploded past the rim and reached for him with strong, liquid arms. Draco hit them with the chair. They smoked and burbled and fell back again. Draco smiled grimly. The damn potion could eat even through a Shield Charm, but for some reason, wood defeated it.
This was one of the most exciting potions he had ever developed, for obvious reasons, and also one of the most dangerous, for reasons equally obvious to anyone who read the ingredients list.
If he could just manage to work the potion right, he would have something capable of entering the bodies of animals and plants—and perhaps humans, one day—and manipulating them like puppets according to the will of the person who owned the potion. But he had to perfect it first.
And survive the brewing process, of course.
He stepped slowly to the side, never looking away from the cauldron. A low, sullen rumble came from it, for all the world like a growl, and Draco smiled. He had hoped for it to begin making unusual noises like that. They would facilitate the potion’s entrance into the bodies of animals that also growled, including dogs, wolves, and lions.
He entertained a wistful image of sending an army of wolves against the potions master Galen Herzog, who had reviewed Draco’s last book unflatteringly. Herzog lived in the middle of a dense forest. As long as Draco coordinated the attack with the night of a full moon, no one would ever know that it wasn’t a pack of werewolves gone rogue.
With a sigh, he put the idea aside. He was a long way from that yet, and he wanted to make sure that his creation was functioning on a normal, smaller level for several years before he thought about armies.
The potion seemed to have become calm again, but that was one of its many tricks, and Draco wasn’t fooled. He motioned with the chair, a downwards sweeping movement, and the potion promptly rose as though on vines, lunging for what it thought was the unprotected middle of his body.
(Well, “thought.” Draco didn’t know what the right word was for something that thought without a brain).
He spun in a circle and hit it again with the braided rope, striking something solid a moment before the potion dissolved its vulnerable solidity into a shower of drops. It crashed back into the cauldron again and wailed at him in indignation until Draco kicked the cauldron. Then it shut up in surprise.
“Listen to me,” Draco said in a low voice, which would probably also look stupid or nonsensical to anyone who peered around the corner of the doorframe. “I know all about your little tricks. And you might as well get used to the idea that I’m going to tame you and use you, drink you if I like.”
The potion poked a lump of green substance over the rim. Draco was waiting for it, and tapped it precisely on the head with the rope. It pulled back with a sound remarkably like a whimper.
“Take that as a lesson,” Draco said, and then reached for the leaf of red lettuce he needed to drop in while it was thinking about that. He managed to sneak it over the side, and the potion bubbled and whistled some more before becoming quiet in a way that Draco understood to mean it was harmless now.
He still cast several charms before he approached the cauldron and clasped his hands around the sides. He had been fooled before, and so had other researchers who worked in this rare area of sentient potions.
But nothing attacked, and Draco was able to move to the cauldron to the nest of heated bricks it needed to rest in now and even clean a sticky, stinking cauldron and start to ready the next potion before an owl interrupted him.
Draco sighed as he reached out for the letter. He resented the interruptions, yes, but they produced his livelihood. By far most of his money these days came from the specialty potions, more than half Dark or illegal, that he brewed for those who knew about his talents and could afford them.
He wouldn’t have had to do that, and could have been left alone to research in peace, if the Ministry had bothered to leave his family’s fortune less full of holes than a mouse-gnawed tapestry.
His mood soured further when he realized that the letter bore the Ministry seal. What in the world did they want? He pulled it open more savagely than he probably should have, and then paused and half-shut his eyes. Yes, no one was here to observe him right now, fantasies of audiences notwithstanding, but your own soul could be the most important audience of all.
So Severus had taught him.
Draco’s mouth pulled to one side in a grim smile as he drew the parchment out, preserving the original creases for a moment while he checked for charms on the envelope and letter both. In a strange way, those days immediately after he had fled with Severus from Hogwarts at the end of his sixth year were the best of his life. He and Severus had been alone for some time, moving warily through the countryside as they avoided both the Death Eaters—Draco hadn’t known why they were avoiding the Death Eaters, then—and the patrols of Aurors hunting them. And Severus, apparently for lack of anyone else to teach, had talked to himself, and Draco had listened.
That was the time when Severus had told Draco to start addressing him by his first name, as he was “no longer a professor.” His eyes had grown black when he said that, but Draco thought it was with amusement more than scorn or anger.
And he had talked and talked—about potions techniques, about common Muggle behaviors, about the spells that one might use to disguise oneself and counterfeit Galleons, about the best way to survive under the Dark Lord’s reign. Draco, his mind wiped clean by shock and self-loathing (killing was a simple task; Greyback and Aunt Bella could do it), retained those instructions.
Then they had come back into the Dark Lord’s reach, and Severus had demanded and got the credit for killing Dumbledore, and Draco had gone back to nothing more than bare survival for months that still seemed longer than the six years that had passed since then.
But Severus had given him a gift worth more than the information itself: the consciousness that there was something higher out there, artistry and grace and control, beyond the pall of blood and death. Potions masters were superior, Severus had taught him, to the politics that swirled around them, however affected by those politics they might be. Someday, when things were settled, Draco thought, he would make potions like the ones Severus had described and live in a setting of calm and order.
He had clung to that hope, that belief, throughout the war, and then afterwards he had made it a reality.
Although Severus was dead, and Draco had never spoken with his portrait, he liked to think that the man would approve of what he had made himself.
The reminiscences had calmed him. Draco turned to the letter.
Dear Potions master Malfoy:
The Ministry requires your help with the reopening of Hogwarts. Certain important artifacts, such as the key of the Headmaster’s office and the Sorting Hat, remain beyond the reach of the new school governors. We know that the portrait of war hero Severus Snape holds some information needed to reach them, but he will not speak with anyone but you. We will await your presence at the school on the thirtieth of July.
Draco leaned back against the wall of his lab and began to laugh. He laughed until his stomach ached and all the strength was gone from his legs, so that he slid down into a heap and muffled the last giggles and hiccoughs in his arms.
They wanted…
The Ministry wanted…
Oh, it was too much.
Draco wiped his hand with his eyes and shook his head. He had his own spies inside the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world that he rarely saw because so much of his time was spent either collecting ingredients or brewing or researching. He knew that the Ministry had not reopened Hogwarts so far because of endless, vicious rows over what form the school should take “under their supervision.”
One fact his spies and contacts told him again and again, from the seedy rogue Mundungus Fletcher whom Draco supplied with a gin substitute to the elegant Monica Graveling who took the Resurrection Potion that allowed her to see and converse with the spirit of her dead sister. The Ministry planned to reduce the number of Hogwarts Houses to three, banishing Slytherin and anyone who was Sorted there from the school.
Draco had noted the fact as interesting, enraging, or amusing depending on his mood at the time, and thought no further.
But now.
There was never any doubt that he would go, of course. Among other things, Draco wanted to speak with portrait of Severus, and this was an excuse that would replace his nonexistent courage and drive him at last into an office he should have performed long since. And if he was there, he could observe certain facts for himself, gather ingredients from the Forbidden Forest, revisit old memories from Hogwarts’s corridors and classrooms that needed to be confronted, and put an Incendiary Draught in the middle of the Ministry’s plans to destroy his House.
He would, if necessary, demand that price for his aid. But Draco did hope that he could find some more subtle method.
He wrote his acceptance and then went to order the house-elves to pack his clothing. He would, of course, attend to his books, his vials, his cauldrons, and his stasis boxes himself. Those were tasks to be trusted to the clumsy fingers of no less skilled mortal.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, D/s elements, violence, sex, profanity. EWE.
Summary: Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait—and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.
Author’s Notes: This will be an irregularly updated story of, probably, five to seven parts, with fairly long chapters. The D/s elements are limited, but an important part of the story, and I haven’t often written them before, so please don’t read it if that bothers you.
Chosen Chains
Chapter One—Hello, Tension
“I still don’t understand why Annie would have to go away,” Mrs. Crompton said, her expression so distressed that Harry nodded sympathetically in spite of himself.
It wasn’t easy. He had spent almost three hours in this hot, cramped room with young Annie Crompton, a Muggleborn girl just experiencing her first signs of magic, and both parents. He had explained the existence of the wizarding world to them, demonstrated his own spells, explained why he had been called in to help them—there were a few other half-bloods and Muggleborns who could have come, but most of them were on holiday right now—and told them that Annie wouldn’t need to go a magical school until she was eleven. Both Crompton parents refused to understand.
Harry reminded himself to be patient, and tried to ignore the sweat creeping down his neck and the tension coiled in his muscles. Annie, small for six years of age and with dark hair that struggled into curls, was his focus here, or should be. She sat on a chair between her parents and watched him with squinting blue eyes.
“It would be hard to have her practicing magic among Muggles,” Harry said, for the sixth time. He glanced at the walls, hoping to distract his attention, and then jerked his head away when he saw the photographs of mother, father, and child. This house resembled Number 4 Privet Drive too closely for comfort. It was even in Surrey. “And hard to hide our existence then.”
“Don’t see why you need to,” Herbert Crompton said, leaning forwards to thump a fist down on the stool in front of him. Annie jumped, but smoothed her expression out again before her father could notice. “She can give it up any time she likes. Not that important, is it?”
“I’m sure something could be done with seaweed to help wean her off it,” Adela Crompton said, one hand fluttering in front of her. “They can do wonderful things with seaweed now.”
Harry sighed. The Cromptons had accepted the existence of magic much more easily than some of the Muggle parents he spoke with; that wasn’t the problem. They simply didn’t want anything to disrupt their perfect, normal existence.
Just like the Dursleys.
Magic crept up his chest and into his hair in bright tendrils, which never did anyone any good. Harry did his best to ignore it. It was unlikely to manifest in ways the Cromptons could notice unless he got much angrier than he was now. “She can’t just drop magic,” he said. “She has to have some kind of training. If she decides that she doesn’t want to go a magical school, then she can do that. But she’d need a few years of learning to control her magic first.”
“She doesn’t need it.” Mrs. Crompton turned and smiled mistily at Annie. “Did you ever see any child that self-possessed?”
Not many, Harry thought, meeting Annie’s eyes again. And that’s the problem.
The Cromptons seemed to have ambitions for Annie even higher and more stringent than the ones Petunia and Vernon had entertained for Dudley, but they expected her to actually achieve them. Harry could see the awards placed along the walls between the photographs and how Annie sat too still, shoulders drawn up as if someone had shouted into her face.
No signs of actual abuse, he thought—he was familiar with those by now—but she was supposed to be her parents’ golden child, their perfect little girl, and had curled into herself under the pressure.
Not that things would be that much easier for her in the wizarding world, where tensions between pure-bloods and Muggleborns were creeping up again.
Harry forced himself to hold his breath so he wouldn’t give in to the anger, and then glanced at the Cromptons. “Magic is different than emotions, ma’am,” he said. “Things she wants, people she thinks are threats, small and fleeting desires—the magic will react to all of those, and in a wilder and wilder way unless she gets training.”
“Is this some kind of therapy?” Mr. Crompton was trying to look down his bespectacled nose at Harry, which might have worked if he was in any way impressive, or Harry easily frightened.
“Of course not,” Harry said. “She’ll get help, yes, but only to learn how to deal with her magic. I can see that she’s smart and doesn’t need any help other than that.”
The Cromptons preened. Annie widened her eyes and stared at Harry as if he had said something far more remarkable than what he had.
“But it has to be her decision,” Harry said, looking at Annie. “If she doesn’t want to get training right now, she doesn’t have to. But then it will make it all the more important for her to spend at least a little time in a magical school when she’s eleven.”
“Why is the age of eleven so all-fired important?” Mr. Crompton fidgeted in his seat and tried the glare again. Harry clenched his jaw. He wouldn’t snarl at a man who really did love his daughter.
“Because that’s when wizard children are trusted to handle their wands,” Harry said. “Most students attend the magical schools soon after their eleventh birthday.” It had taken a long time to remind himself to say magical schools and not Hogwarts, and not because he wanted to be more inclusive. It was the strict truth. Hogwarts had been closed since the war.
Bitter iron filled his mouth. Harry licked his lips and wished he could spit.
“Our Annie doesn’t want any of that,” said Mr. Crompton.
“You’re sure about the seaweed?” asked Mrs. Crompton.
“Maybe we should ask Annie what she wants?” Harry said, but the hardness of his voice made both of them shut up and sit up straighter. Harry turned to the girl and waited. He felt a vicious satisfaction in making the Cromptons stop babbling, told himself that he shouldn’t, and felt it anyway.
Annie moved her hands a bit, the only visible sign of agitation Harry had seen her give since he arrived and started explaining. Then she looked him in the eye and asked, “What happens if I don’t get training? Specifically?”
Harry nodded to her. “You can cause danger to people when you’re young and your magic just reacts. I made one of my aunts inflate like a balloon and float in the air.” Mr. and Mrs. Crompton looked ready to faint. Harry ignored their reaction. He was more interested in Annie’s. “I wanted to get away from some kids who were chasing me and ended up on a roof. I get angry at a teacher and turned her hair blue. I didn’t know what was happening. No one told me I was a wizard. I found out when I was eleven, and I was happy about it, but I really wished someone would have told me sooner.” He softened his voice, leaning towards her. “That’s one reason I come around. Even if you don’t want to be any part of the wizarding world, you need to know what’s happening and you deserve to have a name for what you are.”
“A witch,” Annie said. She sounded as though she were trying the word out.
“But she doesn’t have to be,” Mrs. Crompton said. “No law says that she’s required to be.”
“No,” Harry said, as mildly as he could under the circumstances. “But it could be dangerous for her if she’s not.”
“Would she die?” Mr. Crompton flashed an apprehensive look in Harry’s direction.
“No,” Harry said again. “But she could be hurt.”
“What would the neighbors think, though?” Mrs. Crompton took on an expression that reminded Harry very much of Aunt Petunia. “I’m sure you’ll understand, Mr. Potter, that we have to think of our reputation and our honesty. What are we going to say if Annie goes to a school like this? ‘Oh, yes, we sent her to a school for people who can do magic?’ It’s a bit abnormal—”
One of the photographs on the wall abruptly jumped out of its frame and landed on the carpet. Both the senior Cromptons stared at it with their mouths open. The glass in front of it hadn’t broken or otherwise parted to let it through, which Harry knew was startling when you were seeing it for the first time.
“Sorry,” Harry said pleasantly. “A bit hot in here, isn’t it?”
Magic hissed and curled under his fingernails. Harry turned his hands over so that they wouldn’t see. No doubt about it; when he got out of here, he would have to go in search of stress relief. He hated to do it, but it had been three months. Clearly something had to be done.
“In the end, Annie is the one who has to make the decision,” he said. “And she has five years to do that.” He smiled at Annie, but she only looked cautiously back at him. Harry thought she’d probably had a lot of practice at telling when someone was putting on a polite mask but was angry behind it. “If she doesn’t get training before she’s eleven, the wild magic will calm down a bit. But after that age, it increases again. Please do consider that before you decide that she can never go.”
He stood up. Mrs. Crompton stood up with him, shaking her head. “I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “What will it matter to her ability to get along in the real world?”
Harry suddenly had an idea about what might work here. He should have thought of it right away, given that Hermione was so oriented towards good marks, and he thought her parents had trained her to be high-achieving.
But then again, he no longer spent a lot of time thinking about Hermione.
He leaned forwards and caught Mrs. Crompton’s eye. “You’re forgetting that she would have two worlds to conquer,” he whispered. “If she wants high marks in magical school, surely someone who’s had a Muggle education would do better than someone who’s had nothing but a magical one?”
Mrs. Crompton suddenly looked thoughtful.
Harry gave her a smile, the least strained one he could muster under the circumstances, and then turned and held his hand out to Annie. He hoped that he wasn’t putting her in a worse situation than before, with the pressure to do great coming from two directions, but he literally couldn’t think of any other tactics that would work right now. He would try again, and try to do better, once it wasn’t so hot and he was less stressed. “Good-bye, Annie. Think about what I said, won’t you? I’ll see you next week.”
Annie looked up at him with wide eyes before she took his hand. “Good-bye,” she said.
No words of promise or decision one way or the other, Harry thought as he nodded to her and took his leave. Well, and he could hardly blame her, when her parents were right in the room with her and obviously listening for her to say something wrong.
“Good-bye,” he said to the Cromptons in general, and in less than a minute he was out on the street and walking briskly away between the nearly-identical houses. He was ready to admit that this street might have a little more character than Privet Drive, but surely not much.
I hope that it won’t drive a magical child mad to grow up here, he thought, and spun to Apparate the moment he found an isolated back garden. Then, the instant he landed in his house, he went to find paper and pen. He was accustomed to sending messages by Muggle post now, since he almost never communicated with the wizarding world and hadn’t replaced Hedwig.
As he was writing out his carefully-worded request to Bradley, the Muggle man he had gone to three months ago, an annoyed tapping and a hoot came from his front window.
Harry swore and flicked his wand in a nonverbal spell that jerked the window up. The owl flew in, landed on his desk, and stood there staring at him, shifting from foot to foot as if the letter it carried physically hurt it.
Harry snapped his fingers, and this time the blast of wandless magic tore the letter free and threw the owl a good foot backwards. It caught itself with a flutter and a screech and zoomed to sit on the back of a chair this time, hunched over.
Harry knew he hadn’t hurt it, and therefore felt free to ignore it as he tore into the envelope. Goddamnit, he wanted business done for the day so that he could get of here and to Bradley’s house.
The envelope was the thick, resistant kind that only the Ministry used, and Harry felt the magic curl through him once more, melting the seal so that he had to tilt the letter away from him as wax dripped on the floor. Then he half-tore the letter removing it, and threw it on the desk to lie there, burned along the side. Harry turned and stamped convulsively on the envelope until he thought his temper had worn out.
Then he finished writing his own letter and went to post it before he came back and confronted the Ministry’s moronic missive.
Dear Mr. Potter:
It will please you to know that we are requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts. The Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, as well as other important artifacts, have temporarily been placed beyond our reach, and the portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore has requested to speak with you before he reveals their location. This is a formality only, and should take no more than a few days of your time. If you will please send your reply by the owl that brought the letter, we will await your coming no later than the thirtieth of July.
“Unlucky for you, huh?” Harry told the owl, which shook its feathers into place with a soft whirring noise and then pretended to ignore him.
Then he stood there, turning the letter over and over in his fingers, and thinking. He could translate the Ministry’s language well enough; “a formality only” meant that it was something highly important and difficult they were trying to make sound simple. The portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore making a request meant the old man was being seriously obstructive. And “requesting your help in the reopening of Hogwarts” meant…
Harry shook his head. He had left the wizarding world because of arguments over what exactly the Ministry’s role in the reopening of Hogwarts should be. They had wanted to take over the duty of appointing the Headmaster and the school governors, not to mention examining all the classes taught and changing things about.
Well, and he’d left because they sacked him. But Harry honestly thought he might have gone anyway.
Then there was the bitter shouting and words with the two people he had considered his best friends in the world.
Harry rolled his eyes in irritation. He wasn’t here to remember. He was here to make a decision about whether he would answer the letter or not.
There was no reason for him to do so, looking at it from one angle. The Ministry had told him he wasn’t welcome back, and he doubted that they would give him a voice in the way they ran Hogwarts now.
On the other hand, what would happen if he went back, spoke to Headmaster Dumbledore’s portrait, and located these “important artifacts,” but forced through a price for doing so first?
Harry smiled. He wrote his response, with a touch here and there of wording that would warn anyone who looked at it that he was returning reluctantly. They would be expecting that, and think they could pat him on the head, offer him a biscuit, and still make him save them all.
Harry did enjoy setting people up to expect one thing and then disorienting them completely.
He paused as he realized one thing—he wouldn’t have time to arrange an appointment with Bradley, at least not one to their satisfaction, before he had to leave. It took a lot out of Bradley to cope with what Harry needed to really relax. He would want several evenings to prepare, and he would try to persuade Harry, as always, to accept something less deep and severe.
Harry shrugged. Spending time with a man like Bradley was one means of getting rid of stress. Going back to the wizarding world and irritating everyone in sight was another.
*
Draco knew he would look ridiculous to anyone peering into the room from the outside: approaching the cauldron with a chair cautiously outstretched before him and a long, braided rope in his free hand.
Then again, most of the people who might have put their heads into the room like that were not experimental potions brewers.
He waited until the bubbles exploding in the cauldron had subsided into silence again. Then he lashed out with the braided rope, hitting the rim and making the room ring with the sweet sound of rapped metal.
The bubbles at once exploded past the rim and reached for him with strong, liquid arms. Draco hit them with the chair. They smoked and burbled and fell back again. Draco smiled grimly. The damn potion could eat even through a Shield Charm, but for some reason, wood defeated it.
This was one of the most exciting potions he had ever developed, for obvious reasons, and also one of the most dangerous, for reasons equally obvious to anyone who read the ingredients list.
If he could just manage to work the potion right, he would have something capable of entering the bodies of animals and plants—and perhaps humans, one day—and manipulating them like puppets according to the will of the person who owned the potion. But he had to perfect it first.
And survive the brewing process, of course.
He stepped slowly to the side, never looking away from the cauldron. A low, sullen rumble came from it, for all the world like a growl, and Draco smiled. He had hoped for it to begin making unusual noises like that. They would facilitate the potion’s entrance into the bodies of animals that also growled, including dogs, wolves, and lions.
He entertained a wistful image of sending an army of wolves against the potions master Galen Herzog, who had reviewed Draco’s last book unflatteringly. Herzog lived in the middle of a dense forest. As long as Draco coordinated the attack with the night of a full moon, no one would ever know that it wasn’t a pack of werewolves gone rogue.
With a sigh, he put the idea aside. He was a long way from that yet, and he wanted to make sure that his creation was functioning on a normal, smaller level for several years before he thought about armies.
The potion seemed to have become calm again, but that was one of its many tricks, and Draco wasn’t fooled. He motioned with the chair, a downwards sweeping movement, and the potion promptly rose as though on vines, lunging for what it thought was the unprotected middle of his body.
(Well, “thought.” Draco didn’t know what the right word was for something that thought without a brain).
He spun in a circle and hit it again with the braided rope, striking something solid a moment before the potion dissolved its vulnerable solidity into a shower of drops. It crashed back into the cauldron again and wailed at him in indignation until Draco kicked the cauldron. Then it shut up in surprise.
“Listen to me,” Draco said in a low voice, which would probably also look stupid or nonsensical to anyone who peered around the corner of the doorframe. “I know all about your little tricks. And you might as well get used to the idea that I’m going to tame you and use you, drink you if I like.”
The potion poked a lump of green substance over the rim. Draco was waiting for it, and tapped it precisely on the head with the rope. It pulled back with a sound remarkably like a whimper.
“Take that as a lesson,” Draco said, and then reached for the leaf of red lettuce he needed to drop in while it was thinking about that. He managed to sneak it over the side, and the potion bubbled and whistled some more before becoming quiet in a way that Draco understood to mean it was harmless now.
He still cast several charms before he approached the cauldron and clasped his hands around the sides. He had been fooled before, and so had other researchers who worked in this rare area of sentient potions.
But nothing attacked, and Draco was able to move to the cauldron to the nest of heated bricks it needed to rest in now and even clean a sticky, stinking cauldron and start to ready the next potion before an owl interrupted him.
Draco sighed as he reached out for the letter. He resented the interruptions, yes, but they produced his livelihood. By far most of his money these days came from the specialty potions, more than half Dark or illegal, that he brewed for those who knew about his talents and could afford them.
He wouldn’t have had to do that, and could have been left alone to research in peace, if the Ministry had bothered to leave his family’s fortune less full of holes than a mouse-gnawed tapestry.
His mood soured further when he realized that the letter bore the Ministry seal. What in the world did they want? He pulled it open more savagely than he probably should have, and then paused and half-shut his eyes. Yes, no one was here to observe him right now, fantasies of audiences notwithstanding, but your own soul could be the most important audience of all.
So Severus had taught him.
Draco’s mouth pulled to one side in a grim smile as he drew the parchment out, preserving the original creases for a moment while he checked for charms on the envelope and letter both. In a strange way, those days immediately after he had fled with Severus from Hogwarts at the end of his sixth year were the best of his life. He and Severus had been alone for some time, moving warily through the countryside as they avoided both the Death Eaters—Draco hadn’t known why they were avoiding the Death Eaters, then—and the patrols of Aurors hunting them. And Severus, apparently for lack of anyone else to teach, had talked to himself, and Draco had listened.
That was the time when Severus had told Draco to start addressing him by his first name, as he was “no longer a professor.” His eyes had grown black when he said that, but Draco thought it was with amusement more than scorn or anger.
And he had talked and talked—about potions techniques, about common Muggle behaviors, about the spells that one might use to disguise oneself and counterfeit Galleons, about the best way to survive under the Dark Lord’s reign. Draco, his mind wiped clean by shock and self-loathing (killing was a simple task; Greyback and Aunt Bella could do it), retained those instructions.
Then they had come back into the Dark Lord’s reach, and Severus had demanded and got the credit for killing Dumbledore, and Draco had gone back to nothing more than bare survival for months that still seemed longer than the six years that had passed since then.
But Severus had given him a gift worth more than the information itself: the consciousness that there was something higher out there, artistry and grace and control, beyond the pall of blood and death. Potions masters were superior, Severus had taught him, to the politics that swirled around them, however affected by those politics they might be. Someday, when things were settled, Draco thought, he would make potions like the ones Severus had described and live in a setting of calm and order.
He had clung to that hope, that belief, throughout the war, and then afterwards he had made it a reality.
Although Severus was dead, and Draco had never spoken with his portrait, he liked to think that the man would approve of what he had made himself.
The reminiscences had calmed him. Draco turned to the letter.
Dear Potions master Malfoy:
The Ministry requires your help with the reopening of Hogwarts. Certain important artifacts, such as the key of the Headmaster’s office and the Sorting Hat, remain beyond the reach of the new school governors. We know that the portrait of war hero Severus Snape holds some information needed to reach them, but he will not speak with anyone but you. We will await your presence at the school on the thirtieth of July.
Draco leaned back against the wall of his lab and began to laugh. He laughed until his stomach ached and all the strength was gone from his legs, so that he slid down into a heap and muffled the last giggles and hiccoughs in his arms.
They wanted…
The Ministry wanted…
Oh, it was too much.
Draco wiped his hand with his eyes and shook his head. He had his own spies inside the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world that he rarely saw because so much of his time was spent either collecting ingredients or brewing or researching. He knew that the Ministry had not reopened Hogwarts so far because of endless, vicious rows over what form the school should take “under their supervision.”
One fact his spies and contacts told him again and again, from the seedy rogue Mundungus Fletcher whom Draco supplied with a gin substitute to the elegant Monica Graveling who took the Resurrection Potion that allowed her to see and converse with the spirit of her dead sister. The Ministry planned to reduce the number of Hogwarts Houses to three, banishing Slytherin and anyone who was Sorted there from the school.
Draco had noted the fact as interesting, enraging, or amusing depending on his mood at the time, and thought no further.
But now.
There was never any doubt that he would go, of course. Among other things, Draco wanted to speak with portrait of Severus, and this was an excuse that would replace his nonexistent courage and drive him at last into an office he should have performed long since. And if he was there, he could observe certain facts for himself, gather ingredients from the Forbidden Forest, revisit old memories from Hogwarts’s corridors and classrooms that needed to be confronted, and put an Incendiary Draught in the middle of the Ministry’s plans to destroy his House.
He would, if necessary, demand that price for his aid. But Draco did hope that he could find some more subtle method.
He wrote his acceptance and then went to order the house-elves to pack his clothing. He would, of course, attend to his books, his vials, his cauldrons, and his stasis boxes himself. Those were tasks to be trusted to the clumsy fingers of no less skilled mortal.