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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Ten—Getting a Life
            “It would help if you ever acted like it bothered you.”
            Harry started and turned around. Boot stood behind him with his bag draped over his shoulder and his eyes squinting at Harry. Then again, he squinted like that a lot. Harry sat back silently and waited to see what he would say.
            Amicus stirred in his pocket. Harry was supposed to be working on object-to-object Transfigurations; what he wanted to work on was more plans to turn a pile of objects into a cat. Instead, he had to look up Memory Charms. Amicus was bored and wanted to go down to the dungeon classroom, Harry knew.
            “And it would help if you would talk to me.” Boot dropped his bag on the table next to Harry’s with a loud thump.
            “I don’t know what you mean,” Harry said. “I thought you’d decided not to talk to me anymore.”
            “If that had worked, I wouldn’t be here now.” Boot flopped down in his chair, a lot like his bag had flopped on the table. “But you didn’t even notice it.”
            Harry shook his head, a little confused. “I thought you didn’t want to be my friend anymore. You don’t have to be my friend. You have the right to decide for yourself.”
            Boot stared at him. His eyes were so wide they reminded Harry of Malfoy’s eyes in the corridor outside his dungeon workroom. Then Boot turned and buried his head in his arms, running his fingers roughly through his hair.
            “You don’t handle anything like a normal person,” he whispered.
            Harry chose not to say anything, and turned back to his books. At the next table, Neville Longbottom was working by himself except for Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Granger kept leaning towards Longbottom to whisper encouragingly and pat him on the arm. Weasley was glaring around as if searching for intruders.
            Harry was glad Longbottom had people to be to him what Amicus was to Harry. Being able to talk to snakes shouldn’t leave you alone that way.
            “I just wanted to be your friend,” Boot continued, in a whining tone that got on Harry’s nerves. “And you wouldn’t pay any attention to me.”
            Harry sighed and leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling of the library. Amicus stirred in his pocket again, but Harry held him down. In his mood, Amicus might bite Boot, and Harry didn’t want that.
            “Look,” said Harry. “My friendship isn’t going to hurt you if you don’t have it. You’re friends with Goldstein and Corner. Much better friends than you have been with me. You have Quidditch to interest you, and even other people in our House and the other Houses to be friends with. We don’t fight. We don’t curse each other. You’re safe in our room. You don’t have to worry about me locking you up or poisoning your food or anything like that. Why are you so insistent that we have to be friends?”
            Boot stared at him in silence. Harry stared back. He thought this was the part where Boot probably got up and stomped out of the library.
            Instead, Boot breathed, sounding like he was in shock, “You don’t have any idea.”
            “Not why you’re so upset that you can’t have the friendship of this one specific person, no,” Harry said, although it hadn’t sounded like a question.
            Boot looked around, and then he drew his wand and cast a bubble around them. Harry blinked. The other sounds in the library promptly became muffled, and he couldn’t see other people well, either. Everything blurred like they were underwater.
            “Where’d you find that spell?” Harry knew it hadn’t been on the regular list in Charms.
            “You’re not the only person who can do some extra studying when something matters to him,” Boot said grimly.
            “I never said I was,” Harry started. He was tired of being accused of things he’d never said.
            “Listen to me,” Boot said, and something about his tone made Harry do it, if only because there was the chance that Boot would leave him alone faster if he did. Boot put his hand on Harry’s arm and said, “What the Muggles did to you was wrong.”
            “I know that, of course. You think I don’t know that?”
            “But the way you responded to it is also wrong.”
            Harry turned away in silence. Boot didn’t know a thing about it.
            “You need—Harry, you need someone to help you.”
            “Go talk to someone if you want. Professor McGonagall already has. The Wizengamot can’t find any other family for me, so I have to stay there.”
            “Not like that.” Boot sighed, and his hand tightened on Harry’s arm. “I mean someone to help you get over it.”
            Harry just turned around, and this time Boot flinched like Malfoy.
            “You don’t know a thing about it,” Harry whispered. “You don’t know a thing about what I’m trying to do, or what I’m going to do. And you don’t know what would help me get over it. Go away.”
            “But I’d like to.”
            “What?”
            Boot shook a little, as if it was taking all his courage to keep him there instead of running away. There was a reason he hadn’t been Sorted into Gryffindor, Harry thought. “I’d like to know,” he repeated. “What would help you get over it. And I don’t—I promise I won’t threaten to go to Professor Flitwick or anything like that. I won’t even tell Anthony, if you like. But I want to know.”
            Harry stared at him. Boot still didn’t flinch or back down, and Harry didn’t think it was a joke. It was a bit much for a joke.
            “Why?” Harry finally exploded.
            Boot lifted his head. “Because I’m your friend, even if you aren’t mine. And I don’t want you to suffer.”
            Harry stared at him and said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. He just didn’t know what in the world Boot could hope to gain from this, and that paralyzed him with indecision.
            “What can I do?”
            Harry looked down and away. Boot didn’t try to make him look up. He just sat there, and Harry realized he would probably go on sitting there, waiting, for as long as it took.
            I’ve never had someone who would do that for me.
            But that was a lie, because he had Amicus. And he would have the cat once he made it. And Professor McGonagall would probably have done the same thing for him. Harry knew she just didn’t know enough.
            But he hadn’t thought Boot knew enough, either. He had discovered things and looked for them because he wanted to—
            I’m not powerful. I’m not famous. I don’t want to do anything but heal my parents. I could understand if I was the Boy-Who-Lived and he was flattering me like those people did who wanted to look at Longbottom before he showed them he’s a Parselmouth.
            “Do you finally believe me?” Boot whispered then. “That I’m doing this because I want to, not because I’m trying to trick you or for whatever other reason you think I could possibly do something like this?”
            Harry finally breathed in and turned back to Boot. “I do.”
            Boot smiled, and he really looked like he was eating a great sweet. “Good. Now do you think you could call me Terry and mean it, this time? And we’ll discuss what would make you better together.”
*
            Severus had not yet found the enemy who had wrecked his potions. Nor had he fully finished replacing them, even though it had been months since the assault.
            It infuriated him. Not even Rubeus or Filius would willingly sit next to him at meals now, and Albus had taken to watching him with narrowed eyes, as if he thought the time would come soon to do something about Severus.
            Severus ignored that completely. If Albus had something to say, he should say it. Severus was already wasting precious brewing time in useless training of the Longbottom boy, not to mention tutoring his Slytherins to make up for the desolation on their marks that Lockhart was performing in his classroom.
            Severus did not question Albus’s decisions, not since the day that Albus had pointed out that many people would think sparing Severus from Azkaban was one of the more questionable of them. But he did think, and seethe, and plot, and look.
            He looked into more inane teenagers’ mind during those months than he had in the eleven years before. He soaked himself in images of them snogging, wanking, cheating on their exams, copying each other’s essays, playing Quidditch like children. He knew he would have to keep looking. There was no way that someone could have planned an assault like this alone. They would need co-conspirators, and Severus need stumble on only one of them to bring the whole edifice crashing down.
            The only people he could exempt absolutely from suspicion were his Slytherins—none of them would have dared—and Longbottom. Longbottom was so terrified of Severus he sometimes forgot to breathe in his presence. Pathetic for the supposed savior of the world, but since it meant less Legilimency work for Severus this time, he was prepared to forgive it.
            But every sixth-year and seventh-year mind was free from incriminating information, and so were the fifth-years. Severus hesitated to work his way further down than the Ravenclaw fourth-years. Younger students might have participated, but only as the tools of older ones. They would not have known the details of the plan or been able to perform the complicated spells necessary.
            Then he reminded himself again of the value of learning about co-conspirators. And it wasn’t as though he would be unable to punish someone who had helped the real culprit, simply because they might not have done all of it.
            So he went lower and lower, and even stooped to scraping his mind through third-year thoughts and second-year anxieties about the Chamber of Secrets. Nothing came to mind. Snogging, homework, childish games, petty rivalries and insults and jealousies. Sometimes Severus thought it was no wonder he despised most of his students, when these were their thoughts.
            The only exception was Potter, and he only thought about his parents, day in, day out. Severus could not stand to hear such worship of James Potter, and even Lily.
            Everything that had made Lily the person Severus had known and loved was gone. It would never come back. Severus could not stand to stare at images of her that Potter had made up or accumulated only on visits to St. Mungo’s. He pulled himself roughly out of Potter’s mind each time.
            Still there was no trace of the person who had destroyed his work, and still Severus stalked in search of them.
*
            “Isn’t this better now that you have some friends to share it with?”
            Harry gave Terry a small smile and turned his gaze to the Quidditch players darting around the pitch in front of them. He wanted to say that he wouldn’t have been here at all normally, but yes, it was better to watch the game in company. At least it was entertaining to see Corner come out of his shell and leap up and down cursing the players who made mistakes.
            Harry watched the Huffelpuff Beaters chasing down the Slytherin Seeker. The Seeker was Malfoy, who had apparently bought his way onto the team. Harry watched him critically, but Malfoy never looked in his direction.
            Terry had told him that the Seeker was the most important player on the team, and most people would give anything to be one. That meant Malfoy shouldn’t be paying attention to people on the ground. Harry could have tried a Memory Charm on him without being observed…
            Except for the hundred other people huddled around him. Harry left his wand in its pocket, and simply watched as Malfoy leaned out and caught the Snitch with a little motion of his hand. There were groans from around him, and Terry slumped back, shaking his head hard enough that Harry heard snapping noises from his neck.
            “That’s torn it, then,” Terry muttered. “Slytherin as good as has the Quidditch Cup. For the eighth year in a row.” He looked out of the corner of his eye at Harry and raised his voice a little. “If we had a decent Seeker on the Ravenclaw team, then we might have a chance.”
            Harry said nothing. For one thing, he still had no intention of spending all his time flying around on brooms after a bunch of stupid balls. For another, he had no idea why Terry thought Harry would be a good Seeker instead of Chaser or something else, and no intention of asking.
            “We have a more than decent team now,” said Iverson, seated in the row behind them, leaning down. As a sixth-year, he was still as chatty as ever. “It’s just that Hardin doesn’t want to put anyone out, so he doesn’t hold practices as often as he should. And Mallory is getting ready to start studying for NEWTS, so he’s said he won’t fly next year. And Chang looks promising, but I don’t know that she’ll be able to overcome that way she flinches when people are staring at her…”
            Harry felt a wave of intense sympathy for Chang. He would have hated everyone staring at him, yes.
            He caught a glimpse of a pale face from the corner of his eye. Longbottom was sitting near the front of the Gryffindor stands, surrounded by protective Weasleys. No paralyzed people had turned up lately, but that didn’t keep a lot of students from thinking Longbottom was the Heir of Slytherin anyway.
            Harry wanted to shake his head. Longbottom was probably afraid of tree branches tapping on his window at night. The last thing he would have done was enter a Chamber and wake up a terrifying monster.
            And if he was a great actor and just hiding it all, the way that even Terry was prone to insisting sometimes, wasn’t it convenient that his disguise collapsed when he began enacting this powerful, evil plan? And that none of the professors, who seemed to know everything else that went on in the school, had seen him actually speaking to the creature in the Chamber?
            The creature. It’s a serpent, of course. That was the most reasonable guess, with Slytherin’s gift being Parseltongue.
            Harry would have tried to tell people if he thought that anyone was interested in hearing him. As it was, his voice would probably do Longbottom more harm than good. Goldstein and Corner were still hesitant to accept Harry as a real friend, and Terry was his only link to the rest of Ravenclaw now. No one else—bar Snape and Professor McGonagall—seemed to know who Harry was.
            Which is a very useful disguise, Harry had to admit as he stood up to leave the stands with his chattering acquaintances. Just not one that lets me defend other people.
            Still, Harry could do something. He hung back a little—easy to do, with Terry sprinting ahead to commiserate with the Hufflepuff team and Corner and Goldstein intensely discussing the game—and waited until the Gryffindors passed. For a second, Longbottom was looking right at him.
            Harry smiled as sympathetically as he could and mouthed, I believe you.
            He didn’t think Longbottom was going to react. Maybe he hadn’t seen, and Harry was an idiot for even putting himself that much out there for someone.
            Then Longbottom’s head went up, and his step took on a sort of spring. He didn’t strut past Harry, but he walked a little more confidently.
            There. I don’t really have friends, but that cost me nothing. And someone else who likes animals should have more support.
*
            “Stay after class, please, Mr. Potter.”
            Minerva hated what she had to do. But she had made more mistakes in the past than she cared to reflect on.
            She was determined that the way she handled Harry Potter would not be one of them.
            Harry turned and waited for her without showing any sign of apprehension. Then again, he never did, Minerva thought, sighing a little as she cast the charms on the door that she more often used when she conducted Longbottom’s lessons.
            From the way Harry stiffened a little, he might recognize the spells. But he never took his eyes from her or turned around.
            He has that level of trust in me, at least. With a relief as heavy as tar, Minerva laid aside her wand. “What progress have you made with object-to-object Transfigurations, Mr. Potter?”
            “I still can’t do them well, Professor.”
            Harry spoke as though that didn’t bother him, and his eyes were steady and unwavering. Minerva slowly shook her head. “What is lacking when you Transfigure something, Mr. Potter?”
            “The Wild. I need the Wild, or I can’t do it.”
            Minerva raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Potter, you must remember that the Wild is the—the most imaginative component of Transfiguration, but it is not the only important one. Because it changes so much from practitioner to practitioner and is so difficult to sense, it cannot be the basis for your art. You might as well insist that everyone should be able to picture the same kind of animal when they Transfigure a cat from a cushion.”
            “But I’m not insisting on that, Professor.”
            Minerva looked at him sharply, a little hopefully. That was the closest to cheek she had ever heard from Harry, other than when she had first met him and he didn’t know how to act around a Hogwarts professor. It was—well, she would like it, at this point. It would mean his distant mask, that he still maintained despite her trying to show him he could trust her with anything, had started to crack.
            Harry smiled at her. His smile was warmer than it had been. Minerva remembered that she had almost had to reprimand him and his friend Boot the other day, that they had been talking past the time she cleared her throat. Harry normally never did things like that.
            Then she looked into his eyes, and felt her hope wither on the vine.
            Harry’s eyes were still a doll’s eyes, distant and flat and blank.
            Minerva looked away and said softly, “I assumed you had a passion for Transfiguration, Mr. Potter, and would wish to master all its aspects, not only changing objects into animals or animals into other animals.”
            “I do wish to do that, Professor.”
            “Then why insist that Wild is important for every Transfiguration you make?” Minerva found herself pleading a little with the boy, as she hadn’t pleaded with even the most talented student for a long time. “Mr. Potter, you know that is not the case.”
            She paused for breath. Harry sat there and watched it, and Minerva had the strange sensation that she was fighting for far more, arguing for far more, than Harry simply spending more time and attention on a class he claimed to love.
            “You must master all aspects of magic,” she said. “For Transfiguration, at least. And I know that you could do better in your other classes than you have. I know—Madam Hooch told me how well you flew, the day you had flying lessons.”
            There! The first crack in the façade. Harry had stiffened and was staring at her warily. Minerva pressed on.
            “Transfiguration is beautiful, and wonderful, and the most impressive of the Arts,” Minerva said. “I think so. But you need to have other interests in your life, too, Harry. You are one of the most advanced students in Transfiguration I’ve ever seen, but your Head of House tells me you are only average in Charms. I know you could do more than that, if nothing else for your mastery of Wand and Word. Why not try? I know Professor Flitwick would be more than willing to spend time with you practicing your Charms, as he is with any student who shows interest outside of class.”
            Harry only stood there looking at her, and Minerva waited. She had made the most passionate plea she could. Harry would have to come meet her at least halfway.
            “I thought you wanted me to be good at Transfiguration, Professor,” Harry finally said.
            “I do.” Minerva longed to reach out and place a hand on his shoulder, and with some other students she might have tried it. But not with Harry Potter. Lily, James, how I wish you could have been here to raise your son and give him the childhood he needed. “But I wish you to have a life outside this one class, Mr. Potter. I’m—I’m not sure you do.” She smiled, hoping to soften the pressure she might be putting on Harry. “Forgive an old professor’s concern, but I want to be sure that one of my favorite students is thriving, not only studying.”
*
            Harry blinked once. Then he reached down and put his hand on Amicus’s head, stroking him through the cloth of his robes.
            Professor McGonagall doesn’t think I have a life. Well. She would be right about that, the way most people think of it.
            But Harry didn’t think of things the way most people thought of them. That was all right. Most people had parents, and no one else would suffer that much no matter what they did.
            There were two people who stood to lose a lot if Harry let himself get distracted, though.
            “I don’t think I’ll ever be great at Transfiguring one object into another,” Harry decided to tell the professor. It was the only fact he knew which might comfort her. “I need the Wild to do that, and I can’t feel the Wild.”
            Professor McGonagall nodded once. “Do you think you can improve your performance in your other classes?”
            “Not in Defense while Lockhart is teaching, Professor.”
            Professor McGonagall sighed faintly. “Yes, I see the problem there. But in Charms? In Potions?”
            “Not in Potions while Professor Snape is teaching, either.” Harry met her eyes and hoped that he didn’t sound too unpleasant when he spoke. There was the faint chance someone might decide that he was good enough at Transfiguration and hated Professor Snape enough to be the one who had taken revenge on him. “I’ll talk to Professor Flitwick about extra time for Charms, though. It would be good to be good at that.”
            Professor McGonagall didn’t ask him what for, luckily. She simply considered him, opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something else, and then closed it with a faint sigh. “It’s a beginning,” she said. “Remember that even a Ravenclaw must do something other than schoolwork some of the time.”
            “Yes, Professor,” said Harry, although that didn’t make much sense to him. Why would a professor care whether a student was spending all their time on schoolwork?
He remained there, waiting, until Professor McGonagall said, “Yes, you may go. My apologies for having kept you for so long.”
“That’s all right, Professor,” Harry said, and opened the door. Terry was waiting for him. He nodded impatiently to Harry and took off down the corridor. Harry followed more slowly.
            He was working on a new theory for why his object-to-object Transfigurations were going so wrong. And while he would need a little more testing to prove it true, he was almost certain he was right.
            “Come on, Harry! We have a study session with Padma in the library! She said that she’s actually figured out an easy way to memorize the information from Lockhart’s books…”
            Harry grimaced, but nodded. He wanted to go if that easy way existed. Lockhart was a disgrace to teaching, and Harry didn’t want to waste his time actually reading the git’s books.
            But tonight, no later, he would have to slip away to the dungeon classroom and work on his own spells.
*
            “Commuto abundantiam felim!”
            The words vibrated in Harry’s mouth and the magic trembled out of his wand. And this time, he could sense the Wild, sweeping around him and down to the miscellaneous pile of rags and stones Harry had collected in the corner of the dungeon classroom.
            Harry slumped a little against the wall, sighing as he watched the collection begin to turn into a kitten. A kitten with black fur and green eyes, just like the one Uncle Vernon had killed.
            This time, it had been easy. And Harry knew the reason why.
            It was almost the last day of school in his second year, almost the time he would have to return to the Dursleys. Desperation was driving him now. There were some things a cat would be more useful for than a mouse or rat, and he suspected that those were the only things that would keep him safe over the summer. Uncle Vernon would have had ten months to decide he wasn’t really afraid of Harry. The kitten would play a part in a new plan.
            Harry had to survive if he was going to heal his parents. He would willingly put his life in danger for them; in fact, he would probably have to, with some of the riskier areas of his research. But he wouldn’t do them any good if he died along the way because Uncle Vernon got enraged and finally hit him, or if Dudley and his gang pounded him too hard.
            That’s the difference, Harry thought, as he saw the kitten open eyes that looked like his own. I have to care about it. It has to be for my parents.
            Harry couldn’t do something just to please his professors, or because someone else had asked him to, or for revenge and nothing else. He had done the Transfiguration of the mice who’d got into Snape’s potions for revenge, but even the last one of those he’d tried to do, a week ago, had been unsuccessful. On the other hand, he had a rat and mice who could help him keep going until he could heal his parents.
            And now he had a cat who could help him do the same thing.
            Harry had imagined a white patch, sort of like a lopsided T, on the kitten’s chest. He saw it now and smiled as the kitten scampered up to him, crook-backed, and batted at his fingers. When Harry picked him up, he purred.
            Amicus stuck his head out of Harry’s pocket and looked in profound distress at the new arrival. The kitten didn’t even look at the rat.
            “He’s not interested in chasing you down,” Harry murmured. “He’s not interested in anything except fish and insects.”
            Amicus gave a loud sniff that perfectly expressed his opinion of that and climbed out of Harry’s pocket to do some grooming. Harry sat down with the kitten on his chest, and pondered.
            He hadn’t been able to hold to his original plan of doing average work in his classes, at least not in Transfiguration. But now he thought he’d just gradually and slowly fall behind in a natural way. He’d looked at the third-year books, and while they had a lot of theory on Transfiguring animals, almost all the practical work concentrated on objects. Until Harry found an object he could create that would help his parents, he would continue not to do well at those, because he simply didn’t care enough.
            Professor McGonagall would have to accept that she’d been mistaken, that Harry wasn’t a prodigy or a genius. He could do things that looked remarkable for a first-year, but the older he got, the less smart he’d look.
            That suited Harry fine. He liked Professor McGonagall; she was still the one who had done the most for him and the one who’d taken him to visit his parents. But she was busy, and the Head of a different House besides, and she couldn’t take his mum’s place. And she wouldn’t approve of the experiments Harry had started reading about in a book he’d got from the Restricted Section.
            Harry snorted. All he’d had to do to get into the Restricted Section was ask for a pass from a professor. He supposed he couldn’t say Lockhart had been useless, after all.
            Harry knew he was a long way from being able to complete those experiments, yet, or even start them. “Look how long it took me to make a kitten,” he said aloud.
            Said kitten hooked his claws in Harry’s shirt and tried to bite him on the chin. Harry held his head down and chuckled.
            “But at least they caught the damn giant snake and no one died, so the school will be open next year,” he said, and jumped up. “And I can read a lot of Muggle books about brains this summer, so I can start practicing on myself when I can use my wand again.”
            He put the kitten on the floor. Amicus promptly skipped up his arm. Harry stretched and began the personal Transfigurations he would need before he went back to the Dursleys. Claws on both hands this time, retractable so they wouldn’t bother him during these last days at Hogwarts; the stone-hard skin on his chest, legs, and arms to resist Dudley’s punches, which he’d finally perfected; and, after a long hesitation, the powerful muscles he’d decided he could add to his legs. It would mean a few days of walking hunched or not much at all, but that was okay. Exams were over, and the Ravenclaws were used to Harry spending a lot of time sitting in one place, studying.
            With that done, Harry bent over and looked at the kitten. He purred attentively.
            “I think,” said Harry, fingering the white fur on his chest, “that I have a good name for you. You can be Cross.”
            The kitten jumped to his left shoulder, opposite Amicus, who tensed unhappily but at least stayed still. Harry spent a moment rubbing the kitten’s head.
            “What do you say, Cross?” he whispered. “Shall we go bother some Dursleys?”
            The kitten purred loud enough to make Harry’s ear hurt this time. He was smiling as he opened the door of the workroom and stepped out into the corridor.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning