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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Chapter Eleven—The Dining Room
“So you agree with me that Harry ought to have lessons before he goes to Hogwarts!”
“I’m not sure that we agree in what the lessons ought to be, Mr. Black. Could you sit up and take your elbows off the table, please?”
“Y’know, you don’t have to keep calling me Mr. Black. I gave you permission to call me Sirius. Because I know permission matters to you Slytherin types. Can’t you just do that? Mr. Black makes me think I’m my father or something.”
Dolores grimaced at Black. He only flopped back against the chair and laughed at her. She supposed it was a lost cause to try and get him to behave reasonably when he had run away from one of the most prestigious pure-blood families in their world to avoid doing exactly that.
Harry wasn’t awake yet, but now that his custody was firmly settled, she and Black had been discussing his pre-Hogwarts education. Narcissa Malfoy had offered to tutor him in etiquette, but Dolores had politely refused and asked her to concentrate on music instead. Etiquette was so important that she would prefer Harry learned it from her.
Along with history. And politics. And the correct way to observe and listen. But that went without saying. They certainly didn’t say it to each other, she and Narcissa, when Dolores made her apologies, all wide-eyed and smiling, and Narcissa smiled back without moving her lips and accepted the excuses.
“Call me Sirius. You call Harry by his first name!”
“He is a child.” And I need other people to think I care more about him than I actually do. It would sound strange for a guardian to call the child she adopted and fought for by his last name. “You are an adult. I thought you would rejoice in being called Mr. Black. Less of a reminder of your childhood.”
Black snorted bitterly and picked at the food in front of him. “My last name is what the guards in Azkaban called me. And the people at the Ministry when they knew I was innocent but wanted to convince me to be on Dumbledore’s side.”
“Dumbledore calls you by your first name, surely.”
“That doesn’t make it tainted forever!”
Dolores refrained from saying that she would have thought political enemies and Azkaban guards would taint a name less than Dumbledore. “It is simply odd to call you that, Mr. Black. You have a higher rank than I do, or at least will once you get some of your political clout back. I am trying to teach Harry to respect the rules of our society—”
“Oh, that’s it!” Black clapped his hands and leaned back in his chair with a face so abruptly relaxed that Dolores had to prevent herself from bristling. “I’m trying to teach him to break the rules. It’s no wonder that we’re having trouble agreeing!”
“When he knows the rules, then he can break them,” said Dolores, after wrestling with herself during a moment when she wanted to shout at Black. But she would have to resist the impulse. Harry adored him. And his help before the Wizengamot had been invaluable. “Surely you had to know why your pranks would horrify and disturb others before you could pull them?”
Black paused. “You won’t make Harry’s childhood like mine was,” he said, in a low, deadly voice.
“No, of course not,” Dolores said, startled into utter truth. “I can’t mimic the upbringing of a Dark pure-blood family from two decades ago.”
For some reason, that made Black start laughing again. Dolores tried to maintain her gaze and her hold on her teacup as both calm and steady. It was difficult, but then again, she thought she knew what she was doing when it came to Black.
If only he would stop changing all the time.
“My parents would be so happy to hear you say that,” Black finally muttered, still chuckling.
“I imagine they would be.” Dolores patted her lips with a napkin and turned to the stairs when she heard the subtle thump of small feet. She’s first heard them a moment before, when they’d paused near the top. Harry was implementing his lessons well. “I imagine they were people who believed in preserving distinctions between the families.”
“Yeah,” Black muttered to himself, his head falling down and his chin resting on his chest as he watched Harry come into sight at the far end of the stairs. Harry was adjusting his robes. Dolores didn’t think Black had noticed him spying. “You could say that.”
“Good morning, Harry,” said Dolores, and gestured for the house-elf to bring in the toast with marmalade that Harry liked. “I hope that you had a restful sleep.” Black rolled his eyes at her formal courtesy. Well, he could do that. So far, it was her lessons that Harry was paying more attention to, as shown by his little expedition this morning.
“Yes, thank you, Miss Dolores.” Harry started eating the toast, in the neat way Dolores had shown him that dropped fewer crumbs on the floor, but he was watching her and Black at once. The same thing happened when he reached for his porridge and tipped one spoonful of sugar and one of honey onto it.
Dolores smiled. Black rolled his eyes. “You don’t let him eat like a growing boy,” he complained. “You starve him.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
About to answer herself, Dolores hesitated and settled back in her chair. No. Better to let Harry do this for her. He had jumped to her defense so instinctively that even she was surprised. Now she would wait and see what kind of outcome would stem from Harry and Black’s first argument.
Black blinked and pushed that thick hair out of his face. He would look better with it trimmed and cut, but Merlin forbid he listen to any of Dolores’s suggestions. “I just meant that she—she doesn’t let you have all the sweets she should, Harry. As your guardian. I know she doesn’t starve you like those horrible Muggles starved you, but you’ve got to admit, you could eat more.”
“I eat all the food I want.” Harry spoke in between swallows, keeping his mouth properly closed while he chewed and his elbows off the table. Dolores watched in fascination. She had never been this proud of someone else for so long. It was a strange, floating sensation, as if she had a balloon tethered to her that someone else might snip loose at any moment.
“I just meant all the sweets you want.” Black held up his hands like they were a Protego shield. “That’s all.”
“I have all the sweets I want.”
Black scoffed so hard that bits of spittle flew across the table. Dolores sighed out in bliss when she watched Harry move his sleeve to avoid them. “You can’t possibly. I see how few you eat. Every growing boy wants more than that.”
“I’m not every growing boy.” Harry punctuated the point by digging his spoon hard into his porridge, but since none slopped over the side of his bowl, Dolores was inclined to forgive him.
“But…you must want more, right?” Black glanced at Dolores for a second, although Dolores honestly wasn’t sure why, and then focused on Harry again. “Have you ever even had a Chocolate Frog? Any of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans? Anything like that?”
“I’ve seen them. And I have them sometimes.” Harry dug his spoon into his porridge again, and this time it was a little harder, but no drops flew onto the table. “I just don’t have them a lot.”
“But you should have them whenever you want. You can have them whenever you want when we go to Hogsmeade! I’ll take you. There’s a huge shop there, Honeydukes, that has all the kinds you can imagine. And there are chocolates that seal your mouth shut, and ices that make it impossible to do anything but sing, and—”
“That doesn’t sound fun, though,” said Harry. Dolores saw his hand tremble. It would be time to intervene soon. Harry wasn’t used to arguing with adults who liked him—it was the kind of skill Dolores saw him getting no use out of, so she had not taught it to him—and he was getting upset.
“It would be fun if you used them on me, right!” Black reminded Dolores of a wagging-tailed puppy at the moment, his head lowered and his chin almost resting on the table. She only hoped he didn’t carry the resemblance so far as to piddle on the carpet. “Of course it would be. You could watch me walking around with my mouth stuck shut.”
“That doesn’t sound fun,” Harry repeated, soft but getting worn-down, and Dolores spoke before Black could say anything else.
“It does indeed not sound fun, Harry,” she said, and turned to Black. “I must insist that you not buy him any of those sweets without my express permission, Mr. Black.”
Black gave her a glimpse of a grin, at least if a grin included showing his canines. “Call me Sirius, and I’ll consider it.”
Dolores grimaced, but that was a small enough price to pay, and she could perhaps demonstrate to Harry, by example, that she enjoyed some informal relationships with powerful pure-bloods. “Very well, Sirius. But if Harry does not want to spend his time or money on those pranks, I would assume you would refrain from buying them anyway.”
“He just doesn’t know how fun pranking is!”
“I do,” said Harry, and this time Dolores looked at him sharply. His hand was no longer trembling at his side, but his lowered head and the way his lip was trembling made up for that. “But it’s always fun for other people.”
“What?” Black looked so baffled that Dolores wanted to clap her hand over her eyes. Did he truly understand nothing of the way Harry had grown up, despite knowing the Muggles had been abusive?
“It’s fun for Dudley and people like him. People who beat me up. I don’t want to prank people. I don’t want to be pranked.” Harry shot Sirius a look from burning green eyes that Dolores wanted to applaud. He wasn’t yet at the point where he might make people swoon, but he would reach it without much trouble in a few years. “I don’t want you to buy me pranks, either. Buy me something else.”
“Of course.” Black’s voice was very soft. “What would you like, Harry? Anything you want. I mean, that isn’t sweets or pranks, because you said you don’t want those,” he added hastily as Harry started to open his mouth.
Harry appeared to be caught off-guard. Dolores kept her frown inwards only. He would have to get used to people wanting to buy him things and give him gifts. That was another lessons they would need to work on soon, how to accept compliments and the rest gracefully.
But then Harry’s chin became firm. He said, “Buy me a pet.”
Dolores sat upright. She liked cats. That was all that she liked. And she was Harry’s legal guardian. She was the one who would say what animals came into her house. “Harry, if you think on what I said—”
“Make it a cat,” Harry went on, oblivious, staring at Sirius as if he was daring him to back down or change his mind. “I know that you like dogs, but I want a cat.”
Dolores frowned openly this time. Was Harry doing this because he wanted a pet, or as a challenge to her authority? He would have to be far stupider than he was not to notice how much she liked cats. That might mean he was slipping around the boundaries she set for his own good and daring her to ban Black from bringing a kitten home.
“Black—”
“You aren’t calling me Siiiirius,” Black sang, and plugged his ears. “I don’t have to liiiiisten to you.”
Dolores closed her eyes in a private moment of utter despair. So, instead of an adult she could count on to back her up and discipline Harry, she had another child to deal with, one who enjoyed flouting her authority in a way that Harry never had.
She didn’t shake her head or snap, because that was what Black wanted. She turned to Harry and asked, “What kind of cat do you want, Harry?”
“The kind that’s part Kneazle,” said Harry at once. “Draco was telling me about his Kneazle kitten, and they’re expensive and knock things over all the time because they want to chase ghosts only they can see. But one who’s part Kneazle wouldn’t be so expensive and wouldn’t jump on things all the time.”
Dolores eased slowly back in her chair. This wasn’t an impulse purchase, then. This was something he had thought about for a while.
And he had probably also thought about how to phrase it. That was why he’d got all the way through those long sentences without stuttering, and without looking away from her, or abating the fire in his eyes.
“A kitten?” she asked. “Or a cat?”
“Either would be fine.” Here, Harry’s eyes flickered downwards, and his mask shattered a bit. “I mean, if you prefer a kitten or a cat, Miss Dolores, that’s what we should get.”
“No way, the furball will be your pet, kiddo!” Sirius shot a hand out to ruffle Harry’s hair. Dolores would have objected to that more, but truly, he could do no harm in that department. “You should get to choose.” He turned to Dolores, shielded the side of his face with the Daily Prophet that had been lying near his plate, and stuck out his tongue.
Dolores considered the merits of slow-acting poisons, but unfortunately, all the best kinds had been banned in Britain centuries ago by pure-bloods frightened of assassinations. Those who truly needed them brewed their own. That kind of Potions talent was beyond her.
“I still think that Miss Dolores should choose,” said Harry, and his voice was tiny and firm. He kept his head ducked and his eyes away from her.
“Then I will choose a kitten,” said Dolores, because of course it was the only thing she could say. “A half-Kneazle kitten certified to be clean by the shop.” She gave Black a stern look.
It didn’t matter. He’d already leaped up on his toes and was grinning, looking like he was a minute’s excuse from spinning around in a circle. “Of course! One half-Kneazle kitten, coming right up!” And he dashed into the drawing room, and a second later, Dolores heard his call of, “The Leaky Cauldron!” as he Flooed away.
Left alone, Harry tightened his grip on his spoon for a moment. Then he looked directly at Dolores and asked, “Are you angry?”
“About you leaving off what I told you to call me.”
“Sorry, Miss Dolores.” But the flinch was smaller than it would have been a week ago, Dolores thought. Before Black came to live with them.
She had to consider, then, what kinds of undesirable lessons he would teach Harry, as well as what advantages he could add to them. She could raise a legal fuss if she desired, and turn Black out.
But Black could still teach Harry things she could not, about what a proper pure-blood family had been like. It almost did not matter that Black mocked and violated those lessons (save for augmenting her conviction that he would have ended up in prison sooner or later, even if not for that particular crime). She could still draw on them and paint a realistic, sane picture for Harry to emulate.
“No,” she said finally, “I’m not angry.” Perhaps on the day that Black truly showed his horrible side she would be, but not now.
She started as Harry flew off the chair and at her. She almost drew her wand, but in truth, they hadn’t started dueling lessons yet, and she didn’t think Harry, with his small face and frame and ribs that ached, could hurt her without a spell.
And then he grabbed her, and she discovered that he was squeezing her in the way no one could squeeze him, because of his ribs.
“Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you, Miss Dolores. That’s something they would never have done for me. Ever. No matter what. Thank you for letting me, and not getting angry when Sirius wanted to get something for me. Thank you.”
Dolores blinked and put her arms slowly around the strange child. He thought she would be angry enough to act like the Muggles? She had done something wrong. She had not been as guardian-like as she should with him. She had let down the lesson somewhere.
Or at least she thought that was it. Because, at the same time, she knew that she would never have agreed to a pet if Harry had proposed it. So there must be something wrong…
How could she agree when it was Black and Harry, and Harry had issued it as a direct challenge to her authority?
But she held Harry, and she let her mouth guide her, for once, without thought, because this was a situation she had never been able to imagine. “You’re welcome, Harry.”
He jerked his head up and gave her a dazzling smile, and then went back to his seat to finish his breakfast, instead of running around the house like an ill-mannered Black of her acquaintance. Dolores watched him in silence as she ate her own meal, and comforted herself with the fact that that must mean her own influence was stronger. If he could act like she had drilled him to, and not as Black had.
But the nagging feeling of something wrong, something I am missing, remained.
*
“His name’s—well, actually, I suppose his name’s whatever you want it to be.”
Black liked playing the careless lord, Dolores saw, although he might deny that description of it. But the offhand way he spoke, and the way his eyes sparkled, and the way he deposited the kitten, white and covered with soft black spots like a miniature snow leopard, on the floor, all confirmed it.
Harry knelt before the kitten and stared at it. It stared back at him, head lifted and tufted tail twitching a little.
And Harry smiled. It was more dazzling than the smile he had given Dolores at the dining table. She felt a little jerk of something like a pin pricking her, and then realized that made no sense. Not a jerk and a pinprick at once.
But in the meantime, Harry had picked up the kitten, and said, as firmly as though someone was going to take the name away from him, “His name is Pardus,” which at least told Dolores that he was paying attention to his Latin lessons.
“Pardus?” Black asked, his mouth downturned. “Why not something more fun?”
Harry turned his head and gave Black the same kind of arrogant look Black had used when giving him the kitten. “Because that’s what I want to name him.”
And Dolores could be glad of a kitten in the house after all, because Harry should take what he wanted from the world, not beg for it, however much asking might become a child, and Black blinked and backed down and even uttered a sort of stammering apology.
Harry caught her eye as he took Pardus out of the room, dangling and purring in his arms, and mouthed two more words.
Thank you.
Dolores sighed a little. At least Harry was still firmly following her lessons.
And at least it is a cat.
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- 12
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The Daring Win