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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Fifteen--Advanced Lessons
"Miss Dolores."
Dolores awoke slowly. She'd spent most of the past day awake and on high alert, because Sirius had heard a rumor from one of his disreputable friends that Dumbledore was making some other move in the Wizengamot to take Harry away. It had turned out to be nothing but a rumor, and she'd been glad to let her head finally touch her pillow.
Now Harry stood beside the bed, his eyes so big that it looked as if they hurt. Dolores snatched up her wand. Perhaps Dumbledore had decided to come through the Floo again.
But instead, Harry reached up to touch his scar and murmured, "I'm having nightmares. I--don't understand. I thought I was too young to remember what happened to my parents, but--" He swallowed. "I think that's what I'm dreaming of."
Dolores sat up. This was a different kind of emergency. "Go over to the chairs," she told Harry, and he scurried to the smaller of the two chairs in the corner. Dolores followed, pausing only to build up the fire with a wave of her wand and close the curtains against the light of the full moon. It was astonishingly bright. She was surprised it hadn't woken her on its own.
Harry sat with his head bowed and his hands worrying at the sleeves of his robe. Dolores coughed, and he did stop that, but he also gave her a look of plain despair.
Dolores made her voice calm and brisk both at once. "How certain are you that that's what you're remembering, Harry?"
"There's a flash of bright green light and a woman screaming. And before that, someone telling her to stand aside, and she says to take her. Not Harry. What else could it be? It's not like I have any other memories it could be."
"The Killing Curse is green."
"That's what Sirius said."
I shall have a talk with Sirius. "Why do you think you only started remembering this now?"
"I don't know. Except sometimes I had have a dream of green light and a high voice laughing at the Dursleys'. They just...didn't encourage me to talk about it."
Dolores sighed. She really hadn't thought of anything bad enough yet to inflict on the Dursleys as revenge. It was most vexing. "Then I think it's a true memory, Harry. Probably one that your mind repressed until you were ready to deal with it."
"How can I be ready if I'm sitting here crying like this?" Harry rubbed his sleeve angrily over the tear on his face.
Dolores was forcibly reminded that he was a young boy after all. After seeing him handle people in the Wizengamot and Lupin, she know how great he would be, but he wasn't right now. She held out her hands.
Harry stared at her in wonder and doubt, then got off the chair and came slowly over. Dolores took his hands and swung them gently back and forth. Harry still stared at her as if she was Polyjuiced.
Maybe she wouldn't have done this before Harry came into her life, but then, there were lots of political moves she wouldn't have made either, because she didn't have the power. She only knew this was the right move now.
"Your mind has moments of readiness that only it knows," she told him. "I think that you're stronger than you give yourself credit for. You don't think that way because you grew up with them, but you are."
Harry hesitated so long that Dolores thought she hadn't managed to reassure him, but then he nodded and said, "All right. Can I stay and sleep in the chair here, though? Just in case nightmares wake me up again?"
"Nonsense. You are a growing boy and must sleep flat, not with your neck crooked up at an angle." As Harry drooped, she drew back the blankets on her own huge bed, bought with one of the first surges of money she'd got from the Potter estate, and added, "Come."
Harry watched her with big eyes as he got into bed. Dolores shrugged. She had no nightmares, and she rather enjoyed surprising Harry. She lay down next to him, not touching him since he didn't seem to want that, and closed her eyes.
It was surprisingly restful, even with Harry's tendency to seem asleep and then roll over in a blitz of blankets next to her. Dolores fell into the best kind of thick, dreamless slumber, and dreamed that the front door opened and closed twice, nothing worse.
In the morning, certainly, aside from a certain manic cheerfulness in Sirius's grin that probably meant he had sought out a woman and Lupin being sick enough to excuse himself from breakfast, nothing was unusual.
Except that she had taken another step to make herself indispensable in Harry's life.
I can do whatever I need to.
*
"I want to know who did this to him."
Dolores smiled tranquilly at the Healer in front of her, Jane Kleinan, and nodded to the chair across from her. When one had celebrity and a bit of money, Healers would come to the house instead of expecting you to go to St. Mungo's, which Dolores would admit to liking. "Please sit down, Healer Kleinan. I'll tell you about it."
Kleinan took the chair still eyeing her, as if she thought Dolores would try to get away with abusing the most famous boy in the wizarding world. Kleinan had dark hair in a severe chignon and a long neck and hard hands. She was tall enough that Dolores would have tilted her head back to look her in the face had Kleinan not sat down.
"He's had several broken bones. He's malnourished. I can tell he's been on potions that are supposed to repair that, but the breaks and starvation go so deep it's not possible." Kleinan caressed her wand. "Tell me, or I immediately contact the Wizengamot."
"His Muggle relatives abused him."
Kleinan paused. "I did hear something about that."
"Harry hasn't told me everything they did to him. But I know they made him sleep in a cupboard, they starved him, and--" Dolores shook her head. "I didn't know about the broken bones. It's possible his aunt and uncle beat him, but Harry keeps insisting they didn't, so it was probably his cousin."
"Was his cousin considerably older?"
"No, but considerably bigger, and would often chase and beat Harry with his friends. I had the impression the Muggle adults considered it 'boys' play.'"
"They would." Healer Kleinan still looked upset, but at least not like a dragon who would level the whole house. "They would. I sometimes get Muggleborns like that. Their magic conceals the break, or they do because they feel vulnerable, and then the adults are willing to accept it. Anything so as not to have to deal with a strange child."
Dolores was nodding, and hiding her amusement. It seemed that even Harry's odder flights of fancy--such as wanting to help abused Muggleborn children--would have plenty of material to work on.
"If he hasn't told you the full extent of the damage, how do you know that you aren't accidentally making it worse?"
Calm, calm, even when she challenges you. "You may not have heard that I have two other adults in the house with Harry every day. One is his godfather, Sirius Black, recently declared innocent. Harry tells him things he won't tell me."
"This Black won't keep the secrets from you?"
"Not if it was about Harry getting physically hurt. Believe me, he would be summoning an entire platoon of Healers to personally attend him."
"And the other?"
"Harry's tutor, Remus Lupin. He teaches him in ancient history and some magical theory. Harry asks intelligent questions, and some of them are about Muggles and abused children. Lupin would tell me at once if he picked anything up from them."
Kleinan exhaled slowly and reached up to tuck a stray strand of hair back into her chignon. "All right. I thought he was incredibly close-mouthed, but what he has are different people he can talk to about different things."
"Exactly."
Kleinan remained still for another few seconds, and Dolores waited. The Healer was the sort of woman who would have left already had she come to the end of all she wanted to say. Dolores could not imagine what else needed to be discussed, but not pushing was getting her all sorts of rewards lately.
"I think the emotional abuse may have been worse than the physical."
"So I am finding," Dolores said. "They called him freak, I know that. They never told him there was such a thing as magic, even though they knew about it."
Kleinan stared. "What were they going to do when it came time for him to attend Hogwarts?"
"Perhaps not let him go. It is my experience that those kinds of Muggles rarely look ahead--they keep up their denial from day to day and imagine that will save them."
"Or they might do something worse," Kleinan said, and her fingers flexed in her lap. "There is--well, I imagine you've heard of some of the restrictions the Ministry is placing on wild valerian grown by moonlight lately?"
"Yes," said Dolores, rather thrown. But she did still get internal memos from the Ministry at times, and that was one of them. "There was a face cream that contained an accidentally high dose of it and poisoned someone?"
"Yes. Some batches are still recently-picked, of course, and the Ministry has mandated that we use them. In such ways that all wizards involved are safe, but Bagnold is getting all those accusations of wasting money lately..."
"I see." Dolores had picked up the emphasis on the word "wizards." "What kinds of things can valerian do?"
"Well, combined with certain other ingredients, make safe face creams. And combined with others, cause the sort of gentle sleep that we recommend for our patients. And for yet others..." Kleinan traced her fingers down her robe as if she was playing a harp. "Cause them to violate their most deeply-held beliefs."
"Really."
"Yes. It's been used by less powerful wizards who can't cast the Unforgivables to mimic the Imperius Curse."
"Really," said Dolores, and this time they shared a smile.
"It's difficult to brew, of course," Kleinan said after reflecting on it a minute. "Nothing that can be done in a day or even a week. And I have duties at St. Mungo's that do keep me rather busy, when you think about it."
"I'm sure you do," said Dolores, peaceably. If this was about money, then she could give Kleinan all she wanted. But she thought it was more about putting on a show so that anyone looking at this in a Pensieve memory could see they hadn't had an open discussion of torture.
"But sometimes I find time in the evenings. The way I found time for a house call today." Kleinan stood up and inclined her head to Dolores. "I think Harry will heal splendidly if he has multiple adults to care for him. And no other children for now," she added a second later.
"He does have friends..."
"I meant no other child sharing the house with him, splitting the adults' focus. It could remind him too much of his cousin and set back the healing."
"Oh, of course not." Dolores shook her head. "I never had the impression that either Sirius or Mr. Lupin thought much about children. Sirius has already declared Harry his heir. He doesn't seem taken with the notion of marrying and leaving his property to someone else."
"And you?"
"Of course I have made my will so that everyone goes to Harry--"
"Were you planning on marrying and having children?"
Dolores wanted to sneer, to ask Kleinan if she'd noticed the ugliness of Dolores's face and the shape of her mouth. But she was keeping her head turned studiously away, head bowed and fingers playing with her cuffs, so she probably had and just didn't want to say anything.
"No."
"Ah. Well, the attitude you have towards protecting Harry is the best thing for him right now."
Kleinan shook her hand and passed as briskly through the fireplace as Dolores had thought she would once she was done. In the meantime, Dolores leaned back and dreamed of what would happen if the Dursleys were to lose their inhibitions and act "abnormal" in public.
It would have to be in public, of course. It's not a punishment if it happens in the privacy of their own home, even if they remember what they did in front of each other. And somewhere with lots of Muggles.
Dolores nodded. While Kleinan was arranging for the potion and the appropriate punishment for the Dursleys, Dolores thought she would do what she could to arrange the place.
*
"Ah, my dear Madam Umbridge. Might you spare me a moment of your time?"
In the seconds before Dolores turned to face Albus Dumbledore in the aisle of the small Diagon Alley shop, she thought of and discarded the notion of hitting him with her basket of tomatoes, or the bag of grapes Harry was carrying. Harry decided her against that. He was shrinking next to her, eyes wide and dismayed.
No. Harry didn't need any more notoriety than what he already had. Dolores wouldn't add to that with a brawl in public.
She smiled sweetly at Dumbledore and made sure she tested the ripeness of the watermelon she'd chosen with one finger. Then she placed it in the basket, shifting some of the tomatoes to make room for it. "Of course. What did you want to speak about?"
"Well, about Harry's future, of course." Dumbledore tried to twinkle at Harry. Harry, clearly having none of it, pressed his face into Dolores's robes like a much younger child. This once, she didn't mind. "If we could buy our food and go talk in private?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, but I do have to have the house-elves prepare a rather extravagant dinner for four tonight. I thought you meant you wanted to speak to me here and now."
People's heads were turning. Dolores didn't mind. Dumbledore had far more to lose than she did in a public confrontation.
"Harry's future will take longer to discuss than a moment."
Dumbledore was trying for dignified. Dolores went for simpering. "I know that! It's so important! But I'm trying to focus on this dinner party right now, and this is so unexpected...I suppose we could go talk in the Leaky Cauldron? As long as we can leave by four!"
It was twenty to four now. Dumbledore frowned and shook his head slowly. "One might think you didn't want to discuss Harry's future, Madam Umbridge."
"I do! I do! Simply, so much time, so many commitments..."
"If you have that many, perhaps you should leave the raising of young Harry to someone else."
Dolores would have responded, and still wasn't dismayed, but at that moment Harry raised his head. His eyes brimmed with dislike as he said, more than loud enough to be heard, "I don't want to be raised by you."
That could have been a disaster, but glancing around, Dolores saw the other people in the shop were with them. It wasn't the first time she'd come here with Harry, and they were used to him and her; they barely even exclaimed over his scar, anymore. That had to mean something. Among other things, that they were on her side in this.
"Harry has spoken, I'm afraid, Headmaster." Dolores reached down and let her hand rest on the back of his neck. "We should go home, now. Perhaps we can make an appointment instead of simply meeting by chance like this?"
She knew as well as Dumbledore did that it wasn't by chance. But although his eyes fastened on her with a look of dislike, he didn't have the standing to challenge her or force her into something right now.
After a tense moment, she saw Dumbledore incline his head.
"I will owl you tomorrow."
"Of course. Just in case, you should know there's a ward on my house that's impervious to Howlers. I'll charm it to let your letter through."
Dumbledore nodded and twinkled one more time at Harry and went away. Dolores took them to the front to pay for their food, deliberately not hurrying.
"I don't like him," said Harry, in a voice smaller than he'd used since she took him from the Dursleys. "I don't want him to get guardianship of me."
"I promise," Dolores said, and didn't look at him as she took the bag of grapes he was holding and let the witch at the front wave her wand over it to check weight and price in Sickles, "I will never let that happen."
And that tactic worked. By the time they were back in the street, Harry was walking tall and proud if tense, his eyes aiming straight ahead.
This is how one should raise the Savior of the Wizarding World, Dolores thought, and gloried in the stares as they went by.
*
Biigoh: Thank you! Yes, Dolores is a little worried, but as you can see from this chapter, Harry is already perfectly capable of running circles around her. That doesn't mean he won't end up in Slytherin.
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The Daring Win