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Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24376 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
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Chapter Fifteen—Stretch and Accept
“There is no reason I should let your friends visit.”
“Okay.”
Tarquinius pauses. He anticipated objections from Harry. He anticipated Harry leaping to his feet and storming out of the dining room. But Harry goes on eating his porridge and reading the book that he brings to the table every morning—a heavy tome of history Tarquinius wouldn’t have expected to interest him—like always.
Unexpected reactions deserve more study. Tarquinius lets a few more moments bleed past. It alters nothing. Harry frowns and flips back one page to study something he’s already read, but Tarquinius can’t prove that’s a distraction tactic.
“Why aren’t you angrier about me not letting your friends visit?”
“It would probably be a disaster anyway, that’s why,” Harry says, and looks at Tarquinius over the top of the book. “Ron would say something about you, and you would get angry. Or you would say something about blood traitors and call my friend Hermione a Mudblood, and then maybe you would fling curses at them. Or use one of your pets on them. It would be nice if I could see them, but only if no one gets hurt.” And he goes quietly back to the book as if he’s said nothing either remarkable or offensive.
“I would not be so crude as to use curses or insults.”
“But you didn’t mention your animals or poison.”
Tarquinius stares some more. It’s hard when the boy won’t meet his eyes. Theodore perfected that gesture long ago, of course, but it’s always obvious when he’s trying to ignore someone. Theodore has a trick of blushing and letting his eyes dart. Harry only acts as if the book is the most important thing in existence.
“You would—you believe I would hurt your friends, and yet you think you can stay here without consequences?”
“At the moment, I owe you a debt, and you’ve talked about that. And you want to train me in magic. Why would you do that if you were just going to kill me?”
“I could hurt you without killing you.”
“I know. But I can stand pain. It’s come with pretty much every summer.”
Tarquinius slams his hands on the table. Harry finally glances up from his book. “I am not like the Muggles,” Tarquinius says. It is more of an effort than it should to be to keep the saliva out of his voice. “I will not starve you. I will not lock you up. I already told you that. Have I not already shown you information you would not have known otherwise, and taught you magic, and warned you about dangers that might have overcome you in the house?”
“You dislocated my shoulder. Dudley did that to me a few times.”
It’s a mask. It has to be a mask, the indifference in those green eyes. The boy must want to see his friends. But Tarquinius cannot find the edges. If Harry is bluffing, he is doing it better than Tarquinius’s own son does most of the time.
“I had the impression that you considered it a sacrifice to your education. You didn’t object to it at the time.”
“Why should I have? I’m not saying you have to stop. I’m just saying that you’re like the Dursleys in a lot of ways, and they would never have let Ron and Hermione visit.”
Harry flips another page and frowns, then reaches out and writes down a note on the scroll of parchment Tarquinius didn’t even notice him taking out of his pocket. That says many things about his own concentration that he does not want to hear.
“If I were to let them come…”
“I want them to survive. So you shouldn’t.”
“If I were to swear not to harm them…”
Harry sighs and looks up. “You would want another debt from me. I think I owe you enough already. I’m not willing to ask for another one when the price might be Ron and Hermione suffering from some loophole because I didn’t ask enough questions. We can find something else to do.”
Tarquinius drums his fingers on the table. “If the other thing you find to do with your friends put myself or my son in danger, I will not be merciful.”
“I don’t see how letters can do that.” Harry puts a bookmark in his tome and swallows a few more spoonfuls of his porridge before he pushes it away. “Do you know if Theo is still asleep? I’ll go and knock on his door if he is.”
Baffled, Tarquinius only shrugs, and watches Harry leave. Then he looks back at the book, but it is a book on history and nothing more. It certainly contains no secret letters from Harry’s friends with tips on how to drive a former Death Eater to madness.
Not that Tarquinius really thought it did.
He leans back and touches one hand to his eyes. No, they are the normal morning combination of slightly gritty from the painkilling potion he takes at night and slightly wet from the potion he applies in the morning to counter those effects. There is nothing to indicate Harry slipped him another kind of potion, one that would influence his mind.
Frowning deeply, Tarquinius stands. He will find a way to answer Harry’s request that puts him back in control. But until he does, he will stay away from the children. It is unconscionable to let a twelve-year-old manipulate him.
*
“Does your dad always get upset when you tell him the truth?”
He and Theo have been studying the history of brewing for the past few hours, because Snape is coming this afternoon and he already expects Harry to know all these things like how the metal of the cauldron interacts with various kinds of flowers. Harry’s ready for a break, and this is the only question that he thinks can really distract Theo.
Theo blinks and looks up at him, marking his place under a sentence with one finger. “I mean, it depends on what you say.”
“He said my friends couldn’t come visit. I told him okay. Then he talked like he wanted to let them come visit, or he expected me to argue. I told him that he probably just wanted another debt from me, and I wasn’t going to do that when it might mean that Ron and Hermione got hurt.”
“I—never thought he would ask you that. They sent you a letter asking if they could come visit?”
“I don’t think they really trust your father.”
“Well, that’s only intelligent, though.” Theo runs his fingers down the book’s spine, deep in thought. “Do they think they could do something to stop him if he was determined to hurt you? Does Granger know a lot of Dark Arts?”
“Oh, come on, Theo.”
“Yes, that was a stupid question. But it doesn’t make any more sense to me why they would demand to visit if they can’t stop him.”
Harry stares into Theo’s shining eyes, full of that desire to understand, and feels a little quiver in his stomach. Theo isn’t being stupid. He really doesn’t understand the kind of friendship that Harry, Ron, and Hermione share.
It makes Harry fiercely glad that he was Sorted into Gryffindor for the first two years, even if he has to stay in Slytherin the rest of the time.
“They want to keep me safe, and they don’t really care if they can’t do it by themselves or if they have a plan. They’ll come, and they’ll try to take me away if they think your dad is threatening me. That’s all.” Harry shrugs a little when Theo stares harder than ever. “I mean, Ron and I didn’t have a plan when we went after the troll to save Hermione, either. We just did it.”
“Why?”
“Because we couldn’t leave her there.”
Theo only sits back and frowns. Harry shrugs again. “Do you mind if I go on reading? I want to know this before Snape comes this afternoon.”
“I thought you wanted to know if my father would get angry with you for being honest.”
“I don’t think you really know, do you?”
“No…I mean, I think this is the first time that someone’s ever asked me something like that.”
Harry nods, and returns to the book. He can feel Theo looking at him sometimes, but honestly, he doesn’t understand why. This really is the simplest thing he can do: ask questions.
Sometimes he still remembers that the Dursleys didn’t want him to ask questions, but then he remembers that they’re hardly around now to enforce the demand. And he can’t stop the fountain of guilt mingled with relief that bubbles up in his chest.
*
Theo suspects that Harry is fooling him and his father in the same way.
Without ever meaning to fool them. Theo is smart enough to realize that. Harry isn’t a mastermind with complicated plots, or he can’t do it yet, or he’s too bad a liar and he would give them away. Maybe all of those things are even true.
But as Harry sits there, paging through his book, and Theo pretends to do the same, but really remembers the way Harry just shrugged at him when he asked the question about going to rescue Granger, Theo is smart enough to realize something else.
He will need to understand this. Both because he doesn’t want to be fooled in the future…
And because if he wants to be Harry’s real friend, then he needs to know how to do it.
Being Harry’s real friend in the future is going to be important. Theo can feel that much.
*
“Enough with the cauldrons, Harry.” Severus can feel his own frustration giving his voice extra bite. “Come over here. I want to talk to you about dueling.”
Harry drags his stirring ladle back over the lip of the cauldron, and nods, his breathing soft and labored. Severus thinks that is more likely to be the fumes and the effort of concentration than the manual labor. Harry has proven where his disturbing propensity for that came from.
But when he sits down in the chair Severus indicates and looks up at him, he does not express gratitude for the information. “I thought Mr. Nott was going to talk to me about dueling? We dueled a few days ago.”
“I knew that Tarquinius was going to do that,” Severus says, and tries to recover his mental balance in the face of Harry’s skepticism. “But surely that does not mean you want only one teacher?”
“Are we going to duel, too?”
“I think you should understand more of the theory first. That ridiculous Dueling Club this past year hardly provided you with any.”
Harry nods and then keeps watching him. Severus pauses. In the end, however, there seems no reason not to continue the lesson as he has planned. He raises his wand and conjures an image in front of him, two cloaked and hooded wizards standing on a field of swirling red. At least Harry leans forwards and becomes more attentive then.
“Most opponents do bow to each other at the beginning of the duel,” Severus says. “But that is formality. The theory behind a duel is different. What is the goal of a duel?”
“Um. In battle? Or in a club like the one Lockhart had?”
“And I,” Severus says before he can stop himself. It galls him to see the fool given credit for any idea that is not repeated Memory Charms.
Harry eyes him.
Severus sighs and continues. “In a battle. A duel is considered now as a formalized contest between two wizards, but that takes place in—contexts that you are unlikely to be involved in except in class. When you fight for your life, the duel is what happens between any two wizards who encounter each other in battle. There is a theory of multiple duels at once, which we will tackle later. For now, we need to concentrate on one opponent at a time.”
Harry nods, but doesn’t say anything further. Severus wishes for a conveniently placed wall to rest his forehead again, and repeats, as carefully as he can, “What is the goal of a duel in battle, Harry?”
“Oh! Um—to kill the person you’re fighting?”
“To disable,” Severus counters, feeling a squirm of that same unease in his gut that he felt when Harry heard of the deaths of his Muggle family without blinking. “It doesn’t matter whether they’re only lightly wounded or not, as long as they can’t strike at you any longer. And that is what you should keep in mind, since I am not sure that you should concentrate on deadly spells anyway.”
“Because I’m underage?”
“And because I thought you would not want to kill.”
His voice finally seems to get through to Harry, who fidgets and looks away, touching his face with a reluctant hand. “I just—”
“I would like to know about this, actually.” Severus didn’t think an opportunity to get his questions answered would arise so quickly, but now that it’s here, he’ll hardly waste it. “Why did you seem almost relieved to hear of the deaths of your Muggle family, instead of distressed? Why are you comfortable living here with a Death Eater? That is not the boy I thought I knew.”
“I don’t have any home anymore.”
Severus didn’t anticipate this answer. He keeps himself from showing confusion, however. That has proven fatal in every dealing with children he has ever had. “What do you mean by that?”
“It didn’t matter so much when I came to Hogwarts, because Gryffindor was home.” Harry whispers the words, his eyes locked on his trainers. Severus notes in passing that they’re much cleaner and less scuffed than they were when Severus first saw him in the Nott house. Tarquinius’s doing, no doubt. “I hated last summer, but I knew I would be coming back to Gryffindor Tower and all my friends. But then when I was Sorted into Slytherin and I thought I wouldn’t have a home…”
“So you were willing to do anything.”
“Yes.”
“But why rejoice in the deaths of your Muggle family?”
“Because why should I feel bad for them?” Harry’s eyes cut up to him, and Severus sees his hands form into fists. “They made my life horrible. They’d just go on doing it.”
Severus considers for a moment how to respond, and ends up choosing a tactic that has not occurred to him before this moment. “You risked your life this year to save a young girl whom, despite her relation to your friend, you barely knew. I thought you—perhaps had a huge fund of compassion and a heart capable of forgiving anyone.”
“Ginny hadn’t done anything I had to forgive her for.”
Severus sighs when he sees the tight way Harry’s face is shuttered. He won’t get anything else out of him. “If you would like to go back to dueling theory…”
Harry obediently turns to watch the image Severus has conjured, and Severus shakes his head and moves on with the lesson.
*
Harry feels the truth bouncing around inside of him, and part of him is almost tempted to confess it to Snape. It would make him stare. At the moment, Harry thinks that might be the best he can hope for.
He saved Ginny because he felt sorry for her and she’s Ron’s little sister, and Ron would be upset if she died. That’s it. That’s the honest truth. He’s not some hero who cares about everyone in the world. He cares about people who like him and are nice to him.
It’s the same reason he can’t feel as upset about the Dursleys as he knows he should. They would make his life ten times worse now that he doesn’t have a home at Hogwarts, and he could ignore them before, but now it would be horrible. They weren’t nice to him.
Maybe this is the real reason the Hat put him in Slytherin, he thinks. Not because he’s a Parselmouth, but because he’s not as heroic and happy as everyone in Gryffindor thinks he should be. He’s still upset and angry that people thought he was the Heir of Slytherin and the Hat put him in Slytherin. A real hero would move past it.
Harry can’t.
*
Tarquinius shakes his head as he strides into the breakfast nook. He spent most of yesterday considering what he should do about the situation with Harry’s friends, and the only real course of action open to him is to surrender to the “manipulation” that he isn’t even sure Harry is consciously practicing.
It’s a thing he has had to do more than once in his life: give in to an opponent, and then handle that opponent’s reaction and fit it into his plans instead of dictating the situation as he likes to do. But he never expected to have a twelve-year-old boy put him in one of those tangles.
“Your friends can visit,” he tells Harry, who once again has the history book he only seems to read at breakfast.
Harry immediately puts the book down. “And you’ll promise not to hurt them while we’re here? Not attack them or curse them or poison them or hurt them with your animals or anything else? And you won’t insult them?”
Tarquinius frowns a little at him, wondering why Harry seems to be more worried about poison than the animals he knows obey Tarquinius’s will, but word order is not something he wants to question Harry about. “I will. As long as you promise they won’t insult me or my son without some correction from you, and you won’t allow them to explore the manor on their own or touch anything I wouldn’t allow you to touch.”
“I can do that.” Harry hesitates for a long minute, and Tarquinius wonders if he will want to do the oath now, before they eat. He will insist they remain here if that is Harry’s idea. He still needs more food than he has received.
But instead, he gets a dazzling smile and a soft, “Thank you.”
Then Harry goes back to his book.
Tarquinius piles food slowly on his plate, and tries not to stare too much. He has the feeling he has just been manipulated again, but if anything, Harry would have more innocent intentions with a smile than with words.
Perhaps I shall have to learn more about honesty and kindness, simply to separate them from his actual attempts to manipulate me.
*
Kain: Tarquinius did toss out that tidbit with the intention of influencing Harry's opinion of Blaise. Too early yet to tell exactly what it will do.
Harry is good at disarming Tarquinius in other ways, too! And Snape, too, which Severus does not appreciate. :)
Blaise is a little worried becuase his mother pays a lot of attention to this particular boytoy, and he thinks maybe she isn't planning to kill Bernard.
Severus really thinks of his debt as being to Lily, and then to her son, not to Albus. He's currently making plans to run if he has to. But Albus has another countermove up his sleeve. Harry wouldn't actually try to prevent him from finding Dudley, though. Not much he could do about that. And yes, Dudley as it at Aunt Marge's.
Ron and Hermione's visit is going to be...interesting.
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