Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 15
- 16
- 17
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixteen—Vengeance’s Path

            “You could be a better student if you only applied yourself.”

            Harry blinked and stood up, his hand on his wand and his pocket boiling with mice, for a second before he caught himself. The voice had startled him. He hadn’t expected to hear it in the library.

            But for whatever reason, there Professor Moody was, looming in front of him, hands on his hips as he stared down at Harry. He had both eyes firmly fixed on him instead of having the magical eye watch out behind him for danger, which was unusual. Harry’s senses felt as though they were tingling with the intensity that he concentrated on Moody back.

            “I read your essay,” Moody whispered harshly. A flick of his wand, and a faint, shimmering wall like a bubble appeared to cut them off from the rest of the library. Harry was pretty sure it was a shield that would keep anyone from overhearing them.

            “You may fool the rest of the professors, but you don’t fool me anymore,” Moody said, taking a step towards Harry that made his wooden leg thump. “You’re perfectly capable of doing anything you want to. You understand the theory.”

            “Theory and practice aren’t the same.” It was something Snape said over and over again in class whenever Michael didn’t brew a potion right. Harry had never thought he would be grateful to Snape for an aphorism.

            “Theory’s more than half of practice,” Moody retorted. “The people who cast spells without knowing what they’re doing, ones they can’t handle, ones that they think are good countercurses when they just magically exhaust them and don’t get rid of the threat…they’re the ones in trouble.” He took another step forwards. Harry judged the jumping angles and the way he could lunge, where his claws would land on Moody’s body if he did. “Why are you holding yourself back?”

            “I’m not holding myself back, Professor. I just don’t care that much about Defense.”

            Harry had thought the truth would calm Moody down. He seemed to be pretty good at sensing lies. But instead, Moody pointed his wand straight at him. Harry’s legs twitched wildly, but he managed to keep from leaping. Moody hadn’t cast at him yet.

            “You should. With what’s coming, what any sane wizard knows is coming, you should.” Moody leaned towards him, eyebrows bristling like the hair on Cross’s back when he got upset. “I’m going to test your reflexes, Potter. And I damn well want to see what you’re keeping up your sleeve.”

            At the moment, Harry didn’t have any animals up his sleeve, but he also had the feeling that Moody hadn’t meant it that literally. His legs twitched again anyway. He wanted to Obliviate Moody. He wanted to strike at him. He hated being cornered.

            But at the same time, he didn’t want to do anything that would confirm Moody’s suspicions. Harry only said plainly, “You said something about help once before, sir. Someone who could perform miracles.”

            Moody paused and held his wand back a little. “Ah. You’ve thought about that, Potter?”

            A strike to the hand, to take his wand away, then a leap to the side and a strike for the hamstrings. Now that he had a battle plan in mind, Harry was a little calmer. “Yes, sir. But I don’t trust someone who claims to perform miracles. Some people have told me they can. It always ends up the same way.”

            “What way?”

            Harry considered Moody. He didn’t trust him the way he did Professor McGonagall, but on the other hand, that lack of knowledge meant he might be able to pass off half-truths as the whole truth.

            He took a step towards Moody and lowered his voice. Moody promptly bent down in front of him, magical eye almost sitting still in his face.

            Harry whispered, “I don’t like my relatives. They treated me horribly just because I had magic and they didn’t. I tried to get some people to help, like some of my teachers when they were in the Muggle world. And it always came to nothing. I learned not to trust anyone who promised a miracle.”

            Moody was smiling, or at least doing the sort of clenched grimace that Harry thought was the closest he could come to a smile. Harry still didn’t like being this close to anyone who wasn’t an animal or his parents, but he could put up with it for a little while longer.

            “I think you would like the man I have in mind. Not only is he magically powerful, he was raised by Muggles who hated him and didn’t understand him, either,” Moody breathed. “He is…incredible. He trusts few people, like you do. But he never held back in school, Potter. He knew he had to apply himself if he was going to become an important person.”

            I don’t want to be an important person. I just want to heal my parents.

            Harry consented to give a small shrug of his shoulders. “But why would he want to help me? I’m just a student who can’t do a whole lot for an adult who’s that strong.”

            “Right now, he’s at the mercy of his enemies,” Moody said. “But he could return to power more easily with help. He would be able to achieve it on his own. Never doubt that!” His voice rang out solemnly. “But it would be easier with help.”

            I don’t think much of this power he’s talking about. And isn’t Moody supposed to be an Auror, loyal to the Ministry? He can’t be talking about the Minister or the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement or anything like that.

            Having entered the game, though, Harry knew he couldn’t back out immediately. It was like the time he had tricked Dudley’s friend Piers into believing something horrible would happen if he touched Harry. He had to keep up the pretense for as long as it was necessary.

            “I don’t know, sir. I only want to do one thing.”

            “What’s that?”

            “Take revenge on the people who hurt me.” It was true, even. Healing his parents and torturing the Lestranges would take revenge on the people who had hurt him. But Harry wasn’t going to tell Moody about the healing his parents part, either. Moody would probably think Harry should put this powerful man, whoever he was, first. And Harry didn’t intend to do that. He could only put his family first.

            And Moody, like all adults, would probably try to stop Harry from healing his parents because it would be something dangerous. Not fit for a child to do. Plus Moody would have the additional idea that he had to “save” Harry because he wanted Harry to be useful to his miracle-worker later.

            “I promise that my lord can help you with that,” Moody said. “You’re a strange child, Potter, not like the others. But powerful, like he was. He can help you. I’ll help you.”

            Harry held still, as if he was thinking about it, while in the back of his mind a thousand voices seemed to start laughing all at once. He only knew a few people who would get called “lord” in the wizarding world. It wasn’t like the Muggle world, where there were some people who had inherited political power because of a title.

            Dark Lord Dudders.

            Of course, if he showed he knew that, then Moody was likely to use a Memory Charm on him at best. Harry would have to go on playing the game the way he had with Piers, and with Malfoy.

            He looked Moody straight in the normal eye, and said, “But how can you help with my Muggle relatives? They live in a completely Muggle area. And I thought the Statute of Secrecy meant you couldn’t perform magic in places like that.”

            Moody gave him a wild smile. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. That’s the first gift I’m going to give you, Potter. Let you come up with a suitable miracle for the man I’m talking about to perform for you. And when you’re ready, come and tell me exactly what kind of vengeance performed on your relatives would win you.”

            Harry blinked a little. “You sound like you think I could really help your powerful man, Professor Moody.”

            “I think you will because you have the potential,” Moody said. “And I’m the only one who can convince you to stop neglecting that.” He nodded once and went off. The shields he’d raised popped as he went, and Harry saw the curious glances of more than one person in the library.

            Harry shook his head a little at them and turned back to his own homework. He wondered for a second if Dark Lord Dudders was so desperate for help that he had to recruit people like Harry. Moody at least made sense, because he was a powerful Auror. But a fourteen-year-old student?

            Maybe Moody is crazy and desperate, too.

            Harry had to consider what he would do with the knowledge. But in the end, there was only one thing.

*

            “You’ll have your wand ready the moment he comes out of the room, Minerva.”

            Albus’s voice was gentle and steady. Minerva could only nod. They were both standing outside the door of Alastor’s rooms.

            Minerva glanced again at the anonymous letter Albus had received, the one that accused Alastor of working for You-Know-Who. Minerva had been skeptical. She knew a lot of people hated Alastor for the way he had arrested “innocents,” including the Death Eaters who claimed to have been under Imperius during the first war. It would make sense to come up with a damaging accusation if they could and try to get him sacked.

            But Albus had spent a day considering it before he approached her, and he apparently had private evidence he hadn’t shared with her. Minerva stood braced for battle as Albus knocked again on Alastor’s door.

            It didn’t open, but they heard some shuffling from inside. Minerva glanced once at Albus. “Doesn’t he have a Foe-Glass?” she whispered.

            Albus nodded, and then abruptly grabbed her and whirled her to the side. At the same moment, a white blast as bright as lightning broke through the door and headed straight for Albus. It was a formless mass of light, and Minerva’s mouth opened to scream despite some of the things she had seen during the war.

            Albus’s wand snapped right, left, right. The shield that took form in front of him looked as if it was made of smooth black bricks. The light broke on it and vanished.

            The next instant, Albus had charged into Alastor’s quarters. Minerva followed, murmuring the spells that would animate several of the chairs she could see in the room ahead of her and call them to her side to fight for her.

            The chairs whirled around on new paws and scraped the ground in challenge. Minerva turned with them around her. If Albus needed help, she would send the chairs to flank him and Moody, and attack that way.

            But a glance made it obvious that she couldn’t actually help. Albus was darting back and forth and weaving a spiral of white light and tiny flying phoenixes inwards on Moody. Minerva winced. The power of the magic in the room was harsh enough to make the hairs on her arms stand up.

            Moody responded with a spell that was purple and radiant and coiled on his shoulders and ate the light and phoenixes. Minerva had last seen that spell in the first war, when it had snapped out and eaten the legs off several people who had ended up in St. Mungo’s, never to walk again.

            Albus caught her eye and snapped his head to the right.

            And Minerva realized she could help after all. Albus was stronger than Moody, but he couldn’t use magic as strong as he would need to defeat him without damaging the school badly. Moody, by contrast, wouldn’t care about what he used.

            Minerva whispered instructions. The largest chair next to her crouched, and then jumped over Minerva’s head and landed next to Alastor, swiping his leg with a paw as he made a turn away from Albus’s wand.

            Moody snarled and splintered the chair with a wordless Cracking Curse that Minerva didn’t think she could have bettered. But she had provided the distraction needed. Albus finally managed a Stunner that touched Moody’s heart, the one place it would lay him out when he was protected by that dark purple spell.

            In a second, Moody was stretched on the floor, and the magic he’d created blazed fiercely, once, and vanished from around him. Albus limped slowly up to look at him. Minerva opened her mouth to call Poppy, but Albus shook his head.

            “I’ll be all right for a moment,” he said. “What I don’t understand is how Voldemort could have corrupted Alastor. He was one of the best.”

            Minerva looked around the room in a silent, probably fruitless search for answers. On Alastor’s wall hung the now empty and useless Foe-Glass. There was a locked trunk in the corner, and a flask of some potion on the table.

            As Minerva watched, steam spurted from the potion, and a very familiar odor came from it—the odor of the “brandy” that Alastor tended to drink even in the middle of meetings with the other professors. Minerva reached out and pulled on Albus’s sleeve. “Look,” she whispered.

            Albus turned around, and his eyes widened the moment he caught sight of the flask of the potion. He strode over and spent a moment regarding it. Then he nodded once and said, “Polyjuice.”

            “So Alastor—”

            “Has to be still alive, but he’s not him.” Albus faced the Stunned man again, and his face was implacable and grave in a way Minerva hadn’t seen since she talked with him about Harry’s relatives. “I wish I knew who had suspected this and didn’t speak up until now.”

            Minerva shook her head. She had seen the letter someone had sent Albus, and it hadn’t said anything about Polyjuice, only that as far as that person knew, Moody was someone who probably served You-Know-Who.

            But she also couldn’t blame Albus, as they searched the rooms for some sign of the real Alastor and waited for the Polyjuiced man to transform back to his normal self, for looking extra hard at all the letters they found. She knew he was looking for one with the same writing as the owl that had arrived for him.

            When they found the real Alastor in the bottom of “Moody’s” secure trunk, and saw the face of a supposedly dead man on the one who transformed, it only led to more questions, not fewer.

*

            “I can’t help being nervous, even though Gran keeps telling me that I’ll do fine,” Neville whispered the morning of the Third Task.

            “I think it’s fine to feel nervous,” Harry said. The hedge maze they were setting up for the Third Task looked big enough that all sorts of monsters could hide in there, and even Harry’s extra lessons couldn’t completely get rid of the problem with Neville’s self-confidence.

            “Yeah. I just hope I don’t have to face another basilisk.”

            “I think it’s amazing that you already faced one.” Harry looked into Neville’s wide and worried eyes and tried to make a joke. “And think of it, you didn’t even have me with you to help you that time.”

            Neville’s face did clear, and he laughed. “Or Yar.” Then he looked around abruptly and said, “Where’s Terry? He always used to come over when it was time for classes to start. Like he wanted to make sure you didn’t accidentally go to class with us.”

            Harry glanced over his shoulder. Terry was talking to Roger Davies, as usual. He spent most of his time with the Ravenclaw Quidditch team now. “I think poor Terry’s finally given up on me,” Harry said, managing to keep his voice light.

            “Stopped being your friend?” Neville looked outraged for a second, then guilty, the way he usually did. “Is it because you’ve had to spend so much time with me and he doesn’t like me?”

            “No one could force me to spend time with you if I didn’t want to,” Harry said, and waited until Neville gave a little nod. It looked reluctant, but at least he was doing it. Maybe, with time, he would come to believe it. “And it’s more that Terry had convinced himself I was some kind of Quidditch star waiting to happen. I finally managed to make him believe I’m not, and now he’s friends with Davies and Chang.”

            “That’s a weak basis for a friendship.”

            Harry nodded. “That would be why he’s not around me all the time anymore.”

            This time, Neville frowned at the Ravenclaw table. “But he doesn’t care? More than that, I mean? He was friends with you since your first year, and I know he talked to you even when you tried to keep to yourself. It seems strange he would abandon you over something like Quidditch.”

            Harry hesitated. There were things he had never tried to talk to Neville about, because he wasn’t sure if Neville would keep being his friend afterwards. But he thought he could try the truth about Terry now, if he could find the right words.

            “I think he was worried that I wasn’t normal,” Harry said finally. “He was worried about me, and he thought I wanted friends and I was being left out of everything. I tried to convince him that I didn’t really care about having friends and I definitely didn’t care about Quidditch. But I don’t think he ever believed me. Finally he realized this year that I don’t care. I can’t blame him for moving on.”

“But you’re my friend.”

Harry nodded. “Because we started out helping each other, and you’re brave, and you didn’t seem to mind that much if I wanted to be left alone. But it bothered Terry a lot. If it doesn’t bother him anymore, I can’t blame him.”

            Neville just sat there and looked at him with his brow furrowed, which wrinkled the lightning bolt scar. Harry sipped his pumpkin juice and looked peacefully back.

            “Well, all right,” said Neville finally. Then he looked over as one of the other Gryffindors said something, and jumped to his feet with a curse that Harry knew would have made Professor McGonagall look sharply at him. “I’m sorry, Harry! We have to go. I don’t want to keep Professor Dawlish waiting.”

            Harry nodded. The Ministry had assigned another Auror to teach the Defense classes that Crouch had once taught, and while Dawlish seemed to be nice and even a little dotty personally, he was stern in the classroom.

            Harry shook his head a little as he returned to the Ravenclaw table. He hadn’t thought exposing Moody as working for Voldemort would have such profound effects. He had thought it was Moody, not someone who was supposed to be dead and had such strong ties to the Death Eaters.

            But it was done now, and no one had even suspected that Harry might have done it. The other students just talked in hushed tones about how maybe one of the other people who used to be Death Eaters had betrayed Crouch. The professors pinched their lips shut and didn’t talk about it at all outside the absolute minimum the students needed to know to accept Auror Dawlish as their new Defense professor.

            Harry snatched a scone from the table and stood up. He would walk with Michael to Potions, since Terry was still studiously pretending to be a sixth-year on the Quidditch team instead of a fourth-year who had to go to Snape’s class like anyone else. And while Snape sneered at him and insulted Harry’s potion, Harry would dream of this afternoon, and the training he was going to do.

            He had finally decided how to go to war against the Lestranges.

*

            “Yes, I had to hood you. Shut up.”

            Yar was making displeased little chirrups as she surveyed the clearing in the Forbidden Forest where Harry had brought her. But Harry sensed her interest the minute she saw those dummies he had Transfigured from straw and stone. She was always interested in new things, to see if they were food.

            He’d hooded Yar to bring her here because she would ride his shoulder but not always fly after him, and he wanted to make sure they were out of sight and the attention a soaring eagle might draw. Harry lowered the stump he’d used to carry her to the ground and dusted his hands off. Yar, head cocked and bobbing as her neck snaked back and forth, ignored him in favor of the dummies.

            “That’s right,” said Harry softly, and then he waved his wand. Several of the sticks lying on the forest floor sprang up and attached themselves to the hands of the dummies—always the right hands, since that was where most wizards carried their wands. “Now. Watch this.”

            Yar didn’t pay attention to his words—she often didn’t—but she looked up and focused when Harry created the image of an eagle soaring over the clearing. In fact, she mantled and screamed, crouching in challenge. Harry set a hand gently in the middle of her back, and waved his wand again.

            The illusory eagle stooped down, feet thrown out in front of it, aiming for the dummies. It grabbed the right hand of one dummy, the one that held the fake wand, and squeezed. Harry had to cast a different spell to make the hand crumple and the sound of a pained scream echo around the clearing, because the illusion couldn’t affect physical reality. But there it was.

            Yar blinked and blinked, golden eyes never looking away from the dummies. Harry created another eagle, and did it again. And again. And again. Then he tossed pieces of meat to the illusory eagles to reward them.

            Yar only watched and didn’t fly that day. But Harry didn’t care. It would take him a long time to train his eagle.

            But when he was done, her talons that could crush someone’s right hand with a careless squeeze would know to aim for the hands of the enemy.

*

            Albus stepped slowly back into the shadows of the Owlery, although he already had a Disillusionment Charm on. He didn’t think he needed a glamour to disguise his scent. Birds didn’t have much of a sense of smell, and in any case, his should be masked by the drifting of feathers and pellets from the owls.

            The eagle was there again. This time, it simply sat on the windowsill and considered the owls. It looked as if it might be counting the numbers of birds and how many had recently gone to carry messages.

            Albus was on edge. The information the Ministry had got from Crouch before the Dementors Kissed him was enough to let Albus know that Crouch had entered Neville’s name in the Tournament, but the Death Eater had only laughed when they questioned him about Voldemort’s plans after that. He didn’t know.

            He did know there was another free Death Eater working with Voldemort, one who had helped Crouch assume Alastor’s place but always kept his cloak too low to identify him. And unluckily, there were simply too many Death Eaters who had walked away from Azkaban after the first war. Albus didn’t dare make a move without proof, because Fudge wouldn’t listen to him anyway, and for fear of warning his enemies.

            But Albus had come up with a better plan than simply destroying the eagle.

            He held up a feather now, and worked the Transfiguration with slow, precise sweeps of his wand. The feather changed slowly into a snowy-white band of metal, one that would snap together around a bird’s leg. The band hummed with a small Tracking Charm.

            The eagle began to ruffle its wings and act as if it would fly a minute into the Transfiguration. Albus tensed. Now that he knew how smart the bird was, he would do something other than simply cast a spell at it that would send it back into its components.

            Treating the bird as a spy of his own necessitated more complex measures, anyway.

            After a moment, the eagle’s wings calmed down, and Albus could turn back to the band. He had chosen to add the Tracking Charm during the process of Transfiguration rather than after; that would make it subtler, something that was more part of the band’s inherent structure than attached to the surface. Albus thought he needed that, particularly with someone who had mastered Transfiguration enough to create the eagle.

            At last the band was done. Albus moved slowly closer to the windowsill, alert for any twitch of movement in the eagle’s beak or talons.

            But nothing happened. Albus flicked a Stunner at the bird from so close that it had no time to react other than leaping slightly into the air, and then he slid the band around the bird’s leg and pressed it tight. The band shut with a little click.

            Albus moved back with a faint smile. There were so many wizards who thought they could never learn any useful ideas from Muggles, but Albus wouldn’t have had this idea if he hadn’t read those fascinating Muggle magazine articles about people who banded and tracked birds like this.

            He revived the eagle and ducked hastily behind a perch, even given the Disillusionment Charm, as the bird revived with screaming and thrashing. It immediately leaped out the window and was gone, flying towards the Forbidden Forest.

            Albus nodded. He would give it a day or so, in case the creator of the eagle was alarmed by his pet’s anxiety, and then he would begin paying close attention to its movements.

            Besides, he wouldn’t have been able to give it proper attention today anyway. Tonight was the Third Task, and likely the last time that Voldemort would have to make a proper move.

*

            Harry was on his feet the minute he saw Neville staggering out of the maze, so pale he could hardly move, carrying Cedric Diggory’s body.

            Professor McGonagall was running towards him, too, and Professor Dumbledore. But Harry was there first. He stared at Diggory, who had died with no marks on him, and then looked straight at Neville. “The Killing Curse?” he whispered.

            “Voldemort,” whispered Neville, shaking. “And Macnair—”

            Then the professors were there, and shouting, and escorting Neville away, while everyone else screamed and flailed and fainted. Or they tried to escort him. Harry stayed right with him, using the same unobtrusive but quietly stubborn tactics that he had when he’d wanted to get into Crouch’s good graces, and after a harassed look at the audience, Professor McGonagall let him stay.

            “We will have to know what happened, my dear boy.”

            Harry slanted a little look sideways at Professor Dumbledore, who had dim eyes now—not twinkling—and a near-limp in his step as he walked beside Neville. He didn’t know? Harry had thought he would know. He’d been close enough to hear Neville speak.

            “The Cup was a trap.” Neville hunched over as he walked, until Snape finally thought to take Diggory’s body from him. “I—I got th-there at the same time as C-Cedric, and I s-said we both should share it. So Hogwarts would get the glory.”

            His throat bobbed, and Harry Transfigured a button off his robe sleeve into a basin with barely a thought. Neville leaned over and vomited into it.

            “It was a Portkey,” Neville continued a second later, as he was wiping his mouth. They were all still walking along, but by now, they were in the school and the noise of the crowd had mostly cut off. “It t-took us to this g-graveyard. Macnair killed Cedric.” He broke off into a sob, and Harry put his arm around Neville. “V-Voldemort tied me to a stone and t-took blood from my arm. Well, Macnair did that, and V-Voldemort got ready to bathe in the cauldron and rise from it. It was a potion of some kind. So he rose, and he called the Death Eaters back, and—”

            “We’ll talk about this further once you’re in the hospital wing, Mr. Longbottom.”

            That was Professor McGonagall, and Harry found himself relaxing. She would handle things better than Snape would. Harry wasn’t sure about Dumbledore, since he didn’t really know him, but he did know that Dumbledore appeared interested in the story and hadn’t suggested the hospital wing. Professor McGonagall was the only professor here who really cared about Neville.

            “Back to Ravenclaw Tower with you, Potter.”

            That was Snape, the sneer imprinted in his voice the way it was on his face. Harry looked up at him fearlessly, and saw Snape turn a little pale. Harry didn’t think he was remembering the werewolf fight Harry had Obliviated from his mind last year; in fact, he probably had the more profound reaction because he couldn’t think of a reason why he should be afraid of James Potter’s son.

            Harry turned to Professor McGonagall. “Is Neville going to be all right, Professor?”

            Her face softened, the way it always did when she saw him acting like a “normal” boy. “I’ll personally make sure of it, Mr. Potter.”

            Harry nodded and touched Neville’s shoulder once before he went away. There was no one else in his bedroom when he came into it, and he snatched a book and went right away to the dungeon workroom, pausing only to let a group of Slytherins clatter past him.

            Harry had something to do that he had to finish before they left for the holiday, at the very latest. He hoped to have it done tomorrow, so he could give it to Neville.

*

            “Is the boy going to be all right, Minerva?”

            Minerva raised her head and blinked eyes that felt as if long, gummy strings had been shoved into them. She’d fallen asleep by Neville’s bed in the hospital wing, and she had to reorient her head towards Albus’s questions.

            Then she nodded. “Poppy treated him for the aftermath of the Cruciatus and a wound on his arm,” she said. “She thinks that’s where You-Know-Who took the blood for—” She broke off and shook her head. Neville should have been safe. She had thought for sure he would be after they had caught Crouch and learned from him who had put Neville’s name in the Goblet. All he had to do was get through the Third Task, and You-Know-Who’s plan should be thwarted.

            “I know.” Albus sat down beside the bed and stared at Neville in silence. Then he looked up. “I think perhaps I will speak with Augusta about Neville spending the summer in training. He could use it.”

            Minerva found herself sitting so still and alert that she felt the way she did before she entered her Animagus form. She shook her head and said, “Surely what the boy most needs now is rest.”

            “Perhaps. But that is not what the wizarding world needs.”

            Minerva stood abruptly. Albus looked at her in surprise. Minerva said, “You can talk to Augusta. If she chooses to make him dispose of his summer that way, then I can’t gainsay her. But while we are inside the walls of Hogwarts, Neville’s protection is mine, and you’ll leave him alone.”

            Albus blinked. Then he said softly, “Minerva, I never meant—I never meant the boy must train or I would be displeased—”

            “No, but you implied it.” Minerva felt cold and tired. She sat down again by Neville’s bed and stared at him, trying to imagine how much worse he must feel. “I care more about Neville right now than the whole of the wizarding world. Please go away, Albus.”

            She had the impression that he lingered for a little, as if hoping to catch her eye. Minerva kept her head bowed and her gaze fixed on Neville’s bed, and finally he left.

            Minerva exhaled shakily and touched her forehead with one hand. She knew Albus meant well. She would never have followed him this long if she didn’t believe in his politics and his vision for the school.

            But sometimes—not always, just sometimes—he had a tendency to see things in such large patterns and groups that they left the small and the individual behind.

            Minerva drifted into a kind of trance, keeping watch over Neville’s bedside, and jumped again when a voice said, “Professor McGonagall?”

            Minerva turned with a series of sharp blinks. Harry was standing beside her now, and he had a grey kitten in his hands with the largest and most serious eyes Minerva had ever seen on a cat. They were blue-grey. When the kitten saw Neville, it stirred and squirmed, and Harry put it on the bed.

            The kitten walked towards Neville and peered into his face. Then it lay down beside him. A second later, Minerva felt the bed tremble slightly. The kitten was purring, and the thunder of its purr was so loud she could feel it.

            “Where did you get that kitten, Harry?”

            Harry was watching Neville and the kitten with a small smile. He looked up. “I Transfigured it from a stack of coins, Professor McGonagall,” he said calmly.

            Minerva closed her eyes. Then she said, “And you do not intend to simply turn it back into the coins with it’s done?”

            “No, Professor. I imagined it as being loyal to Neville, to cheer him up and maybe protect him when it gets big enough. That means I can’t Transfigure it back.”

            Minerva opened her eyes. “Harry, you must know that kind of Transfiguration you are practicing is extremely dangerous. I understood why you wanted to do this for Neville, and I think it will help him, but—you must promise me not to do that again.”

            Harry looked at her. “I know why human Transfiguration is dangerous, Professor McGonagall. But why is this kind dangerous?”

            Harry spoke in such an odd tone, as if he was humoring her. But Minerva knew he was a serious little boy. And she was tired herself from watching all night and prone to interpret things strangely when she was that way, as she knew from long experience during the war.

            “Because you can create monsters so easily,” she whispered now. “Cats that would attack Neville instead of comforting him. Things with fangs and claws that you can’t destroy before they hurt you. Man-eating monsters if you imagine a leopard or a lion or the like. You—your imagination is the limit, but the more complexity you imagine into the animal, the more distance from its natural behavior, the more dangerous it is.” She turned and looked Harry in the eye. “It’s already dangerous to make a cat such a loyal being, more like a dog than a cat. Promise me you won’t do it again.”

            Harry stared at her with intense, shining eyes. Minerva blinked again. She felt—what? Intimidated, by the force of the will in those eyes? Surely not. She knew Harry was James and Lily’s son, and while he had few friends, he was integrating himself more into the school now. And Harry had a sense of morality developed by his own treatment at the hands of his relatives. His instinct to protect Neville was evidence of that.

            “It sure seems dangerous, Professor McGonagall.”

            Minerva sighed in relief. And because she felt strange, and tired, she leaned forwards and hugged Harry before he could draw away. He only stood there, and seemed to be thinking about something.

            “I know you’ve decided you don’t want to leave your relatives now that they’re treating you better,” Minerva whispered. “But if you ever change your mind, you must tell me right away. I’ll still come for you, and we’ll work out legal guardianship somehow. All right?”

            “Yes, Professor McGonagall.”

            Harry still stood there passively, not hugging her back. Minerva closed her eyes and shivered again at the memory of his eyes.

            But he was James and Lily’s son, he had wanted to Sort Gryffindor, he had done this for Neville at such a risk, and he didn’t bully people or taunt them or hurt them. Surely it was all right. Surely it would be.

            She could repeat much the same things to the boy lying so still in the bed, with the change of his parents’ names. Surely it will be.

*

            Sorcha: Thank you very much! The story is going to get more complex next chapter, I think, as Harry enters fifth year and the main plot of the story I had in mind can get underway.
- 15
- 16
- 17
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Art of Self-Fashioning