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Children of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 12412 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Part Ten
“Professor McGonagall, can I talk to you?”
Professor McGonagall turned around with a little frown. She had her bronze tomcat walking beside her balancing a stack of essays on his head. Malkin seemed to frown a little, too, or at least his mouth was set in between his whiskers. Golden just looked at him, and he calmed down.
“Of course, Mr. Potter. But perhaps not in the middle of the corridor?”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Professor. Can we go to your office?”
“Well, at least no one can say that you’re not a polite young man,” Professor McGonagall muttered under her breath as she nodded to Harry and kept walking up the corridor with Malkin. Harry followed her, wondering. Why did she think he might not be polite? Were people gossiping about him or something?
Golden nudged his hip. When Harry looked down at him, he hissed softly, “Dursleys.”
Right. Of course Professor McGonagall wouldn’t think he was polite if she knew he was raised by them. So Harry got more cheerful. That must mean she knew who had put him there.
They got to Professor McGonagall’s office, which seemed to have everything in the kind of order Aunt Petunia loved and tried to make Harry do. Malkin hopped up on the professor’s desk without disturbing the stack of essays on his head. Harry gasped. “That’s really impressive,” he told the cat.
“You’ll flatter him,” said Professor McGonagall, but she was smiling. She went and sat down behind her desk. “Now. Please tell me what’s wrong, Mr. Potter.”
Harry sat up and looked her right in the face. “Okay. So there’s something I need to know, and I thought maybe you’d know the answer, Professor. Who left me with the Dursleys after my parents died?”
For a second, Harry thought his professor would fall over. But then she nodded slowly. “It was the Headmaster, Mr. Potter. Mr. Hagrid brought you from your parents’ home to the Dursleys, and Professor Dumbledore and I met him there and—left you on the doorstep.”
Golden pressed hard against his leg for a second. Harry petted his head. Poor Golden. This was harder for him to hear about than it was Harry. Golden wanted it so that nothing bad would ever happen to Harry. Harry accepted it happened sometimes. “Why were you there, Professor?”
“The Headmaster had wanted me to watch your relatives the day before and see what kind of people they were, to see if they would welcome a magical child among them.”
“Did you see what kind of people they were, Professor?”
Harry couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice. He was sorry for it when he saw Professor McGonagall flinch, but he kept watching her. She took a deep, slow breath. “Yes, I did, Mr. Potter. I told the Headmaster that they were the worst kind of Muggles and I couldn’t believe he intended to leave you there. But he said you should have the chance to grow up with family and—and it would be dangerous for you in our world.”
“Hm.” Harry felt Golden press harder against his side. He knew what Professor Snape and Julian would probably say, but Harry had another question to ask. “Is there any way that you can tell what color someone’s familiar will be before it manifests, Professor?”
Professor McGonagall gave him a faint frown. “Not that I know of, Mr. Potter. It can be a source of considerable anxiety for parents who see their children as—more a reflection of themselves than their own individuals. Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking I didn’t have my familiar then. No one knew it would be gold.”
Professor McGonagall immediately came around the desk and knelt in front of him. “You were not left there because you had a golden familiar or no familiar or any familiar, Mr. Potter,” she said fiercely. “You were left there because Professor Dumbledore thought it best. Please, please never think that we thought—that I thought you could somehow survive better because we knew you were powerful. Please never think that you were unworthy of being raised within the wizarding world.”
Malkin was nodding fiercely from on the desk. Harry smiled at him and then hugged Professor McGonagall. She went all stiff with surprise, but she didn’t say anything, so Harry had to say, “I wasn’t thinking about that, Professor. I just thought that maybe people knew I would be powerful and so it would be okay.”
“It wasn’t all right, was it?”
Harry shook his head a little. “No.” He wasn’t going to go into more detail, though. She might go and tell Dumbledore.
Professor McGonagall sighed so deeply that it made Harry’s toes curl, and then she stood up and moved back from him, around the other side of the desk again. “Mr. Potter—Harry. Listen to me. There are people who can help you if your relatives have mistreated you. There’s a department in the Ministry that has that as their sole business.”
Harry kept his face calm and polite as he listened, and didn’t laugh or say he knew, even though he wanted to. After Professor McGonagall finished giving him all the details, he stood up and said, “Thank you, Professor.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Potter. I wish there was something else I could do.”
“Um, actually there is. Professor, could you not tell anyone else? I want to tell them.”
“Mr. Potter, if your relatives have treated you badly, then—”
“I know. But I’m going to handle it. I promise,” Harry added hastily when he saw the way Professor McGonagall drew all her brows down. “Golden wouldn’t let me ever go back on a promise. It’ll happen.”
Professor McGonagall seemed to think about that for a bit, and she glanced at Golden. Golden nodded. Malkin, on her desk, was stalking back and forth with all the hair on his tail standing out, but he calmed down when Professor McGonagall put a hand gently in the middle of his back.
“All right,” she said at last. “If you promise me that you will have the problem corrected by the end of the year, when you have to face your relatives again. Can you do that with sincerity, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes, Professor! I promise!”
Her face softened. “I was sad that you hadn’t become a Gryffindor, but I think now that your House has suited you, Mr. Potter. And you’re friends with some of my Gryffindors, correct?”
“Yes, Professor. Ron Weasley and Cormac McLaggen.”
“They’re good ones to be friends with,” Professor McGonagall said quietly, although she seemed a little surprised at the same time. But Harry had given up on understanding some of the way people felt about Houses. It made no sense to him, like the way that people thought tin and copper familiars were inferior. He just had to accept it existed and then change it. “I hope you’ll find a way around this.”
Harry nodded to her and left the office with Golden silent and thoughtful behind him. It was time to find Professor Snape and ask about the ritual.
And then do some homework. Even though he had tried to convince Golden to hold a quill in his mouth and write, those essays wouldn’t complete themselves.
*
Severus swore under his breath as he watched the owl winging away. He had tried to buy some of the refined silver they needed from the goblins, and the goblins asked all sorts of nasty questions in their message. And then the owl had left without waiting for a reply—no surer sign that they refused to help.
“Professor Snape, sir? Are you okay?”
Severus turned sharply around. Potter was standing in the doorway with his snake beside him, his eyes wide. Severus thought over his words and decided that there had been nothing an eleven-year-old probably wouldn’t be aware of already. He nodded. “Merely having some trouble getting hold of some ingredients, Mr. Potter.”
“Oh.” Potter came a few steps into the room. “Mrs. Malfoy might be able to help with that.”
“You told her about what was going on?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay, sir. I promise that she thinks she’s going to get something out of it, and she’s not going to get what she thinks.”
Severus paused. There was a soul too old for a child behind those green eyes. Potter looked the same as ever otherwise, but—
“You manipulated her?”
“She thinks she’s manipulating me. I think that she thinks I’m weak or naïve or something.”
“And thus she is taken in,” Severus muttered, understanding. He had thought of Potter as naïve at first, too. He must be, if he thought he could walk into Hogwarts and the wizarding world and change things to suit himself when they had stayed the same for so much longer than he’d been alive.
Now he understood what Narcissa had failed to see. Potter—Harry—might be the only one who did have that power, if only because other people would give it to him the minute they saw Golden.
“Yes, sir. So why don’t we let her buy some of the ingredients? You know, the rare ones and the expensive ones. And there are others that you can work on, right? Is there anything I can help with?”
“If you are right about Professor Quirrell being possessed by the Dark Lord,” Severus asked slowly, “why do you want to help him? You recall that this is the man who killed your parents and tried to kill you?”
And who was Lily’s doom. The thought made the center of his chest squeeze tight, but Severus would not say it aloud. The child had enough to deal with.
“I know, sir. But I don’t think Professor Quirrell was a bad man before he got possessed. And maybe we can get Voldemort out of him and make him go possess something else. Or bring his familiar back to life, and then he could possess her. I don’t really want to kill anybody.”
“But he killed your parents!”
“Um. I know. I don’t like him, sir. But I don’t want to kill him, either. Do you always want to kill people who hurt you?”
Severus blinked. He would not answer the question, but it made him think some uncomfortable things.
“There are chances that many other people will push you to kill him,” he said slowly.
“Like Professor Dumbledore, sir? And maybe some of the people who think that I’m a hero just because I have a golden familiar?” Harry sighed. “I know. But there’s nothing I can do about that, sir. I just have to keep going, and solve the problem the best way I can. Anyway, I’m going to get a Ministry investigation going. They’re going to investigate the Dursleys at the same time. And I met Julian, who seems nice. And…”
Severus relaxed, for some reason, listening to the child’s chatter. It was true that it would be useful to have someone with deeper vaults than he possessed to buy the expensive ingredients. And it was true that Harry needed to get away from his foul relatives. And it was true that he seemed to have managed to keep this away from Albus so far, since the man would certainly have wanted to keep Harry from meeting with “Julian.”
It sounded all too good to be true, though. Severus was awaiting the moment when the stone wall fell on his head.
Monday morning, it came.
*
Jan: Thank you! Dumbledore will not find out about the investigation until it's a little more advanced, though.
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Children of the Sun