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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
- 15
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- 17
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Chapter Sixteen—Dumbledore’s Visit
“You remember the lines that I want you to speak, Harry?”
Harry nodded and took a step forwards, his hands folded behind his back. He bowed, and there was so much formal and correct in the motion that Dolores’s soul hummed with pride. She said nothing about it, of course. She wouldn’t want to disrupt Harry’s recollection of his lines.
Or have him get a swelled head. But the more time that passed, the less chance Dolores thought there was of that.
“Professor Dumbledore, hello. Welcome to our home. May I get you some tea?”
Dolores nodded her approval, both of the words and the way Harry said them. There was nothing to grasp onto there, no inflections or nuances that Dumbledore would be able to twist against them. They were a wall of glass, smooth and beautiful and impenetrable.
“You could call him Headmaster sometimes, too.”
“Okay,” said Harry, and tugged a moment at the high collar of his robe, until the way Dolores narrowed her eyes at him made him wince and look down. “I know, Miss Dolores, but these are scratchy. And they feel too small.”
Dolores raised her eyebrows and cast a spell that she used to use on her colleagues at the Ministry, mostly out of boredom. It would tell if someone was abnormally heavy, and was supposed to be used to tell if someone was smuggling in weapons or Muggle technology. But she had used it on Harry to track his weight before this.
Yes, he was heavier. And when Dolores leaned back and considered him slowly, she supposed that he looked taller, as well.
“I’m sorry,” Harry added hastily, not flinching anymore, but still watching her face with an intensity that Dolores knew came from his years with the Muggles. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was ungrateful for the robes.”
“You are not ungrateful. You are the one that the majority of the wizarding world should be grateful to. You should remember that.”
Harry swallowed some air and nodded. “All right, Miss Dolores.”
“And you’re right. You are taller and heavier than you were. I think our regime of food and potions is beginning to cure your malnourishment at last.” Dolores couldn’t brew the right potions to give Harry herself, and neither could anyone in her household, but Lupin had been able to advise her which ones were the right ones to buy.
Sometimes Dolores wondered where his obvious familiarity with conditions of malnourishment came from. Sirius had told her he’d found himself an outcast after the Potters’ deaths for insisting on Sirius’s innocence, but that didn’t explain everything.
“Do you mean—I might be as tall as my dad someday?”
Dolores had never paid enough attention to Sirius’s and Lupin’s stories about the Potter parents to be sure of exactly how tall James Potter had been, but she saw no harm in nodding her agreement. Harry looked enormously relieved.
“I would never let you go out looking malnourished, Harry.”
“I know. But that has to do with looking.”
Dolores opened her mouth to ask what he meant, and the fire flared. She turned around at once, no less poised and ready than her ward. Harry moved a step towards her, but that rather pleased Dolores than otherwise. As long as Harry didn’t show too much fear in front of Dumbledore, showing his dependence on her judgment would be a welcome manifestation.
Dumbledore came through wearing bright yellow robes covered with stitched patterns of purple cobwebs. Dolores wondered if there was a message there—such as that Dumbledore valued the old and crumbling over the new—but put it out of her mind. Sirius and Lupin had chosen not to be here today, both of them uncertain of their control around Dumbledore.
“Welcome, Headmaster,” Dolores said, and bowed her head in what could be a gesture of respect if you didn’t know that Dumbledore was a Legilimens and it was wise to avoid too much eye contact with him.
“Headmaster, hello. Welcome to our home. May I get you some tea?”
Harry’s voice didn’t shake, and he held out his hand for the cloak the Headmaster was wearing just as though they didn’t have house-elves. Dolores shook her head a little at him as an elf popped up behind Dumbledore. Harry widened his eyes and fell back a step.
“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore, letting the elf take the cloak. “Some tea would make me feel warmer. It’s got cold out lately.” He made a show of rubbing his hands and leaning towards the fire.
Harry shot Dolores a bewildered glance even as he turned towards the kitchen. Dolores knew why. She had been teaching Harry not to rely on endurance or Muggle methods of doing things so much, which meant Harry knew full well that Dumbledore could simply have cast a Warming Charm.
But Dolores nodded to him to go ahead. It was obvious to her that Dumbledore wanted to get her alone, and for reasons of her own, she was inclined to allow it.
The instant Harry passed out of sight into the kitchen, Dumbledore straightened up and turned away from the fire. “You don’t know what damage you’re doing to him.”
“No, I don’t.”
Dolores waited a moment, and Dumbledore sighed and gave in to what could at least seem like an innocent question on the surface. “He needs other things more than mere material comforts.”
“Well, yes. He needs to be in good health and survive. The Muggles were starving him.”
“You know boys exaggerate—”
“But a need for nourishment potions doesn’t. I am lucky that I had a friend who could tell me what potions a growing boy needed. They’re more often used for wizards who underwent a prolonged period of starvation in the wilderness, did you know? Not at all the sort of thing that most Potions brewers would expect to make for a boy Harry’s age.”
Dumbledore was still for a moment, frowning. Then he moved towards the chair Dolores had been expecting him to take all along, the huge, comfortable one that Sirius had Transfigured and decorated in Gryffindor red and gold. Since neither Dolores nor Harry wanted to sit there, it was a double win; it took nothing from them, but let him think it was a sacrifice.
“I did not know it was that bad,” he said as he seated himself.
“Very likely not.”
Dumbledore gave her a narrow glance that told her he had heard the ambiguity hidden in her words, and snorted a little. “You must know that Harry could have grown up with the Dursleys.”
“Not happily. And that does matter to me.”
“You want to use him as a political tool.”
“Even if I granted that was true,” said Dolores, with a small shrug of her shoulders that pointed out how foolish she would be to grant any such thing, “I would think his happiness was important. And you didn’t. Why is that, I wonder? Surely you know the boy would have served your cause better if you took better care of him.”
Or was that it? Did Dumbledore want to come in like a savior and offer Harry the shining prize of our world as a reward for enduring the Dursleys?
Harry came carefully out of the kitchen, carrying the silver tea tray with cups, kettle, sugar cubes, tongs, milk, cream, and small sandwiches balanced on it. Dolores knew the tray had been magically lightened, but it was gratifying to see Dumbledore blink and sit upright as if he would protest for a moment.
“I thought you had house-elves,” he said.
“Oh, we do,” said Harry, and placed the tray on the little table equidistant between the three chairs. Dolores thought she might be the only one to notice his sigh of relief when that was done. “But there are some chores I like doing myself.” He smiled at Dumbledore and reached for the nearest cup. “How do you like your tea, sir?”
“With lots of milk,” said Dumbledore, watching Harry. Harry kept his head shyly bowed as Dolores had told him he should when he was dealing with the Headmaster, and carefully prepared the tea. After he handed it to Dumbledore, he went over and stood behind Dolores’s chair, instead of sitting down.
Dolores patted his hand. That was something they had discussed, too, and she thought…yes, there was the narrowing of Dumbledore’s eyes she had expected. He would think this was something he could use against them.
In reality, it was tradition for the youngest member of a pure-blood family to serve the tea and remain standing until everyone had theirs. Dumbledore would get laughed out of the Wizengamot if he tried to use this as “evidence” that Dolores was an unfit guardian, assuming he could get anyone to listen to him in the first place.
“Do you want your tea, Miss Dolores?” Harry murmured, bending down near enough for her to see how much like steel his green eyes looked.
Dolores smiled at him again and stroked the nape of his neck, and let Dumbledore think what he would about that. “That would be very nice, Harry. If you would make sure that there’s enough sugar in it…?”
“Unlike last time?” Harry smiled at her and reached for the sugar.
“I am curious why you took Harry away from his Muggle family, only to have him continue to labor like a house-elf.”
A little flinch shivered through Harry. Dolores took her time looking up from Harry’s face, and made sure that her own face was like the glass of Harry’s earlier words. “He doesn’t labor like a house-elf.”
“Carrying that heavy tray, serving the tea—”
“I’m following traditions when I do that,” said Harry, and his voice was quiet and controlled. Not respectful, but given the provocation, Dolores would have been astonished if he’d managed that. His hands continued to move, carefully gathering up the right amount of sugar cubes. “Traditions I choose to follow. Ones that got explained to me. Not like the tradition of abandoning me with a family who hated me.” Harry gave Dumbledore a single glance as he handed the cup to Dolores.
Dumbledore rocked back from whatever he saw in Harry’s face. Dolores sipped her tea, delighted. They hadn’t planned to reveal Harry’s strength and convictions so early, but on the other hand, Dumbledore was being stubborn. It was as well for him to understand what he was playing with.
“You mean you’re acting like a pure-blood? Not traditions that your family would have wanted you to follow. Not ones they would have raised you to follow.”
Harry straightened up, and his posture was perfect. “I would thank you not to call those disgusting creatures my family, Headmaster.”
“I meant your parents, Harry. They died for you. They didn’t die so that you could learn the traditions of people who hated Muggleborn witches like your mother.”
Dolores would have shaken her head if she hadn’t wanted to avoid their attention. Now he’s done it.
“How can I know what my parents would have done? All I know is that they died so I could live. So I could be happy, not living with people who mistreat me.” Harry took a step forwards. “If I find value in these traditions, then I like to think they would be happy for me.”
His voice wavered a little. He’s only seven, no matter how well he’s doing, Dolores thought, and decided to intervene.
“Harry is right, Headmaster. I like to think his parents would have wanted him to be happy, not merely alive. And staying with his aunt and uncle didn’t make him happy.”
“It made him safe.”
“According to whom, and from what?” Dolores raised her eyebrows in polite skepticism. “His relatives could still hurt him. Did you know, Headmaster, what malnutrition can do to a growing child’s body? It can affect the bones, and the eyesight.” She looked sideways at Harry’s glasses. “And the brain, even. I took him away from that. I assure you that he always has plenty to eat, here.”
Dumbledore frowned a little and shook his head. "I think you know full well what I mean, Madam Dolores." His eyes snapped to her face for a moment, but then returned to Harry. "Corruption. Spiritual corruption."
"I don't consider that a threat worth addressing."
"No?"
"No. Because you would assume that anyone whose custody he grew up in, anyone you didn't personally approve, was corrupting him."
Dumbledore tried to interject, but it was Harry who did it instead, his voice wavering up and down the scale. "How could--how could you approve of the Dursleys, sir? I don't understand. Why did you--how could you do that?"
Dolores gently drew Harry back with a hand on his shoulder. They'd done enough confrontation of Dumbledore, she thought, enough to wring the answers out of him if there were any. It was time for him to speak his piece. Harry understood the signal and went silent, leaning against her chair. Dolores stroked his hair in time with her own idea of soothing motions.
It took an unusually long time for Dumbledore to get his breath, or perhaps his thoughts gathered together. He drank from the teacup again, set it down, and twined one hand in his beard. Then he said in a measured, resonant voice, "I never intended for things to turn out as badly as they did."
"So you thought they would only abuse him a little."
"I never intended abuse!"
"But you are far-sighted enough to know it could happen. I only met Petunia Dursley for a few minutes, and I saw how horrible she was. You must have known her longer, to consider leaving Harry there at all."
“I had not—met her for many years. I first knew her as a young girl, when her sister received her Hogwarts letter and Petunia wrote to me and desperately begged to go to Hogwarts as well. Of course I had to deny her.” Dumbledore looked up abruptly. “Do you think I shouldn’t have denied her?”
“You shouldn’t have responded,” said Dolores, and shook her head. This was one of the great dangers of Muggle families having Muggleborn children: they would learn about the wizarding world and assume that world wanted them, that they should have the right to it as they thought they had the right to all other parts of the earth. “But you hadn’t seen her since then? You thought she would welcome a baby born to that world she could never have?”
“I thought she would welcome her nephew. Few people have the skewed view of family that you do, Miss Umbridge.”
Dolores bristled. Dumbledore had undoubtedly been doing research on her family. She opened her mouth, but Harry spoke up first.
“I do.”
Dumbledore turned towards Harry with the light glinting off his glasses again. “Please explain that, Harry.”
“I think family is what you make it.” Harry’s fingers were jerking hard at the sleeves of his robe. Dolores thought about reaching out and stilling them, but she thought Dumbledore needed to see what his decisions had driven Harry to. “And I know that Aunt Petunia would never consider me family. I don’t see why I should have to think that way about her, just because my mum was her sister.”
“She is still your aunt. You have an uncle. A cousin.”
“Why does that matter to you so much?” The words were wrenched out of Harry’s throat in a cry. He was shaking, staring at Dumbledore. “You can have all the aunts and uncles and cousins you want! You don’t need me to want mine!”
From the way Dumbledore’s eyes dimmed, Dolores suspected they had come to the true answer at last. Something to do with Dumbledore’s family, something to do maybe with the way he had no children and she had heard he was estranged from his brother. Yes, it made perfect sense that Dumbledore might have thought family should always be given a thousand chances, because he regretted not giving his own more.
But that didn’t give him the right to subject Harry to abuse because he idealized blood family.
“Harry is my ward,” Dolores said, when there was a dangerous moment where either of them might have tried to speak. “I will fight for him. I will also always remember that his parents died. I will never speak badly of them, Headmaster. But I will badmouth the Muggles all I want.”
Dumbledore ignored her and spoke to Harry. “Would you go back if they were in danger, Harry? Would you fight to protect them?”
Harry stared at Dumbledore in the way Dolores wanted to. “How could I do that? I’m seven!”
“You might find it in your heart to protect them when you are older—”
“Why? They never protected me!”
“Sometimes, Harry, good people find it in their hearts to protect people they don’t personally care about. Sometimes they learn that it doesn’t matter whether those people feel gratitude or not. Sometimes they learn what matters most is being a good person, being a hero, whether or not other people ever see them that way.”
This matters to him, Dolores thought, eyeing the way Dumbledore leaned forwards and held his breath when he finished speaking. Why?
“Then maybe I’m not a good person.”
Dumbledore looked ready to fall over. Dolores held back the smirk she wanted to give and touched Harry gently on the shoulder. “I think that maybe we’re getting a little overheated,” she said. “Headmaster, has the purpose of your visit been accomplished? I think you can see that Harry has no desire to go back to the Muggles, and every one to stay right where he is.” She could have laughed at the look on Dumbledore’s face, but her political instincts restrained her.
“I would prefer to hear Harry say it himself.”
“I’m happy here.”
Dumbledore bowed his head in what looked like sorrowful resignation. Dolores knew better than to count on it. “I suppose I shall have to leave you here and simply tell you that my door is always open if you want to talk, Harry.”
Harry only nodded. Then they watched Dumbledore leave by the Floo, and Harry turned around in the next second and stared desperately up at her.
“I don’t have to leave and go back to them, do I? Ever? You said that!”
“You don’t have to,” Dolores said softly, and stroked Harry’s hair until some of the desperate look faded from his eyes. “For his own reasons, Dumbledore wanted you there, but he’s not going to try any more kidnapping attempts. And I think he would have been most pleased if you agreed of your own free will.”
“It would never be the same, even if I did. Not that I know I’m magic now.”
Dolores smiled at him and nodded. “He will try other, political attempts.”
“I don’t care.”
At some other time, Dolores would have to correct that level of unconcern. Harry would never be the force she knew he could be if he kept expressing that kind of indifference to his own fate and the best tools to free himself from manipulation.
But for now, she allowed him to lean on her, and then they went and had lunch, and Harry petted Pardus as he sat up in his chair and ate with perfect manners.
You’ve lost control of him now, Dumbledore. Forever.
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The Daring Win