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Children of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 12412 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Part Eleven
“I need to talk to you, Severus.”
Albus delivered the words in a clipped, cold way, walking past Severus without a glance in his direction. Fawkes sat on his shoulder and did give a single mournful look back at him. Severus stood frozen in place for long moments.
Shadowstriker dancing on his neck brought him back to reality. They were just outside the Great Hall, and students would walk past any second and be able to see him and gossip to each other. Severus swallowed and began to move, his hand resting on his viper. By the time he claimed his usual seat, his face was as cold as ever.
In reality, he could only begin to guess what Albus had discovered. That Severus was aiding Harry? That he had gathered ingredients for the possession ritual? Severus looked at Albus during breakfast when he thought he could get away with doing so, but he laughed and made as many cryptic comments as always. No way to tell.
Severus did manage to catch Harry’s eye as he stood to go to his first class. He twitched his left arm towards Albus, and saw the boy nod. That was the most he could do right now.
Severus taught that morning in what felt like a daze, although he knew his students would find his words as sharp and their potions as botched as usual. What would Albus do? Place him under some magical restriction, forbid him any more contact with Harry, break through his Occlumency and read his deepest thoughts?
He won’t sack me. He knows Horace won’t come back, and there’s no other Potions expert in Britain who can match me.
But every other kind of dread dogged Severus’s footsteps as he made his way to the Headmaster’s office at noon, the time they always met.
“Ah. Come in.”
Other than the first word, Albus did sound different. There were no endearments or offers of sweets. Severus still made himself take his seat in his usual chair and in his usual way. Shadowstriker had become silent and watchful, but that wasn’t unusual.
Albus kept Severus waiting while he stroked Fawkes’s breast feathers and made much of him. However, that probably didn’t work the way he intended. It gave Severus time to recover his equilibrium.
Even if he does manage to ban me from contact with Harry somehow, Harry now has that investigation going in the Ministry. He would still manage to achieve what he wants.
Albus turned to face him, and said, “Severus, I am very disappointed in you.”
Severus blinked. No vaguer lead-in could he have imagined. Of course, that was probably the point, to make him condemn himself out of his own mouth.
“I don’t know why, Albus,” he said. “I have been doing my job exceptionally well. I haven’t even been complaining about the dunderheads in my classes as much as usual—”
“You know that you have been interfering in my plans, Severus. We cannot yet do the ritual to remove the spirit that has possessed Quirinus, and you plan to do it!”
So that was it, then. Severus calmed down Shadowstriker with a touch. Fawkes was only sitting on his perch, watching. Of course, Albus had such perfect command of his emotions that his familiar didn’t often reflect them. “I am doing what I believe to be right.”
“No, you are doing what Harry tricked you into. That child, Severus—”
“I know my own mind better than to be tricked by a child, Albus.”
“But how can I assume that you would do something so reckless for James Potter’s son?” Albus shook his head, and then held out his arm. Fawkes stepped from his perch to Albus’s shoulder, his eyes never leaving Severus and his viper. “You would not. Everyone who knows you would agree on that. That means it must either be a trick, a promise of power, or, of course, the well-known way that an untrained child with a golden familiar can influence people without meaning to.”
Severus froze. He hadn’t thought of that bit of lore, because there had been no children with golden familiars in so long, but he remembered it now. Magic spread around such people and their familiars like a puddle of rainwater. It could bend wills, change minds, make unreasonable words seem like the definition of reason.
Children who did that were—contained. There were ways of doing so that would leave them fundamentally unable to use their spreading magic, only intentional spells powered by a wand, until they were seventeen. Then they would be released from their bindings and expected never to use such magic again. They were adults and should control themselves.
If Albus accused Harry of such a thing, then there would be no end to the distrust that Harry would experience. Other people would question their every interaction with him, their every positive thought towards him. The investigation he had started in the Ministry would halt. His classmates would shun him. Some of the old traditional families might even take their children out of Hogwarts, to have them examined by Mind-Healers and make sure they hadn’t been influenced by Harry’s magic.
Severus didn’t think he had been warped by Harry’s magic in that way, any more than he was by Albus’s anymore. But no one would believe him.
“If…”
Severus looked up. Albus was watching him with serious eyes. He nodded once Severus looked at him.
“If I make the accusation. I don’t have to. There’s no reason that anyone ever has to know of young Harry as anything but a magically talented child and the future savior of Britain. If you back off helping him with the possession ritual.”
“And anything else?”
“Of course anything else, Severus. No extra help with homework. No tutoring for potions. No private meetings. Keep in mind what happens if you don’t.”
Severus took a deep breath and risked his one push. “I’ve read some books that suggest the spreading magic of those with golden familiars isn’t real. Just a rumor invented by someone jealous of their power, who wanted an excuse to constrain them.”
Albus smiled. “Yes, books do say all sorts of things. And newspapers say different ones. At this point in the history of our world, Severus, which one do you think is more liked to be believed?”
Severus swallowed. “Fine. But you will not harm the boy, or I will consider my promise broken.”
“I will only do what must be done for a young child’s good, Severus. To make sure that people aren’t afraid of him, and he has the chance to grow and become what he should be.”
Severus stood up, but the moment was balanced, and he dared to speak the words, because Albus was in a good enough mood not to consider them a threat. “Someone who can never be your rival in power?”
Albus’s face softened, proving even that blow had not gone home. “You have terrible ideas about both me and young Harry, Severus, if you think that he would ever suffer that fate.”
Severus only inclined his head and left. Shadowstriker was dancing frantically around his neck. Severus rested a hand on the snake’s spine, and thought about various ways to communicate what had happened as he walked down the stairs.
Not even Albus could track the movement of every familiar in the school at once. And Harry was a Parselmouth.
“Go and tell Harry what you witnessed,” he ordered Shadowstriker the moment he reached a portion of the corridor outside Albus’s office that had no portraits.
Shadowstriker wriggled into a small opening at the base of a tapestry without protest, even though most of the time he hated leaving Severus. Severus straightened his spine and kept walking, although he had never felt less like going and teaching his afternoon classes.
He had chosen his side. He had no idea at the moment what he could do to help that side other than warning Harry. But it would be something.
*
“I understand,” Harry told Shadowstriker, and sighed. The silver snake’s recollections had sometimes been confused, but he knew enough to know that Dumbledore had threatened Professor Snape, and he would have to back off. “Please go back and do everything you can to make sure that he feels thanked.”
Shadowstriker bobbed his head in what could have been a bow or a nod and then slid back into the little crack in the wall that he’d come out of. Harry sat back against the big stuffed chair in the Hufflepuff common room that he liked and petted Golden while he stared into the fire.
“Is there anything I can help you with, Harry?”
Harry blinked up at Cedric. The older boy was giving him a concerned look. His bronze leopard familiar, Nebulous, sniffed noses with Golden. Harry smiled a little. Nebulous was one of the few animals who never treated Golden any differently, just like Cedric never treated Harry that way.
“No, thank you, Cedric,” he said. “Unless—can you tell me if people think people with golden familiars are dangerous?”
“Well, of course you can be,” said Cedric, and gave him a thoughtful look. “But it doesn’t mean you have to be. You can help people with your power just as much as you can hurt them. Has someone been telling you that you’re dangerous, Harry?”
“I just wonder if people are going to start fearing me.”
“No. Don’t worry about that. You know that no one is falling all over themselves to help you—”
“Well, I mean, I made a lot of friends in a lot of Houses—”
“And there are still people who ignore you, and people who say ignorant things about you.” From the frown Cedric was giving, some of those people were Hufflepuffs. “No, don’t worry about it. I know people will stand behind you.”
“All right. Thank you, Cedric.”
Cedric gave him one more smile and went to bed, nodding at Harry as he did so. “It’s curfew soon. You should go to bed. You need your sleep.”
“I will,” Harry promised, and sat up only a little while longer, stroking Golden, before he went to his bedroom and curled up in his bed. It was next to Neville’s.
It was possible that he hadn’t understood everything Shadowstriker had said, or Shadowstriker hadn’t understood everything. But Cedric had made him feel better.
*
Severus stiffened in surprise when two wizards in the robes of Aurors marched through the doors of the Great Hall. The students gasped, and one of the second-years at the Ravenclaw table asked in a tone of confusion, “Aunt Irene?”
Other than a fleeting smile, neither of the Aurors acknowledged the children. They took up stiff guard poses on either side of the doors, their wands drawn. Marching behind them came Minister Fudge, a tall wizard whom Severus didn’t know, and Amelia Bones. Severus leaned slowly back in his seat, his eyebrows rising further.
“Can I help you, gentlemen, Madam Bones?” Albus sounded completely warm and genial, but Fawkes had ruffled all his feathers out and was watching the visitors carefully.
Bones looked at him with a fierce scowl. Her silver tiger familiar, crouched next to her, rumbled threateningly. Severus had heard that she called the tiger Phantom, and that, drawing on a mixture of his magic and hers, he could pass through walls and materialize inside hidden rooms and hostage situations.
“I want you to explain, Albus Dumbledore,” Bones said, “how you could leave a child who is the savior of our world and born to the gold with abusive Muggles. I want an explanation now.”
*
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Children of the Sun