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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
- 18
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Chapter Nineteen—Needing Careful Handling
“And I think it’s all sewn up.”
Dolores paused on the other side of the doorway into the dining room. This one had no door, so Lupin and Sirius could have seen her if they turned around. But neither of them turned. Lupin was facing Sirius, who was waving his arms around and grinning so hard that it seemed to change the tenor of the room.
Harry stopped in his walk beside her. Dolores looked down and saw how wistful his face looked. “What are you thinking?” she murmured.
Harry started a little and shook his head. “Only—only that I hope Dumbledore doesn’t do anything to make Sirius or Lupin have to leave,” he muttered, and reached down to tickle Pardus, who was walking beside him, batting at one of his laces.
“He will not. It does seem to have been handled,” Dolores said, and walked into the dining room.
Sirius turned to face them and greeted even Dolores a lot more cheerfully than he usually did. “You’ll never guess what happened!”
“Likely not,” said Dolores, and motioned for Harry to take the seat across from her and open his napkin across his lap. He did, although his eyes were wide with fascination and he looked at Sirius as if he thought the story would involve blood and murder.
Hopefully it only involves that one attempted murder, Dolores thought, and reached for the honey.
“Sometimes political battles are just as exciting as spell battles,” Sirius was explaining to Harry, still waving his arms. “Dumbledore wanted to tell on Remus over here. And he went too far. He said that he would accuse him of something that wasn’t his fault, and then he told me that he would tell everyone unless I gave him custody of you!”
Dolores sipped at her tea, and wondered. Dumbledore knew that Dolores and not Sirius had legal custody of Harry. Of course he could have challenged her, which was one reason Dolores took so much effort to make Sirius happy, but he couldn’t hand Harry over to Dumbledore without a second thought.
Why not make the threat to me? Perhaps I would not have responded the way he wanted. I might have let Lupin’s past come out, or simply kicked him out of the house. Lupin was a good tutor, but not worth losing custody of Harry.
“What did you do?” Harry was leaning forwards with his eyes sparkling. Dolores looked at him, and then away. He almost never looked at her in that manner.
Then again, I am not meant to be the “fun” one. I am meant to be the one who will teach him how to survive these political battles, which Sirius cannot do.
“I found a friend who knew certain things about Dumbledore, and threatened to tell on him.” Sirius folded his arms and nodded importantly. “And you know what? I don’t think my friend would have done it, but he knew you were involved. He told me that he hates to think of you shuffled from one custody situation to another.” He reached out and smiled at Harry, gently touching his hair. “He threatened Dumbledore for us, and told him to hold his hand. For us. For you.”
Harry paused for a long second, and Dolores wondered why. He no longer seemed to despise the idea of blackmail, at least the times they had talked about it.
But then Harry said, “Is this friend of yours going to want something in return?”
Sirius laughed like a bark. “Why would he? He’s a friend! And he was outraged over what Dumbledore was doing!”
“But now he knows whatever secret Dumbledore was going to tell everyone about Remus,” said Harry, with a quick glance at Lupin. “And I owe him something. So maybe he wants an autograph from me, or the chance to appear in public with me. But maybe he wants something more than that.”
Dolores concealed her smile behind a sausage. There speaks my teaching.
“Well, no, Moody wouldn’t demand anything like that from you,” Sirius said, blinking and studying Harry as if he was worried about him. “I mean—he just wouldn’t. You can probably assume that everything is fine unless he specifically contacts me again.”
Harry watched him, skeptically. Then he shrugged and went back to eating his porridge. “All right.”
Not really all right, of course. Dolores knew the signs that Harry had decided to put off his questions until a later time, when Moody might prove to be a threat or not. Then again, he obviously knew better than to try and make Sirius understand that.
“You are sure Dumbledore is contained?” Dolores took the chance to murmur to Sirius as they were leaving the dining room.
Sirius gave her the kind of look that meant his mind was already somewhere else. “What? Oh, yeah. Of course. He’s not going to try anything like that again.”
“Then I wonder if it would be worthwhile introducing Harry to a few other pure-blood families,” Dolores said, her mind racing ahead. “The Malfoys are all very well, but they think too highly of themselves. Who would you suggest?”
“Um. The Longbottoms?” Sirius shrugged when she glared at him. “Most of the people I know aren’t pure-bloods, honestly. Or they don’t have children. Or they’re dead.”
Dolores nodded slowly. “I was thinking, perhaps, of the Parkinsons and the Zabinis.” She had also thought of the Goyles and the Crabbes, but even if those families’ fathers had not been suspected Death Eaters, she would have disdained their children’s fitness as companions for Harry. Too simple and too stupid, from what she had seen of those boys when they accompanied their fathers to the Ministry.
“Um. Really?”
“The Zabinis were not Death Eaters, and the Parkinsons weren’t, either,” said Dolores mildly. “What do you have against them?”
“The large number of very dead husbands that Mrs. Zabini has?”
“You can’t think she would target Harry? He’s too young.”
Sirius gave her such an incredulous glance that Dolores did think she had done something wrong for one moment, and then his face turned tired. “Of course. Of course you would see it that way, that I’m objecting because I might think Mrs. Zabini is going to target Harry.”
“You could tell me why else you’re objecting. That would be a courtesy.”
Her father had told her once that she got too frozen and polite when she was angry. But Sirius himself didn’t seem angry. He shook his head. “Because she’s evil? Because I don’t think we should expose Harry to someone evil so young?”
“You didn’t mind about Narcissa until we had that split with her.”
“She’s my cousin.” For the first time since he’d settled the matter of the letter, Sirius looked uncomfortable.
“But she’s the wife of an accused Death Eater.” Dolores folded her hands and found herself taking lessons from Harry rather than the other way around, trying to look small and meek and harmless. “I don’t think we can say one family like that is all right and then banish another that didn’t even have the accusation laid against them.”
Sirius grimaced and looked away. “All I can say is that I won’t be drinking any tea when Mrs. Zabini’s around.”
Dolores smiled. She could, at least, be gracious in victory, another thing her father had never understood. “She would have to marry you first to be interested in getting rid of you.”
Sirius shuddered all over and muttered something about needing to be elsewhere. Dolores studied him as he stalked away, and shook her head a little. Sirius could think that she was an unfit guardian all he wanted.
But he would have been little better himself. In fact, probably worse, always seeking after some kind of political stability without compromise that didn’t exist.
*
The official letter from the Ministry didn’t make Dolores react much at first. If nothing else, Sirius was across the table, drooping over his tea, and Harry was quietly sneaking pieces of food to Pardus under the mistaken impression that she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t want to attract their attention right now.
But when she opened it, she saw the seal of the Wizengamot on the bottom of the paper, and paused. Then she looked up and read the request.
There was a time, before Harry had come into her life and she had taken on the responsibility of being a good guardian, that Dolores would have shrieked in pure frustration at the news contained in the letter. As it was, she read it through twice, to make sure that she understood all the implications, and laid it down.
“Sirius?”
He muttered something and took another long sip of tea. There were always a few mornings a month when he seemed tired, and Lupin didn’t come to breakfast on those days. Dolores didn’t really care what they did with each other at night—anything from lovemaking to blood sports could have been going on there—as long as they kept it away from Harry. So far, they appeared to be doing so.
“Are you absolutely sure that your cousin doesn’t know anything about you bringing Draco to Diagon Alley to meet Harry?”
Harry’s head came up at once, the way it always did at the sound of his name, his eyes wide and worried. Dolores smiled at him and he seemed to calm down a little, but he sat still, ignoring the way Pardus swatted at his hand.
“I’m sure,” Sirius said, gulping the rest of his tea with a huge tilt of his head. “Why would she let me keep doing it if she knew?”
“Then explain this request from Lucius Malfoy to let the Wizengamot reevaluate Harry’s custody because we were putting his son in danger, please,” said Dolores, and pushed the letter across the table to Sirius.
Sirius read through it with his jaw dropping. Harry, meanwhile, sat motionless, ignoring even the way Dolores leaned the side of her hand against his bowl of porridge. Dolores frowned. She would have to work with Harry on obedience and not letting startling things take him off-guard.
“The son of a bitch!”
Well, he’s awake now, Dolores thought, and sighed a little as she watched Sirius throw his teacup and storm around near the table and yank at the cloth. The plates and dishes on it were too heavy to pull off, luckily, or the house-elves would have been dealing with even more of a mess than they currently had.
“Sit down, Sirius,” she finally said, when she considered that it had gone on long enough.
“Cissy told Lucius, and Lucius figured out a way he could use this to his political advantage.” Sirius flopped sideways into his chair, his arms folded and his lip projecting enough that Dolores could have put a saucer on it. “How dare he?”
"He did it because he saw a chance."
It was Harry's tone more than his words that gave Dolores pause. Harry was sitting with his arms folded and his own lip sticking out, but he didn't look petulant. He looked as if he was going to swoop down on someone.
And somehow, I think he will more hawk than songbird.
"Don't know what you mean by that, pup."
"He feels insulted. Miss Dolores told me that. So of course he would take a chance at revenge if he saw it. Wouldn't you?"
Sirius only stared at Harry as if he'd never seen him before. Dolores might have said something, but she decided she would leave this battle up to Harry. It might be good for Sirius to learn to respect his godson a little more.
"But--why would he want to take revenge now? For what? He could have gone after me the instant Cissy told him!"
"But he might have heard something about Dumbledore wanting custody back. So he strikes at a point when we're weak." Harry only shrugged, and matched Sirius's incredulity with his own. "I mean, wouldn't anyone do that?"
"We're not weak!"
"Dumbledore wanted custody. Now he does. He could have spread rumors." Harry hesitated and looked over at her then, and Dolores only shook her head a little. She didn't know for certain whether rumors of Dumbledore's attempted blackmail had spread, or whether it was only that many people in the Ministry remembered the way he had challenged Dolores in front of the Wizengamot. "Or maybe it's just good timing. But yeah, Lucius wanted revenge. So he took it."
"Are you like that, pup?"
"Like what?"
"Vengeful."
Harry seemed to shrink in his seat, something that made Dolores want to cuff Sirius alongside the head. "Against the Dursleys, maybe," he whispered.
"Well, if it was just against them, then maybe it would be okay." Sirius leaned across the table to ruffle Harry's hair. "Just remember who you are, right? It's not a good thing to be vengeful! Your mum never was. Your dad...sometimes, but it didn't work out well." For a moment, Sirius looked fascinatingly guilty. "So talk about it with me before you ever start on any kind of revenge."
Harry only nodded, eyes downcast, and Dolores knew Sirius had just insured that would never happen.
She waited until Sirius had stopped ranting against the Malfoys and left the room. Then she turned to Harry. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be vengeful.”
“But you told me that too much hatred could eat you.”
Dolores leaned back slowly. “I suppose you could look it as the difference between what Dumbledore did and what Lucius Malfoy did.”
Harry only shifted a little in his chair and sneaked a crumb of meat he didn’t think she saw down to Pardus, but he was listening. That was what Dolores would ask for.
“Dumbledore is so desperate to take control of you that he can’t wait for appropriate times to express himself. He came up to us while we were shopping. He came to the house even though he should have been able to see that you were uncomfortable with him and it would serve him well to establish a relationship from a distance first. Do you see?”
Harry nodded, although Dolores had learned sometimes he would do that when he had no real understanding, but wanted to pretend he did. She leaned forwards and tapped him on the nose; he yelped a little. “Harry? I’m asking you if you really understand what I’m saying.”
“Yes,” said Harry, and now he looked happy. That had happened other times after she tapped his nose, but it never did when she squeezed his shoulder. Dolores supposed she had to have some things about him she would never understand. “Dumbledore couldn’t wait, and he was impatient.”
“Yes,” Dolores said, content that his skills in rephrasing concepts were coming along the way they should. “But Lucius waited. Do you know why?”
Harry thought about that for longer than she liked, but one could not have everything. Finally, Harry said hesitantly, “Maybe he didn’t know until now that I was seeing Draco and Sirius was bringing him to the Alley? And stuff.”
“What have I told you about the word stuff.”
“Not to use it. Sorry, Miss Dolores.”
That was as polished an apology as she thought she could get out of him. Dolores nodded gracious forgiveness. “In the meantime, he might not have known about it. But he most likely knew and waited to use the knowledge. He would have to be neglectful not to notice the way his son disappeared so often.”
“The Dursleys wouldn’t notice if I disappeared.”
“They were neglectful.”
Harry nodded, as though it comforted him to hear her say it. “You don’t think Mr. Malfoy is neglectful.”
“No.” Dolores spent a moment looking into his eyes. “And it’s the kind of accusation that, even if you believed it, would be very dangerous for you to make in the future, Harry. Remember that, when you’re trying to save children from abuse.”
“Oh, Draco’s not Muggleborn,” said Harry, and he sounded a little shocked.
Dolores blinked, but opted not to ask about Harry’s feelings on blood status right now. “Anyway. You can see the value in waiting when you have information and only striking once you’re sure? But Sirius would think that kind of behavior is vengeful.”
Again Harry took the time to chew on that information, and Dolores wasn’t surprised; she had given him a lot to think about. She managed to finish most of her breakfast, all but the fresh, cut strawberries piled on her plate, when Harry spoke again. “What did my father do that Sirius was ashamed of?”
Dolores smiled, slowly, this time in praise of Harry’s wisdom, and ignored the way he flushed and squirmed a little. He was intelligent. That should be recognized. “You noticed that, too? I don’t know, I’m afraid. I didn’t know much about your father before I adopted you other than the history everyone knows.”
“And do you know more about him now?”
Dolores had to shake her head. “That he was a member of the Potter family, yes, and I got those photographs for you. But I wanted to spend more time on the political context that you’ll need to understand.”
Harry only nodded, more tamely. “I’ll wait a few days and ask Sirius.” He paused, and Dolores waited, because it was the kind of pause that meant something else was coming. “And I don’t care if he would think that’s vengeful.”
Dolores nodded to him with a smile. Sometimes, she honestly couldn’t believe what kind of child she was raising.
Someone intelligent, who understands the magical world and his place…
I wonder if Dumbledore left him with the Muggles in part because he was worried about Harry surpassing him in political influence. Well, I’m not. I’ll never have the same kind of political influence as he does.
What I want is to be known as the guardian of the Boy-Who-Lived. And not paid more attention than that. You get so much more done that way.
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The Daring Win