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Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24374 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
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Chapter Nineteen—Between Houses
Harry’s coming down the stairs the next morning when he sees the twitch of a wand from the corner of his eye. He immediately pulls his own wand and ducks low, letting the jinx soar past him to splash against the wall and break a section of stone open.
Tarquinius taught him to be that sensitive to the motion of a wand. Harry’s mentally thanking him as he jumps down the rest of the stairs and whips around to put his back to the wall, facing Marcus Flint.
Flint gapes at him for a second, then scowls and steadies his grip on his wand. “You’re going to be Seeker, Potter. Or you’re going to watch your back.”
Harry can remember being afraid of Marcus Flint the first time he saw him, thinking he looked like a troll and how easily he could smash Harry off a broom. But he’s thought about, and faced, scarier things this summer. Dumbledore is scarier than Flint, because he has more power over Harry’s life.
“You have a Seeker,” Harry says. His own voice is quiet and furious. He almost seems to be floating outside himself, listening to it. “Be satisfied with him and back off.”
“I told you to do something, Potter. Your scrawny little arse doesn’t have that much power in Slytherin.” Flint comes forwards to loom over him. “Are you going to do what I say, or do you have to learn your lessons the difficult way?”
Harry’s blood is pounding so hard his vision feels distorted. And Tarquinius and Snape both taught him only one response to that when he feels it.
His hand twitches, and he snarls, “Reducto!”
The Blasting Curse hits Flint squarely in the shoulder and sends him rolling backwards, his wand flying from his hand. He’s shouting and squirming and grabbing hold of his arm. Harry isn’t surprised. He heard the distinct sound of snapping bone.
Harry stands there, panting and coming back to himself. A few other Slytherins have stampeded into the common room, including some of the Quidditch players, but none of them are making any move to help Flint. They just stand there, wide-eyed.
Harry gives them a nasty smile and puts his wand away. “He tried to curse me,” he says. “Probably something like this, judging by the size of the hole in the wall. Go tell Professor Snape if you want. I’m going to breakfast.” And he turns and walks away.
*
The first action between Harry and someone else in Slytherin, and I had to miss it!
Theo shakes his head at himself as he runs out of the common room, swinging his satchel around his shoulder at the last minute and counting his Shrunken books by feel as he runs. He thought everything would be all right for at least a day. Yes, Harry confronted Flint last night, but no one did anything. Theo thought the tensions would simmer and then spill over, and he could make sure it wasn’t Harry setting himself up like he was in opposition to the rest of the House. That would give Theo—and Blaise—a chance to show that Harry does have Slytherin friends.
Instead, this happened.
Theo pelts to the Great Hall as hard as he can, and then stops and stares when he gets inside. Harry isn’t at the Slytherin table. Did he decide to skip breakfast? Theo hopes not. If he goes and eats with the Gryffindors, that could be just as bad. He walks in, looking around cautiously.
But no, there Harry is, just chatting with Granger and Weasley but not sitting down with them. Even as Theo watches, he waves and walks towards the Slytherin table. He aims for an end of the bench where he can sit with just one person beside him.
Theo moves over and sits down in that spot. Harry shoots him a little glance and then pours himself a glass of pumpkin juice.
“Why?” Theo asks, buttering his own toast thickly. He loves the Nott house-elves, he’s good friends with a couple of them, but he has to admit that Hogwarts has fresher butter and better toast.
“He was threatening me. Your dad and Professor Snape taught me how to duel. What do you do when someone is threatening you?”
Theo pauses. He thinks he’s probably had more dueling practice than Harry over the years, but he wouldn’t have reacted like that. “I—well, I suppose I would tell him to back off and then try to Disarm him.”
Harry pauses in turn. Then he asks, “And what would happen if it was a Gryffindor cornering you?”
Theo nods. He thinks he understands better now. But he wants to clarify something for Harry. “You don’t have to react like that just because he’s a Slytherin, even if he’s older and he wants something from you. Blaise and I will back you up. Maybe even Draco at this point. You don’t have to settle everything like you’re fighting for your life.”
Harry gives him a dark look. “He wants me to play Quidditch. He threatened me.”
“You’re still a Slytherin. He wouldn’t get away with it if he did something to you. And you’re not going to get away with doing this to him,” Theo has to add. “You know Professor Snape is going to give you detention.”
“I’d rather have that than be in hospital with a broken bone or boils or something.”
Theo frowns. There’s something—he doesn’t know, it’s strange, because Harry isn’t threatening him. But there’s something about the statement that makes him worried. He keeps a close eye on Harry as they eat, and when the rest of the House spills into the hall, gossiping and pretending not to look at Harry.
Blaise sits down on Theo’s other side, and for a second, they trade glances. Blaise doesn’t look as worried as Theo feels, though. After a second, Blaise shrugs and takes some pumpkin juice. “Someone already went to take Flint to the hospital wing, Harry. They probably reported you to Professor Snape, too.”
Harry shrugs. He’s taken a book out of his satchel and started reading. Theo thinks it’s one Father let him borrow from the Nott library. It’s apparently about countercurses.
“You aren’t worried about the detentions?” Blaise persists.
“What can he do? Make me scrub cauldrons? He did that all summer. Writing lines is boring, but I can put up with it. And I don’t have any Quidditch practice to worry about missing.” Harry says all that in a monotone without raising his head, and turns a page. “I’ll deal with it when it comes up.”
This time, Blaise glances at Theo. Theo can only shrug. There’s no way to predict what’s going on in Harry’s head, or what’s going to come next. Theo, for one, would never have predicted a Blasting Curse.
As long as Harry keeps his head down and his eyes on the book, there’s not much they can say anyway, so Theo goes back to breakfast.
*
“Um, Hermione?”
They have Potions class first thing in the morning this year, and of course it’s with the Slytherins. Hermione winces sympathetically for Neville and turns to him with a soothing smile. She supposes she’ll partner up with him when she’s not with Ron. “Yes, Neville, what is it?” Professor Snape isn’t in the classroom yet, so there’s no recipe for him to prepare, but Neville would be nervous anyway, just because it’s Professor Snape.
“I heard—I heard Harry hexed a Slytherin student this morning. That Marcus Flint. Some of the Slytherins were talking about it when I came into breakfast.”
Hermione can feel her eyes widen even as she spins around and instinctively looks for Harry at the Slytherin tables. But he’s not here yet. “Oh, no! I wonder why he did that? He shouldn’t do that!” He’s going to have detention at the very least, and probably some Slytherins are going to hex him, too. Hermione feels anxiety flutter in her throat. “Did you hear anyone say why?”
“Just that Flint wanted him to play for the Quidditch team, and he didn’t want to.” Neville bites his lip. “Hermione, do you think that means Harry’s still a Gryffindor?”
Hermione winces. She doesn’t really know how Harry would want her to handle this. On the one hand, he came over and talked to them this morning like everything was fine. On the other hand, she knows that he’s really not a member of Gryffindor House anymore, and she thinks things will be worse if everyone pretends he is.
Before she can think of what to answer, Neville looks at her wistfully and adds, “I mean, he won’t hex us in the corridors, will he?”
Hermione relaxes. Neville’s not really asking about House identity, then. “No, Neville. Harry wants his friends to stay his friends. He’s very open about that with Ron and me. Didn’t you see—” But no, Neville must have come in late to breakfast to hear the Slytherins talking, so he wouldn’t have seen. “Harry came and talked to us this morning. Before he sat at the Slytherin table, I mean.”
“Oh? He did? Do you think he would be okay talking to me?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t he?”
Neville’s eyes dart away. “He just—he’s your friend. We’ve never been all that close.”
“Oh, Neville.” Hermione reaches out to squeeze his hand. “Harry still wants to be friends with all of us. It doesn’t mean he’s going to side with us all the time or play Quidditch for the Gryffindor team. But he wants to be our friend.”
“Blimey, of course he does!” Ron flops down in the seat next to Hermione and winks at Neville. “Did you hear about him hexing a Slytherin this morning? If that doesn’t prove he wants to be our friend, I don’t know what does! What?” he adds, as Hermione glares at him.
Hermione only shakes her head, and then turns around as he sees Harry coming into the classroom. He has his cauldron under one arm and a look of utter grim determination on his face. She waves, and he catches sight of her and his face softens. But not a lot.
He sits down in the Slytherin section and faces the front of the room. When the other Slytherins come in, they’re whispering, and many of them sit down a long way behind Harry. Hermione feels her heart sink a little. Of course she wants Harry to stay friends with them, but his life will be much harder if he can’t fit into Slytherin and he goes around attacking all the popular people.
Professor Snape comes sweeping into the room then, and Hermione sits up. The professor is looking straight at Harry, but there’s not the usual kind of sneer she saw there last year. Instead, there’s grim lines. He looks—disappointed.
“Potter?” he says. Harry looks up from his book, which Hermione doesn’t think is his Potions book. “Detention for cursing a student. A week, to be served with me, starting at seven tonight.”
Harry only nods and turns back to his book, at least until Professor Snape starts calling their names. Then he puts it away and faces the front of the room again, his hands clenching on either side of the cauldron.
Hermione tries to catch his eye, but then they’re busy brewing the potion, and Professor Snape starts swooping around the room to make sure they’re all doing it properly, and Hermione has her hands full helping Ron and Neville. She can only hope that she’ll have the chance to catch up with Harry after class.
*
“Why’d you do it?”
Draco hisses the question to Harry more than once as they work on their potion, but Harry only shrugs and stirs or chops or checks the temperature of the fire or goes to fetch ingredients from the storage cupboards as needed. He’s sunk into a kind of iron mood.
That’s what he calls it, anyway. The only time he used to feel it was when Dudley and his gang had chased him so much that Harry just started feeling indifferent about what happened to him. One time he turned around and faced Dudley when he had Harry cornered near a fence, and something about the look on his face made Dudley run away. He didn’t tell his parents, either.
He’s starting to think he really shouldn’t have cursed Flint. It’s going to get him detention and mutters and lots of things. But the last thing he cares about is fitting into Slytherin. He wants to be done with the nonsense of which House he belongs to. Or he wants to make a new House that will just have his friends in it.
And if he was in the same situation again, he would do the same thing again. He doesn’t want to let the other Slytherins think they can just hex him or threaten him or prank him and get away with it.
“Why’d you do it?”
“I’m going to do it to you, too, Malfoy, if you don’t shut up,” Harry hisses over his shoulder, as he carefully picks through the shrivelfigs in front of him to make sure that all of them are chopped.
Draco turns away in offense, and Professor Snape, who’s walking down the row and shaking his head at Crabbe and Goyle’s cauldron, pauses to narrow his eyes. Then he jerks his head at Harry. Harry steps away from the cauldron, his breathing up. His adrenaline is still up as if he’s in the duel with Flint, in fact.
“Listen to me,” Snape says, his voice so extremely soft that the sound of stirring from nearby potions covers it. “I do not know what happened, but you will not continue to threaten other students. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I—” Harry doesn’t know why he admits it, except that he did study with Snape over the summer and the stirring and popping and bubbling will still cover his voice. “It feels like I’m in danger and I need to be ready to deal with it any second.”
Snape’s eyes widen a little and he draws his wand. Harry starts to fall back, ready to draw his own, but Snape hisses, “Be still, you stupid boy,” and Harry finds himself obeying even though he should get upset at the insult. Snape draws a circle in the air over his head and watches as a pattern of concentric rings forms. It means nothing to Harry. Another spell he has to study, he supposes.
Snape scowls at the results, then jerks his head down. “It can wait until the end of class. Then I will take you to Madam Pomfrey for the antidote,” he says, and flies away to harass someone else.
“What antidote?” Harry mutters, but he feels a little better knowing that maybe he’s not just going to go around hexing people left and right. He turns and goes back to his cauldron. He can try to salvage some of his grade with the potion.
Draco keeps watching him. Hermione is doing the same thing from the other side of the classroom. Harry only shakes his head at them, and keeps working. The iron mood is starting to crack, he thinks. He still won’t try to fit in with either Slytherin or Gryffindor just because someone wants him to, but he’s a little calmer.
And he doesn’t need to hex Draco, and their potion turns out all right, although Draco does whisper, “If it was just me working by myself, it would have been perfect.”
Harry shrugs, and steps over to Professor Snape’s desk to await their trip to the hospital wing. They have History of Magic next. Nothing he cares about missing a few minutes of.
*
Severus shakes his head as he leads Harry up the stairs. Less than twenty-four hours back in Hogwarts, and Harry’s managed to curse another student, earn himself a fairly implacable enemy, and been potioned. It must have happened last night during dinner. The Drake’s Breath potion takes that long to work.
“Why do I have to have an antidote?” Harry asks. He sounds polite, if a little shaken.
“Because the potion that got slipped into your food, or most likely your pumpkin juice last night, is called Drake’s Breath,” Severus says over his shoulder. He is glad that the break in Marcus Flint’s bone was a clean one, meaning it took Poppy approximately three seconds to heal it and send Flint on his way. It means they won’t meet him in the hospital wing now. “It puts the drinker into a more or less permanent state of adrenaline and regarding most people around them as enemies. Warriors sometimes drink it the night before a battle. It takes days to wear off, and someone would probably slip you another dose before then.”
“Oh.”
Harry is quiet for several stairs. Then he says, “So that means that I had an enemy in Slytherin even before I cursed Flint. Or talked to him about playing Quidditch.”
Severus nods. “And it must have been slipped into either more than one dish, or with a huge dose into your pumpkin juice. Since you didn’t get a chance to finish your whole meal before the Headmaster interrupted you.”
“Oh.”
They enter the hospital wing, and Poppy scowls at Harry. Severus catches her eyes. “We need the Drake’s Breath antidote, Poppy. Someone decided it would be a good idea to administer it to our Mr. Potter here.”
That makes her scowl ease. Poppy knows as well as any Healer what Drake’s Breath does. “Of course,” she says, and bustles away. Thank Merlin they have a lot of the antidote on hand, Severus thinks as he turns back to Harry. It’s a common prank potion among the upper years.
“Why should I care about cursing them, though?” Harry mutters suddenly. “If they already hate me and they’re going to prank me no matter what I do…is everything I’ve felt since last night the result of the Drake’s Breath?”
Severus is beyond impressed that Harry is starting to question his own perceptions now, while still under the potion’s influence. “No. It wouldn’t have started working until sometime in the middle of the night.”
“Good.”
Severus studies him carefully. “Is there something you want to tell me, Harry? About what you felt last night, I mean?”
Harry looks up and at him. His eyes flash. “Just that I won’t let myself be anyone’s puppet, sir. Slytherin’s or Gryffindor’s or any—one’s.”
Severus would have liked to say more, but Poppy comes back with the antidote then, and Severus watches to make sure Harry drinks all of the curling red-gold potion. It scorches the throat, and sometimes those under the influence of Drake’s Breath see someone giving them the antidote as another enemy and refuse it.
Severus can already see that he will have this year cut out for him.
*
Kain: Yes, exactly. Tarquinius can play this game better than Dumbledore. Dumbledore relies too much on the rule of law.
Albus does believe, in his heart of hearts, that he's doing the right thing, and that safety for the majority is worth any sacrifice. The problem is that he's asking others to make those sacrifices. But yeah, the ambiguity in Harry's words went right over his head.
Harry already has his work cut out for him! But although his cursing of Flint in this chapter was motivated by the potion, his feelings about his abuse were not. He's still going to keep on being himself, which to him means "no one needs to know about the Dursleys."
SickPuppy: Well, someone cursed Flint into the wall? But yeah, thank you!
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