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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you for all the reviews! Here’s the second chapter.

Chapter Two—Understanding Death

            “I need to know how much you already recognize about battle before training you.”

            Harry nodded and hoped he looked like a serious adult instead of a little boy as he stared at the room in front of him. It was an enormous place, bigger than he had known the Room of Requirement could create, with a hollow, rising ceiling that made it look as if it were capped with a dome. The walls were some flat, blank material that Harry thought might have been wood, but when he let his hand rest on one, it felt more like stone. There was no crack or join in it that he could see, and none in the floor, either.

            Scattered here and there were mats, cushions, ropes dangling on hooks from the ceiling, chairs, large stands that Harry thought looked like easels but with hooks and handles on top of them instead of places to put a canvas, stair steps leading nowhere, and rings on chains. Harry looked around for some sign of weapons, but there was none. Only Evelina standing in what looked like the center of the room, a ring of white light on the floor, watching him with assessing eyes.

            “Strength training can only do a limited amount,” she muttered, as if to herself. “We could try with the weights, but the goal is to build as fast as we can in a limited amount of time. Speed and stamina are the best bets.”

            “Are you talking about me?” Harry asked. He was still a little sore about the way Dumbledore had all but patted him on the head and told him that there was no way to beat the prophecy. At least the talk hadn’t lasted long before Dumbledore told him that he would have to train with Evelina.

            “Yes,” Evelina said. “You’re far from the tallest student I’ve ever taught. We need to make you fast, rather than trying to prepare you for contests of strength that you’ll lose anyway.” Without seeming to notice how much she had insulted Harry, she spun her wand around between her fingers, still watching him intently. “And I’ll need a demonstration of your skills before I decide what we should work on first, of course.”

            Harry nodded stiffly and asked, “Do you want me to tell you what spells I know?”

            Evelina laughed a bit. “Showing is better than telling, don’t you see?” she asked, and sent a sharp Stunner at him with a twist of her hand that Harry had never seen imitated.

            Harry raised a Shield Charm without thinking; the Stunner cracked into it and halted. Harry Transfigured the ground beneath Evelina’s feet to ice and ducked around the nearest chair, which was the end one of a long row, scrambling beneath them on his hands and knees towards the far side of the room.

            The chairs flew into the air, tumbling about, the legs of the one he was under scraping painfully at Harry’s arms and sides. He rolled over and cast another Shield Charm straight above himself. The yellow spray of fountain-like light that was diving towards him hit the shield and bounced out to the sides, making the floor steam and smoke. Harry winced, but also felt a slight appreciation, as strong as it could be under the circumstances. Well, at least she isn’t playing around. If she can really train me to survive Voldemort, then I’ll work with her.

            Evelina performed some other charm; Harry heard her incant it, but he didn’t know what it did until he found his vision flipping over and an odd rushing motion in his ears. He felt as if he was going to vomit, and his eyes bulged. He could hear a distinctive sloshing in his ears that he hated. If it wasn’t really his brain turning over, which was what it felt like, it was near enough to that that he didn’t want to experience any closer.

            He ducked and weaved, sometimes crawling, sometimes running, as he made for the nearest stand of easels or whatever they were. But then Evelina blasted them away, and Harry realized that he couldn’t see where they’d flown off to with his vision wavering around all over the place.

            Instinct made him dive, smashing a shoulder painfully into the floor. But it was nothing compared to the Blasting Curse that sailed serenely by and would probably have taken his head off, or at least broken his shoulder instead of only giving him a bruise.

            Harry whirled around, pushing with his fingers off the floor and taking advantage of the height he was currently at to cast his own Blasting Curse at Evelina’s feet. That made her leap like a frog, and Harry gritted his teeth in grim satisfaction as he raced on, this time launching himself into a roll that carried him to temporary safety behind a rope.

            Evelina’s Cutting Curse severed the rope before Harry could decide to climb it. Harry groaned. She likes taking away my cover and anything I could use as weapons. Well, I’ll have to do something else, then.

            He rose to his feet—her charm was still in effect, making him nauseated, but not as bad as it had been—and raced straight for her.

            Evelina’s eyes widened, and then narrowed in appraisal. She moved back and flipped up one hand, wand following. Harry felt a jerk behind his navel and wondered what she could have been using as a Portkey, since he’d touched nothing; then his world flipped again and he realized that he was hanging upside down from the ceiling, his feet tangling in an invisible net.

            “Expelliarmus!” he cried, still able to orient on her even though his perspective had changed so drastically.

            Evelina crouched down, using her body to shield her wand so that all it did was fly into her free hand. Then she rose and strolled towards him, Harry grimaced and held his wand close so that it wouldn’t fall onto the floor.

            “So you won,” he said.

            “Of course,” Evelina murmured. “Still, it was nearer than I expected. Since Albus told me you mostly survived your battles with the help of luck and your friends, I was wondering if you knew anything about fighting at all. I am pleased to see that you do.”

            Harry scowled at her. She smiled at him, and he sighed as he realized that she was only acting the way she had acted all along: like someone who had to train him to survive and wasn’t sure if she could. At least she was significantly more honest and less weird that some of the other people in this world had been acting.

            He shuddered as he thought about them, and then said, “Are you going to teach me the spells that you used on me today?” He winced. All the blood was rushing to his head, and he thought that he would faint if it went on much longer. But he wasn’t going to ask to be lowered before Evelina did it.

            Evelina flicked her wand in the next moment—either she had never meant to keep him up that long, or she knew what she was doing better than Harry had thought—and his world flipped right-side up again. Harry sighed in relief as he massaged his head and gazed curiously at Evelina, who was studying him this time as if she thought she would be able to read his thoughts through his skull.

            “Yes,” she said. “I am amazed that you survived the war without learning them. Were those all the spells that you know, the ones you used against me?”

            “Of course not,” Harry answered, a little huffily. “The Hogwarts professors taught me a lot more.”

            “Yet you didn’t use them,” Evelina said. “Why?”

            “You know the answer to that.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck and avoided his eyes.

            Evelina moved so that he had no choice but to look at her. “I don’t, actually,” she said. “And I am trying not to underestimate or overestimate you, because there are dangers either way, and either way the war could continue. What do you know? What do you need to learn? What can I help you to make better use of? I’m trying to determine which spells belong to which category.”

            Harry spent a bit more time in dubious study of her face, but she didn’t roll her eyes or change her expression in the silence, so finally he gave in. “I know a lot of charms,” he admitted. “And the kinds of hexes that children use on each other. Not much about Potions, and the Defense spells are mostly ones I picked up on my own. The Shield Charm, the Patronus Charm, and the Disarming Charm are my main ones.”

            “Ah. Hm.” Evelina cocked her head at him. “I find it strange that you would have learned to cast a Patronus before you learned to change someone’s inner balance.”

            “Was that what you did to me?” Harry still had the urge to spit, his mouth had tasted so awful for a bit there.

            Evelina nodded. “Among other things. The charm is a common one, but I’ve added modifications of my own inventions.”

            Harry blinked. “I didn’t know that you could modify a spell, except to make it more or less powerful when you cast it, because, well, some people aren’t as strong.” He didn’t think he’d said that the right way; Hermione would have had all the right theory and all the right words.

            He clenched his teeth when he thought about that. He wanted to be home with his friends right now, not training for a war that he’d already fought and won, no matter how nice Evelina was to him about it.

            She was silent right now, staring at him so hard that Harry knew he had said something wrong again. Then she shook her head with a sharp little movement and said, “It’s so—unusual to find that you know some things at an advanced level and others not at all. May I see you cast a Patronus Charm?”

            Harry nodded, held out his wand, and thought, without effort, of the warm, sunny days at the Burrow just before Fleur and Bill’s wedding, when he and Ron and Hermione had snatched a moment of rest from the chaos to sit outside and watch the sunset. “Expecto Patronum!” he called, and the silver stag leaped from his wand.

            Evelina took a step back and then walked around it, as if she wanted to see the way its hooves touched the ground and make sure it was real. The stag turned its head to watch her, and she shook her head in wonder.

            “A corporeal Patronus,” she whispered. “That—you shouldn’t have been able to cast that until you were considerably older than you are now, if at all.” She studied him again.

            “There were Dementors at the school in my third year,” Harry said, answering her unspoken question. “Sirius—my godfather—was a fugitive in that world, and they thought that he had come to Hogwarts to try and hunt me down. So the Dementors surrounded the school, and they affected me. Professor Lupin taught me the charm so that I could defend myself. Is he here?” he added, with a sudden blast of hope.

            “Lupin? I believe a professor of that name taught at the school some years ago. I do not know where he is now.” Evelina hesitated, then spelled over one of the chairs that she’d scattered earlier and sat down in it. Harry sat next to her when she called a second one and wondered what she had to tell him. The long line across her brow and the way her hands clenched in her lap said it was something.

            “Do you think I won’t survive?” he asked her bluntly.

            “If you went out on the field the way you are now?” Evelina pressed her fingers against her mouth with what looked like a meditative look. “No, you wouldn’t.”

            Harry winced, then nodded. At least she’s honest.

            “How do we make it so I have a fucking chance?” he asked. “I assume you know some spells that the Aurors wouldn’t teach me, or at least normal Aurors wouldn’t, but you would?”

            “Dumbledore did give me permission to teach you anything I wanted and thought you could need,” Evelina said, still in a musing tone. Harry hated that. He wished she would pay attention to him so that he could be sure she wasn’t seeing some other student in her head, or, even more likely, all the ways he could die. He waved a hand in front of her eyes, and she blinked, then focused on him. “That could include some of the spells that made me have to leave the Aurors.”

            “Did you use Dark Arts?” Harry asked, half-wary and half-intrigued. He had used the Unforgivable Curses against the Carrows and to sneak into Gringotts, after all, and he had thought he might have to use them again since he’d been here.

            “Not as such,” Evelina said. “Not curses that were illegal. But ones that made the criminals so uncomfortable that I was privately asked to stop using them. I didn’t want to, and in the end I walked away from the Ministry.”

            “That’s stupid,” Harry said. “Why would they want you to stop using spells that would allow you to survive?”

            Evelina smiled. Harry stiffened, because it had an edge of pity, but from her next words, the pity wasn’t directed at him. “Because there are other goals than simply surviving,” she said. “Upholding the law. Showing everyone how kind and decent you are. Mind you, a lot of the Aurors aren’t kind and decent people. But they were better at pretending than I was.”

            Harry snorted. “I’ll have to think about what it means to be an Auror, before I try to become one in my world.”

            Evelina shrugged. “At the time, I didn’t think there was any other profession that would accommodate my love of chasing people, bringing them down, and using complicated magic. I would choose differently if I had the choice to make over again.” She leaned forwards and continued briskly, “I noticed that you used mostly defensive magic. We’ll concentrate on offensive magic first, the spells that you should have learned and didn’t—”

            “Not my fault,” Harry muttered. “We had incompetent Defense teachers almost all the years I was there, and two of the ones who weren’t incompetent hated me.”

            Evelina paused. “Who were they?”

            “One of them was Snape,” Harry said, deciding that, in case he disappeared here before he could confront Voldemort, someone should know who had likely killed him. Snape hadn’t done much but stare and snipe at him yet, but Harry was smart enough to know that could change at any time. “The other was a Death Eater disguised as Moody.”

            Evelina paused thoughtfully. Then she said, “From what I understand, the Professor Snape that we know—that I know—would never have been a poor teacher to this Harry. Not on purpose. I think he is a poor teacher in other ways.”

            “I’m glad someone agrees with me,” Harry said hotly. He hated the way that the Snape in this world stared at him. He couldn’t help who his parents were, and here, he couldn’t help that he was alive and the other Harry was dead. “He kept on being Potions teacher in my world despite the fact that everyone hated him except the Slytherins.”

            “It helped that this Potter was a Slytherin, of course,” Evelina said. “But I’m afraid that I can’t tell you much more than that. I only know what they told me when they brought me in to act as a tutor to you, and Albus didn’t consider the intimate relationship between his dead student and that student’s Head of House something I needed to know.”

            “Are you really trying to help me?” Harry asked, because it had suddenly become important. “I mean, do you care if I survive or not? Or are you only doing this as a favor to Dumbledore, and it doesn’t matter very much whether I live?”

            “I can want to help you survive for the sake of the world, and not for your own sake,” Evelina said. “I think a lot of the Order of the Phoenix are like that, and you will be disappointed if you try to rely on them for anything else.”

            Harry winced. He almost wished he hadn’t asked the question, now. But it probably was better to know that he stood alone, without a friend around him, than to think he could treat them like the people in his world. It had been different here. It had.

            He would have to find someone to tell him how different. Malfoy—Draco—might be a good one for that, Harry thought distractedly. He looked like he wanted to talk to someone anyway, and it shouldn’t be hard to get him to talk about the dead Harry.

            “But from what I’ve seen of you,” Evelina continued, “you are someone I want to survive, yes. Among other things, I don’t want to think my teaching was wasted.”

            Harry relaxed a bit. “Did they have you teach the others?”

            “No. I suspect that Albus thought the training he gave them was enough.” Evelina waggled her wand at the nearest rope, and two of the strands untwisted and spun into a tight scroll that began to fill with the names of spells. Harry studied them in some dismay. He didn’t think he could learn and memorize them all in the short time they probably had before Voldemort learned he was here.

            Then he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. You’ll learn them if you have to, if you want to survive and go home. And you know you want that more than anything.

            “What kind of training did he give them?” Harry asked, wondering if it was like the private memories that Dumbledore had showed him of Tom Riddle.

            “Defensive spells, mostly,” Evelina said. “And training in what were supposed to be Tom Riddle’s signature spells when he was a young man.” She paused, then shook her head. “Of course, I don’t think that the Harry Potter native to this world ever got to use them, since he killed himself before he and You-Know-Who could have a final confrontation. I don’t know about the others.”

            Harry firmed his lips. “And you think learning offensive spells will help me more?”

            “Yes,” Evelina said. “You can only retreat for so long.” The scroll of spells seemed to have finished creating itself, and she grabbed it, shook it once to snap it out, and spent a few minutes scanning it before she nodded. “This will do,” she added as she handed it to Harry. “You should be able to do all these incantations nonverbally by the end of the week, and I want you to surprise me with one each day.”

            “Nonverbally?” Harry listened to his voice rise, and fought to bring it back under control. “I’m not as good with nonverbal magic as—”

            “As you should be,” Evelina finished calmly. “Yes, I know.” She hesitated again, then added, “You’ll have to be. I think that’s the only way you’ll survive. More to the point, becoming good at nonverbal spells is the only way to anticipate them, and your enemies will hurl them at you.”

            Harry squeezed the side of the chair, and then let go and grimly accepted the scroll. “What about other ways of fighting?”

            Evelina brightened. “I don’t know that you’ll ever do it with You-Know-Who,” she said, “but I can teach you some hand-to-hand fighting skills that ought to impress the Death Eaters if you have to close with them. And I suspect that he’ll send them after you first. He’ll be curious, eager, to test your skills, but he has some sense. No use going after someone who would be able to kill him on the first try.”

            Harry nodded, a little downcast. Until then, he hadn’t realized how much he’d depended on Voldemort being crazy and liable to do things like simply rush into battle or send the Death Eaters who were stupid and could be tricked.

            Evelina leaned forwards. “This has been a chance for me to understand your strengths,” she said. “But even more than that, you need to learn to understand yourself. And there is some knowledge that I can give you to take out of here today.” She reached out and pressed two fingertips hard into the left part of Harry’s chest, hard enough to make him wince. “Never go for the heart.”

            Harry frowned and cocked his head. “Why not? I thought that was supposed to be the one thing that would make someone drop dead immediately.”

            Evelina smiled, her eyes glinting. “And in the case of a spell, if you can hit the heart, that is true. But if you’re going after it with a blade, the way that I’ll train you to, the ribs get in the way. That’s what they’re supposed to do, after all: protect the heart. Imagine the knife in your hand jolting suddenly and skidding off to the side, or sticking in bone.” She raised her eyebrows. “Not what you want to happen when you have some other enemy coming at you.”

            Harry nodded. “So where do you cut?”

            Evelina turned her head to the side and laid her fingertips against her neck. “Throat,” she said. “A cut, remember; don’t try to strangle someone unless you’re doing it with magic. Strangling someone with a garrote or similar will take more strength than you have.” She moved her hand down, widening her legs so she could tap her left thigh. “The femoral artery. They’ll bleed to death in a few minutes. It’s a surer cut than the throat in many ways, because if you don’t cut deep enough on the throat, it’s possible for your enemy to live a few minutes. Not likely, and they’ll probably not be able to get their breath and call out even if they do, but we’re talking about tactics that can help you kill your enemies.” She glanced at Harry, and her eyes were very cold. “Not leave them alive but wounded.”

            Harry nodded. His hands felt as cold as her eyes looked, he thought, and tried to wipe them off on his trousers without her noticing. “And where else?”

            Evelina moved her hand on the thigh higher. “The groin. Vulnerable in the first place—though not as much so on a woman; don’t expect to disable a female opponent right away unless your kick is really strong—and a cut there will also bring down the blood, and the death.” She paused, her face distant. “There was a man who thought he was going to rape me, once. I always carry more than one knife, and I daresay he was surprised when he bled to death within two minutes of taking his clothes off.”

            She turned back to Harry, seeming to shake off the memory or trance that had almost consumed her. “Learn as many binding spells as you can. One thing you’ll want to do is keep their hands away from the wound. If they manage to plug it, the blood won’t spurt as fast and they’ll have a chance to live.” She paused. “Of course, you could also learn a spell that will cut their hands off,” she added. “That’s always a useful one.”

            Harry stared at her. “Was that the spell that got you kicked out of the Aurors?” he had to ask.

            “No,” Evelina said. “That was the one that destroyed their blood’s ability to clot, so that a slight cut would make them bleed to death.” She shook her head, her smile faint but there. “The Head Auror and I had a long talk where I pretended not to understand why he was upset. I did understand, of course, but he was sending me, without a partner, into situations where it was use spells like that or die.”

            She reached out and poked Harry above the heart again. “And the same thing is going to be true for you. Can you kill?”

            “I’ll try,” said Harry. He felt deadened, a great huge hollow around his beating heart.

            “Memorize ten spells off that list for tomorrow,” Evelina said, getting to her feet. “And find yourself a weapon. A short knife, I think. No point in a long blade, for you.”

*

            “I really cannot agree, Harry.”

            Harry took a deep, calming breath, and reminded himself that Dumbledore was probably used to a Harry who just did as he was told. It would make a lot of sense, since that Harry had been in Slytherin and Snape seemed to tolerate him. Snape wouldn’t tolerate someone who broke the rules left and right.

            “I’m not asking for a lot, sir,” he said, when he thought he could speak without shouting. They were in Dumbledore’s office, Harry sitting in a chair across the desk from him, a large, cushiony chair with lion’s heads at the end of the arms. Harry wondered if Dumbledore had given it to him on purpose so that Harry wouldn’t be able to stand up and move away quickly if he wanted, but that was a bit too paranoid. “Just the backstory. More about Harry—the other me who was here, and the kind of training you gave him. You told me the history of the war.”

            Dumbledore gave him a misty smile. Harry closed his hand down on the holly wand, and wished that the Elder Wand in his back pocket wasn’t throbbing like a second heart. He hadn’t taken it to training with Evelina that morning, but then he’d realized that someone might find it in his bedroom—or the Slytherin bedroom that Draco had said was his—and what would they think? He’d keep it with him from now on.

            “The history of the war was information you needed to know if you were to fight effectively for us, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “But the information you’re requesting is sensitive, and the people who could tell it best are Draco and Severus.”

            “Well, then,” Harry said, and started to stand up. He’d only come to Dumbledore rather than Snape or Malfoy because he didn’t want to deal with sneering and tears.

            “I was saying,” Dumbledore said, his hand rising as if he would physically push Harry back into his seat with a palm on his forehead, “that they could. I think it would be terrible to ask them now, when they are grieving for a young man who was very real to them, no matter how strange or nonexistent he may seem to you.”

            Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’m the one who’s nonexistent, at least to you. You treat me like I’m a bloody puppet, like I should be happy to be hauled out of my universe and put with you.”

            He had wondered earlier if it was a bad thing to complain so openly, but then he’d remembered. They couldn’t do anything to him that would be permanent, because they needed his help with the war. He hadn’t ever had that in his world, because people there were just as happy to hate him and turn against him as help him. But now…

            Now, the Order of the Phoenix—and Evelina, Harry reckoned she counted as outside the Order—were the only people who knew they were here, and they had to spoil him. Harry had already resisted a few temptations that Dudley would have taken.

            “That’s not true,” Dumbledore said steadily. “You are very important to us, and to the future of our world.”

            “To the future,” Harry said, folding his arms as he leaned back in the chair. He kicked a heel against the rungs on the bottom of the chair, too, but they were dark wood, and just swallowed the sound. It wasn’t satisfying. “But not to you.”

            “I believe I have just told you that you are.” Dumbledore’s eyes had a steely glint in them. Harry wondered if he would have seen it in the eyes of his Dumbledore, too, if he’d lived.

            “But not to you personally,” Harry said. “Not as a person. As a weapon. That’s basically what you told me when I first arrived. You didn’t even research some other spell that you could use on me or the others, one that would make us able to return home. You just snatched us. Did they go along with all this, by the way?”

            Dumbledore took his glasses off, deposited them on the desk, and rubbed slowly and painfully at his forehead, as if it ached. Harry smiled despite his own uneasiness over potentially antagonizing Dumbledore. A headache was only a tenth part of the panic and pain that he knew he would feel if he let himself think about this too seriously.

            So he didn’t let himself think about this too seriously. Or he got angry instead. Anger was a good substitute.

            “I do not know what you want from me,” Dumbledore said, his voice deeper and more formal than before. “I cannot care personally for you as your Albus may have. I am a general, not only a Headmaster. And a general can’t see some people as more important than the others. He must treat them all the same.”

            “Bollocks,” Harry said, more for his enjoyment of the expression on Dumbledore’s face than for his general enjoyment of the word. “You see the people who’re gathered around you, your bloody Order, as more important than the rest of the world, because you let them in on the secret of the first Harry Potter’s death. And you see them as more important than me. Which doesn’t really make sense, because you need me to fight the war. So maybe you should start thinking that that I’m important, too, and answer my questions.”

            Dumbledore leaned forwards. “That sounded remarkably like a statement that you would not fight for us, Harry.”

            Harry sneered and flipped a hand at him. “That’s a sign that you do see your Order as more important than everyone else. I could still fight for your world and ignore you. But no, not fighting for you and you personally is the important thing.”

            Dumbledore shook his head, and then leaned forwards and pressed his brow against his clasped hands. Harry watched him. He thought he might still get the answers he wanted, as long as he waited.

            “You are trying to personally antagonize me,” Dumbledore said at last, when enough minutes of quiet had passed that Harry could hear the whir from the strange silver machines that lined the shelves. Evidently, this Harry hadn’t smashed them, Harry thought. But why would he? His Sirius was still alive. “I don’t understand why. We have to work together to fight this war. And I could—I wish that I could do something to make up to you for the necessity. I would never have done such a thing, pulling someone fresh from victory into another war, if not for our dire need.”

            “Could you use a different spell?” Harry demanded. “Tell me that.”

            Dumbledore hesitated, and it was for long enough that Harry noticed. He laughed, cutting off Dumbledore’s response. “You could have,” he said.

            “None of the others were as safe,” Dumbledore said repressively. “Most of them stood a strong chance of pulling apart the boy we were trying to summon between worlds.”

            “It might be better than the fate the other two suffered,” Harry said. “I asked you whether they went along with you.”

            Dumbledore leaned back in his seat and studied him with weary eyes. “They were both Slytherins,” he said. “Used to thinking through their first impressions, understanding that even someone who had hated their fathers might be a good man beneath the cloak he was required to wear. They were also more used to obeying authority than I think you were.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I like how everyone wants to blame this on me being Gryffindor,” he muttered, climbing to his feet. “Well, I’ll go talk to Snape and Malfoy, since you won’t tell me anything about the other Harry.”

            Dumbledore let Harry get all the way to the office door before he spoke. His voice sounded hollow, the way the beat of Harry’s own heart had to him earlier.

            “He was a young man of extraordinary strength and sweetness, both.” Dumbledore’s words were spaced evenly enough apart that Harry counted twenty heartbeats during that simple sentence. “Growing up with Sirius had taught him the Gryffindor side of life, the recklessness and pranks and the joy of bravery and of friends. But he was wise enough to realize that he wanted something more for himself. Distinction, not always to be in the shadow of a man who is still childish in some ways and not always to be in the shadow of the House of Black, which he could not belong to by virtue of blood.” Harry frowned and started to ask why his Sirius had managed to leave him the Black house and the Black money, then, but Dumbledore’s words rolled on. “He chose Slytherin, although I believe it was the only choice the Hat offered him. He embraced the necessity of thinking through the impression Sirius had given him of people like the Malfoys, who grew close to him. He had a relationship of mutual respect with Severus, though never as easy as I think Severus would have had with a normal Slytherin student. He was intelligent; he easily made high marks in all his classes. He had a natural talent for Defense, for Quidditch, for Potions—”

            That’s the real bloody difference between us, right there, Harry thought. And has to be the reason Snape likes him.

            “And for Transfiguration. I am afraid that we got into quite a few arguments over his future and what we each thought he should pursue.” Dumbledore’s tone now had a trace of an amused smile in it. “And he made friends from other Houses, something that he argued with young Malfoy over, but which never ruptured their relationship. He would have united them, I think, had the war come to Hogwarts. He was diplomatic for one so young, I believe because he had been taught by Remus Lupin.” Harry opened his mouth to ask where Lupin was, and still Dumbledore rolled on. “He was ferociously curious. That made it a task to keep him out of trouble at times, but it also meant that he knew more of the world and of life than any ten children his age.” Dumbledore’s voice sank into a whisper. “It came near killing me, when we lost him.”

            No wonder, Harry thought, his hand still on the knob, wishing now that he hadn’t asked Dumbledore to tell him about the other Harry. Someone else could have done the same thing, and still made him sound less intimidating. I’m not like him at all. Well, the talents for Defense and Quidditch and being born to oppose Voldemort, maybe, but not anything else. And this is the boy they expect me to replace, the one who should have been here, the one who Draco was in love with and who Ron and Hermione were friends with and who Snape respected. And even Dumbledore, from the sound of it.

            I’m just Harry, compared to him.

            But the next moment, Harry shook his head and started fighting his way back up from that little depression. Well, if he was “just Harry,” he was still the one who hadn’t committed suicide in despair over Voldemort, or whatever had really happened. He would have to do this Harry’s work, but in a different way.

            “Thanks for telling me, sir,” he said brightly, noting that Dumbledore still hadn’t said anything about the way he’d trained that Harry, and slipped out of the room. He would ask someone else where Remus was, and whether this Harry might have been able to inherit the Black fortune from Sirius even though he wasn’t related to him by blood.

            And he thought he knew the perfect candidate.

*

            “Harry! What did you want to know?”

            It was not truly coincidence and not truly conspiracy that had Severus pausing outside the room where Black and—the fourth Potter—sat. He had been following in the boy’s footsteps, but he had not known that he would go here. He leaned against the wall and murmured a Disillusionment Charm, and it fell over him in cold draperies. Severus was not interested in either the row that would follow if Black leaned out and saw him or the conversations that he might be subjected to if other members of the Order of the Phoenix found him.

            “What he was really like.”

            Severus closed his eyes so that he could concentrate better on the sound of the conversation. He couldn’t see much as it was, leaning against the side of the wall with the door only ajar a few inches. And it was not in looks that the fourth Potter differed from the Harry he had known.

            It was in the voice. His voice proclaimed different emotions, went up and down the scale in different ways, if one listened for it. Severus was determined to find out the source of that difference and go to Dumbledore if he could. It was Albus’s notion that the best way to defeat the Dark Lord was to summon different versions of Harry from other worlds. Severus did not believe it would work now, any more than it had worked the other times.

            And he would prefer to survive.

            “Harry. My godson.” Black sighed, beginning melodramatically as he always did. “I may not be the best person to ask. He said that I didn’t always judge him strictly enough, because I saw too much of his parents in him.”

            “What was it like for him to grow up with you?” This Potter’s voice had a plaintive quiver at the back of it that Severus had never heard in his Harry’s voice. But he didn’t yet know what it meant, so he placed it in the center of a silver web in his mind and waited for the other threads to grow.

            “Well, I can only tell you what it was like for me.” Black chuckled. “And the answer is: wonderful. He played pranks on me, and I played pranks on him. We had a house-elf for the cleaning and the cooking, which I’m glad of. I was never good at those sorts of things, and I knew that Harry didn’t want to be.”

            Severus rolled his eyes. Much as he mourned the lost potential of Harry’s life, he could testify that it would have been better if the boy had learned a bit of the humility that daily chores would have taught him.

            “Oh,” Potter said. Severus cocked his head. Harmonics in that word that he could not figure out, and he could not tell if it came in response to the notion of chores or pranks or endless leisure. He placed the gem in his mind—this one he envisioned as purple, where the first had been bright red—and the first web came into being, binding them.

            “It was different when he went to Hogwarts, of course,” Black continued. “I didn’t see him every day then, although I could come and visit whenever I wanted. I was part of the Order, and Dumbledore wanted to talk to us from time to time. Everyone who knew anything knew that Ol’ Tom wasn’t dead.”

            Severus sneered. It was not the use of the Dark Lord’s name itself that he minded from Black; it was that Black used it without having the power that would enable him to survive his disrespect, as Albus did. If the Dark Lord killed him, then the Order would lose another member.

            “But I heard about him all the time,” Black said. “How well he did in his classes, and how he made even people who weren’t in his House respect him.” He paused, and then added, as if perhaps it still troubled him, “I was surprised when he was Sorted into Slytherin, but I made the best of it in the end, because he didn’t let the House confine him. He was more than that.”

            Severus, who remembered it rather differently, laughed in silence to himself. Yes, Black had let the boy alone in the end, but not until after numerous Howlers, private and painful conversations, and a few rows with Severus that he didn’t care to think about in detail. That was the real reason the Headmaster had allowed Black to visit so often, rather than his association with the Order; he had demanded it, because he wanted to be sure that his precious godson wasn’t being corrupted.

            “How did he make friends with Ron and Hermione?” Potter asked. His voice was subdued. Severus listened intently again, but could tell nothing from those particular words or the tone in which they were spoken, and so let it pass rather than putting it in his web.

            “They fought a mountain troll together,” Black said, his voice thick with longing and awe. Severus had long since known that Black was envious of Harry in some ways, and believed that he had achieved more as a first-year, at least in numbers of rules broken, than Black had as a near-adult. “Harry had made friends with Ron on the train, and he wasn’t going to let Houses get in the way, so he kept trying to talk to him. And then they noticed together that Hermione was missing, and…that happened.”

            “Oh,” Potter said, in much the same tone as before, but not so suggestive this time. Severus wondered if the boy was beginning to realize how others would view his words, or whether Severus himself had simply sucked the sound dry of the deep meanings. “Were they still friends when he started dating Malfoy?”

            “Yes,” Black said, and his voice deepened into a growl. “After I spoke with them and told them the way it was going to be.”

            Severus arched his eyebrows. He had never known that, but it made sense. The way he remembered it, Weasley and Granger had come down to breakfast one morning more sullen than ever but willing to speak to Harry again, which was more than they had been for a fortnight. He had hoped that they had grown more adult on their own, or spoken with their parents. This was another debt that he did not want to owe Black.

            “Why did he start dating Malfoy, Sirius?” Coils of emotion twisted into Potter’s voice that Severus did not like and did not understand. Did the boy hate Malfoy in his own world? That would perhaps make sense because he had been a Gryffindor—although Severus did not believe a world where Harry Potter was in Gryffindor made sense on the face of it—but why hate him more than any other Slytherin?

            “Because they were friends, and Malfoy fell in love, and Harry considered it and fell in love back,” Black said. “I was a little disappointed, I’m not going to lie to you. I always hoped that Harry would marry someone like his mum and have lots of children I could spoil. But it looked like he and Malfoy were going to last.”

            “Then that’s what I don’t understand, most of all,” Potter burst out, and the position of his voice changed as he rose to his feet and paced back and forth. “Why would he kill himself when he had all his friends and a lover and you raising him? Why?”

            Severus felt his nostrils flare. That was the question he had asked, as well, but at least he had the right to ask it.

            “I don’t know.” Black’s voice was gentle, and a shuffling announced that he had risen to his feet and embraced Potter the way that he had embraced the last two summoned from their own worlds. They had accepted it without struggle, because they had been raised by Black as well, but from the sound, Potter had stiffened briefly before he burrowed into Black’s embrace. Interesting, Severus thought, and added another jewel to the web, though as yet he didn’t know how it related to the others.

            “Did anyone ever try to find out?” Potter persisted. “Why he went to the lake? Why he didn’t tell anyone else?”

            Severus felt the prick of his fingernails on his own skin. Had they summoned an imbecile? He did not tell us because he knew that we would have tried to stop him, and he wished to succeed.

            “Malfoy has a few theories, I think.” Black’s voice sank. “But there’s nothing I can think of, and nothing I want to think of. I wanted to be alone with my grief.”

            Of course you did, Severus thought, and prepared to step back. He thought the conversation over, or at least devoid of interesting material. Now Black and Potter would weep on each other’s shoulders rather than conversing in such a way that Severus could determine Potter’s character.

            Instead, though, Potter said something quiet, and came out of the classroom an instant later. He paused in the middle of the corridor, his eyes shut and his arms tense and straight at his sides. Severus watched him closely, but didn’t see his lips moving in hopeless prayer, the way he had rather thought he might.

            Then he turned and drew his wand. Severus went still when he saw it. He had glimpsed Potter’s wand before, and he knew it was of holly, the way that the wand of every Potter they had summoned was. But this was elder.

            “Hominem resero,” Potter intoned.

            Severus did not move as the spell found him; he ought not to have been such a fool as to stay there once Potter came out of the room, and this was his punishment. Potter stared hard at him rather than yelling for Black right away, and so Severus dropped the Disillusionment Charm and waited, bored, for the outraged reaction. He had already known that Potter did not like him, probably because of his much-vaunted resemblance to James and his position in Gryffindor House.

            Potter’s eyes hardened, but he didn’t yell. Instead, he asked, “Did you listen to the whole thing?”

            Severus deplored the non-specificity of Potter’s vocabulary, but he nodded. Once again, there was no point in lying, and he was curious as to what this direct interrogation would tell him about the boy.

            “How much of that was true?”

            Severus stared at him in silence this time not because he didn’t want to speak, but because he could not. It had never occurred to Harry to distrust what his godfather told him, except for a few times as he grew older and Black said something against the Malfoys or Severus that Harry knew not to be true from direct observation. But this…the second and third Potter had accepted Black’s version of events.

            “Well?” Potter asked. “Did the other Harry really kill himself with no indication that he would? Did he have real and deep and uncomplicated friendships with Ron and Hermione? Was he just such a paragon as he’d been made to sound?”

            Severus found a comprehensible motive in the tone of those last words. “It does not behoove us to be jealous of the dead, Potter,” he said, a lesson he had learned long and bitter years ago.

            Potter shook his head slightly. “If everyone counted on him to save them because he was intelligent and knew a lot, then I can’t do the same thing. I’m not as smart as that.”

            Severus wondered what Potter thought to gain by denying his own nature. The native intelligence should be there, though Severus could accept that it would not be as well-trained in someone who had not been Slytherin. And the native arrogance must be, for a scion of James Potter’s House. He waited, therefore, instead of answering, while Potter tapped his wand in his hand and frowned at him.

            “That’s too much to ask, isn’t it?” Potter muttered, but now he sounded as if he were talking to himself. “Dumbledore tried to warn me, and I reckon he was right. You’re grieving too much to talk to me.” He nodded at Severus, said, “Fine,” and turned to walk away.

            But Severus did not know what he had meant about Albus, and that made him reluctant to allow the boy to leave. He circled in front of Potter instead, and waited. Potter halted, folding his arms close, as if he was reluctant to touch Severus.

            “Explain yourself,” Severus said. He had thought about making his voice gentle instead of brusque, but no one else was in the corridor, which meant that no one else was around to watch how he treated the boy. Not that they would be surprised. I thought bringing him—bringing them all—here was a mistake in the first place.

            “I asked Dumbledore if I should talk to you because you knew the other Harry best,” Potter said simply. “He said that you would still be grieving and would resent if it I asked you questions. I reckon so, because otherwise, why would you refuse to answer them?” He turned to the side and started edging past Severus.

            Severus nearly put out a hand to stop him in any case, so great was his shock. “That is not true,” he said, “and Albus would have known it.”

            Potter paused, then shrugged. “Because you talked to the others you kidnapped?” A sharp undercurrent of bitterness there, one Severus had not imagined could exist in someone who shared at least some of Harry’s traits. Severus had been more bitter for the others than they had been for themselves. “Well, no one ever knows how grief works unless they’re in someone’s mind, I think, and I’m no different.”

            “Albus can read minds, you idiot boy,” Severus snapped. “He was trying to keep you from seeking me out.”

            Potter shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe he didn’t want to read yours. You’re an Occlumens, aren’t you, like the one in my world? You could have kept him out. Anyway, if you won’t answer my questions, then you won’t answer my questions.” He was past Severus already, proceeding down the corridors at a steady trot. He was making for the Gryffindor Tower, Severus thought.

            “I never said,” Severus murmured, “that I would not answer them.”

            Potter paused again, then turned towards him and scrutinized him carefully. Severus looked blandly back. Let the brat believe what he wanted; he had already handed Severus enough food to make several thousand thoughts. A further conversation with him would be enlightening, but was not truly necessary.

            “All right,” Potter said finally. “Then can we talk here, or should we go somewhere else?”

            “Another place would be acceptable,” Severus said, fully aware that Black might come out and see them here soon enough, or Albus might descend the stairs. He had been preternaturally good in the past about knowing when someone might say something that would dent the morale of his young warriors. “Follow me to my quarters.”

            Potter backed away a step, then visibly forced himself to relax. “All right,” he said. “I suppose you wouldn’t want to kill me, anyway, even if you don’t want me here.”

            “What was the source of your animosity with my analogue?” Severus asked, as if idly, but his ears had never been pricked so during Potter’s and Black’s conversation.

            “I never knew until after he was dead,” Potter said. “I just knew he hated my dad and that he picked on me. But now I know he—you, I s’pose—loved my mum, and that changes things.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “I still wish he wouldn’t have picked on me during class, though. Especially when I didn’t know anything about the wizarding world the first day, and he should have known that.”

            Severus continued to walk, although the walls of his mind were now resonating with questions. Questions he wanted to ask the boy and hear answered, in the same childish voice if necessary.

            Nothing about the wizarding world. Nothing at all?

            Nothing about his parents. There should have been someone to tell him what great friends Severus and Lily were. McGonagall had told Harry, their Harry, about it long before Severus would have been comfortable enough to raise the subject.

            Potter had been in Gryffindor, Severus reminded himself yet again. That was bound to produce changes—in character, in history, in timeline. Perhaps they should be glad that they had managed to bring him across at all; the spell was apt to work with more difficulty between worlds that were more different. If Albus had known about this Potter’s House, Severus doubted he would have targeted him.

            But this different?

            Severus was not used to that wariness in those bright green eyes. Not anymore. There was Harry, and there were the other two, who had trusted him to speak the truth and guide them in their spells and their battle tactics.

            A great weariness descended on him as he realized the track his thoughts were taking. Once again, it would be up to him to correct the mistakes of others.

            But this time, his curiosity was enough to subdue, and quiet, the disgust with his inevitable role. He opened his door, and Potter preceded him into his quarters.

            Severus discovered, rather to his distant surprise, that he was looking forward to the coming conversation.

*

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