Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26078 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two—First Steps on the Path
            Minerva looked around with a shudder as she walked up the street towards what the letter claimed was the right house. Everything was—pale.
            Well, all right, there were flowers in plenty of the gardens, and some of the houses also had those small plastic decorations that Muggles seemed to be so in love with. Those were a gaudy red and orange and green, or sometimes blue or white.
            But to Minerva, the world was still pale without that patina of hovering magic that marked Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and even villages or houses where individual wizards lived among Muggles. There was an extra depth to the colors there. A resonance to the sounds. A feeling that she could turn around and see someone smile at her in a friendly way, which lasted no matter how hostile the wizard in question really was.
            (Minerva had been somewhat disconcerted to notice that feeling of “home” persisted even when she was at Severus Snape’s house in Spinner’s End, an experience neither of them wanted to repeat).
            As she raised her hand to knock on the door, she wondered if perhaps the lack of magic was a sign that Harry had turned out a Squib. Then she bit her lip and told herself not to be stupid. He wouldn’t have received a letter in that case.
            The door opened at once. A small boy looked up at her through glasses that he threw back with the motion of his head rather than pushed back with his finger.
            Minerva found her voice had deserted her. She could only stare. His eyes were exactly the shade of Lily’s as McGonagall had last seen them, distant and glazed and no longer recognizing her.
            “Who are you?”
            His voice wasn’t rude, but it had the same odd lack of resonance as the whole neighborhood. McGonagall told herself that wasn’t his fault. Any magical child growing up in this environment had probably been stifled.
            Old anger made her voice probably sharper than it should have been as she replied. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, Merlin knew. Everything had simply worked out so unfairly. “My name is Professor Minerva McGonagall. I know you probably know all about magic, but since you grew up with a Muggle family, I thought it best for me to come and introduce myself.”
            The boy simply stared at her. Now that she looked more closely, Minerva saw James in his shaggy dark hair and even the shape of his hands—Seeker’s hands, most likely. But neither of his parents had had that pale skin, or that sharp, wary gaze.
            James as he was. Not as he is.
            Minerva swallowed again, and started to ask if the boy would rather that she left the letter and went away, but that was an unacceptably cowardly response for a Gryffindor. She substituted, “I suppose that your aunt and uncle already explained everything?”
            “Explained what.”
            It wasn’t a question. And as Harry—he must be Harry, although how unlike the cheerful, bouncing baby she had met a few times—turned and stared back into the interior of the house, Minerva knew why there was no magic here. One didn’t consciously express and spread around what one didn’t know one had.
            Her wand appeared in her hand as a large man charged in from another room that, from the glimpse of the table around the corner, was probably the kitchen. Minerva warned herself to be careful. She hadn’t become as gentle and forgiving as she should have after years of peace. The war-instincts were always there, getting her ready to cast at sudden movements—or transform.
            But then the man roared at Harry, “Who is this?” His gaze went to Minerva’s robes, before he straightened up and yelled, “FREAK!”
            Not so unneeded, after all. Minerva ignored the urge to Transfigure him into something more aesthetically pleasing, and waved her wand at an ugly vase standing on a shelf instead. “Commuto fideliam felim!”
            The vase blurred and struggled for a moment, and then a black cat was crouched on the shelf, tail lashing. The fat man shut up. Minerva smiled. She had found that a bit of unexpected animal Transfiguration was almost always effective at doing that.
            She glanced down at Harry, who was watching with wide eyes. He didn’t look frightened, though, despite his apparently total ignorance about things that should have been his rightful heritage. His eyes were wide with glee.
            “Now,” said Minerva. “Neither of us are freaks. I am Professor Minerva McGonagall of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and I came to take Harry to the shops in Diagon Alley.” She glanced at Harry, who didn’t seem able to look away from the cat, for some reason. “It seems that I will need to explain magic to him and the war and who his parents really were, as well.”
            “Those freaks,” said a woman’s voice. Minerva turned to see who else needed a lesson.
            There was an incredibly thin woman in the kitchen doorway, with a boy so fat behind her that he looked like a couch she could sit on. Minerva studied the woman’s face, but ended up shaking her head. She had known Lily had a sister. No resemblance was visible, though.
            “I told you not to call us that,” said Minerva, pleasantly.
            “I’ll call you whatever I like!” The woman’s voice was so high-pitched that it reminded Minerva of some bats she’d caught. “My bitch of a sister, the way she was always talking—and to think we have to have it in the house—”
            “Commuto felim leonem.”
            She probably shouldn’t have done that, Minerva conceded, as black twisted into gold fur and the lion leaped from the cracking shelf to land in between her and Petunia. It was childish. It was undignified. It could be classed as Muggle-baiting.
            But as the lion roared in his aunt’s face and she staggered back, fainting, while the fat boy behind her ran shrieking away and the fat man followed him, Minerva happened to glance down at Harry Potter.
            His face was so alight with joy that she would have forgiven herself far worse transgressions.
*
            Professor McGonagall had taken Harry to a small café—a Muggle café, he knew now—to eat lunch before they went to Diagon Alley. She’d also set up a spell around them that she said would keep people from knowing they were talking about magic. Harry ate a sloppy sandwich with so much bacon on it that it kept coming off. It was the best lunch of his life.
            And Professor McGonagall had said she would answer his questions. Harry had lots of them.
            “If I can do magic, why can’t I do the things you do?”
            Professor McGonagall gave him a faint smile and patted at the corners of her lips with a napkin. Harry tried to imitate her. He knew his table manners weren’t the best. Aunt Petunia told him that all the time.
            If he was snatching food off the table in a desperate attempt to eat it before they took it away, of course his manners wouldn’t be the best. But he didn’t have to worry about that here.
            “Because you don’t have a wand,” Professor McGonagall said. “Transfiguration is an extremely advanced branch of magic, one that most adults need extensive training in before they can achieve the effects I did.” She bit the inside of her cheek once. “But I must impress on you, Mr. Potter, that in most cases, one can never use magic in front of Muggles. I did it only because it was a special situation and I thought your relatives were already aware of magic.”
            “They were. I wasn’t.”
            “I know. I’m sorry.”
            Harry cocked his head, then nodded. She was offering an apology that he thought was acceptable. It didn’t sound as though she was full of pity for him, which was something he’d always hated.
            “So I won’t do magic in front of Muggles. But I did some things, like turning one of my teachers’ hair blue.”
            “Yes.” Harry knew Professor McGonagall was hiding a smile, although he only knew that because of how closely he was looking at her. He thought she was pretty stern a lot of the time. “That is called accidental magic. Children wield it in moments of extreme emotion, without wands. When they receive their wand and start their training, at Hogwarts or another school—or sometimes with their family alone—then their accidental magic usually calms down.”
            Harry thought carefully about what he was going to say next. He didn’t want to show too much to Professor McGonagall, who was probably going to be sympathetic, but might—do things that he didn’t want her to do.
            “I’ve had plenty of times when I felt something extreme. And my magic didn’t do anything.”
            Why couldn’t I save my kitten?
            “That would be the lack of training. The discipline at Hogwarts will teach you how to cast spells when you want to, and with what effects you want, instead of relying on what is essentially a chaotic mixture of power, will, and desire. You may have been powerful enough emotionally at the moments when you wanted something to use magic, but not magically powerful enough. Or your feelings may have been more powerful when you were younger than they are now, although they wouldn’t seem so because your awareness of your own wishes has increased. For example, I’ve seen babies able to summon a favorite toy to themselves, but they haven’t been able to will their own nappies clean, even though they cried harder in the second circumstance than the first.”
            Harry didn’t like the comparison of himself with a baby, but he knew enough to be able to keep quiet about that, too. He traced his finger over the table for a second, and then asked, “What can you do with Transfiguration?”
            Professor McGonagall smiled. Harry had to smile back. She reminded him of that enthusiastic maths teacher at primary school. She really seemed to love it when someone was interested in her subject.
            “Change objects into animals, as you saw. Change animals into other animals, or objects into other objects. Animate objects for various purposes. Change yourself into an animal, as I can.” Professor McGonagall looked around as if to make sure that her privacy spell was holding, and then she leaned towards him and lowered her voice anyway. “I can change myself into a cat. I will show you later, if you like, when we are in magical surroundings. It’s not the sort of thing I would want to risk in front of Muggles who know nothing about magic. I’ve already bent the laws enough as it is.”
            “I’d like to see that,” Harry said at once.
            His mind was humming and buzzing. He was wondering about other things.
            Could I change objects into animals to defend me? Or keep me company? Could I change my nails into claws so I could scratch Dudley? Could I turn the doors in the house into monsters so they would leave me alone?
            He didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask all those questions aloud. Besides, he had others. “You said something about a war earlier. What war?”
            “Someone should have checked up on you!” said Professor McGonagall passionately, and Harry flinched a little. But she calmed down almost immediately, so he didn’t think she was upset at him.
            “There was a war that began when your parents were still young and in school,” Professor McGonagall said at last. “There was a Dark Lord—a wizard who practiced evil magic—and proclaimed himself and his followers superior to all other wizards. According to him, people with any kind of Muggle blood, or Muggleborns—”
            “What are they?”
            “Wizards or witches with two Muggle parents. There are people with one magical parent, others with two, but there are also many others with Muggle family.”
            She paused. Harry thought she was going to say something about his supposedly Muggle family, but Harry stared silently back at her and thought as hard as he could, I have no family.
            Either Professor McGonagall could read his thoughts, too, or she had drawn her own conclusions about Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, because she said in a choked voice, “And people who have two magical parents, or who have had magical ancestors for the past several generations, often refer to themselves as pure-bloods. They think of themselves as superior. They formed a large part of this Dark Lord’s following.”
            “Why?”
            “Which why? Why did they follow him or why do they think themselves superior?”
            “Both.” Harry wondered if he would always have to clarify what he wanted to know. She ought to realize he didn’t know anything about this world—this world that should have been his—so he would have a lot of questions.
            Professor McGonagall just nodded instead of getting upset, though, so he supposed he hadn’t sounded that rude. “They think of themselves as superior because they’re more distant from Muggles, who they see as clumsy, rude, and ignorant. Muggles are deliberately kept ignorant of our world, of course, by order of the government, but that distinction seems to escape many pure-bloods.”
            Harry grinned.
            “And they think of Muggleborns, who often don’t know anything about magic until they get their Hogwarts letters, as sharers in that same inferiority.” Professor McGonagall shook her head, a few strands of hair escaping from the tight bun at the back of her head. “I can’t represent their perspective fairly, I think, since I fought against You-Know-Who.” She seemed to sense the question this time before Harry asked it, because she added, “The name most people give this Dark Lord. He was so feared that people created aliases for him. They also call him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
            “What’s his real name?”
            Professor McGonagall shuddered a little, but said, “Lord Voldemort.”
            Harry thought for a second, then said, “That sounds stupid. I think I’ll just call him Dudders. After my cousin.”
            Professor McGonagall gave a full-throated laugh, of the kind that Harry didn’t think she often gave, just based on his impression of her so far. A second later, she clapped her hand over her mouth with a guilty motion. Harry smiled at her again. He liked her, and not just because she was the first magical adult he’d ever met. She was just—nicer than other people.
            “Well, I would advise you not to use it in many contexts, because others won’t understand.” Professor McGonagall cleared her throat a bit primly and returned to her story. “So You-Know-Who amassed many followers together. He promised to get rid of Muggleborns, and he promised those who followed him power and the chance to torture others. That was enough for many to turn to him. Others followed out of fear.”
            Even more like Dudley. But that might have given Professor McGonagall too many clues about the Dursleys, so Harry only nodded and asked, “Is he still around?”
            Professor McGonagall shook her head, and her face took on a bit of awe. “He was defeated when you were one year old. He attacked a family called the Longbottoms—pure-bloods, but they’d fought against him instead of joining him. Both Frank and Alice Longbottom, who were parents to a single baby boy, died under You-Know-Who’s wand. But somehow, no one knows exactly how, that baby boy, Neville Longbottom, survived You-Know-Who’s most powerful spell, the Killing Curse, with only a scar on his forehead. And You-Know-Who vanished.”
            Harry blinked. It sounded fantastic to him, but, well, there was magic in the world. “So he’s a hero?”
            Professor McGonagall smiled. “Yes. He’s called the Boy-Who-Lived, and honored in our world. He’s your age, in fact. He’ll be attending Hogwarts with you. You might end up friends.”
            Harry was more interested in something else right now, though. “So my parents died in the war, too?” At least it was a lot better excuse for leaving him with the Dursleys than the nonsense stories the Dursleys had told him.
            And Professor McGonagall stared at him, and spoke the seven words that changed his life forever.
            “But, Mr. Potter, your parents aren’t dead.”
*
            Minerva had never once thought…
            He didn’t know about magic. She should have thought of that. But still, she would have thought that his relatives had simply told him some ridiculous story about why his parents weren’t around now. She had never thought they would have told him James and Lily Potter were dead.
            “What do you mean?” Harry whispered. His voice was so small, and his eyes fixed on the remains of his lunch as if it might lash out at him.
            Minerva controlled the temptation to reach out for him, and instead balled her napkin up on her lap. She would have to remove the spell soon, or the Muggles would begin to wonder why no one was sitting at this table. But she did manage to say, “This isn’t the best place for that discussion. Perhaps we’ll get some ice cream?”
            Harry nodded. Minerva canceled the spell, paid the bill when the apologetic, muttering waiter rushed over to them, and then followed Harry outside, keeping a close eye on him. Harry was stumbling. He stood in the street and turned back and forth as if he had forgotten what other people looked like.
            Minerva steered him firmly to a small shop that sold so many different favors of ice cream she dithered, making up her mind. By the time she chose chocolate with vanilla swirls, Harry seemed partially recovered. He got pure chocolate, and followed her to a small outdoor table where Minerva raised a more secure privacy charm.
            “Tell me.” Harry hesitated a second later, and then softened the stark words with a politeness Minerva suspected didn’t come naturally to him. “Please.”
            Minerva sighed. Her first instinct was to conceal part of the truth so as not to wound him.
            But looking into his eyes, she doubted he would forgive her if she did that. She had already altered his world with careless, blunt words. The only thing she could do was go on with similar bluntness and hope that would make up, in some sense, for the failures of others.
            Including myself. But the Wizengamot, who had briefly discussed the matter because of inheritance and James having no Potter relatives left, had seemed so satisfied to place Harry with his Muggle family that Minerva had thought no more of it.
            “Your parents were also attacked,” Minerva told him quietly. “Not by You-Know-Who, however. Followers of his—they are called Death Eaters—pure-bloods named Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange. They tortured your parents with a particularly painful curse known as the Cruciatus. Your parents went insane from being held under it. They are long-term residents in the wizarding hospital, St. Mungo’s.”
            “Were they weak?”
            He is not going to be a Gryffindor. Minerva could at least conceal her sadness, though, and give him what she had to give. “No. They each spent more than ten minutes under it. Two minutes is usually enough to permanently maim someone, or kill them.”
            Harry nodded, his eyes bright. “What were their names? I mean, their full names? I know my mum’s name was Lily, because sometimes my aunt yelled it at me.”
            I am going to do something. “Your father’s full name is James Charlus Potter—Charlus after his uncle. Your mother’s middle name is Joyce, I believe. After her mother.”
            Harry inhaled as if he was breathing in the scents of a whole garden full of roses. “Will you take me to see them?”
            Minerva had to blink back her tears. He won’t be a Gryffindor, but he’s as brave as one. “If that’s what you want. The sight of them is—hard.”
            “You’ve visited them?”
            “A few times.” To Minerva’s further shame, she hadn’t gone in the last year. It was so hard to see those bright, vital students of hers reduced to staring and mumbling wrecks. But shame shouldn’t have prevented her from doing what was right. “I’ll take you this afternoon.”
            Harry nodded and finally swallowed some of his ice cream, a full mouthful that he almost slurped from the bowl. Minerva thought of correcting his table manners, and refrained. Not today.
            “What happened? I mean, why did they get attacked?”
            “Your parents were war heroes,” Minerva said softly, her mind full of the past, of James Potter dueling Rabastan Lestrange to a standstill on a crowded battlefield and Lily darting out to rescue two fallen Order of the Phoenix members before she Apparated away with them. “You-Know-Who hated them for their defiance of him. Also, your mother was Muggleborn, and I already told you that he hated them on principle. James represented the pure-bloods who wouldn’t follow any Dark principles, especially after he married Lily. And so, You-Know-Who sent some of his most powerful followers after them.”
            “How did they get in? Aren’t there security systems that keep magical homes safe?”
            “Yes,” Minerva replied, and tried not to twitch. “You and your parents were under one of the most powerful protective enchantments of all, the Fidelius Charm. That involves someone else promising to keep the secret. As long as that person is faithful, the secret can’t be wrested from them, even under torture.”
            Harry sat up, and his eyes were cold as Minerva had never seen Lily’s. “So someone willingly betrayed them?”
            Those were the eyes of someone who had been betrayed multiple times, Minerva would wager. She nodded. “They trusted the wrong person. They had a friend, Peter Pettigrew, who had been with James for so long that I think James believed no one could turn him away from their side. But Pettigrew was a Death Eater in secret. When James and Lily told him their location, he went straight to You-Know-Who and revealed it, and he passed it on to the Lestranges.”
            “Is Pettigrew in prison?”
            “Perhaps better than that,” said Minerva, and smiled for just a moment, before she remembered what else that containment had cost them, and winced. “He’s dead.”
            “How?”
            “Your parents had another friend,” said Minerva, and stared blindly at her ice cream until it stopped swimming in her vision. “Sirius Black. I suppose you would say—he was a sort of blood brother to James, closer to him than anyone. He was your godfather. Originally, your parents were going to use him for the Secret-Keeper, but they thought You-Know-Who would suspect him because he knew all about James and Sirius’s closeness. So they switched to Pettigrew instead, and…
            “Sirius knew what had happened the instant he saw your parents lying on the floor. He turned and took off, bellowing about Pettigrew, and we couldn’t guess where he went in time. He tracked Pettigrew down and dueled him. It was so grim and ferocious that they both died.”
            Minerva had to fully close her eyes this time. She’d had to identify Sirius’s body, and Pettigrew’s, too. So many of her students dead, she’d stood there with ashes in her throat, even as the rest of wizarding Britain sang and danced in celebration of the end of the war.
            “Does he—does he have a grave I can visit?”
            No need to ask which of his parents’ old friends Harry meant. Minerva forced her eyes to open, her lungs to breathe, her world to go on. She had a lot of practice at that. “Yes, he does. We held a funeral for Sirius a few days after the duel, and although he’d been estranged from his family for a long time—they followed You-Know-Who and I believe abused him—his brother Regulus placed a gravestone for Sirius. It’s in Godric’s Hollow, where your parents lived.”
            Harry nodded as though he was committing the information to memory. He probably was. He was the most serious and solemn little boy Minerva had ever met. “I see.” He slurped some more ice cream. “Can we go? I want to see everything.”
*
            And they did.
            Harry had a series of images in his head. They flashed past him, and he knew he would remember them forever, long after the other parts of the day had become nothing more than unimportant connecting corridors he walked down.
            First, they went to St. Mungo’s. There, Professor McGonagall had to argue with some wizards in green robes for rather a long time over whether they could see his parents at all. Then Harry had stepped forwards and whispered, “Please, let me see them. I never knew them.”
            One green-robed witch gave a choking gasp and nodded, then ran off. As they walked further into hospital, Harry looked at Professor McGonagall for an explanation. She gave a small, uncomfortable smile, and said, “You have your mother’s eyes.”
            Harry had never known that. He looked around when they were escorted into the Janus Thickey ward, and he immediately saw the woman who had green eyes. She was sitting on the edge of a bed, staring at her feet. She had red hair—Harry had never known that, either—and she wore a shapeless robe.
            “Lily?” Professor McGonagall’s voice was very gentle. “I’ve brought Harry to see you. Your son.” She touched Harry’s shoulder.
            Harry didn’t need a push. He went forwards. He felt as if he were floating, walking in a dream.
            His mum looked up. Her eyes were wide and glazed, and seemed to look a little past him. She blinked and struggled and reached out with one hand that shook. Harry took it carefully, holding it even when he thought she would pull it away. It was cold and dry, and she had chipped nails.
            His mum cupped his chin and looked at him, then looked away with a murmur of, “Slytherin green.”
            “What’s Slytherin?” Harry asked Professor McGonagall. He didn’t need to ask to know that his mum didn’t recognize him. That was okay. There was already a savage determination growing in Harry. Something he was going to do.
            “One of the Houses at Hogwarts. All students are organized into them, and you’ll be Sorted into one of the four at the start of the school year.” Harry knew from just hearing the word that “Sorting” was important. “Slytherin is—a House that has a somewhat unfair reputation for producing Dark wizards. It was You-Know-Who’s House, and the one many followers of his came out of, as well.”
            “So my parents weren’t in it.”
            “Well, no. But there is—a large bias against Slytherin that is not exactly fair. Slytherin’s defining traits are cunning and ambition. It doesn’t mean that everyone who’s in it is evil.”
            Harry didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be in it. “What House were my parents in?” He looked around for his dad, but didn’t see him yet. Maybe he was in the bathroom.
            “Gryffindor.“ From the way Professor McGonagall smiled and her voice warmed, Harry had no difficulty in guessing what her House had been, too. “The House whose colors are red and gold. And whose defining traits are bravery and chivalry. It was mine, too.” She paused. “I am the Head of Gryffindor House.”
            “That’s mine, then.”
            “Do not attempt to force yourself into the mold of your parents, Mr. Potter. They would not want that.”
            Harry didn’t answer, partially because his father was coming out, and his dad wore glasses. Just like him. His hair was messy. Just like Harry’s. Professor McGonagall introduced them, but Dad, although he shook Harry’s hand, seemed even less likely to recognize him than Mum. He sat down on the bed, heaved a great sigh, and started talking in a mumbling stream. His mouth shook, so sometimes drool ran down his cheek. Straining his ears, Harry could make out “brooms” and “Sirius.”
            The other reason Harry didn’t answer was because no one had ever tried to force him into the mold of his parents. The Dursleys had tried to force him out of it, although Harry hadn’t realized they were doing it at the time.
            If Harry wanted to be like his parents, that was his right. The right he hadn’t even known he had.
*
            Second, Professor McGonagall took Harry through an uncomfortable, squeezing kind of teleportation—she said it was “Apparition”—and they landed in front of a grave. Harry started forwards. He supposed it was an ordinary sort of graveyard, with silence and benches and tombstones everywhere, but then, he’d only sometimes seen one on telly or read about it in a book, so he wouldn’t know.
            The grave was a big, green mound. There was a carved stone at the head of it. It bore everything in capital letters except the last line:
SIRIUS BLACK
3 NOVEMBER 1959-1 NOVEMBER 1981
BELOVED FRIEND
TOUJOURS PUR
He died trying
            Harry looked in silence at the stone, and at the grave beneath it, where his godfather slept. He noticed there was a tied bunch of flowers lying next to the stone; they looked like roses, except they were black. He turned around and pointed silently at them, looking at Professor McGonagall.
            “Black roses,” said Professor McGonagall. She had her cloak wrapped around her, as if she was cold. “Conjured flowers. I believe his brother leaves them on a regular basis.”
            “What do the words on the grave mean?” Harry stared at the dates and calculated in his head. Sirius Black was almost twenty-two when he died.
            Harry had sometimes doubted whether he would ever live to be twenty-two years old, himself, but for an adult, it seemed so young.
            “He was your father’s best friend,” Professor McGonagall murmured, voice almost lost beneath the rising wind. “And close to your mother, too, before the end. Toujours pur is French—the motto of the Black family. It means ‘Always pure.’”
            Harry smiled a little. “But he wasn’t always pure, was he?”
            He was viciously proud of that. It was like the opposite of the emotion he had felt when Uncle Vernon killed his kitten. His father had been the “wrong” kind of pure-blood, and so had his godfather. That was great. Harry didn’t want anything to do with insane Lord Dudders and his pure-blood scum.
            “No, he wasn’t.” Professor McGonagall hesitated once, and then added, “I’m not sure what the last words mean. Regulus had them added. Maybe he means that Sirius died trying to do the right thing.”
            “Killing someone?”
            “Well—the Blacks do have a certain reputation, Mr. Potter. For being pure-blood, yes, and fanatical followers of various Dark Lords, but also for having obsessive tendencies to the point of insanity. It is perhaps, fitting, from a Black point of view that Sirius died the way he did.”
            Harry ran his hand down the stone. “He was in Gryffindor, too, wasn’t he?”
            “Yes. The only Black in Gryffindor ever. The rest of his family was all Slytherin.”
            Harry said a silent farewell and hello to the godfather he’d never known, and made a silent promise. He wasn’t going to be in Slytherin, no matter what happened. He supposed he had some traits that might make him fit there. He was cunning, or at least smarter than the Dursleys. They only won because they could simper and they were stronger than him. And he had an ambition, born in him the minute he understood what had happened to his parents.
            But he wasn’t going to be a Slytherin. He wasn’t going to be a pure-blood—although he probably couldn’t anyway, since his mother had been Muggleborn. At least if he was understanding Professor McGonagall right.
            He was going to exist to be a bother and a pest to the people who had tortured his parents into insanity and killed his godfather. And when he got older, he was going to be much worse than that.
            Professor McGonagall cleared her throat. Harry turned around, presuming she wanted to leave. He went still when he saw her offering him a conjured bunch of white flowers.
            “Lilies,” she said. “For—your mother.”
            Harry nodded, and turned, and placed them carefully on the other side of the grave, opposite the black roses. Then he turned around and they left.
            He thought he caught a glimpse of a tall dark-haired man, in a cloak and robes like Professor McGonagall’s, watching him from the far end of the graveyard. But when he turned his head, the man had turned and strode on. And then they Apparated away, so Harry didn’t get the chance to make sure.
            Well. If the man was an enemy, Harry intended to be ready for him in the future.
*
            Third, they were in a wand shop, and Ollivander was trying Harry with wands.
            Harry tried wand after wand. Ollivander named their woods and cores as he handed them to Harry. He seemed particularly hopeful with a holly wand, but none of them worked. The oaken wands almost shook themselves out of Harry’s hand. A blast of cold air blew across the shop when he handled a rosewood wand, but that didn’t seem to be the result Ollivander wanted.
            Finally, Ollivander turned around, looking harassed, and gave Harry a larger wand, announcing, “Ash, dragon heartstring, thirteen inches, unyielding. If this one doesn’t work, we’ll see about the—”
            Harry had already felt a surge up his arm, welcoming and toothy at the same time, like Professor McGonagall’s Transfigured lion trying to lick his face. He waved the wand. A white puff of smoke shot out and became a mouse running across Ollivander’s counter for an instant before it turned back into smoke.
            Ollivander clapped his hands and cackled with glee. “Yes, yes, that’s exactly the one! And extremely powerful in Transfiguration, if I do say so myself.”
            “Mr. Potter is wise enough to wait to learn Transfiguration until he has had some training,” Professor McGonagall snapped.
            Harry touched his wand, and smiled.
*
            Fourth, Harry was back in Privet Drive, lying on the bed in Dudley’s second bedroom for the first time in his life, watching the sunset out the window. Professor McGonagall had had some quiet but extremely vicious words with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, and they had moved Harry up here and then retreated with mutters. Harry lay there, kicking up his heels and looking at his wand and at all the books he had bought at Flourish and Blotts. Professor McGonagall had said they were his birthday present from her, especially all the ones on Transfiguration, even though they’d gone to his vault at Gringotts and it looked like Harry had plenty of money.
            Professor McGonagall had strictly warned him not to use his wand outside of school. That could get him expelled from Hogwarts. Harry had agreed eagerly. He had plenty to read, anyway, and that was what he most wanted to do now.
            Because he had figured it out.
            Transfiguration was powerful. Professor McGonagall had said so. Ollivander had said that Harry had a wand particularly suited for Transfiguration.
            Magic could do lots of things. And that meant magic should be able to heal his parents.
            Obviously, it couldn’t just make the Cruciatus Curse never to have happened. But Harry had thought of something he bet would work.
            It would take training. And time, and study. Professor McGonagall hadn’t actually got around to showing him her cat form; Harry didn’t blame her, with all the other things that had happened. But she had said it took her a long time to become that kind of witch.
            Harry would take the time. He would study everything. He would get to know things. He would Transfigure objects and animals until he was good at it. He would read all the books. He would make sure that other people didn’t know what he was doing, because they would probably try to stop him.
            And in the end, he would Transfigure his parents’ brains back to the way they should have been. They would be normal and healthy, and he would have them back again.
            Harry nodded in determination, and picked up the first book, and began to read.
*
Kain: Thanks! Yes, as you can see here, Neville is the BWL. Harry is going to fight with Draco, but for different reasons, and the Trio is not going to come into existence because Harry is utterly uninterested in making friends. He’ll make some almost despite himself, but not in different Houses.
Eren: Thanks so much!
lusting-for-snape: Thanks! I think Harry could have still turned out like in canon, but he chose to interpret events differently here.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Art of Self-Fashioning