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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-Seven—So Many Gifts
“I don’t know why people got me so many clothes.”
Dolores chuckled and let the fine cloth of the dress robes, and the ties, and the tunics, and the ordinary robes, and the gloves, and all the other garments that Harry’s allies and admirers had bought him, cascade through her fingers onto the bed. “It’s an easy way to give an expensive gift that looks useful.”
“They could have got me books.”
“I suspect they didn’t know which ones you already have in your library.” She and Sirius and Remus did, of course, which meant their gifts to Harry had all been books.
Harry sighed and set about looking through the clothes himself. “I’m not wearing this hideous thing,” he said, holding up a set of dress robes with lace on the cuffs and hem. “Or these. I know gloves can be resized, but I don’t think we can do anything about the color. It looks like a Crup was sick on it. And what about this? Do they think I’m a girl?”
Dolores obediently removed the clothes Harry had complained about, studying them. The parasol and the gloves might make a fine gift for someone else. As for the dress robes, resized, they would do for Sirius. He would think it was hilarious to wear them if he ever attended a ball or a session of the Wizengamot.
“You checked them all for curses, right?”
“No. I would have just placed a mass of unchecked material in the middle of your bed and waited for you to get your fingers nipped off.”
“Well, you tried it last year.”
“None of those were fatal curses, and it showed that you need to check for them at all times,” Dolores pointed out, and wrinkled her nose when she saw the mark at the bottom of the gloves. Not as fine as they looked, then. She would have to alter it to the mark of one of the more expensive shops before she tried to bribe anyone with them.
“Fine,” Harry muttered, and began waving the practice wand she had got him over the robes and other clothes, speaking quick detection charms. Dolores watched him critically. His muscle memory was nearly perfect, as it should be, after years of practice. But there was still a wobble when he moved his wrist a certain way…
“Stop.”
Harry knew to freeze in position when she used that tone. Dolores leaned in and closely studied his wrist. There was a bump there that she didn’t remember seeing before, but she was sure that it didn’t come from a curse she had missed embedded in the gifts or anything like that. It was something else.
“Did anything ever happen to this wrist?” she asked, and turned his hand back and forth.
“I think Dudley sprained it once. Or maybe broke it,” Harry said, voice soft and solemn as it always was when he talked about his Muggle cousin. “It’s not like we went to Healers to check.”
“Broken and improperly healed,” Dolores decided, after casting a few spells of her own. “Yes. It is causing a slight wobble with any motion you make with your wand to the right.”
“Well, it can’t be that bad, right? Or you would have figured it out before now. Someone would have noticed something.”
Dolores looked calmly into Harry’s eyes until he dropped both his gaze and his challenging tone. “Sorry, Miss Dolores.”
“We weren’t looking for it before,” Dolores said. “And you haven’t cast this many delicate spells all in a row.” They were usually practicing more impressive spells, for entirely understandable reasons. “We will correct it now.” She concentrated and spent a moment reciting the incantation to herself, since she hadn’t used it in years, then launched it at Harry’s wrist with a swish of her hand. “Episkey hodie.”
Harry gasped aloud and bent over as the bones rebroke and positioned themselves with a series of sharp snaps, then sealed back together. He stared at Dolores with eyes filmed over with tears. “That hurt.”
“Of course it did,” Dolores said, and put her wand away while she smiled gently at him. “Because I was healing it. And it was set improperly the first time.”
Harry rubbed his wrist, and said nothing. Dolores nodded at the pile of clothes on his bed. “Let’s see you cast the detection charms again.”
This time, Dolores could make out nothing wrong with the wand movements, and she smoothed down Harry’s hair as he moved in to gather up the ones he would keep. “Think of that when you notice imperfections in your casting and your politics. No price is too great to pay to perfect what you have.”
Harry gave her a long enough glance that Dolores thought he might really be holding a grudge over the bone-setting. But then he consented to lean against her briefly before he began to put the gifts away in his cupboards and on the bookshelves.
Dolores went down and ordered a celebratory dinner from the house-elves. Considering everything they had accomplished together in the last forty-eight hours, if was the least they deserved.
*
“I don’t really know what to do with this letter. I don’t think I know the people who sent it.”
Dolores looked up. Harry was turning the letter back and forth in his hands, and only the lesson he had received the day before in the importance of detection charms let Dolores keep calm when she saw that. “Who is it from?”
“Someone named Arthur Weasley. Something about how he knew my parents and he’s going to have a boy the same year as mine at Hogwarts, and he wants to know if we can meet and get to know each other.”
Dolores extended her hand and snapped her fingers authoritatively. Harry let her have the letter. Dolores thought he was rather relieved. He seemed to have no idea what to do.
Dolores scanned the letter. As Harry had said, it was short, and the information about Arthur’s name and family—and his son’s name, Ron—was all it contained. Dolores put the letter down next to her bowl and took a thoughtful spoon of her clear soup.
She was sure that Dumbledore was behind this reaching-out, and she wondered for a moment whether Dumbledore hoped to plant a spy in the house, or whether he only hoped to encourage Harry’s “Light” and “Gryffindor” tendencies. Probably the latter. It wasn’t as though Dolores would allow the Weasley parents to look around their house unhindered, and a ten-year-old boy would make a poor spy.
Unless he’s Harry. But Harry’s special.
“Do you think I should reply to them?” Harry was studying her, without looking like he was studying her. Dolores was impressed at how hard it was for her to tell. “I mean, aren’t these the sorts of people you want to keep me away from?”
“It’s one thing if you associate with them and reach out first. It’s another thing if they’re the ones who want to spend time with you.”
“But are people like the ones on the Wizengamot going to know the difference from the outside?”
“I can always correct them if they have questions about that. Or Ernest can.”
Harry spent another few minutes eating his porridge, stirring the chopped raspberries around in it, while he stared at the letter. Dolores had finished, and she spent her time watching him, instead. She thought she knew what decision he would make. She was more interested in the logic he would use to justify it.
“It could be a good thing if we have people thinking that I have friends influenced by Dumbledore,” Harry muttered. He looked up at her. “But you wouldn’t let me be friends with Neville Longbottom three years ago. What’s different about the Weasleys?”
“Now, you’re older and you have the training that I wanted you to have. A seven-year-old has no discretion, Harry. You could have been influenced in undesirable ways. Now I think you have enough sense of yourself and your desires not to have that happen to you. And I doubt this Weasley child will have received any training of any kind.”
Harry hesitated. “He might tell me that Muggles are wonderful, or that Muggleborns are never abused, or that Dumbledore is great.”
Dolores gave him a gentle smile. “And are you going to believe him, the way you might have when you were seven?”
“Don’t be stupid, Miss Dolores. I was never going to agree with him that Muggles are wonderful. Or harmless. I suppose he might say it that way.”
“The other things?”
Harry paused, then nodded a little. “I suppose I might have. Do you think Dumbledore would just show up unannounced if I accept this invitation, though?”
“That’s why you’re going to have this Ron Weasley over to visit at our house. If you’re asked, you can always say that you have more money and the duty of hospitality falls on you.”
Harry relaxed. “All right. That’s fair. Are you going to supervise us?”
“Do I need to?”
Harry’s smile spread slowly across his face, as if he was absorbing the impact of a promised treat for the first time. “No. You don’t. But can you make sure that you keep Sirius busy when Ron’s here? He said something once about knowing the Weasleys, and he might try to interfere.”
“Sirius is going to be too busy to breathe in the next few months,” Dolores promised, and watched in approval as Harry cleaned up the remnants of his breakfast. She couldn’t believe that she had once thought he might need more guidance than this, that he might be weak and incapable.
To be fair, Dumbledore thought the same thing.
*
“I don’t want to visit the Wizengamot.”
“I don’t know why. You have the political acumen. I know that. And you have the loyalty to Harry that he needs someone on the Wizengamot to have. And you’ll delight in making Dumbledore show his arse in front of everyone.”
“Now that I think about it, there’s a great prank I can play with a spell that cuts away someone’s robe and turns them around—”
Dolores rolled her eyes and tucked the resized robes with lace cuffs and hem that Harry had got for his birthday into Sirius’s arms. “You don’t have to take everything I say so literally. Put these on.”
Sirius scrambled the robes around in his arms until he could get a look at them. Then he began to snicker, very loudly, and promptly stripped off the robes he was wearing. Dolores shook her head and turned her back, glad his room had no mirror on the opposite wall. Along with being overly literal, Sirius was overly impulsive.
“This is going to cause the perfect stir,” Sirius said happily, and there was a sound of buttons snapping all at once, courtesy of a charm, that let Dolores know it was safe to turn around again. “I can’t wait to flounce up to some of the older pure-bloods and ask them where the lace on their robes is.”
“You must tell me what they say.” Dolores gave him a little push towards the door. “The Wizengamot session is supposed to start any minute. I’m sure that you’ll think up a plausible reason for going by the time you get there.”
“You’re not coming?” Sirius turned around and gave her a hurt look.
“I promised Harry that I wouldn’t actively supervise his meeting with Weasley. That hardly means I’m about to leave him alone in the house with one of Dumbledore’s minions, especially when you told me that Remus wasn’t feeling well enough today to keep up with active children.”
“I don’t think you could describe a ten-year-old child as a minion. His parents, maybe. Arthur and Molly are good people, but they were even more loyal to Dumbledore and his Order than I was.”
“How could they be?”
“They usually did what Dumbledore told them to do.” Sirius’s grin flashed hard enough to illuminate the room for a minute. “I didn’t.”
Dolores nodded a second later. “Then go to the Wizengamot and make sure that you aren’t interfering with the Weasley child’s visit, either. I am more than enough protection if he needs it.”
Sirius shrugged, which settled the seam of the resized robes more neatly in place. “You are. Merlin knows why or how it happened, but you are.” Then he winked and stepped past her, gently escorting her out of his room with a hand on her shoulder. “And I’ll make sure that I report on who seems outraged to see me, and who thinks it’s funny.”
“You do that,” Dolores said absently. She had heard the voices below begin, and of course the Weasley boy had not come through the fireplace by himself. There was an adult voice joining in down there.
“He’ll be all right, Dolores.”
She looked up, long enough to see Sirius leaning in towards her. He hesitated as if he was about to say something else and was thinking better of it, then nodded and shook her shoulder and her hand at the same time.
“He’ll always be all right,” he repeated, and then slid down the banister to the first floor, which contained the fireplace that Dolores and Harry usually took to the Ministry. It would, conveniently, keep him out of sight of anyone on the floor immediately below.
Dolores rolled her eyes, and walked with light steps a few doors down. When she opened that door, there was nothing in the room but a mirror. She touched her wand to the glass, only thinking the incantation instead of saying it—with the force of long habit—and the mirror lit softly with a flickering, candle-like image of the room downstairs where Harry was greeting the Weasley boy and his father.
Both Weasley had truly unfortunate ginger hair. Dolores had to smile. She knew the Malfoys and Weasleys had a long-standing feud for other reasons, but it seemed plausible that Lucius would have hated them anyway, for not having the sense to charm their hair some other color long ago.
“It’s nice to meet you, Harry. I’m Arthur Weasley, and this is my son, Ron.” The man ushered the boy forwards with a tug on his robe, and the boy ducked his head and muttered a few awed words, eyes fixed on Harry’s scar.
Dolores saw the way Harry’s smile turned a shade cooler. The Weasleys had just lost whatever chance they might have with him.
But his voice was perfectly polite as he said, “Yes, it’s nice to meet you, too, Mr. Weasley. Do you want to go outside and fly, Ron?”
Ron opened his mouth, but didn’t get to speak before Arthur said, as if casually, “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about before you do that, Harry. You see, I knew your parents, and I knew something about their politics. They were great friends of Albus Dumbledore. I think they would want you to—”
“You don’t really know what my parents would want me to do,” Harry cut in. His voice was soft, but not gentle. “They’re dead. You knew them well at one point. So you probably knew they wouldn’t have wanted me to grow up with abusive Muggles. I assume Headmaster Dumbledore knew the same thing. He dropped me off on my aunt’s doorstep anyway.”
Arthur was silent and staring. Ron only looked uncertainly back and forth between his father and Harry. His thoughts were probably more on brooms than on the political undercurrents he wouldn’t have been trained to understand, Dolores thought.
She felt a mild contempt for Arthur, but then, his son wasn’t famous and would never have to deal with politics until he was older or ran into Malfoys. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for not giving Ron that training.
“But you have your godfather living with you. He must have told you—”
“He’s told me lots of stories about my parents, sure. But he also agrees that Miss Dolores is the one who can raise me the best.”
Arthur continued to stare. Harry stared back. Dolores smiled. Harry had obviously seen there was no reason to play normal little boy with Arthur. He was too loyal to Dumbledore to be fooled.
After a few seconds, Arthur’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. “All right, boys. Have fun. I’ll be back to get you in two hours, Ron.” He turned and disappeared into the Floo without saying goodbye. Dolores raised her eyebrows. She thought the Malfoys might also disapprove of his manners.
“What was all that about?” Ron asked, looking at Harry cautiously.
Harry smiled at him. “Boring grown-up things. Parents are boring sometimes, aren’t they? And we really can fly. Let’s go!” He ran towards the pitch, and if he would never be a normal careless child, he was doing a good imitation of it.
Ron hesitated, then ran after him. Harry said something else as he passed out of the mirror’s range, and Ron laughed.
Dolores leaned back and ended the spell, smiling a little. Harry had chosen not to try and convert the adult Weasley, cutting his losses.
But he might succeed better with the son.
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The Daring Win