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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Eight—Gryffindors and Slytherins

            “W-What did you want to talk to me about, Professor?”

            Minerva gave Neville as calming a smile as she could. She understood why the boy was nervous when she’d asked him to stay behind after Transfiguration. It was only a week since she had given him the Murtlap for his hand and encouraged his plan to put together a secret Defense group in spite of Umbridge. She had even promised to cover for them if she could. As far as she knew, Neville and his friends hadn’t chosen a meeting place yet, making the question moot.

            But now, she had a different plan to propose. “I got a letter from Harry the other day,” she whispered.

            Neville’s face transformed completely. “Is he okay? Where is he? Is he ever going to come back to Hogwarts?”

            Minerva had to smile again. She wondered for a moment if Augusta had ever seen this look on Neville’s face, and then dismissed the notion. She honestly had no idea how Augusta interacted with her grandson, except that it didn’t increase his confidence. But Neville had never complained about how she treated him.

            Until I confronted him, he didn’t complain about Umbridge, either.

            Minerva put the thought away to examine at a later date, and said, “He’s fine. He stayed for a short time with your grandmother—”

            “But she said he had no idea where he was!”

            “It seems that you have more of a co-conspirator in your grandmother than you knew, then.”

            Neville’s face was a study. Minerva told herself sternly not to forget that she wanted to ask him about Augusta later, or at least owl Augusta. The woman was so proud that she might give an honest answer without thinking about the implications.

            “As for whether he’s going to come back to Hogwarts, I think it’s unlikely, at least right now. But he’s staying with Regulus Black. And he wants to know if we’re interested in help to take down You-Know-Who.”

            Neville actually staggered back a step. Then he reached up and petted the cat who sat on his shoulder, as always, so close and devoted that Minerva forgot about him most of the time. He was part of Neville, like his wand.

            “Of course I am,” Neville whispered. “I should have known Harry would never abandon me.”

            Minerva nodded briskly. She had the feeling that she should encourage that perception as much as possible. The more faith Neville could have in his friends, the more he would have in himself, too. “He hasn’t. But he can’t do much from this distance, either. It’s up to us to come up with something. Do you want to help me plan here? Or do you want to come to a meeting with me, and Harry, and Black? It’s more of a risk,” she added, when she saw Neville starting to answer, one of the few times that she’d ever seen him act like an impulsive Gryffindor.

            “I know that,” said Neville, with a little irritated shiver of his skin like a horse shrugging off a fly. “I want to do it anyway.”

            “Good,” said Minerva, and sent him on his way before Umbridge could come around and overhear. Neville received so much post that no one would notice if Minerva sent him an owl when she had a firm meeting place and time.

            And now she felt as if she could start breathing real air for the first time since Umbridge had entered the school.

            I can finally feel like I’m doing something.

*

            Severus stepped slowly inside St. Mungo’s, and concealed his sneer at the weakness of the defensive spells. The hospital had spells in place that would detect blood, and broken bones, and certain curses, and almost nothing else. They didn’t think anyone would break in except perhaps to steal certain Potions ingredients, which were in their own, separately protected, room.

            It would be easy to set up an ambush here that would take Potter. Perhaps a bit harder to spread the rumors that would snare him in the first place, but that was why his Lord had given the job to Severus. He was the best.

            He could have left, then, since this had been only a scouting mission, and while many fewer Healers were here in the night than in the day, he stood a chance of rousing one. But he trusted in his Disillusionment Charm, and there was something he wanted to do.

            There was no separate wall of defensive spells guarding the Janus Thickey Ward, either.

            Severus paused with his hand on the door when he reached it, and listened. There were no snores from behind the door, or voices. Severus didn’t know if his enemies were asleep, but at least he could be sure no Healer was with them, either.

            He opened the door and glided inside.

            Lily and Potter were both awake, lying motionless in bed, their eyes pinned and staring at the ceiling. Severus hesitated when he saw that, but neither turned when they saw him. Perhaps, at that, their normal condition was not so different from sleep.

            Severus thought about approaching Potter, but there was no need. He had already come to terms with the fate that had fallen on his primary enemy, and his main regret at the moment was that Potter wasn’t sane to mourn over his son, fallen into the Dark.

            But his secondary enemy…

            Severus stood beside Lily’s bed. There was nothing left of the girl, the woman, he had known, he told himself. Certainly nothing. Her hands had never been still in the old days. She had never had a glazed or empty look in her eyes. That was the kind of look that belonged to her son, with his damnably obsessed mind. Even when she was bored, she had a low, sullen glimmer in her face, as if she was plotting the suffering of the person who had dared to bore her.

            Severus could not help contrasting her with the woman whose face had changed when she heard him say the word Mudblood.

            If she was a true friend, she would have forgiven that. She forgave Potter worse.

            Severus felt his hands clench, his breathing get fast and shallow. He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had shut the door, and looked swiftly over his shoulder. An open door would bring a Healer in, and some of them would be suspicious enough to call others.

            But the door was shut. Severus turned himself back with a shake. It wasn’t like him to forget that.

            Lily had always affected him more than anyone else.

            He thought about not speaking the words. In truth, he had spoken them to her in his mind long before, and saying them aloud would change nothing when she hadn’t the wit to understand them. And the instincts of the wary predator in the back of his mind said even that soft sound might bring a patrolling Healer.

            But in the end, he judged the risk safe enough. And the chances were strong that he would never see her again.

            “You could have saved me,” Severus whispered to her. “You could have stood by me. If I had had one anchor to prop me up, I wouldn’t have continued with the Dark Arts. They enchanted me, but never the way your eyes did, your face. If you had smiled at me once more, I wouldn’t have needed to replace the anchor. And the only anchor available to me at the time was the Dark Lord. My friends weren’t enough, they never were. I would have turned away from them at a word from you.”

            Lily lay there, breathing only, not blinking, alive only by courtesy.

            “Your son has no anchor,” Severus told her quietly. “Transfiguration, perhaps, but just as Dark Arts couldn’t be mine, Transfiguration won’t be his. One needs something to cling to. He has no friends, no leader, no mentor, no Lord.” For a moment, he let his hand touch her red hair.

            It felt like nothing.

            “I wouldn’t have needed a Lord,” he said again, “if you had stood by me.”

            I was wise not to come here, he thought then. He could recognize the same churning emotions rising in his chest that had risen on the night they spoke for the last time. Fear, anger, frustration. Why couldn’t she understand? How could he make her see?

            But Severus had spent the last fourteen years understanding that his frustration made no difference, and no one had the right to make him afraid. Even the Dark Lord would pay for that offense, in the end.

            That left the anger. And the anger was still great, that she hadn’t fled when she saw the Death Eaters who had come to end her. That she had let herself be tortured into madness and picked that over the life she could have had in the shelter he would have made for her.

            Severus stood and fed the anger on the sight of her still body until he knew he would need no sight to rouse it again. Then he turned away.

            There is still one pair of blank green eyes in the world that I can inspire to spark with something more than stillness.

*

            “Neville. What’s wrong.”

            That was Hermione, Neville thought, while he stroked Dapple’s tail with one hand and stared at his friends. When she was really stressed, she didn’t even make it into a question. It was a combination of statement and staring.

            Neville didn’t think he should tell her, though, or Ron, who was leaning on the back of her chair and also staring at him. Even though his friends were wonderful and supporting him against Umbridge, because they knew he was telling the truth, this was probably too dangerous for them. Ron and Hermione didn’t really know Harry, and they weren’t as close to Professor McGonagall as Neville was because of all his extra training. He shouldn’t tell them. He should let them stay here.

            “Neville.”

            But the problem was, the more Hermione spoke like that, the more Neville remembered her standing at his side during the Triwizard Tournament. And the more Ron stared at him like that, the more Neville remembered him coming back to him last year after his little bout of jealousy. And there was the chess game Ron had played to save them all and the Philosopher’s Stone, and the way Hermione had researched basilisks, and how both of them had tried to offer him help during the evenings when he came back exhausted from his extra training or shaken too deep for tears because the training had been with Snape, and how Hermione helped him with homework, and Ron tried to teach him strategy…

            They were at his side. Always. And if they found out that he’d kept something from them they would be hurt, and they would probably find a way to tag along and be in more danger from someone like Regulus Black. And if they didn’t find out until later, that would be bad.

            And if a miracle happened and Neville managed to keep his secret, it would fester, buried, between them. They always told each other everything, even if that was because Ron was really bad at keeping secrets in the first place and Hermione spoke before she thought and Neville was just bad at lying.

            “All right,” he said. “It’s like this. We’re going to do something to stop Umbridge, Professor McGonagall and I. And we’re going to do something to help stop V-Voldemort.” Ron still flinched like he’d been jabbed with a Blood Cactus’s spines at the name, but Hermione was getting better; she just turned pale. “It’s a meeting.”

            “Who with?” Hermione sounded breathless.

            “With Harry.”

            It took them a moment to recognize the first name. They’d never been as close to Harry as Neville was, never thought of him the same way Neville did—although they’d been entirely approving when they’d found out Harry had Transfigured Dapple for Neville. But then Hermione caught her breath and whispered, “He’s not dead?”

            Neville shook his head. “He was apparently staying with my Gran for a little while, actually.” And he was going to have to speak to Gran about that, and figure out what he thought. He didn’t know what he thought right now. He had too many other things to think about.

            “Oh.” Hermione seemed at a loss for words, which was so unlike her that Neville caught Ron’s eye and they both smiled. Then Hermione said, “Of course we want to go. We will go, Neville, you know that.”

            “‘Course we will, mate.” Ron reached out and nudged Neville’s shoulder with a closed fist. “We’re best friends. We’re Gryffindors. That’s what we do.”

            Neville closed his eyes and sighed. He thought he would have Professor McGonagall’s anger to face when he explained, and of all his professors, he hated it most when she was angry with him. It was so much like disappointment. And disappointment led him back to thoughts of Gran, and all the people who hated him right now for not being the shining hero they thought he should be, and not coming back with Cedric alive and Voldemort defeated the way he was supposed to.

            But as he felt Hermione grab his hand and Ron move around behind his chair, Neville knew saying whatever he had to say was worth it. And his friends would be there to help him explain, the way they were there to help him do everything else.

            The way Harry will be.

*

            “This is for your own good, Draco.”

            It was the only thing Father had said, the only thing Father ever said when he wanted Draco to do something he didn’t want to do. And Draco knew that struggling and protesting would get him nowhere. At best, it might make Father withhold that new experimental broom he’d planned to give Draco next year.

            At worst, it might make him do something…drastic.

            And really, there was nothing unpleasant about lying on the divan in the small sitting room while Mind-Healer Selywn examined him. She had a frown that made Draco want to curl up and hide, but she was gentle as she turned his head back and forth and stared into his eyes. Draco had been under Legilimency before, but this didn’t feel like that. Then again, he didn’t know enough about what Mind-Healers did to say what it was. He resolved to learn more about it if he didn’t have to spend several days in St. Mungo’s.

            Selwyn finally nodded and stood up, turning to Father with that same frown on her face, but lessened. “You were right, Mr. Malfoy. He is suffering from the effects of a deeply-placed Memory Charm.”

            Draco stared at the ceiling, since he knew what would happen if he flinched and looked at Father or the Mind-Healer. But his mind echoed with the emptiness of astonishment. When would someone have Obliviated him? Draco knew most of the secrets in Slytherin House, and he knew he hadn’t suddenly forgotten anything about anyone important.

            “I thought so,” said Father, and Draco hid the heretical thought that of course he had, or Selwyn wouldn’t have said that he’d called her in for that reason. Father didn’t know Legilimency, but Draco didn’t want to encourage him to learn. “So. How soon can you break it down?”

            “Without pain? It will take several hours and a sedative for your son. With pain? In five minutes.”

            “Five minutes, then.”

            Selwyn nodded and turned back to Draco, who barely had time to brace himself. Then her wand traced an arc in the air before his eyes, and created a pattern that looked like a rainbow doubled and turned back on itself.

            The rainbow flared bronze and began to rotate on its axis. Draco had watched it complete two full rotations before it turned and flew into his face.

            Draco screamed and reached up a hand to claw at his eyes. It was going into them, sinking into them, and it felt the way he imagined it would feel to have molten metal poured on them. Selwyn seized his hand and held it back, and when Draco held up the other one, she bound it to his side with some sort of charm.

            Draco didn’t know what charm, and he couldn’t know, because he couldn’t see. The pain occupied his whole world, pain of walls falling inside his head, pain of someone stabbing him again and again in the eye. He screamed, even knowing what Father would probably say to him after the Mind-Healer left, because going mad if he tried to keep silent scared him more.

            And then it ended so suddenly that Draco went limp. He felt hot, exhausted tears trickling down his cheeks. It surprised him slightly. He’d been so sure that he didn’t have eyes.

            “Ah,” said Selwyn, somewhere outside the pain that now dominated Draco’s comprehension. “Yes. Most interesting, Mr. Malfoy. It seems your son has an enemy whom he caught coming out of a workroom in the Hogwarts dungeons where the other young man was apparently practicing magical experiments. Since the other student wasn’t a Slytherin, he had no good excuse for being there. He threatened your son into keeping silence by telling him he would set rats on him to gnaw him to death.”

            Draco gasped in silent shock, ignoring the way, for the moment, the air felt molten in his throat. What? But I don’t remember—

            But he did. The memories of Potter were suddenly there, sharp as cracked glass.

            “Who would dare to do this to my son?” Father asked.

            Draco answered before the Mind-Healer could. “Potter,” he croaked, opening his eyes. “Harry Potter. He was doing—something, and he threatened me with his rat. And then he Obliviated me so I would forget.”

            Father was silent, but in the way his eyes sharpened, Draco read his own forgiveness for both screaming and being so weak as to get hit with a Memory Charm in the first place.

            “Potter. So.” Father’s hands worked over the top of his cane for a moment. “How interesting. We will…have to do something about this.”

*

            Albus leaned slowly back and closed his eyes. In this innermost, private sanctum, the library behind the Headmaster’s office, he could forget about the need to keep up appearances. He could have a Muggle reclining chair here, and no one would fuss at him about how he needed to act like a wizard.

            A soft trill sounded from his left, and Albus reached out a hand without looking. Fawkes landed on his arm a second later. Albus marveled, as always, at how light a phoenix was. He looked as if his talons should make him weigh as much as an owl, but instead, he was all air and fire.

            But the wonder was half-absent, and Albus opened his eyes with a weary breath and looked at the book in front of him. It was the greatest treasure of his office, passed down from Headmaster to Headmaster over the years. Nothing could remove it from the sanctum; even if someone discovered a way around the magic-soaked stones, it would disintegrate before it went anywhere else.

            It was a “book” only by courtesy. Infinitely expandable leather bindings bulged with pages torn from scrolls, copied over from journals and diaries, and scribbled with notes from other books. Everything a Headmaster found useful or interesting went here.

            And at last Albus had found a solution to the major mystery he had been researching, but it was not a happy solution.

            “Well, no one said it would be,” he told Fawkes, who ducked his head and rubbed his neck against Albus’s. Albus smiled at the old signal—older than the book, maybe, but then even he didn’t know how you would go about estimating a phoenix’s age—and stroked Fawkes’s chin.

            Fawkes closed his eyes in ecstasy. Although he often commented on the things Albus struggled and fought with and researched, he hadn’t chosen to do so this time; he just wanted to be petted.

            Albus looked around the room as he thought. The walls were stone, but red and gold, not grey. They were so impregnated with magic that the power constantly sought some harmless outlet, and turning the stones different colors was harmless enough. Albus knew the colors altered with the Headmaster, though. They would have glowed silver and green, dark and mysterious, when Phineas Nigellus Black reigned here, for example.

            All around the circular room were shelves, set flush with the walls and containing the originals of the silver “toys” in his outer office. These were the instruments that looked after the health of the portraits, told him if blood was spilled in the corridors, detected the presence of Dark Arts, and guarded any number of secret entrances from the Forbidden Forest. Here no one could spy, no one could see. And Albus was as safe here as he could be anywhere.

            But other people do not have this sanctuary.

            Albus’s smile faded slowly as he glanced back at the Headmaster’s book. He sighed and turned the frayed pages, reading aloud to Fawkes for lack of a better audience.

            “There is a condition called Lycaon’s Syndrome, rarely seen except among those human children who have spent the years of their childhood with centaurs or werewolves. They will have the eyes and bodies of beasts, their magic shaping them in accordance with their minds’ desires to be one with their caretakers. It is pure Wild without Will or Word or Wand, the most primal form of Transfiguration.

            “It is to be noted—and this is something that those studying Lycaon’s Syndrome have tried on occasion to exploit—that the Transfigurations created by sick children are permanent. They partake of the Wild, not a Will, which falters, or Words, which fall silent, or a Wand, which is not always waved. They feed moment to moment on that primal magic hovering around the child.

            “But Lycaon’s Syndrome kills, in the end. It always makes the children who suffer it into beasts, and they turn on those around them as a wild wolf turns on those who would try to make it into a dog. Great masters of Transfiguration they are, but Lycaon’s sufferers will always return to the wild, and the Wild. Their bodies and Transfigurations will dissolve at the end into pure magic, and return to the forest primeval.”

            Albus shook his head. Fawkes had gone still on his shoulder, a sign he was listening. Albus stroked his neck and murmured, “I never thought Mr. Potter might be suffering from that, since Minerva told me he had learned Transfiguration the usual way. But it makes sense of his Transfigured animals, and it makes sense why I could not immediately connect him with that eagle. What I sensed around that animal was not a distinct magical signature, but the Wild and the Wild only.”

            Albus sighed and shut the book. He had to admit that Potter was low on the list of his priorities right now, between trying to make sure that he nudged Neville gently in the right direction and readied the Order of the Phoenix to bring the war to Tom.

            But then, since Mr. Potter and his creations would both dissolve soon, it might not have to be. Only, if he saw him in battle, Albus would know he could expect no more mercy from Potter that he would from a wild beast.

            Kill him gently, kill him quickly. That would be the best and most painless way.

            “Oh, Lily,” he did whisper, letting his mind linger in contemplation of those who would be hurt. “Oh, James. If you could see what your son has become.”
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The Art of Self-Fashioning