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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Twenty-Eight—Mischief Makers
Dolores raised her eyebrows. Her first impulse when the bedraggled-looking owl soared through the window had been to clean it of mites and disease, but then it had crash-landed in the middle of their table, nearly upsetting Remus’s bowl of cereal, and Harry had shaken his head at it.
“That must be Ron’s owl,” he muttered. “He told me it looked like that.”
Dolores had separated the letter from the owl’s leg and held it out to Harry, but Harry only looked at it for a second before he handed it back to Dolores. “It’s addressed to you, not me,” he explained, before turning back to his breakfast.
Dolores had read over the letter, and still thought she probably didn’t understand all of it. Arthur Weasley told her that his son had enjoyed the visit and he wanted to thank her and Harry for their hospitality.
Then he went on to say, It can’t be true, of course, that Harry was placed with abusive Muggles. We know all sorts of people who would gladly have taken him in, including people who worked closely with James and Lily during the war. Why did he tell Ron those stories about Muggles? Can you please write back to me? You, not Harry. While I know that you’re trying to encourage him to have his independence, I would rather see the issue from a perspective that is not a child’s.
“Tell me what you think of this, Harry,” Dolores said, and slid the letter across the table to him.
Harry read it, a muscle in his face twitching. Then he pushed himself back from the table and stalked over to lean on Sirius’s chair. Sirius hadn’t deigned to put in an appearance at breakfast yet.
“Harry?”
“He has no reason to doubt it,” Harry said quietly, staring out the window that looked into the water gardens. The Potter house-elves had wanted to build it, saying that there had been one in James’s childhood home, and Dolores had seen no reason to forbid them. “I didn’t tell Ron a lot, but I told him some. Why does Mr. Weasley think I’m making it up?”
Ah. Harry would have been sensitive to that insinuation, of course, after the times he’d told Muggles about the problems with his family and had them ignore him. Dolores stood and moved around the table to put her hand on Harry’s shoulder.
“I don’t think he disbelieves you, as such. I think he’s looking for a reason to decide the situation was exaggerated.”
“Why?”
“So he can stay allies with Dumbledore. He’ll likely be forced to break with him if it’s true that he placed you with abusive Muggles.”
Harry turned to stare at her. “Break with him? But it’s not his fault. He probably never even knew where I was. He probably believed Dumbledore when he said I was safe.”
“I know. But this is the power of your name, the kind of power I’ve been trying to tell you about.” Dolores calmly held his eyes. “Imagine you’re an adult, if you can. Imagine that you have a friend—Draco, let’s say. Draco dies, and his child is placed somewhere. An ally tells you that child is safe. Years later, you find out that the opposite is true, that the child is abused and unloved. Would you still remain allies with the man or woman who lied to you?”
Harry’s hand curled like a claw against Sirius’s chair. “No,” he whispered.
“So, you see.” Dolores touched his hair. “We can’t always take you as an example for everyone.” Harry nodded; she had taught him that. “Most people don’t have your political impact on things. But I think we can take you as an example for this. Weasley doesn’t want to believe that Dumbledore would do something so horrible. But he’ll have to, unless you deny it.”
Harry’s mouth worked for a second. Then he said, “Of course I’m not going to deny it.”
“Good. I’ll need to be the one to write back to him, because he addressed it to me, and that’s courtesy. But you can watch over my shoulder and have me write down anything that you particularly want to say.”
Harry stood staring at her for so long Dolores wondered if she had food on her face. Then he said, “I know you tell me that you’re not a good person.”
“I’m not,” Dolores said smoothly. Just like teaching Harry to revere his mother and not her as his mother, that was only self-protection, the truth put out there so someone accusing her of it someday couldn’t alienate Harry.
“But you’re—” Harry flailed for words. “You’re the only one who respects me as much as you do. Who lets me have as many choices as you do.”
Dolores blinked, honestly surprised. “Sirius doesn’t?”
“He asks me where I want to go to eat or what kinds of presents I want, but. Not things like this.”
Dolores found herself nodding. Now that Sirius was going to the Wizengamot sessions, maybe he would have more important things to talk with Harry about, but of course Harry wouldn’t care as much about presents and restaurants as he would about power and choices.
Not when I have had the teaching of him.
“Let me finish my breakfast, and then we’ll write to the Weasleys together, you and I.”
*
“I have a message for you, Dolores.”
Sirius’s eyes and face contained such a strange mixture of emotions that Dolores had no idea what he was about to tell her. She palmed her wand, just in case, as she moved away from the ladder to the owlery.
“Did you insult Augusta Longbottom at some point?”
“Early on in Harry’s custody,” Dolores said calmly. “I wanted to distance him from people who had worked with Dumbledore—before I found out that some of them could be reasonable, of course.” She nodded at Sirius.
“Well, she came up to me in the Wizengamot today and demanded to know if your ‘accusations’ against Dumbledore were true. Of course I told her they were, and assured her that Dumbledore made it worse by bringing Snape along to his party.” Sirius fell silent and rapped his fingers against the ladder’s rungs.
“And?” Dolores asked with exaggerated patience.
“She said she was no fan of yours, but if it was true that Dumbledore had treated Harry that badly, he’d obviously lost control of his faculties, and she couldn’t continue to follow him any longer.”
Dolores looked down at the floor to hide her smile. Then she looked up again. “And of course you told Madam Longbottom that it was true.”
“I did. She didn’t seem pleased about the knowledge that Snape could use Legilimency, either. Apparently the Board of Governors sends out some kind of newsletter on a regular basis.” Sirius rolled his eyes. “And of course Augusta is the kind of person who would read that. That information about Snape should have been mentioned in the newsletter when he was hired. It wasn’t, she said.”
Dolores thought she would have liked to be able to purr at that news. “Then Dumbledore could find himself in more legal trouble, if he was supposed to inform the Board of Governors when he hired Snape.”
Sirius nodded. “Do you really think Snivellus is going to testify against Albus, though?”
“Lose the insulting nickname, Sirius, if he does become an ally. And he’s already distanced himself from him; we saw that at the party. If Dumbledore sacks him, he might have a layer of legal deniability, but it’s going to be fragile. How he tolerated a Legilimens working for him for ten years without reporting it to the Board of Governors…”
Sirius nodded. Then he started fidgeting with the rung of the ladder again.
“Speak up.”
“W-what?”
“What else happened at the Wizengamot? It must be something more than Madam Longbottom approaching you, or you wouldn’t be dancing like this?”
“I am not dancing,” Sirius said, looking disgusted, but he took his hand away from the ladder. “I don’t understand how Dumbledore could have messed up this badly. He put Harry with the Muggles. Why did he do that? Didn’t he know that people wouldn’t like it?”
Dolores shrugged. “He probably thought that no one would realize where Harry was before Hogwarts. Remember that people would ask him what had happened to Harry, and he would only smile and shrug and say that he was being cared for by a loving family? That wasn’t a clue on which to search.”
“And if Harry had stayed with the Dursleys…what do you think would have happened then?”
He would have come to Hogwarts dependent on Dumbledore. Wide-eyed and trembling with awe. And utterly ignorant of politics and the power of his name. I can’t imagine Dumbledore sharing what power he has.
“He would have been essentially a Muggleborn. But a Muggleborn with someone else acting on his name, and Dumbledore making all the allies.”
“Oh.” Sirius barely exhaled the word. He stood frowning down at his hands, and then he looked back up and said, “I need to think. Don’t hold dinner for me.” He turned and strode towards the door down the corridor that would take him to an outside staircase Sirius had modified into a ramp.
Dolores looked at his back with raised eyebrows. She still thought something else had happened at the Wizengamot, but it was all too obvious that she wouldn’t be able to make Sirius talk about it. In the end, she shrugged and went to conduct Harry’s lesson in modern politics for the day.
*
The noise of the Floo opening was enough to shake Dolores out of a sound sleep. No Floo in the house should have been able to open. She scooped her wand up from the bedside table and tapped it against a small mirror on a metal stand near the bed.
The mirror rippled, wavered, and became the image of the Floo entrance, locked on the fireplace. Dolores raised her eyebrows when no one came through. Were they trying to spy? Of course, they shouldn’t have been able to do even that, with all the entrances into the house locked tight.
Then a hoarse voice spoke from the flames. “Dolores Umbridge?”
Dolores was on her feet and moving immediately, pausing only to fling a casual robe over her shoulders. She went down the stairs fast, listening intently. No, Harry was asleep, and Sirius hadn’t come back, and Remus was snoring behind his door. Dolores took the opportunity to cast a Sleeping Charm on him. It might not be disastrous if Harry interfered, but the others could be a problem.
When she reached the fireplace, the green glow of the flames had dimmed to a small emerald spark swimming in the normal colors. Dolores sat down on a cushion in front of the hearth. “Professor Snape?”
The flames snapped upright again, and the green dot turned to an image of the professor’s face. He inclined his head, eyes locked on her. “Yes. Madam Umbridge, I have learned something I think you should hear.”
Dolores nodded, unsurprised. “What is your price?”
“Enough founding Galleons to start a business outside Hogwarts. I know the Potter fortune can provide that easily enough. And your hold on Black’s and the werewolf’s leashes enough that they will not interfere with me.”
“What were—”
And then Dolores snapped her mouth shut and thought of all the times that she had seen Remus sick after the full moon and the times that Harry had come to her on the nights when it was shining and talked about having nightmares, and her mouth clamped shut.
Harry knew, and he had helped in distracting her.
“Madam Umbridge.”
Dolores looked up. She nodded. “That werewolf, of course. You have my word. I’ve already talked to Sirius about it. If I have to, I’ll curse him to keep his mouth shut around you.”
Snape’s head tilted back a little. “The only spells that will do that without taking the mouth away permanently are Dark.”
“I hardly think that you’re about to tattle on me.”
“No,” Snape conceded. “I will want to have a business near Diagon Alley, although not in the alley itself. I am aware that Black might challenge you for custody and win if you wanted to spend that much money on one of his enemies.”
Dolores didn’t see fit to tell him that Sirius had said she was the best guardian for Harry. The understanding she had with Sirius might be damaged beyond repair by now. “How large a shop?”
They dickered over dimensions for a time, and what exactly she would do to keep Sirius and Remus under control, until Snape nodded and said, “That should be enough for now. Dumbledore is planning to sacrifice me to the Board of Governors, and sack me. But before he does that, he will have to destroy documents that made it clear he hired me knowing I was a Legilimens. And he will have to Obliviate me. I can bring you both the papers and the memories.”
“How sure are you that he plans to Memory Charm you? Wouldn’t the documentation be enough?”
“He is cautious,” said Snape, and a small smile ran like a slash across his lips. “I know and understand him well, and that is why I have survived as long as I have. He might think that, were it my word against his, few people would believe me.” Snape looked her in the eye. “But you are a viable contesting force against him now. If you joined with me and my memory was left intact…”
Dolores nodded in recognition of both the compliment and the wariness. “Very well. Then I can promise you what you have asked for. But you will need to bring the documents with you.”
Her blood was singing inside her as she watched Snape hold up a sheaf of papers. “I have them,” he said. “I brought them with me on the chance that you would accept the bargain. Dumbledore will probably have sensed their absence by now.”
“Do you have anything else that you need to gather up?”
“I have few enough personal effects.”
“Then come through,” Dolores said, and waved her wand to end the charm that prevented—that should have prevented—anyone from coming through from Hogwarts. As she stepped out of the way and watched him stripping soot off his robes, she added, “How did you manage to force the Floo open in the first place?”
“A spell of my own creation.” Snape looked around the room in an evaluating sort of way. “I will share the knowledge with you if you include some Potions ingredients with the opening of the shop.”
“It should not be difficult.” Dolores reached out a hand, and Snape laid the papers in it. Looking through them, Dolores nodded. There was a contract that specifically mentioned Snape’s Legilimency skills, a letter from Dumbledore that explained what he wanted Snape to do as a spy on the Dark Lord—which involved the Mind Arts—and several notes that made a reference to “seeing what’s on his mind” about some political enemy of Dumbledore’s in the Ministry.
Dolores folded up the papers and let herself smile. She could feel the joy racing and leaping through her. She had finally pinned Dumbledore in a position he couldn’t escape from, and he couldn’t rely on public perception of him as a hero and Snape as a former Death Eater, either. She had won.
“You are pleased, then.”
“Yes.” Dolores considered Snape. “It might be as well for you to stay out of Sirius’s sight, at first. He has something else on his mind, and I’ll need time to reconcile him to your presence.”
Snape nodded. “I intended to return to my own home anyway.”
“Does Dumbledore know where it is?”
Snape grimaced, conceding the point. “There is enough room in this house not to inconvenience me?”
“There is.”
Dolores led him to a room on the third floor, near the owlery, that the house-elves dusted and polished, but with old-fashioned furniture no one used. Snape nodded, stepped inside, and shut the door behind himself.
Dolores stood contemplating the future for a moment, and the spells that she would use to lock up the documents in a vault where no one but she knew where they were. Or, no, perhaps she would ask the house-elves to keep an eye on them, and make sure they knew to answer to no one but her.
Then a door closed downstairs, and Dolores half-closed her eyes and turned to confront Sirius.
She wanted to know how long she had been letting a werewolf live in the same house as Harry.
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The Daring Win