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Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24376 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Eight—Dragged
Harry finds himself dragged into Snape’s office first thing—of course. Snape slams the locking spells on the door and then whirls around, his nostrils flaring out so hard that Harry takes a step back.
But he reminds himself that he went outside to face a man lots of people thought was a crazed murderer. He can do this. He just puts his head up and waits.
From the way Snape is staring at him, eyes bloodshot and hands clenched, he thinks Harry looks like a Gryffindor. But that doesn’t matter at the moment. All that matters is if Snape is going to listen to him, or if he’s going to try to keep Harry from seeing Black again.
Harry really wants to see Black again. And it’s hard to remember the last time he wanted something so strongly, instead of just putting up with the things other people were telling him and doing to him.
“You are an idiot.”
Harry nearly flinches, but he thinks of all the time the Dursleys called him a “freak” and how he didn’t flinch from that, and he just says, “I did what I thought was right. Sir.” He decides he needs to add that because otherwise they might never find his body.
“You are insane.”
“Why, because I went outside and met a dog that I knew was acting strangely, and then he turned out not to be a Death Eater? I already suspected he wasn’t, sir. I saw the way he sat and looked at me one day, and he could have attacked because—”
Snape abruptly steps across the room and stands in front of him, bending down until his hooked nose almost touches Harry’s. Harry looks at the nose instead of his eyes. If he looks at Snape’s eyes, then he might start feeling shame.
He doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t want to give up feeling happy and let Snape drag him back to the Slytherin common room. Staying there might keep Harry safe, but it’ll also cage him and drain his spirit.
Maybe I could say that to him?
But Harry rejects the notion out of hand. Snape won’t listen to him. Snape doesn’t care about anything except his physical safety. Harry only waits, with his hand resting on the side of his robe near where he could draw his wand if he was facing almost anyone but Snape.
“You suspected he was here,” Snape breathes. His voice is so faint that Harry can’t really tell what emotion’s in it. “You knew of his Animagus form—”
“Not right away,” Harry says, because he’s Slytherin enough to realize that telling Snape about his visits to Remus is not the thing to do right now. “But I was able to figure it out. I mean, Sirius Black, a black dog? It was kind of obvious.”
Snape turns slowly away. He says in a flat voice, the kind of thing he uses when he’s talking to Crabbe and Goyle in Potions, “So you don’t care about your own life. I have striven to show you that you matter. It seems I did not do a good enough job.”
Harry blinks, and blinks again. “Huh?”
Snape snaps back around to face him, his face distorted with pain. “What else is the reason that you run away from your minders and go to confront a man who you do not know for certain wanted to spare you? You do not value yourself as you should. You believe that you should—take risks, die, I do not know what. And why did you not tell me that you suspected Black was an Animagus?”
Not suspected, knew, Harry almost wants to say, but he’s not stupid enough for that. He folds his arms and says, “I do so value myself.”
“Not enough.”
“Not enough, fine!” Harry snaps, and his voice vibrates in odd ways, and a crack makes its way through the glass of a flask on the shelf with something floating in it. Snape stares at him with wide eyes. At least he’s not talking nonsense anymore. “But I’m going numb surrounded by people all the time! And not able to be what I want!”
“What—”
“Where I want!” Harry can’t stop the words from bursting out of his mouth, or the part of his brain that apparently believes Snape must know and understand everything. “I want to go back to Gryffindor Tower! That’s my home! Not in the dungeons with Slytherins who stare at me half the time and whisper behind their hands and sneer when they think I’m not looking!”
Snape spends some more time studying him the way he might an expensive Potions ingredient. Harry supposes he should be grateful that it’s the way he might look at an expensive ingredient. “I had thought that the Slytherins were leaving you more alone since the incident with Flint,” he says at last, his eyes shrewd and speculative.
Harry snorts in despair. “They’re not leaving me alone! They follow me everywhere—”
“But the ones following you everywhere and the ones sneering behind their hands are not the same.”
Harry grits his teeth and refuses to stab Snape with his wand, even though he really wants to. “No, they aren’t. Sir.”
“You feel stifled. And you don’t feel as if you have a home to go to.”
Harry begins to laugh, because he can’t help himself. “No, of course I don’t! Slytherin isn’t home! And you don’t want me to go back to Tarquinius’s house, and neither does Dumbledore, and Dumbledore wants me to go back and live with my cousin and I’m never going to do that, and it’s not safe enough for me to stay with the Weasleys, and—and if Black clears himself, then at least he’s my godfather and he can do something to make sure I have a home!”
There’s silence in the room when Harry finishes. Harry’s panting and avoids Snape’s eyes as best as he can. He can already feel the flush creeping up his cheeks. He shouldn’t have said all that. He shouldn’t have said anything at all. What is he, stupid?
Snape’s going to think I am.
But standing there and feeling sorry for himself isn’t going to accomplish anything. Harry turns back around to face his fate, which is probably going to be enough detentions to last the rest of his third year.
*
That is what the boy was hiding. That is why he looks on the verge of a panic attack.
Severus keeps himself outwardly calm. He studies Harry instead, and sees him go from red to pale. Severus finally sighs and waves his wand to pull a chair from behind the desk so that he can sit down in it. He holds out a hand to Harry. Harry blinks at it as if he has no idea what fingers are.
“Sit,” Severus finally snaps.
“Where, sir?”
Oh, for—Then again, it makes sense that Harry won’t know advanced Transfiguration yet. Severus hardly covered that in their summer lessons. He waves his wand in a complicated spiral pattern, and one of the ancient, rusted cauldrons that he keeps to scare children with the permanence of potions stains more than anything else springs forwards and transforms into a stool. Harry swallows and takes his seat.
“I did not realize you were so acutely unhappy,” Severus tells him softly.
“I am.”
Severus leans slowly back. He can change some things, but not all of them. There is still the fact that Harry was ignoring his own safety, and didn’t tell anyone about the dog when he first saw it, and knew Black was an Animagus when Severus thinks that even Albus might be ignorant of that particular fact.
Of course, once he wreathes his mind around the possibilities, the obvious conclusion stands out to him. “Lupin told you of Black’s Animagus form,” he says, and tries not to snarl at the way the boy flinches.
Harry says nothing, simply watching him, with his head a little bowed to make it harder to look him in the eye. And he looks small enough that Severus doesn’t relish the idea of shaking him.
Although it’s what he deserves.
“I specifically told you that you were also forbidden to visit Lupin.”
“For stupid reasons. As long as I stay away from him on the full moon, it’s not like I’ll turn into a werewolf. And I know that you’re brewing the Wolfsbane for him. Why does it matter if I go visit him?”
Severus says nothing, instead trying to calculate how Harry could have eluded his minders for long enough to see the wolf. The Cloak made it possible for him to leave the school, along with his roommates being asleep. But it should have been impossible for him to be absent long enough during the day.
That is something he will have to take up with Mr. Nott and Mr. Zabini when they are awake again. For now, he continues to stare passively at Harry, and lets the silence wear on, making the boy acutely uncomfortable.
But not uncomfortable enough to speak, it seems. Harry slides his hands between his knees and squeezes them shut on his wrists. He grimaces. He keeps silent.
Severus finally says, trying not to spit the words, “I wanted to keep you safe.”
“And you kept me unhappy, instead.” Harry is staring at the far wall now. He seems to think that will make Severus give up on his interrogation.
Severus hisses and stands, moving over to the side so that Harry will have no choice but to meet his eyes. “I did what I had to do. You do not understand how dangerous Death Eaters and werewolves can be—”
Harry makes a sound somewhere between a snort and a snarl, and yanks his sleeve up. Severus finds himself looking at a scar, a long white slash that surrounds a puncture wound. He frowns at Harry, wondering if this is some wound his relatives gave him.
“This is from the basilisk,” Harry says. “I don’t have any scars from when I faced Voldemort in the back of Quirrell’s head, but that’s pure luck. Don’t tell me that I haven’t faced danger, sir.”
Severus forces himself to take a mental step back. He’s handling this badly right now, and there’s too much chance that Harry will simply fade away from him if he doesn’t calm himself. He inclines his head and says, “Yes. You have faced danger. And it may be that a werewolf is small next to a basilisk.”
Harry lets his sleeve fall down over the scar again. His eyes are narrow. Severus can feel the suspicion radiating off him like heat.
“It doesn’t mean that I want to see you put in more danger,” Severus continues, soft, intense. “It doesn’t mean that being bitten by a werewolf and suffering for the rest of your life is something you should desire or seek out.”
“You still haven’t answered my argument about how I’m in danger as long as I stay away from Remus during the full moon and he stays on Wolfsbane. Sir.”
This child. Except that Severus knows the cynical spirit peering at him through those green eyes doesn’t really belong to a child. He acknowledges the many, many mistakes he’s made and tries to go on not to make anymore.
“Perhaps I have exaggerated the danger. I faced a transformed Remus Lupin myself, and since then, I have been—careful around werewolves.”
“Was that one of the stories about them bullying you that Remus didn’t tell me?”
Harry immediately turns the color of a wound inflicted by a Cutting Curse. Severus breathes through the immediate pain and panic in his chest. Harry has not blabbed those stories to anyone, despite the weeks he must have spent hearing them from the wolf. No students are taunting Severus. No Gryffindors are covering up sniggers and then pretending to look sympathetic.
“Then you know what your father, Black, and Lupin did.” Memory forces Severus to add, “And Pettigrew, although he was another victim of Black’s instability—”
“But he’s not! I mean, he’s alive. He was a rat Animagus. He is, I mean. He’s hiding out as Ron’s pet rat. That’s what Black told me. That’s why he’s here. He wants to kill Pettigrew. I think I convinced him to turn him in to the Ministry instead so his innocence wouldn’t be questioned, but—”
“It is the sort of lie Black would come up with,” Severus says stiffly, although he feels a bolt of shock tear through him, and some part of him instinctively believes it. He shakes his head and goes on. “I am willing to test Weasley’s rat and see if it is an Animagus. But you will not be involved in the testing. Or any future meeting with Black.”
Harry looks at him in a way that makes Severus sure he will sneak out of his bed as soon as Severus’s back is turned. Severus strides towards him, makes himself modulate his stride in mid-step, and comes down rather oddly on his left foot, almost turning his ankle.
Harry watches him, and blinks. Severus ignores that to kneel in front of him and speak as softly and intensely as he ever did during the summer.
“You have given me a story to investigate. Thank you. Now. You have done enough. You have proven that you do better with some measure of freedom, and I will instruct your fellow Slytherins to spend time with you one-on-one when they can and allow you outside more often. But you cannot be involved in this.”
Harry’s nostrils flare stubbornly.
A harsh note creeps into Severus’s voice. “I was thinking of not assigning detentions, Mr. Potter. Do I need to reverse that decision?”
“This affects me more than anyone else! Black can adopt me if he’s right and Pettigrew is still alive—”
“And if Pettigrew is taken to the Ministry, and if Black’s name is cleared, and if Dumbledore allows you to go with him for the summer,” Severus says sharply. He hasn’t forgotten that Tarquinius only managed to get Harry in his house in the first place by essentially kidnapping him. “Listen to me. You have made a contribution. You have done enough. Even if Black is right, there is still a Death Eater in this school, one who might panic and attempt to hurt you the instant he discovers he’s been found out. We know his master is still alive. Are you going to fight me on this?”
“It’s just—you’re talking to me the way you would a child.”
“You are—”
“No, I’m not!” Harry stands up to shout at him. “No, I’m not! I’ve fought things and survived things and come back from things that adult wizards couldn’t fight! Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot!”
Severus waits until his own impulse to strike has subsided. Sometimes having reflexes honed by war is a bad thing, however useful it can be in the middle of Potions class. He inclines his head and says calmly, “I would never call you an idiot.”
“Just a child, right?”
Severus holds Harry’s eyes this time. He thinks it might be because of his milder displeasure in spite of it, but Harry turns an incredibly bright red and lets his eyes drop. “You are making assumptions,” Severus says quietly. “Such things are dangerous. Yes, your chronological age entitles you to protection and consideration that an adult might not have. And that means I will overlook your outburst.”
“Then—”
“But you will still have detention for a week, Mr. Potter. All with me. You are going to be writing lines. Lines about honoring the worth of your own life and the sacrifice that your parents made to protect you.” It’s surprisingly easy to speak about James Potter when casting him in the mode of someone who sacrificed his life for Harry.
Harry’s horrified gasp is everything he’s hoped for. Severus arches an eyebrow. “You are a child in this much: you have not learned a lesson from this. You still think that you should escape without punishment.”
“But you could just make me scrub cauldrons!”
“How would that address the problem?” Severus asks softly, back in control. “You would only tire out your hands and arms and think of your own good position self-righteously all the time you were scrubbing. Much better, I believe, to have you think about why I am upset that you sneaked out at night.”
“I was sure he wasn’t a Death Eater!”
“Why didn’t you come and tell me?”
“I didn’t think you would be any fairer about him than you were being about Remus!”
Severus pauses. There is the heart of the problem, then, and not just that Severus has been keeping him under too close a watch. He speaks quietly. “You thought that Slytherins were being unfair about Gryffindors, and Gryffindors were being unfair about Slytherins. That is it? You felt that you belonged nowhere?”
The hectic color surges up in Harry’s cheeks as if a firework has gone off underneath his skin. But he looks down, and finally nods.
Severus grimaces. He would do so much to avoid this, including leaving Hogwarts. But the oath he swore to protect Lily’s son binds him still.
And so, too, does the promise he made to himself during the summer: to see Harry happy if possible, and settled for the future with someone other than Tarquinius.
“I will do what I can to see that Pettigrew is captured, and Black’s innocence proclaimed,” he says, and watches the way Harry’s head snaps up, the way his eyes lock on Severus with reluctant hope glowing in the backs of them. He doesn’t want to trust, not really. But Severus nods encouragingly in response to the glow.
“But first, I will escort you back to the Slytherin common room, and give you a sleeping potion.”
“You can trust me to stay put without that.”
Severus sighs and reveals another consequence of this small adventure of Harry’s. “Perhaps, but I no longer do trust that you will do what you say, when you lied from the beginning. We can begin to rebuild this trust when this—matter is settled.”
Harry opens his mouth to argue, then subsides into silence when he sees the meaningful way Severus’s eyes are fixed on him. He nods grudgingly. Severus turns to gather up a mild sleeping draught from his stores.
He almost misses the words, then almost thinks them a product of his imagination, but when he plays them back in a Pensieve later, they are really there.
“Thank you, sir.”
*
Kain: Thank you! i think, to some extent, being in Slytherin has calmed Harry's hot temper, because he knows he'll get detention for charging off without thinking.
Draco will eventually be Harry's friend, but it's going to take considerably longer than it has so far- partially because Draco thinks the way you describe.
Sirius is chidish and immature, I think, but in this univesre he might have a chance to grow the way he never did in canon.
And yes, I don't really undesrtand how Sirius's imprisonment worked, either. At the very least, I would have thought they'd use Veritaserum on him and not worry much about the legal rights.
SickPuppy: Thank you!
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