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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-Nine—Her Stance
Dolores walked down the stairs to see Sirius climbing towards her. He grinned, but he wasn’t as oblivious as he liked to pretend, and that expression faded before he stopped on the step below her.
“What happened?”
“I want to know what precautions you took so that Lupin wouldn’t bite anyone when he was in his werewolf form.”
Sirius froze, his hands fluttering for a moment on the banisters as if he was looking for something to pick up and throw at her. Dolores only stood there, her arms folded and her wand resting in her hand. If Sirius tried to use a Memory Charm on her, then he was going to find out how prepared she was.
“It’s not—” Sirius licked the back of his teeth. “It’s different than you’re thinking,” he began, in a weak, bumbling voice that made the heat in Dolores’s chest flare terribly.
“So you took no precautions. You let Harry into the secret but never told him what a werewolf running around the house at night could really mean for him.” Dolores heard her voice shaking. She didn’t care. Not when she could imagine all too clearly what would happen if Lupin had caught Harry. “I thought you—were different from that, Sirius.”
“No!” Sirius practically barked, and lunged up to grip her arm. Dolores whipped to the side and trained her wand on him. Sirius stopped at once, with his hand in the air, but his voice was stronger than before. “No, Remus had Wolfsbane every month! And I was with him in my Animagus form!”
“Why is that supposed to reassure me.”
Sirius seemed to notice the lack of a question mark, and winced. “Look, can we go—I don’t know, downstairs or something? I don’t want Harry to come out and find us arguing here.”
Dolores nodded curtly. She would prefer to deal with Harry and what he had known in her own way. But she chose a room down the corridor from Lupin rather than below him. She would know the instant he came outside.
Sirius began pacing back and forth the minute she shut the door. “We didn’t really want to keep it from you,” he said earnestly. “It’s just that I knew what kind of reputation you had in the Ministry.”
“What kind of reputation did I have?”
Sirius turned and pointed at her. “One that said you would react exactly the way you’re reacting now! You immediately think that Remus did something wrong! That he’s going to hurt people just because he’s a werewolf! That’s not true. He’s lived here three years and he’s never hurt anyone.”
“Perhaps if you told me about it—”
“I know you wouldn’t have let Remus be Harry’s tutor or let him stay in the house.” Sirius was still glaring at her. “And Remus wanted that relationship with Harry! He wanted to get to know James and Lily’s son.”
“I am so glad to know that Lupin’s wishes matter more to you than Harry’s safety. Since I understand that Lupin did not confine himself to his room during the nights of the full moon.”
Sirius flinched for a second, but then he lifted his head. “No. We know exactly when the moon will rise. We go outside, and I give him his Wolfsbane, and then he transforms and I transform with him. He doesn’t attack me, you know. I think it’s because he’s so familiar with me, and another animal is less tempting than a human anyway.”
“I would like you to think about what you just said.”
“But we go miles away from everybody! Remus can run around instead of staying in one room. That’s what he did before he got this job and he could afford the Wolfsbane. He tore himself up. You ought to see the scars he has, it’s awful.”
That answered an old question Dolores had had regarding some of Lupin’s scars, but she would not have paid this price for the revelation. Barely keeping from grinding her teeth, she asked, “And now that he can afford it?”
“Huh?”
“Why does he have to leave the room and run around now that he can afford the Wolfsbane?” Dolores twirled her wand between her fingers and stepped closer to Sirius with a smile, noticing that he was avoiding her eyes. “Let me see if I can answer, since you seem so reluctant. Nothing is preventing him from staying in that room, but you think it’s more fun to run around outside. And it was fun to keep the secret from me. And it was fun to bark like an idiot and dare a werewolf to chase you.”
Sirius muttered something.
“What?” Dolores cupped her hand around her ear with exaggerated motions. “I don’t think I heard that justification.”
“I don’t bark like an idiot,” Sirius muttered, louder.
Dolores bared her teeth in a grin that she hoped would strike Sirius as more frightening than a werewolf’s. “So everything is fine, right, as long as no one finds out? There’s no chance that Lupin would forget his Wolfsbane. Or you might be seen by Muggles. Or that you might miscalculate the time of moonrise and he’d transform earlier. Or that Harry might be encouraged by your example to lie to me about other things…”
By Sirius’s expression, Dolores knew that last had already happened. She nodded shortly. “Explain.”
“I just—I mean, I’ve been teaching him a few spells that you probably wouldn’t approve of,” Sirius muttered, rubbing his forehead and looking away from her. “Some of the spells that James and I used to play pranks at Hogwarts. And I’ve got him on the path to become an Animagus. Just the first steps, the ones that a child can do.”
“Do you know what the Wolfsbane potion originated as?”
Sirius blinked at her. “No. What are you talking about?”
Dolores pointed her wand at his feet. “It came about by accident. The researcher who first brewed it was attempting to make a potion to heal students stuck halfway through their Animagus transformation. A common accident, one that can cripple someone for life, and one that you seem to have avoided by pure luck.” Her temper broke then. “He is ten years old, Sirius Black!”
Sirius only shook his head, his eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with it? Of course I wasn’t going to just teach anybody this, but the pup is the son and godson of Marauders! Of course he’ll be naturally talented in Transfiguration!”
Dolores shuddered at the thought of what Harry’s life would have been like if Sirius had never chased Pettigrew, or if he’d been proven innocent earlier and able to go get Harry from the Dursleys. He probably would have killed Harry in some “fun” accident before he was eight. Or got him devoured by a werewolf.
“You are going to explain to Harry that you won’t be continuing his Animagus training until you can get help from someone who’s actually a professor,” she said. “Minerva McGonagall would be acceptable, if you don’t think that she’s too much under Dumbledore’s thumb. Just like you are going to explain to Remus Lupin that I will be overseeing his consumption of Wolfsbane from now on. And he will spend the full moon nights in a locked cellar with a chain on the door.”
Sirius just stared at her. He didn’t say anything or smile, but there was a rebellious glint in his eyes that Dolores understood only too well.
Dolores took a step forwards, smiling. “You are going to do this, Sirius,” she purred. “And you are going to keep those promises.”
“Why should I?”
“Because otherwise,” Dolores aid, tracing his jugular with her wand, “I am going straight to the Ministry in a few hours, when they open, and telling them about my horrific discovery of the werewolf living in my house who put the Boy-Who-Lived in danger.”
“You can’t!” Sirius gasped and then snapped, “No one would believe you anyway! Not when they really know Remus and how gentle he is, and not when he’s lived here for years without causing a problem—”
“Who are they going to believe when they start thinking about it?” Dolores gave him a faint smile. “The werewolf and the man who were both outcasts for years—one of them an actual former prisoner—or the woman who’s always done her best to protect the Boy-Who-Lived?”
Sirius’s jaws clamped shut. His nostrils flared. He didn’t look happy with her, but Dolores didn’t need him to look happy with her. She just needed him to agree that his actions before this were idiotic.
“I’ll do it,” Sirius hissed between his teeth, like an enraged Erumpent. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forgive you! And neither will Harry! He likes learning to be an Animagus. And he likes Remus. If you send him away—”
“I won’t send him away at all,” Dolores told him sweetly. “He can stay if you follow the new rules. Otherwise, it’ll be the Ministry officials who come to take him away who’ll be the villains.”
Sirius stood as tall and straight as he could, but Dolores faced him down. She could feel the cold anger that burnt in her belly lending her strength. Sirius was manipulative and a decent political player when he wanted to be.
But he wasn’t Harry’s legal guardian. He still did carry that shadow of suspicion from Azkaban with him. And while he would cause trouble if he went against her, it was nothing compared to the trouble she could cause Lupin.
“How are you going to deal with Harry?” Sirius finally asked. “He lied to you, too. And I don’t see you spitting threats at him about Azkaban and the Ministry.”
“Harry is ten years old,” Dolores said softly. “You are thirty, Mr. Black. Imagine who I think deserves the harsher punishment.” She paused, watching him, and then unleashed the next spell in her arsenal when she saw how stubborn he still looked. “Imagine what Harry will feel when he finds out another adult in his life valued having fun and having a ‘normal’ life more than they valued him.”
It didn’t take long for Sirius to get the comparison, thank Merlin, or Dolores would have truly been in despair. He lunged forwards, his mouth open as if he was going to bite her in human form. Dolores raised a Shield Charm, and he stopped.
“I am nothing like those filthy Muggles,” he whispered.
“Really? What did you want most, Sirius? A life where you could be a responsible guardian to Harry and teach him the rules he should follow to keep himself safe and happy? Or a life where you could act exactly like the emotional teenager you are, and play pranks, and see Harry as the reincarnation of your best friend?”
Sirius swallowed and shut his eyes. “Don’t—don’t take us away from him.”
“I shan’t have to,” Dolores said, and she didn’t even try to make her voice cold anymore. Soft would do. “If you both do exactly as you’re told.”
Sirius blinked and looked steadily at her. Then he nodded. “All right. But you have to let me tell him that his Animagus lessons are going to end.”
“You’re not in a position to impose conditions. I’ll be telling him all of this in the morning. Including his punishment for lying and disobeying me.”
Sirius’s shoulders slumped then. “Don’t be upset with him,” he said wearily. “We just told him it was okay and he went along with us. He’s a kid, like you said.”
“Yes. Ten years old. Not old enough to be punished the way you deserve to be. Old enough to know better. He is going to receive the brunt of my temper in the morning, Sirius. In the meantime, I suggest that you offer your explanations to the only person you have the right to address right now. Go wake Lupin—you may need to cancel the sleep charms on him first—and tell him about the new order in the household.”
Sirius slunk out of the room, still glaring over his shoulder as if he thought that would make her change her mind. Dolores only raised her eyebrows at him, and Sirius finally looked at his feet and left.
Dolores sighed and turned to face Harry’s room. She would go and see if he was awake. If he wasn’t, then she would leave this until the morning, and only make sure that she was the one who saw Harry first then.
*
He was awake. He sat on his bed with his hands clasped in his lap, and he lifted his head when she entered. His eyes were as bright as Lumos Charms.
“I know that Lupin is a werewolf,” she told him, standing near the door. “I know that Sirius let him run around with the Wolfsbane potion, and that you lied to me on the nights of the full moon so I wouldn’t wake up and go looking for them, or notice any noise they made coming back in. And I know that Sirius was teaching you to become an Animagus.”
Harry only narrowed his eyes a little, as if squinting against light she couldn’t see.
“All of that stops. Now.”
“Remus can’t stop being a werewolf,” Harry pointed out, his voice as quiet as hers had been most of the time she was talking to Sirius.
“He is going to stop being a free one,” Dolores said. “He’ll continue to take Wolfsbane, but he’ll stay in his room. And did you listen to the rest of it, or were you only waiting for what you could contradict?”
A bright flush took over Harry’s face, and he bit his lip. Then he glanced away from her, and muttered, “Sirius was right.”
“I’m astonished to hear there is something he may have had the correct thoughts on. Tell me what it was.”
“You don’t like werewolves. You start looking for someone to blame the minute something goes wrong. You don’t want me to learn advanced magic, because you don’t know it. You just want me to learn advanced politics, because that’s what you’re good at, and this way you get to have me under control, because you’re still better at it than I am. You always want to be in control—”
There was more, a tumbling rant that Harry had probably been keeping sealed beneath his lips for some time. Dolores listened, now and then nodding, until she finally asked, “And is that all that Sirius said to you?”
Harry flushed up to his cheekbones and muttered, “Yes.”
“Good. Now, please, think back on the spells that I’ve taught you. Detection spells and defensive ones may be the great majority, but are they the only ones?” Harry silently shook his head. “And what level are they at?”
Harry struggled for a minute. Then he muttered, “I couldn’t find some of them in the spellbooks you let me look at at all.”
Dolores nodded. “They’re the property of the Ministry, and not usually used outside it. But you need to know them, so you do. Does that suggest to you that I’m only keeping you safe on the political front?”
“No.”
Harry was sullen again, staring down at his hands as if he couldn’t believe that he had let her win the argument. Dolores studied him, and decided that she had better bring up something he should have thought of already.
“I am concerned with your safety,” she said. “You can call it other things, but I think of it as all of a piece. Your safety is why I took you from the horrid Muggles. Your safety is why I taught you to duel with words and take care of yourself on the political front. Your safety is why I was upset to learn there was a werewolf living in my house.”
Harry jerked and looked at her. “But—I thought you would be upset because Remus is dirty and barely human.”
“Have I ever said such words to you?”
“Sirius said—”
“Sirius was not taking your safety into consideration, something I have already spoken to him about.” Dolores let her voice cool. And Sirius is behind the times. I would never say something like that now. “What I have is someone with a disease, a condition, that he could pass to you. And Sirius was romping around with him as if nothing mattered!”
“Well, I mean, Remus wouldn’t attack him when Sirius was in his Animagus form—”
“And that makes you entirely safe, of course,” Dolores agreed with a little jab of sweetness in her voice that made Harry flinch. “You know exactly how to handle yourself around a werewolf. Were you ever outside with them?”
“Um. Sometimes.”
Dolores shook her head. “I did underestimate the depths of Sirius’s recklessness,” she muttered. When Harry gave her a blank look, she rolled her eyes. “Harry, you are smarter than this. If Sirius wanted to take chances with a werewolf, then that was up to him. He is one of the shallowest adults of my acquaintance, but if he wanted to run that risk, he could. He had no right to risk your life.”
“But on Wolfsbane, Remus is safe—”
“And of course, no one could mistake the timing of the moonrise. Or forget to take the Wolfsbane because they got distracted by something else. Or be playing around and have the transformation almost start before they handed him the potion—”
From Harry’s flinch, she knew the nature of the near-catastrophe that had happened. She knew there had to have been at least one. She closed her eyes and struggled for patience.
“Sirius—Sirius said it was okay because we got Remus the potion before the moon cleared the horizon.”
“And we all know exactly how far we should trust Sirius’s judgment now.”
“Miss Dolores? I’m sorry.”
Dolores sighed and opened her arms and her eyes. Harry raced across the room and snuggled against her, sighing.
“A guardian has to think of your safety,” Dolores whispered to him. “This must stop, Harry. I told Sirius last night. I’ll tell Lupin when I see him this morning. If it happens again, I’ll have no hesitation in kicking Lupin out and exposing him as a dangerous werewolf who lacks the judgment he needs to be around children. That will be the end of him getting any job as a tutor or teacher. Do you understand me?”
“You—sound scared.”
And furious. But that was another thing Harry didn’t need to know in exactly those words. “I was terrified.”
Harry pressed closer still. “I’m sorry.” There was a beat of silence. “Am I going to get punished for this?”
“Two days confined to the house,” Dolores said. “And some reading that I’ll want you to write an essay about.” She’d already picked out the books she wanted him to read, all on werewolves and the times that they had tripped up and passed the infection on to someone else.
“All right.”
There was a moment of silence when he just leaned on her, and then Sirius abruptly shouted, “Snivellus? What are you doing here?”
Dolores rolled her eyes, patted Harry’s shoulder one time, and rose to deal with the next crisis.
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The Daring Win