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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8180 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Dolores’s House

            “Good morning, Miss Dolores.”

            In the end, that had been the best address for the boy to use, Dolores had decided. It was less formal than she would have liked in other circumstances, but when they were out in public or someone came to interfere and spy in the house, she couldn’t seem too distant from Potter. She had to present the picture of stern but kind disciplinarian.

            Or rather, Potter had to present it. Dolores knew herself to be really that way. It was just that people didn’t usually see it.

            “Good morning, Harry,” she said, and set the paper down. “This morning, we’re going to have lessons on the proper way to pour milk into a cup.”

            Potter nodded and picked up the cup and saucer she had waiting for him, as well as the delicate white pitcher of milk, decorated with frolicking blue kittens. He had looked at it strangely the first time he saw it, as if he wasn’t used to cats. Now he kept his eyes where they should be, on her face.

            “You must be careful with it,” said Dolores, and made sure that her own cup and saucer were arranged properly in front of her. She could hardly blame the boy for picking up bad habits if she didn’t model the right ones for him, and it would be such a bore to take them out of him. “You must handle the pitcher or other vessel the correct way, and yet never give your conversational partner the impression that you aren’t paying attention to them.”

            She picked up the pitcher and tilted it at the correct angle, aware of Potter’s eyes on her all the while. He had a mania for learning. Dolores supposed the Muggles had sparked that in him. She only had to undo a few of the things he had learned about Muggle superiority and “freaks” from them.

            “Look people in the eye, but not directly in the eye, not often. They’ll take that as hostile or confrontational. On the other hand, looking away too much is also a bad thing. It makes you look furtive or thieving.”

            Potter absorbed her words, and he was looking at her in much the right way. He had uncontrollable nervousness about meeting adult eyes, though, which made him glance down often. Dolores tapped her tongue against her teeth, a chiding sound. Potter flushed and looked up again.

            “You don’t want to hear me make that sound at the table with you, Harry,” she told him. “Or at any other time.”

            “No, Madam.” Dolores didn’t even have to raise an eyebrow, since Potter immediately corrected himself. “No, Miss Dolores.”

            “Better,” said Dolores, and smiled, although Potter had his head ducked so he didn’t see it. That was all right. The best patterns for people to follow were the ones that got trained into them, making it hard for them to disobey. Inner promptings were more powerful than outside ones, always. “Now, recite the lesson about history that I set you to learn yesterday.”

            As Potter did, letting his voice glide through the words about his own defeat of You-Know-Who and the Ministry’s role in the immediate aftermath, Dolores wondered again why no one from Dumbledore’s side had contacted her yet. There had been articles about her adoption of the Boy-Who-Lived, of course. She had stood there smoothing his hair and answering questions and listening to Potter give his perfect, coached responses.

            But neither Dumbledore nor the Ministry officials popularly thought to be allied with him had made any motion.

            Perhaps they’re waiting until they think I’m off my guard.

            Dolores shrugged a little, without letting her shoulders actually move. They would never find her that way, so that in case, it was a strategy that only played into her hands. The more time passed, the more Potter trusted her and became hers.

            And if he knew true history, not the lies that Muggle-loving wizards wanted to spread, and he had full control of his celebrity in a way that few people in their world would know about, because so few wizards had had this kind of celebrity…

            What were the limits to what she could accomplish?

*

            The limits were pretty far away, Dolores thought, on the day an owl from Dumbledore arrived and she realized that she wasn’t afraid.

            “Who is that from?” Potter asked, standing beside her and holding his head up in the proper way Dolores had taught him. He’d been inclined to complain that it hurt his neck at first, but Dolores had only had to glance at him, and Potter subsided.

            “The man who left you with the Muggles,” Dolores said. She said it absently, turning over the letter as if enchanted with the sight of the thick parchment and the Hogwarts crest on the front. But she was keeping a sharp eye on Potter, and she saw the way his hands jerked.

            He had strong feelings on the topic of his Muggle relatives. He needed some coaxing to tell her what they’d done—apparently he’d tried to complain to Muggle authorities before and not been listened to, which lowered Dolores’s opinion of Muggle authorities to the height of a mouse’s tail—but once she knew, Dolores could use it as a lever.

            And she had told him several times that Dumbledore had been the one to put him there, but apart from asking what he would do when he went to the school the man controlled, Potter hadn’t seemed to pay much attention to the name. Now he stared intently at the letter, and then up at her. Since he glanced aside a second later, and since his strong emotion was so commendable, Dolores forbore to punish him.

            “What will happen now?”

            “We have to make some sort of response, of course.” Dolores put the letter aside without bothering to read it. Long experience with others’ recitations had taught her exactly what Dumbledore’s brand of manipulation was like. She bent down in front of Potter, who was staring up at her dubiously. “Or rather, you have to look as if you were making it all by yourself.”

            Potter swallowed and nodded. “Otherwise he’ll think that you’re controlling me and teaching me to despise Muggles, right?”

            That made Dolores pause. She wanted Potter to use his brain, since it would make him less tiresome to teach, but only in the ways she approved of. If he was going to be troublesome, she would have to punish him.

            But this time, the words were earnest, and the truth. Dolores let it go. “Yes, that’s right. And you have to tell him a little about how they treated you.”

            Potter flinched and curled in on himself. Dolores reached over and calmly pinched his shoulder. Potter straightened up at once.

            “But then everyone will know,” he whispered. “And they’ll use it as a weapon against me.”

            Dolores had been about to ask, again, why he was so paranoid about someone finding out the truth, but of course she understood perfectly then. And the boy made a good point. There was every chance that someone would decide he must a weakling for not standing up to Muggles.

            “Choose something you can tell him that would make him feel sorry for you but not make you look weak,” she said. “Something about the way they treated you. They must be something.”

            Potter bowed his head, thinking. Dolores eyed his shaggy hair with disfavor. She wanted to cut it, make him look presentable, but on the other hand, if she did that, then Potter would lose one of the things everyone knew about him, one of the marks that linked him to his parents. She had to be seen as raising the son of James and Lily Potter. Not making him over into her own image.

            No matter how much better that image would be.

            “The cupboard,” Potter finally said, looking up. “It’s where I slept. He might feel sorry for me because I wouldn’t have a bedroom, but on the other hand, they put me there when I was a baby. It’s not weak or my fault.”

            His voice quavered a little on the last words. But Dolores was too busy thinking it over in puzzlement to respond. Why have him sleep in a cupboard? Not even house-elves did that. They generally had a bed of rags in the kitchen or the nursery or the bathroom, wherever their most immediate duties would take them. Cupboards were for storing things.

            Muggles. Who can understand them?

            Dolores let that go, too. She was really too forbearing for the boy’s own good, but at the moment, they had a larger enemy coming who would have to occupy both of their attention. “It’s not. That would be a good thing to tell him.” And the boy looked up like a flower to the sun for her praise. “How much time did you spend in there?”

            “All the time, unless I was in school or doing chores for them.”

            “That will make a good thing to say,” said Dolores. “Try to appear pathetic but not too pathetic when you’re talking to him. Cast your eyes down and then look up again. Don’t look him directly in the eye too often. You should appear to be a respectful child.”

            “Am I going to have to answer questions?”

            “From him? No.” Dolores smiled tightly. “I’m going to field the questions. Don’t worry, dear.”

            Potter never looked like he believed her endearments, but that was all right. Dolores was no longer sure that she wanted a boy who acted all the time as if he did.

            She wrote a polite response to the meddling Muggle-lover’s letter and sent it off. And then she began to clean around the house, leading the boy around and showing him the proper use of domestic charms. She half-thought he would protest because of the work his relatives had put him to, but he only appeared enthralled, and took the wand to use it when she instructed him to.

            He managed one of the charms on only the third try, too. Dolores relaxed. If he was really powerful and that wasn’t simply a creation of Dumbledore’s publicity campaign, then she could use him even more in the future.

*

            They met Dumbledore in the receiving room Dolores had decorated in blue and white china cat plates, and with a mantel of river stones. Fancy but not too fancy, it suited Dolores’s notions of what was due a visitor.

            “Headmaster Dumbledore,” said Dolores, giving him the least of his titles so they would understand how they stood with each other. Potter stood stiff and straight at her side, his body vibrating a little, perhaps with his hatred. Dolores could feel it where he stood against her, and she glanced at him with a small frown.

            If the vibration was hatred or terror, he had to put them aside. If it was anger, that might be useful, but only in an older person. Dolores, after seeing how many brats threw tantrums, didn’t trust a child to use anger properly.

            “Harry, my boy!” said Dumbledore, after the barest nod at Dolores. Dolores ground her teeth. She had never heard that Dumbledore was rude. On the other hand, he normally charmed everyone, so maybe people just excused the rudeness as wonderful eccentricity.

            She wondered how long it would take Dumbledore to realize that he was in the presence of someone who wouldn’t.

            Potter looked at Dumbledore with a blank face that did suit Dolores. They’d worked on that, the emotionless mask he should use with people who believed foolish things about him or presumed on a familiarity that didn’t exist. “Do I know you, sir?” he asked, without holding out his hand to take the one being offered to him.

            Dumbledore lowered his hand and smiled without a sign that such a thing offended him. “Not as such, my boy, but I was a good friend of your parents. Visited them several times when they were under the Fidelius, you know.” He chuckled and sent a single piercing glance at Dolores for a second, then turned, ignoring her as if she was a Muggle. “Saw you when you were a baby. And saw you soon after the sad event that left you orphaned.” He bowed his head.

            Thanks to Dolores, though, Potter knew all about that event, and he had read the proper sort of history books, the ones that made doubtful noises about whether such a young baby could have been a savior without ever coming right out and saying it. He only blinked a little more and moved closer to Dolores.

            “You were the one who put me on a Muggle doorstep? My aunt told me about that.”

            “I left you with your relatives, yes.” Dumbledore seemed to realize he had to be careful now, but from the way he studied Potter, Dolores didn’t think he knew what kind of care it was. “I’m said to hear you refer to Muggles in that tone, my boy. They’re no different from you and me.”

            Potter took a deep breath. Dolores tensed. This could be the moment when he lost it and started yelling at people. Yes, she wanted him to hate Dumbledore, but he had to make the right impression.

            “They put me in a cupboard, sir. They kept me there.”

            Dumbledore stared at him. Dolores waited. She thought Potter had given just the right amount of detail. If Dumbledore pressed him on it, they would be better able to control the interaction.

            Dumbledore smiled and said, “It must be some sort of misunderstanding.” This time, he did glance at Dolores. “They didn’t use that as his bedroom?”

            “Yes, they did,” said Dolores, and had never been so glad that she’d worked at perfecting a sweet voice as when she saw how it took Albus Dumbledore aback. “As a bedroom, as punishment, as a place where he was every time he wasn’t at school or doing chores.” She placed a hand on Potter’s shoulder and squeezed a little. “Harry told me that himself.”

            Dumbledore turned slowly back to Potter. His jaw was tight. “That doesn’t make them bad people, Harry,” he said, as if pleading with Potter. “You must see that it doesn’t. And you mustn’t hate all Muggles for that. Muggles are people, like us. Some of them as good as you. Some of them as bad as wizards like Voldemort who killed your parents.”

            Dolores jumped, and after weeks with her, so did Potter. Dumbledore noted it, and paused. “I hope that you will never be afraid of a name, Harry.”

            “I think it’s a good idea to be afraid of the man who killed my parents,” Harry whispered, and shrank against her.

            Dolores intervened then. “I must register a slight objection to you addressing my charge so informally, Headmaster. Unless and until you reclaim the personal relationship that you had with him when he was a baby, you should call him Mr. Potter.”

            Dumbledore gave her another of those piercing glances that seemed to read her mind. “Don’t imagine that I’m ignorant of the motives with which you adopted him, Madam Umbridge.”

            Maybe he is a Legilimens. But the context of the conversation, the fact that Dumbledore wouldn’t want to show her too much disrespect in front of a child she’d taken in as her own, gave Dolores the advantage in this contest. She shook her head a little. “Of course I would want to rescue him from abusive Muggles, Headmaster. You speak as if someone might not want to.” She paused, and blinked, and adopted the fake shocked tone that worked so well with Crouch. “Perhaps you wouldn’t want to, sir? After you left him on their doorstep?”

            “I do not do that intending for any abuse to happen!”

            Dolores shrank back. For an instant, Dumbledore seemed to tower up to the rafters of her house, and his eyes and his beard both seemed to flash with lightning.

            But Dolores was still in her own home, and she knew she had Harry Potter on her side. She shook her head. “I took him in. I will raise him, as per the Minister’s say-so. It turns out that Harry has no close wizarding relatives in any case, or they would have stepped forwards to adopt him already. And with his godfather in prison…”

            Dumbledore stared at her, the stony stare that he seemed to think should make her afraid. But Dolores was more afraid of curses, and political consequences. She looked back, one arm wrapping around Harry slightly when he acted as if he would move away from her.

            “I will challenge this,” Dumbledore said in a low voice. “I did not want his family to abuse Harry. But I must insist that he not be raised someone who does not have his best interests at heart.”

            Dolores gave him another sweet smile. “And I must insist that you not call him by his first name.”

            Dumbledore seemed to have gone back to pretending that she didn’t exist. He turned and nodded to Potter. “I will make sure that you don’t suffer as a result of one poor decision I made, Harry. I will do better by you this time.”

            Potter only looked at him with those devastatingly clear green eyes. He said nothing, and maybe Dumbledore, as he hurried out the door, took that as consent. But Dolores knew better. Potter hardly trusted adults who made promises like that, not when so many adults had broken them already.

            “Can he take me away?” Potter whispered, turning to look at her.

            “No,” said Dolores. “Because I’ll make sure of it.” Time to start contacting those people who owed her favors. And Minister Bagnold, who wouldn’t want to be made to look silly after she had consented to let Dolores adopt Harry Potter. And some people like Lucius Malfoy, who had nothing to do with her normally but who would definitely want to be present if there was a chance to reduce Dumbledore’s power.

            “But how do I know you will?”

            Dolores looked down and smiled, glad that Legilimency, if it was a power Dumbledore possessed, couldn’t manifest in one so young. “I’m here,” she said. “Harry.”

            And Potter, who was indeed much more intelligent than she would have thought the child of two Muggle-lovers could be, understood. She was there, and she was the one who could make her will known, punish him as well as save him.

            “The question,” Dolores continued delicately, “is whether you want to stay with me.”

            Potter’s shoulders hunched, and she could almost hear him run over the choices in his head: the Muggles who had hated him, Dumbledore who had already treated him carelessly, or her. And he looked up and nodded.

            “I know you,” he said.

            That understanding is always going to trump Dumbledore’s little ideals, Dolores thought in triumph, and caressed Potter’s hair.

*
            Anon: I haven’t read that story, so I couldn’t model mine on that one even if I wanted to!
            InvidiaRed: Dolores will try to have as much power over Harry as possible. If that leads to a certain scenario…
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The Daring Win