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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.

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Chapter Thirty-Four—Unforeseen Consequences
“Then that is the final price,” Dolores said, and stepped back from her first handshake with the owner to look again around the space that would become Snape’s shop in Diagon Alley.
It had used to be an apothecary at one point, but the current owner had used it as a junk shop, a Light version of Borgin and Burke’s. The shelves still stood against the walls, but dust and half-broken toys and mostly-disenchanted artifacts buried them. The current aisles were narrow and barely squeezed between the shelves. Dolores felt her lips twitch as she realized that the place the shop most reminded her of was the second bedroom in the Muggles’ house that Harry had told her about. Perhaps a fat Muggle cousin hadn’t broken these objects, but they looked about as useless.
“It is.” The owner, a small, desperate man named Ives Pilfer, clasped his hands and bowed before her. “When does your friend want me to move out, Madam Umbridge?”
“As soon as you can.” There was no urgency to the matter, whatever Snape might think. He would probably continue to live at their house and eat their food until the place was spotless, and he wouldn’t do most of the work himself. Dolores although had planned to lend him the Potter house-elves for the cleaning, anyway.
“It might be another week.”
Dolores waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter.” She stepped back through the shelves to get a look at a bowl that resembled a Pensieve, although it had a long crack down the side that would probably have made it useless anyway. It also was made of a dark green, milky stone that resembled jade. She didn’t think most Pensieves were made with anything that color.
“That’s a fine specimen, Madam Umbridge,” Pilfer said eagerly, catching up with her and nodding to the bowl. “When it’s working, you can place water from a fountain or river or lake or any other body inside it and see what’s happening near the place the water came from.”
“Truly?” Dolores was startled. Most of the scrying she knew of—and this was undoubtedly scrying—promised sights of the future, and was actually useless without the proper magical gift. But seeing the present seemed both more useful and more likely to work.
“Truly.” Pilfer abruptly deflated as he glanced at the bowl again. “But it got dropped a year ago when I moved into the shop. I’m not sure it works now.”
“You’d certainly have to repair the crack to make water even stay in the bowl,” Dolores murmured as she examined it. “I’m not sure how it would work if you did magically seal it…”
“My father was the one who bought it,” Pilfer said, and cleared his throat nervously. “You can’t use magic on it to repair an object, he said. You’d have to take it to a human Healer.”
“Who could charge more than you could sell it for. If you even found a Healer who would agree to try the experiment in the first place.”
“That’s true.” Pilfer gave a long sigh that seemed to take up most of the air in his chest. “And all the Healers I know refuse to conduct even the smallest of experiments with Healing magic unless it’s truly needed. They wouldn’t take the time or risks that playing with this scrying bowl needs.”
Dolores considered it thoughtfully again. Surely it would take time and resources to repair, but she had both. And if she could get it working again, what a useful thing it would be. The water from the Hogwarts lake alone would be worth the price. She needed to have an independent set of eyes on the school when Harry started attending.
If he attended, and Dumbledore abided by the sanctions put on him.
She turned around. “How much do you want for it?”
*
“I don’t think you should be putting the bicorn horn so close to th—”
That was all Dolores had time to hear before an enormous cloud of pink smoke and a huge glop sound came out of the potions lab she had turned over to Tonks and Harry for their lessons. Accompanying it was a stench like burned sugar. Dolores waited until most of it had cleared, and stepped around the corner.
Tonks stood in the middle of the mess with a Shield Charm glowing around her. Most of the tables were covered with what looked like heavy, shimmering green swamp water. Dolores shook her head slowly.
Then she realized there was no sign of Harry, and started to lay her hand on her wand. A sad noise stopped her.
“Croak.”
Dolores turned. A small frog sat on one of the tables, originally invisible because its green skin was almost the same color as the swamp water. Its eyes bulged, and there was a tiny mark like a black lightning scar on its forehead. Dolores thought she noticed it only because she instinctively looked for it.
No matter what Harry becomes, that bloody scar should always identify him, Dolores thought as she breathed out a careful response. “You were studying the Salas Interaction?”
Tonks nodded miserably. Her hair was the dark green of the spilled potion now. “Yes. Harry was supposed to be moving the bicorn horn away from the cauldron to add it after the dried leemy seed pods, and then he moved it too close.”
Dolores relaxed as much as she could. It was hardly dignified or worthy of his heritage and power that Harry was a frog, but the Salas Interaction predicted animal transformation based on the combination of opposing ingredients. Bicorn horn and leemy seed pods occupied the opposite sides of a spectrum that Potions masters had discovered early in history, and inevitably turned everyone who touched the potion into frogs.
“Are you sure this is the normal effect?” she did have to add a second later. “The green coating and the smell are not what I would predict of the Salas Interaction.”
“Oh.” Tonks blinked, dropped the Shield Charm, and waved her wand, and the sugar smell disappeared. “The scent was because Harry was eating a Chocolate Frog at the time. He dropped it in the fire when the potion exploded.”
Dolores stared at the frog again. She thought he would have hung his head if frogs had enough neck to do that. “He was eating in a Potions lab?”
“I told him not to,” said Tonks in a meek voice.
“Croak,” said the frog.
“Transformation is kinder than many things that could have happened to him,” said Dolores stiffly. She kept her wand still at her side. There was no enemy to brandish it at here but Harry’s own stupidity, and no danger but what could have happened. She had no reason to feel so breathless. “And the slime?”
“That was my Shield Charm in close contact with it, I’m afraid.” Tonks was almost wringing her hands. “I was going to put one up around Harry, too, but we’re trained to do it to ourselves first, and I followed my instincts—”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dolores. Her heart felt as if it was slowing down now, even though it hadn’t been pounding too hard. “As long as the interaction is normal and the other effects not caused by the potion itself, he should be a human again in twenty-four hours.”
“Yes,” Tonks agreed instantly. “There’s no reason to think otherwise!”
“You can go home, I think,” Dolores said mildly, and checked her smile as Tonks almost ran out of the room. Then she shook her head, turned to Harry, and picked him up in one hand.
“I was never a frog as a result of the Salas Interaction,” she said thoughtfully, “but I had a classmate who spent some time as a pig. He said it was one of the most humiliating things he ever experienced. I would assume that you won’t eat in the potions lab again?”
The frog croaked out what sounded like a negative, but then stared at her with huge eyes. Dolores could only guess what he was trying to say. Still, she thought she knew.
“I know the Salas Interaction happened because of the ingredients,” she said calmly as she carried Harry out of the lab and snapped her fingers for a house-elf. It appeared and squeaked with terror as it stared at the green coating on the tables. “Clean this up as soon as you can,” Dolores instructed, and the elf nodded fervently.
Dolores stepped down the corridor and turned back to the frog resting on her palm. “But you most likely put the ingredients too close together in the first place because you were eating and distracted. I know you, Harry. You’re not intentionally careless. You shouldn’t be eating in the lab because of the smell, but also because it can be the indirect cause of accidents like this if not the direct cause. Do you understand now?”
Silence. Then a soft “Croak.”
Dolores smiled, and went to conjure a pond for Harry to wait out his time in.
*
“I think I may be able to repair it,” the Healer said quietly. Dolores had chosen him because he was the only Healer in St. Mungo’s who hadn’t looked surprised or impressed to see her. She wanted him to focus on the problem, rather than the prestige he might get from helping Harry Potter’s guardian. “But I need the bowl to run some tests. May I have it?”
“Only if you promise to return it in no worse condition.”
The Healer’s eyes focused for a moment. He was a young man in the usual lime-green robes, although perhaps they looked better with his dark skin than they did with the paler wizards’ who usually wore them. “Of course I wouldn’t make it worse! I’ll only do what I can to repair it, and give it back to you like this or better.”
Dolores nodded. “How long will you need the bowl?”
“It shouldn’t be longer than a fortnight.”
Harry certainly wouldn’t be going to Hogwarts in a fortnight. (Harry was now a human being again and not a frog, but he was determined to master all forms of the Salas Interaction, and barely left the potions lab). “That will be acceptable. I will return for my property then, Healer Ivon.”
Ivon said nothing more than a wordless murmur that she wouldn’t get sense from anyway, so Dolores smiled and slipped out of the room. The corridor didn’t bustle with people as she passed down it, but only because it was the middle of a weekday afternoon, and more wizards got into mishaps fooling around with nameless artifacts or inadvisable spells in their own time rather than at work.
“My dear Dolores!”
She turned slowly. Striding towards her was Dumbledore, the stars on his robes twinkling as madly as his eyes. Dolores inclined her head. She could not accuse him of having planned this ambush, not when the hospital was a public place and he hadn’t appeared before now to stalk her through the corridors.
It still didn’t mean she welcomed the encounter.
“Headmaster,” Dolores said, and watered all the inflection out of her voice. She would be as approachable as a statue. She clasped her hands in front of her and moved her lips in what was not a smile and wasn’t not one, either. “You wished to speak about something?”
Dumbledore stopped in front of her and beamed some more. “Oh, come now, Madam Umbridge, you needn’t pretend that neither of us have an interest in Harry.”
Dolores didn’t let her eyebrows rise, but it was a reaction that she considered. “Headmaster? Why would you have an interest in Harry? He isn’t one of your students yet, and you have been told to leave him alone.”
“I care about him as one human being about another, of course.” Dumbledore’s voice was desperately earnest. Now his eyes were outshining the stars on his robes. “How can I see you pass and not wonder about that dear boy? I loved his parents so much. I miss them still. I look forward to the day that I can teach him. You cannot expect me to shut my emotions off and never care because of an unfortunate Wizengamot decision.”
Dolores smoothed out all the ways that her hands wanted to clench and clutch each other, and smiled emptily. “I was unaware that you personally taught children, Headmaster. Surely you are too busy dealing with the day-to-day duties of running the school?”
“I meant teach in a general way, my dear. Of course I won’t be interacting with Harry that much, but—”
“Of course. And never without supervision, and never without me there. I understand what you mean.”
Dumbledore paused. Dolores only looked back at him, being careful never to look him directly in the eyes. She wondered what in the world he had thought she would say. He was trying to make it sound as if he cared so much for Harry and the sanctions were a misunderstanding, presumably for any audience who might pass by as much as her. Why wouldn’t she uphold the sanctions and make it clear that she thought they were necessary?
It was as though he didn’t expect anyone to act politically against him.
Dolores managed to keep from widening her eyes, but she suddenly wanted to gasp aloud.
Of course that’s what it is. Of course that’s exactly what he thinks.
Dumbledore had gone essentially unopposed in the Wizengamot by everyone except suspected Death Eaters and other pure-bloods who had enough money to convince some politicians to listen to them. Dolores was none of those, so it must have been a novel experience for her to challenge him and keep on doing so, not crumpling the first time he smiled at her.
“This is getting rather far afield from the subject that I meant to bring up,” said Dumbledore, and cleared his throat with a delicate cough. “You are here to get some potions for Harry?”
“I cannot disclose any part of my ward’s health to you unless you have an immediate need to know it, Headmaster. And surely any illness or accident that might necessitate him coming to St. Mungo’s would be taken care of long before he attended Hogwarts.”
Dumbledore stared at her again. Dolores gave him back the empty smile she was getting good at, and stood there.
“I am speaking to you as someone concerned about Harry’s health,” said Dumbledore, slowly and clearly, as if she might have ceased to speak English in the last few moments. “Not as the Headmaster of Hogwarts.”
“But that is the only capacity in which you may relate to him, Headmaster.”
“Not even as a concerned citizen?”
“Concerned citizens who care about nothing but Harry’s political importance usually get their news on him from the Daily Prophet, I would imagine,” Dolores said. “At least, I have escaped being ambushed when I go about my daily business. Good day, Headmaster.” And she turned and began to walk down the corridor again.
The air ahead of her abruptly shimmered, and Dolores stopped. She didn’t know what spell Dumbledore had used, but she recognized the tingle on her skin as a powerful shield. She didn’t want to walk into it and have something undignified happen.
“This is unconscionable, Headmaster,” she said calmly, staring straight ahead. She didn’t want to turn around and risk Legilimency because she didn’t know where his eyes were right now. “You were told to contact me by letter if you had a need to know something about Harry. Not to hold me with shield hexes in the corridors.”
“I believe that you do not know everything about Harry, Madam Umbridge. That he is of great importance to the future of our world.”
“You are not obeying the sanctions, Headmaster Dumbledore—”
“I have reason to believe that Voldemort created Horcruxes to keep himself alive. And that the scar on Harry’s forehead may shelter a Horcrux.”
“You are not obeying the sanctions.”
“Are you listening to me, woman? Harry is one of the things keeping Voldemort alive! He will return someday. Harry needs to be prepared for the future as a—”
Dolores turned her head, and this time, she didn’t fear Legilimency. Dumbledore shut up as soon as he saw the look on her face, and stared at her as if she was the snake that had been her House symbol, never trying to read her mind.
“You seem to have mistaken me for a Gryffindor, Headmaster,” Dolores whispered. “That is, as someone who cares about unspecified futures and wars against Dark Lords instead of a select few people.”
“He has to be prepared! He has to die!”
“Of course that’s the way you would see him,” Dolores said, staring at him. “As someone disposable.”
“He is a Horcrux. Do you know the risk I have taken telling you this?”
“I don’t think you thought of it as a risk. You thought it would get me on your side.” Dolores shook her head. “Fall back, Dumbledore.” Her eyes were on movement behind him, not his wand. “You’ve already violated the sanctions in so many unacceptable ways that I’ll be surprised of the Wizengamot doesn’t impose more.”
“You have to—”
“Mr. Dumbledore!” Healer Ivon called from behind him. Dumbledore started and lowered his guard.
“Expelliarmus!”
Healer Ivon stepped up behind Dumbledore and began to lecture him about the inadvisability of using powerful magic in the corridors of a hospital so near vulnerable patients, while Dolores stared at the wand that had flown into her hand when she cast the Disarming Charm. It seemed to be made of elder wood, and that made her wonder…
A matter to investigate later, she thought, and dropped the wand in her pocket, and listened in pleasure to one of the best passionless scoldings she’d ever heard.
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The Daring Win