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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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“Let’s see the progress you’ve been making in your training, Harry.”
Harry turned around and put down the book on the history of the Unforgivable Curses that Black had lent him to read. Black left him alone a lot of the time now, outside of meals. In return, though, Harry had to be willing to show him what he’d learned from Professor McGonagall every time Black wanted to see it.
Harry had to put Spellmaker on the floor first. She’d decided that she liked to sit on his shoulder, even though he hadn’t created her loyal to him, but her weight messed up the subtle flicks of the wand he needed to cast his Transfiguration spells.
Ignoring the cat’s displeased mews, Harry took a few steps away from the dark wood table in the center of the library with his books on it. He looked at Black, who stood by the entrance to the library with an intense look on his face.
“Go on,” Black urged him. “Whatever you like.”
Harry nodded and conjured a small flower, a simple charm that he’d learned in fourth year. It was a white daisy that he laid on the floor and studied for long enough that he thought he understood something about the shape of the petals and the length of the stem.
Then he flicked his wand and muttered the incantation that Professor McGonagall had told him to spend the majority of the week working on. “Commuto florem arcam.”
The daisy trembled and shuddered a little. Then its petals changed to wood, and the stem elongated and flowed up to grow sides. When the magic was done, an imperfect wooden box lay on the floor. Its dark sides still had some of the white shade, and Harry could feel yielding petals when he reached down and poked at it.
“Hmm.” Black crouched down on the other side of the box and examined it in the same way. “Too slow, and the amount of concentration you have to do…that sort of spell wouldn’t be much use in the middle of a battle, would it?”
Harry stared at him. “Why would turning a daisy into a box be useful in the middle of a battle, anyway?”
“Point.” Black moved back with his head cocked and his eyes fixed on the box, his fingers tapping on his leg. “But that doesn’t mean that changing living objects to inanimate objects is never useful. There were some great Transfiguration masters of the past who could change attacking soldiers into stone, for example.”
“I bet some of them were your ancestors.”
Black smiled. “Why do you think I learned about it at a young age?” He examined the box again. “It’s strange. It does still feel like a flower when you touch it, but not the way mistakes did in Transfiguration class when I was young.”
Harry shrugged. “It’s probably just been a long time since you touched a Transfiguration someone did a terrible job on.”
“No. I remember the sensation—I remember it well, because I had a friend who was terrible at it and always asking me to check his work.” Black rolled his eyes. “Stupid Collier…But I still wonder what makes this different. Transfigure another one for me.”
Harry did, this time trying to spend less time concentrating on the daisy before he transformed it. It didn’t seem to help, really.
Black bent down in front of the Transfigured flower and stared at it as if it was fascinating, though. Then he picked up the broken box and rolled it between his hands. Harry stood watching him and wondering if this meant he could go back to reading the book on the Cruciatus soon. There was information in it that was at least new to him, even though ultimately it might not help him much.
“Hmm,” said Black. He put the box down and looked from it to the first one. Then he nodded. “Make me one more?”
“A daisy this time, or some other flower?” Harry wearily prepared to cast the spell again. He didn’t like doing things that only proved they were mistakes over and over, but Black’s gaze was oddly fixed.
“A daisy again. I want to see what it’s like with three examples.”
Harry shrugged, made the daisy, and again Transfigured it into a wooden box. This one was harder than the others, but had small green leaves sticking out of the bottom. Black picked it up and juggled it from hand to hand.
Then he reached out and gathered up the other boxes, with a sidelong glance at Harry for permission.
“Do whatever you like with them,” Harry said, waving a hand. He turned back to the desk. He had actual research to do, unlike the playing that Black seemed intent on.
“Thanks, Harry. You’re the best.”
Harry snorted and sat down, not looking away from the book in front of him. Sometimes Black sounded like a schoolboy younger than Harry. Well, Harry supposed that was appropriate, given that his sense of humor seemed permanently frozen at that age.
*
“I want you to brew me a potion that detects the presence of life-force in an object.”
“Impossible,” Severus said, without glancing away from the cauldron in front of him. The Blood-Replenisher Potion was just coming to a boil. “It cannot be done,” he added, when he realized Black was lingering. He reached out and swept the cauldron off the fire at precisely the right moment. “There is no life-force in objects to detect.”
He was turning to clean his hands when something clattered to his feet. Severus leaped back and instinctively tried to draw his wand, but he hadn’t had it in what felt like weeks. He grimaced and bent over to look at the boxes Black had thrown.
“I want you to take a look at those,” said Black, and his mouth twitched when Severus glanced at him. “Then give me your opinion about the potions again.” He turned and left the cellar, locking the door behind him.
Severus took a long moment to study the door, even though he had done it before when Black had immediately left and he had found nothing. The spells locking it and closing off the latch, hinges, and wood of the door itself from Severus’s touch were blood-keyed. Someone else would have to be of Black’s family to even touch it.
Severus might have tried to use certain potions to trick the magic into thinking he was a Black, but he had none of the ingredients for those potions.
At last, with nothing better to do, Severus picked up the boxes and placed them on the table in the center of the lab. The cellar Black and Minerva were keeping him in had at least been fully outfitted. There were even sharp knives for slicing and fine, thin cuts, although they all dulled their edges when Black appeared in the room.
Black was clever in a way Severus had never appreciated when he knew the man among the Death Eaters. It was another thing to remember, deplore, and get revenge for if he could.
They cannot keep me here forever, Severus thought, as he often did, while he arranged the boxes in such a way that they could withstand several blows of a hammer without falling or sliding off the table. They would have to tell Albus something. The Dark Lord will summon me. He will want to find out what happened to Macnair and the Lestranges.
But so far, his Mark hadn’t burned. The Dark Lord might be playing a waiting game, or…
He might have discarded Severus, the way he tended to do with Death Eaters who had once failed him.
Severus shook away the thoughts that could not help him now, and turned to the boxes. He recognized them almost immediately as the result of failed Transfigurations. One of them still had leaves, for Merlin’s sake. He sneered. Was baby Potter having trouble with his magic? Did Black think Severus would teach him?
They could force him to brew potions, but they couldn’t force him to teach the boy. Severus would prefer to be cut up and studied before that happened.
But Black had acted like there was something special about these boxes, so Severus sighed and reached out to lay his hand on the one with the leaves. He immediately gasped and snatched his hand back, staring.
Something had buzzed at him when he touched the box, as if there was a bee trapped inside it. Or, Severus had to admit after a moment, as if there was something alive in it. It had actually felt more like touching the side of a deeply sleeping animal than touching wood, even wood imperfectly Transfigured.
Wary, Severus let his fingers brush the side of each box. They all felt basically the same, although the one that looked most like a box had the most life in it, as if the animal was about to wake. For a moment, Severus suspected this was a trap and the boxes would change back into animals and eat him.
But no, there would be no point. He thought Black would enjoy torturing him too much to kill him like that. And the leaves suggested they had once been flowers.
Severus could not fathom the life force in them, though. Transfigured plants didn’t feel like that. Even Transfigured animals didn’t.
His fingers clenched, and once again, he wished for his wand. But he would have to rely on the observations of his senses. He bent down near the boxes, still instinctively flinching in case something reached out to him from them, and sniffed them the way he would with Potions ingredients when he was trying to determine their fitness to be used.
The smell of a living animal, warm, rank fur, rose to his nostrils.
Severus staggered back, shaking his head. This was—not possible. Transfigured animals could smell like that. Not boxes. Not flowers.
He found himself nearly bumping into one of the finished potions that was cooling in a large open flask before he could put it safely into vials. Severus moved to a stop and stood a moment with his arms folded, his eyes half-lidded, and calmed his breathing. He would have no power here if he was too excited.
This was—not possible. But it had apparently happened. And Severus was sure that it was a result of Potter’s magic.
His first thought was that Potter had simply discovered or used some rarer branch of the Dark Arts, something that was strong enough to trick the senses. But again, he had to admit Black would recognize that at once. Probably no one better, with that library of Dark Arts books upstairs plus experience as a Death Eater.
Besides, why would Black have brought Severus the boxes at all if he didn’t want outside confirmation?
To torment me.
Severus grimaced and shook his head. He knew better than that, honestly. Being a Death Eater meant Black knew better ways to torture him, for one thing. Like rendering him absolutely helpless and incapable of doing anything but what he was told.
His hand clenched again, but Severus turned back to the boxes. There was another explanation, although Severus was going off theory rather than experience. He had never seen anything like this before.
Potter was casting with almost pure Wild. He infused it into everything that he Transfigured, even things not meant to be alive.
Severus shook his head the moment he had the thought. It could not be so, because that was not what the Wild was. The Wild was life force and will and animal magic, and sometimes human magic for those who could expand their wills and imaginations to embrace it. It was present in Transfigurations that involved animals, either one animal into another or an animal into an object or from an object. It was not—
It did not belong here.
Even the fact that these boxes had been flowers did not account for it. Flowers were a different kind of living being, one that did not resonate with the Wild.
Severus’s next thought was that perhaps the boy had turned animals into daisies, then daises into boxes. But in that case, there was no reason for Black to bring the boxes to him. He would have understood the source of the Wild.
Too plainly, he did not. He wanted Severus to tell him.
Severus grimaced as he felt the draw wake to life in his mind, as present as that rank smell. He did not want to be intrigued by anything that infernal boy had done. But it was true that he was more bored here than he had been since the start of the war, and this was a puzzle like nothing else he had ever seen.
And if he gave enough good answers to Black and Potter’s probing questions, if he brewed enough of the potions they wanted, if he feigned enough meekness…
They might let down their guards. It was not impossible.
And when they did, Severus would be waiting.
*
Harry quietly shut the door of the ancient library behind him and stood near the wall, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He heard Bellatrix cackle, but he’d expected it, and it didn’t make him jump.
The Lestranges were tied up with bonds, as usual, this time on pallets that Black had conjured in the middle of the room. Black came in and used magic to unbind them and exercise their muscles at least once a day. He said if they were going to hold them captive, then they needed to make sure they didn’t suffer. He said it was humane.
Harry didn’t see that, but he was willing to acknowledge that Black was a lot more human than he was, even now.
“Has the ickle baby Potter come to see us?” Bellatrix made kissing noises at him. Harry studied the length of her throat. He imagined Transfiguring it into a swan’s neck, and then changed his mind. No, a giraffe’s neck would be better. Then her head would fall over, and she wouldn’t be able to lift the weight. “Baby Potter who still hasn’t decided what to do with us?”
Harry saw the way her fingers clenched around the rope bonds, and had to smile. Bellatrix tried to disguise it, tried to pretend that she was happy to stay here and wait for the chance to torment him, but it drove her mad that she couldn’t be out there torturing and slaying for Lord Dudders.
Well. Drove her madder.
“Leave him alone, Bella,” said Rabastan, wearily, sagging against his pallet as he stared up at the ceiling. “You know as well as I do that it’s never going to change, and we won’t get the chance to take revenge.” But he turned his head and eyed Harry darkly under lowered lids anyway, as if he was estimating the distance between them.
“You might,” said Harry, and cocked his head. He hadn’t brought Yar with him into the room, even though he had been tempted. She was too strong, and the Lestranges wouldn’t dare try too much around her. Even though Black didn’t want Harry torturing them, he hadn’t forbidden Harry to tell them about what had happened to Snape’s hand and Macnair’s. “You might be set free to duel me if you impress me enough.”
Rodolphus frowned, Rabastan hesitated, but Bellatrix lunged forwards against her bonds. “Set me free now, Baby Potter!” she screeched. “If you want to be fair about it…”
“But I don’t want to be fair about it,” Harry said, and took a step towards her. He felt his stomach surging and cooling as if someone was pumping cold water into it. “I want to be horrible. I want you to hurt. You tortured my parents.”
Bellatrix waited until she was sure she was watching, and then she nodded and licked her lips. “And they suffered so beautifully, I’d do it again. And again.”
Harry wanted to hit her. He wanted to cut her apart. But the cool anger let him hold onto his temper and say, “You’re going to help me help them.”
“How, ickle Potter? There’s no coming back from that kind of madness! I know! We did our little experiments, too, during the war.” Bellatrix chuckled hollowly. “We always killed them later, of course, but they’re not coming back.” She leaned towards him and lowered her voice even more. “Does Potter miss his mummy?”
Harry didn’t respond. He concentrated on the air above her, around her. Professor McGonagall had taught him to do the opposite of this when he was trying to Transfigure objects. Those had no Wild, and so he had to look at the object itself, and imagine it changing into whatever he was trying to create.
But living beings had Wild. And Harry wanted to see if he could sense a human being’s when he wasn’t in the middle of battle and just trying to stop them from striking him, or knock them down.
Bellatrix’s taunting went on, but Harry didn’t hear it. He was hearing something on the edge of his listening powers, something that interested him far more than her words. He knelt down, absently making sure he was out of reach as she lunged with her teeth snapping.
Yes. He could feel it. There was a sort of aura around her, a blanket of thick warmth and will that followed the outline of her arms and legs. It was weakest around the head, which surprised Harry, but after a moment’s thought, he decided he knew why. After all, the head could lose heat as well as get heated up. Why wouldn’t it lose the heat of the Wild?
“Little baby Potter,” Bellatrix sang, and Harry looked harder at her and then reached out to the Wild around her.
He didn’t use his wand. There was no object to manipulate. He didn’t actually want to Transfigure her. He wanted to see if he could alter the Wild around her body, and what would happen if he did, if he could make it flow and melt at his command.
Bellatrix shrieked.
Harry blinked. He’d fallen so far into the consideration of that warm aura that he hadn’t paid attention to what was happening with Bellatrix. He shifted the mice in his pockets, in case they had to protect him, and watched her.
Bellatrix sagged, panting, the minute Harry stopped concentrating, but she turned crazed, hate-filled eyes on him. “What are you doing? You can’t do that to me!”
Harry felt a small smile play over his mouth. Really, so many of the “fearsome Dark wizards” people were so scared of reminded him of Dudley. The one time a kid at primary school had stood up to Dudders, he’d been astonished. He was the one who chased people and beat them up and threw rocks at them. Not someone at him!
“You’re the only one who gets to torture people, right?” Harry asked her, gently. His hand was on his wand, but his attention kept wandering back to that aura of the Wild. It felt like velvet against his hands, or his mind, when he twisted his will the right way. “Of course you are. Of course you are.”
“Potter! Baby Potter! I hate you!”
Since Harry didn’t know how he’d actually hurt her before, he decided it wasn’t breaking his promise to Black not to torture them. He reached out to the Wild again, keeping one eye on Bellatrix in the meantime.
Her screams stopped suddenly, and her eyes went blank. Harry realized he was focusing on the Wild that fluttered around her head, the place he’d previously ignored.
Rabastan and Rodolphus were shouting at him this time, but Harry ignored them with the ease of long practice. He crouched down in front of Bellatrix and stared into her blank eyes, seeing the way her mouth twitched and a small line of drool was running down her chin.
She looked…just like his parents.
Harry let her Wild go abruptly. And then he turned and strode out of the room, ignoring their screams at his back again, but what he was shaking with wasn’t hatred or fear. It was excitement.
The Cruciatus Curse manipulates the Wild in someone’s body. I don’t know all the details yet, but it obviously affects the brain. It shut down some things, probably. Changes others. Warps them.
I don’t have to Transfigure brains if I can learn enough about manipulating the Wild.
*
Black knocked on the door of the library where Harry had pulled down several books on the theory of the Wild perhaps two hours later. “There’s a letter for you from Hogwarts, Harry. And Severus has discovered something remarkable about those boxes you Transfigured.”
“That they have an aura of the Wild even though inanimate objects aren’t supposed to?” Harry asked absently, twisting his head so that he could make out the small marginal annotation in the tome he held. “Yeah, I figured that out, too.”
He heard Black come to a stop behind him. “How could you? You didn’t touch those boxes after I took them to Severus.”
Harry rolled his eyes a little. When he called his enemies by their first names, it was because he wasn’t afraid of them. But Black kept sounding almost affectionate about “Severus.” Harry just hoped that he didn’t let his guard down around him. “I was looking at the Wild around Bellatrix’s body. When I touched it where it pooled around her head, she started to react the same way my parents do to most stimulation.”
“I told you not to torture them—”
“You specified the spells I shouldn’t use and the limbs I shouldn’t break. I didn’t even know that I could touch the Wild outside a spell.”
Black was silent for a few moments, and then he moved around in front of Harry, staring at him as he shook his head. “You’re always going to be cold and somewhat inhuman, aren’t you?”
“Probably.” Harry looked back at him with eyes that he had considered altering to take in more light like a cat’s, but he didn’t know enough about eyes yet to experiment, and blindness would weaken him. On the other hand, perhaps manipulating the Wild would give him another way to do it. “You got to me too late.”
“Well.” Black sat down on the other side of the table and looked at the books Harry had chosen with an absent eye. “It might have been too late from the time that you grew up in your relatives’ loving care.” He sighed. “At least this way we can find out what a gift you have. It has to be a powerful one, to manipulate the Wild like that.”
“And not limited to Transfiguration?”
“How did you know that?”
“That’s what some of the books said. They seem to agree that you could perform what are essentially charms and curses on people, as long as you had some definite end result in mind. But there are notes in most of the margins disagreeing with them. I have to read them to find out if I can really do that, or if it’s speculation.”
Black got up and came around the table, putting his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry stilled and looked up at him patiently. He had come to realize that both Black and Professor McGonagall liked to touch him, in ways that didn’t have anything to do with disciplining him.
Harry had decided to permit it. It would make good practice for when he got his parents back and needed to endure hugs.
“You’re still remarkable,” Black said softly. “I’ll do what I can to help you. To help you actually heal your parents, not curse them or hurt them further. For now, I think you ought to read your letter.” He nodded to the parchment he’d left lying on the table, which Harry had honestly forgotten about. “Your friend sounds angry. You should reassure him.”
“Why would Neville be angry?”
“It’s not from Longbottom.”
Harry blinked and opened the letter, and stared when he saw Terry Boot’s handwriting. He knew it from plenty of study sessions together, and he blinked harder as he realized that Terry had cared enough to write to him, instead of being relieved when Harry disappeared so that he didn’t have to put up with him anymore.
“It’s enlightening,” Black added, and disappeared out the door before Harry could even have time to be irritated that he’d read Harry’s post.
Harry settled back against the chair and read, absently stroking Spellmaker, who had found her way into the room and was curled up on the chair next to him. She purred, and somehow the sound ended up winding its way into Harry’s contemplation of the letter and making him think.
Harry,
I won’t use anything like “Dear.” You’re not. You’re an irritation and a prat. Why did you never write to me? You wrote to Longbottom, and you didn’t spend nearly as much time with him as you did with me. And apparently Granger and Weasley know something, too, and I know that you were never close with them.
I should just be able to give up and not write to you if I’m angry. I know you would probably say that. You’re so bloody practical all the time, you expect other people to be the same. But you can be stupid for all that you’re so smart, Harry. You never thought that other people might like to really know you, just because you didn’t care about knowing them.
Now, I want to know some things. What did you grow up like? Why did you leave the school? Were you really Transfiguring any animals that you wanted to out of objects, and how did you learn to do that?
And there’s something going on with Malfoy, too. Not that you deserve to know, not if you don’t reply to me, but I’ll tell you anyway, because that’s what friends do. Unlike you, Mr. Secret-Keeper.
He’s been strutting around more lately, and dropping dark hints about his father and “Potters in general.” I don’t really know what he can do against your parents, but he seems to think he can do something.
Reply to me, prat. Or don’t, and then I’ll consider this friendship closed and I can move on with the next chapter of my life.
Terry.
Harry rubbed his forehead, a gesture he’d picked up from Neville. He knew what he would have to say if Terry was here, even if he would probably punch Harry and think he was stupid. Harry had had no idea that Terry would be angry. He hadn’t thought Terry cared about Harry except as a mystery, a puzzle to solve.
Because that was the way Harry cared about most people.
Harry sighed. Terry had taken the time to write to him, and be honest, and warn him about Malfoy, and even if Harry hadn’t had the feeling that he would please Professor McGonagall by thinking about people other than his parents, that last part deserved some kind of reply.
It was just—awkward, because Harry hadn’t done anything like it before.
It took a lot of time, and hesitations, and asking Black for paper and ink because his first three tries didn’t work, but at last he was watching the owl fly away with the letter for Terry, and shaking his head.
It was strange, how people like Professor McGonagall and Neville and Terry and even Black seemed to care about Harry when he knew he didn’t do many things worth caring about. It wasn’t like they were his parents.
Then he went back to the books on the Wild.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning