Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24374 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story

Chapter List
- 34
- 35
- 36
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Five—Treating Sirius
“They’re not going to give me a real trial. Not really.”
“Fudge is negotiating with Dumbledore now about removing the Dementors from the grounds and giving you a real trial,” Severus replies without taking his attention away from the bubbling flask of sludgy potion in his hand. Honestly, he thinks that the chances Black is getting are more than he deserves. Forgiven by the boy who he should have cared for, stopped before he could commit the stupid mistake of murdering Pettigrew, apologized to by Severus himself… But Severus will not say it, lest he look as if he thinks that Azkaban was not punishment enough. “He can’t act too soon. It would make him look weak.”
“He is.”
“But he can’t afford to look that way, especially since he’s going to declare you innocent and say Peter Pettigrew is a resurrected villain, not a dead hero.”
Black goes unexpectedly silent. Severus finishes the last swirl of the potion, and nods. He took the potion to recover from his short stint in Azkaban. Despite his confident words to Albus, he is not sure that it will work for Black, with his much longer one, to recover his mental health.
Then again, it’s not as if he cares that much if Black actually recovers. He’s doing this for Harry, not for Black to be with Harry.
He turns around with the potion and finds Black leaning forwards on his chair, studying Severus. His chair inside the cage. Severus carefully hides a smile at that. How interesting that Albus didn’t order Severus to put Black in more comfortable quarters, or come himself to see him.
“What you said almost made sense.” Black is tapping his fingers suspiciously against the chair arm.
“Imagine that,” Severus drawls back, and it’s honestly hard to prevent the urge to roll his eyes. “Someone who speaks truth and makes sense.”
“But you hate me.”
“What would lying to you gain me? If nothing else, Harry would visit you soon and simply tell you the truth. He would have yesterday, but you were asleep by the time he visited.” Black spent most of yesterday raging at Severus and stressing his pain-racked body and mind with the screaming. Honest sleep, not one of Severus’s Stunners, consumed him before Harry could make his way to detention.
“But you hate me.”
Severus shakes his head. He can’t pierce the veils that shroud Black’s mind, and honestly, he doesn’t have the will to try right now. He holds out the flask. “This is the Mind-Lifting Potion. It helped me when I was in Azkaban. It should lessen the paranoia that plagues you now.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Not really,” Severus says, honest as he can’t be when Harry is in the same room. “I would prefer it if you ceased to exist and left me alone. But we can’t have what we wish for.” He extends the flask again. “Drink this, Black. Harry wants you sane. He wants you to be his guardian. This is the fastest way to restore some of that sanity.”
Black only studies him for a few minutes. Then he nods and grasps the neck of the flask.
Only Severus’s own instinctive paranoia saves him. Black swings the flask and shatters it against the bars of the cage, then throws the broken pieces at Severus. Severus dodges smoothly to the side and lifts a shield to make sure that none of the flying shards hit him.
In the meantime, breaking the flask has left Black’s fingers lacerated. But he looks as satisfied as a happy, panting dog asleep in front of the fire can.
“What the hell, Black.” Severus keeps his voice flat. Honestly, showing any emotion other than shock is beyond him now, so profound is that shock.
“You were trying to poison me. I could tell when you said that you were trying to help me.” Black is tilting his head back and forth so his ratty dark hair tumbles around his shoulders, obviously proud of himself. “You can’t fool me, Snivellus. You can’t really want me to recover, and you want me gone. You said so yourself.”
Severus sneers and says nothing, because he can hear something other than the sound of his own self-congratulations. That sound is the noise of someone catching his breath and the rustle of the soft cloth that comprises an Invisibility Cloak.
Harry pulls it off his head and just stares at Black. “Why did you destroy the potion, Sirius?” he whispers. “It must have taken Professor Snape a long time to make that.”
Severus watches him. Honestly, at this moment the boy looks almost nothing like James Potter, even though pulling the Cloak off has made his hair even more flyaway than usual. His face is pale, his eyes wide, his voice respectful.
Black frowns a little. “I know he says all the right things, Harry, but he’s just a git and a bully. He says that he wants me to go away and then hands me a potion. Honestly, what am I supposed to think? I mean, you’ll understand when you’re a little older.”
Harry only shakes his head slowly. “I understand that you’re sick from Azkaban.”
“Sick of being there? Sure!” Black grips the cage bars and leans forwards with an idiot’s grin. “But you can help me get better, Harry. I know that I’ll be as right as rain when I have you to take care of!”
“Sick mentally,” Harry says, his voice and face both incredibly solemn. “I mean—how could anyone be normal after they’ve been around Dementors for ten years? But it’s only now that I really realized what that means.”
“I do want to take care of you, Harry.” Black gives the smile that so many found charming, even Lily in the end, as he presses against the cage bars. “It’s just going to take a little while. And I just don’t like Snivellus.”
“You’re still calling him that?”
It’s incredible how much the room can chill with one small boy’s disapproval, Severus thinks as he stands back. He’s glad he’s not on the receiving end of Harry’s interrogation.
It does remind him that he has an interrogation of his own to give. But no need to do it now, while Harry takes a step forwards and looks at Black as though he’s peering through a slimy mirror.
“I want you to stop talking to him that way. I don’t want to be friends with someone who talks that way.”
“But we wouldn’t just be friends, Harry! I would be taking care of you.”
“I had guardians who hated me for my magic. I don’t want a guardian who hates someone else for something they can’t help.”
“He could change his name from Severus if he wanted!”
Honestly, Black, Severus thinks, just barely resisting the urge to shake his head, as he watches the way the frown contorts Harry’s face. Severus knew Black was childish. He simply didn’t realize how much.
“I don’t want to discuss this with you,” Harry says. “I want to discuss you healing your mind. Would you drink that potion that Professor Snape was trying to offer you if Dumbledore brewed it?”
“Albus? Yes, of course.”
Severus opens his mouth to complain that Albus doesn’t even know what the potion’s ingredients are, much less how to brew it, but he gets a look that’s so unexpectedly fierce, he blinks and shuts his mouth.
“Then we’ll get him to brew the potion and give it to you, okay? In the meantime, I want you to concentrate on that meditation you told me you were doing. Remembering the happy times of the past and forgetting about Dementors.”
“Okay,” Black says, and there’s a soft yearning in his eyes that Severus supposes a child might find attractive. “I really do want to be your godfather and take care of you, Harry. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Bollocks. He came here wanting revenge on Pettigrew.
Unlike Black, however, Severus has an idea of when speaking up would only imperil his position, so he keeps his mouth shut again, and Harry manages to smile at Black and say, “All right. I have a detention to serve with Professor Snape.”
“I can get you out of it!”
Harry turns and walks out of the room, his usual tactic whenever Black passes the limits of his tolerance. Severus lingers only long enough to watch Black slump back against the cage bars before he follows Harry into the outer room.
Making sure to raise the charms that will prevent Black from hearing anything they say, Severus begins, “If you want me to let Albus brew the potion—”
“What?” Harry lets his school tie dangle loosely around his throat and gives Severus a distracted glance. “Oh. No. Of course not.”
“But you told Black—”
“I told him that because he would only get upset if he knew you were brewing it. You’ll still brew it, sir. But we’ll just give it to him and tell him it came from Dumbledore.”
Severus closes his mouth slowly, and blinks himself. Then he says, “Risky, if Dumbledore speaks to Black.”
“He hasn’t so far. I think he’s too much of a coward to.”
Severus has to agree with that. As he has to agree that he would be a coward himself if he put this necessary work off any longer. He nods to Harry. “Sit down. We need to speak about some of the things you’ve been writing lines on. And what you said in Dumbledore’s office.”
*
Shit.
Harry sits down slowly in the chair that’s usually his, although there’s no desk in front of it for writing lines this time. He keeps a wary eye on Snape, who sits down opposite him. That’s new. Usually he stands.
I thought I was being a good enough Slytherin with the lies and all to keep him from asking about this. I reckon not.
“What your cousin did to you was torture.” Snape speaks slowly and evenly, as if he thinks Harry’s about to fly out of the chair. “You suffered from it. I want to know how you feel and think about it. You used it as a weapon against Dumbledore, but most of the time you keep the scar concealed. Are you ashamed of it?”
Harry stares at him. This doesn’t sound like the man he thought Snape was, so calm and assured and cool. And smart. “Of course I bloody am!”
Snape goes still, his eyes glittering and watchful. Then he says, “But it was done to you. You didn’t do it to yourself. You were too young to defend yourself—”
“No, I wasn’t,” Harry snaps, his head seething with memories of making the glass at the zoo vanish and Apparating onto the roof. “I could do accidental magic. I did it all the time. Half the time I didn’t even want anything to happen, it just did. And then I lay there and wished and wished and wished for something to happen while Dudley was cutting me, and nothing did! I could have done magic to protect myself, but I was too weak to call it!”
If Harry thought Snape was still before, it’s nothing compared to the way he looks now. He examines Harry with utter intensity, and Harry wants to turn away and curl up in a corner and not see anything for a while. But Snape’s demanding eyes keep him from doing that.
“Accidental magic does not work that way,” Snape finally says.
“But sometimes it does! Once I wanted to keep Aunt Petunia from cutting my hair in a stupid way, and I managed to grow it back! And once I escaped from Dudley’s gang—”
“It responds to fluctuations in emotions and desires and even atmosphere,” says Snape, flicking his fingers as if tossing a ruined potions ingredient away. “It is not something under conscious control, and very few wizards understand how it works at all. You are not weak for not being able to make your cousin go flying backwards. You are not.”
Harry bites his lip and flares his nostrils out, and says nothing. One thing he’s learned with Snape is that protesting usually makes it worse. He’ll just assign the detention to you harder once he understands how much you don’t want it. And, well, Harry won’t say anything now, and just let Snape think he agrees with him. That’s the best way to handle it.
Snape smiles a little, and shakes his head. “I want to hear your agreement.”
Harry glares. Snape watches him. When it’s gone long enough that Harry thinks he’ll get a scolding, Snape lifts his eyebrows and says in a very mild voice, “I want to hear you say ‘I am not responsible for defending myself from my abusive relatives.’”
Harry clenches his hands into fists. It’s not that he would hate saying something like this—he wouldn’t—but Snape is just going about it all wrong.
“Harry. I am waiting.”
“It’s not that way and you know it!” Harry snaps.
“I don’t know it at all, because I don’t know what you are talking about.” Snape’s voice is level. “Tell me.”
“I mean that it’s not as simple as you say it is!” Harry shoots up out of the chair that he was half-sitting in and paces around the room. He’s about two seconds away from waving his hands, but he can tell Snape doesn’t really care. “I have accidental magic, I should be able to do something! I just lay there and let Dudley do it—”
“You didn’t fight?”
“Of course I fought! But he had two friends holding me down, and—”
“Then it is not your fault.”
Harry spins around and snarls at Snape. “I should be able to do something! I should have fought when they locked me in the cupboard! I should have gone and told someone among the Muggles who could have stopped it! I should have done something!”
“You were a child.” Snape says it so calmly that Harry wouldn’t believe the voice was coming out of his mouth if he couldn’t watch Snape’s lips moving. “You were not responsible for anything. The people who should have loved you and comforted you—they didn’t. That is not your fault.”
“Yes, it is!”
“Harry. Listen to what you are saying.”
Harry catches himself back before he can say something else, and angrily closes his eyes. He’s trembling, on the verge of tears and hating it. He can feel Snape still watching him, and then Snape comes forwards a step and clasps Harry’s shoulder, gentle and strong and comforting.
How messed-up is that, that I find Snape comforting?
“You can admit that they tortured you,” Snape says, almost in a whisper now. “You can admit it was wrong. You had no trouble appreciating the fact that they were dead and you did not have to go back. What is so different about this? Is it simply speaking the words?” His hand shifts on Harry’s shoulder as if to hold him up, even though Harry isn’t about to collapse. He’s not that much of a weakling.
Harry shuts his eyes harder and controls his breathing. That’s one of the things he found in the books in Tarquinius’s library that has been pretty consistently useful. He can calm himself down if he counts his breaths.
“They make me weak just by existing,” he finally says, when he knows that he’s not going to get any calmer and Snape isn’t going to go away. “I want to forget about them. I don’t want people to know about them and laugh at me. What does it matter, what they did to me? They’re dead.”
“I would say that your words contain a contradiction,” Snape says, in that dispassionate tone that Harry hates most of all, because he can’t help but listen to it. “If they do not matter, then why do you wish to forget about them?”
Harry swallows and doesn’t reach down to rub the scar on his arm, but only because he knows Snape is going to be watching for that. He just says, “I don’t want to talk about it. They’re dead and gone.”
“We have to talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Because what they did to you still has consequences. In the way that you risk your life, because no one ever taught you it has value. In the way that you wanted to live with Black right away, because you are so used to parental figures who hurt you and shove you away that you are prone to cling to the tiniest spark of light in that direction.”
Harry jerks himself away from Snape. He meets the man’s eyes, and winces. Snape is looking at him with all this compassion, again, this sensation that Harry hates. He shakes his head. “That’s not why—”
“They influenced you,” Snape counters him, never raising his voice. “One of the things you can think of, Harry, is that that weakness will go on plaguing you until you deal with it.”
Harry winces with each blow that Snape gives him. It’s true that—that that makes him sound so weak, not being able to stop Dudley and his friends from beating him up sounds strong in comparison. But he doesn’t want to think about the Dursleys. Or talk about them. Maybe he can’t help thinking about them, but he sees no reason to let Snape into his thoughts.
But if he’s going to be stronger in the future, and Snape is right that this is a weakness plaguing him, and he’ll be a lot stronger once it’s gone?
Harry bites his lip and flops down into the chair that Snape pulled out for him and nods. “All right. Let’s talk.”
*
SickPuppy: Dumbledore thinks all children are innocent. He does have blinders on.
Kain: Snape would whip out adoption forms if he thought it would do any good. But he knows Albus and Sirius would prevent him from doing anything "drastic," which means useful.
Yes, poor Ron! And, well, Snape might be closer to unbiased if he gets a chance to treat Sirius at all...
Severus would only have a little legal sway if Sirius adopts Harry. That doesn't mean he wouldn't get more by underhanded means.
- 34
- 35
- 36
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Other People's Choices