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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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Seven—Nearly
The Dementors are finally gone from outside the school on the seventh of December.
Harry stands outside the castle, watching the breath foam up from his lips. For once, none of his friends are around. Ron has detention, Hermione is studying one of the shield spells she still has trouble with in the library, Theo is writing a letter to his father, Blaise is writing a Transfiguration essay that Harry actually finished yesterday, Draco is muttering to himself about something lately non-stop and has gone off to do whatever it is, and God knows where Greengrass is. Sirius is doing better now that he’s drinking that potion he thinks Dumbledore brewed, and he’s moved up to secure quarters on the second floor, along with Lupin. Snape is making more of the potion.
That means he can stand and stare at his reflection in the lake if he wants, or conjure snowballs and send them whizzing around his head. That’s one of the spells that he and his friends have been practicing. He’s doing it when he hears a muffled argument from behind him.
Harry turns around. There are two tall students he doesn’t recognize facing something in the snow with their backs to him. Harry can see they have Ravenclaw robes, and he thinks one of them looks a little familiar, but he doesn’t know them. Fourth-years, maybe?
Then the thing in the snow moves, and Harry realizes it’s not a fire, which is what he thought they were doing at first. It’s a person.
Harry narrows his eyes. The other Ravenclaws still have their backs to him. It’s not like he knows for sure. But he knows what this feels like to him.
The times when Dudley and his gang cornered Harry, and taunted him as he struggled to stand upright and find his glasses.
Harry stalks towards the Ravenclaws. They’re too busy laughing to notice him. Harry pauses about a meter from them and raises one of the skin-tight shields that he and Theo have just about perfected. They won’t notice anything under his robes.
“What are you doing?”
The Ravenclaw girls turn around in confusion. One of them he still doesn’t recognize, but the other one is Cho Chang, the Seeker for her House.
Harry remembers thinking she was pretty. Not now, though. In the snow in front of them is a small blonde girl with straggling hair who’s trying to get her shoes back on. Harry looks at her robes, which are soaked through with snow, and gives Chang and her companion a look that actually makes them take a step backwards.
“What were you doing?” he asks again, and his voice is harsher and colder than the snow that’s starting to whirl down around them.
“I—nothing!” says the girl next to Chang, flushing as though she’s stuck her face in boiling water.
“We were just playing,” Chang says soothingly, and smiles at him. Harry can remember a time when he had vague daydreams about that. Now just the thought makes him tired. “You don’t need to worry about it, Potter. Looney—I mean, Luna knows we were just playing, right, Luna?” She smiles at the blonde girl, who’s back on her feet by this time. Harry notices she’s wearing a necklace of what looks like wilted lettuce leaves around her neck.
“The Nargles like to play,” says Luna, and waves one hand. “Where did my Nargle-bane go?”
There’s another crushed necklace on the ground near Chang’s foot, or maybe Luna was wearing it in her hair. Harry doesn’t care what they say. He heard the contempt in Chang’s voice before she thought to change that insulting nickname.
“You were bullying her,” Harry says. He’s a little astonished at how cold his voice is, even knowing that he hates bullies. He draws his wand. Chang skips backwards and looks a minute away from drawing hers, but the girl next to her just cowers. “Get out of here. The next time I see you doing this—”
“What can you do? You’re a year younger than us!”
“Make sure that you get detention with Professor Snape.”
“You—you can’t do that. I mean, you may be a Slytherin now, but everyone knows that he hated you last year.”
“Really.” Harry stares at them, and is pleased to see the way that Chang’s hand flutters away from her wand. Maybe he shouldn’t be, but he is. He arranges himself protectively in front of Luna. “Get out of here.”
Chang and the other girl look for a second as if they’re going to argue, but then they turn and pelt towards the castle. Harry shakes his head in disgust and turns and holds out his hand to Luna. “They’re idiots,” he says. “Hi. I don’t think I really introduced myself properly. I’m Harry Potter. You’re Luna—what’s your last name?”
“Lovegood.” Luna is staring at him in interest, even as he takes her necklace and casts the charm that ought to straighten it out. It would work with ordinary jewelry, but here, Harry can only really manage to get some of the wilted leaves to look whole again. “You’re not with the Nargles.”
“Are most people?” Harry can already tell that Luna isn’t going to talk about this openly, which means he’ll have to ask questions in a kind of code to figure out who bullies her and how much. He turns and walks with her back to the school. Luna settles the restored cord in her hair with a simple nod.
“Most people like the Nargles. They spend all their time around them and laugh at their jokes. But what they don’t know—” Luna looks up at him with silver eyes that really do shine like the moon “—is that Nargles don’t know secrets. They don’t keep secrets. They’ll tell everything you trust them to keep precious to someone else.”
Ah. Harry doesn’t smile, because he thinks it would be a mean smile and might frighten Luna, but he nods. “Thanks for telling me, Luna. That’s good to know.”
“Is it? Why?”
Harry snorts a little, but it’s easy to avoid laughing at her, remembering what she looked like in the snow when Chang and the other girl were bullying her. He turns around in front of the Great Hall and clasps her hand. “Because maybe I can do something about Nargles if I don’t have them around me on a regular basis,” he says.
“I don’t think so. The Nargles don’t ever really go away, you know. The most you can do is make them leave someone alone for a little while.”
“Then that’s what I’ll do.”
“It’s nice to meet someone who understands the Nargle problem,” Luna says, and shakes his hand firmly. “Another thing they do is cloud people’s brains, you know. People think that they’re thinking all their own thoughts when that’s really not true.”
“A good thing to keep in mind.” Harry smiles at her. “Do you want to come join our study group in the library? We meet this evening at eight. We study ways to protect ourselves. We might be able to come up with something that works against Nargles.”
“It might be a good idea, if only to learn how to defend against Blibbering Humdingers.”
“They’re around a lot, too?”
“All the time.”
“Just tell me when they are, and I’ll help protect you.”
For a second, Luna’s eyes sear him as if she’s judging his actual intent instead of his words. Then she smiles and nods and looks vague again. “I’ll see you at eight, Harry.” She slips away to the Ravenclaw table. Harry watches. A few people glance at her and turn away in disdain. Luna doesn’t appear to notice. She solemnly builds a wall of breadcrumbs around the edge of her plate instead, before she starts eating.
“Harry.”
That’s Draco, beside him with an intent expression in his eyes. Harry blinks and follows him back to the Slytherin table. It’s unusual to see Draco at dinner as the first Slytherin there. Besides, Harry had the impression that whatever he was doing would take a long time. “What is it?”
Draco sits down across from him. His face is almost blank, but his hands are clasped in front of him. “My father would be honored if you accepted an invitation to Malfoy Manor for the holidays.”
No, Harry almost says. Then he swallows. He doesn’t actually want to, and more than that, he doesn’t think Snape would let him go. On the other hand, Snape isn’t his legal guardian, and there has to be some important reason that Draco is asking this. “Why?” he asks.
Draco understands the question behind the question. He nods, eyes fastened on Harry’s face. “Because I’m on the verge of convincing my father that my loyalty is to him and him alone, and that he can use you,” he whispers.
Harry hesitates. Then he says, “Is it going to be unsafe for you if I don’t go?”
“I—don’t know. It might.” Draco clenches his hands for a second, then seems to think that’s too revealing and slips them down into his lap. “At the very least, he’s decided that we’re not friends and he can do whatever he wants.”
“Let me discuss it with Professor Snape, then.”
“Why? He’s not your legal guardian. He can’t make you stay at Hogwarts if you don’t want to.”
“But he’s the one who would make my life the most miserable if I didn’t consult with him and he found out,” Harry says dryly. “Which he would if I agreed and didn’t tell him.”
Draco shudders. “Good point.” Then he eyes Harry curiously. “You’re actually considering this?”
“Do you want me to or do you not want me to, Malfoy?”
Harry didn’t mean to sound so dark, to make Draco flinch and bite his lip the way he does, but he honestly isn’t sure what to do, and he doesn’t want Draco dancing around from one side to the other and apparently changing his mind. Draco finally jerks his head down and says, “Yes. I want you to come.”
“Then I’ll talk with Professor Snape and get back to you as soon as I can.”
Harry eats most of his dinner in peace, then, but Ron suddenly yells out at him from the Gryffindor table near the end of it, “Mate! You’re coming to the Burrow this year for the hols, right?”
Draco tenses and practically hisses next to him. Harry hides a groan. It’s not like Ron could know. And if Draco thinks of this as some competition to see who gets the most of Harry’s attention, he’s going to have to think again.
Harry manages a smile and a shrug. “We’ll have to see.”
“Rubbish! What’s stopping you?”
Harry rolls his eyes and stands, aware that far more people than he wants are watching his every movement. God, he wishes he was ordinary, that no one really noticed or cared about him—just a few friends. Like what the Dursleys wished for, after all.
“I think I should talk to a few people before I do,” he says, and slips out of the Great Hall before Ron can say anything else.
Draco follows him. Harry keeps his eyes focused ahead, because he will look annoyed if he turns to Draco now; it’s just the way things are.
“I need an answer.”
“So do I. But you can’t give me the one I need most, so we’ll both have to wait.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to know if your father is going to kill or torture me or put me under the Imperius Curse if I do go to your Manor for the holidays. And you can’t tell me that. I doubt he would tell the truth even if he did decide to say something to you about his intentions.”
Draco pauses, then catches up with him as Harry continues marching towards the dungeons. “Probably not the killing or the torture. He has to suspect that people would know what happened to you, and think he has some motive to murder you.”
Harry laughs in despair, then stops himself because he can already tell from the unhealthy sound of the cackle that no one else would be able to. He stops in front of Professor Snape’s door and knocks three times. He was supposed to be here this evening anyway for detention, but now he has to spend this time handling this new problem.
The despair wants to well up, thick and black, but he forces it down. If he can do this to help Draco, he will. It’s just that—
Sometimes it would be nice if someone was doing something for him for a change, or saving him.
Snape opens the door and studies them for a moment. Then he nods and says, “In.”
Harry slips inside and stands against the wall as he watches Draco nod to Professor Snape. Snape questions him first, and Draco says, “I don’t know, sir,” more often than he says anything else. But he does tell Snape what Harry thinks are probably true details about how he’s been working to get free of his father and convince him that Draco is on his side at the same time, and that it would help if Harry accepted Lucius’s invitation for the holidays.
Snape turns to Harry then. Harry shrugs at him. “I can’t tell how safe it is. That’s the only reason I haven’t said yes.”
Snape’s eyes narrow further. “The only reason?”
“Well, yes,” Harry says slowly. He doesn’t understand. Does Snape think that he’s being stupid to even think about going? Or that he’s selfish enough to put Draco at risk even when Draco has told him that him being safe depends on Harry going to the Manor? “I knew you would get upset if I put myself in danger.”
*
He’s perfectly willing to risk it, on the tiny chance that—
But Severus stops himself. He cannot expect Harry to understand all the politics of the older Slytherins when he is still working on mastering the politics of the younger generation. He steps back, looks Harry in the eye, and says, “Draco’s father is not going to harm him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, of course I know that.” Severus turns to Draco. “Tell me now, Mr. Malfoy. Do you really think that your father would hurt you if you are unable to persuade Mr. Potter to accompany you?”
Draco shuffles in place and lowers his eyes. Severus watches him, and sees the moment when the tremor of uncertainty passes through him. He snorts. He must know Lucius better than the boy does at the moment, which is strange to think about.
“You are his only child. And he would have to contend with your mother if he hurt you. Of course he is not going to do that.”
Draco looks him in the eye. “He might not. But he might.”
Harry is already tensing with resolve. Of course he’ll fling himself into the breach and offer to go. Severus shakes his head at him. “The situation is not impossible to handle, but it will require you to think, Mr. Potter, instead of volunteering yourself for martyrdom.”
“I do not volunteer myself for martyrdom!”
“You are preparing to visit the house of a Death Eater who has given no sign that he wants to use you and thus protect you for a while in the way that Tarquinius Nott did. What about that is not desperation for pain?”
“I have to protect Draco.”
Severus notes Draco’s dropped jaw, although he doesn’t intend to call attention to it. Yes, you are among his friends now. See that you do not mess up the chance. “There are other ways to proceed, I said. Will you calm down and listen to me, or will you blindly charge ahead and inflict pain on yourself and others?”
Harry closes his eyes and breathes deep. Then he says, “I’m listening.”
The tone he uses makes Draco’s jaw drop further, but as Severus intends to swear the boy to secrecy about several things, he sees no need to call attention to that, either. “You will stay here for the holidays,” he says. “You will say that it is at the command of your Head of House. And on one of the selected days when Hogwarts is not in session, then I will accompany you to Malfoy Manor.”
Harry blinks his eyes open. Then he says, “That could work. As long as Draco’s father isn’t going to hurt him because I’m not there all the time.”
Severus turns on Draco. He has the sense to snap his jaw shut and shake his head fervently. “No, that would be great! That would be wonderful! I don’t think my father thought I would manage to persuade you at all, honestly.”
“Fine,” Harry says. “But—isn’t Ron going to be upset that I can’t spend the holidays with him?”
Severus cannot help the roll of his eyes this time, and does not try. “You may cast all the blame on the evil Professor Snape when Weasley talks to you,” he says. “And in the meantime, you will go and tell your friends the good news while I speak with Draco.”
Harry gives him the most suspicious glance possible, but is wise enough to leave without lingering. Severus faces Draco and draws his wand. Draco winces and sucks in a breath.
“I will swear you to secrecy about several things you saw and heard here today,” Severus says smoothly. “And you will do what I say, Draco. You will not endanger him based on what you now know about him. Do you understand?”
“Why would I want to endanger the first person who acts like he wants to protect me just for being his friend?”
Well. That is unexpected. But Severus picks it up and weaves it into his plan. If he can gain another protector for Harry, that is all to the good. “Then repeat after me. I, Draco Malfoy, swear on my magic…”
*
SickPuppy: Severus would not want you to tell anyone he apologized. :) And thank you!
Kain: Heh, Harry doesn't think much of how hard Snape will have to work to change himself because it's exactly the kind of work he's doing all the time, and has to keep on doing as he learns how to adapt to having both Slytherin and Gryffindor friends. But ultimately, Severus does care more about having Harry's good opinion than he does about terryfing Neville, so he will change. But it will take a while.
Harry isn't thinking in terms of changing the whole of Slytherin House--not yet.
And thank you! Writing the conversation was a little nerve-wracking because it had to be such a delicate balancing act.
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