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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26077 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Chapter List
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Chapter Forty—The Reception of Allies
“Professor McGonagall? What are you doing here?”
Harry hastily put down his book and darted out of the library. Terry had gone downstairs for lunch, which meant Professor McGonagall must be in the kitchen. Harry was still a little annoyed that he wasn’t the first one who had got to greet her.
Professor McGonagall was sitting at the table, sipping a cup of something that smelled stronger than tea. (Black thought Harry had Transfigured his nose, but Harry had just always had a strong sense of smell). She looked up when Harry came in, and nodded at him. “Hello, Harry,” she said, the burr in her voice stronger than usual. “I hope you don’t mind me coming to you with nothing but my wand and the clothes on my back.”
“Of course not,” Harry said. “You brought yourself and your magic, and what could be more important than that?”
Professor McGonagall smiled a little. “Thank you.” She set her cup down on the table and studied him for a bit. “You look as though you’ve been healthy.”
“I have. Did Dumbledore chase you out?”
Professor McGonagall blinked, then chuckled. “Yes, you have it. Oh, he didn’t mean to. But he intercepted the letter I sent you, and figured out that you and Black are hiding together.” She nodded to the wall behind her, where Black leaned. Harry hadn’t consciously noted him before. “He demanded that I prove my ultimate loyalty was to him.”
“I don’t really understand why,” Harry said, after a moment’s thought. “I mean, it should be to Neville, right? And I’m not threatening Dumbledore. I’m just researching various ways to heal my parents.” He didn’t miss the glance Professor McGonagall shot Terry, and shook his head. “He knows, Professor.”
“Ah.” She sighed and stirred a finger through the liquid in her cup. Black made a grumbling noise. She ignored him, which Harry approved of. “I think part of it is that he does not understand you, Harry, and anything that Albus does not understand, he wishes to control and study until he does. And you are something outside his control. He thinks you have Lycaon’s Syndrome—”
“Patently ridiculous,” Black interrupted flatly. “Lycaon’s Syndrome cannot be reversed, and we’ve seen the way that Harry has returned to sanity.”
“What is it?” Terry demanded.
“A disease that makes someone become more and more like an animal, until the process is carried to its logical endpoint, and they cannot recover,” Professor McGonagall answered. “It uses the Wild, which is probably one reason that Albus thinks Harry has it. He creates permanent Transfigurations, and so does Lycaon’s Syndrome.”
“He doesn’t,” said Black again. Harry thought he was being very insistent about this. “For one thing, I never heard of any child with it who could transform other things. Only themselves.”
“I know. But I’m telling you Albus’s reasoning for it. And part of it is that he knows you’ve taken Severus, and that must make you the enemy.” Professor McGonagall hesitated and looked at Harry. “Do you think you could make peace with him if you told him the real reason Severus had been trying to ambush you?”
Harry twisted up his mouth. “I could try. But what do you think would happen?”
“He might not believe you,” Professor McGonagall admitted after a moment’s thought. “And he would certainly want Severus back.”
Harry nodded. “I don’t intend to release him yet. He hates me and my parents so much that he would do something. Dumbledore couldn’t hold him back. And as long as I keep him here, then I can make sure of what happens to someone when their Dark Mark is gone.”
Professor McGonagall nodded. She was still frowning, and staring a little at her cup, so Harry knew something was still on her mind. He sat down in front of her, so she had to look at him and couldn’t glance away. “What is it?” he asked.
“I find myself wondering if we should try to get Neville on our side,” she said quietly.
“I thought he already was. I mean, he isn’t going to go to Dumbledore and tell him where I am or anything like that.”
Professor McGonagall uttered a tiny sigh. “No, but now he is without you and without me in that school, with Dolores Umbridge still focused on making him suffer for saying You-Know-Who is coming back—”
“He has Weasley and Granger,” Terry interrupted. “They stick to him like some Muggle disease.”
Professor McGonagall frowned at Terry, but didn’t seem really distracted from what she was saying to Harry. “He has no adult who cares enough to protect him. Albus has trained him, yes, but he’s intent on forcing him into battle before he’s ready. And Augusta Longbottom has…different ideals.”
“Which is a short way of saying that she wants Longbottom to survive but also thinks that dishonor is worse than death,” said Black, his arms folded. “Why she would think that when she’s had to suffer the loss of her own son, I don’t know, but that’s people who consider themselves on the righteous side for you.”
“But if Neville came here, then his grandmother and Dumbledore would just come and get him back.”
Professor McGonagall settled back and considered Harry with slightly narrowed eyes. “I’d have thought you would be more sympathetic.”
“I am, but I want a plan that’s going to work,” Harry said. “It’s not going to work to have him here. It might not even work for us to stay here much longer, if Dumbledore knows about me being with Black now.”
“Let him come and try himself against the defensive magic my ancestors wove into place on their houses,” said Black, and he was grinning like a skull. “Oh, please. I’d pay good money to see that.”
“Right, but he could get public opinion on his side, and then it would be more than just Dumbledore trying to break your defenses down.”
“Noted, Boot.” Black’s voice had cooled off a little. He still didn’t seem to like Terry, Harry thought with a private roll of his eyes, even though he ought to be able to see that Terry wasn’t doing any harm by being here. “What I meant is that Dumbledore won’t go too far even if he tries to go too far.”
“But we might be accused of kidnapping the Boy-Who-Lived.” Professor McGonagall sighed and worked her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. I want to make sure that Neville and my other students are safe, but it’s hard to do from here.”
Harry watched her in silence for a moment. He agreed, but he wasn’t sure what else she wanted him to say.
Professor McGonagall smiled at him and sat up. “I want to know more about these experiments you’ve been performing with the Dark Mark. Is it true that you removed one from Professor Snape completely? And you’ve modified Lestrange’s?”
Harry nodded. He was always glad to discuss the research that might bring his parents back to him. “Yes, but now we’re stuck on what we can give Lestrange as a focus to enable her to cast spells I can unwind.”
“I still think it’s wrong to try that. You’re too fixated on that idea.” Black flopped gracelessly into a chair and rolled his eyes at Harry. “Why don’t you use the modifications to her Mark to take control of her, and make her do what you want?”
Professor McGonagall looked a little shocked, but Harry only shrugged. “Because she would still need a wand to cast the spells.”
“Not if you commanded her to draw on her deep magic.”
“Deep magic?”
Black paused. “Maybe it doesn’t have that name outside the books in the Black family library. I know it has various names. Accidental magic is a part of it. The power that can spare a wizarding child from getting in trouble or falling to their death, sometimes.”
Harry nodded. “And get them punished,” he murmured, his mind dancing back over life with the Dursleys. “Well. I could try. But I haven’t done it before, so I would still need—”
“People standing by to make sure she doesn’t get out of hand. Of course. I’m willing to do that.”
Harry eyed Black. “Why is this so much better than giving her a wand?”
“Because it’s simpler than trying to Transfigure an object, and it’s shorter, and this way, if the idea doesn’t work, then you’ll move on to something else.”
“I’m never going to give up on ways to heal my parents. Know that, Black.”
“But this way might not work. So we need to find out whether it does or not, instead of wasting all our time on it if it doesn’t.”
Harry eyed him one more time, then stood up. Well, he had always known that Black was strange. “I’m going to read up on a few spells I might want to try and get her to perform. We should be ready to try tomorrow.”
“At the latest. Of course.” Black gave Harry a mocking bow from where he was seated. “Whenever you’re ready, Your Majesty.”
Harry shook his head as he left the kitchen, Terry silently following him. He had never asked for Black to treat him like he was a prince. The opposite, if anything. Black had only himself to blame if he was impatient now.
Why doesn’t he give up on me, since he’s such a large proponent of giving up?
*
Minerva waited until she was sure that Harry and Boot were well out of the kitchen before she spoke. At least she didn’t think Harry had any animals that could listen to a conversation and then report it back to him in English. “You stand a chance of losing him if you keep on like this, you know.”
Regulus sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “I know.” His hair was shaggy, Minerva noted, hanging over his face as he shook his head. “But I don’t know what else to do. He won’t give up on this insane idea to heal his parents, and he won’t just understand that I want to protect him.”
“Perhaps you should try explaining your reasons to him, and not heading the list with boredom.”
“I have. But he seems to think anything less than deeply selfish reasons to protect him is a lie, and I don’t want to lie to him.”
Minerva nodded slowly. “Then perhaps we should simply let things play out. As long as he doesn’t destroy himself with Transfiguration or trying to heal his parents, he may surprise us. I think that he’s probably stronger than we think.”
Regulus sat without replying for a while. Then he looked up and asked, “Do you think Albus will try to get you back?”
Minerva’s long flight was over now, which meant her muscles remembered the leap from the Tower and the jumping through the Forbidden Forest and reminded her of her true age even though she was back in her human form. She massaged her face and leaned an elbow on the table, wishing her mind didn’t feel so dull. “In the sense that he would want to secure my loyalty, yes. But I could never become his ally on equal terms again. He wouldn’t be satisfied with my wanting to work with him. He would want repentance and apologies.”
“But he has no right to demand them.”
“He’s too powerful a wizard. None so powerful in a long, long time—”
“Unless you count the Dark Lord.”
Minerva peered at him around her hand. “I don’t, particularly. Albus is the only one You-Know-Who ever feared.”
Regulus laughed, a sound that seemed to curl up Minerva’s arm and into her ear like an earwig. “I think that he’ll have someone else to fear in the future, if things continue as they are,” he said, and gave a pointed glance at the doorway Harry had walked through.
“But Harry doesn’t want to fight You-Know-Who,” Minerva said, wondering if Regulus had understood the child he was guarding at all. “The only thing he cares about is healing his parents. If he can strike back at You-Know-Who, it’s only because he thinks that’s what he needs to do to remove the Lestranges’ magic from his parents.”
Regulus grinned in a way that reminded her of Severus when he was making a point about the essential uselessness of Hufflepuffs. “How do you think the Dark Lord will take the loss of five of his Death Eaters?”
Minerva paused. “Was Severus loyal?”
“To the Dark Lord? He acted as if he was, that night.” Regulus stretched his arms a little, never looking away from Minerva. “Do you know how much he hates my brother even now, when he’s been dead for fourteen years? It’s honestly a little disturbing.”
Minerva sighed. “I know.” Her mind strayed back to the days the Marauders and Severus had been her students, and she shook her head. She should have worked harder to curb their torment of Severus and make them obey the rules that everyone else around them obeyed, more or less.
On the other hand, there were other people who had been tormented and hadn’t grown up as extraordinarily bitter as Severus. Neville cringed sometimes and had the school turn on him on a regular basis, but Minerva couldn’t picture him hating dead people as much as Severus, or trying to kill the son of the woman he’d loved.
“So it doesn’t matter, in the end, whether he’s more a Death Eater or more a member of Dumbledore’s Order,” Regulus finished, with a dismissive motion of his fingers. “Even Severus might not know. I say we don’t spend more time worrying about it. He’s an enemy. He can be an asset, in the sense that he’s brewing potions for us and they seem to work well enough. But he can never be an ally.”
Minerva nodded. Given her last conversation with Severus, she didn’t think she could do anything to persuade him otherwise. “And you think it would be a good idea to let Harry do as he wills with Bellatrix?”
“I know I care more about him than my cousin.”
“Why?”
“I know my cousin. Harry is something new under the sun.”
Minerva blinked at Regulus. For him, it might just be that simple. Or, from the way the man was smiling at her with his lips firmly closed, he didn’t intend to say anything else, so she should accept this because she wouldn’t get anything else. Minerva nodded and stood.
“Promise me that you’ll let me rest before you let Harry perform this.”
“I think everyone should be there. Even Boot. I want to let Harry try, but I don’t know it’ll work.”
“Do you hope it won’t?” Minerva paused with her fingers drumming on the side of the doorway while she waited for his answer.
Regulus looked away and gave a silent shrug.
Minerva went to the room Regulus had had prepared for her, ignoring the sneers of the one house-elf she saw. She’d ignored far greater disapproval in her time. She had her own to contend with now, swirling around in her chest as she Transfigured her robes into sleeping ones and firmly locked the door.
Perhaps I should have stayed and tried to work things out with Albus.
But then, as she lay down in the oversized bed and breathed in what she thought was a new absence of dust, she had to shake her head. She’d been right in what she said of him to Regulus. Albus wanted people not just to work with him but to admit they were wrong. It was one of the reasons he had so valued Severus, Minerva thought. Severus had things to repent, things he’d done wrong.
If he ever even realized they were wrong. If he wasn’t only pretending so he could avoid Azkaban.
Well, she wouldn’t solve riddles like this lying here and staring into the darkness. Minerva had once had the habit of being able to go to sleep at once, like the cat she was, because she might have to leap up to defend the school or the children during the war, or run out on an Order of the Phoenix mission.
She found her way back to that still, dark place in the center of her mind, loosening all her muscles so it felt as if someone was stroking down her back to her tail. Her eyes drooped shut. She thought about being curled up in a stream of sunlight, and the way that the velvet cushions on many of Hogwarts’s windowseats felt beneath her, and the way that a stomach full of cream and milk bulged…
She slept.
*
“What you have brought me is valuable information, Draco.” Lucius Malfoy smiled down at his son and let his hand clasp a slender shoulder briefly.
Draco’s face lit up so violently that Lucius tapped his tongue against his teeth. Draco at once schooled his expression. Lucius nodded.
They stood in the entrance hall of Malfoy Manor, where the Dark Lord was coming to meet Draco and hear his report. He was interested in knowing where this Potter brat was, given that Severus and Macnair had been on a mission against him when they disappeared. Draco would meet the Dark Lord for the first time tonight, and had to be on his best behavior.
At least he was acting better now than he had been, Lucius thought. He had never thought he had raised a son who would let himself be Memory Charmed by another student in his third year, and then succumb to an unreasoning fear of a transient threat. Of course the Potter boy seemed unusual, but Draco should have been better than unusual. He should have been strong.
But he took his mind from both boys when he heard the entrance of the Dark Lord. There was such magic swirling around him that it was actually that which Lucius heard, the sharp crackle of power tracing orbits in the air about the Dark Lord’s body. Lucius knelt at once, and Draco wasn’t slow in following him down. Luckily, he also knew that he should use both legs, while Lucius took one knee in deference to the fact that he was part of the Dark Lord’s Inner Circle.
I can only hope that Draco will be found worthy to follow me there.
The Dark Lord came in and stopped, staring down at them. Lucius bowed his head. Even without the overwhelming weight of the Dark power in the entrance hall, it was hard to meet that piercing pair of red eyes.
“You have information on the Potter brat, Lucius.”
“That my son gathered.” Lucius shoved Draco lightly forwards, and Draco bowed from his knees without looking up.
“You are to ssstand.”
Lucius shivered at the curl of Parseltongue on the words. He knew it was really for Draco; the Dark Lord wanted to see what he was made of. But too many memories filled his mind of times he had been tested for him not to respond.
Draco did well. He stood, keeping his head bowed in such a way that it didn’t seem disrespectful, only sense—which of course it was—and then gazed up into their Lord’s face. His lips parted around a strangled gasp. Lucius wondered if he would have to tug him back to the floor, but the Dark Lord made his sibilant laughter as he reached out and took Draco’s chin.
“Very good, Draco. I can see that you will never lie to me.”
“No, my Lord.”
“You understand your best interests. No doubt part of that is due to your father’s instruction.”
Lucius bowed his head again as the Dark Lord glanced at him. He would never presume to speak without his Lord’s express permission. He would simply wait until there was a question, or an implied one, as the demand for Draco’s report had been.
“Most of it, my Lord.”
“And the rest?”
Lucius tensed. The Dark Lord became like this, sometimes—almost playful, setting riddles that had only one correct answer. It was too much to hope that Draco would do as well in answering this one, when Lucius had not warned him about it. This was such a rare mood for the Dark Lord that he hadn’t thought he would have to.
“The rest comes from your example, my Lord.”
There was silence so tense and freezing that Lucius felt his mouth drop open. He would never have dared try a response like that. He was astonished that Draco did, and he intended to punish him, if there was anything left of him to punish—
The Dark Lord laughed, and it was a gentle, abiding laugh. He pulled Draco more fully to his feet, and then said, “A good ansssswer, Draco. Tell me what you heard now.”
Draco did. Lucius listened carefully, even though he’d already heard it multiple times himself, listening as the Dark Lord did for little gaps in the truth. But it was straightforward. Dumbledore had become careless. There were anti-eavesdropping spells on every professor’s quarters, but they engaged only with the closing of the door. If Dumbledore hadn’t been in such a tearing hurry, if he hadn’t lost control…
But Dumbledore had been increasingly erratic for months now, Lucius thought, more preoccupied with Dolores Umbridge than she deserved, more prone to letting Severus get away with some of the potions experiments that he had once forbidden inside the school’s walls. At least, until Severus had disappeared.
Lucius looked up as Draco stopped speaking, certain that their master would order an attack on the school. Even though Lucius wanted revenge on Potter more, it was the natural place to strike, with Dumbledore’s attention so distracted.
But the Dark Lord’s eyes had narrowed to gleaming slits of red in the way that meant danger, and he reached out with one hand and lightly caressed Draco’s forehead. Draco gasped. Lucius knew why. Their Lord’s hands were colder than marble in winter.
“You have done well, Draco,” he said, and remained still a moment more, staring up at the ceiling. Then he nodded to Lucius. “I find myself utterly annoyed by the existence of the traitor Regulus Black and the little boy who has ssssstolen my Death Eaters from me.”
Lucius thought “stolen” was an odd way to put it, when the boy was surely responsible for defeating them only with Black’s and Minerva’s help, but he nodded. “Very well, my Lord. What do you want me to do?”
“Take enough Death Eaters to assault the Black house, and take Nagini with you.” The Dark Lord smiled in that way he had when he wanted to terrify, and made Lucius shiver with delight instead. “I think we shall have ssssome fun with the boy’s purported talent in Transfiguration.”
“Yes, my Lord,” said Lucius, and bowed, and held the posture—so did Draco—until the Dark Lord left. Then Draco exhaled hard and glanced at Lucius.
“May I come, Father?”
“Death Eaters only, Draco. You are not one.” Draco pouted, and Lucius reached out and lightly slapped the expression off his face. “Not yet.”
Draco beamed, and Lucius leaned back and smiled a little. It wouldn’t be long before the strike on the school, surely, not with Dumbledore that distracted, and then Lucius would have a different kind of revenge.
But for now, the Potter boy.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning