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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.

Chapter List
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"Why do all these people keep trying to write to me? I'm no one special!"
Potter had to yell the words. The main dining room of Dolores's house was full of the noise of screeching, flapping, jostling, pecking owls. All of them had packages or letters of some kind attached to their legs. Only Howlers were missing. Dolores was glad she had already spent some of Potter's vault money on a twist of a defensive spell that would keep them away.
And it was even for Potter's own good. That was the part that made Dolores smile when she lay in bed at night. It was so easy to do something that others would define as good, or part of taking care of Potter. She didn't know why Dumbledore had never managed it.
"What have I told you about raising your voice, Harry?" Dolores was currently studying a grey owl that looked as if it might collapse and die in the next few seconds. It was held up more by the owls on either side of it than anything else. Perhaps it was only asleep, not dying. But Dolores wanted to be on the alert in case she had to clean up a corpse in the next few moments.
"Not to do it, Miss Dolores."
She only heard him because she was concentrating so intently on the words, but Dolores nodded anyway. Then she turned around and took Potter's hand, leading him into the next room. The owls tried to follow them. The door, however, sealed with a cleaning spell that would keep out any fur or feathers, flared at them and forced them back.
Dolores closed the door and turned to face Potter. She had furnished this room in a dark green--it held the photo albums, her school scarf, and several other reminders of her old school House--and he looked as if he was disappearing into it as he raised his head appealingly to look at her.
"You are somebody special," she said. "As far as the average witch or wizard is concerned. You are not important in the way you were telling me about, the way that your aunt and uncle treated your cousin. Or the way the Minister and the Wizengamot are important. Never that."
"Yes, Miss Dolores." Potter bowed his head submissively. The one good legacy from his Muggles was how easy he was to tame.
Dolores patted his head. "But there are consequences to your fame," she said, and gave the closed door a thoughtful glance. She had hoped that maybe seeing all those owls and packages would teach Potter something of his place in their world. It hadn't worked out that way. Not if he raised his voice.
She made up her mind and turned back to him. "I know you despise Headmaster Dumbledore, Harry."
Potter nodded, but didn't speak. He must be more intelligent than he looked, Dolores thought for the fiftieth time.
"But he did have one good idea, even if he executed it in the wrong way. Some of those packages or letters could contain poison or Portkeys. Or even simply enchanted parchments that would begin to function if you touched them. You need protection, Harry. You need someone who will hold you back from doing exactly what you want until you learn more about the wizarding world and you can protect yourself."
"Yes, Miss Dolores. I know."
"I don't think you know all the consequences of what can happen if you're not protected." Dolores stood up. The place she wanted to visit normally needed an appointment if one didn't already have relatives there, but she was utterly certain they would make an exception for the Boy-Who-Lived. "Come. There's something I want to show you."
*
“Where are we, Miss Dolores?”
Potter whispered the words, sticking as close to her side as a feral cat to the shadows. Dolores glanced down at him and spoke patiently. “What did you hear me say when we went through the Floo, Harry?”
“St. Mungo’s. I just—it’s a hospital?”
Dolores nodded and moved down the white corridor, holding her wand out and bringing Potter forwards with a hand on his shoulder so his scar would show more clearly to the mediwitch hurrying towards them. “A request by Mr. Harry Potter to visit the Janus Thickey Ward.”
The mediwitch gasped and clapped her hands together at her breast, staring at them with starry-eyed wonder. “Harry Potter! And you must be his guardian, the Miss Dolores Umbridge I heard so much about!” She reached out and shook Dolores’s hand until her arm hurt. “You’ve done so much good in such a short time!”
I could get used to this.
“Does Mr. Potter want to make a donation?” asked the mediwitch, scuttling ahead of them and looking back over her shoulder. Some of her bronze hair fell in her eyes. Dolores saw a tear near the bottom of her robe, too. “Of course St. Mungo’s would welcome any amount, no matter how small, but—”
“Not today, thank you. Today, we are here to study the consequences of the war.”
The mediwitch’s smile faltered a little. “Is it true that Mr. Potter didn’t know anything about the war and his fame until you brought him back to our world, Madam Umbridge?” she whispered, slinking back towards them.
Potter muttered something under his breath, probably to do with him being right there and the mediwitch being able to ask him herself if she wanted to. Dolores pinched his shoulder without looking at him and said, “That’s true. And there are no lessons as graphic as the ones St. Mungo’s teaches.”
“That’s true, that’s very true!” said the mediwitch, although Dolores thought she was only repeating Dolores’s last words for lack of anything else to say. “Please, come. I’ll make sure everything is in order for your visit.” And she clattered up the stairs in front of them, waving her wand and muttering under her breath. Dolores was amused to notice some of the cobwebs and dust in the corners disappearing.
“What are we going to see?”
“Some of the consequences of the war.”
That at least made Potter subside, although Dolores wondered how much longer he would last before he needed another reminder. He was a stubborn child. In some ways, that was good, as it had allowed his spirit to stay alive among the Muggles.
In other ways, it was not. He needed correction and chastisement and cautions that he was not the center of the universe. But Dolores was the one who had the training of him. That meant he would receive his much-needed education better than any other child.
And this shall be very educational.
*
“Wh-what’s wrong with them?”
Potter’s voice was very quiet. Dolores gripped his shoulder and steered him further in, even though he looked as if he would have liked to linger near the door of the ward.
His eyes were locked on the two people Dolores had brought him to see. It was sheer luck that Dolores had been here with Minister Bagnold on a previous tour and remembered that their beds were some of the first. And that they hadn’t been moved in the meantime.
Of course, Dolores dismissed the notion of luck a second later. What looks like luck is most often careful planning.
“These are the people I brought you here to see, Harry,” she said, and bent down to whisper in his ear. Potter’s eyes were locked on the two gently staring and hand-flapping people in the beds. “Their names are Frank and Alice Longbottom. In the last war, they fought on the same side as your parents, against You-Know-Who. They were close friends of your parents. I think,” she finished with a frown. That was something she hadn’t realized she was so uncertain of.
Potter was shaking. “But—they didn’t end up like that because they were cursed?’
“In a way, they did,” said Dolores, a little regretful that there was no non-Unforgivable curse that caused the same symptoms as had left the Longbottoms drooling wrecks. It would have been useful more than once in her life. “They were held under what’s called the Cruciatus Curse. I know I mentioned that to you last week. What is it?”
Potter was too occupied in staring at the Longbottoms to answer. Dolores pinched his shoulder again and wrenched a gasp from him. “I will have answers, Harry,” she said simply.
“It’s a pain curse,” Potter finally mumbled. “The worst you can imagine, you said. You have to take the worst pain in the world and multiply it by ten.”
“By thirteen,” Dolores said, who was also trying to continue Potter’s education in symbolic numbers. “Or more than that. Most of the time, Dark wizards don’t use the curse very long. When they do…” She nodded at the Longbottoms.
Currently, the woman was playing with some sweets wrappers. She would pause and stare at them as if the secrets of the universe were written on them, then lay them carefully aside. A second later, she would pick up the ones she had discarded and look them over again.
The man simply stared at his hands. Then he picked them up and turned them back and forth in front of his face. A second later, he brought them down and put them in his lap again, then flopped back against his pillow with a sigh. His vacant stare traveled across the room’s walls and door. It paused on them, but Dolores thought that was only coincidence, given how he kept going a second later.
Dolores knelt down next to Potter, so no one could hear what she was going to say next. Certain words were necessary, especially since Potter was still so young and needed immediate lessons, but she didn’t want anyone else to hear them.
“Look at them, Potter. Look well. They were some of the last casualties of the war. Four Death Eaters who were frustrated by your defeat of You-Know-Who went after the Longbottoms and cursed them in front of their son, who is almost exactly your age.”
“Then you’re saying—it was my fault they’re like this, Miss Dolores?”
Dolores paused to consider that. On the one hand, she had already seen how useful guilt was as a leash on Potter. All she had to do was give him a disappointed look, and he would immediately clean up his room or finish his dish-washing or whatever other chore he had put off or not finished.
But she didn’t like the idea of this particular guilt competing with her influence over him, so she chose a different route.
“I didn’t bring you here to have you feel guilt, Harry. I brought you here to show you what can happen when you’re not careful. To show you that certain foes will stop at nothing to destroy you. That’s why you can’t disregard what the owls carry, or open them any way you like. Do you understand now?”
From Potter’s shivering and huge eyes, he did indeed. Dolores put a hand on his shoulder and patted it, then turned him gently towards the door of the ward. She thought the point had been made.
Unfortunately, they didn’t manage to emerge from the ward before Dolores had to stop to avoid slamming into a tall woman with a vulture on her hat. Dolores’s lip curled a little before she could stop herself. Didn’t this woman know vultures were at least ten years out of date?
Behind her was a chubby boy whom Dolores looked at carefully. Then she turned and glanced at the faces of the Longbottoms.
Yes, this was clearly their son.
Potter was looking at the boy with wide eyes. No doubt he was interested in other wizarding children. Well, Dolores intended to introduce him to suitable ones when the chance presented itself. She simply hadn’t contacted those families yet.
“Come along, Neville,” said the woman, and snatched the chubby boy’s hand to tow him to the bedside of the woman. “Talk to your mother.” She turned and stared at the man a little desperately. Her son, Dolores remembered.
“Gran,” said Longbottom, fidgeting in a way that made Dolores suddenly glad that Harry had taken so well to instruction in how to stay still. “I think…I think that’s Harry Potter.” He turned and stared at Potter.
The woman looked around, but her mouth was pinched, and she still seemed more interested in her feeble-minded son than anyone else. “Then I’m sure you ought to go over and introduce yourself, Neville.”
Dolores knew she had to prevent that. The Longbottoms were perhaps the family that looked the most suitable on the surface, with a grandson just Potter’s age and a long record of spotless service to the Ministry and sometimes the Wizengamot. But this current generation was pathetic. Dolores had received reports from those in the know that Neville Longbottom was little above a Squib in strength, and he and his grandmother remained at home with barely any political excursions.
Harry would have to form bonds with other people.
“Um, hi? Harry Potter. I’m Neville Longbottom.” The chubby boy was actually toddling forwards now, and his eyes focused with awe on the scar. Potter leaned against Dolores, and a small shiver ran through him.
Dolores could have burst out cheering, if she would ever do anything so undignified. Above everything else, Potter hated people staring at his scar. She put her hand on Potter’s shoulder and turned him, saying, “Come, Harry. It’s time we should head home.”
“Um, Harry? Potter?”
Dolores turned her head and gave Longbottom a chiding glance. He shrank away from her, his hands clenching. His grandmother was still preoccupied with murmuring something to his father, and would never notice.
“He doesn’t like people who only want to take advantage of his fame,” said Dolores, and correctly judged that she didn’t need to say anything else to this boy. He sank further into his shoulders and didn’t even mutter anything about how that wasn’t what he meant.
Too bad that I cannot commend Mrs. Longbottom’s child-rearing in other ways, Dolores thought, as she swept Potter out of the closed ward. It is more likely to be simple neglect than actual planning.
*
“Miss Dolores?”
It was the first time that Potter had sounded like he was going to ask her for something specific since the Wizengamot trial. Dolores put aside the paper, which had stories of Dumbledore’s fall from power that she’d been chuckling over, and gave him her attention. “Yes, Harry?”
Potter still tended to flush and go silent when she looked at him closely. Dolores allowed him to play with his fork for a minute, and then cleared her throat pointedly.
“I just—I think I need a friend,” Potter said at once, if in a mumble that Dolores had to concentrate to hear. “I thought that maybe the Neville boy could be one, but he can’t.” Dolores nodded, glad he had come to that conclusion with only the actions in front of him, and not any words. “But someone. Could I have one?”
Dolores pretended to consider it, then said, “I anticipated you would need one. So I already sent out an owl to a family who has a suitable boy near your age.”
Potter swallowed, and his eyes focused on her with such adoration that Dolores sighed a little. It was like being near a fire after she’d come back in from a chilly, cold evening.
“You did? You’re so wonderful, Miss Dolores.”
She had often found the artless emotions of children irritating, but they had their charm. Dolores smiled. “Don’t you want to know the family’s name?”
“When you want to tell me, Miss Dolores.”
“The Malfoy family.”
Potter snapped his head up, his eyes widening. “But—Miss Dolores, aren’t they accused Death Eaters?”
Dolores sighed. “Did you not read through the whole of the history book I gave you, Harry? Only one member of the Malfoy family was accused of being a Death Eater, the current head, Lucius Malfoy. And he was only accused. It was later found out that he was under the Imperius Curse. And I know from our visit to St. Mungo’s that you remember your lesson on the Unforgivables.”
Potter’s throat bobbed again. “Yes, Miss Dolores. I just—wondered why he would allow his son to be friends with me. I mean, I know he wasn’t a Death Eater!” he added hastily, when Dolores fixed him with a patient look. “But he might feel embarrassed about being reminded of the war when he sees me.”
That was a feat of reasoning Dolores wouldn’t have expected from him, and she was mildly impressed. “It is his son who will spend the most time with you, and he is only a few months older than you, so only a baby when his father was accused,” she said firmly. “You won’t embarrass him. At least,” and she stopped and studied Potter carefully, “you had better not embarrass him.”
Potter shivered. “No, Miss Dolores. I won’t.”
Dolores nodded. His second vault key had come that evening—once she had managed to chase the owls with irrelevant messages out of the window and retrieved the important ones—and she had enough money at her disposal for her next gracious gesture. “Then we go shopping for dress robes tomorrow. You’ll meet Draco in the afternoon. And you will be on your best behavior. I shouldn’t even need to remind you of that, really,” she continued, reaching across the table to pat Harry’s hand. “But you’ve very young, so I’ll make an exception.”
“Thank you, Miss Dolores.” Potter hesitated, then continued, “For everything.”
Yes, I could get used to this pride.
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The Daring Win