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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.

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Chapter Fifty—To Hogwarts
“Why did you do that to Snape?”
“You can’t honestly think he would ever want to brew potions for us again,” Harry said, turning his head slightly as he packed yet another mouse into the softly bulging bag Professor McGonagall had Transfigured for him. It had so many pockets where animals could hide that it had slapped flatly and almost wetly against his back when Harry first picked it up, but that would change when it was packed. “Or that we could trust them if he did. Do you know all the subtle shades of poison he might put in them?”
Regulus didn’t answer for a long time, but stood in the doorway of the library watching Harry. “I thought he might be someone you would try to preserve and use as a bargaining chip,” he said finally.
“I needed a way to get spies into Lord Dudders’s stronghold without making it look like I was doing it. He was the way.”
“Did you know he would die?”
“I suspected it. Lord Dudders might have kept him alive for a while, but you have to admit, Snape wasn’t what he used to be.”
“Because of the strike to his eye.”
“Not that alone.” Harry stepped back from packing the bag and turned to Regulus with eyes he knew were calm, maybe calmer than Regulus would approve of. “His hatred. Would the Snape you used to know try to attack me when he was still captive and had no way of getting out of your house even if he did kill me?”
Regulus was quiet. Harry waited. He supposed Regulus knew more about Snape than he did, thanks to having been Death Eaters together, and he might say something different about Snape’s actions than Harry thought he would.
“No,” Regulus murmured at last.
“Yes, I didn’t think so.” Harry considered, unbuttoned another small pocket on the side, and dropped a handful of black widow spiders into it. “We couldn’t keep him around here. We couldn’t trust him. There was no chance he would ever join our side. He was angry about me taking the Dark Mark away, for Merlin’s sake. And I don’t think he would ever have served Lord Dudders faithfully again, either, and Lord Dudders could probably sense that. Snape was incapable of being faithful to anything except his own petty hatreds.”
Regulus shifted, but again remained silent for long enough that Harry was almost sure the bag was full. “He did love your mother.”
“Enough to set a trap for me by her hospital room. What would have happened if the battle went in there? If, say, Macnair decided that he could hurt me the most by cursing her?”
“I don’t think Severus thought…”
“Right. That’s why I think he didn’t love my mother at all. It was obsession. He probably blamed me for her going mad, as if I had anything to do with it. He certainly didn’t act as if he blamed the Lestranges, or he would have found some way to get revenge on them before they were captured.”
Regulus finally made a soft sound. “You said that in your vision, the Dark Lord was speaking to Draco. What are you going to do about him?”
“If he comes against me? Capture him.”
“You wouldn’t…”
“Kill him out of hand? I haven’t killed any of the others out of hand, have I?” Harry turned around and slung the bag over his shoulder. “Are you worried because he’s my age, or for some other reason?”
“I think you may go further into darkness than you realize yet.”
“I won’t kill him if I don’t have to,” Harry said equably, which he thought was a fair thing to say. “I only will if I capture him and give him a chance and he’s still attacking me like Snape did.”
Regulus gave a faint, sour smile. “I suppose I have to be content with that.”
“It’s almost a kindness, you know,” Harry said, after a moment of hesitating and deciding if he should say anything at all. “For someone as eaten up by hatred as Snape was. What chance did he have of surviving?”
“That’s a very cold perspective, Harry.”
“That’s what I am, is cold,” Harry said, and it was a little hard for him to believe Regulus didn’t know that by now, which probably meant he should simply ignore Regulus when he said things like that. “Anyway. Are you and the others ready to Apparate to Hogsmeade?”
“Yes.” Regulus stepped aside so Harry could get his bag through the door, and shook his head. “I can’t believe that you’re all right with the others coming along.”
Harry cocked his head. “One of the reasons is that you and Professor McGonagall will be there to keep them out of trouble. The other is that if I leave them here on their own, God knows what they’ll do. Go through the Dark Arts books in the library, maybe. Go down and try to talk to the Death Eater prisoners.”
Regulus blinked rapidly, even as he pivoted to walk alongside Harry. “You distrust Boot and Longbottom that much?”
“No. The others. And Neville might get pressured into going along with them because they’re his friends, and Terry would probably be too busy reading to realize they were down in the cellars.”
“Ah.”
At least Regulus said nothing else as they walked down the corridors and Harry swung the squirming bag so that it fell right between his shoulder blades, instead of along the top of his shoulders. He could feel the spiders and the ants jostling each other gently; the mice, who Harry had given crushed corn and grain to keep them occupied, were more noticeable as they dodged and darted back and forth. He hoped they would get bored and go to sleep soon.
Or we’ll reach Hogwarts soon and I can let them out.
The others were all waiting in the downstairs sitting room that Regulus had brought Harry to during their first conversation. Professor McGonagall nodded at Harry when she saw the bag, and held out her arm. Harry went over to her and took it. Terry turned to stand on the other side.
Regulus would be taking Neville first, then come back for Weasley and Granger. He had his eyes closed and was working, silently and intently, to lower the wards around the house just enough for them to Apparate out. Then they would come back up when they were gone. Harry watched in silence, knowing better than to interrupt right now.
Terry leaned towards him. “You said something about having to take the Death Eaters to You-Know-Who in two days?” he whispered.
Harry nodded, not taking his eyes off Regulus.
“How are you going to manage that and destroy all the Horcruxes in the next little while?”
“I’m going to manage it,” Harry said, and heard Terry sigh in that way that meant he was irritated. Harry serenely ignored him. Terry could sigh all he liked. Harry meant what he said.
Besides, if Lord Dudders sent Draco after him, which Harry highly suspected would happen given the interaction between them he’d seen through the eyes of his spiders, then Harry wouldn’t hold the two days’ deadline as sacred anyway. Lord Dudders had to be taught that he wasn’t the only one who could break promises.
“What happens if Dumbledore notices us?”
Harry grinned a little. “He won’t notice the spiders and the ants. He doesn’t understand or use the Wild the way I do.”
“But us.”
“You are going to stay outside the castle with Professor McGonagall,” Harry said, even as they disappeared and reappeared in Hogsmeade. Terry looked a little green from the Side-Along Apparition. Harry took his bag from his shoulders and gently released the first wave of mice. They scurried towards the castle. “And cause a distraction, if you want to help.”
Terry blinked and shook his head. “Of course I want to help, but you didn’t say anything about causing a distraction before now.”
“I thought Weasley or Granger might raise a fuss,” said Harry, with a shrug. A wave of spiders followed the mice. He would wait to use the ants until they were closer to their destination. “I still don’t know how loyal they are to Dumbledore.”
Terry nodded slowly as he watched Regulus Apparate again, back to the house to get Weasley and Granger. “Then what do you want us to do?”
“I’m going to tell Weasley and Granger that my birds indicate the Horcrux is outside the castle,” Harry said, and tilted his head in the direction he knew the building stood, although he couldn’t see it from here. “In the Shrieking Shack. You pretend to believe me, and go and search for it.”
“I must applaud your good sense, Mr. Potter.”
Harry turned to see Professor McGonagall standing behind him. She nodded and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I do not think that Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger would actively betray us, but I also do not think that they stand behind the spirit of this adventure.”
Harry nodded. To him that made sense, and so he wasn’t going to ask them to do things they wouldn’t be any good at. He slung the bag over his shoulder again and added, “Are you going to be with them, Professor McGonagall?” He half-wanted her to come to the school with him, but on the other hand, Dumbledore might have some trap spells up that would react to her presence.
“I am going to come with you,” said Professor McGonagall. “And yes, I do think Albus might have traps up, but he cannot create traps for all my forms without also catching Mrs. Norris in them.” She shimmered, and her body melted into the cat. Harry smiled down at her and turned to face the school.
“What about me?” Regulus asked in a soft voice as he took a step away from Weasley. The three Gryffindors were talking together quietly, now and then looking around Hogsmeade as though they expected a Death Eater attack at any moment.
“Your choice,” Harry said. “Do the Gryffindors need supervision more, or do you think that you can find your way into the school even past the traps that Dumbledore probably has waiting for you?”
Regulus narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think he’s ever come close enough to me to have a sense of my magical signature. And he can’t set wards that sense the Dark Mark without stopping Snape—he probably still hopes Snape will come back to him.”
Professor McGonagall moved uneasily near Harry’s feet. He knew why. He’d told her what he’d done to Snape, and she had asked for some time to think about it, but she hadn’t said anything about it before they had to come to Hogwarts. Well, at least she wasn’t turning her back on him the way she temporarily had after he’d stopped Snape’s attack on him.
“We’ll do as we’re asked.”
Neville had stepped forwards. He caught Harry’s eye firmly, and Harry nodded. Neville knew that the Horcrux wasn’t in the Shrieking Shack. But he would keep his friends from realizing how much they were being placated and held back from danger.
“Good,” said Harry. “You know the way to the Shrieking Shack?”
Weasley shuddered. “Who doesn’t?”
“Is the Horcrux there?” Granger gasped, jumping automatically to the conclusion that Harry wanted her to reach. Sometimes—although not often enough for his tastes—Gryffindors were reliable like that.
“Yes,” Harry said. “At least, it was one of the places my birds were singing.” That was even the truth, although only because his birds had needed somewhere to sit and sing around Hogwarts, and the roof of a building no one used was one of the best choices. “Why don’t you go with Terry and scout it out?”
“What are you going to do?”
Harry looked at Hogwarts. “Dumbledore has something that belongs to me,” he said with perfect truth. “I’m going to get it back.”
*
Neville knew why Harry felt like he couldn’t tell Ron and Hermione, but he understood.
And he knew the Horcrux wasn’t in the Shrieking Shack, but he was going to tell his friends that was where it was, and act surprised with them when Harry came out of Hogwarts with the Horcrux in his hands.
If he doesn’t destroy it with the basilisk fang that’s already there.
Neville tensed when he thought of that. How was Harry going to get into the Chamber without Neville there to hiss in Parseltongue for him? But knowing Harry, he had that figured out already, or he would have asked Neville to go with him and found some other excuse to leave Ron and Hermione out here.
“Good luck, Harry,” he said.
Harry looked at him, holding Neville’s eye with a faint smile. Neville nodded and watched him go up the path with a cat padding beside him and Black walking at his heels. After a few seconds, he Disillusioned himself so that Neville couldn’t see exactly where he was.
He’s what I should have been.
Gran had written to him about that in more than one of her letters. Neville knew that Harry wouldn’t agree, but although he agreed that he wouldn’t want to Transfigure himself the way Harry had done and obsess over his parents—it was bad enough having them dead and perfect in his Gran’s eyes—he knew Harry had other virtues.
He wasn’t afraid of Voldemort.
He would get the job done, no matter what he set out to do. Neville hadn’t even been able to prevent Ron and Hermione from following him, which sometimes he thought he should have done.
“Nev?”
Ron was waiting. Neville turned away and managed to make his face into a scowl of grim determination. “Well, let’s find the Horcrux, then.”
*
Albus uneasily set down the glass of Firewhisky he’d been drinking in an effort to fall asleep. It should have been easy. The Minister had finally removed Dolores from the school, and between calling Horace back to take up the Potions position, teaching Minerva’s classes himself, and allowing a revolving group of Aurors to take over the Defense post, they had managed. The school was no longer on the verge of rebellion. A few Marked students had been found and quietly forced out. The search for Neville wasn’t going well, but Albus knew they would have to find him eventually.
Still, though, there was a sense like slime creeping through his veins. He didn’t know what was wrong, but he knew something was.
He looked at Fawkes. The phoenix was usually asleep at this hour, but instead he sat in the middle of his perch and tilted his head back and forth, fixing first one thing in the office and then another with a bright, gleaming eye. He looked at Albus and gave a soft chirp.
“Can you hear an enemy approaching?” Albus asked quietly, lowering his glass again and taking out his wand. Sometimes—not often—he had to admit that he liked having the Elder Wand on hand, with the reputation of being unbeatable.
Fawkes gave an uncertain trill and looked around the office again. Albus did the same thing, but saw only dust and a spider hanging calmly from a web in the corner. He shook his head. He would have to have the house-elves in here to dust again.
“Perhaps I should patrol the corridors, just in case,” he murmured, and rose to his feet. Most of the time, a Disillusionment Charm would have sufficed, but this time, he went to a trunk that had stood forgotten in a corner of his office for years and drew out James’s Invisibility Cloak.
An extra layer of protection couldn’t hurt.
*
Dumbledore’s getting ready to leave his office.
Harry quietly altered his course so that he could get to the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets by a different path. At least it was on the second floor, and not the seventh.
Next to him, Professor McGonagall peered around a corner and curled her tail as a sign that it was clear there, although Harry had seen the report already through the eyes of his mice. Regulus had used a spell that made him move completely silently, even to the ears of Harry’s animals, and muffled the outline of his body in ways that made him harder to see than even a Disillusionment Charm. Harry’s spiders kept running across his feet.
He’d offered the spell to Harry, but Harry had had to decline. His animals might need to find him any second with an urgent message.
They turned into the second-floor corridor they needed, and then a shiver swept through the mice who were around the next corner. Harry immediately froze and cocked his head. There was nothing to be seen, but the mice had smelled something, and it had frightened them.
Professor McGonagall crouched and showed her teeth, although she did it without spitting or hissing that might have alerted someone. Harry knelt down and spoke in a voice that he knew feline ears would pick up, but not human ones.
“Something around the corner. Not visible, but the mice can hear and smell it.” Now they were telling him about the tromp of heavy footsteps that met their delicate ears.
Professor McGonagall jumped lightly to a windowsill, and then up to a gargoyle directly under the ceiling. She waited. Harry sank back against the wall, half-shielded by the same windowsill, and Regulus hovered behind him.
In the silence, Harry could hear the scurrying of his spiders better than anything, and the tapping of the legs of his ants still in the bag.
Then he heard the footsteps, too.
Professor McGonagall tilted her head, obviously tracking with nose and whiskers to let him know where the person was. Then she flicked an ear at Harry, and he shrank even more into the window alcove.
He hadn’t watched closely enough through the eyes of the spider in Dumbledore’s office to spot when he actually left; he’d been focused on the mice in this corridor. But he had no doubt it was Dumbledore. No student could have perfected that kind of charm that would let him move without even the outline of a body, and no other professor on patrol duty would have a reason to walk out of sight like this.
Plus, Professor McGonagall wasn’t attacking. She had told Harry that she felt she could handle most other opponents, but Dumbledore was out of her league.
Regulus leaned back towards Harry and narrowed his eyes. “He must be using the Invisibility Cloak,” he said, in the same breathless voice Harry had for Professor McGonagall.
“He has one?” Harry didn’t take his eyes off the sound of footsteps. At least Regulus was in front of him, and although no one could see him due to his spells, he wasn’t transparent, either. He would block the shimmering outline of the Charm around Harry.
“Well, not him. I think it belonged to your father. He used it more than once in battle against the Death Eaters.”
Harry caught his breath, and then wanted to laugh in joy. Well, he had come back to get something from Dumbledore that belonged to him, after all. He had simply been referring to the basilisk fang, but it had worked out this way, and he was glad it had.
He drew his wand. Regulus reached out and clamped his wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but in definite warning.
“What are you doing?” he asked in the same whisper. Dumbledore was almost past them.
“Giving him something to fight,” Harry said, and focused on the image he wanted. After the songbirds, it was easy. He had the Wild shaped and dancing around him almost before he thought, and there were plenty of objects around that he could Transfigure without weakening the structure of Hogwarts or giving them away. “Commuto saxem felinem!”
The nearest piece of rubble fallen from Hogwarts’s old masonry writhed and squirmed, and then there was a tabby cat where it had been. It arched its back and yawned, then followed Dumbledore with a near-soundless pad of paws. In seconds, it had leaped and snagged Dumbledore’s cloak, tugging it away from him.
My cloak, Harry thought smugly.
Dumbledore turned around with an oath, and then went still when he saw the cat. “Minerva?” he whispered.
Regulus didn’t chuckle, but Harry felt his body shake as though he wanted to. Harry grinned. He’d deliberately given his Transfigured cat markings around the eyes like Professor McGonagall’s spectacles.
And while Dumbledore could tell the cat was alive with the power of Transfiguration, that could easily be mistaken for the aura of an Animagus—especially when he wasn’t all that familiar with the Wild.
“I am glad that you’ve come back, Minerva,” Dumbledore went on, raising his wand a little. “Glad that you’ve seen sense. Why don’t you come up to my office and we can talk?”
Harry’s cat tilted its head as though it was considering it, and then moved casually to the side, off the Cloak. Harry concentrated hard on a non-verbal Summoning Charm, and the Cloak immediately whirled towards him.
He had meant it to go, well, invisibly, while Dumbledore was focused on the cat that he thought was Professor McGonagall. But Dumbledore was either more aware than Harry was expecting or less focused on the cat. He snapped his wand out and started to incant a Summoning Charm of his own.
Shit. Harry rapped his knuckles hard against the stone, the signal to both Professor McGonagall and Regulus that something had gone wrong, and they should shift to their backup plan.
Regulus stepped out to duel Dumbledore. Professor McGonagall leaped off the gargoyle with all four paws spread wide and landed on Dumbledore’s neck, making him stagger and shout with pain.
Harry ran straight for the girls’ bathroom. When he was on the soaking floor, he dumped his ants out of his bag and filled the intelligence of the swam, the will that was greater than any one insect alone, with the image of his desire, the basilisk fang.
They scuttled into the nearest pipe, and Harry turned around and faced the door, his wand drawn. He would fight Dumbledore if he had to.
He didn’t want to. He wanted to find the Horcrux in Hogwarts as well as the basilisk fang and get out with both of them. But it had been his own mistake that had cost them their secrecy. He would do what he needed to do.
And in the meantime…
Songbirds hadn’t been the only creatures he had read about.
Harry reached out to the shadows falling from the torches into the room, and began quietly to see if he could shape darkness with the Wild.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning