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
- 50
- 51
- 52
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifty-One—Rip
Harry wakes up the instant that Sirius slips through the doors into the hospital wing. It’s like he knows, and he can’t stay asleep with someone who hurt him standing next to him. He rolls over, ignoring the way that his burns hurt when they brush against the blankets, and stares up at Sirius.
Sirius winces and meets his eyes and winces and then throws himself down on his knees next to the bed and sobs. Harry grabs his wand and casts a Silencing Charm. He doesn’t want anyone to interrupt. He knows this is going to be important.
“Can you ever forgive me?” Sirius moans.
“If you tell me a few things,” Harry says.
“Anything. I’d do anything for you, Harry. I love you. You’re my godson.”
Harry doesn’t know what to feel as he looks down at Sirius. “Why didn’t you come and see me before this?”
“I tried! But I was afraid that I was going to be arrested, and I didn’t want to go back to prison. Albus told me that I wouldn’t do you any good if I was in Azkaban again, and I knew that was true.”
So he spoke with Dumbledore but not me. There’s a dull spinning motion in the back of Harry’s head. It’s like he’s strained himself too far again or taken that foul-smelling potion Snape keeps insisting he drink, but this time he knows that he’s really seeing things clearly. For the first time, maybe.
“You’re not going to be arrested,” he says. “Hermione looked up the laws. Maybe they’re kind of stupid—” Harry knows they’re stupid, he would hate to have the Dursleys get away with hurting him if they were wizards just because he wouldn’t say something or they wouldn’t say something “—but I think they got written because of exceptions and personal stories and grudges and all that. So you’re safe. Why did you wait until tonight to come see me?”
“Albus wasn’t sure it was safe.”
He does listen to him. Harry ignores the little jab of pain in the center of his chest. “You’re going to be safe. I think that I’m going to have a second guardian, and—”
Sirius surges to his feet. “Why do you want anyone other than me? Did Snape use Legilimency on you or something? We have to teach you Occlumency as soon as we can, pup. Healer Hawksgift knows it. We’ll teach it to you.”
“I already know some,” Harry says. The sensation of reeling in his head gets worse. “But anyway, I want someone else because—” His tongue tangles around his teeth. It’s one thing to think this, and another thing to actually say it to Sirius.
He didn’t mean to hurt me. I know that. He never would have had me face that spell if he didn’t think I could handle it.
But it happened anyway.
“You want to get rid of me. You’re upset at me. You hate me.”
Sirius whispers the last words, and Harry sits up and wraps his arms around as much as of Sirius as he can. “No. I just think that you need some more time to recover, and that means you need a different Mind-Healer. And I want a second guardian so that a situation like the one in the Forest never happens again. If you get upset or something, or we need some time apart to think, then I could go over to the second guardian’s house.”
Sirius is staring at him. “Who are you thinking?”
“Um, I don’t know. Maybe Snape.”
“You want your guardian to be the man who made you an orphan?”
“What are you talking about, Sirius? Voldemort is the one who did that to me.”
Sirius is shaking his head fast, his eyes bright the way they were when he was telling Harry to go up against the Iron Pole. Harry scoots further back from him. He shivers. Suddenly his burns are hurting again.
“No, Albus told me all about it.” Sirius speaks almost too quickly, so that his words seem to rush and blur in Harry’s ears. “There was a prophecy that made Voldemort attack your parents. It was about a boy being born at the end of July who could defeat him. Well, Snape overheard part of that, so he went straight to Voldemort and told him. And Voldemort attacked Lily and James because of that.”
Harry sits there and feels cold and crushed. He feels—ripped. As though part of himself he didn’t even realize was there has peeled away and left him behind.
But also, sitting there, he thinks of something.
“When did Dumbledore tell you that?” he asks quietly.
“What? Well—a few months ago. When we were arranging for my trial.”
“So you knew all this time,” Harry says, forcing the words through numb lips, “and you didn’t tell me? Why? Why tell me just now?”
But he knows. He knows as though Sirius has written the words on a giant piece of parchment and waved it around. Because until now, he didn’t care or didn’t think it was important. Only now, when he thinks Harry might actually choose to live with Snape, is it important.
It’s a weapon. It isn’t a secret he deserves to know or a fact that matters to Harry, so someone should tell him. No, it’s a weapon.
Harry closes his eyes. The peeling part of himself is being followed by another part. It’s the part that was convinced that Sirius loved him unconditionally and he could just—be with him and it would be okay.
I suppose some people don’t get someone who loves them like that, Harry thinks wearily to himself. Sirius wants to hurt Snape, and Snape wants to hurt Sirius. I suppose—I’m just in the middle. That’s all.
So he’ll have to put aside his hopes of having someone love him like a parent does. It doesn’t matter. Harry will make it not matter. He can still have his own room and someone who treats him better than the Dursleys and a stable home. He can’t have everything he wanted. But since when did he get everything he wanted, anyway?
He can live with this. He can live with Sirius’s hatred of Snape and the fact that he never told Harry the truth until he could try to hurt Snape, and he can live with Snape’s hatred of Sirius and the fact that he never told Harry about overhearing this prophecy, either. He’ll just—live with things.
It hurts. But sometimes pain is what you get.
“I wanted you to know! Before you run off and live with Snape!”
Harry sighs and says, “I’m going to talk to Madam Macmillan tomorrow. I think I will have her talk to the newspapers for me, if she still wants to. And we’ll get you a regular Mind-Healer—”
“I want Healer Hawksgift!”
Harry looks up and tries a variation of the trick that he saw Hermione using. “And you don’t care about me, Sirius?” he asks softly, making his eyes as big as he can. “I don’t want Healer Hawksgift treating you. I want a different Healer. Are you going to make me beg you for it?”
Sirius immediately lunges over the bed to hug him. “Harry, Harry, no! Of course not!”
“Then will you go to a different Mind-Healer? For me?” Harry tries to let his voice wobble the way Dudley’s did whenever he saw that he had one last birthday gift than last year.
“Yes—just for you. But you’re the only one who could ever ask that of me. Don’t you dare tell Snivellus that I’m doing it.”
Harry wants to laugh, but he clears his throat instead and says, “Thank you, Sirius. Anyway, this is going to be—different than I thought it was. I want to live with you, but I also want Snape to be able to visit whenever he wants.”
“Why? Why him?”
“Because he has to make up for what he did to me by taking away my parents somehow,” Harry says. It’s the first thing that comes into his head, and not true, but he also thinks that Sirius is going to accept it. Sirius is into revenge and things like that. “And this will be the best way to do that. By making him take care of me and look into my face and see my dad every day. And by making him deal with you.”
Sirius grumbles about it for a little, but he looks pleased. He ruffles Harry’s hair. “You’re acting like a proper Marauder.”
This is me acting like a Slytherin, Harry thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He has to talk to Snape as soon as possible, to make sure that he goes along with the lie and to confront him about what he said in the entrance hall.
And the prophecy?
I don’t want to talk about it.
He probably has to, though, because otherwise there’s too much chance that Sirius would blurt it out at some point, or brag to Snape that he told Harry. Great. Another conversation he doesn’t want to have tonight.
“Can you get Snape for me, please?” he asks Sirius, making his eyes as wide as he can. “And don’t tell him why. Be as polite to him as you can.”
Sirius frowns for a second, then chuckles. “Because you want to spring it on him that you know. You have great ideas, pup!” He hugs Harry again, and then turns into a dog and lunges out of the room and down the stairs.
Left alone, Harry buries his face in his legs, and takes a slow, deep breath. He doesn’t cry, but he’d like to. He’d like to be the kind of person who can cry and have a normal life and wake up from a nightmare and have a parent comfort him.
But he just isn’t, that’s all. So he sits there, and waits for Snape, and feels another piece of the person he used to be rip away.
*
Severus enters the hospital wing cautiously. It still feels as though the raw emotions he expressed earlier are glowing on his skin like a sunburn. The summons from Black, and the blank face he used to deliver it, are agitating Severus further.
Harry turns around and shows him a likewise blank face. But Severus can see the devastation in those green eyes.
There’s only one person who could have put it there. “What did Black do?” Severus asks, and makes his voice as soft as he can so he won’t shout.
Harry sighs. “He’s agreed to see a real Mind-Healer and to allow me to have you as a secondary guardian. But he thinks I’m doing it to make you deal with me and take revenge on you. So you’re going to have to go along with that lie.”
“You should not be anywhere near Black. You should—”
Harry’s eyes flash, and all the pillows around him spin into the air. “Be with the man who told the prophecy to Voldemort?” he yells.
Severus freezes in place. Now he understands the reason for both the blank mask Black wore and the malignant glitter deep in his eyes. Black told Harry. “You know.”
Harry slumps back against the pillows as they drop back on the bed. “Yeah,” he says dully. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re still my best choice. I know that you only stared caring about me when I was Sorted into Slytherin, but you’re strong and competent, and you’re not afraid of Sirius, and you can stand up to Dumbledore at least as much as you have so far. And you said that you cared about me a few hours ago, and I believe you. So you can be my secondary guardian.”
“I care about you for more reasons than your House.”
Harry glances at him, his face gone blank this time. “I know. But you only started when I was suddenly a Slytherin. And you never told me that you went and told the prophecy to Voldemort. Sirius never told me, either, but now he has, and I don’t—I don’t really expect better of him. I expected better of you. I thought you’d told me all the important secrets. Stupid of me, wasn’t it?” His tone is absolutely flat.
“You cannot be surprised that I did not tell you of this before,” Severus snaps before he can stop himself.
For a second, Harry struggles, and the pillows tremble on the bed again as if they’re going to fly up. Then he glances away and gives a tight nod. “Yes, all right, I’m not. I know why you didn’t. But I wish you’d managed before Sirius said something.”
“I had no idea that he knew. Nor had I come up with some way to tell you the truth without hurting you.”
“I know,” Harry says, and seems to let go of his anger, although the weary expression that replaces it on his face is not a true improvement. “Anyway. How do you want to handle this? I’m not going to live with Sirius in Grimmauld Place, because he says the protections on that house can keep out anyone, and I don’t want him holding you at bay. And I don’t even know if you have a home outside of Hogwarts.”
“Not a true one,” Severus says tightly, thinking of Spinner’s End and shuddering. “I have the means to acquire one, but the price was too high before.”
“Is it just money? I can pay for that.”
“You are not to pay for something your guardians should pay for!”
“But why not? I have money, and you’re speaking like you don’t, and the house could be yours anytime that I’m not there.”
Severus squints at Harry. It seems the boy has learned the lessons of Slytherin too well, in some ways. He fully expects that Severus will let him purchase the house, will take advantage of him because that is the way that some Slytherins would act.
“I told you I had the means to find a home.”
“And you haven’t done it so far, sir, so you must have good reasons to avoid it. What are the reasons?”
The boy looks calm again, as if he has tucked away his anger and the broken heart that must have come from evidence that Black doesn’t really care about him. He’s studying Severus with careful curiosity.
Severus sighs and says, “I would owe a favor to the Malfoys when it was done. I don’t want that.”
“Oh, yes, I can see that. Well, just let me buy the house then, sir.”
“I will not.”
Harry just watches him with his forehead wrinkled. “But you don’t want to be in debt to the Malfoys, and I don’t want you in debt to them, either. Are you worried about being in debt to me? I wouldn’t say you were. I would just give you the money and ask you to find a place that we could live.”
Severus stands up and approaches the bed. Harry doesn’t flinch, but some part of him does grow tight and coiled. Severus wonders if he will ever be able to rid Harry of the reflex to tense up when an adult comes towards him, even an adult without an obvious weapon in hand.
“A guardian should take care of a child,” Severus says, making sure to emphasize the words as he leans over the bed. “That does not include letting the child buy his own clothes or food or home.”
“And I’m hardly a normal child, sir. Let me do this.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to find myself at the mercy of the Malfoys one day. And Sirius would go even crazier if he found out I was, and then maybe he would do something or Dumbledore would do something to make sure you were blocked.”
Severus pauses. That’s a better argument than he expected. He knows full well how devious the Malfoys are. Lucius might indeed manage to reach through the debt and put Harry at risk somehow, if only by contacting him and talking cryptically about how much Severus owes him. Harry would feel compelled to pay the debt then.
“You realize that this will cause comment?”
“We don’t need to advertise it, sir. Besides, I’m going to have Madam Macmillan helping me with statements to the press and that kind of thing. They probably won’t find it nearly as fascinating, even if they find out about it, as the fact that you and Sirius are my guardians in the first place.”
Severus nods slowly. There are plenty of people in the wizarding world who know about his and Black’s rivalry. But he does have one other thing to say. “I will not tolerate Black hurting you.”
“I know that, sir.”
“Why are you so determined to give him a second chance?”
“Because I still want to be in contact with him, and I think he deserves the chance to redeem himself. Maybe he can’t, but I don’t know that yet. I’ll see what he’s like after he has contact with a regular Mind-Healer.”
Harry speaks so wearily. Severus finds himself on the verge of snarling again. “Even less than your own care are you responsible for the mental health of your guardians.”
“Unless I want to be.”
“Black does not deserve the chance!”
“That’s not for you to say.”
Harry turns his face away, and Severus pauses. He does not want to leave on this note. He softens his voice. “I will allow you to purchase the home, perhaps, but I will still do my best to protect you from all harm, Harry.”
This time Harry at least glances at him and smiles a little. “Thank you, sir. I do believe that.”
*
Harry lies awake in bed later that night, after he’s sent an owl to Madam Macmillan that Hermione took to the Owlery for him. His mind is churning with thoughts. He still has to find out who actually alerted Madam Macmillan to everything that was happening; she never did tell him. And he has to find out how to contact Gringotts and arrange for some of the money to go to Snape so he can buy a house. And he has to figure out what to say to Sirius and Remus, who’s only visited him when he’s asleep so far, according to Madam Pomfrey.
But he also has to struggle against the sense of bitterness welling up inside him.
I shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to take care of Sirius. I shouldn’t have to make peace and compromises with someone who hurt me. I shouldn’t have to just—ignore the fact that Snape didn’t tell me he sold out my parents to Voldemort.
Harry shakes his head. But what else could he do? Snape does care for him, and he’s trying to make up for betraying the prophecy in his own way. And guilt would eat Harry alive if he didn’t try to do something for Sirius.
He told Snape he wasn’t a normal child. So he has to be abnormal in all sorts of ways. He has to make sure things are done right. And if that means acting like an adult—
That’s the way it has to be.
He drifts off to sleep feeling as though something else is ripping inside him, but his dream is about snakes and how they shed their skin, and the hope that maybe that’s what’s happening inside him, too.
*
Moodysavage: There would still be people who think Harry is crazy for picking Severus! As you saw for Sirius here.
Kain: Harry is incredibly worried abuot Sirius. That's really the reason that he's staying with him at all. He's worried about what would happen to Sirius without some kind of stabilizing influence.
Harry really does have some great friends. And with him defying the system and screwing around with it, Hermione is going to get some political experience damn fast.
The situation with Sirius and Severus will be tense, but Harry is going to make it as smooth as he can.
Hermione grabbed the people who were there. Draco and Daphne were elsewhere at the time.
- 50
- 51
- 52
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