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The Art of Self-Fashioning	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 26078 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 52
- 53
- 54
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Chapter Fifty-Three--A Decision to Make
Harry stayed still, his eyes fixed on Dumbledore as he stood with his hands spread and his voice declaiming, and thought. And thought.
If they could have left with the fang and the Cloak and with the Horcrux destroyed, then Harry really wouldn't have thought about Dumbledore again. What did it matter to him if the man lived and walked around? And breathed and talked to the portraits and the Hogwarts ghosts? He wouldn't be doing it with a Horcrux near him or Harry's family Cloak in his possession. And he wouldn't be threatening Professor McGonagall or Regulus or Terry or Neville. So he might as well get on with it.
But now he was here, and he was threatening to take Neville.
This can't happen, Harry thought, and calmly reached down to move his holly wand in a certain spiral pattern.
He hadn't thought of the pattern before. He knew Professor McGonagall and Regulus had been upset when he hurt Snape. And they hadn't talked a whole lot about what had happened when he took Snape to Lord Dudders, but it was a kind of not-talking that Harry knew. They were doing their best not to think about it, either.
So he hadn't wanted to kill Dumbledore. They would probably be upset with him.
On the other hand, he would rather they be upset with him than Neville be sacrificed to Dumbledore.
"We can negotiate, you know," Dumbledore was saying to Neville, his voice heavy and bright. "You don't have to do everything you were doing before. Especially since it seems obvious now that the training was not working in the first place."
Neville wilted in front of Dumbledore. Harry felt as though his own mouth was full of venom he would have to spit like the cobra guarding the Horcrux. "I don't want to do this," Neville whispered, his voice barely audible. "I'm only doing it because I can't think of another way to save my friends."
"Neville, you know what I said--"
Harry was more pleased than he should have been to see the way Neville ignored Granger completely, only fisting his hands and acting as if he would walk across the distance that separated him from Dumbledore any second. "Just please," he said, "don't hurt them."
"I can promise that I won't, my boy. I'll return the favor of them not hurting me, not greatly," Dumbledore said, and glanced at Regulus. "As soon as Mr. Black here agrees to remove a certain curse he cast."
Regulus smiled. Harry could see the way he was tensing to leap, as though he had already decided everything was lost and he would make the only commitment he could, the only commitment that made sense in this situation. "No," he said pleasantly.
Dumbledore opened his mouth, but Harry got there first. He reached out and put a hand on Regulus's wrist, making Regulus turn his head.
Harry shook his.
There was a long moment when Harry dreaded it might not be enough to keep them from trying to murder each other. Regulus breathed with his mouth open, his eyes locked on Harry's, grim enough that Harry didn't know how to convince him. Then he tossed his head a little and looked away.
"It seems the boy you betrayed your brother's memory for has more sense than you do," Dumbledore murmured softly. He was walking towards Neville, holding his eyes as much as possible. Neville was drooping and shivering both at once. "He knows it would do you no good to attack me. And I'll have you remove the curse later. It doesn't have to be right now."
Professor McGonagall was looking back and forth between him and Neville, Harry saw. He didn't know if she was planning on doing something desperate, but he didn't wait.
He again made the spiral motion with his wand. And again. The incantation he was thinking of wasn't long, and he had often practiced it to nonverbal perfection. He'd had to be ready when the Death Eaters attacked Grimmauld Place, after all.
He made the swirling motion again, and again, and again, and small specks began to pop into being around him. Buzzing specks.
"Mr. Potter!"
Dumbledore's voice. Either he had noticed or he intended to call Harry over to smirk and gloat. Harry didn't waste time. He had created enough, he thought, and with the time it would probably take Dumbledore, he could create more if he needed to. He fell back and looked up.
Dumbledore was indeed looking at him with one hand extended. He had his other hand on Neville's shoulder and was ignoring the way Neville hunched in despair.
"I'll have my wand now, if you please."
Harry took a step forwards, and then darted to the left. Dumbledore swung to face him, but not as if he was surprised, shaking his head. "I thought you might try a distraction like this," he said pleasantly. "But it won't work, my boy. I have your friend here, and nowhere for you to go."
The distraction served its purpose. Dumbledore was focused on him, ignoring the way both Regulus and Granger had turned and stared in the right direction.
The wasp swarm crashed into him with the force of a javelin. Furiously buzzing, they clung to his face, stung his ears, crawled into his eyes. Dumbledore screamed in pain. Neville bolted from under his hand in a panic as the queens Harry had created alighted on Dumbledore's arms.
But none of the queens went after Neville, or anyone else in the corridor. That was a nice thing about Transfiguring animals that obeyed only him, Harry thought distantly as he watched Dumbledore writhe under the wasps. Less independent thought and “reality,” but more obedience and making sure that they didn’t do what they weren’t supposed to do.
Someone grabbed his arm and spun him around. Harry thought it was probably Professor McGonagall, and blinked a little when he realized it was Granger.
“Stop! Make it stop! Please!”
Granger screamed the words, clutching her ears. Harry wondered for a second whether his wasps had attacked someone they weren’t supposed to after all and got into her ear canals, and then realized it was against the sound of Dumbledore’s screams.
Harry carefully modified the wordless incantation in his mind and cast another spell that would create a different kind of wasp. He watched as they soared away from him and landed on Dumbledore. A sting, and the screams were already quieting.
“What did you do?” Granger whispered the words, and she flinched when Harry looked at her.
“Made some with stronger venom to their stings. The others were basically normal wasps. These will kill him more quickly.”
Granger gaped for a second. Harry could hear people moving behind him, but since he knew they were only Regulus and Professor McGonagall—Neville was shivering down the corridor, with Weasley’s arm around him, and Terry leaned against the wall next to them—he didn’t see a reason to look away from Granger. She could have her say, if she wanted.
She raised a hand as if she would slap him, or shake him. Harry raised his own hand, letting her see the gleaming claws.
“It’s horrid. Horrid.” Granger spat the words at him as if that would make him agree with her. Behind them, Dumbledore’s screams were silent, and he was probably dead now. Harry wondered what she had to complain about.
“But effective.”
Granger stood there, shaking, for a second. Then she turned and flung herself away from him. Weasley and Neville were both waiting for her. They wrapped their arms around her and began murmuring. Weasley never looked away from Granger’s face, but Neville’s eyes were sober, and he stared at Dumbledore.
Harry did, too, to make sure he was dead. He was. The swarm of wasps rose and flew over to Harry, and Harry told them, “Scout the corridors. Don’t sting anyone you see, but scare them away, and come back to me if there’s someone there.”
They flew off, except for a single queen who remained on his shoulder in case someone else attacked. Harry turned back to Regulus and Professor McGonagall.
Regulus looked him in the eye and shrugged. “My curse was going to kill him anyway. It would just have taken longer. I’m a little angry that you didn’t leave him alive to let it take effect. Wasn’t there a way to do that?”
“Not without him striking at our unprotected backs. I think I see where Snape gets it. Got it.”
Regulus’s lips twitched a little, and then he looked away. “We should start walking. The longer we stay around here, the more chance we have of running into one of the other professors. It’s too late for the prefects to be patrolling now.” He began to walk down the corridor.
Professor McGonagall was white to the lips. “Why did you do that?” she whispered. “Or why did you hesitate so long?”
Harry looked up at her. “I thought you wouldn’t like it. But I also couldn’t think of another way to get out of this. He would keep coming. He wasn’t fooled by my Dementors not being able to eat souls. He would have taken my Cloak back. He would have tried to use Neville against Lord Dudders. Now he can’t.”
“So—that was what you thought? It wasn’t because you hated him?”
“I hate Lord Dudders.”
Professor McGonagall seemed to wrestle with that for a minute as they walked back towards the door. Terry fell into step behind them, his eyes as big as Amicus’s when he had seen a bit of food he liked. Weasley and Granger and Neville avoided looking at them. Regulus was already ahead, to the point where Harry had to listen for the hum of the swarm so it wouldn’t turn him back.
“You—hate—You-Know-Who, so you don’t have any hate left over for Dumbledore?”
Harry nodded to her, grateful she understood. It meant he might not have to explain so much of himself in the future. “Yes. It’s like that. If someone else did something like Lord Dudders did to my parents, then I would hate them, too. But no one else has.”
“So you did this because you thought it had to be done. And you held off so long because you thought we wouldn’t like it.”
“Yes.”
Professor McGonagall appeared to understand, so Harry didn’t know why she was still chewing her lips, something she did only when she was thinking. Then she shook her head, and gave Harry a wan smile, and fell behind to talk with Regulus.
Harry didn’t mind. It had taken her a little while to get over what he had done to Snape, and she had probably known Dumbledore longer. So it made sense that she would have to think about it.
Regulus didn’t need to think about it. Harry wasn’t sure about Terry or Neville. Weasley and Granger…
They were staring at him with huge, blank eyes, and they flinched every time he looked towards them. They kept their arms wrapped protectively around Neville.
Harry had to snort. He honestly didn’t care what they did, as long as they didn’t get in the way and didn’t hurt Neville. He hoped Neville would tell him if they started to be upsetting about the Horcrux in Neville’s forehead or anything else.
If they got in the way, then they were stupid. They knew what he would do. And now they’d seen it.
*
He cared about Albus’s death only because of the way it would affect us. Or what it would make us think of him.
Minerva drew in a deep, rattling breath as she watched the wasps come back and dance around Harry. He listened to them, not as if he was finding words in the sound of their wings, but as if it was similar. After a second, he nodded and sent them back out to scout down the corridors with a wave of his hand.
I thought he was more guided by moral principles. I thought he was beginning to have some…but instead, he is guided by what we think. By what the people he cares for think, and nothing else matters to him.
Then again, wasn’t it the same way when it came to his parents? Harry probably wouldn’t have been interested in rescuing them if they were strangers who had happened to be hurt. Instead, he wanted to save them and bring them back to sanity because they had loved him, and he cared for their love. He had had too little in his life for that not to be important to him, even if he couldn’t remember his first year of childhood.
Minerva sighed and slowly took a staircase that she remembered bounding down in cat form. Terry was keeping close to Harry, and Regulus had disappeared entirely around the corner in front of them. From behind her, Minerva could hear the ceaseless whispering from Hermione and Ron and Neville. Well, mostly Hermione and Ron, she judged with a quick glance over her shoulder.
She looked back at Harry, a gliding shadow.
I must be more careful than ever. Knowing how he looks on me and Regulus, I must be as strong a moral anchor as I can.
*
“How can he keep walking like nothing happened?”
“I don’t know, Hermione. But I know one thing. I bloody well won’t ever trust him again. He just murdered him. I thought the whole point of sneaking into the school was to avoid Dumbledore.”
“I know! And he killed him like—” A strangled sob. “As if it didn’t matter. Professor Dumbledore mattered more than that.”
Neville walked with his head bowed and listened to his best friends talk. Now and then, he looked at Harry, who still had a single wasp balanced on his shoulder. Some of the others circled back to spin around his head, but they never stayed long. Neville found himself shamefully glad of that.
Part of him agreed with Hermione and Ron. It was shocking, what Harry had done. And after they’d spent so much time trying to avoid Dumbledore, it made Neville shiver a little. Not because he suddenly thought Harry would turn on him. He wasn’t that stupid. But because he didn’t know what was going on behind Harry’s eyes.
And part of him was glad, and hiding on the floor of his heart in fear of his friends discovering it.
Dumbledore had always been there, as long as Neville could remember, having arguments with his grandmother and agreements with his tutors about the hard way he would need to be trained. One of Neville’s earliest memories was of Dumbledore bending over his cot and talking to some other adult Neville couldn’t see about his grand responsibility. He had to be ready to rid the world of You-Know-Who. That was always out there.
Neville hadn’t minded, so much, the thought of dying under You-Know-Who’s wand. His parents had done that, and everyone said they were so brave. But he minded, a lot, the thought of being responsible for saving the whole world.
Dumbledore wasn’t the only one who’d said he had to do that. Sometimes Neville thought everyone believed it. But he had been the one to say Neville had to have the training, and then look disappointedly over his glasses when Neville turned out not to be good at Potions.
And Harry didn’t care about Neville being the Boy-Who-Lived. He didn’t care about much, Neville thought, except getting rid of people who got in the way and healing his parents. He’d got rid of both Snape and Dumbledore now.
Even if Neville had to go back to training because his Gran insisted, that was two threats gone. He would never have to learn Potions from Snape or hear gently disappointed words about his progress again.
It made his face want to ache with smiling.
*
They reached Grimmauld Place without further encounters with anyone. Harry sent his wasps to patrol the outside of the house anyway. There might be another Death Eater attack any second.
He retreated to the smallest library. Terry came with him, frowning all the way, but since he sat down and picked up a book, Harry didn’t think he would be a bother. Harry closed his eyes and plunged into the stream of song that flowed around him, pinpointing the Horcruxes.
After perhaps an hour, he straightened and stretched. Two were in the house, of course: the one Regulus had retrieved and Neville. Harry had tracked one other to Diagon Alley, and one to a Muggle village. He planned to go after the one in the Muggle village first. It would be less noticeable than showing up in Diagon Alley.
“Harry.”
He started. He’d thought Terry would have left some time since, but instead, Terry was leaning forwards across the table. “What?” Harry asked.
“Did you go into this knowing that you wanted to kill Dumbledore?”
Harry looked at him with a flicker of interest. That was at least a little different than what he’d thought they would ask him. “No. I thought we would get him out of the way. Or not run into him at all. But then he was going to hurt Neville.”
“Would you—would you have killed him if he was going to hurt me? Or Weasley, or Granger?”
“He wouldn’t have. You weren’t valuable to him the way Neville was.”
From the way Terry blinked and groaned a little, that wasn’t the right answer. But Harry wasn’t sure what the right one was. Terry chewed his lip for a while before he gave it, too. “I mean, were you only upset because it was Neville? Or could it have been me, or Weasley, or Granger, or Professor McGonagall, or Black, and you still would have been as upset?”
“Weasley and Granger, no,” Harry said, after considering it for a moment. He would still have rescued them, because they were important to Neville, but Terry’s question was about whether he would be as upset. “They’re here because of Neville, not because they chose to be. But any of the rest of you, yes.”
Terry frowned some more. “I don’t know whether I should tell you that I never want someone murdered for me or not.”
“You wouldn’t have much choice about it.”
“Because you’re so much more powerful than I am?”
“No. Because if someone was threatening you like that, they would be more powerful than you were. I can only picture Lord Dudders or one of the Death Eaters doing that, personally. No one else seems to care much about stopping me.”
“Only because they don’t know what you’re doing,” Terry muttered, but he sounded relieved. “Don’t murder someone for me if you can help it, okay? I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“It wouldn’t be on yours. It would be on mine.”
“No, mine, because you don’t really have a conscience.”
“You and the others are the closest I come to it,” Harry acknowledged. He knew what he considered right and wrong, but they didn’t always seem to be the things other people considered right and wrong, and he honestly wasn’t interested in spending too much time thinking about it. “Just don’t get into situations where Lord Dudders and the Death Eaters could capture you, okay? Or where they would go through you to get at me.”
Terry shivered. “Don’t worry. I’m glad sometimes that I’m not a Gryffindor.”
Harry just nodded and left the room. He would have to see about getting Regulus or Professor McGonagall to Apparate him to the Muggle village. And this time, no others were coming with them. There was too much chance that an ambush would put one of the children in danger.
*
Terry sighed and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. He was wondering what his obligations were here, given the conversation he’d overheard when they came back.
It reassured him to know that Harry wouldn’t just murder other people on a whim. And it really hadn’t been a whim this time, he had to admit. Harry had finally decided that killing Dumbledore was worth the price of having people flinch when they looked at him, because he had threatened Neville.
And stood in the way. If Dumbledore had been another Hogwarts professor who had just happened to come upon them outside the Room of Requirement, Terry doubted Harry would have done that.
All right. So Terry understood the rules. They were essentially the same rules he had already known, but now they were all set out and stated. All right.
He wondered if that meant he was obligated to warn Weasley and Granger that their dark looks and little whispered hissings about trying to do the “right thing” when it came to Harry were idiotic. They would only get themselves trampled on or clawed or bound by the Wild if they tried to do something to Harry.
Or stung.
Terry finally shrugged and stood up. He would warn them. He wouldn’t say anything to Harry yet, because he might kill them “just to be sure,” and Terry didn’t really want them dead.
But after that, he washed his hands of the entire matter. They had all been in that corridor. They’d had as much chance as Terry to see exactly what happened when Harry Potter got angry.
If they wanted to challenge him after that, then Terry planned to be nowhere near the scene.
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The Art of Self-Fashioning