Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Children of the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 12416 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the beginning of a longer arc in the fic.
Harry was watching Professor Quirrell again. No one else ever seemed to do that. They were disgusted by the way he spoke, or the way he smelled, with all the garlic under his turban, and they would just laugh and look away.
But Harry didn’t think anyone else had watched long enough to notice what he saw. Quirrell’s familiar, a bronze rabbit, always stayed near him, crouched next to him on the table and nibbling from his plate. Harry thought that the rabbit was probably like Golden; she didn’t need to eat, since she could just live on her wizard’s magic, but she wanted to, as a kind of reassurance. Golden ate because he liked the taste and they were in a different place now.
Harry knew that Golden hadn’t eaten a lot around him when they were young because he hadn’t wanted to take the food that the Dursleys would give Harry. But now that they were at Hogwarts, he ate all the time.
Not like Quirrell’s rabbit, though, whose name was Alanna. She was always flinching, even harder than the professor himself did.
And Golden didn’t have a smaller familiar inside him, either.
Harry had actually thought it was a worm at first, but he’d asked around a little under the guise of being a wide-eyed child, and making friends. And he did want to make friends. He thought that made people answer him honestly. The other part of it was that they all wanted to talk to someone with a golden familiar, because they thought he was going to do great things and they wanted to be part of them.
Harry planned to put a stop to that as soon as he could.
Anyway. Familiars didn’t get worms, or other animal diseases. Most of the time, the only thing that could kill them was when their wizard or witch died. On occasion, they could get corrupted if their person practiced enough Dark Arts, but even that was rare and took insanity or a lack of control.
So there was no reason that Harry knew of for the small silver snake that floated, transparent, near Alanna’s neck and ears.
But Harry thought that both she and Quirrell were in trouble. And he intended to help.
*
Narcissa sat back from the letter, and nodded slowly. Even for a child as skilled in subtlety as her Draco was, it made a pretty trap. And while Harry Potter was certainly powerful, nothing she had heard about him pointed to any sense of subtlety.
She would offer him a mentor, she thought as she reached down and stroked Venus’s fur, making her rumble with contentment. She would offer him kindness. If he didn’t know his own place at the top of the hierarchy, or at least didn’t intuitively understand it, that would be all the harder to resist. He would be unused to thinking of himself as the dispenser of good things, and would position himself as beneficiary.
At the same time, Narcissa would make sure that he would have no reason to think of himself as dominant over Draco. She would plant a few doubts about the natural powers of golden familiars. About the rightness of using Parselmouth to command reptilian ones like Kali. And she would teach him that the Malfoys were right, and Draco the natural leader for him to follow.
By all rights, it should have been me gifted with a golden familiar, she thought idly as she stood up to post the letter.
But it did not matter. After the snare was spun, she would have the use of one as an extension of her will.
*
Harry went to Professor Quirrell first. Golden reared up beside him and examined Alanna with interest. That made Alanna shriek and dive behind the professor. Harry winced.
“Sorry for that, Professor Quirrell,” he said. “But I wanted to ask you about the snake that Alanna has inside her.”
Professor Quirrell had been reaching back to pet his rabbit. But now he recoiled and got papers all over the floor from the way his hand was swinging. Harry frowned. Professor Quirrell looked as scared as Dudley did when Golden reared up and swatted him away with his tail. But Dudley couldn’t see Golden. Harry knew Professor Quirrell had to be able to see the snake.
“W-what are y-you t-talking about, M-Mr. P-P-P-Potter?”
“That snake, right there,” Harry said, and pointed at the shadow that was inside Alanna’s ears right now. “It sort of moves around, but I can always see it. It’s silver, and she’s bronze, so I thought maybe she was sick. I could try to talk to it?” he offered. Now that he knew he was a Parselmouth, because Draco and Neville and some other people had explained it to him, he knew he might be good at talking to snakes.
Professor Quirrell only stared at him as if Harry had done something horrible, before he shook his head abruptly and grabbed up Alanna protectively. “No! It’s nothing!”
“But, sir—”
“She’s fine! You will not threaten my familiar, Potter!”
Harry sighed. Professor Quirrell was probably one of those people who thought Harry liked being at the top of the hierarchy and would threaten anyone who didn’t have a golden familiar themselves. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just thought she was sick and I wanted to help heal her.”
“Out of my classroom! This instant!”
Harry frowned and left, with Golden crawling beside him. Something was bothering him, but it wasn’t until they were in Herbology and Neville was showing him the right way to pick up a Burning Bush that he realized what it was.
Professor Quirrell hadn’t stuttered on those last few words at all.
*
“Did you get the letter from my mother?”
A few days had gone by without Harry saying anything, and Draco had to know. Mother had written to him that she would write to Harry—or Potter, because she called him that. She said that he needed a mother, and Draco knew there was no one better in the whole world than his Mother.
But if Harry didn’t say anything, that might mean he didn’t agree. And Draco had started dancing up and down so much, or juggling his leg back and forth, when he was thinking about it, that Kali had started to hiss and swipe at him.
He stared hard at Harry now, who blinked at him as if he didn’t know what he was talking about. Well, they were sitting at the Hufflepuff table and Harry had been talking to Longbottom, but a conversation with Longbottom was—just not as important.
“What? Oh, yeah, I did. It was strange.”
“Why?”
“Because she said all these things about helping me find my place and my power.” Harry shook his head and pulled out a folded piece of parchment from his pocket. Draco had to admit that it did look like the creamy parchment Mother would use. “She misunderstood something, right? Because she must know that I don’t want to use my power. And my place is Hogwarts.”
Draco swallowed slowly. Something was wrong, but he didn’t think he had the words. He took the letter away from Harry. “I’ll, uh, read it and get back to you. Maybe she did misunderstand something.”
“Thanks, Draco! I don’t want to be rude to her. It was nice of her to write to me. I just don’t understand.” Harry stood up and grabbed a piece of bread and said to Longbottom, “It’s time for us to go stand up to Snape again.” Then he was off, Golden slithering beside him.
Longbottom gave Draco a hopeless look. Probably because he was the only one around, Draco thought, but he found he couldn’t look away, even when Kali, sitting on his shoulder, nudged at his hand impatiently.
“He doesn’t understand, does he?” Longbottom whispered. His toad leaped onto his shoulder and croaked dismally.
“No.”
Longbottom nodded and then sighed. “I hate Professor Snape, but I’m not going to let Harry get hurt.” He reached up to hold the toad onto his shoulder and hurried after Harry.
Draco looked down at the letter in his hands, and without even having read it, he knew the same thing was true of him.
*
BookDragon: Thank you! I do plan to, at a more regular speed now.
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Children of the Sun