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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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“Madam Umbridge. I’ve heard all about you.”
“Only powerful things, I hope,” said Dolores, and contented herself with a small bow, since Narcissa Malfoy was holding her hand out to her instead of using both of them to clutch at her robes.
“Yes,” said Narcissa, with a thoughtful glance that proved she heard all the low speculation that muttered in the back of Dolores’s mind. She turned and let her robes fall swirling about her, draping gracefully over her feet and the floor of Dolores’s drawing room. “And this must be Harry.”
If they want to be on a first-name basis with him, they can, Dolores thought, and put her hand on Potter’s shoulder as she had when Lucius confronted them. “Yes. Say hello, Harry.”
“Hello, Mrs. Malfoy.” Harry was blinking a little, as if the light in the room was too bright with him. “You’re really pretty. Draco said you were, but I thought he must be exaggerating.”
Dolores could feel herself turning as pink as the robes she wasn’t wearing right now, but Narcissa laughed, a gentle, delighted sound. “It’s been a long time since someone gave me a compliment like that, Harry,” she said, holding out her hand to him, too. “And the best thing is, I know you mean it.” She smiled at Dolores. “What a little charmer he is.”
Dolores managed to nod, although she thought Harry embarrassing and not charming. She was glad that she hadn’t reached out to pinch his shoulder for that mistake. She inclined her head and murmured, “Mrs. Malfoy has come to teach you some lessons, Harry.”
“Oh.”
“I can quite understand that lessons might not be what you want, Harry,” Narcissa said smoothly, and sat down on the chair nearest him, arranging her robes to fall around her as gracefully as a cataract. “But it’s what you need. If you spent time all day playing, could you grow up to be a wizard who understood the power of his name?”
Dolores relaxed back into her chair. Narcissa understood the way she wanted to raise Harry, then. As long as she didn’t try to claim all the credit or power for herself…
Narcissa met her eyes for a second, and inclined her head. They understood each other perfectly, which meant Dolores didn’t need to interfere as Harry shook his head so hard that his messy fringe tumbled into his eyes.
“No, Mrs. Malfoy! That would mean Dumbledore might come and put me back with—the Muggles.”
His voice sank on the last words, and Dolores frowned. He needed to be able to name them without a tremor, especially now that knowledge of his childhood was common in the wizarding world. For him to have such an obvious point of weakness would end up with it being probed and used against him.
“He might try,” said Narcissa, looking as perfect and pale and lovely and unmoved as Dolores wished she could be. “And at the moment, he is making another move.” She looked at Dolores, but only to include her in the conversation, Dolores thought. Her eyes, so faint a color it was hard to tell whether they were blue or grey, never really left Harry. “He is releasing your godfather from prison.”
“I thought he—killed people.”
The one good thing about him being this timorous is that he will not be Sorted into Gryffindor, Dolores thought in exasperation.
“Dumbledore appears to believe that he is innocent. He might try to take you away, if Dumbledore can prove his innocence. Do you want that to happen?”
“No. I don’t—know him.” Harry glanced at Dolores, and then away again. “I don’t think he would teach me about the wizarding world.”
“He would teach you many very strange things, things that wouldn’t agree with you or help your future at all.” Narcissa leaned forwards and rested her chin on her hand, her eyes never fading or moving. “You see, I know Sirius Black. He was my acknowledged cousin before he was disowned when he was sixteen.”
“Disowned? Why would he want to leave his family?”
He still longs for a family, then. Dolores was not sure whether that was something she should try to train out of him or not. On the one hand, Harry had such a powerful yearning in that direction that it might be advisable to work with the grain of the wood rather than warp it.
On the other hand, Dolores was not sure she could ever be a mother.
“He didn’t want to, I think.” Once again, Narcissa shook her head in a way that made his hair look like a waterfall. “But he had to. He wanted to change his family to fit him. He was the first Black ever Sorted into Gryffindor. The rest of us were Slytherins. He thought that meant he was better than us—purer, lighter, more good—and he went around proclaiming in a loud voice that we should abandon the Dark Arts and join him. His parents couldn’t put up with that, of course. So they disowned him.”
“I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to live with someone like that. Someone who couldn’t even understand—does he think Muggles are good, Mrs. Malfoy?”
“Some of them,” said Narcissa, and gave him a smile that made Dolores watch her carefully. She would stand for many things in the teaching of these lessons, but not Narcissa stealing Harry’s affections away from her. “That was what made his crime so surprising. He killed a dozen Muggles while also trying to kill his best friend.”
“Best friend?”
“Well, perhaps I am exaggerating a little. I believe your father was his best friend. But they had two others. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. It was Pettigrew he killed. Or perhaps didn’t kill.”
Harry looked painfully bewildered. Dolores nodded a little. She suspected the pace of the teaching had gone too fast for him, and since Harry still didn’t know much about the wizarding justice system other than what Azkaban was and that the Wizengamot presided over trials, this wasn’t going well for him. “Harry,” she called.
He looked at her, blinking a little. Dolores stood up and came over to him, patting his shoulder. “Listen to Mrs. Malfoy, dear. When she’s done speaking, then you can ask any questions you still have.”
“Of course, Harry,” Narcissa said, her voice confection-sweet. “I should have realized this sudden flow of information would puzzle you. Believe me, I want you to ask questions. I would like to teach you about the wizarding world and the heritage that always should have been yours.”
Dolores saw the way Harry’s jaw hardened, and went back to sit down, well-content. Harry didn’t like people condescending to him. It was one reason Dolores wanted to train manners into him. They would always condescend to him as long as he acted like a child.
But for now, Harry only focused on Narcissa and said, “Please continue, Mrs. Malfoy.”
“Your parents were hidden under a powerful spell called the Fidelius Charm. Only the Secret-Keeper could reveal the location of the cottage where they lived, once the spell was cast. And Black was both that Secret-Keeper, and a secret Death Eater.”
“I remember Miss Dolores telling me about that.”
Narcissa nodded. “It seems as though your parents might have chosen a different Secret-Keeper, who might have been Pettigrew himself. Of course, then it becomes a question of whether Black is guilty of murder and betraying your parents, or only the first crime.”
“I hope they find him guilty,” said Harry, as solemn as a soldier. “I don’t want to leave Miss Dolores.”
“Not even to live with a man who knew your parents?”
“He’s been in Azkaban, though. Miss Dolores told me what happens to people in Azkaban. And my parents—the only thing I remember of my parents is my mum screaming and You-Know-Who casting the Killing Curse at her.”
Dolores put down her arms harder on the chair than she meant to, but she had to stare. Harry had told her nothing of this. How was she to respond and look like a good guardian when she had to sit there gape-mouthed?
“How do you know that’s what you remember, Harry?” Narcissa, meanwhile, was as calm as a judge, and even leaning forwards to urge Harry to continue. Dolores decided the best thing to do was repair her dignity and see what she could salvage from the situation later.
“I didn’t for a long time, Mrs. Malfoy. But then I learned about the way my parents died from the history books Miss Dolores gave me. The Killing Curse is green, and I’ve always dreamed about a green light and a woman screaming and a man laughing. His laughter is—it’s high and cold and he sounds insane.”
Dolores relaxed a little. At least that made it sound as though Harry had simply failed to trust her with something precious and private to him because he had come into her care so recently, not as if she had been missing obvious signs of trauma.
“I see.” Narcissa sat back and gave Dolores a single quick glance, as if she didn’t know for sure whether to believe Harry but also saw no reason to disbelieve him. “But that doesn’t make you more eager to remember your parents?”
Harry was silent for a long time, playing with a thread that had frayed off the cuff of his sleeve. Dolores frowned at him, and wondered how long that had been there, and whether he picked at his clothes. It might be time for a Stinging Hex across the knuckles if he did.
“He can’t give me the memories,” Harry finally whispered. “All he can tell me is things he knows about them. And—and the newspaper articles all said that he was my dad’s best friend. I don’t know how much he could tell me about my mum.” He looked up and turned to Dolores first. “Maybe it’s being ungrateful. I don’t want to be ungrateful.”
Dolores nodded. That was one of the first lessons she had taught him.
“But I don’t want secondhand memories. I want the real thing. And I think right now, the only person who’s going to give me the real thing and teach me the real history is Miss Dolores.”
Narcissa stood and smiled, smoothing down her robes. “My husband was wondering what you would say about knowing your godfather was freed, Mr. Potter. I will be happy to report to him how he should vote in the Wizengamot when this matter comes before him.”
“I mean, I think he should be free if he’s innocent,” Harry said, his eyes huge behind his glasses. “But I don’t want to see him.”
“How interesting,” said Narcissa, and her eyebrows arched a little higher. “I shall tell my husband that as well.” She turned, with only a small nod to Dolores, and walked out of the room.
Dolores accompanied her, giving Harry a sharp look on the way past. Harry nodded. He would understand and obey the order to stay in that particular drawing room until she returned.
Dolores was again grateful that the boy was as intelligent as he was. Being reared by Muggles could have warped him to the point that he was unwilling to use his brain at all.
“You have taught him commendable loyalty to you, Dolores,” said Narcissa, and paused in the doorway that would lead her outside. She preferred to Apparate rather than Floo even though she had Flooed in, Dolores noticed, and stored that information in her head in case it should prove useful later. “But you might want to consider that loyalty to you is not loyalty to all pure-blood ways and families.”
I don’t want him to be loyal to all of them, Dolores could have said, but she only lowered her eyes and whispered, “Oh?”
“Yes. For example, if he thinks of you as a parent, he might not want to do things that would be in his best interest when it came to the Wizengamot.”
“I see. I shall keep that in mind, Mrs. Malfoy.”
When Narcissa had departed, Dolores went thoughtfully back into the drawing room. Harry stood with his hands clasped in front of him and stared down at his fingers. Dolores took the chair Narcissa had been sitting in and asked, “What did you think of Narcissa, Harry?”
“She’s pretty.”
Dolores nodded patiently, and waited. That pure-bloods used beauty like that as a weapon wasn’t something she would attempt to explain to Harry right now. “But did you like her?”
“No.”
Dolores leaned slowly back in the chair. She had hoped to elicit a response like that eventually, but she hadn’t expected it right away. “Why not?”
“I don’t think she liked me. I think—she was just concerned about what I thought of Black, and her husband, and maybe Draco. At first I thought she liked me, but then she was cold, like Aunt Petunia.”
Dolores’s lips twitched in spite of herself, but she had to say, “It won’t do to compare a pure-blood witch like Mrs. Malfoy with a Muggle, Harry. You must not let anyone hear you say that.”
“Yes, Miss Dolores.” But Harry was hesitating, shrinking in front of her again with his head bowed, holding something back obviously enough that Dolores sighed a little as she spoke.
“What is it, Harry?”
“Is it all right for me to compare her to Aunt Petunia if no one hears me?”
Dolores paused. Then she knelt down in front of the boy and lifted his head. He was growing more talented at hiding his emotions and lying with his face, but his eyes still and always gave him away.
Harry looked at her with almost blank eyes for the first time, though. His face was smooth and so guileless that Dolores would have believed in the innocent nature of the question if not for the things she had said to Harry, and the things she was trying to teach him.
“You must remember one thing, Harry. As you navigate the world of politics, and you learn how to use the power of your name the way I’m teaching you to do, and you make friends…”
“Yes, Miss Dolores?”
“Your first loyalty will always be to me, or I will make sure that you wish it had been.”
As she spoke, she pinched his shoulder again, but this time Harry only looked her in the eye and nodded once. He was growing resistant to pain, Dolores thought, or perhaps she couldn’t surprise him with that now, so it had lost its sting.
Hmmm. Perhaps I need to implement those other tactics I was thinking of.
“One reason you need to be careful,” Dolores said, and modulated her voice as she stood up, “is that some people will seek to use you. The Malfoys can be powerful allies, but they might do the same thing as Dumbledore. See your power and your name, and decide that they can manipulate you for it.”
Harry looked up at her. “How can I keep them from doing that and still be friends with Draco?”
“Well,” said Dolores slowly, as if it was only just occurring to her, “you might talk to Draco, sometimes, when he’s here. See if he knows all the politics that his parents take part in. I don’t think he does. Some of it might surprise him.”
“Why wouldn’t his parents tell him, though? You tell me, Miss Dolores.”
“You remember I told you that you can become powerful by keeping people in ignorance, the way Dumbledore does?” Dolores waited until Harry nodded. “I think that Lucius Malfoy would prefer that Draco not think about power right now. And not telling him all the correct details about history or legislation is one way to do that.”
“Oh.” Harry stared at his hands again, and Dolores waited. She was sure she knew what his next question would be. And she was right. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Malfoy want Draco to know about politics, though?”
“Because sometimes sons can be challenges to their parents. Troubles. Trials. You know, Harry. The kind of trouble I told you never to be.”
“No, Miss Dolores!”
At least those words still properly terrify him. Dolores took a moment to revel in her triumph, before she continued. “I don’t think the Malfoys will hurt you, Harry. Mr. Malfoy likes you better than his wife, I think. But they might seek to use you in ways that you don’t want to be used. So you need to be cautious around them, the same way you are around Dumbledore. And talk to Draco when he’s here. Find out what he knows and doesn’t know. Then report back to me.”
Harry went still. “You want me to…spy on him, Miss Dolores?”
“Only tell me the truth.”
For a moment, Harry seemed to be struggling with the notion, even given the way she had phrased it, and Dolores thought she knew why. His disgusting Muggle aunt would have spied on her neighbors, Dolores was certain.
But she kept eye contact, and Harry finally nodded. “It would be good to know what Draco knows,” he said, in a soft voice.
Dolores smiled. “We’ll make a politician of you yet, Harry.”
And here she could trace her progress. A month ago, Harry would have flinched at what she said, and maybe curled up so that he could bury his head in his arms and shudder. He had dreaded using his name at all when he found out it might make people notice him, and oppose him.
Now, he beamed up at her for the compliment.
A better politician than most, even.
*
BillP: While I would still hesitate to call Dolores "motherly" here, I think you're right that she sees the importance of varying her tactics and trying to be sweet sometimes, at least in public. And Harry is going to grow up very differently now.
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The Daring Win