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Other People's Choices	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 24374 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
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Chapter List
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Chapter Seven—The Future Awaits
Harry is almost halfway back to Gryffindor Tower before he remembers that he doesn’t live there anymore and he has to go to Slytherin to pack.
Harry leans against the wall and closes his eyes. His breathing is harsh and heavy and sounds as though someone is scraping down the stones with one of Aunt Petunia’s nail files.
Snape tried. Harry will give him that. But he heard Dumbledore start speaking after he walked out the door, before the staircase could carry him down to the corridor again. He sounded sad and reasonable.
People who sound sad and reasonable win. Harry should know. That’s the way Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia sound every time someone questions them about Harry or even about the state of their garden. Then the people questioning them smile and go on their way. That means Harry isn’t only going to spend three days with the Dursleys, no matter what Snape said. He’s going to spend the whole summer.
Why do I keep allowing myself to hope? It only hurts more in the end when it turns out not to be true. This feels like all the times Harry used to hope his parents were alive when he was younger and they would come take him away with them someday.
It’s been a really long time since I hoped like that.
“Potter?”
Harry starts and looks up. This staircase isn’t used a lot, and he thought he would be alone for longer. More than that, the last person he expected to see standing in front of him was Zabini. Harry sighs and straightens and moves out of the way, since he assumes Zabini wants to get past him.
“No, Potter, I want to talk to you.”
“About what?” Harry thinks they’ve said all there is to say. The last time they talked, Zabini blocked his way and didn’t even deny thinking that Muggleborns were beneath him. He isn’t as unpleasant as Malfoy, but Harry doesn’t see why they can’t just ignore each other for the next five years.
Five years. Nausea swells to life in his stomach.
“About something I should have said the other day, and didn’t.” Zabini’s face is determined, his dark eyes fastened on Harry as if he’s the key to winning Slytherin the House Cup. “Listen. Can you come to the room with us? Theo’s there, and he wants to talk to you, too. Draco’s chasing a distraction we made up for him, and Greg and Vince are still eating.”
“Chasing a distraction you made up for him?” Harry isn’t about to walk into the same room as two Slytherins, and no one else, until he understands everything about what their words mean.
Zabini smiles. It makes him look like someone sharing a secret with a friend, and Harry smiles back before he can think about it. “I charmed a ball of paper to fly really fast. Theo knows a charm to make it shine like the Snitch. We told him that some Gryffindors wanted to bet him he couldn’t catch it, but he wasn’t around, so they just left the Snitch and the terms of the bet. He’s chasing it around the castle as we speak.”
Harry laughs, and then pauses in wonder. That makes his throat ache so hard he knows it’s been even longer since he laughed than since he hoped. “And you don’t think he’ll get suspicious any time soon? Or stop? I mean, he doesn’t need money.”
“Of course not, but this is about pride. He’s not going to stop because then someone might wonder about him not being fast enough in Quidditch games. And we told him Weasley was one of the people who bet him, so…”
Harry cocks his head. That honestly sounds like something the twins might do. Or Ron, in reality. “Okay. Why does Nott want to talk to me, though?” Zabini at least has made an effort before now. Nott just keeps silent and looks at everything down his nose.
“Because you change the power dynamics in Slytherin.” Zabini turns to walk alongside him as they make their way back down the stairs. “And Theo’s someone who could have been at the top if he wanted to. He’s eager to see what happens when you challenge Draco for the top position. Speaking together, we’ll reason it out better than if just one of us tries.”
“Zabini—”
“I wish you’d call me Blaise.”
“I don’t know if I can. You always call me Potter.”
Zabini stops walking and stares at him. Harry stares back, keeping his hand in his robe pocket, close to his wand. He’s not sure how fast Slytherin “friendship” can fade, but he’s ready if he has to use the Disarming Charm. It worked pretty well on Lockhart.
“So literally the only thing I had to do was ask, and you would have let me?” Zabini shakes his head. “How long did it take you and Weasley to start calling each other by your first names?”
“Right away. I mean, probably less than an hour,” Harry says, when Zabini looks at him like that isn’t enough. He shrugs. “He was nervous, I was nervous, we were both new at Hogwarts, he was nice to me, why wouldn’t we be friends when we met each other?”
*
Potter—probably he will be Harry now—is going to change the dynamics in Slytherin House in a way Blaise never expected.
He’s not naïve, not in the classic sense of the word. Look at the way he’s keeping his hand in his pocket, near his wand, right now. But he doesn’t see the political world the way a Slytherin does. For a second, Blaise wonders what in the world he’s doing in Slytherin. Did the Sorting Hat put him here just because of his Parseltongue?
Then he listens to the words that Harry said.
He was nice to me.
No, there’s a Slytherin mindset behind that after all. Harry might not have got on that train looking to greet old friends and allies of his family and establish powerful connections, the way Draco and Theo did, but he doesn’t welcome all and sundry, either. He wants to be friends with people who are nice to him. A simple and basic and selfish way to choose a friend.
“I should have known that, I suppose,” Blaise says. He doesn’t mind admitting he’s wrong if he doesn’t have an audience. “Since you weren’t raised in the wizarding world, then you wouldn’t know about the importance of last names.” That sounds nicer than saying “you were raised by Muggles.” Blaise congratulates himself. See, he can do nice.
But Harry only shakes his head and says, “I call you by your last name. I call Malfoy by his last name. I call Nott by his last name. I can list people I call by their last names all day. So you’d better explain that bit.”
“I want to, but I think Theo can do a better job than me. So will you come to Slytherin and listen to him do it?”
For a long moment, Harry pauses the way the birds did when Blaise started catching them to feed to one of his mother’s margay cats years ago. Then he nods. “You’re being awfully open and honest for a Slytherin. Blaise.”
We have to change his perception of us. Sure, a lot of Slytherins do lie, and Blaise will do it when it suits him, the way he did to Draco this afternoon. But that doesn’t mean Slytherin embodies evil, and he doesn’t want Harry to go on thinking it does.
“I want you as my friend. I want you to understand things. I don’t think I’m going to get that by lying. Do you?”
Harry has a strangely open smile he apparently gives people who are nice to him. He nods. “You’re not. Let’s go.”
*
Theo sits up when Blaise and Potter walk into the room. He can feel that sudden, strange urge to vomit from excitement, the way he did when his father first showed him his old Death Eater robes and mask and made Theo swear never to tell anyone.
It’s easy to smooth down, though, easier than he thought it would be. Theo knows he can’t vomit, or Potter will get the wrong impression. He smiles, instead, and casts the charm at the doors that will warn them if anyone is coming back. “Hello, Potter.”
“We’ve agreed on first names, Theo,” Blaise says quietly.
Well, that’s sudden, but it’s also something to be expected of a Gryffindor, so Theo’s not really surprised. He nods. “Then I’m Theo. I don’t like my full name.” He doesn’t know if Harry would use it or not. Better to cut it off now, though, and prevent any…unfortunate reactions from Theo before he knows what he’s doing.
“Okay,” Harry says, as if it’s that simple. Maybe it is. Theo relaxes. He can get along with people who treat him right. And maybe Harry just wants that, too. He sits on his bed and looks at both of them.
Theo turns his head. He’s the one who knows, but Blaise is the one who sees. Blaise nods to him. “Harry wants to know what’s so important about last names. He started calling Weasley by his first name right when he met him.”
Theo can’t keep his eyes from widening, but, well, Weasleys. “Okay,” he says, and faces Harry, who stops swinging his legs like he’s in Binns’s class and pays attention. “Most of the time, we use last names except when we’re around people we know really well. It never pays to be friends with someone who isn’t your friend in return.”
“But how do you know that? If they’re not your friends, then they could call you by your first name on purpose, to make you think they are.”
Theo smiles. He’s glad that he won’t, as Professor Snape says, be teaching a dunderhead. “With a lot of us who grew up together, it’s a matter of knowing traditions and alliances. Draco calls us by our first names because his father knows my father. And Blaise’s mother,” he has to add. As much as anyone can know Blaise’s mother. “But Draco thinks he’s being superior to me and Blaise and calling us by our first names because we can’t do anything about it. He thinks we call him by his first name because we’re his friends and in awe of him.”
“So why do you call him by his first name?” Harry’s forehead is wrinkled, creasing his scar. Theo stares at it despite himself and then manages to look away. He would really like a chance to study that scar, one day.
“Because we want him to think the way he does.”
“I thought Malfoy was the most respected person in Slytherin.” Harry speaks slowly. “That’s not true, is it?”
Theo shakes his head. “I think his father was, when he was here. At least, that’s the way mine talks about him. And his family has lots of money and favors in the Ministry, and they’re quick to expose their enemies to ridicule or hatred when they can.”
“My father will hear about this!”
It’s such an uncanny imitation of Draco’s voice that Theo nearly checks his charm on the door. Then he meets Harry’s grin and smiles without feeling like he has to force or calculate it for the first time in a long time.
“Exactly. Lucius is like that, except it’s the Minister he tells.”
Harry nods slowly. He looks quiet and determined and like he’s salting something away in his head. Theo starts to ask what it is, but Harry speaks before he can. “You don’t respect Mr. Malfoy either, do you? You call him by his first name.”
“Very good,” Theo murmurs. He doesn’t think Harry has any of the natural instincts that come to someone who grew up around people like his father and expected to Sort Slytherin. But he can learn. “No, I don’t. He whines too much.”
Harry laughs, and then claps a hand across his mouth. “Sorry. I’ve just…never heard someone use that word about an adult before.”
“It’s the right word.” Theo shrugs. The right word matters a lot more to him than someone possibly running and tattling to Lucius—not that Harry will anyway. “It’s better to stay silent and secret and be powerful when you can.”
Harry frowns. “I don’t think I can do that. I have to say something if I see someone doing the wrong thing.”
Blaise and Theo exchange a look of the kind Harry probably never will learn to interpret, and Theo finally nods. “Well, your kind of power is different. You’re the Boy-Who-Lived. You can make people respect you in a way that I can’t unless you grew up around me, and then you probably already do anyway.”
“That doesn’t make me strong! It makes me weak! All those people who thought they knew who I was and that I was evil, just because I can talk to snakes! It was worse because of who I was! There’s nothing good about being the Boy-Who-Lived!”
“I…”
Theo has never thought of it that way. And he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Blaise look flabbergasted, but that is the right word for the expression on his face.
Harry is ranting on, ignoring the way they stare at him. “Everyone acts like I wanted it! The fame, everything! Like I wanted my parents dead. Like I wouldn’t trade every one of the whispers and the stares and the newspaper articles about me that Lockhart made me pose for to have them back.
“It’s a curse. Is there a spell that can take your fame and give it to someone else? Because I’d look it up and then I’d practice it until I was good at it and I’d use it.”
Theo leans slowly back on the bed. His mother died when he was small, and it’s one of those things that it’s not wise to talk to his father about. But at least he’s had his father, and he’s learned magic, and he was raised in the wizarding world.
Blaise is almost the same, except it was his father who died, and probably for close to the same reasons. It’s one of the many ways they became friends. He walks slowly up to Theo’s side of the bed and joins him in staring at Harry.
Harry abruptly seems to realize they’re staring, and flushes. “Sorry,” he mutters. “I just—I don’t like attention.”
“You don’t have to like it. But I think it would help you to learn how to use it.”
“Make it a weapon?”
Once again, Harry is putting concepts into words that Theo thought would either have to wait or would make him balk. He nods, faintly impressed. “It’s already a weapon, you know. Something that strong always is. It’s just that either the newspapers will keep reporting on things you don’t want them to, or they’ll say what you tell them to say.”
“I’m not that strong. I—you must be joking.”
Theo shakes his head. “It’ll take a lot of work, but you can turn this weapon around in your hand, so it points their way. I can help you. My father knows how to make the papers stop talking about him.”
“Why did they talk about him in the first place?”
Theo hesitates, but someone else would tell Harry if he didn’t, and that means he has to risk it. “Because he was a follower of the Dark Lord.”
Harry bolts to his feet. His face is so white it looks like the icing on some of the buns the house-elves serve at home. “No.”
“That doesn’t mean I am.” Theo has to admit he always expected to be, but he only has to admit it to himself. “We can change things. You can—”
“I wish I was never put here! I wish things were different! I don’t belong here!”
“You could learn to belong, is what I’m saying. We could teach you, and help you, and that would mean we wouldn’t have to lie to people like Draco anymore. I’d like to be able to tell the truth and laugh at who I want. I don’t right now because it’s too much trouble to deal with Draco getting offended and Lucius getting whiny. But I’d like to.”
Theo still expects Harry to run out of the room, and Blaise moves like he’s thinking about interfering. But Harry stares at him instead. Then he says, “Prove it.”
“What do you mean? How can I prove it?”
“We’d like to help you,” Blaise adds earnestly. He always does earnest better than Theo. “But we don’t know how you want us to do that.”
Harry is quiet for so long Theo thinks he just said that and doesn’t know how to back it up now. Then he takes a deep breath. “You say you have powerful fathers—”
“Mother—”
“Parents, fine—and you can teach me how to control what the papers say about me. Prove it. Prove I can do what I want. I don’t want to go back to my Muggle relatives for the summer. But Dumbledore says I have to, and even Professor Snape said it would be for at least three days. Then he’s got some plan to remove me from them. But I don’t want to even see them again. Keep me from having to go back to them. Prove it.”
Blaise starts to protest, but Theo raises a hand, and he falls silent. “Why don’t you want to see them again?”
Harry gives him a glance that sears. “I hate them.”
Theo smiles, and even when it’s as wide as it can get on his face, it feels like the smile is growing inside him. He nearly thought Harry was just too different, except for being sort of intelligent and a Parselmouth.
But this they can work with. Harry not running out of the room when he heard about Theo’s father and hating Muggles. This they can use.
“We’ll do it,” Theo says, and removes the spell on the door so Harry can leave.
“But how?” Blaise whines the minute the door is shut, and whining is the right word. “We only have two days, counting today, before we go home for the summer. And I know Mum’s heard about Harry being here, but that doesn’t mean she thinks there’s any value to doing something like this.”
“I have a favor I can call in from Father,” Theo tells him quietly. “I’m going to use it.”
“And you think Harry would even take any favor your father offers him? You think your father will do it no matter who it’s for?”
“He has to,” Theo says, and he’s talking about them both. He knows it, he can see it, the racing pathways of power, the way he sometimes can just sitting on the couch in the common room and staring into the fire. It’s like being a seer. He knows the ways strong people are going to go, whole and complete, without being able to break them down into their individual parts.
“It begins now, Blaise,” he says, and he can feel the thrill moving up through his veins, as almighty as an earthquake. “It really begins now.”
*
Kain: Thanks! Yes, Ron is loyal to Harry, and will even pitch in on what Blaise and Theo want to do if he can find some way to do so.
Dumbledore is not malicious, true. But he is sort of blind. I think he really does have the sort of value for blood family that makes him believe they can't seriously want to be apart or mistreat Harry; he calls Harry's home life dark and difficult in canon, but not abusive. I think he probably believes that at least Petunia and Dudley love Harry, deep down.
Ha-ha, poor Snape, now a Death Eater will <I>definitely</i> know where Harry was living!
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