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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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Chapter Eight—The Wrestling Place
Dolores had cast spells years ago that would alert her the instant anything changed in her home. That included a door opening outside, someone knocking, or even an animal entering her garden and nibbling on her plants. If the disturbance was a small one, she could roll over and go back to sleep immediately. Sleeping easily had always been a gift of hers, as it was of everyone who had a clean conscience.
This time, she was jerked awake as though someone had grabbed her shoulder, and she understood when she listened to the jabbing of the alarm in her ears.
Someone had Flooed into the main drawing room, the one where she and Harry had met Narcissa three days ago.
All the Floo connections were closed.
Dolores rolled to her feet and grabbed her wand. Then she paused to make sure that there was nothing indecorous about her pink dressing gown. There was a tiny possibility, smaller than the rabbit currently struggling in one of her traps outside, that this might be the Minister or another ally, and she didn’t want to look disheveled in front of them.
But she didn’t really think it was.
Dolores came out near the top of the stairs and paused in unpleasant surprise when she saw Harry peering from his open door. “Go back into your room, Harry,” she whispered. “There are intruders, but I’ll take care of it.”
“Sorry, Miss Dolores, I couldn’t sleep,” said Harry, and shivered. “I never can when there’s any noise in the darkness. Dudley liked to creep downstairs sometimes and try to drag me out of the cupboard if I was sleeping.”
While that was interesting, Dolores didn’t want to discuss it when she might be about to begin a battle. “Go back into your room, Harry. Bolt the door. When you do, you’ll see some sparkling white stars appear on the hinges. They’ll protect you unless you unbolt the door from the inside. Don’t do that unless you hear me say…” She thought for a minute. “I want to free the rabbit. Okay?”
“Can people imitate your voice?”
“There are spells that can do that,” said Dolores, as soothingly as she could when she heard more than one pair of boots trampling on the carpet downstairs. “That’s why I gave you the phrase. You have to hear me say that, all right? Not just my voice telling you to open the door.”
Harry finally nodded and went back into his room. Dolores listened, despite the compulsion to dash away, and heard the faint snap of the bolt just a moment before harsh white light began to play around the door. She nodded and crept down the stairs, casting a Disillusionment Charm when she was near the bottom step.
There was only silence as she made her way as quietly as she could towards the drawing room door, which was puzzling and frightening. But then Dolores remembered she’d left the door mostly shut earlier that day.
Sure enough, when she leaned her ear to the gap, she could hear the low voices talking to each other.
“Are you really sure that Harry’s going to want to see me, Albus?”
“You are a connection to his parents, Sirius. And I do think that we recognize some people who were around us in our earliest childhood even when we don’t know we recognize them. The moment Harry sees you, he’ll feel that sense of familiarity in his bones. I’m sure of it.”
“Well—I suppose that’s true.”
Dolores sneered a little. If one of the rumors about Black’s relationship with his family was true, she could understand the reason for his doubt.
Several plans ran through her mind, but she chose the best one when she heard the footsteps moving towards the door. She didn’t have much time. And ultimately, looking like a fool wasn’t desirable if, say, she had to share this memory in a Pensieve in front of the Wizengamot.
She stepped back, canceled the Disillusionment Charm, and put away her wand. She made sure that she was waiting with her hands folded in front of her and a faint, inquiring frown on her face when they came out of the drawing room.
Black leaped into the air. He looked starved, and he was dirty in a way that made Dolores’s skin crawl. But still, she stood still and let her skin crawl while she casually examined him.
He was also pale, and dark-eyed, and dark-haired, and even if his hair was scraggly and hanging around his face at the moment, Dolores could see that he had once been handsome, and what many of her acquaintance would call a classic pure-blood. So she let a faint smile pass over her lips. “Mr. Black. Are you here to talk to Harry?”
Dumbledore opened his mouth, then closed it again. Maybe he thought it was better to let Black handle this. In any case, Black was already talking. “Yes. Yes, I want to see him. James and Lily—they left him to me. I’m his godfather. I want to see him. I want to know he’s safe.”
Azkaban didn’t leave him unscathed. There was no way that Dolores would leave him unsupervised with Harry. But she only nodded and then said, “It’s the middle of the night. I think Harry would be better able to see you in the morning. Growing boys need their sleep, you know.”
Black’s eyes darted back and forth between her and Dumbledore. Dolores bristled, but waited. She didn’t know for certain that Dumbledore’s plan had been to come here and steal Harry away in the middle of the night. Given the precarious political position he was in right now, that would really be the height of stupidity for him to do.
Especially since suspicion would fall on him immediately. He could hardly pretend Black had broken out of Azkaban on his own and stolen Harry.
“I want to see him now,” Black said, and there was a hint of a growl in his voice.
“Even if you frighten him? That would hardly make him wish to associate with you more.”
Black looked utterly confounded. Dolores sniffed a little. Dumbledore hadn't prepared him at all, had he? He had probably plucked Black from prison the moment an investigation said he could--or a bit before--and brought him here.
That's why they planned to sneak in at night, of course. Because they knew they could convince a frightened, sleepy boy far better than they could convince me.
"I think we should wait for the morning," said Dolores, in the softest, steadiest voice she could manage. "That way, Harry can see you in the light of day and think about you as his godfather, not someone creeping his way into the house at night. And that way, you can explain more fully why you're here. Certainly not to take him away from the only wizarding home he's ever known."
"Wizarding home?"
"Why, yes. He was being raised by Muggles, Mr. Black. Lily Evans's sister and her husband. Did Mr. Dumbledore not explain that to you?"
Dolores, at least, was absolutely certain that couldn't be the case, that Dumbledore would have had to say something to explain why Harry was with Dolores and why it was so imperative for Dumbledore's cause that they get him away. But that didn't mean Black remembered it.
Black reacted even better than she'd hoped. He spun around and pointed a finger at Dumbledore in the way he would have pointed a wand if he had one. "Tuney Evans? You left him with Tuney Evans?"
"Yes," said Dolores, amused. If she ever met the Muggle woman again, she would have to call her that awful nickname, just to see what happened.
"I'm not talking to you," Black snapped over his shoulder, and faced Dumbledore. "I want an answer! What about Augusta Longbottom? What about Amelia Bones? What about any members of the Or--" He cut himself short and gave a wary look towards Dolores, which Dolores smiled blandly through. "I mean, just, you couldn't have found someone better for him?"
"Not without the risk of revealing where he was placed." Dumbledore stood straight-backed and sad-eyed, like a war general. "It was of the utmost importance to keep him concealed where Death Eaters could not reach him."
"Was? Not now?"
Black is a gift, Dolores decided quietly. He was questioning Dumbledore about all sorts of things that she never would have thought of, or dared to bring up. And Dumbledore actually looked ashamed and lost, perhaps because Black had been in prison for seven years for something he might not have done.
It was a form of credit Dolores would never want to earn, but she didn't mind exploiting it now that it was available to her.
"Sirius," said Dumbledore, and sighed. "I did what I thought was best. I didn't have you available to consult with me, or James, or Lily. And then I thought Peter had been killed unjustly--"
"Now you know he wasn't."
"Now. But not then, Sirius." Dumbledore stretched forwards his hands, as if he would take Black's or even embrace him. "Now, of course, you can make the best decisions for Harry. But at the time, all I had were my instincts. And my instincts said that it would be dangerous for him to grow up in the wizarding world."
"I do wonder one thing," Dolores interjected, her voice bright. "Why not have a Squib take care of him? Then he could have grown up in the Muggle world, but with someone who would cherish him and teach him about his birthright."
"No Squib could have protections placed around their house as powerful as the blood-based ones around the Dursleys'."
"Blood-based protections mean there has to be love!" Black howled, and looked as if he was peering out of the center of a whirlwind, his hair swinging around him as he thrust a finger at Dumbledore. "There's no love here! Never was, between Petunia and Lily, the entire time I knew them! You fool!"
Dumbledore was finally starting to look a little irritated, and Dolores thought it in her best interests to speak again. "It does seem as though there was little love between Harry and his aunt. I saw her using him as a servant in a shop."
"See?" Black snapped at Dumbledore, in such disgust that Dolores did have to bite her lip to keep from giggling. "I told you. It didn't work. It wouldn't work. I don't know why you ever thought it would work in the first place."
"Miss Umbridge is not telling you the whole truth, Sirius. I don't intend to restore Harry to the Dursleys. I planned to have you take care of him."
"Who gave you the right?"
Black was peering at Dumbledore from one eye and then another, as if his mane of hair was a shaggy bush, and Dolores thought she could intervene again. "You do have some legal rights as Harry's godfather, Mr. Black. Did the Headmaster tell you that was why he got you out of prison?"
Black laughed, a kind of horrid cackling sound that Dolores had to admit she would appreciate more without the smile that followed it. "I assume he wanted me to appeal to Harry. To take him away from you and show him why he should be--I don't know, with a family on the side of Light?"
Dolores gave a smooth shrug of her shoulders. "I have never set myself against the Light as Headmaster Dumbledore represents it."
"I don't even know if he would let Harry stay with me," Black mumbled, turning and showing dog-like teeth at Dumbledore. "Or if I was just going to be a waystation. Hell, maybe he was going to take Harry away after it was all nice and legal for a few months and raise him himself."
"I am too busy to take care of a child, Sirius." Dumbledore looked genuinely pained, but then, he could make almost anything look genuine, Dolores thought spitefully. "I would not take him from you. I want Harry reunited with his godfather."
"The way you wanted him reunited with Lily's family?"
"This is not--I never knew they were abusive, Sirius. I only thought that he would be safe there."
"You never checked on him to make sure he was! I was in Azkaban, I couldn't! What's your excuse?"
Dolores broke in politely. In truth, she would have liked the fight to go on longer, but she thought Dumbledore would recover at some point, and they needed to move on. "Would you like to rest now, Mr. Black? Then you can stay here and see Harry in the morning, as I suggested. Over breakfast?"
"You have no legal right to withhold custody from us, Miss Umbridge."
"You don't have bloody custody of him, Albus! I do! Why do you keep talking about 'we' and 'us' as if you have a right to determine what happens to my godson?"
Black spun around, and Dolores did her best to keep from flinching. She didn’t like the way he jabbed his finger into her face, even if he was trying to make a point that would be the opposite of Dumbledore’s. But she stood there and bore it meekly, and Black didn’t seem to notice she was bearing it.
Then again, it would be hard to notice nuances that subtle after so long in Azkaban.
“I want to see Harry in the morning. No more excuses. No more shoving me away and pretending it was for the greater good that I was locked up.”
“I would never pretend that, Mr. Black,” said Dolores with perfect truth. She would never use the language, which sounded more like the kind of thing that Dumbledore often inflicted on the Wizengamot than anything else. “If you’ll come upstairs? I have a guest room that’s already furnished and has the bed made.” She’d furnished more than one room for Harry, curious how he would respond to the abundance of choices, and it would only be a matter of casting the Freshening Charm on the sheets.
“You cannot do this, Madam Umbridge.”
Does he always get more respectful when he’s trying to get around someone? Dolores turned back to Dumbledore and nodded to him a little. “Headmaster, you are currently an intruder in our home. I must ask that you leave.”
“Sirius can hardly be said to share the house with you, madam.”
“I was referring to Harry.”
“She’s looking pretty good compared to you, Albus,” Black snarled, and stalked upstairs. Dolores shook her head a little as she watched him go. On the one hand, she had always heard that Black was under Dumbledore’s dominion after he abandoned his family. It was the only explanation any rational pure-blood could come up with to account for why he’d never tried to reconcile with them.
On the other hand, it seemed that Dumbledore had invested his hopes in a cracked and volatile mind, and it should be no surprise to him that he was disappointed.
“The Ministry has granted custody of Harry to me.”
“You would only seek to use him.”
Black laughed from the stairs. “Pretty bloody rich, coming from you, Dumbledore! Pretty bloody rich.” He went on walking, his footsteps striking the stairs with such precision that he sounded like the windup Muggle toys Dolores had seen Mudbloods playing with. Harry might be frightened, hearing such sounds coming towards his door. She would have to go up soon and reassure him.
Dumbledore cleared his throat. “I think you’ll find, Madam Umbridge, that the Ministry can revoke custody as easily as they give it.”
“Threats, Albus?” Apparently Black could still hear even though he was far enough up the staircase that Dolores could no longer see him. “How like you. I hope you’ll remember that I can give testimony in my own right, now. Just because I’m not going to be your obedient little puppet doesn’t mean you can pack me back off to Azkaban.”
Dumbledore closed his eyes in what looked like exhaustion. “You’re insisting on ending this on a bad note,” he told Dolores, in clipped tones that she thought rather strikingly rude. She wouldn’t have tolerated that from Harry. “It doesn’t have to. We could discuss my plans for Harry, and then you would see their reasonableness.”
Dolores gave him another polite smile and shook her head. “We’ll have interesting discussions about legality if you stay here another second, Headmaster.”
Dumbledore waited a few seconds more, as if he thought she might change her mind, or Black might, or Harry might come flying down the stairs and ask for his forgiveness. Then he murmured, “You are mistaking a mistake,” and departed through the Floo. Dolores raised the protections on it again immediately, for what good it would do. She would see about stronger ones in the morning.
Then she went to make sure Black was settled, and to release Harry from his room.
*
To Harry’s soft, frightened questions, she replied that Black would be staying with them for a little while, and Harry would meet his godfather in the morning. She rejoiced in the way he grabbed her arm and said, “But you won’t let him leave with me?”
It was delicious that it was still a question at the end. Dolores bowed her head and said, “Of course not.”
Harry nodded, and Dolores pushed him back towards the bed. Harry went, still looking back once before he climbed under the sheets.
Dolores went to bed, and dreamed of all the possibilities this visit had opened up before her. She didn’t think Dumbledore had meant to give her more chances, but he had, and she was grateful.
So should he be. After all, she would use this opportunity for the greater good.
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The Daring Win