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The Daring Win	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 8178 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Nine—Arenas of the Mind
“Why did Dumbledore come into our home?”
Dolores spoke to Black, but she was keeping one eye on Harry. He had shown a disgusting tendency to gape at Black over breakfast that morning, letting his mouth hang open and half-chewed food show on his tongue. Only when Dolores gave him a few glares had he started chewing again. Even then, he kept peering and ducking his head whenever Black smiled at him.
Black barked out a laugh, and Dolores saw that his mouth was full, too. She sighed. She supposed she couldn’t reprimand him. “He thought you were a weak witch and you wouldn’t wake up until we had Harry. Then you would have a hell of a fight to get him back. He doesn’t think you’re powerful, just your allies.” He tilted his head to the side as if trying to estimate Dolores’s power with a glance. “But he might be wrong.”
Dolores gave him a frigid smile that could pass as polite. “But the Wizengamot and the Ministry awarded legal custody to me.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Black said, and gulped some pumpkin juice. Dolores had had to send a house-elf to purchase it. However, if the man was that childish, it would only make it easier to control him. “He thought you could rage all you wanted, but no one on the Wizengamot would actually manage to take Harry away once he had him.”
“And he was going to use your claim to contest mine?”
“Yes. Because I was in Lily’s and James’s wills, of course.”
Black’s mouth turned down, and Dolores held back a sigh, hoping he wouldn’t turn out to be a sentimental fool. But he was staring so soulfully at Harry that she at least thought that he would be that way about the boy.
He seems to have no sentiment left about Albus Dumbledore at all.
“And I was not.” Dolores patted her lips with a napkin, and turned to study Harry. He was once again letting his mouth hang open as he studied Black. “Harry, if you would.”
His gaze shifted to her, and he flinched. This time, Black was the one who frowned. “Hey. Are you treating the boy right?”
“Only to teach him manners. What his relatives thought of as manners was to starve him and scold him when he reached for food.”
As Dolores had thought would be the case, Black was easy to distract. His face darkened. “Albus swore he would be safe there,” he muttered, and stabbed a piece of omelet with his fork. “I have no idea what he was thinking.”
“He was probably only thinking of Death Eaters and the like.”
“And people like you?” In one of those sudden changes of mood that Dolores knew were common to those who had come out of Azkaban, Black abruptly leaned towards her, clouds in his eyes and on his face. “People who would use him politically? He might have had a point.”
Dolores regarded him without much emotion, only watching Harry out of the corner of her eye. He was staring between them in dismay, but at least his mouth was closed this time. That pleased her.
“Dumbledore would use him politically far more than I would,” said Dolores softly. “I don’t think he ever actually intended to let you raise Harry, or even to give him to another member of the Wizengamot he felt comfortable with. Certainly not to raise him himself. I think he would have waited until the publicity died down a little, and then sent Harry straight back to his mother’s relatives.”
Harry shivered a little. Dolores strangled a smile. So the reminder of what could have happened worked on Harry even when she wasn’t speaking to him directly. That was good to know.
“But why?” Black’s hands curled, and his fingers scraped like claws down the edge of the dining table. Dolores remained calm. She would have an elf rub it out later. “What did the Muggles do for him that he’s so determined to give them the gift of raising Harry?”
Dolores inclined her head. “I’m glad to see that you think of raising Harry as a gift.”
“Of course I bloody well do!” Dolores did her best to look disapproving without opening her mouth, and Black flushed. “Sorry. For the language, I mean. But I’m not going to take the words back. Of course I would welcome the chance to raise him.”
He beamed at Harry, who smiled tentatively back. Dolores could see the attraction. Black had the link to Harry’s late parents, which she did not. And he seemed like someone who would offer a young child none of the needed discipline at all. At Harry’s age, staying up all night, every night, and eating literal tons of sweets would sound like paradise.
“Then you can help me,” said Dolores. There was no chance that she could get rid of Black quietly, and she might as well make political hay of his wrongful imprisonment and his family name that some people still respected. “Make sure that Harry stays here, and you can help me raise him.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why do you think Albus would send him back to the Muggles?”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t discuss this in front of Harry.” Dolores let her gaze slide minutely sideways.
“No!” Harry said immediately, and then winced and touched his mouth before she could correct him. But he went on, although in a subdued tone and looking at her chin instead of her eyes. “Please let me stay, Miss Dolores. I want to know. And I can—I can take a lot more than you think I can. I’m tough, you know.”
“I would not hurt you unnecessarily, Harry.”
“Let the kid stay. If this is as bad as I think it’s going to be, then he’ll have to learn the truth sometime, and we can’t lie to him.”
Dolores tilted her head stiffly. In truth, she would have preferred to conduct the entire argument herself, but there were disadvantages as well as advantages to partnering with the notorious Sirius Black. “Perhaps you are right. I think that Albus Dumbledore desired to be Harry’s first contact with the wizarding world. Or at least, he wanted to it to happen on his watch. Someone he chose would have contacted Harry, and told him only as much about the wizarding world as Dumbledore wanted him to know.”
“But…there are all sorts of books on Harry. He would have found out the truth once he started reading around more.”
“How much do all those books know about that night in Godric’s Hollow? Speculation, Mr. Black, only. But there is a way to present speculation with a slant, to make certain things sound black and white, right and good or wrong and evil.” She turned and looked at Harry. “What do you think you would have thought of, say, Slytherin House had you first heard the truth from Dumbledore’s people?”
Harry hesitated for a long moment. Then he said, “I wouldn’t have a good impression of it, Miss Dolores.”
“And would you have heard about magic before your eleventh birthday?” Dolores asked, moving swiftly on, since she could see Black opening his mouth, probably to give his own opinion on Slytherin House.
Harry shook his head roughly. “My relatives…they hated just the word, Miss Dolores.”
“I thought so,” said Dolores, and tried unsuccessfully to think about what it would be like to grow up in a household that abhorred magic. Growing up with a Muggle mother and Squib sibling had been bad enough. “So, Mr. Black. Think that Albus Dumbledore is the epitome of all goodness and light?”
“I told you already that I didn’t think that anymore,” said Black, but his voice was rough and his face white. “I just…assume you’re right, for a second. Why?”
“Because that would mean he could completely control Harry’s access to people, knowledge, and perceptions, of course,” said Dolores, feigning shock. “He could make sure that Harry met what he thought were the ‘right’ people, the ones who would tell him that Albus Dumbledore is the center of the universe, and could always be trusted, and—”
“Instead, he’ll meet the people you think are ‘right.’”
“That’s true,” said Dolores. “But those aren’t only the people on one side of the war, Mr. Black—”
“You’re introducing him to Death Eaters?” Black had leaped to his feet.
Dolores didn’t know how she resisted the urge to hex him for interrupting, she really didn’t. But although she pressed her lips together, she didn’t lose her temper. She was truly restrained, she thought, a model of propriety. “I’m introducing him to politically important people, Mr. Black.”
“That means Death Eaters. And members of the Wizengamot.”
“You speak as though he would be better off only knowing one member of the Wizengamot.”
That made Black pause. As Dolroes had suspected, he had forgotten that Dumbledore was part of the Wizengamot, and a practitioner of the politics he so despised. He was thinking of Dumbledore solely in terms of the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
Dolores wished she knew how Dumbledore had accomplished that trick. It would be wonderful to be able to play two roles and make people forget all about one except when it was convenient for her.
“Well,” said Black uncertainly, “I’m sure that Albus would have guided him into politics at the appropriate time.”
“When would that be? He would have spent his summers in the Muggle world with the Dursleys still his guardians, and he would have been under Dumbledore’s control at the school. Isolated from the political world, incidentally. Dumbledore would have managed his access to news, and one of his arguments for putting Harry in the Muggle world was that he didn’t want him to get a swelled head. How much would he have told him, in the name of preserving his innocence and keeping his fame from influencing him?”
Now Black looked a different shade of pale. “But Harry—he would have to know, sooner or later. He would have to know how to manage it, with people coming up to him all the time and wanting to thank him.”
Dolores turned and looked at Harry. “How would you feel with people wanting to do that to you, Harry?”
Black looked guilty for forgetting the boy was in the room. Dolores ignored that. It would make a better weapon if she waited and used it when she needed it.
“I would hate it,” said Harry, and shuddered a little. “I hated it when people on the Dursleys’ street stared at me. They all hated me, because my aunt t-told them I was a horrible person and always causing trouble b-because I got into fights with other kids.”
Black looked ready to run right out and murder the Dursleys. Dolores was starting to understand how even Dumbledore could have believed he belonged in Azkaban for six years. “I’ll make them—”
“Regardless of what we might do to the Muggles in the future,” Dolores interrupted smoothly, “I think we can agree that Harry needs some training in managing his fame before he goes to Hogwarts. Even if we think that Dumbledore had the most noble and admirable of motives, leaving Harry in the Muggle world until his eleventh birthday can be seen as political negligence.”
“Yes.” Black slumped into the chair. Dolores thought he was having more trouble giving up his faith in Dumbledore than he’d admit. “Well…then what can we do? I don’t want Harry to meet Death Eaters, either.”
“On the contrary,” said Dolores sharply, before Harry could bring up his budding friendship with Draco Malfoy and perhaps prejudice Black against the Malfoys’ visits. “He should meet the people who were his political opponents.”
“Why?”
“Harry is a wonderful person,” said Dolores, letting her voice sink a little as she looked at Harry. She didn’t like to praise people to their faces, but Harry wasn’t a Ministry official who would suspect that she was flattering him to advance her career if she was too open. “He can keep them from being political opponents in the future.”
Black blinked. Then he said, “I hated politics.”
“You still had a political side,” Dolores pointed out, her voice gently biting. “By fighting in the Order of the Phoenix under Dumbledore.”
“You know about the Order?”
“It came out after the war,” said Dolores. “When Dumbledore testified that Severus Snape had been a member of it to get him out of spending time in Azkaban.”
“He testified for Snivellus when he wouldn’t even speak up for me?”
The way Black spoke made Dolores remember his family’s reputation in the Dark Arts. She made sure her hand was next to her wand, under the table, as she answered, “Yes, he was a spy. And an accused Death Eater. I hope that you won’t suggest Harry avoid him, unless you want him not to attend Hogwarts, since Snape works there as the Potions master.”
“I hate the thought of him. He was a bully in school! A thug! You don’t know the half of it! He wanted to kill some of my friends just because—”
“I agree that his reputation is not the best, even now,” Dolores said. She had found the path to use with Black, she thought. “But Harry will not be able to avoid him, so it’s best that he get some practice now. Think of it as preparing him to survive Snape.”
Black grabbed the bait, as she had hoped he would, nodding emphatically. “Of course! And you’re right, we can’t let Snivellus ruin his experience at Hogwarts!”
He ripped around to face Harry. “Hogwarts was the best experience of my life, Harry. You’ll have a good time there, too. I’ll make sure of it. We’ll show you all the ways to prank people, and that means…”
Dolores ceased to listen to the specific words as she watched them. What was important wasn’t the words. It was the light in Harry’s eyes as he listened to Black, and the way that one of his hands still gripped his fork.
And how he made sure that he kept his mouth shut when he chewed, and swallowed all the food in his mouth before he spoke.
Her lessons were holding.
Dolores had no objections to Black as an ally. It seemed that it would be rather easy to keep him, as long as she used a light hand on the reins. But she did want to make sure that Harry’s first loyalty was always to the woman who had taught him, first, about magic.
And that he would learn all the complexities of magic, all the nuances of his situation.
He will not be in Gryffindor House if I have anything to say about it.
*
“I see,” said Narcissa Malfoy when Dolores had finished explaining the situation to her. “That is an unexpected complication.”
Her brow didn’t wrinkle as she thought about it. Dolores watched her with attentive envy. She still felt the temptation to lose her temper with Harry sometimes, and much more with Black in the house. She had found him on his way to Zonko’s, to buy some childish jokes, and it had taken a long argument to make him see why some books on history and magic from the Black library would be better gifts.
“In some circumstances, I would consider using the family connection with Sirius,” said Narcissa, bowing her head and strumming with her fingers as if she was playing an invisible instrument. “I am his cousin, you know, and almost the only one he has had recent contact with. Bellatrix was—too much on the opposite side of the war, and Andromeda hasn’t had communication with us in years.”
Her sisters, Dolores recalled, and felt foolish. She had known Narcissa Malfoy was a Black before her marriage, of course. It wasn’t the sort of knowledge that one who intended to climb high in the Ministry could be without. But she hadn’t thought of it in the context of this circumstance. She had simply thought of how resistant Black would be to letting Harry associate with the Malfoys.
“But he does not sound as if he would respond to that right now.” Narcissa sighed and focused on Dolores again. “I think Lucius shall call an emergency session of the Wizengamot.”
Dolores blinked. There had already been an emergency session to settle the matter of Harry’s custody, and by law and precedent, there couldn’t be another one on the same topic unless there was compelling legal reason. Dumbledore had probably intended to present Black’s innocence and greater right to custody of Harry as the reason.
“What will be the topic?” Dolores finally ventured, when Narcissa simply stayed silent and watched her as if she was a slow but promising pupil.
“Why,” said Narcissa, with a slow smile that took over most of her face, “it will be the face that there may be more half-blood wizarding children, placed in the Muggle world, whose only or first contact with magic might come through the Headmaster of their school, rather than the proper Ministry authority.”
Dolores nodded deeply, as close to a bow as she would come now that she had the Boy-Who-Lived in her care. It was a pretext, of course. There were likely none other than Harry, or at least none that Dumbledore had personally placed. But there would be an investigation, and there would be a fuss, and there would be probing into Dumbledore’s motives for wanting the Boy-Who-Lived to grow up in a place only he knew about and have contact with the wizarding world only under the aegis of his school, and there would be proper punishment for having violated the sanctity of the Boy-Who-Lived’s home.
“Thank you for alerting us to this opportunity, Dolores,” Narcissa added carelessly, and then disappeared from the Floo.
Treating me like a student, still, Dolores thought, as she stood and swatted soot from her robes. Well, that is just as well. Aloof, superior teachers don’t always pay attention to everything the student learns.
Or how fast.
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The Daring Win