[Children of the Sun]: A Door Into Hope, gen, PG-13, 10/?
Chapter Nine.
Part One.
Title: A Door Into Hope (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: None among main characters, background Lucius/Narcissa and Arthur/Molly
Content Notes: AU, angst, some violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry is mustering more and more support for the changes he wants to make in the wizarding world as he returns to Hogwarts after his first Christmas holiday. But as some people begin to believe he can make those changes, others see him as a threat.
Author’s Notes: This takes place in my Children of the Sun series after “The Secrets of Longbottom Manor.”
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine-Written Magic
Harry frowned a little as he read the letter from Julian. It said that the Wizengamot had debated the punishment of the Dursleys for several days last week. They didn’t think it harsh enough, they wanted to change it, but they couldn’t muster the votes to do so. Julian seemed to think that meant Harry’s relatives would somehow get free and he would have to go back to them.
“Is something wrong?”
Harry glanced up at Neville with a smile. “Just potentially bad news from one of our allies.”
Neville frowned. “Wh-what potentially bad news?” Trevor croaked and hopped on his shoulder. Neville picked him up and put him in the middle of the table so he could gnaw on lettuce. Harry couldn’t help but smile proudly. This time last term, Neville would have been holding Trevor in his lap and feeding him the lettuce because he was ashamed of him and didn’t want anyone to see him.
“That I might have to go back to the Dursleys.”
Neville dropped his fork. It rang and clattered to the floor as he stared at Harry with wide, desperate eyes. “No! You can’t!”
“It’s okay. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Julian is probably overreacting.”
Neville took a deep, harsh breath, but he was still staring at Harry. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. The best foster brother. You can’t go back to them.”
“Well, even if they got free, I don’t think it would happen. Your grandmother has custody and Dumbledore ignored my parents’ wills in the first place to put me with the Dursleys.”
“You can’t.”
Harry patted Neville’s hand, touched. Some people wouldn’t have liked him coming up and messing up their lives, especially the way Harry did it with standing up to Neville’s grandmother and scaring him that way. Harry wasn’t going to say it because he knew Neville wouldn’t agree, but in his opinion, he was the one who had the best foster brother. “I promise, I wouldn’t.”
Golden lifted his head and put his chin on the table, as if he wanted to show how much he agreed with Harry. Neville calmed down when he saw Golden’s nod. “All right. I just-I couldn’t bear it if you went back to them, Harry.”
“I won’t. I do have to talk to Julian and find out why he thinks that I might, though.” Harry sighed. It was annoying, and confusing. How could the Wizengamot make one decision about his relatives, one Harry thought was too harsh in the first place, and then just change their minds like that?
Neville calmed down, but he didn’t smile again, even though he was eating a sandwich for lunch. Finally, he swallowed and asked, “You said that you had a private Defense session with Professor Quirrell today?”
Harry nodded and began eating mashed potatoes himself at a non-subtle nudge from Golden. “I think that he worries about me more than he says. And he’s going to start teaching me the Shield Charm.”
“That’s a fifth-year spell, Harry!”
“He still thinks I should learn it. Apparently he thinks people could start hexing me in the corridors soon.”
Neville gave an unhappy gulp. Then he nodded. “Well, d-do you think that you could teach it to me? I mean, when you know it, maybe next year, I know that I can’t master it right now-”
Harry beamed and said, “Sure.” He didn’t want to listen to Neville put himself down, but at least it was better than what Neville would probably have said before Christmas, which was that he could never learn it at all. “I just have to talk to Professor Quirrell and make sure that he’s all right with me teaching it to someone else.”
Neville nodded and changed the subject. “Defense has been pretty interesting lately, hasn’t it?”
*
“Mr. Potter? I wanted to speak to you.”
Harry halted and looked up in curiosity. He recognized the woman walking towards him, but only because she sat at the professors’ table. He knew that he’d never spoken to her before. “Hi, Professor Babbling.”
The Ancient Runes teacher studied him for a second. She had large blue eyes that stuck out of her face, and reminded Harry of how the faces of the boys Dudley squeezed by the neck had sometimes looked. But he blocked the memory out of his head even as he thought about it. It wasn’t something he wanted to remember.
Golden nudged him gently.
“I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Potter,” Professor Babbling repeated. She had a high pile of chestnut hair on her head and a huge bronze deer at her side-although Harry thought he remembered someone telling him that the deer was actually a wapiti. “I noticed that you had runes on the back of your familiar. But you are far too young to be taking Ancient Runes. So I didn’t want to wait two years to talk to you.”
Harry grinned. Professor Babbling was pretty straightforward, but he kind of liked that. “All right, Professor. So you wanted to know what the runes meant?”
“Yes, of course. I am teaching Runes. It would be ridiculous for a student in the castle to be using runes that I do not understand.”
“Even if they come from natural defensive magic?”
“The runes are defensive?”
Harry nodded and gestured for Golden to turn his back so that Professor Babbling and her familiar could come over and get a better look. “Yes, Professor. See? I don’t know all of them yet, but I looked up a few, and there are runes of shielding, and calming, and-”
“Yes, but they interlock with new shapes,” Professor Babbling interrupted him, bending over Golden and reaching out to touch his scales. Harry looked at Golden, but he cocked his neck at an angle that meant it was all right with him. “I have not seen those shapes before. They cannot be used to join runes that I am aware of. Can they, Bittersweet?”
Her wapiti stamped a hoof. Harry looked at him and saw that his antlers had curling and interlocked runes in the basic shapes. He couldn’t read them, but he thought at least a few of them looked like the runes that covered parts of Golden’s back.
“How did you make these runes?” Babbling continued, exploring Golden’s back with her hands while she raised her eyes to look at Harry. “How did you carve them on your familiar?”
“I didn’t,” Harry replied with a blink. Did people really think that? That he carved them on Golden? That was so horrible that he shivered. Maybe it explained some of the odd looks that he got when Golden crawled around the castle? “Most of the magic I did before I came to Hogwarts was accidental. And really, Golden did most of it.”
“What did the other wizards you grew up with say when they saw them? Or did they help you?”
“Er, my relatives were Muggles, Professor. They couldn’t see my familiar.”
Babbling squinted hard at him, and her hands stopped moving on Golden’s back. Bittersweet stepped around Golden to sniff noses with him.
“So these just-appeared?” Babbling asked. “Without you realizing what you were doing at all? Then how did they get there?”
“I think Golden made them,” Harry pointed out, a little offended. He’d already said that he didn’t have any idea what had happened to make the runes. He supposed it was strange for people to think a familiar was responsible for the runes, but still. Didn’t they have any respect for a golden familiar at all? “Why don’t you ask him? Or you can ask him and then I’ll translate his answers. Unless you speak Parseltongue, professor?”
“I don’t speak Parseltongue.” Professor Babbling sounded a little less aggressive. She turned back to the runes. “Ask him what the crescent moon mark that joins the two runes on his neck means.”
Harry listened to Golden’s answer, since of course Golden had understood the question perfectly. He supposed it would also take people time to get used to that, though. “He says that the mark is the natural one for joining those two runes, Professor.”
“But how did he figure it out? What does it mean?”
“Could you just ask him directly, Professor? It sounds like you’re talking about him as though he isn’t here, and he doesn’t like that.” Harry could see Golden’s tail starting to swish out of the corner of his eye.
Professor Babbling paused and then nodded. “Of course. How did he figure out the mark? The reason people don’t experiment with marks like this is because it’s impossible to draw it and join the runes without it being exactly right the first time, or you injure yourself.”
Harry wanted to ask how, but Golden was hissing the answer, so he listened to it and translated. “He said that he connects with the ambient magic, Professor. The ambient magic tells him the right mark to draw. He can see it in his mind’s eye, and then he can alter the scales so that they flow into the shape.”
“Remarkable,” Professor Babbling muttered. “Can you-I mean, how did you know to have that connection to the ambient magic? Is it something that only golden familiars can do?”
Harry happily translated after that, because at least he had the feeling that Professor Babbling was coming to see Golden as a person she could ask questions like that of. He only wished it was so easy to convince everybody.
*
Narcissa smiled as she passed the letter she’d received across the table to Lucius. “Good news, dear. The Wizengamot is questioning the punishment that they gave the Potter boy’s relatives.”
“Why would that be good news, though?” Lucius shook his head with a slight frown, and pushed Hecate’s chin out of the way as she dipped over his shoulder to suck up porridge from his bowl. “It was hard enough to convince the boy of their punishment as it was.”
“But it’s another blow to his credibility,” Narcissa said quietly. Some of it was the work of her ally, but she wasn’t about to tell Lucius that. He could know it when the deception was complete. “Question the punishment, and they’ll question the campaign that he’s mounting for power and to weaken the hierarchy.”
Lucius patted his chin delicately with his napkin. “That seems likely to work, but it’s also moving far too slowly for my liking.”
Narcissa smiled thinly. “Don’t worry. I have other measures in place to ensure that our son will never follow Potter.”
And one of those methods, she had to leave the breakfast table in order to write.
*
“Can you help me understand something?”
Hermione looked up from the library table where she and Regina were examining a map of the places where supposedly Forbidden Arts had been practiced in the world. Hermione was starting to think the book was fiction, though. “Yes?”
Draco sat down across from her. Kali promptly flew to greet Regina. Regina rubbed her nose along Kali’s wing. Draco sighed and looked only mildly disgusted.
“What was it like to grow up in the Muggle world with a familiar?” Draco asked quietly. “Is it true that Muggles can’t see them at all?”
Hermione smiled. Draco was questioning what he had been told! That had been all she had wanted people to do for years. She nodded. “They can’t. My parents thought it was a really persistent imaginary friend. They eventually accepted that I thought Regina was real, but they asked that I not talk about her in front of other people.” She held out her hand, and Regina ran over and sniffed at her fingers.
“That’s barbaric!”
“Any more barbaric than convincing people with tin and copper familiars that they can never really accomplish anything?”
Draco flushed. “I mean-I’ve never done that personally.”
“But you’ve been mean to Muggles and Muggleborns personally,” Hermione said, thinking she saw where Draco was coming from.
Draco nodded slowly. “And now that I think about it…” He trailed off, and Hermione let him finish talking in his own time. She still wasn’t sure that she would exactly say she and Draco were friends, but he was more interesting than that stupid book.
“I didn’t put anyone down who had tin or copper familiars,” Draco whispered. “I never actually said the insults. I was always polite. But I was thinking the words. And I looked away from them or pretended I didn’t see them sometimes if they approached me and I thought they were going to ask for charity. That’s the way my parents taught me.”
Hermione nodded. “That’s something that could change.”
“What was it like in the Muggle world, though? Doesn’t it need to change there, too? Isn’t it upsetting that your parents ignored you and thought Regina was imaginary?”
“Right now I just want to help Harry change the wizarding world.”
“But you didn’t answer my question.” Draco leaned forwards and stared at her.
Hermione looked down at the table where Regina was now rubbing her whiskers against her fingers. She’d always been able to feel that, and she’d been so heartbroken when she’d invited her mum and dad to pet Regina and they hadn’t been able to feel anything.
“I wish Muggles could see them,” she whispered. “Hear them. Feel them. Something. But they can’t, and I have no idea how to change that. Or the International Statute of Secrecy, either. I just want to change what I can.”
Draco nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. I understand.” He looked lost for a second, and Hermione frowned at him.
“Draco? Is everything all right?”
Draco nodded quickly and stood up. “I just wanted to ask that question. I have a letter to write.” He turned and walked away with Kali barely fluttering to his shoulder in time before he made it out of the library.
Hermione looked after him, worried, but Regina nuzzled her fingers again, and she nodded. Right. One thing she was trying to do was only being concerned about one challenge at a time. She would think about Draco and the Muggle world and trying to change things later.
Right now, they were working on understanding the Forbidden Arts.
*
Minerva rolled her eyes as she watched Malkin pawing at the ledger. “Yes, you ridiculous bit of bronze fluff, I found the right Palimpsest Charm.”
Malkin puffed up all his fur, the way he always did when she called him that, and which only made the name more fitting. Minerva petted him quickly and then opened the ledger to the page on Claire Jordan again, and that mysterious extra A Albus had written.
The Palimpsest Charm should, in theory, have been an easy solution to the problem of figuring out what Albus had written beneath his name, or what he had first written and then erased. The problem was that, without a precise time period named in the casting of the spell, the charm would erase all of the ink on a page and prepare it for future writing, instead of merely erasing one layer. And Minerva had no idea how old Albus’s name was compared to anything else on the page.
Luckily, she had found a variant that meant she could focus on an individual word, instead of a time period.
She aimed her wand at the large A in front of Albus’s name and half-closed her eyes, repeating the incantation to herself before she spoke it. “Verbum rado.”
Albus’s name shimmered and then peeled off the page as though someone had reached out and taken the skin off a grape. Underneath it was the word that had started with the second large letter A.
Artificial.
Minerva stared at it in silence. Then she turned the pages of the ledger until she found another misplaced A and repeated, “Verbum rado.”
Artificial.
And so said the next page with a large A, and the next, and the next.
The problem was, Minerva thought as she contemplated the changed pages numbly, that not every single wizard or witch described was one that Minerva had a Squib’s birth certificate for. Some seemed to be people that Albus had been suspicious of for no good reason, such as describing the bond between the human and their familiar as “unnatural.”
No, of course that wasn’t the real problem. It was one footnote to the larger problem.
What the bloody hell does “Artificial” mean when applied to a familiar?
Chapter Eleven.
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