[Children of the Sun]: A Door Into Hope, gen, PG-13, 16/?
Chapter Fifteen.
Part One.
Title: A Door Into Hope (16/?)
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 Sixteen-Squibs’ Rights
“I need to speak with you and Miss Granger after class, Mr. Potter.”
Harry started as Professor Quirrell bent down to whisper in his ear, but then nodded obediently and went back to examining the diagram of spell movements that he’d been looking at for the last half-hour. Maybe it was just his poor glasses, but this looked really strange, as though his wand was passing through his arm.
“And Mr. Potter?” Harry looked up to see the Professor still standing next to his desk, giving him a faintly exasperated look. “You are allowed to ask for help if it turns out that you are confused, you know.”
Harry felt himself blush. He ignored the slithery feel of Golden’s tongue tracing a path up his arm, something that happened every time Golden wanted to laugh at Harry in public but didn’t want other people knowing. “It’s fine,” he muttered to Golden. Then he said to Professor Quirrell, “How can I stick my wand through my arm, sir?”
“Where?” Professor Quirrell clucked his tongue when Harry pointed to the spot that was confusing him. “Ah, Mr. Potter, no. What you should be looking at there is the lower wand as the other wand. Your opponent’s wand. You are shielding with your arm in that picture and casting underneath it.”
“Oh.” Harry beamed as the picture resolved in his mind to his satisfaction. “Thanks, Professor! I appreciate it.”
Professor Quirrell’s eyes were narrow in a way that made Harry think his familiar should have been a cat, his amusement obvious. “You are welcome, Mr. Potter.” He turned around and held out his own arm, crooked, like a landing pad. Alanna leaped up on it from nowhere. “Five more minutes, students, and we will begin to practice these gestures.”
*
“You did really well, Hermione!”
Hermione knew that she looked flustered and happy, but she was still used to getting praise from her professors and not her classmates. She tried to clear her throat and look like this happened every day. “Thanks, Harry. You, too.”
Regina butted up against her cheek while Harry smiled at her and petted Golden. “Professor Quirrell wanted to talk to us.”
Hermione’s happiness immediately transformed into nerves, so fast it left her dizzy. She swallowed. “Right,” she said, and turned to march up the corridor towards the professor’s office.’
Harry took her arm before she could go very far, and Hermione glanced at him. His eyes were bright, but he was frowning. “Are you okay? Did Professor Quirrell say something else to you that he didn’t to me?”
Hermione brushed her hair back. Regina squeaked as Hermione almost brushed her off her shoulder. Hermione swallowed and shook her head. “No, no, it’s okay. I just-I’m used to Muggle school, where you don’t go talk to the teachers unless you’re in trouble.”
“I think he’s going to talk to us in private, is all,” Harry said cheerfully. “Come on.” And he walked away up the corridor with Golden slithering behind him.
Hermione sighed very faintly under her breath and walked after him. Harry felt so much joy all the time, it seemed. Was it part of being in Hufflepuff? Or just popular with people? Hermione knew she could never act like that when she’d spent so much time in Muggle school with her classmates upset at her for being a “know-it-all.”
But Hogwarts was different and Harry was different, she reminded herself. Hogwarts was full of people who could see her familiar and believed Hermione when she talked about her. And Harry was different from anyone she’d ever met.
So was Professor Quirrell, Hermione had to admit to herself as they walked into his office. He was sitting with his rabbit on his arm in the middle of a large chair, while drawings of what looked like wizards in the middle of casting defensive spells peered down from the walls. And his gaze was sharp and clear while it had seemed clouded over and glazed when he-attacked her a few months ago.
Can someone really change that much? Do I know that he won’t attack me again when my back is turned?
But Hermione bit her lip and settled bravely in the chair across from Professor Quirrell. Regina was chirping in her ear, and anyway, even if the Hat hadn’t put her in Gryffindor, Hermione could still be brave. There were brave Ravenclaws in history. Other members of her House had told her that.
“Now,” said Professor Quirrell, “it’s a very good thing that I took over the monitoring of our little-mouseless friend, Mr. Potter. Miss Granger’s familiar would have been in grave danger.”
“What would have happened to her?” Hermione cried. She couldn’t imagine life without Regina. From the way Regina shivered and flattened herself against Hermione’s neck, neither could she imagine it without Hermione.
“He is part of a dangerous organization.”
“You don’t mean just his family, do you, Professor?” Hermione asked, and then blushed when Professor Quirrell’s eyes rested on her again. But at least he just seemed like he was assessing her, and not angry at her. Hermione did her best to stare back while seeming bold and not rude.
“No, I do not. It is true that his family has a large number of familiars that are tin and copper, but that in itself is not cause for suspicion. But I witnessed Mr. Wapping having a very interesting conversation through the Floo with a man who was not his father.”
“You know his father, sir?” Harry asked.
Professor Quirrell nodded sharply. “I have bought some of the cauldrons he sells. This man, I also knew, but I had met him while I was-not in my right mind.”
“Then he works with You-Know-Who?” Hermione whispered. Harry gave her a kind of disappointed look, but Hermione ignored him. Right now, she wasn’t going to say Voldemort.
“He works with Dark wizards,” Professor Quirrell corrected her. “That does not mean exclusively Voldemort, and in the last ten years, with many believing that Voldemort was gone forever, of necessity he has had to expand his business. But the business Mr. Wapping discussed with him…it chilled even me.” He petted Alanna, who must have been the one who actually witnessed the Floo call, and she shuddered.
Hermione almost forgot her fears because she wanted to ask how the professor could have looked through Alanna’s eyes from a distance, but Harry interrupted. “Sir, can you please just tell us what it is?”
“I have honestly questioned whether I should, Mr. Potter. It is the kind of knowledge that can taint a young wizard’s mind. And it can even corrupt your bond with your familiar, to know too much of the Forbidden Arts.”
Hermione saw the way Harry’s chin hardened, and sighed a little. She knew what he was going to say, and she could almost recite it along with him as he said it. “That doesn’t matter, though, Professor Quirrell. We already know a lot about this, and it’s better to know so we can help people.”
“And you did bring us here, sir,” Hermione added, when Harry was done. “So you must have decided to tell us.”
Professor Quirrell studied her for long enough that Hermione shifted a little, uncomfortable, but then he nodded. “So I did,” he said, and sighed. Alanna leaned towards him with her nose twitching, but Professor Quirrell only stroked her and then talked on. “Listen, then.”
But he still waited for a while before he started talking again. Regina shifted around on Hermione’s shoulder. Hermione shushed her and tried to be as patient as she could.
“All right,” Professor Quirrell breathed out finally. “The family that Mr. Wapping belongs to has had a large number of Squib children born into it. I’m not sure why. It might be inbreeding, which plagues some other pure-bloods in Britain. There are rumors that it’s because they tampered with the Forbidden Arts long before this. I don’t know.”
“I wish people wouldn’t call them Squibs,” Hermione couldn’t help saying. “It makes it seem like such an unkind word.”
“I know, Miss Granger. But we won’t be discovering a solution to that particular problem today.”
Professor Quirrell sounded sarcastic. Hermione felt herself flush and open her mouth to apologize. But she saw Harry shake his head out of the corner of her eye, and did her best to keep still, even though that also meant suffering from her embarrassment because a professor had scolded her.
“Alanna was able to confirm for me, from the conversation between Mr. Wapping and his father, that Mr. Wapping’s family was utterly determined to restore their Squib children to the wizarding world.”
“Even though Squibs can’t see familiars, sir?” Harry asked. Golden was reared next to him, tracing long curves and lines through the air with his neck.
Professor Quirrell nodded. “Through the Forbidden Arts, they cut up familiars, I assume ones that belonged to wizarding members of their families. That meant that they would sacrifice part of their power to make an essentially artificial animal that could connect to Squibs and give them magic.”
Hermione closed her eyes. She knew some of that from her research, but it still makes her ill to hear it.
“Wouldn’t someone notice, though?” she had to ask. “I mean, that lots of wizards who were going around with familiars suddenly didn’t have them, sir. I suppose they wouldn’t notice about the children not being Squibs if they did it young enough.”
“A-as it were, slice of the original familiar is left,” said Professor Quirrell, his voice loaded with distaste. “They retain some of their power, although not all of it. A silver familiar might become a tin or a copper one, for example. It would depend on the color the familiar originally had and other factors that I am not certain of and frankly do not want to know more about.”
Harry gasped. Hermione opened her eyes and turned to him in concern, only to see him staring at the wall. “Songleaper,” he whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Hermione demanded. She hated to think that there were secrets swirling around here that didn’t include her.
Harry started and turned to look at her with guilty eyes. At least Golden didn’t look guilty in the same way, so Hermione didn’t think it could be too terrible. “Sorry, Hermione. A tin jackrabbit named Songleaper came to me for sanctuary a while ago. He said his wizard had done something terrible, and he was hiding from him.”
He turned to look at Professor Quirrell. “But he couldn’t be artificial, because he had his own will and he could talk. But he could be-”
“The remains of a familiar who was sacrificed to create another.” Professor Quirrell looked harsh and almost evil, like a statue Hermione had seen in a museum once. “Yes, he could be.”
“I don’t understand!” Hermione burst out, and then flushed again as Professor Quirrell and Harry turned towards her. But she kept on, because the knowledge burning in her had to be let out somehow. “How could the familiars remain loyal to wizards who did that to them? How could they put up with just being treated like-like animals?”
Harry and Golden exchanged a long glance, and then talked about something in Parseltongue for a few minutes. Hermione seethed, but did her best to calm down. She wouldn’t get anywhere if she demanded answers and people weren’t ready to give them. Some of her teachers in primary school had told her that, and Hermione was finally learning.
It did help that Regina sat up on her haunches and rubbed her nose against Hermione’s cheek, too. So Hermione knew that at least one person here was firmly on her side.
Harry finally turned to her. “Golden says that some familiars only think about their wizards,” he said quietly. “I mean, only their wizards, not anyone else. So if it was happening to someone they didn’t know, they wouldn’t care. And if someone actually went through the process of having-bits sliced off-” He stopped.
Professor Quirrell picked up the sentence. “Call it what it is, Mr. Potter: vivisection. Sacrifice. Yes, if a familiar did survive those things and became like the jackrabbit who sought you out for sanctuary, they might be too-lessened-to truly remember and comprehend what happened. It is frankly amazing the jackrabbit you met walked away from his wizard.”
Golden hissed something else. Hermione looked to Harry for translation, and Harry gave her a sickly smile. “Golden…he says that some familiars know what’s really going on and wouldn’t go tell anyone else because they wouldn’t be believed. A lot of humans think of them as just animals, Hermione. And you know how humans treat most animals. They’re just there for people to use.”
“Regina is a person!” Hermione began.
“And as one final disincentive,” Professor Quirrell interrupted her, “there is what happens to a wizard or witch caught using the Forbidden Arts. Execution, Miss Granger. When a wizard or witch dies, their familiars go with them. The range of personality traits is found among familiars even as it is among humans. Many of them would not want to cease to exist, even if they were less than they had been.”
“But don’t familiars get reincarnated?”
“There is debate about that,” said Professor Quirrell, and scratched Alanna behind the ears. “But at the very least, they will not be who they were, or live in the circumstances that they originally reincarnated to attend. Out of love for us, why would they wish to destroy us? And out of love for themselves, why would they wish to destroy themselves?”
Hermione looked at the floor. She could see it. And she could even see that it made sense for some familiars to just hope that someone else would find out what was happening and put a stop to it.
She just didn’t approve.
Professor Quirrell started to say something else, but the door to his office abruptly rebounded with thunderous knocks. Professor Quirrell immediately stood and glided between them and the door, his wand in his hand. Golden also reared up and opened his mouth.
But the voice said only, “It’s Severus, Quirinus,” and Professor Quirrell put his wand away and opened the door. Hermione blinked in surprise. It wasn’t just Professor Snape, but Professor McGonagall, standing behind him, and both their familiars.
Hermione hated the looks on their faces at once.
“We have something to tell you, Quirinus,” Professor Snape said. His eyes took in Harry and Hermione and Regina and Golden, and he sighed. “And we might as well tell them, since they are here.” He took a step inside, followed by Professor McGonagall, and warded the door. “Albus’s familiar was also artificial.”
Hermione put a hand across her mouth. It was that or burst into tears.
This is just so horrible. How can we…
But then she caught Harry’s eye. Harry was looking at her, calm and steady and confident. And Golden looked much the same way, at least so far as Hermione could read a snake’s expression.
We’re going to do this. It’s horrible, so that means we have to fight.
Hermione lifted her head and wiped her tears away.
Chapter Seventeen.
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