Chapter Forty-One of 'Wolf's Choice'- Peacemaker
Chapter Forty.
Title: Wolf’s Choice (41/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Main story is gen, a few GoF canon pairings mentioned
Content Notes: AU of GoF, angst, gore, violence, torture, present tense, minor character death
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU of GoF. Harry begins his summer with horrific visions that come true much faster than he was expecting. He’ll have to rely on his circle of friends, both his guardians, and all his allies to cope with the results.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic that is a sequel to my fic Other People’s Choices. Make sure you read that first before you start this one.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-One-Peacemaker
Albus crouches in the shadow of a dripping bush, staring with narrowed eyes as he watches the edge of the wall ahead of him. He’s come here on a desperate chance. He has no way of knowing if the permissions granted more than a decade ago, during the first war, are still active.
But he has to chance that they are, and that Harry is here. He has to get the boy back under his control. He’s the best weapon, the only weapon, against Voldemort. Everyone else won’t see that, and won’t give Harry the training he needs, and will lose the war.
At last the moment comes when he can put it off no longer, and it’s getting silly to sit here and pretend that he shouldn’t do anything else. Albus stands up with a soft huff and approaches the wall of Grimmauld Place’s garden.
Sirius was able to grant various members of the Order of the Phoenix the ability to approach the house, although he had been disowned. He was never actually removed from the wards. That was apparently a lengthy process, and his mother preferred to simply burn him off the tapestry and forget him.
If Albus is right, he should still be able to find his way through the wards, and take Harry from the bedroom he’s probably sleeping in, and be gone with no one the wiser.
His hand touches the solid stone of the wall, having passed straight through the wards as if through a bubble. Albus breathes again and casts a charm on his hands to allow him to scramble up the side of the stones like a squirrel up a tree.
Don’t worry, he thinks, but he couldn’t say whether the words are addressed to Harry or to the world. I am coming.
*
Sirius wakes for a second, and blinks into the darkness of the bedroom. It felt as though someone disturbed the wards. He sits up and blinks around again.
There’s no alarms ringing, though, and there would be. If another werewolf in Voldemort’s ranks dared to come here, or even someone with the Dark Mark, then Sirius would know. He has to lower the protections carefully every time Snape visits.
Sirius lies back down and snuggles into the covers. His mind turns back to Narcissa and Draco. He snorts. He can’t have his cousin’s company here forever, and in a while, she should realize that.
The thing is…
The thing is, it’s already taken her a lot longer to realize than Sirius would have thought. His cousin has always been subtle, maybe not the smartest of the Blacks but definitely the most cunning. She shouldn’t have had to be told that her indefinite stay here isn’t acceptable and that she needs to find a different way to confront her husband, or her past, or whatever has made her run.
And she shouldn’t have brought her son with her, even though he’s friends with Harry. Or allies. Or something. Sirius admits freely, if only to himself, that he’ll never understand Slytherins and all their delicate dances around each other.
Sirius doesn’t wish the boy any harm, far from it. He hopes that Draco grows up with a better sense of principle than his father does. But he’ll have to do it somewhere else. Sirius already has one boy to raise.
Help raise, he thinks then, and grimaces. That thought was definitely in Remus’s voice.
He’s drifting towards sleep again, probably to have his dreams populated by his cousins, when a loud crash makes him dart out of bed, his hand speeding to his wand. He listens for a second, and hears the further crash of curses and the sound of yelled incantations.
Sirius runs in that direction. Wards or not, there is definitely someone in the house now.
*
Albus can hardly believe his luck for a moment when one of the doors on the first floor opens and a slender figure steps out. But he realizes a second later that it’s Draco Malfoy, whose blond hair is shining in the faint moonlight through the windows.
Albus sighs, but levels his wand. At least he can make young Malfoy, who is probably a coward like most of his House and bloodline, lead him to Harry.
“Hold where you are,” he says, in the kind of commanding voice that has made students stop dead in the middle of duels before.
For some reason, it doesn’t work right now-or maybe that’s Slytherins for you, Albus thinks, disgusted. Malfoy snatches his wand out instead and places his back against the door behind him.
“What in the world are you doing here?” he asks, with the kind of manners that Albus has found deplorable for centuries, no matter who uses them.
“All you need to know is that I require your help,” Albus says. The pinched, suspicious look on Malfoy’s face makes him seek to moderate his tone, as much as that’s possible. “Can you please tell me where Harry Potter is, young man?”
“Does that idiocy even work on first-years?” Malfoy asks, with a cruel sneer that makes Albus think the young man is probably gone too far in following his family’s ways. “I can’t believe you thought that would fool me.”’
“It was meant less to fool you than to persuade you.” Albus unleashes some of his power, knowing it will make him seem to loom in Malfoy’s eyes. “All you need to know is that I require your help.”
Malfoy blinks hard and shakes his head, then lifts his chin stubbornly. “Oh, no, you don’t. I know that one. And I’ve been in regular contact with a wizard as strong as you are.”
“You have started following the Dark Lord at this age?” Albus breathes. He knows that he’s being distracted from his main purpose in being here, but he honestly doesn’t think young Malfoy has a plan, as such. And this horrifying information must be pursued. If Albus can turn one soul away from Tom, he has done a good deed. “You think-”
Malfoy’s eyes flicker past him, but that’s not enough warning to brace Albus against the power of the curse that hits him in the back. He staggers, gasping with pain. The agony radiates up his muscles, following the lines of his joints. It grabs them and yanks as though the caster has tied ropes to them, pulling tight.
Albus spins around, his eyes narrowed, hard though that is with the curse in place. Theodore Nott stands there, wand already glowing with the light of his next piece of Dark Arts.
Of course, the boy is inexperienced in battle, or he never would have given Albus time to recover. Albus manages the countercurse through gritted teeth, and then leans forwards, his eyes fastened on Nott. “You think you can bring me down, boy?”
Nott tilts his head. “I think that you don’t learn lessons easily enough.”
“And what does that mean, boy?” Albus takes a slow, threatening step forwards. Most of the time, he would disdain to threaten children, but this one has used Dark Arts and placed himself beyond the pale. If he was an adult and Albus was still in charge of the Wizengamot, he would be facing charges that could lead him in Azkaban.
“I mean,” Nott says, a small, almost polite smile on his face, “that you still haven’t shielded.”
The second curse strikes him in the back then, and Albus shrieks. He is literally on fire, but this fire is one lit beneath the skin. He hasn’t encountered this particular spell in years, and he stutters out the countercurse with his head whirling and his eyes crossing.
It doesn’t take. For some reason, the flames take hold and spread. And the Malfoy child laughs like a devil in the Muggle stories, a creature of such evil that Albus can hardly believe it can take the form of a boy.
“You won’t know the counter to that, old man. It’s a special Black spell that Mother taught me when we came here-”
“What in the name of hell is going on here?”
Sirius Black’s voice booms through the corridor. Albus concentrates long enough to compartmentalize, separating himself from the pain with Occlumency, and turns to face the one person here who might be an ally. It is painfully obvious that he can no longer rely on Severus or Harry, and even Remus has become suspect. He smiles. “Sirius, I was coming for a visit with your godson.”
“You’re not coming anywhere near him!” Sirius spits, and a line of white flame soars out from his wand.
It costs Albus something to stop it, and to stop the purple spell that snaps out from the Nott child in the next moment. He knows that he cannot stand here fighting the three of them, much as it humiliates him to show weakness in front of his students. He will shield and pass among them in search of Harry, who should surely be drawn by the noise and chaos happening here.
But the flames from Malfoy’s curse are eating him, and the fire is cutting into something deep and primal in him, something that feels like his magic itself. Albus has to slow down for one moment, has to deal with it.
And in that moment, Harry comes down the corridor with his dragon next to him.
He stares at Albus with a very pale face, and Albus, in the midst of raising his shield, pauses. He suddenly wonders how he could have been so blind. Of course Harry would not have abandoned him and the ways of the Light of his own free will. He has been tricked by the Slytherins around him, and by Sirius Black, who probably never entirely gave up the Dark ways his family taught him.
“Harry, come here, child,” Albus says, holding out his hand, and ignoring the way that Nott’s spell hits the shield and makes it flicker. He ignores the pain from Malfoy’s curse and the way that Sirius snarls from the side. “We can go away, and I can tell you what you need to do to battle-”
He doesn’t get any further than that, because Chaos rears back on her haunches and breathes.
Albus shrieks in agony as the fire plays across his face. He can feel something melting, and his sight in his left eye is gone. He’s down on one knee, or he thinks he is, and his magic is writhing and fighting him, trying desperately to save him from the dragonfire even as Malfoy’s flames continue to eat away at it.
“Chaos, no!”
Albus has no idea what Harry is shouting for, since, as far as he’s concerned, Chaos already has. But he manages to stagger back, his arms waving in front of him, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of Harry catching hold of Chaos’s neck, his face horrified.
Albus can only see that through one eye.
And the damn Malfoy curse is still eating away at his magic, sawing away at it like a crude Healer who thinks that a Cutting Curse can solve everything.
Albus has no time to waste. He can’t cast the reproachful look at Harry that he wanted to do, and obviously persuading Harry to come with him is a waste of time. The only thing he can do is slam down his hand on the Portkey that hangs around his neck and let it sweep him away.
He takes a shaky kind of pleasure in the sound of a dog’s teeth snapping on air as the traitorous Black lunges at him.
I should not have trusted him even this long, Albus thinks, and then he drops straight into the grassy bed in his prepared refuge and begins shakily to try and heal himself.
*
“I am less than impressed, Black.”
Sirius flinches, and then hates himself for it. When was the last time he flinched at a word from bloody Severus Snape?”
Well…probably a few months ago, come to think of it. But that’s no reason to sit back and just take this kind of scolding by baring his belly. Sirius straightens up and glares at Snape. “I didn’t leave those exceptions in the wards on purpose! I didn’t want Dumbledore hurting Harry any more than you do.”
“Just like you didn’t leave the exceptions for werewolves on purpose. It still meant Albus could intrude here.” Snape lifts his cup of tea to his mouth and takes one precise sip.
Sirius refuses to cower. He will not cower, even knowing, from the deep tone of Snape’s voice, how very disappointed he is in Sirius. “Albus didn’t actually manage to hurt Harry, anyway,” Sirius says, and he does think that’s an improvement over the werewolf scars that Harry carries on his face.
“Do you think that matters to me?”
The room seems to fill with a cold that Sirius tenses his muscles against. He will not shiver. And it’s ridiculous to think that Snape can be any more terrifying now than he was when they were both students. He used Dark curses on people then, for Merlin’s sake! He’s not going to use one now, so why does Sirius find him so frightening?
Because he didn’t have someone to care for then, comes the unexpected thought.
Sirius swallows and meets Snape’s eyes. They’re bright and merciless, and he knows that he won’t be forgiven for voicing that thought aloud, or for continuing to insist that Harry wasn’t hurt, or for defending himself. There’s only one course of action open to him. Unfortunately, it’s one that he hates more than anything else.
But it has to be done.
“I’m sorry.”
Snape sits still long enough that Sirius is reassured he at least recognizes the weight of the apology. Then he nods and finishes his tea before he stands up. “You’ll understand why I want Harry to spend the rest of the holiday at my house.”
“Can you please take Malfoy and Nott with you?” Sirius promptly asks, glad that they’re moving on. “They make me feel like they’re worshipers at an altar or something, the way they follow Harry around.”
Snape only looks amused, damn him. Then again, Sirius knows well enough that Slytherins look the way when there’s nothing worth being amused about. “Since you ask so nicely, Black.”
There’s noise near the front of the kitchen, and Sirius turns his head to see Harry coming in with Chaos next to him and Malfoy and Nott behind him. He’s been a little subdued since last night when Dumbledore broke in, but when Sirius asked him why, he just said that he feels bad about letting his dragon melt the Headmaster’s face.
That’s the one thing Sirius doesn’t think anyone should feel bad about, but for some reason, Harry doesn’t believe him when he tells him that.
“Well done.”
Sirius glances up sharply, but it’s to see Snape smiling at Nott and Malfoy, even dividing his gaze between them as if they’ve both done something worthy of being praised. Sirius just shakes his head weakly, baffled. He supposes that he won’t ever understand the nuances of Slytherins.
At least, he notes, Harry looks as vexed as he feels. Harry glares at Snape and asks, “Can we leave now, sir?”
“If you wish,” Snape says, sounding agreeable in a way that Sirius immediately distrusts, and then goes over and throws Floo powder in the fireplace.
Harry does hug Sirius before he leaves, and he doesn’t look upset or unhappy with him. He even says that he didn’t blame Sirius yesterday. Sirius sighs and sits back with his own cup of tea when Snape and the kids are gone, thinking that now he only has one problem to deal with.
“It’s a good thing that my son asked my permission before he left, or you might have found yourself in trouble, Sirius.”
And she’s standing in the kitchen doorway, Sirius thinks with another sigh as he turns around to face Narcissa.
With luck, this particular problem won’t stay much longer. But as he watches Narcissa touch that damned brooch of faceted onyxes, Sirius realizes that he can’t count on that.
*
“What did you mean when you told them that they did well?”
Severus sips his own tea, which is decidedly superior to that swill Black likes to serve his guests, and studies Harry calmly. Harry stands in front of him with his hands braced on his hips. Chaos, in contrast, is sitting on all fours and blinking lazily. That she can discern when something is worth attacking over and when it is not heartens Severus.
“I meant that Mr. Nott and Mr. Malfoy did well in protecting you, Harry. That’s all.”
“They shouldn’t have had to, though. They shouldn’t have to put their lives in danger. Sirius could have handled it.”
“But is this not exactly what you have been training them for? Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought so.”
Harry stops and glares at him. Severus enjoys his tea. Harry finally gives a shudder like a restrained Abraxan and mutters, “But I didn’t mean them to be facing this kind of danger.”
“I think you would insult them both if you should say that.”
“I know, but…” Harry trails off and scowls at his feet. Then he looks back up. “I can’t train them for danger and then get upset when they survive it, can I?”
“You are learning.”
“But they still shouldn’t have had to face it.” Severus opens his mouth to agree with the fact that Black should have checked his bloody wards, but Harry is already charging ahead. “Because I should be the only one to face it.”
The way that Severus sets down his cup in the middle of the table makes Harry’s muscles tense and his eyes flick to Chaos, but the dragon continues to blink in the manner of a contented reptile. Harry looks him in the face and says, “I don’t care if you punish me for saying it. It’s still true. Dumbledore was there for me. I should have been the one to handle it.”
“I am not going to punish you for saying it.”
As Severus suspected it would, his quiet words remove the bluster from Harry’s breath. He folds his arms and scowls a little. “What, then?”
“I merely wish to remind you that your friends will become all the more determined to put themselves in harm’s way if you do it yourself.”
Harry hesitates for a long moment. Severus waits. He has no hope that simply reminding Harry of that will change his ward’s mind. But it is simple sense. The more Harry charges into danger, the more he endangers his friends.
“You disagree with me that I should be the one to face it.” Harry speaks rapidly at last, his gaze fixed on Severus’s face.
“Yes, I do. But only because that claim exaggerates both your responsibility and the necessity of your facing it.”
Harry wrestles with that a moment in silence. Then he says, “I should-I should find Draco and Theo and tell them that I’m proud of them.”
“That would be a good idea,” Severus agrees mildly, and watches as Harry drifts out of the kitchen. Then he smiles down into his teacup.
He saw the way Draco’s face glowed. Facing this danger beside Mr. Nott has brought him fully into the fold, or so he will see it, proving his worth. He will be even more loyal to Harry after this.
And Mr. Nott is proving worthy of standing at Harry’s side, and will keep his promise to protect him.
Together, they will bind Harry more into a web of consideration that will inevitably have to include consideration for his own life, given that neither Nott nor Draco-not to mention the others-intend to let Harry charge ahead without them.
Severus has no objections in chaining Harry to his sense of responsibility for others’ lives, since nothing else will appear to work.
Then he thinks of Albus, and his mood changes. He will have to prepare something special for Hogwarts’s former Headmaster.
Chapter Forty-Two.
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