Chapter Eight of 'Leopard's Choice'- Training
Chapter Seven.
Chapter One.
Title: Leopard’s Choice (8/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of canon background pairings, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Angst, AU (Harry Sorted into Slytherin at the end of second year), violence, gore, torture, present tense
Rating: R (for violence)
Summary: Sequel to Wolf’s Choice. Harry enters his fifth year with the Ministry demanding he retract his stories of Voldemort’s return, his allies demanding sacrifices he may not want to make, and the world becoming sharper with every breath.
Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to Other People’s Choices and Wolf’s Choice, and the third part of the Choices series. Seriously, don’t try to read this without having read the other stories first. I anticipate this being 60 chapters, like the others in the series. Also, please take the violence warning seriously. Like OoTP, this fic will get considerably darker than the others.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eight-Training
“Picture, as hard as you can, that spotted tail you saw in the mirror.”
Black’s voice is a little doubtful, the way it has been since Theo started the Animagus training with him, but by now, Theo has learned not to hold it against him. He closes his eyes and drifts into the center of his mind, the center of his chest, the warm power that lies coiled there. It’s the power that Theo associates with his ability to transform, the leopard within him.
He might be wrong. But so far, he’s had the best results when he pictures himself hovering in or above it.
“Now, picture your left arm changing. Just a tiny portion. The portion from the elbow to the place we marked earlier.”
That is a small place, only a few centimeters long. But Theo knows this is the right way to begin. He won’t be able to handle the large changes if he can’t do the small ones, no matter how miniscule they are.
He breathes through the urge to reach faster, reach more, and floats the bubble of warmth from the center of his chest to that spot on his arm. The place that Black marked with a red line from his wand tingles as if it’s become a wound. Theo ignores the temptation to open his eyes, and instead, pictures spotted fur as hard as he can. He’s spent hours now with books that have moving pictures of leopards, and even owl-ordered Muggle books from the few shops in wizarding Britain that sell them.
He knows what leopards look like. The golden fur, and the shape of the rosettes that distinguishes them from cheetahs and jaguars, and the slim bodies, and the way their fangs show when they open their mouths.
The slender legs.
Theo believes, as hard as he can, that the center of the spot on his arm is actually the long, slim line of a leopard’s leg.
“Holy shit!”
Theo loses concentration on the image of a leopard leg as his eyes snap open, and he glares at Black. But Black is staring at his arm. Reluctantly, Theo looks. He knows he hasn’t achieved the transformation, and-
His thoughts stop, the way they tend to do when Harry is in danger.
There’s a glowing, perfect patch of golden fur in the middle of his arm, with a single black spot in the middle of it like a flower growing in soft dirt.
Even as Theo watches, it dissolves, and ordinary human skin comes back underneath it. But he can’t stop his quickening breathing or the feeling of elation zipping through him. He turns to Black, and smiles, but his smile dissolves once he sees the stare on Black’s face.
“What is it?” he demands.
“You-I never thought you would be able to achieve that much this fast.”
“Then why try to encourage me in Animagus training?”
“Because you’re Harry’s friend, and he’s my godson.”
Well, all right, that makes sense in the simplistic world of Gryffindors, Theo has to admit. Just because no true Slytherin would have given that answer…
But he’s put a lot less stock in what “true Slytherins” would do since he got to know Harry. He straightens his back. “So it’s a good thing that I managed to concentrate this much and get part of my arm to transform?” he asks. Even if it’s a small part? But he won’t say that, because he’ll be damned if he shows any weakness to Black.
“Of course it’s good! It’s great!” Black is still staring at him with wide eyes. “None of us-I mean, Harry’s father and our other friends-managed the transformation that fast! And you’ve only been concentrating for a few days!”
Theo nods politely. He knows the tale of how Black and his friends, including the traitor, became Animagi, because they wanted to help Remus Lupin through the full moons. He privately thinks that they probably didn’t have as overriding a reason as he does. Lupin was in trouble from a curse that he’d already borne for most of his life.
Harry is in trouble for so much more, and Theo wants to become an Animagus to protect him from that.
“Should I try again?” he asks.
“Hmm.” Black scrutinizes him for a moment, and Theo experiences an odd, uncomfortable feeling. It’s the first time that an adult man has studied him with true interest in…perhaps a decade. His father hardly counts, of course. And Professor Snape has studied him that way, but he was evaluating how well Theo was doing in Potions or how well he could defend Harry, not-
Whatever Black is looking for.
“Do you feel warm around the ears?” Black asks, in a strangely professional tone. “Do you feel as if there’s a bubble swelling beneath the surface of your skin and it’s about to burst?”
Theo considers it carefully, but in the end, he shakes his head. He feels normal. “Am I supposed to feel those things?”
“No.” Black, for some reason, looks a little sad. “That would mean that you were concentrating too much, and you should rest and let your magic subside for a little while. But if you’re fine, then you can go back to concentrating and try to transform that part of your arm again. Just that, nothing else.”
Theo nods. Black is being overly-cautious, he thinks, which isn’t something the man is known for, but then again, Black probably thinks that he’ll have to answer to Harry if he hurts Theo. Not something he wants to do.
Theo closes his eyes and drifts back into the warmth at the center of his chest, reaching out and finding the magic that lives in him.
The leopard that lives in him, and will kill in defense of his friend.
*
“Then the training we gave you was useful.”
Harry nods and smiles slightly at Lyassa as he watches the green adders that he called out of nowhere, the same kind as the serpent that he took to the Wizengamot trial, coiling up his arm. Two more of them are doing a slow-motion parody of battle on the floor, striking at each other so that he can see their motions instead of missing them in the blurring quickness. “It was. I didn’t have to answer the questions that would have embarrassed me because I was responding in Parseltongue, and there is no one here except me who understands it now.”
“And us.”
Harry looks up to find Lyassa swaying in place, as if she wants to echo the green serpents that are sparring on the floor. “Of course,” he says slowly, blinking a little. “But I thought that you didn’t count yourselves because you don’t really live in the real world.”
“The human world,” Lyassa corrects instantly, and Harry sits up. She only uses English when she wants to make some point that she considers really important. “Not the real one. There are many real worlds, and you will cripple your education irreparably if you bind yourself to thinking of this as the only real one.”
“All right,” Harry says, blinking a little. He can see the sense in that, even though he hasn’t given much thought to the world the Speakers live in. They’ve wanted him to visit it, but Harry resisted, first because they just assumed and then because he has enough trouble living in this one. “What about the world that Voldemort lives in?”
“The world of madness.”
“Would it make sense for me to try and understand it so that I can fight him better?” Harry asks, slipping back into Parseltongue because Lyassa has.
Lyassa studies him for long enough that Harry begins to wonder uneasily what he did wrong. She inspires that in him, while the other Speakers that come to talk to him on a regular basis, Asheren and Rizzen, don’t.
“In the end? No.” Lyassa’s tail snaps from side to side even though her head doesn’t move. Harry is used to interpreting that as a sign of aggression, but it doesn’t really look that way right now. Lyassa is just busy thinking about something. “In the end, this war is not the most important thing in your life. Entering the world of madness would carry a high risk of never returning, something you do not want.”
“I thought you believed defeating Voldemort was the most important thing I could be doing, though? It’s the reason you’re helping me. You call him the corrupt Parselmouth.”
“And he is. But the most important thing we are doing here is aiding you.”
“To defeat Voldemort.”
“To live your life.”
That is something Harry hasn’t considered. He blinks and sits back in the middle of the floor, while the green serpents crawl towards him and Lion hisses softly in his ear, worried about him but on the edge of understandable words rather than actually speaking them.
“Did you think that you would have no life after him?”
“Well, most of the time, I think that’s what’s going to happen, because I’ll die fighting him,” Harry says. He’s glad they’re speaking Parseltongue right now. Severus has been keeping a close eye on him since the hearing, apparently under the impression that Harry will try another stunt without informing him of it, and he would be upset to hear Harry talking about his death.
“Do not give up.” Lyassa slithers towards him, her eyes narrowed and her fangs visible for a moment as her lips open wider than usual. Most of the time, Speakers don’t do that, because Parseltongue doesn’t require lips. “I would be most offended to think that we had wasted all this time teaching our magic to someone who is suicidal.”
“I’m not suicidal! I’m practical. I want to live. I just don’t think I will.”
Lyassa pauses and seems to think about that. Harry sits there with his heart pounding hard and a flush mounting in his cheeks. It’s-not something he wants to admit to his friends, but yeah, in his harder moments, it’s something that just feels realistic to him.
“Then we shall have to teach you ways to keep your hope alive.”
Harry wrinkles his nose. That’s something that sounds a little silly to him, although he doesn’t want to say so to Lyassa, who will probably take offense. “Are there magical ways of doing that?”
Lyassa laughs softly, and her tail twitches across the floor. “There are magical ways of doing everything. Let me think about it, and then we will come up with a way that will work to help you.”
*
“Are you-I know that you can’t tell us everything that happens in the magical world, Hermione. But is it true what that paper you got this morning said? There’s a war?”
Hermione takes a deep breath and turns to face her mum and dad across the breakfast table. Her dad is letting her mum take the lead, which tells Hermione that they’ve probably planned out this entire conversation, including what to do if she says yes. It drives her mad, since she doesn’t need to be handled like this, but it also reminds her how strongly her parents see her as a child. Even though she’s nearly sixteen!
“There’s not really a war, yet,” Hermione says. She’ll try being honest with them first, and see how it goes. “But the man who was in charge of leading the last war has come back, so another one will be starting soon.”
“Come back?”
“You remember that you read that history book before my first year, Mum? The one about-” Hermione braces herself “-Voldemort and the war he led? And how he was stopped by my friend Harry?”
Her parents exchange blank glances for a moment, and then her father laughs softly. “I remember that-that was a book of stories, though.”
“No. It was a history book.”
Again the exchange of glances. Hermione feels a throb of envy travel through her. She doesn’t wish she was a Muggle, magic is her life, but she does wish that she had the bond her parents do with someone.
Her mum leans towards her and takes Hermione’s hand across the table. “But you don’t really believe that he did something to stop this man?”
Hermione finds herself absurdly glad that her mother doesn’t speak Voldemort’s name, and shoves the feeling away. She’ll have to get used to it, and saying it, despite the way that she wants to flinch away from it. “I mean, he was a baby, so I think it was probably his mother. She died to save him. But he did something. Voldemort got torn out of his body and didn’t come back until last year. And Voldemort wants to kill Harry.”
There. She said it, and nothing happened. Hermione can’t help feeling that she’s chipping away at something inside herself, something that was preventing her from being as strong as she could be.
“That’s-that’s mental, Hermione.” Her father shakes his head. “People don’t get disembodied and then come back. Mothers dying to protect their children is an admirable thing, of course, but it doesn’t provide some kind of supernatural protection.”
Hermione stares flatly at him. “Dad. You’ve seen people transform into animals in front of you now, and when we went to Diagon Alley last year, you saw people changing the color of their clothes and conjuring quills and shrinking packages with a tap of their wands. You know magic is real.”
“Not this kind. It doesn’t happen, Hermione.”
Hermione is about to snap that she’s not lying, and neither is Harry, when she pauses. Her father’s forehead is sweaty, and he rubs his hands together quickly before he hides them under the table. Hermione’s only seen that before when her mother’s parents, whom her father really doesn’t like, come over to visit.
He’s arguing because he’s afraid and he doesn’t want it to be real. Not because he doesn’t really believe me.
“It did happen, Dad,” she says, as gently as she can. “This is the magical world. And unfortunately, a lot of people sit back and wait for someone else to save them. In the 1940s, they waited for Dumbledore to save them from Grindelwald, who was the Dark Lord at the time. And now they’re depending on Harry to save them from Voldemort.”
“And you?”
“I’m not sitting back and depending on Harry to save me!”
“But you’re standing next to him.” Her mother’s eyes are wide with fear, and she squeezes Hermione’s hand so hard that Hermione swallows back a huge lump in her throat. “That means that you’re going to be a target as well, doesn’t it? And people hate you because you have non-magical parents. I know that I read part of that in a book that was history.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Hermione says, and squares her shoulders. She knows her parents will panic about this, and she tries to ignore the little voice whispering in her head that she only has a little more than a year, and then she’ll be an adult in the wizarding world and they can’t stop her. Hopefully it will never come to that; they’ll just accept that she’s doing what she has to do, and even fighting in self-defense.
“Aren’t you afraid?” Her parents exchange one of those silent-speaking glances again. “You’re not a soldier.”
“But I’m Harry’s friend, and I’m Muggleborn,” Hermione says. “You didn’t raise me to sit back and refuse to participate, anyway.”
“No, but-someone else could do it. Adults.”
“There are some adults I’ve told you about who are fighting,” Hermione said quietly. “Headmistress McGonagall, who took over when Dumbledore got arrested, and Professor Snape and Mr. Black, who are Harry’s guardians.”
“But there’s no army?”
Hermione shakes her head. “No, but I promise you, if we lose the war, it won’t be safe for me anyway. And I trust Harry, and I trust the other people who are on our side. And-” She swallows again. “Harry, he defeated Voldemort, I told you. I think he could rally support to his side if he tried. He just hasn’t tried yet.”
“I saw that story in the paper, though.” Her mum pulls her hand back to fold her arms, and Hermione tucks her own hand beneath the table and tries not to show how cold it feels. “The Ministry of Magic doesn’t believe your friend. They’ll probably get in the way and hamper any effort he could make to raise an army.”
“That’s probably true. But we’re going to fight anyway.”
“Doomed last stands are all very well in history and poetry,” her father says quietly. “But I don’t want you involved in one in real life, Hermione.”
Hermione starts to open her mouth, and Mum snorts abruptly. “Now you’ve done it, Jason. Put her back up. She’ll lie to our faces about what she intends to do and then go off and do it anyway.”
“But it’s dangerous. She’s never lied to us about something dangerous!”
Hermione can feel herself blushing, but she doesn’t think her parents can see it. The basilisk and the troll, she thinks, and is intensely glad that Muggles don’t know Legilimency. “Um,” she says. “I want to help Harry. He’s my friend. I don’t have so many of those.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mum says in the kind of caressing tone she used when Hermione was a child to tell her about how she was just too intelligent for the other kids and that wasn’t a bad thing and she would find the perfect friends someday.
“I know, I know,” Hermione says impatiently. “But-Mum, Dad, I don’t want to lie to you. But if you try to keep me from going back to Hogwarts, then I’ll sneak out behind your backs. And if you try to keep me from fighting in the war, then I won’t tell you what I’m doing. And in a little over a year, I’ll be an adult in the wizarding world, and you can’t stop me. I’m sorry,” she adds miserably, because she’s never seem then look more shocked. “But that’s the way it is. That’s the way it will be. Harry needs me. And I want to. It’s the right thing to do.”
Her parents give each other yet another silent, speaking glance. Then her father says, “If your friends don’t have an army-”
“And most of these wizards who fight on the other side have no idea how to move around in the Muggle world because they don’t have Muggle parents-”
“No, they don’t,” Hermione says, wondering where they’re going with this.
“Then,” Mum says, and draws herself up like she’s about to charge into battle, without a wand, “we’ll help you. We don’t have magic, but there are things we can do. Muggle things.”
Her father nods. “Like moving you around in our world and giving you safe places to hide. Buying things that will help you. Collecting information. There-has to be some way to do that.” He blinks rapidly and pushes his glasses up his nose. His hand is shaking, but Hermione knows that determined expression on his face. She got it from him. “We’ll help.”
Hermione stands up, tears flowing down her face, and runs around the table to hug them. They hug her back.
Chapter Nine.