Chapter Eight of 'World in Pieces'- Potential for a Bridge
Chapter Seven.
Title: World in Pieces (8/24)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Violence, angst, mentions of suicide and torture.
Pairings: Past AU Harry/Draco, canon het pairings otherwise (and no pairing for Harry in the present of the story). Eventually, a Snape mentors Harry story.
Rating: PG-13 to R
Summary: Harry is summoned to an alternate universe still suffering under Voldemort less than an hour after his own defeat of the bastard. Worse, he's not the first Harry Potter they've called on this way. Worst yet (at the moment), there is no way back home. But give Harry time, and he's likely to find something that's even worse.
Author's Notes: This is a WiP that's likely to progress extremely slowly. I know it has 24 chapters, and they'll be long, but I can't say exactly when it'll be updated. It's also really angsty at times, although hopefully never for very long. It picks up right after the last chapter (as opposed to the epilogue) of DH.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews, and sorry for the long break in updates.
Chapter Eight-Potential for a Bridge
“It is only right that you learn necromancy.”
Harry didn’t bother glancing up from the book Severus had given him yesterday, on the properties of various plants that might be used as poisons or healing herbs on the battlefield. He had the book braced on his knees, his hand resting on the arm of the chair, above the piece of parchment spread there. He made almost continual notes, and Severus wondered if he had unusually flexible wrists or a high tolerance for pain, not to mind the odd position. He said only, “No.”
Severus paused, and listened to the sounds of Harry’s breathing. He had gasped when Severus first brought him into the lab, as if unused to the high concentration of smells in the air, but now his breathing was ordinary, deep, and steady. He hadn’t glanced up. He hadn’t changed the hunch of his shoulders, uncomfortable as it was. He had simply refused.
“I see,” Severus said. “And why is that? The Dark Lord uses necromancy, you know that. And your other tutor has taught you spells that enable you to identify and destroy his creatures, which have more than a touch of the Dead Art in them themselves.”
Harry looked up at him. Severus still had to brace himself for the shock that sometimes occurred when their gazes met. He had once, foolishly, believed that seeing so many versions of Harry summoned and dying would inure him to the color of those eyes.
But it would not. It had been Lily’s color, and that of the Harry he had unexpectedly found in his House, and now this one. He would probably die fighting for someone whose eyes looked like that, he thought, and not count it a bad loss.
“I know about his use of necromancy,” Harry said. “That’s why I don’t want to use it. Some of the other books you gave me yesterday mentioned it, and they said that using it corrupted your soul.”
Severus relaxed with a sigh. Well, I should have expected that even an unusually clear-headed Gryffindor would believe some of the rubbish writers like that tend to spout. “They say that about any number of spells, including some that the Ministry has never bothered to classify as the Dark Arts. The Dead Art had advantages, and careful use of it is rather like the use of poisons.”
Harry shrugged, a gesture Severus could stand to see less of. “Well, I think there’s a difference between corrupting your soul because you’re willing to poison people and do things no one else wants to do-” A twist of his lips reminded Severus that this young man would be very used to dealing with that particular burden. “And corrupting your soul because you get more interested in the dead than the living and think nothing of grave-robbing.”
Severus spent a moment shifting his weight in place. Then he said, “It is the grave-robbing, then, that bothers you?”
Harry’s gaze grew sharp enough to pierce. Then he said, “Caring more about the dead than the living. It’s tempting, you know? To only think about the poor dead mes, the ones they summoned from their worlds, and decide that because I care about them I can’t care about anyone else. The Order’s obnoxious, Vol-sorry, Fleshless-Face should die, and I haven’t met any of the people I’m actually fighting to save.”
“Even Draco?” Severus asked. He had been trying to ascertain Harry’s feelings about Draco for the last few days as he gave him books and told him basic truths about this world, his world, and Harry showed murky flashes of a dozen different emotions.
Harry paused, and his mouth twisted as yet another of those emotions stained his eyes like crushed camellias staining a Daybirth Potion. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I want to hit him and sometimes I want him to go away and not say anything, but I reckon I don’t actually hate him. Still.” He aimed his stare at Severus again. “I have enough trouble thinking about the living as it is, instead of the people I want to see again, the ones in my world. Necromancy would take me further away still. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Severus nodded. He had not anticipated an objection, the way Harry had torn into the other books and started studying. Of course, he understood that ferocious study as well, and it had nothing to do with some Granger-like, inherent love of knowledge. Nor was Harry a Ravenclaw. In his universe, he had managed to conquer the Dark Lord without a great deal of book-study. Here, that did not seem to be the truth, with a powerful, sane enemy, so he took to books because they were the means of survival.
“What? Was I sensible or something?”
“Your pardon,” Severus said. “I was thinking of something else.” Thinking that you may have more of a chance to survive than they think you do, and that they might rue the way they have treated you, even before I have the chance to make them.
“You looked at me as if you couldn’t believe I would say that.” Harry lifted his shoulders and let them fall again, in a movement Severus had to admit looked a little different from the shrug that had irritated him so much. “Well. Sometimes I’m smart. Sometimes not. But I’m still alive, and still fighting, and that’s more than I can say for most of the people here.” He started to turn back to his book, then added over his shoulder, “But anyway. That’s why I won’t learn necromancy.”
He went back to reading, and Severus studied him for a moment more before he returned to his own project: separating the books Harry could use from the ones he could not. Thanks to this latest information, the books on necromancy and the use of dead flesh in potions and rituals were cast aside.
Thinking about it, Severus was less displeased than he would have thought he would be at Harry’s decision. Yes, one should grasp every advantage and wield it, without concern for morals, if one’s life was at stake.
If one was a Slytherin.
That Harry was a Gryffindor, he forgot at times. But it did seem that Harry would be more than happy to remind the world on any occasion it happened.
*
There was so much.
Sometimes, it hurt Harry to think of how much he didn’t know, and how much he needed to know, and how much he was going to have to learn if he wanted to go back to his world. Because he thought he would probably need to do the research, in the end. The Order wouldn’t want to do it, because they wished he would die and go away-
Well. Not all of them. The way he saw Malfoy’s eyes shining on the rare days that he deigned to come out of Snape’s dungeons said that. But Malfoy was just as troublesome in his own way as Hermione and Ron, following Harry around, wanting to be with him, to touch him, in ways Harry just wasn’t comfortable with (because he wasn’t the Harry Malfoy thought he was and needed him to be), and whispering and hinting dark secrets about Snape that he refused to just come out and say.
Harry gave up, more or less in frustration, and went back to studying as soon as he could, although Snape did kick him out so he could brew in peace or so Harry could go to sleep.
Harry hadn’t wanted to stay in the Slytherin common room for several reasons, and although Snape had offered his personal quarters, Harry had seen the slight green cast to his face and refused. He didn’t think Snape was offended, really, about having him in the same rooms, or he wouldn’t spend so much time in his lab and library with Harry each day. It was just that he wanted to have somewhere to go that was private.
After the thrill he’d felt when the Dursleys gave him Dudley’s second bedroom, Harry understood that too well to question it, and ignored Malfoy’s darker hints. He could watch out for Snape and not trust him completely while not distrusting everything about him, the way Malfoy wanted him to.
So Harry slept in one of the abandoned classrooms no one had used for years on end, if the amount of dust he found in it was any indication. Banishing that was actually rather fun; he got to use one of the spells Evelina had taught him that displaced air in huge whumps, creating the illusion that an invisible giant was walking towards you. Dust whirled around and came floating back down, where he could burn and Vanish it.
Sure, he could have Vanished the dust in the first place just by flicking his wand, and there was only a slight chance that the furniture would have gone with it. But why not have fun where he could?
Fun was in short supply everywhere else.
He Transfigured a desk into a bed, and another one into a table where he could put his glasses and his books and a candle and a cup of water if he wanted one. Transfiguration was a lot easier than he’d ever found it. But when he thought about it, he mostly remembered McGonagall teaching them to turn objects into animals or animals into other animals. Converting one object into another one had been too useful, or something.
Harry sighed the night he thought that and went to sleep early. He didn’t like thinking that way about his own world, when there were so many things to hate about this one.
But he hated it a little less now. Not because he wanted to live in it, or because the Order was nicer, but because Snape helped him, and Evelina helped him, and the Order was staying out of the way.
If he never got to go home…
But Harry put that thought out of his head when it came to him. Maybe he’d have to face it someday, but not now. Think about it too much and he would become too depressed to go on. It was silly of him, maybe, but it was true.
So he didn’t think about the depressing things, and for almost a week he studied with Snape and Evelina and learned about battle Herbology and killing strikes and the different kinds of things he might be able to command a summoned snake to do, and was all right for the first time since he’d arrived.
Then Hermione had to show up with the damn spell.
*
“Harry? Can I talk to you?”
Harry stiffened. Of course he just had to be walking from his room to Snape’s lab early in the morning, and there she would be. It would probably only have taken him another minute to get down the stairs and safe, but she was behind him, trotting and puffing a bit, and she would get upset if he ignored her.
Besides, he was tired of running.
He turned around and leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Two questions,” he said. “Yes, you can talk to me if you have anything useful to say. No, you can’t call me Harry.”
Hermione came to a stop and blinked at him, one hand rising as if to touch the Nagini-scar on her face, and then falling back at the last instant. Harry focused on the scar. Not nice, from the way she was flushing as he stared at it, but it kept her separated from his Hermione, and that was all he needed right now.
“What am I supposed to call you?” she demanded, much more bossy than Harry’s Hermione ever got, unless you were asking to copy her essay five minutes before it was due. “Potter?”
“Why not call me what you think of me?” Harry asked. “‘Sacrificial victim’ would do.”
“That’s not the way I think of you!” She tossed her head up as she glared at him. Her eyes were bright in the way that said they would turn full of tears in a minute if he spoke the wrong words. Harry just stared back, unimpressed. He knew his Hermione had used that trick a few times when she didn’t want her professors to ask too many questions. It was a bit rich to expect him to accept it without question, though. Surely her Harry hadn’t?
I still don’t know much about him. Not what he was really like. If I can crack the code on that book he left, then maybe I’ll really know him.
“Then why do you persist in talking to me as though I’m stupid?” Harry asked. “A few minutes’ careful thought ought to tell you that I’m not the Harry that you’re used to seeing or any of the ones you’ve summoned since then. But you act as though I should know everything you’re talking about already.”
Hermione paused, then said, “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Professor Snape. You’re talking like him.”
Harry gave her a smile that he knew probably hurt, at least if the way she held her book up in front of her was any indication. “Better than some of the people I could be imitating.”
Hermione bowed her head. “Meaning me and Ron, I suppose,” she whispered. Harry said nothing; he thought she was the stupid one, if things weren’t real to her until she said them aloud like that. “Harry-”
“What did I tell you not to call me?”
Hermione shivered. Harry wondered for a moment if he scared her that badly, when she had faced Nagini, and then snorted. Nagini wouldn’t tell Hermione about all the times when she had summoned other versions of Nagini from different universes, and remind her of her mistakes. He didn’t know if Hermione had come to him because she listened more deeply to his points than any other members of the Order, or because she hated the idea that she had done something wrong, and wanted to set it right.
No. I don’t think she’s scared at all, just stubborn, he decided, as he watched the way she lifted her face towards him.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I see him every time I look at you, see him in the way you gesture and the way you smile and the way you yell. He wasn’t as angry as you all the time, but he had his moments when he didn’t want anyone else touching him or being near him. Even Malfoy came in for his share of Harry’s temper sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Harry said. “But that’s what I object to. You searching so hard for the similarities. You trying to make me into him, when I know that I’m not him. You see why it might be a tiny bit insulting to me?”
“No,” Hermione said, and now her eyes were on fire. “I don’t. Not when he was so much more talented and intelligent and kind to his friends than you’ll ever be.”
“You’re right,” Harry said, in such a bright, false tone that she should have known what was coming, but evidently she didn’t. “He was so intelligent and talented and kind that he managed to kill his own Voldemort.” Then he paused and clapped a hand to his forehead. “No, wait, that was himself! My bad.”
“He was kinder,” Hermione whispered, trembling fiercely. “Kinder than to remind someone’s friends about that person’s suicide all the time.”
“Yeah, but sometimes being kind isn’t what you need.” Harry reached out and rapped his knuckles against her forehead, making her jerk back and stare at him. “And why should I be nice and kind when you kept telling me that I was nothing compared to him, that I was a horrible person, that I needed to be the savior of your world but I didn’t deserve the information I needed to do it? What are you all hiding so hard?”
Hermione jerked back again, but this time so fast that Harry staggered after her; he was still half-leaning on her, after all. She shook her head and tried to talk, but her face was marble-colored and her lips looked as if they might have been made of marble, too.
“Well?” Harry asked, and prodded a little harder than he needed to, because he was finding the expression on her face hard to deal with. It was truth. “Why did you come and talk to me in the first place just now? Were you expressing a different reception?”
“I found a spell,” Hermione said, and now the tears were there, and Harry didn’t think she was trying to use them to manipulate him. “Here.” She thrust the huge book she was holding into his hands and ran away. He heard her sobbing break out pretty much the minute she got around the corner.
Harry bit his lip. He didn’t enjoy being the kind of bloke who made girls cry.
But on the other hand, he didn’t enjoy being the kind of bloke they thought they could make a fool of where it concerned getting home to his own universe. He tucked the book under his arm and went to Snape’s quarters.
*
The spell that Granger had found interested Severus, but he had never experienced interest without wariness since he began learning the intricate rules of potions-making, and wariness was justified here. The Order would not give Harry gifts, and where Granger’s heart had once beat was now a book filled with the Order’s rules.
This book was not a gift. This book was such a bewildering mess of rules and plaints and theories and diagrams that it was a miracle Granger had located a spell that might return Harry to his universe in the middle of it. Severus sat back and pondered the spell, while Harry practiced some healing incantations he had learned from the books he read yesterday. Luckily, he was now experienced enough at creating harmless but shallow cuts on his arms that Severus no longer felt the need to monitor him every second.
The book said…
The book said many things, but Severus had read the first chapter, something Granger tended not to do if she believed the most interesting material to be in the middle or at the end, and he could see the tangle of complexities waiting to leap out on them like a nest of snakes. The book said that there were many worlds where different paths might have been taken, where different things might have happened, exactly as Albus had told Harry. In some worlds, the Dark Lord would never have arisen; in some worlds, Harry would have died no matter what happened; in some, he would have won; in some, Albus would have been the Dark Lord.
Severus paused and caressed the book’s pages when he thought about that. In some ways, I would say that that has already happened-but he is Dark Lord for the Order of the Phoenix alone, their controller and commander, and not for the whole of the world.
But the book also said that these paths of events fell out in predictable orders, and that it was easier to reach out to a similar universe than to reach one that was desperately different. Ones where Albus was the Dark Lord would have a hard time communicating with realities where the Dark Lord had always been known as Tom Riddle and had won.
Severus closed the book and traced his fingers over the cover. On the front, it bore the infinity symbol in silver, in the center of a golden nest of joined snakes. Fairly potent symbols, Severus thought, and appropriate ones for the tangle he now faced.
The universe we stole Harry from is different from ours in several important respects. Harry was in Gryffindor, he had a different life, I died there and Albus died there instead of Harry, and he defeated the Dark Lord.
Given that, how in the world did Albus reach it with the same spell that has so far brought us Slytherin Harrys? And why would he want to reach out to a universe so far from ours in the first place?
Severus had lent his strength to the spell. He had known-he had thought he had known-that it was the best chance the Order and the world had to survive the Dark Lord. And he had believed, until Harry came to this world, that he would share much of the same traits the others did. Slytherin House and being raised by Black.
And is that all that matters? If I have succeeded in seeing this Harry as something more than the sum of what he may be able to do for us, have I done the same thing for the others?
That, he realized now, was why he had instinctively been putting off speaking to Harry about the last two versions of him they had summoned, the ones who had died facing the Dark Lord. He had not seen them in the right way. He had not been sympathetic enough.
The thought of sympathy scraped and pulled at him, but if he could acknowledge that he had been wrong about the need to defend his world, wrong in the part he played in the Order’s pulling other boys out of their worlds, he could acknowledge that feeling sympathy was not the worst thing that could happen to him. He laid the book down and glanced up.
Harry had finished healing the last cut in his arm. He sat down in front of Severus now, in the chair he usually used to study, and stared at him. Severus stared back. He wanted to lash out, he wanted to flee, he wanted to stand and stretch and declare that they needed tea before they could go on.
Anything but admit he had not known the other Harrys that well, and he could not tell this one, the one who was human to him, everything he needed to know.
“At least you’re admitting that what you did was wrong. I don’t think most of the Order can do that as yet.”
Severus started and glanced up. Harry was staring at him, and if he was not a natural Legilimens, that only cooled Severus’s blood the more, because he had known only one man that skilled as a reader of body language and minute facial expressions. That man was Albus.
“How did you know?” he whispered.
“Not such a surprise.” Harry gave him a grim smile and shook his arms out, resting them across his knees. “I asked you to tell me about the other Harrys who were here, and you didn’t want to. You had me ask everything else first. Not a stretch to figure out that there was something there you didn’t want to talk about, which means it’s something you had to wrestle with.” He firmed his lips and lifted his head. “But I want to hear about them. Now.”
Severus nodded. He would speak the words, then, and leave the content of them up to Harry’s judgment. “You know that the first one died in battle against the Dark Lord, I think, and that the second one died at his hand as well, but during torture.”
Harry grimaced and nodded. “But I don’t understand how that last one happened. Did he get captured? After the first one-maybe we could call him the second one, because of the original Harry you knew-they would have been a little more cautious with sending him out to face Old Shrivel-Snake alone, wouldn’t they?”
Severus sighed and closed his eyes. He could remember the Order’s discussion of how they had to carry the offensive battle to the Dark Lord, because he had participated in it. Without the Harry of that time, he remembered now, the one summoned directly before the boy who sat across from him now. Because Albus had thought it would distress him too much to hear the discussion about his probable death, and he was busy with Weasley and Granger and Draco anyway.
Perhaps it is a good thing that Harry-this one-does not find Draco a distraction.
“They decided it was useless to have him face the Dark Lord in direct battle,” Severus said. He could see the problem with these decisions looking back on them. What bothered him most of all was that he had not seen them at the time. Yes, hindsight was clearer than sight in the present, but he prided himself on keener eyes than most. What he prided himself on should be true, to have value. “He was to take him by surprise.”
Silence, and he could feel Harry blinking as if he looked at him. “That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,” he ventured at last.
Severus snorted and opened his eyes. “It would not have been, could they have taken him by surprise. But they forgot to reckon with the Dark Lord’s ability to sense Harry’s movements. He was waiting for them at the ambush point, and took Harry away from them. From us,” he added, although he had not gone with Albus on that doomed mission and now considered himself separate from the Order of the Phoenix. He had not considered himself separate at the time.
“Ability to sense my movements,” Harry repeated, and frowned. His eyes were focused past Severus, with a hawk-like glare Severus had to admire. This was the kind of glare that the Savior of the World needed, perhaps, if he was to win. All of the other Harrys had been-not gentle, but not as intense. Severus wondered why, and placed that question along with the others on the shelf in his mind. He was used to thinking of Slytherins as more intense than Gryffindors, if only because they were more focused.
“He couldn’t,” Harry said. “I mean, yes, he felt we were there when we entered the Death Eaters’ stronghold, and he sent the falcon after me, but he can’t feel where I am.” He stared at Severus. “Can he?”
Severus paused. “Albus did not tell you this?” He could not prevent the softness in his voice, or the way his hand shook for a moment before he rested it on his wand.
“No, he bloody well fucking didn’t,” Harry said, and his voice was the thing that shook, but Severus understood how stupid the wizard would have been who took that for fear. He stood up and stared through the wall as though he could pierce them with his gaze and find Albus hiding behind them. “I thought, since Old Red-Eye didn’t make Horcruxes in this world, or not for long, and I’m not from this world, anyway, that he couldn’t sense my scar.”
“It has nothing to do with that,” Severus said slowly. No, Albus did not tell him. “The two members of a prophecy can sense one another, at least if they have access to the spells and power the Dark Lord carries at his disposal. It takes time, and training, and skill. I doubt the Dark Lord knew you were here immediately after you emerged from your world, because he knew the Order would bring another across but not when, and he has better things to do than wait with his eyes closed every hour of the day. But he can find you.”
Harry gave a bitter laugh and sat back down. “No, Dumbledore never said anything about this. But if he knew it, why did they think the other Harry-the third Harry, whatever, the one who died by fucking torture-why did they think he could sneak up on Voldemort in the first place?”
Severus grimaced at the name, but responded. There were greater things at stake now. “Because Albus did not know about it at the time, not until he had researched further after that Harry died and settled on that as the explanation.”
“So, even now, he doesn’t know.”
Severus shifted. He had no reason to think the look in Harry’s eyes was directed at him, and still, he did not like it.
“No, he does not know,” Severus said quietly. “Not for certain. It is merely the most reasonable explanation for how the Dark Lord foiled our ambush.”
Harry stared into the distance some more, then turned around and focused on Severus in a way that would have been appropriate had Severus been trying to kill him. “Did Dumbledore trust the other Harrys?”
“I believe he did, yes,” Severus said. “They did not resist him. He did not try to conquer them.”
Harry snorted. “When he invited me up to his office for that little talk, I hadn’t tried to resist him, either. What had I done? Said I would accept training from Evelina, complained about being dragged out of my world, and had one meal and slept a little. That was all.”
“I would not pretend to understand Albus,” Severus said. “He grows more distant from me every day. But I can tell you what Granger’s book said, and what I believe has happened.”
Again the distant look that made Severus shiver. He wondered, for a moment, about worlds where the Dark Lord was not Albus or the Dark Lord they knew, but the Potter of them. The vision of such worlds crystalized more and more in his mind the more he watched Harry.
And if I have seen it, what may have Albus seen, or persuaded himself was there to see? Perhaps there is another answer to the problem of why he mistrusts Harry so much.
“Tell me,” Harry said, leaning back and hooking one leg over the other, focusing on Severus as though he had brought him news Harry needed to plan a battle strategy.
Severus explained the concept of ranked worlds as far as he understood them, which was not enough for some of the questions Harry asked them. Of course, Harry didn’t necessarily know the words of the proper magical theory, either, so the questioning mainly showed them where enlightenment was necessary rather than gave it to them.
But in the end, Harry leaned forwards and half-shut his eyes. “So this is what probably happened,” he said. “For some reason, Dumbledore reached out to other worlds, ones further away from this one. Maybe he did it because he thought all those versions of Harry-all my siblings-were too similar to the one who was born here, and he needed someone different to cope with this Voldemort.”
Severus flinched at the name, but nodded. “That sounds reasonable to me.”
“Well, then.” Harry shook his head. “He gets me, but he doesn’t like or trust me. I’m not Slytherin, I’m someone who might actually be closer to him in some ways but farther away in others, and I’m not someone who had the kind of relationship with him that he had with the other Harrys. They looked up to him as a mentor?”
“They certainly did not come to me,” said Severus, with a dryness that he thought should leave his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Harry opened his eyes and grinned at him for that. “All right. Anyway. So. He got someone different because he thought that was the kind of weapon he needed-”
Severus held up a hand. “We do not yet know if this is true. It seems a dangerous thing to state as fact.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
Severus scowled and shook his head.
“Well, then. For the moment, let’s act as if it was true and see how it explains Dumbledore’s behavior.” Harry leaned back, almost squirming into the chair. “So. The thing I don’t understand is, what then? Why would he be unnerved by my differences instead of comforted by them? He summoned me for that reason, after all. Did he think I would be as easy to control as someone he had a bond of trust and training with?”
“He was the one who proposed the spell to the Order, and the one of us who knew the most about it,” Severus murmured.
Harry waited, and then prompted, “And?”
“And-I wonder if he had seen other worlds where a threat arose,” Severus had to say. “Not a threat from the Dark Lord, or himself, which I think increasingly likely the more I study other universes. A threat from you.”
Harry closed his eyes and seemed to listen to a song playing in the silence of his head. Severus sat still and waited. He wondered when fear had entered the equation, and if he was right to fear as long as Harry was in this world with him, rather than home in a place that could contain him.
*
Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?
The sourness in the back of Harry’s throat surprised him. He swallowed several times, and still he couldn’t do away with it. He would have thought he had anticipated something like this, given all the talk of alternate universes and Snape’s just confirming that Dumbledore knew more about them than anyone else.
But he didn’t. He still had to deal with the fact that someone thought he could be a Dark Lord, and this time, it wasn’t random people who read the Daily Prophet and believed whatever it printed. This was someone who had pulled him into this world and might still control his fate here.
The rising of strength within himself at that thought made him gasp, because it was so strong, and so unexpected.
No. I will not let him.
Harry let himself adjust for a moment to that changed thought, then nodded carefully to himself. All right. That was settled, then. No matter what happened, he wouldn’t let Dumbledore have final say over him.
But that still left him in doubt about what to do. He pushed aside the thoughts that wanted to spill out his mouth and said, “Hermione-Granger-said something about that spell being the one I wanted?”
“The spell is one that might work,” Snape said, with the quietude he seemed interested in using around Harry lately. Harry wondered if he should ask why, and decided not to, not when he might hate the answer. “But I would be reluctant to trust a body to it. You could still be ripped apart in the space between universes, which Albus calls dangerous.”
“And you trust him enough to think it is?” Harry demanded, opening his eyes and staring at Snape.
Snape didn’t smile. “I would not risk a trial merely to show that he is wrong.”
Harry nodded. That sounded like good sense, now that he had to think about it. “All right. Then can we send information through? Establish a contact with the world I came from, and talk to someone from there?”
Snape’s eyebrows raised, and his hand rose as if to adjust the collar around his throat. Harry smiled a little. He had watched the man long enough by now to realize that that was the equivalent of standing up and shouting.
“We can but try,” Snape said at last.
Harry nodded. “Then let’s. I could use more than one ally I could trust.”
Don’t trust him, Malfoy’s voice whispered in the back of his head, while Snape looked briefly away, as if trying to hide how pleased he was. Of course, he could be pleased by what Harry said and still be against him. He might want Harry to trust him if he was planning to betray him, too.
I’ll watch him, Harry thought. But I need a better reason than paranoia to think he’ll turn against me.
Chapter Nine.
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