Chapter Twenty-Five of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- The Right Motivation
Chapter Twenty-Four.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (25/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings/Content notes: Angst, canonical child abuse, animal harm in the first chapter, AU, violence, gore, torture, gen (no pairings)
Rating: R (for violence)
Subject: In a world where Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry still grows up with the Dursleys, but he learns to be more private about what matters to him. When McGonagall comes to give him his letter, she also unwittingly gives Harry both a new quest and a new passion: Transfiguration. But while Harry deliberately hides his growing skills, Minerva worries more and more about the mysterious, brilliant student writing to her who may be venturing into dangerous magical territory. Ravenclaw!Harry, Mentor!Minerva.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a fairly long story that will update every Thursday. The first few chapters will take place in Harry’s childhood and first year; then it will skip ahead to his fifth year. It’s heavy on the angst and gore, but heavier on the magical theory.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Five-The Right Motivation
“They’re not going to get out?” Harry stared at the door of the room Black was closing on the Lestranges. It looked like an empty library, and all he’d done was chain them to the shelves. They could get out of the chains, Harry thought. At least, he would try. Even if Black had taken their wands away.
“Those chains won’t open except at the will of the one who put them on,” Black said, absently, gesturing for Harry to follow him. “More of the rather wonderful artifacts that someone in our family came up with.” He paused and glanced back at Harry. “I need to explain some things to you.”
Harry said nothing, but followed. He carried the slim grey cat he’d Transfigured Bellatrix’s wand into. The mice he’d created from her fingers had run off and wouldn’t come back, but the cat hadn’t gone far. She rode his shoulder now and considered Cross with a faint growl bubbling in her throat.
Cross only padded behind Harry, with the patient look of a cat who knew there would eventually be food. And maybe even explanations.
Black took Harry to yet another room he hadn’t been to, one that was decorated with the Black coat of arms on every piece of furniture from the imposing dark desk to the chairs that stood in front of it. The legs and arms of the chairs were sculpted like diving hippogriffs, probably by the same artists who had made the dragon sconces in the Dark Manse. Harry sat down in one of them, the grey cat on his lap, and considered Black.
Black actually wandered about for a bit before sitting behind the desk, facing Harry. He looked more uncertain than Harry had ever seen him.
“I was like you.”
“A Transfiguration master?” was the only thing Harry could think of to say after a few minutes had passed in silence.
“No. Obsessed with one branch of magic.” Black took out his wand and stared at the shiny dark wood of it as if it held an answer. “Dark Arts, in my case.”
Harry chose to say nothing. Black could think they were alike all he wanted. It might lower his guard, in the end, when Harry wanted to escape. People who looked at you and saw their worst nightmare or some kind of kin were prone to ignoring reality, in Harry’s experience.
“It took a sharper lesson than it should have to snap me out of that,” Black said softly, and put his wand down in the center of the desk. Then he looked at Harry, and that might have been his first serious expression since Harry had entered Grimmauld Place. “I nearly died pursuing one of the Dark Lord’s goals. Then I realized I wanted to do something besides just cast Dark Arts spells all my life, no matter how much they satisfied me.”
He sat up and stared at Harry. Harry only looked back. He wasn’t sure what lesson he was supposed to take away from this conversation, except that Black had been a Death Eater and Harry trusted him less than ever.
“By the time I managed to drag myself out of the coma I’d fallen into,” said Black, “the war was nearly over, Longbottom had killed the Dark Lord, and my brother was dead. My parents-they didn’t draw close to me the way I’d thought they might, even though I was the only son they had left. I think my mother never really forgave me for waking up from my obsession with the Dark Arts.”
“That’s very interesting,” said Harry, the same kind of polite lie he’d learned to give the Dursleys back when they had more power, “but it has nothing to do with me.”
“I thought I would rescue you,” said Black with a sigh. “I haven’t had that much to engage me ever since I finally sorted out the financial mess my parents made of the Black investments. I’ve had pets. They bored me. I’ve had lovers. They bored me. I’ve made alliances, but no one really wants to be my ally for long.”
I wonder why, Harry thought, and Black gave a soft chuckle, perhaps at the contempt on his face.
“Yes, you could say I brought it on myself.” He shrugged, making his robes rustle. “The only thing I haven’t tried is getting married and having children, but there’s no one I would want to marry me who would take me, and vice versa. And then you came along. A child I have some connection to. A slight blood connection, a stronger connection because I was Sirius’s brother and you were his godson.”
“You thought I was like you,” said Harry, and then cursed himself for speaking.
“Yes,” said Black, with a nod. “I thought I could give you the same kind of lesson that I received, but not as sharp. I thought we would confront my dear cousin and those in-laws she brought into the family, and we would duel, and you’d probably get a bit scraped up because all you know how to use in battle is Transfiguration, and they would escape.”
“You took them easily enough.”
“The spell I cast before they entered the room. The one that looked like smoke in the air. It meant they couldn’t dodge a simple Stunner once they breathed it in. It slows down their reflexes relative only to that spell. I used it because I thought we might be in extremis, and have to flee with blood pouring down our faces and leave them there.”
“You never intended for me to succeed at all,” Harry said. It was a strange, numbing realization, like standing in the path of a Stunner cast by someone who hadn’t got the charm right yet.
“I thought there was no possible way you could. And I thought the lesson you would learn by failing more important than success.”
“You aren’t an ally to me.”
“I underestimated you.” Black pressed a hand to his heart, and that stupid grin flashed again. It was the grin Harry had seen in some photographs of Sirius in the Prophet, but on Black’s face, he could only hate it. “As for not an ally...Harry, I’m hurt. Who’s willing to keep his own cousin and in-laws cooped up in a room until he hears what you have planned for them?” He leaned forwards and lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you know.”
Harry studied him, trying to understand. He thought Black’s confession was honest as far as it went, but on the other hand, how could Black know himself? How could Harry trust someone who hid behind mockery so much?
“Tell me this,” Harry said. “If I’d failed to capture the Lestranges and also failed to learn your lesson, what would you do with me?”
Black watched him. The humor had left his eyes. Harry wished he could trust that. Someone who knew as many spells as Black did and could be dangerous, too, was someone he could learn from. But Black was too likely to turn everything Harry did say into a joke.
“Teach you again. Another way.”
“You must have seen that I’m happy the way I am,” Harry said. He stopped, because his words did have an echo like a snarl to them that he’d never heard before. He shrugged and kept on going when he noticed the odd way Black watched him. “Or at least, I can achieve more than you thought and keep going even when someone tries to stop me. Why won’t you let me go?”
“At the moment, I doubt you want to go anywhere. Bellatrix is the key to your heart.” Black sighed a little. “If you only knew how true that was for all the men.”
And once again, Black had changed a potentially serious discussion into a farce. Harry stood and shook his head at him when Black opened his mouth. “I will find a way to take them from you if you don’t give them to me. You have a day to make your decision.”
“I don’t accept that you have the right to dictate threats like that to me. There are people who would. But I’m not one of them.”
“Take it or leave it,” Harry replied, and slipped out of the study. The grey cat leaped down in front of him, hissed at Cross, and led the way towards the bedroom Black had given him with her tail held high.
Harry felt comforted as he looked at the twilight out of the windows later. One more night, and dawn, and noon, and then he would have the answer and, most likely, be free of Black forever. He couldn’t believe the man cared enough about his cousin to stand against Harry for her sake, and he had proven he didn’t have any moral reasons.
People are pretty simple to deal with, once you know how to confront them.
*
Minerva waited until Neville was slumped on the seat in front of her before she said quietly, “I spent too long ignoring one student’s torment until it was too late and he wouldn’t let me help anymore. I’m not going to do it again. Take the bandage off your hand.”
Neville jumped as though she had Transfigured his bandage into a poisonous plant. Well, no, Minerva thought a moment later, as she watched the way he cradled his hand. A poisonous plant, he might have had more luck with.
“I can’t let you just--”
“Why not?” Minerva reached for the Murtlap she’d gone to Severus to get earlier that day. If she asked in a certain tone, Severus would grunt and give her what she wanted with no questions. She didn’t think it was her imagination that he’d done that more often since Harry fled. “I know you’re in pain, Mr. Longbottom. I know Umbridge’s detentions are the things causing it. Take the bandage off your hand.”
Neville tensed, but finally did start unwinding the bandage. Minerva’s heart was sore as she looked at the red lines scrawled on the back of his hand, in writing she knew so well from the extra essays she’d assigned him on the practice of Transfiguration. I must not tell lies.
“How did you know?” Neville mumbled, keeping his head ducked and peering at Minerva from under his eyelashes in a way that made her heart worse. “I thought we were so careful about keeping it hidden…”
“You were trying too hard,” said Minerva, as smoothly as she could, and reached for the Murtlap. “I knew you had a secret. And from there, it only involved listening to some of the school gossip.”
“I didn’t know professors did that.”
Minerva had to smile at his gaping mouth and wide eyes. “We do. How do you think we seem so omniscient?”
Neville chuckled weakly, but even a weak chuckle was better than none at all. Minerva smeared and patted and finally cast the spell Severus had told her about, the one that would work with the Murtlap to make sure there was no chance of scarring. When she finished casting it, the bright red words had turned to indistinguishable white swirls.
“Thanks, Professor McGonagall. But she’ll just do it again. She said I had to keep doing it until I stopped talking about V-Voldemort being back.”
Minerva settled more firmly back in her chair. She knew what Albus would say about her next decision. He had told them all to keep quiet for the moment, to go along with what Umbridge and the Ministry were doing. Let them interfere on the surface of Hogwarts, while the far more important depths, the Order of the Phoenix and the fight against You-Know-Who, happened out of their sight.
But Minerva had worried before that Albus’s policy might cause collateral damage, and now she had proof of that that was simple and undeniable.
She swallowed once, and then made the motion in what she knew was the right direction, the one she should have been following all along if she was serious about being a good Head of House as well as a good professor.
“There is something we can do, Mr. Longbottom,” she said, and Neville sat up, probably because she’d used his last name instead of his first one. “We can speak to your grandmother.”
Neville’s face turned pale. “B-but, she’ll say, she’ll talk about how I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“We will explain the situation,” said Minerva firmly. She had dealt with Augusta before, in the context of Neville’s tutoring and how she could not expect him to be exactly like his father. “We’ll explain about how Professor Dumbledore is-busy right now.” She knew why Albus was keeping his eyes and attention away from Neville, his fears about the connection Neville shared with You-Know-Who, but she couldn’t countenance it any longer. “And she will do something. She’s a wonderful woman for doing things, your grandmother.”
Neville’s fingers curled around the chair cushion so hard that Minerva was certain he would refuse for a second. But then he looked up at her and whispered, “You’ll really help?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t before.” I didn’t help Harry soon enough, either. I let myself be put off with platitudes and reassurances and explanations of how hard it would be. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
“Okay. Good.”
Neville had tears at the corners of his eyes. Minerva looked aside and politely pretended she didn’t see them until she was sure he’d knuckled them all away. Then she cleared her throat. “Would you prefer I Floo your grandmother, or start with an owl?”
*
“Your answer, Black,” Harry said, as he walked into the study where the man sat staring out the window at some black roses that grew there.
It was nearly dusk. The lowering sun stabbed rays in through the window, and Harry regretted he hadn’t given himself even more cat-like features. It would have meant he could see the expression on Black’s face more clearly as he turned around and studied Harry where he stood near the doors.
“Something doesn’t make sense to me,” Black said.
Harry smiled indulgently. He’d left no way out of the trap he’d laid for Black, and he supposed he could be kinder than Snape. Neville would probably approve of being kind, he thought, and so would Professor McGonagall. “What were you thinking of, then?”
“You said you wanted to destroy my cousin and my in-laws.” Black stood up and moved a little so the edge of his face was in shadow and Harry still had trouble seeing him. Harry turned smoothly to keep him in sight. If Black thought he could gain an advantage over Harry and attack him this way, he was mistaken.
He might live long enough to learn how mistaken.
“Yes,” Harry said, seeing no harm in the simple answer.
“But you’re driven by purposes,” Black said. “And if revenge was your motive, that leaves one important question unanswered.”
A shiver, a ripple, a whisper of danger passed down Harry’s spine. He kept his face smooth and bland, only shifting once more when Black did so he was still in a good guard position. “Yes?”
“If you wanted to destroy them all along, and that was the only thing you wanted,” Black whispered, “why did you choose to become good in Transfiguration instead of dueling, or Defense? Those obsessions would have made more sense than Transfiguration did.”
“Professor McGonagall was the one who first met me at my Muggle relatives’ house and told me about the wizarding world,” Harry said, unhesitating. “She told me right away that she was the Transfiguration teacher, and what that meant. I thought it sounded fascinating.” He shrugged a little. “If I’d met Snape first and he was actually inclined to consider me something other than a spoiled brat, I probably would have specialized in Potions.”
“No,” said Black, after a long silence in which Harry could have heard insects marching across the floor. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe whatever you like.” Harry was beginning to wish he had brought Yar with him. He hadn’t because he had thought Black didn’t have any way out. He would either lose control of Bellatrix or he would lose control of Harry.
Now he wished he’d remembered how mental Black was. He might find a way out by being bored, or joking, or just not caring about the things Harry had thought he cared about.
“I will,” said Black, with a nod, as if Harry had been serious. He folded his arms on the back of the chair he’d been sitting in and stared at Harry. At least his face was a little easier to focus on now, with the light and the shadow stabilizing. “And I think that you wouldn’t have chosen Transfiguration to defend yourself and get revenge. And would you have focused on revenge for five years before you made a move? I don’t think so. You’re impulsive. It would have happened before this.”
“Your cousin and your in-laws were in Azkaban until this year. There was no point in me trying to punish them until they escaped.”
“And I don’t think you have the patience to wait around for them to escape, and sharpen your skills just in case you get the chance to take revenge. Thank you for confirming my theory that something else must have happened to make you focus on Transfiguration.”
Harry stiffened, and knew Black saw it, and hated himself for it. But he couldn’t retreat. He had pressed Black to this, and he had to stay.
“Are you going to let me have revenge on Bellatrix? Or am I going to take them away from you?”
“It made me wonder what other motive you might have. What’s the only thing that’s as important to you as revenge?”
“I can summon my animals. My eagle has been trained to crush wand hands.”
“And then it occurred to me. It should have occurred to me the first time you mentioned it, actually. Your parents.”
Harry stiffened even more, and Black nodded and continued in a thoughtful voice. “But there are still things about that that didn’t make sense. Why would Transfiguration help your parents? It would have made more sense for you to learn Healing and try to figure out some miraculous cure to the Cruciatus Curse.
“But then I thought about it even more. After all, no Healers have managed to do anything for any kind of madness like the kind your parents have, whether it was produced by the Cruciatus Curse or not. The Janus Thickey Ward exists for a reason. What would you do with Healing magic? Only replicate their failures. But with Transfiguration, you might be able to change their brains back to what they were-”
Harry snapped towards Black, traveling fast. He wasn’t thinking much about what he would do when he landed. He simply leaped. He had claws, and he had enormous jumping muscles, and he had the advantage of surprise. He was going to take the knowledge from Black, and if that meant doing it by closing his eyes forever, that was what he would do.
He slammed into a barrier he hadn’t even seen. Of course, when he reached out and scraped his claws down it, his not seeing it was understandable. It was solid, but invisible.
“Yes,” said Black, from the other side of the wall. Now that it had been disturbed, Harry could see little shimmers running away from it, distorting the outline of Black’s face. He just looked regretful, the way Professor McGonagall had when she realized she was too late to help Harry with the Dursleys. “I thought you might react that way.”
Harry said nothing. He simply slowed his breathing. He had to get Black close to him, take him off his guard again, or he would get nothing done. He tried to stand up and move away as naturally as he could, and not look resentful.
“This is why it would behoove you to learn some of the other branches of magic,” Black added. “There are charms that would reveal barriers like that to you the instant you come into a room. Or you could have cast a spell that would alert you to Dark Arts-which this is. But you chose not to do that.” He glided his eyes over Harry’s face. “I wish you’d learned it already.”
Harry said nothing. He was considering the barrier and ways he could slip around it. What was the best way to make Black lower it? Pretend Harry thought he was right and he would cooperate? But Black knew him better than that. He might be better advised to let it go for now, and then kill Black later.
Because he knew he couldn’t let Black survive, carrying knowledge like this.
“I wish you’d learned a lot of things,” Black went on, sighing a little. “Because I don’t know if I’m up to the task of teaching you to appreciate the finer things in life.”
Best respond now, or he might think that I’m stupid and stunned enough to agree with him. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” Harry murmured, and moved a little to the side. He would feign leaning against the wall and sulking. “Most people would say that Dark Arts aren’t among the finer things in life.”
“But knowing how to protect yourself is. And how to live after you’ve achieved a goal.” Black pivoted to face him. “What did you plan to do after you healed your parents?”
Harry struggled in silence a moment, and then acknowledged that he’d better go along with this, and accept that Black knew for now. “Live with them.”
Black shook his head. “And you thought your childhood and your efforts to learn Transfiguration to this level would leave you unaffected? You thought your parents would cheer when they found out what you did?”
Harry met him stare for stare. “They won’t be able to cheer at all if I don’t do it. They won’t know anything one way or the other.”
“From everything I know about Lily and James Potter, they were staunch Gryffindors. They would probably be horrified to hear that you knew anything about Dark Arts, let alone that you practiced them.”
“Transfiguration isn’t Dark-”
“The kind you practice is considered so. Because it degrades the human mind to a bestial level. It’s on the level of turning someone into an animal and leaving them there. That doesn’t become better or less wasteful because you’re doing it to yourself instead of someone else.”
“I’m doing what I have to do,” said Harry, and was inwardly proud of himself for how calmly he’d spoken. “You’re not being called on to do anything about it.”
“But I am, because you were my brother’s godson.”
“You ignored me for fourteen years.” Even as he said it, Harry was wondering how fair the accusation was. It could also be applied to Lupin, and Harry had been willing to deal with him if need be.
But Black was an outsider, someone who hadn’t been his parents’ friend. Or even Sirius’s friend, it sounded like, not by the end of his life. Harry didn’t see what Black’s feelings of “duty” had to do with it, when they hadn’t been very strong.
“I don’t like taking on duties or interfering when it’s not amusing,” Black said, with a sigh. “And this isn’t going to be amusing, because it’s obvious that you’re obsessed with your parents, and-”
“I am not obsessed.”
“It’ll take a lot of work to make you think of something else. Probably even to get you thinking about another branch of magic. I’m glad you had the revenge to distract you, but that’s not enough. I wonder what will be,” Black added softly, eyes lingering on Harry for a moment before he turned away.
“You can’t decide to do this,” Harry said.
Black shrugged. “I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t on the verge of becoming feral. But that puts a new spin on things, you know. It would be so tiresome if you slid into mindlessness and someone tracked you back to me. And thanks to Augusta knowing that you’ve been staying with me, they could, you know.”
“It isn’t your concern what I do to heal my parents.”
“What were you planning to do? Transfigure your brain the way that you’ve already Transfigured your body?”
“Experiment on your cousin and in-laws.”
Black stared at him in silence. Harry looked back. After all the things Black had believed-and been right about-when it concerned him, it was faintly amusing that the man would pause before this as if it was an unbridgeable chasm.
“That’s-worse than I thought,” said Black, and he sat down again. He shook his head. “But part of this was my fault for expecting you to be normal.”
Harry simply held up his hands, so Black would remember his claws. However, he could feel his head reeling with mild shock. He wouldn’t have thought Black would admit he was wrong about anything, let alone something like this, that might make him let Harry go.
“The Muggles damaged you,” Black murmured. “So did losing your parents. And whatever people did or didn’t do for you at Hogwarts.” He lifted his head and looked at Harry with the kind of piercing determination that made him uneasy when Professor McGonagall did it. “You don’t have to live your life only pursuing a cure for your parents.”
“I don’t have to. I choose to.”
“And I ask you again, what are you going to do when you heal them?”
“I don’t expect to do it quickly. This is a search that might consume most of the rest of my life.”
Black shook his head a little as if he still didn’t understand that. “But what happens if you do it when you’re seventeen? There’s years, decades, of life still ahead of you. And what happens if you do it when you’re thirty? Then you’re not a child anymore. Simply living with them and depending on them wouldn’t make much sense.”
Harry felt as though someone had run a comb across his mind. He shook his head. “I will always live with them. I could live with them.”
“You could,” Black agreed. “But I think you would find it strange. And so would they. They grew up during a war, remember. They became used to doing things on their own quickly, and James’s parents died while he was still young, so there was never a chance that he could live with them for years as an adult. I don’t think Lily going back to her Muggle family was an option, either. They might ask you questions about your choices. They might want you to do other things. What are you going to tell them?”
There was sweat all over Harry’s claws. He frowned. They would be far less effective weapons if they slipped when he turned them on his target.
“Harry,” Black whispered.
“I don’t know what I’ll tell them,” said Harry, and it was the absolute truth. “I don’t know what kinds of questions they would ask. It depends on how their brains regrow.”
Black stood up as though someone had hit him with the Blasting Curse. Harry found himself dropping into a tense crouch, even though realistically he knew he would have had to know about the spell before it could hit. His senses were too good.
“Then-if you don’t know, don’t you see what you’re doing?” whispered Black breathlessly.
“Since you’re so good at dipping your nose into other people’s business, Black, why don’t you tell me?”
“It means that you don’t know what they’re really like. As people, I mean. You probably didn’t even know that James’s parents died when he was young until I told you. You aren’t interested in them, not really. You’re only interested in creating images of your desires who will do exactly as they’re told.”
Harry actually surged forwards a step before he remembered the Dark Arts barrier and that he would simply crash into it. He controlled himself and spoke with as much ice in his tone as he could. “Spoken like someone who’s never known the love of a real family.”
“Neither have you.”
“My parents love me-”
“Loved you, I think. I don’t know if the kind of state they’re in lets them know love at all. And think about it this way, Harry. Do you want to bring them back when they might only be reflections of your desires, not real people?”
Harry struck out again, and then pulled his hand back before it could hit the barrier. He could feel the breath in his lungs pulsing and pulsing and pulsing. Someone had reached in and gripped his lungs with an invisible hand, he thought. Maybe another of those spells Black was talking about. It was hard to breathe, hard to talk.
He turned his head away, but Black went on talking, relentlessly. “You need to think about this, Harry. You need to decide who you’re going to bring back, the people you can barely remember, or the people you’re going to create.”
“I don’t want to create them,” Harry whispered. That would be worthless. He wanted real people who would love him because they wanted him, not people charmed to do so.
Like the way your animals love you?
Harry shook his head. No, that was different. He was thinking strangely. He was thinking the way Black wanted him to think. And he had to stop, because that way was worthless.
He stepped back and let his hand rest for a moment on the mice that squirmed in his pocket to make himself think of something other than what Black was saying. It was the way he’d sometimes had to imagine he was holding animals when he was with the Dursleys. Well, except for those three days when he’d had his kitten.
“You know what I’m saying is the truth,” Black said softly, never moving. His eyes and his words seemed to be enough to pierce Harry, even as he sought for more pure, clear thoughts. “You must have wondered it yourself. Even if you could heal the damage, that wouldn’t bring back memories or personalities.”
“Of course it would, if I could change their brains into what they were before they were cursed!”
“But how could you do that? How could you ever know what was their brains and what were your wishes?”
Harry struggled in silence. Then he said, as calmly as he could, “I’ll talk more to their friends and get them to tell me.”
“What friends? Remus Lupin is the only surviving person who was close to them. Frank and Alice Longbottom are dead-as the whole wizarding world knows. My brother’s dead, and Peter Pettigrew. James’s parents are gone, and Lily’s, or you would have been left with them. And a lot of members of the Order of the Phoenix who fought in the first war are dead, too.” Black spread his hands. “I’m probably one of the few who could give you detailed information. And your aunt, and Snape. Whose perspectives are distorted.”
“So’s yours,” Harry whispered. But his breathing was fast. If he went to Lupin and asked questions, and it turned out that Lupin didn’t know, or couldn’t remember…
Now the task loomed before him like a black stone wall, ready to fall over on his head at any moment. How could he have been so stupid as not to realize this before?
“You weren’t stupid,” Black said, and his voice was dim and faint and far away, somewhere on the other side of a tunnel. “You were simply obsessed. And when you’re obsessed, you don’t think straight.”
Harry turned. In the back of his head, he was going to walk out of the room and find a quiet corner where he could sit with Cross or Yar and think. He was going to do it. He could feel his legs moving.
And then he was falling, so distantly and so fast that he couldn’t save himself. What he did think he heard, oddly enough, was a sharp shattering sound, as though Black had broken another mirror over him.
*
Severus staggered back from the cauldron. He was gasping, and not only from the splash of cold liquid he’d taken to his face. Most of it was simply the shock of the delicate spell/potion combination breaking.
He’d created a potion that would let him scry for Potter, since the demands from the Dark Lord were becoming insistent. It ought to have been simple enough. Potter had no defenses against scrying that Severus knew of. Perhaps it would be possible to do something with esoteric enough Transfiguration, but even a fifteen-year-old genius could not have discovered secrets to his chosen art that no book or elder talked about.
Severus had thought he would either see the boy huddled in freezing woods somewhere, or dead. It was the only explanation for how no word had come to Albus about him.
Instead, he’d run straight into powerful anti-scrying wards. When Severus had got close to the boy’s location-which itself wasn’t much of a clue, because there had been a rushing of darkness and light that was the earth and sky, not identifiable places-then the wards had essentially reached out through the potion and punched him in the nose.
Severus sat up slowly, rubbing his face. He had a bloody nose, but the consequences could have been worse. He stared at the cauldron, which had a huge crack down the side of it, and shook his head slowly.
Potter had found either powerful allies somewhere or shelter in an abandoned house that still had wards on it. Severus was not sure what it was, and not sure how he could determine that.
But he would have to do something. The Dark Lord would demand a report.
Severus closed his eyes. Even gone from the school, Potter causes me trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Six.
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