Chapter Thirty-Two of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- The Keeping of Secrets
Chapter Thirty-One.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (32/?)
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 Thirty-Two--The Telling of Secrets
"You were going to tell me certain things, Harry."
Harry nodded. He'd asked Black if they could use one of the sitting rooms near the top floor of Grimmauld Place, and he'd agreed without even smiling about it. He'd gripped Harry's shoulder when Harry was on his way out of the kitchen, too, as if he approved of what Harry was about to do.
Harry had no idea why Black thought it was his place to approve or disapprove of anything Harry did. But the warmth of the touch seemed to linger anyway.
Professor McGonagall sat in front of him on a couch so gaudy Aunt Petunia would have approved of it, and watched him. There was a steaming cup of tea at her elbow, placed there by a house-elf, but she hadn't touched it so far.
"I thought my parents were dead until I met you," Harry said. "And then I realized they weren't, and I could still get them back. But I had to heal them, because no one else was going to do it. And you talked so much about Transfiguration, and it sounded so powerful, that I decided that was the way to do it."
Professor McGonagall leaned close like she tended to do when she was squinting at mistakes in someone's practical work. For a second, Harry missed Hogwarts fiercely. "You were going to Transfigure...?"
"Their brains."
Professor McGonagall's mouth fell a little open. That did make Harry blink. He'd thought she would immediately tell him how dangerous that was, because she thought everything else he'd done was so dangerous. But she seemed stunned.
"Why did you start with animals?" she finally whispered.
"Because that was a good place to begin," Harry said. "No one would mind if I made animals. They probably wouldn't even notice. And the animals helped me survive and made things better for people, like Dapple did for Neville." He held up his hand and let her see his claws fully for the first time. "Plus, it made for some good experimentation before I began on myself. I needed to know what claws were like before I could do them."
Professor McGonagall shut her eyes and gave a little shuddering breath. "You experimented on yourself."
"Well, at one point I wanted to make a human to experiment on, but I decided I couldn't do it."
Professor McGonagall looked at him a little blankly. "But if you aren't changing yourself anymore and you've decided not to Transfigure humans, then what are you going to do to--help your parents?"
"Black and I captured the Lestranges. I was going to use them." Harry thought of, and then decided not to tell her, that Professor Snape was also maybe a possibility. She had to work with Snape, after all. And she needed to know some things, but not every stray thought that went through Harry's head.
"Harry."
Professor McGonagall actually got on the floor in front of him. Harry watched her in concern, strong enough that a mouse popped its head out of his pocket to see what he needed. Wouldn't she hurt her knees?
"Promise me you won't do that," she whispered. "It would cross a line that shouldn't be crossed. Yes, some of the things you've done so far are illegal, and I am concerned that you reached this level of modifying yourself with so little regard for your life. But nothing you've done is immoral as such, except to people who love you. Don't torture others. Don't let them make you into something you're not."
Harry had to sigh a little. "I think I have to research more about how to Transfigure human brains, Professor. Black already told me that. I don't know enough about my parents. I don't want to bring them back as mindless people who only love me and don't do anything they would want to do."
Professor McGonagall climbed slowly to her feet and reached out to take his hand. She turned it back and forth to look at his claws. "And that's the only reason that you regret what you have become so far."
"Well, Black also told me I was on the path to becoming an animal. He showed me a picture of what could happen if I did that. And then I really wouldn't be able to help my parents anymore."
Professor McGonagall looked as if someone had punched her in the heart. Harry rolled his head and flexed his claws. This was the reason he hated confessing to people. What was wrong with her?
*
It was not as bad as it could have been--for example, if Harry had still believed the things that Black had apparently persuaded him not to believe--but it was bad enough.
He can still sit there and calmly tell me that he planned to experiment on himself.
That, then, was the worst of what the Dursleys had done to Harry: convinced him that he was only worth something in pursuit of a larger goal. It was close to what Augusta had tried to convince Neville of, and only Minerva and some of the other professors who trained Neville speaking up loudly and often had held Augusta back.
What protection had Harry had, with his parents altered beyond recognition and no one close to him who would value his life simply because it was his life? Of course he would decide to risk everything to bring back those he might trust to value him.
Minerva reached out and covered Harry's claws with her fingers, slowly curling them in so that they couldn't damage the skin of his palms. Harry watched her with calm eyes, bright ones, still more animal than human in their lack of fear or understanding.
"I would not want you to do that," she said.
"I know. Because it's wrong."
"Not--everything, Harry. But I wouldn't want you to sacrifice your life in pursuit of your parents' health even if it might not be morally or legally wrong."
That made him blink. Minerva wondered how she had missed it, that brightness, that way Harry had taken so many steps along the feral path. Other adults might not have much reason to be concerned with Harry, but she had. And she could even admit to some jealousy of Black. She ought to have been the one who knew this first, who could confront Harry and make him see sense.
"But everyone loved my parents."
It was Minerva's turn to blink. Her mind hadn't followed Harry's in whatever jump it had made this time. "What difference does that make?"
"They were wonderful people. I've heard that from you. And they had strong friends, or Sirius wouldn't have been willing to die for them and hurt Pettigrew when he found out what happened. And they fought on the right side of the war, which not that many people had the courage to. And I can still see how handsome they were. Or beautiful, I suppose, in my mum's case." Harry frowned, as though he didn't like not being able to apply one word to both his parents. "So why would you be bothered if I sacrificed myself trying to bring them back?"
Minerva made a noise that caused two mice to jump out of Harry's pockets, and reached out, and dragged him against her.
He resisted at first, squirming silently in the circle of her arms, doing his best to escape without actually hurting her. And then he seemed to realize that she wasn't squeezing him, and relaxed, although he still stared at her without understanding.
"Just because they may have been wonderful people," Minerva continued when she was sure she had Harry's attention, "that doesn't mean your life is worth any less. Remember, your parents fought to preserve that life. I know they would have died for you like Neville's parents did if the Lestranges had been there to kill them."
"But if you could have them back..."
"I would give a lot to have James and Lily back. But not you."
*
Harry felt as though Uncle Vernon had struck him. He laid his head back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling, and took a deep, gasping breath.
It made a lot of sense. It explained a lot of Professor McGonagall's actions that he hadn't been sure about, and the way she'd reacted to his confession.
And it made him--it made him feel so strange. As though he was still the boy under the stairs who had waited for someone to turn up and tell him he was special. As though that person had turned up after all, and he'd done something other than immediately decide that he had to heal his parents.
He reached out and put a gentle hand on Professor McGonagall's shoulder. She looked at her with tearful eyes, but smiled and said, "It's true."
"I know it's true," Harry said, because he knew it like he knew the Latin terms for "paw" and "hand" and "claw," deep down in his bones. "I just--didn't know it before."
"Then learn it now." Professor McGonagall stood up, but pulled him with her, so she was still hugging him. Harry hugged her back, or at least leaned against her and put one arm around her. It was hard to say how good he was at this when he had never properly hugged someone before. "I swear to you I would have helped you find some way to heal your parents properly, Harry, without torture and without Transfiguring yourself. If you had come to me, if I'd been watching more closely, if I understood what you needed."
Harry had to ask her something. "What if torture is the only way I can do it?"
"There must be some other way," Professor McGonagall said fiercely. "There must. And now that I know what you want, I can start doing the right research. I have access to a lot of books that a student wouldn't, you know. Some of them even better than those in the Hogwarts library."
Harry paused. He had never considered that. He had been focused on the knowledge that she would stop him if she could; it was the only thing that it made sense for her to do. But if she would help him instead...
"You would really do this?" he asked, testing. If she wanted to save his life so badly, and didn't care about having his parents back the way he did, she might not go all the way, or she might do something that he never would.
"I would."
Professor McGonagall's eyes were steady and shining. Harry found that he did believe her, after all.
And he wasn't alone anymore in his struggle to get his parents back. Black seemed to think he would never accomplish it, so there was no point in helping. There was no one else at school Harry would trust with this, no one who wouldn't be horrified. Until tonight, he would have put Professor McGonagall into that same category.
But she wasn't. That meant he had her at his side.
And the feeling of not being alone anymore lifted some of the weight from his shoulders. Just a little.
*
"It wasn't very wise of you to do this, Severus."
Severus had planned to hold his tongue if Potter or Regulus--of all people, of all former Death Eaters who must have helped Potter figure out part of Severus's plans--came to talk to him. But instead, it was Minerva, and she sat down and gave him the kind of plain disapproving gaze that she had used on him at the High Table when he sneered at Hagrid.
It was too much, even with his wounds healed. His hands were still bound, and he was in a room somewhere in Black's residence, and he had no idea where Macnair or his wand were. He had no idea what the Dark Lord would do to punish him when he learned how Severus had failed.
He turned his head away--
Only to gasp as something stabbed his foot. He whirled around and found that Minerva had changed into a cat, and was scraping her claws slowly down the side of his boot. Severus lost the sneer he'd been planning on. He had seen Minerva blind Macnair in such a form. He could not afford to disregard her.
Minerva changed back with a small wriggle and thrum of magic. "Albums didn't know about this, did he?" she asked.
Perhaps only her uncertainty that it might have been one of Dumbledore's plans had kept her from hurting him the way she had Macnair, Severus realized with a chill. But his best ploy now was to act to appease her, and appeal to her, not shiver from the chill. "No," he said, meeting his gaze. "It was my plan to fool the Dark Lord and draw in the Potter boy the only way I knew how."
"Why did you want him if Albus hadn't commanded you to find him?"
Severus swallowed back the acid retort that apparently Minerva had done more than a little disobeying of Albus's commands herself. Sarcasm wouldn't help him now. "Because he is still Lily's son. And I had no idea where he was, what he was doing. I was surprised he managed to remain alive this long on his own. I wanted to keep him safe."
Minerva looked at him with her eyes shining, a feline reflection in the darkness. Then she frowned and shook her head. "No. I don't believe that."
"What?" Severus had never doubted his ability to fool Minerva before, and it was disconcerting to feel his stomach churning now.
"Maybe I would have, once," said Minerva. "But not now. I saw the spells you set up. You could have ambushed Harry in a different way than taking him blind outside his parents' room. And why were you there with another Death Eater?" She folded her legs beneath her. "Black won't speak up for you. Harry wants you as an experiment. Convince me that you deserve to be let go."
"What kind of an experiment?" Of all the possible ways that Potter might have taken vengeance, Severus had never envisioned that one.
Minerva gave him a smile that would have looked gleeful if it was less condescending. "To practice Transfiguration on."
It made sudden, and awful, sense to Severus. The boy could never have achieved his mastery of Transfiguration only creating animals and adding muscles or claws to his own body. He must have experimented on something, and it only made sense that it was more like "someone." He heard his own breathing turn harsh in his ears, and Minerva nodded in something that might have been satisfaction.
"So. You still have a better chance of convincing me than you do of convincing them." Minerva stared him directly in the eye. "Talk."
Severus bared his teeth. He would at least have the chance to speak to an audience, then, although it was an audience hardly likely to be sympathetic to him. He would take the present and leave the past and the future to themselves for the moment.
"He destroyed Lily."
"You-Know-Who? Rodolphus Lestrange?"
Severus glared. If he could have an audience, he wondered why it had to be one who would make desperate excuses to avoid guessing the obvious. "Of course not. Potter."
"James Potter suffered just as she did--"
"That bloody boy is the one I'm talking about! If Lily had never had him, she would never have been a target!"
Minerva stiffened. Her eyes took on another, different shine, more cat-like and yet more disturbing, and Severus would have shrunk back if the magical, invisible bonds holding him had permitted movement.
"Harry did not destroy Lily," Minerva said quietly. "The Lestranges did, and the war did. What did you intend to do with Harry once you had him, Severus?"
Severus turned his head away. What did it matter? The audience had not worked out in the way that it never did. Once again, as she had when he was still a student, Minerva disbelieved Severus and defended a Potter. "You have no interest in my answer."
"Oh, I do," said Minerva, and the words were near a purr, but Severus could not prevent himself from flinching. "I want to know because I want to know if I should allow Harry to do as he wants, or protect you."
The breath left Severus's lungs. The only thing he could think of was being used as Potions ingredients, cut up and hung, or vivisected. "You--would not let that happen."
"I thought so when I walked into this room, too," Minerva said, right back to that disturbing purr. "And then I heard what you intended to do to Harry, and I decided that now I'm uncertain." She gave him an angelic, hard smile. "Details?"
"I did not know what I would do with him," said Severus, "other than keep him to myself, and decide how to hurt him later."
Minerva waited. Severus kept his head turned away. He knew what he would see reflected if he looked at her, and right now, he couldn’t stand it.
“That wasn’t the right answer,” Minerva said in a strange voice, and stood. “But it was what I needed to know.” She nodded to him and left the room.
Severus sat there, feelings twinges of pain that didn’t all come from his newly-healed leg, and tried to think about whether he had made the situation worse or better.
*
Minerva forced herself to walk slowly towards the bedroom Black had given her as a courtesy. She still burned with anger the way she’d burned with battle-lust a few hours ago.
There was-nothing but hatred in Severus’s voice.
Minerva had pitied him always, had wished many times there was something she could do for him, had tried to think of ways to help him when he returned to the school wrapped up in his bitterness and his pride. She had never seen into his soul, had never known that he was carrying around this immense burden of grief and loathing.
She had liked Severus sometimes, respected him as a Potions master always, even as she deplored the way he taught. She had thought he was the Head of House Slytherin needed.
And now it turned out that was…
A lie. Or worse than a lie. He was willing to blame a child for his parents’ madness, and try to capture him for something that might have ended up worse than death.
Minerva sighed. She couldn’t even think too hard yet about the lies she would use to fool Albus when she slipped back into the school. She was thinking, instead, about the way that this night had changed her so completely.
A pair of conversations, and her motives and her loyalties were overturned.
Because she would still have to explain her absence to Albus. But not before she came up with a way to pledge herself to Harry and help him decide what to do about Severus, utterly and completely.
I’m committed now.
Chapter Thirty-Three.
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