Chapter Forty-Two of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- When He's At Home
Chapter Forty-One.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (42/?)
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 Forty-Two-When He’s At Home
Severus tensed as he heard the door scraping open. He’d known something was happening last night, with the noises and the feeling of powerful magic rushing past him, but he hadn’t known what it was, and he had stayed silent and still in the center of his cell, ready to move.
He hoped Lucius would come through the door. Or even the Dark Lord, come to rescue him from the mad child who called himself Lily’s son.
But, of course, it was the mad child, and this time, he came alone. Severus found himself flowing to his feet before he really thought about it. He could get his hands around that slim throat, he could take-
“I wouldn’t,” said Potter.
There was a movement near his feet, and Severus glanced down, expecting to see one of the insufferable brat’s pets. Then he froze. There was a small snake coiled there, tongue flickering out to catch his scent, fangs poised less than an inch from Severus’s boot.
“A krait,” said Severus in flat disbelief. He eased back and sat down on his pallet again, staring at the appalling brat. “Not even you can handle one.”
“If I’d made it or found it naturally, no, of course not. But the animals I create out of the Wild obey me.” The boy put his hand down, and the krait slithered over to him and up his arm to his shoulder, coiling neatly around his neck. Severus stared and squinted and waited for the moment the fangs would plunge into Potter and pump him full of venom. It didn’t happen. “Now. I want to ask you some questions about Lord Dudders’s snake.”
Severus hated that the brat’s name for the Dark Lord could make him flinch in anticipation of pain nearly as much as the word “Voldemort” could. But he only shook his head. “I know nothing about it.”
“You must know something. You spent long enough as a Death Eater. And Lord Dudders sent her to attack the house last night along with several Death Eaters-”
“If the Dark Lord knows where we are, you are dead.” And probably I am, too, now that I no longer bear his Mark.
Potter gave a slight smile that was more terrifying than anything Severus had seen on his face before. “No, I don’t think so. But the snake was hit by a Killing Curse during the attack, and yet she survived it. I want to know why.”
Severus felt his mind blanking. He knew the Dark Lord had laid powerful protections on Nagini, but nothing could block the Killing Curse. It was one reason why, despite the protections, the Dark Lord had always kept her at his side. Sending her to raid a house was entirely out of character.
“I don’t believe she’s here,” Severus said, the first words that came to him. “I don’t believe you captured anyone else.”
Potter’s eyes widened until Severus thought he would drown in glistening green. But Potter didn’t ask him why he thought that. He simply turned and faced the door of Severus’s cell, and his eyes closed as he concentrated.
Severus began edging nearer once again. Yes, there was the krait, but it went on staring at the boy and never once looked Severus’s way. If it was an unnatural creature made to be loyal, then it might be incapable of attacking without Potter directing it to.
He stopped because he heard a voice. It was tired and hoarse and sounded as if it came from the far wall of Severus’s cell.
“Severus? Are you there?”
Severus had indeed been a Death Eater of the Dark Lord for a long time, and he had heard that voice in enough battle-weary and blood-soaked situations to recognize it now. It was Lucius’s voice.
“I am here,” Severus said, turning away from Potter. He wondered if this was some test the Dark Lord had devised, or perhaps Black had managed to disguise his voice. He would know what Lucius’s tones sounded like, too, after all. “Where are you?”
“In a cell. The Potter boy woke me up through my Dark Mark to speak to you. He controls it somehow, I don’t know how. He wants me to soothe your doubts. Let me do that, so I can sleep again.”
The hairs on Severus’s arms rose, accompanied by a sharp tingling. He had never heard Lucius sound so defeated, not even the time they had briefly spent in Ministry captivity before their trials as Death Eaters. There was something more than unnatural about this.
“You don’t want to sleep, Lucius,” Severus said, switching his attention back to Potter. He still had his eyes closed and his head bowed and a small, serene smile on his face, as if he was the one asleep. Severus slid a step closer. “You want to wake and seize your vengeance. Or are you going to pretend that you’re happy about what the boy has done to you?”
“Not happy. I just don’t have any choice. His eagle crushed my right hand and his wasps stung my eye and his spiders bit me, and now he controls the Dark Mark.”
Severus’s hands rippled open from the fists he had made them into. “What kind of poison from the spiders, Lucius?” he asked urgently. There was no doubt in his mind that if Potter made spiders to attack Death Eaters, they would be venomous ones. “What kind of treatment are you getting?”
“Black widow spiders. And I don’t think-I don’t think I received any treatment?” Lucius’s voice sounded like he was stumbling with tiredness. “But someone must have cast healing spells or used potions on me, because I’m still alive.”
“Can you break out?”
But Lucius didn’t respond, and, turning back to Potter, Severus realized his eyes were open again and he was shaking his head a little, in time with the motion of his hand that stroked the krait on his shoulder. “As if I’m about to let you tell each other that. Now. I want you to tell me some more about Nagini.”
“What have you done?” Severus was choking on fury. Even assuming that Black and Minerva had helped Potter-which he had to assume, he could not think otherwise in the face of his fear-he still should not have survived the battle, should not have taken an experienced Death Eater and fighter like Lucius Malfoy bloody captive.
“Taken several Death Eaters captive and captured Nagini. Now, tell me about her.”
“I will not.”
Potter watched him with infuriatingly blank eyes for a long minute, then shrugged. “I did tell Black your usefulness was coming to an end, but he didn’t believe me. He thought you would do anything to save your own hide.” He tapped the krait’s head with a finger, and it slid smoothly down his arm and dropped to the floor and made for Severus.
Severus leaped backwards, but even if he got up onto the table, he knew there was really nowhere to hide. The krait would simply climb the table leg and come after him. And now it was drawing its head back and baring its fangs, and Severus had no bezoar or other ingredients here that would let him brew an antivenin. They were all in the lab.
“Wait!”
Severus hated the croak of his voice, but it was apparently what Potter had been waiting for, because he called the krait back with a crook of his finger, and nodded to Severus, eyes patiently gleaming.
Severus still hated himself for succumbing, but he kept his eyes down and told himself it was no worse than turning to Dumbledore to get out of Azkaban. “The Dark Lord values Nagini highly. However, he never had her with him during the first war. It’s only during the second that I’ve seen her. He once said something about meeting her in Albania. He can speak with her in Parseltongue, of course. He has laid protections on her that should shield her from every spell but the Killing Curse.”
“And I know from Lucius that he didn’t use the Killing Curse on her on purpose,” said Potter, a soft, wondering tone to his voice. “Yet she survived it. But Dudders didn’t expect her to…” He let his voice trail off, while Severus tried not to let his shock show that Lucius had been the one to use the Killing Curse on Nagini.
Perhaps Potter was already controlling him then.
Severus couldn’t help shooting a grateful glance at his own blank arm. He had hated it when Potter removed the Dark Mark from him-an unpermitted, violating alteration to his body-but at least it meant his will was his own.
“There must have been something else he added,” Potter said. “Something that protected her in ways he didn’t anticipate. Huh. How extraordinary.” He shook his head in a meditative way, and then nodded at Severus and added, “I’ll have to secure the information somehow. Perhaps the snake can tell me.” He made his way to the door with startling abruptness, snapping his fingers to call the krait after him.
“You speak Parseltongue?”
“How else can I command snakes?” Potter asked, with a smile that truly made Severus wish he had carried through on his plan to strangle the brat, and then closed the cell door behind him. Severus hurried to it at once, but heard the sound of the locking spells engaging, more powerful a deterrent than any merely physical lock.
Especially the way Black casts them.
Severus retreated to his pallet in the middle of the floor and did his best to think. He had to choose his allegiance, and carefully. If this animal-obsessed boy could control those with the Dark Mark, then Severus’s only true option was Dumbledore. He would have to spin his lies carefully to convince the Headmaster to accept him back, but he could do it.
He had to devise a way to get out of here. He had to flee. He had to-
He had to find some way to get revenge on Potter.
That was the rub. Every plan Severus had for leaving meant he would probably never come into contact with Potter again, except perhaps on the battlefield. And he could not bear to leave a wrong unrighted.
Perhaps, though, Potter would slip up. That Black had let him come here alone argued his guardian’s restrictions were loosening. Severus only needed the boy to visit him once and be off-guard to seize a chance.
Clear as a pearl, a plan came to him. It would take time, but so did almost everything worthwhile in Severus’s life.
I only need to pretend regret.
*
“I think we need him. He’s the only one on our side who can understand Parseltongue.” For some reason, Harry smiled. “No matter how much I might wish I could understand it.”
Minerva sighed. On the one hand, she disliked that this was the reason Harry had decided they had to bring Neville out of Hogwarts. Harry called himself the boy’s friend, but seemed more concerned about his own safety and the safety of the people here than Neville’s.
On the other hand, Harry had certainly permitted Mr. Boot to help with his research and answered his questions to the point that Minerva no longer saw the anger she had become accustomed to in her Ravenclaw student’s face. Perhaps Harry would have been more forthcoming to and interested in Neville if he’d pushed Harry harder.
“I don’t see that what happened to the Dark Lord’s snake really matters,” said Regulus lazily. Minerva turned to eye him. She always did when he sounded lazy, which was dangerous. Regulus had his hands folded behind his head and his steady gaze aimed up at the ceiling. They were in the library where Harry had done most of his research again, tall dark shelves surrounding them. “You’re focusing too much on a minor matter, Harry.”
“You think that coming back to life from the Killing Curse was minor?”
“We only have Malfoy’s word that he actually hit the snake. He might have been mistaken. It was dark, and he was in a lot of pain.”
Mr. Boot was hiding a grin, Minerva noted. Maybe it was simply at the way Harry was bristling up and stalking towards Black like a predatory hedgehog.
“Consider this,” Harry said, and his words dragged and hissed as if he really were capable of speaking to snakes himself. “We only have a story of one other being surviving a Killing Curse in the last decade.”
A long pause, and Regulus finally lowered his gaze so he could stare at Harry. The stare was mostly unimpressed. “You’re talking about Longbottom.”
“Of course I mean Neville. And no one really knows why it happened, even though Professor McGonagall’s told me about all the magical theorists who have worked on it in the last fifteen years. Here’s a chance to find out. Maybe we can find something to use against Lord Dudders. He got defeated the last time Neville survived it…”
“You don’t care about defeating the Dark Lord,” said Regulus, even though he looked truly snared from the expression on his face. “You only care about your parents.”
“But what I felt is a gap in the Wild,” said Harry.
Another pause. Even Mr. Boot was frowning now, Minerva noted, which meant this was something Harry hadn’t explained to him in some private midnight conference when intelligent people were in bed. But it also seemed as though Regulus had reached his limit of asking questions for the day, so it was up to Minerva to fold her arms and say, “Explain it in a way normal people can understand, Harry.”
Harry flashed her a full grin that was so startling Minerva still hadn’t recovered when he started to speak. “I mean that usually, I can feel the Wild as one smooth-blanket, I suppose, or cloth. There isn’t anything that lacks it. There are so many living things around that even a house doesn’t feel empty.”
Minerva nodded encouragingly. That was similar to some theories of the Wild she had read long before she started teaching Harry.
“But there are voids in the Wild. There was one inside Bellatrix’s Dark Mark. That was one reason I could reach out to it and touch it, because it felt so different from the way other people’s did. And the snake has a void inside her. As if there was a part of her that died, but only part.”
“Perhaps that’s what the Dark Lord’s been doing,” said Regulus, and there was enough enlightenment on his face that Minerva suspected he’d been drawn back into the conversation despite himself. “Messing around with soul magic.”
“How is soul magic different from the Wild?”
“The Wild affects life, as you know,” Minerva said quietly, after a glance at Regulus to make sure he didn’t want to handle the question. “The force that stirs limbs and makes a heart beat. It has nothing to do with what comes after. Soul magic does.”
“But how can he even touch the soul? If it’s immaterial?”
“Oh, there are spells that affect the soul,” said Regulus. “And deeds. Murdering someone splits the soul.”
“Then why would anyone sign up to be in the Death Eaters?” Harry asked, making one of his leaps of logic that sometimes bewildered Minerva. “If it’s dangerous to them because murder splits the soul…”
“Most of the time, it doesn’t have any perceptible effect on their behavior,” said Regulus, with a shrug that Minerva felt was careless of him. “They’re already the kind of people who would commit a murder, so if it makes them a little more sadistic or prone to madness, no one’s going to notice.”
“Like your cousin?”
“Bella’s soul was always a shriveled, tattered thing, so you’re right. We wouldn’t have much noticed the difference when she committed her first murder.”
“This is leading us away from the Wild and the gap you were trying to explain to us,” Minerva interjected. She was uneasy with the thought of soul magic, less because it bothered her if Black practiced it than because Harry looked fascinated. “You think that perhaps a piece of the snake has died, Harry?”
“I would say her soul, but I don’t even know if animals have souls.” Harry looked at Regulus, who wisely kept his mouth shut. After a moment, Harry went on. “But she’s clearly still alive, and most of the Wild that I think makes her up is wrapped around her body. So it’s not a death in the traditional sense.”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “I can’t explain it any better than that. I think maybe Neville is the only one who can.”
“He was never able to explain to me how he survived the Killing Curse, or any theory his grandmother might have had,” Minerva decided to caution Harry.
“But maybe that was because you and his grandmother were pushing him. And he might have been afraid that anything you found, you’d immediately report to Dumbledore.”
“I certainly would not have…” began Minerva indignantly, and then let the words trail off. Harry was watching her with no accusation, but a certain piercing brilliance to his eyes, and she ended up looking down. Yes, now, thinking about it, perhaps she would have.
“Well, things have changed so Minerva is no longer loyal to Dumbledore,” Regulus said with reckless cheer. “So you think he’ll feel comfortable telling her?”
“More that he never had anyone to compare himself to before, so even if he does know somewhere deep down how he survived it, then he wouldn’t know for sure,” said Harry, in the tones of someone who found the explanation simple. Minerva wasn’t sure she did. Harry was going on and leaving her with no time for questions, however. “If he can compare the sense of himself-his soul, his magic, whatever you want to call it-to the sense of something else that survived the Killing Curse…”
“This doesn’t help you heal your parents.”
“But it might help Neville defeat Lord Dudders, and Neville is my friend, too.”
Boot spoke up then, with a faint frown. “You said before that you didn’t want him here because it would mean You-Know-Who and Dumbledore would both attack the house. How are you going to solve that problem?”
“You-Know-Who already attacked,” Harry said dismissively. Minerva noted that he used his friend’s preferred name when talking to Boot, although at all other times he favored that ridiculous nickname he’d devised. “We can handle him. And I’d pit the Black wards and my animals against Dumbledore, too.”
“The Dark Lord didn’t lead the attack himself.” Regulus’s voice was as quiet as the Killing Curse. “Dumbledore will. That’s an important difference.”
Harry paused for a minute, his head tilting. “Then we can’t give him a reason to attack.”
“Taking Longbottom would be a reason to attack,” said Boot.
“We’re not going to take Neville. We’re going to invite him.” Harry smiled, and there was something unholy about the edge to that smile. Minerva found herself holding her breath, even though that wasn’t a gesture she fell prey to very often. “And we’re going to have an ally who’ll stand up to Dumbledore for us, and make it very clear that his interference isn’t welcome.”
“There isn’t any such person!” snapped Regulus, but Minerva must have been infected by the smile herself, because she saw the answer.
“Neville’s grandmother,” she said. “Aren’t you thinking that, Harry?”
Harry made her a little bow in response. “I knew my friendship with Augusta Longbottom would come in handy someday,” he said, as if he’d always planned this. “Just let me write that I think we’ve found a way to get her grandson out of the war and defeat Lord Dudders once and for all, and I think she’ll come running.”
*
Draco bowed down to the floor, shivering. He could do nothing else with the Dark Lord in front of him and the long, spidery white finger tracing a slow line down his cheek and the side of his neck.
“What did your father do, Draco?”
Draco had already answered the question numerous times, which was one reason his muscles were shaking now-from round after round of the Cruciatus Curse. But he gathered himself together, with a sob in his voice, and prepared himself to try and answer it once more, this time to the Dark Lord’s satisfaction.
“He-he took several Death Eaters and your companion Nagini on a raid of a Black property, m-my Lord.” Draco had already learned, from harsh experience, not to call Nagini the Dark Lord’s pet snake.
“That’s right. And why hasn’t he come back?”
Draco knew the Dark Lord probably wanted him to suggest that his father had turned traitor, but Draco could never do that even if he died for it. He swallowed another sob and tried the same answer he had before. “M-maybe the same th-thing happened to them that h-happened to Professor Snape, my L-Lord.”
That didn’t get him snapped at, the way he thought it would. In fact, the Dark Lord pulled back his hand from Draco’s face and began to walk slowly in circles in the Manor’s receiving room. Draco bent further down and shivered some more.
“You could be right,” the Dark Lord murmured, and then his voice altered even more, swinging like a pendulum towards cold cruelty. “What is so powerful about this boy? Tell me, Draco!” He drew his wand, and before Draco could even think that he would leave his mother to mourn two Malfoy men, he snapped it at Draco and cried, “Legilimens!”
Draco reeled through memories that he had been through only recently, when the Memory Charm broke. He saw the way Potter had threatened him with being eaten by rats, and then how he’d Obliviated Draco. And he saw things he hadn’t remembered seeing, such as Potter bending over thick books on the Mind Arts in the library.
The Dark Lord pulled roughly back. Draco gasped and whimpered, but other than flinging a Silencing Charm at him, the Dark Lord didn’t bother about that.
“So the boy is stubborn and cold and talented at magic when he pushes himself,” the Dark Lord murmured. “Even when he doesn’t care to push himself much in anything but Transfiguration.” He nodded. “I see. Then I shall make sure the boy cannot oppose us, and I shall take my Death Eaters back.”
He turned and faded out of sight in the strange way he had, as if he was made of mist. It wasn’t Apparition. It wasn’t anything Draco had seen before. He folded in on himself, and only moved when his mother came in to check on him and he knew she would be frantic if he didn’t move.
But his mind remained fixed on one thing. In the end, it wasn’t the Dark Lord who had done this to him, not really.
It was Potter.
Always bloody Potter. And if you’ve taken my father, I’m going to find a way to destroy you.
Chapter Forty-Three.
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