Chapter Fifty-One of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- Weaving the Darkness
Chapter Fifty.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (51/?)
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 Fifty-One-Weaving the Darkness
Minerva sank her claws deeper into the back of Albus’s neck before she jumped off and turned around to face him. Albus was staggering, his mouth agape. Minerva thought it was more the shock of being ambushed than any actual pain. She hadn’t hit him that hard.
But then she saw Regulus in front of him, coolly casting spells that outlined Albus’s body with a nimbus of blue and purple light. Minerva had never seen them before. From the way Albus trembled and then fell to one knee, though, she could guess at their effect.
She put her tail up and mewed softly. Regulus didn’t bother looking at her, only twisted out of the way as Albus finally managed to level his wand.
“You really shouldn’t have thought that you could do whatever you wanted with Harry.” Regulus’s voice was cool and distant. “I could have forgiven a lot, but not that.”
“I was only doing-what was necessary-to rescue-”
Regulus cut him off, with a cold laugh that abruptly made Minerva realize how terrifying he must have been as a Death Eater. “Who would have needed rescuing if you had let him alone? You were the one who felt so threatened by a fifteen-year-old schoolboy that you tried to recruit him to your war effort or crush him completely.”
“If he has told you that,” Albus said, and he was standing now, his voice steadier, “then you are more of a fool than I suspected.”
“He didn’t have to tell me anything. He wouldn’t think to do that, anyway.” Regulus sounded mildly disgusted. “He only told me a few things, and then I thought about the way you looked at Slytherins and anyone who wanted to study their own magic when I was a student here, and it became clear. And it was crystalline by the time Minerva fled.”
Albus turned to face Minerva in turn. Minerva cringed when she saw how disappointed he looked. She’d thought she was immune to that gaze, but Albus was a past master at it and it was disconcerting to face.
“If you could have stayed,” Albus began, and his voice was coaxing, sad, and eloquent at once.
Regulus hit him from behind with another spell Minerva didn’t recognize. But other than creating a dark blue halo around Albus for a minute and then flaring and disappearing, it didn’t seem to do anything in particular. Albus still turned around and stared with tragic, betrayed eyes at Regulus.
“What was that curse?” Albus asked.
“You know very well. I know you were close to my brother, and I know he used that on a few Death Eaters during the war. There’s no way he wouldn’t have told you.”
Minerva blinked and curled her tail for a second. She couldn’t see Albus’s face anymore, but she could identify the stink of fear when she was in her feline form. Albus had begun to smell of it so abruptly that she wrinkled her nose, her delicate senses disturbed.
“How could you?” Albus whispered.
“I think we’ve established that. Or should have.” Regulus leaned back on the wall and shook his head. Minerva wondered if she was the only one seeing the careful way he breathed, how his folded arms partially shielded his side. A spell Albus cast that Minerva hadn’t seen must have got through. “I want to stop you. Well, even if you kill me now, that curse will remain to take justice for me. And Harry. And Minerva. And anyone else you alienated or made into a tool during your endless campaign of ‘Headmaster knows best.’”
Minerva paced slowly forwards. She had been in the Order of the Phoenix at the time, and thought she was close to Sirius, but she remembered no information about a curse that even indirectly resembled that one.
Albus seemed to have recovered from his shock, and whatever other injuries he’d taken. He aimed his wand again. “I think you know that I will kill you. You know what wand I wield.”
Minerva narrowed her eyes. What wand? She knew the old stories that said Albus had taken Grindelwald’s wand from him after their duel, but just because it was Grindelwald’s wand wouldn’t make it especially powerful.
“I know it, or I couldn’t have cast that curse.” Regulus was smiling, the sort of curled smile that Minerva used to dread when it appeared in her classes, because she knew it once again meant Sirius had come up with some plan to torture Severus.
“You will regret it,” said Albus, in the same way he had told Neville that he needed to be stronger, and Minerva that she needed to spend more time training Neville and give more leeway to Severus, and his students that they needed to live up to Gryffindor ideals.
Regulus laughed a little. “Only in the amount of strength it’s taken from me.”
Which at least reduced Minerva’s worries that he’d somehow been wounded and she hadn’t seen the curse Albus had cast. She tensed, ready to dart in through Albus’s ankles. She had to be careful and clever, though, or he would simply Stun her and be done with it. She was surprised he hadn’t already. Regulus must have taken him too off-guard.
But in the moment before the duel could begin, the darkness to the sides of the corridors stirred, and Minerva saw both Albus’s and Regulus’s breath foam in front of their mouths. She blinked and stared, then began to shiver from the cold herself.
“What is this?” Albus’s voice was high and thin. “What is this? What evil have you unleashed?”
Minerva couldn’t tell if he was talking to her or to Regulus. And in the end, when she saw the creatures coming out of the shadows, perhaps it didn’t matter.
*
Harry reached deep into himself for knowledge. Some things he knew from reading textbooks. Some he knew from reading books in the Black library. Some he knew from history. And some things simply made sense, the same way he had known he could protect himself with Transfiguration after he started to learn it.
The knowledge answered his call, a heavy dark weight that flowed up his windpipe like Nagini might have. Harry opened his mouth, and the words were there, balanced on his tongue, half incantation and half wordless shriek.
“Commuto caliginem-”
The rest wasn’t a word. It was a sound like the howl of the wind and a sad sigh and a depthless laughter, the sound the creatures he was trying to weave into being made in his soul when he thought of them.
There was a bated moment when Harry thought they wouldn’t answer. He didn’t know enough about them. He’d modified the incantation, or created it, but not well enough. There was no way to predict them. The Wild didn’t really make them up the way it did other creatures. There was no-
And then there they were, twisting around him, imitating the snake-like movement of the words up his throat. Harry smiled at them a little. He’d wished he could speak Parseltongue, but that was the next best thing.
They felt his will, as the mice and cats and eagles he had created before had. They finished forming, and when they did, they were almost polite black cloaks drifting in midair, gleaming white hands folded in front of them.
Harry sighed out. He’d wondered if they would try to attack him, but either his will was paramount, or his soul was too much like an animal’s.
“Go make sure that Regulus and Professor McGonagall are safe, retrieve the Invisibility Cloak, and stop Dumbledore,” he told them. “You might not want to kill him.”
His Dementors filed out of the bathroom. Harry wondered for a second if Professor McGonagall and Regulus would know they were friends, but he doubted it would matter either way. The Dementors would avoid them, and Dumbledore’s Patronus probably wouldn’t work on them. They were different from the “natural” ones, as Amicus had been different from a normal rat, Yar from a normal eagle.
Harry turned around and took the krait out of his pocket. It turned its head and peered up at him with soft, dull eyes. Harry laid it on the floor next to the sink, near the pipe the ants had gone through to reach the Chamber of Secrets, and nodded at the opening.
He knew from Neville that the basilisk had been able to crawl around the school thanks to the pipes. It stood to reason that spaces that would contain a basilisk could take a krait.
“I taught you the music of the Horcrux. Go and find the loudest song and then come back and lead me to it.”
The krait flickered out its tongue once in obedience, then turned and crawled into the pipe. Harry waited a moment to make sure it wouldn’t come right back due to a lack of understanding, but it didn’t. He strode across the bathroom and started to open the door.
“You’re scary.”
Harry turned to face the floating silvery ghost girl Neville had told him haunted this toilet. He shrugged a little. “I do what I have to do.”
“I could get Peeves,” said the ghost girl, as if trying out a new idea. “He could probably stop you.”
Harry didn’t think Peeves could do that, but on the other hand, he hadn’t exactly tangled with the poltergeist on a regular basis while he was trying to keep his secrets. “You do that,” he said, “and I’ll call a creature that can destroy you. Can a Dementor eat a ghost? I wonder if I can create one-”
The ghost girl squeaked and wailed and apparently fled through back into her toilet. Harry shrugged a little and faced the door.
Time to see what his Dementors had wrought.
*
Albus ignored the way he thought he could feel Black’s curse tugging at his vitals already-it wouldn’t work that quickly-and summoned the memory to mind of when he had first met Gellert. Somehow, Dementors had come to Hogwarts. He didn’t know how they would have got past the protections.
Perhaps Minerva lowered the protections and let them in behind her. She would do anything she could to spite me.
But the magic was still there on the end of his wand, shimmering, and he still yelled “EXPECTO PATRONUM!” and watched it fly out, the soaring phoenix, as it had been since he came to Hogwarts as a Transfiguration professor.
The phoenix, cloaked in swirling flames, soared directly at the nearest Dementor. The creature didn’t flinch from it, which made Dumbledore frown. Sometimes, when they were entirely intent on eating the soul of a prisoner, they would react like that, and the Patronus would almost destroy itself trying to destroy them.
But this one simply stepped past the Patronus and lifted its faceless hood in Albus’s direction, reaching out a hand.
No. Albus had imagined many ways to die, and now, thanks to Black, he knew how he would. But none of them had been at a Dementor’s hands, or lips. He retreated before the reaching fingers, knowing his wand trembled.
The creatures lined up, drifting towards him. Not a one turned to look at Minerva or Black, which was all the confirmation Albus needed that they were the Dementors’ allies. Albus swallowed and wondered if they would spread out after this, seeking the souls of innocent children asleep in Gryffindor Tower, in the Hufflepuff common room, in the Ravenclaw beds. How many people were Black and Minerva willing to kill to be rid of him?
He thought of offering himself up as a sacrifice, saying they could have his soul if they left the children alone. It would free him from the torment of waiting for Black’s curse to work, and perhaps it would spare an innocent or two.
But before he could open his mouth and say he would do so, the Dementors formed a circle around him. Albus paused. Would they share his soul between them? And what would be the effect if they did? He had never read of Dementors letting another of their kind share a meal. They were selfish brutes.
The circle tightened, and Albus lifted his wand, the Elder Wand that he had thought to render harmless by dying with it. Perhaps he could still cast another Patronus and break through whatever strange protections Minerva had laid on the Dementors.
Beyond the circle, he saw a Dementor pick up James’s Invisibility Cloak, and stared. Most of the time, they cared about human clothing only if it contained a clue that they could use to track a criminal.
Then Harry Potter came out of the bathroom.
He moved like a cat, and his eyes shone like a cat’s, like a wolf’s-like the eyes of a child with Lycaon’s Syndrome. His hair was dark enough that Albus could barely distinguish it from the robes he wore. His pale hands were clasped in front of him, imitating the posture of the Dementors, and from the way he glanced up as the one holding the Cloak handed it to him, Albus knew who the leader was after all.
“Oh, Minerva,” he whispered. “How could you have fallen for this boy’s tricks?”
As if hearing the words, said boy turned to him. Albus found himself recoiling without even meaning to. He had always found animals like phoenixes more congenial than ones like cats because of the brightness in their gazes, the awareness that another creature stood in front of them and their ability to respond to the other’s presence.
Cats had a blankness. All predators did. It meant they were only interested in prey, and not in the presence of the being as a presence. What it would mean for them, whether they could eat it-that was all.
This boy was like a cat. He was not the son Lily and James had left. Albus had no trouble believing the Dementors would leave him alone; he wasn’t human anymore.
“Thank you for the Cloak,” the boy said, and it was impossible to tell if he was addressing the Dementors or Albus, until he went on. “I didn’t know it should have belonged to me. Now I have something of my family’s.” He folded it carefully and tucked it into what appeared to be a little pouch hanging near his waist. Albus could only shake his head.
James, how you would die if you were sane.
“You don’t deserve to have that cloak,” Albus told the boy. He had passed beyond fear. Let the boy tell the Dementors to suck out his soul. What mattered was having his say, so at least the two adults present could listen and decide if they really wanted to cast their lot with a rabid animal. “You won’t use it properly.”
“Why not?”
Such indifference. Albus wanted to scream and smash it with his bare hands. That he could not only made the hollow center of his chest fill with a dull ache. He couldn’t believe that Minerva, whom he had been accustomed to think of as intelligent, could fall for this act. And Black. A Death Eater, but he had buried Sirius and Albus had thought of him as decent for that.
Easily manipulated was more like it.
“Because its power is too great for you. All you want is to kill your enemies and Transfigure yourself.”
The boy gave him a faint smile and then turned and looked around as a small snake came crawling out of the bathroom behind him. He bent down towards it and looked at it for a long moment. Albus felt his bowels turn watery. Was the boy a Parselmouth? Had Voldemort somehow marked both of them after all?
But the only thing the boy did was frown and glance up at Black and Minerva. “Something prevented him from getting to the Horcrux’s hiding place. There’s not much that could do that. Do you know anything about an enchanted room separate from the pipes? Or a barrier that all the pipes in the school avoid?”
Black was the one to make a soft noise of recognition, while Albus was still reeling from the fact that the boy knew about Horcruxes. “Of course. The Room of Requirement. It changes shape according to a person’s desire, and your snake isn’t a person, so he couldn’t influence it. What a perfect hiding place for the Horcrux. I should have thought of that as soon as you mentioned your birds flying to Hogwarts.”
“What birds? How do you know about Horcruxes?” Albus snapped. The Dementors hadn’t yet sucked out his soul, and Potter looked-infuriating as it was-as if he had better things to do than kill Albus. That might mean…
Albus did not dare think of some of the things it would mean, if he could not get Potter under control right now.
The boy only blinked and glanced at him as if he assumed that Albus had gone to sleep. “My plan.” Then he turned around and said to Black, “You can show me where the Room of Requirement is?”
“My memory hasn’t deteriorated that much since I was a schoolboy,” said Black dryly, to which the boy only responded with a blank stare. “But don’t you need to wait for your ants?”
“No. If I’m not here when they come out with it, then they’ll just find me wherever I am and bring it to me.”
What? Albus yearned to ask, but it seemed that neither Minerva nor Black was in a confessional mood and the boy’s talkative one had ended. He had to stand there and watch as they turned to go up the corridor.
Wait. No, I don’t. Black had cast that curse on him that would eventually doom him, but it wasn’t as though it would kill Albus right now. And he would be pathetic if he simply stood here and watched enemies who might be greater than Voldemort walk away. At least Albus had always understood what Tom was, and it had never felt like a betrayal when he began to work with the Dark. This did.
He raised his wand and aimed carefully between the shoulders of the Dementors. They weren’t doing anything except standing around him in a circle. Perhaps they couldn’t do anything without the boy’s direct command.
He didn’t say the spell. After so long paired with the Elder Wand, he knew exactly how to move it, and his magic was actually sometimes more powerful when wordless. His will sped down the wand, and away from him, towards the boy’s unprotected back.
Silent, powerful…
There was no way that he could have sensed it.
But he did.
He leaped into the air and came down like a rabbit, throwing the Invisibility Cloak around himself as he moved. In a second he was a shimmer of motion. Albus could see through the Cloak when he concentrated, but it took a prior spell cast on his eyes, and for a moment, he hesitated, even as Black shouted and turned back towards him.
“Expelliarmus.”
The voice came from right beside him.
Impossible to cover the distance that fast, Albus thought, even as he watched the Elder Wand go soaring out of his hand, even as he watched it smack into an arm reaching from under a silky fabric, even as plans began to shred and drift like the outlines of Dementors in his mind.
Then he remembered the modifications that the boy had made to his leg muscles. Yes, he might be able to cover the ground like a rabbit or kangaroo with those.
Albus tried to dismiss the irrelevant thoughts, but it was hard to think around the deadness in his mind, or the lump in his throat. He watched as the boy came back into sight, holding the Elder Wand and giving it in an incurious glance before he tucked it into his waistband.
“Better this way,” he said. “You might have sent a Patronus for help, and that would have been annoying.”
He turned back to Black. “Where is the Room?”
“On the seventh floor.”
The boy nodded once and turned his wrist over. The Dementors parted from around Albus, but only so some of them could stream around the corner and ahead of the boy, while the rest formed a tighter circle around Albus.
Albus shut his eyes. He wondered how many innocent children would lose their souls during the boy’s quest for the Room of Requirement, and wished his sacrifice had worked after all.
He might have tried to break out, but without a wand, it would be suicide. And Black’s curse or not, he might be able to do more good in the future, perhaps even recovering his wand. So he sat down on the floor and prepared to wait quietly.
Someone would have to come along, and perhaps the Dementors wouldn’t attack them, either, since they only seemed meant to hold Albus here. He could send the message then, and wake the other professors.
There must be a way of stopping him.
*
Harry had to smile as he stood outside the door to the Room of Requirement, which had formed after he’d walked back and forth in front of the wall three times and thought about wanting the place where the Horcrux was hidden. He’d been skeptical at first, but Regulus had been right, this existed. He would have to ask him later how he’d learned about it.
For now, he could sense the contained Wild in the room, probably part of the magic had been used to create it in the first place, and the coiled void of the Horcrux. It had stopped singing so loudly when he created the door. Harry wondered if it could sense his intentions and was waiting to defend itself, or if it thought another victim was entering.
Harry swung the door open softly.
The rubbish in the room astonished him. Some of it looked like old books and jewelry that might have been hidden hastily and then abandoned when their owners couldn’t come back for them, but who would want to save cracked chairs and empty potions vials?
Harry shook his head and stepped further into the room. He didn’t need the song to spot the Horcrux, the silver diadem hanging over the ear of a bust. He let out a soft breath and walked towards it.
Professor McGonagall slipped in beside him, still in her cat form. Harry nodded to her. She would be less vulnerable to the Horcrux’s song in that form, and it was sensible of her.
“Should you be trying to touch it?” Regulus asked flatly from behind him.
Harry turned his head to answer, and his krait hissed a warning.
There was a black, greasy smoke gathering around the diadem when he turned back, nothing like the magic that had tried to attack him when he was affecting the Death Eaters’ Dark Marks before. Harry gripped his wand.
The smoke rose, and rose, until Harry had to tilt his head back to regard it. Then it coalesced and grew long and thin, and a black cobra as high as the ceiling swayed in front of him, hood flared.
It opened its mouth and spat venom at him with deadly accuracy.
Harry dodged, and the battle began.
Chapter Fifty-Two.