Chapter Nine of 'Other People's Choices'- Cascade of Steam
Chapter Eight.
Title: Other People’s Choices (9/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: None; this is a gen story
Content Notes: AU of CoS, angst, present tense, violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. The Sorting Hat doesn’t just let the Sword go when it falls on Harry’s head in the Chamber, but also Sorts him again, this time into Slytherin. Harry is furious and terrified, and the adults aren’t helping much.
Author’s Notes: This began life as another of my Advent fics in response to an anonymous request for Harry being re-Sorted into Slytherin when the Sorting Hat hits his head in CoS. The title is based on Dumbledore’s quote: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine-Cascade of Steam
“My father has things in motion.”
Harry turns his head to the side a little as Theo whispers that into his ear, but Theo plants a hand on the back of his neck and turns him face forwards again. Harry nods and starts to eat. He supposes it will look strange if he doesn’t enjoy the huge breakfast that’s their last meal before they leave Hogwarts. Besides, he wants to eat a lot in case this doesn’t work.
But his hands are sweating, and he fumbles the knife and fork more than once.
“Harry?”
Harry looks up. Blaise is leaning over in his seat, his face troubled. “Can I talk to you before we go?”
“Let me eat a little more first,” Harry mumbles, and chews his way through a scone with enough honey on it to satisfy even Dudley, a huge bowl of porridge, and some sausages that break crisply and just right under his teeth. Blaise only waits. Harry finally stands, wipes his mouth on a napkin, and follows him out.
He thinks they’ll go outside or down into the dungeons, so it’s a surprise when Blaise casts some sort of charm. Harry squints. He can almost make out the faint red shimmer in the air around them, which he supposes is a privacy charm of some sort.
“I wanted to ask you what you know about my mother.”
Harry blinks. He’s only heard random gossip about Blaise around the Slytherin dorms now and then. The older Slytherin students act like they never notice second-years, except for Malfoy sometimes. “I-don’t know? I mean, she raised you, right? And she’s had lots of husbands?”
“Yes. That’s it. That was the part I wasn’t sure you knew.” Blaise’s hand is very tight on his wand. “I have lots of stepfathers. Sometimes we move around to a new house that Mother’s bought or we go to live with one of them. And sometimes they notice me, but more often they don’t. Mother only notices me sometimes.”
Harry scowls. He was thinking of all magical families as like either the Weasleys or the Malfoys. He never imagined anything like this. “It sounds sort of like the Dursleys.”
“Exactly.” Blaise studies Harry with one eye, head tilted like a raven. “I don’t know if I can help you. I don’t have the resources Theo and his father do. But if you ever need someone who can understand exactly what it’s like to live with people who don’t care about you, then I can do that. I want-I want to be your friend. Theo’s my only one.”
Harry slowly stretches out his hand. Blaise takes it. He doesn’t try to say anything, which Harry is grateful for, because it’s not like he has the words, either.
“Thanks, Blaise. But I don’t like talking about the Dursleys much.”
“It’s not the talking. It’s the knowing.” Blaise gives him a fleeting smile and walks towards the dungeons to pack.
Harry watches his back, and finally nods. He supposes Blaise is right, at that. And having someone else who knows wouldn’t be terrible, as long as Harry isn’t under an obligation to be friends with him.
He’s already packed, and going back to the dungeons will probably just result in a confrontation of sorts with Malfoy, who’s been getting prissier and prissier about Harry being in Slytherin. Harry turns around.
No, he realizes suddenly, going back to the dungeons wouldn’t have resulted in a confrontation, because Malfoy is right in front of him. Harry just stares him down. Crabbe and Goyle aren’t here, and he knows-pathetic as the reason for it is-that Malfoy got detention with Snape for tumbling Harry down the common room stairs. So he doesn’t think Malfoy will try to start anything.
“Do you have to have everything?”
Harry blinks like he did when Blaise started talking. “What do you mean?”
“You’re famous, and you have all this money, and you’re great at Quidditch, and you’re a Parselmouth, and now you’re in Slytherin, too, and everyone’s falling all over themselves to be friends with you. The only thing I have that you don’t is parents.” Malfoy sneers, but Harry gets the feeling that it’s a lot more half-hearted than usual. “I don’t…why do you have to have everything? I’d kill to have half what you have!”
“I want my parents back more than anything in the world. You have no idea how lucky you are, Malfoy!”
“But you have everything else. Why can’t I have my parents and everything else, too?”
Malfoy sounds like Dudley, but looking into his face, Harry thinks he can see past that. Malfoy means what he’s saying. He’s upset and bewildered and even though he’s also kind of stupid, Harry thinks, because he doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up as an unwanted orphan, he really thinks there should be some way he could be both Harry and himself.
“I don’t know. That’s the way the world works. But I don’t really care for most of it, Malfoy. I’d give you my Parseltongue in a second. I don’t want that. And I’d go back to Gryffindor if I could.”
“But Slytherin is the best House to be in!”
“For you. The only reason the Sorting Hat put me here is because I’m a Parselmouth, and that’s really not enough reason for me.” Harry shrugs, feeling a dry, tired shiver run down his shoulders. “If I could make you a Parselmouth, then there would be no reason for me to stay here, and I’d just go back home.”
Home is Gryffindor Tower, and squashy armchairs, and listening to the twins plan some new prank and Hermione and Ron bickering. Dumbledore said something once about how he has to think of the Dursleys’ house as home. Harry can’t, and it’s not just a matter of stubbornness. He can’t think of Slytherin as home, either.
“To your Muggles?”
“To the Tower.”
Malfoy is watching him with his mouth a little open, and Harry realizes abruptly that he’s probably said too much. Malfoy can’t taunt him right now, because summer is about to start, but who knows what he’ll say when they come back?
And Harry is still in the cold place that can never be home.
“Go away,” he says abruptly, and turns away himself, clattering up the steps towards Gryffindor. He has his shrunken trunk in his pocket; he’s going to keep it with him and set Hedwig free to fly until he’s sure that Theo and his dad have kept their promise. He’ll go up to Hedwig in a few minutes.
But first he wants to see the Tower one last time, to carry it like a good-luck charm with him for a while. He’s going to be free of the Dursleys. Is it too much to hope that he can be free of Slytherin, too?
*
Theo touches the letter in his pocket and turns away from watching the sweep of the grounds from the Astronomy Tower. He knows what his father’s distraction will be, and he thought he might spy it from there, but it’s clear that it’s not coming to Hogwarts. Father will probably send it to meet the train.
A foot shifts below him, and stone drops away. Theo immediately shrinks back. He already has a Disillusionment Charm on himself; he didn’t want anyone to think that he had anything to do with the distraction if it happened here and someone running looked up and saw him.
But the arguing voices don’t come any closer to the top. They’re standing on the staircase that leads up to the Tower. Theo creeps slowly towards them, stopping whenever a noise or a cascade of dust could reveal him. Some people can see through Disillusionment Charms, and he doesn’t want to give them any reason to suspect him.
It sounds like one of the people who can see through them is one of the arguing voices.
“I know what you want, Severus, and in other circumstances, I would support you to the best of my ability. Surely you know that.” Dumbledore is weary, or wants other people to think he is, Theo decides, crouching right at the top of the staircase. “But Harry will not be safe from Death Eaters in any other place than his relatives’ home.”
He’s not now, Theo thinks, and touches his tongue of one of his back teeth.
“He has already made a deal with the son of a Death Eater for safety,” says Snape, harsh as the tooth. “Do you want to drive him further into their arms? He hates the Muggles more than he fears for his own life, Albus!”
How does he know that? Theo cocks his head to the side. His father once had suspicions Professor Snape was a Legilimens, but he never had any proof, he told Theo, and he couldn’t make accusations without proof. This is probably proof, because Harry wouldn’t have told Snape willingly.
I have to tell my father. He would do it right now if he was at the Owlery. As it is, Theo has to remain still and listen with all his might.
“I know. But I am going to have a talk with him before he leaves on the train, Severus. He will understand that he can’t go with a Death Eater. Perhaps I should have had it with him before now, but-well, I did not realize how desperate he had become.”
“You should have. You should have.”
“Other than reading his mind, Severus, what should I have done? Harry is a resilient child. I thought he would take this shock and cope with it, not go running to Death Eaters the minute my back was turned.”
And the Headmaster is a Legilimens, too. Theo isn’t as surprised by that. He still makes sure that his hands are clenched around his knees and holding on tight, and that his breathing is as careful as possible.
“You should have let me and Minerva do what we proposed. Now I do not even know if Potter will agree to follow me in that, or if it is too late. He has made it perfectly clear that he trusts neither of us.”
“Nonsense, Severus. I think the boy is adapting to trust you as his Head of House, given the situation and that he has not tried to do something like move his trunk back into Gryffindor Tower. And I will have that talk with him now.”
The voices move away down the stairs. Theo still sits as quiet as a frog with a hawk flying nearby until he’s sure that neither of them has lingered behind to try and catch eavesdroppers.
He slips away to the Owlery at once. He is too late to alter either the distraction his father has planned or the conversation Dumbledore is going to have with Harry. He will and can send the information about Legilimency, though. He will do what he can.
*
“Harry, my boy. I have one more thing I wanted to ask you about the Dursleys.”
It does not astonish Severus, how Harry’s head lifts and he stops on the step he’s on. How he speaks as if someone is pulling the words out of his mouth with a hook. “Yes, Headmaster? What is it?”
“How long has it been,” Albus asks, bending down, “since you talked to them? Really talked? About the reasons they took you in, about how they made you part of their family?”
Harry’s shoulders are thin, but they straighten with a snap, as if someone was pulling them up on a puppet string. But Severus suspects they are not being pulled that way. Not any longer. “They were never my family.”
“Now, Harry.” Albus is gently disapproving, the way he sounded when Severus came to him with news of the prophecy and his will to change sides. “Your aunt loved your mother very much, you know. She even sent me a letter asking if she could attend Hogwarts with her sister, despite not having magic.”
For a moment, Harry’s face softens. Severus can see how deep that craving for knowledge about his family runs, and he pauses. Did Petunia truly never say anything about Lily?
It is wrong that she never did. Lily was a shining light who does not deserve to be dimmed, especially in the memory of her only child.
Then Harry takes a step back from the edge of the stair and watches Albus with almost-closed eyes. “Maybe she loved my mum once, sir, but she’d decided she hated her by the time I was old enough to ask about my parents. She told me my parents were drunks who died in a car accident. Why would she say that about them if she loved Mum?”
“Petunia was most disappointed when I had to refuse her. I think she always wished to come to Hogwarts, always wished to possess magic. Can you not forgive her, my boy? Perhaps approach her in fellowship and ask for those stories that she, of all people, would know best how to give you?”
Severus clears his throat. He can hardly believe he’s about to say this, but in his mind is an image of Lily’s face tumbling down and down a dark hole, and he does not wish to see that every time he closes his eyes. “Come to that, I would serve the boy just as well as a source of stories, Headmaster.”
Albus turns to him with a swiftness that does not match the placid smile growing on his face. But before he can say something, Harry has lunged forwards off the step and is standing at the bottom of the staircase, staring at Severus.
“You?”
Your surprise is not flattering. But in some ways, he has earned it, that lack of surprise. Severus nods. “I grew up in a Muggle neighborhood. Your mother lived nearby, and I was the one who taught her what she was. Until she knew, her sister thought that her ability to make rocks float and flowers grow was strange.”
“Freakish.”
That sounds like a word the boy has heard more times than he can count. Severus acknowledges it. “I was the one who named it for her, and taught her about Hogwarts and the wizarding world. We were best friends for-a time.”
“Tell me about her. Tell me all about her.”
Severus breathes out carefully. He may have found the bait that will counteract the Notts’ deadly trap. If only Albus does not interfere.
And, of course, he does. It is as if he cannot help himself.
“Harry, your aunt loves you. I’m sure she does. Even if your uncle doesn’t and your cousin is too young to understand, your aunt is your blood family.”
“But, sir,” Harry says, with only a fleeting glance away from Severus at Albus, “blood family doesn’t love each other sometimes. Like Neville and that great-uncle he talks about, or me and Aunt Petunia. And Dudley.”
Severus lets his lip curl a little. Dudley Dursley. Only Petunia Evans would think of a name like that.
“Blood family can keep you safe,” Albus says, his words as soft as water wearing away a stone, “keep you protected from all dangers. You wouldn’t want to put other people in harm’s way, would you, Harry?”
Harry’s fists tremble at his sides. Severus sees it and leans forwards to clasp them.
“Make the boy go back, and he will only run away,” he says, sure he is not insulting Harry. He only speaks the truth, and Harry is smart and complex-minded enough to realize what he is doing, if he listens closely.
Which, given his flared nostrils and the pinched way his cheeks seem to be collapsing inwards, might not be the case.
“But he must understand the love of his aunt. Even his cousin. The love of a home.”
Harry laughs like a raven. “They’re not my family! They’re not my home!”
From the way Albus’s face turns sickly pale, Severus is sure he understands now. There are blood protections that depend on sincere emotion-everything from the desire to see a family line continue to loyalty to a ward’s deceased parents. Since neither of those would be in play here, Severus determines that it must be Harry’s feeling that the Dursley house is home.
And maybe that would have worked when he knew nowhere else. But what did you think introducing him to the wizarding world would do? Are you honestly surprised, Albus?
“If they cannot love you,” Albus says, and his voice is still a little shaken although gaining in strength by the second, “surely you can love them?”
“No.”
Harry turns and marches off towards the entrance to the school. Severus and Albus stand a moment, in what Severus suspects is shock on Albus’s part. He does not know that he himself feels anything but a thin churning of triumph.
“I will try to keep him safe, and convince him that this is only a temporary detour. I will try to remove him from the Death Eaters’ clutches.” Honestly, the only reason Severus shared that information with Albus in the first place was to show him how serious the situation has become.
“The Dursleys cannot be temporary, Severus. Not until he reaches seventeen.”
“Because you want him to stay safe from Death Eaters more than anything else. Even though, in this school, he has access to their children.”
“Voldemort is still the greatest danger, and the blood protections hold against him.”
Severus shakes his head in silence and turns away. He has tried things Albus’s way; he has warned him, because Albus’s strength, thrown behind him, would ensure a quicker response from the Ministry.
Now all bets are off, and Severus will do things in his manner.
Chapter Ten.
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