Chapter Twenty of 'Other People's Choices'- Studying
Chapter Nineteen.
Title: Other People’s Choices (20/?)
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 for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Studying
“Are you going to tell the Headmaster about the potion, sir?” Harry asks Snape as they stop in front of the door to the Slytherin common room after his detention, which Snape insisted on walking him back from. Harry hopes the answer is no. He doesn’t want to deal with Dumbledore trying to protect him or telling him that he should stop suspecting everyone and Hogwarts is safe.
“Do you think it would do any good, Mr. Potter?”
Harry looks up at Snape and can practically see Snape’s mind running along the same tracks as his own. “No good at all, sir.”
Snape nods. “You may tell Mr. Flint that you will continue to serve the detentions I assigned you. Beyond that…” He pauses for so long that Harry wonders what’s going on. “I don’t care what you tell him.”
Harry blinks. It feels like permission. “Sir?”
“You heard me.”
It is permission, and Snape is getting annoyed that Harry doesn’t recognize it. Harry bites back his smile, and just nods and says, “Yes, sir,” then slips into the common room as Snape pronounces the password.
It doesn’t surprise him that the common room is full of people trying not to look as if they were waiting for him. Blaise and Theo both stand up right away and start towards him. But they’re not close enough to the door to get there before Flint does, standing up and sneering at Harry and folding his arms to emphasize his muscles. Or maybe his healed bones, Harry isn’t sure which.
“What do you have to see for yourself, Potter?”
Harry holds Flint’s eyes. Tarquinius is more frightening, really, even though Harry thinks Theo’s dad wouldn’t want to hurt him because he wants to collect on his favor later. “I’m serving detentions with Professor Snape for a week because I hexed you.” He moves a step towards Flint, whose nod fades into knotting brows. “And he says I could do whatever else I wanted to you,” he hisses.
“Wh-what? Potter, what are you doing? Stop that!” Flint snaps as he watches a snake that’s hanging from the chandelier above them come to lazy life and start looping down the side of the lighted crystals.
Harry just manages to hold back his smile. He started the snake moving with an animation charm that Tarquinius taught him over the summer, one of the spells he drilled Harry on until Harry could do nonverbally every time. It’s a relief to see that it still works. And it makes Flint think that Harry can control all the snakes in the common room because he’s a Parselmouth.
“You heard me,” he hisses, and takes another step, which Flint matches with one backwards. The stone snake reaches the edge of the chandelier and drops to the floor with a solid smack, rearing up in front of Harry. “Is it my fault if you don’t understand the language of the House you were Sorted into?”
Blaise and Theo are standing at his sides by then. Theo breathes into his ear, “That might be enough.”
Harry has to concede that it probably is, when he sees how white Flint is looking. “Come here, beautiful,” he hisses at the snake as if he’s commanding it, when it’s really just a flex of his will through the animation charm. It turns around and slithers back to him. Harry picks it up and strokes the cool, slightly rocky back.
“You know that I can command snakes anywhere I go, at any time?” Harry asks softly, looking up at Flint. The snake coiled around him arm is an odd pressure, but he makes sure to look like he does this every day. “I’m sure there are some carved on your bed, or on the walls in your bedroom. Do you want to antagonize me?”
For a long time, it seems like everyone in the room is holding their breaths. Harry waits. He hopes this is enough to make Flint back off, but Flint is so stupid it might not be.
“If you want your House to lose at Quidditch, who am I to stop you?” Flint finally sneers. It’s a transparent attempt to recover, but when he turns his back and stomps up to his room, Harry decides he doesn’t care. He lets control of the snake go and makes sure to hiss in Parseltongue one more time. Then he removes it from his arm and drapes it over the back of a couch.
“You could-you could put it back on the chandelier?” someone asks in a high, squeaky voice that reminds Harry of Dobby. But when he looks over, it’s Pansy Parkinson, her eyes wide as she holds a book on her lap.
Harry’s not about to admit that he probably can’t do that since he didn’t memorize the position the snake was in before. “It doesn’t want to go,” he tells her instead.
Parkinson squeaks again and apparently decides to study in her room for the rest of the night.
Harry would go up himself, but Blaise gives him a friendly look and says, “We are going to talk.”
Harry sighs a little and walks over to a corner where they can put up a Privacy Charm without it being obvious. He got to talk to Ron and Hermione about what was going on earlier, before dinner, but Blaise and Theo weren’t in the library then. He supposes he owes his Slytherin friends an explanation, too.
*
Blaise can feel his skin tingling with excitement as he sits down on the couch next to Harry. He and Theo are the only ones who dared come near Harry once he started speaking Parseltongue. They’re the brave ones, the ones who are going to get to associate with a Parselmouth. The other Slytherins give them envious looks, but their fear-or their wisdom-prevents them from approaching closer.
That doesn’t mean Blaise doesn’t want to know what the source of Harry’s anger is, though. The Harry Blaise thought he got to know through letters this summer wouldn’t break someone’s arm.
“All right,” Harry says, and still lowers his voice even though Theo has layered the Privacy Charms. “Someone slipped me a potion. Drake’s Breath. It puts the one who drinks it in a constant heightened state of adrenaline. It needs time to work, so Snape knows it must have been last night, at dinner.”
Blaise blinks, and blinks again. He didn’t expect this revelation.
“Who did it?” Theo asks quietly. His wand is resting on his lap, and he looks ready to go to war.
“There’s no way of telling yet.” Harry’s face is stiff. “It could be someone who bribed the house-elves. Or it could have been a professor who gave something to a house-elf and told them to make sure I drank it.”
“Dumbledore,” Theo says at once.
Harry snorts. “It could be him, but I don’t know why he would want to make me paranoid.”
“So that he can say you don’t fit in with Slytherin and send you back to Gryffindor.”
The logic seems obvious to Blaise, too, but Harry only shakes his head and frowns a little. “He hasn’t objected to me being Sorted into Slytherin, not really. He’s a lot more concerned about where I’m going to stay during the summer, and about me staying with my Muggle cousin, for some reason.”
Blaise catches Theo’s eye just then, when Harry is too busy staring into space to notice, and gets a sharp nod that confirms his own suspicions. No one who matters is going to let Harry head back there.
“I think he’s fine with me being in Slytherin if he can just control where I go,” Harry mutters. “And one House in the school isn’t a lot different from another.”
Blaise supposes he has to concede that, at least when it comes to staying inside Hogwarts’ walls. Otherwise, the statement is so absurd that it isn’t worth responding to. “Is that why you performed all those detection charms on your drink tonight?”
“Yes. And on my food. But I did those ones with my wand underneath the table, so it was harder for someone to tell. If they start putting something in my food, then I’ll know.”
“Was anything tainted?” Theo is leaning slightly forwards, his eyes almost aglow.
“No. But that might be because a dose of Drake’s Breath is supposed to last forty-eight hours. The person who gave it to me wouldn’t have a way of knowing that Snape took me to the hospital wing and gave me the antidote already.”
Theo nods. “Then you’ll have to make sure that you’re on guard tomorrow.”
“I know. Especially tomorrow night.” Harry sighs and suddenly looks so much older than it reminds Blaise of one of his stepfathers who his mother fed an Aging Potion to. “Why are people doing this? I’m not trying to take over Slytherin or anything! I don’t want to fit in to just one House! I want to have my own group of friends, and I want to learn more magic, and that’s enough.”
Blaise sighs, then realizes Theo is looking at him. Apparently, absurdly, he’s supposed to explain this one. He glares. Theo glares back, and says silently that he’s been carrying the bulk of the conversation so far, it’s Blaise’s turn.
With a slight grimace, Blaise faces Harry. “But you made yourself look like a true Slytherin tonight, commanding that snake.”
“I just did it to make Flint back down, though. Not because I’m mad with power.”
“Deception to protect yourself,” Blaise says at once. “Even more of a true Slytherin.”
“But I don’t want it,” Harry says, so intense that Blaise feels as if he’s standing in front of a desert wind. “I’m not going to build on it, you know. I just want to help my friends.” Suddenly he looks at Blaise, and Blaise has the odd sensation that everything has reversed. “I told Theo this over the summer, but I couldn’t tell you because I knew that someone would probably read your letters. If you want help in getting away from your mum, I’ll help you.”
Blaise coughs before he thinks about it. He sees Theo’s blank face from the corner of his eye. Theo would probably go along with Harry, but only if Harry actually had a sensible plan. That he doesn’t means it’s probably not going to happen. “Oh, ah, thank you for that, Harry, but I don’t think my mother would kill me.”
“Really?”
It’s not comfortable being on the searching end of an interrogation, but then, Blaise already knows that from being around his mother and stepfathers. “No,” he says firmly. “And you are building a power base in Slytherin, Harry, just showing other people that things can be done differently-”
What shuts him up this time isn’t the way Harry shrugs and turns his back, but the grip Theo has on his arm. Theo shakes his head. Blaise understands. Now isn’t the time to talk to Harry about building a power base. He’ll either come around on his own or he’ll build a different sort of base outside of Slytherin.
When he speaks next, it sounds like he might have started.
“I’m going to put together a multi-House study group that’ll meet in the library. Do you want be part of it?”
“Of course,” Theo says at once. “Father taught you some pretty interesting things during the summer. Of course I want to keep that up.”
Blaise nods vigorously when they turn and look at him, even though he isn’t sure that he’ll be enthusiastic about all the spells that Theo and Harry know. But he wants to stay close to the center of power. “I want to join.”
To stay close to the center of my power. Or to stay close to…my friend?
From the way his gut twists when Harry’s smile lights up, Blaise isn’t sure which one it is, but he does know he’s going to make an effort. And if he gets to learn brilliant magic on the way, that’s what will happen.
*
“Zabini. Nott.”
“Granger. Weasley.”
Harry wants to roll his eyes, their greetings are so guarded, but he keeps it to himself. He knows he’s the only one at the table who will think it’s funny. “All right,” he says, and opens one of the books that Tarquinius let him take out of the Nott library. “I think we should work on defensive spells.”
“I know the Shield Charm,” Blaise offers quietly.
“Me, too,” Theo says and glances at Ron and Hermione.
“I know the incantation, but I haven’t practiced it,” Hermione says, almost bouncing in her seat in her eagerness to learn more. Harry has to smile at her. She blinks and smiles back, although Harry doesn’t know if she’s guessed what it’s for.
Ron has a more practical concern. “We can read about the spells here, but we can’t practice them,” he says, waving his hand around at all the other students who are sitting at tables and reading and sometimes peering towards them, as if wondering why Gryffindors and Slytherins are gathered in the same place. “Where are we going to go to practice?”
Harry pauses and thinks about that. Then he smiles. “I know there are some house-elves who work for Hogwarts. I bet they could tell us where secret passages and old classrooms are. Don’t you think so?” he adds, when he notices the way Theo’s staring at him.
“I-would never have thought of asking a house-elf.”
“Well, you should,” Harry says, with a shrug. “Anyway, I just need to find the way to the kitchens. That’s where they mostly work. We’ll go and talk to one of them. But until we can do that, we’ll just read up on the incantations and the theory, okay?”
All of them nod, and Harry goes back to the book. “There’s different kinds of shields,” he says, and flips a few pages. “The Shield Charm protects you from everything except the spells that are too strong for it. But there are shields that just hover above your skin and prevent physical blows from touching you, and shields that stop flying creatures, and shields that protect your mind, and shields that keep your wand from being snapped, and-”
“I want to learn the skin-shield!”
“The wand-shield should be first.”
Blaise and Hermione stop speaking and both glare at each other. Harry rolls his eyes a little and glances at Ron. Ron is stroking his rat Scabbers, who’s asleep on his shoulder, and grins with a small shake of his head. Harry reckons he’s just glad to see someone able to out-talk Hermione.
“Let’s split up into little groups so that we can learn them both,” Harry says. “I already know the skin-shield, so, Hermione, why don’t you and-and Theo study that, and Blaise and Ron and I can study the wand-shield.” He was about to say that Ron should study with Hermione, but the whole point is to keep people from just splitting up into Houses.
Theo has a disgruntled expression on his face. Harry knows he knows how to do one kind of skin-shield already, too. Harry gives him a pleading look, and Theo shifts around the table so that he’s sitting next to Hermione. She gives him a faint nod and leans over the book.
Harry shuffles around to be by Blaise and Ron. They’ve spent about ten minutes complaining that the wand-shield doesn’t have enough explanation of the different kinds of shield when someone says, “Um, Harry? Are you-you’re here with Slytherins? But also Ron and Hermione?”
Harry looks up, blinking. Colin Creevey is standing there, holding his camera and giving Blaise and Theo such dubious looks Harry is surprised that his face can stretch that far. He smiles at the boy and says, “That’s right. Did you need something? Maybe help on your homework?” He could do that.
“No. Um. Just-just a lot of the Gryffindors don’t believe that you’re really friends with Slytherins.” Colin plays with his camera for a second. “Can I get a photo of you? Just to show to them?”
Harry checks Blaise’s and Theo’s moods from the corner of his eye. Neither of them look very pleased, but they also don’t look upset. Harry shrugs and turns back to Colin. “Sure, you can do that. Although I don’t see why it’s so special.”
“It’s just,” Colin says breathlessly as he gets the camera up to his eye and aims it at them, “Gryffindors and Slytherins never are together. I mean, except in class, and we have to be, someone makes us be.” Suddenly he pauses and peeks around the camera. “Or did someone make you be together?”
“No,” Blaise says suddenly, and leans forwards so that he can give Colin the most sincere look Harry has ever seen on his face. “We’re here because we think that House unity is important.”
Colin, of course, being a second-year, buys it, beaming and nodding. “All right! That makes sense!” Then he jerks the camera up to his eyes and snaps it so many times that Harry thinks he probably has a dozen pictures.
When he acts like he’s going to keep taking them, Harry hides a roll of his eyes and says gently, “Colin, we need to get back to studying, so if you’re done…”
“Oh, yeah!” Colin steps back and smiles at Harry, patting his camera. “I have so many that they’ll have to believe me now!” And he turns and runs out of the library, towards Gryffindor Tower.
“You don’t mind being seen with Gryffindors?” Ron is asking Blaise when Harry pays attention again.
“You don’t mind being seen with Slytherins?”
“Well, it’s not like you’re Malfoy.”
One step at a time, Harry comforts himself, and goes back to arguing about wand-shields.
Chapter Twenty-One.
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