Chapter Twenty-One of 'Other People's Choices'- Ancient History
Chapter Twenty.
Title: Other People’s Choices (21/?)
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 Twenty-One-Ancient History
“Oi, mate, I’m in the paper!”
Harry turns around with a smile. Ron’s hurrying up behind him, waving the Daily Prophet. Harry glances at it, and blinks. There’s what has to be Colin’s picture on the front page, with him, Ron, Hermione, Theo, and Blaise around the table in the library. Scabbers is even balancing on Ron’s shoulder, staring at the camera.
“So is Harry,” Hermione says, and comes up behind Ron to tap him on the back of the head. “And Zabini and Nott and me.”
“It’s still brilliant,” Ron says, though with a slight flush, as he rolls up the paper and glances at Harry. “Did Colin tell you that he was going to send the picture to the Prophet? He sure hasn’t mentioned anything in the common room.”
“No,” said Harry absently, his eyes scanning the Great Hall. There’s Colin, standing behind his little brother Dennis at the Gryffindor table and gesturing so hard that it looks as though his hand’s going to fall off. “Colin?”
Colin hears him right away-part of Harry thinks uncomfortably that maybe he’s always listening for a call from Harry-and comes hurrying over, beaming. “What do you think of that picture? Pretty great, right?”
“It’s a good picture,” Harry says, smiling down at him. “But how did you get it in the paper?”
“Oh, this woman called Rita Skeeter. She saw me with my camera in Diagon Alley once, and she heard me say I knew you, Harry, and she said she’d really like any pictures that I managed to take!” Colin bounces up and down in place. “She’s a fan, Harry! I sent her an owl, and she liked this picture so much she said she’d write an article to be with it right away!”
Harry frowns. He vaguely recognizes Skeeter’s name. She’s one of the people who wrote a lot of articles him about last year when he was Sorted into Slytherin. “Er-does she seem like she’s really a fan, Colin? Only she wrote a lot of stories about me, and some of them-”
“Oh, but I asked her, and she said she’s changed now! She thinks that you’ve been discriminated against,” Colin pronounces the words with pride, “and she wants to set the record straight by writing good stories about you.”
Harry exchanges a glance with Ron and Hermione. Ron shrugs. “I don’t know, mate. I only know that my mum likes her articles.”
“This one isn’t bad,” Hermione says with a slight nod. She’s pulled the paper away from Harry and is reading the words under the picture. “She just says that you’re encouraging inter-House unity at Hogwarts.”
“We do appreciate your efforts, Mr. Potter.” Harry turns and sees Professor McGonagall coming up behind him. She smiles at him. She looks weary, he thinks, but before he can wonder about it, she goes on, “I think the rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor should have died a long time ago.”
“Do you, Minerva? Well, perhaps it will when the Gryffindors admit Slytherin superiority once and for all.”
Snape has come up behind them, too. Harry scowls at him. Snape blinks and gives him a look that clearly asks, What have I done?
If Snape doesn’t know, then he’s probably being deliberately stupid. Harry just nods and says, “Thanks, Professor McGonagall,” and walks over to the Slytherin table. Neither Blaise nor Theo is there yet, even though for the last few days, they’ve tried to get up and walk with him. In fact, the only third-year Slytherin is Draco Malfoy, who’s playing with a spoonful of porridge.
He looks up and widens his eyes at Harry. Harry hesitates only once before he nods and sits down. He can’t be welcoming of Malfoy on the train and then act standoffish when they’re at school.
“Hi, Draco,” he says, and goes about slathering his toast with marmalade in the way that used to make Hermione scowl at him when he sat with the Gryffindors. He can’t help checking over his shoulder. Sure enough, she’s scowling again. Harry has to grin.
“Um, Potter-Harry? Can I ask you something?”
Draco sounds hesitant. That’s not like him at all. Harry turns around and blinks. “Sure, I reckon.”
“If you-if the only reason that you’re not playing Seeker is because you’re afraid of what I think, I want you to know that I think you should be Seeker. We have to win. And you’re better than me.” Draco speaks the words as if he didn’t just cut his pride, but his fists are clenched on either side of his plate.
Harry gapes at him. He can hear people walking in behind him and coming towards the Slytherin table, but right now he can’t care. He can’t take his eyes from Draco’s face. Draco flushes more and more brightly, and finally ducks his head, shaking it.
“Why are you doing that?” he whispers.
“I just never thought you would say that.”
“Say what?” Blaise swings in on one side of Harry, with Theo right behind him. A Slytherin girl Harry doesn’t know takes his other side, but he ignores her for the minute.
“Draco says that he doesn’t care if I take the Seeker position,” Harry says, a little dazed.
Blaise drops his toast. Theo freezes in place and looks at Draco. Harry has no idea what he’s thinking. But Draco is speaking anyway, and it’s more important to listen to him right now.
“I do so care! I want you to be the Seeker because I care so much about Slytherin winning! You know that we’re going to stand at least a chance of losing the House Cup if you don’t play!” Draco plants his hands on the table. “The least you can do is repay my sacrifice by becoming Seeker in turn!”
Harry doesn’t laugh, but it’s a near thing. “So, because you admitted I’m better, that’s enough reason for me to play?”
“Of course it is!”
Harry grins, at least, because it’s that or explode. Draco is just staring at him as if he’s baffling. He’s sincere, Harry thinks. He really does think Harry is better, and it’s cost him who knows what to say it.
But he’s also still-silly, if he thinks that this huge sacrifice from him is enough to get Harry on a broom for Slytherin House.
“Thank you, Draco,” Harry says. “Really, thank you. But you’re still a great Seeker, too. And Gryffindor doesn’t have anyone as good as you. Right now,” he has to add, because it’s true that maybe they’ll have someone try out this year who’s great. “Slytherin could easily still win. Don’t worry about it.”
Draco’s face turned pink. “So-you’re rejecting my offer?”
“To quit so I can become Seeker? Yeah. But not because it’s you or because you’re a horrible Seeker,” Harry adds quickly, since Draco looks as if he wants to stalk away from the table. “It’s because I don’t want to play Quidditch anymore.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Study. And practice Parseltongue.” Harry isn’t sure how true that is, because he isn’t sure that Parseltongue is the sort of thing you can get better at by practicing, but it sounds good, and it’s true that he’ll want to practice some of the magic he can learn by using serpents.
Draco is staring at him, so betrayed and mottled pink and wide-eyed that Harry can’t help what he says next. “You look exactly like Ron when I told him that I wasn’t going to play Quidditch this year.”
“I-do not!”
“Oh, that was an intelligent retort, Draco,” says the Slytherin girl on the other side of Harry. Harry glances at her and sees her curling her lip a little. Her dark green eyes are focused on her plate. “You probably do. Quidditch fanatics are all the same. And you don’t know when to give up on a business negotiation, either.” She pauses, then adds with some context Harry doesn’t know but is sure is embarrassing, “Like father, like son, after all.”
Draco shoves back from the table and marches away. Harry opens his mouth to call after him, but he spins around near the doorway of the Great Hall and shouts, “At least I have parents who are happily married, Daphne!”
Then Draco has left the Great Hall, and Harry sighs.
The Slytherin girl, Daphne apparently, has turned her own shade of red, but it fades by the time Harry opens his mouth to say something. “Don’t listen to him,” she tells Harry. “He needs practice before he can accept anything gracefully.” She holds out her hand to Harry. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Daphne Greengrass.”
Harry studies her carefully as he shakes her hand. She has smooth brown hair as well as the green eyes, but he really doesn’t recognize her. No, wait. He thinks he saw her standing behind Pansy and snickering one time last year.
He’s made peace with Draco, who did worse than that to him and his friends. But Draco also reached out and tried to help first. He’ll reserve judgment on Daphne, he supposes.
Theo has decided to be more blunt. “Why are you only talking to him now, Daphne? What did he do that made you decide you can be his ally?”
Daphne shifts her eyes to Theo. She doesn’t have any expression on her face. “If you’ll notice, Theo, I came over and sat down next to Harry before he said anything to Draco. It was what he did in the common room a few nights ago. I took the time to think about it.” She nods to Harry. “You’re going to be a powerful wizard.”
“Because I’m a Parselmouth?”
“Of course. Parselmouths are always powerful wizards.”
Harry can’t help but peer at her. On the one hand, Salazar Slytherin and Voldemort are both powerful, but on the other hand, it’s not like he would have wanted to follow either one of them.
Daphne only looks back at him, and then spends a moment patting at her mouth with her napkin. “And what did you to Flint the first morning was quite impressive, even if you seem to have decided against it for now.” She sounds disapproving.
Harry only shrugs. He’s not about to confess that he was under the Drake’s Breath potion, so altogether he thinks it’s probably just as well to avoid discussing it. “Do you want to find a classroom to practice the shields today?” he asks Blaise and Theo.
“I asked a house-elf about that,” Blaise says, sounding incredibly smug that he got to talk to a house-elf. He’s eating his toast with neat, quick bites, but he stops long enough to talk. “It said there’s one on the fifth floor. Down that corridor past the ugly statue of the kitten playing with a ball.”
“No kitten is ugly.”
Harry looks sideways at Daphne. Blaise ignores her and only says, “We’d probably want to put a Silencing Charm on the door, for the inevitable moment when Weasley falls over and hits his head.”
“Please call him Ron and don’t insult him.”
Blaise pauses long enough to swallow the bite of toast in his mouth. Then he says, “All right, Harry. I won’t.”
Daphne says nothing further then, but when they get up to go to Potions, she falls in line behind Harry and murmurs, “It’s interesting how you’ve got them so well-trained that they do what you say.”
“Blaise and Theo? They’re my friends. I’m not training them.” Harry hesitates, then adds, “And if you’re going to be-an ally, then I don’t want you insulting them, either. Otherwise you might as well go back where you came from.”
Harry thinks that will make her go away, but instead, Daphne’s face brightens, and she laughs. “I like you, Harry,” she says, and holds the door into the Potions classroom open for him.
Harry can’t think Slytherins are weird, because he knows too many of them who act sane now, but as he goes into the classroom, he does think, Girls are weird.
*
Lucius Malfoy studies the picture in the paper. He hasn’t moved since the Daily Prophet’s owl brought it into him. Narcissa went out to Diagon Alley earlier. Lucius managed a smile for her, as he usually does for his wife, but he’s been quietly turning the implications of the picture around in his mind for an hour now.
Harry Potter was Sorted into Slytherin last year. That is an indisputable fact. Lucius has dismissed rumors of other “facts,” such as Potter killing a basilisk and gathering a group of Slytherins around him to make a political move. They seem so impossible. A twelve-year-old boy, against one of the deadliest beasts in the world? And someone without a political bone in his body, like most Gryffindors, always reactive instead of active, doing this?
But the picture shows Potter with Nott’s and Zabini’s sons. And while Lucius still can’t believe they would associate with Potter of their own free wills, neither can he imagine that they would sit beside three Gryffindors only for a joke.
If Nott is involved, then Tarquinius will know about it. He might even have ordered Theodore to do it. Lucius stands up and makes his way to his fireplace, to cast in the Floo powder and name Nott’s main residence, where he will probably be. “Shadow Hall!”
Sure enough, it takes only a minute before Tarquinius’s face appears in the fire. He smiles a little at the sight of Lucius, which isn’t one of his signs of surprise. “Ah, Lucius. Flooing me about a certain newspaper article?”
“More the picture. I don’t pay much attention to what the Skeeter woman writes, except to know what the common rabble will be thinking. But I do want to know what your son is doing sitting with Potter willingly.”
“Of course. Well, it’s true that I think Potter’s interesting, and he seems to be surviving in Slytherin so far. Have you heard from your son that he’s triumphed in several confrontations with Marcus Flint?”
“Flint would fail an exam a troll could pass,” Lucius points out, wondering what maggot’s got into Tarquinius’s head. “Unless Potter bested him in a wrestling match, that’s not interesting news.”
Tarquinius pauses. “I see your point, Lucius. Why did you contact me, then?”
“It does look like Potter’s trying to be political. I wanted to find out what your son is doing, how you’re involved, and if you intend to guide the boy. Remember that it would be better for our Lord if Potter never became a political power, even a weak one.”
“That’s true, Lucius. And you know that everything I do is for our Lord, bar the regrettable necessity of pretending to be under the Imperius Curse after the last war.”
*
Poor Lucius, Tarquinius thinks when the Floo is sealed and he can go back to writing the letter he’s been laboring over most of the morning. Not to see that the boy is already a political power, because of his name if nothing else.
Not to see that our Lord is, at best, a wraith reduced to possessing others’ bodies to survive.
Tarquinius returns to writing. He’s not worried about the balancing act he’ll have to do, between Lucius and Harry. Lucius is charging down the wrong path and isn’t likely to turn his Abraxan around in time. Tarquinius, on the other hand, has options, a plan, allies, and more enthusiasm than he’s felt for anything but breeding animals and covering up the truth in years. He chuckles and signs his name with a final flourish to the letter.
Then he summons his favorite bird, a dark hawk that he created years ago out of some spare parts from experiments with owls. The bird, which he calls the Deliverer, perches on his arm and stares at him with round golden eyes.
“You are to fly fast and straight,” Tarquinius says as harshly as he can, his eyes fixed on the bird’s. “Turn aside only for winds, predators, or other dangers that might prevent you from delivering your message. Do you understand? Nothing matters as long as this gets through.”
The Deliverer makes a soft, curtseying bow, wings spreading out on either side of its body. Then it extends its leg so Tarquinius can tie the message on. Tarquinius watches as the Deliverer springs and speeds out into the bright morning.
The process will still take a few more months to complete after the addressee receives his letter. But that is the last step. The months are only necessary because of the ponderous formality with which the people involved tend to move, not because they will refuse or because there are any more things to be done.
Harry will have a secure place to stay for the summer, and the holidays, and all other years to come. Among people who have no reason to fear the Ministry, the Wizengamot, or the Headmaster.
Tarquinius is smiling when he turns around.
Chapter Twenty-Two.
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