Chapter Two of 'Wolf's Choice'- At Home
Chapter One.
Title: Wolf’s Choice (2/60)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Main story is gen, a few GoF canon pairings mentioned
Content Notes: AU of GoF, angst, gore, violence, torture, present tense, minor character death
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU of GoF. Harry begins his summer with horrific visions that come true much faster than he was expecting. He’ll have to rely on his circle of friends, both his guardians, and all his allies to cope with the results.
Author’s Notes: This is a long fic that is a sequel to my fic Other People’s Choices. Make sure you read that first before you start this one.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-At Home
“I have something to tell you, Theo. I believe that you shall have a little sibling soon.”
“Congratulations, Father. I didn’t realize your experiments had progressed to the point where you can create life on your own.”
Tarquinius narrows his eyes. He expected a startle out of his son, perhaps questions, although only a few, since he has always punished Theo for too much emotion too openly expressed. Theo goes on eating his peas with a pleasant and open expression.
“Not by such methods. I will court and marry a witch who can give me a proper heir, without weakness, and without the desire of rebelling against me.”
The direct reference to Astrid makes Theo pause, but perhaps only because Tarquinius doesn’t talk about her often. Then Theo shrugs and swallows another mouthful of peas. “Congratulations, then, for a different reason. Will you want me to decorate the manor? Make myself scarce when you bring my stepmother here?”
Tarquinius’s hand clenches down, but beneath the table, out of sight. Theo does not seem wary of being supplanted. Why? Does he think the poison he has introduced into Tarquinius’s blood will kill him before Tarquinius can sire another heir? But that cannot be true. The Joy-Killer takes its long, slow time.
“I will want you to be courteous to her. And welcome your new little brother when he arrives.”
“Of course, Father. Although I have to admit that I might prefer a sister. Spending time around Luna Lovegood-I told you, she’s from Ravenclaw, part of Harry’s study group?-makes me think having one would be interesting.”
Tarquinius retreats into baffled silence, although as always he listens closely when Theo talks about the people he studies with. It might be that he’ll pick up valuable secrets this way, and learn ways to manipulate his son.
But Theo goes to bed with a smile on his face, the way he always has when he comes home for the first day of summer, and Tarquinius is left to gaze blankly at the seat where his treacherous son sat.
Why is he not more bothered? Why is not tormented by fear?
*
Theo shuts his bedroom door quietly behind him, and listens to the defenses engage. He added a few runes when he came home for the summer, but honestly, the majority of the protections hiding him here are decades or maybe even centuries old. Nott parents haven’t always been the sanest. These kept them from harming their own children.
The way Father wants to do to me now.
Theo still smiles a little as he goes over to open the potions book that he duplicated from the Hogwarts library. He did wonder if Father would confront him about the fact that Theo has been poisoning him for years, but now that he’s had more time to think about it, he’s not surprised at what happened. Father likes to play with people. Keeping them on edge and making them wonder when he’s going to take revenge is more his style.
And taking revenge in ways that people never even notice until they’re impossible to stop is more Theo’s.
Theo reads carefully through the index of the potions book-it’s unusual in being one that has an index-and nods when he comes to the description of the effects he wants. He spends the rest of the evening reading about the different potions that can cause them, and decides on the one he’ll brew before he closes his eyes.
He’s not going to have any more little siblings. He’s not going to watch them suffer under Father, and maybe watch their mothers murdered, too. He can keep them safest by never letting them be born.
*
Blaise shudders a little as he watches a great black owl veering back from the wards that Professor Snape has established around the edge of his property. He knows that particular owl carries a message from his mother. He knows she wants him back.
She’ll conceal it with soft words and sad sighs if they ever meet again in person, but Blaise knows she’s furious. Professor Snape didn’t ask her permission before he took Blaise home with him and Harry for the summer, after all.
But if the professor had been foolish enough to do that, Blaise would be dead right now. And since so few British wizards care about Italian laws anyway, and the Headmaster at the school doesn’t care enough to intervene one way or the other…
They got it accomplished.
“Mr. Zabini. I wish to test your Occlumency.”
Blaise nods and stands up as his Head of House walks into the library. This is a nice room, furnished in dark green and with so many books on the shelves that Blaise doubts he could come to the end of them in a hundred years. Blaise spends most of his time here when Harry is at Black’s house.
Professor Snape stands in front of him for a second and scowls at him. Blaise braces himself as best he can, but he still feels only a flicker before Professor Snape sighs. “You were thinking about the black owl that came bearing a letter from your mother, and why no one in Britain has come to investigate your situation.”
“Yes, sir,” Blaise says. He looks away. He doesn’t understand why he isn’t better at Occlumency. He had to keep his thought hidden from his mother for literally years. And he has his mother’s Gift that can influence and charm people. He thought he had better control of his mind than this.
“There is something that may help you,” Professor Snape says, gesturing for Blaise to sit down. “You are trying to suppress your emotions.”
“But that’s what I thought you had to do, sir. Harry is always talking about clearing your mind when he’s practicing Occlumency with us.”
“Clarity is not the same as suppression. What you must do, Mr. Zabini, is make those emotions not matter. Think of achieving peace and blankness in your mind as your highest goal. Not fooling someone or resisting a Legilimens. Not even survival.”
Blaise studies him skeptically. Asking him not to care about survival is-a lot.
“Try to relax yourself into it, Mr. Zabini. Think of the way that you feel in this house. You are calmer than you were at Hogwarts? You do not need to worry about your mother being able to remove you from here or a Gryffindor playing pranks on you. Close your eyes and pursue that feeling. Hunt it down.”
“And that’s clarity? That’s calm?”
“There are different ways of achieving it. I do not care what path you take to the end result, so long as you achieve Occlumency.”
More for Harry’s safety than my own, Blaise thinks, but without resentment. After all, his Head of House has demonstrated that he cares about Blaise’s safety by housing him for the summer. Blaise doesn’t need any more displays than that.
He closes his eyes and regulates his breathing. He thinks about a bed of his own to sleep in, with no fear that his mother will come in at night to “talk.” He thinks about Professor Snape around all the time and Harry sometimes, instead of his mother’s boyfriends and needing to understand them if she’s got a new one. He thinks of Harry in his bed across the corridor-
“Something has distressed you. What?”
Blaise looks up at Professor Snape. He doesn’t want to betray the secrets Harry has trusted him with, and he does his best to banish them from the surface of his mind so that Professor Snape can’t get a look. “Um, just thinking about the kind of burdens that Harry has to bear, Professor.”
“Do remember that I can detect lies, Mr. Zabini.”
Blaise flushes. Snape’s tone is bored, which is worse than disappointed. “Sorry, sir. But I do worry about him. And there are things that I think he should be working on differently or sharing with more people. But I don’t want to force him to act the way I think he should, either.”
Snape considers this, then nods. “That is fair. I will, in fact, be talking to Harry myself when he returns here on Wednesday night. He is not progressing in Occlumency the way he should. I wish to find out why.”
Those fucking nightmares, Blaise thinks, but he keeps his gaze carefully averted.
“You could tell me, and I would never suggest that I had heard it from you.”
“No, thanks.” Blaise shakes his head. “I’ve kept secrets from him before, and it didn’t last very long. I can’t-”
He cuts himself off, because speaking to Professor Snape about it is different than speaking to Harry, but the words echo so loudly in his mind that it’s possible Professor Snape heard them anyway. I can’t do that to him.
“If you are certain. Then I shall merely find out the secrets and punish you if I find out that you harmed my ward in participating in their concealment.”
“That’s fair, Professor Snape.”
“Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing,” Professor Snape orders, instead of responding to that. “You should be seeing a faint, red, glowing thread in front of you, at some point. That is the representation of your magic-I conjured a representation of it the other day that told me so-and you can concentrate on that to lead you to thoughts of deeper Occlumency if your ordinary thoughts are not responding as they should.”
*
“Harry, I have something to ask you.”
Harry feels his shoulders tensing as Sirius talks. They’ve been eating dinner in the middle of the kitchen at Grimmauld Place, which used to be downstairs and windowless. Then Sirius tore a huge hole in the wall with a spell, and framed it and put in glass and some kind of enchantment. Now it shows the lake at Hogwarts.
Harry reluctantly turns away from the window. “What is it, Sirius?”
Sirius is toying with his fork. He clears his throat a few times, and then says, “Well, I know that you like having Snape as one of your guardians, so I won’t ask you to change that.”
“Thanks, Sirius,” Harry says, but his shoulders are just getting tighter. He doesn’t want to start yet another conversation about Professor Snape. There isn’t anything Harry can do to change the compromise they have to make it “fairer” for Sirius or Snape, and what they have takes enough work as it is.
“But I want to offer you something, and I don’t want you to tell Snape about it.”
“Fine.”
Sirius blinks as if thrown off-stride, then grins a little. “You know that I can teach you how to be an Animagus? How would you like to learn to become one?”
Harry feels his heart clench. A few months ago, he would have leaped at that. But he knows a lot more now, and he also has a lot more to learn. And he knows that he has to rank magic he learns by how useful it’s going to be against Voldemort.
“I would like to, but I don’t know if I have space in all the other things I’m learning.”
“Oh, come on, Harry! You only have those serpent magic lessons when you’re with Snape, and I know you’ve done all your summer homework already! What else do you have to learn?”
“I’m keeping up Occlumency practice, and practicing the serpent magic even when the Speakers aren’t actually with me, and learning more about runes, and reading books of defensive spells, and studying history so that I can know more about Dark Lords-”
Sirius interrupts him. “But you don’t have to do all that! Why can’t you just relax and let yourself have some fun once in a while?”
“Because that could mean that someone close to me dies and Voldemort wins.”
Sirius shakes his head. “But you know that you’re not going to have to fight Voldemort directly, right? When that time comes, then someone’s going to be right next to you! Maybe Dumbledore, maybe me, maybe me and Remus and all your friends. You don’t have to fight alone!”
Harry doesn’t say anything. It would be too complicated to explain that he has to. He doesn’t want to endanger anyone else. And he’s going to let people help him in the other battles, of course. He accepts that he can’t fight all the Death Eaters and teach people to protect themselves alone. But that’s not the same thing as actually fighting the monster in his nightmares who is building his body out of skinned muscles.
“Harry? You know you’re not alone?”
“I know I’m not alone for most things. But going up against Voldemort himself, I have to be. Don’t you think that’s what the prophecy says?”
“Fuck the prophecy!” Sirius brings his hand down on the table, making all the crockery and Harry jump at the same time. “My Mind-Healer says that one of the worst things I did was feeling like I had to control everything and do it myself. You’re doing the same thing if you go too much by the prophecy.”
Harry hesitates. Maybe that’s true. But he still doesn’t think he can bear to stand aside and let his friends fight Voldemort for him. Or Sirius. Or Snape. Or even someone he doesn’t know.
“Not right now, Sirius. Maybe next summer, when I know more and I don’t feel like I’m scrambling to catch up all the time.”
Sirius sighs and stirs the remaining sauce on his plate around with his fork. “Okay, pup. But just remember that the offer is always open.”
Harry nods and smiles at his godfather, grateful that his refusal isn’t going to change into a huge argument.
Sometimes it seems huge arguments are where he lives nowadays.
*
“If you do not tell me about your nightmares, I cannot help you.”
Severus knows his voice is too tense and lays too many burdens on the shoulders of a boy who is already burdened, but he is aching with frustration. Harry still has his eyes turned away from him. He refused to tell Severus about the dreams that Severus knows he’s having, and now he’s also refusing to look him in the eye and give Severus an easy way of seeing it.
“It’s not your fault that I haven’t mastered Occlumency yet,” Harry whispers. He wraps his arms around himself and paces up and down the corridor outside his room. Severus caught him up as he headed upstairs; he tends to Floo in lately and go straight to the library, studying for hours, instead of greeting Severus and Zabini. “I don’t want you to feel like it is.”
“I certainly do not feel like it is!”
“Well, good.” Harry gives him a somewhat baffled look. “As long as you know that. It’s not your fault, it’s mine.”
“I will not speak in terms of assigning blame,” Severus says. He bends down and takes one of Harry’s shoulders, wincing as he feels how tightly wound Harry is. “Harry. Listen to me. I do not care how many horrific images there are in your dreams. I do not wish to blame you for not walling them out. I wish to see them.”
“I have to handle him alone.”
“I will not permit you to.”
“You can’t stop me. The prophecy says I have to.”
Severus feels his lips pull back into a snarl that would do Black’s Animagus form proud. So that is what this is about. “I can certainly keep you from acting on your own,” he says, and makes his voice cool. “Charm the books in the library to keep themselves closed when you try to read them, for instance. Do what I should have done the moment I realized you were acting like this.”
Harry whirls around to face him, and at least there’s honest outrage burning on his face now, not the cold resignation Severus has come to hate. “What’s that?”
“Insist that you see a Mind-Healer.”
“You can’t do that! Sirius would have to agree!”
“In fact,” Severus drawls, seeking refuge from pain in a hot, hard enjoyment, “the guardianship papers say that either of us can insist that you see a Mind-Healer at least twice. Black’s permission is not required.”
Harry gapes at him. Then he pushes his glasses furiously up his nose and says, “I don’t want to see one. I don’t need to see one! I’m fine.”
“Then the definition of ‘fine’ includes nightmares every night, an obsessive drive to study that does you no good, ignoring your friends and your friends’ owls, and a degree of self-loathing. Truly, I did not know any dictionary covered that.”
Harry squeezes his eyes shut and leans heavily on his doorframe. “I have to. He’s torturing people and killing them. Or having Greyback torture people and kill them, anyway. How am I supposed to stop him if I don’t take my magic seriously?”
Severus breathes out. Ah. Now they are getting somewhere. He reaches out and gently strokes the knotted shoulder until it relaxes, at least a little. He murmurs, “It is not your responsibility to keep him from torturing and killing people.”
“Yes, it is!”
“I want you to forget about that ridiculous prophecy. Keep in mind that everyone else will keep you from facing him by yourself, and yes, that does include me. It includes Mr. Zabini. It includes Weasley and Granger and Nott and Malfoy. It includes Black,” Severus has to grimace as he says that, “and even the werewolf. Defeating Voldemort is not your responsibility alone.”
Harry is breathing noisily, his head bowed. For a moment, Severus thinks it would be better if he could permit himself the release of tears, but he is also selfishly relieved that that does not happen. He would have no idea how to deal with it.
“Now,” Severus continues quietly, “let me help you tonight. I can give you a combination of an Occlumency shield in your mind and a potion that will let you sleep. And tomorrow, we can set about finding a Mind-Healer for you.”
Harry’s eyes snap open. “You were serious about that?”
“I should have started being serious long since.”
“You don’t look like a huge shaggy black dog.”
“Very funny, Mr. Potter,” Severus says in his most sepulchral voice. “Will you permit me to use the Occlumency and the potion?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the Mind-Healer?”
“I’ll-think about it, sir.”
For now, that is all Severus can ask for. He tilts Harry’s head gently back and looks into his eyes, sweeping away the conflicting images of fleshless bodies and full moons and blood on the ground and replacing them with one of a calm forest glade. At the same moment, he Summons the most powerful Dreamless Sleep potion he has from the lab and drips a careful three drops on Harry’s tongue.
Harry drops like a log. Severus catches him and carries him to bed, carefully tucking him in because there is no one to see.
And if he lingers, watching Harry’s sleep for a few minutes, there is still no one to see.
Chapter Three.
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