Chapter Fifty-Two of 'Wolf's Choice'- A Different Kind of Selfishness
Chapter Fifty-One.
Title: Wolf’s Choice (52/60)
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 again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifty-Two-A Different Kind of Selfishness
Harry wakes slowly. There’s a pulsing warmth in his hand that feels like a heartbeat, and he wants to curl around it and pretend that it’s the real heat, the heart that Chaos has that will never beat again.
There are low voices in the room with him, but Harry doesn’t want to open his eyes. He wants to drift here and rejoice in his freedom from pain. Severus must have given him some powerful potions. Harry remembers very well what happened, but he’s shielded from the full implications of it for a moment.
And the heat is real. Harry finally has to open his eyes and shake his head in wonder.
Remus and Sirius stop talking at once and look anxiously at him. “How are you?” Sirius asks, leaning forwards to cup his hand around Harry’s neck. “Severus said that you were in a pretty bad way when you went to sleep.”
Harry licks his lips and manages to sit up, trying to ignore the sensation of everything poised to fall on him when he starts really thinking about it. “Can you feel that?” he asks.
“Feel what?” Remus is looking concerned, like he thinks Harry has gone mad.
I deserve to, after everything that happened, Harry thinks, but then he dismisses the thought. No, he won’t dishonor Chaos’s sacrifice that way. He turns his head back and forth for a second, and then manages to see the shining of something small and red under the blankets. He moves them, and there’s the tiny stone that Chaos breathed into the ground to create for him.
He picks it up, and a sensation radiates up his arm from his palm: a feeling that his hand is resting on hot scales, and that there’s a heartbeat right there. Harry closes his eyes and chokes on a sob. It’s not the real thing, it’s never going to be the real thing, but it’s close.
She left it for him.
“Harry? What’s that?” It’s Sirius this time, crowding close to the bed and looking as if he thinks the stone is hurting Harry and he’s going to take it away.
“It’s a stone Chaos created with her fire.” Sirius flinches from the dragon’s name, but Harry can’t. He’ll hear it every day, he’ll be reminded of it every day, and even though part of him just wants to curl up and mourn, he can’t do that.
Chaos died for him. She sacrificed herself for him. And if he just lies here in the hospital wing for the rest of his life, or even just a month, that would mean that he’s unworthy of her sacrifice.
Part of him laughs in a dark voice that sounds kind of like Voldemort’s, and whispers, So you are using your guilt to trick yourself into this? You would manipulate your own emotions? And people call me a monster.
Harry stares at the pulsing stone and shrugs. So he’s manipulating himself. So what? If he gets up and walks again, instead of lying down to die, then he’s still doing the right thing.
“I think you could really use your Mind-Healer, Harry,” Sirius says, and ruffles his hair as if he thinks it might burst into flames if he doesn’t do it carefully.
Harry bites his lip. He hasn’t thought about going for Healer Lyndell, largely because there’s no guarantee that they would be able to bring her here quickly. And he needs to be up before then.
“If you can Floo her,” he concedes. “But it’s morning, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Remus offers. The werewolf scars on his face seem to glow with light of their own as he stares at Harry. Harry finds himself stiffening his shoulders. He’s going to hold up under this one way or another. “Were you think of going somewhere? Of course there’s no classes today. They don’t even know what to do with the Durmstrang students, as I understand it. The Aurors want to question them on how much they knew about Headmaster Karkaroff’s plans, but some of their parents have arrived and are claiming diplomatic immunity for them.”
Harry shrugs. Honestly, what the Durmstrang students do doesn’t really matter to him, unless they have some sort of plan to hurt his friends. He only asked about getting Headmaster Karkaroff freed earlier because it might make Harry himself feel a little better, and right now, he needs all the feeling better he can get.
“I need to get up and go down to breakfast.”
Sirius makes a horrified noise that he manages to break off. Remus reaches out and brushes his hand gently down Harry’s shoulder, the same gentleness that Sirius showed when he ruffled his hair. They both seem really afraid of breaking Harry.
“No, you don’t,” Sirius says. “You need to stay here and rest.”
Harry shakes his head. He can still feel the ache inside him where Chaos was, and he still thinks that one of the potions he’s on must be preventing him from thinking about it in anything like a normal way, or he would be a sobbing mess on the floor. “It won’t do any good, Sirius.” He pauses and then manages to say in a voice that doesn’t shake, which impresses him, “It won’t bring her back.”
“But if you go down there,” Remus says, his voice deepening in the direction of a growl, “there will be people who think they can ask you questions and make accusations.”
Harry glances at Remus. “And you think I can’t handle them?” He’s wearing a pair of green hospital pyjamas under the sheets that definitely aren’t his. He wonders where they came from, and how he can get a pair of normal robes.
“I won’t be able to handle it,” Remus says flatly. “I’ll probably tear apart the first person who dares to accuse you of something.”
Harry pauses and blinks at Remus. He’s so used to him being the calm and gentle one, other than right after the attack Greyback perpetrated, that it’s shocking to hear him say that. “You mean literally.”
Remus nods, his eyes flaring gold.
Harry thinks about it, turning his mind through some of the spells his study group has learned in the last few months. “Fine. I’ll cast a shield that floats along with me and prevents people from approaching me too closely unless I want them to. And I want you to cast a shield that surrounds your ears and diminishes the sound of conversations, okay?”
Remus stares at him. “You’re taking such measures to protect them? What about yourself, Harry?”
“I’m doing that, too.” Harry tucks the warm stone close to him. His mind is still blurring and rushing if he thinks about it, but that’s why he’s not thinking too hard about it. “You know what the worst thing would be right now, Remus?”
“What?” Remus trembles a little, as if he thinks Harry is going to name a specific person and he’ll dash out and tear them apart like he was promising.
“Lying around in bed and staring at the ceiling. I don’t have any choice but to drown in my thoughts if I do that. I would never recover. And that would mean-dishonoring Chaos.” Harry hears his voice crack on those words, but as if from a distance. He takes a deep breath and forces himself to refocus on what’s really in front of him, the most important things. “I want to go down and walk around and eat breakfast and see my friends. Reassure people.”
“You shouldn’t have to!”
“And I should never have been in the Tri-Wizard Tournament in the first place, and Voldemort should never have been resurrected, and Lucius Malfoy should never have been an idiot!” Harry hears his voice soar and crack, and closes his eyes, while once again he tightens his hold on the firestone until his fingers hurt. “Look, we won’t get anywhere if we sit around and talk about what should be and shouldn’t, Moony. I want to move.”
“What about Draco?”
“What about him?”
“He-came here and accused you of killing his father, to hear Severus tell it.” Sirius takes over, casting an uneasy look at Moony, who is pacing back and forth muttering to himself and waving his arms around. “Then he flounced out. And Severus says that you took it and accepted the blame. Why?”
Harry settles himself. He won’t convince Sirius and Remus unless he sounds calm, he knows, in spite of the fact that they would probably prefer it if he ran around screaming. “Because it made me feel better.”
“What?” Sirius goggles at him.
Harry nods. “It was selfish. I-I can work better if I know what I’m responsible for and I bear the pain and take the accusations from my friends up-front. That way, Draco can’t suddenly pop up months later and accuse me of murdering his father. I can deal with his hatred right now, but if I had to after I thought he supported me, that would probably destroy me.”
“I just don’t understand you, pup.” Sirius gives him a hard hug, and Harry curves his arm around Sirius’s neck and closes his eyes and hangs on. “Why does that help?”
Harry swallows. “You know the worst thing the Dursleys ever did to me?” It feels strange to speak their name aloud, after so long, but he has to.
“No.” Sirius strokes his back up and down.
Harry swallows again to quell the urge to cry. “For like a month when I was six, they told me that they really wanted to love me, but they just needed me to do some more chores and do well in school. So I tried. And I did well at the chores and got my teacher at primary school to praise me. And then Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon laughed and told me that they were joking, that I should have known better, that no one could ever love me-”
“I want to kill them, I want to kill them,” Sirius whispers over and over again, while Harry buries his head against Sirius’s shoulder. Remus is the one who mutters something about how Sirius can’t kill them because they’re already dead, which Harry is at least grateful for. He manages to pull himself back and gulp air hard.
“And I couldn’t stand it if Draco turned on me someday when I thought he’d forgiven me,” Harry continues. “That would be worse than anything. So this is the course that I’m pursuing, and it’s not great, but it’s going to work for me.”
“Even if he hates you for the rest of his life?”
Harry nods and cups Chaos’s stone close to him. “He should have the right to do that if he wants. And I don’t care how much he hates me. The only way I would get upset is if that leads to him attacking me or one of the others.”
Sirius and Remus exchange speaking looks, but Harry has no interest in finding out what they say. He stares at them in silent challenge. Are they going to let him go down to the Great Hall for breakfast or not?
Not that it really matters, since Harry intends to go whether or not they “let” him.
“Severus!” Sirius sounds so startled that Harry turns and glances over his shoulder, away from the staring contest with Remus, and he gets to see the profound expression of relief on Severus’s face before he tucks it away inside himself.
Well, all right. Harry will do the best he can not to upset Severus more, because it looks like he’s been plenty upset already.
But Harry still has to do what’s best for him, too, and if that includes manipulating his own emotions and walking around in public, then he’ll explain that. Severus might actually go along with it better than Sirius and Remus. Harry knows that the professor is more worried about his mind than his body.
“How are you?” Severus asks quietly as he walks towards Harry, his hand resting for a moment on his shoulder, then flinching back as if he thinks that the skin there might still be tender from Lucius Malfoy’s flaying spells.
But the pain potions have really helped with that. Harry meets Severus’s gaze. “Ready to take on the world?”
“Are you, now?”
The mild way Severus speaks, coupled with how his muscles tense, tell Harry that he’s going to have to explain. He sighs a little and leans towards Severus. “Yes. Listen to me. I was just explaining to Sirius and Remus that the Dursleys betrayed me once by pretending they would love me, and then saying they never would. I would rather deal with the accusations and the hatred up-front, if people are going to feel it, rather than later. I don’t want to hide in the hospital wing.”
Severus pauses for a long second, staring into Harry’s face, and Harry waits. It’s the only thing he can do, really. He does try his best to push his intentions into the open part of his mind and meet Severus’s eyes so that he can understand everything through Legilimency.
Severus half-closes his eyes. “I hate that you have to do this,” he whispers. “That you have to think so hard about the public’s reaction to something that was not your fault.”
“I know.” Harry reaches up and awkwardly touches Severus’s shoulder. The height difference between them is too dramatic to make him able to hug him. “Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault, either.”
“If I had-”
Harry shakes his head. “It wasn’t your fault. It was Voldemort’s. And Lucius Malfoy’s. And Lucius-died.” His breath catches, but he wraps his fingers tighter than ever around Chaos’s stone and conjures some of her warmth, and he can go on. “Voldemort is going to die sooner or later. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t blame anyone else, either.”
“I am still going to make sure that Karkaroff and Edgecombe receive justice for what they did.”
Harry sighs. “I know. I would have spared them from it if I could have because I don’t want people to blame me for that, either. I told you, selfish.”
“No more so than would be expected, given how you have suffered.” Severus’s eyes are direct for a second, and then he glances aside. “And Draco?”
“I don’t want to lose his friendship, but I think-I probably already did. And he’s going to suffer enough because of losing his father. Leave him alone.”
“You know that he had some kind of knowledge of what Karkaroff and Edgecombe had planned before it happened? He attempted to tell me as much before the Portkey spirited you away.”
“I don’t believe that he knew anything like this.” Harry says it firmly, and steps away from Severus, shaking his head, when Severus tries to interrupt. “No, I really don’t. He might have acted like an idiot, but he’s not one so much that he would have done something that he suspected could have hurt me or destroyed his father.”
Severus waits for a long moment before he grunts. “Fine. But it is too much to expect me to support the accusations he is trying to hurl.”
“I wouldn’t ask that of you.” Harry holds the stone close to himself and looks up at a rustle of wings. Lion drops to his shoulder, chattering happily in Parseltongue about how glad he is to see Harry “walking around with unnecessary feet” again. Harry buries his face for a second against the golden scales of his snake, and then turns away from the memories and the stares and nods to the door of the hospital wing. “Let’s go downstairs and get the first dramatic appearance over with.”
Severus and Sirius and Remus all surround him like an honor guard as he goes down the stairs. Harry doesn’t mind that or try to talk them out of it. He’s almost got used to it with the way his friends have been treating him in the past few months, anyway.
And the only person he has the right to ask miracles of is himself.
*
Theo stands up when he sees Harry come through the door of the Great Hall. Well, technically he sees Black and Lupin and Professor Snape first, but then they part out of the way, and there’s Harry, giving the people at the Slytherin table a tentative smile, and then turning and doing the same to the Gryffindor table.
Immediately, someone shouts something. But Harry has the shimmer of a shield around him as he turns and makes his way to the Slytherin table, and for all Theo knows, that includes an auditory shield wrapped around his ears so that he can’t hear the stupid accusation, which has something to do with “lying about You-Know-Who.”
Theo is smiling warmly at Harry and he knows it and part of him thinks of it as a weakness, but Harry smiles back, and that’s all he wants. He sits down, but nudges Parkinson to move down the bench so that Weasley and Granger can sit next to him.
Granger gives Theo a faint frown as she settles in next to him. “It’s kind of creepy that you knew we would do that instead of rushing over to hug Harry.”
“Harry’s got enough bodyguards around him that no one can hug him right now.”
Weasley snorts. “True enough.” And then he leans over to punch Harry in the arm as he sits down on the opposite side of the bench from them.
“Hey, mate.”
Theo can hear the deep grief and hope in Weasley’s voice this time because he’s looking for it. Harry nods back, and that is worth everything.
“Are you all right?” Harry asks, his eyes resting for a second on Theo before going on to seek out Blaise, and Daphne, and Weasley and Granger, and then he twists to watch as Lovegood and Smith head towards him from the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables.
“We’re fine,” Granger says, a flowing of warmth and worry from her that Theo can almost feel on his skin. “How are you, Harry?’
Harry pauses a second, and touches the winged serpent coiled on his shoulder. Theo doesn’t think he’s going to be walking around without Lion for a while. “I’m okay,” he says finally, while Black and Lupin are coaxed by Professor Snape to join the professors’ table.
“Where’s Draco?” he asks a second later.
Theo looks down, because he can’t keep his voice or expression neutral, but luckily Daphne does just that. “His mother came to collect him yesterday.”
“I’m glad he has family,” Harry says, and that’s it. That’s going to be it for a while, Theo thinks.
But he can at least make sure that Harry has this one evening undisturbed. He catches Finnigan’s eye across the Great Hall, as the idiot looks likely to storm over and ask rude questions, and Finnigan turns red and sits back down.
We’ll keep on going, Theo thinks, as he turns back to dinner and conversation, and ensures his fellow Slytherins make room for Smith and Lovegood at the table, too. And in the end, we’ll outlast them.
Chapter Fifty-Three.
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